Modern History

• Increased the number of elected members in the Imperial Legislative Council and the provincial council
• However, most of the elected members were elected indirectly
• The reformed councils still enjoyed no real power, being merely advisory bodies.
• Introduced separate electorates under which all Muslims were grouped in separate constituencies from which Muslims alone could be elected. This was aimed at dividing the Hindus and Muslims. It was based on the notion that the political and economic interests of Hindus and Muslims were separate.
  • This later became a potent factor in the growth of communalism
  • It isolated the Muslims from the Nationalist Movement and encouraged separatist tendencies
• The real purpose of the reforms was to confuse the moderate nationalists, to divide nationalist ranks and to check the growth of unity among Indians
• Response of Moderates
  • They realized that the reforms had not granted much
  • However, they decided to cooperate with the government in working the reforms
  • This led to their loss of respect among the nationalists and masses

• Definition
  • Communalism is the belief that because a group of people follow a particular religion they have, as a result, common secular, that is, social, political and economic interests.
  • Second stage: Secular interests of followers of one religion are dissimilar and divergent from the interests of the followers of another religion
  • Third stage: The interests of the followers of different religions or of different religious communities are seen to be mutually incompatible, antagonistic and hostile.
• Communalism is not a remnant of the medieval period. It has its roots in the modern colonial socio-economic political structure.
• Divide and Rule
  • After 1857, British initially suppressed Indian muslims. However, after the publishing of Hunter’s book ‘The Indian Mussalman’ they actively followed the policy of divide and rule and hence started supporting the Muslims.
  • They promoted provincialism by talking of Bengal domination
  • Tired to use the caste structure to turn the non-brahmins against Brahmins and the lower caste against the higher castes.
  • It readily accepted communal leaders as authentic representatives of all their co-religionists.
• Reasons for growth of communal tendencies in Muslims
  • Relative backwardness: educationally and economically <incomplete>

Muslim League

• 1906 by Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dhaka, and Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk
• It made no critique of colonialism, supported the partition of Bengal and demanded special safeguards for the Muslims in government services.
• ML’s political activities were directed not against the foreign rulers but against the Hindus and the INC.
• Their activities were not supported by all Muslims
  • Arhar movement was founded at this time under the leadership of Maulana Mohamed Ali, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Hasan Imam, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, and Mazhar-ul-Haq. They advocated participation in the militant nationalist movement.

Muslim Nationalists

• The war between Ottoman Empire and Italy created a wave of sympathy for Turkey
• During the war between Ottoman empire and Italy, India sent a medical mission headed by MA Ansari to help Turkey.
• As the British were not sympathetic to Turkey, the pro-Caliph sentiments in India became anti-British
• However, the militant nationalists among muslims did not accept an entirely secular approach to politics
• The most important issue they took up was not political independence but protection of the Turkish empire.
• This approach did not immediately clash with Indian nationalism. However, in the long run it proved harmful as it encouraged the habit of looking at political questions from a religious view point.

Hindu Communalism

• Some Hindus accepted the colonial view of Indian history and talked about the tyrannical Muslim rule in the medieval period
• Over language they said that Hindi was the language of Hindus and Urdu that of Muslims.
• Punjab Hindu Sabha was founded in 1909. Its leaders attached the INC for trying to unite Indians into a single nation.
• The first session of the All India Hindu Mahasabha was held in April 1915 under the presidentship of the Maharaja of Kasim Bazar.

It however remained a weak organization because the colonial government gave it few concessions and little support

IMPORTANT NOTE

SSC MASTERS will come out with more such initiatives to provide a level-playing field to aspirants who do not need or have access to coaching and provide strategic competitive advantage to our followers in every aspect of SSC preparation and to stand true to its endeavour of becoming ‘A One stop Destination for SSC preparation’. Please Subscribe ssc masters for regular update for ssc cgl preparation. Leave you reviews about SSC Masters in the comment box below and suggestions for ssc masters for innovative SSC CGL preparation.

Nationalists saw that their disunity was affecting their cause

• Two important developments at the Lucknow Session of Congress
  • The two wings of the Congress were again united
  • The Congress and the Muslim League sank their old differences and put up common political demands before the government.
• INC and ML passed the same resolutions at their sessions, put forward a joint scheme of political reforms based on separate electorates, and demanded that the British Government should make a declaration that it would confer self-government on India at an early date.
• The pact accepted the principle of separate electorates
• Main clauses of the pact

