An Independent India

THE INTERWAR PERIOD HIST 1301 | History An Independent India There was some hope for Indians that they would now be granted additional privileges by Britain because of the important role their men had played in the British Army during World War I. Indians also wanted the British government to remove its restrictive wartime policies. But it was immediately evident that Britain had no intention of changing. Thus, a burgeoning nationalist movement in India, as in many other nations, now promoted freedom from colonial domination. Almost immediately after World War I ended, Indian nationalists and British rulers clashed. Indians started congregating in a walled area in Amritsar, a Sikh holy city in Punjab, at the beginning of April 1919. They were opposing the Rowlatt Act, which gave Indians accused of being revolutionary subjects the right to be held without charge or trial for two years. The demonstrations occasionally got violent. The demonstrators had little possibility of escaping the confined area when the British Indian Army opened fire on them on April 13. Over a thousand people were injured and hundreds of people died. Following an inquiry, the unit's British commander finally resigned. Following the tragedy, the Indian government changed the country's laws to limit the number of Indian MPs allowed to serve in the national legislature and to determine who may vote. This tiny compromise, nevertheless, did not stop Indian nationalists who advocated for independence and self-rule from criticising the government. Indians should run India, according to the Indian National Congress. Its adherents advocated for ongoing acts of peaceful disobedience, boycotts of British products, and refusal to pay certain taxes. A lawyer by the name of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi started to take centre stage in this tumultuous and emotional scenario; Gandhi embraced and promoted the practice of civil disobedience and nonviolence, dressed traditionally, and gave up worldly belongings. The self-rule movement in India in the 1920s evolved into a grassroots movement that encouraged civil disobedience. In 1921, Gandhi became leadership of the Indian National Congress, which quickly evolved into the popular party. Several British regulations contradicted Indian customs, including those pertaining to salt collecting, which is a staple food in India. Native Americans were not allowed to harvest or trade salt under the colonial system; instead, they had to buy it from the British and pay a high fee. Gandhi launched the Salt March on March 12, 1930, when he led his followers on a two-hundred-mile, twenty-four-day march to the Arabian Sea in order to gather salt from the sea. Gandhi and his supporters did harvest salt, against British law, despite the British government's best attempts to hide the salt deposits at the beaches. For these acts of civil disobedience, he was detained together with almost sixty thousand other people. Over the course of the following several weeks, more nationalists started breaking the law by gathering salt from coasts in various regions. Gandhi consented to halt the widespread act of civil disobedience but was not allowed to leave prison until the next year. The British did not initially support India's independence movement, but after a few years they started to give up on the issue of self-rule. Through the 1935 administrative of India Act, they gave Indians authority over many administrative duties, but they kept control over the armed forces and foreign policy. This was a significant step towards giving India more independence. Nonetheless, the question of Muslim representation in India persisted. For instance, the Indian National Congress, which was predominately made up of Hindus, was acknowledged by the British as the entity representing all Indians, while the Muslim League was recognised as the official representative of the Muslim community. Although the Indian National Congress had made some progress towards achieving its goals of self-rule, it was still obvious that Britain still controlled India.