Test: Modern History - Italian MCQ

• An important development in the second half of the nineteenth century was the establishment of large-scale machine-based industries in India. The machine age in India began when cotton textile, jute and coalmining industries were started in the 1850s. The first textile mill was started in Bombay by Cowasjee Nanabhoy in 1853, and the first jute mill in Rishra (Bengal) in 1855. The first steel in India was produced only in 1913. Thus, India lacked such basic industries as steel, metallurgy, machine, chemical and oil. India also lagged behind in the development of electric power.
• Most of the modern Indian industries were owned or controlled by the British capital. Foreign capitalists were attracted to the Indian industry by the prospect of high profit. Labour was extremely cheap; raw materials were readily and cheaply available; and for many goods, India and its neighbours provided a ready market. Foreign capital easily overwhelmed Indian capital in many of the industries. Only in the cotton textile industry did the Indians have a large share from the beginning.
• British enterprises in India also took advantage of their close connection with the British suppliers of machinery and equipment, shipping, insurance companies, marketing agencies, government officials and political leaders to maintain their dominant position in the Indian economic life. Moreover, the  government followed a conscious policy of favouring foreign capital as against the Indian capital. The railway policy of the government also discriminated against Indian enterprise; railway freight rates encouraged foreign imports at the cost of trade in the domestic products. It was more difficult and costlier to distribute the Indian goods than to distribute the imported goods.

The poverty of India was not a product of its geography or of the lack of natural resources, or of some „inherent‟ defect in the character and capabilities of the people. Nor was it a remnant of the Mughal period or of the pre-British past. It was mainly a product of the history of the last two centuries.
Before that, India was no more backward than the countries of Western Europe. Nor were the differences in the standards of living at the time very wide among the countries of the world. Precisely during the period that the countries of the West developed and prospered, India was subjected to modern colonialism and was prevented from developing.

The basic fact is that the same social, political and economic processes, that produced industrial development, and social and cultural progress in Britain, also produced, and then maintained economic underdevelopment, and social and cultural backwardness in India. The reason for this is obvious. Britain subordinated the Indian economy to its own economy and determined the basic social trends in India according to her own needs. The result was stagnation of India‘s agriculture and industries.

• In 1866, Dadabhai Naoroji organized the East India Association in London to discuss the Indian question and to influence the British public officials to promote Indian welfare. Later, he organized the branches of the Association in prominent Indian cities.
• The most important of the preCongress nationalist organizations was the Indian Association of Calcutta. The younger nationalists of Bengal had been gradually getting discontented with the conservative and pro-landlord policies of the British India Association. They wanted sustained political agitation on the issues of wider public interest. They found a leader in Surendra Nath Banerjea, who was a brilliant writer and orator. Led by Surendra Nath Banerjea and Ananda Mohan Bose, the younger nationalists of Bengal founded the Indian Association in 1876. The Indian Association set before itself the aims of creating strong public opinion in the country on political questions and the unification of the Indian people under a common political programme.
• The younger elements were also active in other parts of India. Justice Ranade and others organized the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in 1870. M. Viraraghavachari, G. Subramaniya Iyer, Ananda Charlu and others formed the Madras Mahajan Sabha in 1884. Pherozeshah Mehta, K.T. Telang, Badruddin Tyabji and others formed the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885.

• Many Indians had been planning to form an all-India organization of nationalist political workers. But, the credit for giving the idea concrete and final shape goes to A.O. Hume, a retired English Civil Servant. He got in touch with the prominent Indian leaders and organized with their cooperation the first Session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay in December, 1885. It was presided over by W.C. Bonnerjee, and attended by 72 delegates.
• It has been said that Hume‘s main purpose in encouraging the foundation of the Congress was to provide a safety valve‘ or a safe outlet to the growing discontent among the educated Indians. He wanted to prevent the union of a discontented nationalist intelligentsia with a discontented peasantry.
• The Safety Valve Theory is, however, a small part of the truth, and is totally inadequate and misleading. The Indian leaders, who cooperated with Hume in starting this National Congress, were patriotic men of high character, who willingly accepted Hume‘s help, as they did not want to arouse official hostility towards their efforts at so early a stage of political activity and they hoped that a retired Civil Servant‘s active presence would allay official suspicions. If Hume wanted to use the Congress as a safety valve‘, the early Congress leaders hoped to use him as a lightning conductor‘.

• The British Government was forced by the agitation of the nationalists to pass the Indian Councils Act of 1892. By this Act, the number of members of the Imperial Legislative Council, as well as the Provincial Councils was increased. Some of these members could be elected indirectly by the Indians, but the officials‘ majority remained.
• The nationalists were totally dissatisfied with the Act of 1892 and declared it to be a hoax. They demanded a larger share for the Indians in the Councils, as also wider powers for them. In particular, they demanded Indian control over the public purse and raised the slogan that had earlier become the national cry of the American people during their War of Independence : No taxation without representation‘. At the same time, they failed to broaden the base of their democratic demands; they did not demand the right to vote for the masses or for women.

