Subject: Modern History

Union Home Minister unveiled a 15-foot statue of Jayaprakash Narayan or JP on his 120th birth anniversary at the socialist icon’s birthplace, Sitab Diara village in Bihar’s Saran district.

Who was Jayaprakash Narayan?

• JP was born in 1902 in Bihar’s Sitab Diara, a village prone to frequent-flooding, after which his family moved to a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Balia district.
• He quit college to join the non-cooperation movement, before going to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx.

Political affiliations

• JP returned to India in 1929 and joined the freedom struggle and the Indian National Congress, upon the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru and drawn by a speech by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
• He went on to become the founding members of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP).
• However after independence took it out of the Congress and formed the Socialist Party, which was merged with J B Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party to form the Praja Socialist Party.

Dissociation from active politics

• While Nehru was keen on JP joining the Union government, JP sought to distance himself from electoral politics, opting to focus on social causes instead.
• He was disillusioned with political parties and called for communitarian democracy.
• Parties, he believed, were centralized and susceptible to moral and financial corruption.

The JP movement

• Students in Gujarat began demonstrating in late 1973, in response to mounting mess bills.
• The protests became widespread in the state, with workers, teachers and several other groups joining in the movement, calling for a change in government.
• JP saw the youth of Gujarat that had been able to bring about political change as an alternative route from electoral.
• The protests against corruption grew widespread, and students of Bihar began their movement in March 1974.
• The students approached JP, who left his self-imposed political exile and led the movement. At a rally in Patna he called for Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution).

Opposition to the Emergency

• When Indira Gandhi imposed an Emergency on June 25, 1975, JP shifted his focus to opposing the authoritarian rule and opposition parties looked to him for leadership.
• The Socialists were naturally drawn to him ideologically, while the RSS and its political front the Jana Sangh sought to return to the mainstream, and were happy to be dissolved into the Janata Party that JP had formed.
• JP is celebrated for launching a popular, mass movement against the Indira Gandhi government, which led to the formation of the Janata Party government in the 1977 general election.
• This was the first non-Congress government in the country.

Try this PYQ:

Who among the following were the founders of the “Hind Mazdoor Sabha” established in 1948?

(a) B. Krishna Pillai, E.M.S. Namboodiripad and K.C. George

(b) Jayaprakash Narayan, Deen Dayal Upadhyay and M.N. Roy

(c) C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, K. Kamaraj and Veeresalingam Pantulu

(d) Ashok Mehata, T.S. Ramanujan and G.G. Mehta

 

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The Government of India began its year-long celebrations for the ‘Telangana Liberation Day’ on September 17, marking how on the same day in 1948, the state of Hyderabad got its independence from Nizam’s rule, as said in a press release.

Why in news?

• From 1911 to 1948, Nizam Mir Usman Ali, the last Nizam of Hyderabad, ruled the state composed of Telangana and parts of present-day Karnataka and Maharashtra (Marathwada).
• While these states mark the Liberation Day officially, Telangana has never done so.

Hyderabad’s accession into India: A backgrounder

(1) Reluctance of Nizam

• At the time of India’s independence, British India was a mix of independent kingdoms and provinces that were given the options of joining India, Pakistan, or remaining independent.
• One among those who took a long time to make a decision was the Nizam of Hyderabad.
• Believed to be one of the richest people in the world at the time, the Nizam was not ready to let go of his kingdom.

(2) Sufferings for the people

• Meanwhile, the majority population of Hyderabad state was far from enjoying the same kind of wealth as the Nizam did.
• The feudal nature of the state at the time caused the peasant population to suffer high taxes, indignities of forced labour, and various other kinds of exploitation at the hands of powerful landlords.

(3) Lingual friction

• There was also a demand by the Andhra Jan Sangham for Telugu to be given primacy over Urdu.
• By the mid-1930s, apart from a reduction in land revenue rates and the abolition of forced labour, introducing Telugu in local courts became another important issue.

(4) Mass movement

• Soon after the organisation became the Andhra Mahasabha (AMS), and Communists became associated with it.
• Together, the two groups built a peasant movement against the Nizam that found local support.

Who were the Razakars and the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen?

• By October 1946, the Nizam banned the AMS.
• A close aide of the Nizam, Qasim Razvi, leader of the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, became closely involved in securing the Nizam’s position.
• The Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen was a political outfit that sought a greater role for Muslims in the early 20th century, but after Razvi took over the organisation, it became extremist in its ideology.
• It was under him that a militia of the ‘Razakars’ was formed to suppress the peasant and communist movement, launching a brutal attack.
• Around this time, the Standstill Agreement was also signed between the Nizam and the Indian government in November 1947, declaring a status quo.
• This meant that until November 1948, the Nizam could let things be as they were and not finalise a decision as negotiations with the Indian union continued.

