NCERT Solutions Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India s Long Road to Independence

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 8 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 9: India’s Long Road to
Independence

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

Part II, 35 – 84 15 31 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 48 pages

Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 8 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 9: India’s Long Road to
Independence
From the royal proclamation of 1858 to the midnight of 15 August 1947, this chapter follows ninety years in
which a land of many languages, faiths and regions learnt to act as one nation — through reform and writing,
through Swadeshi and boycott, through revolutionary daring and Gandhian satyagraha — and it does not
hide the cost: the jails, the massacres, and the Partition that shadowed the victory.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 8) Part II, 35 – 84

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

15 31

MEDIUM

English

The Big Questions — Pages 36–37
Chapter opener

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 How did a land of diverse geographies, languages and religions come together to
challenge and finally end nearly two centuries of British rule?

It came together because colonial rule pressed on everyone in the same few ways, and because
Indians slowly built the things a common struggle needs — shared grievances, shared
organisations, shared symbols and shared methods. Diversity never disappeared; what changed
was that local anger was converted into national action.
1. The grievances were common, even where the languages were not. Heavy land taxes
produced famines and hit peasants and tribals from Punjab to Chota Nagpur. Cheap British
manufactures ruined local industry. And the humiliation was identical everywhere: lower pay for
Indians in the army, civil services and universities; juries with British majorities that were lenient
towards Europeans; clubs, trains and city areas where Indians could not mix with Europeans;
the Arms Act of 1878 that disarmed Indians but not the British; the Vernacular Press Act of the
same year that censored Indian-language newspapers.
2. Organisations gave the anger an address. The Indian National Congress met for the first
time in Bombay in 1885 with 72 delegates from diverse regions and religions, and after that it
met every year in a different city. Regional bodies had failed; an all-India forum did not.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

3. Newspapers carried one argument to many languages. Tilak’s Marathi Kesari, Bipin
Chandra Pal’s and Aurobindo Ghose’s English Bande Mataram, the Bengali Yugantar, Naoroji’s
Voice of India, Banerjee’s The Bengalee. A reader in Poona and a reader in Calcutta could be
angry about the same thing on the same morning.
4. Symbols crossed language borders faster than arguments did. Bankim’s Bande Mataram,
composed in 1875, became “a rallying cry and a mantra during the 1905 awakening”;
Subramania Bharati translated it into Tamil; Lala Lajpat Rai named a Punjabi publication after it.
Abanindranath Tagore painted ‘Bharat Mata’ in 1905. In Bengal in 1905 people tied rakhis on
one another’s wrists to answer a partition meant to divide them.
5. The methods were ones anyone could join. You did not need English, a degree or a weapon
to refuse foreign cloth, to spin khadi, to walk in a procession, to picket a liquor shop or to pick
up a handful of salt. That is why the movement could include, in the words of a British report,
“thousands of women, many being of good family and high educational attainments… actually
from purdah”.
6. Shocks did the rest. The Partition of Bengal (1905), Jallianwala Bagh (1919), the all-British
Simon Commission (1927), the lathi charge that killed Lala Lajpat Rai (1928), the executions of
1931 — each turned a regional protest into a national one.

Why it finally worked: By 1946 the British could no longer count on the two things
an empire needs — obedience and armed force. Quit India showed that a hundred
thousand people could be jailed and the country would still not be governable; the
Royal Indian Air Force and Royal Indian Navy mutinies showed that even Indian
servicemen could no longer be relied upon. Add Britain’s exhaustion after World War
II and a worldwide wave of decolonisation, and staying became impossible.

The honest limit: The chapter itself says the movement “unified the subcontinent,
but could not resolve the political Hindu-Muslim question”. Unity was real, and it was
incomplete — and 1947 shows both.

Q2 What were the main developments and who were some important figures in India’s
struggle for freedom?

The struggle moves through five broad phases. The table follows the chapter’s own timeline
(Fig. 2.2).

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

PHASE MAIN DEVELOPMENTS SOME IMPORTANT FIGURES

Crown rule British Crown takes direct control (1858); royal Queen Victoria; Raja Ram Mohan Roy;
and reform proclamation and ‘paramountcy’ over some Swami Dayananda Saraswati;
1858–1900 560 princely states; Arms Act and Vernacular Vidyasagar; Syed Ahmed Khan;
Press Act (1878); reform movements; Kuka Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule; Bankim
(Namdhari) movement crushed in 1872; Chandra Chattopadhyay; Swami
Chapekar brothers (1897); Birsa Munda’s Vivekananda; Baba Ram Singh; Birsa
Ulgulaan (1899–1900); Indian National Munda; A.O. Hume; Dadabhai
Congress founded (1885); Vande Mataram Naoroji; W.C. Bonnerjee
composed (1875)

Swadeshi and Partition of Bengal (1905); Swadeshi, boycott Lord Curzon; Rabindranath Tagore;
the and National Education; Bande Mataram daily Surendranath Banerjee; Bipin
Nationalist and the Bengal National College (1906); Chandra Pal; Aurobindo Ghose; Bal
turn Congress adopts Swaraj at Calcutta (Dec 1906); Gangadhar Tilak; Lala Lajpat Rai
1905–1915 All-India Muslim League founded at Dhaka (‘Lal–Bal–Pal’); Gokhale, Pherozeshah
(1906); Surat split (1907); Alipore Bomb Case Mehta, Rashbehari Ghosh (Moderates);
and Tilak’s imprisonment (1908); partition Khudiram Bose; Prafulla Chaki;
annulled and capital shifted to Delhi (1911); Barindra Ghose; V.D. Savarkar; Rash
bomb thrown at Viceroy Hardinge (1912); Behari Bose; Kartar Singh Sarabha;
Ghadar Movement (1914–15); Bagha Jatin Bagha Jatin; Abanindranath Tagore;
killed at Balasore (1915) Subramania Bharati

Gandhi and Gandhi returns from South Africa (1915); M.K. Gandhi; Annie Besant; Gopal
mass Lucknow session reunites the Congress and Krishna Gokhale; Muhammad Ali
mobilisation the Lucknow Pact with the League (1916); Jinnah; Vallabhbhai Patel; Muhammad
1915–1922 Home Rule Movement (1916); satyagrahas at Ali and Shaukat Ali; Maulana Abul
Champaran, Ahmedabad, Kheda (1917–18); Kalam Azad; Brigadier-General Dyer
Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh (1919); and O’Dwyer (on the other side);
Khilafat Movement (1919–22); Non- Motilal Nehru; Jawaharlal Nehru;
Cooperation Movement (1920–22), withdrawn Chittaranjan Das; Subhas Chandra
after Chauri Chaura Bose; Udham Singh

Purna Swaraj Kakori train robbery (1925); Simon Ram Prasad Bismil; Ashfaqulla Khan;
and civil Commission boycotted and Lala Lajpat Rai Chandrashekhar Azad; Bhagat Singh;
disobedience dies (1927–28); Motilal Nehru Report asks for Sukhdev Thapar; Shivaram Rajguru;
1925–1935 dominion status (1928); Bardoli movement Suniti Chowdhury; Shanti Ghosh; Bina
(1928); Purna Swaraj at Lahore (Dec 1929); Das; Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel; Sarojini
Salt March and Civil Disobedience (1930); Naidu; Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan;
Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre (1930); Chandra Singh Garhwali; Viceroy
executions of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Irwin; B.R. Ambedkar; Muhammad
Sukhdev, and the Gandhi–Irwin Pact (1931); Iqbal
Round Table Conference and the Poona Pact;
movement withdrawn (1934); Government of
India Act (1935)

War, Quit India taken into World War II without Winston Churchill; Stafford Cripps; C.
India and consultation; Lahore Resolution (1940); Bose Rajagopalachari; Aruna Asaf Ali;
freedom escapes India (1941); Cripps Mission rejected Kanaklata Barua; Ram Manohar

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

1939–1947 and Quit India launched (1942); Bengal
co m
Lohia; Jayaprakash Narayan; Viceroy

e m.
famine and the reorganised INA and Azad Linlithgow; Subhas Chandra Bose;

m l as
.co north-east (1944); INA trials, RIAF and RIN
Hind government (1943); INA defeated in the Muhammad Ali Jinnah; Mountbatten;

a g
m
Cyril Radcliffe; Jawaharlal Nehru;

l a se mutinies, Cabinet Mission and Direct Action Sardar Patel

a g Day (1946); Interim Government;
Independence and Partition (1947);

m
integration of the princely states

. co ag
e m
g l as
a
Remember what the chapter says first: the ICHR’s Dictionary of Martyrs lists some
14,000 names. “Freedom fighters not mentioned here are no less important than the
few who illustrate our story.”
co m
em.
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a s em
l
What issues did the leading freedom fighters agree or disagree upon?
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Q3
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m a s
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They agreed on the end and disagreed on everything else about how to reach it.
s unjust, that Indians were being economically drained
What united them: that foreign ruleawas
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and personally humiliated, andathat Indians must have a real say in governing themselves.
Beyond that, the disagreements were serious, public, and often between friends.

co m
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a
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ase
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m ase
.co


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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

THE ONE SIDE THE OTHER SIDE WHAT HAPPENED
ISSUE

How much Moderates — autonomy Nationalists — nothing less ‘Swaraj’ was adopted in
freedom to inside the British Empire, than independence (Tilak, Lala 1906 without being
ask for won by gradual reform Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose) defined. When Moderates
(Naoroji, Gokhale, tried to step back from it,
Pherozeshah Mehta, the Congress split at
Surendranath Banerjee) Surat in 1907

Peaceful Petitions, then mass Revolutionaries — that “the use Both streams grew side by
pressure or non-violent action — of force was a legitimate side. Bhagat Singh’s
armed action boycott, satyagraha, means”, because non-violence execution in 1931 was
khadi, the Salt March was too slow and put too little mourned across the whole
pressure (HRA, HSRA, Anushilan spectrum — Bose called
Samiti, Abhinav Bharat, Ghadar) his spirit
“unconquerable”

Whether to Gandhi — Chauri Chaura Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Motilal Nehru and C.R.
call off a (Feb 1922) was ‘inhuman Nehru, C.R. Das and Subhas Das formed the Swaraj
movement conduct’, so Non- Chandra Bose disapproved of Party to try a different
over Cooperation must stop the withdrawal strategy; it was short-
violence at once lived after Das’s death in
1925

Mixing Gandhi backed the Some Congressmen said The alliance did increase
religion with Khilafat cause as a Turkey’s Caliph was no concern Muslim participation —
the national chance to unite Hindus of India’s; Syed Ahmad Khan but historians also note
movement and Muslims against had objected to tying Indian that it “reinforced the
British rule Muslims’ loyalty to a faraway sense of separateness”,
religious power; Jinnah left the and riots followed
Congress in 1920 warning
against mixing religion with the
freedom movement

Separate The Congress accepted Gandhi feared separate The Poona Pact: no
electorates separate electorates for electorates for the Depressed separate electorates, but
Muslims in the Lucknow Classes would permanently an increased number of
Pact (1916); Ambedkar divide Hindu society, and went reserved seats in the
wanted them for the on a ‘fast unto death’ legislatures
Depressed Classes so
that they would have a
real political voice

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Seeking Subhas Chandra Bose — Many admired his courage; The INA was militarily
foreign help freedom would come others criticised his alliance defeated in 1944, but the
in wartime only through armed with Nazi Germany and Japan INA trials of 1946 shook
struggle, so approach British authority more
Britain’s enemies than the campaign had
(Germany, then Japan)

One nation Nearly all Congress Iqbal proposed a separate Partition in 1947 —
or two leaders, including Muslim territory in 1930; Jinnah which, the chapter notes,
Maulana Azad and Abdul endorsed Pakistan; the Hindu “was widely opposed even
Ghaffar Khan, opposed Mahasabha under Savarkar by the Indian National
the Two-Nation idea also saw Hindus and Muslims Congress. There was no
as two distinct nations, though national consensus”
without explicitly asking for
partition

Why the disagreements matter: They are not a weakness in the story — they are
the story. A movement that could hold a Moderate lawyer, a Marathi newspaper
editor, a Bengali bomb-maker, a Pathan pacifist and a Gujarati spinning khadi inside
one struggle was strong precisely because it was argued over. The one disagreement
it could not settle was the last one, and that is where the tragedy of 1947 begins.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 38
Introduction to the chapter

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Talk to your grandparents or elderly family members and find out what they
remember or heard about India’s freedom struggle. Note which leaders or methods
people supported. Discuss in class how, despite sharing the same goal of freedom,
people followed different paths.

