India is celebrating its 75th Independence Day on August 15 this year with the theme ‘Nation First, Always First’. The Indian government is celebrating the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ program in view of 75 years of Independence and is dedicated to the people of India. India was under British rule from 1858 to 1947. The British East India Company controlled India from 1757 to 1857. On August 15, 1947, India earned freedom from 200 years of British colonial control. The freedom fighters’ huge courage and sacrifice ousted the British to free the nation on August 15, 1947. India has been unified under many empires in its history like the Mauryan Empire and Mughal empire. A sense of oneness has been there for ages – even though most of the centralised administration in India didn’t last long. With the end of Mughal rule, India broke into hundreds of princely states.  The British – which was instrumental in the fall of the Mughal Empire – held control over the princely states and created the British Indian Empire. However, most Indians were extremely dissatisfied with the exploitative foreign rule. The educated Indians realised that the British always gave priority to their colonial interests and treated India only as a market. They advocated for the political independence of India.

Revolt of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857-58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company’s army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels’ defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence.

Foundation of Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885

The late nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of many political organisations in British India.

Indian National Congress (also known as Congress Party) founded in 1885 was the most prominent one.

Initially, its aim was to create a platform for civic and political dialogue between Indians and the British Raj and thus obtain a greater share in government for educated Indians.

Later, under the leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawarhal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the Congress party played a central role in organising the mass movements against the British.

Partition of Bengal (1905)

Indian nationalism was gaining in strength and Bengal was the nerve centre of Indian nationalism in the early 1900s. Lord Curzon, the Viceroy (1899-1905), attempted to ‘dethrone Calcutta’ from its position as the centre from which the Congress Party manipulated throughout Bengal, and indeed, the whole of India. The decision to partition Bengal into two was in the air from December 1903.

Congress party – from 1903 to mid-1905 – tried moderate techniques of petitions, memoranda, speeches, public meetings and press campaigns. The objective was to turn to public opinion in India and England against the partition.

However, Viceroy Curzon 1905 formally announced the British Government’s decision for the partition of Bengal on 19 July 1905. The partition took effect on 16 October 1905.

The partition was meant to foster another kind of division – on the basis of religion. The aim was to place Muslim communalists as a counter to the Congress. Curzon promised to make Dacca the new capital.

This resulted in a lot of discontentment among the Indians. Many considered this as a policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ by the British. This triggered a self-sufficiency movement popularly known as the Swadeshi movement.

The Swadeshi Movement (1905-1908)

From conservative moderation to political extremism, from terrorism to incipient socialism, from petitioning and public speeches to passive resistance and boycott, all had their origins in the movement.

Swadeshi is a conjunction of two Sanskrit words: swa (“self”) and desh (“country”).

The movement popularised the use and consumption of indigenous products. Indians started ditching British goods for Indian products.

Women, students, and a large section of the urban and rural population of Bengal and other parts of India became actively involved in politics for the first time with Swadeshi Movement.

The message of Swadeshi and the boycott of foreign goods soon spread to the rest of the country.

The militant nationalists led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh were in favour of extending the movement to the rest of India and carrying it beyond the programme of just Swadeshi and boycott to a full-fledged political mass struggle. For them, the aim was Swaraj.

In 1906, the Indian National Congress at its Calcutta Session presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, declared that the goal of the Indian National Congress was ‘self-government or Swaraj like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies. There were differences in the ideologies with the congressmen who were popularly known by the names Moderates and the Extremists. They had differences of opinion regarding the pace of the movement and the techniques of struggle to be adopted. This came to a head in the 1907 Surat session of the Congress where the party split (the two factions re-joined later).

The Ghadar Movement (1914)

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 gave an impetus to the nationalist feelings in Indians. The Home Rule League by Lokmanya Tilak and Annie Besant were formed during First World War. At the same time, a revolutionary movement gained popularity – The Ghadar Movement. (Note: The word Ghadar means ‘revolt’)

The Ghadar Movement was an international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India.

The early membership was composed mostly of Punjabi Indians who lived and worked on the West Coast of the United States and Canada. The movement later spread to India and Indian diasporic communities around the world.

The main leader initially was Bhagwan Singh, a Sikh priest who had worked in Hong Kong and the Malay States.

Later Har Dayal took leadership and played a crucial role in the Ghadar movement. He issued a Yugantar Circular praising the attack on the Viceroy. He urged Indians in the USA not to fight against the US but use the freedom in the US to fight the British.

The Ghadar militants toured extensively, visiting mills and farms where most of the Punjabi immigrant labour worked. The Yugantar Ashram became the home and headquarters and refuge of these political workers.

