Nationalism in India

This is Chapter 2 of Section I, Events and Processes, in India and the Contemporary World – II. Chapter 1 showed nationalism in Europe building nation-states. In India, as in many colonies, NCERT argues, modern nationalism is intimately connected to the anti-colonial movement: people discovered their unity in the struggle with colonialism, and the sense of being oppressed was a shared bond. But each class and group felt colonialism differently, and their notions of freedom were not the same. The Congress under Mahatma Gandhi tried to forge them into one movement — and the unity did not come without conflict. Picking up the story in the 1920s (earlier nationalism is in Class 8), the chapter studies four things: the war, Khilafat and Non-Cooperation; the differing strands within it; the road to and the course of Civil Disobedience, with who took part and who held back; and the cultural processes — images, songs, folklore, flags, history — that created a sense of collective belonging.

• Links within this book: Chapter 1, The Rise of Nationalism in Europe (jess301) — NCERT asks you to compare Bharat Mata with Germania (Exercise 4) and to recall how nations are symbolised. Chapters 3–5 (global economy, industrialisation, print) explain the Depression, the business classes and the printed images behind this chapter.
• Live pages to pair with: lehs303 (Class 12, Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement) — the same events in more depth, with police reports and letters; lehs301 (colonialism and the countryside — revenue, peasants and tribals); lehs302 (1857, which NCERT compares with the 1920s); lehs304 (framing the Constitution — the separate-electorates debate continues there); keec101 (the colonial economy behind swadeshi and the salt tax); lesy208 (social movements — peasant, tribal, dalit and women’s movements); kehs106–107 (indigenous peoples and paths to modernisation, for comparison).
• UPSC: Modern Indian history is one of the most tested areas of GS1. Prelims returns again and again to Rowlatt and Jallianwala, Khilafat and Non-Cooperation, Chauri Chaura, the Swaraj Party, Simon, Lahore 1929, Dandi, the Round Tables, the Gandhi–Irwin and Poona Pacts, and Quit India. Mains asks about ‘many voices’ in the Gandhian phase (2019), ideological strands and the widening social base since the 1920s (2020), women (2013, 2016), Gandhi and Ambedkar (2015) and the masses the Gandhian movements mobilised (2026).

• Nationalism in colonies = the anti-colonial movement: shared oppression united groups, but each felt it differently. Gandhi’s Congress tried to forge them into one movement — not without conflict.
• War (1914–18): defence spending, prices doubled (1913–18), forced recruitment, famine and influenza (12–13 million dead). Satyagraha: truth and non-violence; Champaran (1917), Ahmedabad and Kheda (1918).
• 1919: Rowlatt Act → hartal (6 April) → Jallianwala Bagh (13 April) → repression. Khilafat + swaraj → Non-Cooperation (Calcutta Sept, Nagpur Dec 1920): titles, schools, courts, councils, foreign cloth.
• Many strands: towns (cloth imports Rs 102 → 57 crore), Awadh (Baba Ramchandra), Gudem hills (Alluri Sitarama Raju), Assam tea workers. Withdrawn after Chauri Chaura (Feb 1922).
• Towards 1930: Swaraj Party; Depression; Simon (no Indian member); Lahore Purna Swaraj (Dec 1929). Salt March (78 volunteers, 24 days) → Civil Disobedience — breaking laws; Gandhi–Irwin Pact (1931); Poona Pact (1932).
• Belonging: Bharat Mata (Bankim; Abanindranath, 1905), folklore, flags (1906, 1921), nationalist history — with Hindu imagery a limit. Quit India (1942). ‘A nation with many voices.’

The First World War created a new economic and political situation. Defence expenditure soared, financed by war loans and higher taxes — customs duties were raised and income tax introduced. Prices doubled between 1913 and 1918, bringing extreme hardship. Villages were called upon to supply soldiers, and forced recruitment caused widespread anger. Crops failed in 1918–19 and 1920–21, causing acute food shortages, and an influenza epidemic followed; according to the Census of 1921, 12 to 13 million people died of famine and epidemic. People hoped their hardships would end after the war. They did not.

