Decolonization of India: What does it feel like to be ruled by someone else?

1
Decolonization of India What does it feel like
to be ruled by someone else?

• CHY4U

2
Impact of WWII on British Empire

• Britain had survived the war, but its wealth,
  prestige and authority had been severely
  reduced.
• The huge sense of relief at a more or less
  dignified exit, and much platitudinous rhetoric,
  disguised the fact that the end of the Raj was a
  staggering blow for British world power. John
  Darwin

John Darwin, BBC History, Britain, the
Commonwealth and the End of Empire, March 3,
2011, http//www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/
endofempire_overview_01.shtml (May 28, 2013).
3
Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler, World
History Connections to Today Teachers Edition
(Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Prentice Hall,
2001), 632.
4

• http//www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/gallery/photos/
  24.html
• PBS, The Story of India. (4.04).

5
Success, but

• By 1910 , India had the fourth largest railway
  system in the world, one that unified the country
  geographically and economically. However, under
  British rule, the generally positive advances of
  social reforms, public works and unification of
  the sic Indias disparate regions were coupled
  with racism and economic exploitation. Lack of
  Indian representation in government and an
  economic system that was perceived as a drain on
  Indias wealth were the primary causes of
  agitation against British rule in India.

PBS, The Story of India, Colonization, 2008,
http//www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/gallery/photos/
21.html (May 28, 2013)
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Tilak on Self-rule, 1907  

• One thing is granted, namely, that this
  government does not suit us. As has been said by
  an eminent statesman - the government of one
  country by another can never be a successful, and
  therefore, a permanent government. One fact is
  that this alien government has ruined the
  country. In the beginning, all of us were taken
  by surprise. We were almost dazed. We thought
  that everything that the rulers did was for our
  good We are not armed, and there is no necessity
  for arms either. We have a stronger weapon, a
  political weapon, in boycott. We have perceived
  one fact, that the whole of this administration,
  which is carried on by a handful of Englishmen,
  is carried on with our assistance. We are all in
  subordinate service. I want to have the key of
  my house, and not merely one stranger turned out
  of it. Self-government is our goal we want a
  control over our administrative machinery. We
  don't want to become clerks and remain clerks.
  At present, we are clerks and willing instruments
  of our own oppression in the hands of' an alien
  government, and that government is ruling over us
  not by its innate strength but by keeping us in
  ignorance and blindness to the perception of this
  fact.

Modern History Sourcebook, Tilak Address to the
Indian National Congress, 1907, 1998,
http//www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1907tilak.html
(May 28, 2013).
7
Gandhi on Independence, 1929

•  
• We believe that it is the inalienable right of
  the Indian people, as of any other people, to
  have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their
  toil and have the necessities of life, so that
  they may have full opportunities of growth.

Jeff Hay, The Partition of British India (New
York Chelsea House Publishers), 43.
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Memorializing
Visitor viewing painting of the massacre at a
public garden in Amritsar in 1919 that killed 379
people.
Francis Elliott, David Cameron to Express
British Regret Over Amritsar Massacre, The
Times, Feb. 20, 2013, http//www.thetimes.co.uk/tt
o/news/politics/article3693230.ece (May 28,
2013).
9
Gandhi and Women in the Salt March, 1930
University of Texas at Austin, South Asia
Institute, Women in the Indian Independence
Movement The Salt Protests of 1930,
N.d. http//www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/southasia/_f
iles/pdf/outreach/LP_salt_protest.pdf (May 24,
2013).
10
Women and Salt
Radha Kumar, A History of Doing, New Delhi.
Zubaan. 1993. pp. 78 in University of Texas at
Austin, South Asia Institute, Women in the Indian
Independence Movement The Salt Protests of 1930,
N.d. http//www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/southasia/_f
iles/pdf/outreach/LP_salt_protest.pdf (May 24,
2013).
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Salt Gathering

• Gandhi on salt tax in letter to the viceroy in
  1930

• But if you cannot see your way to deal with these
  evils I shall proceed to disregard the
  provisions of the salt laws. I regard this tax to
  be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's
  standpoint. As the Independence movement is
  essentially for the poorest in the land the
  beginning will be made with this evil. The wonder
  is that we have submitted to the cruel monopoly
  for so long. I hope that there will be tens of
  thousands ready in a disciplined manner, to take
  up the work after me, and in the act of
  disobeying the Salt Act to lay themselves open to
  the penalties of a law that should never
  disfigured the Statute book.

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Hand Spinning

• Gandhi on self-sufficiency in a letter to the
  British Viceroy in 1930

• Gandhi in 1946

• If the weight of taxation has crushed the poor
  from above, the destruction of the central
  supplementary industry, i.e. hand-spinning, has
  undermined their capacity for producing wealth.

Indian Independence Nationalism Source 3,
British Library, Help for Researchers, N.d.,
http//www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india
/indianindependence/indiannat/source3/index.html
(May 28, 2013).