The Government of India Act 1919 was an act of the British Parliament that sought to increase the participation of Indians in the administration of their country. The act was based on the recommendations of a report by Edwin Montagu, the then Secretary of State for India, and Lord Chelmsford, India’s Viceroy between 1916 and 1921. Hence the constitutional reforms set forth by this act are known as Montagu-Chelmsford reforms or Montford reforms.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar – Key Points

• Popularly known as Baba Saheb. He was the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly and is called the ‘Father of the Indian Constitution’.
• He was a jurist and an economist. Born into a caste that was considered untouchable, he faced many injustices and discrimination in society. He was born in Mhow in the Central Provinces (modern-day Madhya Pradesh) to a Marathi family with roots in Ambadawe town of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra.
• He was a brilliant student and had doctoral degrees in economics from Columbia University and the London School of Economics.
• Ambedkar was against the caste-based discriminations in society and advocated the Dalits to organise and demand their rights.
• He promoted the education of Dalits and made representations to the government in various capacities in this regard. He was part of the Bombay Presidency Committee that worked with the Simon Commission in 1925.
• He established the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha to promote education and socio-economic improvements among the Dalits. He started magazines like Mooknayak, Equality Janta and Bahishkrit Bharat.
• In 1927, he launched active agitation against untouchability. He organised and agitated for the right of Dalits to enter temples and to draw water from public water resources. He condemned Hindu scriptures that he thought propagated caste discrimination.
• He advocated separate electorates for the ‘Depressed Classes’, the term with which Dalits were called at that time. He was in disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi at that time since Gandhi was against any sort of reservation in the electorates. When the British government announced the ‘Communal Award’ in 1932, Gandhi went on a fast in Yerwada Jail. An agreement was signed between Gandhi and Ambedkar in the jail whereby it was agreed to give reserved seats to the depressed classes within the general electorate. This was called the Poona Pact.
• Ambedkar founded the Independent Labour Party (later transformed into the Scheduled Castes Federation) in 1936 and contested in 1937 from Bombay to the Central Legislative Assembly. He also contested from Bombay (north-central) after independence in the country’s first general elections. But he lost both times.
• He also worked as Minister of Labour in the Viceroy’s Executive Council. After independence, Ambedkar became the first Law Minister in 1947 under the Congress-led government. Later he resigned due to differences with Jawaharlal Nehru on the Hindu Code Bill.
• He was appointed to the Rajya Sabha in 1952 and remained a member till his death.
• He advocated a free economy with a stable Rupee. He also mooted birth control for economic development. He also emphasised equal rights for women.
• A few months before he died, he converted to Buddhism in a public ceremony in Nagpur and with him, lakhs of Dalits converted to Buddhism.
• He authored several books and essays. Some of them are: The Annihilation of Caste, Pakistan or the Partition of India, The Buddha and his Dhamma, The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India, Administration and Finance of the East India Company, etc.
• Ambedkar considered the Right to Constitutional Remedy as the soul of the constitution.
• Ambedkar died of ill health in 1956 at Delhi. He was cremated according to Buddhist rites in Dadar and a memorial is constructed there. The place is called Chaitya Bhoomi. His death anniversary is observed as Mahaparinirvan Din. His birth anniversary is celebrated as Ambedkar Jayanti or Bhim Jayanti on 14 April every year.

Amritlal Vithaldas Thakkar, popularly known as Thakkar Bapa was an Indian social worker who worked for upliftment of tribal people in Gujarat state in India. He became a member of the Servants of India Society founded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1905. In 1922, he founded the Bhil Seva Mandal. Later, he became the general secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1932. The Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh was founded on 24 October 1948 on his initiative. When Indian constitution was in process, Kenvi visited remotest and most difficult parts of India and conducted probe into the situation of tribal and Harijan people. He added valuable inputs in the process of constitution. Mahatma Gandhi would call him ‘Bapa’.

a) A. D. Savarkar

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar , commonly known as Swatantryaveer Savarkar or simply Veer Savarkar in Marathi language, was an Indian independence activist and politician who formulated the Hindu nationalist philosophy of Hindutva. He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha. 