Gandhi returned to India in January 1915 from South Africa, where he had fought the racist regime with a novel method of mass agitation, satyagraha. It stressed the power of truth and the need to search for it: if the cause was true and the struggle against injustice, physical force was unnecessary. A satyagrahi, without vengeance or aggression, could win through non-violence by appealing to the conscience of the oppressor, who had to be persuaded, not forced, to see the truth. Gandhi believed this dharma of non-violence could unite all Indians. In India he organised satyagrahas at Champaran in Bihar (1917) against the oppressive plantation system; among the Ahmedabad cotton mill workers (1918); and for the peasants of Kheda in Gujarat (1918), who, hit by crop failure and plague, could not pay revenue and demanded that its collection be relaxed.

Emboldened, Gandhi in 1919 called a nationwide satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act. NCERT says it had been hurriedly passed through the Imperial Legislative Council despite the united opposition of its Indian members; it gave the government enormous powers to repress political activity and allowed detention of political prisoners without trial for two years. Gandhi wanted non-violent civil disobedience against such unjust laws, beginning with a hartal on 6 April. Rallies were held, railway workshop workers struck and shops shut. Alarmed — and fearing that railways and telegraphs would be disrupted — the administration clamped down: local leaders were picked up in Amritsar and Gandhi was barred from entering Delhi. On 10 April police in Amritsar fired on a peaceful procession, provoking attacks on banks, post offices and railway stations; martial law was imposed and General Dyer took command.

On 13 April came the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. A large crowd had gathered in the enclosed ground — some to protest against the new repressive measures, others for the annual Baisakhi fair; many villagers from outside the city did not know of the restrictions in force. Dyer blocked the exits and opened fire, killing hundreds; his object, he declared later, was to ‘produce a moral effect’ — terror and awe in the minds of satyagrahis. As the news spread, crowds took to the streets of north Indian towns; there were strikes, clashes and attacks on government buildings. The government responded with humiliation and terror: satyagrahis were made to rub their noses on the ground, crawl on the streets and salute every sahib; people were flogged, and villages around Gujranwala (now in Pakistan) were bombed. Seeing violence spread, Gandhi called off the movement.

The Rowlatt satyagraha had been widespread but mostly urban. Gandhi now wanted a broader movement — impossible, he felt, without bringing Hindus and Muslims closer. One way was the Khilafat issue. The war had ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey, and a harsh peace was rumoured for the Ottoman emperor, the Khalifa, spiritual head of the Islamic world. To defend the Khalifa’s temporal powers a Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay (NCERT: March 1919). Younger Muslim leaders such as the brothers Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali discussed united mass action with Gandhi, who saw a chance to bring Muslims under the umbrella of a unified national movement. At the Calcutta session of the Congress in September 1920 he convinced other leaders to start non-cooperation in support of Khilafat as well as swaraj.

In Hind Swaraj (1909) Gandhi declared that British rule was established in India with the cooperation of Indians and survived only because of it; if Indians refused to cooperate, British rule would collapse within a year and swaraj would come. He proposed that non-cooperation unfold in stages: first, the surrender of titles awarded by the government and a boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and legislative councils, schools and foreign goods; then, if the government used repression, a full civil disobedience campaign. Through the summer of 1920 Gandhi and Shaukat Ali toured extensively to win support.

Many in the Congress had doubts. They were reluctant to boycott the council elections of November 1920 and feared the movement might lead to popular violence. Between September and December there was an intense tussle between supporters and opponents; finally, at the Nagpur session in December 1920, a compromise was worked out and the Non-Cooperation programme was adopted.

The Non-Cooperation–Khilafat movement (NCERT: began January 1921) drew many social groups, each with its own aspiration; all answered the call of swaraj, but the term meant different things to different people. In the towns it began with the middle classes: thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, lawyers gave up practice. Council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party — the party of the non-Brahmans — saw entering the council as a way to gain power usually available only to Brahmans. The economic effects were more dramatic: foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed and foreign cloth burnt in bonfires; the import of foreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922, from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore; merchants refused to trade in or finance foreign goods; Indian mills and handlooms produced more. But the town movement slowed: khadi was often dearer than mill cloth, so the poor could not boycott for long; and alternative Indian institutions were slow to come up, so students and teachers trickled back to government schools and lawyers to the courts.