• The nationalists demanded the separation of the judicial from executive powers, so that the people might get some protection from the arbitrary acts of the police and the bureaucracy. They agitated against the oppressive and tyrannical behaviour of the police and other government agents towards the common people.
• The nationalists urged the government to undertake and develop welfare activities of the state. They laid a great deal of emphasis on the spread of primary education among the masses. They also demanded greater facilities for technical and higher education.
• The nationalists urged for the development of the Agricultural Banks to save the peasants from the clutches of the money-lenders. They wanted the government to undertake a largescale programme of extension of irrigation for the development of agriculture and to save the country from famines. They demanded extension of medical and health facilities, and improvement of the police system to make it honest, efficient and popular.

• The separatist and loyalist tendencies among a section of the educated Muslims, and the big Muslim Nawabs and landlords reached a climax in 1906, when the All-India Muslim League was founded under the leadership of Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dhaka, and Nawab Mohsin-ulMulk.
• Founded as a loyalist, communal and conservative political organization, the Muslim League made no critique of colonialism, supported the partition of Bengal and demanded special safeguards for the Muslims in government services.
• The Muslim League‟s political activities were directed not against the foreign rulers, but against the Hindus and the National Congress.
• The Lucknow Pact of 1916 marked an important step forward in the Hindu- Muslim unity. Unfortunately, it did not involve the Hindu and Muslim masses, and it accepted the pernicious principle of separate electorates.

The Ahrar Movement :

• The educated Muslim young men were, in particular, attracted by the radical nationalist ideas.
• The militantly nationalist Ahrar Movement was founded at this time under the leadership of Maulana Mohamed Ali, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Hasan Imam, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan and Mazhar-ul-Haq.
• These young men disliked the loyalist politics of the Aligarh School, and the big Nawabs and Zamindars.
• Moved by the modern ideas of selfgovernment, they advocated active participation in the militant nationalist movement.

• Two Indian Home Rule Leagues were organized on the lines of the Irish Home Rule Leagues and they represented the emergence of a new trend of aggressive politics. Annie Besant and Tilak were the pioneers of this new trend.
• Tilak set up his Home Rule League in April, 1916, and it was restricted to Maharashtra (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, Central Provinces and Berar. It had six branches, and the demands included Swarajya, formation of linguistic states and education in the vernacular.
• Annie Besant set up her League in September, 1916, in Madras and covered the rest of India (including Bombay city). It had 200 branches, was loosely organized as compared to Tilak‘s League and had George Arundale as the organizing secretary. Besides Arundale, the main work was done by B.W. Wadia and C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar.
• In June, 1917, Annie Besant and her associates, B.P. Wadia and George Arundale, were arrested. In a dramatic gesture, Sir S. Subramaniya Aiyar renounced his knighthood, while Tilak advocated a programme of passive resistance.

The Home Rule Movement:

• The League campaign aimed to convey to the common man the message of Home Rule as self-government.
• The aim was to be achieved by promoting political education and discussion through public meetings, organizing libraries and reading rooms containing books on national politics, holding conferences, organizing classes for the students on politics, carrying out propaganda through newspapers, pamphlets, posters, illustrated post-cards, plays, religious songs, etc., collecting funds, organizing social work, and participating in local government activities.
• The Home Rule agitation was later joined by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Chittaranjan Das, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Lala Lajpat Rai.
• The Home Rule agitation proved to be short-lived.
  The reasons for the decline were as follows:
  (i) There was lack of effective organization.
  (ii) Communal riots were witnessed during 1917-18.
  (iii) The Moderates who had joined the Congress after Annie Besant‘s arrest were pacified by talk of reforms (contained in Montagu‘s statement of August, 1917, which held self-government as the longterm goal of the British rule in India) and Besant‘s release.

• The Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress, presided over by a Moderate, Ambika Charan Majumdar, finally re-admitted the Extremists, led by Tilak to the Congress fold.
• The Lucknow Pact, (December, 1916), an agreement made by the Indian National Congress, headed by the Maratha leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and the All-India Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
• While the League agreed to present joint constitutional demands with the Congress to the government, the Congress accepted the Muslim League‘s position on separate electorates, which would continue till any one community demanded joint electorates. The Muslims were also granted a fixed proportion of seats in the legislatures at all-India and provincial levels.

The Montagu Chelmsford Reforms:

• In line with the government policy contained in Montagu‘s statement of August, 1917, the government announced further constitutional reforms in July, 1918, known as the Montagu Chelmsford, or the Mont Ford Reforms. Based on these, the Government of India Act, 1919, was enacted.
• The Act introduced dyarchy for the executive at the level of the provincial government.
• It extended the principle of communal representation by providing separate electorates for the Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and the Europeans.
• It introduced, for the first time, bicameralism and direct elections in the country. Thus, the Indian Legislative Council was replaced by a bicameral legislature, consisting of an Upper House (Council of State) and a Lower House (Legislative Assembly). The majority of members of both the Houses were chosen by direct election.
• It provided for the establishment of a Public Service Commission.

