The Rise of Indian Nationalism

By the second half of the nineteenth century, Indians were beginning to think of themselves as one people with a common interest against colonial rule. This national consciousness did not appear overnight. It grew out of the very changes the British had set in motion, sharpened by anger at how those same rulers treated Indians. Out of it came a string of political associations and all-India campaigns. These trained Indians in organised politics and led directly to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. From that foundation the movement grew through Moderate petitions, the Swadeshi boycott and Gandhi's mass satyagrahas into the struggle that ended British rule in 1947. This is a high-yield foundation topic.

Indian nationalism grew partly as a result of colonial policies and partly as a reaction against them. Several forces worked together:

• Political and administrative unification. For the first time the whole subcontinent was brought under a single rule, with one civil service, one set of laws and one judiciary. The railways, roads, post and telegraph were built by the British for their own ends. But they also linked the economic fate of distant regions and let leaders and ideas travel.
• Western thought and education. English education exposed the new educated class to the liberal and radical ideas of writers like Mill, Rousseau, Paine and Voltaire. It also gave nationalists from different regions a common language in which to talk to one another.
• The press and literature. A fast-growing body of newspapers, journals and pamphlets criticised official policy. They spread ideas of self-government and democracy, and knit nationalist opinion together across regions.
• Rediscovery of India's past. Research by European and Indian scholars revealed a rich and dignified civilisation. This demolished the colonial myth that India had a long history of servility. It gave educated Indians self-respect and confidence.
• Rise of a new middle class. British administrative and economic changes created an educated urban middle class of lawyers, teachers, journalists and officials. This class shared a "common foreground of knowledge, ideas and values". It led the national movement at every stage.
• Understanding the economic drain. People came to see that colonial rule was the root cause of India's poverty. The interests of peasants, artisans, workers and the educated were all damaged by it.
• World influences. The unification of Italy and Germany and national liberation movements in Greece, Ireland and elsewhere inspired Indian nationalists.
• Reactionary and racist policies. Nothing did more to spread nationalism than colonial arrogance. Lytton lowered the civil-service age limit in 1876. The grand Delhi Durbar of 1877 was held in the middle of a terrible famine. The Vernacular Press Act (1878) and the Arms Act (1878) followed. Above all, the Ilbert Bill controversy (1883) showed nationalists the true face of colonial rule. Europeans forced the government to gut a bill that would have let Indian judges try them. The lesson was clear: justice could not be expected where European interests were involved.

The "drain of wealth" idea was worked out by a group of pioneering economic critics. Three names matter most:

• Dadabhai Naoroji: the father of the drain theory. He was also the first to ascertain India's per capita income, calculating it at about Rs. 20 for 1867–68. The figure gave hard proof of India's poverty under colonial rule.
• R.C. Dutt: author of The Economic History of India, a detailed two-part indictment of colonial economic policy from 1757 onwards.
• G. Subramania Iyer: a prominent Madras journalist who carried the economic critique to the public through the press.

A key part of the drain was the Home Charges. These were the payments India made to Britain every year. They covered the cost of maintaining the India Office in London and the salaries and pensions of British personnel engaged in India, both civil and military. The costs of wars Britain fought outside India were also loaded onto India, but those were booked as separate military expenditure. They were not part of the Home Charges.

The Congress was not India's first political organisation. Earlier associations were mostly led by wealthy, landed men and were local or regional. But they began the habit of organised, constitutional agitation. The later ones, led by the educated middle class, had a wider agenda.

In Bengal:

• Bangabhasha Prakasika Sabha (1836). Formed by associates of Raja Rammohan Roy.
• Zamindari Association / Landholders' Society (1838): founded to defend landlords' interests; it marked the beginning of organised political activity.
• British Indian Association (1851): formed by the merger of the Landholders' Society and the Bengal British India Society; it petitioned Parliament for a separate legislature and other reforms.
• Indian League (1875) and, most important, the Indian Association of Calcutta (1876). It was founded by Surendranath Banerjea and Ananda Mohan Bose, who were unhappy with the conservative, pro-landlord British Indian Association. It aimed to build strong public opinion and unify Indians on a common programme. It kept its membership fee low to attract poorer people, and held an all-India conference in 1883. It was the most important forerunner of the Congress and merged with it in 1886.