In Awadh peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra, a sanyasi who had been to Fiji as an indentured labourer. They fought talukdars and landlords who demanded exorbitant rents and cesses and forced begar; tenants had no security of tenure and were regularly evicted. They demanded lower revenue, an end to begar and a social boycott of oppressive landlords — panchayats organised nai–dhobi bandhs, denying them barbers and washermen. In June 1920 Jawaharlal Nehru began touring Awadh villages; by October the Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up, headed by Nehru, Baba Ramchandra and others, with over 300 branches within a month. The Congress tried to integrate this struggle, but in 1921 it took forms the leadership disliked: talukdars’ and merchants’ houses were attacked, bazaars looted and grain hoards seized; local leaders told peasants that Gandhi had declared no taxes were to be paid and land was to be redistributed. The Mahatma’s name was invoked to sanction all action.

Tribal peasants read swaraj in yet another way. In the Gudem Hills of present-day Andhra Pradesh a militant guerrilla movement spread in the early 1920s — a form of struggle the Congress could not approve. The colonial government had closed large forest areas, stopping people grazing cattle or collecting fuelwood and fruit; when it began forcing them to give begar for road building, the hill people revolted. Their leader, Alluri Sitaram Raju, claimed special powers — astrology, healing, surviving bullets — and was proclaimed an incarnation of God. He praised Gandhi, said he was inspired by Non-Cooperation and urged people to wear khadi and give up drink, yet asserted that India could be liberated only by force. The rebels attacked police stations, tried to kill British officials and waged guerrilla war; Raju was captured and killed in 1924 and became a folk hero.

In the plantations, freedom for Assam tea workers meant the right to move freely in and out of the gardens and to keep links with their home villages. NCERT says that under the Inland Emigration Act of 1859 they could not leave without permission, which was rarely given. Hearing of Non-Cooperation, thousands defied the authorities and headed home, believing Gandhi Raj was coming and everyone would get land in their villages. Stranded by a railway and steamer strike, they were caught by the police and brutally beaten. NCERT’s summing-up: these visions were not defined by the Congress programme — they imagined swaraj as an end to all suffering — yet in chanting Gandhi’s name and demanding ‘Swatantra Bharat’ they were relating emotionally to an all-India agitation beyond their locality.

In February 1922 Gandhi withdrew Non-Cooperation, feeling that it was turning violent and that satyagrahis needed proper training. Within the Congress, some leaders, tired of mass struggle, wanted to contest elections to the provincial councils set up by the Government of India Act of 1919 — to oppose British policy inside, argue for reform and show that the councils were not truly democratic. C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party within the Congress for a return to council politics. Younger leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose pressed for radical mass agitation and full independence.

Two factors then shaped politics in the late 1920s. The first was the worldwide economic depression: agricultural prices began to fall from 1926 and collapsed after 1930; as demand and exports fell, peasants struggled to sell harvests and pay revenue — by 1930 the countryside was in turmoil. The second: the new Tory government in Britain set up a Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon to review the constitutional system and suggest changes — with not a single Indian member. When it arrived in 1928 it was met with ‘Go back Simon’; all parties, including the Congress and the Muslim League, joined the demonstrations. To win them over, Viceroy Lord Irwin announced in October 1929 a vague offer of ‘dominion status’ in an unspecified future and a Round Table Conference. This did not satisfy the Congress: the radicals led by Nehru and Bose grew more assertive and the liberals and moderates lost influence. In December 1929, under Jawaharlal Nehru’s presidency, the Lahore Congress formalised the demand for Purna Swaraj, and declared that 26 January 1930 would be celebrated as Independence Day, with a pledge. The celebrations attracted little attention — so Gandhi had to relate this abstract freedom to concrete, everyday issues.

