Grade X History CBSE

1. NATIONALISM
IN INDIA

2. INTRODUCTION
* The years following 1919 saw a huge spread of nationalism
among the people of India, and different modes of struggle
were used.
First of all, let us know what is:
* Nationalism: It is basically the feeling of patriotism, i.e.,
affection towards the country. It is also implies a significant
unity among the people
* In this presentation, we will study non-cooperation and Civil
Disobedience Movements, and explore how congress
developed a national movement, mobilised the people, and
also how different social groups participated in the movements
differently….

3. • It increased to an economical and political crisis.
• Due to huge increase in defence expenditure , customs
duties were raised and income tax was introduced .
• Through the years prices were increased significantly –
doubling between 1913 and 1918.
• Demand for soldiers increased and forced recruitment took
place in rural areas.
• This led to an extreme hardship for common man and also
caused widespread anger.
IMPACT OF THE FIRST WORLD
WAR

4. Additional Problems for the people
• In 1918-19 and 1920-21, crops failed in many parts of
India, resulting to acute shortage of food.
•Then came an influenza epidemic. In 1921, nearly 12-13
million perished as a result of plague epidemic.
• People hoped that their hardships would end after the war
was over. But that did not happen.

5. Mahatma Gandhi comes into the Scene
• January 1915: M.K .Gandhi returned to India.
• He had come from South Africa where he successfully
fought the racist regime with a novel method of mass
agitation, which he called Satyagraha.
• After learning about the injustices being done to people in
India, he decided to fight against them, through Satyagraha.

6. The Idea of Satyagraha
•It promotes the idea of truth and Non-Violence.
• The idea of satyagraha emphasized the power of truth and
the need to search for it.
• It suggests that if cause is true, and if the struggle was
against injustice, a Satyagrahi could win the battle with Non-
Violence.

7. Cont….
• Without using violence of any form, a satyagrahi could win
the battle by appealing to the conscience( making the
oppressor to understand what is right and what is wrong) of
the oppressor.
• This can be done by persuading the people ( including
oppressor) to see the truth, instead of being forced to accept
the truth.
• Gandhi believed that this idea could unite the Indians.

8. Implementation of Satyagraha
•1916 : Gandhi Travelled to Champaran in Bihar to inspire the
peasants to struggle against the oppressive plantation system.
•1917: He organised a satyagraha to support the peasants of
Kheda district of Gujarat. Which was affected by crop failure
and a plague epidemic, the peasants couldn’t pay revenue and
demanded relaxation , however the government agreed to
suspend collection.
•1918: He went to Ahmadabad to organise a satyagraha
movement amongst cotton mill workers as a result mill
owners agreed to increase 35% in wages.
• Gandhi had a great success in all of the above.

9. The Rawlatt Act of 1919
Gandhi got tremendous success in the initial movements
which brought him in to close contacts with the common
mass and decided to launch a nation-wide satyagraha against
the proposed Rowlatt Act.
•Rowlatt Act: It gave the Government enormous powers to
repress political activities , and allowed detention of political
prisoners without trial.
•Gandhi wanted to fight this by adopting non-violence by
organising activities like hartals ( bandh ).
•Rallies were organised in various cities, workers went on
strike in railway workshops, and shops closed down.

10. Consequences/ results
• This scared the British. So it decided to clamp down on
nationalist.
• Local leaders were picked from Amritsar and Gandhi was
barred from Delhi.
• 10th April: The police in Amritsar fired upon a peaceful
procession, provoking widespread attacks on banks, post
offices, and railway stations.
• 13th April: Because of the April 10th incident, strict martial
law had been imposed. General Dyer took command and
the infamous Jalianwalla Bagh incident took place.

11. The Jallianwalla Bagh Incident
• On April 13th 1919, a crowd of villagers who had come to
Amritsar to attend a fair had gathered in the enclosed
ground of Jallinawalla Bagh.
• Being from outside the city, they were unaware of the
martial law that had been imposed.
• Dyer entered the area, blocked the exit points, and opened
fire on the crowd, killing hundreds.
• His object, as he declared later, was to produce a moral
effect, to create in the minds of satyagrahis a feeling of
terror and fear.