In Bombay:

• Poona Sarvajanik Sabha: founded by Mahadev Govind Ranade and others. It grew out of an older Poona body dating from 1867 and took shape as the Sarvajanik Sabha in 1870, so both years are cited for its founding. In 1875 it sent a petition to the House of Commons demanding India's direct representation in the British Parliament.
• Bombay Presidency Association (1885): started by Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta and K.T. Telang.

In Madras:

• Madras Mahajan Sabha (1884): founded by M. Viraraghavachari, B. Subramania Aiyer and P. Ananda Charlu.

Exams often pair the people of this period with their offices and causes. Fix these associations:

• Lord Ripon: the Viceroy under whom the Ilbert Bill was introduced in 1883.
• Theodore Beck: principal of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, the centre of the Aligarh movement.
• Pherozeshah Mehta: a founder of the Bombay Presidency Association and a founding leader of the Indian National Congress.
• Badruddin Tyabji: an early president of the Indian National Congress. He was not associated with the Muslim League, which was founded only in 1906, long after his Congress presidency.

These associations organised a series of campaigns that rehearsed all-India political action before the Congress was even born. They agitated:

• for an import duty on cotton (1875) and for the Indianisation of government service (1878-79);
• against the Arms Act (1878) and the Vernacular Press Act (1878);
• against Lytton's Afghan adventure and against plantation labour and the Inland Emigration Act;
• in support of the Ilbert Bill;
• for an all-India fund for political agitation; and
• against the reduction of the maximum age for the Indian Civil Service examination. The Indian Association took this up as an all-India agitation known as the Indian Civil Service agitation.

Together these campaigns gave Indians their first practice in nationwide organisation around shared grievances. They were the direct prelude to the Indian National Congress.

Organised concern for workers also began in these years. The Factories Act of 1881 was the first labour law in British India. It regulated the working hours and conditions of child workers in factories. Note its limits carefully: it did not fix wages for labourers, and it did not give workers the right to form trade unions. Around the same time N.M. Lokhande began organising mill workers in Bombay. He is regarded as the pioneer of the labour movement in British India.

In 1885 these strands came together in the Indian National Congress, which brought leaders from across the country into one all-India body. In its early years the Congress was moderate. It did not demand freedom. It asked for a greater share for Indians in government: more Indians in the legislative councils and the civil service, and protection for Indian trade and industry. Its method was to pass resolutions and send petitions to the government, trusting in British fair play.

Over time the Congress split into two broad streams over both goals and methods.

• Moderates: leaders such as Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopal Krishna Gokhale worked through constitutional means: speeches, petitions and pressure. Naoroji's "drain of wealth" theory exposed how Britain bled India economically.
• Radicals (Extremists): led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, they lost patience with petitions. Tilak declared, "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it."

The turning point was the British partition of Bengal in 1905. Indians saw it as an attempt to divide them. It set off the Swadeshi Movement: a boycott of British goods and the promotion of Indian-made goods and institutions.

Mahatma Gandhi transformed the struggle into a movement of the masses. His weapon was satyagraha (literally "insistence on truth"), a method of non-violent resistance to injustice. It meant standing firmly against wrong without hatred or violence, and being willing to suffer for the truth. He first developed it while fighting racial injustice in South Africa. He returned to India in 1915 and tested it in local struggles: for the indigo peasants of Champaran, and for mill workers and peasants in Ahmedabad and Kheda. These campaigns proved that non-violent mass action could win results.

Gandhi then led three great all-India mass movements against British rule:

• Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22): Indians boycotted British schools, courts, titles and goods. It was called off after the violence at Chauri Chaura.
• Civil Disobedience Movement (1930): launched with the famous Dandi Salt March, when Gandhi walked to the sea and broke the unjust salt law.
• Quit India Movement (1942): a final mass demand for the British to leave, with the slogan "Do or Die".

Through these movements peasants, workers, students and especially women entered politics in huge numbers. That made the freedom struggle truly national. Gandhi also worked tirelessly against untouchability and for Hindu-Muslim unity.

The Quit India movement, the strain of the Second World War and the rising tide of nationalism together made British rule impossible to continue. After long negotiations, India became independent on 15 August 1947.

Independence came, however, with a great tragedy. The subcontinent was divided into two nations, India and Pakistan: the Partition. Millions of people were uprooted, and terrible violence erupted between communities. Gandhi, heartbroken by the bloodshed, worked to restore peace until his assassination in 1948. His legacy of non-violence inspired freedom and civil-rights movements worldwide.