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India in an Imperial War 1911-18 In November 1910 Charles Hardinge replaced Minto as viceroy; his grandfather had also

been governor-general of India. Lord Crewe became secretary of state for India. Hardinge wanted a conciliatory policy to prepare for the visit of King George V to India the next year. He ordered that no political prosecutions were to be initiated without his consent and that any pending prosecution that was not going to secure a conviction was to be withdrawn. On the first day of 1911 at Allahabad sixty Hindus met with forty Muslims, and Gokhale urged Hindus to understand Muslim fears. In June 1911 John Jenkins gave Hardinge the idea to restructure the partition of Bengal by 1) moving the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, 2) creating a United Bengal as a Presidency, 3) making Bihar and Orissa a Lieutenant-Governorship with a capital at Patna, and 4) restoring Assam as a Chief Commissionership. Crewe indicated his support in August, and the Cabinet and India Council approved the proposals in November. At his coronation on December 11, George V announced that ending the Bengal partition was his gift to India. The changes were put into effect by proclamations in March 1912, and the Act of Parliament was approved by the King in June. Assam got its legislative council in November, and the Central Provinces got one a year later. Most Indians were glad that the partition of Bengal had been undone, but many Muslims considered it a betrayal. However, in March 1913 the Muslim League adopted the Congress goal of self-government under the British and sought to attain it by promoting national unity and cooperation. The Indian National Congress responded by electing the distinguished Muslim Syed Muhammad as president for their annual session at Karachi in December. Soon after King George V visited the new capital, a bomb was thrown on December 23, 1912 at the elephant carrying Viceroy Hardinge, who was seriously wounded; but only the servant holding the umbrella was killed. Four men were executed, and two others were sentenced to seven years. The Moderate Gokhale gave the assurance that he and his party would not oppose the Viceroy on anything. The 1913 Indian Criminal Law Amendment Act made conspiracy a criminal offense. The Defence of India Act empowered special tribunals to ignore the Code of Criminal Procedures to inflict sentences of death, transportation for life, and imprisonment for violating rules or orders in the Act without any appeal. Any civil or military authority could order a person to remain in an area, abstain from acts, search and seize possessions, and arrest anyone suspected of planning something. This Act negated the previous rule of law and was used to bring nine conspiracy cases involving 175 people, of which 18 were executed, 58 were transported for life, and 58 others were imprisoned. Because of

torture by police, many people were convicted based on confessions they later recanted. In Bengal about eight hundred people were interned without any trial at all. About 30,000 Indians, mostly peasants from the Punjab, had emigrated to America. Lala Hardayal fled India and went to France and then San Francisco. In November 1913 he founded the Yugantar Ashram and the weekly Ghadar (Rebellion), publishing it in Urdu, Marathi, Gurumukhi, Hindi, and English. They reported on the crimes perpetrated by the British in India and highlighted biographies of Indian patriots and fighters for freedom in other countries. Circulation increased quickly, and distribution became world-wide. After Hardayal criticized US immigration policy that excluded Orientals and spoke for the Syndicalist Party, he was arrested on March 24, 1914 to be deported; but probably because of the sympathetic Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan he was given bail. Hardayal fled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he edited a paper called Bande Mataram. In 1914 Gurdit Singh, a Sikh businessman in Singapore, chartered the Japanese steamer Kongamata Maru to take 376 Sikhs to Canada, but in July the Canadian immigration department sent them back to India. Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, and Japan joined their alliance with France and Russia. When Turkey joined the Central Powers of Germany and Austria in October, most of the troops the British sent to Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt were Indian. The ruling chiefs of India declared their loyalty to Britain, and many Indians were sent to fight in France also. Recruiting for the Indian army jumped from 15,000 men a year to 300,000 by 1918. According to Edwin Montagus speech in November 1918, India sent 1,215,338 men overseas and suffered 101,439 casualties. The Government of India bore these enormous expenses and even contributed an extra 100 million for the British empires war, increasing Indias national debt by thirty percent. India supplied 1,874 miles of railway track, 6,000 vehicles, 237 locomotives, 883 steamers and barges, and ten million cubic feet of timber. In India, a country larger than Europe, the British garrison was reduced to 15,000 men. Some Muslims in Afghanistan took the side of Turkey, but Amir Habibulla of Afghanistan remained loyal. Indian troops were sent to the mouth of the Euphrates River to protect the oil tanks and pipelines of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and they captured Basra in November 1914. They advanced toward Baghdad, but the Turks stopped General Townshends forces at Kut-el-Amara. After a five-month siege he and his 10,000 men surrendered. Another 12,000 Indian troops arrived at Basra, but they could not move up river because they lacked transportation. Bad leadership and disease caused 23,000 casualties. Later Lloyd George appointed the Mesopotamia Commission that reported negligent planning, especially by the Viceroy, the aged