12. Image of Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre

13. Cont….
• As the Jallianwalla Bagh news spread, there were strikes ,
clashes with the police and attacks on Government buildings.
• The Government countered this with brutal repression,
seeking to humiliation and terrorise people.
• Seeing the violence spread, Mahatma Gandhi called off the
movement.

14. Need of wider spread of Movement
•The Rowlatt Satyagraga was limited mainly to the cities and
towns.
• Mahatma Gandhi felt the need of a more broad based
movement in India.
• He was convinced that it could be only possible by bringing
the Hindus and Muslims on a common platform.
• So he decided to take advantage of the Khilafat issue.

15. The Khilafat Issue
• As the First World War ended with the defeat of Turkey,
and Turkey lost most of her territories, it could not retain
control over the holy places. This angered the Muslims in
India.
• In support of Khalifa ( Emperor of Turkey & spiritual
head of the Islamic world ) Muslims in India formed
Khilafat committee in Bombay in March 1919 under the
leadership of Moulana Muhammad Ali and Shoukat Ali to
defend Khalifa.

16. Cont….
•Young Muslim leaders began discussing with Gandhi
about the possibility of a united mass action on the
issue.
* He took the advantage and convinced other leaders of the
congress, and at Calcutta Session of the Congress in Sep
1920 a resolution was passed to launch a Non-
Cooperation movement in support of Khilafat with
Swaraj

17. Non-Cooperation Movement
• In his famous book ‘Hind Swaraj’ (1909) Mahatma Gandhi
declared that “ British rule was established in India with the
co-operation of Indians, and had survived only because of
this co-operation.
• If Indian refused to co-operate, British rule in India would
collapse within a year and swaraj would come and British
rulers will have no other way than to leave India.
* Gandhi proposed that the movement should unfold in stages:
i) Surrender of the Government awarded titles,
ii) Boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and
legislative councils, schools and foreign goods.
iii) And a full civil disobedience campaign would be
launched if the government use repression.

18. Different Strands within the
Movement
• The Non-Cooperation- Khilafat Movement began in Jan
1921.
• Various social groups participated in this movement, each
with its own specific aspiration.
• All of them responded to the call of Swaraj but the term
meant different things to different people.

19. The movement in the towns
* The movement started with good participation from the
middle-class in cities.
• Thousands of students left the Government schools and
colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned , and lawyers
gave up their legal practices.
• The council elections were boycotted in most of the
provinces except Madras. In Madras the Justice party of
Non-Brahmins felt that entering the council was one way
of gaining some power( something that usually only
Brahmins had access to) .

20. Cont….
• Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops were picketed,
and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires.
• The boycott of foreign cloths helped in increasing the
demand of cloths made in India.
• The import of foreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922,
its value dropping from Rs. 102 crores to Rs. 57 crores.
• But this movement in the cities gradually
slowed down for variety of reasons:

21. Reasons for slowdown of the
Movement
• Khadi cloth was often more expensive than mass produced
mill cloth and poor could not afford to buy it.
• Similarly the boycott of British institutions posed a problem
for the movement to be successful, alternative Indian
institutions had to be set up so that they could be used in
place of the British ones. These were slow to come up.
• So students and teachers began trickling back to
government schools and lawyers joined back in government
courts.

22. Rebellion in the countryside
• The movement left a deep impact on rural life.
• In countryside, the movement was led by the peasants,
Tribals and local leaders and took the meaning of swaraj in
a different way. For example,
• In Awadh, before 1920 peasants were suffering a lot
because of the oppressive landlords and Talukdars.
Their demands were:
i) Reduction of revenue
ii) Abolition of Begar
iii) Social boycott of oppressive landlords

23. Cont….
* The movement in Awadh was not against British but
against Talukdars and landlords which was led by Baba
Ramchandra, a sanyasi who had earlier worked in Fiji as
an indenture ( bounded ) labour.
• In June 1920 Jawaharlal Nehru came across all this and
decided to set up Oudh Kisan Sabha. Within a month, over
300 branches were set up in various villages.
• So when the Non-Cooperation Movement began the
following year, the effort of the Congress was to integrate
the Awadh peasant struggle in to the wider struggle.

