HOME RULE MOVEMENT AND LUCKNOW PACT

The First World War broke out in August 1914. The Allied powers claimed that they were fighting the war for freedom and democracy. In the beginning of the war, some of the Indian nationalists, particularly moderates, took the British statesmen on their word.

Therefore, the war was seen as differently by the different groups:

• Extremists and revolutionaries saw the predicament of British as their opportunity and many organizations like Home Rule League by Annie Besant and Tilak.
• Moderates on the other hand extended support to government hoping that government will reciprocate by more relaxation in to them.

Ghadar party saw this as an opportunity that they have been waiting for, though, they were not fully prepared. They didn’t want to let the opportunity go. It exhorted its leaders to go to other countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Phillipines and Burma etc and exhort Indian nationals there to stand for the cause. Others like that of

Kartar Singh Sarabha and Raghubar Dayal Guptaleft for India. An attempt was made to overthrow the British rule by military revolt. Rash Behari Bose was chosen as the leader. However, government foiled this bid and Ghadar Conspiracy failed. More than 40 were sentenced to death.

Start of First World War led to following:

(i) Loss of Indian Soldiers – Millions of Rupees from India was diverted for use in war, Indian soldiers died while fighting in Europe.

(ii) Working Class – Middle class had more job opportunities as new factories were setup to supply European. However, wages were low and working conditions were bad. Trade Unionism was still to become popular so it left workers with little bargaining power.

(iii) Capitalists – Capitalists had a field day as industrial production boomed.

(iv) Agriculture – After scourge of famine, World War further led to crash in prices of agriculture commodities in international markets. This pushed farmers further into debt trap.

(v) Politics and National Movement – Nationalist leaders saw it as an opportunity to bargain more rights and conditional support in war was provided in the hope that post-war, Britain will take political actions in favor of Indians. 

After the war, Economic situation deteriorated. Industry which prospered during war time, was now facing closure and fall in output. Workers and artisans who now faced loss of jobs and high prices also turned toward the national movement. 

Promise made during the war were betrayed and it also pushed nationalism. While colonies were promised democracy they got a raw deal in turn. Erstwhile colonies of defeated powers were distributed among winners as war bounty.

Russian revolution further stoked nationalism and put heart in colonial people.

As the war was over, national Leaders were disappointed by the measures taken by government. Government of India Act of 1919 was a huge disappointment. Treatment of Ottoman Empire after Treaty of Severs led to rousing Muslim Sentiments and it paved way for Khilafat Movement and Non-Cooperation. After war, trade unionism also flourished and in 1920 first headway was made with formation of AITUC under N M Joshi.

Home Rule Movement

The Home Rule League Movement was India’s response to the First World War in a less charged but a more effective way than the response of Indians living abroad which took the form of the romantic Ghadar adventure.

Significant leaders such as Balgangadhar Tilak, Annie Besant, G.S. Khaparde, Sir S. Subramania Iyer, Joseph Baptista and Mohammad Ali Jinnah among others got together and decided that it was necessary to have a national alliance that would work throughout the year (unlike the Congress which had annual sessions) with the main objective of demanding self-government or home rule for all of India within the British commonwealth. This alliance was to be the All India Home Rule League along the lines of the Irish Home Rule League.

In the end, however, two Home Rule Leagues were launched—one by Balgangadhar Tilak and the other by Annie Besant, both with the aim of beginning a new trend of aggressive politics 

Background

Some of the factors responsible to the formation of the Home Rule Movement were:

(i) A section of the nationalists felt that popular pressure was required to attain concessions from the government.

(ii) The Moderates were disillusioned with the Morley-Minto reforms.

(iii) People were feeling the burden of wartime miseries caused by high taxation and a rise in prices, and were ready to participate in any aggressive movement of protest.

(iv) The war, being fought among the major imperialist powers of the day and backed by naked propaganda against each other, exposed the myth of white superiority.

(v) Tilak was ready to assume leadership after his release in June 1914, and had made conciliatory gestures—to the government reassuring it of his loyalty and to the Moderates that he wanted, like the

Irish Home Rulers, a reform of the administration and not an overthrow of the government. He also admitted that the acts of violence had only served to retard the pace of political progress in India. He urged all Indians to assist the British government in its hour of crisis.

(vi) Annie Besant, the Irish theosophist based in India since 1896, had decided to enlarge the sphere of her activities to include the building of a movement for home rule on the lines of the Irish Home Rule Leagues.

The Two Leagues

Both Tilak and Besant realised that the sanction of a Moderate-dominated Congress as well as full cooperation of the Extremists was essential for the movement to succeed.

