The Making of the National Movement: 1870s–1947

This is Chapter 8, the last chapter of Our Pasts – III. The earlier chapters showed conquest (hess202), new land revenue (hess203), tribal life (hess204), the revolt of 1857 (hess205), colonial education (hess206) and the debates on women and caste (hess207). This chapter asks how those many discontents became one national movement: from the associations of the 1870s and the Indian National Congress (1885), through the Moderates and Radicals, the Swadeshi movement, the Gandhian mass movements, the revolutionaries, Quit India and the INA, to independence and Partition in 1947. NCERT keeps every story short — this page adds the dates and names UPSC asks for, marked ‘Beyond NCERT’.

• Links within this book: hess205 (1857 and the Crown’s promises), hess206 (national education and Gandhi’s and Tagore’s ideas), hess207 (Phule’s warning about ‘unity’ without equality, Periyar leaving the Congress). In Social and Political Life – III, hess301 shows the Constitution the movement led to.
• Senior pages to pair with: jess302 (Class 10, Nationalism in India — Rowlatt, Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience in detail), lehs303 (Class 12, Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement), lehs304 (Class 12, Framing the Constitution — the 1935 Act, the Cabinet Mission), leps201 (Partition’s aftermath), keec101 (the drain and the colonial economy), jess305 (the press laws). This page is the one-chapter overview of 1870–1947 they build on; it does not repeat their detail.
• UPSC: the freedom struggle is the single most tested part of Modern History. Prelims asks for founders and places (Congress 1885: 1983, 1992, 2004, 2008; Muslim League: 1992), Moderates and Extremists (1982, 1989, 1992, 2015, 2016), Swadeshi (1979, 1988, 2010, 2016, 2019), Rowlatt to Chauri Chaura (1980, 1983, 1998, 2007, 2012), Purna Swaraj and Dandi (1981, 1995, 2006, 2009, 2014), the 1939 resignations (1991, 2008, 2012), Quit India and the INA (1981, 1983, 1990, 2000, 2009, 2011) and the road to Partition (1983, 1996, 1999, 2002). Mains GS1 has asked about the Moderates (2017, 2021), Curzon (2020), women (2013, 2016), Gandhi and Bose (2016), the 1920s strands (2020), the Gandhian phase (2019, 2026) and Quit India (2024).

• 1870s–1885: associations speak for ‘all the people’; Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act (1878), Ilbert Bill (1883) → Congress founded by 72 delegates, Bombay, December 1885.
• Moderates (to 1905): representative councils, civil service exams in India, cut the drain; Radicals (Pal, Tilak, Lajpat Rai): self-reliance, swaraj — ‘Freedom is my birthright’.
• 1905 partition of Bengal → Swadeshi; 1906 Muslim League (Dacca); 1907 split; 1909 separate electorates; 1915 reunion; 1916 Lucknow Pact.
• Mass phase: war and 1917 → Gandhi: Rowlatt Satyagraha and Jallianwala (1919), Khilafat–Non-Cooperation (1920–22), Chauri Chaura (Feb 1922, 22 policemen killed).
• 1922–39: Swarajists v. Gandhians; RSS and CPI; HSRA (1928); Simon boycott; Purna Swaraj (1929; 26 Jan 1930); Dandi (1930); 1935 Act; Congress in 7 of 11 provinces (1937); resignations (1939).
• 1940–47: League’s ‘Independent States’ (1940); Quit India (1942: ‘do or die’); Bose and the INA; 1946 elections, Cabinet Mission, Direct Action Day → Partition.

These developments, NCERT says, led people to ask a crucial question: what is this country of India and for whom is it meant? The answer that slowly emerged was that India was its people — all of them, irrespective of class, colour, caste, creed, language or gender — and that its resources and systems were meant for all of them. With this came the awareness that the British controlled India’s resources and people’s lives, and that until this control ended India could not be for Indians.

This consciousness was clearly stated by political associations formed after 1850, especially in the 1870s and 1880s, most of them led by English-educated professionals such as lawyers: the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the Indian Association, the Madras Mahajan Sabha, the Bombay Presidency Association and, above all, the Indian National Congress. Though most worked in one region, they stated their goals as those of all India’s people, not of one region, community or class, and worked with the idea that the people should be sovereign — a modern consciousness and, NCERT says, a key feature of nationalism.

