Test: Nationalist Movement Phase 2 (1919-1939) - 2 - UPSC MCQ

• Statement 3: His first few imprisonments were in:

• From 10-1-1908 to 31-1-1908, Johannesburg

• From 1-11-1908 to 30-11-1908, Johannesburg and Volksrust

• Statements 1 and 2: In India, the first three imprisonments were in:

• From 9-4-1919 to 11-4-1919, Railway carriage

• From 10-3-1922 to 20-3-1922, Sabarmati

• From 21-3-1922 to 11-1-1924, Yeravda

• He was then imprisoned in Yerwada and Sabarmati several times, with the last imprisonment in Aga Khan Palace, Delhi.

• In the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese labourers went to work on plantations, mines, and road and railway construction projects worldwide.

• In India, indentured labourers were hired under contracts which promised return travel to India after they had worked five years on their employer’s plantation.

• Most Indian indentured workers came from the present-day regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu. In the middle 19th century, these regions experienced many changes—cottage industries declined, land rents rose, and lands were cleared for mines and plantations.

• All this affected the poor's lives: they failed to pay their rents, became deeply indebted and were forced to migrate in search of work.

• Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress in 1894. This organisation led non-violent protests against the white people's oppressive treatment towards the native Africans and Indians. Started newspaper: Indian Opinion.

• Found Passive Resistance Association. Found Tolstoy farm with the help of Kallenbach. During the Boer War outbreak in 1899, Gandhi gathered around 1,100 Indians and organised the Indian Ambulance Corps, but the ethnic discrimination and torture continued on Indians.

• Mahatma Gandhi felt an irresistible attraction to a life of simplicity, manual labour and austerity. In 1904—after reading John Ruskin’s Unto The Last, a critique of capitalism—he set up a farm at Phoenix near Durban where he and his friends could live by the sweat of their brow.

• Six years later, another colony grew up under Mahatma Gandhi’s fostering care near Johannesburg; it was named Tolstoy Farm for the Russian writer and moralist, whom Mahatma Gandhi admired and corresponded with.

• Those two settlements were the precursors of the more famous ashrams (religious retreats) in India, at Sabarmati near Ahmedabad (Ahmadabad) and Sevagram near Wardha.

Indian Mirror was an English paper founded by Devendranath Tagore, at Calcutta in 1862.

• It is a railway station in South Africa where a young Mahatma Gandhi was thrown out of a ‘Whites-only’ compartment 125 years ago.

• On June 7, 1893, Gandhi, then a young lawyer, was thrown off the train’s first-class compartment at Pietermaritzburg station after he refused to give up his seat as ordered by racially prejudiced officials.

• The incident led him to develop his Satyagraha principles of peaceful resistance and mobilize people in South Africa and India against the British's discriminatory rules.

• As the historian Chandran Devanesan remarked, South Africa was ‘the making of the Mahatma’. In South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi first forged the distinctive techniques of nonviolent protest known as Satyagraha, first promoted harmony between religions and first alerted upper-caste Indians to their discriminatory treatment of low castes and women.

• The India that Mahatma Gandhi came back to in 1915 was rather different from the one he had left in 1893. Although still a colony of the British, it was far more active politically.

• The Indian National Congress now had branches in most major cities and towns. The Swadeshi movement of 1905-1907 greatly broadened its appeal among the middle classes. That movement had thrown up some towering leaders—Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Maharashtra, Bipin Chandra Pal of Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai of Punjab.

• On Gokhale’s advice, Mahatma Gandhi spent a year travelling around British India to know the land and its peoples.

• His first major public appearance was at the opening of the Banaras Hindu University in February 1916. Among the invitees to this event were the princes and philanthropists whose donations had contributed to the university's founding.

• Also present were important leaders of the Congress such as Annie Besant. Compared to these dignitaries, Mahatma Gandhi was relatively unknown. He had been invited on account of his work in South Africa rather than his status within India. When his turn came to speak, Mahatma Gandhi charged the Indian elite with a lack of concern for the labouring poor.

• The opening of the Banaras Hindu University, he said, was certainly a gorgeous show. But he worried about the contrast between the richly bedecked noblemen present and millions of the poor Indians who were absent.

• Mahatma Gandhi told the privileged invitees that there is no salvation for India unless you strip yourself of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India.

• There can be no self-government spirit about us; he went on to take away or allow others to take away from the peasants almost the whole of their labour results. Our salvation can only come through the farmer. Neither the lawyers nor the doctors nor the rich landlords are going to secure it.