The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act (The Rowlatt Act), 1919:

• An extension to the Defence of India Regulations Act, 1915, was passed in March, 1919. It was what was officially called the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, but popularly known as the Rowlatt Act.
• It was based on the recommendations made in the previous year to the Imperial Legislative Council by the Rowlatt Commission, headed by the British judge, Sir Sidney Rowlatt, to investigate the seditious conspiracy‘ of the Indian people.
• All the elected Indian members of the Imperial Legislative Council voted against the Bill, but they were in a minority and easily overruled by the official nominees.
• All the elected Indian members – who included Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Mazhar Ul Haq – resigned in protest.
• Satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act — The first mass strike by Gandhiji.

The Champaran Satyagraha (1917) – First Civil Disobedience by Gandhi:

• Mahatma Gandhi was requested by Rajkumar Shukla, a local man, to look into the problems of the farmers in context of the indigo planters of Champaran in Bihar.
• The European planters had been forcing the peasants to grow indigo on 3/20 part of the total land (called the Tinkathia system).
• When Gandhi, joined now by Rajendra Prasad, Mazharul-Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh and J.B. Kripalani, reached Champaran to probe into the matter, the authorities ordered him to leave the area at once.
• The government appointed a committee to go into the matter and nominated Gandhi as a member. Gandhi was able to convince the authorities that the Tinkathia system should be abolished and that the peasants should be compensated for the illegal dues extracted from them. As a compromise with the planters, he agreed that only 25 per cent of the money taken should be compensated.

The Non-Cooperation Movement:

• The Khilafat Committee started a campaign of non-cooperation and the movement was formally launched on August 31, 1920. (Tilak had, incidentally, breathed his last on August 1, 1920).
• In September, 1920, at a special session in Calcutta, the Congress approved a Non-Cooperation Programme till the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were removed, and Swaraj was established. 
• The programme was to include :
  1. Boycott of government schools and colleges.
  2. Boycott of law courts and dispensation of justice through the Panchayats instead.
  3. Boycott of the Legislative Councils. There were some differences over this, as some leaders, like C.R. Das were not willing to include a boycott of the Councils, but bowed to Congress discipline. These leaders boycotted the elections held in November, 1920, and the majority of the voters too stayed away.
  4. Boycott of foreign cloth and use of Khadi instead. Also practice of hand-spinning to be done.
  5. Renunciation of government honours and titles. The second phase could include mass civil disobedience, including resignation from government service and non-payment of taxes.
• The Congress Working Committee met at Bardoli in February, 1922, and resolved to stop all activities that led to breaking of the law and to get down to constructive work, instead, which was to include popularization of Khadi, national schools, and campaigning for temperance, for Hindu-Muslim unity and against untouchability. 

• The Brahmo tradition of Raja Rammohun Roy was carried forward after 1843 by Devendranath Tagore, who also repudiated the doctrine that the Vedic scriptures were infallible, and after 1866 by Keshub Chandra Sen. The Brahmo Samaj made an effort to reform Hindu religion by removing abuses and basing it on the worship of One God‘ (monotheism), and on the teachings of the Vedas and the Upanishads, even though it repudiated the doctrine of the infallibility of the Vedas.
• It also tried to incorporate the best aspects of modern western thought. Most of all, it based itself on human reason which was to be the ultimate criterion for deciding what was worthwhile and what was useless in the past or present religious principles and practices.
• For that reason, the Brahmo Samaj denied the need for a priestly class for interpreting the religious writings. Every individual had the right and the capacity to decide with the help of his own intellect what was right and what was wrong in a religious book or principle. Thus, the Brahmos were basically opposed to idolatry, and superstitious practices and rituals, in fact to the entire Brahmanical system.
• They could worship One God‘ without the mediation of the priests. They actively opposed the caste system and child-marriage, and supported the general uplift of women, including widow remarriage, and the spread of modern education to men and women. The Brahmo Samaj was weakened by internal dissensions in the second half of the 19th century. Moreover, its influence was confined mostly to the urban educated groups.

• Religious reforms began in Bombay in 1840 by the Paramahansa Mandali, which aimed at fighting idolatry and the caste system. Perhaps the earliest religious reformer in western India was Gopal Hari Deshmukh, known popularly as „Lokahitwadi‟, who wrote in Marathi, made powerful rationalist attacks on Hindu orthodoxy, and preached religious and social equality. He also said that if religion did not sanction social reforms, then religion should be changed, for after all, religion was made by the human beings, and scriptures, written long ago, might not remain relevant to the later times.
• Later, the Prarthana Samaj was started with the aim of reforming the Hindu religious thought and practice in the light of modern knowledge. It preached the worship ofOne God‘ and tried to free religion of caste orthodoxy and priestly domination. Two of its great leaders were R.G. Bhandarkar, the famous Sanskrit scholar and historian, and Mahadev Govind Ranade. It was powerfully influenced by the Brahmo Samaj.
• Its activities also spread to south India as a result of the efforts of the Telugu reformer, Viresalingam. One of the greatest rationalist thinkers of modern India, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, also lived and worked in Maharashtra at that time. Agarkar was an advocate of the power of human reason. He sharply criticised any blind dependence on tradition or the false glorification of India‘s past.