Dissatisfaction with British rule intensified in the 1870s and 1880s. The Arms Act (1878) barred Indians from possessing arms. The Vernacular Press Act (1878) tried to silence critics: the government could confiscate a newspaper’s assets, including its printing press, if it published anything found ‘objectionable’. In 1883 the Ilbert Bill provided for the trial of British or European persons by Indians and sought equality between British and Indian judges; when white opposition forced the government to back down, Indians were enraged and the episode exposed the racial attitudes of the British. The need for an all-India organisation of educated Indians had been felt since 1880; the Ilbert Bill controversy deepened it. The Indian National Congress was established when 72 delegates from all over the country met at Bombay in December 1885. Its early leaders — Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji, W.C. Bonnerji, Surendranath Banerji, Romesh Chandra Dutt, S. Subramania Iyer and others — came largely from Bombay and Calcutta. Naoroji, a businessman and publicist settled in London and for a time a member of the British Parliament, guided the younger nationalists; a retired British official, A.O. Hume, helped bring Indians from different regions together.

It has often been said that the Congress in its first twenty years was ‘moderate’ in objectives and methods. It demanded a greater voice for Indians in government: more representative and powerful Legislative Councils, councils in provinces that had none, Indians in high positions, and civil service examinations held in India as well as London. Indianisation was part of a movement against racism, since the important jobs were monopolised by white officials who assumed Indians could not be given responsibility; and since British officers sent much of their large salaries home, Indianisation would also reduce the drain of wealth to England. Other demands: separation of the judiciary from the executive, repeal of the Arms Act, freedom of speech and expression.

The early Congress also raised economic issues. It declared that British rule had caused poverty and famines: higher land revenue had impoverished peasants and zamindars, and grain exports to Europe had created food shortages. It demanded lower revenue, a cut in military expenditure and more funds for irrigation, and passed resolutions on the salt tax, the treatment of Indian labourers abroad and the sufferings of forest dwellers under an interfering forest administration — so, NCERT concludes, this body of the educated elite did not speak only for professionals, zamindars or industrialists. The Moderates published newspapers and articles showing how British rule was ruining the country economically, criticised it in speeches, and sent representatives around the country to mobilise opinion. They felt the British respected freedom and justice and would accept just demands once Indians made them known.

By the 1890s many Indians questioned the Congress’s political style. In Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab, Bepin Chandra Pal, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai explored more radical objectives and methods. They criticised the Moderates’ ‘politics of prayers’, stressed self-reliance and constructive work, and argued that people must rely on their own strength, not on the government’s ‘good’ intentions, and fight for swaraj. Tilak raised the slogan ‘Freedom is my birthright and I shall have it!’

In 1905 Viceroy Curzon partitioned Bengal, then British India’s biggest province, including Bihar and parts of Orissa. The British cited ‘administrative convenience’ — but, NCERT asks, whose convenience? It was tied to British officials’ and businessmen’s interests; and instead of removing the non-Bengali areas, the government separated East Bengal and merged it with Assam. Perhaps, NCERT suggests, the main motives were to curtail the influence of Bengali politicians and to split the Bengali people. The partition infuriated people all over India. All sections of the Congress — Moderates and Radicals — opposed it; large meetings and demonstrations and novel methods of mass protest followed. This was the Swadeshi movement, strongest in Bengal but echoed elsewhere — in deltaic Andhra it was called the Vandemataram Movement. It promoted self-help, swadeshi enterprise, national education and Indian languages; the Radicals called for mass mobilisation and boycott of British institutions and goods; and some individuals began to suggest that ‘revolutionary violence’ was needed.

Other developments followed. A group of Muslim landlords and nawabs formed the All India Muslim League at Dacca in 1906. The League supported the partition of Bengal and wanted separate electorates for Muslims, conceded by the government in 1909: some council seats were now reserved for Muslims elected by Muslim voters — which, NCERT says, tempted politicians to build a following by distributing favours to their own religious groups. Meanwhile the Congress split in 1907: the Moderates opposed boycott, feeling it involved force; after the split they dominated the Congress, with Tilak’s followers outside. The two groups reunited in December 1915, and in 1916 the Congress and the League signed the historic Lucknow Pact, agreeing to work together for representative government.

