The Gandhian Era

Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 armed with satyagraha — truth-force, disciplined non-violent resistance. His Indian apprenticeship was fought on the soil: at Champaran (1917) he forced the indigo planters to face an inquiry — tinkathia's end; at Kheda (1918) he won revenue relief for peasants ruined by plague; at Ahmedabad (1918) he arbitrated the mill-workers' strike with a fast. In each, the method was the message: investigate, negotiate, resist — without hatred.

The post-war Raj answered hope with repression: the Rowlatt Act (1919) — 'no vakil, no appeal, no daleel' — allowed detention without trial; on 13 April 1919 General Dyer's troops fired 1,650 rounds into the unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, killing hundreds — the massacre that converted the Empire's remaining loyalists into its enemies. Tagore renounced his knighthood; Gandhi called off satyagraha only to launch it on an imperial scale.

Joining hands with the Khilafat movement defending the Ottoman Caliph — Gandhi's bid for Hindu-Muslim unity — the Congress launched Non-Cooperation (1920–22): surrender of titles, boycott of courts and councils, foreign cloth and government schools, and the spinning of khadi. The manoeuvre made the Congress a mass party of millions; when a mob burnt twenty-two policemen at Chauri Chaura (February 1922), Gandhi called off the movement — a decision debated ever since.

The Swarajists — C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru — carried the fight into the councils; the Simon Commission (1928), all-white, was met by the nationwide cry 'Simon Go Back', in a lathi-charge on which Lala Lajpat Rai received fatal blows. Then, at the Lahore session (December 1929), the Congress declared Purna Swaraj — complete independence — as its goal, hoisting the tricolour on the Ravi's bank, with 26 January 1930 to be Independence Day.

Gandhi opened the attack with a symbol: on 12 March 1930 he set out from Sabarmati with seventy-eight followers on the 240-mile march to Dandi, where on 6 April he broke the salt law by picking up a fistful of sea-salt — the spark for a nationwide Civil Disobedience in which lakhs courted arrest. It brought the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (1931), the Second Round Table Conference, and the Communal Award; Gandhi's fast against separate electorates for the Depressed Classes ended in the Poona Pact (1932) with B.R. Ambedkar — reserved seats within the joint electorate instead.