How to do it. Fix a time when the person is free, and take a notebook — memory is a source,
and a source must be recorded carefully.

1. Ask open questions, not yes/no ones: “What did people in your village talk about in 1947?”
rather than “Did people like Gandhi?”
2. Ask what they saw or heard themselves, and separate it from what they were told later.
Both are worth writing down, but they are different kinds of evidence.
3. Write the person’s name, age, and the place their family lived at the time. A memory without
a place and a date is hard to use.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

4. Note their exact words for the important bits. Do not smooth them out.

Questions that usually open a conversation: Was anyone in the family in jail, in a procession,
or in the army? Did the family stop buying foreign cloth? Was there a khadi spinning wheel at
home? What songs were sung? What did people say when they heard about Gandhi, or Bhagat
Singh, or Subhas Chandra Bose? What happened in your area on 15 August 1947? Did anyone in
the family move because of Partition?
What a good answer must contain: (i) who you interviewed and where their family lived; (ii) at
least two specific memories, with names or places; (iii) which leader or method they say people
around them supported; (iv) one honest line about what they were not sure of.

Sample answer: “I spoke to my grandmother, Kamla Devi, aged 84, whose family
lived in a village near Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh. She did not see 1942 herself —
she was born in 1941 — but her father used to say that during Quit India the young
men of the village cut down telegraph poles and that the police came twice and beat
people in the fields. Her father was a Congress supporter and kept a charkha; her
uncle admired Subhas Chandra Bose and used to argue that ‘spinning will not send
them home’. She remembers that on Independence Day sweets were distributed at
the school and someone hoisted a flag on a bamboo pole. She was not sure whether
her uncle ever actually joined anything, or only talked.”

What the class discussion should conclude: Almost every family will produce a
different mixture — one household admired Gandhi, another Bose, another a local
leader nobody outside the district remembers. That is exactly the chapter’s point:
“although all those who fought for India’s freedom shared the same objective, they
often differed in the ways to achieve it.” Disagreement about method is not
disloyalty to the goal.

LET’S REMEMBER — Page 39
A Royal Proclamation

LET’S REMEMBER

Q1 Let’s go back to the map of the British Indian Empire in Part 1 of this textbook (Fig.
4.16). Observe the different colours; recall that the red and pink territories are
those directly under British administration, while the yellow ones are the princely
states.

The map shows two Indias under one empire.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

COLOUR ON WHAT IT MARKS WHO ACTUALLY RULED THERE
THE MAP

Red and pink British India — the The Crown, through the Secretary of State for India in London
presidencies and and the Viceroy (also called Governor General) in India, with
provinces British officials, British courts and British law

Yellow The princely states — Indian princes, in name. In practice a British ‘Resident’ or
some 560 of them ‘Political Agent’ was posted in almost every one and “very often
interfered in the government and administration”

What to notice about the pattern. The red and pink are not scattered at random. They follow
the coasts and the great river valleys — the ports and the fertile, revenue-rich plains that the
East India Company had taken first. The yellow states are largely inland, in the drier and hillier
interior. That is a map of an empire built for trade and revenue.

Why this matters for 1858: The royal proclamation promised to respect “the rights,
dignity and honour of native Princes”. The map shows what that promise was worth
in practice: the princes kept their palaces and titles, but under British paramountcy
— their supposed autonomy was “reduced to a symbolic one”. Keeping 560 friendly
rulers in place was cheaper and safer for Britain than governing all of India directly,
especially after 1857.

Look ahead: Those same yellow patches become a problem again in 1947, when the
princely states are given the option to join India or Pakistan — or, in theory, to stay
independent. Sardar Patel’s task of integrating them (p. 78) is the last chapter of this
map’s story.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 42

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Other Influences (Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Bande Mataram)
co m
e m.
m as
LET’S EXPLORE

.co a g l
a s em are the first two stanzas of the song. Can you make out some of their
gl
Below
a
Q1
meaning? Vande mātaram! sujalām suphalām malayajaśhītalām śhasyaśhyāmalām,
mātaram! Vande mātaram! Śubhrajyotsnām pulakitayāminīm phullakusumita

com
. ag
drumadalaśhobhinīm suhāsinīm sumadhura bhāṣhiṇīm sukhadām varadām,
e m
as
mātaram! Vande mātaram!

a g l

. c om
Yes — almost every word is a picture of the land, addressed as a mother. The song is in

m a s emsame person:
Sanskrit, and it is built out of compound adjectives, all of them describing the
o Mother.
mātaram, cthe
. a gl
a s em
aglWORD ITS PARTS MEANING

m a s
.co agl
vande mātaram vande = I bow / I praise; mātaram = to the “I bow to the Mother” /

em
Mother “Praise to the Mother”

a s
agl
sujalām su = good; jala = water richly watered — a land of
good rivers

co m
su = good; phala = fruit
m .
suphalām richly fruited

m a e by the sandal-scented
scooled
.co
malayaja-śhītalām malayaja = sandalwood (from the Malaya hills); l
ag breeze from the south
a s em śhītala = cool

ag l śhasya-śhyāmalām śhasya = crops; śhyāmala = dark green dark green with standing
crops
se m
com g l a
m . a
ase
śubhra-jyotsnām śubhra = bright, white; jyotsnā = moonlight bright with white moonlight

pulakita-yāminīm
a gl
pulakita = thrilled (hair standing on end with whose nights are thrilled with
delight); yāminī = night joy

. com
emand leaf
phulla-kusumita phulla = blossoming; kusumita = in flower; lovely with trees in full flower

com l as
drumadala-śhobhinīm druma = tree; dala = leaf/foliage; śhobhinī =

. a g
m
beautiful

ase
agl su = sweet; hāsinī = smiling
suhāsinīm sweetly smiling

.c
s e m
om a
su-madhura = very sweet; bhāṣhiṇī = speaking

gl
sumadhura bhāṣhiṇīm sweet of speech

sukha-dā =m
. c giver of happiness, giver of a
sukhadām varadām
a s e giver of happiness; vara-dā = giver of

agl
boons blessings

co m
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Put together: “I bow to the Mother — rich in waters, rich in fruit, cooled by the southern
breeze, dark-green with harvests; bright with moonlight, her nights thrilled with delight,
beautiful with flowering trees, sweetly smiling, sweetly speaking, giver of joy and of blessings —
Mother, I bow to you.”

Why these words became a political slogan: Not one line of the two stanzas
mentions politics, an enemy, or even a name. Every image is of soil, water, crops,
trees and moonlight — and all of them are said to a mother. That is what made the
song so powerful in 1905: it fused the ordinary land you can see from a field with the
person you are most bound to defend. Rabindranath Tagore set it to music and sang
it at the 1896 Congress session; in 1905 it was sung in street processions until the
authorities banned public singing of it; and in 1950 the Constituent Assembly
adopted it as India’s National Song.

Did you know? The poem was composed in 1875, seven years before Bankim used it
in Anandamath (1882). The title is the Bengali form of the Sanskrit Vande Mātaram —
Bengali has no letter ‘va’, only ‘ba’, which is why the newspaper of 1906 was called
Bande Mataram.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 43
Other Influences (Swami Vivekananda)

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 How are the values expressed by Swami Vivekananda above relevant in the 21st
century? Can some of them help you achieve your goals? Share your thoughts with
your classmates.

They are relevant because none of them depend on the year 1893. Vivekananda was not
making a political programme — he was arguing about what people must first become before
they can change anything. That argument does not date.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

WHAT HE SAID WHAT IT MEANT THEN WHERE IT APPLIES NOW

“Arise, awake, and stop not A call to Indians to act instead of Persistence. Most goals — a skill, an
till the goal is reached” waiting for permission exam, a project — are lost not to failure
but to stopping halfway

Discover your inner Colonised people had been taught Self-doubt is still what stops a student
strength; overcome fear, that they belonged to an ‘inferior from asking a question in class or trying
weakness and self-doubt race’ a subject they have been told is not for
them

Cultivate science He advised Jamsetji Tata to found a A country solves its own problems only if
research institute — it became the it can also do its own research
Indian Institute of Science

Reject blind imitation of “Look back… drink deep of the Confidence without copying — you can
the West, but look forward eternal fountains that are behind, learn from anywhere without deciding
and after that, look forward, march that your own culture is worthless
forward”

Combine spiritual practice Faith was to be measured by what Volunteering, disaster relief, teaching in
with social service it did for people your neighbourhood — ideals tested by
(Ramakrishna Mission) action, not by argument

Why this mattered to the freedom movement even though he stayed out of
politics: The chapter is careful about this — “Swami Vivekananda did not involve
himself in political action”. His contribution was earlier in the chain. A movement
needs people who believe they are capable of self-rule before it can demand self-
rule. He built that belief, which is why “many freedom fighters drew inspiration from
him”. His birthday, 12 January, is observed as National Youth Day.

Try this: Pick one goal for this term and apply the sentence literally — write down
where you will “stop not”: the point at which you usually give up. Naming that point
in advance is most of the work.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 50

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The Nationalist Agenda (the Bande Mataram daily)

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Why do you think the Bande Mataram daily avoided using the word ‘independence’?

