World War I, Home Rule Leagues & the Lucknow Pact

Why This Chapter Matters

The years 1914 to 1919 are a compact, high-yield block. SSC and RRB papers regularly pick from four points inside it: the two Home Rule Leagues of 1916, the Lucknow Pact of 1916, the Montagu Declaration of August 1917, and the Government of India Act, 1919 with its system of dyarchy. Expect 1 to 2 questions from this block in a typical SSC CGL/CHSL GA section, and the same in RRB NTPC. Banking exams touch it less often, but the GoI Act 1919 appears in their static GK too because it connects to polity.

The most repeated question types are: who founded which Home Rule League and where, which two parties signed the Lucknow Pact, who made the August 1917 declaration, and in which act was dyarchy introduced. A second layer of questions tests the fine print: the month of each league's founding, the newspapers of Tilak and Besant, who called Jinnah the "ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity", and the reserved versus transferred subjects under dyarchy. Learn the fine print here once and this chapter stops costing you marks.

1. India and the First World War (1914–1918)

The First World War began in August 1914 and ended in November 1918. Britain declared war on Germany, and India, as a British colony, was pulled in automatically. No Indian was consulted.

India's contribution was heavy. More than one million Indian soldiers served overseas, in France, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, Gallipoli and East Africa. Around 70,000 Indian soldiers died. India also paid a large war contribution in money and supplied food, raw materials and equipment. Wartime taxation rose, prices roughly doubled between 1914 and 1918, and shortages hit ordinary people hard. This economic squeeze created the popular anger that later fed Gandhi's mass movements.

Politically, the war split Indian opinion into three broad responses:

• Moderates and most Congress leaders supported the British war effort. They believed loyalty during the war would be rewarded with constitutional concessions afterwards.
• Extremist leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak also supported recruitment, but with a clear expectation: cooperation now, self-government in return. Tilak had just returned in June 1914 after six years of imprisonment (1908–1914) in Mandalay jail, Burma, following his conviction in the 1908 sedition case.
• Revolutionaries at home and abroad saw Britain's difficulty as India's opportunity and tried armed action. The Ghadar Party's plans and the Berlin Committee belong to that stream, covered in the previous chapter.

To crush wartime dissent, the government passed the Defence of India Act, 1915. It allowed detention without trial and special tribunals. It was used heavily against revolutionaries in Punjab and Bengal, and its logic was later extended in peacetime by the Rowlatt Act of 1919 (next chapter).

One more wartime fact exams like: the Lucknow session of 1916 readmitted the Extremists into the Congress, ending the split that had lasted since Surat, 1907. The war years, therefore, saw Indian nationalism reunite and reorganise while the government fought abroad.

2. The Home Rule Movement (1916–1918)

2.1 Why "Home Rule"?

By 1915, the national movement was almost silent. The Congress after Surat was a Moderate body meeting once a year. The Extremists were outside it. Into this vacuum stepped two leaders with the same idea borrowed from the Irish Home Rule movement: demand self-government (Home Rule) within the British Empire, and build a permanent, year-round agitation for it rather than an annual conference.

The two leaders were Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant. Besant, an Irish-origin theosophist, had come to India in 1893 and led the Theosophical Society from its headquarters at Adyar, Madras. She joined the Congress in 1914 and pushed it to readmit the Extremists. When the Congress moved slowly, both leaders decided to float separate leagues. They deliberately divided the country between themselves to avoid friction.

2.2 Tilak's Indian Home Rule League (April 1916)

Tilak founded his league first, in April 1916, at the Belgaum session of the Bombay Provincial Conference. Its headquarters was at Poona (Pune).

• Name: Indian Home Rule League.
• Area of work: Maharashtra (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar.
• Mouthpieces: Tilak's own papers, Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English).
• Structure: Six branches; membership reached about 32,000 by 1917, larger than Besant's league in numbers.

Tilak toured relentlessly and linked Home Rule to concrete demands, including the formation of linguistic states and education in the vernacular. His most quoted line came from this phase: "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it." In 1916 the government prosecuted him for his Home Rule speeches and demanded a security bond; he was defended by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and the Bombay High Court eventually ruled in Tilak's favour. SSC has asked the "birthright" attribution more than once, so fix it firmly with Tilak.

2.3 Besant's All India Home Rule League (September 1916)

Annie Besant launched her league in September 1916 at Madras, with headquarters at Adyar.

