The Indian
independence movement was a series of historic events in South Asia with
the ultimate aim of ending British colonial rule. It lasted until 1947, when
the Indian Independence Act 1947 was passed.
The first nationalistic
movement took root in the newly formed Indian National Congress with prominent
moderate leaders seeking the right to appear for Indian Civil Service
examinations in British India, as well as more economic rights for natives. The
first half of the 20th century saw a more radical approach towards self-rule.
The stages of the
independence struggle in the 1920s were characterised by the leadership of
Mahatma Gandhi and Congress's adoption of Gandhi's policy of non-violence and
civil disobedience. Some of the leading followers of Gandhi's ideology were
Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Maulana Azad, and
others. Intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore, Subramania Bharati, and
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay spread patriotic awareness. Female leaders like
Sarojini Naidu, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Pritilata Waddedar, and Kasturba Gandhi
promoted the emancipation of Indian women and their participation in the
freedom struggle.
Few leaders followed a
more violent approach, which became especially popular after the Rowlatt Act,
which permitted indefinite detention. The Act sparked protests across India,
especially in the Punjab Province, where they were violently suppressed in the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
The Indian independence
movement was in constant ideological evolution. Essentially anti-colonial, it
was supplemented by visions of independent, economic development with a
secular, democratic, republican, and civil- libertarian political structure.
After the 1930s, the movement took on a strong socialist orientation. It
culminated in the Indian Independence Act 1947, which ended Crown suzerainty
and partitioned British India into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of
Pakistan. On 26 January 1950, the Constitution of India established the
Republic of India. Pakistan adopted its first constitution in 1956. In 1971 ,
East Pakistan declared its own independence as Bangladesh.
Background –
The first European to
reach India via the Atlantic Ocean was the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama,
who reached Calicut in 1498 in search of spice. Just over a century later, the
Dutch and English established trading outposts on the Indian subcontinent, with
the first English trading post set up at Surat in 1613.
Over the next two
centuries, the British defeated the Portuguese and Dutch but remained in
conflict with the French. The decline of the Mughal Empire in the first half of
the eighteenth century allowed the British to establish a foothold in Indian politics.
During the Battle of Plassey, the East India Company's Army defeated Siraj
ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, and the company established itself as a major
player in Indian affairs. After the Battle of Buxar of 1764, it gained
administrative rights over Bengal, Bihar and the Midnapur part of Odisha.
After the defeat of Tipu
Sultan, most of southern India came either under the company's direct rule, or
under its indirect political control in a subsidiary alliance. The Company
subsequently seized control of regions ruled by the Maratha Empire, after defeating
them in a series of wars. Much of Punjab was annexed in the year 1849, after
the defeat of Sikh armies in the First (1845—46) and Second (1848—49)
Anglo-Sikh Wars.
Early resistance to
Company rule –
Maveeran Alagumuthu Kone
was an early revolutionary against the British presence in Tamil Nadu. He
became a military leader in the town of Ettayapuram and was defeated in battle
against the British and Maruthanayagam's forces. He was executed in 1757. Puli
Thevar opposed the Nawab of Arcot, who was supported by the British.
Maruthanayagam Pillai was a commandant of the British East India Company's
Madras Army. He was born in a Tamil Vellalar caste family in a village called
Panaiyur in British India, what is now in Nainarkoil Taluk, Ramanathapuram District
of Tamil Nadu, India. He converted to Islam and was named Muhammad Yusuf Khan.
He was popularly known as Khan Sahib when he became a ruler of Madurai. He became
a warrior in the Arcot troops, and later a commandant for the British East
India Company troops. The British and the Arcot Nawab employed him to suppress
the Polygar (a.k.a. Palayakkarar) uprising in South India. Later he was
entrusted to administer the Madurai country when the Madurai Nayak rule ended.
