Nationalism in India
Class 10 Social Science · History · 21 questions with answers
This chapter asks 'why' far more than 'when'. Why salt, why 1930, why did different groups join for different reasons, why was a movement called off. Dates support those answers; they are not the answers. A child who knows five conditions can reconstruct the chapter; a child who knows twenty dates cannot.
- Places the main movements in order with their years
- Explains why each movement took the form it did
- Explains why different social groups joined for different reasons
- Handles 'why did this happen' questions with conditions rather than events
Exercise 1 of 3 · 7 questions
Give the year, and one sentence on what happened.
Write the answer · Warm-up
Here’s one done for you
Notice that each answer gives a year and a reason rather than a year alone. In Class 10 History a date on its own is almost never the answer - it supports one. Learning the chapter as seven events with a sentence each is far more useful than a list of fourteen dates, and it survives exam pressure much better.
- 1)The Rowlatt Act
- 2)The Jallianwala Bagh massacre
- 3)The Non-Cooperation Movement begins
- 4)Chauri Chaura, and the calling off of Non-Cooperation
- 5)The Lahore Congress declares Purna Swaraj
- 6)The Dandi March
- 7)The Poona Pact
Answers
- 1) 1919. It allowed detention of political prisoners without trial, and provoked nationwide protest.
- 2) 13 April 1919, at Amritsar, where a peaceful gathering was fired upon by troops under General Dyer.
- 3) 1920. Gandhi called for the surrender of titles, boycott of schools, courts and foreign goods.
- 4) February 1922. Gandhi called the movement off after a violent incident at Chauri Chaura, holding that the country was not ready for non-violent mass struggle.
- 5) 1929, with 26 January 1930 to be celebrated as Independence Day.
- 6) March to April 1930, from Sabarmati to Dandi, launching the Civil Disobedience Movement by breaking the salt law.
- 7) 1932, between Gandhi and Dr B. R. Ambedkar, giving depressed classes reserved seats within the general electorate rather than a separate electorate.
Exercise 2 of 3 · 7 questions
Explain in two or three sentences.
Write the answer · Guided
Here’s one done for you
The salt answer is the model for this chapter. It is not enough to say salt was taxed - the mark is for why that made it a good symbol: everyone used it, everyone resented the monopoly, and it could unite groups whose real grievances differed. That last clause is the historical point, and it is what the question is set to test.
- 1)Why did Gandhi choose salt as the symbol for the Civil Disobedience Movement?
- 2)Why did Gandhi call off the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1922?
- 3)Why did the movement spread to the countryside so quickly in Awadh and the Gudem Hills?
- 4)Why did some business groups support the movement and later withdraw?
- 5)Why did the Simon Commission provoke such widespread protest?
- 6)Why was the Civil Disobedience Movement different from Non-Cooperation?
- 7)Why did Gandhi's method of satyagraha appeal so widely across India?
Answers
- 1) Because salt was consumed by every household, rich and poor alike, and the state monopoly on it was resented across every class and region. It made a single symbol capable of uniting people whose other grievances were quite different.
- 2) Because of the violence at Chauri Chaura, where a crowd set fire to a police station. Gandhi held that a movement based on non-violence could not continue when its participants had turned violent, and that the country needed further preparation.
- 3) Because local grievances found expression in it. In Awadh peasants were resisting high rents and begar under Baba Ramchandra; in the Gudem Hills, forest laws had cut off traditional rights, and Alluri Sitaram Raju led resistance. Each region joined the national movement for its own reasons.
- 4) Indian businessmen supported it because they wanted protection against imports and freedom to trade. Many withdrew after the failure of the Round Table Conference and because of fears about the spread of militant activity and disruption to business.
- 5) Because it had no Indian member at all. A body sent to decide India's constitutional future without a single Indian on it made the point about Indian exclusion more sharply than any speech could.
- 6) Non-Cooperation asked Indians to refuse to cooperate - to give up titles, schools and courts. Civil Disobedience went further and asked them to break specific laws, such as the salt law, which made confrontation with the state direct rather than passive.
- 7) Because it needed no weapons, no training and no wealth, so a peasant could take part as fully as a lawyer. It also placed the moral position with the protester, which made repression by the state look like exactly what it was.
Exercise 3 of 3 · 7 questions
Explain what each group hoped to gain, and why some of them left.
Write the answer · Practice
Here’s one done for you
This exercise is the heart of the chapter and the part most often reduced to 'everyone joined the freedom movement'. They did not - or rather, they joined for incompatible reasons. Rich peasants wanted lower revenue, poor peasants wanted rent remitted, and satisfying one would have alienated the other. Explaining that tension is exactly what a long answer here is marked on.
- 1)The rich peasants of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh
- 2)The poorer peasantry
- 3)The industrial working classes
- 4)Women in the Civil Disobedience Movement
- 5)The depressed classes and Dr Ambedkar's position
- 6)The Muslim League and its demands in the 1930s
- 7)Plantation workers in Assam
Answers
- 1) They were hit hard by the trade depression and falling prices and joined hoping for a reduction in revenue demand. When the movement was called off in 1931 without revenue being revised, many were deeply disappointed and did not rejoin in 1932.
- 2) They wanted unpaid rent to the landlords remitted, which the Congress was unwilling to promise for fear of alienating the rich peasants and landlords. Their participation was therefore uncertain throughout.
- 3) Their participation was limited, partly because industrialists kept the movement at a distance from labour demands. Some workers did join, particularly around Nagpur, adopting parts of the boycott.
- 4) They participated in large numbers - joining marches, making salt and picketing shops. However, the Congress was long reluctant to give them positions of authority within the organisation, seeing their role largely in terms of service.
- 5) Dr Ambedkar argued that political empowerment was the only real solution to social disability, and demanded separate electorates for the depressed classes. Gandhi opposed this, fearing it would divide society permanently; the Poona Pact of 1932 settled on reserved seats within the general electorate instead.
- 6) It sought safeguards for Muslims as a minority in a future India - separate electorates or reserved seats. When negotiations over these failed, the distance between the League and the Congress widened, with consequences that ran to 1947.
- 7) They understood swaraj as the right to move freely in and out of the enclosed plantations and to return to their villages, a right the Inland Emigration Act denied them. Many left the plantations when the movement began, though most were caught and punished.
While your child works
- Ask 'why did it take that form?' rather than 'when did it happen?'. Dates support answers; they are not answers.
- The different social groups joined for different and sometimes conflicting reasons. That tension is what long answers are marked on.
- This chapter has reliable map marks attached to it. Practise those separately, on a blank outline.