SOCIAL SCIENCE PROJECT

1. SOCIAL SCIENCE PROJECT DONE BY:- SOUMEE SENGUPTA{ 8-A } BHAGYASHRI SONAWANE{ 8-A } ARCHANA KUSHWAHA{ 8-A }

2. India from 1857 to 1947

3. THE INDIAN REBELLION OF 1857 The Indian rebellion of 1857 was a great uprising in northern and central India as a result of Delhi’s policy of annexation an doctrine of lapse and the British’s indiffer-ence towards the Indian rulers like the Mughals and the Peshwas.It was first started by Mangal Pandey who was hanged by the British but later revolt spread in Meerut,Jhansi,Kanpur and Lucknow.Slowly the Rani of Jhansi, Nana Sahib and Tantia Tope were subdued and the British took the control of the sitiuation .The effects of the revolt of 1857 were far-reaching. After it, the British introduced reforms to involve the higher caste Indians into administrative services and abolished the East India Company to bring the Indian subordinates under the direct rule of Queen Victoria. King Bahadur Shah was exiled to Rangoon where he died in 1862.The number of Indians were reduced in the army and British soldiers were increased.

4. THE PERIOD OF SOCIAL REFORMS The decades following Sepoy rebellion was a period of growing political awareness and Indian leadership at the provincial and national level.In 1885, Indian National Congress was founded by SurendraNath Banerjee at the sponsorship of A.O.Hume. At first the Congress’s role was limited in discussing annually matters related to civil rights and Indian aspiration to Civil Service examination etc. The elite class of Indians were its members . The influence of socio-religious groups like Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj and the inculcation of moral and cultural values by Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Dada Naoroji was catalystic for the huge national fervour and passion for freedom that was to be felt at a later date.

5. THE RISE OF INDIAN NATIONALISM Bal Gangadhar Tilak was the first Congressman, who said “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it”.Alongwith Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipinchandra Pal he formed the extremist group as against the moderates represented by Gokhale etc who criticized the earlier ones and ultimately drove them from the Congress in 1907.In 1906 alarmed by the Hindu prominence All India Muslim League was formed to seek selective muslim participation in government service and electorate. The British government also followed the Divide and Rule policy and divided Bengal in 1905 under Lord Curzon.Meanwhile the Congress led opposition of the partition by the boycott and swadeshi movement ultimately forced the government to reverse the partition in 1911 and transfer the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi.During the First World War though India supported the British with her full force but Bengal and Punjab remained hotbeds of terroristic aspirations.After the war due to rising inflation and escalated human suffering the extremists and the moderates submerged their differences and in the Lucknow pact a temporary alliance was formed with the muslims . The British government also followed a carrot and stick policy by the Government of India Act,1919 introduced local a self government in India.

6. THE NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT AND ITS AFTER EFFECTS The positive effects of the reforms of 1919 were soon erased by the black act of Rowlatt Act which tried to silence the voice of Indian press and imprison any person without trial . Next followed the protests of Jallian Wala Bagh where at the order of General O’Dyer more than three hundred people were fired at on 13th April,1919. The first Satyagraha was staged by M.K.Gandhi in 1919 in protest against the use of foreign goods and using khadi. The non-cooperation movement acquired its momentum when Gandhiji abruptly called it off because it turned violent at Chauri Chaura.In 1920,Congress vowed at aiming Swaraj as its ultimate goal and during this time a bunch of important leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabh Bhai Patel, Subhash .Chandra Bose emerged as the party’s prominent leaders shaping its future policies.Following the rejection of Simon Commission by the Indian people, in its historic Lahore session Congress adopted Purna Swaraj as its goal and authorised itself to observe civil disobedience movement in 1930s.In the same year Gandhiji undertook the famous Dandi march to break the law and prepared salt from sea water.

7. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS In April,1930 the civil disobedience movement turned violent in Calcutta and Gandhiji was imprisoned .Later he was released to attend the Gandhi-Irwin pact in 1931.The British government agreed to release all prisoners and in return civil disobedience was called off. Gandhiji attended the second round table conference which was however a failure and he came back only to resume the movement again. In 1935 the government of India act aimed at giving provincial autonomy and safeguarding minority people’s interest by maintaining separate electorate. This later culminated into the two nation theory and gave birth to Pakistan. During the whole span of the twentieth century several revolutionary activities contributed towards the freedom struggle. For e.g.,during the partition of Bengal in 1905 Aurobinda Ghosh and The Anushilan Samiti in Bengal took the initial steps while in the 1920s Bhagat Singh and his followers protested by throwing bomb in the central legislative assembly. All of them were hanged.

8. THE QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT AND THE FINAL HOURS OF INDEPENDENCE In the background of a widespread dissatisfaction in an arbitrary participation of India into second world war, Gandhiji called Quit India movement in the 1940s. Further the aspirations for self-government was again thwarted by the proposals of Cripps’ Mission which failed to meet the Indian expectations.Allout hartal was seen and mass agitation resulted into bomb throwing and large scale arrest. Other significant development was the founding of Indian National Army by Subhash Bose which fought against the allied forces in the Burma and seiged kohima. But the INA forces were captured and during their trial mass revolts broke out specially among the Indian navy which defied the orders of the British superiors. All this agitations culminated into the unwilling British masters to step down from power under Lord Mountbatten in August 1947 when Independence was announced and partition of India followed with the birth of two nations- that of India and Pakistan.

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