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Lord Dalhousie was the founder of modern India because he brought modernity in ideas, architecture, reforms, public works etc.  Military Reforms : Shimla became the army headquarter and Meerut became artillery headquarter Dalhousie created a new, regiment called ‘Gurkha Regiment’ and also introduced the system of centralized control in newly acquired territories known as ‘Bon-Regulation system’.  Educational Reforms : Woods dispatch is considered as the Magna Carta of English education that helped in the development of female & male education. An engineering college was established at Roorkee and Anglo Vernacular Schools and Government colleges were also opened.  Social Reform : Widow Remarriage Act (1856) was passed during his work period. Infrastructural  Development : He introduced the railway network that facilitated trade, commerce and cultural experiences.  He also laid out first telegraph line and postal system on modern lines that increased commu...

Mahatma Gandhi’s contribution to achievement of Indian Independence was invaluable. He made the freedom struggle a mass movement, encouraging participation of every section of society.  In Non-cooperation movement, women and youth participation was unprecedented. Peasants and workers also joined the movement after Mahatma Gandhi’s arrival on national scene. Earlier freedom movement was solely restricted to educated upper class.  He also introduced a new method of peaceful satyagraha, based on truth and nonviolence. Britishers had no idea how to deal with it. If they didn’t do anything, then masses were mobilized against them, and if they used force then also masses condemned them. Had he not been there, achievement of Independence would have been more violent.  He conditioned massed for non-violent struggle. For example, in non-cooperation movement this was used on a mass scale for the first time. After the incident of Chauri - Chaura, he realized that people were not pre...

M. K. Gandhi is known to be one of the few people who encouraged women’s active participation in the freedom struggle-marking him as a rare promoter of women’s liberation. Women’s entry into national politics through non-violent methods brought miraculous results. On the one hand, women became aware of their inner strength, and on the other, the process brought human and moral elements into politics.  Gandhi had tremendous faith in women’s inherent capacity for non-violence. And his experience of participation by women in politics from his days in South Africa till the end of his life bears testimony to the fact that they never failed his expectations. With Gandhi’s inspiration, they took the struggle right into their homes and raised it to a moral level.  Women organized public meetings, sold Khadi and prescribed literature, started picketing shops of liquor and foreign goods, prepared contraband salt, and came forward to face all sorts of atrocities, including inhuman treatm...

Many reasons may be identified for the partition of Bengal in 1905. According to the British Government, the Bengal province consisting of Bihar, Orissa, Assam was too big to be welt governed. So it was felt that Bengal has to be divided for administrative convenience.  The British government actually was interested to check nationalistic feelings of Indians, so they partitions Bengal. Bengal was the nerve centre of Indian nationalism due to the rising number of attacks on the Britishers by the revolutionary terrorists, and due to the fact that emerging military nationalism had obtained a strong following in Bengal.  So it was this consideration which made the British partition Bengal under two administrate units;  1.  On the basis of language thus reducing Bengalis to a minority in Bengal itself.  2. On the basis of religion as Hindus in West and Muslims in the East. It was this imperialistic consideration that led to the partition of Bengal-and not the concept...

The Moderate leaders gave national movement its start and clearly stated the colonisation's aims and policies. Their economic and constitutional understanding remained the guiding principle of the national movement. However, their reach among people was always limited due to following reasons :- • The political jargons used by the moderates were alien to uneducated masses. There was also lack of political faith in the masses. Thus people largely remained aloof.  • It was gradually realised that the British didn’t concede to any of the major demands of the moderates.  • Indian Council Act 1892 was criticised. Moves such as further amplification of repressive laws under IPC and reduction in number of members in Calcutta Corporation didn’t go down well with progressive elements in INC.  • Political ideologies of the moderates were blamed to be inefficient. Methods followed by moderates were described as political mendicancy.  The result was emergence of a more militan...

The socio-religious reform movements of the 19th century may be regarded as Indian Renaissance.  The most striking feature of the Indian renaissance is its work towards the upliftment of women, criticism of caste systems and religious orthodoxy.  It did not preach Western values because on some counts both were contradictory.  Though the socio-religious reform movement borrowed many elements from the West, but they also challenged the western culture perpetuated by the colonial government.  Reform movements the like Brahma Samaj, Prarthana Samaj were forward looking in the sense that they tried to rid the Indian society from its superstitious beliefs. Whereas other like the Arya Samaj;  Theosophical Society were often regarded as revivalistic movement because they attempted to revive the age-old tradition of the Indian Society to counter the spread of Western Values, even though they were based on blind faith.  More Indian Renaisance mad conscious attempts ...

If we have an overall look at 19th century socioreligious reform movement's nature, it becomes clear that this movement was associated with urban middle class and upper class in which rationalism and religious universalism put importance on the social reforms and modernization.  The process of religious reform had started almost in all Indian religions, India, in the 19th century, witnessed a series of socioreligious reform movements which aimed at reorientations of the Indian society along modern lines. These reform movements can be viewed as the expression of the social aspiration of newly emerging middle class of colonial India.  Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Arya Samaj in Punjab, Paramhamsa Mandalis and Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra, Ahmadiya, Aligarh movements, Singh Sabha, Rehnumai Mazdeyasan Sabha, etc. were some of the socio-religious organisations which tried to relieve their religions from the burdens of blind faith and superstitious. beliefs Religious reformation was a ...

An important development in the second half of 18th century was the establishment of large scale machine based industries in India. It led to the emergence of two new classes industrialist and the modern worker class. The Indian capitalist class emerged in the latter half of the 19th century and developed its attitude towards the Indian National Congress which can be analysed in three phases.  The first phase, may be taken to be the period between 1855 and 1905.  During the period, of the Indian National Congress, the Industrialist class supported some of the demands of the Congress like.  • Stopping the drain of wealth from India to British.  • Use of indigenous capital instead of foreign capital etc. It is because of the co-operation of this class with the Congress that Swadeshi Movement, by and large became successful.  The second phase, starting from 1905, extended till late 1930s.  During this phase, the industrialist class, by and large, supported Gan...

The period from 1920 to 1947 has been described as the Gandhian Era in Indian politics. During this period, Gandhiji had the final say behalf of the Indian National Congress in negotiating with the British Government for constitutional reforms, and for chalking out a programme for the national movement. Mahatma Gandhi led the national freedom struggle against the British rule and it also gave space and voice to many other voices which further strengthened the movement.  Voices that strengthened and enriched nationalist movement are as follow:  Socialist Voice  • The emergence of socialism in Congress during 1920s and 1930s imparted a new orientation to anti-British struggle because the socialist vision of national movement was quite different from that of Gandhiji and other nationalists.  • Anti-British struggle got radicalism greatly because socialists wanted that the idea of non-violence should be followed by congress in a pragmatic manner for the mistakes of one o...