How did Gandhiji transform Indian nationalism by 1922? Explain

Gandhiji from 1915-1920 and transformation of Indian Nationalism:

(i) In returning from South Africa, on Gokhale’s advice, Gandhiji spent a year travelling around British India, getting to know the land and its people. His first major public appearance was at the opening of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in February 1916.

The opening of the BHU was an occasion for celebration, marking as it did the opening of a nationalist university, sustained by Indian money and Indian initiative. But rather than adopt a tone of self-congratulation, Gandhiji chose instead to remind those present of the peasants and workers who constituted a majority of the Indian population.

(ii) Gandhiji at Champaran (Bihar) : In the last month of that year, Gandhiji was presented with an opportunity to put his precepts into practice. At the annual Congress, held in Lucknow in December 1916, he was approached by a peasant from Champaran in Bihar, who told him about the harsh treatment of peasants by British indigo planters. Mahatma Gandhi was to spend much of 1917 in Champaran, seeking to obtain for the peasants security of tenure as well the freedom to cultivate the crops of their choice.

(iii) The following; year, 1918, Gandhiji was involved in two campaigns in his home state of Gujarat. First, he intervened in a labour dispute in Ahmedabad, demanding better working conditions for the textile mill workers. Later on Gandhiji joined peasants in Kheda in asking the state for the remission of taxes following the failure to their harvest.

These intiatives in Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda marked Gandhiji as a nationalist with a deep sympathy for the poor.

(iv) Later on Gandhiji called for a countryside campaign against the “Rowlatt Act”. Gandhiji was detained while proceeding to the Punjab, even as prominent local Congressmen were arrested.

The situation in the province grew progressively more tense, reaching a bloody climax in Amritsar in April 1919, when a British General ordered his troops to open fire on a nationalist meeting. More than four hundred people were killed in what is known as the Jallianwalan Bagh Massacre.

(v) It was the Rowlatt Satyagraha that made Gandhiji a truly national leader. Embodied by its success, Gandhiji called for a campaign of “non-cooperation” with British rule. Indians who wished colonialism to end were asked to stop attending schools, colleges and law courts, and not pay taxes. In sum, they were asked to adhere to a “renunciation of (all) voluntary association with the (British) Government.”

Thus Gandhiji turned Indian masses towards a fierce battle against the British.