24. Cont….
• As the movement spread, the landlords were attacked,
bazaars were looted, and grains hoarded were taken over.
• In many places local leaders told the peasants that Gandhi
declared that no taxes were to be paid and land has to be
redistributed among the poor.
• Name of the Mahatma was being misused to sanction all
aspirations.
• The government had little difficulty in suppressing the
movement.
• The movement was over by the end of January.

25. Rebellion by the Tribals
* The tribal people spread over a large parts of India, but
colonial government changed their relation –ship with forest
in the following ways:
I ) The tribals were prevented from entering the forest to graze
cattle or to collect fruits and firewood.
II) The new forest laws were a threat to their livelihood.
III) The government forced them to do begar for road building.
IV) All these actions enraged the tribals so they revolted.

26. Cont….
• The revolt was led by Alluri Sitaram Raju, who proclaimed
that he had a variety of special powers and an incarnation
of god, he could heal bullet shots and said he was inspired
by the non-cooperation movement and Gandhi, persuaded
people to were khadi and give up drinking.
• But at the same time he asserted that India could be
liberated only by the use of force, not non-violence.
• The revolt took place at Gudem hills of Andhra Pradesh,
Rebels attacked police stations, attempted to kill British
officials and carried Gurilla warfare to achieve swaraj.
• Alluri Sitaram Raju was arrested and executed in 1924, then
revolt ended.

27. Reasons for failure of Tribal revolt
i ) The warfare between the tribals and the British government
was not on equal footing.
ii) On one side there were trained armed forces with latest
weapons, on the other side tribals had formed fighting
bands with primitive weapons, believing in magical powers
of the leaders. As a result the tribals died in large numbers.

28. Swaraj in Plantations
For plantation workers in Assam, swaraj (freedom) meant the
right to move freely in and out of the confined space in which
they were enclosed , and it meant retaining a link with the
village from which they had come.
• Under the act of 1859 (Inland emigration act) plantation
workers were not permitted to leave the tea gardens without
permission, and were rarely given such permission.
• When they heard of the Non-Cooperation Movement,
thousands of workers defied the authorities, left the
plantations and headed home.

29. Cont….
• They however, never reached their destination. Stranded
(struck) on the way by a railway and streamer strike, they
were caught by the police and brutally beaten up.
CONCULSION: The spirit of unrest and aggressiveness
contributed the rise of many local movements, which did not
adopt the policy of Non-Cooperation or even the idea of Non-
Violence and they interpreted the swaraj in their own ways,
imagining it to be a time when all suffering and all troubles
would be over.

30. Calling off of Non-Cooperation
Movement
* In February 1922 Gandhi decided to withdraw the movement
due to following reasons :
1) The movement was gaining success in the mean time it
took a violent turn after the police fired at Chauri Choura
in Uttar Pradesh on a peaceful demonstration in Bazaar.
2) In sudden burst of anger the demonstrators set fire to a
nearby police station burning 22 policemen to death.

31. Cont….
3) Gandhiji also felt that satyagrahis needed to be properly
trained before they would be ready for mass struggle.
4) Within the Congress some leaders were tired of mass
struggle and wanted to participate in elections to the
provincial councils which were set up by the government
of India Act 1919.

32. Achievements of Non-Cooperation
Movement
i) The movement contributed to the awakening of masses.
ii) Ordinary people, men and women rich and poor showed
willingness and ability to endure(bare/tolerate) hardship
and punishment.
iii) People achieved a new sense of confidence and strength
for further movements.

33. Formation of Swaraj Party
• As discussed earlier many leaders were of the opinion that it
was important to oppose British policies within the councils,
argue for reform and also demonstrate that these councils
were not truly democratic by becoming a part of the system.
• Keeping these objectives C R Das and Motilal Nehru formed
the Swaraj Party in 1922.
• But the younger leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose and
Jawaharlal Nehru were in favour of more radical ( Complete)
mass agitation and proclaimed for full independence.

