Summary

● Swarajists and No-Changers

Swarajists advocated council entry after withdrawal of Non- Cooperation Movement with an aim to end or mend the councils.

No-changers advocated constructive work during transition period.

● Emergence of New Forces during 1920s

1. Spread of Marxism and socialist ideas

2. Activism of Indian youth

3. Peasants’ agitations

4. Growth of trade unionism

5. Caste movements

6. Revolutionary terrorism with a tilt towards socialism

● Activities of HRA/HSRA

Established—1924 Kakori robbery—1925 Reorganised—1928 Saunders’ murder—1928

Bomb in Central Legislative Assembly—1929 Bid to blow up viceroy’s train—1929

Azad killed in police encounter—1931

Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev hanged—1931

● Broadened View of HSRA

In later years, ideology moved away from individual action towards socialistic ideals.

● Revolutionaries in Bengal

Attempt on life of Calcutta police commissioner—1924

Surya Sen’s Chittagong Revolt Group and Chittagong robberies— 1930

Chapter 18

Simon Commission and the Nehru Report

Appointment of the Indian Statutory Commission

The Government of India Act, 1919 had a provision that a commission would be appointed ten years from date to study the progress of the governance scheme and suggest new steps. An all-white, seven-member Indian Statutory Commission, popularly known as the Simon Commission (after the name of its chairman, Sir John Simon), was set up by the British government under Stanley Baldwin’s prime ministership on November 8, 1927. The commission was to recommend to the British government whether India was ready for further constitutional reforms and along what lines. Although constitutional reforms were due only in 1929,

the Conservative government, then in power in Britain, feared defeat by the Labour Party and thus did not want to leave the question of the future of Britain’s most priced colony in “irresponsible Labour hands”. Also by the mid-1920s, the failure of the 1919 Act to create a stable imperial power had led to several parliamentary reports and inquiries. The Lee Commission went into the Raj’s failure to recruit enough British officers; the Mudiman Commission looked into the deadlock within the diarchic dispensation; and the Linlithgow Commission inquired into the crisis of Indian agriculture. So

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the British government thought it necessary to go more fully into the working of the 1919 Act. The Conservative Secretary of State for India, Lord Birkenhead, who had constantly talked of the inability of Indians to formulate a concrete scheme of constitutional reforms which had the support of wide sections of Indian political opinion, was responsible for the appointment of the Simon Commission.