Swaraj Party
Encyclopedia
The Swaraj Party, Swarajaya Party or Swarajya Party, established as the Congress-Khilafat Swarajaya Party, was a political party formed in India
in 1922 that sought greater self-government and political freedoms for the Indian people from the British Raj
. It was inspired by the concept of Swaraj
. In Hindi
and many other languages of India
, swaraj means "independence" or "self-rule".
who had opposed Mahatma Gandhi
's suspension of all civil resistance in 1 January 1923 in response to the Chauri Chaura
tragedy, where policemen were killed by a mob of protestors. Gandhi felt responsible for the killings, reproached himself for not emphasizing non-violence more firmly, and feared that the entire Non-Cooperation Movement
would degenerate into an orgy of violence between the British-controlled army and police and mobs of freedom-fighters, alienating and hurting millions of common Indians. He went on a fast-unto-death to convince all Indians to stop civil resistance. The Congress and other nationalist groups disavowed all activities of disobedience.
But many Indians felt that the Non-Cooperation Movement
should not have been suspended over an isolated incident of violence, and that its astonishing success was actually close to breaking the back of British rule in India. These people became disillusioned with Gandhi's political judgments and instincts.
.
In December 1922, Chittaranjan Das
, N.C. Kelkar and Motilal Nehru
formed the Congress-Khilafat Swarajaya Party with Das as the president and Nehru as one of the secretaries. Other prominent leaders included Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy
and Subhas Chandra Bose of Bengal
, Vithalbhai Patel
and other Congress leaders who were becoming dissatisfied with the Congress. The other group was the 'No-Changers', who had accepted Gandhi's decision to withdraw the movement.
Now both the Swarajists and the No-Changers were engaged in a fierce political struggle, but both were determined to avoid the disastrous experience of the 1907 split at Surat. On the advice of Gandhi, the two groups decided to remain in the Congress but to work in their separate ways. There was no basic difference between the two.
Swarajist members were elected to the councils. Vithalbhai Patel became the president of the Central Legislative Assembly
. However, the legislatures had very limited powers, and apart from some heated parliamentary debates, and procedural stand-offs with the British authorities, the core mission of obstructing British rule failed.
With the death of Chittaranjan Das in 1925, and with Motilal Nehru's return to the Congress the following year, the Swaraj party was greatly weakened.
The Swarajists sought more representation in the Congress offices, and an end to the mandatory requirement for Congressmen to spin khadi
cloth and do social service as a prerequisite for office. This was opposed by Gandhi's supporters, men like Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru
and Rajendra Prasad
, who became known as the No Changers as opposed to the Swarajist Changers. Gandhi relaxed the rules on spinning and named some Swarajists to important positions in the Congress Party. He also encouraged the Congress to support those Swarajists elected to the councils, so as not to embarrass them and leave them rudderless before the British authorities.
When the Simon Commission
arrived in India in 1928, millions of Indians were infuriated with the idea of an all-British committee writing proposals for Indian constitutional reforms without any Indian member or consultations with the Indian people. The Congress created a committee to write Indian proposals for constitutional reforms, headed by now Congress President Motilal Nehru
. The death of Lala Lajpat Rai
, beaten by police in Punjab
further infuriated India. People rallied around the Nehru Report and old political divisions and wounds were forgotten, and Vithalbhai Patel
and all Swarajist councillors resigned in protest.
Between 1929 and 1937, the Indian National Congress would declare the independence of India and launch the Salt Satyagraha
. In this tumultuous period, the Swaraj Party was defunct as its members quietly dissolved into the Congress fold.
when it contested the 1935 elections to the Imperial Legislative Council
held as per the Government of India Act 1935
.
From 1935 onwards, the Swarajya Party ceased to exist and was succeeded by the Indian National Congress in the elections to the Imperial Legislative Council as well as the Madras Legislative Council
.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in 1922 that sought greater self-government and political freedoms for the Indian people from the British Raj
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
. It was inspired by the concept of Swaraj
Swaraj
Swaraj can mean generally self-governance or "self-rule", and was used synonymously with "home-rule" by Gandhi but the word usually refers to Gandhi's concept for Indian independence from foreign domination. Swaraj lays stress on governance not by a hierarchical government, but self governance...
. In Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
and many other languages of India
Languages of India
The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...
, swaraj means "independence" or "self-rule".
Chauri Chaura
The Swaraj Party was formed by Indian politicians and members of the Indian National CongressIndian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
who had opposed Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
's suspension of all civil resistance in 1 January 1923 in response to the Chauri Chaura
Chauri Chaura
Chauri Chaura is a town near Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. The town is known most for an event in February 1922 during the British Raj when a police chowki was set on fire by a mob of angry citizens, killing 23 policemen inside.-Background:In the early 1920s, Indians, led by Mahatma Gandhi,...
tragedy, where policemen were killed by a mob of protestors. Gandhi felt responsible for the killings, reproached himself for not emphasizing non-violence more firmly, and feared that the entire Non-Cooperation Movement
Non-cooperation movement
The non-cooperation movement was a significant phase of the Indian struggle for freedom from British rule which lasted for years. This movement, which lasted from September 1920 to February 1922 and was led by Mohandas Gandhi, and supported by the Indian National Congress. It aimed to resist...
would degenerate into an orgy of violence between the British-controlled army and police and mobs of freedom-fighters, alienating and hurting millions of common Indians. He went on a fast-unto-death to convince all Indians to stop civil resistance. The Congress and other nationalist groups disavowed all activities of disobedience.
