tance in most every aspect of daily life. This meant boycotting all British-
made goods, refusing to send children to British schools and colleges, ig-
noring British courts of law, and rejecting British titles and honors.
Noncompliance extended to British elections and the British tax system.
By withdrawing their support, the Indian people hoped to stop completely
the British in India and allow for the creation of an independent Indian
nation. Hundreds of thousands responded to Gandhi’s plea and joined his
civil disobedience campaigns, and the Indian National Congress quickly
gained a mass following.
The situation in India was a powder keg waiting to explode. In 1927,
rioting broke out when the British Parliament placed no Indians on a
commission created to investigate the government of India. Soon after,
the British imprisoned Gandhi and his associates but could not silence
their message. In 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the
Congress. Like Gandhi, Nehru was passionately devoted to the cause of
independence. Finally in 1935, the British Parliament passed the Gov-
ernment of India Act, which provided for elected legislatures in the
provinces, but restricted the number of eligible voters based on property
and educational requirements. Amid this growing agitation between the
British colonial government and Indian peoples, Mother Teresa arrived
to do her work.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Nonviolent resistance to the British in India continued to grow. By
1939, anti-British feelings intensified as the Indian people watched
Britain once more plunge into hostilities with the Germans. The Parlia-
ment, as it had during World War I, declared a state of war with Germany
on behalf of the Indian people without consulting them.
The consequences of British actions were horrendous in India, result-
ing in the Great Famine of 1942–1943. The transportation system was
now taken over by the British military; even the small river crafts used to
deliver rice to Calcutta from the paddies of Bengal were pressed into ser-
vice. Burmese rice, which accounted for 10 percent of the staple food for
Bengal, was cut off, causing a shortage. The Indian government, preoccu-
pied by the war, saw the problem as one that needed to be solved locally.
Prices started to rise and both black marketers and money lenders pros-
pered. Poor families in the rural areas, depleted of their meager savings,
sold their land. With no food to eat, thousands fled the region for Cal-
cutta, flocking to the city’s already overburdened soup kitchens. Housing
for the poor was already overstretched, and thousands of people died in
24 MOTHER TERESA