Test: Nationalist Movement Phase 1(1905-1918) - 2 - UPSC MCQ

• By the dawn of the twentieth century, a band of nationalist thinkers had emerged who advocated a more militant approach to political work. These included Raj Narain Bose, Ashwini Kumar Datta, Aurobindo Ghosh and Bengal; Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar and Tilak Maharashtra; and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab.

• The Komagata Mara incident provoked a revolutionary nationalistic response in India.

• It was a Japanese steamship that sailed from Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada, via Japan in 1914.

• It Was Carrying 376 Passengers Who were immigrants from Punjab. Of these, only 24 were granted admittance in Canada when the ship docked in Vancouver. At that time, Canada had laws restricting entry of migrants of Asian origin.

• Following a two-month stalemate, the ship and its 352 passengers were escorted out of the Canadian military's dock and forced to sail back to India.

• This ship was burnt, which led to resentment and anger among the Indian community.

• Gokhale set up swadesh Sevak Home.

• D. Kumar in Vancouver on the lines of the India House in London. It also started a Gurmukhi paper called Swadesh Sevak, which advocated rise in revolt against the British and social reform.

• In 1910, Tarak Nath Das and G. D. Kumar set up United India House in Seattle in the United States.

• It was a Bengali Indian organisation and arose from a conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms in Bengal.

• It had two prominent if somewhat independent arms in the east and west Bengal identified as Dhaka Anushilan Samiti and the Jugantar group.

• From its foundation to its gradual dissolution through the 1930s, the Samiti collaborated with other revolutionary organisations in India and abroad. Led by notable revolutionaries of Aurobindo Ghosh, Rash Behari Bose and Jatindranath Mukherjee, the Samiti was involved in several noted incidences of revolutionary terrorism against British interests and administration in India.

• These included the early attempts to assassinate Raj officials and the 1912 attempt on the life of India's viceroy and the Seditious conspiracy during World War I.

• She co-founded the Paris Indian Society together with Singh Rewabhai Rana and Munchershah Burjorji Godre.

• She served as the private secretary of Dadabhai Naoroji, the British Committee of the Indian National Congress. Together with Nuoroji and Singh Rewabhai Rana, Cama supported Varma’s Indian Home Rule Society's founding in 1905.

• Statement 3: In her appeal for human rights, equality, and autonomy from Great Britain, she unfurled what she called the ‘Flag of Indian Independence’.

• Revolutionary terrorism again became attractive after the abrupt end to the noncooperation movement.

• Some of the revolutionary terrorist politics leaders were Jogesh Chandra C.hatterjea, Jatin Das, Surya Sen, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Chandrashekhar Azad, Shiv Varma, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Jaidev Kapur.

• It became a high profile case.

• The British Government arrested Sri Aurobindo, a prominent Nationalist Leader at the time, Barindra Ghose, and many young revolutionaries.

• They were charged with ‘Conspiracy’ or ‘waging war against the King’ - the equivalent of high treason and punishable with death by hanging.

• The case dragged on with preliminary hearings in the Magistrate’s court, involving 1000 artefacts as evidence and 222 witnesses followed by a trial in Sessions Court, involving 1438 exhibits and 206 witnesses. During this period, the under-trial prisoners were illegally held in the Presidency Jail under torturous conditions (including solitary confinement).

• Judge Beachcroft finally delivered the judgment on 6 May 1909 after a protracted trial of one year.

• Statements 1 and 2: It was similar to the British Defence of the Realm Acts, and granted the executive vast powers of preventive detention, internment without trial, restriction of writing, speech and movement.

• However, unlike the English law which was limited to persons of hostile associations or origin, the Defence of India act could be applied to any subject of the king and was used to an overwhelming extent against Indians.

• The act's passage was supported unanimously by the non-official Indian members in the viceroy’s legislative council. It was seen as necessary to protect against British India from subversive nationalist violence.

• The act was first applied during the first Lahore Conspiracy trial in the aftermath of the failed Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915. It was instrumental in crushing the Ghadar movement in Punjab and the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal.

• The pressure by the state's secretary resulted in an effective restriction on Indian immigration into Canada in 1908.

• Tarak Nath Das, an Indian student, started a paper called Free Hindustan and reported that while the British government was keen to send Indians to Fiji to work as labourers and not want them to go to North America where social and ideas of liberty might infect them.