• The Banaras Hindu University opening was an occasion for celebration, marking as it did the opening of a nationalist university, sustained by Indian money and Indian initiative.

• But rather than adopt a tone of self-congratulation, Mahatma Gandhi chose instead to remind those present of the peasants and workers who constituted a majority of the Indian population, yet was unrepresented in the audience.

• There had been sporadic resistance in Champaran since the 1860s to the tinkathia system by which European planters holding thikadari leases from the big zamindars made peasants cultivate indigo on the part of their land at unremunerative prices.

• As indigo declined from about 1900 in the face of competition from synthetic dyes, the planters tried to pass the peasants' burden by charging sharahbeshi (rent enhancement) or Tawan (lump sum compensation) in return for releasing them from the obligation to grow indigo.

• Widespread resistance developed in the Motihari-Bettiah region between 1905 and 1908 and even after it continued:

• As part of this ongoing confrontation, Raj Kumar Shukla, a prosperous peasant cum petty moneylender, contacted Mahatma Gandhi at the Lucknow Congress of 1916.

• This became the historic Champaran movement.

• In 1918, there was a conflict situation between the Gujarat mill owners and workers on the question of Plague Bonus of 1917.

• The mill owners wanted to withdraw the bonus while the workers demanded a 50% wage hike.

• The mill owners were willing to give only a 20% wage hike.

• Later in March, under Mahatma Gandhi's leadership, there was a strike in the cotton mills. In this strike, Gandhi used the weapon of hunger strike.

• It was carried out in a non-violent disciplined way. The result was that the strike was successful and the workers got a 35% wage increase.

• Kochrab was the first ashram established by Mahatma Gandhi in India in 1915. It was a pioneering centre for students of Gandhian ideas to practice Satyagraha, self-sufficiency, Swadeshi, work for the upliftment of the poor, women and untouchables and public education and sanitation.

• Sabarmati Ashram was the residence of Gandhi for over 12 years (1917-1930) and a laboratory for his social experiments (e.g. agriculture and literacy promotion).

• It was also from here that in 1930, Gandhi started his Dandi March. This was not his first ashram, though.

• It was the second Satyagraha movement after the Champaran Satyagraha. Mahatma Gandhi organised this movement to support the peasants of Kheda district.

• The peasants of Kheda were not able to pay the high taxes of the British due to crop failure and plague epidemic.

• In Gujarat, Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual head of the struggle. His chief lieutenant Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and a close coterie of devoted Gandhians toured the countryside, organised the villagers and gave them political leadership and direction.

• The tax withheld, the government’s collectors and inspectors sent in thugs to seize property and cattle, while the police forfeited the lands and all agrarian property. The farmers did not resist arrest nor retaliate to the force employed with violence.

• The government finally sought to foster an honourable agreement for both parties. The tax for the year in question and the next would be suspended and the increase in rate reduced, while all confiscated property would be returned.

The correct chronological order of the initial Satyagrahas led by Mahatma Gandhi is as follows:
Option B: Champaran—Ahmedabad Mill Strike—Kheda
Explanation:
1. Champaran:
- The Champaran Satyagraha was the first significant Satyagraha led by Mahatma Gandhi in India.
- It took place in 1917, in the Champaran district of Bihar.
- The Satyagraha was organized to protest against the oppressive indigo plantation system imposed on the farmers by the British landlords.
2. Ahmedabad Mill Strike:
- The Ahmedabad Mill Strike, also known as the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association (ATLA) strike, was led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1918.
- It was a successful labor strike organized by textile mill workers in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
- The workers demanded better working conditions, higher wages, and the abolition of the "tied-house" system.
3. Kheda:
- The Kheda Satyagraha took place in 1918 in the Kheda district of Gujarat.
- It was a protest against the British government's unfair taxation policies during a severe famine.
- Mahatma Gandhi led the Satyagraha, urging the farmers not to pay the taxes until their demands for relief were met.
Therefore, the correct chronological order of the initial Satyagrahas led by Mahatma Gandhi is Champaran—Ahmedabad Mill Strike—Kheda (Option B).

During the time of British occupation of India, peasants of Champaran district of the Bihar state were highly exploited by the indigo cultivation. The lessees of Indigo and agricultural areas had been Indians until 1793, but as the British Empire began its rule in India, European planters began to take over and gained total control of the indigo and sugar cane cultivation.  