34. Effects of Great Depression
This was a period of internal debate and disagreement
within the Congress.
In such situation, two factors shaped the Indian politics in the
1920s.
1) World wide economic depression
2) Formation of Simon Commission
World Wide economic Depression: In 1930s, as the demand
for agricultural goods fell and exports declined, peasants
found it difficult to sell their harvests and pay their
revenue .

35. Cont….
Formation of Simon Commission:
i) The British Government constituted a commission under
Sir John Simon to look in to the functioning of the
Constitutional system in India and suggest
reforms/changes.
ii) But since all the members in the commission were
British, the Indian leaders opposed the commission.
iii) The commission arrived in India in 1928, it was greeted
with the slogan “GO back Simon”.
iv) All parties including Congress and Muslim league joined
the protest.
v) During these protests the police did lathicharge at
Lahore as a result the great leader ‘Lala Lajpat Rai’ was
assaulted and he died a month later on 17th Nov 1928.

36. Cont….
• All the major Indian parties took part in the demonstration
against Simon Commission .
• In an effort to win them over, the viceroy, Lord Irwin
announced in Oct 1929 an offer of ‘dominion status”( semi
independence) for India in an unspecified future and a round
table conference to discuss a future constitution.
• This did not satisfy the congress leaders, to discuss further
congress leaders met at Lahore congress session.

37. Lahore session and the Demand for
complete independence(Purnaswaraj)
• In December 1929 under the presidency of Jawaharlal
Nehru, Lahore Congress session was held and passed a
resolution boycotting the Round Table Conference. And
declared that ‘Poorna Swaraj’ complete independence as its
goal.
• It was declared that 26th Jan 1930 would be celebrated as
the independence day, and gave call to the people to take
pledge to struggle for complete independence.
• But the celebrations attracted very little public support, so
Mahatma Gandhi had to find a way to concrete issues of
everyday life.

38. The Salt March and Civil
Disobedience Movement
• On 31st Jan 1930 Gandhi sent a letter to viceroy Irwin
stating 11 demands, abolition of Salt tax one among them.
• His letter stated that if the demands were not fulfilled there
would be Civil Disobedience Campaign.
• Irwin was unwilling to negotiate, so Gandhi started his
famous Salt March along with 78 trusted volunteers on 12th
March 1930.
• The march was over 240 miles, from Gandhiji’s ashram
Sabarmati to the Gujarat coastal town of Dandi. The
volunteers walked for 24 days, about 10 miles a day.

39. Image of Salt March

40. Cont….
• Salt was something that was consumed by the rich and
poor alike, as it was the most essential items of food.
• The tax on salt and the government monopoly over its
production, Mahatma Gandhi declared, the most
oppressive face of British rule.
• So this movement attracted people in large numbers.
• Thousands came to hear Gandhi wherever he stopped, and
he told them what he meant by swaraj and urged them to
peacefully defy the British.
• On 6th April he reached Dandi, violated the salt law by
manufacturing salt by boiling sea water.

41. Cont….
•This Dandi March marked the beginning of Civil
Disobedience Movement.
• The Civil Disobedience Movement was different from Non-
Co-operation Movement the sense that it not only asked
people to refuse cooperation with British, but also asked
them to break the rules.
• As the movement spread, foreign cloth was boycotted, and
liquor shops were picketed.
• Peasants refused to pay revenue and Choukidari taxes,
village officials resigned, and in many places forest people
violated forest laws- going into Reserved Forests to collect
wood and graze cattle.

42. Cont….
• Worried by the developments, the colonial government
began arresting the Congress leaders one by one.
• This led to violent clashes in many places. When Abdul
Gaffar Khan, a devout disciple of Mahatma Gandhi was
arrested in April 1930, angry crowds demonstrated in the
streets of Peshawar, facing armoured corps and police firing.
Many were killed.
• A month later, when Mahatma Gandhi himself was arrested.
Industrial workers in Sholapur attacked police posts,
municipal buildings, law courts and railway stations- all
structures that symbolised British rule.

