Individual Satyagraha

Background

Britain declared India a belligerent in the Second World War in September 1939 without consulting Indian political leaders, prompting the Congress ministries formed after the 1937 provincial elections to resign in protest. The Congress was divided over how far to press the issue while Britain fought against fascism: Gandhi was reluctant to launch a mass movement that might embarrass Britain at a moment of genuine peril, while other leaders, including Subhas Chandra Bose, pressed for immediate, large-scale resistance.

The campaign

Gandhi's compromise was a satyagraha of deliberately small scale and symbolic form. Individual volunteers, personally selected and authorised by Gandhi, would give public notice of their intent to speak against India's participation in the war and against war-related restrictions on free speech, and would then court arrest, one person following another only after the first had been arrested or had completed the act. Vinoba Bhave was the first satyagrahi in October 1940; Jawaharlal Nehru was selected as the second and was arrested shortly afterward.

The campaign continued through 1940 and into 1941, with thousands of volunteers across the country eventually taking part in a similarly restrained, individual form, resulting in a large number of arrests but avoiding the mass confrontation and disorder that had followed earlier movements such as Non-Cooperation.

Significance

Individual Satyagraha kept the independence movement active and visible without escalating into open confrontation with the colonial government during the early years of the war. Most political prisoners taken under the campaign were released by December 1941. The approach was abandoned in 1942 in favour of the far larger Quit India Movement, launched after the failure of the Cripps Mission and amid Japan's advance toward India's eastern frontier.