After 1919 the struggle gradually became a mass movement, involving peasants, tribals, students and women in large numbers and occasionally factory workers; certain business groups too began to support the Congress in the 1920s. Why? The First World War changed India’s economy and politics. Defence spending rose hugely; the government raised taxes on incomes and business profits; war demand pushed prices up sharply, hurting ordinary people. Business groups, though, made fabulous profits: the war created demand for industrial goods (jute bags, cloth, rails) and cut imports, so Indian industry expanded and businessmen demanded more opportunities. The British expanded their army, pressing villages to supply soldiers for an alien cause; many who served abroad came back understanding how imperial powers exploited Asia and Africa, and wanting to oppose colonial rule. And in 1917 the Russian Revolution spread news of peasants’ and workers’ struggles and ideas of socialism, inspiring Indian nationalists.

In these circumstances Mahatma Gandhi emerged as a mass leader. He arrived in India from South Africa in 1915, already respected internationally for leading Indians there in non-violent marches against racist restrictions; those campaigns had brought him into contact with Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and Christians, Gujaratis, Tamils and north Indians, merchants, lawyers and workers. He spent his first year travelling to understand the people and the situation. His earliest interventions were local movements in Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad, where he came into contact with Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel; in Ahmedabad he led a successful millworkers’ strike in 1918.

In 1919 Gandhi called for a satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act, which curbed fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and strengthened police powers. Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and others called the Act ‘devilish’ and tyrannical. Gandhi asked Indians to observe 6 April 1919 as a day of non-violent opposition — of ‘humiliation and prayer’ and hartal — and Satyagraha Sabhas were set up. The Rowlatt Satyagraha became the first all-India struggle against the British government, though largely restricted to cities. In April 1919 the government used brutal measures against demonstrations and hartals; the Jallianwala Bagh atrocities, inflicted by General Dyer in Amritsar on Baisakhi day (13 April), were part of this repression. Rabindranath Tagore expressed the country’s pain and anger by renouncing his knighthood. Participants tried to keep Hindus and Muslims united, as Gandhi always wished: he saw India as a land of all who lived in it.

The Khilafat issue was one such shared cause. In 1920 the British imposed a harsh treaty on the Turkish Sultan or Khalifa; Indian Muslims wanted the Khalifa to keep control of Muslim sacred places in the former Ottoman Empire. The Khilafat leaders, Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, wanted a full-fledged Non-Cooperation Movement; Gandhi supported them and urged the Congress to campaign against the ‘Punjab wrongs’ (Jallianwala), the Khilafat wrong, and for swaraj. The movement gained momentum through 1921–22: thousands of students left government schools and colleges; lawyers such as Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, C. Rajagopalachari and Asaf Ali gave up their practices; British titles were surrendered, legislatures boycotted, and foreign cloth burnt in public bonfires — its imports fell drastically between 1920 and 1922. Large parts of the country, NCERT says, were on the brink of a formidable revolt.

People’s initiatives. Many people resisted non-violently; others interpreted Gandhi’s call in their own way, sometimes not in line with his ideas — but either way they linked the movement to local grievances. In Kheda, Patidar peasants campaigned against high land revenue; in coastal Andhra and interior Tamil Nadu, liquor shops were picketed; in Guntur, tribals and poor peasants staged ‘forest satyagrahas’, sending cattle into forests without paying grazing fees, expecting Gandhi to reduce taxes and abolish forest rules — many forest villages proclaimed swaraj, believing ‘Gandhi Raj’ was coming. In Sind, Muslim traders and peasants were enthusiastic about the Khilafat call; in Bengal the Khilafat–Non-Cooperation alliance gave enormous communal unity and strength. In Punjab, the Akali agitation to remove corrupt mahants, backed by the British, from gurdwaras became closely identified with Non-Cooperation. In Assam, tea garden labourers, shouting ‘Gandhi Maharaj ki Jai’, demanded a big wage increase and left the British-owned plantations, saying they were following Gandhi’s wish; Assamese Vaishnava songs replaced Krishna with ‘Gandhi Raja’.

