MHI 09 Solved Guess Paper 2026: Indian National Movement for IGNOU Master of Arts (History) (MAH / MAHI)

Compare the views of the Cambridge School and the Subaltern Studies on Indian nationalism

"Much attention has been paid to the apparent conflicts between imperialism and nationalism; it would be at least equally profitable to study their real partnerships." Anil Seal (1968)

The Cambridge School was a group of historians, mostly at Cambridge University, who wrote in the 1960s and 1970s. Their view was close to colonialist writing and opposed to the nationalist and Marxist views.

Main arguments of the Cambridge School

  
1. No real conflict with the British: Seal said the main conflict was not between India and Britain but among Indians themselves.
  
2. Elites, not classes: Nationalism came from competition among English-educated elites for posts and seats: caste against caste, community against community.
  
3. Fake struggles: Seal called Congress-Raj battles "a Dasehra duel between two hollow statues", a show fight rather than a real one.
  
4. Factions and localities: Later writers said politics ran through vertical patron-client factions led by local bosses; the locality mattered more than the nation.
  
5. Self-interest, not ideology: Leaders were driven by power and personal gain, and ideology was only a mask.

The Subaltern Studies

This trend began in 1982 with the first volume of Subaltern Studies, led by Ranajit Guha, who wrote that the historiography of Indian nationalism had long been dominated by colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism.

  
1. Against elitist history: Guha attacked colonialist, nationalist and Marxist writing, as all of them left out the politics of the people.
  
2. Autonomous domain: The subaltern had their own politics, which did not come from elite politics and did not depend on it.
  
3. Four differences: People's politics rested on caste, kinship and tribe; it was horizontal, more violent and more spontaneous.
  
4. Case studies: Gyanendra Pandey showed the Awadh peasant revolt arose before Non-Cooperation; Shahid Amin studied how people saw "Gandhi as Mahatma".
  
5. Second phase: Under postmodern influence the focus moved to "community" and "fragments"; Partha Chatterjee spoke of the "subalternity of the elite".

The Cambridge view was collected in Locality, Province and Nation (1973), with work by Gordon Johnson, C.A. Bayly, D.A. Washbrook, C.J. Baker and B.R. Tomlinson. Among subaltern writers, Stephen Henningham found an elite uprising and a subaltern rebellion running side by side in Quit India, and Sumit Sarkar found masses outstripping leaders in Bengal.

Conclusion: Both schools rejected the nationalist picture of a united, selfless movement. The Cambridge School debunked nationalism as a power game, while the Subaltern historians questioned the official story and showed a strong, autonomous popular nationalism.

Discuss the reasons for the origin and development of the Swadeshi Movement and its significance

Background: reasons for origin

  
1. Failure of moderate politics: Moderates were criticised for "politics of mendicancy" (begging through petitions), and most of their demands stayed unfulfilled.
  
2. Faction fighting: Some historians link extremism to rivalries such as Tilak vs Gokhale and Aurobindo vs Bipin Chandra Pal.
  
3. Economic critique: The moderates' own economic nationalism fuelled anger against colonial rule.
  
4. Curzon's despotic rule: The Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act (1899), the Indian Universities Act and the Official Secrets Amendment Act (1904) angered Indians.
  
5. Partition of Bengal, 1905: Announced on 19 July and implemented on 16 October 1905, it aimed to break the bhadralok and divide Hindus and Muslims.

Development of the movement

The partition united Bengalis instead of dividing them. On 7 August 1905 a formal boycott resolution at the Calcutta Town Hall began the movement, and Sumit Sarkar found four trends in it.

  
1. Moderate trend: Petitions and meetings; later Surendranath Banerjea called for boycott.
  
2. Constructive Swadeshi: Self-help through Swadeshi goods, national education, arbitration courts and village work, inspired by Tagore's atma-shakti.
  
3. Political extremism: From 1906 the aim became Swaraj, pursued through passive resistance: boycott and breaking unjust laws.
  