How did the situation escalate to military action?

• In the first half of 1948, tensions grew as the razakar leaders and the government in Hyderabad began to speak of war with India and began border raids with Madras and Bombay Presidencies.
• As a response, India stationed troops around Hyderabad and began to ready itself for military intervention.

India commences Operation Polo

• With the Nizam importing more arms and the violence of the Razakars approaching dangerous proportions, India officially launched ‘Operation Polo’ on September 9 and deployed its troops in Hyderabad four days later.
• On September 17, three days after the deployment, the Nizam surrendered and acceded to the Indian Union in November.
• India has decided to be generous and not punish the Nizam.
• He was retained as the official ruler of the state and given a privy purse of five million rupees.

The legacy of Operation Polo

• It has also been said that the army’s march into Hyderabad did not just target the razakars and the radical extremist forces.
• A four-member goodwill mission led by Pandit Sunderlal was constituted by the then Prime Minister.
• At the request of then PM Nehru, a month was spent in Hyderabad in November 1948 where evidence was gathered and at the end, a report was filed.
• Estimated thousands of people died in communal violence during the military action.

Why debate now?

• The debate about whether the day of independence was about integration into the Indian union after months of negotiations, or liberation from an autocratic monarch has continued.
• Hyderabad’s history continues to affect today’s politics.
• After Qasim Rizvi left India for Pakistan, the organisation was handed over to Abdul Wahed Owaisi, the grandfather of a present day Parliamentarian.
• And communal-sectarian politics is storming up the city of Hyderabad leading to religious tensions.

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A recently-released Malayalam film Pathonpatham Noottandu (‘Nineteenth Century’) is based on the life of Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker, a social reformer from the Ezhava community in Kerala who lived in the 19th century.

Who was Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker?

• Born into a well-off family of merchants in Kerala’s Alappuzha district, Panicker was one of the most influential figures in the reformation movement in the state.
• He challenged the domination of upper castes or ‘Savarnas’ and brought about changes in the lives of both men and women.
• The social reform movement in Kerala in the 19th century led to the large-scale subversion of the existing caste hierarchy and social order in the state.
• Panicker was murdered by a group of upper-caste men in 1874 at the age of 49. This makes him the ‘first martyr’ of the Kerala renaissance.

What was Panicker’s role in initiating social reforms?

• Panicker is credited with building two temples dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, in which members of all castes and religions were allowed entry.
• One was built in his own village Arattupuzha in 1852, and one in Thanneermukkom in 1854, another village in the Alappuzha district.
• Some of his most significant contributions were in protesting for the rights of women belonging to Kerala’s backward communities.
• In 1858, he led the Achippudava Samaram strike at Kayamkulam in Alappuzha.
• This strike aimed to earn women belonging to oppressed groups the right to wear a lower garment that extended beyond the knees.
• In 1859, this was extended into the Ethappu Samaram, the struggle for the right to wear an upper body cloth by women belonging to backward castes.
• In 1860, he led the Mukkuthi Samaram at Pandalam in the Pathanamthitta district, for the rights of lower-caste women to wear ‘mukkuthi’ or nose-ring, and other gold ornaments.
• These struggles played an important role in challenging the social order and in raising the dignity of women belonging to the lower strata of society in public life.

Other work

• Apart from issues related to women, Panicker also led the first-ever strike by agricultural labourers in Kerala, the Karshaka Thozhilali Samaram, which was successful.
• He also established the first Kathakali Yogam for the Ezhava community in 1861, which led to a Kathakali performance by Ezhavas and other backward communities, another first for them.

Try this PYQ:

Q. The Shri Narayan Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) Movement(1902-03) was related to which of the following community?

a) Mopilla Community

b) South Indian Tea Planters

c) Ezhava Community in Kerala

d) North Eastern Tea Planters

 

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Lok Sabha Speaker, who is currently in Canada for the 65th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, will travel to Mexico where he will unveil statues of Swami Vivekananda and Maharashtra-born freedom fighter and agriculturalist Pandurang Khankhoje.

Who was Pandurang Khankhoje (1883-1967)?

• Born in Wardha, Maharashtra, in the late 19th century, Pandurang Khankhoje came in contact with other revolutionaries early on.
• As a student, Khankhoje was an ardent admirer of the French Revolution and of the American War of Independence.
• Closer to home, the Hindu reformer Swami Dayanand and his Arya Samaj movement, which called for a spirit of reform and social change, became the hero to a young student group led by Khankhoje.