• Having failed at the 1914 session of the Congress to reach a Moderate-Extremist rapprochement, Tilak and Besant decided to revive political activity on their own.
• By early 1915, Annie Besant had launched a campaign to demand self-government for India after the war on the lines of white colonies. She campaigned through her newspapers, New India and Commonweal, and through public meetings and conferences.
• At the annual session of the Congress in 1915, the efforts of Tilak and Besant met with some success. It was decided that the Extremists be admitted to the Congress.
• Although Besant failed to get the Congress to approve her scheme of Home Rule Leagues, the Congress did commit itself to a programme of educative propaganda and to a revival of local-level Congress committees.
• Not willing to wait for too long, Besant laid the condition that if the Congress did not implement its commitments, she would be free to set up her own league—which she finally had to, as there was no response from the Congress.

Tilak and Besant set up their separate leagues to avoid any friction. As Annie Besant said, some supporters of Tilak were not at ease with her and similarly, some of her own supporters were not at ease with Tilak. However, both leagues coordinated their efforts by confining their work to their specific areas. They cooperated where they could. 

Tilak’s League

Tilak set up his Indian Home Rule League in April 1916.

• Tilak held his first Home Rule meeting at Belgaum.
• Poona was the headquarters of his league.
• His league was restricted to Maharashtra (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, Central Provinces and Berar.
• It had six branches and the demands included swarajya, formation of linguistic states and education in the vernacular.
• It was during Home Rule Movement that Tilak declared that – ‘Swaraj is My Birth Right and I will have it’.

Besant’s League

• Annie Besant set up her All-India Home Rule League in September 1916 in Madras (now Chennai) and covered the rest of India (including Bombay city).
• It had 200 branches, was loosely organised as compared to Tilak’s league and had George Arundale as the organising secretary.
• Besides Arundale, the main work was done by B.W. Wadia and C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar.

Programme and Strategies

The League campaign aimed to convey to the common man the message of home rule as self-government.

• It carried a much wider appeal than the earlier mobilisations had and also attracted the hitherto ‘politically backward’ regions of Gujarat and Sindh.
• The aim was to be achieved by promoting political education and discussion through public meetings, organising libraries and reading rooms containing books on national politics, holding conferences, organising classes for students on politics, carrying out propaganda through newspapers, pamphlets, posters, illustrated post-cards, plays, religious songs, etc., collecting funds, organising social work, and participating in local government activities.
• The Russian Revolution of 1917 proved to be an added advantage for the Home Rule campaign.
• The Home Rule agitation was later joined by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Chittaranjan Das, K.M. Munshi, B. Chakravarti, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Lala Lajpat Rai.
• Some of these leaders became heads of local branches of Annie Besant’s League. Mohammad Ali Jinnah led the Bombay division. 
• Many of the Moderate Congressmen who were disillusioned with Congress inactivity, and some members of Gokhale’s Servants of India Society also joined the agitation. 

However, Anglo-Indians, most of the Muslims and non-brahmins from the South did not join as they felt Home Rule would mean rule of the Hindu majority, and that too mainly by the high caste.

Government’s Response

The government came down with severe repression, especially in Madras where the students were prohibited from attending political meetings.

• A case was instituted against Tilak which was, however, rescinded by the high court. Tilak was barred from entering the Punjab and Delhi.
• In June 1917, Annie Besant and her associates, B.P. Wadia and George Arundale, were arrested. This invited nationwide protest.
• In a dramatic gesture, Sir S. Subramaniya Aiyar renounced his knighthood while Tilak advocated a programme of passive resistance.

The repression only served to harden the attitude of the agitators and strengthen their resolve to resist the government. Annie Besant was released in September 1917.

Decline of Home Rule Movement

The Home Rule agitation proved to be short-lived and by 1919, it had petered out. The reasons for the decline were:

(i) There was a lack of effective organisation.

(ii) Communal riots were witnessed during 1917-18.

(iii) The Moderates who had joined the Congress after Annie Besant’s arrest were pacified by talk of reforms (contained in Montagu’s statement of August 1917 which held self-government as the longterm goal of the British rule in India) and Besant’s release.

(iv) Talk of passive resistance by the Extremists kept the Moderates away from activity from September 1918 onwards.

(v) The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which became known in July 1918 further divided the nationalist ranks. Annie Besant herself was in two minds about the use of the league after the announcement of the reforms. Annie Besant vacillated over her response to the reforms and the techniques of passive resistance.

(vi) Tilak had to go abroad (September 1918) in connection with a libel case against Valentine Chirol whose book, Indian Unrest, had featured Tilak as responsible for the agitational politics that had developed in India. With Besant unable to give a positive lead and Tilak away in England, the movement was left leaderless.

