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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes ‘living flags’ triumphantly paraded the streets and defied the police to take away the national flag!
The national flag, the symbol of the new spirit, now became a common sight even in remote
villages.
U.P. was the setting of another kind of movement — a no-revenue, no-rent campaign. The no-
revenue part was a call to the zamindars to refuse to pay revenue to the Government, the no-rent
a call to the tenants not to pay rent to the zamindars. In effect, since the zamindars were largely loyal
to the Government, this became a no-rent struggle. The Civil Disobedience Movement had taken
a firm hold in the province in the initial months, but repression had led to a relative quiet, and
though no-rent was in the air, it was only in October that activity picked up again when Jawaharlal
Nehru, out of jail for a brief period, got the U.P. Congress Committee to sanction the no-rent
campaign. Two months of preparation and intensive propaganda led to the launching of the
campaign in December; by January, severe repression had forced many peasants to flee the villages.
Among the important centres of this campaign were the districts of Agra and Rae Bareli.
The movement also popularized a variety of forms of mobilization. Prabhat pheris, in which bands
of men, women and children went around at dawn singing nationalist songs, became the rule in
villages and towns. Patrikas, or illegal news-sheets, sometimes written by hand and sometimes
cyclostyled, were part of the strategy to defy the hated Press Act, and they flooded the country.
Magic lanterns were used to take the nationalist message to the villages. And, as before, incessant
tours by individual leaders and workers, and by groups of men and women, and the holding of
public meetings, big and small, remained the staple of the movement. Children were organized
into vanar senas or monkey armies and at least at one place the girls decided they wanted their
own separate manjari sena or cat army!
The Government’s attitude throughout 1930 was marked by ambivalence. Gandhiji’s arrest itself
had come after much vacillation. After that, ordinances curbing the civil liberties of the people
were freely issued and provincial governments were given the freedom to ban civil disobedience
organizations. But the Congress Working Committee was not declared unlawful till the end of
June and Motilal Nehru, who was functioning as the Congress President, also remained free till
that date. Many local Congress Committees were not banned till August. Meanwhile, the publication
of the report of the Simon Commission, which contained no mention of Dominion Status and was
in other ways also a regressive document, combined with the repressive policy, further upset even
moderate political opinion. Madan Mohan Malaviya and M.S. Aney courted arrest. In a conciliatory
gesture, the Viceroy on 9 July suggested a Round Table Conference and reiterated the goal of
Dominion Status. He also accepted the suggestion, made by forty members of the Central
Legislature, that Tej Bahadur Sapru and M.R. Jayakar be allowed to explore the possibilities of
peace between the Congress and the Government. In pursuance of this, the Nehrus, father and
son, were taken in August to Yeravada jail to meet Gandhiji and discuss the possibilities of a
settlement. Nothing came of the talks, but the gesture did ensure that some sections of political
opinion would attend the Round Table Conference in London in November. The proceedings in
London, the first ever conducted between the British and Indians as equals, at which virtually
every delegate reiterated that a constitutional discussion to which the Congress was not a party
was a meaningless exercise, made it clear that if the Government’s strategy of survival was to be
based on constitutional advance, then an olive branch to the Congress was imperative. The British
Prime Minister hinted this possibility in his statement at the conclusion of the Round Table
Conference. He also expressed the hope that the Congress would participate in the next round of
deliberations to be held later in the year. On 25 January, the Viceroy announced the unconditional
release of Gandhiji and all the other members of the Congress Working Committee, so that might
be to respond to the Prime Minister’s statement ‘freely and fearlessly.’
After deliberating amongst itself for close to three weeks, and after long discussions with delegates
who had returned from London, and with other leaders representing a cross-section of political
opinion, the Congress Working Committee authorized Gandhiji to initiate discussions with the
Viceroy. The fortnight-long discussions culminated on 5 March 1931 in the Gandhi-Irwin Pact,
which was variously described as a ‘truce’ and a ‘provisional settlement.’

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