Stages of the freedom struggle

What this covers

Stages are analytical aids for tracking changes in aims, leadership, organization, methods, participation and colonial response. Their boundaries overlap because constitutional work continued during mass agitation, local struggles did not begin or end on one national date, and negotiation accompanied resistance. A practical sequence moves from early organized nationalism and constitutional agitation to Swadeshi and assertive methods; wartime and Home Rule politics; early Gandhian experiments and all-India satyagraha; mass movements of the 1920s and 1930s; provincial and constitutional politics; and wartime struggle, the INA, armed-force unrest and final negotiations. For every stage compare trigger, declared objective, organization, participants, geographic reach, state response, immediate outcome and the transition to the next phase.