Eighth Part
Q Give two important causes for the growth of the trend of revolutionary terrorism.
A. Revolutionaries have convinced themselves of the futility of trying to convert the British rulers by petitioning and praying methods. They had participated actively in the Swadeshi movement in the hope and belief that Extremist methods of agitation such as boycott, passive resistance, etc., would yield the results but these methods proved ineffective . They expected that this movement would bring the British Government to its knees but that was not the case. Another factor that helped the growth of the trend of revolutionary terrorism was the brutal repression of the Swadeshi movement by the Government. For example the police made the unprovoked assault on the peaceful crowd at the Barisal Political Conference on 27tH April, 1906 which had led the nationalist paper Jugantar to give the call: "Force must be stopped by force". The Government's ability to repress was considerably enhanced by the split that took place in the Indian National Congress at Surat in 1907
between the Moderates and the Extremists. Luring the Moderates with promises of constitutional reform, the government proceeded to launch an all-out attack on the Extremists; Tilak was sentenced to six years of exile in Burma, Aurobindo Ghosh was arrested in a revolutionary conspiracy case.
Q. Give the causes of the rise of Ghadar Movement.
A. Emigrant Indians were facing hardships at the hands of local white population like discrimination , racial slurs etc in North America, facing hardships united them. They were disappointed with the lack of response from the Indian and British governments to their genuine requests and grievances . This further convinced them that their inferior status or miserable condition in foreign lands is due to their being citizens of an enslaved country. This aroused to nationalist consciousness and a feeling of solidarity as they started participating in political agitation. The Indian community in North America felt the acute need for a central organization and led by Lala Har Dayal, a political exile from India, who had come to the U.S. in 1911 caused the emergence of Ghadar movement .
Q. What were the aims of Ghadar Party?
A. The main aim of the Ghadar party was to overthrow British rule in India . Political action outlined by Lala Har Dayal was that the British rule could only be overthrown by armed revolt and that for this to happen it was necessary that Indian immigrants go to India in large numbers and carry this message to the masses and the soldiers of the Indian army. The Ghadar party workers launched a vigorous propaganda campaign, touring factories and farms where Indian immigrants worked to unite and prepare them to fight the British .
Q. Give names of four important leaders of Ghadar Movement.
A. Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna was elected the President, Lala Har Dayal the General Secretary and Pandit Kanshi Ram Maroli the Treasurer, Bhai Parmanand and Harnam Singh and Tarak Nath Das.
Q. What was the message spread by the Ghadar Paper?
A. The paper Ghadar was launched on the first of November, 1913; the first issue was in Urdu followed a month later by the Gurmukhi version. The very idea of Ghadar paper was to spread the message of Nationalism.simple . Its very name meant revolt, enumerating the negative effects of British rule. This paper emphasized on the wrong policies of British rule, on the issues of drain of wealth, high land revenue, low per capita income, recurrence of famines which killed millions of Indians, high expenditure on Army and low expenditure on health, the policy of divide and rule by pitting Hindus and Muslims against each other. The paper laid emphasis on the revolt to topple British rule. It highlighted the small number of Englishmen present in India as compared to the crores of Indians and by suggesting that the time had come for another revolt since already fifty-six years had lapsed since the last one in 1857.
Q. Mention the three important events of 1914 which influenced the Ghadar Movement.
A. The three major events in 1914: .the arrest, jumping of bail and flight to Switzerland of Lala Har Dayal, the fateful voyage of the ship Komagata Maru, and the beginning of the First World War.
Q. What action was planned by Ghadar leaders in India?What was the main achievement of the Ghadar movement?
A. Ghadar activists toured the villages and distributed party publications, addressed gatherings at melas and made every effort to persuade the people to rise in revolt. The Ghadar revolutionaries attempted to spread their message among the soldiers and engineer a mutiny. Attempts at revolt in November 1914 failed for lack of proper organization and centralized leadership. Another, more organized, attempt was made in February 19 15 after Rash Behari Bose had been entrusted the task of leadership and organization, but this too proved abortive as the government succeeded in penetrating
the organization and took pre-emptive measures.
