MODERN INDIAN HISTORY HANDOUT on CABINET MISSION and REVOLUTIONARY TERRORIST MOVEMENT
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CABINET MISSION On 19th February 1946 – The day after the RIN meeting broke out in Bombay – Clement Atlee announced the proposed visit of a Cabinet Mission. The upper most concern in official mind was that of imperial defence, and for that purpose a united India was considered to be in Britain’s best interests. The three member Mission was headed by Pethick Lawrence, Stafford Cripps and A.V. Alexander. It was to discuss two important issues:(1) The formation of an interim government based on widest possible agreement among Indian political parties. (2) The principle and procedure for the framing of a new constitution for granting independence. PROPOSALS: 1.
The unity of India had to be retained and it rejected the Muslim League’s demand for a full-fledged Pakistan.
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It proposed a very loose federal government for the Union of India, including both the provinces and the Princely States.
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There would be a union government at the top, in-charge of only Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communication.
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All the residual powers would be vested in the provincial governments, which would be free to form groups.
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Each group could also have its own executive and legislature and could decide what provincial subjects to take on in common.
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A Constituent Assembly was to be elected by the recently constituted provincial assemblies to draft a Constitution for the whole of India.
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The Cabinet Mission divided the provinces into the following three sections:Section A: Bombay, Madras, Central Provinces, Orissa, Bihar and United Provinces. Section B: NWFP, Sindh and Punjab Section C: Bengal and Assam.
According to the Cabinet Mission Plan, the interim government was formed on nd
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September 1946 headed by J.L. Nehru, but Muslim League did not join the interim
government. On 13th October 1946, the League joined the Government. 2
The Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 9th December 1946 and on 11th December 1946, Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected as its President. On 13th December 1946 J.L. Nehru introduced his famous ‘Objective Resolution’ which was adopted and enacted on 22nd January 1947 in the form of Preamble. MOUNTBATTEN PLAN, JUNE 3, 1947 The British P.M. Clement Attlee announced on 20th February 1947 in the House of Commons that Britain would vacate India by 30th June 1948, this is known as Attlee’s Declaration. Lord Mountbatten, the 34th and the last Governor General and Viceroy arrived in India on 22nd March 1947. On June 3rd, 1947 Mountbatten published a statement outlining his partition or the 3rd June Plan. According to the Plan, India would be divided but in a manner that maximum unity was maintained. Pakistan would be created, but it would be as small as possible. Other features were: (i)
The provincial legislative assembly of Bengal and Punjab would meet in two parts separately. One representing the Muslim majority district and the other representing the remaining district to decide by vote for the partition of the province.
(ii) In case of Sindh and Baluchistan, Legislative Assembly was to take its own decision at a special meeting. (iii) A provision of referendum was provided for in the case of the NWFP and Muslim majority district of Sylhet. (iv) With regard to the Indian States, the British Government would cease to exercise the powers of Paramountcy. It would then be open to the States to enter into political relation with the successor government. The Plan also made provisions for the setting up of a Boundary Commission to demarcate boundaries in case partition was to be effected. Mountbatten delayed the announcement of Boundary Commission even though it was ready by 12th August 1947. The British Parliament introduced Indian Independence Bill on 18th July 1947 which finally became Indian Independence Act on 15th August 1947 and thus India became independent.
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THE REVOLUTIONARY TERRORIST MOVEMENT The revolutionary terrorist movement was largely the outcome of the same set of causes which gave rise to extremist wing in the nationalist politics. The revolutionaries wanted faster results and disapproved the value of persuasion popularized by the moderates and low-grade pressure advocated by the extremists. As far as their methods were concerned, the revolutionaries believed that Western imperialism could only be ended by Western methods of violence. Hence they advocated the cult of the revolver and the bomb. The revolutionaries formed secret societies, recruited young men and believed in bold action and sacrifice for the cause of the country. By assassinating the European officials, they sought to demoralize the official class, paralyse the administration and uproot the enemies of freedom – both foreign and Indians. To finance their projects, they involved themselves in dacoities, looting of banks and offices and even train derailments. Though dacoity was endorsed as a means of fund raising, strict conditions were attached to it. Permission was given to rob from the households and establishments of traitors, people opposed to the cause of revolution, spies, money lenders, hoarders and oppressors of the poor and the weak etc. Everyone took oath not to do any harm to women, children, the weak and the sick in those operations. GROWTH The first indications of revolutionary movement originated in Maharashtra and that too among the Chitpavan Brahmins of the Poona district. The first political murder was committed at Poona on 22nd June 1897 by the Chapekar brothers (Chitpavan Brahmins) Damodar and Balkrishna. The British authorities believed that Tilak’s speeches and writings in Maratha and Kesari had led to this act and thus he was arrested and awarded 18 months of rigorous imprisonment. The beginning of the revolutionary movement in Bengal can be attributed to the bhadralok class. In 1902, Promotha Mitra, Jatindranath Bannerjee and Barindra Kumar Ghosh established Anushilan Samiti, a revolutionary group but their activities had been confined initially to physical and moral training of members and were not particularly significant till 1907 or 1908. The partition of Bengal and the Indian offensive through boycott of British goods and Swadeshi movement infused a new spirit among the youths of Bengal to an extent which was earlier unknown. In 1905 Aurobindo Ghosh published 4