He later fought war against the British and the Arcot Nawab. A dispute arose
with the British and Arcot Nawab, and three of Khan's associates were bribed to
capture him. He was captured during his morning prayer (Thozhugai) and hanged
on 15 October 1764 at Sammatipuram near Madurai. Local legends state that he
survived two earlier attempts at hanging, and that the Nawab feared Yusuf Khan
would come back to life and so had his body dismembered and buried in different
locations around Tamil Nadu. In Eastern India and across the country,
Indigenous communities organised numerous uprising against the British and
their fellow members, especially landlords and moneylenders. One of the
earliest of these on record was led by Binsu Manki around 1771 over the
transfer of Jharkhand to the East India Company. The Rangpur Dhing took place
from 1782 to 1783 in nearby Rangpur, Bengal. Following Binsu Manki's revolt in
Jharkhand, numerous uprisings across the region took place, including the
rebellion led by Tilka Manjhi in 1784; Bhumij Revolt of Manbhum from 1798 to
1799; the Chero Uprising of Palamu in 1800 under the leadership of Bhukan
Singh, and two uprising of the Munda community in Tamar region, during 1807 led
by Dukan Mank, and 1819—20 under the leadership Bundu and Konta. The Ho
Rebellion took place when the Ho community first came in contact with the
British, from 1820 to 1821 near Chaibasa on the Roro River in West Singhbhum,
but were defeated by the technologically enhanced colonial A larger Bhumij
Revolt occurred near Midnapur in Bengal, under the leadership of Ganga Narain
Singh who had previously also been involved in co-leading the Chuar Rebellions
in these regions from 1771 to 1809. Syed Mir Nisar Ali Titumir was an Islamic
preacher who led a peasant uprising against the Hindu Zamindars of Bengal and
the British during the 19th century. Along with his followers, he built a bamboo
fort (Bansher Kella in Bengali) in Narkelberia Village, which gained a
prominent place into Bengali folk legend. After the storming of the fort by
British soldiers, Titumir died of his wounds on 19 November 1831. These
rebellions lead to larger regional movements in Jharkhand and beyond such as
the Kol Insurrection led by Singhray and Binray Manki, where the Kol (Munda,
Oraon, Bhumij and Ho communities) united to rebel against the "outsiders"
from 1830-1833.
The Santhal Hul was a
movement of over 60,000 Santhals that happened from 1855 to 1857 (but started
as early as 1784) and was particularly led by siblings — brothers Sidhu, Kanhu,
Chand and Bhairav and their sisters Phulo and Jhano from the Murmu clan in its
most fervent years that lead up to the Revolt of 1857. More than 100 years of
such escalating rebellions created grounds for a large, impactful, millenarian
movement in Eastern India that again shook the foundations of British rule in
the region, under the leadership of Birsa Munda. Birsa Munda belonged to the
Munda community and lead thousands of people from Munda, Oraon, and Kharia
communities in "Ulgulaan" (revolt) against British political
expansion and those who advanced it, against forceful conversions of Indigenous
peoples into Christianity (even creating a Birsaite movement), and against the
displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands. To subdue these rising
tensions which were getting increasingly out of control of the British, they
aggressively set out to search for Birsa Munda, even setting up a reward for
him. They brutally attacked the Dombari Hills where Birsa had repaired a water
tank and made his revolutionary headquarters between 7—9 January 1900,
murdering a minimum of 400 of the Munda warriors who had congregated there,
akin to the attacks on the people at Jallianwallah Bagh, however, receiving
much less attention. The hills are known as "Topped Buru" today — the
mound of the dead. Birsa was ultimately captured in the Jamkopai forest in
Singhbhum, and assassinated by the British in jail in 1900, with a rushed
cremation/burial conducted to ensure his movement was subdued.
The toughest resistance
the Company experienced was offered by Mysore. The Anglo-Mysore Wars were a
series of wars fought in over the last three decades of the 18th century
between the Kingdom of Mysore on the one hand, and the British East India Company
(represented chiefly by the Madras Presidency), and Maratha Confederacy and the
Nizam of Hyderabad on the other. Hyder Ali and his successor Tipu Sultan fought
a war on four fronts with the British attacking from the west, south, and east,
while the Marathas and the Nizam's forces attacked from the north. The fourth
war resulted in the overthrow of the house of Hyder Ali and Tipu (who was
killed in the final war, in 1799), and the dismantlement of Mysore to the
benefit of the East India Company, which won and took control of much of India.
Pazhassi Raja was the prince regent of the princely state of Cotiote in North
Malabar, near Kannur, India between 1774 and 1805. He fought a guerrilla war
with tribal people from Wynad supporting him. He was captured by the British
and his fort was razed to the ground.
In 1766 the Nizam of
Hyderabad transferred the Northern Circars to the British authority. The
independent king Jagannatha Gajapati Narayan Deo II of Paralakhemundi estate
situated in today's Odisha and in the northernmost region of the then political
division was continuously revolting against the French occupants since 1753 as
per the Nizam's earlier handover of his estate to them on similar grounds.
Narayan Deo II fought the British at Jelmur fort on 4 April 1768 and was defeated
due to superior firepower of the British. He fled to the tribal hinterlands of
his estate and continued his efforts against the British until his natural
death on the Fifth of December 1771.
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