During the First World War, significant changes occurred in India’s political life and socio-economic conditions. Indian politicians who were not revolutionaries supported the British government’s war efforts. Tilak and Gandhiji toured villages in 1918 to raise men and money for British assistance. Tilak remarked: “Buy war bonds, but treat them as leases for Home Rule.” Thus, during the war, an objective common platform emerged under which the Moderates, Extremists, and the Muslim League (controlled by the Young Party) shared a single programme — to extend support to the war in exchange for exerting strong yet constitutional pressure on the crisis-ridden British government. They hoped that a grateful Britain would reward India’s loyalty and enable the country to take a giant leap toward self-government. They forgot that the various powers in the First World War were fighting only to safeguard their own colonies.
Many Indian leaders still believed that the government would not grant any real rights until popular pressure was applied, and for that, a genuine mass political movement had to be launched. Several other factors were also pushing Indian nationalism in that direction. The war had made the condition of India’s poorer classes miserable and deplorable. They knew that inflation and increased taxation were inevitable because of the war; hence, they were ready to join any militant protest movement.
However, the Indian National Congress was not in a position to lead such a mass movement. Due to the infamous Surat Split, repressive measures against Swadeshi activists, and the constitutional reforms of 1909, the Moderate faction had become inactive and inert, losing all contact with the masses. After his term of exile ended in 1914, Tilak returned from Mandalay and showed eagerness to bury past bitterness with his old Congress opponents.
He felt that the Indian National Congress had become synonymous with the Indian national movement and no national movement could succeed without its sanction. To convince the Moderates, win their trust, and ensure that the British government would not resort to repression in the future, he declared: “I say clearly that we want reform of the administration in India, just as the agitators in Ireland are demanding. We have no intention of overthrowing British rule.” He reiterated his loyalty to the British government and appealed to the Indian people to stand by it in its hour of crisis.
The Home Rule Movement
Annie Besant, the worldwide president of the Theosophical Society, was not anti-imperialist, but she believed that granting Indians a substantial measure of self-government was essential for friendship between India and Britain. She wanted a political movement for self-government in India on the lines of the British Radical and Irish Home Rule movements. Besant felt that the movement’s success required the Congress’s approval and the cooperation of the Extremists. Consequently, she repeatedly pressured the Congress Moderates to readmit Tilak and his Extremist colleagues.
The Extremists could not rejoin the Congress until the death of Pherozeshah Mehta in 1915. Meanwhile, Moderate leaders like Bhupendranath Basu of Calcutta were ready to accept any means that could pull the Congress out of its current stagnation. The Congress remained merely a platform for deliberation and was unprepared for any sustained agitation. Therefore, Tilak and Annie Besant decided to launch their own political movement while continuing to pressurise the Congress to readmit the Extremists. Finally, at the annual Congress session in December 1915, Tilak’s group (the Extremists) was permitted to rejoin.
Formation of the Home Rule Leagues
The simple objective of the Home Rule Movement was to secure Home Rule (self-government) for India and to conduct an educational programme that would foster pride in the motherland among Indians.
The task of organising the movement was undertaken by two separate Home Rule Leagues led by Tilak and Annie Besant. Annie Besant had announced plans for such a league as early as December 1915 and had already begun awakening political consciousness through her weekly Commonweal (launched 2 January 1914 from Madras) and daily New India (launched 14 July 1914). In early 1916, Young India also began publication from Bombay. Bal Gangadhar Tilak founded his Indian Home Rule League on 28 April 1916 at a provincial conference in Belgaum, partly to retain his base in Maharashtra.
Annie Besant formally launched her All-India Home Rule League in September 1916 at Madras (Adyar) and appointed George Arundale as organising secretary. The two leagues decided to work both in cooperation and independently. Tilak and Besant divided their spheres of work to avoid confusion. Tilak’s league remained confined to Maharashtra (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, the Central Provinces, and Berar. By April 1917 it had 14,000 members, rising to 32,000 by early 1918.
Tilak and N.C. Kelkar ran their organisation from Poona in a fairly centralised manner. Besant’s league had a more all-India character, with its Adyar headquarters supported by nearly 200 local branches spread across towns and villages. By mid-1917, her league had 27,000 members. The two leagues never merged, because, in Besant’s words, “some of his (Tilak’s) followers did not like me, and some of mine did not like him.”
