From South Africa to the Salt Satyagraha and the Cripps Mission — every major Gandhian campaign, in sequence, with the parallel revolutionary movement alongside it.
Gandhi's rise marks the third and final phase of Indian nationalism's growth. He built his politics around ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha, tools first tested over two decades in South Africa — a period that decisively shaped his political thinking, drawing on Ruskin, Tolstoy and Thoreau. In the Moderate phase (1894–1906) he relied on petitions and memoranda, founding the Natal Indian Congress and the journal Indian Opinion. In the Satyagraha phase (1906–1914) he led campaigns against the discriminatory Registration Certificate, restrictions on Indian migration between provinces, the £3 poll tax on ex-indentured Indians, a court ruling invalidating non-Christian marriages, and the Transvaal Immigration Act.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and, on Gopal Krishna Gokhale's advice, spent his first year studying India's conditions closely before committing to any course of action, based at the Sabarmati Ashram.
Champaran Satyagraha (1917) — India's first civil disobedience campaign. Rajkumar Shukla persuaded Gandhi to examine the grievances of Bihar's indigo farmers, forced under the Tinkathia system to grow indigo on 3/20th of their land while European planters extracted high rents. A committee (with Gandhi as a member) led to the Tinkathia system's abolition and a 25% refund of illegal exactions. Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar-ul-Haq, Mahadev Desai and J.B. Kripalani were among the other leaders involved.
Ahmedabad Mill Strike (1918) — Gandhi's first hunger strike. A dispute over the discontinuation of a wartime plague bonus saw workers demand a 50% wage rise; Gandhi countered with 35% and fasted unto death to press the point, after Anasuya Sarabhai invited him to take up the workers' cause.
Kheda Satyagraha (1918) — crop failure hit Gujarat's Kheda district, and though prevailing rules entitled farmers to remission when yield fell below a quarter of normal produce, the government held firm and threatened to seize property. Gandhi urged farmers to withhold tax payment; Vallabhbhai Patel, Narhari Parekh and Mohanlal Pandya joined the campaign.
The Rowlatt Act, 1919 — the "Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act" — allowed imprisonment without trial for up to two years, and triggered India's first all-India mass strike. Gandhi organised the Satyagraha Sabha and called for a nationwide hartal combined with fasting, prayer and civil disobedience of specific laws.
On 13 April 1919, troops under Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire on a peaceful crowd at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, gathered to protest the arrest of Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. The massacre shocked Rabindranath Tagore so deeply that he renounced his knighthood, declaring "such mass murderers aren't worthy of giving any title to anyone."
Two intertwined movements ran together: post-war resentment (the Government of India Act, 1919 fell short of expectations after wartime sacrifices), the Home Rule groundwork of Besant and Tilak, Congress-Muslim League unity via the Lucknow Pact, wartime economic hardship, the Rowlatt Act/Jallianwala Bagh pairing that shattered faith in British justice, and the Khilafat Movement — Indian Muslims protesting plans to dissolve the Ottoman caliphate after Turkey's WWI defeat. A Khilafat Committee (1919) was led by the Ali Brothers and Maulana Ajmal Khan, with Gandhi heading the All India Khilafat Committee.
Non-Cooperation was a peaceful protest: resigning government posts, withdrawing children from government schools, boycotting foreign goods and elections, and refusing British army service — a genuine turning point, as Congress for the first time abandoned purely constitutional methods. The 1920 Nagpur Session formally endorsed it, set up a 15-member Congress Working Committee, and reorganised provincial committees on a linguistic basis. Gandhi assured the country Swaraj would come within a year.
The movement was abruptly called off after the Chauri Chaura incident (5 February 1922) — an enraged mob in Chauri Chaura, UP, burned a police station, killing 22 policemen, after alleged police assault on protesting volunteers. Gandhi argued people were "not yet ready" for a purely non-violent revolt; he was arrested and sentenced to six years.
Non-Cooperation did not win Swaraj, but it was a genuine mass movement reaching every corner of the country, cementing Gandhi's position as a mass leader and drawing large numbers of Muslims into national politics. Once it ended, the Congress split over strategy: the Swarajists (C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru, Ajmal Khan) wanted to enter the legislative councils; the No-Changers (Rajagopalachari, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, M.A. Ansari) favoured constructive work instead. Swarajist achievements included Vithalbhai Patel becoming Speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly and helping defeat the 1928 Public Safety Bill.
The sudden withdrawal of Non-Cooperation pushed many nationalists toward revolutionary methods, fed by new communist groups, inspiration from the 1917 Russian Revolution, and publications like Atmashakti and Bijoli. The Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), founded October 1924 at Kanpur by Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Sachindranath Sanyal, aimed at armed rebellion to establish a federal republic. The Kakori Incident (1925) saw HRA members loot official railway cash; Bismil, Ashfaqullah, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged. Regrouping under Chandrashekhar Azad at Feroze Shah Kotla, the group (with Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and others) became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), formally adopting socialism.
