COLONIAL ADM. STRUCTURE

1. COLONIAL ADM. STRUCTURE • Centre: Viceroy’s council, and legislative council • Provinces: Governor’s council, and legislative council • Towns: councils • Army, Judiciary, Civil services and Police.

2. GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACTS • ACT OF 1909: Separate electorates for Muslims • ACT OF 1919: Dyarchy and separate electorates for Anglo Indians and Christians • ACT OF 1935: Federation of India.

3. POLITICS OF PARTITION 1919-1947

4. M K GANDHI

5. M K GANDHI • Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 into a bania (merchant trader) family in a princely state of Porbandar, Gujarat. He went to England to complete his law degree and then went to South Africa in 1893. • He worked in Natal for nearly 20 years on behalf of Indian community against racist policies of white rulers.

6. GANDHIAN POLITICS • He returned to India in 1915 and travelled to different areas assessing the political situation and understanding various strands of Indian unrest.

7. SATYAGRAHA* • Lit. translationTHE QUEST FOR TRUTH. • MASS POLITICAL ACTIVITYthrough non-violent methods • Gandhi mobilized three localities with different demands in 1917-1918. • SATYAGRAHA IN KHEDA DISTRICT, GUJARAT 1917: No revenue demand by the peasansts.

8. SATYAGRAHA • SATYAGRAHA IN AHMEDABAD: Gandhi intervened in an internal conflict between Gujarat mill owners and their workers. • SATYAGRAHA IN CAMPARAN: Gandhi instituted an open enquiry in July 1917, and gave an All India publicity to the grievances of Champaran indigo cultivators and the landless plantation labour.

9. GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1919 • The System of Dyarchy* was introduced in the provinces. • Besides Muslims, other minorities including Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Christians and Europeans were also given the right of separate electorate.

10. DYARCHY • The principle of dyarchy was introduced in which the central Legislative Assembly and Provincial Assemblies were responsible for different areas of sovereignty. Education, health, agriculture, and local self government were made the responsibility of provincial legislative, while income tax, law and order, communications, foreign affairs and military matters were reserved for the central authority.

11. ROWLATT ACT SATYAGRAHA, 1919 • The Rowlatt act was passed as a war time ordinance to ensure the state’s monopoly of power and had permitted British to hold Indians without trial through a system of special court orders. The Rowlatt act became a law in February 1919, which was an attempt to make the war time procedures a permanent restriction on civil rights.

12. ROWLATT ACT • Gandhi called for a mass protest movement relying on political networks like Pan-Islamicist groups who were concerned about the fate of Caliph in the declining Ottoman Empire, and his own Satyagraha sabha which he had started in Bombay in February, 1919. • The resentment was fuelled by brutal provocation and repression by the state authorities ,especially, in Punjab.

13. JALLIANWALA BAGH MASSACRE • On April 13, 1919, Gen. Dyer opened fire on a peaceful unarmed crowd, consisting mostly of villagers. The enclosed ground where these people had gathered was known as Jallianwala Bagh, about 379 people were killed and over 1200 were wounded.

14. NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT 1922-24 • After the repressive response to the Rowlatt Satyagraha, the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Gandhi launched the Non-cooperation movement. • The movement had a formal program of boycotting government institutions and schools, as well as mass economic boycott of foreign goods. • 1919-21 also saw a series of labour unrest and peasant (kisan) movements.

15. NON-CO-OPERATION MOVEMENT • The regional and class variations of unrest in this period reflected a variety of local concerns that fuelled the sense of mass agitation. • CHAURI-CHAURA INCIDENT,GORAKHPUR, UINTED PROVINCE, 1922: The agitators killed 22 policemen and injured several. Gandhi called off the non-cooperation movement after this incident.

16. NON-CO-OPERATION MOVEMENT • After 1922, as active non-cooperation moved into a quiescent phase, a number of prominent Congress politicians, among them C R Das and Motilal Nehru formed a new party and successfully contested the elections of reformed assemblies. Simultaneously, with Gandhi’s encouragement, the khadi movement, through All India Spinners Association took on organizational form.

17. GANDHIAN POLITICS

18. GANDHIAN POLITICS • Gandhi also began to develop a program for women. When he asked women to join the political movement, he equated it with the restoration of the rule of Rama and that would come only, when women emulating the faithful and brave Sita would united fight alongside their men against this immoral ruler.

19. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT(1930-34) • The backdrop of economic depression (1929 and Bengal famine) and appointment of Simon commission (all white member committee was appointed to enquire into the future constitutional reform in India, led to massive unrest and demonstrations all over India.

20. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT • Gandhi launched a now-famous salt march from his ashram in Sabarmati in mid-Gujarat to the western coast of lndia at Dandi, on the Arabian sea, to collect salt water to make salt, in violation of the salt tax.

21. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE • At the height of all-India agitation, Gandhi once again chose to hold back and settle for moderate concessions from the British. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931 was based on vague principles: federation (central and provinces), Indian responsibility, and safeguards for minority populations.

22. GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1935 • The Government of India Act had two main parts: provincial and federal. • At the provincial level the Indian ministers were now to be involved in all government departments. • Dyarchy- the separation of provincial subjects of government from the central ones was officially abolished.

23. ACT OF 1935 • The Act can be seen as a possible prelude to the British finally agreeing to concede power to the Indians at the centre, based on electoral showings in the provinces. • Both the Congress and the Muslim league contested the elections in 1936 and Congress won elections in 7 out 11 provinces.

