The Indian Independence Movement encompassed activities and ideas aiming to end the East India Company rule (1757–1858) and the British Raj (1858–1947) in the Indian subcontinent.
The very first organised militant movements were in Bengal, but they later took movement in the then newly formed Indian National Congress with prominent moderate leaders seeking only their basic right to appear for Indian Civil Service examinations, as well as more rights, economic in nature, for the people of the soil. The early part of the 20th century saw a more radical approach towards political self-rule proposed by leaders such as the Lal, Bal, Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh. The last stages of the self-rule struggle from the 1920s onwards saw Congress adopt Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's policy of nonviolence and civil resistance,Muhammad Ali Jinnah's constitutional struggle for the rights of minorities in India, and several other campaigns. Activists Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh preached armed revolution to achieve self-rule. Poets and writers such as Rabindranath Tagore, Subramaniya Bharathi, Allama Iqbal, Josh Malihabadi,Mohammad Ali Jouhar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Kazi Nazrul Islam used literature, poetry and speech as a tool for political awareness. Feminists such as Sarojini Naidu and Begum Rokeya promoted the emancipation of Indian women and their participation in national politics. Babasaheb Ambedkarchampioned the cause of the disadvantaged sections of Indian society within the larger self-rule movement. The period of the Second World War saw the peak of the campaigns by the Quit India movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Army movement led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
The Indian self-rule movement was a mass-based movement that encompassed various sections of society. It also underwent a process of constant ideological evolution.[1] Although the basic ideology of the movement was anti-colonial, it was supported by a vision of independent capitalist economic development coupled with a secular, democratic, republican, and civil-libertarian political structure.[2] After the 1930s, the movement took on a strong socialist orientation, due to the increasing influence of left-wing elements in the Congress as well as the rise and growth of the Communist Party of India.[1] The All-India Muslim League was formed in 1906 as a separate Muslim party which later in 1940 called for separate state of Pakistan. The work of these various movements led ultimately to the Indian Independence Act 1947, which ended the suzerainty in India and the creation of Pakistan. India remained a Dominion of the Crown until 26 January 1950, when the Constitution of India came into force, establishing the Republic of India; Pakistan was a dominion until 1956, when it adopted its first republican constitution. In 1971, East Pakistan declared independence as the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
