Chapter 30 The Indian Independence Movement, 1905-1947

1. Presentation By; Jany Diaz Mr. Marshall, Ap History Period 1 Chapter 30 The Indian Independence Movement, 1905-1947 Guerilla Tactics

2. Intro India was a colony of Great Britain from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. (Bulliet 800) Under British rule the subcontinent acquired may of the trappings of Western-style economic development, such as railroads, harbors, modern cities, and cotton and steel mills, as well as an active and and worldly middle class. (http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-history/modern-history/indian-independence.html) The economic transformation of the region awakened in this educated middle class a sense of national dignity that demanded political fulfillment. (Bulliet 801) In response, the British gradually granted India a limited amount of political autonomy while maintaining overall control. (Spodek 760) Gandhi, leader of the Indian Independence Movement

3. Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, at the age of 21 in jail. Lands & the People • Religious and communal tensions among the Indian peoples were carefully papered over under British rule. (Spodek 711) • Violent conflicts tore India apart after the withdrawal of the British in 1947. (Bulliet 801) • Much of India is fertile land, but it is vulnerable to the vagaries of nature, especially droughts caused by the periodic failure of the monsoons. (http://maryland.sierraclub.org/archive/1999/mayjun/index.html) • When the rains failed from 1896 to 1900, 2 million people died of starvation. (Bulliet 802)

4. Indian independence movement leader Mohandas K. Gandhi reads by his spinning wheel at his home in India, in 1946. • To produce timber for construction and railroad ties, and to clear land for tea and rubber plantations, government foresters cut down most of the tropical hardwood forests that had covered the subcontinent in the nineteenth century. (Bulliet 803) • In spite of deforestation and extensive irrigation, the amount of land available to peasant families shrank with each successive generation. (http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-history/modern-history/indian-independence.html) • Despite periodic famines the Indian population grew from 250 million in 1900 to 319 million in 1921 and 389 million in 1941. (http://maryland.sierraclub.org/archive/1999/mayjun/index.html) • This growth created pressures in many areas. (Bulliet 803) • Landless young men converged on the cities, exceeding the number of jobs available in the slowly expanding industries.( Spodek 704)

5. The government protected property owners, from village moneylenders all the way up to the maharajahs, or ruling princes, who owned huge tracts of land. (http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-history/modern-history/indian-independence.html) • The cities were crowded with craftsmen, traders, and workers of all sorts, most very poor. (Spodek 715) • The peoples of India spoke many different languages: Hindi in the north, Tamil in the south, Bengali in the east, Gujerati around Bombay, Urdu in the northwest, and dozens of others. (http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-history/modern-history/indian-independence.html) Badly damaged by Allied bombing raids, the Reichstag building lies in ruins asRussian Red Army troops continue to advance in Berlin, Germany, in 1945. * Economic development- what the British called the “moral and material progress of India” hardly benefited the average Indian. (Bulliet 804) * Indians were divided into many classes. Peasants, always the great majority, paid rents to the landowner, interest to the village moneylender, and taxes to the government and had little left to improve their land or raise their standard of living. (Spodek 712)

6. Standing just left of centre, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson addresses the crowd outside the State Department in Washington D.C, USA, Sunday 14th June 1914. * Hinduism discouraged intermarriage and other social interactions among the castes and with people who were not Hindus. (Bulliet 804) Muslims constituted one-quarter of the people of India but formed a majority in the northwest and in eastern Bengal. (Spodek 707) Muslims rulers had dominated northern and central India until they were displaced by the British in the eighteenth century. (http://maryland.sierraclub.org/archive/1999/mayjun/index.html)

7. India’s subordination to British interests was vividly demonstrated in the famine of 1943 in Bengal. (Bulliet 804) • When the war ended, Britain’s new Labour Party government prepared for Indian independence, but deep suspicions between Hindus and Muslims complicated the process. • By early 1947 the Indian National Congress had accepted the idea of a partition of India into two states, one secular but dominated by Hindus, the other Muslim.(http://maryland.sierraclub.org/archive/1999/mayjun/index.html) India Moves Towards Independence In the 1920s, slowly and reluctantly, the British began to give in to the pressure of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. (Bulliet 808) Though paying homage to Gandhi, they preferred his designated successor as leader of the Indian National Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru.

8. Bibliography **Bulliet **http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-history/modern-history/indian-independence.html **http://maryland.sierraclub.org/archive/1999/mayjun/index.html **Spodek