 Mahatma
Gandhi
That India opted for
an entirely original path to solving this crisis and
obtaining swaraj (independence) was due largely
to Gandhi, commonly known as "Mahatma" (or
Great Soul) or, as he himself preferred, "Gandhiji"
(an honorific term for Gandhi). A native of Gujarat who
had been educated in Britain, he was an obscure and
unsuccessful provincial lawyer. Gandhi had accepted an
invitation in 1893 to represent indentured Indian
laborers in South Africa, where he stayed on for more
than twenty years, emerging ultimately as the voice and
conscience of thousands who had been subjected to
blatant racial discrimination. He returned to India in
1915, virtually a stranger to public life but
"fired with a religious vision of a new India,
whose swaraj . . . would [be] a moral
reformation of a whole people which would either convert
the British also or render their Raj impossible by
Indian withdrawal of support for it and its modern
values," according to historian Judith M. Brown.
Gandhi's ideas and
strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience (satyagraha--see
Glossary), first applied during his South Africa days,
initially appeared impractical to many educated Indians.
In Gandhi's own words, "Civil disobedience is civil
breach of unmoral statutory enactments," but as he
viewed it, it had to be carried out nonviolently by
withdrawing cooperation with the corrupt state.
Observers realized Gandhi's political potential when he
used the satyagraha during the anti-Rowlatt Acts
protests in Punjab. In 1920, under Gandhi's leadership,
the Congress was reorganized and given a new
constitution, whose goal was swaraj .
Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to
pay a token fee, and a hierarchy of committees--from
district, to province, to all-India--was established and
made responsible for discipline and control over a
hitherto amorphous and diffuse movement. During his
first nationwide satyagraha, Gandhi urged the people to
boycott British education institutions, law courts, and
products (in favor of swadeshi ); to resign
from government employment; to refuse to pay taxes; and
to forsake British titles and honors. The party was
transformed from an elite organization to one of mass
national appeal.
Although Gandhi's
first nationwide satyagraha was too late to influence
the framing of the new Government of India Act of 1919,
the magnitude of disorder resulting from the movement
was unparalleled and presented a new challenge to
foreign rule. Gandhi was forced to call off the campaign
in 1922 because of atrocities committed against police.
However, the abortive campaign marked a milestone in
India's political development. For his efforts, Gandhi
was imprisoned until 1924. On his release from prison,
he set up an ashram (a rural commune), established a
newspaper, and inaugurated a series of reforms aimed at
the socially disadvantaged within Hindu society, the
rural poor, and the Untouchables (see Changes in the
Caste System, ch. 5). His popularity soared in Indian
politics as he reached the hearts and minds of ordinary
people, winning support for his causes as no one else
had ever done before. By his personal and eclectic
piety, his asceticism, his vegetarianism, his espousal
of Hindu-Muslim unity, and his firm belief in ahimsa,
Gandhi appealed to the loftier Hindu ideals. For Gandhi,
moral regeneration, social progress, and national
freedom were inseparable.
Emerging leaders
within the Congress--Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai
Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari, Maulana
Abdul Kalam Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Jaya-prakash
(J.P.) Narayan--accepted Gandhi's leadership in
articulating nationalist aspirations but disagreed on
strategies for wresting more concessions from the
British. The Indian political spectrum was further
broadened in the mid-1920s by the emergence of both
moderate and militant parties, such as the Swaraj Party
(sometimes referred to as the Swarajist Party), the
Mahasabha Party (literally, great council; an orthodox
Hindu communal party), the Unionist Party, the Communist
Party of India, and the Socialist Independence for India
League. Regional political organizations also continued
to represent the interests of non-Brahmans in Madras,
Mahars in Maharashtra, and Sikhs in Punjab.
The Congress,
however, kept itself aloof from competing in elections.
As voices inside and outside the Congress became more
strident, the British appointed a commission in 1927,
under Sir John Simon, to recommend further measures in
the constitutional devolution of power. The British
failure to appoint an Indian member to the commission
outraged the Congress and others, and, as a result, they
boycotted it throughout India, carrying placards
inscribed "Simon, Go Back." In 1929 the
Congress responded by drafting its own constitution
under the guidance of Motilal Nehru (Jawaharlal's
father) demanding full independence (purna swaraj
) by 1930; the Congress went so far as to observe
January 26, 1930, as the first anniversary of the first
year of independence.
Gandhi reemerged from
his long seclusion by undertaking his most inspired
campaign, a march of about 400 kilometers from his
commune in Ahmadabad to Dandi, on the coast of Gujarat
between March 12 and April 6, 1930. At Dandi, in protest
against extortionate British taxes on salt, he and
thousands of followers illegally but symbolically made
their own salt from sea water. Their defiance reflected
India's determination to be free, despite the
imprisonment of thousands of protesters. For the next
five years, the Congress and government were locked in
conflict and negotiations until what became the
Government of India Act of 1935 could be hammered out.
But by then, the rift between the Congress and the
Muslim League had become unbridgeable as each pointed
the finger at the other acrimoniously. The Muslim League
disputed the claim by the Congress to represent all
people of India, while the Congress disputed the Muslim
League's claim to voice the aspirations of all Muslims.
The 1935 act, the
voluminous and final constitutional effort at governing
British India, articulated three major goals:
establishing a loose federal structure, achieving
provincial autonomy, and safeguarding minority interests
through separate electorates. The federal provisions,
intended to unite princely states and British India at
the center, were not implemented because of ambiguities
in safeguarding the existing privileges of princes. In
February 1937, however, provincial autonomy became a
reality when elections were held; the Congress emerged
as the dominant party with a clear majority in five
provinces and held an upper hand in two, while the
Muslim League performed poorly.
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