discuss the important features of Indians democracy during the British period?
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In the early twentieth century, in part because of Woodrow Wilson’s call for the self-determination of peoples, the Indians received the mistaken impression that Wilson was referring to the subcontinent instead of Central Europe. Indian Nationalists got a considerable boost from this, only to be terribly disappointed by the very incremental, conservative changes that the British made in 1919. Slight forms of representation were allowed, but only very propertied males were allowed to have representation in the various parts of British India. (Even though after 1857 the British basically extended their sway over all of India, some monarchs were allowed to remain as titular heads of their states. They didn’t wield any effective power, and could be dismissed with a wave if the British resident so chose. But there were these 562 monarchs, and some of them ruled over areas slightly larger than a postage stamp. They were allowed to do essentially what they wanted, except that the British controlled three critical areas—defense, foreign affairs and communications. They also recognized the British as what was called the paramount power in India, through the Doctrine of Paramountcy. As it happened, these nominally independent kingdoms would pose an interesting challenge at the time of national independence and partition in 1947. )
In the 1920s and early 1930s, under the Congress party, the Indian National Congress, which had been formed in 1885, came under the tutelage of one of the most remarkable men of the twentieth century: Mohandas K. Gandhi. Most people think of Gandhi as a saintly individual. They also think of his personal quirks. What is relevant, however, is Gandhi’s genius in transforming this elitist, anglicized, upper middle class organization into a mass-based political party. Gandhi recognized that the only way to oust the British was to mobilize all of India’s population. In this, he drew upon Henry David Thoreau and his idea of civil disobedience. Gandhi recognized that if he used civil disobedience, he could paralyze the British, because the British were interested in social control, not in genocide. They did not want to wipe out the Indians, but rather to keep the Indians in their place.
Gandhi’s contribution to civil disobedience, which came back, ironically, to the United States in Dr. Martin Luther King’s actions, is that it must be done in a non-violent fashion and with a willingness to suffer the consequences. In this way, Gandhi became an exemplar of the importance of the rule of law. That is, if you break the law, you must suffer the consequences, however unjust you might deem that law to be. He decided in 1931 to break a simple law, the so-called “Salt Law.” Most people know about the breaking of the Salt Law, but this act contained a deeper significance. Salt is something you have to use; it doesn’t matter if you’re a peasant or a plutocrat. The Salt Law fell disproportionately on the backs of the poor Indian peasants, and thereby Gandhi managed to mobilize the peasantry, to give them an understanding that this was an unjust law and must be broken. But he was also prepared, along with his carefully chosen followers, to face police batons and go to prison. In this fashion, Gandhi helped the peasantry understand the power of civil disobedience; how to stand up against an unjust law, and the necessity to do so. This in part explains India’s political culture after independence. The agitational politics that one sees in India—the strikes, the demonstrations, the public unrest, that so characterizes Indian life, in many ways has a direct lineage back to Gandhi. This is the idea that you have a right to go out into the public sphere and protest, even though the police unfortunately remain very colonial in their mentality, and still beat people to a pulp with batons. Nevertheless, people brave this routinely in India, and none more than the Indian poor.