Beginning of the Home Rule Movement
Acting in mutual understanding, the two Home Rule Leagues launched a massive campaign for Home Rule through public meetings in cities, establishment of reading rooms, large-scale sale of pamphlets, and lectures. The nature of these activities was not very different from the old Moderate politics; the new element was their far greater intensity and reach.
Within a year of its formation, Tilak’s league sold 47,000 copies of six Marathi and two English pamphlets. Later, these were also printed in Gujarati and Kannada. Explaining the importance of Home Rule to the people, Tilak said: “India is like a son who has grown up. It is time for the father or guardian to give him his rightful share. The Indian people must now claim their rights. They are fully entitled to them.” During this movement, Tilak gave his famous slogan: “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it.”
Tilak tried to link the ideal of Home Rule with concrete and clear grievances of the people, such as education in regional languages and the demand for linguistic states. He said: “Demanding provinces on the basis of Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, and other languages simply means that the medium of education should be the regional language. Do the English educate their people in French? Do the Germans educate theirs in English, or the Turks in French?” This shows that Tilak harboured no regional or Marathi narrow-mindedness.
On issues of non-Brahmin representation and untouchability, Tilak was not doctrinally casteist. He explained to non-Brahmins that the conflict was not between Brahmins and non-Brahmins but between the educated and the uneducated. Since Brahmins were more educated, even a government advocating for non-Brahmins was forced to recruit Brahmins for government jobs. At a conference on the eradication of untouchability, Tilak declared: “If God himself tolerates untouchability, I will not accept such a God.” Tilak’s movement was not exclusively a Chitpavan Brahmin movement either. Membership lists of the Poona branch of the Home Rule League reveal substantial participation by non-Brahmin traders, and in districts like Khandesh, Maratha and Gujar members outnumbered Brahmins.
No religious appeal is evident in Tilak’s speeches of this period. The demand for Home Rule was entirely secular. He said the opposition to the British was not because they followed a different religion but because they were not working in the interest of the Indian people.
In Tilak’s words:
“Whether English or Muslim, if someone works for the welfare of the people of this country, he is not an outsider to us. This sense of foreignness has nothing to do with religion or occupation; it is a straightforward question of interests.”
To curb the growing influence of the Home Rule League, the British government intensified repressive measures. On 23 July 1916 — Tilak’s 60th birthday, when he was presented with a purse of one lakh rupees — the government served him a “show-cause notice” threatening restrictions on his activities and demanded a bond of ₹60,000. For Tilak, this was perhaps the greatest gift.
He said: “Now the Home Rule movement will spread like wildfire in a jungle. Government repression will only fan the flames of rebellion.”
A team of lawyers led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah fought Tilak’s case. They lost in the magistrate’s court but won on appeal in the High Court in November. Gandhi’s *Young India* wrote: “This is a great victory for freedom of expression and a major success for the Home Rule movement.” Tilak now began publicly stating that the government had permitted demands for Home Rule or self-government.
Annie Besant’s league also launched a massive campaign for self-government. Arundale asked volunteers to establish libraries through New India for political education, conduct classes for students, distribute pamphlets, collect funds, organise social work and political meetings, and persuade friends to support and join the movement.
By September 1916, Besant’s league had sold 300,000 copies of 26 English pamphlets. When Besant was barred from Berar and the Central Provinces in November 1916, all league branches held protest meetings and sent resolutions to the Viceroy and Home Secretary. Similarly, when Tilak was banned from Punjab and Delhi in 1917, protest meetings were held across the country.
Moderate Congressmen
Many Moderate Congressmen, frustrated with Congress inertia, joined the Home Rule movement. Leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, V. Chakravarti, and J. Banerjee took league membership. Though members of Gokhale’s Servants of India Society were not allowed to join the league, they supported the movement through speeches and pamphlet distribution. Many Moderate nationalists in the United Provinces toured villages and towns with Home Rule workers to prepare for the Lucknow Congress session. The 1916 Lucknow session became an opportunity for Home Rule members to demonstrate their strength. Tilak’s supporters reserved an entire train to Lucknow, which some called the “Congress Special” and others the “Home Rule Special.” Arundale urged league members to make every effort to attend the session.
Congress and the Muslim League
The split in the Congress that occurred at the Surat session (1907) persisted until 1916. While the government continued crushing nationalist revolutionaries, it also tried to widen the rift between Moderates and Extremists as well as between Hindus and Muslims through the Morley-Minto Reforms. However, certain national and international events increased the distance between the British government and Indian Muslims: the annulment of the Bengal Partition (1911), Britain’s refusal to help Turkey in the Italo-Turkish and Balkan Wars (1911–12), Lord Hardinge’s rejection of the proposal for a Muslim University at Aligarh in August 1912, and the 1913 Kanpur riots following the demolition of a portion attached to a mosque. Indian Muslims were deeply disillusioned with the British government.
In 1912, the so-called Young Party captured the Muslim League and tried to make it more aggressive. Gradually, Muslim youth began moving beyond the limited political vision of the Aligarh school and drawing closer to the Congress.
Joint Bombay Sessions of Congress and the League (1915)
The new sense of unity generated by the war and the Home Rule movements convinced not only Moderates and Extremists but also Muslims that internal divisions were gravely harming their objectives, and they needed to unite against the government. Due to this rising aspiration for nationalism and national unity, efforts by Tilak, Annie Besant, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah succeeded in holding the Congress and Muslim League sessions together in Bombay in 1915, where delegates jointly organised a Muslim banquet. Jinnah came to be known as the “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.” The following year, both organisations again held simultaneous sessions at Lucknow.
Lucknow Session of the Congress (1916)
Two historically significant events occurred at the 1916 Lucknow session of the Congress. First, the two wings of the Congress — Moderates and Extremists — reunited. This was a necessity of the time, as internal divisions had rendered the Congress inactive.
Presiding over the session, Ambikacharan Mazumdar said: “After ten years of painful separation and misunderstanding, during which needless controversies wasted our energy, both sections of the great national party have realised that disunity means defeat and unity means victory. The brothers have come together again.” In fact, Tilak had begun efforts to reunite the two factions immediately after his release from jail in 1914. The rising nationalist tide made even old Congressmen eager to welcome Tilak and other Extremist nationalists back.
The Lucknow Pact, 1916 (Congress-League Pact)
The second major event was that the Congress and the Muslim League, setting aside past differences, presented joint political demands to the government. This unity was formalised by the signing of the Congress-League Scheme, popularly known as the Lucknow Pact. Both Tilak and Jinnah played crucial roles in bringing the two organisations together, as both believed that only through Hindu-Muslim unity could India achieve self-government. Under the pact, the Congress accepted the League’s demand for separate electorates and communal representation. Both organisations passed identical resolutions in their sessions, presenting a joint scheme of constitutional reforms based on separate electorates and demanding that the British government immediately declare the grant of self-government to India.
Senior leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya opposed the pact because it gave excessive weight to the Muslim League. In response, Tilak said: “Some gentlemen allege that we Hindus are giving too much to our Muslim brothers. I say that if self-government is granted only to the Muslim community, I will have no objection; if it is given to the Rajputs, I don’t mind.
Even if it is given to the most backward Hindu classes, I have no objection. Let any community in India be given this right — we have no objection. My statement represents the entire Indian national sentiment.” Undoubtedly, the Lucknow Pact was a significant step in the development of Hindu-Muslim unity. Separate electorates for Muslims were accepted so that the minority would not feel that the majority wished to dominate them. However, no effort was made to secularise the political outlook of Hindus and Muslims so that they could understand that their interests as Hindus or Muslims were not separate in politics.
After the Lucknow Pact, communalism retained full scope to raise its head in Indian politics. Nevertheless, the establishment of unity between Moderates and Extremists and between the Congress and the Muslim League created a wave of political enthusiasm throughout the country. The demand for constitutional reforms was raised again at the Lucknow Congress session. Tilak moved a resolution to form an executive committee to implement Congress decisions and programmes, but it was defeated due to Moderate opposition. Four years later, in 1920, when Gandhi revised the Congress constitution, Tilak’s proposal was effectively accepted. After the Congress session ended, a joint meeting of both Home Rule Leagues was held in the same pandal, where the Congress-League Pact was praised.
Government Reaction and Nationwide Agitation
The British government was naturally alarmed by the events at Lucknow, especially the Congress-League Pact and the growing influence of the Home Rule Leagues. The Madras government banned students from attending political meetings, which was opposed throughout the country. Tilak said: “The government knows that patriotic sentiment excites students the most. In any case, no country can progress without the strength of its youth.”