Ramakrishna Parmahamsa (1834–86) was a saintly person who sought religious salvation in the traditional ways of renunciation, meditation and devotion (Bhakti). In his search for religious truth or the realization of God, he lived with mystics of other faiths, Muslims and Christians. He again and again emphasised that there were many roads to God and salvation, and that the service of man was the service of God, for man was the embodiment of God. It was his great disciple, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), who popularized his religious message and who tried to put it in a form that would suit the needs of the contemporary Indian society.

Above all, Vivekananda stressed social action. Knowledge, unaccompanied by action in the actual world in which we live, was useless‘, he said. He too, like his Guru, proclaimed the essential oneness of all religions and condemned any narrowness in religious matters. Thus, he wrote in 1898 : For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam is the only hope‖. At the same time, he was convinced of the superior approach of the Indian philosophical tradition. He himself subscribed to Vedanta, which he declared to be a fully rational system. Vivekananda criticized the Indians for having lost touch with the rest of the world, and become stagnant and mummified.

He wrote, Motion is the sign of life.‘ He condemned the caste system and the current Hindu emphasis on rituals and superstitions, and urged the people to imbibe the spirit of liberty, equality and free-thinking. He was shocked by the poverty, misery and suffering of the common people of the country.
In 1897, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission to carry on humanitarian relief and social work. The Mission had many branches in different parts of the country and carried on social service by opening schools, hospitals and dispensaries, orphanages, libraries, etc. It, thus, laid emphasis not on personal salvation, but on social good or social service.

The Arya Samaj undertook the task of reforming Hindu religion in north India. It was founded in 1875 by Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824–83). Swami Dayanand believed that selfish and ignorant priests had perverted Hindu religion with the aid of the Puranas which, he said, were full of false teachings. For his own inspiration, Swami Dayanand went to the Vedas, which he regarded as infallible, being the inspired word of God, and as the fount of all knowledge. He rejected such later religious thought as conflicted with the Vedas. This total dependence on the Vedas and their infallibility gave his teachings an orthodox colouring, for infallibility meant that human reason was not to be the final deciding factor.

However, his approach had a rationalist aspect, because the Vedas, though revealed, were to be rationally interpreted by himself and others, who were human beings. Thus, individual reason was the decisive factor. The teachings he derived from his own interpretation of the Vedas were consequently similar to the religious and social reforms that other Indian reformers were advocating. He was opposed to idolatry, ritual and priesthood, and particularly to the prevalent caste practices and popular Hinduism as preached by the Brahmins.

He also directed attention towards the problems of men as they lived in this real world and away from the traditional belief in the other world. He also favoured the study of western sciences. Swami Dayanand had met and had discussions with Keshub Chandra Sen, Vidyasagar, Justice Ranade, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, and other modern religious and social reformers. In fact, the ideas of the Arya Samaj with its Sunday meeting resembled the practices of the Brahmo Samaj and the Prarthana Samaj in this respect. Some of Swami Dayanand‘s followers later started a network of schools and colleges in the country to impart education on western lines. Lala Hansraj played a leading part in this effort. On the other hand, in 1902, Swami Shradhananda started a Gurukul near Hardwar to propagate the more traditional ideals of education. The Arya Samajists were vigorous advocates of social reform and worked actively to improve the condition of women, and to spread education among them. They fought untouchability and the rigidities of the hereditary caste system.

They were, thus, the advocates of social equality and promoted social solidarity and consolidation. They also inculcated a spirit of self-respect and self-reliance among the people.
At the same time, one of the Arya Samaj‘s objectives was to prevent the conversion of the Hindus to other religions. This led it to start a crusade against other religions. This crusade became a contributory factor in the growth of communalism in India in the 20th century. 

The Theosophical Society was founded in the United States by Madam H.P Blavatsky and Colonel H.S. Olcott, who later came to India and founded the headquarters of the Society at Adyar near Madras in 1886. The Theosophist Movement soon grew in India, as a result of the leadership given to it by Mrs. Annie Besant, who had come to India in 1893. The Theosophists advocated the revival and strengthening of the ancient religions of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.
They recognised the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul. They also preached the universal brotherhood of man. As religious revivalists, the Theosophists were not very successful, but they made a peculiar contribution to developments in modern India. It was a movement led by the westerners who glorified Indian religious and philosophical traditions. This helped the Indians recover their self-confidence, even though it tended to give them a sense of false pride in their past greatness. One of Mrs. Besant‘s many achievements in India was the establishment of the Central Hindu School at Benaras (Varanasi), which was later developed by Madan Mohan Malaviya into the Benaras Hindu University.