The people’s Mahatma. People sometimes saw Gandhi as a messiah who could end their misery and poverty. He wanted class unity, not class conflict, yet peasants imagined he would help them against zamindars and agricultural labourers that he would give them land. Sometimes people credited him with their own achievements: after a powerful movement, the peasants of Pratapgarh (United Provinces) stopped illegal evictions but felt Gandhi had won it for them. At other times, in his name, tribals and peasants did things that did not conform to Gandhian ideals. In February 1922 a crowd of peasants, provoked by police firing on a peaceful demonstration, set fire to a police station at Chauri Chaura; twenty-two policemen were killed, and Gandhi, who opposed violent movements, abruptly called off Non-Cooperation.

After Non-Cooperation, Gandhi’s followers insisted the Congress take up constructive work in the villages; other leaders, such as Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru, argued it should fight elections to the councils and enter them to influence government policy. Through sincere social work in villages in the mid-1920s, the Gandhians extended their support base — which proved very useful for the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930. Two important developments of the mid-1920s were the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu organisation, and the Communist Party of India; these parties, NCERT says, have held very different ideas about the kind of country India should be, and it asks readers to find out about them with their teacher.

Revolutionary nationalists such as Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad and Sukhdev wanted to fight colonial rule and the rich exploiting classes through a revolution of workers and peasants; they founded the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) in 1928 at Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi. On 17 December 1928 Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru assassinated Saunders, a police officer involved in the lathi-charge that had caused Lala Lajpat Rai’s death. On 8 April 1929 Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly — their leaflet said the aim was not to kill but ‘to make the deaf hear’. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were executed on 23 March 1931; Bhagat Singh was only 23. In 1927 the British government decided to send a commission under Lord Simon to decide India’s political future, with no Indian member; all political groups boycotted it and met it with ‘Simon Go Back’. The decade closed with the Congress resolving in 1929, under Jawaharlal Nehru’s presidency, to fight for Purna Swaraj (complete independence); ‘Independence Day’ was observed across the country on 26 January 1930.

Purna Swaraj, NCERT says, would never come on its own; it had to be fought for. In 1930 Gandhi announced a march to break the salt law, under which the state had a monopoly on making and selling salt. Gandhi and other nationalists argued that it was sinful to tax salt, so essential an item of food. The Salt March linked the general desire for freedom to a specific grievance shared by everybody, and so did not divide rich and poor. Gandhi and his followers marched over 240 miles from Sabarmati to the coastal town of Dandi, where they broke the law by gathering natural salt on the shore and boiling sea water. Peasants, tribals and women took part in large numbers; a business federation published a pamphlet on the salt issue. The government tried to crush the movement with brutal action against peaceful satyagrahis, and thousands were jailed.

The combined struggles, NCERT says, bore fruit when the Government of India Act of 1935 prescribed provincial autonomy and elections to the provincial legislatures were announced for 1937. The Congress formed governments in 7 out of 11 provinces. In September 1939, after two years of Congress rule, the Second World War broke out. Critical of Hitler, Congress leaders were ready to support the British war effort, but in return wanted India to be granted independence after the war. The British refused, and the Congress ministries resigned in protest.

In the middle of the Second World War Gandhi decided to begin a new phase: the British must quit India immediately, he told them, and to the people he said ‘do or die’ — but fight non-violently. Gandhi and other leaders were jailed at once, yet the movement spread, especially among peasants and youth, who gave up their studies to join it. Communications and symbols of state authority were attacked everywhere, and in many areas people set up their own governments. The British first responded with severe repression: by the end of 1943 over 90,000 people had been arrested and around 1,000 killed in police firing, and in many areas orders were given to machine-gun crowds from aeroplanes. The rebellion, NCERT says, ultimately brought the Raj to its knees.

Bose and the INA. Subhas Chandra Bose, a radical nationalist with socialist leanings, did not share Gandhi’s ideal of ahimsa, though he respected him as the ‘Father of the Nation’. In January 1941 he secretly left his Calcutta home, went to Singapore via Germany, and raised the Azad Hind Fauj or Indian National Army (INA). In 1944 the INA tried to enter India through Imphal and Kohima, but the campaign failed. INA members were imprisoned and tried, and people from all walks of life joined the movement against the INA trials.