The super-government system that the European planters controlled implemented the tinkathia system—an obligatory indigo planting on a portion of a tenant’s holding for nominal compensation. The Government Executive favored the planters, overlooking any pleas including legal action. The Bengal Tenancy Act and other reactionary laws further helped exploit the peasants, requiring the peasants to plant 3/20, and sometimes up to 5/20, of their holdings with indigo.

 

 

The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, also known as the Rowlatt Act, was a law passed by the British government in India to combat revolutionary activities, particularly those of the Indian independence movement. The law provided for the detention of individuals without trial and gave the British government broad powers to suppress political dissent. The Act was passed despite widespread opposition and protests in India and is considered a significant event in the Indian independence movement. The Act was later repealed in 1922 after the Indian National Congress and other political parties launched a nationwide campaign against it.

 

 

 

• Mahatma Gandhi in 1919 decided to launch a nationwide Satyagraha against the proposed Rowlatt Act (1919). This Act had been hurriedly passed through the Imperial Legislative Council despite the united opposition of the Indian members.

• It gave the government enormous powers to repress political activities and allowed political prisoners detention without trial for two years. Mahatma Gandhi wanted non-violent civil disobedience against such unjust laws, which started with a hartal on 6 April.

• The Sabarmati Ashram (also known as Harijan or Satyagraha Ashram) was home to Mahatma Gandhi from 1917 until 1930 and served as one of the Indian freedom struggle's main centres.

• This was Sevagram cottage (not Sabarmati Ashram). Mahatma Gandhi left for Delhi from Sevagram in 1946 and then went to Noakhali. From there, he did not return to Sevagram while engaged in his task of communal unity and peacemaking. He was martyred in Delhi in 1948.

• It is common knowledge.

• But after the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, the government expressed no sign of regret and went ahead with more repression. Mahatma Gandhi was shocked and suspended the ‘Satyagraha’ declaring it a ‘Himalayan Blunder’.

• Young India, Harijan and Hind Swaraj were some of the most famous works of Mahatma Gandhi. Young India was a weekly paper or journal.

• He used Young India to spread his unique ideology and thoughts regarding non-violence in organising movements and urge readers to consider, organise, and plan for India’s eventual independence from Britain.

• The journal was reprinted in the United States by the India Home Rule League of America.

• An analogous concept to freedom in Indian political thought is ‘Swaraj’. The term Swaraj incorporates within it two words—Swa (Self) and Raj (Rule). It can be understood to mean both the rule of the self and rule over self.

• In the context of the freedom struggle in India, Swaraj referred to freedom as a constitutional and political demand and as a value at the social collective level.

• That is why Swaraj was such an important rallying cry in the freedom movement inspiring Tilak’s famous statement: ‘Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it’.

• The understanding of Swaraj as Rule over the Self was highlighted by Mahatma Gandhi in his work Hind Swaraj, where he states, ‘It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves’.

• Swaraj is not just freedom but liberation in redeeming oneself, self-responsibility and capacity for self-realisation from dehumanisation institutions.

• Understanding the real ‘Self ’ and its relation to communities and society is critical for attaining Swaraj.

• Mahatma Gandhi believed the development that follows would liberate both individual and collective potentialities guided by justice.

• Needless to say, such an understanding is as relevant to the 21st century as it was when Mahatma Gandhi wrote the Hind Swaraj in 1909.

• We usually understand non-violence to mean non-injury. A non-violent act is thought to be one that does not cause physical injury. Gandhi changed this meaning in two fundamental ways.

• For him, non-violence meant not just refraining from causing physical harm, mental harm or loss of livelihood. It also meant giving up even the thought of harming someone. For him ‘causing’ did not mean harming oneself. For Gandhi, ‘I would be guilty of violence, if I helped someone in harming someone else or if I benefited from a harmful act’.

• In this sense, Gandhi’s notion of violence was close to ‘structural violence’.

• The second major change that Gandhi introduced was to give the idea of nonviolence a positive meaning. Not causing harm was not enough. Ahimsa required an element of conscious compassion. Gandhi was opposed to passive spiritualism.

• For him, non-violence meant a positive and active pursuit of well-being and goodness. Therefore those who practise nonviolence must exercise physical and mental restraint under the gravest provocation.

• Nonviolence is an extremely active force that has no room for cowardice or weakness. In fact, Gandhi went to the extent of stating that if non-violence were inadequate to defend oneself, then it would be better to resort to violence than take refuge in passivity in the name of non-violence.