• The movements for religious reform were late in emerging among the Muslims. The Muslim upper classes had tended to avoid contact with the western education and culture, and it was mainly after the Revolt of 1857 that the modern ideas of religious reform began to appear. The Muhammedan Literary Society was founded at Calcutta in 1863. This Society promoted discussion of religious, social and political questions in the light of modern ideas and encouraged upper and middle-class Muslims to take to western education.
• The most important reformer among the Muslims was Sayyid Ahmad Khan. He was tremendously impressed by modern scientific thought and worked all his life to reconcile it with Islam. Even the Quran he interpreted in the light of contemporary rationalism and science. In his view, any interpretation of the Quran that conflicted with human reason, science or nature was in reality a misinterpretation.
• All his life he struggled against blind obedience to tradition, dependence on custom, ignorance and irrationalism. He also warned against fanaticism, narrow-mindedness and exclusiveness, and urged the students and others to be broad-minded and tolerant. Sayyid Ahmad Khan believed that the religious and social life of the Muslims could be improved only by imbibing modern western scientific knowledge and culture. Therefore, promotion of modern education remained his first task throughout his life. In 1875, he founded at Aligarh the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College as a centre for spreading western sciences and culture. Later, this College grew into the Aligarh Muslim University. Sayyid Ahmad Khan was a great believer in religious toleration. He believed that all religions had a certain underlying unity which could be called practical morality. Believing that a person‘s religion was his or her private affair, he roundly condemned any sign of religious bigotry in personal relations. He was also opposed to communal friction, appealing to the Hindus and the Muslims to unite.
• Moreover, the Hindus, the Parsis and the Christians had freely contributed to the funds of his college, whose doors were also open to all Indians. However, towards the end of his life, he began to talk of Hindu domination to prevent his followers from joining the rising National Movement. This was unfortunate, though basically he was not a communalist. He only wanted the backwardness of the Muslim middle and upper classes to go. On the other hand, any hostility by the officials might prove dangerous to the educational effort which he saw as the need of the hour. He believed that only when the Indians had become as modern in their thinking and actions as the English were, could they hope to successfully challenge the foreign rule. He, therefore, advised all Indians, and particularly the educationally backward Muslims, to remain aloof from politics for some time to come.
• Consequently, to prevent the orthodox Muslims from opposing his college, he virtually gave up his agitation in favour of religious reform. For the same reason, he would not do anything to offend the government and, on the other hand, encouraged communalism and separatism. Sayyid Ahmad‘s reformist zeal also embraced the social sphere. He urged the Muslims to give up medieval customs and ways of thought and behaviour. In particular, he wrote in favour of raising women‘s status in the society and advocated the removal of Purdah and the spread of education among women.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan was helped by a band of loyal followers, who are collectively described as the Aligarh School. Chiragh Ali, the Urdu poet Altaf Husain Hali, Nazir Ahmad and Maulana Shibli Nomani were some of the other distinguished leaders of the Aligarh School.

Religious reforms began among the Parsis in Bombay in the middle of the 19th century. In 1851, the Rehnumai Mazdayasan Sabha, or the Religious Reform Association, was started by Naoroji Furdonji, Dadabhai Naoroji, S.S. Bengalee and others. It campaigned against the entrenched orthodoxy in the religious field and initiated the modernization of the Parsi social customs regarding the education of women, marriage and the social position of women in general. In the course of time, the Parsis became socially the most westernized section of the Indian society.

• Religious reforms among the Sikhs began at the end of the 19th century, when the Khalsa College was started at Amritsar. But the reform efforts gained momentum after 1920, when the Akali Movement rose in the Punjab. The Akalis also participated in the Indian Independence Movement against the British Government, and supported the Non-Cooperation Movement against them.
• The main aim of the Akalis was to purify the management of the Gurudwaras or the Sikh shrines. These Gurudwaras had been heavily endowed with land and money by devout Sikhs. But they had come to be managed autocratically by corrupt and selfish Mahants. The Sikh masses, led by the Akalis, started in 1921, a powerful Satyagraha against the Mahants and the government which aided them.
• The Akalis soon forced the government to pass a new Gurudwara Act in 1922, which was later amended in 1925. Sometimes with the aid of the Act, but often through direct action, the Sikhs gradually turned out of the Gurudwaras the corrupt Mahants, even though hundreds of lives had to be sacrificed in the process.

