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| Question | Answer |
| When was Gandhi born? | 1869 |
| Between what years was Gandhi a lawyer in South Africa? | 1893-1914 |
| How did Gandhi's experience in South Africa aid him and the Congress Party on his return to India? | He worked with a wide range of Indians from all castes, backgrounds and religions. He learnt about publicity and how to co-operate and confront individuals in positions of authority. Also, he experimented with ways of protesting and direct but non-violent opposition, such as burning registration documents. |
| How did his experience in South Africa affect him philosophically? | Whilst there he began to develop his concept of satyagraha. It meant 'soul-force' and he applied it to non-cooperation with the British authorities. |
| Why did Gandhi dislike the term 'passive resistance'? | It meant resisting authority by doing nothing. Whereas Gandhi believed in a more active way of resisting the Raj; by non-violent non-cooperation. |
| Why did Viceroy Chelmsford in 1919, believe that the task of dealing with Gandhi was difficult? | Gandhi was held in high respect by 'everyone who comes across him' therefore he was more difficult to deal with than if he had been a 'mere agitating politician'. |
| What was Gandhi's philosophy? | That every single person was created to search for the truth and that in order to be fully human, each person has to reach the truth within themselves. He believed that violence inhibits the search for the inner meaning/truth. |
| What did Gandhi do when he arrived back in India in 1915? | He took a year out of public life so that he could get back in touch with India and Indian affairs and develop an understanding of the political dynamics of the country. |
| How did Gandhi appeal to the Indian peasants? | He believed that people were much happier when they lived in small, self-sufficient communities. The Indian peasant masses began to find that they could identify with Gandhi's ideas. |
| Why did the Indian masses begin to identify with not only his ideas but also with Gandhi himself? | He behaved like no other Indian politician: he discarded western clothes and adopted the Indian 'dhoti'; he ate frugally, like the peasants, and walked everywhere he could. |
| Why did Gandhi believe spinning with a 'chakra' (a spinning wheel) was important? | He believed that daily spinning would bring India's leaders into closer contact with peasant life and enhance the dignity of labour in the minds of India's intellectuals who had never had to do hard physical work. |
| Why did people begin to call Gandhi the 'Mahatma' (the Great Soul)? | Because of his renunciation of contemporary values and society, and his search for the truth. |
| What did Nehru believe were Gandhi's strengths as a politician? | He attracted people of different kinds, thereby becoming a link between different groups from the poorest peasants to princes and rich industrialists. |
| How did Gandhi's connections with Muslims and businessmen aid his political career? | Muslims and businessmen had been largely neglected by Congress politicians. Muslims supported his take-over of Congress in 1920 and the business community helped to fund his non-cooperation campaign. |
| What three things led to Gandhi changing his mind about the British in India and developing the idea of swaraj (self-rule)? | The Rowlatt Acts, the Amritsar Massacre and its endorsement by large sections of the British community in India, and one of the outcomes of the Paris Peace Conference; that Turkey had to pay a hugh indemnity and lose its colonial territories. This last one affected Gandhi as he realised that it could increase the idea of separateness among Muslims. |
| When did Gandhi emerge as the leading Indian politician and leader of Congress? | 1920 |
| Why was Gandhi able to become the leading Indian politician? | There was no other all-Indian political leader or group who could organise opposition to him. Gokhale and Tilak had died (1915 and 1920) and Annie Besant was seen as a woman of little consequence. Also, there was wide geographical support for Gandhi because of the many local disputes with which he had been involved. |
| When was Gandhi's civil disobedience campaign? | 1920-22 |
| What was Gandhi's aim with his civil disobedience campaign? | To make the Raj ungovernable so that swaraj (home-rule) could occur. |
| What did non-cooperation entail? | Boycotting elections and the law courts; removing children from government schools; witholding taxes; refusing to buy imported goods; and leaving all government posts. |
| Why were some of the non-cooperation policies unrealistic? | Some professionals, e.g.lawyers, were unlikely to want to abandon their lucrative practices and parents would not want to deny their children an education. |
| Was the non-cooperation campaign successful? | There was some initial success: in some areas taxes were not paid, voters did not vote, around 200 lawyers stopped work and during the visit of the Duke of Connaught to Calcutta in 1921, shops were closed and very few Indians were present at official ceremonies. |
| What was the Moplah rebellion? | It coincided with the non-cooperation campaign (1921). Muslim Moplahs in Malaba killed 600 Hindus and forcibly converted 2500 to Islam. To address the violence, 2000 rebels were killed. |
| What happened in Chauri Chaura on 5th Feb 1922? | Congress supporters torched a police station killing the 22 policemen inside. |
| When did Gandhi declare the non-cooperation movement over? | 6th Feb 1922 |
| What was the reaction of Indians towards Gandhi calling off the civil disobedience campaign? | Hindu and Muslim supporters believed it was a betrayal of the movement. It left Congress split. |
| What did Gandhi do after declaring and end to the civil disobedience campaign? | He returned to his ashram and withdrew from political campaigning, focusing instead on a social welfare programme in the villages. At the end of Feb 1922, Gandhi was arrested by the British authorities and sentenced to 6 years in prison. |
| What was the outstanding feature of Congress' commitment to satyagraha? | The way in which its members had involved themselves in peasant communities and had acquired a deeper understanding of peasants' needs. |
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