4. Revolutionary nationalism: After 1908 groups like the Anushilan Samiti turned to bombs and assassinations.

Limits and decline

Muslims and lower-caste peasants such as the Rajbanshis and Namasudras felt left out, Swadeshi goods were costly and migrant workers stayed untouched. After the Surat split of 1907, political extremism declined by 1908.

Significance

  
1. Spread of national ideas: Nationalism moved beyond elite circles to students, teachers and towns.
  
2. New methods: Sarkar says it anticipated most Gandhian strategies, except violence.
  
3. New leaders and regions: Leaders emerged from Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra, and Indians abroad joined in.
  
4. Annulment of partition: Partition was annulled in 1911, partly due to popular pressure.

Sarkar links the later cult of violence to the failure of mass mobilisation: the Maniktala bomb unit, and the attack by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki on Kingsford's carriage at Muzaffarpur on 30 April 1908.

Conclusion: The Swadeshi Movement turned nationalism from petitions to mass protest. It had weaknesses, yet it gave nationalism its populist and even revolutionary meanings.

Trace the development of the Non-Cooperation Movement and analyse the role of the Khilafat Movement in it

Beginning of the Khilafat Movement

Indian Muslims saw the Sultan of Turkey as the Khalifa, protector of Muslim holy places. After Turkey's defeat in the First World War they launched the Khilafat movement, led by two streams: the Aligarh-based Western-educated group and the ulama, who gave it a radical edge.

Background to Non-Cooperation

  
1. Economic hardship: Prices rose sharply after the war, and peasants and workers were restless.
  
2. Disappointing reforms: The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms (Act of 1919) were called "disappointing and unsatisfactory".
  
3. Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh: The Rowlatt Act (March 1919) allowed arrest without trial, and on 13 April 1919 General Dyer fired on a peaceful crowd.

Role of Khilafat: convergence under Gandhi

Gandhi joined the Khilafat demand to the demand for Swaraj, and Hindu-Muslim unity reached a new high. The Khilafat Conference first adopted non-cooperation in November 1919, and the harsh peace treaty with Turkey in May 1920 brought both movements together.

Main phases

  
1. First phase (Jan-Mar 1921): Launched on 1 August 1920 and accepted at Nagpur in December 1920; students left for 800 national institutions, lawyers quit courts and foreign cloth was burnt.
  
2. Second phase (from Vijayawada, Mar 1921): Targets of one crore members, one crore rupees for the Tilak Swaraj Fund and 20 lakh charkhas; khadi became the dress of the movement.
  
3. Third phase: Mohammed Ali declared service in the British Army religiously unlawful for Muslims, and the Prince of Wales' visit on 17 November 1921 was boycotted.
  
4. Fourth phase: Both sides turned confrontational, and after the Chauri Chaura violence of 5 February 1922 Gandhi withdrew the movement.

Contribution and the withdrawal debate

At some places two-thirds of those arrested were Muslims, untouchability reached the front of national politics, and 1921 alone saw 396 strikes. Foreign cloth imports fell from Rs. 102 crore in 1920-21 to Rs. 57 crore in 1921-22.

  
1. Contemporaries: Motilal Nehru, Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru saw the withdrawal only as a question of violence.
  
2. Marxists: R.P. Dutt and A.R. Desai said Gandhi feared a mass outburst against the propertied classes.
  
3. Sarkar and Pandey: They linked it to the need to keep control over the movement.
  
4. Bipan Chandra: He saw it as part of a long-term strategy of struggle in phases.

Conclusion: Khilafat gave Non-Cooperation its mass Muslim base, and Gandhi joined both streams. The movement failed in its stated aims, but it made common people an integral part of nationalism.

Analyse the relationship between the nationalist movement and the Dalits

The national movement had to unite different social groups against colonial rule. For the Dalit intelligentsia, liberation from internal oppression mattered more than liberation from British rule.

