Video narration
How could a vast country challenge British rule? An Independence Day celebration can make freedom feel like one triumphant moment. But the struggle began long before 1947. The uprising of 1857 was a major early challenge to British power, not yet a unified national movement of the later kind. Later, the Indian National Congress, an organization pressing for greater Indian political voice, helped build national politics. Under Mahatma Gandhi, mass campaigns brought many people into resistance through noncooperation and civil disobedience. At the same time, regional movements, revolutionaries, workers, peasants and social reformers pursued change in different ways. The struggle was not one leader's campaign. Many movements and methods pressed toward self-rule, without always sharing one plan. Decades of organizing and resistance across India brought British rule to an end in 1947. Independence came alongside Partition.