The Rise of the Nationalist Movement in India

Indian nationalism was the most consequential political development of the nineteenth century in British India. From a small, English-speaking elite in the 1880s to a mass political movement of millions in the 1920s, the nationalist movement transformed the political culture of British India and produced, in 1947, the largest decolonisation in history. The movement’s origins were diverse, its ideologies contested, and its trajectory uneven. It combined liberal constitutionalism with revolutionary terrorism, Hindu revivalism with Muslim separatism, and Gandhian non-violence with Subhas Bose’s armed struggle. The story of Indian nationalism is, in this respect, the story of the twentieth century’s most ambitious experiment in anti-colonial politics.

The Roots of Indian Nationalism

The roots of Indian nationalism lay in the experience of British rule. The first generation of politically conscious Indians, the so-called “Brown Englishmen” of the late nineteenth century, were the products of English-language education. The universities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, founded in 1857, produced a small but influential class of Indian intellectuals who were steeped in the English language and English ideas. The first generation of Indian nationalists read the same texts as their British contemporaries — Mill, Bentham, Burke, and later Marx — and they drew on these texts to construct a critique of British rule.

The principal founder of the Indian National Congress, Allan Octavian Hume, was a retired British civil servant who believed that the Indian educated class should have a role in the British administration of India. The early Congress, founded in 1885, was a moderate body of English-speaking professionals who sought a greater Indian role in the British administration. The early Congress was, in that sense, a loyalist body. The Indian National Congress was not, in its origins, a revolutionary organisation. It was a body that sought to participate in the British system of governance, and it was only later that it became the principal vehicle of Indian independence.

The Early Nationalism: Naoroji and the Drain Theory

The early Congress was dominated by figures like Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917), Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915), and Pherozeshah Mehta (1845–1915). Naoroji, in particular, was a serious economic thinker, and his “drain theory” — the argument that British rule was draining India of its wealth — was a major contribution to the economic analysis of colonialism. In his 1901 book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, Naoroji estimated that the British were extracting perhaps £30 million a year from India through a variety of mechanisms — the export of Indian revenues to pay for the Indian Civil Service, the home charges, the guaranteed dividends on the railway investments, and the trade in opium and other commodities. The drain theory was, in its time, a serious intellectual contribution, and it provided the economic foundation for the Indian nationalist critique of British rule.

The moderates, however, were not separatists. They sought Indian self-government within the British Empire, on the model of the white settler colonies. The early Congress resolutions, drafted in the English language and submitted to the British authorities, were polite requests for reform. The British response was a series of minor concessions — the Indian Councils Acts of 1892 and 1909 — that left the substance of British power in India untouched.

The Extremists and the Swadeshi Movement

The first major crisis of Indian nationalism came in 1905, with the partition of Bengal and the resulting Swadeshi movement. The partition, which Lord Curzon justified on administrative grounds, was widely seen as a divide-and-rule measure, and it produced a serious political crisis. The Swadeshi movement, which called for the boycott of British goods and the promotion of Indian products, was the principal political expression of the Bengali protest.

The Swadeshi movement produced a new generation of Indian political leaders, the “extremists” of the early twentieth century. The most important were Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), Bipin Chandra Pal (1858–1932), and Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) — the “Lal Bal Pal” trio. Tilak, in particular, was a formidable political organiser, and his famous statement that “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it” became a rallying cry of the Indian independence movement. Tilak’s strategy of mass political mobilisation, including the Ganapati festivals in Maharashtra and the Shivaji festivals, was a major innovation in Indian politics.

The split between the moderates and the extremists was formalised at the Surat session of the Congress in December 1907, when the two factions fought a literal brawl over the question of the Congress presidency. The Congress was, in effect, split in two. The British response was the suppression of the Swadeshi movement, the trial and imprisonment of Tilak, and the slow retreat of the extremists. The moderates regained control of the Congress in 1908, and the Congress was, in the years before the First World War, a relatively quiet body.

The First World War and the Home Rule Movement

The First World War was the great political event of the Indian nationalist movement. The British declaration of war on Germany in August 1914, on behalf of British India without consulting Indian political leaders, produced a serious political crisis. The Congress, which had been relatively quiet in the years before the war, found a new cause. The Home Rule Movement, founded in 1916 by Tilak and Annie Besant, demanded self-government for India within the British Empire on the model of the Irish Home Rule movement.

