Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Early Career and Experiments with Truth in South Africa

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar in the princely state of Kathiawar in Gujarat.
• Father was a diwan (minister), studied law in England, Gandhi, in 1898.
• Stay in South Africa to organise the Indian workers to enable them to fight for their rights.
• Stayed there till 1914 after which he returned to India.
• Indians in South Africa consisted of three categories.
1. Indentured Indian labour - from south India, who had migrated to South Africa after 1890 to work on sugar plantations.
2. Merchants - Meman Muslims
3. The ex-indentured labourers who had settled down with their children in South Africa after the expiry of their contracts.
• Accepted racial discrimination as a part of their daily existence.

Moderate Phase of Struggle (1894-1906)

• Gandhi relied on sending petitions and memorials to the authorities in South Africa and in Britain.
• Set up the Natal Indian Congress and started a paper Indian Opinion.

Phase of Passive Resistance or Satyagraha (1906-1914)

method of passive resistance or civil disobedience, which Gandhi named satyagraha.

• Satyagraha against Registration Certificates (1906)
• Indians, carry at all times certificates of registration with their fingerprints.
• Gandhi formed the Passive Resistance Association to conduct the campaign of defying the law and suffering all the penalties resulting from such a defiance.
• Government jailed Gandhi and other who refused to register themselves.
• End, there was a compromise settlement
• Campaign against Restrictions on Indian Migration.
• Indians defied this law by crossing over from one province to another and by refusing to produce licences. Many of these Indians were jailed.
• Campaign against Poll Tax and Invalidation of Indian Marriages.
• Demand for the abolition of poll tax.
• Supreme Court order which invalidated all marriages not conducted according to Christian rites and registered by the registrar of marriages drew the anger of the Indians and others who were not Christians.
• Hindu, Muslim and Parsi marriages were illegal and children born out of such marriages, illegitimate.
• Protest against Transvaal Immigration Act
• Illegally migrating from Natal into Transvaal.
• In India, Gokhale toured the whole country mobilising public opinion in support of the Indians in South Africa.
• Lord Hardinge, condemned the repression and called for an impartial enquiry.

Through a series of negotiations involving Gandhi, Lord Hardinge, C.F. Andrews and General Smuts, an agreement was reached by which the Government of South Africa in Compromise Solution.

Gandhi’s Experience in South Africa

• Masses had immense capacity to participate in and sacrifice for a cause that moved them.
• Unite Indians belonging to different religions and classes, and men and women alike under his leadership.
• Leaders have to take decisions unpopular with their enthusiastic supporters.
• Evolve his own style of leadership and politics and new techniques of struggle.

Gandhi’s Technique of Satyagraha

Based on truth and non-violence. Philosophy of Tolstoy, evil could best be countered by non-violent resistance.

• Not to submit to what he considered as wrong, but was to always remain truthful, non-violent and fearless.
• Principles of withdrawal of cooperation and boycott.
• Include non-payment of taxes, and declining honours and positions of authority.
• Ready to accept suffering in his struggle against the wrong-doer.
• True satyagrahi would have no ill feeling for the wrong-doer.
• True satyagrahi would never bow before the evil.
• Only the brave and strong could practise satyagraha, not for the weak and cowardly. Ends could not justify the means.

Gandhi in India

• Gandhi returned to India in January 1915.
• Tour the country the next one year and see for himself the condition of the masses.
• Convinced about the limitations of moderate politics and was also not in favour of Home Rule agitation.
• He would join no political organisation unless it too accepted the creed of non-violent satyagraha.

Champaran Satyagraha (1917) - First Civil Disobedience

• Gandhi was requested by Rajkumar Shukla, context of Indigo planters of Champaran in Bihar.
• The European planters had been forcing the peasants to grow indigo on 3/20 part of the total land (called tinkathia system).
• Peasants were forced to sell the produce at prices fixed by the Europeans.
• When Gandhi, joined now by Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar-ul-Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh, and J.B. Kripalani, reached Champaran to probe into the matter.
• Finally, the authorities retreated and permitted Gandhi to make an enquiry.
• Government appointed a committee to go into the matter and nominated Gandhi as a member.
• Gandhi convince the authorities, compromise with the planters, he agreed that only 25 per cent of the money taken should be compensated.
• Gandhi won the first battle of civil disobedience in India.
• Other Leaders - Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad and Shambhusharan Varma.

