🌍CBSE Class 12th History Chapter-11 Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement Notes 📚

📁Learning Objective

• A Leader Announces Himself
• The Making and Unmaking of Non-cooperation
• The Salt Satyagraha A Case Study
• Quit India
• The Last Heroic Days
• Knowing Gandhi

A Leader Announces Himself

• Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in 1915, after 20 years from South Africa.

• Historian Chandran Devanesan has rightly remarked that “South Africa was the making of the Mahatma”.

• It was in South Africa that Mahatma Gandhi adopted his technique of non-violent protest or Satyagraha, promoted harmony between religions, and alerted upper caste Indians for their discriminatory treatment of low castes and women.

The Making and Unmaking of Non-cooperation

Knitting a popular movement

• To further strengthen the movement and unity among fellow Indians he joined hand with Khilafat Movement. Khilafat Movement was led by Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali and it demanded restoration of the respect of the Caliphate.

• According to Gandhiji by intermixing of Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement, the two major religious communities i.e. Hindus and Muslims could collectively bring an end to colonial rule.

• Students refused to go to schools, colleges, lawyers stopped to going courts, working class went on strike, tribes in Andhra Pradesh violated forest laws and farmers in Awadh stopped paying taxes. American biographer of Mahatma Gandhiji, Louis Fisher wrote “Non-Cooperation became the name of an epoch in the life of India and Gandhiji.

• Due to this movement British government was shaken. In February 1922, Gandhiji called off Non-Cooperation Movement due to untoward incident of burning of police stations in Chauri Chaura in which several constables were burnt to death.

• During the Non-Cooperation Movement, thousands of Indians were put in jail and Gandhiji was arrested in March in 1922, charged with sedition and awarded him six years of imprisonment.

A people’s leader

• Gandhiji had transformed the nationalist movement into a mass movement that was more properly representative of the Indian masses.

• In his speech at the opening of the BHU, he reminded people that the peasants and workers were a majority of the Indian population who remained unrepresented in the national movement.

• It was Gandhiji’s desire to make Indian nationalism representative of the Indian people. The people appreciated the fact that he dressed like them, lived like them, and spoke their language.

• He identified himself with common man. This was strikingly reflected in his dress, while another nationalist leader dressed formally, wearing a western suit or an Indian band gala, Gandhiji went among the people in a simple dhoti or loin cloth.

• Meanwhile, he spent part of each day working on the charkha (spinning wheel) and encouraged other nationalists to do likewise.

• The act of spinning allowed Gandhiji to break the boundaries that prevailed within the traditional caste system, between mental labour and manual labour.

• Gandhiji’s appeal among poor, and peasants in particular was enhanced by his ascetic life style, and his shrewd use of symbols such as the dhoti and the charkha.

• Gandhi appeared not just to look like them, but also to understand them and related to their lives and work for them and the nation together.

The Salt Satyagraha A Case Study

• In year 1928, there was Anti-Simon Commission Movement in which Lala Lajpat Rai was brutally lathi charged and later he succumbed to it. In year 1928, another famous Bordoli Satyagraha took place.

• So again, by the year 1928 political activism started brewing in India. In 1929, Congress session was held at Lahore and Nehru was elected as its President. In this session “Purna Swaraj” was proclaimed as motto, and on 26th January, 1930 Republic Day was observed.

Dandi (Salt) March:

• After Republic Day observance, Gandhiji announced his plan of march to break salt law. This law was widely disliked by Indians, as it gave state a monopoly in manufacture and sale of salt. On 12th March, 1930 Gandhiji began his march from ashram to ocean.
• He reached to shore and made a salt and thereby making himself criminal in sight of law. Many parallel salt marches were undertaken during this time in other parts of the country. Movement was supported by peasants, working class, factory workers, lawyers and even Indian officials in British government supported it and left their jobs. Lawyer boycotted the courts, peasants stopped paying taxes and tribal broke forest laws.

• There were strikes in factories or mills. The government responded by detaining the dissenters or Satyagrahis. 60000 Indians were arrested and various high rank leaders of Congress including Gandhiji were arrested.

• An American magazine, ‘Time’, was initially doubtful on the strength of Gandhiji and wrote that Salt March would not be successful. But latter it wrote that this march made the British rulers ‘desperately anxious. These rulers were now started considering Gandhiji as a ‘Saint’ and ‘Statesman’, who was using Christian acts as a weapon against men with Christian beliefs.

