India Independence to 1980s world history timeline with music The term Indian independence movement encompasses a wide range of areas like political organizations, philosophies and movements which had the common aim of ending the company rule (East India Company), and then British imperial authority, in parts of South Asia. The independence movement saw various national and regional campaigns, agitations and efforts, some nonviolent and others not so. The first organised militant movements were in Bengal, but they later took to the political stage in the form of a mainstream movement in the then newly formed Indian National Congress (INC), with prominent moderate leaders seeking only their basic right to appear for Indian Civil Service examinations, as well as more rights, economic in nature, for the people of the soil. The early part of the 20th century saw a more radical approach towards political independence proposed by leaders such as the Lal, Bal, Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai. The last stages of the freedom struggle from the 1920s onwards saw Congress adopt Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's policy of nonviolence and civil resistance, Muhammad Ali Jinnah's constitutional struggle for the rights of minorities in India, and several other campaigns. Revolutionaries such as Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh preached armed revolution to achieve independence. Poets such as Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam used literature, poetry and speech as a tool for political awareness. Feminists such as Sarojini Naidu and Begum Rokeya championed the emancipation of Indian women and their participation in national politics. The period of the Second World War saw the peak of the campaigns by the Quit India movement (led by "Mahatma" Gandhi) and the Indian National Army (INA) movement (led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose) and others, eventually resulting in the withdrawal of the British. The work of these various movements led ultimately to the Indian Independence Act 1947, which created the independent dominions of India and Pakistan. India remained a Dominion of the Crown until 26 January 1950, when the Constitution of India came into force, establishing the Republic of India; Pakistan was a dominion until 1956, when it adopted its first republican constitution. In 1971, East Pakistan declared independence as the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The Indian independence movement was a mass-based movement that encompassed various sections of society. It also underwent a process of constant ideological evolution. Although the basic ideology of the movement was anti-colonial, it was supported by a vision of independent capitalist economic development coupled with a secular, democratic, republican, and civil-libertarian political structure. After the 1930s, the movement took on a strong socialist orientation, due to the increasing influence of left-wing elements in the INC as well as the rise and growth of the Communist Party of India. The All-India Muslim League was formed in 1906 to protect the rights of Muslims in the Indian Sub-continent against the INC and to present a Muslim voice to the British government. On 3 June 1947, Viscount Louis Mountbatten, the last British Governor-General of India, announced the partitioning of British India into India and Pakistan. With the speedy passage through the British Parliament of the Indian Independence Act 1947, at 11:57 on 14 August 1947 Pakistan was declared a separate nation, and at 12:02, just after midnight, on 15 August 1947, India also became an independent nation. Violent clashes between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims followed. Prime Minister Nehru and deputy prime minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel invited Mountbatten to continue as Governor General of India. He was replaced in June 1948 by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. Patel took on the responsibility of bringing into the Indian Union 565 princely states, steering efforts by his "iron fist in a velvet glove" policies, exemplified by the use of military force to integrate Junagadh and Hyderabad state into India (Operation Polo). On the other hand, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru kept the issue of Kashmir in his hands.The Constituent Assembly completed the work of drafting the constitution on 26 November 1949; on 26 January 1950, the Republic of India was officially proclaimed. The Constituent Assembly elected Dr. Rajendra Prasad as the first President of India, taking over from Governor General Rajgopalachari. Subsequently India invaded and annexed Goa and Portugal's other Indian enclaves in 1961), the French ceded Chandernagore in 1951, and Pondichéry and its remaining Indian colonies in 1956, and Sikkim voted to join the Indian Union in 1975. From wiki India Independence Movement

• published: 15 Feb 2014
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