First World War & Nationalist Response

• First World War (1914-1919), Britain allied with rance, Russia, USA, Italy and Japan against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey.
• Moderates supported the empire in the war.
• Extremists, including Tilak (who was released in June 1914), supported the war efforts in the mistaken belief that Britain would repay India’s loyalty with gratitude in the form of self government.
• Revolutionaries decided to utilise the opportunity to wage a war on British rule and liberate the country.
• Revolutionary activity - Ghadr Party in North America, Berlin Committee in Europe, Singapore.
• Raising the possibility of financial and military help from Germany and Turkey - the enemies of Britain.

Home Rule League Movement

• Indian response to the First World War.
• Prominent leaders—Balgangadhar Tilak, Annie Besant, G.S. Khaparde, Sir S. Subramania Iyer, Joseph Baptista and Mohammad Ali Jinnah among others national alliance that would work throughout the year.
• Objective of demanding self-government or home rule for all of India within the British commonwealth lines of the Irish Home Rule League.
• Two Home Rule Leagues were launched - Balgangadhar Tilak & Annie Besant.
• Factors Leading to the Movement
• section of the nationalists felt that popular pressure was required to attain concessions from the government.
• Moderates were disillusioned with the Morley-Minto reforms.
• Feeling the burden of wartime miseries caused by high taxation and a rise in prices, and were ready to participate in any aggressive movement of protest.
• War among the major imperialist powers of the day and backed by naked propaganda against each other, exposed myth of white superiority.
• Tilak was ready to assume leadership after his release in June 1914, conciliatory gestures - government reassuring it of his loyalty and to the Moderates that he wanted, like the Irish Home Rulers. urged all Indians to assist the British government in its hour of crisis.
• Annie Besant, Irish theosophist based in India since 1896, enlarge the sphere of her activities.

The Leagues

• Tilak and Besant decided to revive political activity on their own.
• Early 1915, Annie Besant had launched a campaign to demand self-government, campaigned through her newspapers, New India and Commonweal, and through public meetings and conferences.
• 1915, Annual Session of congress, efforts of Tilak and Besant met with some success. but Besant failed to get the Congress to approve her scheme of Home Rule Leagues.
• Tilak and Besant set up their separate leagues to avoid any friction.
• Tilak’s League
• Home Rule League in April 1916.
• First meeting at Belgaum.
• Poona was the headquarters & Six Branches.
• Demands included swarajya, formation of linguistic states and education in the vernacular
• Besant's League
• All-India Home Rule League in September 1916 in Madras.
• 200 branches - loosely organised as compared to Tilak’s league.

The Home Rule League Programme

• Campaign aimed to convey to the common man the message of home rule as self-government.
• Also attracted the hitherto ‘politically backward’ regions of Gujarat and Sindh.
• Promoting political education and discussion through public meetings, organising libraries and reading rooms containing books on national politics, holding conferences, organising classes for students on politics, carrying out propaganda through newspapers, pamphlets, posters, illustrated post-cards, plays, religious songs, etc., collecting funds, organising social work, and participating in local government activities.
• Russian Revolution of 1917 proved to be an added advantage for the Home Rule campaign.
• Later joined by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Chittaranjan Das, K.M. Munshi, B. Chakravarti, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Lala Lajpat Rai.
• Mohammad Ali Jinnah led the Bombay division.
• Anglo-Indians, most of the Muslims and non-brahmins from the South did not join as they felt Home Rule.

Government Attitude

• Severe repression, especially in Madras.
• Tilak was barred from entering the Punjab and Delhi.
• June 1917, Annie Besant and her associates, B.P. Wadia and George Arundale, were arrested. This invited nationwide protest.

Agitation Faded Out by 1919

• lack of effective organisation.
• Communal riots.
• Moderates who had joined the Congress after Annie Besant’s arrest were pacified by talk of reforms and Besant’s release.
• Passive resistance by the Extremists kept the Moderates away from activity.
• Montagu-Chelmsford reforms
• Tilak away in England, the movement was left leaderless.
• Gandhi’s fresh approach to the struggle for freedom was slowly.

Gandhi accepted the presidentship of the All India Home Rule League, changed the organisation’s name to Swarajya Sabha, Later league joined the Indian National Congress.

Positive Gains

Gandhian phase that was to come with its mass involvement in the struggle for freedom.

• Movement shifted the emphasis from the educated elite to the masses and permanently deflected the movement from the course mapped by the Moderates.
• Created an organisational link between the town and the country.
• Generation of ardent nationalists.
• Masses for politics of the Gandhian style.
• Montagu and the Montford reforms were influenced by the Home Rule agitation.
• Efforts of Tilak and Annie Besant towards the Moderate-Extremist reunion at Lucknow (1916).
• Home rule movement lent a new dimension.

Lucknow Session of the Indian National Congress (1916)

Readmission of Extremists to Congress

Readmitted the Extremists

• Old controversies had become meaningless now.
• Moderates and the Extremists realised that the split had led to political inactivity.
• Annie Besant and Tilak had made vigorous efforts for the reunion. Tilak had declared that he supported a reform of administration, denounced act of violence.
• Death of two Moderates, Gokhale and Pherozshah Mehta, who had led the Moderate opposition to the Extremists, facilitated the reunion.

Lucknow Pact between Congress and Muslim League

• Muslim League and the Congress and the presentation of common demands by them to the government.
• Muslim League, now dominated by the younger militant nationalists, coming closer to the Congress objectives and turning increasingly anti-imperialist.

Why the Change in the League’s Altitude

• Britain’s refusal to help Turkey its wars in the Balkans (1912-13) and with Italy (during 1911) had angered the Muslims.
• Annulment of partition of Bengal in 1911, annoyed sections of the Muslims who had supported the partition.
• Refusal of the British government in India to set up a university at Aligarh.
• Calcutta session of the Muslim League (1912) had committed the League to “working with other groups for a system of self-government suited to India, goal of self-government similar to that of the Congress brought both sides closer.
• Generated anti-imperialist sentiments among the ‘Young Party’.

Nature of the Pact

• Present joint constitutional demands with the Congress to the government.
• Congress accepted the Muslim League’s position on separate electorates, Muslims were also granted a fixed proportion of seats in the legislatures.
• representative assemblies at the central as well as provincial level should be further expanded with an elected majority and more powers given to them.
• Term of the legislative council should be five years.
• Salaries of the Secretary of State for India should be paid by the British treasury and not drawn from Indian funds.
• Half the members of the viceroy’s and provincial governors’ executive councils should be Indians

Critical Comments

• Executive as a whole was not to be responsible to the legislature.
• Congress seemed to ask for in any scheme of post-war constitutional reforms.
• Expanded version of the Morley-Minto reforms.

Montagu’s Statement of August 1917

• August 20, 1917 in the British House of Commons in what has come to be known as the August Declaration of 1917.
• "The government policy is of an increasing participation of Indians in every branch of administration and gradual development of self governing institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire".
• Now Onwards, demand by nationalists for self-government or home rule could not be termed as seditious since attainment of self-government for Indians now became a government policy.
• Reforms were not intended to give self-government to India, use term ‘responsible government’.
• Rulers were to be answerable to the elected representatives.

Indian Objections

• No specific time frame was given
• Government alone was to decide the nature and the timing of advance towards a responsible government & Indians were resentful that the British would decide what was good and what was bad for Indians.