Modern India · Topic 18 of 20
Socialist and communist growth, Congress provincial ministries, and hardening communal politics (1934-1939)
The Basics
By the early 1930s, young Congressmen jailed during the civil disobedience movements of 1930-31 and 1932-34 had grown disillusioned with Gandhian strategy. Inside the jails, they read Marx and debated socialism. But they could not accept the existing line of the Communist Party of India. They searched for a middle path that kept them inside the Congress.
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By the mid-1930s, kisan sabhas had sprung up in many provinces, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Punjab, but they worked separately with no common national platform.
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By 1935 Congress had rejected the new Act as inadequate. The British then announced provincial elections for early 1937. This forced Congress to decide its strategy. Should it contest the elections? And if it won, should it accept office?
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In July 1937 Congress ministries took charge of eight provinces, but the Government of India Act, 1935 gave them only provincial autonomy, with Governors retaining emergency powers and the centre keeping most revenue. Gandhiji called these offices 'crowns of thorns', telling Congressmen to hold them lightly and to prove Congress could rule 'with the least possible assistance of police and military'.
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By the early 1930s the Great Depression had crashed agricultural prices while taxes, rents and debts stayed at the old levels, leaving peasants trapped. The Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, launched by the Indian National Congress, gave this distress a political outlet, turning into no-tax and no-rent campaigns in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Punjab, and into forest satyagrahas by peasants and tribals in Maharashtra, Bihar and the Central Provinces. This churning produced a new generation of Left-leaning political workers who, once Civil Disobedience ebbed, turned to organising peasants full time, culminating in the formation of the All India Kisan Sabha in 1936 under Swami Sahajanand Saraswati.
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Communalism is often mistaken for religion itself. But it is a modern political ideology, not an ancient inheritance. Hindus and Muslims fought side by side in the Revolt of 1857. Religious distinction barely figured in public life through the 1860s.
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The Shimla Deputation in 1906 asked Viceroy Minto for separate Muslim electorates.
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Punjab Hindu Sabha was founded in 1909 by U.N. Mukherji and Lal Chand.
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Savarkar led the Hindu Mahasabha toward extreme communal politics.
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M.S. Golwalkar led the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and wrote the booklet 'We'.
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Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was a nationalist Muslim leader opposed to League separatism.
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