Declaration of Independence

The Indian nationalist movement leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, hardened their stance against British rule in wake of the horrific Amritsar Massacre in 1919. Nehru was jailed for the first time in 1921 for his advocacy of the noncooperation movement. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Nehru and Gandhi collaborated ever more closely in the Indian National Congress, each going to prison more than once for civil disobedience actions.In 1927, Nehru issued a call for complete independence for India. Gandhi opposed this action as premature, so the Indian National Congress refused to endorse it.As a compromise, in 1928 Gandhi and Nehru issued a resolution calling for home rule by 1930, instead, with a pledge to fight for independence if Britain missed that deadline. The British government rejected this demand in 1929, so on New Years Eve, at the stroke of midnight, Nehru declared Indias independence and raised the Indian flag. The audience there that night pledged to refuse to pay taxes to the British, and to engage in other acts of mass civil disobedience.Gandhis first planned act of nonviolent resistance was a long walk down to the sea to make salt, known as the Salt March or Salt Satyagraha of March 1930. Nehru and other Congress leaders were skeptical of this idea, but it struck a chord with the ordinary people of India and proved a huge success. Nehru himself evaporated some sea water to make salt in April of 1930, so the British arrested and jailed him again for six months.