Commander-in-Chief Beaufort Duff in India, the Director of Medical Services, and General John Nixon, the commander in Mesopotamia. Secretary of State Austen Chamberlain resigned and was replaced by his critic Edwin Montagu. Some revolutionaries and politicians considered Englands necessity Indias opportunity. About sixty Indian revolutionaries from the Ghadar party sailed from San Francisco to fight in India, and a hundred joined on the way; they were detained at Hong Kong, and a hundred were interned. Several thousand people came back to India; 400 were kept in jail, and 2,500 were restricted to their villages in the Punjab. Sikhs were especially suspected, and on September 29, 1914 police massacred eighteen Sikhs from the Kongamata Maru who wanted to go to Calcutta and refused to get on a train to the Punjab. In February 1915 fifteen Muslims from Lahore, Peshawar, and Kohat joined the Mujahidins in Kabul. That same month the Muslim battalion of Fifth Light Infantry, believing they were being sent to fight Turks, mutinied at Singapore, killing eight officers, nine soldiers, and seventeen civilians. About three hundred mutineers dispersed into the jungle, and forty mutineers were executed in public. A few revolutionaries tried to work with the Germans to foment a rebellion against the British in India; but efforts to smuggle arms from the United States failed, and many were arrested or killed. The day after the US declared war in April 1917, seventeen Indians were arrested in San Francisco. Ram Chandra had given names, and on the last day of the trial he was murdered by another defendant, who was shot dead by a marshal. Eventually more than a hundred defendants were either convicted, became Government witnesses, or fled the country. A few revolutionaries continued using violence, and the number of political murders since 1907 reached 64 by 1917. In that decade there were 112 robberies, twelve bombings, and three attempts to wreck trains. The secret Abhinava Bharata operated in Maharashtra, and many colleges had branches. Annie Besant went to England in 1914 and raised support for the cause of India. She bought a daily newspaper in Madras and renamed it New India on July 14; her coverage of the war helped increased the circulation to ten thousand by November. Besant published a series of articles on the history of the Indian National Congress in Commonweal and as the book How India Wrought for Freedom. She invited 237 members of the All-India Congress Committee and the All-India Muslim League to a closed conference December 25 on strategy for attaining home rule. Three days later the Congress postponed action on a Home Rule League until a report could be made. Tilak was released from prison after six years in June 1914, and at a provincial conference in Puna the following May he condemned violence and proposed

