CBSE Class 10 Social Science Nationalism in India Notes Set 05

The First World War and a new situation

The First World War created a new economic and political situation in India. Defence spending rose sharply and was met by taking loans, raising customs duties and introducing income tax. Prices doubled between 1913 and 1918, hurting the poor. Villages were forced to supply soldiers, and crop failure with an influenza epidemic caused famine and millions of deaths. People expected relief after the war, but it did not come.

Gandhi and satyagraha

Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915. He had developed satyagraha there, a method of struggle based on truth and non-violence, which appeals to the conscience of the oppressor instead of forcing him. He first applied it in India at Champaran in Bihar (1917) to support peasants forced to grow indigo, then at Kheda in Gujarat (1917-18) for peasants hit by crop failure, and at Ahmedabad (1918) among cotton mill workers.

In 1919 the Rowlatt Act allowed the government to jail political prisoners for two years without trial. Gandhi called a nationwide hartal. On 13 April 1919 General Dyer fired on a peaceful crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, killing hundreds. This shocked the country and hardened opposition to British rule.

Non-Cooperation and Khilafat

Gandhi linked the Khilafat issue, the harsh treatment of Ottoman Turkey after the war, with the demand for swaraj. Under the leadership of Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, Muslims joined the Non-Cooperation Movement, which was approved at the Nagpur session of December 1920. It proposed giving up titles, boycotting councils, schools, courts and foreign cloth, and later refusing to pay taxes. Gandhi argued in Hind Swaraj that British rule survived only because Indians cooperated with it.

In towns, lawyers gave up practice and students left government schools, but the movement slowed because khadi was costlier than mill cloth and there were too few national institutions. In the countryside, peasants in Awadh under Baba Ramchandra opposed high rents and forced labour, while tribals in the Gudem Hills led by Alluri Sitaram Raju followed their own militant path. Plantation workers in Assam left the gardens, hoping for swaraj. In February 1922 a mob burned a police station at Chauri Chaura, and Gandhi called the movement off.

Civil Disobedience

Within the Congress, C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party in 1923 to contest council elections. The Simon Commission arrived in 1928 without a single Indian member and was boycotted. At the Lahore session of December 1929, under Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress demanded Purna Swaraj, and 26 January 1930 was observed as Independence Day.

Gandhi picked salt, used by rich and poor alike, as the target. After his eleven demands were ignored, he marched with 78 followers about 240 miles from Sabarmati to Dandi and broke the salt law on 6 April 1930. Peasants, traders, industrialists and many women joined the movement, though Dalit participation was limited and some Muslim leaders were lukewarm. After the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (5 March 1931) Gandhi attended the Second Round Table Conference, which failed, and the movement was relaunched. Dr B.R. Ambedkar demanded separate electorates for Dalits, and the Poona Pact of 1932 gave them reserved seats in provincial and central councils, to be voted for by the general electorate.

The sense of collective belonging

Nationalism also grew through shared images and stories. Bankim Chandra wrote Vande Mataram, and Abanindranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata. Nationalists collected folk tales, and the Swaraj flag, developed with a spinning wheel at its centre, became a symbol of defiance and self-help.

Worked examples

1. Why was the Simon Commission boycotted? It had no Indian members and did not discuss swaraj, so Indians saw it as an insult.

2. State two terms of the Poona Pact. Reserved seats were given to the depressed classes in the provincial and central councils, and they were to be elected by the general electorate.

3. Why did Gandhi choose salt as a symbol? Everyone used it, and the tax on it hurt the poor most, so a protest against it could unite all sections.

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