Ahmedabad Mill Strike (1918) - First Hunger Strike

• March 1918, Gandhi intervened in a dispute between cotton mill owners of Ahmedabad and the workers over the issue of discontinuation of the plague bonus.
• Mill owners wanted to withdraw the bonus, workers were demanding a rise of 50% in their wages.
• Mill owners were ready to give only a 20% wage hike. The workers went on strike.
• Mill owners deciding to bring in weavers from Bombay. Wworkers of the mill turned to Anusuya Sarabhai for help in fighting for justice, sister of Ambalal Sarabhai (president of the Ahmedabad Mill Owners Association)
• Anusuya Behn went to Gandhi & asked him to intervene and help.
• Gandhi was a friend of Ambalal
• Gandhi asked the workers to go on a strike and demand a 35% increase in wages instead of 50%. Also advised the workers to remain non-violent while on strike.
• He himself undertook a fast unto death, Mill owners submit the issue to a tribunal. At the End, tribunal awarded the workers a 35% wage hike.

Kheda Satyagraha (1918) - First non-Cooperation

• 1918, Due to drought crops failed in Kheda district of Gujarat.
• According to the Revenue Code, yield was less than one-fourth the normal produce, farmers were entitled to remission.
• Gujarat Sabha requesting that the revenue assessment for the year 1919 be suspended.
• Government, however, remained adamant and said that the property of the farmers would be seized if the taxes were not paid.
• Gandhi asked the farmers not to pay the taxes, spiritual head of the struggle.
• Patel along with his colleagues organised the tax revolt.
• Revolt was remarkable in that discipline and unity were maintained.
• Government sought to bring about an agreement with the farmers.
• Agreed to suspend the tax for the year in question, and for the next; reduce the increase in rate; and return all the confiscated property.

Gains from Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda

• Demonstrated to the people the efficacy of his technique of satyagraha.
• Surer understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the masses.
• Acquired respect and commitment of many, especially the youth

Rowlatt Act, Satyagraha, Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

• One Hand, government dangled the carrot of constitutional reforms.
• Other Hand, extraordinary powers to suppress any discordant voice against the reforms.

The Rowlatt Act

• Defence of India Regulations Act 1915, passed in 1919.
• Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act.
• Investigate the 'seditious conspiracy' of the Indian people.
• Deported or imprisoned without trial for two years.
• Even possession of seditious newspapers would be adequate evidence of guilt.
• All elected Indian voted against the bill, overruled by the official nominees.
• Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Mazhar Ul Haq - resigned in protest.
• Act allowed political activists to be tried without juries or even imprisoned without trial
• Arrest of Indians without warrant, suspicion of ‘treason’.
• Such suspects, secrecy without recourse to legal help.
• Special cell consisting of three high court judges was to try such suspects and there was no court of appeal above that panel.
• Panel accept evidence not acceptable under the Indian Evidences Act.
• Law of habeas corpus, the basis of civil liberty, was sought to be suspended.
• Wartime Defence of India Act (1915) by a permanent law.
• Strict control over the press, government was armed with a variety of powers.
• Authorities chose to consider as terrorism or revolutionary tactics.

Satyagraha Against the Rowlatt Act - First Mass Strike

• Indians expected a huge advance, for their contribution to the war but Montford Reforms with its very limited scope & shockingly repressive Rowlatt Act.
• Gandhi called the Rowlatt Act the “Black Act” and argued that not everyone should get punishment in response to isolated political crimes.
• Gandhi called for a mass protest at all India level. Gandhi organised a Satyagraha Sabha and roped in younger members of Home Rule Leagues and the Pan Islamists.
• Nationwide hartal (strike) accompanied by fasting and prayer, and civil disobedience against specific laws, and courting arrest and imprisonment.
1. Masses just giving verbal expression to their grievances.
2. Now onwards, peasants, artisans and the urban poor were to play an increasingly important part in the struggle.
3. Orientation of the national movement turned to the masses permanently.
• Satyagraha was to be launched on April 6, 1919, before there were large-scale violent, anti-British demonstrations in Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Ahmedabad, etc.
• April 1919 saw the biggest and the most violent anti-British upsurge since 1857.
• Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, said to have used aircraft strafing against the violent protestors.

