Non-cooperation movement

Also called: Non-Cooperation Khilafat movement · Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"

Meaning

The Non-Cooperation movement (1920–22) was Gandhi's first all-India mass campaign, run together with the Khilafat movement. Indians were asked to give up government titles and boycott government schools, courts, councils, services and foreign goods, and finally to stop paying taxes. Gandhi promised that this would win swaraj (self-rule) within a year. He called it off after the violence at Chauri Chaura in February 1922.

It matters because it was the first time students, lawyers, merchants, workers, peasants and tribal people all acted against the Raj at once. British rule was shaken more deeply than at any time since 1857.

Explanation

Background: the idea and the Khilafat link

• The idea comes from Hind Swaraj (1909), written by Gandhi.
• British rule did not stand on guns alone. It stood on Indian cooperation.
• Indians served the Raj as clerks, police, soldiers, lawyers and teachers. They bought British cloth and voted in British-made councils.

• If Indians took back that help, the rule would fall.

• Satyagraha (non-violent resistance in which the protester's own suffering is the weapon) was the method. The fight had to stay non-violent.

• The Khilafat question:
• Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) lost the First World War, and the winning powers began to break it up.
• The Ottoman Sultan was also the Khalifa, the religious head of Muslims across the world. Indian Muslims feared his position would be destroyed.
• The Khilafat Committee was formed at Bombay in March 1919 under the brothers Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali.

• Their demands: the Khalifa must keep control of the Muslim holy places, he must keep enough land to defend the faith, and Jazirat-ul-Arab (Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Palestine) must stay under Muslim rule.

• Why Gandhi joined the two causes: he saw a real chance to bring Hindus and Muslims into one movement. To him the Khilafat question was a genuine wrong done to Indian Muslims, not a bargaining chip.

The programme and how Congress adopted it

• Calcutta special session, September 1920: Gandhi proposed non-cooperation for Khilafat and swaraj together and won the other leaders over. [2]
• Nagpur session, December 1920: Congress formally adopted the programme as its policy. [2]
• The programme: give up titles; boycott government schools, courts, government service, foreign goods and elections; and in the end refuse to pay taxes. [2]

• It was planned in stages, not all at once: 1. Give up titles. 2. Boycott civil services, army, police, courts, councils, schools and foreign goods. 3. If the government used repression (force to crush protest), move to full civil disobedience (openly breaking laws).

• Gandhi's support for Khilafat also helped him put new life into the Congress. The two movements ran their non-cooperation programmes side by side. [2][3]

The movement on the ground, from January 1921

In the towns (the middle class led)

• Students left government schools and colleges, teachers resigned and lawyers stopped practising.
• Council elections were boycotted in most provinces.
• Madras was the exception. The Justice Party, a party of non-Brahmans, fought the elections and entered the council.
• For them, council seats were one of the few ways to gain power that Brahmans already held elsewhere.
• So a boycott would have handed power back to the upper castes.

The economic boycott

• Foreign cloth imports roughly halved in 1921–22, from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore.
• Liquor shops were picketed: protesters stood outside and stopped buyers from going in.
• Foreign cloth was burnt in public bonfires.
• Merchants refused to trade in foreign goods or to fund that trade.

Workers, peasants and tribal people went further than the leaders wanted

• 1921: 396 strikes involving 6 lakh workers, with 70 lakh workdays lost.
• Andhra hill tribes (Gudem-Rampa hills) broke the forest laws. They grazed cattle and cut wood in forests the state had closed to them.
• Awadh peasants refused to pay taxes, and rents to the talukdars (big landlords).
• Kumaun hill people refused begar (forced, unpaid labour, such as carrying officials' loads).
• Key exam point: these groups often acted against the wishes of the local Congress leaders. Each read "Gandhi's swaraj" in its own way: an end to rent, to begar or to forest rules.