But many Indians felt that the Non-Cooperation Movement
Non-cooperation movement
The non-cooperation movement was a significant phase of the Indian struggle for freedom from British rule which lasted for years. This movement, which lasted from September 1920 to February 1922 and was led by Mohandas Gandhi, and supported by the Indian National Congress. It aimed to resist...
should not have been suspended over an isolated incident of violence, and that its astonishing success was actually close to breaking the back of British rule in India. These people became disillusioned with Gandhi's political judgments and instincts.
Council entry
Gandhi and most of the Congress party rejected the provincial and central legislative councils created by the British to offer some participation for Indians. They argued that the councils were rigged with un-elected allies of the British, and too un-democratic and simply "rubber stamps" of the ViceroyGovernor-General of India
The Governor-General of India was the head of the British administration in India, and later, after Indian independence, the representative of the monarch and de facto head of state. The office was created in 1773, with the title of Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William...
.
In December 1922, Chittaranjan Das
Chittaranjan Das
Chittaranjan Das was an eminent Bengali lawyer and a major figure in the Indian independence movement.-Personal life:...
, N.C. Kelkar and Motilal Nehru
Motilal Nehru
Motilal Nehru was an early Indian independence activist and leader of the Indian National Congress, who remained Congress President twice, and...
formed the Congress-Khilafat Swarajaya Party with Das as the president and Nehru as one of the secretaries. Other prominent leaders included Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was a Pakistani-Bengali politician and statesman who served as 5th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1956 till 1957, and a close associate of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, first Prime minister of Pakistan...
and Subhas Chandra Bose of Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, Vithalbhai Patel
Vithalbhai Patel
Vithalbhai Patel was an Indian legislator and political leader, and co-founder of the Swaraj Party.-Early life:Born in Nadiad, in the Indian state of Gujarat, Vithalbhai Jhaverbhai Patel was the third of five Patel brothers, four years elder to Vallabhbhai Patel, raised in the village of Karamsad...
and other Congress leaders who were becoming dissatisfied with the Congress. The other group was the 'No-Changers', who had accepted Gandhi's decision to withdraw the movement.
Now both the Swarajists and the No-Changers were engaged in a fierce political struggle, but both were determined to avoid the disastrous experience of the 1907 split at Surat. On the advice of Gandhi, the two groups decided to remain in the Congress but to work in their separate ways. There was no basic difference between the two.
Swarajist members were elected to the councils. Vithalbhai Patel became the president of the Central Legislative Assembly
Central Legislative Assembly
The Central Legislative Assembly was a legislature for India created by the Government of India Act 1919 from the former Imperial Legislative Council, implementing the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms...
. However, the legislatures had very limited powers, and apart from some heated parliamentary debates, and procedural stand-offs with the British authorities, the core mission of obstructing British rule failed.
With the death of Chittaranjan Das in 1925, and with Motilal Nehru's return to the Congress the following year, the Swaraj party was greatly weakened.
Changers and No-Changers, and the Simon Commission
After his release from prison in 1924, Gandhi sought to bring back the Swarajists to the Congress and re-unite the party. Gandhi's supporters were in a vast majority in the Congress, and the Congress still remained India's largest political party, but Gandhi felt it necessary to heal the divide with the Swarajists, so as to heal the nation's wounds over the 1922 suspension.The Swarajists sought more representation in the Congress offices, and an end to the mandatory requirement for Congressmen to spin khadi
Khadi
The term khādī or khaddar means cotton. khādī is Indian handspun and hand-woven cloth. The raw materials may be cotton, silk, or wool, which are spun into threads on a spinning wheel called a charkha. It is a versatile fabric, cool in the summer and warm in the winter...
cloth and do social service as a prerequisite for office. This was opposed by Gandhi's supporters, men like Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
and Rajendra Prasad
Rajendra Prasad
Dr. Rajendra Prasad was an Indian politician and educator. He was one of the architects of the Indian Republic, having drafted its first constitution and serving as the first president of independent India...
, who became known as the No Changers as opposed to the Swarajist Changers. Gandhi relaxed the rules on spinning and named some Swarajists to important positions in the Congress Party. He also encouraged the Congress to support those Swarajists elected to the councils, so as not to embarrass them and leave them rudderless before the British authorities.
When the Simon Commission
Simon Commission
The Indian Statutory Commission was a group of seven British Members of Parliament that had been dispatched to India in 1927 to study constitutional reform in Britain's most important colonial dependency. It was commonly referred to as the Simon Commission after its chairman, Sir John Simon...
arrived in India in 1928, millions of Indians were infuriated with the idea of an all-British committee writing proposals for Indian constitutional reforms without any Indian member or consultations with the Indian people. The Congress created a committee to write Indian proposals for constitutional reforms, headed by now Congress President Motilal Nehru
Motilal Nehru
Motilal Nehru was an early Indian independence activist and leader of the Indian National Congress, who remained Congress President twice, and...
