Indian Independence: History & Democracy

Independence

• Nehru marveled at India's long, dynamic cultural continuity of over 5,000 years when he said India was progressing all the time

• Manmohan Singh noted there was no parallel in history to India's struggle for independence, which culminated in its "boldest statement ever of social democracy".

• Meghnad Desai has called the success story of modern India in uniting diversity, a miracle while Ramachandra Guha has said it is nothing short of a humdrum manifestation.

• Pratap Bhanu Mehta declared Indian democracy as a "leap of faith" unprecedented in human history.

• Amartya Sen stated India was the first non-Western country to choose a democratic constitution.

• Sunil Khilnani considers India's democratic experiment the "third moment" after the American and French revolutions.

• Nehru viewed himself as embodying the qualities of George Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower rolled into one.

• Four couplets represent centrality in India's official and intellectual imaginary: antiquity-continuity, diversity-unity, massivity-democracy and multi-confessionality-secularity.

• All are touchstones of the "idea of India" arising from an independence struggle

• For the nationalist movement, the Congress Party believed India was naturally "one undivided land", and "one nation before" the British arrived.

• Nehru claimed an "impress of oneness" dating back 6,000 years, using historical texts to support territorial claims against China.

• Claims of the subcontinent being a unified political or cultural entity in pre-modern times are inaccurate.

• Before the British, the area was divided among middle-sized kingdoms and empires without consistent political or cultural connection.

• The "idea of India" is a European invention, derived from the Greek term for the Indus River, and was initially used to describe all natives of an unknown country.

• Britain gained control through the area’s sprawling heterogeneity, exploiting local conflicts.

• The Indian Army, composed of Indian troops, conquered the country for the British.

• The British maintained control by relying on multiple fragmentations of the region: ethnic, linguistic, dynastic, social, and confessional.

• After the 1857 Mutiny, the Raj policy was to maintain a two-to-one ratio of sepoys to whites and prevent the native detachments from developing a shared identity.

• State Secretary Wood aimed to instigate rivalries among Sikh, Hindoo, and Goorkha regiments.

• The Eden Commission in 1879 sought to make the Native army safe by counterpoising Natives against Natives.

• Muslims, suspected after the mutiny in Delhi, were largely excluded from the army.

• The Indian Army, with 200,000 to 250,000 soldiers in peacetime, was the Raj's largest employer.

• It was described by Salisbury as a "British barrack in the Oriental Seas" and served in imperial expansions, as well as domestic repression.

• Internal security was the army's top priority, with British troops outnumbering native levies in areas outside of Afghanistan.

• A police apparatus of 150,000 was established by the 1880s to serve as a forward screen of repression.

• The Viceroy in 1942 stated India and Burma were conquered countries kept in the Empire by force.

• Attlee criticized this statement as anti-imperialist propaganda.

• The Raj collaborated with princes and landlords, mainly Hindu, who benefited through protection and exploitation of tenants and laborers.

• Merchants and manufacturers resented the imperial economic system that favored British exports due to the lack of tariff protection

• British railways and the rule of law extended their potential fields of profitable operations and assured stable rights of possession and transaction, which created ambivalence among Indian professionals from these groups.

• The Raj aimed to create a native elite educated to metropolitan standards, but these elites developed liberal ideas that challenged British rule.

• A layer of professionals, including lawyers and journalists, became the seedbed for Congress nationalism.

• By imposing infrastructural and cultural grids, the British unified the subcontinent which later turned it against its rulers.

• Congress, founded in the 1880s, initially sought colonial self-government with the rise of nationalist agitation, led by Englishmen and prompted by Hindu anger at the partition of Bengal.

• The Liberal government introduced representative elements into legislative machinery with complex franchises for a small percentage of the population.

• The Morley-Minto Reforms aimed to prevent any shift in power by unifying aristocratic elements of society and men, who would support the government's stance on political issues.

• Congress welcomed these changes and expressed loyalty to the Emperor, even supporting the Empire in the Great War.

