Embedded Files
INDIAN NATIONALISM IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD
INSTRUCTIONS
Review the context using p.740-742 (Ch.19) in the textbook. Write a sentence summary for each of the required subsections.
Read both documents. Then summarize both questions in the space provided.
Re-read p.740-742 in the textbook. Source Document A using "Occasion" and "Author’s POV" using the information found in the reading.
Then source Document B using "Purpose for a Particular Audience."
DOCUMENT A
Source: Mohandas Gandhi, "Letter to Lord Irwin," March 1930.
Note: Lord Irwin was the English governor in India. Gandhi wrote this letter before marching to the sea and breaking the English Salt Tax law. Gandhi's march to the sea is generally called '"The Salt March." Most historians consider it the turning point of the movement to free India from British control. The Salt Tax Law made it illegal for Indians to manufacture or collect their own salt.
Dear Friend,
Before embarking on Civil Disobedience and taking the risk I have dreaded to take all these years, I would ... approach you and find a way out. I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst therefore 1 hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India. ... And why do I regard the British rule a curse?...Even the salt [the peasant] must use to live is so taxed as to make the burden fall heaviest on him. ... The tax shows itself still more burdensome on the poor man when it is remembered that salt is one thing he must eat more than the rich man...
My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India... But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and if my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram [Community] as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws....
DOCUMENT B
Source: illustration by Paulo Garretto, The Graphic (an illustrated weekly newspaper published in the U.K. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), May 24, 1930
Caption: “Gandhi, the Tailsalter"
This cartoon shows Gandhi “salting” the tail of the British lion (the national symbol of Britain). It is based on an old folk belief that if you put salt on a bird’s tail, you will then be able to catch it.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse