← 🇮🇳 Indian history · usually met in Std 7-12
Ninety years from 1857 to 1947, and far more than one movement, one method or one leader.
The revolt of 1857 ended Company rule and brought direct Crown administration. The Indian National Congress formed in 1885 and began as a body of petitions and resolutions. The partition of Bengal in 1905 produced the Swadeshi movement, and the early twentieth century saw revolutionary activity alongside constitutional pressure. Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 and reshaped the movement around mass non-violent non-cooperation: Champaran, the Salt March in 1930, Quit India in 1942.
It was never a single stream. Ambedkar fought for the rights of the depressed classes and argued that political freedom without social reform would leave most Indians unfree. Bhagat Singh and his comrades took a revolutionary path. Subhas Chandra Bose raised the Indian National Army abroad. Women were central throughout — Sarojini Naidu, Kasturba Gandhi, Aruna Asaf Ali, Usha Mehta and thousands unnamed. Independence came on 15 August 1947, together with a Partition whose violence and displacement are part of the same history.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “India's freedom struggle” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus. Archaeological Survey of India ↗The body that excavates and protects the sites — Harappa, the Ashokan pillars, the monuments themselves.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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