Phase 5 — Between the Movements (1922–1929)

With Non-Cooperation suspended and Gandhi imprisoned, the Congress temporarily split over strategy. C.R. (Chittaranjan) Das and Motilal Nehru, unconvinced that boycotting legislatures achieved anything, founded the Swaraj Party (1922) within Congress, contesting council elections in order to obstruct government from inside — "responsive cooperation" turned into deliberate parliamentary wrecking. Das's Swarajists won notable successes in Bengal and the Central Provinces before Das's premature death in 1925 weakened the party.

Revolutionary activity resurfaced sharply in this decade — see the dedicated section below for Kakori, the HSRA, and the Assembly bomb — while constitutional politics ground forward:

• 1927 — the British government appointed the Simon Commission to review the working of the 1919 reforms and recommend further constitutional advance, but scandalously included not a single Indian member. Its 1928 arrival was met nationwide with black-flag protests and the cry "Simon Go Back." During a protest in Lahore, Lala Lajpat Rai was severely injured in a police lathi-charge and died weeks later (November 1928) — a death revolutionaries would shortly avenge (see Saunders' killing, below).
• 1928 — the Nehru Report: stung by British taunts that Indians could not agree on a constitution of their own, an all-parties conference convened a committee under Motilal Nehru (with Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose and others involved) that produced India's first home-grown constitutional blueprint, demanding Dominion Status, a federal structure, and — controversially, from the Muslim League's perspective — joint (not separate) electorates, a stance that widened the Congress-League gulf even as it unified Congress opinion.
• December 1928 — the killing of J.P. Saunders, a British police officer at Lahore, by Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Chandrashekhar Azad of the reorganised Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), avenging Lajpat Rai's death (they had intended to kill the officer responsible for the lathi-charge, Scott, but mistakenly killed Saunders instead).
• 8 April 1929 — Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw two low-intensity bombs into the Central Legislative Assembly chamber in Delhi to protest the repressive Public Safety and Trade Disputes Bills, deliberately avoiding casualties and courting arrest to use the ensuing trial as a public platform — shouting "Inquilab Zindabad" ("Long Live the Revolution") as they were seized.
• December 1929 — the Lahore Session of Congress, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru (his first presidency, at his father's urging and with Gandhi's backing over more senior claimants), adopted the Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence) resolution, formally superseding the Dominion Status demand that had dominated Congress thinking since the Nehru Report.
• 26 January 1930 — the Congress observed the first "Independence Day" as Purna Swaraj Day, with the tricolour hoisted and a pledge of complete independence read out at gatherings across the country — the same date later chosen, in deliberate tribute, for the Constitution's commencement in 1950.

Memory hook — 1927–1929 in five beats, "SNSAL": "Simon Never Sat Around Long" — Simon Commission (1927, no Indians) → Nehru Report (1928, home-grown blueprint) → Saunders killed (Dec 1928, avenging Lajpat Rai) → Assembly bomb (April 1929, Bhagat Singh & Dutt) → Lahore session (Dec 1929, Purna Swaraj). Five events, five letters, one breathless sentence — and note how fast they came, barely two years apart start to finish.

Practice Recall: Put these five events in order without looking: the Nehru Report, the Lahore session, the Assembly bomb, the Simon Commission's arrival, the killing of Saunders. Then check against "SNSAL" above.