Indian Independence And Partition History Essay

Indian Independence And Partition History EssayIt began with the idea of Mahatma Gandhi to free India from the control of the British, in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi proposed a non- military force march to protest the British Salt Tax. To understand why the British coarsenessiness value was so oppressive to the Indian people, it helps to know a bit about the subcontinents climate and culture. Indias hot hold promotessweating, which drains the human body of its salt supply. Since Indians dont eat much meat a natural source of salt they relied on supplementary salt to maintain a healthy amount in the body. Taxing the mineral that Indian people relied on for survival was just one way that the British disposal unplowed Indians under its thumb. As salt is necessary in everyones daily diet, everyone in India was affected and upon realizing the scheme of the British, the salt march was set in motion.Before embarking on a 240 miles march from Sabarmati to Dandi to protest the salt tax, Gand hi displace a letter to the Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, fore strugglening their excogitations of genteel disobedienceIf my letter makes no magical spell to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I sh totally proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I do-nothing take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor mans standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be do with this evil. (Gandhi)Acknowledged of this action, the viceroy could have arrested him easily scarce by doing so could spark an intense come about so he only replied Gandhi was contemplating a course of action which is clearly bound to involve impingement of the law and danger to the public peace.As promised, on March 12, 1930, Gandhi and 78 male satyagrahis (activists of truth and resolution) started borderland towarfared the Arabian Sea. It has been told that along h is way, the roads were watered, and fresh flowers and green leaves strewn on the path and as the satyagrahis walked, they did so to the business line of one of Gandhis favorite bhajans,Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, sung by the great Hindustani vocalist, Pandit Paluskar.Each village he passed by, he convinced government officials to resign in protest and to encourage people to pledge non wildness, therefore, to a greater extent and more men joined the march. On April 5, 1930, after a 24 day-long journey, Gandhi and his followers reached the coast, he pile up a chunk of salt and immediately stone-broke the law. No sooner had Gandhi violated the law than everyone started interest him, picking up salt off the coast. A month after Gandhi completed his march he was arrested for breaking the law and soon after Indias prisons were abounding with 60.000 differents practicing this simple act of civil disobedience. (Hatt, (2002).p. 33)WomenAgain, though women were full and active members of Gandhis community, and many were to be closely associated with him over a lengthy period of time, as he went so far to say that the women have come to look upon me as one of themselves., no women were ease up among the 78 people chosen to accompany him on the march. An expla republic for this was that Gandhi snarl women wouldnt provoke law enforcers wish well their male counterparts, making the officers react violently to non-violence. As salt is an important householdnecessity, Gandhi strongly favoured the license of women. He especially recruited women to participate in the salt tax campaigns and the boycott of foreign products.( Norvell, 1997.) Sarma (1994) had concluded that by enlisting women in his campaigns, including the salt tax campaign, anti-untouchability campaign and the peasant movement, Gandhi had gave many women a new presumption and dignity in the mainstream of Indian public life.Folk HeroGandhi was portrayed as a christ (the long-awaited savior of an entire people), a way of incorporating radical forces within the peasantry into the nonviolent resistance movement. It was told that in gram of villages, plays were performed presenting Gandhi as the rebirth of earlier Indian nationalist leaders, or even as a demigod. The plays built support among illiterate peasants steeped in traditional Hindu culture. Similar messianic imagery appeared in favorite songs and poems, and in Congress-sponsored religious pageants and celebrations.In this way, not only a folk hero image of Gandhi was made, but withal, the Congress was seen as his sacred instrument. .