The Santhals became Settlers:

• Zamindars and Britishers after having failed to subdue the Paharias and transform them into settled cultivators turned to Santhals. The Santhal appeared to be ideal settlers, cleared the forest and ploughed land.
• After land was granted, population of Santhals increased exponentially and their villages also increased in number.
• When the Santhal were settling, the Paharias resisted but were ultimately forced to withdraw deeper into hills. It impoverished the Paharias in the long term.  Hence, statement 3 is correct.

The Fifth Report and its Impact on Zamindars:

• It was the fifth of a series of report on administration and activities of East India Company in India.
• It was submitted to the British Parliament in 1813. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• British Parliament forced the company to produce regular report on the administration of India and appointed committees to enquire into the affairs of the company. It became the basis of intense parliamentary debates on the nature of East India Company’s rule in India.
• Fifth report has shaped our conception of what happened in rural Bengal during that period and evidence contained in the 5th report are very important.

The Rise of The Jotedars in Villages:

• The group of prosperous farmers were popularly known as jotedars.
• Jotedars were a class of rich peasants.
• They acquired vast areas of land, controlled trade, money lending and exercise immense- power over the poorer cultivators. Their land was cultivated through share cropper known as adhiyars or bargadars.
• Within village the power of jotedars was more effective than that of Zamindars. They fiercely resisted the efforts of Jama to increase the Jama of village and prevented zamindari official from executing their duties.
• Sometimes they also purchased the auctioned property of zamindar.
• Joiedar played an important role in weakening of zamindari system. Hence, statement 2 is correct.

Bengal and the Zamindars:

• Colonial rule was first established in Bengal. In Bengal, East India Company tried to reorder the rural society and establish new land rights and new revenue system.
• There was an auction held at Burdwan in 1797, which was popularly known as Grand Public Event.
• Company fixed the revenue and each zamindar was supposed to pay. This fixing of revenue was done under the Permanent Settlement and it become operational from year 1793.
• The Zamindars who failed to pay the revenue, their estate was auctioned to recover the revenue. But sometimes it was found that the purchasers at auction were servants and agents of the zamindar himself, e.g. auction in Burdwan. Hence, statement 4 is not correct.

• Mahatma Gandhi wrote this book in his native language, Gujarati, while travelling from London to South Africa onboard SS Kildonan Castle in 1909. In it, he expresses his views on Swaraj, modem civilisation, mechanisation and so on.

• The British banned the Gujarati edition on its publication in India. Gandhi then translated it into English.

• The British, the English edition, was not banned, who concluded that the book would have little impact on the English-speaking Indians’ subservience to the British and British ideas.

• Mahatma Gandhi's words: ‘It is said of ‘passive resistance’ that it is the weapon of the weak, but the power which is the subject of this article can be used only by the strong’.

• This power is not passive resistance; indeed, it calls for intense activity. The movement in South Africa was not passive but active. Satyagraha is not a physical force.

• A satyagrahi does not inflict pain on the adversary; he does not seek his destruction. In the use of Satyagraha, there is no ill will whatsoever. ‘Satyagraha is pure soul-force.

• Truth is the very substance of the soul. That is why this force is called satyagraha. The soul is informed with knowledge. In it bums the flame of love.... Nonviolence is the supreme dharma’.

• His first major public appearance was at the opening of the Banaras Hindu University in February 1916. Compared to the dignitaries at the opening speech, Mahatma Gandhi was relatively unknown.

• He had been invited on account of his work in South Africa rather than his status within India. When his turn came to speak, Mahatma Gandhi charged the Indian elite with a lack of concern for the labouring poor. He worried about the contrast between the ‘richly bedecked noblemen’ present and ‘millions of the poor’ Indians who were absent. He told the privileged invitees that ‘there is no salvation for India unless you strip yourself of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India’.

• The Satyagraha (Sanskrit and Hindi: holding onto truth) concept was introduced in the early 20th century by Mahatma Gandhi to designate a determined but nonviolent resistance to evil.

• Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha became a major tool in the Indian struggle against British imperialism and has since been adopted by protest groups in other countries.

• According to this philosophy, satyagrahis— practitioners of Satyagraha—achieve correct insight into an evil situation's real nature by observing non-violence of the mind by seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love and by undergoing a rigorous process of self-scrutiny.

• In doing so, the truth of the satyagrahi encounter in the absolute. By refusing to submit to the wrong or to cooperate with it in any way, the satyagrahi asserts that truth. Throughout the confrontation with evil, the satyagrahi must adhere to nonviolence, to employ violence would be to lose correct insight. Satyagrahis always warn their opponents of their intentions.