43. Cont….
• A frightened government responded with a policy of brutal
repression. Peaceful Satyagrahis were attacked. Women and
children were beaten, and 100,000 people were arrested.
• In such a situation, Gandhi once again called off the
movement and entered in to a pact with Irwin on 5th March
1931, and consented to participate in a Round Table
conference in London and the Government agreed to release
the political prisoners.
• In Dec 1931, Gandhi went to London for the conference,
but returned disappointed as the negotiations broke down.

44. Cont….
• Mahatma Gandhi came back to India he found that most of
the local leaders were put in jail.
• Congress had been declared illegal, and a series of measures
had been imposed to prevent meetings, demonstrations and
boycott.
• With great apprehension (Unwillingly), Mahatma Gandhi
relaunched the Civil Disobedience Movement. For over a
year ,the movement continued by 1934 it lost its
momentum.

45. How Participants saw the Movement…
• Different Communities participated in the movement for
different reasons, and saw swaraj in a different perspective.
FARMERS/ PEASANTS:
• For the farmers, the fight for swaraj was a struggle against
high revenue.
• When the movement was called off in 1931, without the
revenue rates being revised, the farmers were highly
disappointed.
• Many of them refused to participate when the movement
was re-launched in 1932.
• Congress did not want to alienate the rich landlords and
hence the relationship between the poor peasants and
congress was uncertain.

46. Cont….
INDUSTRIALISTS/ MERCHANTS & BUSINESS
CLASS:
• During the first world war, Indian merchants and
industrialists had made huge profits and became powerful.
• They were been on expanding their business, but after the
First world war colonial policies restricted their business
activities. They wanted protection against imports of foreign
goods.
• To protect their business interests, they formed “ The Indian
Industries and commercial congress” in 1920 and
“Federation of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and
Industries” (FICC) was formed in 1927.

47. Cont….
• The industrialists supported the Civil Disobedience
Movement when it was first launched. They gave financial
assistance and refused to buy and sell imported goods.
• After the failure of 2nd Round Table Conference business
groups were no longer enthusiastic.

48. Industrial Workers
• The Industrial working classes did not participate in the
Civil Disobedience Movement in large numbers, except in
the Nagpur region.
• As the industrialists came closer to the Congress, workers
stayed aloof ( away).
• But in spite of that, some workers did participate in the Civil
Disobedience Movement, selectively adopting some of the
ideas of the Gandhian programme, like boycott of foreign
goods, as part of their own movements against low wages
and poor working conditions. There were strikes in 1930
and dockworkers in 1932 by the railway and dock workers.

49. Cont…
• Thousand if workers in Chotanagpur tin mines wore
Gandhi caps and participated in protest rallies and boycott
campaigns.
• But the Congress was reluctant to include workers demands
as part of its programme of struggle . It felt that this would
alienate industrialists.

50. Participation of Women
•Women also participated in the Civil Disobedience
Movement in large numbers.
• However, most of the women were from high-caste families
in the urban areas and from rich peasant households in the
rural areas.
• But for a long time, the congress was not interested to give
any position of authority to women within the organization.
• The Congress was just keen on the symbolic presence of
women.

51. The Limits of Civil Disobedience
Participation of Dalits:
* For long the Congress had ignored the dalits, for fear of
offending the conservative high caste Hindus. But
Mahatma Gandhi declared that swaraj was impossible if
untouchability wasn’t eliminated.
• He called the ‘untouchables’ the children of god or
Harijans and organized satygrahas to secure them entry into
temples, and access to public wells, tanks, roads and
schools, etc. to gain popularity among them and drag them
into the movement.

52. Cont…
• He himself cleaned toilets to dignify the work of the bhangi
( sweepers/ scavengers), and persuaded upper castes to
change their heart and give up the sin of untouchability.
• But many dalit leaders wanted a different political solutions
to the problems of the dalit community.

53. Cont….
• They demanded reserved seats in educational institutions
and separate electorate for dalits.
• Dalit participation in the Civil Disobedience movement
was limited.
• Dr. B. R. Ambedkar organised the dalits into ‘Depressed
Classes Association’ in 1930.
• He clashed with Mahatma Gandhi during the Second
Round Table Conference, on the issues of separate
electorate for dalits.