Gandhi found in salt a powerful symbol to unite the nation. On 31 January 1930 he sent Viceroy Irwin eleven demands: some of general interest, others specific to different classes, from industrialists to peasants — so that all could identify with the campaign. The most stirring was to abolish the salt tax: salt was consumed by rich and poor alike, one of the most essential foods, and the tax and the government’s monopoly on production, Gandhi declared, showed the most oppressive face of British rule. The letter was in effect an ultimatum: if the demands were not met by 11 March, civil disobedience would begin. Irwin would not negotiate. So Gandhi set out with 78 trusted volunteers on a march of over 240 miles from his ashram at Sabarmati to the coastal town of Dandi — 24 days, about 10 miles a day. Thousands came to hear him at each stop. On 6 April he ceremonially broke the law at Dandi by making salt.

This began the Civil Disobedience Movement. Unlike 1921–22, people were now asked not only to refuse cooperation but to break colonial laws. Thousands broke the salt law and demonstrated at government salt factories; foreign cloth was boycotted and liquor shops picketed; peasants refused to pay revenue and chaukidari taxes; village officials resigned; forest people entered Reserved Forests to collect wood and graze cattle. The government began arresting Congress leaders one by one, leading to violent clashes. When Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a devout disciple of Gandhi, was arrested in April 1930, crowds in Peshawar faced armoured cars and police firing; many were killed. When Gandhi himself was arrested a month later, industrial workers in Sholapur attacked police posts, municipal buildings, courts and railway stations — symbols of British rule. Repression followed: peaceful satyagrahis, women and children were beaten and, NCERT says, about 100,000 were arrested.

Gandhi again called off the movement and signed a pact with Irwin on 5 March 1931: he agreed to attend a Round Table Conference in London (the Congress had boycotted the first) and the government agreed to release political prisoners. The Second Round Table Conference broke down and Gandhi returned disappointed to find a new cycle of repression: Ghaffar Khan and Nehru in jail, the Congress declared illegal, meetings, demonstrations and boycotts banned. With great apprehension he relaunched Civil Disobedience; it continued for over a year but by 1934 had lost momentum.

In the countryside, rich peasant communities — the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Uttar Pradesh — were active. As producers of commercial crops they were hard hit by the depression; their cash income vanished, they could not pay revenue and the government refused to reduce it. For them swaraj was a struggle against high revenue; they organised their communities, sometimes forcing reluctant members to join boycotts. But they were deeply disappointed when the movement was called off in 1931 without revenue being revised, and many refused to join in 1932. Poorer peasants, many of them small tenants, wanted unpaid rent remitted; they joined radical movements often led by Socialists and Communists. Fearing to upset rich peasants and landlords, the Congress would not support ‘no rent’ campaigns in most places, so its relations with the poor peasantry remained uncertain.

The business classes had made huge profits in the war (see Chapter 4) and resented colonial policies restricting business; they wanted protection against imports and a rupee–sterling exchange ratio that would discourage imports. They formed the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress (1920) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI, 1927); led by Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G.D. Birla, they attacked colonial economic control and at first supported Civil Disobedience with money and by refusing to trade in imports. Swaraj meant to them freedom from colonial restrictions on business. After the failed Round Table Conference they cooled, fearing militancy, prolonged disruption and the growing socialism of younger Congressmen. Industrial workers did not join in large numbers except in the Nagpur region; as industrialists drew closer to the Congress, workers stayed aloof. Some adopted Gandhian ideas such as the boycott of foreign goods in their own fights over wages and conditions — railway workers struck in 1930 and dockworkers in 1932, and thousands of Chotanagpur tin-mine workers wore Gandhi caps at rallies — but the Congress kept workers’ demands out of its programme, fearing to alienate industrialists and divide the anti-imperial front.

Women took part on a large scale. Thousands came out to hear Gandhi on the salt march; they marched, made salt, picketed cloth and liquor shops, and many went to jail — in towns mostly from high-caste families, in villages from rich peasant households. Many came to see service to the nation as a sacred duty. Yet NCERT notes that this public role did not radically change how women’s position was imagined: Gandhi held that women’s duty was to look after home and hearth, and for a long time the Congress was reluctant to let women hold positions of authority, valuing their symbolic presence.

