Spectrum Test: First World War And Nationalist Response - UPSC MCQ

Factors: 

(1) A section of the nationalists felt that popular pressure was required to attain concessions from the government. 

(2) The Moderates were disillusioned with the Morley- Minto reforms. 

(3) People felt the burden of wartime miseries caused by high taxation and a rise in prices and were ready to participate in any aggressive movement of protest. 

(4) The war, being fought among the major imperialist powers of the day and backed by naked propaganda against each other, exposed the myth of white superiority. 

(5) Tilak was ready to assume leadership after his release in June 1914 and had made conciliatory gestures- to the government reassuring it of his loyalty and to the Moderates that he wanted, like the Irish Home Rulers, a reform of the administration and not an overthrow of the government. 

He also admitted that the acts of violence had only served to retard India's pace of political progress.

• Tilak setup 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, the formation of linguistic states and education in the vernacular. 

• Besant's League: Annie Besant set up her league in September 1916 in Madras and covered India's rest (including Bombay city). 

• It had 200 branches and was loosely organized 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.

• It carried a much wider appeal than the earlier mobilizations and also attracted the political backward regions of Gujarat and Sindh. So statement 2nd is incorrect. 

• Rest of the statements are correct. The League campaign aimed to convey to the common man the message of home rule as self-government. 

• It carried a much wider appeal than the earlier mobilizations had and attracted the hitherto 'politically backward' regions of Gujarat and Sindh. 

• The Russian Revolution of 1917 proved to be an added advantage for the Home Rule campaign. 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. Some of these leaders became heads of local branches. 

• Many of the Moderate Congressmen who were disillusioned with Congress inactivity and some Gokhale's Servants of India Society also joined the agitation. However. 

• Anglo-Indians, most of the Muslims non-brahmins from the South did not join as they felt Home Rule would mean the Hindu majority rule, and that too mainly by the high caste.

The decline's reasons were as follows 

(i) There was a 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 long-term goal of the British rule in India) and Besant's release. 

(iv) Talk of passive resistance by the Extremists kept the Moderates away from an activity from September 1918 onwards. 

(v) The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which became known in July 1918 further divided the nationalist ranks 

(vi) Tilak had to go abroad (September 1918) in connection with a case while Annie Besant vacillated on her response to the reforms and passive resistance techniques. 

With Besant unable to give a positive lead and Tilak away in England, the movement was left leaderless.

• It was clear that the British had no intention of handing over power to a predominantly elected legislature within the Indian majority. 

• Secretary of State for India, Edwin Samuel Montagu, made a statement on August 20, 1917, in the British House Commons in what has come to be known as the August laration of 1917. 

• From now onwards, nationalists' demand for self-government or home rule could not be termed as seditious since the attainment of self-government for Indians now became a government policy, unlike Morley's statement in 1909 that the reforms were not intended to give self-government to India. 

• Though half the executive was to be elected by the legislature, the executive as a whole was not to be responsible to the legislature. 

• The legislature could not remove the elected half of the executive. Still, since important matters like the budget were dependent upon the legislature's approval, the constitutional deadlock was most likely. 

• This was the nature of executive-legislature relations that the Congress seemed to ask for in any scheme of post-war constitutional reforms. 

• The Lucknow Pact demands were thus just a significantly expanded version of the Morley-Minto reforms." While the Congress and the Muslim League's effort to put up a united front was a far-sighted one, the acceptance of the principle of separate electorates by the Congress implied that the Congress and the League came together as separate political entities. 

• This was a major landmark in the evolution of the two-nation theory by the Muslim League. Secondly, while the two groups' leaders came together, efforts to bring together the masses from the two communities were not considered.

• The objections of the Indian leaders to Montagu's statement were two-fold 

• (1) No specific time frame was given. So statement 1st is incorrect. (2) The government alone was to decide the nature and the timing of advance towards a responsible government. The Indians were resentful that the British would decide what was good and what was bad for Indians.

• The Indian National Congress's Lucknow session presided over by a Moderate, Ambika Charan Majumdar, finally readmitted the Extremists led by Tilak to the Congress fold. 

• Various factors facilitated this reunion: (i) Old controversies had become meaningless now. (ii) Both the Moderates and the Extremists realized that the split had led to political inactivity. (ii) Annie Besant and Tilak had made vigorous efforts for the reunion. To allay Moderate suspicions, Tilak had declared that he supported a reform of the administration and not an overthrow of the government. He also denounced acts of violence. (iv) The death of two Moderates, Gokhale and Pherozshah Mehta, who had led the Moderate opposition to the Extremists, facilitated the reunion.

• The Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League could be considered an important event in the nationalistic struggle for freedom. 

• 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 until any community demanded joint electorates. 

• The Muslims were also granted a fixed proportion of seats in the legislatures at all-India and provincial levels.