Achievements- The Ghadarites succeeded in popularizing nationalist ideology especially the critique of colonialism and the understanding that Indian poverty and backwardness was a consequence of British rule-among vast masses of Indians in India and abroad. They created a cadre of highly motivated nationalists-and though many of these were lost through repression, some permanently and others for number of years-who continued to play an important role in building up the national and later the left and peasant movements in Punjab and other parts of India for many decades to follow.
Q. What were the main weaknesses of the Ghadar movement?
A. The basic fault with Ghadar movement was the over estimation of the preparedness of the movement . The response that they evoked in the immigrant lndian community, whose nationalist consciousness was aroused by daily experiences of racial insult, alienation produced by living in unfamiliar surroundings, and whose small numbers made the task of its organization relatively easier, misled them into thinking that the vast mass of Indians in India were also in a similar state of readiness. They also underestimated the might of the British rulers, the strength of the ideological foundations of their rule, and thought that all that the people of India needed was a call to revolt.
Q. Why did Tilak and Annie Besant strive to gain re-entry for the extremists into the Indian National Congress?
A. Mrs Annie Besant wanted to build up a movement in India on the lines of the Irish Home Rule League, and thus was urging moderates to accept the Extremists back into the Congress. Tilak after returning to India, after serving a long sentence of six years in Mandalay in Burma, concentrated all attention on securing the readmission of himself and other Extremists into the Indian National Congress from which they had been thrown out in 1907 at Surat. Disunity had only helped the British govt. who had removed the Extremists through repression, and then ignored the Moderates by granting reforms that fell far short of their expectations. The complete lack of political activity since 1908 was also a reason for requirement of unity of two factions of Congress .
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Q. Discuss in about five lines the provisions of Rowlatt Act.
A. In 1917 the Government of lndia had appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Justice Sydney Rowlatt to investigate " revolutionary crime" in the country and to recommend legislation for its suppression. After a review of the situation, the Rowlatt committee proposed a series of methods to enable the British government to deal effectively with the revolutionary activities. In the light of these recommendations the Government of lndia drafted two bills and presented them to the Imperial Legislative Council on 6 February 1919. The government maintained that the bills were 'temporary measures' which aimed at preventing 'seditious crimes'. The new bills attempted to make war-time restrictions permanent. The bill recommended that the offenders would be tried by a special court consisting of three high court judges. There was no provision of appeal against the decision of this court which could meet in camera and take into consideration evidence not admissible under the Indian Evidence Act. The bill also proposed to give authority to the government to search a place
and arrest a person without a warrant. Detention without a trial for maximum period of two years was also provided in the bills.
Q. Discuss in about ten lines the response of Indians to Rowlatt Act.
A. There was widespread condemnation of the bills in the whole country. Gandhi also launched his campaign against the bills. He stated that they were instruments of distrust and repression,nullifying the proposed reforms. Moreover, he opposed not just the content of the bills, but also the manner in which they were thrusted upon in the country without regard to public opinion. He formed a Satyagraha Sabha on 24th February 1919 in Bombay to protest against the Rowlatt Bills. Gandhi inaugurated his Satyagraha by calling upon the countrymen to observe a day of 'hartal' against the Rowlatt Act to which people responded enthusiastically . On 6April 1919 hartal was a successful and Gandhi decided to intensify agitation on 7 April by advising the satyagrahis to disobey the laws dealing with prohibited literature and the registration of newspapers.
Q. Write five lines on Jallianwala Bagh incident.
A. On 8th April 1919 Gandhi left Bombay to promote the Satyagraha agitation in Delhi and Punjab. But, as his entry in Punjab was considered dangerous by the government, so Gandhi was removed from the train in which he was travelling at Palwal near Delhi and was taken back to Bombay. The news of Gandhi's arrest precipitated the crisis. It led to large scale mob violence in different parts of the country including Punjab .
On 13th April a large crowd had gathered at Jallianwala park on the occasion of Baisakhi unaware of the orders passed by the administration against gathering . Prompted by zeal to teach peaceful Indians lesson , General Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a peaceful unarmed crowd assembled at Jallianwala Bagh. Most of the people were not aware of the ban on meetings, and they were shot without the slightest warning by General Dyer. The official count of death were 379 but it was high as unofficial sources confirmed .
