Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Movement (1919–1947) — Part 9: 10. Other Strands of the National Movement
Part 9: Other strands — Bhagat Singh/HSRA (bombs CLA 8 Apr 1929, hanged 23 Mar 1931); Bose/INA (Tripuri 1939, Forward Bloc, Imphal-Kohima 1944, INA trials 1945-46); women (Sarojini Naidu, Aruna Asaf Ali, Usha Mehta); the Left (CPI, Congress Socialists).
Modern India — Part 5 of 5
10. Other Strands of the National Movement
10.1 Revolutionary Nationalism (Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose)
The Gandhian approach was not the only current in the independence movement.
Bhagat Singh and the HSRA: Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, and their comrades in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) argued that colonial rule could only be overthrown by force. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 — deliberately not to kill but, as they declared, "to make the deaf hear." Bhagat Singh was also implicated in the killing of Police Officer J.P. Saunders in retaliation for the lathi charge that killed Lala Lajpat Rai. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev were hanged on 23 March 1931. The Congress's inability to save them — and Gandhi's departure for London shortly afterwards — triggered protests, including black flag demonstrations against Gandhi at Karachi. Bhagat Singh became a hero to millions of Indians, representing a different but equally legitimate tradition of self-sacrifice for the nation.
Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA: Subhas Chandra Bose disagreed with Gandhi's insistence on non-violence and constitutionalism. Re-elected Congress president at the Tripuri session in 1939 against Gandhi's wishes, Bose resigned under party pressure and formed the Forward Bloc. In 1941, he escaped from India — from house arrest in Calcutta — and eventually reached Germany and then Japan. He organised the Indian National Army (INA) from Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese and led its campaign into northeastern India in 1944, reaching Imphal and Kohima before being repelled. Bose's call — "Give me blood and I will give you freedom" — resonated powerfully with young Indians. Though the INA campaign was militarily unsuccessful, the INA trials of 1945-46 (in which the British tried captured INA officers for treason) became a massive political embarrassment and fuelled the final surge for independence. The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of February 1946 — in which Indian sailors in Bombay and other ports rose against the British — further demonstrated the collapse of colonial authority.
10.2 The Role of Women
Women played a far larger role in the national movement than conventional histories have acknowledged. During the Non-Cooperation Movement, women gave up purdah and participated in picketing. The Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-34) was particularly notable for mass female participation. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay persuaded Gandhi to include women in the Salt Satyagraha. Sarojini Naidu became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress (1925) and led a group of satyagrahis in raids on the Dharasana Salt Works in May 1930 — an episode memorably reported by American journalist Webb Miller that horrified world opinion. Women from socially conservative professional, business, and peasant families picketed shops, faced police lathis, and went to jail.
During the Quit India Movement, Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the Congress flag at Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay after the arrest of the leaders and led the underground movement. Usha Mehta ran the secret Congress Radio. Nonetheless, despite this extraordinary contribution, the women's movement's specific demands for gender equality were largely subordinated to the overriding goal of national liberation, and the post-independence political order was slow to translate women's participation in the freedom struggle into substantive social and political equality.
10.3 The Left and the National Movement
The Communist Party of India (founded 1920) had a complex relationship with Gandhian nationalism. Initially supporting the Non-Cooperation Movement, it later diverged from the Congress, criticising Gandhian ideology as representing the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie. The Congress Socialist Party, formed within the Congress in 1934 by Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, and others, pushed the Congress toward a more radical economic programme and was central to the underground resistance during Quit India. The left drew attention to the class dimensions of the national struggle — the contradiction between peasants and landlords, between workers and capitalists — that Gandhian nationalism tended to paper over in the name of national unity. The peasant movements in Telangana, Tebhaga (Bengal), and Kerala's Malabar region in the 1940s demonstrated the energy of left-led agrarian struggles that ran parallel to, and sometimes in tension with, the Congress mainstream.