supporting the British. Annie Besant consulted with him, and he said that prominent nationalists were serving in municipal and legislative councils. They agreed to work for self-government under the British. Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta still objected to admitting the Extremists, but they both died in 1915. Tilak and the Conference of Nationalists met twice in 1915 and established the Indian Home Rule League. Besant proposed amending the Congress constitution, and Tilak came back in December 1915, receiving a great ovation by the 2,259 delegates at Bombay. In July 1916 Tilak was ordered to furnish a personal bond of 20,000 rupees. The Bombay High Court set aside his order; but Besant lost her appeal on a second levy of 10,000 rupees for New India and the weeklyCommonweal. So she sold her two presses and suspended publication, but three days later New India re-appeared under a new editor. After waiting for approval from the Congress, Besant decided to go ahead with another Home Rule League in September 1916. She decreed September 14 as Home Rule Day and at the first celebration said that she used the term Home Rule because she wanted self-government for India within the British empire. Branches were quickly formed in the major cities, and she made extensive speaking tours, as did Tilak. He covered Maharashtra and the Central Provinces while she went to the rest of India. In December 1916 at Lakhnau (Lucknow) the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League united to demand reforms for self-government within the empire. Congress adopted the following goals: 1. The Council of the Secretary of State shall be abolished. 2. Half of the Governor-General's Executive Council shall be Indians elected by the Imperial Legislative Council. 3. Four-fifths of the Imperial Legislative Council shall be elected, one-third of these by Muslims. 4. The Government of India shall not interfere in local affairs. 5. The Imperial Legislative Council shall control the Government of India except in military and foreign affairs. 6. Four-fifths of the Provincial Legislative Councils shall be elected by the people with specified numbers of Muslims in each province. 7. Provincial Legislative Councils shall control their governments. 8. Three-fourths of any community may block a bill. 9. Executive officers in India shall have no judicial powers. This Congress was extraordinary for its religious quality and the participation of women. The Home Rule resolution was passed unanimously. Gandhi proposed that the Lakhnau Pact be translated into the Indian languages, and by the end of 1917 a million people had signed the petitions.

Besant also worked for the woman suffrage resolution passed by Congress, and in May 1917 she was elected the first president of the Womens Indian Association. She protested Government Order 599 that prevented students and teachers from attending unapproved political lectures and conferences. The governments of Bombay, the Central Provinces, and Bihar banned Besant from entering while the governments of the Punjab and Delhi prohibited Tilak and B. C. Pal. On June 15 the Government of Madras ordered Besant interned with her secretary George Arundale and philanthropist B. P. Wadia, who joined her at Ootacamund. Newspapers publicized their informal detention that lasted 94 days. The retired judge Subrahmaniya Aiyar and two thousand people declared that they would stand by the Home Rule League if it was declared illegal. President Woodrow Wilson of the United States proclaimed that the war was to make the world safe for democracy and to give the right of self-determination to the people in choosing their own government. Aiyar wrote toWilson that autonomy for India would result in ten million more volunteers for the war. American newspapers publicized this, and labor supported home rule for India as in Canada and Australia. On August 14 a Madras committee approved of using passive resistance, and six days later Secretary of State Montagu announced that responsible government was the new goal of British policy in India. The British removed the racial bar from giving Indians royal commissions in the army, and Besant and her associates were released from detention. In response the Congress and the Muslim League set aside passive resistance and sent an All-India deputation to Viceroy Chelmsford and visiting Montagu. Tilak nominated Besant as president for the 1917 Congress, and by the end of the year his League had 14,000 members. Besant spoke eloquently to the 4,967 delegates about how the war could not end until England realized that autocracy must perish in India. They demanded home rule because freedom is the birthright of every nation and because her resources were not being used for her greatest needs. Money was being spent on the army instead of education. India was no longer begging for boons but was standing up for rights. However, Montagu met with the Moderates who had seceded from the Congress, and they formed the National Liberal Federation. The report signed by Montagu and Viceroy Chelmsford in April 1918 was published in July and proved to be a disappointment even to the Moderates. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report recommended giving more popular control to local bodies, but the Government of India was to remain completely responsible to the Parliament. Congress held a special session at Bombay on August 29; but even though they were not very far apart, the Moderates declined to rejoin the Congress. In their annual meeting in December at Delhi the Congress resolved to send a deputation to England to ask the Parliament to let their representatives attend the Peace Conference, and they demanded responsible

