Introduction

The Civil Disobedience movement began in 1930 (12 March – 6 April 1930). Mahatma

Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience Movement after the British Government failed to
respond positively to Gandhi's eleven demands. On March 12, 1930, Gandhi led the
famous Dandi March. The three Round Table Conferences of 1930–1932 were a series of
peace conferences convened by the British Government and Indian political figures to discuss
constitutional reforms in India. These lasted from November 1930 to December 1932. In this
article, we will discuss the Civil Disobedience Movement and Round Table
Conference, which will be helpful for UPSC exam preparation.

Civil Disobedience Movement

 Background
o To carry out the mandate given by the Lahore Congress, Gandhi
presented the government with 11 demands and gave a deadline of
January 31, 1930 to accept or reject these demands.
o With no positive response from the government to these demands, Gandhi
was given full authority to launch the Civil Disobedience Movement at a
time and place of his choosing by the Congress Working Committee.
o By the end of February, Gandhi had decided to make salt the movement's
central formula.
o The celebration of Independence Day in 1930 was followed by the launch
of the Civil Disobedience Movement, led by Gandhi.
 Features
o The Civil Disobedience Movement began with Gandhi's well-known Dandi
March.
o On March 12, 1930, Gandhi set out on foot from Ahmedabad's Sabarmati
Ashram with 78 other Ashram members for Dandi, a village on India's
western seacoast about 385 kilometres from Ahmadabad.
o On April 6, 1930, they arrived in Dandi. Gandhi violated the salt law there.
Following the defiance of the salt law, the Civil Disobedience Movement
spread across the country.
o Because salt was a government monopoly, it was illegal for anyone to
produce it.
o Gandhi defied the government by picking up a handful of salt that had
formed as a result of sea evaporation.
o During the first phase of the civil disobedience movement, salt production
spread across the country and became a symbol of the people's defiance
of the government.
 Causes
o The unrest in social and political situations aided in the formation of the
civil disobedience movement.
o Simon commission, which was formed by the British government in 1927
to formalise India's constitution and was entirely composed of British
 members, was rejected by the Indian National Congress and other political
and social organisations and was dubbed the all white commission.
o In 1928, a new constitution was drafted in Calcutta by a committee led by
Motilal Nehru. The INC demanded that the British government accept
Nehru’s Report in 1928.
o The main theme of the report was to give India Dominion Status. It
warned and blackmailed the British government that if they did not accept
the report, they would be threatened and a civil disobedience movement
would be launched.
o The main goal of the constitutional reform, according to the Governor
General of India, Lord Irwin, was to Grant India dominion status.
o Following the declaration, Gandhi and other leaders proposed a round
table conference to resolve the constitutional crisis, and when the British
government did not respond positively to any of their demands, the civil
disobedience movement was launched.

First Round Table Conference (Nov, 1930)

 The First Round Table Conference was the first of three such conferences organized
by the British government between 1930 and 1932 to discuss constitutional reforms in
India.
 These conferences were held in accordance with the Simon Commission's report from
1930.
 The British King George V officially inaugurated the First Round Table Conference
on November 12, 1930, at the House of Lords in London, and it was chaired by the
then-British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.
 This was the first time the British and Indians met as equals.
 The Congress and some prominent business leaders declined to attend, but many other
Indian groups were present.
 It was attended by the Princely States, the Muslim League, the Justice Party, the Hindu
Mahasabha, and others.
 The conference resulted in little progress. The British government recognised that the
Indian National Congress's participation was required in any discussion about India's
future constitutional government.

Second Round Table Conference (Sep 7-Dec 1931)

 On September 7, 1931, the second session of the conference convened in London.

 The conference's main task was accomplished through the two committees on federal
structure and minorities.
 To address the ineffectiveness of the First Round Table Conference, the Second Round
Table Conference was held in London from September 7th to December 1st, 1931,
with the active participation of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, who were
specially invited for the Conference.
 Apart from the Congress, there were a large number of Indian participants. The princely
states, Muslims, Hindu groups, Liberals, Justice Party, Sikhs, Parsis, and Indian
Christians.
 At the conference, Gandhi (and thus the Congress) claimed to speak for all Indians
against imperialism. The other delegates, however, did not agree.
  Because of the large number of groups that participated, the British government claimed
that the Congress did not represent the interests of all of India.
 Gandhi emphasised the importance of a partnership between Britain and India based on
equality.
 He demanded the immediate establishment of a responsible government at the national
and provincial levels.
 He rejected the idea of a separate electorate for untouchables, claiming that they were
Hindus and thus should not be treated as a minority.
 He also stated that separate electorates or special safeguards for Muslims or other
minorities were unnecessary. Many of the other delegates were opposed to Gandhi.
 The session quickly came to a halt over the issue of minorities. Separate electorates
were demanded by Muslims, the poor, Christians, and Anglo-Indians. All of this
culminated in the 'Minorities' Pact.'
 Gandhi fought valiantly against this concerted effort to tie all constitutional progress to
the resolution of this issue.

Third Round Table Conference (Nov 17-Dec 24, 1932)

 The third Round Table Conference was held on November 17, 1932, and lasted until
December 24, 1932.
 The Indian National Congress and Gandhi did not attend the third Round Table
Conference and neither did many Indian leaders.
 It was impossible to reach a conclusion without the presence and participation of
Congress leaders.
 One of the primary reasons for Congress's absence was that too many of its leaders
were once again imprisoned, this time for continuing the Civil Disobedience
Movement, undertaking salt Satyagraha.
 Delegates were sent by the Indian states. Aga Khan III, B.R. Ambedkar, Muhammad
Iqbal, Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, and Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas were among the
other Indian representatives.
 As with the previous two conferences, little was accomplished. In March 1933, the
recommendations were published in a White Paper and debated in the British
Parliament.
 A Joint Select Committee was formed to examine the recommendations and drafted a
new Act for India, and the committee produced a draft Bill in February 1935, which
became the Government of India Act of 1935 in July 1935.

