Decolonization of India: What does it feel like to be

ruled by someone else?CHY4U

Impact of WWII on British Empire

“Britain had survived the war, but its wealth, prestige and authority had been severely reduced.”

“The huge sense of relief at a more or less dignified exit, and much platitudinous rhetoric, disguised the fact that the end of the Raj was a staggering blow for British world power.” – John Darwin

John Darwin, BBC History, Britain, the Commonwealth and the End of Empire, March 3, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/endofempire_overview_01.shtml (May 28, 2013).

Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler, World History: Connections to Today – Teachers Edition (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001), 632.

• http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/gallery/photos/24.html– PBS, The Story of India. (4.04).

Success, but…

“By 1910 , India had the fourth largest railway system in the world, one that unified the country geographically and economically. However, under British rule, the generally positive advances of social reforms, public works and unification of the [sic] India’s disparate regions were coupled with racism and economic exploitation. Lack of Indian representation in government and an economic system that was perceived as a drain on India’s wealth were the primary causes of agitation against British rule in India.”

PBS, The Story of India, Colonization, 2008, http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/gallery/photos/21.html (May 28, 2013)

Tilak on Self-rule, 1907:  “One thing is granted, namely, that this government does not suit us. As has been said by an eminent statesman - the government of one country by another can never be a successful, and therefore, a permanent government. …One fact is that this alien government has ruined the country. In the beginning, all of us were taken by surprise. We were almost dazed. We thought that everything that the rulers did was for our good …We are not armed, and there is no necessity for arms either. We have a stronger weapon, a political weapon, in boycott. We have perceived one fact, that the whole of this administration, which is carried on by a handful of Englishmen, is carried on with our assistance. We are all in subordinate service. … I want to have the key of my house, and not merely one stranger turned out of it. Self-government is our goal; we want a control over our administrative machinery. We don't want to become clerks and remain [clerks]. At present, we are clerks and willing instruments of our own oppression in the hands of' an alien government, and that government is ruling over us not by its innate strength but by keeping us in ignorance and blindness to the perception of this fact.”

Modern History Sourcebook, Tilak: Address to the Indian National Congress, 1907, 1998, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1907tilak.html (May 28, 2013).

Gandhi on Independence, 1929

 

“We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth.”

Jeff Hay, The Partition of British India (New York: Chelsea House Publishers), 43.

Memorializing

Visitor viewing painting of the massacre at a public garden in Amritsar in 1919 that killed 379 people.

Francis Elliott, “David Cameron to Express British Regret Over Amritsar Massacre,” The Times, Feb. 20, 2013, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3693230.ece (May 28, 2013).

Gandhi and Women in the Salt March, 1930

University of Texas at Austin, South Asia Institute, Women in the Indian Independence Movement: The Salt Protests of 1930, N.d.http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/southasia/_files/pdf/outreach/LP_salt_protest.pdf (May 24, 2013).

Women and Salt

Even though only a few women were chosen officially to take part in the salt satyagraha with which the Indian revolution opened on the morning of April 6, 1930, by sunset of that first day it has turned into a mass movement and swept the country. On that memorable day thousands of women strode down to the sea like proud warriors. But instead of weapons, they bore pitchers of clay, brass and copper; and instead of uniforms, the simple cotton saris of village India. …Women young and old, rich and poor, came tumbling out in their hundreds and thousands, shaking off the traditional shackles that had held them so long. Valiantly they went forwards without a trace of fear or embarrassment. They stood at street corners with little packets of salt, crying out: ‘ we have broken the Salt Laws and we are free! Who will buy the salt of freedom?’ Their cries never went unheeded. Every passer-by stopped, slipped a coin into their hands and held out proudly a tiny pinch of salt.

Radha Kumar, A History of Doing, New Delhi. Zubaan. 1993. pp. 78 in University of Texas at Austin, South Asia Institute, Women in the Indian Independence Movement: The Salt Protests of 1930, N.d.http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/southasia/_files/pdf/outreach/LP_salt_protest.pdf (May 24, 2013).

Salt GatheringGandhi on salt tax in letter to the viceroy in 1930:

But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils …I shall proceed … to disregard the provisions of the salt laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land the beginning will be made with this evil. The wonder is that we have submitted to the cruel monopoly for so long. …I hope that there will be tens of thousands ready in a disciplined manner, to take up the work after me, and in the act of disobeying the Salt Act to lay themselves open to the penalties of a law that should never disfigured the Statute book.

Hand SpinningGandhi on self-sufficiency in a letter to the British Viceroy in 1930:

“If the weight of taxation has crushed the poor from above, the destruction of the central supplementary industry, i.e. hand-spinning, has undermined their capacity for producing wealth.”

Gandhi in 1946

Indian Independence: Nationalism Source 3, British Library, Help for Researchers, N.d., http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/indiannat/source3/index.html (May 28, 2013).