The National Movement and Constitutional Development, 1885–1947

Lord Curzon’s partition of Bengal was announced in July 1905 and took effect on 16 October 1905. The official reason was administrative convenience; nationalists saw it as an attempt to divide Bengali-speakers and Hindus and Muslims and to weaken Calcutta, the nerve-centre of nationalism — Curzon’s own correspondence shows that weakening the nationalists was indeed an aim. The boycott resolution was passed at the Calcutta Town Hall on 7 August 1905, formally launching the Swadeshi movement. 16 October was observed as a day of mourning; Tagore asked people to tie rakhi to each other as a sign of unity, and wrote "Amar Sonar Bangla".

• Methods: boycott of British cloth and salt, bonfires of foreign goods, samitis (volunteer bodies — e.g. Ashwini Kumar Dutta’s Swadesh Bandhab Samiti at Barisal), national schools (National Council of Education, 1906), Swadeshi enterprises such as P. C. Ray’s Bengal Chemicals and the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company of V. O. Chidambaram Pillai at Tuticorin (1906), and traditional festivals turned to political use.
• Spread: Tilak in Bombay and Poona, Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh in the Punjab, Syed Haider Raza in Delhi, Chidambaram Pillai in Madras presidency. Its limit was that it did not draw in the Muslim peasantry of eastern Bengal, among whom the partition was not unpopular.
• The Muslim League: a deputation led by the Aga Khan met the Viceroy Minto at Simla on 1 October 1906 to ask for separate electorates; the All-India Muslim League was founded at Dacca on 30 December 1906, under the patronage of Nawab Salimullah.
• Surat (1907): the Moderates wanted to limit Swadeshi and boycott to Bengal; the Extremists (Lal–Bal–Pal and Aurobindo) wanted them extended nationwide with passive resistance. The session broke up in disorder and the Extremists were excluded until 1916. In 1908 Tilak was sentenced to six years in Mandalay for writings in the Kesari.

The government answered the revolutionary turn of Swadeshi with repression. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage they believed to carry the judge Kingsford (April 1908); Khudiram was hanged in August 1908, and the Alipore bomb case followed, in which Aurobindo Ghose was defended by C. R. Das and acquitted. Abroad, Shyamji Krishna Varma ran India House in London (1905), where Madan Lal Dhingra shot Curzon Wyllie (1909); the Ghadar Party was founded in San Francisco in 1913 with Sohan Singh Bhakna as president and Lala Har Dayal as a leading figure. At the Delhi Durbar of 12 December 1911, George V announced the annulment of the partition and the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi; New Delhi was inaugurated in 1931.

The First World War, Turkey’s entry against Britain and Tilak’s release in 1914 brought the factions together. At Lucknow in December 1916 the Congress readmitted the Extremists and concluded the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League, negotiated largely by Tilak and Jinnah: the two bodies presented joint demands for self-government, and the Congress accepted separate electorates and a fixed share of seats for Muslims in each province, with one-third of the elected Indian seats at the centre. It brought Hindu–Muslim political unity for a few years — at the price of conceding the communal principle.

Besant’s internment in June 1917 caused an uproar, and on 20 August 1917 the Secretary of State Edwin Montagu declared in Parliament that British policy was "the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire" — the August Declaration. Meanwhile Gandhi, back from South Africa in January 1915, tested satyagraha in three local struggles: Champaran (1917) against the tinkathia system imposed by indigo planters; the Ahmedabad mill strike (1918), where he used a hunger strike for the first time in India; and Kheda (1918), for remission of revenue after crop failure, with Vallabhbhai Patel.

Reform came wrapped in repression. On the report of a committee under Justice S. A. T. Rowlatt, the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act — the Rowlatt Act — was passed in March 1919 despite the opposition of every elected Indian member: it allowed detention without trial and trial without juries. Gandhi formed a Satyagraha Sabha and called a nationwide hartal on 6 April 1919 — his first all-India campaign. In Amritsar, after the arrest of Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satyapal on 10 April, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer on 13 April 1919 (Baisakhi) fired without warning on an unarmed crowd in the enclosed Jallianwala Bagh; official figures gave 379 dead, Indian estimates far more. The Punjab was under martial law under Lieutenant-Governor Michael O’Dwyer.

