The Home Rule Movement Of 1916-18

The romantic adventure of the Ghadar revolutionaries was a dramatic response to the First World War by Indians living abroad. The Home Rule League Movement, led by Lokamanya Tilak and Annie Besant, was a less charged but more effective Indian response. Lala Lajpat Rai was away in the United States of America, and Aurobindo Ghose, the Swadeshi firebrand, had taken sanyas in Pondicherry. The Indian National Congress had yet to recover from the combined effects of the Surat split in 1907, heavy government repression of Swadeshi Movement activists, and the Moderates disillusionment with the 1909 constitutional reforms.

 

•    Bal Gangadhar Tilak was released on June 16, 1914, after serving a six-year prison sentence, the majority of which he spent in Mandalay, Burma. He returned to India in a very different form than the one from which he had been exiled. 

 

•    Tilak initially focused all of his efforts on gaining readmission to the Indian National Congress for himself and other extremists. He was clearly convinced that the approval of this body, which had come to symbolise the Indian national movement, was a pre-requisite for any political action to succeed. 

 

•    To conciliate the Moderates and convince them of his bonafide, as well as to stave off any possible government repression, he publicly declared: I may state once for all that we are trying in India, as the Irish Home-rulers have been doing in Ireland, for a reform of the system of administration and not for the overthrow of Government; aid I have no hesitation in saying that the acts of violence which had been committed in the different Parts of India are not only repugnant to me, but have, in my opinion, only unfortunately retarded to a great extent, the pace of our political progress.” He also pledged his allegiance to the Crown and urged all Indians to assist the British government in its time of need.

 

•    Many of the Congress's Moderate leaders were also dissatisfied with the decision they had made in Surat in 1907, as well as the fact that the Congress had lapsed into near-total inactivity. As a result, they were sympathetic to Tilak's overtures. 

 

•    Annie Besant had begun her political career in England as a proponent of Free Thought, Radicalism, Fabianism, and Theosophy, and had come to India in 1893 to work for the Theosophical Society. 

 

•    She was already 66 years old in 1914. She had been spreading the message of Theosophy from her headquarters in Adyar, a suburb of Madras, since 1907, and had amassed a large following among the educated members of many communities that had not experienced their own cultural revival. 

 

•    In 1914, she decided to broaden the scope of her activities by forming a Home Rule movement modelled after the Irish Home Rule League. She realised that in order to do so, she needed both the Congress's blessing and the Extremists' active cooperation. As a result, she focused her efforts on persuading the Congress' moderate leaders to welcome Tilak and his fellow extremists.

 

•    The annual Congress session in December 1914, however, was a disappointment — Pherozeshah Mehta and his Bombay Moderate group succeeded in keeping the Extremists out by winning over Gokhale and the Bengal Moderates. 

 

•    Annie Besant began a campaign in early 1915, using her two newspapers, New India and Commonweal, as well as public meetings and conferences, to demand that India be granted self-government after the war, similar to the White colonies.

 

•    Her tone became more authoritative and her stance more aggressive starting in April 1915. 

 

•    Because Tilak had not yet been admitted to the Congress, he was careful not to alarm the Moderates or appear to be circumventing the Congress. This is evident from the fact that at a meeting of his supporters held in Poona in May 1915, it was decided that their first step would be to establish an agency "to enlighten the villagers regarding the Congress's objects and work." 

 

•    Local associations formed in a number of Maharashtra towns in August and September of that year focused more on emphasising the need for unity within the Congress than on increasing political activity. Tilak hoped to persuade the majority to accept him because of his reasonableness and caution, despite resorting to threats to pressure the more conservative among the Moderates.

 

•    His and Annie Besant's efforts were soon rewarded, and at the Congress's annual session in December 1915, it was decided that the Extremists would be allowed to re-join the organisation. The death of Pherozeshah Mehta had severely weakened the Bombay group's opposition. 

 

•    Annie Besant, on the other hand, was unable to persuade the Congress and the Muslim League to support her decision to establish Home Rule Leagues. She did, however, persuade the Congress to commit to an educational propaganda programme and the revitalization of local Congress committees. Knowing that the Congress, as it stood at the time, would be unlikely to carry it out, she added a clause stating that if the Congress did not begin this activity by September 1916, she was free to form her own League.

 

•    Tilak, who was not bound by any such obligations and had been granted readmission, took the initiative and established the Home Rule League at the Bombay Provincial Conference in Belgaum in April 1916. 

 

•    Annie Besant's impatient supporters secured her permission to start Home Rule groups, despite her decision to wait until September. 

 

•    Jamnadas Dwarkadas, Shankerlal Banker, and Indulal Yagnik founded the Young India newspaper in Bombay and established the All India Propaganda Fund to print pamphlets in regional languages and English. Because there was no sign of Congress activity in September 1916, Annie Besant announced the formation of her Home Rule League, with George Arundale, a Theosophical follower, serving as the Organizing Secretary. 

 

•    Tilak's League was given charge of Maharashtra (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, the Central Provinces, and Berar, while Annie Besant's League was given charge of the rest of India. The reason the two Leagues did not merge was because, in Annie Besant’s words, "some of his followers disliked me and some of mine disliked him. We, however, had no quarrel with each other.”