In 1940 the Muslim League moved a resolution demanding ‘Independent States’ for Muslims in the north-western and eastern areas of the country. The resolution did not mention partition or Pakistan. Why, NCERT asks, did the League seek an autonomous arrangement? From the late 1930s it began to view Muslims as a separate ‘nation’ from Hindus — perhaps influenced by tension between some Hindu and Muslim groups in the 1920s and 1930s. More importantly, the 1937 elections seemed to convince it that Muslims were a minority who would always ‘play second fiddle’ in a democratic structure and might even go unrepresented; and the Congress’s rejection of a joint Congress–League government in the United Provinces in 1937 annoyed it. The Congress’s failure to mobilise the Muslim masses in the 1930s let the League widen its base, and it grew further in the early 1940s while most Congress leaders were in jail.

At the end of the war in 1945 the British opened negotiations with the Congress and the League; the talks failed because the League saw itself as the sole spokesperson of India’s Muslims, which the Congress could not accept since many Muslims still supported it. In the 1946 provincial elections the Congress did well in the ‘General’ constituencies, but the League’s success in seats reserved for Muslims was spectacular, and it pressed its demand for ‘Pakistan’. In March 1946 the British cabinet sent a three-member mission to Delhi; it proposed that India stay united as a loose confederation with some autonomy for Muslim-majority areas, but could not get the Congress and the League to agree on details. Partition, NCERT says, now became more or less inevitable. The League turned to mass agitation and named 16 August 1946 ‘Direct Action Day’; riots broke out in Calcutta, lasting several days and killing thousands, and by March 1947 violence had spread across northern India. In Partition many hundreds of thousands were killed, numerous women faced untold brutalities, and millions fled their homes to become refugees in alien lands. India and many of its cities changed, a new country — Pakistan — was born, and the joy of independence came mixed with the pain and violence of Partition.

The opening question, five Activity boxes, the questions with Source 3, and the two questions NCERT puts in the running text, in page order.

‘Let’s recall’ (four), ‘Let’s discuss’ (five), ‘Let’s do’ (two) and ‘Let’s imagine’, page 110.

Numbers

One-liners

• Nationalism: India belongs to all its people, irrespective of class, colour, caste, creed, language or gender.
• The associations of the 1870s–80s spoke for all India and believed the people should be sovereign.
• The Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act (1878) and the Ilbert Bill (1883) deepened anger.
• 72 delegates founded the Congress at Bombay in December 1885.
• Moderates petitioned for councils, Indianisation and economic relief; Naoroji exposed the drain.
• Radicals (Pal, Tilak, Lajpat Rai) demanded swaraj and self-reliance.
• The partition of Bengal (1905) set off Swadeshi: self-help, national education, boycott.
• The Muslim League (1906) won separate electorates (1909); the Congress split (1907) and reunited (1915).
• War, rising prices, industrial growth, returning soldiers and 1917 helped make nationalism a mass movement.
• The Rowlatt Satyagraha was the first all-India struggle; Jallianwala Bagh followed.
• Khilafat and Non-Cooperation took local forms everywhere; Chauri Chaura ended it in 1922.
• Swarajists entered councils; Gandhians did village work; the RSS and CPI were formed in the mid-1920s.
• Bhagat Singh’s HSRA sought a workers’ and peasants’ revolution.
• The Salt March joined freedom to a grievance shared by all.
• The 1935 Act gave provincial autonomy; Congress ministries resigned over the war in 1939.
• Quit India (1942) met severe repression; Bose led the INA.
• After 1937 the League saw Muslims as a nation; 1946 elections, the failed Cabinet Mission and Direct Action led to Partition.

