Gov 1255: Politics of IndiaLecture 2: The Historical Legacy

Procession in Bangalore for Mahatma Gandhi's Quit India Movement, a call for independence of India from British rule, 1942

Prof Prerna Singh

Lecture 2: The Historical Legacy

Why did the British colonize India?

Why did they leave?

Why did the British colonize India?

The East India Company

The Boston Tea Party

The Mughal Empire

The Indus Valley Civilization 3300-1900 BC

Medieval India

The Taj MahalShah Jahan Mumtaz Mahal

The Mughal Empire

East India Company spreads its control

Spread of control of East India Company

Rebellion of 1857

Rani Laxmi Bai

Mangal Pandey

Queen Victoria, Empress of India

The Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire

Why did the British leave?

Why did the British leave?

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Gandhi returns to India

World War I Over 1.5 million Indians served

in the armed services

Post card depicting the Sikh Regiment liberating France in World War I

World War I Over 1.5 million Indians served

in the armed services

India provided £146 million in revenue for the war.

Severe economic crisis – rising taxes, inflation, famines.

The Congress Party

Gandhi

Gandhi Created a wholly new form of

politics: Mass movement

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”

Albert Einstein

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

UNIQUE

New spiritual techniques into politics: Passive resistance, Mass Civil

Disobedience, Courting Arrests, Prayer Meetings, Fasts

Political success of spiritual techniques

Gandhi & Thoreau Gandhi on Thoreau’s Essay on Civil

Disobedience:

“It expresses the essence of my political philosophy, not only as India’s struggle related to the British but as to my views of the relations between citizens and government…I took the name of my movement from Thoreau’s essay”.

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

Who is the greatest man in the world today?

John Haynes Holmes, Pastor of the Community Church of NY City, Sermon in the lyric theater of New York City in 1921

“What we have under Gandhi’s leadership is a revolution…but a revolution different from any other that history has knowledge. Gandhi is a citadel of modern power”.

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

“To know Gandhi is to tantamount to knowing Christ”

Gandhi’s Significance in World History Martin Luther King’s radio address on his last day in India:

"Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

Swaraj or the independence of India from foreign domination.

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

Most powerful political intervention against the British is small, non-violent intervention into colonial economy : Movement towards economic self-reliance

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

Economic self-reliance - Clothing

- Food

Gandhi spinning cloth on a charkha

Movement for Home-spun cloth

Gandhi’s Salt March 1930

“Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down”

American Correspondent Webb Miller

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

Most powerful political intervention against the British is small, non-violent intervention into colonial economy: Movement towards economic self-reliance

Political Symbolism: Connection of body to body politic

Gandhi with British mill workers in Lancashire

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

Most powerful political intervention against the British is small, non-violent intervention into colonial economy: Movement towards economic self-reliance

Political Symbolism: Connection of body to body politic

Mass Participation

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

Young women march in the Non-Cooperation Movement, 1930s

Tensions around Gandhi Religion

Caste

Most fatal tension…from closest associate

Next week…Darkest period of modern

Indian history: The Partition of India