Because the word was dangerous in law, and because a vaguer word was more useful in
politics. Two reasons, and the chapter gives the evidence for both.
1. Sedition. Under colonial law it was a crime to write anything “promoting sedition or rebellion
against the authority of a state or monarch” (the chapter’s own margin note, p. 46). The chapter
shows exactly how that worked: Tilak was first prosecuted in 1897 for articles “which incited
violence”, “although there was no evidence”; he was jailed again in 1908 for sedition because of
his articles in Kesari, in a trial the chapter calls “rushed and unfair”; and Bande Mataram itself
“was suppressed while the Alipore trial went on”. A newspaper that printed the word
‘independence’ in plain type would have been shut down and its editors jailed within weeks —
and then it could not spread the idea at all.
2. Reach. In 1906 the Congress had just adopted Swaraj, and the chapter tells us it “was not
defined — it was understood to have a range of meanings, from self-rule within the British
Empire to full independence.” That vagueness was not an accident. A paper arguing for
‘absolute national autonomy’ could be read approvingly by a Moderate who wanted dominion-
style self-government and by a Nationalist who wanted the British gone. ‘Independence’ would
have split the readership on day one.

The technique: Say the strongest possible thing in words the law finds hard to
prosecute. ‘Autonomy’ sounds like an administrative arrangement; ‘absolute’ and
‘national’ quietly remove every British role from it. The meaning is complete
independence; the vocabulary is respectable.

Note: This is our reading of the chapter’s evidence, not a statement the newspaper
made about itself. The chapter invites you to think it out, and the sedition
prosecutions are the strongest clue it gives you.

Q2 Comment on the phrase ‘absolute national autonomy’ in the above quotation from
a Bande Mataram article.

Read the three words separately and the phrase turns out to mean complete
independence, with nothing left over for Britain.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Autonomy — self-government; the power to make your own decisions.
National — belonging to the whole nation, not to a province or a community. It is a claim on
behalf of India as one people.
Absolute — the decisive word. Autonomy can be partial: a legislative council with limited
powers, provincial self-government, dominion status with Britain still holding defence and
foreign policy. Absolute autonomy leaves no British share at all.

Now look at where the phrase sits in the sentence: “This agitation is not an agitation merely
against Partition … The attainment of absolute national autonomy—it is this alone that will
settle down this movement.” The paper is telling both the government and its own readers that
the Bengal agitation cannot be bought off. Annulling the partition — which the British finally did
in 1911 — would not end anything, because the demand had already moved past it.

Why the phrase is so carefully built: Compare it with what the Moderates were
asking for at the same moment — “a gradual shift to self-government within the
British Empire” — and with the Home Rule Movement of 1916, which asked for “self-
government for India within the British Empire… no longer the full independence
that the earlier Nationalists had demanded”. Absolute national autonomy is the
maximum demand, phrased so that it is still difficult to prosecute for sedition.
Compare it also with Sri Aurobindo’s words at the head of the chapter (1909): “Our
ideal is that of Swaraj or absolute autonomy free from foreign control.” The same
idea, now stated openly — because by then he was writing in a different situation.

Q3 Looking at the two boxes on either side of the daily’s title in Fig. 2.12, what do you
observe?

The paper advertises its politics in its masthead — it is not hidden inside the paper, it
flanks the title. Each box has a registration-number line at the top, a bold declaration in the
middle and a price line at the foot (the small print of the registration and price lines is too faint
to read in the reproduction).

Page 13 of 48

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co m
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BOX WHAT IT SAYS WHAT IT IS DOING

a se
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.India.”
“Swadeshi PAPER of
Indian-run, Indian-financed. The boycott a
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Left of Declares the paper itself to be a Swadeshi product — Indian-owned,

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the title
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reports on; the newspaper is an example of it

Right of “Our Policy: INDIA for States the editorial line in four words. Not a request for reforms, not a

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the title Indians.” petition — a claim about who India belongs to

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Indian Nationalism.” ag
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Under “A Daily Organ of Names the movement it belongs to. It is a party organ, and says so
the title

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What this tells you about the Nationalist press: A moderate paper would put

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news on the front page and opinion inside. Bande Mataram puts its programme
where.cthe name goes, so that a reader — or a policeman — sees
a g the politics before
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reading
a Calcutta programme in miniature: Swadeshi on the left, Swaraj (‘India for Indians’)

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on the right. The rest of the page is dense small type in many columns, with a
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column headed ‘Prosecution of Babu Arabinda Ghosh’ — a reminder of what running agl
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such a paper cost.
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Did you know? The same newspaper added National Education to Swadeshi and
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boycott, and spelt out a ‘doctrine of passive resistance’. The Bengal National College
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it supported was later integrated into Jadavpur University.
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LET’S EXPLORE — Page 52
India as the ‘Mother’ (Fig. 2.14 and Fig. 2.15).c
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LET’S EXPLORE

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Q1 In what ways are these two representations of Mother India similar or different?

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Both turn India into a mother-goddess; but one is a meditation and the other is a poster.

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FIG. 2.14 — ‘BHARAT MATA’, FIG. 2.15 — COVER OF VIJAYA,
ABANINDRANATH TAGORE (BENGAL, SUBRAMANIA BHARATI’S
1905) MAGAZINE (MADRAS
PRESIDENCY)

Medium A painting in soft washes — yellows and saffron, A printed line drawing on the cover of a
blurred edges, no hard outline magazine — black ink, strong outlines,
made to be reproduced cheaply and
often

The figure A calm young woman in the saffron of a A more dramatic figure, one arm
renunciate, with a halo behind her head and four raised, drawn over an outline map of
arms. She stands on the bare earth India, with people gathered below her

What she Four objects, one in each hand — a white cloth, a No gifts. She is placed on the land itself
holds / sheaf of paddy, a manuscript and a rosary: — the peninsula and the island of
stands on usually read as the Mother’s gifts of clothing, Lanka are clearly drawn behind and
food, learning and spiritual life below her

Words in None भारतमाता (Bharat Mata) on a banner
the image across the top, वन्दे म ातरम् (Vande
Mataram) beside her, and the Tamil
title வ ஜயா above the frame
Mood Quiet, inward, devotional — she gives Public, rousing, political — she is being
hailed by a crowd

What they share: both were made in the Swadeshi years; both come out of the idea the
chapter describes, “partly inspired by Bankim’s Anandamath, they saw India as a divine
motherland”; both make the nation something you owe love and duty to, rather than an
administrative unit on a British map; and both were meant for Indians, not for the government.

The most important difference — and why it matters: Abanindranath’s Mother
has no map. Bharati’s Mother is the map. Once the figure is drawn over the outline
of India, the picture makes a territorial claim: this land, whole and undivided,
belongs to her — which is a direct answer to a government that had just cut Bengal
in two. That is the difference between a spiritual image and a political one.

And notice where they come from: one from Bengal, one from the Tamil country,
within a few years of each other, saying the same thing in different languages and
different visual traditions. That is the chapter’s Big Question 1 answered in two
pictures.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 What details can you discern in the front cover of Subramania Bharati’s Vijaya?

Working down the printed cover, these are the details that can be made out:

A thin ruled line at the very top with small print at either end — the issue and volume details
of the magazine.
The title in large Tamil letters, வ ஜயா (Vijaya, meaning ‘victory’), with an ornamental plant-like
motif rising above it, and a short line of Tamil beneath it — the magazine’s subtitle or its
editor’s line.
A ruled rectangular frame enclosing the whole illustration.
A banner scroll across the top of the frame carrying the name भारतमाता — ‘Bharat Mata’, in
Devanagari.
The words वन्देमातरम् — ‘Vande Mātaram’ — printed to the right of the figure, again in
Devanagari.
An outline map of India filling the frame behind the figure: the peninsula tapering to the
south, with the island of Lanka off its tip.
The Mother figure standing across the map, robed and with an arm lifted — the same
gesture a leader makes when addressing a crowd.
Small groups of people at the bottom of the frame, drawn much smaller than she is,
looking up towards her; a flag stands among them on the right.

The detail worth arguing about: a Tamil magazine, edited by a Tamil poet, for
Tamil readers — and yet the Mother’s name and the song beside her are printed in
Devanagari, in Sanskrit words. That is a deliberate choice. Bharati had already
translated Bande Mataram into Tamil, so he could easily have used Tamil script here.
Keeping the Sanskrit form says that this Mother is not Tamil Nadu’s alone — she is
the same Mother a reader in Bengal or Punjab was invoking. The cover is making a
pan-Indian claim, in one glance, without a word of argument.

Reading pictures: Relative size in an illustration is never accidental. The people are
tiny and the Mother fills the frame — the message is that the nation is larger than
any of the individuals who serve it.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 55

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DON’T MISS OUT: Freedom Struggle in the North-East

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 You may explore further and find out more about the freedom struggle in the
North-East and known and lesser-known freedom fighters from this area.

Start from the six names the chapter itself gives you, then widen out. The point of the
exercise is to see that the freedom struggle in the North-East was not a smaller copy of the
movement elsewhere — much of it began earlier, and much of it was fought over land, forests
and tax.

NAME / WHEN AND WHERE WHAT THEY DID
EVENT

Tirot Sing Khasi Revolt, 1829– Led Khasi resistance when the British pushed a road through
1833, present-day the hills — one of the earliest organised revolts in the region,
Meghalaya decades before 1857

The Singpho 1830s–1840s, eastern A tribal revolt against British rule as the Company extended
Rebellion Assam its hold over Assam after the Anglo-Burmese war

Maniram Dewan 1857, Assam Publicly hanged by the British for their part in the rebellion
and Piyali Baruah of 1857 in Assam

Kanaklata Barua 1942, Gohpur, Assam Shot dead at 17 while leading a procession to hoist the
national flag at the local police station during Quit India;
honoured as ‘Birangana’ (heroic woman)

Kushal Konwar 1942–43, Assam A Quit India martyr — one of the movement’s best-known
figures from Assam

Rani Gaidinliu From the late 1920s, Began fighting the British at the age of 13; urged people not
Manipur and the Naga to pay taxes and not to work for the colonial masters — non-
hills cooperation carried out in the hills

How to explore further, properly:

1. Fix the place first — Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh,
Mizoram — and then look for what happened there, rather than searching for ‘famous
freedom fighters’ in general.
2. Use the state government’s or the state archive’s pages, district gazetteers, and the ICHR
Dictionary of Martyrs, which the chapter mentions — it lists some 14,000 names, and many
North-Eastern martyrs are in it.
3. Ask what the local grievance was. In the North-East it was very often land, forest rights,
house tax or forced labour — not the same issues that drove protest in Bombay or Calcutta.

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4. Look for women and very young people. Kanaklata Barua was 17 and Rani Gaidinliu was 13
when they began. Also look for Bhogesvari Phukanani and Gopinath Bordoloi, both in the
chapter’s long list on p. 80.
5. Record your sources. If two accounts differ on a date, say so instead of choosing one silently.