• Name: All India Home Rule League.
• Area of work: the rest of India, everything outside Tilak's zone, including Bombay city.
• Mouthpieces: her papers New India and Commonweal.
• Key organisers: George Arundale (organising secretary), B.P. Wadia and C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar.
• Structure: about 200 small branches; looser than Tilak's league but spread across the whole country.

Many leaders who later dominated the freedom struggle first entered active politics through Besant's league: Jawaharlal Nehru in Allahabad, and Satyamurti in Madras, among others. Jinnah joined the Home Rule agitation too. Gandhi did not join either league.

2.4 Government repression and the movement's peak

The government hit back in 1917. In June 1917, the Madras government interned Annie Besant along with Wadia and Arundale. The arrest backfired completely. Protests spread nationwide, membership of the leagues jumped, and even Moderates like Madan Mohan Malaviya and Surendranath Banerjea joined the leagues in protest. Sir S. Subramania Iyer, a retired judge, renounced his knighthood against the internment. Under pressure, and with the Montagu Declaration coming, Besant was released in September 1917.

Her prestige peaked immediately afterwards: in December 1917, Annie Besant was elected President of the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, becoming the first woman President of the INC. (The first Indian woman President was Sarojini Naidu, Kanpur, 1925 — a favourite match-the-pair trap.)

2.5 Decline of the movement

The Home Rule agitation faded during 1918 for four main reasons:

1. The Montagu Declaration (August 1917) promised responsible government, and Besant felt agitation should pause while reforms were considered. Her softening cost her support.
2. Tilak left for England in late 1918 to fight a defamation case against Valentine Chirol, author of Indian Unrest, who had called him the "father of Indian unrest". Tilak lost the case, but the movement lost its engine in his absence.
3. Talk of passive resistance divided the leagues' Moderate members.
4. From 1919, Gandhi's satyagraha politics absorbed the activists. In 1920 Gandhi became President of the All India Home Rule League and renamed it Swarajya Sabha; within a year it dissolved into the Congress.

Do not write the movement off, though. It created the first year-round political organisation in India, trained a generation of workers, spread the demand for self-government to towns that had never seen politics, and directly pushed the British into the 1917 declaration.

3. The Lucknow Session and the Lucknow Pact (December 1916)

The 31st session of the Indian National Congress met at Lucknow in December 1916 under the presidentship of Ambica Charan Majumdar. Two reunions happened at this single session, which is why examiners love it.

3.1 Congress reunion: Moderates and Extremists together again

The Lucknow session readmitted Tilak and the Extremists into the Congress, closing the wound of the Surat split of 1907. Majumdar remarked that the Congress had been reunited after nearly ten years. Tilak's stature and the pressure of the Home Rule agitation made the reunion possible.

3.2 The Congress–League Pact

The second reunion was between the Congress and the All India Muslim League, which held its session at Lucknow at the same time. The two bodies signed a joint scheme of constitutional reforms, known as the Lucknow Pact. The chief architects were Tilak on the Congress side and Mohammad Ali Jinnah on the League side. Jinnah, then a member of both the Congress and the League, presided over the League's Lucknow session (1916). For his role, Sarojini Naidu called Jinnah the "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity."

Why did the League move towards the Congress? The British annulment of the Partition of Bengal in 1911 had disappointed Muslim loyalists. Britain's war against Turkey, whose Sultan was the Caliph, angered Muslim opinion. Younger League leaders like Jinnah, the Ali brothers and Maulana Azad wanted cooperation with the Congress rather than dependence on the government.

Main terms of the Lucknow Pact:

• Joint demand for self-government for India at an early date, with elected majorities in the legislatures and more powers to them.
• Half the members of the Viceroy's Executive Council should be Indians.
• The Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims, for the first and only time in its history.
• Muslims were given weightage: fixed shares of elected seats, one-third at the centre, and province-wise percentages (higher than their population share in Muslim-minority provinces, lower in Punjab and Bengal).
• No bill affecting a community would proceed if three-fourths of that community's members opposed it.

3.3 Assessment

The pact's strength was unity: for the next few years the Congress and League campaigned together, and this united front pushed the government towards the 1917 declaration. Its weakness was the method: by accepting separate electorates, the Congress officially recognised the idea that Hindus and Muslims were distinct political units. The pact united leaders, not the masses, and the concession later fed communal politics. State this as cause and effect; exams occasionally frame it as "which agreement accepted separate electorates — Congress accepted them at…?" Answer: Lucknow Pact, 1916.