The Home Rule Movement, in the years 1916–1918, was the largest political movement in Indian history. Annie Besant, the British socialist and theosophist who had moved to India in 1893, was a particularly effective organiser, and the Home Rule leagues she established in Madras, Bombay, and other cities became the principal vehicles of Indian political mobilisation. The British response, however, was the same as the British response to the Swadeshi movement: repression, restriction, and the slow retreat of the moderates.

The Rowlatt Act of March 1919, which authorised the British Indian government to try political cases without juries and to detain political prisoners without trial, was the last straw for the moderate leadership. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919, in which General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a peaceful political gathering in Amritsar, killing perhaps 400 people and wounding perhaps 1,200, was the event that converted the Indian political class to the necessity of mass political action. The Indian National Congress, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, was about to enter a new phase.

Gandhi and the Mass Movement

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) returned to India from South Africa in January 1915, having spent more than two decades developing the principles of satyagraha — the doctrine of nonviolent civil disobedience. The Gandhian era of the Indian nationalist movement began in 1920, with the Non-Cooperation Movement. The movement, which called on Indians to boycott British institutions, British goods, and British courts, was the largest political mobilisation in Indian history.

The Gandhian movement had three main phases. The first, the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–1922, was suspended after the Chauri Chaura incident of February 1922, in which a mob attacked a police station and killed 22 policemen. The second, the Salt March of 1930 and the Civil Disobedience Movement that followed, was the most dramatic period of Gandhian politics. The third, the Quit India Movement of 1942, was the last and most violent of the Gandhian campaigns, and it was the campaign that produced, in the end, the British decision to leave India.

Gandhi’s contribution to the Indian nationalist movement was, in the first instance, the introduction of nonviolent civil disobedience, or satyagraha, as the principal instrument of political action. The Gandhian programme of nonviolent resistance — non-cooperation with British institutions, the boycott of British goods, the spinning of Indian cotton in the charkha — was, in its combination of political and cultural demands, a remarkable innovation. As the historian C. A. Bayly has argued in Origins of Nationality in South Asia (1998), the Gandhian movement was the first truly popular anti-colonial movement in the history of European imperialism, and it marked a fundamental shift in the politics of anti-colonial resistance.

The Hindu-Muslim Question

The Hindu-Muslim question was, in many respects, the most important political question of the Indian nationalist movement. The Indian National Congress, the All-India Muslim League, and the various regional political organisations had to find a constitutional framework that would accommodate the religious diversity of British India. The early Congress, dominated by figures like Gokhale and Naoroji, had attempted to develop a common Indian nationalism that would transcend religious difference. The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909, which introduced separate electorates for Muslims, marked the beginning of the British policy of communal representation.

The 1930s saw a decisive shift in the politics of the Hindu-Muslim question. The All-India Muslim League, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, became increasingly assertive, and the demand for Pakistan — a separate Muslim state — emerged in the late 1930s. The Lahore Resolution of March 1940, which called for “independent states” for the Muslim-majority areas of British India, was the founding document of the Pakistan movement. The failure of the Congress to find a constitutional framework that would accommodate the Muslim League was the principal cause of the partition of 1947.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of Indian nationalism has been substantially revised since the 1990s. The older nationalist tradition, of which the work of R. C. Majumdar and the History of the Freedom Movement in India is representative, treated the Indian nationalist movement as a unified national struggle that culminated in 1947. The post-independence Indian historiography, of which the work of Sumit Sarkar, Partha Chatterjee, Ranajit Guha, and the Subaltern Studies group has been the most influential representative, has tried to recover the experience of those who were not represented in the Congress. The current generation of historians, of whom the work of C. A. Bayly, David Arnold, Ayesha Jalal, and the contributors to the Oxford History of the British Empire are the most distinguished representatives, has produced a much more nuanced picture. Indian nationalism, on this more recent view, was a complex and contested set of political, social, and cultural processes whose history is not identical with the history of the Congress. The Cambridge school of Indian history, of which C. A. Bayly is the most distinguished representative, has been particularly influential in producing a more integrated account of the movement. The most recent work, of which the contributions of William Dalrymple, Kim Wagner, and the participants in the “Nonviolence and the State” project are representative, has focused on the violence that accompanied the movement, and on the way in which the British withdrawal was, in the end, a process of negotiation in conditions of near-civil war.

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