Reunion, the Lucknow Pact and the Home Rule Leagues of 1916

The Road to Reunion after the Surat Split

The Deaths of Gokhale and Mehta and Tilak's Return

Why this matters: the reunion of the Congress became possible only when the obstacles to it were removed. Bal Gangadhar Tilak returned from his imprisonment at Mandalay in 1914, chastened and eager to rejoin the mainstream, and he now sought readmission to the Congress rather than confrontation.

On the other side, the two Moderate leaders most opposed to the Extremists, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta, both died in 1915. With the hardliners of both wings gone or softened, the path to reunion lay open, as the timeline of these years shows.

The First World War and the Expectation of Reform

Distinguishing features of the moment owed much to the First World War. India contributed men and money to the imperial war effort, and nationalists of every shade expected that this loyalty would be rewarded with a substantial measure of self-government once the war was won.

This widely shared expectation of reform gave the movement a new urgency and a new unity of purpose. If India was to press its claim effectively, the nationalists reasoned, it must speak with one voice, a logic that drove both the reunion of the Congress and its pact with the Muslim League.

The Lucknow Session and the Congress-League Pact (1916)

Tilak, Jinnah and the Acceptance of Separate Electorates

What is the significance of the Lucknow session: it achieved a double unity in a single meeting. At the Lucknow session of December 1916, the Congress formally readmitted the Extremists, ending the split of 1907, and at the same session it concluded the famous Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League.

The architect of the pact on the Muslim side was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, then a member of both the Congress and the League and hailed as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. To win the League's cooperation, the Congress made a momentous concession: it accepted separate electorates for Muslims, the very communal principle it had condemned in 1909. The two streams that met at Lucknow are shown below.

The Weightage Formula and the Joint Demands

Distinguishing features of the pact lay in its terms. The Congress conceded not only separate electorates but a weightage formula: Muslims were given a fixed, generous share of seats in the legislative councils, about one-third at the centre, more than their share of the population in some provinces and less in others.

In return, the two bodies agreed on a joint scheme of constitutional reform, a common set of demands for self-government to put before the British. The main provisions are set out below. The pact was a calculated bargain: unity now, in the hope of reform, at the price of a communal concession whose dangers would appear only later.

The Home Rule Leagues of 1916

Tilak's Indian Home Rule League (April 1916)

What is the significance of the Home Rule Leagues: they carried the demand for self-government from the council chamber into the country. The first was founded by Tilak in April 1916, at Belgaum, the Indian Home Rule League, with the resounding slogan that he made famous: 'Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it'.

Tilak's League worked a defined territory: Maharashtra apart from Bombay city, Karnataka, and the Central Provinces and Berar. It gave the militant tradition of the Deccan a fresh, legal channel, turning the energy of the Extremists into an organised, popular campaign for Home Rule. The two Leagues and their comparison are shown below.

Annie Besant's All-India Home Rule League (September 1916)

Observable outcomes of the same impulse appeared a few months later. In September 1916, the Irish-born Theosophist Annie Besant founded the All India Home Rule League at Adyar, near Madras. She was a tireless organiser and propagandist, and through her journals New India and Commonweal she carried the message far and wide.

Besant, it should be noted, was the president of the Theosophical Society, not its founder, and she would go on to become the first woman president of the Indian National Congress in 1917. Her League covered the rest of India outside Tilak's territory, building a wide network of branches and volunteers.

Methods, Spread and the Territorial Division

Contemporary linkages between the two Leagues lay in a sensible division of labour. To avoid rivalry, they divided the country territorially: Tilak's League took the western and central Deccan, and Besant's the rest, as the map below shows. Their methods were those of a modern agitation: public meetings, the press, pamphlets and the enrolment of members.

The movement spread rapidly during 1916 and 1917, drawing in students, professionals and the lower middle class, and reaching towns and districts the Congress had never touched. For the first time since the Swadeshi years, nationalism was again a popular, energetic force, no longer the affair of an annual session alone.

Impact, the Montagu Declaration and the Decline

The Montagu Declaration and the Fading of the Movement

Observable outcomes of the agitation came quickly. Alarmed by its spread, the government interned Annie Besant in 1917, but the move backfired, provoking nationwide protest and swelling the movement further. The pressure told: on 20 August 1917, the Secretary of State, Edwin Montagu, declared that British policy aimed at the gradual development of responsible government in India.

The Montagu Declaration was a landmark, the first official admission that self-government was the goal, and it took much of the steam out of the Home Rule agitation. The movement then faded, as Besant's caution, Tilak's departure for England and, above all, the rise of Gandhi drew its energies into new channels. Its impact, however, was lasting.

• A revived movement: Home Rule re-energised national politics after the lean years.
• A wider base: It reached new towns, students and the middle class.
• The Montagu Declaration: It forced the first official promise of responsible government, in 1917.
• The stage set: It prepared the organisation and the mood that Gandhi would soon lead.

Significance: The Stage Set for the Gandhian Mass Phase

The Inheritance Gandhi Received

Contemporary linkages run directly from 1916 to the age of Gandhi. The events of that year left the national movement united, allied and energised: a reunited Congress, a pact with the Muslim League, a popular Home Rule organisation and an official promise of reform. This was the political inheritance that Mahatma Gandhi would take up from 1919.

The Home Rule Leagues had built the local organisation and the popular habit of agitation that the mass movements would need, and the Lucknow reunion had restored the Congress as a single national platform. The early phase of Indian nationalism, from 1885 to 1916, here passed on its whole inheritance, of organisation, method and ideal, to the mass movement that would follow.

Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Lucknow Pact
• Wikipedia: All India Home Rule League
• Wikipedia: Annie Besant
• Wikipedia: Bal Gangadhar Tilak
• Wikipedia: Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms
• NCERT, Our Pasts III (The Making of the National Movement)
• Ministry of Culture: Indian Culture Freedom Archive
• Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (Freedom Movement portal)
• Press Information Bureau, Government of India
• National Portal of India