Komagatamaru Incident

The Komagata Maru incident involved the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru, on which a group of people from British India attempted to immigrate to Canada in April 1914. Most of the ship passengers were denied entry and forced to return to Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). There, the Indian Imperial Police attempted to arrest the group leaders. A riot ensued, and they were fired upon by the police, resulting in the deaths of 22 people.

British Government passed orders that no passenger be allowed to disembark anywhere on the way — not even at the places from where they had joined the ship — but only at Calcutta.

It triggered off a wave of resentment and anger among the Indian community and became the occasion for anti-British mobilization. A number of Ghadar leaders, like Barkatullah and Tarak Nath Das, used the inflammatory passions surrounding the Komagata Maru incident as a rallying point and successfully brought many disaffected Indians in North America into the party’s fold.

The Home Rule Movement (1916-1918)

The Home Rule Movement under the leadership of Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak was an important political movement that set the stage for India’s struggle for independence.

Annie Besant, who was a proponent of Free Thought, Radicalism, Fabianism and Theosophy, had come to India in 1893 to work for the Theosophical Society.

In 1914, she decided to enlarge the sphere of her activities. She started a movement for Home Rule on the lines of the Irish Home Rule League. She realized that she needs the cooperation of both Moderates and Extremists. In the annual session of the Congress 1915, it was decided that the Extremists be allowed to rejoin the Congress along with the Moderates. Tilak set up the Home Rule League in the Bombay Province. The two leagues worked in different areas. Tilak promoted the Home Rule campaign which linked the question of Swaraj with the demand for the formation of linguistic states and education in the vernacular medium.

Members of Gokhale’s Servants of India Society, though not permitted to become members of the League, encouraged the demand for Home Rule by undertaking lecture tours and publishing pamphlets.

During the Lucknow session of the Congress in December 1916, the famous Congress-League Pact was declared. Both Tilak and Annie Besant had played a role in bringing about this agreement between the Congress and the League, much against the wishes of many important leaders, including Madan Mohan Malaviya. This pact is popularly known as the Lucknow Pact where separate electorates for Muslims was accepted.

The turning point in the home rule movement came with the decision of the Government of Madras in 1917 to place Mrs Besant and her associates, B.P. Wadia and George Arundale, under arrest.

Montague Declaration was introduced by the British government as a sign of a conciliatory effort. Henceforth, Home Rule or self-government movement was not treated as a seditious activity. However, this did not mean that the British were ready to grant self-government.

In 1920 All India Home Rule League changed its name to Swarajya Sabha.

Champaran movement in Bihar (1917)

Mahatma Gandhi, after his struggle against apartheid in South Africa (racial discrimination against the blacks) for almost twenty years, returned to India in 1915.  On Gokhale’s advice, he spent a year travelling around British India to understand the problems of Indians. He initially maintained a distance from political affairs, including the Home Rule Movement that was gathering momentum at this time. Mahatma Gandhi began his experiments with Satyagraha against the oppressive European indigo planters at Champaran in Bihar in 1917.

Champaran issue had actually begun in the early 19th century when European planters made agreements with Indian farmers that forced them to cultivate indigo on 3/20th of their holdings (known as the Tinkathia system).

Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919)

The passage of the Rowlatt Act in 1919 resulted in large scale political unrest throughout India. A large peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab to protest against the arrest of pro-Indian independence leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal.

In response to the public gathering, the British Brigadier-General R. E. H. Dyer surrounded the Bagh with his soldiers.

General Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on the nationalist meeting killing hundreds. The brutality at Jallianwala Bagh stunned the entire nation. This event caused many moderate Indians to abandon their previous loyalty to the British and become nationalists distrustful of British rule.

Non-cooperation Movement (1920)

Gandhiji called for a campaign of “non-cooperation” with British rule. Indians who wished colonialism to end were asked to stop attending schools, colleges, and law courts. They were asked to not pay taxes. In sum, they were asked to adhere to a “renunciation of all voluntary association with the British Government”.

Gandhiji said that if non-cooperation was effectively carried out India would win swaraj within a year. When the Congress met for its annual session at Nagpur, C.R. Das moved the main resolution on non-cooperation. Many groups of revolutionary terrorists, especially in Bengal, also pledged support to the movement.

The goal of the Congress, by this time, changed from the attainment of self-government by constitutional means to the attainment of Swaraj by peaceful means.

Khilafat Movement (1919-24)

The Khilafat movement was a political protest campaign launched by Muslims of British India to restore the caliph of the Ottoman Caliphate, who was considered the leader of the Muslims. To further broaden the Indian freedom struggle, Gandhiji joined hands with the Khilafat Movement.

