Indian Freedom Struggle

Indian freedom struggle involves the independence movements pertaining to those contrived crusades that were popularised against the oppressing British dominion, both by employing non-violent and violent measures. This dichotomous issue was in fact a substantial issue, due to diverging paths of many nationalists espoused to reach one common goal of ‘Purna Swaraj’ or absolute freedom. Indian freedom struggle has gone towards much shallow an establishment, with 15th August merely reduced to ceremonial rituals. The huge mass in India that is named today as `middle class`, is governed much by international rules and laws, including globalisation. Much narrower a section of society comprise the Indian defence forces, represented by Indian Army, Indian Air Forces and Indian Navy. Otherwise, the present Indian society is largely unaware and cloudy about the umpteen Independence movements that India underwent to become what it is today.

Indian Freedom Struggle in during the rule of British East India Company from the year 1751 to 1857, that is in the first 100 years, gained a momentum towards Independence. The first organised confrontational movements were in Bengal, but they later took to the political stage in the form of a mainstream movement in the then newly formed Indian National Congress (INC), with prominent moderate leaders seeking only their basic right to appear for Indian Civil Service examinations, as well as more rights, economic in nature, for the people of the soil. In the first phase of British Rule which was gained by the British East India Company after long years if anarchy and the political confrontations with the French East India Company and Dutch East India Company, there were many revolutions organized sporadically in different regions of India. Some of them were Santhal Rebellion, Chuar Rebellion and the Sepoy Mutiny.

Santhal Rebellion
Before the British came to India, the Santhals resided peacefully in the hilly districts of Cuttack, Dhalbhum, Manbhum, Barabhum, Chhotanagpur, Palamau, Hazaribagh, Midnapur, Bankura District and Birbhum District. They were leading a peaceful life by clearing the forest and also engaging in hunting for subsistence. But when the British claimed their rights on the lands of the Santhals, they peacefully went to reside in the hills of Rajamahal. After few years, the Britishers and their counterparts started claiming those Santhal-owned land as theirs. The British were helped by the local Zamnidars, who were with them for their selfish needs.

The simple and honest Santhals were cheated and turned into slaves by the zamindars, the money lenders who first appeared to them as mere business men who gave them loans. These loans, however hard a Santhal tried to repay, never ended. In fact through corrupt measures of the money lenders, it multiplied to an amount for which a generation of the Santhal families had to work as slaves. Furthermore, the Santhali women who worked under labour contractors were disgraced and used. This loss of freedom turned them into rebels and finally they took oath to launch a Rebellion on these axis of evil. Santhal Rebellion was started on 30th June, 1855. The attack against the British was launched by two rebel leaders, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu. Although the Rebellion was brutally suppressed, it marked a great change in the colonial rule and policy. The day is still celebrated among the Santhal community with great respect and spirit for the thousands of the Santhal martyrs who sacrificed their lives along with their two celebrated leaders to win freedom from the rule of the zamindars and the British operatives.

Benaras Rebellion
In 1781, in response to the need for revenue to fight the war in Madras against Hyder Ali, Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India, had pressed Chait Singh (d.1810), ruler of Benaras, to make additional revenue payments in 1778 and 1779 of five lakhs as a sort of war tax. In 1780, Sir Eyre Coote (1726-1783) had requested that Chait Singh be asked to supply troops of 2000. After a period of no response, Chait Singh offered 500 infantry and 500 cavalry troops. Hastings felt this to be an insufficient response and in July 1781 left for Varanasi to "discipline" Chait Singh. Benaras Rebellion began when Lord Hastings demanded to arrest Chait Singh. This led to widespread revolts in Banaras and neighboring Bihar, marking a significant early resistance to British expansion. Although suppressed, the rebellion demonstrated strong public opposition and had lasting impacts on British policy in northern India.

Moamoria Rebellion
Moamoria Rebellion was the rebellion that began in the year 1769 and ended 1806. It was the time when the British East India Company captured Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha after the Battle of Plassey (1757). Moamoria rebellion was the armed conflict between the Morans, the supporters of the Moamara Sattra, and the Ahom kings. This civil conflict led the British East India Company to interfere in the political scenario of the Assam. This led to widespread popular discontent against the Ahom king and the nobles and to two periods in which the Ahom king lost control of the capital. Retaking the capital was accompanied by a massacre of subjects, leading to a steep depopulation of large tracts. The Ahom king failed to retake the entire kingdom, a portion in the northeast, Bengmara, became virtually independent.