24. OTHER LEADERSS: M A JINNAH • Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a staunch secularist and a brilliant lawyer. He was the member of Indian National Congress till 1913 when he joined the Muslim league. He was a strong critic of sectarianism and use of religion in politics (did not support the Khilafat movement of 1922).

25. M A JINNAH • Jinnah’s opportunity to stake a claim for • All India Muslims not only at the centre but at the provincial level came through the needs of Muslims in India’s Muslim minority provinces especially United Provinces (UP).

26. M A JINNAH • In UP, where the Muslim League won all 29 seats reserved for the Muslims, the Congress refused to form any coalition with them. Congress saw itself as representing all Indians.

27. OTHER LEADERS • JAWARHARLAL NEHRU • SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE ‘NETAJI’ • B R AMBEDKAR

28. INDIA AND WORLD WAR II • The Congress ministries resigned in 8 out of 11 provinces in protest of Viceroy Linlothgow’s decision to declare India a belligerent in the war against Germany without consulting them.

29. CRIPPS INDIA MISSION • The mission did not meet the Congress demand for immediate control of defence portfolio of the centre and the talks basically failed.

30. QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT 1942 • The movement was seen as by far more serious rebellion since 1857. • The main Congress leaders were jailed by the authorities and the movement was carried on by the lower ranking leaders and it began as an urban movement where the strikes (hartals) and clashes with the police became the norm in most cities.

31. POLITICS OF PARTITION:SIMLA CONFERENCE • In the summer of 1945, a conference was convened at Simla by the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, who had recently returned from England with the approval of British Cabinet to a proposal for reconstituting the Executive Council in consultation with the Indian leaders.

32. SIMLA CONFERENCE: WAVELL PLAN • Wavell proposed talks to set up a new Executive Council which would be entirely Indian. “ Caste Hindus” and Muslims will have equal representation.

33. SIMLA CONFERENCE • The conference broke down on the insistence of Jinnah that his party should have an exclusive right to nominate Muslim members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. This was something which the Congress could not concede without repudiating its national composition.

34. THE DEADLOCK • 1946, that the British Government was still working "in the spirit of the Cripps Offer of 1942" and intended to convene a constitution-making body. Elections to the central and provincial legislatures, were announced.

35. 1946 ELECTIONS • Muslim League win was most spectacular and it won all the seats to the Central Legislative Assembly and 75% vote of the Muslim caste vote in the provincial assemblies. • Still, the League had to form coalitions to form ministries. Only Bengal had a league ministry. In Punjab had a coalition under congress and Akali (Sikh).

36. 1946 ELECTIONS • Northwestern Province had a Congress ministry. • Congress entered the coalition politics of the Muslim majority provinces and so remained a constraint for Jinnah’s claim to parity at the centre.

38. CABINET MISSION PLAN • In an effort to resolve deadlock between Congress and the Muslim League in order to transfer British power "to a single Indian administration", a three-man Cabinet Mission formed in 1946 which drafted plans for a "three-tier federation for India."

39. CABINET MISSION PLAN • According to these plans, the region would be divided into three groups of provinces, with Group A including the Hindu-populated provinces that would eventually comprise the majority of the independent India.

40. CABINET MISSION PLAN • Groups B, the NW Muslim majority provinces, and C were comprised of largely Muslim-populated of NE provinces. Each group would be governed separately with a great degree of autonomy except for the handling of "foreign affairs, communications, defense, and only those finances required for such nationwide matters."

41. CABINET MISSION • Jinnah interpreted the scheme to be a defacto recognition of his Pakistan Demand: the groups would have constituent assemblies of their own; the constitution of the federal central could eventually be designed to be a mere agency with executive and not legislative powers. The Congress also was amenable to the scheme.

42. CABINET MISSION PLAN • but argued that the provinces were free to opt out of a group to which they did not wish to belong. Congress had a ministry in northwestern province which was in Group B and under the Congress reading it should have a choice to opt out. • Jinnah, interpreted the scheme as having compulsory grouping, in order to ensure

43. CABINET MISSION PLAN • two groups of Muslim majority provinces within federation. • The plan provided only the choice between an undivided India with a weak federal structure with compulsory grouping of Muslim and Hindu majority provinces, or a separate independent sovereign centre, that would constitute only of the Muslim majority districts of Bengal and Punjab.*

44. CABINET MISSION PLAN • As leader of the Muslim League, Jinnah accepted the Cabinet Mission's proposal. However, when Nehru announced at his first press conference as the re-elected president of Congress "no constituent assembly could be bound by any prearranged constitutional formula,"

45. ROAD TO PARTITON • By early 1947, with increasing violence and armed mutinies London’s priority was to leave India as soon as possible. Clement Atllee, the New Labour minister announced that British would depart from India by June 30th 1948 (Feb 20th 1947)..

46. ROAD TO PARTTION • On March 8, Nehru spoke for the Congress and called for the partition of Punjab and Bengal. • In March Wavell left for London and Lord Montabatten arrived as Britain’s final viceroy.

47. PARTITION OF INDIA • June 2 1947, Mountbatten announced his Partition plan - moth eaten Pakistna made up of only the Muslim majority districts of Punjab and Bengal. • The Mountbatten Plan, as the 3rd June, 1947 Plan came to be known, sought to effect an early transfer of power to India and Pakistan.

50. NEHRU’S SPEECH • “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”...