Contextualising caste identity

  
1. Colonial policy: After 1857 the British recorded caste in official documents and offered some welfare measures to oppressed groups, which raised Dalit hopes.
  
2. Jotiba Phule: The first ideologue of the anti-caste movement; his Gulamgiri (1873) attacked Brahmanism and saw nationalism as another form of it.
  
3. Regional leaders: Ambedkar, E.V. Ramaswami Naicker, M.C. Rajah, Narayana Guru, Mangu Ram and Acchutanand fought caste domination.

Integration of Dalit issues into the national movement

  
1. Calcutta Congress, 1917: The Congress passed its first resolution for abolition of untouchability.
  
2. Nagpur, 1920: Gandhi made removal of untouchability part of Non-Cooperation and essential for Swaraj.
  
3. Vaikom Satyagraha, 1924: Gandhi backed the demand to open temple roads to untouchables.
  
4. Sub-committee, 1929: Madan Mohan Malaviya headed an anti-untouchability sub-committee for temple entry, wells and schools.

Politics of representation

  
1. Two groups: M.C. Rajah and B.R. Ambedkar led rival Dalit groups; the Rajah-Moonje Pact (1932) accepted reserved seats in joint electorates.
  
2. Communal Award: It gave Dalits separate electorates and an extra vote in 71 special seats, and Gandhi fasted unto death against it.
  
3. Poona Pact, 24 September 1932: Joint electorates with 148 reserved seats in provincial legislatures and 18 per cent at the centre.
  
4. After the pact: The Harijan Sevak Sangh (1932) worked for temple entry, and the Congress won reserved seats in 1937.

Most of the Dalit intelligentsia doubted the Congress's will to share power. In What Congress and Gandhi had done to Untouchables (1945), Ambedkar argued that freedom had no meaning without equal rights, and that a nation's freedom must include its servile classes.

Conclusion: The Congress brought a section of Dalits into the movement and made untouchability a national issue, but Dalit leaders stayed critical, because for them social equality came before political freedom.

Discuss the main strengths and weaknesses of the legacies of the Indian National Movement

"We are all in one boat, we have to go forward together. If some people begin to jump about in it, then the boat will not go forward but it will surely capsize." Jawaharlal Nehru (1957)

The movement played for India the role the French Revolution played for Europe. It built the widest possible consensus on two pillars, anti-imperialism and national unity, and everyone except loyalists and communalists could join this umbrella. Its legacies are like ancestral wealth that independent India must nurture or lose.

Legacies (strengths)

  
1. Making of the Indian nation: The movement created a territorial, civic, plural and non-coercive nation; Surendranath Banerjea called India a "nation-in-making".
  
2. Mass participation in politics: Indian democracy came from the struggle, not as a British gift, which is why universal adult franchise was adopted and the 1952 election became the largest in world history.
  
3. Civil liberties: Leaders fought for freedom of the press, speech and association; Nehru formed the Indian Civil Liberties Union in 1936.
  
4. Planned economic development: The Karachi resolution (1931) gave the State control of key industries, and the National Planning Committee (1938) led to the Planning Commission (1950).
  
5. Secularism: The Karachi resolution promised State neutrality towards all religions; Gandhi and Nehru arrived at an anti-communal, not anti-religious, idea.
  
6. Independent foreign policy: The Congress opposed British conquests, backed Asian freedom struggles and opposed Fascism; Nehru joined the League against Imperialism at Brussels in 1927.

Weaknesses and limitations

  
1. No radical social change: Being truly representative, the movement also carried society's hierarchy, patriarchy and caste prejudice.
  
2. Weak control from the top: Ordinary people, not trained cadres, ran it locally, so centrifugal and divisive tendencies could not be fully controlled.
  
3. Partition: The failure to counter those tendencies led to partition and compromised national unity.

Conclusion: Independent India lives in the shadow of the national movement. Its democracy, secularism, civil liberties and foreign policy are legacies, and so are its social weaknesses, which is why legacies must be consciously nurtured.