• The major effect of national awakening in the 19th century was seen in the field of social reforms. The newly educated persons increasingly revolted against the rigid social conventions and outdated customs. They could no longer tolerate irrational and dehumanising social practices. In their revolt they were inspired by the humanistic ideals of social equality and the equal worth of all individuals. Nearly all the religious reformers contributed to the social reforms movement.
• This was because the backward features of the Indian society, such as the caste system or inequality of the sexes, had religious sanctions in the past. In addition, certain other organizations, like the Social Conference; the Servants of India Society; and the Christian Missionaries worked actively for social reforms. Many prominent persons, like Jotiba Govind Phule, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, Justice Ranade, K.T. Telang, B.M. Malabari, D.K. Karve, Sasipada Banerjee, B.C. Pal, Viresalingam, Sri Narayan Guru, E.V Ramaswami Naicker and B.R. Ambedkar, and many others, also played an important role. In the 20th century, and especially after 1919, the National Movement became the main propagator of social reforms. Increasingly, the reformers took recourse to propaganda in the Indian languages to reach the masses.
• They also used novels, dramas, poetry, short stories, the Press and, in the thirties, the cinema to spread their views. While social reforms were linked with religious reforms in some cases during the 19th century, in the later years they were increasingly secular in approach. Moreover, many people, who were orthodox in their religious approach, participated in them.
• Similarly, in the beginning, social reforms had largely been the effort of the newly educated Indians, belonging to the higher castes to adjust their social behaviour to the requirements of the modern western culture and values. But gradually it penetrated down to the lower strata of the society, and began to revolutionize and reconstruct the social sphere. In time, the ideas and ideals of the reformers won almost universal acceptance and are today enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The social reform movements tried in the main to achieve two objectives : the emancipation of women and extension of equal rights to them; and the removal of caste rigidities and in particular the abolition of untouchability.

• The various religions practised in India, as well as the personal laws based on them, consigned women to a status inferior to men. The condition of the upper-class women was, in this respect, worse than that of the peasant women. Since the latter worked actively in the fields alongside men, they enjoyed relatively greater freedom of movement and, in some respects, a better status in the family than the upper-class women. For example, they seldom observed Purdah and many of them had the right to remarry.
• Hindu women had no right to inherit property, nor did they enjoy the right to terminate an undesirable marriage. Muslim women could inherit property, but only half as much as a man could; and in the matter of divorce, even theoretically, there was no equality between husband and wife. In fact, Muslim women dreaded divorce. The social position of Hindu and Muslim women, as well as their values, were similar.
• Razia Sultana and Chand Bibi arose in India. But they were exceptions to the general pattern and did not, in any way, change the picture. Moved by the humanitarian and egalitarian impulses of the 19th century, the social reformers started a powerful movement to improve the position of women.
• After the 1880s, when the Dufferin Hospitals (named after Lady Dufferin, the wife of the Viceroy) were started, efforts were made to make modern medicine and child delivery techniques available to the Indian women. The movement for the liberation of women received a great stimulus from the rise of the militant national movement in the 20th century. Women played an active and important role in the struggle for freedom. They participated in large numbers in the agitation against the Partition of Bengal and in the Home Rule Movement. After 1918, they marched in political processions, picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor, spun and propagated Khadi, went to jail in the Non-Cooperation Movement, faced lathis, tear gas and bullets during public demonstrations, participated actively in the revolutionary terrorist movements, and voted in elections to the legislatures and even stood as candidates themselves. Sarojini Naidu, the famous poetess, became the President of the Indian National Congress. Several women became Ministers or Parliamentary Secretaries in the popular ministries of 1937. Hundreds of them became the Members of the Municipalities and other organs of local government. When the trade union and the Kisan Movements arose in the 1920s, women were often found in their forefront.
• Another important development was the birth of a women‘s movement in the country. Upto the 1920s, enlightened men had worked for the uplift of women. Now aware and self-confident women undertook that task.
• They started many organizations and institutions for the purpose, the most outstanding of which was the All-India Women‘s Conference, founded in 1927, to improve educational efforts for women and children, and has expanded its scope to also tackle other women‘s rights issues.

• In the matters of administration, the British introduced equality before law, took away the judicial functions of the Caste Panchayats and gradually opened the doors of administrative services to all castes. Moreover, the new educational system was wholly secular and, therefore, basically opposed to caste distinctions and the caste outlook. As modern democratic and rationalist ideas spread among the Indians, they began to raise their voice against the caste system.
• The Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophists, the Social Conference and nearly all the great reformers of the 19th century attacked it. Even though many of them defended the system of the Four Varnas, they were critical of the caste (Jati) system.
• In particular, they condemned the inhuman practice of untouchability. They also realized that national unity and national progress in political, social and economic fields could not be achieved so long as millions were deprived of their right to live with dignity and honour.
• The growth of the National Movement played a significant role in weakening the caste system. The National Movement was opposed to all those institutions which tended to divide the Indian people. From the beginning, the Indian National Congress and, in fact, the entire National Movement opposed caste privileges and fought for equal civic rights and equal freedom for the development of the individual without distinctions of caste, sex or religion. All his life Gandhiji kept the abolition of untouchability at the forefront of his public activities. In 1932, he founded the All-India Harijan Sangh for this purpose.
• His campaign for the ―root and branch removal of untouchability‖ was based on the grounds of humanism and reason. He argued that there was no sanction for untouchability in the Hindu Shastras. Since the middle of the 19th century, numerous individuals and organizations worked to spread education among the untouchables to open the doors of schools and temples to them, to enable them to use public wells and tanks, and to remove other social disabilities and distinctions from which they suffered. As education and awakening spread, the lower castes themselves began to stir. They became conscious of their basic human rights and began to rise in defence of these rights.
• In Maharashtra, in the second half of the 19th century, Jyotiba Phule, born in a lower-caste family, led a life-long movement against the Brahmanical religious authority as part of his struggle against upper-caste domination. He regarded modern education as the most important weapon for the liberation of the lower castes. He was the first to open several schools for girls of the lower castes.
• Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who belonged to one of the Scheduled Castes, devoted his entire life to fighting against caste tyranny. He organized the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation for the purpose. Several other Scheduled Caste leaders founded the All-India Depressed Classes Association.
• In Kerala, Sri Narayan Guru organized a life-long struggle against the caste system. He coined the famous slogan: “One religion, one caste and one God for mankind.” In south India, the nonBrahmins organized, during the 1920s, the Self-Respect Movement to fight the disabilities which the Brahmins had imposed upon them. Numerous Satyagraha Movements were organized all over India jointly by the upper and the depressed castes against the ban on the latter‘s entry into temples and other such restrictions. The struggle against untouchability could not, however, be fully successful under the alien rule. 

