Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Movement (1919–1947) — Part 1: Introduction: Gandhi's Entry into Indian Politics

Introduction: Gandhi's Entry into Indian Politics

In January 1915, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India after more than two decades in South Africa, where he had developed the technique of non-violent protest known as Satyagraha and established himself as a community leader fighting racial discrimination. On the advice of his political mentor Gopal Krishna Gokhale, he spent his first year travelling across India to understand the land and its people. His first major public appearance came at the opening of Banaras Hindu University in February 1916, where he sharply criticised the Indian elite for ignoring the plight of the labouring poor, declaring: "There is no salvation for India unless you strip yourself of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India." This speech was both a diagnosis of Indian nationalism as an elite phenomenon and a statement of his intention to broaden it to include the peasants and workers who constituted the vast majority of India's population.

Before 1915, the Indian National Congress had two main camps: the Moderates, who favoured gradual constitutional reform, and the Extremists led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala Lajpat Rai (the "Lal, Bal and Pal" trio), who advocated militant opposition. Gandhi's approach would transcend both camps, bringing in peasants, workers, women, and artisans as active participants in the freedom struggle on a scale never seen before in Indian political history.

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1. Gandhi's Early Experiments: Champaran, Kheda, Ahmedabad (1917-1918)

Gandhi's first political interventions in India were regional in scope but national in significance. These campaigns established Satyagraha as a viable tool and marked Gandhi as a nationalist with genuine empathy for the rural poor.

Champaran (1917): At the annual Congress session at Lucknow in December 1916, a peasant named Rajkumar Shukla from Champaran, Bihar, approached Gandhi and described the exploitation of peasants by European indigo planters under the oppressive tinkathia system. This system compelled farmers to grow indigo on a fixed portion of their land and sell it to planters at artificially low prices. Gandhi spent much of 1917 in Champaran, conducting a systematic fact-finding inquiry despite a government order to leave. His refusal to comply, backed by massive popular support, forced the colonial government to appoint an inquiry committee on which Gandhi served. The tinkathia system was abolished and planters were required to compensate the peasants. Champaran is remembered as India's first successful civil disobedience campaign.

Ahmedabad (1918): Gandhi intervened in a labour dispute between textile mill workers and millowners in Ahmedabad, demanding a 35% wage increase. When workers' resolve weakened during the strike, Gandhi undertook a fast unto death — his first use of the fast as a political instrument — compelling the millowners to accept arbitration. The workers ultimately received the 35% increase they had demanded.

Kheda (1918): When the harvest failed in Kheda district of Gujarat, peasants petitioned for remission of land revenue. Gandhi led a no-tax campaign, asking peasants to refuse payment until the government acknowledged their distress. After months of sustained resistance, the government relented and suspended revenue collection for the poorer peasants. Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel emerged as a key organiser during Kheda, beginning a long partnership with Gandhi.

Taken together, these three campaigns marked Gandhi out as a leader capable of building mass political action around concrete economic grievances — a skill that would prove decisive in the national campaigns that followed.

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