Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. Mastin and I will be your history teacher for these four lessons.

In our first lesson, we're going to be asking the question, how did India achieve independence from the British Empire in 1947? And then at the end of our fourth lesson, you should be able to answer that question in full.

How did India achieve independence in 1947? There are three things you'll need for these lessons.

You'll need something to write with like a pen or a pencil.

You'll need a piece of paper and you will need something coloured to write with.

That's something that's a different colour from the first thing that you're going to write with.

That could be a coloured pencil coloured pen or a highlighter.

So, I'm doing to give you a moment now to get those three things and also to make sure that you've cleared away any distractions like your phone, and you've found a quiet place to work and then we'll start our first lesson.

So, let's begin with a very ordinary bookshop run by Vishnu's father.

You can see little Vishnu there, in his shorts.

He's five years old.

His sister is standing next to him.

She's called Sati.

Vishnu and Sati's father opened this bookshop in 1926.

Their little bookshop is called the Modern Book Stall.

Vishnu's father opened his book stall in the city of Pune in India.

If I show you where Pune is, it's about halfway down the west coast of India.

Now, this is what India looks like today.

You can see that in the northwest of India, it shares a border with the country of Pakistan.

And if you look in the northeast of India, you can see that it shares borders with Nepal and Bangladesh.

But India looked very different on a map when Vishnu's father opened his bookshop in 1926.

India, of course, was part of the British Empire.

It was ruled by the British.

In fact, the British was so proud of this particular part of their empire, that they referred to India as the jewel in the crown.

India was a land of many different peoples, who came from different religions, who spoke different languages, lots of different foods, lots of different cultures.

The British were particularly proud that they ruled over India, the jewel in the crown of their empire.

But in India, many millions of Indians did not want to be ruled by the British Empire.

Millions of Indians wanted their country to be independent.

Well, the bookshop opened in Pune, is opened around the same time that India is demanding independence from the British Empire.

So, our four lessons are going to look at how India eventually in 1947, became independent.

We're going to look at four things.

We're going to look at India's demand for independence in our lesson today.

In our second lesson, we're going to look at World War II and how World War II had an effect on India's fight for independence.

In our third lesson, we're going to look at what effects the Second World War had on India.

And then finally, in our fourth lesson, we're going to look at what happened when India became independent.

Now as I said at the beginning, you're going to need a piece of paper but not any old piece of paper.

I'd like you to divide your piece of paper into four, right from the top to the bottom, all the way down the middle and from the left-hand side to the right-hand side, all the way across the page.

So, I don't want you to draw four little boxes.

I want you to use the whole page to divide it into four.

In the middle of the page, can you write the question, the big question that we're going to be asking over the four lessons.

How did India achieve independence in 1947? And then in our four boxes, can you write those four headings.

Gandhi, in the first box.

That's what we're going to be looking at today.

Next lesson, we'll be looking at the second box, India in World War II.

And then the other two boxes, our final lessons, Post World War II.

That means after World War II.

And then the last box, Independence and Partition.

Don't worry about what the word partition means just yet.

We'll look at that in our fourth and final lesson.

But if you want to pause the lesson now and to divide your page and when you're ready, if you want to come back to the lesson.

When the bookshop opened, this is what India looked like.

The bookshop is in the city of Pune.

You can see that Pune spelled, P-U-N-E.

Pune, is in an area of India on the map that is shaded in pink.

The pink areas on the map are the parts of India that are ruled directly by the British.

You can see that there are other parts of India that are not shaded in pink.

There are shaded in a light yellow colour.

These were states of India, that although the British did rule over the whole of India, they had a little bit of what we call self-government.

So, Indians ran those parts of India.

But ultimately, they did what the British wanted them to do.

Those states that are shaded in yellow, still had to obey the laws of the British in India.

Now, little Vishnu and his sister working in the bookshop in Pune with their father and their mother, they originally came from a part of India, called Sind.

You can see it up in the northwest there, S-I-N-D, Sind.

That's where Vishnu's family originally came from.

But then Vishnu's grandparents moved to Pune and Vishnu's father opened the bookshop in Pune.

But Vishnu still had a lot of family who lived in Sind.

So, India was complicated at the time that the bookshop opened.

Some parts of India were ruled directly by the British, like where Pune was, where the bookshop opened.