Sample answer (opening paragraph): “The freedom struggle in the North-East
began earlier than in most of India. Tirot Sing’s Khasi revolt (1829–1833) and the
Singpho rebellion of the 1830s–40s were fought before the Great Uprising of 1857,
and in 1857 itself Maniram Dewan and Piyali Baruah were publicly hanged in Assam.
The region then joined the national movements: in 1942, Kanaklata Barua, aged 17,
was shot dead while carrying the national flag to a police station at Gohpur, and
Kushal Konwar was executed. In Manipur, Rani Gaidinliu began resisting the British
at 13, telling people to stop paying taxes and stop working for the colonial
government — a strategy very close to non-cooperation, worked out in the hills.”

Small point worth noticing: the chapter spells the same name two ways — ‘Kanak
Lata Baruah’ in the box on p. 55 and ‘Kanaklata Barua’ on p. 76. Spellings of Indian
names in colonial-era records are often unstable; when you write, pick one form and
say which you are using.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 56
The Revolutionaries (Tilak’s sedition trial)

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 When the judge asked Tilak if he had anything to say after being sentenced, Tilak
replied, “There are higher powers that rule the destinies of men and nations; and I
think, it may be the will of Providence that the cause I represent may be benefited
more by my suffering than by my pen and tongue.” What message do you think he
was trying to convey?

He was telling the court that the sentence would defeat its own purpose. The government
thought it was silencing him. He replied that his six years in Mandalay would say more for
Swaraj than his newspaper ever had.
Three things are packed into that sentence:

Acceptance without submission. He does not plead, apologise, or ask for mercy. He
accepts the punishment, and in the same breath denies that the punishment settles
anything.

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‘The cause I represent’. He shifts attention off himself. He is not on trial as Bal Gangadhar
co m
Tilak; he stands there for a cause, and causes do not go to jail.
se m.
o m l a
g for exactly that.
.c and a speech can be banned — the Vernacular Press Act aexisted
‘My suffering’ against ‘my pen and tongue’. He is naming a real political fact. An article can
m
se injustice cannot be censored. The trial was, as the chapter says, “rushed and unfair”,
be censored
a
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a and everyone in India could read that in the papers.

com
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Was he right? The chapter’s own evidence says yes. Tilak came out of prison “a ag
g l as
national hero… known as ‘Lokmanya’ or ‘revered by the people’”. The same pattern
a
repeats through the whole chapter: Khudiram Bose calm and smiling on the scaffold
at 18, with crowds throwing flowers on his funeral procession; Bhagat Singh’s
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execution making him “a symbol of the resistance”; Lala Lajpat Rai’s death after the

o m l a se
lathi charge inflaming the whole country. Repression kept producing the opposite of
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what it.cintended. Gandhi later built an entire method — satyagraha,
a
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suffering in the quest for truth” — on precisely this insight.
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Also worth knowing: Tilak’s lawyer in that trial was Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He lost
.
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this case in 1908; in another sedition
a the story of the 1940s might have looked from 1908.
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is a reminder of how differently

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On another occasion, Tilak famously declared, “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall
o it.” What does this reveal about Tilak’s character?agl
Q2

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It reveals a man who had stopped asking. Look at the two halves of the sentence — each says

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something different about him.

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THE WORDS
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WHAT THEY REVEAL

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“Swaraj is my He rejects the whole idea of being granted freedom. A birthright is not given by a government
birthright”
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and cannot be withheld by one — you have it because you were born. This is a direct answer

m a s
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through

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“my birthright… Courage in the first person. He speaks as one man taking personal responsibility, which is why
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I shall have it”
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Why this one sentence spread so far: It is short, it is in the first person, and it
needs no education to understand. That was Tilak’s whole political method — the
chapter says he was “a powerful orator” who turned Ganesh Chaturthi and the
Shivaji festival into popular events “to send message that people needed to be
awaken, stand up and resist the oppression”, and who wrote in Marathi in Kesari
rather than in English. He was trying to reach people the Congress of 1885, “mostly
drawn from Anglicised upper classes”, had never spoken to. A slogan any labourer
could remember was a political tool, not a flourish.

Connect it up: Compare this with the Lahore resolution of 1929 — “it is the
inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom”.
Tilak’s ‘birthright’ became the Congress’s ‘inalienable right’ twenty years later.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 63
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and its Aftermath

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Rabindranath Tagore sent a strong letter of protest to the then Viceroy. “The
accounts of the insults and sufferings by our brothers in Punjab,” wrote Tagore,
“have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India, and the
universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored
by our rulers—possibly congratulating themselves for what they imagine as
salutary lessons.” In the same letter, Tagore returned the knighthood he had
received from the British. What does Tagore mean when he assumes that the
colonial rulers ‘congratulated themselves’ after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre?

He means that the rulers saw the massacre not as a crime but as a success — a ‘lesson’
that would frighten Indians into obedience — and were quietly pleased with themselves
for it. The bitterness lies in one word: salutary. A salutary lesson is a painful one that is
supposed to do you good. Tagore is saying that the government believed it had done India a
favour by shooting into a crowd.
Notice the other two phrases he chooses:

“trickled through the gagged silence” — censorship. Punjab was under martial law and
news was being suppressed, so the truth reached the rest of India only in fragments. Tagore
is telling the Viceroy that the government cannot claim not to have known.
“has been ignored by our rulers” — this is the real charge. Not only did they kill; they then
treated the country’s grief as irrelevant.

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Was Tagore right? The chapter says he was. Dyer “proudly defended his action
before a British-dominated inquiry committee, which condemned it, though without
recommending any penal action”; he was only removed from India after “a general
outcry”; and Punjab’s lieutenant governor, O’Dwyer, “defended Dyer’s action”. Tagore
wrote this before those facts were fully known — and they confirmed him. To this
day the British government has not apologised, describing Jallianwala Bagh only as
‘a deeply shameful event in British history’.

Why returning the knighthood mattered: A knighthood was the empire’s way of
saying ‘this Indian is one of ours’. Giving it back — publicly, in the same letter —
turned an honour into an accusation. Tagore had no political office and commanded
no movement; this was the strongest instrument he had, and he used it. Twenty-one
years later Udham Singh answered the same massacre in an entirely different way,
tracking O’Dwyer to London and shooting him. The chapter puts the two responses
close together; they show how wide the range of Indian reactions to 1919 was.

The numbers, for the record: about ten minutes of firing, 1,650 rounds; official
British counts admitted nearly 400 dead and over 1,200 wounded, while Indian
estimates put the dead at over 1,000.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 69
Purna Swaraj and Civil Disobedience (the Lahore resolution, December 1929)

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Form groups to analyse, compare and discuss the various elements or demands
contained in the above resolution.

How to run the exercise. Split the extract into its sentences and give one to each group. Each
group answers three questions about its sentence: what is being claimed? what is it based on?
who is it addressed to? Then put the four sentences back together in order and see the argument
they build.

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ELEMENT IN THE THE CLAIM WHY IT IS PLACED THERE
RESOLUTION

“the inalienable right of the Indian Freedom is not a favour It is put first because everything else
people, as of any other people” to be granted; it belongs rests on it. And ‘as of any other people’
to Indians as it belongs answers the racial argument the chapter
to everyone describes on p. 40 — that Indians
belonged to ‘inferior races’ unfit to rule
themselves

“to have freedom and to enjoy the Freedom is defined to This is the drain of wealth, the famines
fruits of their toil and have the include an economic and and the ruin of Indian industry turned
necessities of life, so that they may human minimum, not into a demand. Freedom that left people
have full opportunities of growth” just a flag and a hungry would not count
parliament

“if any government deprives a people A government that fails The moral licence for what comes next.
of these rights and oppresses them the this test loses its claim to Civil disobedience is not lawlessness; it is
people have a further right to alter it obedience the exercise of a right the resolution has
or to abolish it” just stated

“has not only deprived… but has The charge sheet — four Note ‘the masses’: this is the Congress of
based itself on the exploitation of the counts, in that order 1929, not of 1885. And ‘culturally and
masses, and has ruined India spiritually’ echoes the older Nationalist
economically, politically, culturally, argument about English education and
and spiritually” national self-respect

“India must sever the British The conclusion, stated Everything above exists to make this
connection and attain Purna Swaraj without any sentence unavoidable. There is no
or complete independence” qualification ‘within the Empire’, no ‘in due course’

What to compare it with (the second half of the exercise):

DEMAND YEAR WHAT IT ASKED FOR

Congress at its 1885 ‘Unswerving allegiance to the British Crown’; greater Indian participation, civil
founding rights, some reforms

Swaraj at Calcutta 1906 Self-rule — deliberately undefined, anywhere from autonomy inside the Empire
to full independence

Home Rule 1916 Self-government within the British Empire — “a practical first step”
Movement

Motilal Nehru 1928 Dominion status: full internal autonomy, but Britain keeps defence and foreign
Report policy and the Crown stays head of state

Lahore resolution 1929 Purna Swaraj — sever the British connection entirely

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The point the comparison makes: the demand escalated because the British
refused each smaller version of it. The chapter is explicit — the Simon Commission
came “without a single Indian member”, and it was “the realisation that Britain was
not ready to grant India such a status” that pushed Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas
Chandra Bose and the younger leaders to Purna Swaraj. Note also that the demand
was not new: Nationalists had voiced it two decades earlier, Aurobindo in 1908,
Maulana Hasrat Mohani in 1921 and V.D. Savarkar in 1925. What was new in 1929
was that the whole Congress adopted it.

Discuss in your group: the sentence about the right “to alter or to abolish” a
government closely echoes the language of the American Declaration of
Independence of 1776. Why might Indian leaders in 1929 have wanted to use the
vocabulary Britain’s own former colonies had used against it?

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 76
The Quit India Movement

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 During the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–22, some 40,000 participants were
jailed for various terms. The Salt Satyagraha of 1930 saw over 60,000 people jailed
and a large number brutalised by the police. The Civil Disobedience Movement
during 1931–34 saw another 40,000 freedom fighters jailed. During the Quit India
Movement of 1942–45, over 100,000 freedom fighters were imprisoned and nearly
10,000 killed during the brutal repression of the movement. You need not
remember these figures. However, conduct a class discussion about their
significance in terms of the huge collective sacrifice suffered by the Indian people.

Set the figures side by side first — the shape of the numbers is the argument.

