Colonial India and the Freedom Movement: Causation and Sequence
Building the framework
Organise the period around three transitions: the shift from Company rule to Crown rule after 1857, the growth of organised nationalism from 1885, and the mass mobilisation phase from 1919 to 1947. For each, know the institutional changes and the economic arguments.
Concepts a candidate must hold
The Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari systems and their different revenue assumptions; deindustrialisation debates; the drain of wealth argument; the Ilbert Bill controversy; the split between Moderates and Extremists at Surat in 1907; the Lucknow Pact of 1916; the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh; Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience, and Quit India as distinct strategies; and the constitutional negotiations culminating in the Cabinet Mission and Mountbatten Plan.
Typical traps
Do not conflate the founding of the Congress with the start of mass politics; 1885 was an elite petitioning phase. Be careful with dates around the partition of Bengal in 1905 and its annulment in 1911. Questions often test whether a movement was launched by a resolution or by a specific incident.
Rule of thumb
For any Gandhian movement, identify the trigger, the method, and the reason for suspension as three separate facts. In a question about why Non-Cooperation was withdrawn, the Chauri Chaura incident is the trigger, but the underlying reason was concern that mass violence would destroy the movement's moral basis.