The Indian Independence Movement
Explore the Indian independence movement — decades of struggle against British colonial rule, culminating in independence and partition in 1947.
The Indian independence movement was one of the largest and most significant anti-colonial movements in history, mobilizing hundreds of millions of people across the Indian subcontinent against British rule. From the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885 to independence in 1947, the movement evolved from elite petition politics to mass civil disobedience.
Mahatma Gandhi transformed the movement through his philosophy of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha). The Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22), the Salt March (1930), and the Quit India Movement (1942) mobilized millions of ordinary Indians — peasants, workers, women, students — in acts of peaceful defiance that exposed the moral bankruptcy of colonial rule. Gandhi's methods influenced civil rights movements worldwide, from Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States to anti-apartheid activists in South Africa.
Independence came on August 15, 1947, but accompanied by the trauma of Partition — the division of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. The process was catastrophically violent: an estimated 1–2 million people were killed in communal violence, and 10–15 million were displaced in one of the largest mass migrations in history. The partition's legacy — including the Kashmir conflict — continues to shape South Asian politics.