• Satyagraha forbids any tactic suggesting the use of secrecy to one’s advantage. It includes more than civil disobedience. Its full range of application extends from the details of correct daily living to the construction of alternative political and economic institutions.

• Satyagraha seeks to conquer through conversion: in the end, there is neither defeat nor victory but rather a new harmony.

• Throughout his life, Mahatma Gandhi sought to develop ways to fight India’s extreme poverty, backwardness and socio-economic challenges as a part of his wider involvement in the Indian independence movement.

• Gandhi’s championing of Swadeshi and non-cooperation were centred on the principles of economic self-sufficiency.

• He sought to target European-made clothing and other products as a symbol of British colonialism and the source of mass unemployment and poverty, as European industrial goods had left many millions of India’s workers, craftsmen, and women without a livelihood.

• By championing homespun khadi clothing and Indian-made goods, Gandhi sought to incorporate peaceful civil resistance as a means of promoting national self-sufficiency. He was a self-described philosophical anarchist, and his vision of India meant an India without an underlying government. He once said that ‘the ideally nonviolent state would be an ordered anarchy’.

• Mahatma Gandhi’s imagination of democracy fully encircled with non-violence that exists in no nation of the world as up to now.

• Democracy of his imagination happens to be one that does not have any provision of punishment, and even an organisation like ‘State’ happens to be obsolete.

• This is because Gandhi holds that the State is symbolical of centralised and organised violence. As nonviolence is connected with the human soul, man can be non-violent, whereas in opposition to it State is a soulless machine.

• On this accord, it is impossible to get rid of violence. Its very existence depends upon violence.

• Gandhi's philosophy is that non-violence should be admitted as an invariable part of our life and it is based on this dictum that modern polities must operate.

• At the same time, in present-day democracy, there is a great deal of centralisation and inequality. In a stateless democracy, there is decentralisation and equality.

• Mahatma Gandhi initially said: ‘I propose to discard at least up to 31st of October my topi and vest and content myself with a loincloth and a chaddar whenever necessary to protect my body. I adopt the change because I have always hesitated to advise anything I may not be prepared to follow ... ’

• At this time, he did not want to use this dress all his life and only wanted to experiment for a month or two. But soon, he saw this as his duty to the poor, and he never wore any other dress. He consciously rejected the well-known clothes of the Indian ascetic and adopted the dress of the poorest Indian.

• Khadi, white and coarse, was a sign of purity, simplicity, and poverty. Wearing it also became a symbol of nationalism, a rejection of Western mill-made cloth.

Explanation:

1. A series of ‘Praja Mandals’ were established to promote the nationalist creed in the princely states.
This statement is true. 'Praja Mandals' were established by Mahatma Gandhi and his comrades as organizations to promote the nationalist movement in the princely states. These organizations aimed to mobilize people and raise awareness about the nationalist cause in the regions outside British India. They played a crucial role in spreading the message of independence and organizing protests against British rule.

2. Gandhiji encouraged the communication of the nationalist message in the English language, rather than Hindi or mother tongue, to make the message accessible.
This statement is false. Mahatma Gandhi and his comrades emphasized the use of vernacular languages, including Hindi and other regional languages, to communicate the nationalist message. They believed in the power of language and wanted to make the message accessible to the masses in their mother tongues. Gandhi himself wrote and spoke extensively in Hindi and Gujarati, among other languages.

3. Provincial committees of the Congress were based on the administrative divisions (states) carved by British India; a linguistic basis was avoided to curb regional tendencies.
This statement is true. The provincial committees of the Indian National Congress were organized based on the administrative divisions created by the British in India. The focus was on the administrative divisions rather than linguistic divisions.

The correct answer is 1 and 3 only.

• While Mahatma Gandhi’s mass appeal was undoubtedly genuine and in the context of Indian politics, without precedent-it must also be stressed that his success in broadening nationalism was based on careful organisation.

• New branches of the Congress were set up in various parts of India.

• A series of ‘Praja Mandals’ was established to promote the nationalist creed in the princely states. Gandhi encouraged the communication of the nationalist message in the mother tongue, rather than in the rulers' language, English.

• Thus, Congress's provincial committees were based on linguistic regions, rather than on the artificial boundaries of British India.

• In these different ways, nationalism was taken to the country's farthest corners and embraced by social groups previously untouched by it.