Dialogues

• Firstly, this event brought Mahatma Gandhi to world attention. The March was widely covered by the European and American press.

• Secondly, it was the first nationalist activity in which women participated in large numbers. The socialist activists Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay had persuaded Gandhi not to restrict the protests to men alone. She herself courted arrest by breaking salt and liquor laws.

• Thirdly, it made the British realize that their rule was not to last forever, and they would have to share some power with the Indians. To discuss the same the British tried to hold Round Table Conference in London to get to some kind resolution.

Gandhi-Irwin Pact

• In January 1931, Mahatma Gandhi was released from jail. After that many meetings were held with the Viceroy and it culminated in the Gandhi-Irwin pact.
• It was declared to call off Civil Disobedience Movement; all prisoners who were put in jail without trial to be released and to allow salt manufacturing along the coasts. Gandhiji represented the congress at Second Round Table Conference at London.

The Round Table Conferences

• The first Round Table Conference was held in London in November 1930 but it ended without any fruitful decision due to the absence of major Indian nationalist leaders.

• A Second Round Table Conference was held in London in the latter part of 1931.Gandhiji represented the congress and claimed that his party represented all of India three parties, the Muslim League, the Princes, and the lawyer thinker B.R. Ambedkar opposed that claim. The conference in London was inconclusive, so Gandhi returned to India and resumed civil disobedience movement.

Quit India

• In1945, the Labour Government came to power in Brtiain.It was committed for Indian Independence.

• In India, the Viceroy Lord Wavell, negotiated with the congress and the Muslim League.

• Early in 1946, the provincial legislative elections were held in which the congress won the General and League won reserved constituencies.

• A Cabinet Mission was sent to the summer of 1946, failed to make consensus between congress and League.

• Jinnah called for a “Direct Action Day” to force the League’s demand for Pakistan on 16 August 1946 leading to bloody riots in many parts of India.

• In February 1947, Lord Mount batten appointed as Viceroy. He too held inconclusive talks and he announced that India would be freed, but also divided. The formal transfer of power was fixed for 15 August.

The Last Heroic Days

• On 15th August 1947, Gandhiji was not at Delhi to witness the festivities. He was at Calcutta and undertook 24 hours fast. Due to the initiative of Gandhiji and Nehru, the Congress passed a resolution on the rights of the minorities.

• After working to bring peace to Bengal, Gandhiji shifted to Delhi from where he hoped to move on to the riot-torn districts of Punjab. On 30th January 1948, Gandhiji was shot dead by Nathuram Godse.

Knowing Gandhi

Public voice and private scripts

• One important source is the writings and speeches of Mahatma Gandhi and his contemporaries, including both his associates and his political adversaries. Out of those a distinction is to be made which were for the public and which not.

• It helped to hear his public voice. Private letters gave a glimpse of his private thoughts. Many letters are written to individuals, and are therefore personal, but they are also meant for the public.

• The language of the letters is often shaped by the awareness that they may one day be published. Mahatma Gandhi published letters written by others to him in his journal Harijan. Nehru edited a collection of letters written to him and published as A Bunch of Old Letters.

Framing a picture

• Autobiographies similarly give us an account of the past that is often rich in human detail. But here again we have to be careful of the way we read and interpret autobiographies.

• So, in reading these accounts we have to try and see what the author does not tell us; we need to understand the reasons for that silence – those willful or unwitting acts of forgetting.

Through police eyes

• Another vital source is government records, for the colonial rulers kept close tabs on those they regarded as critical of the government. The letters and reports written by the policemen and other officials were secret at the time: but now can be accessed in archives.

• Fortnightly reports prepared by home department based on police information for example. Home department was unwilling to accept that Gandhi’s actions had worked any enthusiastic response from the public, Dandi March was seen as a drama, an antic, a desperate attempt to mobilize people.

From newspapers

• Newspapers published in English and different Indian languages tracked Mahatma Gandhi’s movements and reported on his activities. They represented ordinary Indian thoughts.

• Newspaper accounts, however, should not be seen as unprejudiced. People who had their own political opinions and world views published them. These ideas shaped what was published and the way events were reported.

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