Tamil Nadu HSE Second Year History key terms

Political party founded in Bombay in 1885 by A. O. Hume and leading Indian figures. It became the main vehicle of the nationalist movement, moving from petitions for reform to demanding full independence.

Early Congress leaders such as Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopal Krishna Gokhale who relied on petitions, speeches and legislative councils to seek gradual reform within British rule rather than mass agitation or immediate independence.

Congress group led by Tilak, Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal that rejected petitioning, demanded swaraj as the goal, and used boycott, swadeshi and mass mobilisation to pressurise the colonial government.

Term meaning self-rule, popularised by Tilak and later used by Gandhi. It shifted the Congress demand from limited reform to Indian control of governance, and was formally defined as complete independence in 1929.

Declaration of complete independence adopted at the Lahore Congress session of December 1929 under Jawaharlal Nehru's presidency; 26 January 1930 was observed as the first Independence Day.

Curzon's 1905 division of Bengal into two provinces, which provoked widespread protest, boycott of British goods and the swadeshi movement, and was annulled in 1911 after sustained agitation.

Campaign to boycott foreign goods and promote indigenous industry and education, strongest in Bengal after 1905; it introduced mass protest methods and gave the national movement a wider social base.

Dadabhai Naoroji's argument that British rule transferred India's wealth to Britain through home charges, pensions, profits and unrequited exports, explaining India's poverty as a colonial extraction rather than a natural condition.

Gandhi-led campaign launched in 1920 urging Indians to withdraw cooperation from British institutions by boycotting courts, schools and councils; it was suspended in 1922 after the Chauri Chaura violence.

Campaign begun with the Salt Satyagraha of 1930, in which Indians deliberately broke unjust colonial laws to expose the government's dependence on Indian consent; it was followed by the Gandhi-Irwin Pact.

March from Sabarmati to Dandi in 1930 where Gandhi and followers made salt in defiance of the salt law, turning a symbolic grievance into a nationwide challenge to British authority.

Gandhi's method of non-violent resistance based on truth and self-suffering, intended to convert the opponent through moral pressure rather than coercion; applied in Champaran, Kheda and later mass campaigns.

Agitation by Indian Muslims after 1919 to protect the Ottoman Caliphate; Gandhi linked it to non-cooperation, producing brief Hindu-Muslim political cooperation that later weakened after the caliphate's abolition in 1924.

Mass campaign launched in August 1942 demanding immediate British withdrawal; the leadership was jailed, protests turned violent in places, and it made continued British rule politically untenable after the war.

Organisation founded in 1906 to represent Muslim political interests; under Jinnah from the 1930s it demanded safeguards and eventually a separate state, adopting the Lahore Resolution for Pakistan in 1940.

1946 British delegation proposing a three-tier federal union with grouped provinces; the plan failed because Congress and the Muslim League disagreed over grouping and the right of provinces to secede from groups.

June 1947 plan providing for partition of British India into India and Pakistan, with princely states free to accede; it fixed 15 August 1947 as the date of transfer of power and led to the Indian Independence Act.

Division of British India in 1947 into India and Pakistan, accompanied by mass migration and communal violence; it created unresolved disputes including Kashmir and displaced millions of people.

1919 law allowing detention without trial and trial by special courts without juries; widespread opposition to it produced the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and pushed Gandhi towards mass non-cooperation.

Firing by General Dyer's troops on an unarmed gathering in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, killing hundreds; the event discredited British claims of benevolent rule and deepened nationalist feeling.

Colonial statute introducing provincial autonomy and a federal structure with princely states, plus separate electorates; provinces became largely self-governing after the 1937 elections, giving Indians practical administrative experience.

Montagu-Chelmsford reforms introducing dyarchy in provinces, separating transferred and reserved subjects, and expanding legislative councils; it disappointed nationalists and set the stage for the 1935 Act.

System under the 1919 Act dividing provincial subjects into transferred ones run by Indian ministers and reserved ones controlled by the governor; it was abandoned in 1935 because governors retained real power.

Body elected in 1946 to frame India's constitution; it sat from December 1946, adopted the Constitution on 26 November 1949, and functioned as the provisional parliament until the first general election.

Opening statement of the Constitution declaring India a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic and listing justice, liberty, equality and fraternity as objectives; it was amended in 1976 to add socialist and secular.

Rights in Part III, including equality, freedom of speech, life and personal liberty, and constitutional remedies, enforceable through writs against state action; they can be restricted by reasonable limits.

Guidelines in Part IV directing the state towards welfare goals such as employment, education and equitable distribution; they are not directly enforceable in courts but inform legislation and policy.

Eleven obligations of citizens added by the 42nd Amendment in 1976 on the Swaran Singh Committee's recommendation; they are moral guides and are not enforceable by courts.

