80 Years Ago in India

Gandhi returns to India (see South Africa for his early life) with his wife and children in 1915. Here it was not long before he was taking the lead in the long struggle for independence from Britain. He never wavered in his unshakable belief in nonviolent protest and religious tolerance. He was called Mahatma, which means the "noble- hearted". When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence, whether against the British who ruled India, or against each other, he fasted until the fighting ceased. He was killed by an assassin at the age of 79 in 1948.

During the First World War, 500,000 Indians fought for Britain, and India donated £100 million to the imperial war chest. It was a huge human and financial sacrifice, but when peace came in 1918, the British refused to relax their tight control of India.

Gandhi mistrusted European style industrialization, and part of his strategy to force Britain to give up its control of India was economic. He wanted the common people of India, most of whom were desperately poor, to become self-sufficient through the encouragement of local and traditional industries, such as the production of cotton cloth. A second strategy to undermine British control of the economy was through boycotts of British manufactured goods. Part of this strategy was the hartal. This was a traditional demonstration of mourning or disapproval where all shops, businesses and schools were closed to allow people to join mass, public demonstrations. Gandhi called for an India-wide hartal on April 6, 1919, but in some locations anti-European feeling boiled over into violence. Some of the worst violence happened in Punjab province where riots broke out which Gandhi could not halt.

Some Europeans were killed in the city of Amritsar. The British reaction was equally violent leading to the 1919 Amritsar massacre, one of the most publicized atrocities committed by the British in India. Army units, including Gurkhas from Nepal, were called in to crush the rioters. The total of dead is not known for sure, but the British admitted to close to 400 Indians had been killed. The massacre showed everyone that British rule rested only on military force.