4. The Montagu Declaration (20 August 1917)

The pressure of the Home Rule movement, the Lucknow unity, and Britain's need for Indian support in a grinding war produced a formal promise. On 20 August 1917, Edwin Samuel Montagu, the Secretary of State for India (1917–1922), made a statement in the British House of Commons. It is called the Montagu Declaration or the August Declaration.

Its key sentence promised the "increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire."

Note three exam points:

1. The word used was "responsible government", a step beyond the older vague phrase "good government". This was the first time Britain officially stated self-government as the goal of its Indian policy.
2. Britain alone would decide the timing and pace of each step. This was the catch, and nationalists soon saw it.
3. After the declaration, demanding self-government could no longer be called seditious, which changed the legal climate of politics.

Montagu then visited India (November 1917 to April 1918) and toured with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford (Viceroy 1916–1921). Their joint proposals came out as the Montagu-Chelmsford Report in July 1918, which became the basis of the Government of India Act, 1919. The Congress met in a special session at Bombay in August–September 1918 under Syed Hasan Imam to consider the report and declared it disappointing, demanding effective self-government instead. Moderates who welcomed the reforms walked out of the Congress and formed the Indian Liberal Federation (1918) under leaders like Surendranath Banerjea. They came to be called the Liberals.

5. The Government of India Act, 1919 (Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms)

The Act was passed in December 1919 and its reforms operated from 1921. It declared its goal as the gradual introduction of responsible government. Remember its two halves: what it did in the provinces and what it did at the centre.

5.1 Dyarchy in the provinces

The Act's signature feature was dyarchy (diarchy), meaning double government, introduced in the provinces, not at the centre. Provincial subjects were split into two lists:

• Reserved subjects — administered by the Governor and his Executive Council, not answerable to the legislature. Examples: police, justice, land revenue, finance, irrigation, prisons, press.
• Transferred subjects — administered by the Governor with Indian ministers responsible to the provincial legislative council. Examples: education, health, local self-government, agriculture, industries, excise.

The design gave Indians the spending departments without money, since finance stayed reserved. The Governor could also take over transferred subjects in a breakdown. Dyarchy worked from 1921 to 1937, when the GoI Act 1935 replaced it with provincial autonomy. The idea of dyarchy is associated with Lionel Curtis.

Provincial legislative councils were enlarged, with about 70 per cent elected members, and could reject budgets, though Governors could restore grants by certification.

5.2 Changes at the centre

• A bicameral central legislature replaced the old Imperial Legislative Council: the Council of State (upper house, 60 members) and the Central Legislative Assembly (lower house, 145 members). A majority in each house was elected.
• Direct elections were introduced for the first time, though on a narrow franchise based on property, tax and education. Only about 2 to 3 per cent of Indians could vote.
• No dyarchy at the centre. The Viceroy's government remained responsible only to London. The Viceroy could certify rejected bills and issue ordinances.
• Three of the eight members of the Viceroy's Executive Council were to be Indians.

5.3 Other provisions

• Separate electorates were extended beyond Muslims to Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Indian Christians and Europeans.
• Central and provincial subjects were separated, the first clear devolution of subjects between the two levels.
• A High Commissioner for India was created in London, taking over some functions of the Secretary of State, whose salary was now paid from the British exchequer instead of Indian revenues.
• The Act provided for a statutory commission after ten years to review its working. This clause produced the Simon Commission (appointed 1927, two years early).
• A Chamber of Princes (Narendra Mandal) was set up in 1921 on the report's recommendation, an advisory body of princely rulers.
• The first elections under the Act were held in 1920, and the Congress, by then in the Non-Cooperation Movement, boycotted them.

5.4 Why nationalists rejected it

The franchise was tiny. Finance stayed with the Governor, so Indian ministers ran departments without funds. The centre stayed irresponsible. The Congress at its Amritsar session (December 1919, President Motilal Nehru) called the reforms "inadequate, unsatisfactory and disappointing". Tilak called the Act "unworthy and disappointing, a sunless dawn". Within months, Jallianwala Bagh and the Khilafat wrong pushed the country from constitutional disappointment into mass non-cooperation, which the next two chapters cover.