government in India. The Congress named Tilak, Gandhi, and Hasan Imam to attend the Peace Conference. The membership of Tilaks Home Rule League had grown to more than 33,000, but the British War Cabinet would not even let Tilak go to England. After the Bolsheviks took over Russia and withdrew from the war, the Turks invaded Central Asia, Azerbaijan, and Persia. In April 1918 the Viceroy called a conference at Delhi and asked India to redouble its war efforts. Khaparde said Indians would mobilize enthusiastically if the British Parliament would promise them responsible self-government within a reasonable period, but he was not allowed to present his resolution. Tilak was not invited as he had been declared out of order at the Bombay War Conference. Mohandas Gandhi told the Viceroy that he and others would help the British empire in their time of need if self-government would come more quickly. Meanwhile the Government was inflicting much pressure on Indian men in order to meet their recruiting goals. Most of the Indians fought for the money as mercenaries. In the second half of 1918 India suffered severely from the world-wide influenza epidemic. Official figures estimated that six million people died, but others said it was closer to sixteen million. Mohandas Gandhi arrived in England during the first week of the Great War, and again he supported the British by raising and leading an ambulance corps; but he became ill and returned to India in January 1915. The great poet Rabindranath Tagore called Gandhi Mahatma, meaning Great Soul, and in May 1915 Gandhi founded the Satyagraha Ashram for his family and co-workers near the textile city of Ahmadabad in Gujarat. When a family of untouchables asked to live in the ashram, Gandhi admitted them. Orthodox Hindus believed this polluted them. Funds ran out, and Gandhi was ready to live in the untouchable slums if necessary; but an anonymous benefactor donated enough money to last a year. To help change peoples attitudes about these unfortunate pariahs, Gandhi renamed them Harijans or Children of God, and he later called his weekly magazine Harijan. In a speech at the opening of Benares Hindu University on February 6, 1916 Gandhi said he was ashamed to be speaking in English, and he commented on the jewelry worn by the dignitaries on the stage. The Theosophist Annie Besant was one of the most popular orators of her era, and she liked to speak last. However, Gandhi had been late and spoke after her. She interrupted his discussion of anarchism, and this dispute caused the princes to leave the stage. Yet Gandhi agreed that Indians must take power into their hands to gain self-government. Gandhi began wearing home-spun khadi in order to encourage self-sufficient village industries and thus help alleviate poverty in India. In April 1917 Gandhi went to Bihar to learn how suffering indigo workers in Champaran were being exploited by

exorbitant fees of landlords. He was arrested and ordered to leave; but as he insisted on staying, he was put in jail. However, the officials soon realized that the Mahatma was the only one who could control the crowds. Assistants helped by carefully documenting the grievances of 20,000 tenants, and a government commission unanimously accepted the tenants complaints as valid. Rents were reduced, and the planters had to compensate the tenants. The Government abolished the growing of indigo, and most planters sold their factories and left the district. Gandhi had developed his methods of nonviolent action for social change in South Africa, where Indians suffered discrimination. He was especially aware of how the indenture system was used to recruit Indian laborers in British colonies. When the Government refused to introduce a bill to abolish this in the Central Legislative Council, he announced he would start a nonviolent campaign if the system were not abolished by July 31, 1917. The Government averted that by deciding to end the system. Gandhi also used satyagraha (truth power) in Kaira in 1918. Peasants were suffering from a famine but still had to pay taxes. Petitions and prayers had failed. After Sirdar Vallabhbhai Patel and others helped educate them, the peasants pledged to forfeit their lands rather than pay the assessments; Bombay merchants supported the campaign. Gandhi advised the farmers to remove their crops from the attached fields, and they were arrested for doing so. Eventually the authorities suspended the taxes for the poor peasants. The textile workers of Ahmadabad were also economically oppressed. Gandhi suggested arbitration; but it fell apart when some workers went on strike. After examining the issues, Gandhi believed they deserved a 35% increase in pay. The millowners would not go beyond 20% and declared a lock-out on February 22, 1918. When the workers became hungry and were weakening in their pledges, Gandhi went on a fast to strengthen their resolve to continue the strike. He explained that he did not fast to coerce the opponent but to strengthen or reform those who loved him. He did not believe in fasting for higher wages, but he fasted so that the workers would accept the system of arbitration to resolve the conflict. After four days the mill-owners accepted the arbitrators award of a 35% increase. In the spring of 1918 Gandhi was persuaded by the British to help raise soldiers for a final victory effort in the war. Charlie Andrews criticized Gandhi for recruiting Indians to fight for the British. Gandhi spoke to large audiences but gained hardly any recruits. He was experimenting with a limited raw-food diet and became sick.

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