• There shall be self-government in India.
• Muslims should be given one-third representation in the central government.
• There should be separate electorates for all the communities until a community demanded joint electorates.
• A system of weightage should be adopted.
• The number of the members of Central Legislative Council should be increased to 150.
• At the provincial level, four-fifth of the members of the Legislative Councils should be elected and one-fifth should be nominated.
• The size of provincial legislatures should not be less than 125 in the major provinces and from 50 to 75 in the minor provinces.
• All members, except those nominated, should be elected directly on the basis of adult franchise.
• No bill concerning a community should be passed if the bill is opposed by three-fourth of the members of that community in the Legislative Council.
• The term of the Legislative Council should be five years.
• Members of Legislative Council should themselves elect their president.
• Half of the members of Imperial Legislative Council should be Indians.
• The Indian Council must be abolished.
• The salaries of the Secretary of State for Indian Affairs should be paid by the British government and not from Indian funds.
• Of the two Under Secretaries, one should be Indian.
• The Executive should be separated from the Judiciary.

• Evaluation
  • As an immediate effect, the unity between the two factions of the congress and between INC and ML aroused great political enthusiasm in the country
  • However, it did not involve Hindu and Muslim masses  and was based on the notion of bringing together the educated Hindus and Muslims as separate political entities without secularization of their political outlook
  • The pact therefore left the way open to the future resurgence of communalism in Indian politics.

IMPORTANT NOTE

SSCMASTERS will come out with more such initiatives to provide a level-playing field to aspirants who do not need or have access to coaching and provide strategic competitive advantage to our followers in every aspect of SSC preparation and to stand true to its endeavour of becoming ‘A One stop Destination for SSC preparation’. Please Subscribe ssc masters for regular update for ssc cgl preparation. Leave you reviews about SSC Masters in the comment box below and suggestions for ssc masters for innovative SSC CGL preparation.

Army

Army fulfilled four important functions:

1. Instrument to conquer Indian powers
2. Defended the British Empire in India against foreign rivals
3. Safe-guarded against internal revolt
4. Chief instrument for extending and defending the British Empire in Asia and Africa.

Bulk of the army consisted of Indians. In 1857, of the total strength of 311400, about 265900 were Indians. Highest Indian rank was that of Subedar.

British could conquer and control India through a predominantly Indian army because:

1. There was absence of modern nationalism at that time
2. The company paid its soldiers regularly and well, as opposed to the Indian rulers and chieftains.

Police

Cornwallis was responsible for the creation of a modern police system in India. He established a system of Thanas (or circles) headed by a daroga. The police:

1. Prevented organization of a large-scale conspiracy against foreign control
2. Was used to suppress the national movement.

Judiciary

Though started by Hastings, the system was stabilized by Cornwallis.

Civil Cases

District: Diwani Adalat (civil court) presided over by the District Judge

Provincial Court: Appeal from civil court

Sardar Diwani Adalat: Highest appeal

There were also, below the District Court, Registrar’s Court (headed by Europeans) and subordinate courts headed by Indians known as munsifs or amins.

Criminal Cases

4 divisions of Bengal presidency. Each had a Court of Circuit presided over by the civil servants. Appeals could be made to Sardar Nizamat Adalat.

William Bentinck:

• Abolished the provincial courts of appeal and circuit
• Their work was assigned to District Collectors
• Raised the status and power of Indians in the Judicial service.

In 1865, High Courts were established at Madras, Calcutta and Bombay.

British brought about  uniformity in the system of law. In 1833, the government appointed Law Commission headed by Macaulay to codify Indian Laws. This eventually resulted in the Indian Penal Code, Code of Civil and Criminal Procedures and other codes of laws.

• The backbone of the rebellions, their mass base and striking power came from the rack-rented peasants, ruined artisans and demobilized soldiers

CAUSES

• The major cause of the civil rebellions was the rapid changes the British introduced in the economy, administration and land revenue system.
• The revenues were enhanced by increasing taxes.
• Thousands of zamindars and poligars lost control over their land and its revenue either due to the extinction of their rights by the colonial state or by the forced sale of their rights over land because of their inability to meet the exorbitant land revenue demanded.
• The economic decline of the peasantry was reflected in twelve major and numerous minor famines from 1770 to 1857
• The new courts and legal system gave a further fillip to the dispossessors of land and encouraged the rich to oppress the poor.
• The police looted, oppressed and tortured the common people at will.
• The ruin of Indian handicraft industries pauperized millions of artisans
• The scholarly and priestly classes were also active in inciting hatred and rebellion against foreign rule.
• Very foreign character of the British rule

REBELLIONS

• From 1763 to 1856, there were more than forty major rebellions apart from hundreds of minor ones.
• Sanyasi Rebellion: (1763-1800)
• Chuar uprising (1766-1772 & 1795-1816); Rangpur and Dinajpur (1783); Bishnupur and Birbhum (1799); Orissa zamindars (1804-17) and Sambalpur (1827-40) and many others

WHY FAILED?