Quick Revision — One-Line Facts

• World War I lasted from 1914 to 1918; over a million Indian soldiers served and about 70,000 died.
• Defence of India Act, 1915 allowed wartime detention without trial.
• Tilak returned from Mandalay jail in June 1914 after six years' imprisonment.
• Tilak founded the Indian Home Rule League in April 1916 at Belgaum, headquarters Poona.
• Tilak's league worked in Maharashtra (minus Bombay city), Karnataka, Central Provinces and Berar.
• Tilak's papers: Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English).
• "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it" — Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
• Annie Besant founded the All India Home Rule League in September 1916 at Madras (Adyar).
• Besant's papers: New India and Commonweal; organising secretary George Arundale.
• Jawaharlal Nehru began active politics in Besant's Home Rule League; Gandhi joined neither league.
• Besant was interned in June 1917 with Wadia and Arundale, and released in September 1917.
• S. Subramania Iyer renounced his knighthood in protest against Besant's internment.
• Annie Besant, Calcutta 1917: first woman President of the INC; Sarojini Naidu (Kanpur 1925) was the first Indian woman President.
• Tilak went to England in 1918 for the defamation case against Valentine Chirol, and lost.
• In 1920 Gandhi headed the All India Home Rule League, renaming it Swarajya Sabha.
• The Lucknow session, December 1916, President Ambica Charan Majumdar, reunited Moderates and Extremists after the 1907 Surat split.
• The Lucknow Pact (1916) was signed between the Congress and the Muslim League; architects Tilak and Jinnah.
• In the Lucknow Pact the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims for the only time.
• Sarojini Naidu called Jinnah the "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity."
• The Montagu Declaration was made on 20 August 1917, promising the progressive realisation of responsible government.
• Edwin Montagu was Secretary of State (1917–22); Lord Chelmsford was Viceroy (1916–21).
• The Montagu-Chelmsford Report (July 1918) became the Government of India Act, 1919.
• The 1919 Act introduced dyarchy in the provinces: reserved subjects with the Governor, transferred subjects with Indian ministers.
• Education, health, local self-government and agriculture were transferred; police, finance, land revenue and justice were reserved.
• The Act created a bicameral central legislature: Council of State (60) and Legislative Assembly (145), with direct elections.
• Separate electorates were extended to Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Indian Christians and Europeans in 1919.
• The Act promised a statutory commission after 10 years, which came early as the Simon Commission (1927).
• The Chamber of Princes (1921) and the High Commissioner for India followed from the 1919 reforms.
• Moderates who accepted the 1918 report left the Congress and formed the Indian Liberal Federation (1918).
• The Congress at Amritsar (1919) called the reforms "inadequate, unsatisfactory and disappointing".

Memory Tables

Table 1: The Two Home Rule Leagues Compared

Point	Tilak's league	Besant's league
Name	Indian Home Rule League	All India Home Rule League
Founded	April 1916, Belgaum	September 1916, Madras
Headquarters	Poona	Adyar (Madras)
Area	Maharashtra (minus Bombay city), Karnataka, CP, Berar	Rest of India, including Bombay city
Newspapers	Kesari, Mahratta	New India, Commonweal
Key aides	N.C. Kelkar and others	George Arundale, B.P. Wadia, C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar
Branches	6 large branches	About 200 small branches

Table 2: Year-wise Chronology, 1914–1921

Year	Event
1914 (June)	Tilak released from Mandalay jail
1914 (August)	First World War begins
1915	Defence of India Act
1916 (April)	Tilak's Indian Home Rule League founded at Belgaum
1916 (September)	Besant's All India Home Rule League founded at Madras
1916 (December)	Lucknow session: Congress reunion + Lucknow Pact with Muslim League
1917 (June)	Besant interned; released September 1917
1917 (20 August)	Montagu Declaration in the House of Commons
1917 (December)	Besant presides over Calcutta session of INC
1918 (July)	Montagu-Chelmsford Report published
1918	Special Congress session, Bombay (Syed Hasan Imam); Indian Liberal Federation formed
1919 (December)	Government of India Act, 1919 passed; Amritsar session of INC
1920	First elections under the Act (boycotted by Congress); Gandhi renames Besant's league Swarajya Sabha
1921	Reforms come into operation; Chamber of Princes set up

Table 3: Government of India Act, 1919 — Subjects under Dyarchy

Reserved (Governor + Executive Council)	Transferred (Governor + Indian ministers)
Police	Education
Land revenue	Public health and sanitation
Justice	Local self-government
Finance	Agriculture
Irrigation	Industries
Prisons, press	Excise

Practice MCQs

Q1. Who founded the Indian Home Rule League at Belgaum in April 1916? (a) Annie Besant (b) Bal Gangadhar Tilak (c) G.K. Gokhale (d) Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Q2. Annie Besant's All India Home Rule League had its headquarters at: (a) Poona (b) Bombay (c) Adyar, Madras (d) Calcutta

