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| 1920s |
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| Definite change in foreign trade for India. A negative balance of trade with Britain characterized the period leading up to the Great Depression, prompting the metropole to look for other outlets, and for India to increase its trade with Germany, Japan, and the U.S. Britain survived the depression in India by using a high exchange rate, a deflationary monetary policy, and discriminating protection. These policies, while ensuring that India was part of the world market, did not allow India to participate in it. Seriously damaging the Indian economy and prolonging the impact of the depression, such policies transmitted external disturbances but gave no benefits. Indian peasants suffered most severely. | 1 |
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| 1921–26 |
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| LORD READING, viceroy. | 2 |
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| 1921 |
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| Height of the noncooperation movement. Despite Gandhi's insistence on nonviolent action, terrorist outbreaks were frequent, and in some parts of the country serious peasant risings against landlords and moneylenders took place: peasant movement in Gangetic plain (Kisan movement) linked claims to higher status with resistance to landlords and government; rising of the Akalis (Sikh peasant puritans) in the Punjab, March 1921; rising of the Moplahs (Muslim peasants of Malabar) in Aug. 1921, with forced conversions and slayings of Hindu landlords. The last episode set off a decade of chronic clashes between Hindus and Muslims, with much bloodshed. Other kinds of conflict—especially class conflict as exemplified by landlord-peasant tensions in areas where they shared religious identity—were denied outlet by Gandhi. He and Jawaharlal Nehru disagreed on the relationship between class protest and the nationalist struggle; Nehru eventually acceded to Gandhi's strategy of postponing such struggle in the interest of winning national independence. | 3 |
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| Nov. 2 |
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| The Ali brothers were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for calling on Muslim troops to desert. As more and more first-line (male) leaders were imprisoned, women took on additional responsibilities in running the nationalist struggle. In the Khilafat movement, for instance, the mother and wife of an Ali brother became the main spokespersons. Large sums were raised from women, who contributed their jewelry (often their main dowry goods); economic boycotts, because they focused on domestic goods, succeeded essentially because women decided to support them. Although Gandhi tried to distinguish between male and female roles in support of nationalism, many strong women leaders acted outside that dichotomy. | 4 |
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| Dec. 24 |
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| The Indian National Congress gave Gandhi sole executive authority. Gandhi denounced all violence and introduced a campaign of civil disobedience toward the law. Despite his great authority, violence continued to spread. | 5 |
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