Struggle for Swaraj Test - 1

The Civil Disobedience Movement was one of the most significant movements launched by Mahatma Gandhi in the course of India's freedom struggle. It started with Salt March from Dandi. Salt was also manufactured in Satyagraha centers at Hyderabad and Sukkur. K. Madhavan Nair, P. Krishnapillai and R.V. Sharma led the Satyagraha at Kozhikode. Ramadevi and her daughter Annapurna Maharana led the movement from Rampur.

The main features of Nehru Report were as follows.

i) Responsible government at both centre and provinces
ii) Advocated dominion status
iii) Fundamental rights

iv) Rejected separate communal electorates. (It proposed reservation for the Muslims at the centre and in the provinces in which they were in minority.)
v) Equal rights for women and the demand for universal adult sufferage
vi) Dissociation of the state from religion in any form

vii) Freedom to form any trade union

Hence, only statement IV is not correct.

The British action was seen as a violation of the principle of self-determination and a deliberate insult to the self-respect of the Indians. At its Madras session in 1927, presided over by Dr. M. A. Ansari, the National Congress decided to boycott the Commission at every stage and in every form.

There were 7 members in the Simon Commission, including its Chairman Sir John Simon.

Simon Commission was officially known as Indian Statutory Commission. It was a group of seven British Members of Parliament who were dispatched to India in 1928 to study the constitutional reform and recommend to the government.

The Swaraj Party was established as the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party. In December 1922, Chittaranjan Das, Narasimha Chintaman Kelkar and Motilal Nehru formed the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party with Das as the president and Nehru as one of the secretaries. It was formed after the Gaya annual conference in December 1922 of the National Congress, that sought greater self-government and political freedom for the Indian people from the British Raj.

The Communist Party of India has officially stated that it was formed on 25 December 1925 at the first Kanpur Party Conference.

After the publication of Gandhi Vs. Lenin, Dange and his friends engaged themselves in trade union activities and evolved into one of the earliest communist circles in India and began publishing the Socialist, the first communist journal in India, from August 1922.

The English officer who led the fatal lathi (baton) charge on Lala Lajpat Rai during the freedom struggle was James A. Scott.

In 1928, the British government set up the Commission, headed by Sir John Simon, to report on the political situation in India. The Indian political parties boycotted the Commission, because it did not include a single Indian in its membership, and it met with country-wide protests. When the Commission visited Lahore on 30 October 1928, Lajpat Rai led non-violent march in protest against it.

The protest was with the words "Simon go back" and black flags. The superintendent of police, James A. Scott, ordered the police to lathi (baton) charge the protesters and personally assaulted Rai. Despite being extremely injured, Rai subsequently addressed the crowd and said, "I declare that the blows struck at me today will be the last nails in the coffin of British rule in India".

The first Civil Disobedience Movement was started by Gandhiji after the Rowlatt Act of 1919.

Rowlatt Act, (February 1919), allowed certain political cases to be tried without juries and permitted internment of suspects without trial. Later Mahatma Gandhi returned to India. He began to emerge as an increasingly charismatic leader under whose leadership first civil disobedience movement grew rapidly as an expression of political unrest.