Social Science (087) — AI-generated practice question

Gandhi's framework held that British rule survived not through force alone, but through Indian cooperation — taxes, army service, and use of government institutions. Without these, the colonial machine would collapse.

To refute the critic: superior military force is meaningless without soldiers to man it, funds to finance it, and a civilian administration to run it. All of these depended on Indian participation. As Gandhi argued in Hind Swaraj, if Indians simply withdrew cooperation, British rule would collapse within a year.

This reveals Gandhi's understanding that colonial power was not purely coercive — it was sustained from below. His strategy of Non-Cooperation was therefore designed to withdraw the consent and labour that made British rule possible, rendering military superiority irrelevant.

Source: Chapter 2, Section 1.3 — Why Non-cooperation?

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• The key Gandhian idea is that power rests on cooperation, not just force — examiners look for this inversion of the critic's logic.
• Cite Hind Swaraj (1909) and the staged Non-Cooperation plan (boycott of army, courts, schools, etc.) to show you've used the textbook.
• The three-mark structure works best as: (1) state Gandhi's core claim, (2) directly refute the critic using that logic, (3) show what it reveals about his understanding of colonial power. Don't pad beyond ~80 words.