NCERT Solutions for Class 8th Social Science Chapter 9 India’s Long Road to Independence
Updated on 2026-09-19
About this chapter
After 1857 the British Crown took direct control (1858). The royal proclamation promised to respect the ‘rights, dignity and honour of native Princes’ and to leave religion alone — but a ‘Resident’ was posted in almost every princely state, missionary work continued with official support, heavy land taxes fed famines, and the Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act of 1878 disarmed and gagged Indians. Promises on paper, control in practice. Reform and culture came before politics. The Brahmo Samaj (1828), Arya Samaj (1875), Vidyasagar, Syed Ahmed Khan and the Phules attacked child marriage, the treatment of widows, caste discrimination and the lack of schooling. Bankim’s Bande Mataram (composed 1875) and Vivekananda’s call to “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached” gave the coming
- Chapter opener
- Introduction to the chapter
- A Royal Proclamation
- Other Influences (Swami Vivekananda)
- The Nationalist Agenda (the Bande Mataram daily)
- India as the ‘Mother’ (Fig. 2.14 and Fig. 2.15)
- DON’T MISS OUT: Freedom Struggle in the North-East
- The Revolutionaries (Tilak’s sedition trial)
- The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and its Aftermath
- The Quit India Movement
Quick revision
| Term | What it means | Where it appears in the chapter | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paramountcy | British supremacy over the princely states — the princes ruled, but under British overlordship | A Royal Proclamation, p. 39 | Some 560 princes kept their thrones, but a ‘Resident’ or ‘Political Agent’ interfered so much that their autonomy became ‘a symbolic one’ |
| Martyr | A person who is killed or tortured for his or her beliefs | Margin note, p. 38 | The ICHR’s five-volume Dictionary of Martyrs lists some 14,000 of them — the chapter can name only a handful |
| Seditious | Promoting sedition or rebellion against the authority of a state or monarch | Margin note, p. 46 | The charge used again and again — Tilak in 1897 and 1908, and to suppress Bande Mataram and Yugantar |
| Swadeshi | ‘Of one’s own country’ — using Indian-made goods and building Indian industry | pp. 48, 61 | It hit Britain where it paid: cotton textile imports. Tata’s Swadeshi Mills (1886), Punjab National Bank (1895) and Bengal Chemicals (1901) came before the 1905 movement |
| Boycott | Refusing British goods and, later, British schools, colleges and courts | p. 48 | Effective against goods; weaker against institutions, because Indian schools and courts ‘were not ready enough to offer a transition’ |
| Swaraj | Literally ‘self-rule’; adopted with Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education at the Calcutta Congress, December 1906 | p. 51 | It was deliberately not defined — it could mean self-rule inside the Empire or full independence, so Moderates and Nationalists could both accept it |
| Moderates / Nationalists | Moderates wanted gradual reform and autonomy inside the Empire; Nationalists wanted independence and mass awakening | The 1907 Surat Split, pp. 52–53 | The Moderates and the British called the second group ‘Extremists’; they called themselves simply ‘Nationalists’ |
| Satyagraha | ‘Insistence on truth’ — passive resistance, ahimsa and the acceptance of suffering in the quest for truth | pp. 60–61 | Gandhi worked it out in South Africa (1907–14) and first applied it in India to Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda |
| Khadi | Hand-spun, hand-woven yarn (and the cloth made from it) | THINK ABOUT IT, p. 62 | Not just cloth: work for poor villagers, a symbol of self-reliance, and a direct blow to British textile imports |
| Separate electorates | Seats for which only voters of one community may vote | Lucknow Pact p. 60; Poona Pact p. 72 | Congress conceded them to the League in 1916; Gandhi fasted against them for the Depressed Classes, and the Poona Pact substituted more reserved seats instead |
| Dominion status | Full internal self-government, with Britain still controlling defence and foreign policy and the Crown as head of state | Motilal Nehru Report 1928, p. 67 | Canada and Australia had it. Because Britain would not grant even this, younger leaders demanded Purna Swaraj instead |
| Purna Swaraj | Complete independence | Lahore session, December 1929, p. 68 | Not a new idea — the Nationalists had said it two decades earlier, Aurobindo in 1908, Hasrat Mohani in 1921, Savarkar in 1925 |
| Ulgulaan | ‘The Great Tumult’ — Birsa Munda’s tribal uprising of 1899–1900 | p. 47 | Tribal India fought colonial rule on its own terms: land, faith and dignity. Birsa died in jail at 24 |
| Radcliffe Line | The boundary drawn by the British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe in 1947 | pp. 77–78 | Five weeks to split Punjab and Bengal; ‘millions suddenly found themselves on the “wrong” side of these lines’ |
Exercises
- Chapter opener — The Big Questions Page 36–37
- Introduction to the chapter — LET’S EXPLORE Page 38
- A Royal Proclamation — LET’S REMEMBER Page 39
- Other Influences (Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Bande Mataram) — LET’S EXPLORE Page 42
- Other Influences (Swami Vivekananda) — LET’S EXPLORE Page 43
- The Nationalist Agenda (the Bande Mataram daily) — LET’S EXPLORE Page 50
- India as the ‘Mother’ (Fig. 2.14 and Fig. 2.15) — LET’S EXPLORE Page 52
- DON’T MISS OUT: Freedom Struggle in the North-East — LET’S EXPLORE Page 55
- The Revolutionaries (Tilak’s sedition trial) — LET’S EXPLORE Page 56
- The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and its Aftermath — LET’S EXPLORE Page 63
- Purna Swaraj and Civil Disobedience (the Lahore resolution, December 1929) — LET’S EXPLORE Page 69
- The Quit India Movement — THINK ABOUT IT Page 76
- Partition, Turmoil, and Independence — THINK ABOUT IT Page 80
- Partition, Turmoil, and Independence (closing paragraph) — In-text Questions Page 80
- End of chapter — Questions and activities Page 81–84