India, Chapter 3, Part 1 Gandhi and Civil Disobedience Flashcards
(32 cards)
How was Mahatma Gandhi proved himself to ve one of the great figures of the 20th century?
Mahatma (Great Soul) Gandhi is associated forever with the concepts of non-violence protest and civil disobedience.
His campaigns drew international attention because of the complex problems they caused the British.
They were often unsuccessful in their precise objective but there is agreement that overall Ghandi’s genius was to recognize that the British Empire could be defeated by mass, peaceful, passive confrontation.
- His campaigns exposed the fact the Empire survived because of Indian support and that if that was withdrawn it could not continue
When did Gandhi return to India
January 1915 with a. considerable reputation.
What was gandhi’s initial motivation when he arrived in India?
- Motivated by a desire for Hindu-Muslim friendship and unity.
- Also campaigned ceaselessly for the social inclusion of the Untouchables.
How coudl Gandhi be controversial?
- He could be naively condescending and came close by the stating that Muslims would eventually become Hindus
- He was contradictory and inconsistent in both statements and political tactics.
His rejection of Western values and of the entire concept of progress was actually counter-productive in the final stages of the independence movement.
What were Gandhi’s aims in his campaign?
- To rid India of the British Raj and replace it with swaraj (self-rule).
- His vision, however, was not of modern state but an imagined return to an almost medieval, highly religious society and peasant economy.
What were Gandhi’s beliefes in his campaign?
- He perceived life as an integrated struggle for social justice and self-control, controversially of his self-control of sex.
What 4 principles guided Gandhi’s campaign?
1) Satyagraha
2) Ahimsa
3) Swadesh
4) Swaraj
What was satyagraha?
- He described it as ‘not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of truth’.
- It requires the rejection of dishonorable motives such as campaigning for the advantage of one religious community over another.
A willingness to suffer for the cause, by placing oneself in the path of physical violence it by engaging voluntarily in painful symbolic actions like hunger strikes.
- Violence would inhibit their search for ultimate truth
What was Ahimsa (non-violence(
- Ahimsa is a practical and political method developed out of satyagraha.
- In a political campaign for independence, peace and justice, it is unacceptable to use provocative or retaliatory violence
What were the campaigns methods
Involve inaction, withdrawal of co-operation, resignations, hartals, boycotts or even just silence.
In the face of physical force, campaigners must submit with dignity, relying on the moral effect their suffering to provoke guilt in the attacker and crisis of conscience and determination.
What was Swadesh?
- Swadesh emerged as a response to the 1905 partition of Bengal in a commitment to abstain from the purchase of British goods.
- He urged supporters and required his close followers to learn how to spin cloth and to spend an hour a day spinning order to increase personal and national economic self-reliance
What was the name of the clothes made of home-spun cloth which became a sign of political commitment especially at high level negotiants.
Khadi
What was the name of the peasant loin cloth Gandhi would wear from 1921.
Dhoti
What was Swaraj
He would declare self-rule as a political goal in his first campaigns and the Swaraj Party was formed in 1923.
When did Gandhi’s non-cooperation campaign start abd end
1919-1921
How was the Indian National COngress reorganised?
1) 2,000,000
2) More Hindu
3) More supporters from rich peasantries and commercial castes
4) Support from railway workers, poorer peasants and mill-hands.
5) Membership of the All-Indian Congress Committee increased from 161 to 350 and seats were re-allocated.
6) 100 additional provincial committees and several hundred more local branches were set up.
7) Gandhi set up the Congress Working Committee (CWC) with the job of formulating policy. It mirrored what a cabinet was to the government
What meeting occued in December 1920
Nagpur meeting
What did the protest campaigns of non-cooperation include?
1) Boycotts of law courts by lawyers
2) Boycotts of schools and colleges by teachers
3) Boycotts in general of elections, councils, official functions and honors.
4) Swadesh was promoted
5) Alcohol prohibited
6) Boycott of British cloth had an economic effect on British manufacturers.
What was Gandhi’s proposal at the Nagpur Meeting?
- An even larger non-cooperation movement
- Gandhi declared the aim of swaraj withing a year, a barely realistic objective
What was the response like to Gandhi’s proposal in Nagpur?
- Unanimously approved.
- Disgust as British poplar support for General Dyer turned into support for Gandhi’s call for a ‘peaceful rebellion’.
- The swaraj objective touched the mass Indian population which had until now led politics to a middle-class elite
How was Gandhi more successful as a Congress leader?
- He created mass support through imagination and symbolism
- He opened a new kind of politics between the failed approaches of pleading for constitutional concessions and counterproductive terrorist-attacks.
- His methods were non-violent and assertive, they did not rely on the humiliating notion of proving that educated Indians were becoming able to govern. They gave the masses a part to play with pride.
What was The Khilafat Movement:
The Khilafat movement (1919–22) was a political campaign launched by Indian Muslims in British India over British policy against Turkey and the planned dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I by Allied forces.
It campaigned to protect the last link with the medieval caliphs.
Why did Gandhi, a Hindu, support the Khilafat Movement?
he was certain that no such movement could be organised without bringing the Hindus and Muslims closer together. One way of doing this, he felt, was to raise the Khilafat issue.
- By supporting the Khilafat, Gandhi would gain support from a large number of Muslim, spiritual and political leaders for his policy of non-violence and non-cooperation.
Why did Jinnah, a Muslim, oppose the Khilafat movement?
- He believed that Gandhi’s support was opportunistic but also that it caused a division amongst Muslims, threatening the existing political structure and orderly progress to independence.
- Jinnah is a secular Muslim (possible an atheist). He is not religious, and he believes it is a false way of faking unity between Hindu’s and Muslims.