The limits of Civil Disobedience. The ‘untouchables’, who from around the 1930s called themselves dalit (oppressed), were not moved by an abstract swaraj. The Congress had long ignored them for fear of offending the sanatanis. Gandhi declared that swaraj would not come for a hundred years unless untouchability was eliminated; he called them harijan (children of God), organised satyagraha for temple entry and access to wells, tanks, roads and schools, cleaned toilets himself to dignify the sweepers’ work, and urged upper castes to give up ‘the sin of untouchability’. But many dalit leaders sought a political solution: reserved seats in education and a separate electorate choosing dalit members of legislative councils — political empowerment, they believed, would resolve their social disabilities. Dalit participation was therefore limited, especially in Maharashtra and Nagpur, where their organisation was strong. Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who organised dalits into the Depressed Classes Association in 1930 (NCERT), clashed with Gandhi at the Second Round Table Conference by demanding separate electorates. When the British government conceded the demand, Gandhi began a fast unto death, believing separate electorates would slow dalits’ integration into society. Ambedkar ultimately accepted Gandhi’s position: the Poona Pact of September 1932 gave the Depressed Classes (later the Scheduled Castes) reserved seats in provincial and central legislative councils, to be filled by the general electorate. The dalit movement nonetheless remained apprehensive of the Congress-led movement.

Some Muslim political organisations were also lukewarm. After Non-Cooperation–Khilafat declined, NCERT says, a large section of Muslims felt alienated from the Congress, which from the mid-1920s came to be more visibly associated with openly Hindu religious nationalist groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha. As relations worsened, each community held religious processions with militant fervour, provoking clashes and riots in many cities; every riot deepened the distance. The Congress and the Muslim League tried to renegotiate an alliance, and in 1927 unity seemed possible. The key differences were over representation in future assemblies: Muhammad Ali Jinnah was willing to give up separate electorates if Muslims were assured reserved seats in the Central Assembly and representation in proportion to population in the Muslim-majority provinces (Bengal and Punjab). Hope of a settlement at the All Parties Conference of 1928 vanished when M.R. Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha strongly opposed compromise. So when Civil Disobedience began there was suspicion and distrust; many Muslim leaders and intellectuals voiced concern that minority culture and identity would be submerged under a Hindu majority.

Nationalism spreads when people come to believe they are part of the same nation. That sense of collective belonging came partly from the experience of united struggle, and partly from cultural processes — history and fiction, folklore and songs, popular prints and symbols. As in Europe (Chapter 1), the nation was symbolised in a figure: in the twentieth century India came to be visually associated with Bharat Mata. The image was first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, who in the 1870s wrote ‘Vande Mataram’ as a hymn to the motherland; it was later included in his novel Anandamath and widely sung in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Moved by that movement, Abanindranath Tagore painted his famous Bharat Mata, an ascetic figure — calm, composed, divine and spiritual. In later years the image took many forms in popular prints and paintings, and devotion to this mother figure came to be seen as evidence of one’s nationalism.

Nationalism also grew through a movement to revive folklore. In late-nineteenth-century India nationalists recorded folk tales sung by bards and toured villages for songs and legends, believing they gave a true picture of a traditional culture damaged by outside forces, and that preserving it would restore pride. In Bengal Rabindranath Tagore collected ballads, nursery rhymes and myths and led the folk revival; in Madras Natesa Sastri published a four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales, The Folklore of Southern India, holding that folklore was national literature, the most trustworthy expression of people’s real thoughts. Leaders grew aware of icons and symbols: in the Swadeshi movement a tricolour (red, green and yellow) was designed, with eight lotuses for the eight provinces of British India and a crescent moon for Hindus and Muslims; by 1921 the Swaraj flag — red, green and white with a spinning wheel at the centre, for the Gandhian ideal of self-help — was in use, and carrying it in marches became a symbol of defiance.

