Gandhi and the struggle for freedom
Gandhi turns the Indian National Congress into a mass movement of non-violent resistance that, with many other forces, ends British rule in 1947.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 as a polite forum of English-educated Indians seeking a greater say in government. By the early twentieth century more radical voices, such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak with his cry that “swaraj (self-rule) is my birthright”, were pushing it further. But it was Mohandas Gandhi who turned it into a mass movement.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
The Mahatma
Gandhi had spent two decades in South Africa, where he developed satyagraha, “truth-force”: disciplined, non-violent mass resistance to unjust laws, accepting arrest and suffering without retaliation. He returned to India in 1915, wore homespun cloth, lived simply in ashrams and travelled in third-class railway carriages. The poet Tagore is said to have called him Mahatma, “great soul”.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Three great campaigns
After the Amritsar massacre of 1919, Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22), allied with Muslims in the Khilafat campaign: Indians boycotted British courts, schools and cloth, and burned foreign textiles. He called it off when a crowd killed 22 policemen at Chauri Chaura in 1922, insisting the movement must stay non-violent.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
On 26 January 1930 Congress declared its goal of complete independence, purna swaraj. Gandhi then chose a brilliant symbol: the British monopoly on salt. From 12 March to 6 April 1930 he and 78 followers walked about 390 kilometres (240 miles) to the sea at Dandi and made salt illegally. Across India people followed, and tens of thousands were jailed. The world’s press watched as unarmed volunteers were beaten at the Dharasana salt works.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
In August 1942, with Britain at war, Congress launched the Quit India movement. Gandhi called on Indians to “do or die”. The leaders were jailed within hours and the uprising that followed, much of it violent, was suppressed, with tens of thousands arrested.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
Many hands
Independence was not Gandhi’s work alone. Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel led Congress; Subhas Chandra Bose raised an Indian National Army with Japanese help; revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, hanged in 1931, became martyrs; B. R. Ambedkar fought for the Depressed Classes; and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946 showed the British they could no longer rely on Indian forces. A Britain exhausted by the Second World War, with a new Labour government, decided to leave.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
The movement failed in its hope of keeping India united. The Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah came to doubt that Muslims would be safe as a minority in a Congress-led India, and freedom on 15 August 1947 came with Partition. Gandhi spent independence day fasting and working for peace in Calcutta. On 30 January 1948 he was shot dead in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who blamed him for Partition and for being too generous to Muslims and Pakistan.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
A uniquely Indian, non-violent revolution led by Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and the Congress, uniting Indians of every region and faith and winning freedom without a war of independence.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Gandhi opposed untouchability but defended the caste order (varna) and fought Ambedkar's demand for separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. For many Dalits, Ambedkar, not Gandhi, is the true liberator.
- From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement — Eleanor Zelliot, Manohar (1992)
- Annihilation of Caste — B. R. Ambedkar (1936)
Gandhi's concessions to Muslim demands, and Congress's softness, made Partition possible. Revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose, whose Indian National Army fought alongside Japan, deserve more credit than they get.
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
Why it matters today
The freedom struggle is modern India's founding story. Gandhi's face is on every banknote, his birthday (2 October) is a national holiday, and his methods inspired Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Yet Indians argue about him constantly: Dalits remember his disputes with Ambedkar, Hindu nationalists accuse him of appeasing Muslims, and others stress the role of revolutionaries and Subhas Chandra Bose.
Gandhi was a deeply religious Hindu who read the Bhagavad Gita daily and called God Truth. His inclusive, non-violent Hinduism, open to all faiths and opposed to untouchability, remains one pole of the argument over what Hinduism means in public life; Hindutva is the other.