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The first section of this chapter describes the partition of Bengal. The second considers the Swadeshi movement. The third section describes extremists and moderates. The fourth section looks into revolutionary activities. The fifth section examines the government repression. The sixth section discusses the Morley-Minto reforms. The last section considers Muslim separatism. Throughout 1905 and 1906, the Swadeshi spirit spread. Physically, it moved from Bengal to Maharashtra, Madras and other provinces. More importantly, it forced its way into the mainstream of Indian politics. It was at this time that signs of cleavage began to grow evident in the Congress. The government was quick to take steps against the extremists and revolutionaries. Restrictions were imposed on newspapers and public meetings.

This chapter explores how the country adjusted to not only a failed uprising, but the loss of almost two million people as a result of mortality and emigration. Although it concerned the government, the flurry of revolutionary activities after July 1848 was for the most part isolated and unnoticed by the majority of Irish people. The activities of Lalor, Brenan and others took place against the backdrop of hunger and social dislocation caused by the reappearance of potato blight in the previous year. It meant that, yet again, there was extensive starvation and homelessness in the country, with one million people depending on the draconian Poor Law for survival. The political agitators who escaped to America travelled on the same ships that carried hundreds of thousands of famine-worn Irish out of Ireland. For those who remained in the country, years of political agitation had ended in failure, in 1843 as well as in 1848. The decade which had commenced with the formation of the Repeal Association had ended with both constitutional and physical force nationalism in tatters.

This chapter presents an essay on Mahatma Gandhi’s efforts for national integration in India. It argues that freedom and unity of India was Gandhi’s main focus since his emergence as the dominant figure in Indian politics in 1919 until his death twenty-nine years later. It highlights Gandhi’s belief that unity can only be achieved through non-violent means. It also shows that revolutionary activity in India was suicidal given that the country was hopelessly divided and the masses so deeply sunk in pauperism and so fearfully terror-stricken.

This chapter explores the poignant and disturbing fate of Henryk Erlich and Wiktor Alter at the hands of the Narodni Komitet Vnutriennykh Diel (National Committee for Internal Affairs: the Soviet secret police, NKVD). Erlich had been one of the most important representatives of the General Jewish Workers Union of Poland, known as the Polish Bund. He was also a member of the Central Committee of the Bund, editor-in-chief of the Folkstsaytung, and, with Wiktor Alter, a delegate of the Bund to the Executive Committee of the Socialist International since 1930. He was arrested on October 6, 1939, and charged with anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary activities. The chapter then looks at Erlich's history of the Bund, which, because of the circumstances of its creation, is unique.