UNIVERSITY OF LUCKNOW

FACULTY OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF MEDIEVAL INDIAN
HISTORY
NAME: ANCHITA SINGH
CLASS: B.A. 3RD YEAR (6TH SEM)
ROLL NO.: 180011015092
SUBJECT: MEDIEVAL INDIAN HISTORY
PAPER: I
TOPIC: ROWLATT SATYAGRAHA
SUBMITTED TO: ARPIT SIR
ROWLATT SATYAGRAHA:
Rowlatt Satyagraha movement was started by Gandhi Ji against The Rowlatt Act,1919 for the
exclusion of freedom of press and detention without trial set up a Satyagraha Sabha on 24th
February 1919 at Bombay. As, the Rowlatt Act empowers the Britishers regarding the
suspension of the right of Habeas Corpus.

M. K Gandhi started campaign against Rowlatt bill and set up Satyagraha Sabha 24 th February
AD 1919 at Bombay. During this agitation, M.K Gandhi given famous quote “It is my firm belief
that we shall obtain salvation only through suffering and not by reforms dropping on us from the
English they use brute, we soul force”. After the incident of Jallianwala Bagh massacre on 13 th
April, 1919, the Anti-Rowlatt Satyagarha lost momentum. The movement was against the
exclusion of freedom of press and detention without trial.

The Rowlatt Act empowers the British regarding the suspension of the right of Habeas Corpus.
This makes National leader furious and started agitation against the tyranny of minority ruling.
The country witnessed a remarkable political awakening in India during March and April 1919.
There were hartals, strikes, processions and demonstrations. In Amritsar, the local leaders
Kitchlew and Satyapal were deported (9th April). The arrest of the local leaders led to attacks on
the symbols of British authority, on 11th April Martial Law was clamped with General Dyers in
command.

On 13th April, a peaceful, unarmed crowd (mostly visitors from nearby villages to attend
Baisakhi celebration) which had collected in an enclosed ground (Jallianwala Bagh) to attend a
public meeting oblivious of the ban was brutally massacred without warning. The Jallianwala
Bagh massacre shocked the entire nation with horror and fired patriotic minds with aggressive
determination for vengeance. Gandhi, overwhelmed by the total atmosphere of violence
withdrew the movement on 18th April after confessing a ‘Himalayan Blunder’.

The movement of Non-cooperation was launched on 4 September 1920 by Mahatma Gandhi

with the aim of self-governance and obtaining full independence (Purna Swaraj) as the Indian
National Congress (INC) withdrew its support for British reforms following the Rowlatt Act of 18
March 1919, and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919. The Rowlatt Act of March
1919, which suspended the rights of political prisoners in sedition trials,was seen as a "political
awakening" by Indians and as a "threat" by the British. Although it was never invoked and
declared void just a few years later, the act motivated Gandhi to conceive the idea of satyagraha
(truth), which he saw as synonymous with independence. This idea was also authorised the
following month by Jawaharlal Nehru, for who the massacre also endorsed “the conviction that
nothing short of independence was acceptable”.

Gandhi's planning of the non-cooperation movement included persuading all Indians to

withdraw their labour from any activity that "sustained the British government and economy in
India", including British industries and educational institutions. In addition to promoting “self-
reliance” by spinning khadi, buying Indian-made goods only and boycotting British goods,
Gandhi's non-cooperation movement called for the restoration of the Khilafat (Khilafat
movement) in Turkey and the end to untouchability. This result in public held meetings and
strikes (hartals) led to the first arrests of both Jawaharlal Nehru sahibb and his father, Motilal
Nehru, on 6 December 1921.

It was one of the movements for Indian independence from British rule and ended, as Nehru
described in his autobiography, "suddenly" on 4 February 1922 after the Chauri Chaura
incident.Subsequent independence movements were the Civil Disobedience Movement and the
Quit India Movement.

Through non-violent means or Ahinsa, protesters would refuse to buy British goods, adopt the
use of local handicrafts and picket liquor shops.

The leaders of our major (and minor) political parties are currently crisscrossing the country in
search of votes. Exactly a 100 years ago, in the spring of 1919, another leader was also touring
different parts of India. It was four years since Mohandas K Gandhi had returned to his
homeland. He had organised protests by peasants in Champaran in 1917 and Kaira in 1918; and
also led a satyagraha of mill workers in Ahmedabad. Now he was launching his first pan-Indian
movement aimed at an oppressive piece of legislation known as the Rowlatt Act, that sought to
criminalise dissent and to try alleged dissenters without juries and in camera, with the press and
the public excluded.

On February 8, 1919, Gandhi wrote to an Indian colleague that the Rowlatt Bills were not “a stray
example of lapse of righteousness” but “evidence of a determined policy of repression”;
therefore, “civil disobedience seems to be a duty imposed upon every lover of personal and
public liberty”. The same day he wrote to a South African friend: “The Rowlatt Bills have agitated
me very much. It seems I shall have to fight the greatest battle of my life.”

In the last week of February 1919, Gandhi hosted a meeting of patriots at his ashram in
Ahmedabad. Here a “Satyagraha Pledge” was drafted. Its signatories resolved to court arrest
unless the Rowlatt Bills were withdrawn. Meanwhile, Gandhi also wrote to the Viceroy, Lord
Chelmsford, asking him to withdraw the bills, since even the “most autocratic [Government]
finally owes its power to the will of the governed”.

The Viceroy refused to withdraw the Bills. Gandhi now travelled with his Satyagraha Pledge
across the country, seeking support and signatures. He visited Lucknow, Allahabad, Bombay,
and Madras, as well as many smaller towns. He was preparing his growing band of followers for
a major, countrywide, show of defiance, scheduled for Sunday, April 6, 1919.

At the time, Bombay was the epicentre of Indian nationalism. So Gandhi chose to lead the
protests in that city himself. He arrived at the Chowpatty beach by 6.30 am. His admirers bathed
in the sea and then came and sat around him. By 8 o’clock, there was a “huge mass of people”
assembled on the sea face. One reporter estimated that 150,000 were present — “Mahomedans,
Hindus, Parsis, etc., and one Englishman”. In his speech, Gandhi condemned the recent police
firing on satyagrahis in Delhi, and then asked the crowd to endorse the resolutions asking the
Viceroy to withdraw the Rowlatt Act, these sent “weighted with the blood of the innocents of
Delhi and the promise that we shall continue to suffer by civil disobedience till the hearts of the
rulers are softened”.

The Rowlatt Satyagraha was the first genuinely all-India upsurge against British colonialism (the
Rebellion of 1857 had left large parts of the country untouched). Notably, while the scale,
intensity and character of the protests varied enormously, one feature was constant: the display
of Hindu-Muslim harmony. Thus, while terming the satyagraha a “splendid success”, an Urdu
weekly published in Bombay noted that the government’s passing of the bills had “united the
Hindus and the Musalmans like sugar and water, although these two communities once stood
apart from one another owing to the long-standing differences between them”.

Meanwhile, a newspaper in Karachi observed that the port town had “closed its shops and
centres of business: when did such a stupendous thing happen before in the history of the city?”
The paper further commented: “One was impressed at yesterday’s function with one soul-
stirring fact — the disappearance of communal, parochial and sectarian impulses. They were
“Hindus”, ‘Muhammadans”, “Parsis”, “Khojas”, “Jains”, yesterday; but they all felt they belonged
to one community — the Indian; they all felt there was the One Religion in various religions, the
Religion of Self-respect, the Religion of guarding India’s rights for the service of Humanity”.

The Rowlatt Satyagraha is the subject of great interest to historians of Indian nationalism and to
biographers of Mahatma Gandhi. (Interested readers may consult Ravinder Kumar’s edited
book, Essays in Gandhian Politics, which brings together well researched case studies set in
different parts of India.) However, the Rowlatt Satyagraha is also of some contemporary
relevance, for the fraternity that it manifested is worth recalling — and rehabilitating — in our
own divided times.

I have quoted newspaper reports that testified to how, during the course of the Rowlatt
Satyagraha, Indians set aside their differences of creed and community. Let me now quote the
leader of the movement itself. During the course of the movement, Gandhi asked Indian
nationalists to take this vow:

“With God as witness we Hindus and Mahomedans declare that we shall behave towards one
another as children of the same parents, that we shall have no differences, that the sorrows of
each will be the sorrows of the other and that each shall help the other in removing them. We
shall respect each other’s religion and religious feelings and shall not stand in the way of our
respective religious practices. We shall always refrain from violence to each other in the name
of religion.”

The spirit of inter-community solidarity that so strikingly suffused the Rowlatt Satyagraha was
less visible in later movements led by Gandhi. This was a fact he recognised, and mourned, and
his own last years were devoted to recovering that spirit. Now, a 100 years after Rowlatt, we
must press our leaders to do likewise. India would surely be a much safer and happier place if
the politicians now on the campaign trail were to abide by the spirit of Gandhi’s noble vow of
April 1919.

ITS IMPACT:
The impact of Rowlatt Satyagrah on political situation in India was immense. Gandhi organised
Rowlatt Satyagrah against the Rowlatt Act which gave enormous power to the government to
suppress the political activities of Indian leaders.

In opposition of the Act, protests and rallies were organised in various cities, workers went on
strikes in railway workshops, and shops closed down. The British government tried to suppress
the nationalist activity brutally. Local leaders were picked up from Amritsar, and Mahatma
Gandhi was barred from entering Delhi. After attacks on post offices and railways, martial law
was imposed and General Dyer took command. Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on April
13, 1919. This incident shocked the entire nation. As the news of Jallianwalla Bagh spread,
crowds took to the streets in many north Indian towns. There were strikes, clashes with the
police and attacks on government buildings.

Thus, we can say that the Rowlatt Satyagrah led to an increase in nationalist activities of people
in the country