• Gandhi arrived in Bombay in 1914, known for defending the Indian community in South Africa.

• He supported local struggles, adapted South African tactics and developed a countrywide reputation.

• Gandhi transformed Indian politics, triggering mass movements against British power, which made Congress a popular political force.

• Leading campaigns in 1919–1921, 1930–31, and 1942–43, he challenged the Raj in national liberation struggles, because he displayed abilities that a unique constellation of abilities in mobilizing people.

• Crowds viewed him as semidivine, which is common for nationalist movements.

• He had a first class fund raiser who rebuilt Congress from top to bottom, endowing it with a permanent executive at national level, vernacular units at provincial level, local bases at district level, and delegates proportionate to population.

• Gandhi mediated various social groups and figures within Congress.

• Though not a great orator, was an exceptionally quick and fluent communicator, indicated by his numerous articles and books which was a result of the magnetic force that would attract such passionate admiration.

• Gandhi's twentieth-century leadership as a man of religion differed from others like Khomeini, where religious and political goals were indistinguishable.

• Gandhi considered religion more important than politics, making his faith distinct and home-made.

• Tidrick showed his faith born of Hindu orthodoxy and Victorian psychomancy; and elements from Madame Blavatsky, Theosophy, planchette, and the Esoteric Christian Union.

• Gandhi aimed for moksha - spiritualism of the period, reshaping it through the medium of Western spirituality and thus state of perfection where rebirth ends and there is union with God.

• The path towards enlightenment required "crucifixion of the flesh", meaning more than vegetarianism prescribed by his caste.

• Sex was believed as an overriding danger to liberating the soul, which combined religious fear of sin with Hindu phobias of pollution.

• Celibacy was a duty for those who would serve their country, since lack of stamina could be cowardly and emasculated, which was also tied to animal passions that were seen as incapable of any great effort.

• The allowance for sex in marriage was only accepted as ‘an animal indulgence’ to perpetuate and gratify procreation.

• Complete continence or brahmacharya at any age was of transcendent importance.

• Gandhi defined evils in Hind Swaraj (1909), speaking of machinery represented "machinery represents a great sin", railways as bubonic plague, and hospitals as institutions propagating sin which will make people less moral in their bodies.

• He said people do not need letters without "knowledge of letters" because it makes them discontent, and one Western civilization must be driven out to restore India to pristine condition.

• Post arrival in India subcontinent. Gandhi did not repudiate his position, but he did steer to the issue of modernity instead of radical atavism.

• Politically Swaraj was a call in effect for Home Rule of Irish lines.

• Mastery of the passions and the senses was divinity, making politics merely the lesser form.

• Struggle meant within Indians, leading the British to treason.

• Tolstoy came upon non-violence, and his truth-force or satyagraha was given Hindu cast.

• Congress elite was secular, and Gandhi injected religion, mythology, symbology, and theology.

• Though it could rally Hindus, there were concerns of Muslim million rally in same idiom

• Gandhi always advocated Hindu-Muslim unity, since religions taught the same truths.

• Divisions were a result of implantations that were bound by racism of indifference, where the subcontinent divided the two with conquests and conflicts.

• Gandhi was partly sincere as far as thinking all religions were equal before the Lord, but only one religion more than the other.

• Gandhi came from Gujarat with limited knowledge of subcontinental Muslim culture, holding little reverence for the cow.

• He was unable to invoke ecumenicism or Emperor Akbar that sought to unite India.

• He announced in 1919 that India "is fitted for the religious supremacy of the world" that only served to bely the fact that there was any religious form of equality

• He invoked far-seeing ancestors with holy sites of pilgrimage that served as magnets for national identity.

• He attempted to unite Muslims under Islam for a cause that served overtly confessed objectives.

• Ottoman Empire lost the First World War to the Entente, Young Turks and Sultan.

• It had the symbolic title of Caliph by which for centuries dynasties dusted with authority that were eaten by worms.

