4 - Indefinite Emergency

Summary

The interwar period in India was a time of great political upheaval, with the development of unprecedented mass support for the politics of anti-colonial nationalism. This period also marked the climax of the revolutionary movement in Bengal, as radicals disenchanted by the failure of the non-cooperation campaign soon returned to the tactics of assassination and political violence that they adopted before and during the war. In 1925, the return of revolutionary organizations prompted the Government of India to introduce the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, despite vigorous opposition from within the newly expanded Indian legislatures. With political violence reaching unprecedented levels in the early 1930s, colonial officials became increasingly reliant on repressive emergency laws that for the first time began to target ‘terrorism’ as a distinct category of crime.