Swarajists, Civil Disobedience and the Left

The groups:

• National Liberal Federation (1918): the Moderates who left the Congress over the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, such as Surendranath Banerjea, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Srinivasa Sastri.
• Pro-Changers (Swarajists): wanted to enter the councils. C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party (1923); Vithalbhai Patel became Speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly.
• No-Changers: stayed with Gandhi's constructive work, such as C. Rajagopalachari, M.A. Ansari, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad.
• S.B. Tambe, a Swarajist of the Central Provinces, was the first to accept a ministerial post (October 1925). The Responsivists (Jayakar, Moonje, Kelkar) defended him.

The events in order:

• Lahore session (31 December 1929), president Jawaharlal Nehru: Purna Swaraj adopted. 26 January 1930 was the first Independence Day.
• Dandi March (12 March to 6 April 1930): Gandhi broke the salt law (salt is sodium chloride). Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay persuaded him not to keep it to men. In Karnataka salt was made at Sanikatta.
• Gandhi-Irwin Pact (5 March 1931): Civil Disobedience suspended; the Congress to attend the Round Table Conference; prisoners not convicted of violence released.
• Karachi session (1931), president Vallabhbhai Patel: the resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy.
• Second Round Table Conference (1931): the British refused the basic demand for freedom. Under Lord Willingdon the revived movement met repression, not reconciliation.
• 1931, Bombay: the Depressed Classes leaders demanded separate electorates. The Communal Award (1932) granted them; the Poona Pact (September 1932) replaced them with reserved seats.
• The Muslim League's Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution came much later, in March 1940.

The organisations:

• Madras Labour Union (1918), organised by B.P. Wadia: India's first trade union in the proper sense.
• All India Trade Union Congress (1920, Bombay): set up largely on the initiative of N.M. Joshi; its first president was Lala Lajpat Rai.
• Women led strikes in the 1920s: Anasuya Behn (Ahmedabad textile workers), Ushabai Dange (Bombay mill workers), Prabhabati Devi. Sarala Devi Chaudhurani worked in the nationalist and women's movements, not in trade unions.
• From 1928 the Communists stopped working with the mainstream national movement, and in 1931 they left the AITUC to form the Red Trade Union Congress.
• Triveni Sangh (Bihar): an alliance of the Ahirs (Yadavs), Kurmis and Koeris.
• All India Kisan Sabha (1936): its first president was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati.

The groups and texts:

• Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (September 1928): formed at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi, by Bhagat Singh and other young revolutionaries, with Chandrashekhar Azad as its commander.
• The Philosophy of the Bomb (1930): written by Bhagwati Charan Vohra, approved by Azad, as a reply to Gandhi's article The Cult of the Bomb.
• Congress Socialist Party (1934, Patna): Acharya Narendra Dev president, Jayaprakash Narayan general secretary.
• Dutt-Bradley thesis (1936): a Communist document by R. Palme Dutt and Ben Bradley. It said the Congress could play a great part in an anti-imperialist people's front.