( Murali, (1985)NegotiationsThe government, represented byLord Edward Irwin, decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The Gandhi-Irwin Pactwas sign in March 1931.The agreement between Gandhi and Irwin was signed on March 5, 1931. Following are the great points of this agreementThe Congress would discontinue the Civil Disobedience Movement.The Congress would participate in the Round confuse Confer ence.The Government would withdraw all ordinances issued to curb the Congress.The Government would withdraw all prosecutions relating to offenses not involving violence.The Government would drum out all persons undergoing sentences of imprisonment for their activities in the civil disobedience movement.The pact shows that the British Government was anxious to mystify the Congress to the conference table. The British Government agreed to free all political prisoners, in give-up the ghost for the discontinuationof the civil disobedience movement. Also as a result of the pact, Gandhi was invited to attend the Round panel Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. Gandhi was sent by the Congress as its sole representative, but the negotiations proved to be disappointing, for the most part that various other Indian communities had been encouraged by the British to send a representative and make the claim that they were not prepared to live in an India under the domination of the Congress. Furthermore, it focused on the Indian princes and Indian minorities quite a than on a transfer of power.Yet never before had the British consented to negotiate directly with the Congress, and Gandhi met Irwin as his equal. In this respect, the man who most loathed Gandhi, Winston Churchill, understood the level of Gandhis achievement when he stated it alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, bandage he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal ground with the representative of the King-Emperor.The result was unexpected as Gandhi was again arrested, and the government tried and failed to negate his influence by completely isolating him from his followers. (Herman (20080.pp. 375-377)World War II and Quit India.When World War II broke out in 1939, Britain turned to its colonies, includingIndia, for soldiers. His attitude during the war years was difficult to define he felt very concerned about the rise of fascism around the world, but he also had become a committed pacifist)For one thing, he would never compromise over pacifism. War, for whatever cause, was in his view a bad thing. Though evil must be resisted, it could never be fought effectively by violence, for violence was the root of all evil. Resistance to Germany and Japan must therefore be by the same delegacy of non-violence which he had himself used in India against the British. No doubt, he remembered the lessons of the Boer War and World War I subjection to the colonial government during war did not result in better treatment afterwards.The crisis in the war-time transaction between Mr Gandhi and the British Government came during the Cripps mission in the spring of 1942. Sir Stafford Cripps took with him proposals for establishing in India immed iately after the war Dominion status of full self-government, with the right to declare independence, the minimum provision being made to ease up the scheme acceptable to Moslems. In March of 1942, British cabinet minister Sir Stafford Cripps offered the Indians a form of self-reliance within the British Empire in exchange for military support. The Cripps offer included a plan to separate the Hindu and Muslim sections of India, which Gandhi found unacceptable. The Indian independence movement rejected the plan.That summer, Gandhi issued a chew the fat for Britain to Quit India immediately. The crucial issue was immediate independence, on which Congress insisted. This was Gandhis and the Congress Partys most ultimate fervor aimed at securing the British exit from India. (Gandhi,1990, p.309.) The manner in which British control was to be withdrawn and a provisional Government substituted was set out along with a threat of mass civil disobedience, under Gandhis direction. This mad e Quit Indiathe most forceful movement in the history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale. The colonial government reacted by arresting all of the Congress leadership, including Gandhi and his wife Kasturba. As anti-colonial protests grew, the Raj government arrested and jailed hundreds of thousands of Indians.Tragically, his wife Kasturba died in February 1944 after 18 months in prison. Gandhi became seriously ill with malaria, so the British released him from prison upon realizing that the political repercussions would have been intensive, if he had also died while imprisoned and enrage the entire nation beyond control.Indian Independence and PartitionIn 1944, Britain pledged to grant independence to India once the war was over. Gandhi called for the Congress to reject the proposal once more, since it proposed a division of India among Hindu, Muslim, andSikhstates. As a rule, Gandhi was hostile to the concept ofpartitionas it contradicted his vision of religious unity. (Reprinted inThe Essential Gandhi An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas, Louis Fischer, ed., 2002 (reprint edition) pp. 106-108.)When sectarian violence rocked Indias cities in 1946, leaving more than 5,000 dead, Congress members convinced Gandhi that the only options were partition or civil war. He reluctantly agreed, and then went on a hunger strike that single-handedly stopped the violence in Delhi and Calcutta.On August 14, 1947, theIndian Independence Actwas invoked. In border areas some 10-12 one million million people moved from one side to another and upwards of a half million were killed in communal riots pitting Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs.According to to prominent Norwegian historian,Jens Arup Seip there perhaps could have been much more bloodshed during the partition if there hadnt been for his teachings, the efforts of his followers, and his own presence.