• Major developments in the Indian politics occurred during 1922-28. Immediately, the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation Movement led to demoralization in the nationalist ranks. Moreover, serious differences arose among the leaders, who had to decide how to prevent the Movement from lapsing into passivity. One school of thought, headed by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru, advocated a new  line of political activity under the changed conditions. They said that the nationalists should end the boycott of the Legislative Councils, enter them, obstruct their working according to the official plans, expose their weaknesses, transform them into the arenas of political struggle and, thus, use them to arouse public enthusiasm. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Ansari, Babu Rajendra Prasad and others, known as theNo-Changers‘, opposed Council entry.
• They warned that legislative politics would lead to neglect of work among the masses, weaken nationalist fervour and create rivalries among the leaders. They, therefore, continued to emphasise the constructive programme of spinning, temperance, Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability and grassroots work in the villages and among the poor. They said, gradually prepare the country for the new round of mass struggle.
• The No-Changers‘ carried on quiet, constructive work. Symbolic of this work were hundreds of Ashrams, that came up all over the country, where young men and women promoted Charkha and Khadi, and worked among the lower castes and the tribal people. Hundreds of National schools and colleges came up, where young persons were trained in a non-colonial ideological framework.
• Moreover, constructive workers served as the backbone of the Civil Disobedience Movements as their active organizers.
• While the Swarajists and the NoChangers‘ worked in their own separate ways, there was no basic difference between the two, and, because they kept on the best of terms and recognised each other‘s anti-imperialist character, they could readily unite later when the time was ripe for a new national struggle.

• In December, 1922, C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party, with C.R. Das as the President and Motilal Nehru as one of the Secretaries. The new party was to function as a group within the Congress. It accepted the Congress programme, except in one respect—it would take part in the Council elections.
• The Swarajists and the „No-Changers‟ were now engaged in fierce political controversy. Even Gandhiji, who had been released on 5th February, 1924, on grounds of health, failed in his efforts to unite them. But both were determined to avoid the disastrous experience of the 1907 split at Surat.
• On the advice of Gandhiji, the two groups agreed to remain in the Congress, though they would work in their separate ways. Even though the Swarajists had little time for preparations, they did very well in the election of November, 1923. They won 42 seats out of the 101 elected seats in the Central Legislative Assembly. With the cooperation of other Indian groups, they repeatedly out-voted the government in the Central Assembly and in several of the Provincial Councils. They agitated through powerful speeches on the questions of self-government, civil liberties and industrial development. In March, 1925, they succeeded in electing Vithalbhai J. Patel, a leading nationalist leader, as the President (Speaker) of the Central Legislative Assembly.
• They filled the political void at a time when the national movement was recouping its strength. They also exposed the hollowness of the Reform Act of 1919. But, they failed to change the policies of the authoritarian Government of India and found it necessary to walk out of the Central Assembly, first in March, 1926, and then in January, 1930. 
• Meanwhile, the nationalist movement and the Swarajists suffered another grievous blow in the death of C.R. Das in June, 1925. As the Non-Cooperation Movement petered out and the people felt frustrated, communalism reared its ugly head. The communal elements took advantage of the situation to propagate their views and, after 1923, the country was repeatedly plunged into communal riots. The Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha, which was founded in December, 1917, once again became active. The result was that the growing feeling that all people were Indians first received a setback. Even the Swarajist Party, whose main leaders, Motilal Nehru and Das, were staunch nationalists, was split by communalism. A group, known as the Responsivists‘, including Madan Mohan Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai and N.C.
• Kelkar, offered cooperation to the government, so that the so-called Hindu interests might be safeguarded. They accused Motilal Nehru of letting down the Hindus, of being antiHindu, of favouring cow slaughter and of eating beef. The Muslim communalists were no less active in fighting for the loaves and fishes of office. Gandhiji, who had repeatedly asserted that ―Hindu-Muslim unity must be our creed for all time and under all circumstances‖, tried to intervene and improve the situation. In September, 1924, he went on a 21-day-fast at Delhi in Maulana Mohamed Ali‘s house, to do penance for the inhumanity revealed in the communal riots.
• Gandhiji wrote in May, 1927 : ―My only hope lies in prayer and answers to prayer.‖ But, behind the scenes, forces of national upsurge had been growing. When, in November, 1927, the announcement of the formation of the Simon Commission came, India again emerged from darkness and entered a new era of political struggle.

