Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

There were four factors behind the success of the freedom movement in British India: (1) pressure exerted by public bodies, notably the Indian National Congress; (2) non-violent resistance campaigns; (3) violent resistance; and (4) global political and economic changes. Most histories of the freedom movement highlight the first and second factors, give an inadequate account of the third, and all but ignore the fourth. Typically, the freedom movement is shown to begin with the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. For the next 35 years, resolutions passed at Congress sessions define its direction. In 1920 Mohandas K. Gandhi emerges as the hero of the non-cooperation movement. The historiographical limelight is trained on his satyagraha campaigns; the revolutionary campaigns that precede and follow them fall into the shadow. The impact of global events becomes too obvious to ignore after 1939. From that point, attention is focused on constitutional negotiations and on the Pakistan movement.Some accounts of the freedom movement – including many published in India – do cover violent resistance to British rule. Many such accounts make dubious linkages between eighteenth – and nineteenth-century peasant insurgencies or the Revolt of 1857 and the organized anti-colonial militancy of the twentieth century. Coverage of the terrorist campaigns of 1907 to 1934 focuses largely ... log in or subscribe to read full text