Chuar Rebellion
Chuar Rebellion was occurred in 1798-99. Chuar Rebellion was a massive rebellion that broke out in South-West Bankura district and in North-West Midnapore district. The British East India Company and some Zamindars of Midnapore were engaged in curbing the rebellion ruthlessly. The Local feudal lords called the tribal people as pigs. In Bengali, they are termed as "Chuar". That is why the name of the rebellion is Chuar Rebillion.

One significant factor that is noteworthy in the context of Indian independence movements is that, these crusades had intensified much more in the late 1930s and its succeeding period culminating in the year 1947. Instances prior to this time period are also frequent, with every decade producing and emoting a naturalistic note of their own.

Sepoy Mutiny, 1857
Also known as the `Sepoy Rebellion` or the `Uprising of 1857` and the ‘Great Rebellion’. Sepoy Mutiny commenced on 10th May, 1857, spearheaded by protests from sepoys or soldiers of the East India Company in Meerut which extended to the upper Gangetic Plain and the central portion of India and the most major hostilities were concentrated in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The East India Company was threatened greatly and it was suppressed by the downfall of Gwalior on 20th June, 1858.

Swadeshi Movement, 1905 to 1911
Indian society, as compared to contemporary times, was much simpler and less complicated. The conscious class division was unheard of, with almost no technological tool witnessed in any household. Freedom fighters as such arrived onto such a hot-bed Indian state of affairs, just to help people not to be influenced and charmed by British petty alluring of fineries and everything ‘Vilayati’ (referring to British goods and Britain as a whole). This surging mass of protest marches led to the culmination of the Swadeshi Movement in early 1900s, under able leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Swadeshi Movement was largely a successful ensuing of the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the amount of loss of lives under the sadistic Britishers.

Wahabi Movement, 19^th Century
Wahabi Movement was a part of the Indian freedom struggle as it offered a serious threat to British supremacy in India in the 19th century. The movement was led by Syed Ahmed Barelvi, who was greatly influenced by the teaching of Abdul Wahab of Arabia and the preaching of Delhi saint Shah Walliullah. The Wahabi Movement essentially condemned all changes and innovations to Islam. It was a revivalist movement which held that the return to the true spirit of Islam was the only way to get rid of the socio- political oppression. The Wahabi Movement, that saw an extensive period during the late 1800’s, was a slow mass accumulation of men from various Indian states, leading only to deportation in the Andamans, more effectively to ‘Kala Pani’.

Satyagraha Movement during 1900s
Satyagraha which can be loosely translated as "insistence on truth"- Satya (truth); Agraha (insistence) "soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as non-violent resistance or civil resistance. The very term "Satyagraha" was developed and coined by Mahatma Gandhi. He deployed Satyagraha in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa.

Ghadar Movement, 1914-1917
The ‘Ghadar Movement’ during the initial years of 1900’s was also akin to ‘Wahabi’, with rebels gathering from outside the country like Canada or United States. These independence movements were planned in erstwhile Indian context, stroke a distressing chord in the heart. Men fighting during those times were perhaps not even aware that these would take such historic proportions as to reach every Indian household; times during those did not call for publicised affairs, but just the realisation of India’s Independence.

After the British government decided in April 1914 to stop the deportation of political prisoners to the Andamans (and subsequently a majority of them already sent were repatriated to the Indian jails by September 1914), the revolutionary activities again flared up in 1915 onwards which were more authoritative in intensity, serious in nature and larger in dimension. The prevailing laws, the existing judicial system, the procedure of trial and the Indian jails, all weapons of the administrative set up, were found highly inadequate to contain the ‘terrorist’ activities and penalize the revolutionaries. As a result, the British not only ordained new legislations, but also changed the judicial procedure of trial so as to reduce it only to a semblance of trial.