MOVEMENT YEARS JAILED KILLED

Non-Cooperation 1920–22 some 40,000 —

Salt Satyagraha 1930 over 60,000 a large number brutalised by the police

Civil Disobedience 1931–34 another 40,000 —

Quit India 1942–45 over 100,000 nearly 10,000

Page 23 of 48

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c om
Four things the class should be able to say by the end of the discussion:
.
m
1. Well over two lakh people went to jail in these four movements alone —
a s em
and that is only

.
the four the
a gl trials, the Ghadar
cobox lists. It leaves out the Swadeshi years, the revolutionary
a s emthe Cellular Jail and every local agitation. Freedom was not won by a few dozen
l names; it was won by hundreds of thousands of unknown ones.
arrests,

agfamous
2. The numbers rise over time — and so does the cost. 40,000 in 1920–22, over 60,000 in

com
ag
1930, over 100,000 in 1942–45. That is the movement widening from the educated and the

m .
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urban towards the whole country. But look at the last column: only in 1942 does mass killing

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appear. As participation grew, so did the violence used against it.
3. What one arrest actually meant. A jail term was not a symbolic gesture. It meant a lost job

m
or a lost harvest; a family without earnings; children taken out of school; property
co
m.
confiscated; and often, as the box says of 1930, being ‘brutalised by the police’ first. Aruna

o m l a se
Asaf Ali had suffered solitary confinement; Bina Das was sentenced to nine years of rigorous
.c a g “many of them died and
m
imprisonment; the men in the Cellular Jail extracted oil by hand and

l a se lost their sanity”. Ask the class to work out what a year in jail would cost a family they
some
ag know.
s
4. Why the sacrifice worked. Jailing a hundred thousand people in 1942 did not end Quit India

om a
. c agl
— Viceroy Linlithgow himself called it “by far the most serious rebellion since 1857”. That is

s e m a government can imprison a leader, but it cannot
the whole logic of mass civil disobedience:
a of ordinary people to accept the punishment is what
agl
imprison a country. The willingness
made the punishment useless.

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The discussion should also stay honest about the arithmetic. These are
m l as
.co g
estimates, not census figures. Colonial records under-report; later accounts

em a
s
sometimes over-report. The chapter is right to say “you need not remember these
a
l figures” — what matters is the order of magnitude, and the fact that behind every
ag
m
number is a person who chose to be counted.

a se
. com a g l
m
ase
Take it home: The ICHR’s five-volume Dictionary of Martyrs lists about 14,000 people

agl
who died. Look up whether anyone from your district is in it.

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THINKmABOUT IT — Page 80 as e
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Partition, Turmoil, and Independence

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 As we said at the beginning, this chapter can only mention very few of those who
fought for India’s liberation from colonial rule. Many more names would have
deserved a mention. […] You need not memorise this list. However, see if you can
add any other name to the list. Besides, the support and sacrifice made by the
women belonging to the families of the freedom fighters also needs to be
acknowledged with gratitude.

Yes — start with the people the chapter itself describes but leaves off the list. Every name
below appears somewhere in this chapter, so you can defend each one from the book.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

NAME WHAT THEY DID (FROM THIS CHAPTER)

Baba Ram Singh Led the Kuka (Namdhari) movement in Punjab — boycott of foreign
goods, own postal system and courts, long before these became
national strategies; exiled to Burma, died in captivity

Birsa Munda Led the Ulgulaan of 1899–1900; died in jail at 24

The Chapekar brothers Shot the Plague Commissioner of Poona in 1897; betrayed, arrested
and hanged

Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki The 1908 attempt on Judge Kingsford; Khudiram hanged at 18, calm
and smiling

Bagha Jatin (Jatin Mukherjee) Anushilan Samiti leader; killed after the 75-minute gunbattle at
Balasore, 1915

Rash Behari Bose, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, The Ghadar Movement of 1914–15; Kartar Singh executed at 19
Kartar Singh Sarabha, Lala Hardayal,
Sohan Singh Bhakna

Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, The Kakori train robbery of 1925 and the HRA/HSRA
Chandrashekhar Azad

Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev Thapar Hanged in 1931 at 22–23; “a symbol of the resistance against the
colonial oppressor”

Suniti Chowdhury, Shanti Ghosh, Bina Das Schoolgirls and a university student who took up arms in 1931–32

Udham Singh Tracked O’Dwyer to London twenty-one years after Jallianwala
Bagh; hanged, and asserted the legitimacy of his action at his trial

Aruna Asaf Ali Hoisted the flag at Gowalia Tank Maidan in 1942 and ran the
underground for nearly four years

Sarojini Naidu Poet and orator; first Indian woman president of the Congress
(1925); advocate of women’s voting rights; jailed repeatedly

Kanaklata Barua Shot at 17 leading a flag procession at Gohpur, 1942

Chandra Singh Garhwali Led two platoons of the Royal Garhwal Rifles who refused to fire on
the unarmed crowd at Peshawar in 1930, “choosing jail over hurting
their fellow Indians”

Vanchinathan, Anant Kanhere, V.O. The southern strand — Swadeshi shipping, revolutionary action and
Chidambaram Pillai, Subramania Bharati Tamil nationalist poetry

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Maulana Abul Muslim leaders who opposed the Two-Nation idea; Ghaffar Khan
Kalam Azad, Maulana Hasrat Mohani built a nonviolent movement in the North-West Frontier Province

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Tirot Sing, Maniram Dewan, Piyali Baruah The North-East, from the Khasi revolt of 1829 to the hangings of
1857

How to add names of your own, properly. Do not simply copy a list from the internet. For each
name write: where they were from, what exactly they did, in which year, and where you found it.
Good places to look are the ICHR’s Dictionary of Martyrs, your state archives, district gazetteers,
and the memorials and street names in your own town — most of which commemorate
someone local.

On the second half of the box — the women in freedom fighters’ families. The
chapter asks for this deliberately, and it is the hardest kind of history to write,
because these women rarely left records. When a man went to prison for two years,
someone kept the household alive, raised the children, faced the police at the door,
and sold what little there was to pay a fine. Kasturba Gandhi is on the chapter’s list;
the overwhelming majority are not, and never will be, because no register recorded
them. That absence is itself a historical fact worth stating in your answer, rather than
a gap to be filled with invented names.

In-text Questions — Page 80
Partition, Turmoil, and Independence (closing paragraph)

Q1 The question now confronting all was — What sort of nation will free India build?

The answer India gave was: a sovereign democratic republic, built by Indians for every
Indian, and written down so that no future government could quietly take it back. The
chapter ends on this question because it is the bridge to what comes next — the Constitution
and the working of Indian democracy.
The immediate tasks were brutal. On 15 August 1947 the new government faced, all at once:

Partition’s human wreckage — millions on the move, massacres, abductions, and refugee
trains like the one in Fig. 2.36 with people riding on the roof.
A country that was not yet one country — over 560 princely states with the option to join
India or Pakistan or, in theory, stay independent. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel integrated them
“using a mix of persuasion and firmness”, with military action only as a last resort, which is
why he is called the Iron Man of India.
Institutions inherited from the rulers — an army “still largely structured under British
command with Indian officers gradually stepping into leadership”, a civil service and a police
built to control Indians rather than serve them.

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The choices that answered the question. India decided to be a republic, with an Indian head
of state rather than a foreign monarch; a democracy with universal adult franchise from the
very first election, at a moment when most of the population could not read; a federal union
that could hold many languages and regions together; and a state that would not belong to any
one religion — a direct response to what Partition had just cost. It also promised, in the
Preamble, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, and it wrote in the abolition of untouchability,
the concern Gandhi and Ambedkar had fought each other over in the 1930s.

Why the question was left open, not answered: Because the answer was still
being argued about. The freedom movement had contained Moderates and
revolutionaries, Gandhians and Bose’s soldiers, and the disagreements listed in Big
Question 3 did not disappear at midnight. What independence changed was who
would settle them. From 1947 the argument would be conducted by Indians, among
Indians — which is what Swaraj had meant all along.

Nehru’s own answer, the same night: “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in
history, when we step out from the old to the new… and when the soul of a nation,
long suppressed, finds utterance.” He also said the pledge would be redeemed “not
wholly or in full measure, but very substantially” — an admission, on the first night,
that the work was unfinished.

Questions and activities — Pages 81–84

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End of chapter
co m
e m.
m as
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES

.co a g l
a s emor False. Find out whether the following statements are true or false: 1. Right
gl
True
a
Q1
from its inception, the Indian National Congress called for India’s independence. 2.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak turned a Shivaji festival into a popular event. 3. The Ghadar

. com
Movement of 1914–15 aimed to start a mutiny within the British Indian Army while
ag
a s
British troops were busy with World emWar I. 4. Vallabhbhai Patel earned the title
agl the Satyagraha agitation in Gujarat. 5. The Kakori
‘Sardar’ for his leadership during
train robbery of 1925 was carried out to fund the activities of the Hindustan
Republican Association. 6. The ‘Do or Die’ call was given by Mahatma Gandhi during
co m
se
the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. 7. B.R. Ambedkar and Gandhi were in total
m.
o m l a
.c was sent to India in 1942 because Winston Churchillagsupported immediate
agreement regarding the issue of ‘separate electorates’ for Dalits. 8. Sir Stafford

se m
Cripps
a
agl
independence for India. 9. Subhas Chandra Bose raised an army during his stay in
Germany. 10. The Radcliffe Line, which divided India and Pakistan, was announced a
few weeks before Independence Day.
m a s
m .co agl
l a se
g

a
# ANSWER WHY

co m
m .
se
1 False The Congress of 1885 expressed “full faith in the ‘providential character’ of British

m l a
.co ag Independence became
rule in India” and “unswerving allegiance to the British Crown”. It asked for greater

se m
Indian participation in governance, civil rights and reforms.

g l a the Congress’s formal demand only at Lahore in December 1929, forty-four years

a later

se m
ompatriotic symbols” to tell people to stand up and resist. l a
2 True Tilak “turned the traditional Ganesh Chaturthi… and the Shivaji festival into popular
events, using religiouscand
. a g
a s em crowds that a political meeting could not
gl
Festivals could gather

3 True It was “aadaring attempt by Indian revolutionaries to trigger a pan-Indian mutiny

om
within the British Indian Army during World War I”. The Ghadar Party was founded

. c
by Indian migrants in North America; British intelligence uncovered the plot, and

s e mamong those executed
comTrue a
Kartar Singh Sarabha (19) and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle were

e m . aglin Gujarat, a satyagraha for
as
4 The agitation was the Bardoli movement of 1928

a g l peasant rights and “one of the most successful grassroots movements in the

.c
freedom struggle”. It was for this that Mahatma Gandhi gave him the title ‘Sardar’.
(Be precise in an exam: not the earlier Kheda satyagraha, but Bardoli)
s e m
m a
m . co agl
se
5 True Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Chandrashekhar Azad robbed a train

l a
ag The crackdown that followed led to the execution of Bismil, Khan and
carrying government money at Kakori, near Lucknow, “to fund their revolutionary
activities”.
others

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6 False “Do or Die” was Gandhi’s call in August 1942, at the launch of the Quit India
Movement. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920 was launched with a very
different promise — Swaraj within a year if people kept strictly to nonviolence

7 False They shared the goal of ending untouchability but disagreed sharply on the means.
Ambedkar, who had suffered the discrimination himself, believed separate
electorates were “the only way to ensure their political voice”; Gandhi feared this
would permanently divide Hindu society and began a ‘fast unto death’. The Poona
Pact was the compromise: no separate electorates, but an increased number of
reserved seats in the legislatures

8 False Cripps was sent because Churchill was “under pressure to seek India’s support” in
the middle of the war — not because he favoured independence. The offer was only
dominion status after the war, and even that with a clause allowing provinces to
opt out. Most leaders, including Gandhi, found the assurances insufficient and
rejected it

9 False Bose spent almost two years in Germany seeking support, then judged that his
chances were better with Japan. The Indian National Army was formed in
Singapore in 1943, from Indian prisoners of war and volunteers, along with the
Azad Hind government

10 False Mountbatten appointed Radcliffe in July 1947 and gave him five weeks — which
runs past 15 August. The boundary award was published only after Independence
Day (on 17 August 1947). That is exactly why the chapter says the line split Punjab
and Bengal “almost overnight” and that “millions suddenly found themselves on the
‘wrong’ side”

A note on statement 10: some students mark it True because the decision to
partition was announced in June 1947, weeks before Independence. But the
statement is about the Radcliffe Line itself, and that line was not known to anyone
— not even to the people it divided — until after 15 August. Say which you mean,
and give the reason; that is what the question is testing.

