Political Activity during 1929

Gandhi travelled incessantly during 1929 preparing people for direct political action—telling the youth to prepare for the fiery ordeal, helping to organise constructive work in villages and redressing specific grievances (on lines of the Bardoli agitation of 1928).

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) organised a Foreign Cloth Boycott Committee to propagate an aggressive programme of boycotting foreign cloth and public burning

of foreign cloth. Gandhi initiated the campaign in March 1929 in Calcutta and was arrested. This was followed by bonfires of foreign cloth all over the country.

Other developments which kept the political temperature high during 1929 included the Meerut Conspiracy Case (March), bomb explosion in Central Legislative Assembly by Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt (April) and the coming to power of the minority Labour government led by Ramsay MacDonald in England in May. And Wedgewood Benn became the Secretary of State for India.