When we think about India’s freedom struggle, we often focus on political leaders and major movements like the Non-Cooperation or Quit India campaigns. But the 1930s witnessed something equally significant: the expansion of human rights ideals beyond elite political circles into the everyday lives of ordinary Indians. Peasants, students, and women began organizing themselves to fight for their specific rights, while cultural expressions like cinema brought these conversations into popular consciousness. This decade marked a turning point when civil liberties became not just a political demand but a social movement touching diverse sections of society.
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Peasants organize for their rights
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, India’s peasantry suffered under crushing exploitation. High rents, illegal levies, arbitrary evictions, and forced labor under the zamindari system made rural life unbearable. In response, peasants began forming their own organizations to protect their interests and assert their rights.
The All India Kisan Sabha was established in April 1936 during the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress, with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as its first president. This organization had its roots in the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha, formed in 1929 to mobilize peasants against zamindari exploitation. The movement gradually intensified and spread across India, bringing previously marginalized farmers into the national conversation about rights and justice.
The Kisan Sabha movement represented more than just economic demands. It carried ideas of civil liberties into rural areas, teaching peasants that they too had rights worth fighting for. The Kisan Manifesto, issued in August 1936, demanded the abolition of zamindari and occupancy rights for all tenants, challenging the feudal structures that had oppressed rural communities for generations. By 1938, membership had surged to around 800,000, reflecting how deeply these ideas resonated with the rural poor.
Students join the struggle
Students had long participated in India’s freedom movement, but 1936 saw them organize into a formal national structure. The All India Students Federation (AISF) was founded on August 12, 1936, in Lucknow, representing the most far-reaching attempt to create a national student movement during colonial India. Muhammad Ali Jinnah presided over the inaugural convention, while Prem Narayan Bhargava was elected as the first general secretary.
The AISF wasn’t just about supporting the broader independence struggle. It gave students a platform to articulate their own demands for academic freedom, resistance to British censorship in universities, and equal access to education. Students began observing All India Students’ Day from 1937, mobilizing campuses nationwide for anti-colonial protests. The organization published its own newspaper, Students’ Tribune, to propagate its views on education policy and international anti-fascism.
This movement demonstrated that young people weren’t passive recipients of education but active participants in shaping their society. They connected their educational concerns with broader questions of civil liberties, understanding that freedom in the classroom was inseparable from political freedom.
Women step into public life
The 1930s saw unprecedented numbers of women participating in nationalist movements and organizing for their own rights. While women had been involved in earlier phases of the freedom struggle, this decade marked their mass mobilization across class and regional divides.
Organizations like the All India Women’s Conference, founded in 1927, connected social reform with nationalist politics, demanding not just political rights but also educational opportunities, legal protections, and social equality. Women actively participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, with thousands joining the Salt Satyagraha alongside leaders like Sarojini Naidu and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay.
This participation wasn’t limited to elite women. Across India, ordinary women joined demonstrations, boycotts, and public meetings, challenging traditional norms that confined them to domestic spaces. The nationalist movement provided women with platforms to demonstrate leadership capabilities while connecting gender equality to national identity. Their involvement helped transform the understanding of civil liberties to include women’s specific concerns about marriage, property rights, education, and political participation.
The Indian Civil Liberties Union takes shape
Perhaps the most significant institutional development of this period was the establishment of a dedicated organization to protect civil liberties. The Indian Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) was founded on November 7, 1936, at the initiative of Jawaharlal Nehru. Rabindranath Tagore served as its honorary president, with Sarojini Naidu as working president.
What made the ICLU unique was its non-party, non-sectarian character. Its sole function was to protect civil liberties, regardless of political affiliation. The organization worked to collect data on rights violations, publish facts about abuses, mobilize public opinion, and connect with international civil liberties unions. This systematic approach to documenting and addressing civil rights violations was unprecedented in India.
The ICLU’s formation reflected a growing understanding that civil liberties needed dedicated institutional protection. It wasn’t enough to demand rights only when convenient for political goals; there needed to be organizations specifically committed to defending freedoms like speech, assembly, and protection from arbitrary detention. The ICLU became a model for similar organizations that would emerge after independence.
Cinema brings rights to the masses
The sensitization around rights didn’t remain confined to political organizations and manifestos. It spilled into popular culture, particularly cinema, which was becoming an increasingly powerful medium for reaching mass audiences.
Achhut Kanya (1936), produced by Bombay Talkies, brought the issue of untouchability to mainstream cinema. The film told the tragic story of love between Pratap, a Brahmin boy played by Ashok Kumar, and Kasturi, an untouchable girl portrayed by Devika Rani. By depicting how caste divisions destroyed individual lives and happiness, the film challenged the rigid social hierarchies that denied basic human dignity to millions of Indians. Its commercial success demonstrated that audiences were ready to engage with social reform through entertainment.
V. Shantaram’s Duniya Na Mane (1937), released as Kunku in Marathi, portrayed a woman’s rebellion against forced marriage. The film’s protagonist, Nirmala (played by Shanta Apte), refuses to consummate her marriage to an elderly widower, repeatedly stating that while suffering can be borne, injustice cannot. This bold stance on women’s rights to choose their own lives was revolutionary for its time, giving visual form to the debates about individual autonomy and gender equality that women’s organizations were advocating.
These films did more than entertain. They made abstract concepts like rights and justice concrete and relatable. They brought discussions about caste discrimination and women’s autonomy into homes and public spaces where political pamphlets might never reach. Through compelling storytelling and memorable performances, cinema helped normalize the idea that all individuals deserved dignity and freedom of choice.
A broader vision of freedom
The 1930s expansion of human rights ideals beyond elite politics represented a fundamental shift in India’s freedom struggle. When peasants, students, and women organized themselves and when filmmakers addressed social injustices, they demonstrated that freedom wasn’t just about changing who governed but about transforming the entire social order.
The formation of the Indian Civil Liberties Union provided an institutional framework for protecting rights, while mass movements brought these ideals into lived reality. Cultural expressions like cinema ensured that even those who couldn’t read political manifestos understood what rights meant in their daily lives. Together, these developments created a more comprehensive vision of freedom that would shape independent India’s constitutional commitments to justice, liberty, and equality.
What do you think? How did the expansion of rights consciousness to diverse social groups strengthen India’s overall freedom movement? In what ways do you see the legacy of these 1930s movements in contemporary struggles for rights and justice?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Kisan_Sabha
- https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/paper1/peasant-movements-in-india
- https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/6488
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_India
- https://politicsforindia.com/11-1-civil-liberties-and-human-rights-movements-psir/
- https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/achhut-kanya-1936/KQF4VjVz_ucLcg?hl=en
- https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-defiant-women-of-v-shantaram-s-cinema-v-shantaram-motion-picture-scientific-research-and-cultural-foundation/uAXRT0BVWK_ULQ?hl=en
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