the Bhawani Mandir (Temple of the Holy Mother) which was banned along with Barindra Kumar Ghosh’s Vartaman Rananiti (The Technique of Modern Fighting) and Mukti Kon Pathe (Which Way Freedom?). An inner circle within the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti started the Yugantar weekly in April 1906 and attempted one or two abortive attempts in the summer of the same year. Hemchandra Kanungo, then went abroad to get military and political training. After Kanungo’s return a bomb making factory was set up at Maniktala, a suburb of Calcutta. Gross carelessness on the part of the leadership however, led to the arrest of the whole group including Aurobindo Ghosh within hours of the Kenndey murders (30th April 1908) by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki – the target Muzaffarpur District Magistrate Kingsford escaping unhurt. A total of 34 persons were arrested including Ghosh brothers and were tried in Alipore Conspiracy case. Meanwhile, Shyamji Krishnavarma, a native of Kathiawar (in Gujarat) set up the Indian Home Rule Society in 1905 at London popularly known as the India House. He also published a monthly journal, the Indian Sociologist to support Indian causes. A group of Indian revolutionaries including V.D. Savarkar, Hardayal and Madan Lal Dhingra became members of the India House. Earlier at Nashik, Savarkar had set up an association called Mitra Mela which in 1904 had been merged into the secret society called Abhinav Bharat, modelled after Mazzini’s Young Italy movement of the 1830s. The band of young enthusiasts made India House a centre for pro-India and anti-British propaganda. In 1909, Madan Lal Dhingra shot dead Col. William Curzon Wyllie, an officer at the India Office. In December 1912 a bomb was thrown at Lord Hardinge on his state entry to Chandni Chowk, killing his attendants. GHADAR MOVEMENT: Hardayal, an intellectual giant and a fire-brand revolutionary from Punjab, was the moving spirit behind the Ghadar Party which was formed on 1st November 1913 at San Franscisco. He was assisted by Ram Chandra, Barkatullah and Sohan Singh Bhakna. The party published weekly newspaper ‘Ghadar’ in commemoration of the meeting of 1857. The Ghadar party highlighted the point that Indians were not respected in the world abroad because they were not free. The Ghadar was circulated widely among Indians in North America, and within a few months it had reached groups settled in Philippines, Hong Kong, China and the Malay States and to Central American countries.
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In 1914 three events influenced the course of the Ghadar movement:(i)
the arrest and the escape of Hardayal
(ii) the Komagata Maru incident (iii) the outbreak of W.W.- I. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN 1920s The virtual failure of the Non Cooperation Movement and the phase of despondency again created conditions calling for bold revolutionary activities. Many young people began to question the very basic strategy of the national leadership and its emphasis on non-violence and began to look for alternatives. In the 1920s the revolutionary terrorism was influenced by the working class and the Bolshevik Revolution of Russia. The revolutionaries in North India were the first to emerge out of the mood of frustration and reorganize under the leadership of Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjee and Sachindranath Sanyal. They met in Kanpur in October 1924 and founded the Hindustan Republican Association (or Army), to organize armed revolution to over-throw colonial rule and establish in its place a Federal Republic. One of the daring acts of HRA was the looting of a train at Kakori (near Lucknow) on 9th August 1925. However, the British government arrested several revolutionaries and four among them were hanged. They were:(i)
Ashfaqullah Khan
(ii) Ramprasad Bismil (iii) Roshan Singh (iv) Rajendra Lahiri The Kakori case was a major setback to the revolutionaries of northern India; but it was not a fatal blow. Finally, nearly all the major young revolutionaries of northern India met at Ferozeshah Kotla ground at Delhi on 9th and 10th September 1928 and adopted socialism as their official goal and changed the name of the party to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA). In Bengal, Surya Sen, a school teacher gathered around himself a large band of revolutionary youth including Anant Singh, Ganesh Ghosh and Loknath Paul. They decided to organize a rebellion, on however small a scale, to demonstrate that it was possible to challenge the armed might of the British Empire in India. Their action
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included Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930. He was however arrested in 1933 and hanged in 1934. One of the important features of the revolutionary movement in Bengal in late 1920s was shedding of religious fervour. They no longer took religious oaths and pledges. Chittagong Indian Republican Army cadre included many Muslims like Mir Ahmad, Sattar etc. In India, today the freedom revolutionaries are remembered as martyrs who laid down their lives for the cause of the motherland.
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