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (April 13, 1919)

• Amritsar was the worst affected by violence, beginning there was no violence by the protestors.
• April 9, two nationalist leaders, Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal, were arrested by the British officials without any provocation except that they had addressed protest meetings, and taken to some unknown destination.
• This caused resentment among the Indian protestors who came out in thousands on April 10 to show their solidarity with their leaders. Soon the protests turned violent.
• Police resorted to firing in which some of the protestors were killed.
• Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, senior British officer to impose martial law and restore order & issued a proclamation on April 13.
• People gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh, a popular place for public events, to celebrate the Baisakhi festival.
• 20,000 odd people collected there were political protestors, but the majority were those who had collected for the festival.
• Two resolutions - repeal of the Rowlatt Act & other condemning the firing on April 10.
• Troops surrounded the gathering under orders from General Dyer and blocked the only exit point and opened fire on the unarmed crowd.
• Followed by uncivilised brutalities on the inhabitants of Amritsar.
• Martial law was proclaimed in the Punjab, and public floggings and other humiliations were perpetrated.
• Entire nation was stunned. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest. Gandhi gave up the title of Kaiser-i-Hind, bestowed by the British for his work during the Boer War.
• Dyer ensured the beginning of the end of the British Raj.
• Cooperation with a ‘satanic regime’ was now impossible. realised that the cause of Indian independence from British rule was morally righteous. way to the non-cooperation movement was ready.
• Historian, A.P.J Taylor - "decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule".
• Bhagat Singh was just 11 at the time of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
• Udham Singh, who bore the name, Ram Mohammad Singh Azad, later assassinated Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor who presided over the brutal British suppression of the 1919 protests in Punjab.

The Hunter Committee of Enquiry

• Edwin Montagu, ordered that a committee of inquiry be formed to investigate the matter on October 14, 1919 - Disorders Inquiry Committee, known as the Hunter Committee/Commission - To investigate the recent disturbances in Bombay, Delhi and Punjab, about their causes, and the measures taken to cope with them.
• Three Indians among the members
• Sir Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad, Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University and advocate of the Bombay High Court.
• Pandit Jagat Narayan, lawyer and Member of the Legislative Council of the United Provinces.
• Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmad Khan, lawyer from Gwalior State.
• Dyer was called before the committee.
• He say "I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself".
• Dyer’s statement caused racial tensions among the members of the committee, final report released in March 1920.
• Lack of notice to disperse from the Bagh in the beginning was an error & Dyer’s motive of producing a sufficient moral effect was to be condemned.
• Dyer had overstepped the bounds of his authority. No conspiracy to overthrow British rule in the Punjab.
• Dyer’s actions had been “inhuman and un-British” and had greatly injured the image of British rule in India.
• Hunter Committee did not impose any penal or disciplinary action because Dyer’s actions were condoned by various superiors (later upheld by the Army Council).
• Before the Hunter Committee began, government had passed an Indemnity Act for the protection of its officers. "White washing bill" - severely criticised by Motilal Nehru and others.
• Winston Churchill, review the report. In House of Commons, Churchill condemned what had happened at Amritsar. He called it "monstrous".
• Former prime minister of Britain, H.H. Asquith called it "one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history".
• Dyer was found guilty of a mistaken notion of duty and relieved of his command in March 1920, recalled to England & received his army pension.
• Strangely enough, the clergy of the Golden Temple, led by Arur Singh, honoured Dyer by declaring him a Sikh. The honouring of Dyer by the priests of Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar, was one of the reasons behind the intensification of the demand for reforming the management of Sikh shrines already being voiced by societies such as the Khalsa Diwan Majha and Central Majha Khalsa Diwan. Result Gurudwara Reform movement.

Congress View

• Own non-official Committee - Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, Abbas Tyabji, M.R. Jayakar and Gandhi.
• Criticised Dyer’s act as inhuman.
• No justification in the introduction of the martial law in Punjab.