The gates of the Cellular Jail in the Andamans were reopened to imprison and punish the political prisoners. This time, among other revolutionaries convicted in other cases, Punjabis in general and Sikhs in particular, primarily convicted in fake trials known as Lahore Conspiracy Case and other related cases, were deported to the Andamans. These revolutionaries, well settled in various countries like Canada, America, Philippines, Burma, Hong Kong, China and Japan, had come to the country with a missionary zeal to wage war against the British Empire in India. They were either leaders or members of the Ghadr Party, or they were influenced by its ideology and patriotic fervency. However, with men like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Subash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore or Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, India was never in dearth of legendary crusaders, rebelling valiantly against English oppression.

Khilafat Movement, 1919-1924
With the British cruel arm crushing down on natives in a more intensifying degree with the aid of acts or laws, these Indian independence movements went on streets even more and more. For instance, the Khilafat Movement was awakened largely after the stringency of Rowlatt Act of 1919, absolutely mirroring Muslim sentiments as opposed to British way of life. Indeed, it came to be a mere order of day and a topic of snigger that after every new law was passed, an independence movement was sure to come up and gain accomplishment. Lord Curzon and Lord Dalhousie, in later years, were almost wholly to blame for foolish administration and inviting the wrath directly from England Crown. 

Akali Movement, 1920’s
The Akali Movement around 1919 had tremendously ushered in the Sikh community into Indian freedom struggle, with stray communal incidents happening here and there. Sikhs became such a headache to British rule, that hanging and deportation was the last feasible way out for these ruthless overseas men. By such horrible mixing of British acts and anti-British Indian independence movements, the time was sneaking towards the 1930s, which was the most personified time for protests, rallies and demonstration of both violence and non-violence.

Non Cooperation Movement, 1920-1922
Indian independence movements under the towering Gandhian Era was ushered in by Non Co-operation Movement within 1920-22, signifying every degree of total denying of every British rule of law that was passed under the Rowlatt Act revisions. These one-at-a-time non-violent acts turned into a volley of protests, encompassing fasting for several days by Gandhiji, leading British administration to review and bend their direction of governance. The rebels refused to purchase British goods and embrace indigenous products and services like regional handicrafts, ransack liquor shops, thereby highlighting the Indian moral virtues.

Khaksar Movement, 1931
Khaksar Movement, also known as the Khaksar Tehrik movement, was a social movement that was established in the year 1931 by Allama Mashriqi. It was based in Lahore during the dominion of the British supremacy in undivided India. The objective of the Khaksar movement was to attain independence for the nation from the rule of the British Empire in India. The movement also aimed to establish a Hindu Muslim government in the country. Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, also known as Allama Mashriqi, a Muslim intellectual revisited the principles for self-conduct and self-reform which he had laid out in his treatise titled ‘Tazkira’ in 1924. He included these into a second treatise entitled ‘Isharat.’ This served as the foundation for the Khaksar movement.

Civil Disobedience Movement, 1930-1931
Courts and other administrative buildings, like police outposts, including railways carriages or public transports began to be looted and bombed, only to exhibit the gallantry of fighting nationalists. These nationalists believed only in one policy of taking back an eye for an eye. However, these radical ways were condemned by the non-violent protestors, who were of the faith that Swaraj could also be attained by not shedding any drop of English blood. Gandhiji was considered the leader of all non-violence that ever came up during those times. He was known to pacify British rank-holders by his gifted vocabulary and gift of gab. As such, the Civil Disobedience Movement or admired as Salt Satyagraha March to Dandi, was deemed as a serious threat to establishing British supremacy in India.

Quit India Movement, 1942
Mahatma in fact, along with violence of the young guns of India, continued his passive protests by topping his rebellion with the Quit India Movement in 1942. It was also known as ‘August Kranti’ or ‘August Movement’, and was launched as a reaction against Gandhiji’s call for Satyagraha. It reflects Gandhiji’s determined resistance against the British Raj, in the form of his ‘Do or Die’ which was issued on 8th August, 1942 at Gowalia Tank Maidan, Mumbai. Eventually, British Raj learnt that India was unmanageable in the long run.

Freedom Struggle by Indian National Army, 1940s
The Indian National Army (INA) or the ‘Azad Hind Fauj’ was a forceful army established in 1942 during the World War II, by Indian nationalists. The army’s main goal was to forcefully acquire Indian independence with the aide of Japan and restored by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1943 after the disintegration of the first INA in December. INA played a crucial military role despite the fact that it was represented by a tiny military strength and absence of adequate military equipment. The soldiers of INA put up a stiff resistance and kept fighting along with Japanese troops to secure India’s independence from the British Raj.