Another means was the reinterpretation of history. By the late nineteenth century many Indians felt that history had to be thought about differently to instil national pride. Against British views of Indians as backward and incapable of self-government, they looked to the past for India’s great achievements — art and architecture, science and mathematics, religion and culture, law and philosophy, crafts and trade — followed, in their account, by a history of decline under colonisation; these histories urged readers to take pride in the past and change the present. NCERT adds a caution: these efforts were not without problems. When the past glorified was Hindu and the images drawn from Hindu iconography, people of other communities felt left out.

NCERT concludes that growing anger against colonial rule brought various groups and classes into a common struggle in the first half of the twentieth century. The Congress under Gandhi tried to channel grievances into organised movements and forge national unity; but groups joined with varied aspirations, and freedom meant different things to different people. The Congress constantly tried to resolve differences so that one group’s demands did not alienate another — which is precisely why unity often broke down: high points of activity and unity were followed by phases of disunity and inner conflict. What was emerging was ‘a nation with many voices wanting freedom from colonial rule’.

A box adds Quit India. The failure of the Cripps Mission and the effects of the Second World War caused widespread discontent. The Congress Working Committee at Wardha passed the ‘Quit India’ resolution on 14 July 1942, demanding the immediate transfer of power; on 8 August 1942 in Bombay the All India Congress Committee endorsed it, calling for a non-violent mass struggle on the widest scale, and Gandhi gave his ‘Do or Die’ speech. Hartals, demonstrations and processions with national songs almost brought the state machinery to a standstill in large parts of the country; students, workers and peasants joined, with leaders such as Jayaprakash Narayan, Aruna Asaf Ali and Ram Manohar Lohia, and women such as Matangini Hazra (Bengal), Kanaklata Barua (Assam) and Rama Devi (Odisha). The British responded with force, yet it took more than a year to suppress the movement.

The chapter’s side questions in order. Short outlines follow.

‘Write in brief’ (four questions, the first with four parts) and ‘Discuss’ (four questions), page 50.

Numbers

One-liners

• In colonies, nationalism grew out of the anti-colonial struggle.
• Satyagraha: truth and non-violence that appeal to the oppressor’s conscience.
• The Rowlatt Act allowed detention of political prisoners without trial.
• Jallianwala Bagh (13 April 1919): Dyer fired on a crowd in an enclosed ground.
• Gandhi joined the Khilafat cause to swaraj to unite Hindus and Muslims.
• Hind Swaraj: British rule survived only through Indian cooperation.
• Non-Cooperation was adopted at Calcutta and Nagpur in 1920.
• Swaraj meant different things to townspeople, peasants, tribals and workers.
• Gandhi withdrew Non-Cooperation after Chauri Chaura in February 1922.
• The Simon Commission was boycotted because it had no Indian member.
• The Lahore Congress of 1929 demanded Purna Swaraj.
• Civil Disobedience asked people to break colonial laws, not only to refuse cooperation.
• Salt united rich and poor and could be made by anyone.
• The Poona Pact gave dalits reserved seats elected by the general electorate.
• Bharat Mata, folklore, flags and history built a sense of collective belonging.
• NCERT’s conclusion: a nation with many voices wanting freedom.