Q. What do you understand by the concept of Satyagraha as propagated by Gandhi?
A. The chief aspect of Gandhi's ideology was Satyagraha . It was evolved by Gandhi in South Africa and became a dominant element in India's struggle for freedom from 1919 onwards. For Gandhi, the Satyagraha was to be used so that by self suffering and not by violence the enemy could be converted to one's own view. For Gandhi ji, Satyagraha was not merely a political tactic but part of a total philosophy of life and ideology of action. Non violence became the basis of satyagraha. Gandhi emphasised that non-violent Satyagraha could be practised by common people for achieving political,ends. Satyagraha could assume various forms-fasting, non-violent picketing, different types of non-cooperation & ultimately in politics, civil disobedience in willing anticipation of the legal penalty. On the whole, the use of Satyagraha by Gandhi and the Congress in national movement brought different sections and classes of society together against the British rule.
Q. Discuss the message which Gandhi conveyed through his book Hind Swaraj.
A. In his book 'Hind Swaraj' (1909) Gandhi pointed out that the real enemy was not the British political domination but the modem western civilization which was luring India into its stranglehold. He believed that the Indians educated in western style, particularly lawyers, doctors, teachers and industrialists, were undermining Indian's ancient heritage by insidiously spreading modem ways. He criticized railways as they had spread plague and produced famines by encouraging the export of food grains. He saw Swaraj or self rule as a state of life which could only exist where Indians followed their traditional civilization un corrupted by modem civilization.
Gandhi wrote:
Indian's salvation consists in unlearning what she has leamt during the past 50 years or so. The Railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and such like have to go and the so-called upper classes have to learn to live consciously and religiously and deliberately the simple life of peasant. His ideas reflected adverse effects of 'modernization' under the colonial rule on the artisans and poor peasantry in the countryside. Gandhi tried to give concrete shape to his social and economic ideas by taking up the program of Khadi, village reconstruction and Harijan welfare (which included the removal of untouchability).
Q. Discuss about Gandhi's attitude towards the Peasants' Movement in Champaran.
A. Champaran in the Tirhut division of North Bihar had been seething with agrarian discontent for some time. The basic issue of the trouble was the system of indirect cultivation whereby peasants leased land from planters, binding themselves to grow indigo each year on specified land in return for an advance at the beginning of the cultivation season. Indigo was cultivated under the system called Tinkathia by which a tenant had to cultivate indigo at three-twentieths of his holdings, which generally constituted the best portion of the land . Planters always forced peasants to sell their crop for a fixed and usually uneconomic price. Due to the increasing production of synthetic indigo in Germany planters at Champaran realized that indigo cultivation was no longer economical. The planters thus tried to save their own position by forcing the tenants to bear the burden of their losses.
At the Lucknow Congress session of 1916, Gandhi ji didn’t take interest in the issue as he had no knowledge of the ground situation. But Raj Kumar Shukul a peasant from Champaran, after strenous efforts prevailed upon Gandhi to visit Champaran. Gandhi arrived in Bihar and started making investigations in person. When he reached Motihari, the headquarters of the district of Champaran, he was served with an order to quit Champaran as he was regarded a danger to the public peace. After understanding the miserable ground situation of the indigo farmers,Gandhi launched agitation with the support of the educated middle class. For instance, Rajendra Prasad, Gorakh Prasad, Kirpalani and some other educated persons from the cities worked as his close associates. Local Mahajans
traders and village Mukhtars (attorneys) also helped him. But it was the peasantry which gave him the real massive support.
After the success of the agitation , the Government appointed Champaran Agrarian Committee with Gandhi as one of its members. The committee unanimously recommended the abolition of Tinkathia system and many illegal exactions under which the tenants groaned. The enhanced rents were reduced, and as for the illegal recoveries, the committee recommended 25% refund. The major recommendations of the Committee were included in the Champaran Agrarian Act of 1917.
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