All India Home Rule League

• Home Rule was a common feature in the ancient Roman Empire and the modern British Empire.
• In Ireland the Home Rule Movement gathered force in the 1880s and a system of Home Rule was established by the Government of Ireland Act (1920) in six countries of Northern Ireland and later by the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) in the remaining 26 counties in the south.

Home Rule

• When Britain declared war against Germany in 1914, the moderate and liberal leadership extended their support to the British cause.
• It was hoped that, in return, the British government would give self-government after the war.
• It was in this backdrop that Besant entered into Indian Politics. She started a weekly The Commonweal in 1914.
• This weekly focussed on religious liberty, national education, social and political reforms.
• She gave the call, ‘The moment of England’s difficulty is the moment of India’s opportunity’.
• She started a daily newspaper New India on July 14, 1915.
• She revealed her concept of self-rule in a speech at Bombay: “I mean by self-government that the country shall have a government by councils, elected by the people, and responsible to the House”.
• On September 28, 1915, Besant made a formal declaration in INC session that she would start the Home Rule League Movement for India with objectives on the lines of the Irish Home Rule League.
• In September 1916, after repeated demands of her impatient followers, Annie Besant decided to start the Home Rule League without the support of Congress.

Objectives of the Home Rule League 

• The establishment of Home Rule for India in British Empire.
• Arousing in the Indian masses a sense of pride for the Motherland.

Home Rule League of Tilak

• Tilak Home Rule League was set up at the Bombay Provincial conference held at Belgaum in April 1916.
• League was to work in Maharashtra (including Bombay city), Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar.
• Tilak’s League was organised into six branches and Annie Besant’s League was given the rest of India.

Home Rule League of Besant

• Besant herself inaugurated the Home Rule League at Madras in September 1916.
• Its branches were established at Kanpur, Allahabad, Benaras, Mathura, Calicut and Ahmednagar.
• She declared that “the price of India’s loyalty is India’s Freedom“.
• The popularity of the League can be gauged from the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, B. Chakravarti and Jitendralal Banerji, Satyamurti and Khaliquzzaman were taking up the membership of the League.
• In June 1917 Besant and her associates, B.P. Wadia and George Arundale were interred in Ootacamund. 
• To support Besant, Sir S. Subramaniam renounced his Knighthood.
• Many leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya, and Surendranath Banerjea who had earlier stayed away from the movement enlisted themselves.
• She remarked, “Better bullock carts and freedom than a train deluxe with subjection”.
• She wrote two books, How India wrought for Freedom and India: A Nation and a pamphlet on self- government. 
• Members of the Home Rule Movement such as B.P.Wadia played a key role in organising the working classes by forming trade unions.
• On 20 August 1917 the new Secretary of State Montagu announced that ‘self-governing institutions and responsible government’ was the goal of the British rule in India.
• Almost overnight this statement converted Besant into a near-loyalist.
• In September 1917, when she was released, she was elected the President of Indian National Congress in Calcutta session 1917.

I mean by self-government that the country shall have a government by councils, elected by the people, elected with the power of the purse and the government is responsible to the house…. India should demand self-government not based on loyalty to the British government or as a reward for her services in the war but as a right based on the principle of national self-determination.

-Annie Besant (in September 1915)

Decline of Home Rule Movement

• Home Rule Movement declined after Besant accepted the proposed Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms and Tilak went to Britain in September 1918 to pursue the libel case that he had filed against Valentine Chirol, the author of Indian Unrest.
• In 1919 the British government announced the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which promised gradual progress of India towards self-government.
• This caused deep disappointment to Indian nationalists.
• In a further blow the government enacted what was called the Rowlatt Act which provided for arbitrary arrest and strict punishment.
• The Indian Home Rule League was renamed the Commonwealth of India League and used to lobby British MPs in support of self-government for India within the empire, or dominion status along the lines of Canada and Australia.
• It was transformed by V.K. Krishna Menon into the India League in 1929.

Importance of the Home Rule Movement

• The Home Rule Leagues prepared the ground for mass mobilization paving the way for the launch of Gandhi’s Satyagraha movements.
• Many of the early Gandhian Satyagrahis had been members of the Home Rule Leagues. 
• The August 1917 declaration of Montagu and the Montford reforms were influenced by the Home Rule agitation.
• Tilak’s and Besant’s efforts in the Moderate-Extremist reunion at Lucknow (1916) revived the Congress as an effective instrument of Indian nationalism.
• It created an organisational link between the town and the country, which was to prove crucial in later years when the movement entered its mass phase in a true sense.