When the Madras government interned Annie Besant and her two chief Theosophist associates, George Arundale and B.P. Wadia, in June 1917, nationwide protests erupted. S. Subrahmanyam Aiyar returned his knighthood. Moderates like Madan Mohan Malaviya, Surendranath Banerjea, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had not yet joined the league, now did so and raised their voices against the arrests. At a Congress meeting on 28 July 1917, Tilak warned that if the leaders were not released immediately, a peaceful non-cooperation movement would be launched.
Shankarlal Banker and Jamnadas Dwarkadas collected signatures of a thousand people willing to defy government orders and march to meet Besant. They also obtained signatures from peasants and workers in support of Swaraj. The widespread reach of the Home Rule movement is evident from the fact that by 1917–18, membership of the Home Rule Leagues across India reached approximately 60,000 — the highest in Gujarat, Sindh, United Provinces, Bihar, and parts of South India, regions that had previously remained aloof from the nationalist movement. Montagu wrote in his diary: “Shiva cut his wife into 52 pieces; when the Government of India arrested Annie Besant, the same thing happened to it.”
The Montagu Declaration
Instead of resorting to severe repression to suppress the rising tide of nationalist and anti-government sentiment, the British government once again adopted the policy of offering a carrot along with the stick. To placate nationalist opinion, on 20 August 1917 it announced: “The policy of His Majesty’s Government is that of increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.”
This statement was the exact opposite of what Morley had said in 1909 while presenting the constitutional reforms in Parliament — that their purpose was certainly not to establish Swaraj in the country. The greatest benefit of the Montagu Declaration was that the demand for Home Rule or Swaraj could no longer be branded seditious. However, it did not mean that the British government was about to grant Swaraj. The declaration also stated that responsible government would be introduced only when the time was right, and the British government would decide when that time had come. It was clear that the British were not going to transfer power in the near future. On the basis of the Montagu Declaration, Annie Besant was released in September 1917. By then her popularity had soared so high that in December 1917 she was elected president of the Calcutta Congress session, becoming the first woman to hold that position.
Decline of the Home Rule Movement
In 1918, the Home Rule movement weakened for several reasons. The Moderates who had joined the movement in anger over Besant’s arrest became inactive after her release. The announcement of the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms in July 1918 convinced many leaders that further agitation was unnecessary. The reforms created a new split among nationalists — some wanted to accept them as they were, while others wanted outright rejection.
Even Annie Besant was confused on the issue of the reforms and peaceful non-cooperation; sometimes she criticised the reforms, sometimes she called them acceptable under pressure from supporters. Tilak remained firm in his opposition for a long time but, due to Besant’s vacillating policies and the changed attitude of the Moderates, he could not sustain the opposition single-handedly. In September 1918 he left for England to fight his libel case against Valentine Chirol, author of *Indian Unrest*. Meanwhile, during 1917–18, Gandhi was earning fame for the first time through his campaigns in Champaran, Kheda, and Ahmedabad.
Evaluation of the Home Rule Movement
The importance of the Home Rule movement, especially Besant’s league, lies in its extension to new regions, new social groups, and a new generation. Apart from Maharashtra, the other two old Extremist strongholds — Bengal and Punjab — remained relatively quiet, having suffered severe British repression during the war, making open militant activity difficult.
Besant’s league drew its main support from Tamil Brahmins of Madras, commercial communities of the United Provinces (Kayasths, Kashmiri Brahmins, and some Muslims), Hindu minorities of Sindh, and young Gujarati industrialists, merchants, and lawyers of Gujarat and Bombay. The popularity of Theosophy in these regions owed something to its blend of limited social reform with pride in ancient Hindu knowledge and glory. Secondly, organisations like the Brahmo Samaj or Arya Samaj had little influence there. Thirdly, these areas (except Bombay and Madras cities) had a kind of political vacuum, lacking any well-established tradition — either Extremist or Moderate.
Nevertheless, the Home Rule Leagues could not initiate the politics of mass movements in India. In Madras, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, despite some support from untouchables, the leagues remained Brahmin-dominated, and non-Brahmins opposed them. Besant herself, along with her close associates, eventually retired from militant politics.
The greatest achievement of the Home Rule movement was that it trained a new generation of militant fighters for the future national movement: S. Satyamurti in Madras, Jitendralal Banerjee in Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru and Khaliq-uz-Zaman in Allahabad and Lucknow, wealthy import merchant Jamnadas Dwarkadas, industrialist Umar Sobani, Shankarlal Banker, and Indulal Yajnik in Bombay and Gujarat. When Gandhi called for satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act in 1919, all those who had been politically awakened by the Home Rule movement joined it.
