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IGNOU HISTORY NOTES : Modern India - REVOLUTIONARY TRENDS, GHADAR PARTY AND HOME RULE LEAGUE

IGNOU HISTORY Study Notes for IAS, UPSC Exams

Modern India 1857-1964

REVOLUTIONARY TRENDS, GHADAR PARTY AND HOME RULE LEAGUE

Structure
15.0 Objectives '
15.1 Introduction / 15.2 Revolutionary Trends
15.2.1 Factors Leading to Revolutionary Trends
15.2.2 Early Activities
15.2.3 Decline of the Revolutionary Trend
15.3 The Ghadar Movement
15.3.1 Background of the Movement
15.3.2 Early Activities
15.3.3 Towards Organisation
15.3.4 Strategy and Action
15.4 Ghadar Movement : The Main Events
15.4.1 The Movement in the Last Phase
15.4.2 The Repression
15.4.3 Failure and Achievements
15.5 Home Rule Leagues
15.5.1 Events Leading to the Formation of Leagues
15.5.2 Two Leagues
15.5.3 Tilak's Home Rule League
15.5.4 Annie Besant's Home Rule League
15.5.5 Change in British Attitude
15.5.6 Decline of the Home Rule Leagues
1'5.6 Let Us Sum Up
15.7 Key Words
15.8 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

15.0 OBJECTIVES

In the early years of the twentieth century a new dimension was added to the Indian National Movement. This was the emergence of revolutionary terrorism as a political weapon. After reading this Unit you will be able to:

identify the factors that contributed to the emergenceqof revolutionary terrorism,
know about the early activities of revolutionaries and the causes of their decline.
understand what was the strategy of the Ghadar Movement and its details,
discuss the achievements of the Ghadar Movement, and
know about the Home Rule Leagues and their contribution in the National Movement.

15.1 INTRODUCTION

The first major attempt at a country-wide mass movement-the Swadeshi Movement-all but died out by 1907; the next major effort came after the First World War. In the intervening years, the national movement was to witness three different experiments in political action, all of which contributed in their own way to the furthering and deepening of national consciousness. The first experiment, that of revolutionary terrorism, synchronised with the end of the mass phase of the Swadeshi movement, the other two, the Ghadar and Home Rule Movements spanned the years of the First World War.

15.2 REVOLUTIONARY TRENDS

Revolutionary terrorism was the form of political action adopted by a generation of highlymotivated nationalist youth whose creative energies failed to find adequate room for expression within the existing political trends.

15.2.1 Factors Leading to Revolutionary Trends

The Extremists' critique of Moderate politics had convinced them of the futility of trying to convert the British rulers by petitioning and reasonable argument. They had participated actively in the Swadeshi movement in the hope and belief that Extremist methods of agitation such as boycott, passive resistance, etc., would take the national movement out of its elitist groove. They expected that this movement would bring the British Government to its knees. As you have already studied in Unit-l 1, the Swadeshi movement was only partially successful in mobilising vast sections of the masses. It also could not secure the reversal of the partition of Bengal. This failure was however, almost inevitable. Firstly because it was the first major attempt at m$ss mobilisation. And secondly its methods were new and unfamiliar both to those who advocated them and to those who hesitated to adopt them. It led to a growing sense of impatience and frustration among the youth who began to feel that perhaps something even more dramatic was needed to arouse the people. The inability of the Extremist leadership to either adequately analyse the weaknesses of the movement or to suggest new ways out of the impasse further strengthened this trend. Some sections of the leadership, such as Aurobindo Ghosh, in fact supported the new trend. Those who did not quite agree, preferred to remain silent rather than come out in open criticism, perhaps out of a feeling that this would be playing into Government hands.

Another factor that helped the growth of the trend of revolutionary terrorism was the brutal repression of the Swadeshi movement by the Government. For example the police made the unprovoked assault on the peaceful crowd at the Barisal Political Conference on 27tH April, 1906 which had led the nationalist paper Jugantar to give the call: "Force must be stopped by force". The Government's ability to repress was considerably enhanced by the split that took place in the Indian National Congress at Surat in 1907 between the Moderates and the Extremists, since it removed or at least reduced the danger of alienating the Moderates in the event of repression of the Extremists. Luring the Moderates with promises of constitutional reform, the government proceeded to launch an all-out attack on the Extremists; Tilak was sentenced to six years of exile in Burma, Aurobindo Ghosh was arrested in a revolutionary conspiracy case. During this period a whole generation of nationalist youth especially in Bengal, were:

angered by repression
convinced of the futility of the moderate path and
impatient with the inability of the extremists to either extract immediate concessions from
the government or to achieve a full scale mobilisation of themasses.

This young generation turned to the path of individual heroic action or revolutionary terrorism, a path that had hen taken before them by the Irish nationalists and the Russian Nihilists. Though believing in the necessity, in the long-run, of an armed mass revolt by the people in order to overthrow imperialism, the daunting nature of this task as well as of attempts to subvert the loyalty of the army left them with only one choice for immediate action: assassination of individual British officials, especially the unpopular ones. This was done: