1857–1947 · From the Revolt of 1857 to the transfer of power — a century of resistance, sacrifice, and nation-making.
The Revolt of 1857 — called the "First War of Independence" by some historians and the "Sepoy Mutiny" by colonial writers — began with grievances among Bengal Army sepoys over the greased cartridge issue (rumored to contain cow and pig fat, offending Hindus and Muslims alike). It rapidly expanded into a wider rebellion involving peasants, dispossessed rulers, and religious leaders across northern and central India.
Key centres included Meerut (where the revolt began, May 1857), Delhi (proclaimed seat of Bahadur Shah Zafar as emperor), Kanpur (under Nana Sahib), Jhansi (Rani Lakshmibai), and Awadh (Begum Hazrat Mahal). The British recaptured Delhi by September 1857, but guerrilla resistance continued into 1858.
The revolt failed for multiple reasons: lack of unified command, limited geographical spread (largely confined to north and central India), no alternative administrative structure, and the British ability to mobilise fresh troops from Punjab and the northwest. The British response was brutal — mass executions, property confiscations, and the symbolic blowing of rebels from cannon.
The Government of India Act 1858 ended East India Company rule, transferring authority to the British Crown. The British Raj (1858–1947) introduced a new administrative and ideological framework: direct imperial control, infrastructure development (railways, telegraph, canals) for resource extraction, and a new political culture of loyalist collaboration and, gradually, nationalist opposition.
The Indian National Congress (INC) was founded in December 1885 in Bombay, with 72 delegates. A.O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, played a key role in its formation, though the initiative came from Indian elites — particularly Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, and Surendranath Banerjee. The early Congress was a forum for educated Indians to petition the British government for administrative reform, greater Indian representation in the civil service, and economic justice.
Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) developed the "Drain of Wealth" theory, arguing that British rule extracted India's surplus through taxation, trade, and administrative salaries sent to Britain. His work, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901), laid the economic foundation for nationalist critique.
Moderates (1885–1905): The first generation of Congress leaders — including W.C. Bonnerjee (first Congress president), Surendranath Banerjee, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta, and Madan Mohan Malaviya — believed in constitutional agitation, petitions, and loyalty to the British Crown. They sought administrative reform within the framework of British rule, expecting that British liberalism would eventually grant self-government. They were criticised by younger leaders for their "politics of mendicancy" (begging).
By the early 1900s, frustration with the slow pace of reform produced a more radical wing within the Congress. The Extremists — led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak ("Lokmanya"), Lajpat Rai (Punjab), and Bipin Chandra Pal (Bengal), collectively known as Lal-Bal-Pal — demanded Swaraj (self-rule) and rejected the Moderates' petition politics. Tilak declared: "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it."
The Partition of Bengal (1905) was the catalyst for mass mobilisation. Lord Curzon divided Bengal along religious lines (Muslim-majority East Bengal and Hindu-majority West Bengal), ostensibly for administrative convenience but widely seen as a "divide and rule" strategy. The partition triggered the Swadeshi Movement (1905–1911) — a mass boycott of British goods and promotion of indigenous (swadeshi) industries, particularly textiles.
The Swadeshi Movement saw unprecedented popular participation: students picketed shops selling foreign goods, women joined processions for the first time in large numbers, and the nationalist press (newspapers like Bande Mataram and Amrita Bazar Patrika) played a crucial role. The movement also spread to other provinces — Punjab, Maharashtra, and Madras.
The British responded with repressive measures: the Surat Split (1907) — when the Congress session in Surat broke into open conflict between Moderates and Extremists — and the repressive Press Act (1910) and Seditious Meetings Act (1907). The partition was eventually annulled in 1911, but the nationalist movement had been permanently radicalised. The Extremists were expelled from Congress, and Tilak was imprisoned for six years (1908–1914) on sedition charges.
Alongside the Congress, a parallel strand of revolutionary nationalism developed, particularly among young Bengalis, Punjabis, and Maharashtrians who believed that armed resistance was necessary against colonial violence.
Early revolutionary groups: The Anushilan Samiti (1902, Bengal) and the Jugantar group carried out assassinations of British officials and attempted to manufacture bombs. Khudiram Bose (18 years old) and Prafulla Chaki attempted to bomb a magistrate's carriage in 1908; Khudiram was hanged, becoming a revolutionary martyr. The Alipore Bomb Case (1908–1909) involved Aurobindo Ghose (who later withdrew from politics to pursue spirituality) and his brother Barin.
Bhagat Singh (1907–1931): The most iconic revolutionary of the period. Bhagat Singh joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) and, with Shivaram Rajguru, assassinated police officer J.P. Saunders in 1928 to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai (who died from police lathi charges during a protest against the Simon Commission). In 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw non-lethal bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly to protest repressive bills. His trial and eventual execution on 23 March 1931 made him a national martyr. His writings in jail — including Why I Am an Atheist — reveal a committed socialist and secular thinker.
Chandrashekhar Azad (1906–1931): A revolutionary who vowed never to be captured alive. He reorganised the HSRA after the Kakori conspiracy and was killed in a police encounter at Alfred Park, Allahabad, on 27 February 1931, using his last bullet on himself.
Other revolutionary streams: The Ghadar Movement (1913–1917) was led by Punjabi immigrants in North America (the Ghadar Party, founded by Lala Hardayal in San Francisco) who attempted to trigger a mutiny in India during World War I. The Kakori Train Robbery (1925) by Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan, and the Chittagong Armoury Raid (1930) led by Surya Sen (Master Da) and Pritilata Waddedar (who led a suicide attack on the Pahartali European Club), showed the persistent appeal of armed resistance, particularly in Bengal.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915, where he had developed Satyagraha — a method of non-violent resistance based on truth, non-violence (ahimsa), and civil disobedience. Gandhi transformed the Congress from an elite debating society into a mass organisation, using symbolic campaigns, popular religious vocabulary, and disciplined non-violent action.
Champaran (1917) and Kheda (1918): Gandhi's early experiments in India — the Champaran Satyagraha against indigo planters in Bihar, and the Kheda Satyagraha in Gujarat supporting peasants refusing to pay revenue during famine — established his method of working with local grievances while building national consciousness.
Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919): Gandhi organised nationwide protests against the Rowlatt Act, which extended emergency wartime powers into peacetime. The protests turned violent in some places, most catastrophically at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar (13 April 1919), where General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire on an unarmed crowd, killing hundreds. The massacre shocked the nation and turned moderate Indians against British rule. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest.
The Non-Cooperation Movement (launched August 1920, approved by the Congress at Nagpur) was the first mass withdrawal from British institutions. Indians were asked to: boycott British courts, schools, and colleges; resign from government service; surrender titles and honours; refuse to pay taxes; and boycott foreign cloth. The movement linked the Khilafat issue (protest against British treatment of the Ottoman Caliphate after WWI) with Swaraj, creating a rare Hindu-Muslim political alliance under Gandhi and the Ali Brothers (Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali).
The movement achieved remarkable mass participation: lawyers like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru gave up their practice, students left government schools, and the spinning wheel (charkha) became a symbol of economic self-reliance. However, the movement was abruptly suspended by Gandhi in February 1922 after the Chauri Chaura incident (22 policemen killed by a mob in Gorakhpur district), because Gandhi believed the movement had turned violent and lost its moral foundation. The suspension caused deep disillusionment among younger leaders and marked a temporary decline in Congress activity.
The Civil Disobedience Movement began with the iconic Dandi March (Salt March) in March–April 1930. Gandhi and 78 followers walked 241 miles from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi on the Gujarat coast, where on 6 April 1930 he symbolically broke the salt laws by picking up salt from the beach. The march was a masterstroke of political symbolism: salt was a commodity used by every Indian, and the British salt tax was a regressive levy that hit the poorest hardest.
The movement spread rapidly: salt satyagrahas erupted across the coast (Tamil Nadu under C. Rajagopalachari, Maharashtra under Abbas Tyabji and Sarojini Naidu at the Dharasana Salt Works, where non-violent protesters were brutally beaten). Boycotts of foreign cloth and liquor, refusal to pay land revenue, and forest violations (entering reserved forests to collect wood) brought peasants and tribals into the movement. The British responded with mass arrests — Gandhi, Nehru, and thousands of Congress workers were imprisoned.
The Gandhi-Irwin Pact (March 1931) ended the first phase, with Gandhi attending the Second Round Table Conference in London (September–December 1931) as the sole Congress representative. The conference failed to produce agreement, and Gandhi was disappointed by the treatment of Dalit rights — he had fasted in prison (September 1932) against the Communal Award's separate electorates for Dalits, which led to the Poona Pact with B.R. Ambedkar, giving Dalits reserved seats instead of separate electorates. Civil Disobedience resumed in 1932 but was crushed by repression. The movement was formally withdrawn in 1934.
The Quit India Movement (August Kranti) was launched on 8 August 1942 after the Congress Working Committee passed the "Quit India" resolution in Bombay, demanding immediate British withdrawal from India. Gandhi's slogan was "Do or Die" (Karo ya Maro). The British government arrested the entire Congress leadership — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad — within hours of the resolution.
With the top leadership in prison, the movement became spontaneous and leaderless. Uprisings erupted across the country: in Bombay, Ahmedabad, and Poona; in Bengal and Bihar, where parallel governments were established in some districts; in Ballia (UP), where Chittu Pandey declared independence; in Midnapore (Bengal), where a parallel government functioned for months; in Tamil Nadu and Andhra, where students and workers struck. The British response was severe — over 90,000 arrests, mass floggings, and aerial bombing in some areas. The movement was crushed by 1943, but it demonstrated that British authority in India rested on force alone and that the Indian masses were irreversibly committed to independence.
The All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906 in Dacca, primarily by Muslim aristocrats and loyalists who sought to safeguard Muslim interests and secure separate Muslim representation in legislative bodies. Initially, the League was conservative and cooperative with the British. Its first major success was the Morley-Minto Reforms (1909), which introduced separate electorates for Muslims — a provision that would have profound long-term consequences.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) began his political career in the Congress as a "ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity," working with Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He joined the Muslim League in 1913 but remained committed to a unified nationalist platform, helping negotiate the Lucknow Pact (1916) between Congress and the League, which accepted separate electorates in exchange for joint political demands. However, Jinnah grew increasingly alienated from the Congress, particularly after the Non-Cooperation Movement's Khilafat alliance and the rise of mass politics under Gandhi, which he distrusted.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Jinnah lived in London, disillusioned with Indian politics. He returned in 1934 to reorganise the Muslim League. The League performed poorly in the 1937 provincial elections, winning only 109 of 482 Muslim seats, while regional parties and Congress-allied Muslims won more. This electoral defeat convinced Jinnah that the League needed a sharper ideological identity.
The Two-Nation Theory — the idea that Hindus and Muslims constituted two distinct nations by religion, culture, and social practice — was articulated by Muslim intellectuals like Sir Muhammad Iqbal (who proposed a Muslim state in northwest India in his 1930 Allahabad address) and developed by Jinnah. The Lahore Resolution (23 March 1940) demanded that "geographically contiguous units" in Muslim-majority areas be grouped into "independent states" — later interpreted as a demand for Pakistan. Jinnah's 1940 presidential address argued that Muslims were a nation by any definition, and that a single constitution could not work for two nations.
The League's popularity surged in the 1940s, particularly after the Second World War when the Congress launched the Quit India Movement and the League supported the British war effort. The League won overwhelming Muslim support in the 1946 provincial elections (securing 90% of Muslim seats), giving Jinnah the claim to speak for all Indian Muslims. The demand for Pakistan became non-negotiable.
The independence movement was not monolithic. Multiple social movements ran parallel to Congress campaigns, often with distinct agendas and leadership.
Peasant movements: The Kisan Sabha movement in Bihar and UP (1920s–1930s), led by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, organised peasants against landlord exploitation and high revenue demands. In Bengal, the Tebhaga movement (1946–1947) demanded that sharecroppers (bargadars) keep two-thirds of the crop instead of the customary half. In Malabar, the Moplah Rebellion (1921) was a peasant uprising against Hindu landlords and British rule, though it acquired communal overtones. In Punjab, the Kisan movement and the Unionist Party initially dominated agrarian politics before the Congress and Muslim League mobilised. In Andhra, the Rampa Rebellion (1922–1924) led by Alluri Sitarama Raju was a tribal uprising against British forest regulations. These movements often pushed the Congress to adopt more radical agrarian policies.
Tribal and forest movements: Beyond the Rampa Rebellion, tribal communities across India resisted colonial encroachment on their lands. The Birsa Munda movement in the Chota Nagpur region (1899–1900) challenged both British and missionary authority. In Northeast India, the Naga and Mizo hills saw sporadic resistance to British administrative penetration. In Kerala, the Wayanad tribal resistance and later the Malabar Rebellion connected agrarian and tribal grievances.
Trade unions and working-class movements: The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was founded in 1920. The 1920s and 1930s saw major strikes — the Bombay textile strike (1928–1929), the Chota Nagpur tin mines strike, and railway workers' strikes. The Communist Party of India (formed 1925, though illegal for much of its early history) organised workers and peasants, particularly in Bengal and Kerala. The working class participated in national movements but also articulated distinct economic demands.
Women's participation: Women entered the nationalist movement in unprecedented numbers from the 1920s onward. Sarojini Naidu led the Congress and became the first Indian woman president of the INC (1925). Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay organised women during the Civil Disobedience Movement. Aruna Asaf Ali became known as the "Grand Old Lady of the Independence Movement" for hoisting the Congress flag during the Quit India Movement. Usha Mehta ran an underground radio station during Quit India. Women participated in picketing, processions, and jail terms — challenging colonial authority and patriarchal norms simultaneously. However, women's issues were often subordinated to the "larger" cause of national independence, and the post-independence period saw limited structural change in gender relations.
Princely states and regional struggles: Approximately 565 princely states covered 40% of India's territory. Many had their own nationalist or reform movements: the Praja Mandal movement in Punjab hill states, the Hyderabad State Congress against the Nizam's autocracy, the Travancore movement against caste discrimination and for responsible government, and the Junagadh and Kashmir crises during Partition. The States Peoples' Conference (founded 1927) coordinated democratic movements in princely states, and Sardar Patel's integration campaign (1947–1948) used diplomacy and, in some cases, military force (Hyderabad, Junagadh) to bring princely states into the Indian Union.
Dalit assertion and Ambedkar: B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) led the struggle for Dalit rights, separate from the Congress's mainstream nationalism. The Mahad Satyagraha (1927) for access to public water tanks, the Temple Entry Movement, and the Round Table Conference demands for separate electorates (opposed by Gandhi) shaped the constitutional safeguards for Scheduled Castes. Ambedkar's eventual role as Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution ensured that Dalit rights were constitutionally protected, though his relationship with the Congress remained fraught.
The independence movement manifested differently across India's regions, shaped by local grievances, leadership traditions, and economic structures. Understanding these regional variations is essential for a complete picture.
Socialist and communist ideas influenced significant sections of the independence movement. The Congress Socialist Party (CSP) was formed in 1934 within the Congress by leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev, Minoo Masani, and Ram Manohar Lohia. They sought to combine anti-colonial nationalism with anti-capitalist socialism, arguing that political independence without economic justice would be hollow.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) operated underground for much of its early existence. It was banned during the 1930s and shifted its position on the war several times — initially opposing it as an imperialist war, then supporting it as a "people's war" after the Nazi invasion of the USSR (1941). The CPI opposed the Quit India Movement, which alienated it from the Congress mainstream, though it remained influential in trade unions and peasant organisations, particularly in Bengal (Tebhaga movement), Kerala, and Andhra.
Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945): Bose represented the radical nationalist-left wing of the Congress. Twice elected Congress President (1938, 1939), he defeated Gandhi's candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya in 1939, leading to a crisis and Bose's resignation. He believed in militant mass struggle and, after escaping house arrest in 1941, sought foreign support for Indian independence. In Germany, he formed the Free India Centre and the Indian Legion. In 1943, he took leadership of the Indian National Army (INA) in Southeast Asia, formed from Indian prisoners of war and Southeast Asian Indian expatriates. The INA fought alongside Japanese forces in Burma and the Northeast. Bose's slogan "Jai Hind" and the INA's Red Fort trials (1945–1946) of officers Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Kumar Sehgal, and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon generated enormous sympathy across India, cutting across communal lines. Bose died in a plane crash in Taiwan (August 1945), though controversies about his death persist.
The end of World War II brought the question of India's independence to a decisive point. The British Labour government (elected 1945) was committed to Indian independence but faced the intractable Congress-League deadlock.
Cabinet Mission (1946): A three-member British Cabinet delegation (Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps, and A.V. Alexander) arrived in India in March 1946 with a plan to preserve Indian unity while accommodating Muslim League demands. The plan proposed a three-tier federation: provinces grouped into three sections (one Muslim-majority northwest, one Muslim-majority northeast, one Hindu-majority rest of India), with a weak central government controlling only defence, foreign affairs, and communications. The Congress and League both accepted the plan initially, but interpretations differed — the Congress saw the grouping as voluntary, while the League saw it as a stepping stone to Pakistan. When the Congress formed the interim government (September 1946) with Nehru as de facto Prime Minister, Jinnah called for Direct Action Day (16 August 1946) to demand Pakistan. The day erupted into the Great Calcutta Killing — communal riots in which thousands died, marking the beginning of large-scale Hindu-Muslim violence that would continue through Partition.
Constituent Assembly (December 1946): The Assembly met for the first time, with the League boycotting it. The Congress, under Nehru, moved the Objectives Resolution (13 December 1946), outlining the principles of the future constitution. The Muslim League eventually joined the interim government but continued to boycott the Constituent Assembly, making a unified constitutional process impossible.
Mountbatten Plan (3 June 1947): Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, arrived in March 1947 with instructions to transfer power by June 1948. Facing the collapse of British authority, rising communal violence, and the threat of civil war, he advanced the timeline. The Mountbatten Plan accepted partition as the only viable option. The Congress, after long resistance, accepted partition with reluctance — Gandhi opposed it until the end, while Patel and Nehru saw it as necessary to prevent greater violence and secure a viable centre for the remaining India. The Indian Independence Act (18 July 1947) passed by the British Parliament provided for two dominions, India and Pakistan.
Partition and Independence (15 August 1947): India and Pakistan became independent on 14–15 August 1947. The partition drew boundaries (the Radcliffe Line) through Punjab and Bengal, dividing provinces overnight. The result was the largest forced migration in human history: 10–15 million people displaced, and 1–2 million killed in communal violence. Punjab and Bengal bore the worst violence. The princely states were given the option to accede to India, Pakistan, or remain independent. Most acceded, but Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Junagadh became crises that would shape South Asian politics for decades.
The Indian Independence Movement was not a single struggle but a mosaic of resistances — constitutional, revolutionary, mass, and regional. The Congress under Gandhi provided the largest umbrella, but peasant movements, working-class strikes, Dalit assertion, princely state democracies, and revolutionary armed resistance all contributed to making British rule untenable.
The movement's legacy is complex. It produced a democratic constitution (1950), universal adult franchise, and a secular state structure — but it also left unresolved questions: the Kashmir dispute, Hindu-Muslim relations, the rights of minorities, and deep economic inequalities. The Partition remains a traumatic memory that continues to shape India and Pakistan.
Historiography has shifted over time: early nationalist historians celebrated the Congress's leadership; Cambridge School historians (Anil Seal, John Gallagher) emphasised the role of elite competition and collaboration; subaltern historians (Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee) recovered peasant and working-class agency outside the Congress's dominant narrative; and recent scholarship has focused on gender, violence, and memory in understanding the movement's full human cost and achievement.
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