• The government’s Hunter Committee (Disorders Inquiry Committee, October 1919) criticised Dyer mildly; the Congress set up its own inquiry (Motilal Nehru, Gandhi, C. R. Das, Abbas Tyabji, M. R. Jayakar). Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood; Gandhi later returned his Kaiser-i-Hind medal. Udham Singh shot O’Dwyer in London on 13 March 1940.
• Khilafat: Indian Muslims were angered by the harsh treatment of the Ottoman sultan, the Khalifa, at the end of the war (Treaty of Sèvres, 1920). The Ali brothers (Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali), Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Hasrat Mohani led the Khilafat Committee; Gandhi presided over the All-India Khilafat Conference at Delhi (November 1919) and saw in it a chance to unite Hindus and Muslims.

The Non-Cooperation Movement was launched on 1 August 1920 — the day Tilak died — adopted at the special Calcutta session (September 1920) and ratified at Nagpur (December 1920), with the promise of swaraj within a year. Its programme was the surrender of titles; boycott of government schools, law courts, legislatures (the 1920 elections) and foreign cloth; and a constructive side — national schools such as Jamia Millia and the Kashi and Gujarat Vidyapiths, panchayats, khadi and the Tilak Swaraj Fund. The visit of the Prince of Wales (November 1921) was met with hartals. Local currents flowed into it — the Moplah (Mappila) rising in Malabar (August 1921), the Akali movement, tribal and peasant movements in Awadh and Andhra. On 5 February 1922 a crowd at Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur district) set fire to a police station, killing 22 policemen; Gandhi called off the movement by the Bardoli resolution (12 February 1922). He was arrested in March 1922 and sentenced to six years.

The statutory commission promised by the 1919 Act was appointed early, in November 1927, under Sir John Simon — seven British MPs (Clement Attlee among them) and no Indian. It landed at Bombay on 3 February 1928 to hartals and black flags: "Simon, go back". At Lahore in October 1928 Lala Lajpat Rai was struck in a police lathi-charge and died on 17 November 1928; Bhagat Singh and his comrades of the HSRA shot the police officer Saunders in revenge in December. The Secretary of State Lord Birkenhead challenged Indians to produce an agreed constitution, and an All-Parties Conference committee chaired by Motilal Nehru (Jawaharlal its secretary) did so: the Nehru Report (August 1928).

• The Nehru Report asked for dominion status, not independence — which the younger leaders (Jawaharlal, Subhas Bose) resented.
• Joint electorates with reservation of seats for Muslims at the centre and in provinces where they were a minority — not in the Punjab and Bengal, where they were a majority.
• Linguistic provinces, nineteen fundamental rights including equal rights for women and universal adult suffrage, and full responsible government at the centre and in the provinces.
• The Muslim League rejected it, and Jinnah answered with his Fourteen Points (March 1929), insisting on separate electorates and a one-third share at the centre.

When the one-year deadline set at Calcutta (1928) passed — the Viceroy Irwin’s declaration of 31 October 1929 promised dominion status only vaguely and a Round Table Conference — the Lahore Congress (December 1929), under Jawaharlal Nehru, declared Purna Swaraj (complete independence) its goal, authorised civil disobedience, and fixed 26 January 1930 as Independence Day. Gandhi then set out eleven demands (January 1930) and, when they were ignored, began the Dandi March from Sabarmati on 12 March 1930 with 78 followers, breaking the salt law at Dandi on 6 April 1930 after a walk of about 240 miles.

On 16 August 1932 the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald announced the Communal Award, extending separate electorates to the depressed classes. Gandhi, in Yerwada jail, began a fast unto death on 20 September 1932, holding that separate electorates would split Hindu society for ever. The Poona Pact of 24 September 1932 — signed by B. R. Ambedkar for the depressed classes and Madan Mohan Malaviya among others for caste Hindus — dropped separate electorates but raised the reserved seats for the depressed classes in the provincial legislatures from 71 to 148, within joint electorates, with about 18% of the general seats at the centre. Gandhi then founded the Harijan Sevak Sangh and the weekly Harijan.