After Lala Lajpat Rai died from lathi-charge injuries sustained protesting the Simon Commission, Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru shot police officer Saunders in retaliation (December 1928, Lahore). On 8 April 1929, Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw deliberately harmless bombs into the Central Legislative Assembly, aiming to get arrested and use the trial as a public platform. Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged on 24 March 1931. Separately, Surya Sen led the Chittagong Armoury Raid (April 1930), briefly hoisting the national flag and proclaiming a provisional revolutionary government; Pritilata Waddedar and Kalpana Datta were among his group.
The Simon Commission (1928), containing no Indian members, was widely condemned; the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha opposed it while the Muslim League split. The Nehru Report (Motilal Nehru's committee) recommended dominion status, joint electorates with reserved Muslim seats, linguistic provinces, and nineteen fundamental rights. Jinnah's Fourteen Points (1929) countered with demands for a federal constitution, provincial autonomy and separate electorates. At the Lahore Congress (December 1929), under President Jawaharlal Nehru, complete independence (Purna Swaraj) was declared the goal, with 26 January 1930 fixed as the first Independence Day — the tricolour was hoisted on the banks of the Ravi at midnight, 31 December 1929.
Gandhi presented eleven demands (including abolishing the salt tax) with a 31 January 1930 ultimatum; with no response, he launched the Dandi March (12 March – 6 April 1930) — a 240-mile march from Ahmedabad to the coast at Dandi with 78 Sabarmati Ashram members, breaking the salt law by collecting salt from the beach. The movement spread nationwide: Rajagopalachari in Tamil Nadu, Kelappan in Malabar, Sarojini Naidu at Sholapur, and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar (Red Shirts) in Peshawar; 13-year-old Rani Gaidinliu raised the banner in Manipur/Nagaland.
The Gandhi-Irwin Pact (14 February 1931) placed Congress on equal footing with government, securing the release of prisoners and permission for salt-making, in exchange for suspending civil disobedience — though Irwin refused a public inquiry into police excesses or clemency for Bhagat Singh's group. The Karachi Session (1931) endorsed the Pact and passed resolutions on Fundamental Rights and a National Economic Programme — the first time Congress linked political freedom to economic freedom for "the starving millions."
Three Round Table Conferences (1930–32) followed; Gandhi attended only the second, claiming Congress represented all of political India. Civil Disobedience resumed after the RTCs failed, met with severe repression ("Civil Martial Law"), before Gandhi withdrew it in April 1934. The Communal Award (16 August 1932) created separate electorates for minorities including the depressed classes; the Poona Pact (24 September 1932), signed by Ambedkar and Gandhi, replaced this with joint electorates and reserved seats (147 in provincial legislatures, 18% at the Centre).
After Civil Disobedience, three strategic strands emerged: Gandhi's constructive village work, a revival of constitutional participation (contesting the 1934 Central Legislative Assembly elections), and the Left's push for continued mass struggle — Nehru rejected winning freedom "bit by bit," counterposing "Swaraj through Victory" to a staged approach. Congress ministries formed in Bombay, Madras, the Central Provinces, Orissa, the United Provinces, Bihar, and later NWFP and Assam. At the Haripura Session (1938), President Subhas Bose set up a National Planning Commission; after resigning from Congress in 1939, he formed the Forward Bloc.
When the Government of India declared war support on 3 September 1939 without consulting Indian opinion, Congress offered conditional cooperation, rejected by Viceroy Linlithgow. At the CWC Wardha meeting, Gandhi favoured unconditional support against fascism, Bose favoured immediate civil disobedience to exploit Britain's difficulty, and Nehru — whose view prevailed — opposed Indian participation until India was free, while declining to exploit Britain's crisis immediately. The Muslim League passed the Pakistan Resolution at Lahore (March 1940), demanding autonomous, sovereign Muslim-majority states. The August Offer (1940) proposed dominion status and a post-war constituent assembly, but was rejected by both Nehru ("dead as a doornail") and Gandhi. Individual Satyagraha (1940), beginning with Vinoba Bhave, was a symbolic anti-war protest short of mass mobilisation.
The Cripps Mission (March 1942), prompted by Japan's advance to India's border, offered dominion status, a post-war constituent assembly, and — critically — the right of any province to opt out of the Indian Union, effectively laying groundwork for partition. It failed: Congress rejected dominion status, provincial secession, and the lack of any immediate transfer of power, while the Muslim League objected to a single Indian union and the absence of an explicit Pakistan offer.