 

•    With a tour of Maharashtra, Tilak promoted the Home Rule campaign and clarified and popularised the demand for Home Rule through his lectures. ‘India was like a son who had grown up and achieved maturity; now was the time for the trustee or the father to give him what he deserved. This must be felt by the Indian people. They are within their rights to do so.' 

 

•    He also connected the issue of Swaraj to the demand for the formation of linguistic states and vernacular education. ‘Form separate states for the provinces of Marathi, Telugu, and Kanarese... The principle of providing education in the vernaculars is self-evident and obvious. Do the English use the French language to educate their people? Do the Germans do it in English, or the Turks in French?' ‘Speak in Kannada to establish the right of Kannada language,' he told V.B. Alur, who stood up to support his condolence resolution on Gokhale's death, at the Bombay Provincial Conference in 1915. There was no evidence of regional or linguistic Marathi chauvinism among the Lokamanya.

 

•    Tilak League was divided into six branches: one in Central Maharashtra, one in Bombay City, one in Karnataka, one in Central Provinces, and two in Berar.

 

•    The Government retaliated as soon as the Home Rule movement gained traction, and it did so on a particularly auspicious day. Tilak's sixtieth birthday fell on July 23, 1916, and the occasion was marked by a large celebration, as was customary. He was given a purse worth Rs. one lakh. 

 

•    On the same day, the government sent him a notice requesting that he show because why he should not be bound over for a year for good behaviour and demanding Rs. 60,000 in security. This was the best birthday present Tilak could have wished for. 'The Lord is with us,' he declared, predicting that "Home Rule" would spread like wildfire. Repression was bound to stoke the flames of rebellion.

 

•    Mohammed Ali Jinnah led a team of lawyers defending Tilak. In November, the High Court exonerated him after he lost the case in the Magistrate's Court. The victory was celebrated across the country. 

 

•    Gandhiji’s Young India summed up the popular feeling: ‘Thus, a great victory has been won for the cause of Home Rule which has, thus, been freed from the chains that were sought to be put upon it.”

 

•    Tilak immediately pushed home the advantage by declaring in public speeches that Home Rule now had the Government's blessing, and he and his colleagues ramped up their pro-Home Rule propaganda campaign. Tilak had enlisted 14,000 members by April 1917.

 

•    Many moderate Congressmen joined the Home Rule movement because they were dissatisfied with the Congress's inactivity. Members of Gokhale's Servants of India Society were encouraged to add their voices to the call for Home Rule by giving lectures and publishing pamphlets, despite not being allowed to join the League. 

 

•    Many more Moderate nationalists joined the Home Rule Leaguers in Uttar Pradesh on a tour of the surrounding towns and villages in preparation for the Congress's December 1916 session in Lucknow. Students, professionals, businessmen, and, if it was a market day, agriculturists attended their meetings, which were usually held in the local Bar libraries. They contrasted India's current poverty with her glorious past, as well as explaining the main characteristics of European independence movements, in Hindi. The presence of Moderates was unsurprising, given that the Home Rule Leagues were simply carrying out the political propaganda and education programme that they had advocated for so long.

 

•    Annie Besant had completed the formal formation of her League in September of 1916. Her League was more loosely organised than Tilak's, and three members could form a branch, whereas Tilak's League had six branches, each with a clearly defined area and activities. Besant's League was organised into 200 branches, some of which consisted of a town and others of a group of villages. 

 

•    Though a formal Executive Council of seven members was elected for three years by thirty-four ‘founding branches,' Annie Besant and her lieutenants — Arundale, C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, and B.P. Wadia carried out the majority of the work from their headquarters in Adyar. 

 

•    There was no centralised method for disseminating instructions; instead, they were passed down through individual members and Arundale's column on Home Rule in New India. The membership of Annie Besant's League grew at a slower rate than that of Tilak's. Her League had 7,000 members by March 1917. 

 

•    Many others, including Jawaharlal Nehru in Allahabad and B. Chakravarti and J. Banerjea in Calcutta, joined the Home Rule League in addition to her existing Theosophical followers. The League's strength, however, could not be determined by the number of branches because, while some were very active, others remained adjuncts of the Theosophical societies. Many of the branches in Madras city, for example, were inactive, whereas the branch in Bombay city, the four branches in Uttar Pradesh towns, and many village branches in Gujarat were very active.

 

•    Through New India, Arundale advised members to promote political discussions, establish libraries containing materials on national politics, organise classes for students on politics, print and distribute pamphlets, collect funds, organise social work, participate in local government activities, organise political meetings and lectures, present arguments in favour of Home Rule to friends, and urge them to vote for Home Rule. 

 

 

•    When non-Brahmins in Maharashtra sent a separate memorandum to the government dissociating themselves from the demands of the advanced classes, Tilak urged those who objected to wait: ‘If we can prove to the non-Brahmins, by example, that we are wholly on their side in their demands from the Government, I am sure that in times to come their agitation, now based on social inequality, will be he explained to non-Brahmins that the real distinction was between educated and uneducated people, not between Brahmins and non-Brahmins.

 

•    Because Brahmins were better educated, they had an advantage in the job market, and the government, despite its sympathy for non-Brahmins and hostility toward Brahmins, was forced to look after the administration's needs and hire Brahmins. 

 

•    Tilak said at a conference for the abolition of untouchability, "If a God tolerated untouchability, I would not recognise him as God at all." There is no trace of religious appeal in his speeches from this period; the demand for Home Rule was made entirely on a secular basis.