Nationalist Movement in India

In 1885 India was a colony whose people had almost no say in how they were governed. By 1935 Indians were running the governments of its provinces, and a movement of millions was demanding full self-rule. That change shows how a shared sense of belonging can turn scattered grievances into a force strong enough to challenge an empire.

The person chiefly responsible for leading India's challenge to British rule after the First World War was Mohandas Gandhi. Indians called him 'Mahatma', which means 'great soul'. Gandhi thought carefully about what nationalism was and what it could become. Three of his ideas are worth testing against the events that follow.

1. Any people would feel happier under a bad government of its own than under a good government run by a foreign power.
2. If every part of a nation insists on its own separate right to self-determination, there can be no single nation and no independence.
3. Nobody can be an internationalist without first being a nationalist. Nationalism is not evil in itself. The harm comes from narrow, selfish nations that try to profit from and rise on the ruin of others.

Think about how strong your own sense of national identity is, and why some groups seem to feel theirs more strongly than others. Historians also debate whether nationalism was the main reason empires broke up, or whether economic factors mattered more. India is a good case for weighing that question.