In the 1937 provincial elections the Congress won a majority in Madras, the United Provinces, the Central Provinces, Bihar and Orissa, emerged as the largest party in Bombay, and later formed ministries in the North-West Frontier Province and Assam — eight of the eleven provinces. The Muslim League did poorly even in Muslim-majority provinces. When the Viceroy Linlithgow declared India a belligerent in the Second World War on 3 September 1939 without consulting Indians, the Congress ministries resigned (October–November 1939); the League celebrated a "Day of Deliverance" on 22 December 1939. At Lahore in March 1940 the League adopted the Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution, demanding independent states for the Muslim-majority areas.

The Quit India resolution was passed by the All-India Congress Committee at the Gowalia Tank maidan, Bombay, on 8 August 1942, with Gandhi’s call "Do or Die". In the early hours of 9 August the leaders were arrested, and leaderless crowds attacked railways, telegraph lines and police stations. Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the flag at Gowalia Tank; Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan and Usha Mehta — who ran an underground Congress Radio — kept the movement alive. Parallel governments were set up at Ballia (August 1942, under Chittu Pandey), Tamluk in Midnapore (the Jatiya Sarkar, December 1942–September 1944) and Satara (the Prati Sarkar, 1943–45, under Nana Patil). The Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Communist Party (which called it a "People’s War" after the German attack on the USSR) stayed out. Gandhi fasted for 21 days in February 1943 in the Aga Khan Palace; Kasturba died there in February 1944, and Gandhi was released in May 1944.

The Indian National Army had two phases. The first was raised in 1942 by Captain Mohan Singh from Indian prisoners of war taken by Japan in Malaya and Singapore, with Rash Behari Bose’s Indian Independence League; it collapsed over disputes with the Japanese. Subhas Chandra Bose, who had escaped from house arrest in Calcutta in January 1941, reached Singapore in July 1943, took command, proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) on 21 October 1943, raised the women’s Rani Jhansi Regiment under Lakshmi Swaminathan, and hoisted the flag at Port Blair in the Andamans (December 1943). The INA fought in the Imphal–Kohima campaign (1944) and retreated with the Japanese. The Red Fort trials (from November 1945) of Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Kumar Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon — defended by Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Nehru and Asaf Ali — set off nationwide protests, followed by the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in Bombay (18 February 1946).

The Wavell Plan (broadcast 14 June 1945) proposed to reconstitute the Viceroy’s Executive Council with all members Indian except the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief, and with parity between caste Hindus and Muslims. At the Simla Conference (June–July 1945) it broke down on Jinnah’s insistence that the League alone nominate all the Muslim members. Labour’s victory in Britain (Clement Attlee, July 1945) and the elections of winter 1945–46 — in which the League won every Muslim seat in the Central Assembly — set the stage for the Cabinet Mission.

Both parties first accepted the plan, then quarrelled over whether grouping was compulsory. The League withdrew its acceptance and called for Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946, which began the Great Calcutta Killing and a chain of riots. The interim government under Jawaharlal Nehru (vice-president of the Executive Council) took office on 2 September 1946; the League joined on 26 October 1946, with Liaquat Ali Khan as finance member, but boycotted the Constituent Assembly, which first met on 9 December 1946. On 20 February 1947 Attlee announced that Britain would leave India by June 1948. Lord Mountbatten was sworn in as Viceroy on 24 March 1947 and on 3 June 1947 announced his plan for partition, then advanced the date of independence to 15 August 1947.

• Mountbatten Plan (3 June 1947): the legislative assemblies of Punjab and Bengal would vote on partitioning their provinces; referendums in the North-West Frontier Province and the Sylhet district of Assam; a boundary commission under Sir Cyril Radcliffe; princely states free to join either dominion or (in theory) stay independent.
• Indian Independence Act, 1947 (royal assent 18 July 1947): two independent dominions, India and Pakistan, from 15 August 1947; British paramountcy over the princely states lapsed; the office of Secretary of State for India abolished; each dominion to have its own Governor-General (Mountbatten for India, Jinnah for Pakistan); the Constituent Assemblies to act as sovereign legislatures until new constitutions were framed; the Crown’s title "Emperor of India" dropped.
• The Radcliffe Award was made public only on 17 August 1947, two days after independence.