Arzi Hukumat E Azad Hind, 1943
Arzi Hukumat E Azad Hind, meaning the Provisional Government of Free India, was also known as Azad Hind (Free India). It was a provisional government of India that was founded in the year 1943 in Singapore. Arzi Hukumat E Azad Hind was among the political movement that originated during the 1940s away from India. Its objective was to gain support of the Axis powers to attain freedom for India from rule of the British Empire. Azad Hind was established by Indian nationalists who were exiled from the country during World War II. They developed the provisional government in Singapore with the political, military and monetary support from Imperial Japan in order to fight against British. Netaji Subash Chandra Bose aimed to form the Provisional Government of Azad Hind in Germany after the carrying out the task of restructuring the Indian Independence League, initiating preparations for modernizing the army and after organizing a triumphant campaign to assemble the support of the various Indian communities present in Southeast Asia.

Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, 1946
The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny was also known as ‘Royal Indian Revolt’ or ‘Bombay Mutiny’ was the revolt of the Indian sailors. The sailors who belonged to the Royal Indian Navy on board ship and shore establishments at Bombay harbour, went for a strike and organised a mutiny on 18th February 1946. The revolt was violent and spread throughout the country, covering Karachi to Kolkata and involved 20,000 sailors, 78 ships and 20 shore establishments. This revolt subsequently came to be known as the RIN revolt. It started as a protest against their general conditions.

Mahatma Gandhi’s hope to bring in immediate independence to India by just holding talks was somewhat crushed, with the disillusioned men being put under house arrest for the rest of the freedom struggle. In a nutshell, Indian independence movements were incredulously successful to awake the unaware men at large, with every household housing a revolutionist secretly. British men, at last, could only look towards the future helplessly, with all of their endeavours grovelling in the dust.

India started experiencing the flavour of nationalism by the middle of the 19th century. The Britishers were enjoying the cruel policy of divide and rule, thereby horribly exploiting the natives. Indians needed a united ground to stronghold their aversion and hatred towards the overpowering British imperialists. The feeling was instilled after the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. Many other organisations also were constituted to give a salient form to the struggle for independence. Here are some establishments that became prominent during the struggle for India’s Independence.

Anushilan Samiti
Anushilan Samiti means "Self-Culture Association". The Samiti was established in 1902 in Kolkata under the headship of Pramatha Nath Mitra, a barrister and a patron of the revolutionary movements.

Jugantar
Jugantar was an inner circle within the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti. Extremist activities like attempt to murder, murder and looting against the ruling British government was carried out by the Jugantar party.

Bengal Volunteers
Bengal Volunteers was formed under the headship of Major Satya Gupta. It was Subhas Chandra Bose during the 1928 Kolkata session of Indian National Congress who had unionised a group of volunteers.

Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
Bhagat Singh, Yogendra Shukla and Chandrasekar Azad were the key functionaries of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. It was also considered one of the first socialist organisations in India.

Berlin Committee
The Berlin Committee was established in Germany during World War I in 1914. The orgnisation was called the Berlin-Indian Committee in the beginning.

Communist Consolidation
The founding members of Communist Consolidation were initially associated with the pro-Marxist section of Anushilan Samiti. They started publishing a hand-written magazine The Call.

Ghadar Party
The Ghadar Party was established by the Punjabi Sikhs of the United States and Canada in June 1913. The main aim of the party was to free India from the British regime.

Indian Independence League
Indian Independence League was established by praiseworthy Indian nationalists like Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru in 1928. Initially the organisation was launched in various parts of South-East Asia, including Indian expatriates.

Role of performing art in Indian freedom struggle has had immense significance. India was colonized by the British for close to two hundred years. Aspects of Indian society, namely law, education, medicine, literature and art bear varying shades of influence from the colonial masters and their culture. The one art form which might have offered some resistance during the 19th century was probably Indian classical music. That is because music was performed mainly in courts and temples and did not receive any patronage from the colonial and imperialist state. Lakshmi Subramanian has argued that the reconstruction of classical music was an integral part of a self-conscious cultural project that helped frame the contours of a national heritage, with all its material and symbolic artefacts.