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Q2 Who Am I? Can you identify these figures? 1. Known as the ‘Lion of Punjab’, I was
severely injured during a brutal lathi charge while protesting against the Simon
Commission. 2. I famously declared, ‘Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!’ I
used the Kesari newspaper and festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi to unite people
against British rule. 3. I was a leader of the Nationalist faction of the Congress. In
the daily Bande Mataram, I wrote on the need for India to attain absolute
autonomy. 4. I earned my nickname ‘Bagha’ after wrestling a tiger with my bare
hands. I was a revolutionary leader who died in a gunfight at while waiting for a
shipment of German arms to start an uprising. 5. I organised the daring attempt to
throw a bomb at the Viceroy in 1912. I later escaped to Japan, where I spent years
working to organise a movement from there. 6. I was martyred at a young age after
an attempt on the life of a British judge. 7. I was martyred at a young age after
throwing non-lethal bombs in Delhi’s Central Legislative Assembly. 8. I turned the
freedom struggle into a mass movement through the principles of ahimsa and
satyagraha, leading campaigns such as the Dandi March. 9. I sought help from the
Axis powers during World War II to organise the Indian National Army. 10. A British
lawyer, I was given just five weeks to draw the boundary line that would partition
the Indian subcontinent into two separate nations.

# WHO THE CLUE THAT PROVES IT

1 Lala Lajpat Rai Called the ‘Lion of Punjab’ for his forceful speeches and writings; lathi-
charged at Lahore in October 1928 while leading a nonviolent anti-Simon
march, and died two weeks later. Founding director of the Punjab National
Bank and publisher of Vande Mataram; one of ‘Lal–Bal–Pal’

2 Bal Gangadhar ‘Lokmanya’; wrote in the Marathi Kesari, used Ganesh Chaturthi and the
Tilak Shivaji festival, jailed for sedition in 1897 and 1908, wrote The Gita Rahasya

3 Aurobindo Ghose Joined Bipin Chandra Pal on the Bande Mataram daily in 1906 and soon took
(later Sri charge of it; first principal of the Bengal National College; tried in the
Aurobindo) Alipore Bomb Case and acquitted; the government called him “the most
dangerous man we have to deal with at present”

4 Jatin Mukherjee — ‘Bagha’ means ‘tiger’; an Anushilan Samiti leader who worked with Rash
‘Bagha Jatin’ Behari Bose on the ‘German Plot’. He fought a 75-minute gunbattle from
behind an anthill in the jungles of Balasore (in present-day Odisha) on 9
September 1915 and died the next day. The printed clue reads “died in a
gunfight at while waiting…” — the place name has been dropped in the book; it
is Balasore

5 Rash Behari Bose Behind the 1912 bomb thrown at Viceroy Hardinge during his ceremonial
entry into Delhi; later escaped to Japan, where “years later, he would lay the
foundation of the Indian National Army”

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6 Khudiram Bose With Prafulla Chaki, threw bombs at a carriage they believed carried Judge
Douglas Kingsford in April 1908. Prafulla shot himself before capture;
Khudiram, just 18, was tried and hanged, “calm and smiling in his last
moments”

7 Bhagat Singh He and an associate dropped two low-intensity bombs in the Central
Legislative Assembly in Delhi with no victims — the intention was only “to
make the deaf hear”. He was hanged in 1931, aged 22–23, along with
Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. Strictly, he was tried and hanged for
the earlier assassination of a British officer, not for the Assembly bombs

8 Mohandas Developed satyagraha in South Africa; applied it at Champaran, Ahmedabad
Karamchand and Kheda; led the 380-km march to Dandi in March–April 1930
Gandhi (Mahatma
Gandhi)

9 Subhas Chandra Escaped house arrest in early 1941, travelled through Afghanistan and
Bose Russia to Germany, then to Japan and Singapore, where he formed the INA
in 1943 and proclaimed the Azad Hind government

10 Cyril Radcliffe “A British lawyer unfamiliar with India”, chosen by Mountbatten in July 1947
and given five weeks to draw the boundary — the Radcliffe Line, which split
Punjab and Bengal

Q3 What kinds of sacrifices are needed to achieve freedom? Think about the lives of
Indian soldiers during wars, families suffering during famines, leaders and ordinary
people who were arrested, and countless others who lost their homes and safety
while participating in protests. If you were living during India’s freedom struggle,
would you have chosen to participate in it? What comforts, opportunities, or
personal goals might you have been willing to give up for a cause you strongly
believed in?

First part — the kinds of sacrifice, from this chapter. They were not all the same kind, and it
helps to separate them.

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KIND OF EVIDENCE IN THE CHAPTER
SACRIFICE

Life, deliberately Khudiram Bose hanged at 18; Kartar Singh Sarabha executed at 19; Anant Kanhere hanged
given at 18; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev hanged at 22–23; Kanaklata Barua shot at 17;
Birsa Munda dead in jail at 24; Bagha Jatin at Balasore

Life, taken Nearly 400 (official) to over 1,000 (Indian estimates) killed at Jallianwala Bagh; hundreds at
without choice Qissa Khwani Bazaar; 65 Kukas blown from cannons without trial in 1872; nearly 10,000
killed during Quit India

Liberty Over two lakh jailed across four movements; Tilak six years in Mandalay; Bina Das nine
years’ rigorous imprisonment; the Cellular Jail, where prisoners extracted oil by hand and
“many of them died and some lost their sanity”

Career, status and Gandhi, a London-trained lawyer, choosing khadi and jail; Aurobindo Ghose leaving a secure
comfort post in Baroda; Tagore returning his knighthood; Chandra Singh Garhwali and two platoons
of the Royal Garhwal Rifles refusing to fire and “choosing jail over hurting their fellow
Indians”

Family and home Baba Ram Singh exiled to Burma, never to return; Aruna Asaf Ali underground for nearly
four years with a bounty on her head; women stepping “from the seclusion of their homes…
actually from purdah” into processions; and, in 1947, the millions who lost home, neighbours
and sacred places to the Radcliffe Line

Sacrifice nobody At least 87,000 Indian soldiers killed in World War II; millions dead in the Bengal famine of
chose at all 1943, worsened because Indian grain was shipped to the war front

Second part — your own answer. This is a personal question, so it has no single right answer;
but a good answer must (i) give a clear position, (ii) name what specifically you would give up,
and (iii) be honest about what would be hard. Do not write that you would cheerfully die; write
what you can actually defend.

Sample answer: “I think I would have joined, but in the way most people did — not
by carrying a bomb. I would have taken part in the boycott, worn khadi even though
it was rougher and dearer than mill cloth, and joined processions. What I would have
found hardest to give up is school. Thousands of students left government schools
and colleges during the boycott, and the chapter is honest that this hurt them,
because India’s own institutions ‘were not ready enough to offer a transition’ —
many of them lost years of study for a cause whose victory they might never see. I
would like to think I would have accepted arrest at a salt march, because the risk
there is jail rather than being shot. I am not sure I would have had Khudiram Bose’s
courage at 18, and I would rather say so than pretend.”

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co m
m.
The idea behind the question: Freedom was not won by a small number of

m l a se
extraordinary sacrifices but by a very large number of ordinary ones. That is why the
o
.c about comforts and opportunities rather than about
a gheroism.
m
chapter asks

l a se
ag

com
ag
What values does Tilak’s statement, “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it,”
.
Q4

e m
as
reflect? Can these values be meaningful for young people today?

a g l

Four values, and each is visible in a specific word of the sentence.
co m
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m l as
.co a g
VALUE WHERE IT WHAT IT MEANT IN 1900S INDIA

a s em SHOWS

l
ag Self-respect “birthright” Freedom is not a reward for good behaviour, and not something a ruler

s
bestows. It rejects the whole colonial argument that Indians must first

m a
.co agl
prove themselves ‘fit’ for self-government

m
iteis a birthright, then it belongs to every Indian equally — not only to
Ifs
Equality “my birthright”
a
gl the educated, the wealthy or the high-born
a
Determination “I shall have it”
co m
Not a request, not a hope. Tilak had been to prison for sedition twice and

m .
e
still said it

m l as
m .co
Personal “I shall have it”
a g
He does not say ‘someone will win it for us’. Each person is answerable

l a se responsibility for the outcome — which is why anyone could repeat the sentence about

ag themselves

se m
com
Yes, they are meaningful today — but the meaning has to be transferred carefully. ‘Swaraj’
g l a
m . a
se and I will do what it takes to have it.
literally meant getting the British out; that job is done. What survives is the structure of the

l a
ag
sentence: this belongs to me by right,

Rights as birthrights. Education, equality before the law, the vote at 18, freedom of speech
— the Constitution states these as things you already have, not favours to be requested.
co m
Tilak’s sentence is the attitude that a citizen should take towards them.
m .
o m l a se
agstop being real.
.cexercises — a vote not cast, a wrong not reported — quietly
Responsibility, not just claim. The second half is the harder half. Rights that nobody

se m
g l a
a
Self-respect without contempt. Tilak refused to accept that his people were inferior. The
same refusal is useful against every version of ‘people like you don’t do this subject / this
.c
s e m
m a
sport / this job’.

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Discuss honestly: a slogan is a starting point, not an argument. Tilak’s method —
mass mobilisation through festivals and newspapers — was itself criticised by other
freedom fighters, and Gandhi later chose a different one. Believing you have a right
does not by itself tell you how to secure it; that was the whole debate of the
movement.

Q5 How did peasants, workers, tribals, and students contribute to the national
movement in ways different from political leaders?

Leaders supplied demands, organisation and negotiation. These four groups supplied the
pressure that made the demands impossible to ignore — and they did it out of grievances
of their own, not out of loyalty to a party.