D2
 dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group
possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations. The term
dictatorship comes from the Latin title dictator, which in the Roman
Republic designated a temporary magistrate who was granted extraordinary
powers in order to deal with state crises. Modern dictators, however, resemble
ancient tyrants rather than ancient dictators. Ancient philosophers’ descriptions
of the tyrannies of Greece and Sicily go far toward characterizing modern
dictatorships. Dictators usually resort to force or fraud to gain despotic political
power, which they maintain through the use of intimidation, terror, and the
 suppression of basic civil liberties. They may also employ techniques of
mass propaganda in order to sustain their public support.
 With the decline and disappearance in the 19th and 20th centuries
of monarchies based on hereditary descent, dictatorship became one of the two
chief forms of government in use by nations throughout the world, the other
being constitutional democracy. Rule by dictators has taken several different
forms. In Latin America in the 19th century, various dictators arose after effective
central authority had collapsed in the new nations recently freed from Spanish
colonial rule. These caudillos, or self-proclaimed leaders, usually led a private
army and tried to establish control over a territory before marching upon a weak
national government. Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico and Juan Manuel
de Rosas in Argentina are examples of such leaders. (See personalismo.) Later
20th-century dictators in Latin America were different. They were national rather
than provincial leaders and often were put in their position of power by
nationalistic military officers. They usually allied themselves with a
particular social class, and attempted either to maintain the interests of wealthy
and privileged elites or to institute far-reaching left-wing social reforms.

Nazism, also spelled Naziism, in full National Socialism,

German Nationalsozialismus, totalitarian movement led by Adolf Hitler as head of
the Nazi Party in Germany. In its intense nationalism, mass appeal, and dictatorial rule,
Nazism shared many elements with Italian fascism. However, Nazism was far more
extreme both in its ideas and in its practice. In almost every respect it was an anti-
intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will of the charismatic dictator
as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation, as well as a vision of
annihilation of all enemies of the Aryan Volk as the one and only goal of Nazi policy.
The roots of Nazism
Nazism had peculiarly German roots. It can be partly traced to the Prussian tradition as
developed under Frederick William I (1688–1740), Frederick the Great (1712–68),
and Otto von Bismarck (1815–98), which regarded the militant spirit and
the discipline of the Prussian army as the model for all individual and civic life. To it was
added the tradition of political romanticism, with its sharp hostility to  rationalism and
to the principles underlying the French Revolution, its emphasis on instinct and the
past, and its proclamation of the rights of Friedrich Nietzsche’s exceptional individual
(the Übermensch [“Superman”]) over all universal law and rules. These two traditions
were later reinforced by the 19th-century adoration of science and of the laws of nature,
which seemed to operate independently of all concepts of good and evil. Further
reinforcements came from such 19th-century intellectual figures as the comte de
Gobineau (1816–82), Richard Wagner (1813–83), and Houston Stewart
Chamberlain (1855–1927), all of whom greatly influenced early Nazism with their claims
of the racial and cultural superiority of the “Nordic” (Germanic) peoples over all other
Europeans and all other races.
Adolf Hitler

Hitler’s intellectual viewpoint was influenced during his youth not only by these
currents in the German tradition but also by specific Austrian movements that professed
various political sentiments, notably those of pan-Germanic expansionism and anti-
Semitism. Hitler’s ferocious nationalism, his contempt of Slavs, and his hatred of Jews
can largely be explained by his bitter experiences as an unsuccessful artist living a
threadbare existence on the streets of Vienna, the capital of the multiethnic Austro-
Hungarian Empire.

This intellectual preparation would probably not have been sufficient for the growth of
Nazism in Germany but for that country’s defeat in World War I. The defeat and the
resulting disillusionment, pauperization, and frustration—particularly among the lower
middle classes—paved the way for the success of the  propaganda of Hitler and the Nazis.
The Treaty of Versailles (1919), the formal settlement of World War I drafted without
German participation, alienated many Germans with its imposition of
harsh monetary and territorial reparations. The significant resentment expressed
toward the peace treaty gave Hitler a starting point. Because German representatives
(branded the “November criminals” by Nazis) agreed to cease hostilities and did not
unconditionally surrender in the armistice of November 11, 1918, there was a
widespread feeling—particularly in the military—that Germany’s defeat had been
orchestrated by diplomats at the Versailles meetings. From the beginning,
Hitler’s propaganda of revenge for this “traitorous” act, through which the German
people had been “stabbed in the back,” and his call for rearmament had strong appeal
within military circles, which regarded the peace only as a temporary setback in
Germany’s expansionist program. The ruinous inflation of the German currency in 1923
wiped out the savings of many middle-class households and led to further public
alienation and dissatisfaction.
Learn about the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the anti-Semitism they fomented in pre-WWII
Germany

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Hitler added to Pan-Germanic aspirations the almost mystical fanaticism of a faith in

the mission of the German race and the fervour of a social revolutionary gospel. This
gospel was most fully expressed in Hitler’s personal testament  Mein Kampf (1925–27;
“My Struggle”), in which he outlined both his practical aims and his theories of race and
propaganda.

Posing as a bulwark against communism, Hitler exploited the fears aroused in Germany

and worldwide by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the consolidation of
communist power in the Soviet Union. Thus, he was able to secure the support of
many conservative elements that misunderstood the totalitarian character of his
movement.