Role of Classical Music in India’s Freedom
In the 20th century the same music was seen simultaneously classical and national. Classicism invariably accompanied the processes of modernity and tradition. However, history has not treated music as having played a critical role in the development of Indian cultural nationalism. If one traces the history of music in any region, particularly peninsular India, that by the end of 19th century music and theatre assume great importance in the cultural life of the people. In the 20th century, music and musicians move into the larger cultural public sphere to give ticketed-entry performances in modern auditoriums. Music evolved into a high art form that occupied pride of place in the national imagination.

It is difficult to identify this change from private sphere to public sphere with a particular ideology, or a religious group and to assign it an ethnic identity. In the case of north India, the credit for this transformation is given to Vishnu Narayan Bathkande and Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. It is generally agreed that these two men were the key orchestrators of modernization of Hindustani music. Paluskar was a bhakti nationalist because he stood for devotionalism in preference to Vedic literature Brahminism with a greater focus on Bhajans. Bhathkande was a musicologist established the idea of music as a hope for a new, modern, national and academic art. Both men wanted to save music from extinction. In their own ways they engaged themselves with the colonial challenges to classical music. 

The populist bhakti nationalism of Paluskar, sacralized music and many more women came forward to claim professional performance space. Music teachers became modern incarnations of ancient gurus. Bathkande’s musicology and pedagogical publications gave Indian music its classical history. But this national project represented by Bathkande and Paluskar is resisted by the ustads. Even today, most famous musicians are not trained in institutions but in gharanas. Women could aspire to the status of Hindu, male and Brahminic guru, but never to that of an ustad. 

Role of Folk Music in India’s Freedom Struggle
Indian folk music has helped in creating great awareness among the people for gaining knowledge about the importance of independence. The construction of a discourse for Indian music in the twentieth century is seen as a nationalist cultural project. Three strands distinguished this discourse, namely, the separation of music into classical, non-classical categories, the emergence of new patrons of culture for whom the appreciation of music was an engagement with modernity and the tying up of music and dance to the larger agenda of social reform and modernization.

In colonized India, when a great part of the colonial administration was manned by Indians, patriotic songs were often a surrogate for overt action for many Indian government officials. Such songs played a significant role in shaping the mentality of people who came of age at the time of independence. Anyone with an ear for music and a fondness for poetry would have imbibed notions of his or her identity as a citizen of a free country in terms of patriotic songs heard while growing up. This presentation tries to collect and render some patriotic songs (about 200) in Sanskrit language, Tamil language, Telugu language, Kannada language and Malayalam language. Bengal produced five poets of considerable ability who could sing and were capable of setting the tune to the words of lyrics they had written (poet-composers). These five were Rabindranath Tagore, Rajanikanta Sen, Dwijendra Lal Roy, Atulprasad Sen and Kazi Nazrul Islam. Political songs were only a small fraction of their creative output.

Role of Patriotic Songs in India’s Freedom Struggle
The Bengal situation provides a few insights in such an exercise for performing arts. There are two ways of worship in the Indian tradition- one is private prayer symbolized by puja-karma or by the namaj done at specific times of the day, and the other is congregational prayer in a temple or mosque. The genre of patriotic songs identified the land of one`s birth with divinity, and the words and tunes appropriately corresponded to a piece of intensely devotional music.

Music is only a reflection of people`s moods; it is no substitute for action. The Bengalis are often considered a sentimental people. When one listens to the songs of Tagore, Atul Prasad or Rajanikanta there is lot of love for motherland. The musical legacy of the Swadeshi period has a strong Hindu communal element in it, especially when mass mobilization was part of the nationalist struggle after the 1920s. D.L. Roy`s songs were never banned. He suffered more during freedom struggle period. Nazrul had a strong sense of national identity as well as provincial loyalty and did not see any contradiction in it as Subramania Bharati of Tamil Nadu.

Indian Independence Movement incorporated the efforts by Indians to liberate the region from British rule and form the nation-state of India. It involved a wide spectrum of Indian political organizations, philosophies, and rebellions between 1857 and India`s emergence as a unified nation-state on August 15, 1947. Indian Freedom Struggle incorporated the efforts by Indians to liberate the region from rule of British East India Company and form the nation-state of India. It involved a wide spectrum of Indian political organizations, philosophies, and rebellions between 1857 and India’s emergence as a unified nation-state on August 15, 1947.