Purna Swaraj and Civil Disobedience

In 1928 a report under Motilal Nehru asked for 'Dominion status': full control of India's own affairs, but with Britain still controlling the army and foreign policy and the British king or queen still head of state, as in Canada and Australia.

When it became clear Britain would not give even that, younger leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose pushed for Purna Swaraj: complete independence. The demand was not new: Aurobindo raised it in 1908, Maulana Hasrat Mohani in 1921, V.D. Savarkar in 1925.

The Congress's Lahore session of December 1929 passed it, in words worth reading: "if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or to abolish it … India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj."

Gandhi put it into action with the Civil Disobedience Movement, beginning with the Salt March of March–April 1930: a 380-km walk to Dandi, where he collected salt as a symbol.

Why salt? The government had a monopoly on making it and taxed it heavily. Everyone needs salt, rich and poor alike, so breaking that law was a protest anyone could join.

Thousands were arrested, including Gandhi, but the movement spread: salt marches elsewhere, boycott of foreign cloth, refusal to pay taxes. Large numbers of women broke the salt law and picketed shops; a British report noted women coming "from the seclusion of their homes, and, in some instances, actually from purdah". One of them, the poet and speaker Sarojini Naidu, had been the first Indian woman president of the Congress, in 1925.

Repression followed. At Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar in April 1930, troops fired on a peaceful crowd protesting Abdul Ghaffar Khan's arrest, and two platoons of the Royal Garhwal Rifles under Chandra Singh Garhwali refused to fire on their fellow Indians, choosing jail instead.

In 1931 Viceroy Irwin and Gandhi made a pact: political prisoners released, limited salt-making allowed, civil disobedience paused, and the Congress at the Round Table Conference. It was the first formal talks between the British government and the Congress as equals, but brought no breakthrough. Around then, B.R. Ambedkar wanted separate electorates for the Depressed Classes; Gandhi, fearing it would divide Hindu society for ever, began a fast unto death. The Poona Pact settled it: instead of separate electorates, more reserved seats for the Depressed Classes in the legislatures.