Traps to avoid

• Non-Cooperation was adopted in 1920 (formal launch 1 August; Calcutta, Nagpur); NCERT’s dates box says ‘January 1921’ — the mass phase.
• Chauri Chaura ended Non-Cooperation (1922), not Civil Disobedience; Civil Disobedience was suspended in 1931, resumed in 1932 and faded by 1934.
• Gandhi broke the salt law at Dandi on 6 April 1930 by picking up natural salt; the march began from Sabarmati on 12 March.
• The Congress boycotted the First Round Table Conference and attended only the Second (September–December 1931); Ambedkar attended all three.
• The Poona Pact was between Gandhi, Ambedkar and caste-Hindu leaders — not with the British; it replaced separate electorates with reserved seats in joint electorates.
• Oudh Kisan Sabha (October 1920; Nehru, Baba Ramchandra) is not the UP Kisan Sabha (February 1918; Gauri Shankar Misra, Indra Narain Dwivedi, Malaviya).
• Bardoli (1928, Patel) was against higher land revenue; the Awadh movement was against talukdars’ rents.
• The Swaraj Party (C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru) sought council entry within the Congress; Nehru and Bose wanted full independence.
• Lahore 1929 was presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, not Motilal.
• ‘Vande Mataram’ is Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s (1870s; Anandamath); Abanindranath painted Bharat Mata (1905).
• The Swaraj flag (1921) was designed by Pingali Venkayya at Gandhi’s suggestion: red, green, white with a charkha.
• NCERT’s ‘Inland Emigration Act of 1859’ is doubtful; say ‘penal labour laws bound Assam tea workers’.
• Fig. 10’s ‘Sevagram, 1935’ is doubtful — Gandhi settled at Segaon (Sevagram) in 1936.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• 1915–1922: South Africa (1983); Champaran (1979, 2000, 2007); Kheda (2011); sequences (1983, 1993); UP Kisan Sabha versus Oudh Kisan Sabha (2005); Rowlatt (1980, 1985, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015); Jallianwala (1979); Khilafat (1979, 1987, 1993, 1998); Non-Cooperation and Chauri Chaura (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1996, 1998, 2025 ×2).
• 1922–1934: Swaraj Party (1979 ×2, 1984, 1986 ×2, 1990); Simon (1984, 1998, 2013); Bardoli and Eka (2003, 2026); Lahore and Purna Swaraj (1981, 1982, 2005, 2006, 2012); Dandi and Civil Disobedience (1979, 1982, 1985, 1995, 2009); workers in the early 1930s (2002); Gandhi–Irwin and the RTCs (1990, 2020); Communal Award, Ambedkar and the Poona Pact (1983, 1984, 1997, 2005, 2025). Culture: Vande Mataram (1981), Abanindranath (1999). Quit India box: 1981, 1983, 2009, 2011, 2013.
• Answer-key notes (keep all keys): 1980 — the stem wrongly says ‘Civil Disobedience… 1921’; answer Chauri Chaura. 1985 — ‘first civil disobedience… after the Rowlatt Act’ is debatable wording but matches NCERT’s ‘non-violent civil disobedience against such unjust laws’. 1987 (Khilafat ‘restoration of the Khalifa as head of Indian Muslims’) — loose wording; the intended answer is the Khilafat cause. 1993 sequence — Ahmedabad (Feb–Mar 1918) and Kheda (Mar–Jun 1918) overlap; the key (Champaran, Kheda, Ahmedabad, NCM) is the only option with Champaran first and NCM last — disputed but keep. 1997 — stem misdescribes the Poona Pact as signed with the British; answer (joint electorate with reservation) right. 2002 (A–R on labour) — the key (R explains A) reflects the Communist unions’ stand; NCERT gives the Congress-side reason; both are true parts of the story — disputed. 2011 (Quit India ‘not non-violent’) — keyed (a), since the movement turned violent after the arrests, though the resolution called for non-violence and option (d) on labour is also doubtful — disputed. 2015 (Rowlatt) — the Sedition Committee and Home Rule League details are Beyond NCERT.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• ‘Many voices’ and social base (2019; 2020 ‘ideological strands… expanded its social base’; 2026 ‘masses mobilised’): use NCERT’s strands (towns, Awadh, Gudem, Assam), the Civil Disobedience groups (rich and poor peasants, business, workers, women, dalits, Muslims), plus Swarajists, radicals, HSRA, Socialists and Communists — and the limits (no-rent campaigns, workers’ demands, communal distance). Bring in the historians’ debate with attributions.
• Comparisons and themes: Gandhi and Ambedkar (2015) — both opposed untouchability; method differed (change of heart versus political safeguards); the Poona Pact both sides. Women (2013, 2016) — salt, picketing, jail, Quit India leaders; NCERT’s caution on symbolic presence. Constructive programmes (2021) — khadi, national schools, temperance, untouchability, Hindu–Muslim unity. World developments (2014) — the war’s economic effects, Ottoman defeat and Khilafat, the Depression. Gandhi’s difference (2015) and Quit India (2024) — see lehs303 for depth.

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