Revolutionary activities abroad

• Khankhoje decided to go abroad for further training in revolutionary methods and militaristic strategy.
• At this time, the British government’s suspicions of him were also growing due to his anti-government activities.
• Before leaving, he visited Bal Gangadhar Tilak, by whom he was inspired.
• Tilak advised him to go to Japan, which was itself a strong, anti-West Asian imperialistic force then.
• After spending time with nationalists from Japan and China, Khankhoje eventually moved to the US, where he enrolled in college as a student of agriculture.

Participation in the Indian independence movement

• Khankhoje was one of the founding members of the Ghadar Party, established by Indians living abroad in 1914, mostly belonging to Punjab.
• Its aim was to lead a revolutionary fight against the British in India.
• While in the US, Khankhoje met Lala Har Dayal, an Indian intellectual teaching at Stanford University.
• Har Dayal had begun a propaganda campaign, publishing a newspaper that featured patriotic songs and articles in the vernacular languages of India.
• This was the seed from which the Ghadar Party would emerge.

How did Khankhoje reach Mexico?

• At the military academy, Khankhoje met many people from Mexico.
• The Mexican Revolution of 1910 had led to the overthrow of the dictatorial regime, and this inspired Khankhoje.
• He also reached out to Indians working on farms in the US with the aim of discussing the idea of Indian independence with them.
• Along with the Indian workers, militant action was planned by Khankhoje in India, but the outbreak of the First World War halted these plans.
• He then reached out to Bhikaji Cama in Paris, and met with Vladimir Lenin in Russia among other leaders, seeking support for the Indian cause.

Association with Mexico

• As he was facing possible deportation from Europe and could not go to India, he sought shelter in Mexico.
• Soon, in part due to his prior friendship with Mexican revolutionaries, he was appointed a professor at the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo, near Mexico City.
• He researched corn, wheat, pulses and rubber, developing frost and drought-resistant varieties, and was part of efforts to bring in the Green Revolution in Mexico.
• Later on, the American agronomist Dr Norman Borlaug, called the Father of the Green Revolution in India, brought the Mexican wheat variety to Punjab.
• Khankhoje was revered as an agricultural scientist in Mexico.

Return to India

• Both Pandurang and Jean returned to India after 1947.
• His application for visa was initially rejected by the Indian government due to the ban by the British Indian Government, but was eventually overturned.
• He settled in Nagpur and subsequently embarked on a political career.
• Pandurang Khankhoje died on 22 January 1967.

The 119-year-old Curzon Gate in Bardhaman in West Bengal is at the centre of a political row.

Who was Lord Curzon?

• Born in 1859, Curzon was a British conservative politician who was educated at the elite institutions of Eton and Oxford.
• He served as Under-Secretary of State for India (1891-1892), and for Foreign Affairs (1895-1898), before being appointed Viceroy of India in 1899.
• As viceroy, his administration was known for intense activity and emphasis on efficiency.
• He stated in his budget speech in 1904, “Efficiency of administration is, in my view, a synonym for the contentment of the governed”.

Rise to infame

• Of all the Viceroys of India, Curzon is possibly the most criticised — he is the man who partitioned Bengal in 1905, and triggered a wave of Bengali nationalism that contributed to the wider Indian national movement.
• He was also one of the more openly imperialist of viceroys, and a man who saw Britain’s rule over India as critical to the survival of empire.
• In 1900, Curzon famously stated, “We could lose all our [white settlement] dominions and still survive, but if we lost India, our sun would sink to its setting.”

His works

• Curzon created a separate Muslim majority province of the North-West Frontier Province, sent a British expedition to Tibet and established a separate police service.
• He was instrumental in establishing the Archaeological Survey of India, in order to study and protect historical monuments.
• Early on in his career, Curzon earned some praise from his colonial subjects for taking action against Europeans in a number of high-profile racist attacks against Indians.
• In 1899, he punished white soldiers for raping a woman in Rangoon; he disciplined soldiers of the 9th Lancers for beating an Indian cook in Sialkot to death in 1902.
• He had tried unsuccessfully to get the Calcutta High Court to change the meagre punishment given to an Assam tea manager for murdering a “coolie”.

Why was he disliked then?

• Curzon was both vexed and enraged by the growing nationalist movement in India and he sought to throttle the growing aspirations of the educated Indian middle class.
• A staunch imperialist, he took a series of extremely unpopular measures, including passing, in 1899, the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act.
• He reduced the number of elected representatives in the Calcutta Corporation.
• Among others was the Indian Universities Act (1904), that placed Calcutta University under government control, and the Indian Official Secrets Amendment Act (1904) which reduced the freedom of the press even further.
• Ironically though, it was his biggest and most reviled decision — to partition Bengal in 1905 — that led to a spurt in nationalist sentiment and revitalized the Congress.

How and why did the partition of Bengal take place?

• Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj, and Bengal Presidency was one of the largest provinces in India, populated by more than 78 million people.
• It was such a huge province encompassing present-day West Bengal, Bangladesh, Bihar, parts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Assam.
• For long, the British had maintained that Bengal was too large to efficiently manage and administer; it was also believed that with Calcutta as the nerve centre of the educated nationalists, the resistance to colonial rule would only increase.
• Home Secretary H H Risley noted in 1904, “Bengal united is a power; Bengal divided will pull in several different ways.

Actual course of Partition

• In July 1905, Curzon announced the partition of Bengal into two provinces.
• East Bengal and Assam, with a population of 38 million, was predominately Muslim, while the western province, called Bengal, and was reduced to 55 million people, primarily Hindus.
• Protests began almost immediately after the announcement, with meetings taking place in more than 300 cities, towns, and villages across Bengal.

What were the consequences of the partition?

• In opposition to the partition, nationalist leaders organized a campaign a boycott British goods and institutions and encouraged the use of local products.
• After a formal resolution was passed at a meeting in Calcutta in August 1905, the Swadeshi movement began.
• Students were at the forefront of the movement, which was characterized by boycotts of British educational institutions and law courts, and large bonfires of imported cotton textiles.
• There was a surge in nationalist rhetoric, and the song ‘Bande Mataram’, set to music by Rabindranath Tagore, became the informal anthem of the movement.
• The Swadeshi movement and boycott was not restricted to Bengal, and spread to other parts of the country, including Punjab, Maharashtra, and parts of the Madras Presidency.
• A number of secret societies, such as the Anushilan Samiti of Bengal, sought to overthrow British rule through violent means.
• Revolutionary groups used bombs, attempted to assassinate colonial officials, and engaged in armed robberies to finance their activities.

(Irreversible) Revocation of the Partition

• In 1905, Curzon resigned and returned to England after losing a power struggle with the commander-in-chief of the British Army, Lord Kitchener.
• The protests continued after his exit, and the colonial government in 1911 announced the reunification of Bengal.
• Thenceforth the capital of the Raj was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi.

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The Gadgil Wada of Pune was recently lighted into tricolour for the 75th anniversary of Independence.

Gadgil Wada was where plans for the reconstitution of the socialist Rashtra Seva Dal took place in early 1940s, with socialists like S.M. Joshi, N.G. Gore, Shirubhau Limaye and Kakasaheb in the lead.

Kakasaheb Gadgil

• Gadgil was an Indian freedom fighter and politician from Maharashtra, India.
• He was also a writer. He wrote in both Marathi and English.
• Gadgil graduated from Fergusson College in Pune in 1918, and obtained a degree in Law in 1920.
• In India’s pre-independence days, freedom fighters Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Vallabhbhai Patel influenced Gadgil.
• He joined the Indian National Congress in 1920, immediately after obtaining his law degree and started his active participation in the national freedom movement.
• He suffered imprisonment from the ruling British government eight times for the participation.

Notable work during freedom struggle

• In India’s pre-independence days, Gadgil served as the secretary of Poona District Congress Committee (1921–25), the president of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (1937–45).
• He was elected to the central Legislative Assembly in 1934.
• Gadgil was a pioneer in social reform movements in Maharashtra in the 1930s.
• During the Civil Disobedience Movement, which began in 1930, Gadgil was listed as a leader for the Maharashtra Civil Disobedience Committee and the Pune War Council.
• He was associated with several public associations and institutions, including Sarvajanik Sabha, Pune; Young Men’s Association, Pune; Maharashtra Youth League, Bombay; Pune Central Cooperative Bank; and Pune Municipality.

Service after India’s independence

• Between 1947 and 1952 Gadgil served as a minister in the first central cabinet of independent India.
• He held the portfolios of Public Works, and Mines and Power.
• In his first year in the central Cabinet, he initiated the project of building a military-caliber road from Pathankot to Srinagar via Jammu in Kashmir as a part of India’s activities in the 1947 Indo-Pakistan War.
• As a cabinet minister, he also initiated the important development projects pertaining to Bhakra, Koyna, and Hirakund dams.
• He was a member of the Congress Working Committee from 1952 to 1955.
• His son Vitthalrao Gadgil was a veteran congressman and MP from Pune Lok Sabha constituency, and his grandson Anant Gadgil is currently spokesman for Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee.

Authorship

• Gadgil wrote several books and articles on politics, economics, law, and history.
• The following are some of Gadgil’s books:

1. Pathik (autobiography)
2. Rajya Shastra Wichar
3. Shubha Shastra
4. Waktrutwa Shastra
5. Gyanbache Arthashastra
6. Government from Inside
7. Shikhancha Itihaas (history of Sikhs)

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