The road to Indian Independence was long. It was tough. It was marked by moments of political high, interspersed with long periods of political low. But the freedom struggle eventually succeeded, with the British leaving the land that they had no business occupying in the first place. In this finale, HT senior editor Prashant Jha traces the brutali…

The war had ended. India was inching towards independence, but a clear political roadmap and timeline was missing. The Muslim League had stepped up its agitation for Pakistan. It was a turbulent, uncertain time. And then, in 1946, the Empire was struck with a final blow from within. The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny started from Bombay, and spread acros…

Even as a war broke out in Europe, a clash between different streams of the Indian nationalist movement broke out at home. Triggered by differences with the Mahatma and his protégés, and a desire to leverage the the crisis presented by the war, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, the political lion from Bengal, decided it was time to embark on his own pat…

In 1939, the Second World War broke out in Europe. And India suddenly found itself as a participant in the war, on behalf of the allied powers. There was one problem — no Indian had been consulted. Indian nationalists were clear. They were opposed to Fascism in Europe, but wanted independence at home first. But, by this time, there were a range of …

As the civil disobedience movement faded, the British embarked on a political exercise to defuse nationalist aspirations — in a way that would help the Empire retain absolute political control. This manifested itself in the Round Table Conferences, the Government of India Act 1935, and the 1937 provincial elections, in which the Congress participat…

The nationalist movement was at a crossroad by the end of the 1920s. On one hand, the British had shown no inclination to give Indians the right to self rule and continued with their repressive methods. On the other, anger against colonial rule had been building up, with the Congress finally declaring its aim was purna swaraj, complete independence…

The Rowlatt Acts and the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre had enraged nationalist opinion, and it was in this backdrop that the Mahatma launched his first truly mass-based national movement against the Empire - the Non-Cooperation movement — in 1920. Added to it was the demand for the restoration of the Caliphate — a demand close to the heart of Indian Mu…

Even as nationalist consciousness was growing, the British decided to embark on what was arguably one of the most coercive phases of colonial rule. In 1919, soon after the First World War ended, the British introduced the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly called the Rowlatt Acts. The new legislation provided for indefinite …

1915 marked a decisive turn in India’s freedom struggle. And that wasn’t because of anything the British did. It wasn’t because of anything that the Congress did. It was because one man returned to India after close to two and a half decades abroad. That man was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. And his return, his political philosophy, his techniques of…

Just a decade after the Partition of Bengal, and the sharpening of the Hindu-Muslim divide, there was a moment of unity — a unity made possible by a pact between the Congress and the Muslim League in Lucknow in 1916. The Congress agreed to the idea of separate electorates and demanded that one-third of the seats in the imperial and provincial legis…

1905 saw a change in the direction of India’s nationalist struggle and deepened a communal divide that would haunt India for decades to come. The reason: Lord Curzon, the imperial Viceroy decided it was time to divide British India’s largest province, the Bengal Presidency. The Partition of Bengal was an attempt to divide the Hindu-majority west an…

It had been three decades since the mutiny. It was a period of gloom, as the Crown consolidated its rule, caring little for the well-being of Indians. But a set of early Indian nationalists and a somewhat unusual British reformer came together in Bombay in 1885 to set up what was to become the primary vehicle of India’s political aspirations — the …

The summer of 1857 changed the course of Indian history. For over a century, the East India Company had been expanding its territorial economic control over India. The Company used coercion, deception, and cooption, and appeared invincible. But beneath the surface of deceptive calm, there was discontent against what was the foreign corporate rule. …

India’s freedom struggle is a story of evolution and revolution. It is a story of elite leadership and mass movements. It is a story of the most remarkable and successful non-violent struggle in global history wearing down the most powerful Empire the world has seen through the power of truth. It is a story of repression and revolt. It is a story o…