Q1.
During the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–22, some 40,000 participants were jailed for various terms. The Salt Satyagraha of 1930 saw over 60,000 people jailed and a large number brutalised by the police. The Civil Disobedience Movement during 1931–34 saw another 40,000 freedom fighters jailed. During the Quit India Movement of 1942–45, over 100,000 freedom fighters were imprisoned and nearly 10,000 killed during the brutal repression of the movement. You need not remember these figures. However, conduct a class discussion about their significance in terms of the huge collective sacrifice suffered by the Indian people.
Answer
Set the figures side by side first — the shape of the numbers is the argument.
| Movement | Years | Jailed | Killed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-Cooperation | 1920–22 | some 40,000 | — |
| Salt Satyagraha | 1930 | over 60,000 | a large number brutalised by the police |
| Civil Disobedience | 1931–34 | another 40,000 | — |
| Quit India | 1942–45 | over 100,000 | nearly 10,000 |
Four things the class should be able to say by the end of the discussion:
- Well over two lakh people went to jail in these four movements alone — and that is only the four the box lists. It leaves out the Swadeshi years, the revolutionary trials, the Ghadar arrests, the Cellular Jail and every local agitation. Freedom was not won by a few dozen famous names; it was won by hundreds of thousands of unknown ones.
- The numbers rise over time — and so does the cost. 40,000 in 1920–22, over 60,000 in 1930, over 100,000 in 1942–45. That is the movement widening from the educated and the urban towards the whole country. But look at the last column: only in 1942 does mass killing appear. As participation grew, so did the violence used against it.
- What one arrest actually meant. A jail term was not a symbolic gesture. It meant a lost job or a lost harvest; a family without earnings; children taken out of school; property confiscated; and often, as the box says of 1930, being ‘brutalised by the police’ first. Aruna Asaf Ali had suffered solitary confinement; Bina Das was sentenced to nine years of rigorous imprisonment; the men in the Cellular Jail extracted oil by hand and “many of them died and some lost their sanity”. Ask the class to work out what a year in jail would cost a family they know.
- Why the sacrifice worked. Jailing a hundred thousand people in 1942 did not end Quit India — Viceroy Linlithgow himself called it “by far the most serious rebellion since 1857”. That is the whole logic of mass civil disobedience: a government can imprison a leader, but it cannot imprison a country. The willingness of ordinary people to accept the punishment is what made the punishment useless.
The discussion should also stay honest about the arithmetic. These are estimates, not census figures. Colonial records under-report; later accounts sometimes over-report. The chapter is right to say “you need not remember these figures” — what matters is the order of magnitude, and the fact that behind every number is a person who chose to be counted.
Take it home: The ICHR’s five-volume Dictionary of Martyrs lists about 14,000 people who died. Look up whether anyone from your district is in it.