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GROUP WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DID HOW IT DIFFERED FROM
LEADERSHIP WORK

Peasants Champaran indigo farmers, Kheda peasants facing They struck at the state’s revenue, which
excessive land revenue, and the Bardoli movement was the whole point of the colony. A
of 1928 for peasant rights — “one of the most resolution can be ignored; an unpaid
successful grassroots movements in the freedom land tax cannot. They also gave the
struggle”. During Civil Disobedience they refused movement its numbers and its rural
to pay taxes reach

Workers Ahmedabad mill workers on “extremely low They could stop production and
wages” took up satyagraha in 1918; during Quit transport, and — in 1946 — they showed
India “workers went on strike”; naval ratings of that the empire’s own armed services
the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Bombay in were no longer reliable. That did more to
February 1946 against ill-treatment, and the end British rule than any petition
mutiny “quickly spread across India”

Tribals Birsa Munda’s Ulgulaan of 1899–1900 in Chota They resisted earliest and most
Nagpur; the Singpho rebellion in Assam; Rani directly, over land, forest and faith, often
Gaidinliu’s refusal of taxes and of work for the before an all-India movement existed at
colonial state in Manipur all. Their fight was for their own land and
dignity, and it kept whole regions
ungovernable

Students They joined the Calcutta processions of 1905; they They paid with their own futures, giving
left government schools and colleges during up degrees and careers, and they were
boycott and Non-Cooperation; the Bengal National the fastest to act because they had least
College was founded to receive them; schoolgirls to lose in property and most to lose in
Suniti Chowdhury and Shanti Ghosh (1931) and time. They also produced the young
the university student Bina Das (1932) took up martyrs whose deaths moved the
arms; in 1942 “students left schools” country

The deeper difference — and why it cut both ways. Leaders could start a
movement, but they could not control it. Gandhi called off the entire Non-
Cooperation Movement after protesters at Chauri Chaura burnt a police station in
February 1922 — a decision Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, C.R. Das and Subhas
Chandra Bose disapproved of. During Quit India the whole Congress leadership was
arrested in August 1942 and the movement continued anyway, kept alive
underground by figures like Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. A
movement of ordinary people is far more powerful than one of leaders alone, and
far harder to steer. Viceroy Linlithgow called what it produced “by far the most
serious rebellion since 1857”.

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Note: These groups were not simply following a national call. Their grievances —
rent, wages, land, forests, fees — were local and real. The national movement grew
strong exactly where it managed to connect those local grievances to the demand
for Swaraj.

Q6 Discuss in class this extract from Nehru’s speech on 15 August 1947: “Long years
ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem
our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of
the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A
moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old
to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds
utterance…” What is meant by “redeem our pledge”? How would you define the
‘soul of a nation’?

“Redeem our pledge” means: keep the promise we made — pay back what we swore we
would deliver. To ‘redeem’ is to make good on a debt or a vow. The pledge Nehru is speaking of
is a real, dated one: the Purna Swaraj resolution of the Lahore session, December 1929, whose
declaration of independence Congress workers read out publicly on 26 January 1930 and on
that date every year afterwards. For eighteen years the Congress had promised the country
complete independence. On 15 August 1947 that promise came due, and Nehru is saying, in
effect: we said we would; here it is.
Read the qualification too — it is the most honest phrase in the sentence. “Not wholly or in
full measure, but very substantially.” On the night he spoke, Punjab and Bengal were burning,
millions were on the roads, and the country he had promised was arriving divided. He is
admitting on the first night that the pledge has been only partly kept. And ‘pledge’ carries a
second meaning beyond 1929 — the promise made to the poor: freedom “to enjoy the fruits of
their toil and have the necessities of life”. That part of the pledge was, and remains, unfinished
work.
“The soul of a nation” — how to define it. A nation is not only a territory with a government.
Nehru is naming the thing that survived even when the territory was ruled by someone else. A
workable definition:

The soul of a nation is what a people share that a government cannot create and an
occupier cannot destroy — its languages, memories, arts, faiths and ways of living,
and the values it holds itself to. It is why India remained India through nearly two
centuries of foreign rule.

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The evidence for it is in this chapter. ‘Long suppressed’ is precise: the Vernacular Press Act
censored Indian-language newspapers; public singing of Vande Mataram was banned; English
education was described by the Nationalists as ‘denationalising’, which is why they added
National Education to Swadeshi and boycott. And the ‘utterance’ is exactly what the movement
kept finding — a song by Bankim, a painting by Abanindranath Tagore, a Tamil magazine cover,
a Marathi newspaper, a khadi thread. The soul had been speaking all along; in 1947 it could
finally speak as a state.

For the class discussion: ask what belongs in a nation’s soul and what does not. Is it
a single language or many? A single faith or many? The 1946–47 violence is a
warning here — a definition of the soul of a nation that excludes some of its people
is exactly what turned into Partition. The Constitution’s answer, written the very next
year, was to define India by shared rights rather than by shared identity.

Q7 Imagine you are a freedom fighter. a) Explain the method you support to achieve
freedom. b) Discuss with your classmates any other method they would support. Be
respectful in your debate. c) What does this debate teach us about unity and
disagreement?

a) Choose one of the four methods the chapter actually describes, and argue it from
evidence. Do not invent a method — the strength of your answer comes from using the
chapter’s own record.

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METHOD ITS CASE ITS COST

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“The colonial government largely ignored
Moderate — Keeps the movement legal and its

s em
petitions, resolutions,
a
leaders free; builds Indian the Congress’s resolutions, granting only

gl
minor concessions”
apressure
constitutional representation step by step; won the
1935 provincial autonomy

. com ag
Nationalist — Hits the economy, builds Indian The boycott of institutions had “limited”

emSwadeshi
impact because Indian ones “were not
s
Swaraj, Swadeshi, industry and schools, and awakens

a
agl Bank, Bengal
boycott, National ordinary people; produced ready enough to offer a transition”;
Education Mills, Punjab National leaders were jailed for sedition
Chemicals, the Bengal National
College
co m
se m.
m l a
.co
Revolutionary — Puts real fear into the government; the “Hardened its resolve to rule with an iron

m
armed action
ag Ghadar and Kakori
hand”; the Alipore,

se
attacks “invariably met with strong

l a
popular approval” and created heroes crackdowns destroyed whole networks;

a g who inspired thousands innocent people died, as when two British
ladies were killed instead of Judge

a s
com agl
Kingsford

m .
Gandhian —
e
as makes repression
Anyone can take part — no weapons, Slow; depends on total discipline (one
satyagraha, ahimsa,
g l
a for the ruler;
no education needed; incident at Chauri Chaura stopped
mass non-cooperation politically costly everything); “younger Congress leaders”

m
produced the largest movements in the criticised the Gandhi–Irwin Pact for not
whole struggle
. co
guaranteeing Purna Swaraj

e m
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.co a g
Structure for your speech: (i) I support ____; (ii) because of what it achieved — one concrete
m
l a se
example; (iii) I accept that its weakness is ____; (iv) and here is why I still think it is right.

ag
Sample answer (a): “I would have been a satyagrahi. My reason is the Salt March.
se m
com g l a
.
The salt law was small enough that any villager could break it, and unjust enough
m a
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that breaking it looked obviously right — so over 60,000 people could be arrested in

a gl
a single year, and the government looked worse with every arrest. A bomb makes
one official afraid; a hundred thousand people quietly breaking one law makes the
whole system unworkable. I accept the weakness — it was slow, and Gandhi himself
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had to call off Non-Cooperation in 1922 after Chauri Chaura. But I would rather have
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a slow method that a whole country can join than a fast one that only a few dozen

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b) In the debate: let each side state the other’s position fairly before attacking it. A useful rule
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— you may not argue against a method until you can state its strongest point in one sentence.

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c) What the debate teaches. Three things:
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Agreeing on the goal does not settle the method. Tilak, Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Bose all
wanted the British out and disagreed sharply about how — and the disagreements were
between patriots, not between patriots and traitors.
Disagreement made the movement stronger, not weaker. Different methods reached
different people: festivals reached Poona, satyagraha reached the villages, revolutionary
heroism reached the young, the Congress reached the negotiating table. Historians now
credit Britain’s exit to many of these at once.
But it has a limit. The Surat split of 1907 cost the Congress years, and the disagreement
that could not be settled — over separateness — ended in Partition. Unity survives
disagreement about means far better than disagreement about who belongs.

Q8 Write a news report based on an important event in the Freedom Movement
(Swadeshi, boycott, satyagraha, Non-Cooperation, Quit India, or Partition). a) Write
a headline. b) Include one interview or public reaction. c) Explain why this event
was important.

What a good news report needs. A headline of six to ten words in the present tense; a first
paragraph carrying what, where, when, who; then details in falling order of importance; one
quotation from someone present; and a closing paragraph on what it means. Write in the past
tense in the body, keep sentences short, and do not put your own opinion in the news
paragraphs — put it in the closing analysis and label it.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample answer — Model report
a) Headline: GANDHI PICKS UP SALT AT DANDI; SALT LAW BROKEN AFTER 380-KM
MARCH
Dandi, southern Gujarat, 6 April 1930. Mahatma Gandhi this morning stooped and
picked up a handful of natural salt from this coastal village, deliberately breaking the
colonial government’s salt law at the end of a march of 380 kilometres begun at
Sabarmati on 12 March. The government holds a monopoly on salt production and
charges a high tax on it.
The march has grown at every halt. Salt marches have already begun in other parts
of the country, and organisers say the boycott of foreign cloth and the refusal to pay
taxes will follow. Large numbers of women are taking part — breaking the salt law,
joining processions and picketing liquor shops and shops selling foreign cloth.
b) Public reaction. The poet Sarojini Naidu, who is marching with Gandhiji, said: “He
has chosen the one law that touches every kitchen in India. There is no household so
poor that it does not need salt, and none so grand that it is exempt. That is why they
cannot answer him.” A villager who declined to be named said the police had been
watching the road since dawn.
Arrests are expected. [Later: thousands were arrested, including Gandhi himself.]
c) Why this event was important. Three reasons. First, it converted the Lahore
Congress’s demand for Purna Swaraj from a resolution into an action that anyone
could copy. Second, it chose the perfect target: salt is needed by everyone, the tax is
visibly unjust, and breaking the law requires no weapon and no education — so
participation could be enormous, and it was, with over 60,000 jailed within the year.
Third, it forced the government into a corner: arresting tens of thousands of
unarmed people for picking up salt made the government look absurd as well as
brutal, and within a year Viceroy Irwin was negotiating with Gandhi in the first
formal talks between the British government and the Congress as equals.

If you choose a different event: keep the same discipline. For Partition, resist the
temptation to write a headline that blames a community — the chapter is careful to
speak of “disagreements between the two communities or rather small sections”,
and of a boundary drawn in five weeks by a man who did not know India. A news
report about a tragedy should report what happened and who suffered, and leave
the accusations to the people you quote.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q9 Imagine you are part of a team creating a small museum exhibition on India’s
freedom struggle for students of your age. a) Choose a title for your exhibit. b)
Select three objects (for example: a letter, a photograph, a newspaper, a prison
diary — you can add to these examples) and explain what each object represents. c)
Write a short note on what visitors should learn or feel after seeing this exhibit.

How to plan it. A small exhibition should make one argument, not summarise ninety years.
Choose the argument first, then pick objects that prove it, then write labels of about fifty words
each: what the object is, when and where it is from, and why it is in the room.