Q3. The Lucknow Pact of 1916 was signed between: (a) The Congress and the British government (b) The Moderates and the Extremists (c) The Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League (d) The Home Rule Leagues of Tilak and Besant

Q4. Who made the declaration of 20 August 1917 promising the progressive realisation of responsible government in India? (a) Lord Chelmsford (b) Edwin Montagu (c) Lord Morley (d) Lord Minto

Q5. Dyarchy was introduced in the provinces by which Act? (a) Indian Councils Act, 1909 (b) Government of India Act, 1919 (c) Government of India Act, 1935 (d) Indian Councils Act, 1892

Q6. Who was the first woman President of the Indian National Congress? (a) Sarojini Naidu (b) Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (c) Annie Besant (d) Nellie Sengupta

Q7. Which pair of newspapers is correctly matched with Annie Besant? (a) Kesari and Mahratta (b) New India and Commonweal (c) Young India and Navajivan (d) Bande Mataram and Sandhya

Q8. Who presided over the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in December 1916? (a) Ambica Charan Majumdar (b) Syed Hasan Imam (c) Motilal Nehru (d) Rash Behari Ghosh

Q9. Sarojini Naidu described which leader as the "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity"? (a) Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (b) Mohammad Ali Jinnah (c) Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (d) Hakim Ajmal Khan

Q10. Under the dyarchy of the Government of India Act, 1919, which of the following was a transferred subject? (a) Police (b) Land revenue (c) Education (d) Finance

Q11. In which case did the Indian National Congress accept separate electorates for Muslims? (a) Morley-Minto Reforms, 1909 (b) Lucknow Pact, 1916 (c) Communal Award, 1932 (d) Nehru Report, 1928

Q12. Tilak went to England in 1918 mainly to: (a) Attend the Round Table Conference (b) Fight a defamation case against Valentine Chirol (c) Present the Lucknow Pact to Parliament (d) Meet the Secretary of State

Q13. Arrange the following in correct chronological order: 1. Montagu Declaration 2. Founding of Tilak's Home Rule League 3. Government of India Act, 1919 4. Lucknow Pact (a) 2, 4, 1, 3 (b) 4, 2, 1, 3 (c) 2, 1, 4, 3 (d) 1, 2, 4, 3

Q14. The Government of India Act, 1919 created a bicameral central legislature. Its two houses were: (a) Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha (b) Council of State and Central Legislative Assembly (c) Imperial Council and Federal Assembly (d) Chamber of Princes and Legislative Council

Q15. Consider the following statements about the Home Rule Movement:

1. Gandhi was a member of Besant's Home Rule League from its founding.
2. S. Subramania Iyer renounced his knighthood in protest against Besant's internment.
3. In 1920 the All India Home Rule League was renamed Swarajya Sabha. Which of the statements are correct? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer Key

Q	Answer	One-line reason
Q1	(b)	Tilak set up the Indian Home Rule League at Belgaum in April 1916, headquarters Poona.
Q2	(c)	Besant ran her league from the Theosophical Society base at Adyar, Madras.
Q3	(c)	The Lucknow Pact was a joint reform scheme of the Congress and the Muslim League.
Q4	(b)	Secretary of State Edwin Montagu made the August Declaration in the House of Commons.
Q5	(b)	The 1919 Act split provincial subjects into reserved and transferred lists (dyarchy).
Q6	(c)	Annie Besant presided over the Calcutta session, 1917; Naidu (1925) was the first Indian woman.
Q7	(b)	New India and Commonweal were Besant's papers; Kesari and Mahratta were Tilak's.
Q8	(a)	Ambica Charan Majumdar presided over the reunion session at Lucknow, 1916.
Q9	(b)	Jinnah earned the title for engineering the Congress-League pact of 1916.
Q10	(c)	Education was transferred to Indian ministers; police, revenue and finance were reserved.
Q11	(b)	Only in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 did the Congress accept separate electorates.
Q12	(b)	Tilak sued Valentine Chirol over the book Indian Unrest, and lost the case.
Q13	(a)	League April 1916 → Pact December 1916 → Declaration August 1917 → Act 1919.
Q14	(b)	The 1919 Act set up the Council of State (60) and the Legislative Assembly (145).
Q15	(b)	Gandhi joined neither league in 1916; statements 2 and 3 are correct.