. The death of Lala Lajpat Rai
Lala Lajpat Rai
Lala Lajpat Rai was an Indian author, freedom fighter and politician who is chiefly remembered as a leader in the Indian fight for freedom from the British Raj. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari or Sher-e-Punjab meaning the samem and was part of the Lal Bal Pal trio...
, beaten by police in Punjab
Punjab region
The Punjab , also spelled Panjab |water]]s"), is a geographical region straddling the border between Pakistan and India which includes Punjab province in Pakistan and the states of the Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and some northern parts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi...
further infuriated India. People rallied around the Nehru Report and old political divisions and wounds were forgotten, and Vithalbhai Patel
Vithalbhai Patel
Vithalbhai Patel was an Indian legislator and political leader, and co-founder of the Swaraj Party.-Early life:Born in Nadiad, in the Indian state of Gujarat, Vithalbhai Jhaverbhai Patel was the third of five Patel brothers, four years elder to Vallabhbhai Patel, raised in the village of Karamsad...
and all Swarajist councillors resigned in protest.
Between 1929 and 1937, the Indian National Congress would declare the independence of India and launch the Salt Satyagraha
Salt Satyagraha
The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagrahah began with the Dandi March on March 12, 1930, and was an important part of the Indian independence movement. It was a campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India, and triggered the wider...
. In this tumultuous period, the Swaraj Party was defunct as its members quietly dissolved into the Congress fold.
Madras Province Swarajya Party
The Madras Province Swarajya Party was established in 1923. S. Sathyamurthy and S. Srinivasa Iyengar led the party. Though the character of the organisation was heterogeneous it was largely dominated by Brahmins. The party contested in all provincial elections between 1923 and 1934 with the exception of the 1930 election which it did not participate officially due to the Civil Disobedience Movement though some of the members of the party contested as independents. The party emerged as the single largest party in the 1926 and 1934 Assembly elections but refused to form the provincial government under the existing dyarchy system. In 1934, the Madras Province Swarajya Party merged with the All India Swarajya Party which subsequently merged with the Indian National CongressIndian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
when it contested the 1935 elections to the Imperial Legislative Council
Imperial Legislative Council
The Imperial Legislative Council was a legislature for India during the middle years of the British Raj.The Indian Councils Act 1909 increased the number of members of the Legislative Council to sixty, of which twenty-seven were to be elected...
held as per the Government of India Act 1935
Government of India Act 1935
The Government of India Act 1935 was originally passed in August 1935 , and is said to have been the longest Act of Parliament ever enacted by that time. Because of its length, the Act was retroactively split by the Government of India Act 1935 into two separate Acts:# The Government of India...
.
From 1935 onwards, the Swarajya Party ceased to exist and was succeeded by the Indian National Congress in the elections to the Imperial Legislative Council as well as the Madras Legislative Council
Madras Legislative Council
Tamil Nadu Legislative Council is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It began its existence as Madras Legislative Council, the first provincial legislature for Madras Presidency. It was initially created as an advisory body in 1861, by the British...
.
| Presidents of the Madras Province Swarajya Party | Term start | Term End |
|---|---|---|
| S. Srinivasa Iyengar | 1923 | 1930 |
| Sathyamurthy | 1930 | 1935 |
Performance of the Madras Provincial Swarajya Party
| Elections | Seats in Madras Assembly | Assembly Seats won | Total number of Council seats | Members nominated to the council | Result | Party President |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1923 | 98 | 20 | 29 | |||
| 1926 | 98 | 41 | 34 | S. Srinivasa Iyengar | ||
| 1930 | Did not participate in the elections due to Civil Disobedience Movement | |||||
| 1934 | 98 | 29 | ||||
See also
- SwarajSwarajSwaraj can mean generally self-governance or "self-rule", and was used synonymously with "home-rule" by Gandhi but the word usually refers to Gandhi's concept for Indian independence from foreign domination. Swaraj lays stress on governance not by a hierarchical government, but self governance...
- Indian NationalismIndian nationalismIndian nationalism refers to the many underlying forces that molded the Indian independence movement, and strongly continue to influence the politics of India, as well as being the heart of many contrasting ideologies that have caused ethnic and religious conflict in Indian society...
- Mahatma GandhiMahatma GandhiMohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
- Chittaranjan DasChittaranjan DasChittaranjan Das was an eminent Bengali lawyer and a major figure in the Indian independence movement.-Personal life:...
- Motilal NehruMotilal NehruMotilal Nehru was an early Indian independence activist and leader of the Indian National Congress, who remained Congress President twice, and...
- Vallabhbhai Patel
- Vithalbhai PatelVithalbhai PatelVithalbhai Patel was an Indian legislator and political leader, and co-founder of the Swaraj Party.-Early life:Born in Nadiad, in the Indian state of Gujarat, Vithalbhai Jhaverbhai Patel was the third of five Patel brothers, four years elder to Vallabhbhai Patel, raised in the village of Karamsad...
- K.M. Munshi