Traps to avoid

• First Congress session: Bombay, not Calcutta (1885; president W.C. Bonnerjee).
• Hume ‘played a part’ (NCERT); UPSC keys him as founder.
• Ilbert Bill was diluted and passed (1884), not simply withdrawn.
• The Muslim League supported the partition of Bengal.
• Moderates opposed boycott; the 1907 split followed.
• Reunion: rules changed 1915, Extremists back at Lucknow 1916.
• Gandhi was 45 when he returned in January 1915 (NCERT: 46).
• Natal Indian Congress founded 1894 (NCERT photograph: 1895).
• Chauri Chaura ended Non-Cooperation (1922), not Civil Disobedience.
• Swaraj Party: C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru — not the Ali brothers.
• Civil Disobedience began from Sabarmati; the salt law was broken at Dandi.
• Sarojini Naidu: first Indian woman President (1925); Annie Besant first woman (1917).
• INA first formed by Mohan Singh (1942); Bose took over in 1943.
• The 1940 resolution did not name Pakistan.
• Quit India: 1942, not 1941.
• ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ coined by Hasrat Mohani; popularised by Bhagat Singh.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Founding facts: Congress 1885 — Bombay (1983, 2008), not Calcutta (2004), ‘organised for the first time’ in 1885 (1983), Hume (1983, 1992); Muslim League — Dacca, 1906 (1992); the 1878 Acts and Lytton (1992); Ilbert Bill — Ripon and Indian magistrates trying Europeans (1987, 2003, 2013); Naoroji — drain theory and Poverty and Un-British Rule (1983, 1986, 1993, 2008, 2012).
• Moderates, Radicals and Swadeshi: who was not a Moderate — Tilak (1982, 1992); Tilak led the Extremists (1979) and ended ‘pray and petition’ (1999); Swaraj is my birthright (1979); boycott divided them (1989); Swadeshi began with the partition agitation (1979, 1988, 2010, 2016); the partition’s purpose and significance (1984, 1985); Swadeshi split the Congress (2015); the Surat split (1998, 2016); the Swadeshi programme (2019); chronology of the Regulating Act, partition, League and Surat (1986) and of four sessions (1990).
• 1919–1931: 1919 = Jallianwala (1980); Rowlatt preceded it (1980), caused it (2003, 2007) and aimed at detention without trial (2012); Tagore’s knighthood (1979, 2004); Khilafat unity (1981) and its leaders (1983); Non-Cooperation programme (2025) and results (1996); Chauri Chaura (1980, 1983, 1998); the Swaraj Party (1979, 1981, 1990) and ‘no-changers’ (1990); Simon (2013); Inquilab Zindabad (1979); Purna Swaraj (1981, 2006, 2014); Dandi (1979, 1995, 2009); era of mass movement 1920–47 (1981).
• 1935–1947: provincial autonomy — 1935 Act (1989); the 1939 resignations (1979, 1991, 2008, 2012); Quit India 1942 (1983, 2009, 2011); INA — Bose, Singapore (1981, 1990, 2000); ‘Father of the Nation’ first used by Bose (1993); Pakistan demand 1940 (1983); Cabinet Mission (1996, 1999, 2002); Sarojini Naidu and Tyabji (2015).
• Answer-key notes (all keys kept): 1979 ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ — Bhagat Singh keyed, coined by Hasrat Mohani (disputed). 1980 stem says ‘Civil Disobedience … 1921’ — it was Non-Cooperation, 1922; key stands. 1983 Pakistan ‘first’ demanded in 1940 — the resolution did not use the word; best option. 1984 Lal–Bal–Pal ‘revolutionary leaders’ keyed as true (d) — most accounts would not call them revolutionaries, making (b) arguable (disputed). 1996 Non-Cooperation results — statement II is also defensible; key (I and III) is the best available. 2003 ‘Bose formed the Forward Bloc’ is also true alongside the keyed Rowlatt statement (disputed). 2011 Quit India ‘non-violent’ keyed as not true (disputed).

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• The Moderates (GS1 2017: why they failed to carry conviction; 2021: how far they prepared a base): narrow base and part-time leadership (Source 2), faith in British justice, petitions — versus the economic critique, the all-India platform and the habit of representative politics (section 2).
• Curzon and Bengal (GS1 2020): partition as ‘administrative convenience’ versus dividing Bengalis; Swadeshi, boycott, national education; long-term effects — mass methods, the Radicals’ rise, the League and separate electorates.
• Mass movements and many voices (GS1 2014: world developments behind the struggle; 2019: many voices in the Gandhian phase; 2020: ideological strands of the 1920s; 2026: the masses Gandhian movements mobilised): use the war diagram, the eight people’s initiatives, the strands grid and the participation matrix; women (GS1 2013, 2016): Ambabai, Sarojini Naidu, the fight to be allowed to join.
• Gandhi and Bose (GS1 2016) and Quit India (GS1 2024: events and results): Cripps’ failure and the war → ‘do or die’ → leaderless spread, parallel governments, repression (90,000 arrests) → the INA and the trials; present both leaders’ strategies side by side.

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