• These rebellions were local in their spread and were isolated from each other.
• They were the result of local causes and grievances, and were also localized in their effects.
• Socially, economically and politically, the semi-feudal leaders of these rebellions were backward looking and traditional in outlook.
• The suppression of the civil rebellions was a major reason why the revolt of 1857 did not spread to South India and most of Eastern and Western India.

TRIBAL  UPRISINGS: CAUSES

• The colonial administrators ended their relative isolation and brought them fully within the ambit of colonialism.
• Introduced new system of land revenue and taxation of tribal products
• Influx of Christian missionaries into the tribal areas
• They could no longer practice shifting agriculture
• Oppression and extortion by police officials
• The complete disruption of the old agrarian order of the tribal communities provided the common factor for all the tribal uprisings

UPRISINGS

• Santhals
• Kols of Chhotanagpur (1820-37)
• Birsa Munda (1899-1900)

In May 1945, Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India, went to London and discussed his ideas about the future of India with the British administration. The talks resulted in the formulation of a plan of action that was made public in June 1945. The plan is known as Wavell Plan.

The Plan suggested reconstitution of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in which the Viceroy was to select persons nominated by the political parties. Different communities were also to get their due share in the Council and parity was reserved for Cast-Hindus and Muslims. While declaring the plan, the Secretary of State for Indian Affairs made it clear that the British Government wanted to listen to the ideas of all major Indian communities. Yet he said that it was only possible if the leadership of the leading Indian political parties agreed with the suggestions of the British Government.

To discuss these proposals with the leadership of major Indian parties, Wavell called for a conference at Simla on June 25, 1945. Leaders of both the Congress and the Muslim League attended the conference, which is known as the Simla Conference. However, differences arose between the leadership of the two parties on the issue of representation of the Muslim community. The Muslim League claimed that it was the only representative party of the Muslims in India and thus all the Muslim representatives in the Viceroy’s Executive Council should be the nominees of the party. Congress, which had sent Maulana Azad as the leader of their delegation, tried to prove that their party represented all the communities living in India and thus should be allowed to nominate Muslim representative as well. Congress also opposed the idea of parity between the Cast-Hindus and the Muslims. All this resulted in a deadlock. Finally, Wavell announced the failure of his efforts on July 14. Thus the Simla Conference couldn’t provide any hope of proceeding further.

Why did national movement arise?

• Indian nationalism rose to meet the challenges of foreign domination
• The British rule and its direct and indirect consequences provided the material and the moral and intellectual conditions for the development of a national movement in India.
• Clash of interest between the interests of the Indian people with British interests in India
• Increasingly, the British rule became the major cause of India’s economic backwardness
• Every class gradually discovered that their interests were suffering at the hands of the British
  • Peasant: Govt took a large part of produce away as land revenue. Laws favoured the Zamindars
  • Artisans: Foreign competition ruined the industry
  • Workers: The government sided with the capitalists
  • Intelligentsia: They found that the British policies were guided by the interests of British capitalists and were keeping the country economically backward. Politically, the British had no commitment of guiding India towards self-government.
  • Indian capitalists: the growth of Indian industries was constrained by the unfavourable trade, tariff, taxation and transport policies of the government.
  • Zamindars, landlords and princes were the only ones whose interests coincided with those of the British. Hence they remained loyal to them.
• Hence, it was the intrinsic nature of foreign imperialism and its harmful effect on the lives of the Indian people that led to the rise of the national movement. This movement could be called the national movement because it united people from different parts of the country as never before for a single cause.

What factors strengthened and facilitated the national movement?

• Administration and Economic Unification of the country
  • Introduction of modern trade and industries on all-India scale had increasingly made India’s economic life a single whole and interlinked the economic fate of people living in different parts of the country.
  • Introduction of railways, telegraph and unified postal system brought together different parts of the country and promoted contact among people like never before.
  • This unification led to the emergence of the Indian nation
• Western Thought and Education
  • A large number of Indians imbibed a modern rational, secular, democratic and nationalist political outlook
  • They began to study, admire and emulate the contemporary nationalist movements of European nations
  • The western education per se did not create the national movement. It only enabled the educated Indians to imbibe western thought and thus to assume the leadership of the national movement and to give it a democratic and modern direction
  • Modern education created a certain uniformity and community of outlook and interests among the education Indians.
• Role of Press and Literature
  • Large number of nationalist newspapers appeared in the second half of the 19^th century
  • They criticized the policies of the British government and put forth the Indian point of view
  • National literature in form of essays, novels and poetry also played an important role. Bamkin Chandra, Tagore: Bengali; Bhartendu Harishchandra: Hindi; Lakshmikanth Bezbarua: Assamese; Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar: Marathi; Subramanya Bharti: Tamil; Altaf Husain Hali: Urdu
• Rediscovery of India’s past
  • The British had lowered the self confidence of the Indian through the propaganda that Indians are incapable of self-government
  • Nationalist leaders referred to the cultural heritage of India to counter this propaganda. They referred to political achievements of rulers like Ashoka, Chandragupta Vikramaditya and Akbar.
  • However, some nationalists went to the extent of glorifying the past uncritically. They emphasized on the achievements of ancient India and not medieval India. This encouraged the growth of communal sentiments.
• Racial arrogance of the rulers
  • Englishmen adopted a tone of racial superiority in their dealings with the Indians
  • Failure of justice whenever an Englishman was involved in a dispute with an Indian.
  • Indians kept out of European clubs and often were not permitted to travel in same compartment as Englishmen

