(a) "Colonialism had a twisted logic of its own for commercialization. It emerges on analysis to have been often an artificial…

(a) Colonial commercialization as artificial and forced

The statement is largely valid, though it needs qualification. Under colonial rule, cash revenue demands, rents and debt pushed peasants to grow crops for sale regardless of price signals. Indigo in Bengal and Bihar was grown under planters' coercion, including the tinkathia system in Champaran, and the opium monopoly compelled poppy cultivation. Bipan Chandra and others stress that commercialization served export needs and the colonial drain, not the growth of domestic industry. The gains went to traders, moneylenders and the colonial state, not to cultivators, who sold cheaply after harvest.

Yet the thesis is too uniform. Dharma Kumar and later revisionists show peasants responded to markets: cotton expanded in the Deccan during the 1860s boom, and jute and wheat grew in response to prices and railways. Commercialization was therefore neither wholly forced nor wholly voluntary. Its logic was colonial, since the surplus was extracted, but its forms were regionally varied.

(b) Peasants as the main force in post-1857 agrarian movements

The statement is broadly accurate. Before 1857 agrarian revolts were often led by zamindars, chiefs or local elites, as in the 1857 rebellion itself. Afterwards, peasants fought directly against planters, landlords and moneylenders: the Indigo revolt (1859–60), the Pabna agrarian leagues (1873), the Deccan riots (1875), the Champaran satyagraha (1917), Kheda (1918), Bardoli (1928) and the Kisan Sabhas of the 1930s. Their demands concerned rent, debt and planter coercion, and they were built on peasants' own organisation.

The claim needs care. Ranajit Guha shows how peasants acted autonomously, but leadership was often from richer peasants, as in Bardoli, or from nationalists and the Left, as in the Kisan Sabha. Adivasi movements such as the Munda ulgulan (1899–1900) had distinct tribal and religious features. The judgement is that peasants were the main force, while leadership and aims varied.

(c) Political consciousness and British insults as causes of Non-Cooperation

The statement identifies real causes but is incomplete. Political consciousness had grown through the Home Rule leagues, wartime hardship and the Montagu-Chelmsford disappointment. The Rowlatt Act (1919), the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 1919, martial law in Punjab, the crawling order and the Hunter Committee's mild treatment of Dyer were felt as insults to national honour.

But other causes were just as important. The Khilafat grievance created Hindu-Muslim unity, post-war inflation and economic distress pressed the masses, and Gandhi's emergence as a mass leader supplied the method. The Calcutta special session (September 1920) and the Nagpur session (December 1920) made non-cooperation Congress policy. A full explanation links national honour, economic hardship, Khilafat and Gandhian leadership. The statement is correct in emphasis on insult but incomplete as a cause.

(d) Gandhi "desperately in search of an effective formula" in 1930

The claim captures a real difficulty but overstates it. After the Lahore Congress (December 1929) declared purna swaraj, Gandhi had to decide what form the struggle would take. The Viceroy's October 1929 statement on dominion status was vague, and Gandhi's eleven demands of January 1930 were a bargaining position. Sumit Sarkar notes that Gandhi hesitated, and that the radical pressure from Jawaharlal Nehru and the youth, and from businessmen, shaped his timing. Even Nehru at first doubted that salt could rally the country.

Yet Gandhi was not without ideas. Since 1922 he had prepared through constructive work and the Bardoli experience, and salt was chosen because it was a universal, symbolic grievance. The Dandi march (12 March–6 April 1930) proved that the formula worked. The judgement is that the search was real, but not desperate; the choice was calculated.

(e) British responsibility and speed in the transfer of power

The statement has force. The 3 June 1947 plan, which advanced the transfer from June 1948 to 15 August 1947, left about ten weeks to divide a country, its army and its provinces. The Radcliffe Line was announced only on 17 August, after independence, and the Punjab Boundary Force of about 50,000 men could not stop the violence. Estimates of deaths range from two hundred thousand to two million, and some twelve to fifteen million were displaced. British troops were mostly kept in barracks.

The defence is that Britain was exhausted after the war, and that violence was already rising in Calcutta (August 1946) and Bihar. Mountbatten believed delay risked wider civil war, and the Congress and Muslim League leaders accepted the date. Historians such as Ayesha Jalal and Anita Inder Singh nevertheless stress the lack of preparation. The judgement is that the withdrawal was hasty, and that the haste made the violence worse even if it did not cause it.