Indian Nationalist Movement, movement in British India and elsewhere for national consciousness of India within the British Empire, and later as a free sovereign state. Like all great historical movements, the emergence of the Indian nationalist movement is not easy to date with precision. Although more than merely a military mutiny, the Indian Mutiny of 1857 lacked all-India character and was neither grounded in a coherent conception of the Indian nation nor inspired by a desire for independence from colonial rule. The Indian National Congress, established in 1885, welcomed colonial rule and largely aimed to control its excesses. Its leaders, including Surendranath Banerji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Mahadev Govind Ranade, reflected the acute self-doubt and diffidence of their countrymen, and believed that they were ill-equipped for independence until they became a cohesive nation and learned the art of government under British tutelage. Accordingly, they regarded the Congress not as an instrument of independence but as a forum for bringing together representatives of different sections of society and creating a national consciousness that might in due time prepare the country for independence.

The limited successes of the Congress and the increasingly high-handed colonial rule provoked a militant movement in the early years of the 20th century, led by such leaders as Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The movement, mistakenly called extremism or terrorism, was the first to combine the twin ideas of independence and nationalism. It demanded an end to the colonial rule, and argued that Indians, who already had enough in common to make them a passive or potential nation, would become a self-conscious and self-confident nation in the course of liberation struggle. In spite of a small sprinkling of Parsees and Sikhs, most militant leaders were Hindus. They gave Indian nationalism a distinctly Hindu orientation, which alienated the Muslims and made Indian independence difficult to achieve.

The Indian nationalist movement (properly so called) emerged after World War I. On April 13, 1919, Brigadier General Reginald E. H. Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a peaceful and unarmed crowd of 20,000 people assembled in the Jalianwalla Bagh at Amritsar, killing 379 people and wounding 1,200. The wounded were left unattended overnight, and the news of the massacre was censored. The Amritsar massacre shook the country, dramatically exposed the callousness and inhumanity of the colonial rule, and radicalized Indian political consciousness to an unprecedented degree. It both gave the Indian nationalist movement a distinct focus and impetus, and saw the emergence of Mohandas Gandhi as its unquestioned leader. From now on Indian independence, and the development of Indian nationalism as its necessary basis, were firmly placed on the political agenda.

Under Gandhi's leadership the Congress set about devising strategies for ending colonial rule and uniting the country's diverse religious, ethnic, social, and other groups. Independence was to be achieved by means of satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, and Indian nationalism was to be developed by means of constructive programmes and inter-communal harmony. Both strategies required mass mobilization and a radical transformation in the structure and self-image of the Congress. Under Gandhi's leadership the Congress mobilized many sections of Indian society, especially the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the intellectuals.

Gandhi was the supreme but not the unquestioned leader of the Indian nationalist movement, and several groups of Indians including many intellectuals remained highly critical of him. Some found his method too ineffective or costly in terms of human suffering. Some questioned the religious and rural basis of his nationalism and his ascetic vision of India, whereas others found him too unorthodox and radical and made two attempts on his life. Gandhi was frequently challenged by his colleagues, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan, and Subhas Chandra Bose, who even succeeded in becoming Congress president against Gandhi's wishes. The Indian nationalist movement under Gandhi therefore remained a broad coalition of different interests and bodies of opinion, united by little more than a desire for independence and a rather vague vision of a free India.

As the Indian nationalist movement got well under way in the late 1920s, its success provoked anxieties among the minorities, especially the Muslims, who wondered about the danger of Hindu domination in independent India. Different sections of the Congress reassured them in their own different ways, with only limited success. In the late 1930s a group of Muslims under the leadership Mohammed Ali Jinnah began to argue that they were a distinct nation and needed an independent state of their own. Although leaders of the Indian nationalist movement did much to reassure them, political events moved too fast to prevent the partition of the country in 1947.

Historically speaking, the Indian nationalist movement was unique in several respects. It was the first and the largest anticolonial movement in history. By and large it was free of much of the violence and chauvinism characteristic of nationalist movements elsewhere. Its leaders were acutely aware that political independence had only a limited value unless it was accompanied by a comprehensive programme of social regeneration, and made social and cultural reform an integral part of the struggle for independence. Although the Indian nationalist movement failed to win over some sections of Muslims, it was broadly based, carried all minorities, including a large body of Muslims, with it, and prepared the way for a secular and democratic India fully committed to the protection of its minorities. Thanks to the way it was defined and conducted, it bore no hostility to the colonial rulers either.

In a country as diverse and vast as India, it was not easy to unite all Indians behind a single and comprehensive vision of India. By and large the Indian nationalist movement retained a heavily middle-class character, and the tribals, the ex-Untouchables, and lower castes remained marginal to its conception of the Indian nation.