Rise of Indian National Congress

Predecessors of INC

• East India Association
  • By Dadabhai Naoroji in 1866 in London
  • To discuss the Indian question and to influence the British public men to discuss Indian welfare
  • Branches of the association in prominent Indian cities
• Indian Association
  • Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose in 1876, Calcutta
  • The aim of creating strong public opinion in the country on political questions and the unification of the Indian people on a common political programme
• Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
  • Justice Ranade, 1870
• Madras Mahajan Sabha
  • Viraraghavachari, Anand Charloo, G Subramanian Aiyer, 1884
• Bombay Presidency Association
  • Pherozshah Mehta, K T Telang, Badruddin Tyabji, 1885
• These organizations were narrow in their scope and functioning. They dealt mostly with local questions and their membership were confined to a few people belonging to a single city or province

Indian National Congress

• Indian National Congress was founded on 28 December 1885 by 72 political workers. A O Hume was the first secretary and was instrumental in establishing the Congress
• First session in Bombay. President: W C Bonnerjee
• With the formation of INC, the Indian National Movement was launched in a small but organized manner
• The Congress itself was to serve not as a party but as a movement
• Congress was democratic. The delegates to INC were elected by different local organizations and groups
• Sovereignty of the people
• In 1890, Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of Calcutta University addressed the Congress session
• Safety Valve Theory
  • The INC was started under the official direction, guidance and advice of Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy, to provide a safe, mild, peaceful and constitutional outlet or safety valve for the rising discontent among the masses, which was inevitably leading towards a popular and violent revolution.

Does the safety valve theory explain the formation of Congress?

• The safety valve theory is inadequate and misleading
• INC represented the urge of the Indian educated class to set up a national organization to work for their political and economic development
• A number of organizations, as mentioned above, had already been started by the Indians towards that end
• Hume’s presence in Congress was used to allay official suspicions

Why was there a need for an All-India organization?

• Vernacular Press Act, 1878
• Ilbert Bill (1883) which would allow Indian judges to try Europeans was opposed by the European community and was finally enacted in a highly compromised state in 1884.
• The Indians realized that they could not get the Ilbert bill passed because they were not united on all India level. Hence need for INC was felt.
• In order to give birth to the national movement
  • Creation of national leadership was important
  • Collective identification was created

Aims of INC

• Promotion of friendly relations between nationalist political workers from different parts of the country
• Development and consolidation of the feeling of national unity irrespective of caste, religion or province
• Formulation of popular demands and their presentation before the government
• Training and organization of public opinion in the country

• The first major objective of the Indian national movement was to promote weld Indians into a nation, to create an  Indian identity
• Fuller development and consolidation of sentiments of national unity
  • Efforts for unity: In an effort to reach all regions, it was decided to rotate the congress session among different parts of the country. The President was to belong to a region other than where the congress session was being held.
  • To reach out to the followers of all religions and to remove the fears of the minorities, a rule was made at the 1888 session that no resolution was to be passed to which an overwhelming majority of Hindu or Muslim delegates objected.
  • In 1889, a minority clause was adopted in the resolution demanding reform of legislative councils. According to the clause, wherever Parsis, Christians, Muslims or Hindus were a minority their number elected to the councils would not be less than their proportion in the population.
  • To build a secular nation, the congress itself had to be intensely secular
• The second major objective of the early congress was to create a common political platform or programme around which political workers in different parts of the country could gather and conduct their political activities.
  • Due to its focus solely on political issues congress did not take up the question of social reform.
• Since this form of political participation was new to India, the arousal, training, organization and consolidation of public opinion was seen as a major task by the congress leaders.
  • Going beyond the redressal of immediate grievances and organize sustained political activity.