Gandhi and Indian Civil Disobedience (1919–1935)
Mahatma Gandhi's return to India from South Africa in 1915 fundamentally transformed the character of Indian nationalism. The Indian National Congress had previously been an elite organisation of lawyers and professionals petitioning the British for incremental constitutional reform; Gandhi reconstituted it as a mass movement engaged in systematic civil disobedience. The first major trigger was the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre on 13 April 1919, in which British troops under General Reginald Dyer fired 1,650 rounds into a crowd of unarmed civilians gathered in an enclosed garden in Amritsar — a crowd that had no means of escape. At least 379 people were killed, with estimates running to over 1,000. Dyer subsequently testified that he intended the shooting as a punitive lesson to the entire district. The massacre and the British government's initially equivocal response shattered whatever remained of moderate Indian faith in British justice. Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920: Indians were to boycott British courts, schools, and goods; return honours; and refuse to cooperate with the colonial administration. The movement achieved remarkable mass participation but was suspended by Gandhi in February 1922 after the Chauri Chaura incident, in which a crowd of protesters burned a police station, killing 22 officers — Gandhi's insistence that any violence invalidated the movement was both principled and politically controversial. The defining act of the interwar period came in March 1930: the Salt March. Gandhi walked 240 miles from Sabarmati to the sea at Dandi over 24 days, accompanied by 78 followers and eventually thousands more. At Dandi on 6 April 1930 he picked up a handful of salt — directly violating the British salt tax monopoly. The image of an elderly man in a dhoti defying the greatest empire in the world with a handful of salt became an international symbol of resistance. The Civil Disobedience Campaign that followed resulted in 60,000 arrests, including Gandhi's and Nehru's. By 1935, the Government of India Act had granted elected provincial governments with genuine powers — a significant constitutional advance, though far short of independence. Gandhi's campaigns had demonstrated that the British raj was governable only with Indian consent, and that this consent was withdrawable.
- Year: 1919 CE
- Category: Political
