Answer: The Home Rule Movement was started on the lines of the Irish Home Rule League by the All India Home Rule League to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. It was the Indian response to the First World War in a less charged but more effective way. Evolution of the Home Rule movement:

• 1915:
  • Annie Besant started her campaign for Home Rule early in 1915 to demand self- government for India after the war on the lines of white colonies.
  • She campaigned through her newspapers, New India and the Commonweal, and through public meetings and conferences.
• 1916:
  • Lokmanya Tilak started his Home Rule League in May 1916. His league had six branches covering Maharashtra (except Bombay), Karnataka, Berar and the Central Provinces, while Besant’s league had 200 branches working in the rest of the country including Bombay.
  • Annie Besant started a powerful propaganda campaign for self-government. She formed the London branch of her Home Rule League in June 1916 and her Indian Home Rule League was started in Madras in September 1916. George Arundale, B.W. Wadia, C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar were her associates.
  • The Home Rule agitation was later joined by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Chittaranjan Das, K.M. Munshi, B. Chakravarti, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Lala Lajpat Rai.
• 1919: In June 1917, Annie Besant and her associates were arrested and slowly the Home Rule agitation proved to be short-lived. By 1919, it petered out owing to lack of effective organization, communal riots during 1917-18, announcement of Constitutional reforms of 1919 etc.

Contributions of the Home Rule movement:

• It provided a new dimension to the freedom movement i.e. focus from educated elite to masses.
• It created an organizational link between the town and the country.
• It created a generation of ardent nationalists and prepared the masses for politics of the Gandhian style.
• The August 1917 Declaration of Montagu and the Montford reforms were influenced by the Home Rule agitation.
• The efforts of Tilak and Annie Besant towards Moderate-Extremist reunion at Lucknow (1916) revived the Congress as an effective instrument of Indian nationalism.
• It made a determined effort to get the Home Rule Leagues recognized as the part and parcel of the Congress organization.

The Home Rule Leagues and the associated activities had some positive effects and contributed to the freedom struggle in the coming years.