• In 1919 the Allies resided in Istanbul with what would be the figure by notional pan-Islamic authority?

• The Mutiny occurred with Muslims losing ground under the Raj.

• They did not fully trust the work of bureaucratic employment instead of serving as soldiers.

• The administrative idiom of Persian did not allow Muslims in India to educate themselves in English.

• Reformers looked to the British to create a better educated Muslim elite who would not see their votes overridden by Hindu majorities after a narrow electoral franchise was granted.

• The Arab world considered the turn to be a liberation away from Turkish rule before British and French imperialism divided the spoils.

• In the Subcontinent where there was no experience of Ottoman oppression, the empire served a humiliation that resonated on the world stage, resulting in danger on the Caliphate.

• Gandhi took advantage and rally Hindu in opinion on agitatiion to protect military.

• Jinnah regarded the issue was both irrelevant, but thoroughly regression, which bred clerical gesturing.

• Gandhi would not move by dismay of Arab feelings of Ottoman Imperialism and the fate of the Armenians.

• the cause counted regardless of the religious case that could be used by Hindus alongside the British who were already feeling injustice.

• Forming the All-India Caliphate Committee occurred in 1919 with Rowlatt Act that prolonged arbitrary imprisonment and arrest into peace.

• Gandhi called from a patchy prove and the the face of repression including Dyer noted mowing down with unarmed crowd with Amritsar

• When reports faded within 3 months report made public and that was the entire opinion.

• In the same month the provisioned to get rid of Ottoman Treaty winding

• The Khalifat campaign pushed for the preservative of Caliphate, continuous of Mecca Medina

• The Indian Mussulmans thought it a staggering blow that promptly denounced the issues and made it clear. The ports were to be cut up

• Now Gandhi to get Non Cooperation for the Punjab and the Caliphate and to bring what was gifted with the all outstanding organization imagining promising the nation as Swaraj with an year.

• Non Cooperation was to escalate until Swaraj would rise within Year.

• But they did not accept renounce British honor and title, position to civilian service, politics army. Instead it fell boycotts of courts foreign goods

• the campaign energized. Self organization of volunteer and picketing with the background the hardship post war, with unionizing

• The British rule threatened the civil services. The calls would not insists despite Congress

• The tax strike would be the worst Raj that would rely on sustaining revenue without land

• In February 1922 Gandhi proceeded the highest stage the non Cooperation and Gujarati where police killed those were against food price and retaliized again putting the prices

• Gandhi called called off the five day for non violence and because it would mean they would the have authority Congress that would be the power but not what could what

• He realized the Indian masses lack spiritual ability or would to have always Swaraj could

• Despite this belief of violence remained. Volunteered for Africa service to the British for the war.

• They sought violence and if it were necessary. Wives comfort for husbands fighting will be in the incarnation

• He would rather risk violence than would risk of a whole not or to not have a remorse.

• In 1924 would take the risk violence stop stop slave as God wills.

• To not be hypocritical. Commitment to nonviolence made him sincere

• As a leader he thought his duty by intention of human beings.

• Truth and reality for the point of view from what experience of said

• As if the laboratory were plaything to be a good God. Great so many hobgoblin's consistency

• He could depend that his followers will agree

• Effects cannot corrupt to all sides a British barrister day.

• He modified industry. Even the British will not have those had elicited

• In the opinion that they might have, that will save him

• And it is not necessary with his career be with all to say the

• Gandhi had off the mass he was genuine. But his beliefs political direction by the two

• He could not do those could. But they were in the commonwealth

• Any demand had to tell what word independence that come from

• Not high national commonwealth would be an equal who would later

• Gandhi called independence and not. He wanted would stop a social. Hindu to society by to order. Set them set to the other had

• They would be not comprise with. Against their employers said them.

• Labor the said tenants

• In 1930 he did those

• A British device like and questions

• Gandhi was given a position elections Gandhi now was defined was Empire British

• India the March for Salt defiance time took part arrested