The Home Rule League Movement was India’s less charged but more effective response to the First World War than the response of Indians living abroad, which took the form of the romantic Ghadar adventure. The home rule league movement, led by stalwarts such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant, grew and flourished all across the Indian independence movement between 1916 and 1918. This alliance was to be known as the All India Home Rule League, similar to the Irish Home Rule League. The goal of the home rule movement was the attainment of home rule or dominion status under the British Empire, similar to that of Canada and Australia. The movement was carried out through the two home rule leagues. 

Background

• The Government of India Act of 1909 fell short of Indians’ expectations.
• The national movement slowed when the Congress Party split in 1907 and fiery leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak was imprisoned from 1908 to 1914.
• The release of Tilak and the arrival of Annie Besant, however, resulted in a resurgence of the national movement.
• Annie Besant was an Irish socialist, author, and orator who advocated for Irish and Indian independence. In 1893, she arrived in India.
• India’s authorities were split on whether or not to back Britain in the war.
• Tilak realized the necessity for a renewal of the nationalist movement in India after returning from exile in Mandalay.
• He also recognised the Congress Party’s growing relevance in India’s political landscape. As a result, his first objective was to re-enter the party.
• Due to Annie Besant’s influence, the extremists were allowed to rejoin the party at the December 1915 Congress session.
• Besant had also recognised the importance of Congress’s acceptance and the radicals’ active engagement in the national battle.
• Besant and Tilak, on the other hand, were unable to persuade Congress to endorse their plan to establish home rule leagues.
• Besant persuaded the Congress to commit to educational propaganda and the formation of local groups. It was also decided that if these requirements were not met by September 1916, she would be free to form her own home rule league.
• As a result, in September 1916, she formed her Home Rule League.
• Tilak, on the other hand, was not bound by any such stipulation and had established his league in April 1916.

Factors Leading to Formation of Home Rule League

There were several factors that contributed to the formation of the Home Rule Movement. Prominent leaders, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Annie Besant, G.S. Khaparde, Sir S. Subramania Iyer, Joseph Baptista, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, came together and decided that a national alliance was needed to work throughout the year (unlike the Congress, which only met once a year) with the main goal of demanding self-government or home rule for all of India within the British commonwealth. This alliance was to be known as the All India Home Rule League, similar to the Irish Home Rule League. 

Factors Leading To The Movement:

• A subset of nationalists believed that popular pressure was required to persuade the government to make concessions.
• The Morley-Minto reforms disappointed the moderates.
• People were feeling the burden of wartime miseries brought on by high taxation and price increases, and they were ready to join any aggressive protest movement.
• The war, which was fought between the major imperialist powers of the time and was backed by open propaganda against each other, exposed the myth of white superiority.
• Tilak was prepared to assume leadership after his release in June 1914, and had made conciliatory gestures—to the government, assuring it of his loyalty, and to the Moderates, assuring them that he wanted, like the Irish Home Rulers, a reform of the administration rather than an overthrow of the government.
• He also admitted that the acts of violence had only slowed the pace of India’s political progress.
• He urged all Indians to come to the aid of the British government in its hour of need.
• Annie Besant, an Irish theosophist based in India since 1896, had decided to broaden her activities to include the formation of a home rule movement along the lines of the Irish Home Rule Leagues.