• The Act declared unlawful secondary action and any strike whose purpose was to coerce the government of the day directly or indirectly,

• Besides, incitement to participate in an unlawful strike was made a criminal offence, punishable by imprisonment for up to two years; and the attorney general was empowered to sequester the assets and funds of unions involved in such strikes.

• It declared unlawful mass picketing which gave rise to the intimidation of a worker.

• The Ghadar Party was an organisation founded by Punjabi Indians in the United States and Canada to secure India’s independence from British rule.

• Key members included Lala Har Dayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, Kartar Singh Sarabha and Rashbehari Bose.

• After World War I, Ghadar Party members returned to Punjab to agitate for rebellion alongside the Babbar Akali movement.

• In 1915, they conducted revolutionary activities in central Punjab and organised uprisings. Their presence shook the hold of the British empire, and police surveillance in Punjabi villages increased in an attempt to crush the rebellion.

• The Hindustan Association of the Pacific Coast known as the Ghadar Party, was founded in 1913 to free India from British slavery.

• The Association's headquarters was established initially at 436 Hill Street, San Francisco and named ‘Yugantar Ashram’.

• The Ghadr Party was a revolutionary group organized around a weekly newspaper The Ghadr with its headquarters at San Francisco and branches along the US coast and the Far East. These revolutionaries included mainly ex-soldiers and peasants who had migrated from Punjab to the USA and Canada in search of better employment opportunities.

• Their plans were encouraged by two events in 1914—the Maru incident and the First World War outbreak.

• The Ghadr Party's moving spirits were Lala Hardayal, Ramchandra, Bhagwan Singh, Kartar Singh Saraba, Bark Bhai Parmanand. The Charites intended to Bring about a revolt in India.

Komagata Maru Incident:

• The importance of this event lies in the fact that it created an explosive situation in Punjab. Komagata Maru was the name of a ship carrying 370 passengers, mainly Sikh and Punjabi Muslim would-be immigrants, from Singapore to Vancouver.

• Canadian authorities turned them back after two months of privation and uncertainty. It was generally believed that the British Government influenced the Canadian authorities.

• The ship finally anchored at Calcutta in September 1914. The inmates refused to board the Punjab-bound train. In the ensuing with the police at Budge Budge near Calcutta, 22 persons died.

Inflamed by this and with the War's outbreak, the Ghadr leaders decided to launch a violent attack on British rule in India.

The revolutionary activity was carried out through the Ghadr Party in North America, Berrin Committee in Europe and some scattered mutinies by Indian soldiers, such as Singapore.

• The Home Rule Movement was the Indian response to the First World War.

• Anglo-Indians, most of the Muslims and 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 Russian Revolution of 1917 proved to be an added advantage for the Home Rule campaign.

• Two Home Rule Leagues were established, one by B.G. Tilak at Poona in April 1916 and the other by Mrs Annie Besant at Madras in September 1916.

• The Movement aimed to get self-government for India within the British Empire. It believed freedom was the natural right of all nations.

• Moreover, the Home Movement leaders thought that India’s resources were not being used for her needs.

• The two Leagues cooperated with the Congress and the Muslim League in putting their demand for home rule.

• Between 1916 and 1918, when the World War I was gradually approaching an end, prominent Indians like Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Sir S. Subramania Iyer and Annie Besant decided to organise a national alliance of leagues across India.

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  It was specifically to demand Home Rule or self-government within the British Empire for India.

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  In 1920, the All India Home Rule League elected Mahatma Gandhi as its president. Within a year, the body would merge into the Indian National Congress to form a united Indian political front.

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  It was run separately from both parties. Some members of both INC and AIML joined the Home Rule movement.

• Tilak and Annie Besant set up their separate leagues to avoid any friction.

• Tilak’s League was set up in April 1916 and 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 languages.

• Besant’s League was set up 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 organising secretary. Besides Armidale, the main work was done by B.W. Wadia and C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar.

• 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 members of Gokhale’s Servants of India Society also joined the agitation.

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

• By early 1915, Annie Besant had launched a campaign to demand self-government for India after the war on the lines of white colonies. She campaigned through her newspapers, New India and Commonweal, and public meetings and conferences.

• Establish self-government.

• Build up agitation for home rule by promoting political education and discussion.

• Build the confidence of the Indians against the suppression of the British government and create an alternative movement to break the existing state of stagnation and inertia.

• Revive the political activity on their own while maintaining the principles of congress.

• Demand For Greater Political Representation from the British government.