As a response to the Muslim League, Savarkar joined the Hindu Mahasabha and popularized the term Hindutva (Hinduness), previously coined by Chandranath Basu, to create a collective “Hindu” identity as an essence of Bharat (India). Savarkar was an atheist and also a pragmatic practitioner of Hindu philosophy. He was never associated with the Indian National Congress.

b) Lala Lajpat Rai

He was elected President of the Indian National Congress during its Special Session in Kolkata in 1920, which saw the launch of Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement.

c) Vallabhbhai Patel

His association with INC is as follows:

• He was the secretary of the Gujarat Sabha (Gujarat Wing of INC)
• He was the President of the INC session held in Karachi

d) S. C. Bose

He was twice elected President of the Indian National Congress (1938 and 1939).

a) DR RAM MANOHAR LOHIA

• Ram Manohar Lohia, (born March 23, 1910) was a prominent figure in socialist politics and in the movement towards Indian independence.
• In 1934, Lohia became actively involved in the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), a left-wing group within the Indian National Congress; he served on the CSP executive committee and edited its weekly journal.
• He opposed the Indian participation on the side of Great Britain in World War II and was arrested for anti-British remarks in 1939 and 1940.
• Lohia along with other CSP leaders mobilized support for the Quit India movement (a campaign initiated by Mohandas K. Gandhi to urge the withdrawal of British authorities from India) in 1942. He was jailed again in 1944–46 for such resistance activities.
• Lohia and other CSP members left the Congress in 1948.
• He became a member of the Praja Socialist Party upon its formation in 1952 and served as general secretary for a brief period, but conflicts within the party led to his resignation in 1955.
• Later that year Lohia established a new Socialist Party, for which he became chairman as well as the editor of its journal, Mankind.
• He advocated for various socio-political reforms in his capacity as party leader, including the abolition of the caste system, the adoption of Hindi as India’s national language, and stronger protection of civil liberties.
• Some of his works include: ‘Marx, Gandhi and Socialism’, ‘Guilty Men of India’s Partition’, etc.

b) Jaiprakash Narain

• He took a leading part in the formation of the Congress Socialist Party, a left-wing group within the Congress Party, the organization that led the campaign for Indian independence.
• He was imprisoned by the British again in 1939 for his opposition to Indian participation in World War II on the side of Britain, but he subsequently made a dramatic escape and for a short time tried to organize violent resistance to the government before his recapture in 1943.
• After his release in 1946 he tried to persuade the Congress leaders to adopt a more militant policy against British rule.
• In 1948 he, together with most of the Congress Socialists, left the Congress Party and in 1952 formed the Praja Socialist Party.
• Soon becoming dissatisfied with party politics, he announced in 1954 that he would thenceforth devote his life exclusively to the Bhoodan Yajna Movement, founded by Vinoba Bhave, which demanded that land be distributed among the landless.

c) S.C. Bose

• The statements of Bose, both within and outside the Congress platform, coupled with political radicalisation which was taking shape towards the end of 1920s, paved the way for the Congress to gradually encompass socialist content within it s policies and programmes.
• Bose along with Nehru and younger section of the congress acted as a pressure group and insisted for the inclusion of and for making economic issues an integral part of the Congress policies and programmes.
• The AICC at Bombay session held in 1929 stated in a resolution that the poverty and misery of the Indian people is not only due to foreign exploitation in India, but also the economic structure of society which the alien rulers supported so that the exploitation continues.
• In order to remove the poverty it is essential to make revolutionary changes in the present economic and social structure of society and to remove gross inequality. This resolution is significant to the extent that within the Congress party the seeds of a socialist programme were sown for the first time.
• Bose had been a leader of the younger, radical, wing of the Indian National Congress in the late 1920s and 1930s, rising to become Congress President in 1938 and 1939 during with he pursued socialist agenda.

d) M.R. Jaiyakar

He was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council during 1923–1925, and a leader of the Swaraj Party. He also became member of Central Legislative Assembly. In 1937 he became Judge of Federal Court of India at Delhi. In December 1946, he joined Constituent Assembly of India. He was also the chairman of Indian Road Development Committee, formed in 1927 to report some recommendations in the highway development. He was a member of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha. He took part in the All Parties Conference in 1928, and was pivotal in denying demands of Muslim League put forward by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The Hindu code bill -The bill was drafted by Dr.B R Ambedkar in 1955-56 to reform Hindu laws, which legalized divorce, opposed polygamy, gave rights of inheritance to daughters. Amidst intense opposition of the code, a diluted version was passed via four different laws.

Adi Ambedkar Samaj movement is related to Punjab State. From 1922 onwards, dissension in Arya Samaj factions of Punjab between the Vasant Rai and Mangoo Ram groups again split the regional Adi Dharma movement. Both groups approached the Lahore Headquarters of Adi Brahmo Samaj for recognition which was denied to both. This led to rivalry and inducements from all sides including Arya Samaj, Christian missionaries, Sikhism etc. causing considerable confusion in the Northern Provinces as to who represented Adi Dharma.