54. Cont….
•When the British government conceded Ambedkar’s
demand, Gandhiji began a fast unto death.
• Finally Ambedkar had to accept Gandhiji’s position. This
resulted in signing of the ‘Poona Pact’ of September 1932.
• It made the provision for reserved seats for the Depressed
classes in provincial and central legislative councils. But the
voting was to be done by the general electorate.

55. Participation of Muslims
• After the decline of the Non-Cooperation –Khilafat
movement, a large sections of Muslims felt alienated
( Separated) from the Congress and which never supported
the movements launched by the Congress.
There were many reasons for this kind of attitude of
Muslims.
a) Association of Congress with Hindu Mahasabha:
From the mid of 1920s, the Congress came to be more
visibly associated with the Hindu religious nationalist
groups ( like Hindu Mahasabha/ Sanatanies, the high caste
Hindus)

56. Cont….
b) Communal Clashes:
Relation between Hindus and Muslims worsened which
resulted in Hindu- Muslim clashes in various cities. Every
riot deepened the distance between two communities.
c) Demand for separate Electorate:
Some of the Muslim leaders demanded a separate electorate
for the Muslims which was not supported by Congress
leaders.
d) Status of Muslims in Hindu majority state:
• Many Muslim leaders and intellectuals expressed their
concern about the status of Muslims as a minority within
India.
• They feared that the culture and identity of minorities would
be submerged under the domination of a Hindu majority.

57. The sense of Collective Belonging
( Nationalism)
How did it Emerge…?
Nationalism spreads when people begin to believe that they
are all part of the same nation, When they discover some
unity that binds them together.
The united struggles for independence helped in building the
sense of collective belonging .
Additionally, a variety of cultural process also captured the
spirit of nationalism.

58. Cont….
A) Nation Depicted in Images:
• The identity of the nation is most often symbolised in a
figure or image, with which people can identify the nation.
• The image of Bharatmata by first created by Bankim
Chandra Chattopadhyay and next one by Abnindranath
Tagore were the pictorial representation of the mother land.
• Abnindranath’s image of Bharatmata in which Bharatmata
is portrayed as an ascetic figure , calm, composed , divine
and spiritual.

59. Cont….
•‘Vande Mataram’ the national song was written by Bankim
Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1870s , this was sung during the
Swadeshi movement in Bengal.
• In subsequent years, the image of Bharat Mata
acquired many different forms as it circulated in popular
prints, and was painted by different artists.

60. Cont….
B) Folklores:
Many nationalist leaders like Rabindranath Tagore in
Bengal, Natesa Sastri in Madras ( 4 volume collection of
Tamil folk tales – The folklore of Southern India) took help
of folk tales to spread the ideas of nationalism, It was
believed that the folk tales gave the true picture of traditional
culture that had been corrupted and damaged by outside
forces.

61. Cont….
C) National Flags:
•The National Flag which we see today has evolved through
various stages.
• A tricolour ( Red, Green, and Yellow) was used during
Swadeshi Movement in Bengal.
• There were Eight lotuses on it which depicted the eight
provinces of British India.
• There was a crescent moon and the Sun which represented
Hindus and Muslims.

62. Cont….
•By 1921, Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag. It was
again a tricolour ( Red, Green, White) and had spinning
wheel in the centre, representing the Gandhian ideal of self-
help. Carrying the flag, holding it aloft ( up in to the air),
during marches became a symbol of defiance ( open
resistance).

63. Histories to unite people/ Re-
interpretation of History
Another means of creating a feeling of nationalism was
through re-interpretation of history.
•The British saw Indians as backward and primitive,
incapable of governing themselves. In response, Indians
began looking into the past to discover India’s great
achievements. They wrote about the glorious developments
in ancient times when art and architecture, science, and
mathematics, religion and culture, law and philosophy, crafts
and trade had flourished.
• These nationalist histories urged the readers to take pride in
India’s great achievements in the past and struggle to change
the miserable conditions of life under British rule.

64. THANK YOU