Saving Indian Villages
British Empire, the Great Depression and Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6170778 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alok Oak (0000-0002-5777-730X, University of St Andrews, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 227-241 |
| Publication date | 2022-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Indian Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2321-0230 • E-ISSN: 2321-7472 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/23210230221135834 |
| OpenAlex | W4311079599 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 23 |
This article traces an intricate relationship between Mahatma Gandhi’s call for Civil Disobedience (1930–1933) and the global economic slump of the 1920s experienced by Britain and colonial India. I argue that the economic hardships faced by Indians (particularly the peasant classes) forced Gandhi to revisit his sociopolitical approach to India’s nationalist movement. Despite the chronological overlap of the Great Depression (1929–1931) with Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement (1930–1933), the relation between these two major events has not been adequately explored in recent scholarship. I propose to contextualize the changes in Gandhi’s economic ideas and political strategy (often against contending ideological trends) leading to his defence of Indian peasant interests during the Gandhi–Irwin Pact and the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhi’s increasing awareness of the economic crises and Britain’s severe opposition to granting financial autonomy to India pushed Gandhi in the direction of charting a new path for economic self-reliance. This, I suggest, resulted in his nation-wide popular movement for reviving the Indian village economy in the form of the ‘Constructive Programme’ (1934–1948) in subsequent years
Civil disobedience · Civil society · Colonialism · Development economics · Economics · Empire · Ideology · Opposition (politics · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Indian Economic and Social Development · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Political Economy and Marxism
The Web of Freedom
Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931–1939
Hind Swaraj
The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India
Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations
Masses in the anti‐British struggle
Gandhi and Civil Disobedience
Taxing Colonial Africa
The great Tisco strike and lockout of 1928-Part 1
Congress, Peasants and the Civil Disobedience Movement in Bihar (1930-1932)
The Economies of Africa and Asia in the Interwar Depression
Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India
Peasants and peasant organisations
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |