Indian Nationalism before Independence | Professor Sarah Ansari

foreign [Music] Ansari I'm professor of South Asian history here at Royal Holloway the Indian nationalists struggle was a complex struggle we tend to think of the Indian National Congress formed in 1885 as the main player and it certainly was the most important expression of Indian Nationalism led by Gandhi from the 1920s later on by JaVale Lal nehru by the time we get to the second world war famous for its emphasis on non-violent resistance to Colonial inequality it certainly set the tempo for the Indian nationalist struggle but Indian Nationalism encompassed a what encompassed a wider spectrum of different kinds of political opinion and political stance so there were nationalists on the extreme left of the political Spectrum others to the right under the first category we might name somebody such as bugatt Singh a young Punjabi revolutionary who was eventually executed by the British in 1931 for acts of violence for acts of terrorism that he perpetuated on the extreme right on the Hindu nationalist right there was somebody called vir savakar who whose influence was very strong and one of his followers his supporters later on was responsible for assassinating Gandhi in 1948 after Independence in addition we see different minorities religious minorities putting together their own parties the Muslim League that eventually became that third force in Indian politics just prior to Independence was set up in 1906 and other religions seeks to form their own party by the 1920s then from the 1930s we see the so-called Untouchables in India um starting to break away really from the Congress fold if they'd ever really been in it their leader ambedkar disagreed strongly with Gandhi Gandhi's stance on caste later on ambedkar oversaw the putting together of India's Constitution into which he built a an attack on cast at least on on paper or in principle and then finally the nationalists that perhaps people didn't want to talk about quite so much although he's now the subject of a lot of interesting research that was um subash Chandra Bose he was Congress president in 1938 and 39. didn't get on with Gandhi at all had a very different approach when it came to the use of violence or non-violence and early in the second world war he left India he went first to Nazi Germany and then to Japan in search of allies who would help him literally fight the British and with Japanese support he put together the Indian national Army made up of captured Indian soldiers and took on the British in Southeast Asia and at one point it was for well there was a lot of concern that the Indian national Army together with the Japanese would invade India from the from the East so it's important I think for students to appreciate that while the Congress yes was the main player and certainly did drive the Nationalist movement Indian Nationalism could take different forms and these Indian nationalists certainly they shared the same goal they wanted freedom for their country but they had different ideas about how to go about achieving this