rebellion among the army and the peasantry. Large sections of the Indian
people wished for a victory for the Central Powers. Many Muslims sym-
pathised with the Ottomans; tribal rebels’ millenarian uprisings against
British administrators drew support from rumours that ‘Kaiser baba’ was
on their side and would make British bullets harmless; and rioting crowds
were heard to shout ‘German ki jai’ (victory to the Germans). Jawaharlal
would later characterise the spirit of the time as that of ‘vicarious revenge’:
even among the middle classes, despite declarations of loyalty, there was
little enthusiasm for the British cause.^3
The British response was, not unexpectedly, cruel, with executions and
deportations the order of the day. The Defence of India Act, passed in
March 1915, empowered the government to suppress the rudimentary
civil liberties available in India, setting up special courts to authorise
executions, hand out life sentences and imprison suspects indefinitely
without trial. Particular targets were Bengali terrorists, Punjab Ghadr-ites
and pan-Islamic activists – the latter two had significant popular support,
and the Ghadrwas considered particularly dangerous due to its ability to
reach out to the ordinary soldier and peasant.
Much of this was not particularly significant to groups around the
Congress. Moderates and Extremists had begun to come together after
Tilak’s release from exile in Mandalay in June 1914, and by December
1915, the Tilak group had re-entered the Congress. The war, it was
believed, provided an opportunity to demand ‘Home Rule’ on the Irish
model for India. To this end, Annie Besant and Tilak set up Home Rule
Leagues in 1916. The British war effort, however, was not to be opposed
but supported; in exchange, the argument ran, Indians would be in a
better position to bargain for self-government after the war.
The dominant faction in the Muslim League – a party founded during
the Swadeshi movement, encouraged by British officials as a counter-
weight to the agitation in the hope that it would form the basis of Muslim
collaboration and loyalty to the government – also accepted this
argument. In December 1916, at Lucknow, the Congress and the Muslim
League agreed on a set of constitutional demands to be placed before the
British Government of India, and struck a bargain (the ‘Lucknow Pact’) in
which the Congress accepted separate electorates (established by the
Morley-Minto reforms) and the League accepted under-representation
for Muslims in Muslim-majority areas in return for over-representation
in Muslim-minority areas. This was a bargain that accurately reflected the
THE YOUNG GANDHIAN 31