Constitutional division of powers between the Union and states through the Union, State and Concurrent Lists, with an independent judiciary and a strong centre in emergencies.

Three-tier system of elected local government at village, block and district levels, given constitutional status by the 73rd Amendment in 1992 with reserved seats and a State Election Commission.

Use of high-yielding seed varieties, fertilisers, irrigation and credit from the late 1960s that made India self-sufficient in food grains, especially wheat in Punjab and Haryana, though with regional imbalance.

Dairy development programme associated with Verghese Kurien and Operation Flood, using cooperatives to link village milk producers to urban markets and making India the world's largest milk producer.

Centralised development plans from 1951 setting investment targets for agriculture, industry and infrastructure; the Planning Commission drafted them, and planning was formally discontinued in 2015.

Economic model combining public sector control of strategic industries with private enterprise and regulation; it guided India's post-independence policy until liberalisation in 1991.

Economic reforms removing licensing controls, lowering tariffs and opening sectors to private and foreign investment after a balance-of-payments crisis; they raised growth but reduced state direction of the economy.

Grouping of states founded in 1961 at Belgrade that refused alignment with either Cold War bloc; it gave India diplomatic space and a platform for decolonisation and development issues.

Sustained rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945, fought through alliances, arms races, propaganda and proxy wars rather than direct war, ending with the Soviet collapse in 1991.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a collective defence alliance formed in 1949 under United States leadership; the Soviet response was the Warsaw Pact in 1955, dividing Europe into rival blocs.

Soviet-led military alliance of eastern European states formed in 1955 to counter NATO; it was dissolved in 1991, marking the end of the Cold War division of Europe.

Upheavals in 1917 that ended tsarist rule: the February Revolution established a provisional government and the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks under Lenin to power, creating the first socialist state.

Lenin's faction of Russian social democrats who demanded a disciplined party and immediate revolution; they seized power in October 1917 and renamed themselves Communists.

March 1918 peace treaty in which Bolshevik Russia gave up vast western territories to Germany to exit World War I, a humiliating settlement later annulled after Germany's defeat.

1919 settlement ending World War I with Germany, imposing territorial losses, disarmament and reparations; its terms bred resentment and are often linked to the rise of Nazism.

First worldwide organisation for collective security set up in 1920; it failed to stop aggression in Manchuria and Abyssinia and was replaced by the United Nations in 1945.

Authoritarian nationalist ideology glorifying the state, leader and military expansion, rejecting democracy and individual rights; it took power in Italy under Mussolini from 1922 and inspired similar movements.

Hitler's German variant of fascism combining extreme nationalism, racial ideology, anti-Semitism and expansionism; it caused World War II and the Holocaust before Germany's defeat in 1945.

Global conflict from 1939 to 1945 begun by German invasion of Poland and widened by Japanese and Italian aggression; it ended with Allied victory, the United Nations and decolonisation pressures.

International organisation founded in 1945 with a Security Council holding enforcement powers; India was a founding member and used the forum for decolonisation and peacekeeping issues.

Process by which Asian and African colonies gained independence after 1945, driven by nationalist movements, weakened European economies and changed international norms; India's independence in 1947 was a major precedent.

Reform society founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1828 in Bengal, opposing idolatry, caste rigidity and sati while promoting monotheism and rational, modern education.

Society founded by Dayanand Saraswati in 1875, calling for return to Vedic principles, rejection of idol worship and caste by birth, and support for women's education and social reform.

Tamil Nadu movement led by E. V. Ramasamy from 1925 against Brahminical dominance, caste hierarchy and superstition, promoting rationalism, women's rights and Tamil identity.

Tamil political and social current asserting Dravidian identity and Tamil language rights against perceived northern dominance; it produced the Justice Party, the Self-Respect Movement and later the DMK.

South Indian political party founded in 1917 to press for non-Brahmin representation in education and government jobs; it introduced communal representation in Madras Presidency and later merged into the DMK's political lineage.

Agitation in the Madras Presidency around 1937-39 against compulsory singing of Vande Mataram in schools, seen by many as a Hindi imposition; it strengthened Tamil and Dravidian identity politics.

Tamil Nadu protests, especially in 1937-40 and 1965, against making Hindi the sole official language; the 1965 protests were intense and contributed to the DMK's rise to power in 1967.

Tamil nationalist from Tuticorin who started the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company to compete with British shipping and was imprisoned; he is remembered as Kappalottiya Thamizhan.

Tamil poet and nationalist whose verses in Swadeshi and India championed freedom, women's rights and social equality; his writings shaped Tamil political consciousness in the early twentieth century.

Practice of a widow being burnt on her husband's funeral pyre, banned by Regulation XVII of 1829 under Bentinck after campaigns by Ram Mohan Roy and others; it became a symbol of reform debate.