Essay on the India’s Struggle for Swaraj: 1919-27

The third and the last phase of the national movement began in 1919 when the era of popular mass movements was initiated. The Indian people waged perhaps the greatest mass struggle in world history and India’s national revolution was victorious.

As we have seen in the previous chapter, a new political situation was maturing during the War years, 1914-18. Nationalism had gathered its forces and the nationalists were expecting major political gains after the war; and they were willing to fight back if their expectations were thwarted.

The economic situation in the post-War years had taken a turn for the worse. There was first a rise in prices and then a depression in economic activity.

Indian industries, which had prospered during the War because foreign imports of manufactured goods had ceased, now faced losses and closure.

Moreover, foreign capital now began to be invested in India on a large scale. The Indian industrialists wanted protection of their industries through imposition of high customs duties and grant of government aid; they realised that a strong nationalist movement and an independent Indian government alone could secure these.

The workers and artisans, facing unemployment and high prices, also turned actively towards the nationalist movement. Indian soldiers, who returned from their triumphs in Africa, Asia and Europe, imparted some of their confidence and their knowledge of the wide world to the rural areas.

The peasantry, groaning under deepening poverty and high taxation, was waiting for a lead. The urban, educated Indians faced increasing unemployment.

Thus all sections of Indian society were suffering economic hardships, compounded by droughts, high prices and epidemics.

The international situation was also favorable to the resurgence of nationalism. The First World War gave a tremendous impetus to nationalism all over Asia and Africa.

In order to win popular support for their War effort, the Allied nations Britain, the United States, prance, Italy and Japan promised a new era of democracy and national self-determination to all the peoples of the world. But after their victory, they showed little willingness to end the colonial system.

On the contrary, at the Paris Peace Conference, and in the different peace settlements, all the wartime promises were forgotten and, in fact, betrayed.

The ex-colonies of the defeated powers, Germany and Turkey, in Africa, West Asia and East Asia were divided among the victorious powers. A militant nationalism, born out of a strong sense of disillusionment, began to arise everywhere in Asia and Africa.

In India, while the British government made a half-hearted attempt at constitutional reform, it also made it clear that it had no intention of parting with political power or even sharing it with Indians.

Another major consequence of the World War was the erosion of the White man’s prestige. The European powers had from the beginning of their imperialism utilised the notion of racial and cultural superiority to maintain their supremacy.

But during the War, both sides carried on intense propaganda against each other, exposing the opponent’s brutal and uncivilised colonial record. Naturally, the people of the colonies tended to believe both sides and to lose their awe of the White man’s superiority.

A major impetus to the national movements in the colonies was given by the impact of the Russian Revolution. On 7 November 1917, the Bolshevik (Communist) Party, led by V I. Lenin, overthrew the Czarist regime in Russia and declared the formation of the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, in the history of the world.

The new Soviet regime electrified the colonial world by unilaterally renouncing its imperialist rights in China and other parts of Asia, by granting the right of self-determination to the former Czarist colonies in Asia and by giving an equal status to the Asian nationalities within its border, which had been oppressed as inferior and conquered peoples by the previous regime.

The Russian Revolution put heart into the colonial people. It brought home to the colonial people the important lesson that immense strength and energy resided in the common People.

If the unarmed peasants and workers could carry out a “evolution against their domestic tyrants, then the people of the subject nations too could fight for their independence provided they were equally well united, organised and determined to fight for freedom.

The nationalist movement in India was also affected by the fact that the rest of the Afro-Asian’world was also convulsed by nationalist agitations after the War.

Nationalism surged forward not only in India but also in Ireland, Turkey, Egypt and other Arab countries of Northern Africa and West Asia, Iran, Aghanistan, Burma, Malaya Indonesia, Indo-China, the Philippines, China and Korea.

The government, aware of the rising tide of nationalist and anti- government sentiments, once again decided to follow the policy of the ‘carrot and the stick’, in other words, of concessions and repres­sion. The carrot was represented by the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.