And then other parts of India, although the British were still in charge, were allowed to be ruled by Indians as long as they obeyed the British laws.

Now, there were millions of Indians all across the country who wanted India to be independent, who wanted the British to leave India.

Vishnu's father was one of those Indians.

Vishnu grew up with a bookshop run by his father with stories.

Stories about how the British had taken over India, stories of how the Indians did not want the British to rule over them.

Vishnu grew up with stories about when his father opened the bookshop, he didn't like British soldiers coming in.

But, why were British soldiers going inside Vishnu's bookshop? Well, the reason was that in Pune, there was a very large British army camp.

Lots of British soldiers were stationed in Pune.

This meant the British soldiers when they wanted something to read, would go to one of the local bookshops.

Vishnu's father's bookshop.

What the British soldiers didn't realise is that Vishnu's father was a big supporter of a man called, Gandhi.

Gandhi, was the leader of an organisation in India called Congress.

This organisation called Congress that Gandhi led believed in two things.

They wanted India to be independent.

They wanted the British to leave but they believed in achieving that not by fighting the British with guns or bombs or their fists but by fighting the British in nonviolent ways.

So, that's the first way in which Gandhi and Congress were fighting against the British, nonviolent ways.

They were finding ways to make life difficult for the British, but in a nonviolent way.

They also believed, secondly, in noncooperation.

Not cooperating with the British, not obeying them, not doing what the British wanted them to do.

Now, some people in India thought that Indians should be more violent, should be more forceful and physical and attack the British.

But Gandhi said, no.

Gandhi, said that the British did that.

That the British ruled India through the gun, through terror, through controlling Indians with an army.

Gandhi believed that Indians should take their freedom, should become independent using nonviolent, noncooperation.

This was the symbol of Congress.

You can see it there on the right-hand side.

In the middle of this flag with orange stripe at the top, green stripe at the bottom and in the white stripe, there is a little blue wheel.

And the wheel is attached to a machine that was used for spinning cloth, making your own cloth.

You might think it's a strange symbol to have in the middle of a flag.

But Gandhi and Congress, you might remember believed in nonviolent, noncooperation.

So, making life difficult for the British but doing it in ways that were not violent.

Vishnu and his father had one of these flags.

The British did not like this flag.

This flag was a symbol of India wanting to be independent.

Gandhi would make his own clothes.

He would spin his own cloth, to make his own clothes.

You can see Gandhi there in the picture.

He's bending down but look at what he's wearing.

It's a very simple piece of white cloth that he's wrapped around himself.

And you can see the people behind him.

They were supporters of Congress.

They looked to Gandhi as their leader.

But, what's so special about what they're wearing? Now, let's go back to that picture I showed you a moment ago.

What was so special about what they were wearing is that they didn't buy their clothes from British shops.

They made their own clothes.

If British shops were not able to sell clothes to Indians, the British shops would lose money.

That's exactly what Gandhi wanted.

He wants to put pressure on the British.

And one way he can do this is by encouraging Indians to make their own clothes.

Another way that Gandhi put pressure on the British was by something called the Salt March.

Gandhi is there in the white clothes that he made himself with his spinning wheel.

But he's bending down and he's about to pick up some salt.

He's at the seaside.

But Gandhi hasn't gone to the seaside to swim.

Gandhi has marched to the sea.

He very deliberately announced to everyone that he was going to march from his home to the sea.

And he was going to break a British law.

But he was going to do it in a way that was not violent.

At the time, there was a tax.

And everyone in India had to pay the tax if they used salt.

Everyone in India used salt.

Because everything that the Indians made and cooked and ate, used salt.

Gandhi marched from his home to the sea.

He marched miles and miles to get there, to pick up some salt to use to cook, to break the law.

He started off with just 80 followers, 80 supporters when he left his home.

By the time he reached the village, by the seaside he had thousands and thousands of people who have joined him.

He went to the seashore.

He washed, he prayed and then he went to sleep that night.

The next morning would be the morning that he would break the salt tax.

He would break the salt law.

Everyone waited to see what would happen.

Gandhi walked down to the seashore.

He prayed again and then he picked up some salt.

He boiled it to make it into salt that could be used to cook.

And in that very simple act, he had broken the British salt law.

The British arrested Gandhi but it was too late.

