<P> The costs of the protracted war in money and manpower were great . High casualty rates in the war , increasing inflation after the end , compounded by heavy taxation , the deadly 1918 flu pandemic , and the disruption of trade during the war escalated human suffering in India . The pre-war Indian nationalist sentiment was revived as moderate and extremist groups of the Indian National Congress ended their differences to unify . In 1916 , the Congress succeeded in establishing the Lucknow Pact , a temporary alliance with the All - India Muslim League . British political concessions and Whitehall 's India Policy after World War I began to change , with the passage of Montagu -- Chelmsford Reforms , which initiated the first round of political reform in the Indian subcontinent in 1917 . However , this was deemed insufficient in reforms by the Indian political movement . Mahatma Gandhi , recently returned to India , began emerging as an increasingly charismatic leader under whose leadership civil disobedience movements grew rapidly as an expression of political unrest . The recently crushed Ghadar conspiracy , the presence of Mahendra Pratap 's Kabul mission in Afghanistan ( with possible links to then nascent Bolshevik Russia ) , and a still - active revolutionary movement especially in Punjab and Bengal ( as well as worsening civil unrest throughout India ) led to the appointment of a Sedition committee in 1918 chaired by Sidney Rowlatt , an English judge . It was tasked to evaluate German and Bolshevik links to the militant movement in India , especially in Punjab and Bengal . On the recommendations of the committee , the Rowlatt Act , an extension of the Defence of India Act 1915 , was enforced in India to limit civil liberties . </P>
who returned the knighthood conferred on him by british government after jalianwala bagh massacre
Mahatma Gandhi