Chauri Chaura incident (1922)

On 4 February 1922, at Chauri Chaura (a place in modern Uttar Pradesh), the British police opened fire at a large group of people who were participating in the Non-cooperation movement.

In retaliation, the demonstrators attacked and set fire to a police station, killing all of its occupants. The incident led to the death of three civilians and 22 policemen. Mahatma Gandhi, who was strictly against violence, halted the non-cooperation movement on the national level on 12 February 1922, as a direct result of the Chauri Chaura incident.

In spite of Gandhi’s decision, 19 arrested demonstrators were sentenced to death and 14 to imprisonment for life by the British colonial authorities.

The boycott of Simon Commission (1927)

On 8 November 1927, an all-white, Simon Commission was appointed to recommend whether India was ready for further constitutional reforms. Indian National Congress boycott Simon Commission because no Indian was present in the commission. There were protests in many places.

In Lahore, Lala Lajpat Rai, the hero of the extremist days and the most revered leader of Punjab was hit. He succumbed to the injuries in November 1928. Bhagat Singh and his comrades sought to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai. They killed the white police official, Saunders, in December 1928.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose emerged as the leaders during the Simon Commission boycott movement.

Purna Swaraj Campaign (1929)

In Lahore session 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru was made the President of INC. He declared ‘Purna Swaraj’ or Complete Independence as the only honourable goal Indians could strive for.

On the banks of the river Ravi, at midnight on 31 December 1929, the tricolour flag of Indian independence was hosted. The first task that the Congress set itself in the new year was that of organizing all over the country was public meetings at which the Independence Pledge would be read out and collectively affirmed on 26 January.

Civil Disobedience Movement and Dandi March (1930)

The Lahore Session of Congress (1929) authorized the Working Committee to launch a programme of civil disobedience including non-payment of taxes.

Gandhi’s ultimatum to Lord Irwin, stating the minimum demands in the form of 11 points, had been ignored, and there was now only one way out: civil disobedience. Gandhi selected salt as his main tool of disobedience.

In every Indian household, salt was indispensable; yet people were forbidden from making salt even for domestic use, compelling them to buy it from shops at a high price. The state monopoly over salt was deeply unpopular. By making salt his target, Gandhiji hoped to mobilise a wider discontent against British rule.

Gandhi, along with a band of seventy-eight members of the Sabarmati Ashram started to march from Ahmedabad to the coast at Dandi. There he broke the salt laws by collecting salt from the beach.

On 6 April 1930, by picking up a handful of salt, Gandhi inaugurated the Civil Disobedience Movement – a movement that was to remain unsurpassed in the history of the Indian national movement for the country-wide mass participation it unleashed.

Quit India Movement (1942)

The Quit India Movement was launched at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British rule in India.

In this struggle, the common people of the country demonstrated unparalleled heroism and militancy.

Simla Conference (1945)

The Simla Conference of 1945 was a meeting between the Viceroy of India (Lord Wavell) and the major political leaders of British India at the Viceregal Lodge in Simla.

Wavell proposed a separate representation of Muslims within a united India. Talks, however, stalled on the issue of the selection of Muslim representatives. The All-India Muslim League claimed to be the sole representative of Indian Muslims. The Indian National Congress opposed this claim as the Congress had more Muslims in its support than the Muslim League. This scuttled the conference, and perhaps the last viable opportunity for a united, independent India.

On 14 June 1945 Lord Wavell announced a plan for a new Executive Council in which all members except the Viceroy and the Commander in Chief would be Indians. This executive council was to be a temporary measure until a new permanent constitution could be agreed upon and come into force.

Mountbatten Plan (1947)

The legislature representatives of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the Sikh community came to an agreement with Lord Mountbatten on what has come to be known as the 3 June Plan or Mountbatten Plan. This plan was the last plan for independence.

The plan announced by the Viceroy Mountbatten on 3 June 1947 included these principles:

The principle of the partition of British India was accepted by the British Government.

–              Successor governments would be given dominion status.

–              Autonomy and sovereignty to both countries.

–              The successor governments could make their own constitution

–              The Princely States were given the right to join either Pakistan or India, based on two major factors: Geographical contiguity and the people’s wishes.

The Mountbatten plan led to the enactment of the India Independence Act of 1947.

India Independence Act (1947)

The Indian Independence Act 1947 passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom divided British India into two new independent dominions; the Dominion of India (later to become the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later to become the Islamic Republic of Pakistan).

This Act received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947.

India and Pakistan became independent on August 15th, 1947.

India continues to celebrate August 15th as her Independence day, while Pakistan chose to celebrate August 14th as her Independence day as per their cabinet decisions.

                Source: Clearias.com