Sample answer
a) Title: Ordinary Things, Extraordinary Choices — one argument: that freedom was
won mostly through everyday objects used in an unusual way.
b) Three objects

OBJECT LABEL WHAT IT REPRESENTS

A charkha and a Spinning wheel and cloth, of Swadeshi turned into a daily habit. It gave work
length of hand- the kind seen in Fig. 2.21 to poor villagers, replaced imported cloth, and
spun khadi let a person take part in the movement for an
hour every evening without leaving home

The front page of Calcutta, 1906–08; its The war of words. It also carries a column on
the Bande masthead carries ‘Swadeshi the prosecution of its own editor — proof that
Mataram daily Paper of India’ and ‘Our printing an argument could send you to prison
(Fig. 2.12) Policy: India for Indians’

A lump of salt in Representing the salt Gandhi The genius of choosing a law that everyone
a small dish picked up at Dandi on 6 April could break. Free from the sea, taxed by the
1930 state, needed in every kitchen — the smallest
possible object carrying the largest possible
defiance

c) Note for visitors: “Nothing in this room is rare. A spinning wheel, a newspaper, a
pinch of salt — you could find all three in an ordinary house in 1930. That is the
point. India’s freedom was not won only by famous people doing heroic things; it
was won by very large numbers of ordinary people deciding to use ordinary things
differently, and accepting what it cost them. Over two lakh went to jail in four
movements alone, and the ICHR’s Dictionary of Martyrs records about 14,000 who
died. Before you leave, ask yourself which everyday object of yours could carry a
decision like that.”

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why three objects and not thirty: a visitor of your age will read three labels
properly and skim thirty. An exhibition is an argument with a length limit — every
object you add weakens the ones already there unless it adds something the others
cannot.

If you want a fourth object for a local touch, look for something from your own
district — a photograph of a local memorial, a street name, a family’s ration card, a
Partition-era migration document. Local evidence is what turns a national story into
your story.

Q10 As a class activity, write and stage a small play or skit based on the Freedom
Movement.

Pick a scene with an argument in it, not just an event. A skit works when two people who
both want the same thing disagree about how to get it — which this chapter supplies in
abundance. Ten to fifteen minutes is plenty.
Five scenes that already contain their own drama:

1. Surat, December 1907. Tilak is prevented from speaking; the Moderates want to step back
from the Calcutta resolutions; the Nationalists walk out. Two sides, both of them patriots.
2. Tilak’s sentencing, 1908. The judge asks if he has anything to say. Jinnah is his lawyer. The
whole scene is three speeches long.
3. February 1922, after Chauri Chaura. Gandhi calls off Non-Cooperation; C.R. Das, Motilal
Nehru and a young Subhas Chandra Bose argue against him.
4. The Poona Pact. Ambedkar and Gandhi on separate electorates — one arguing that without
them the Depressed Classes will never have a voice, the other fasting because he fears a
permanent division. Play it with respect for both.
5. A village during the Salt March. A family argues about whether to send a son to join, with
the mother counting the cost of a jail term.

How to write it. Four to six characters, no more. Give every character one clear want and one
real reason. Use the chapter’s actual quotations as your best lines — Tilak’s “higher powers that
rule the destinies of men and nations”, Lala Lajpat Rai’s “the blows struck at me will be the last
nails in the coffin of the British rule in India”, Bose on Bhagat Singh’s “flame which that spirit has
lit up will not die”. End on the disagreement rather than resolving it neatly; the audience should
leave arguing.

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Two rules to set before you begin. First, do not turn any community into the villain

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of your play — the chapter is careful that Partition came from “disagreements
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say, give it to an invented character — a student, a shopkeeper, a constable.
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Staging: you need almost no props. A charkha, a length of white cloth, a newspaper,
a lantern and a bench will carry any of these five scenes.

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India
a do citizens have
se today to protect and strengthen this freedom? Write 5 to 10 lines.
Q11

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The core answer: the generation that won freedom handed over the machinery of self-rule;
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keeping it working is now the citizen’s job, and it is done through ordinary, repeated acts rather
than dramatic ones.
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What a good answer must contain: at least four specific responsibilities (not vague words like

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‘be a good citizen’), a link back to what the freedom struggle actually cost, and one line on

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Sample answer (8 lines):
India’s freedom cost over two lakh imprisonments in four movements alone and
about 14,000 recorded lives, so it is not something to be received passively. The first
responsibility is to vote, and to vote informed — Purna Swaraj meant the right to
choose our own government, and a right unexercised slowly stops being real. The
second is to know the Constitution, because rights you cannot name are rights you
cannot defend. The third is to question the government peacefully — through
debate, the press, the Right to Information and lawful protest — since the whole
struggle was against rulers who could not be questioned. The fourth is to protect
the freedom of people we disagree with: the movement itself held Moderates,
revolutionaries and satyagrahis together, and Partition showed what happens when
a country decides some of its people do not belong. The fifth is to refuse
discrimination of caste, religion, language or gender, which Gandhi, Ambedkar, the
Phules and Vidyasagar all fought in their own ways. At my age this means voting
when I turn eighteen, reading more than one source before believing a story, not
spreading rumours online, and speaking up when someone in my school is
excluded. Freedom was won collectively; it can only be kept the same way.

Why the chapter ends here: its last lines make the point exactly — “India’s freedom
was a hard-won, collective victory. The question now confronting all was — What
sort of nation will free India build?” That question was not answered once in 1947. It
is answered again by every generation, including yours.

Chapter at a glance
After 1857 the British Crown took direct control (1858). The royal proclamation promised to
respect the ‘rights, dignity and honour of native Princes’ and to leave religion alone — but a
‘Resident’ was posted in almost every princely state, missionary work continued with official
support, heavy land taxes fed famines, and the Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act of 1878
disarmed and gagged Indians. Promises on paper, control in practice.
Reform and culture came before politics. The Brahmo Samaj (1828), Arya Samaj (1875),
Vidyasagar, Syed Ahmed Khan and the Phules attacked child marriage, the treatment of
widows, caste discrimination and the lack of schooling. Bankim’s Bande Mataram (composed
1875) and Vivekananda’s call to “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached” gave the
coming movement its language of pride and self-confidence.
The Indian National Congress (1885) began by professing ‘unswerving allegiance to the
British Crown’. Curzon’s Partition of Bengal (1905) changed everything: it produced
Swadeshi, boycott and National Education, the 1906 Calcutta demand for Swaraj, and —

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

because Moderates wanted to step back from it — the Surat split of 1907 between
Moderates and Nationalists. The All-India Muslim League was founded at Dhaka the same
year (1906).
Alongside the Congress ran a revolutionary stream — the Anushilan Samiti, Abhinav
Bharat, Yugantar, the Alipore Bomb Case, Khudiram Bose, Bagha Jatin’s ‘German Plot’, the
Ghadar Movement (1914–15), the Kakori robbery, Bhagat Singh and the HSRA, and
schoolgirls like Suniti Chowdhury, Shanti Ghosh and Bina Das. Its actions were popular and
rattled the government, but also hardened its repression.
Gandhi returned in 1915 and turned protest into a mass movement: satyagraha at
Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda; Non-Cooperation (1920–22, allied with the Khilafat
movement and called off after Chauri Chaura); Civil Disobedience from the Salt March of
1930; the Gandhi–Irwin Pact of 1931; and Quit India in 1942, which Viceroy Linlithgow
called “by far the most serious rebellion since 1857”.
Freedom came in 1947 with Partition. The Radcliffe Line, drawn in five weeks by a lawyer
who did not know India, split Punjab and Bengal; millions migrated and terrible violence
followed. Historians no longer credit Britain’s exit to any single cause: Gandhi and the
Congress, the revolutionaries, the popular uprisings, the RIAF and RIN mutinies, Britain’s
exhaustion after World War II and the worldwide tide of decolonisation all count.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WHY IT MATTERS
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Paramountcy British supremacy over the A Royal Some 560 princes kept their thrones,
princely states — the princes Proclamation, p. but a ‘Resident’ or ‘Political Agent’
ruled, but under British 39 interfered so much that their
overlordship autonomy became ‘a symbolic one’

Martyr A person who is killed or Margin note, p. 38 The ICHR’s five-volume Dictionary of
tortured for his or her beliefs Martyrs lists some 14,000 of them —
the chapter can name only a handful

Seditious Promoting sedition or Margin note, p. 46 The charge used again and again —
rebellion against the authority Tilak in 1897 and 1908, and to
of a state or monarch suppress Bande Mataram and Yugantar

Swadeshi ‘Of one’s own country’ — pp. 48, 61 It hit Britain where it paid: cotton
using Indian-made goods and textile imports. Tata’s Swadeshi Mills
building Indian industry (1886), Punjab National Bank (1895)
and Bengal Chemicals (1901) came
before the 1905 movement

Boycott Refusing British goods and, p. 48 Effective against goods; weaker
later, British schools, colleges against institutions, because Indian
and courts schools and courts ‘were not ready
enough to offer a transition’

Swaraj Literally ‘self-rule’; adopted p. 51 It was deliberately not defined — it
with Swadeshi, Boycott and could mean self-rule inside the Empire
National Education at the or full independence, so Moderates
Calcutta Congress, December and Nationalists could both accept it
1906

Moderates / Moderates wanted gradual The 1907 Surat The Moderates and the British called
Nationalists reform and autonomy inside Split, pp. 52–53 the second group ‘Extremists’; they
the Empire; Nationalists called themselves simply ‘Nationalists’
wanted independence and
mass awakening

Satyagraha ‘Insistence on truth’ — pp. 60–61 Gandhi worked it out in South Africa
passive resistance, ahimsa and (1907–14) and first applied it in India
the acceptance of suffering in to Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda
the quest for truth

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WHY IT MATTERS
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Khadi Hand-spun, hand-woven yarn THINK ABOUT IT, Not just cloth: work for poor villagers,
(and the cloth made from it) p. 62 a symbol of self-reliance, and a direct
blow to British textile imports

Separate Seats for which only voters of Lucknow Pact p. Congress conceded them to the
electorates one community may vote 60; Poona Pact p. League in 1916; Gandhi fasted against
72 them for the Depressed Classes, and
the Poona Pact substituted more
reserved seats instead

Dominion Full internal self-government, Motilal Nehru Canada and Australia had it. Because
status with Britain still controlling Report 1928, p. 67 Britain would not grant even this,
defence and foreign policy and younger leaders demanded Purna
the Crown as head of state Swaraj instead

Purna Swaraj Complete independence Lahore session, Not a new idea — the Nationalists had
December 1929, said it two decades earlier, Aurobindo
p. 68 in 1908, Hasrat Mohani in 1921,
Savarkar in 1925

Ulgulaan ‘The Great Tumult’ — Birsa p. 47 Tribal India fought colonial rule on its
Munda’s tribal uprising of own terms: land, faith and dignity.
1899–1900 Birsa died in jail at 24

Radcliffe Line The boundary drawn by the pp. 77–78 Five weeks to split Punjab and Bengal;
British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe ‘millions suddenly found themselves
in 1947 on the “wrong” side of these lines’

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