(vii) Gandhi’s fresh approach to the struggle for freedom was slowly but surely catching the imagination of the people, and the mass movement that was gathering momentum pushed the home rule movement onto the side lines till it petered out. In 1920, Gandhi accepted the presidentship of the All India Home Rule League, and changed the organisation’s name to Swarajya Sabha. Within a year, however, the league joined the Indian National Congress.

Success of the Movement

• The movement succeeded in attracting masses and marked a shift from elite participation model of moderates.
• Tilak and Besant’s effort revived Congress after Lucknow Pact of 1916.
• They compelled the government to go for more reforms in form of Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919.
• Further, movement also prepared ground for Gandhian politics of mass movement.

Lucknow Session (1916): Readmission of Extremists to Congress

The Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress was presided over by a Moderate, Ambika Charan Majumdar. The session finally readmitted the Extremists led by Tilak to the Congress fold.

Factors Responsible For This Reunion:

(i) Old controversies had become meaningless now.

(ii) Both the Moderates and the Extremists realised that the split had led to political inactivity.

(iii) Annie Besant and Tilak had made vigorous efforts for the reunion. To allay Moderate suspicions, Tilak had declared that he supported a reform of administration and not an overthrow of the government. He also denounced acts of violence.

(iv) The death of two Moderates, Gokhale and Pherozshah Mehta, who had led the Moderate opposition to the Extremists, facilitated the reunion.

Lucknow Pact

Another significant development to take place at Lucknow was the coming together of the Muslim League and the Congress and the presentation of common demands by them to the government. This happened at a time when the Muslim League, now dominated by the younger militant nationalists, was coming closer to the Congress objectives and turning increasingly anti-imperialist.

There were many reasons for the shift in the League’s position:

(i) Britain’s refusal to help Turkey (ruled by the Khalifa who claimed religio-political leadership of all Muslims) in its wars in the Balkans (1912-13) and with Italy (during 1911) had angered the Muslims.

(ii) Annulment of partition of Bengal in 1911 had annoyed those sections of the Muslims who had supported the partition.

(iii) The refusal of the British government in India to set up a university at Aligarh with powers to affiliate colleges all over India also alienated some Muslims.

(iv) The younger League members were turning to bolder nationalist politics and were trying to outgrow the limited political outlook of the Aligarh school. The Calcutta session of the Muslim League (1912) had committed the League to “working with other groups for a system of self-government suited to India, provided it did not come in conflict with its basic objective of protection of interests of the Indian Muslims”. Thus, the goal of self-government similar to that of the Congress brought both sides closer.

(v) Younger Muslims were infuriated by the government repression during the First World War. Maulana Azad’s Al Hilal and Mohammad Ali’s Comrade faced suppression while the leaders such as Ali brothers, Maulana Azad and Hasrat Mohani faced internment. This generated anti-imperialist sentiments among the ‘Young Party’.

The Pact

The Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League could be considered an important event in the course of the nationalistic struggle for freedom.

While the League agreed to present joint constitutional demands with the Congress to the government, the Congress accepted the Muslim League’s position on separate electorates which would continue till any one community demanded joint electorates. The Muslims were also granted a fixed proportion of seats in the legislatures at all-India and provincial levels.

The joint demands were:

(i) Government should declare that it would confer self-government on Indians at an early date.

(ii) The representative assemblies at the central as well as provincial level should be further expanded with an elected majority and more powers given to them.

(iii) The term of the legislative council should be five years.

(iv) The salaries of the Secretary of State for India should be paid by the British treasury and not drawn from Indian funds.

(v) Half the members of the viceroy’s and provincial governors’ executive councils should be Indians 

 

August Declaration or Montague Declaration (1917)

Montague’s Declaration of 1917 was in a reaction to the Home Rule League Movement and it promised that the Indians would be increasingly associated with the administration and self-governing institutions would be gradually developed.

• It stated that responsible government in India as an integral part of British Empire was the final goal of the government and this would be achieved in stages and the British Governments and the Government of India would be, the sole authority to judge the time and measure of each advancement and in this, they would be guided by the responsible Indian leaders and their capability to handle responsibility.
• The famous declaration closed one chapter in the constitutional history of India and opened another.
• With this declaration benevolent despotism was dead and India’s right to Swaraj was admitted and despotism was to give place to constitutional government.
• Demand for Swaraj was no longer seditious with this declaration.

Therefore, all ifs and buts’ were ignored and the announcement was welcomed by almost all political parties. The greatest importance of the declaration perhaps lay in the fact that every Indian was feeling convinced that self-government for India was within the domain of possibility. The declaration also gave the nationalist leaders the moral courage to continue their political fight. However, it was also seen by the extremists as a mean to confound the moderates and distract attention from demand of Purna Swaraj.

Share

& Comment

Tweet