• The year 1927 witnessed many portents of national recovery and the emergence of the new trend of socialism. Marxism and other socialist ideas spread rapidly. Politically, this force and energy found reflection in the rise of a new Left-Wing in the Congress, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose. The Left Wing did not confine its attention to the struggle against imperialism. It simultaneously raised the question of internal class oppression by the capitalists and the landlords. The Indian youth were becoming active. All over the country, youth leagues were being formed and student conferences held.
• The first All-Bengal Conference of Students was held in August, 1928, and was presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru. After this, many other student associations were started in the country and hundreds of student and youth conferences were held. They also put forward and popularized the programme of complete independence. Socialist and Communist groups came into existence in the 1920s.
• The example of the Russian Revolution aroused interest among many young nationalists. Many of them were dissatisfied with the Gandhian political ideas and programmes, and turned to the socialist ideology for guidance. M.N. Roy became the first Indian to be elected to the leadership of the Communist International. In 1924, the government arrested Muzaffar Ahmed and S.A. Dange, accused them of spreading Communist ideas, and tried them, along with others, in the Kanpur Conspiracy case.

• In 1925, the Communist Party came into existence. Moreover, many worker and peasant parties were founded in different parts of the country. These parties and groups propagated Marxist and Communist ideas. At the same time, they remained integral parts of the national movement and the National Congress.
• The peasants and workers were also, once again, stirring. In Uttar Pradesh, there was large-scale agitation among the tenants for the revision of the tenancy laws. The tenants wanted lower rents, protection from eviction and relief from indebtedness. In Gujarat, the peasants protested against the official efforts to increase the land revenue. The famous Bardoli Satyagraha occurred at this time. In 1928, under the leadership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the peasants organized a No Tax Campaign‘ and, in the end, won their demand. There was a rapid growth of trade unionism under the leadership of the All-India Trade Union Congress. Many strikes occurred during 1928. There was a long strike lasting for two months in the railway workshop at Kharagpur. The South Indian Railway workers went on strike. Another strike was organized in the Tata Iron and Steel Works at Jamshedpur. Subhash Chandra Bose played an important role in the settlement of this strike.
• The most important strike of the period was in the Bombay textile mills. Nearly 1,50,000 workers went on strike for over five months. This strike was led by the Communists. Over five lakhs of workers took part in strikes during 1928. Another reflection of the new mood was the growing activity of the revolutionary movement, which too was beginning to take a socialist turn.
• The failure of the First Non-Cooperation Movement had led to the revival of the revolutionary movement. After an AllIndia Conference, the Hindustan Republican Association was founded in October, 1924, to organize an armed revolution. The government struck at it by arresting a large number of youth and trying them in the Kakori Conspiracy Case (1925). Seventeen were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, four were transported for life, and four, including Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla, were hanged. The revolutionaries soon came under the influence of socialist ideas, and in 1928, under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar Azad, changed the name of their organization to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). They also gradually began to move away from individual heroic action and acts of violence. But the brutal lathi charge on an anti-Simon Commission demonstration on 30th October, 1928, led to a sudden change. The great Punjabi leader, Lala Lajpat Rai, died as a result of the lathi blows. This enraged the youth and, on 17th December, 1928, Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru assassinated Saunders, the British police officer who had led the lathi charge. The HSRA leadership also decided to let the people know about their changed political objectives and the need for a revolution by the masses.
• Consequently, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8th April, 1929. The bomb did not harm anyone. The aim was not to kill but, as their leaflet put it, ―to make the deaf hear‖.
• In Bengal, too, revolutionary activities were revived. In April, 1930, a wellplanned and large-scale armed raid was organized on the government armoury at Chittagong, under the leadership of Surya Sen. This was the first of many attacks on unpopular government officials. A remarkable aspect of the terrorist movement in Bengal was the participation of young women. Bhagat Singh and a few others were also tried for the assassination of Saunders.Their defence was organized by the Congress leaders, who were otherwise the votaries of non-violence. Particularly inspiring was the hunger strike they undertook as a protest against the horrible conditions in the prisons. During the course of this hunger strike, Jatin Das, a frail young man, achieved martyrdom after a 63-day-long epic fast. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were executed on 23th March, 1931, despite popular protest. Bhagat Singh defined socialism in a scientific manner—it meant the abolition of capitalism and class domination. In 1926, he had helped establish the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha and had become its first Secretary. The government was determined to suppress this new trend. In March, 1929, thirty-one prominent trade union and communist leaders (including three Englishmen) were arrested and, after a trial (The Meerut Conspiracy Case) lasting four years, sentenced to long periods of imprisonment.
• Women play an important role through their participation in the revolutionary movement in Bengal.