Indians all over the country, were beginning to do the same thing.

They were beginning to make their own salt.

They were breaking the law.

The British arrested thousands of Indians but the jails weren't big enough for the amount of people that the British were arresting, who broke the salt tax.

Gandhi and Congress were putting a lot of pressure on the British.

Well, now it's time for you to do a little bit of work.

We're going to think about how Gandhi's nonviolent, noncooperation put pressure on the British.

How did it put pressure on the British? In what sorts of ways is Gandhi putting pressure on the British? Well, that piece of paper that you divided in four at the start, can I ask you in that first box where you've written the heading, Gandhi, can you write down some examples of how Gandhi is putting pressure on the British.

So, it's worth pausing now and think of all of the examples you've seen and heard.

They might be small examples, where Gandhi is putting pressure on the British.

They might be very big examples, where he's putting pressure on the British.

But when you're ready, if you complete the task and then come back to the lesson.

So, I hope you have written down a few examples of how Gandhi is putting pressure on the British.

But, what I'd like you to do now is to use your coloured pencil or your coloured pen or your highlighter, whatever particular colour you chose.

But, I'd like you to think about what kind of pressure Gandhi is putting on the British.

For instance, are some of your examples, moral pressure? So, the pressure that Gandhi is putting on the British is about showing that the British are being wrong and what Gandhi and Congress are doing is right.

Is it moral pressure that Gandhi is putting on the British? Or are some of your examples economic pressure examples? So, that's to do with money or tax.

Now you might already be thinking, ah, I can see that some of my examples are a bit of both.

So, how will you show that? You might even need another colour.

You might need a colour for economic and a colour for moral.

Now, if you only have the one colour, you might want to use your colour and to design symbols.

So you could have a symbol for economic, like a pound sign or a bag of money.

You could have a symbol for moral.

Moral is about doing what's right and wrong.

That could be something like a tick, doing the right thing.

So, go through your list of examples again.

In fact, you may find that as you go back to your list of examples that you've written, you start to think of other things that Gandhi did.

What pressure did he put on the British that was to do with money? What pressure did he put on the British that were examples of moral pressure? Well, if you have your list of examples, you've probably found lots of examples to do with money, economic pressure.

But then I think that there are examples of moral pressure, where Gandhi is making the British look bad because of the British ruling India and the Indians don't want the British there.

It's moral pressure.

So, as you read through and as you look through your notes and think through all the examples that you've written down, you might start to think of some more.

Remember, they don't have to be big examples.

They can be very small things that Gandhi did.

So, it's worth going back and seeing if you can find more examples.

So, if you want to pause the video here to go back and squeeze as many examples as you can out of your brain, as many as you can into your notes.

And then don't forget, are they economic examples of pressure? Or moral examples of pressure? And put a little symbol or a colour to show whether they're economic or moral.

And then come back to the lesson.

Well, it's time for a few questions now.

So, because you're using your piece of paper that you've divided into four, you might like to write your answers on the back of the piece of paper because we're going to use that piece of paper that you've divided into four in our four lessons.

So, don't write your answers in any of the boxes.

Write the answers on the back of the piece of paper or better still, if you have another piece of paper, write the answers on that.

So the first question, what was the aim of Congress? Gandhi led Congress.

What were they aiming for? What were they hoping to achieve? The second question, Gandhi's belief in nonviolent, noncooperation.

Can you explain what this belief is? And could you give at least one example of how it worked.

You might even be able to give more examples.

Question three, when Gandhi led the Salt March, what was the aim of the Salt March? Well, you might think of more than one aim.

But if you can only think of one, that's okay.

Question four, how did the Salt March put economic pressure on the British? How did it put pressure on the British to do with money? And the final question, how did the Salt March put moral pressure on the British? How did the Salt March make the British look bad? Make the British look as if they were doing the wrong thing and Gandhi and Congress were doing the right thing.

So when you've finished your five questions, if you come back to the video.

Well, it's been wonderful having you this lesson.

Thank you very much for joining me.

Well, thank you so much for all of your hard work and concentration today.

I hope you've enjoyed the lesson.

And I hope you come back for our second lesson looking at how India achieved independence in 1947.

If your parent or carer is able to take a photograph of some of your work, you could send it to me at Oak and I would love to be able to see it as well.

See you in the next lesson.