Why the towns slowed down by 1921–22

• Khadi (hand-spun, hand-woven cloth) cost more than mill cloth, so poor people could not afford to boycott foreign cloth.
• Alternative institutions were slow to appear. There were few national schools for students who left government schools, and no other courts for lawyers who left the courts. Many went back.

The end and the results

• Chauri Chaura, February 1922 (Gorakhpur district, United Provinces):
• A peasant procession clashed with the police.

• The crowd set fire to the police station, and the policemen inside were killed.

• Gandhi withdrew the movement.

• His reason: the satyagrahis were not trained in non-violence.

• In his view, a violent movement was worse than no movement.

• Many leaders were angry. They felt the movement was at its peak, and stopping it threw away what had been gained.

• The Great Trial, March 1922:
• Gandhi was charged with sedition (stirring up hatred against the government) under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. The charge was based on articles he wrote in his weekly Young India. [4]
• He was arrested at his Ahmedabad ashram and tried at Ahmedabad before Sessions Judge C. N. Broomfield, along with Shankarlal Banker. [4][5]
• He had no lawyer, pleaded guilty and asked for the highest punishment the law allowed. [4]
• He was sentenced to six years and released after about two years on medical grounds. [4]

• Judge Broomfield called him "a great patriot and a leader", which was rare praise from a judge of the ruling power.

• The result: the Raj had been shaken to its foundations for the first time since 1857.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: proposed in September 1920, adopted in December 1920, active from January 1921, withdrawn in February 1922. This is the start of the Gandhian era (1915–1948).
• Key places: Calcutta and Nagpur (Congress sessions); Bombay (Khilafat Committee, 1919); Madras (the Justice Party did not join the boycott); Awadh, Kumaun and the Gudem-Rampa hills of Andhra (popular protests); Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district, United Provinces; Ahmedabad (arrest and trial).
• Key people: Mahatma Gandhi; Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali; Shankarlal Banker; Judge C. N. Broomfield.
• How we know:
• Gandhi's own writings: Hind Swaraj (1909) for the idea, and Young India for the articles behind the sedition charge. [4]
• Trade figures on foreign cloth imports (Rs 102 crore down to Rs 57 crore) and records of strikes in 1921.
• Court records of the Great Sedition Trial of 1922, kept in the Indian Culture portal's district repository. [5]

• NCERT Class 10 ("Nationalism in India") and Class 12 ("Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement").

• Sources differ on the arrest date: one gives 10 March 1922 and another 13 March 1922. In an answer, write March 1922. [2][4]

Don't confuse with

• Khilafat movement: a Muslim campaign, led by the Ali brothers' Khilafat Committee (1919), to protect the Turkish Khalifa. Non-Cooperation was the Congress programme for swaraj that took up the Khilafat cause. The two ran side by side but were separate movements.
• Civil Disobedience movement: in the Non-Cooperation movement, civil disobedience (openly breaking laws) was only a planned final stage, and that stage was never fully launched. The later Civil Disobedience movement (1930, begun with the Salt March) made law-breaking its main method from the start.
• Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919): Gandhi's earlier protest against one repressive law. Non-Cooperation was a much bigger programme of boycott, aimed at swaraj and Khilafat together.
• Swarajists: after the withdrawal, some Congress leaders wanted to enter the councils. Non-Cooperation had boycotted them.

Prelims Hooks

• Order of events: Hind Swaraj (1909) → Khilafat Committee, Bombay (March 1919) → Calcutta special session (September 1920) → Nagpur session (December 1920) → Chauri Chaura (February 1922) → Gandhi's arrest (March 1922). [2]
• Trap: non-cooperation was proposed at Calcutta but adopted at Nagpur. [2]
• Which party did not boycott the council elections? The Justice Party of Madras, a non-Brahman party.
• Match the region to the protest: Kumaun refused begar; Awadh refused taxes and rents; Andhra hill tribes broke forest laws.
• Numbers: foreign cloth imports fell from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore, and 1921 saw 396 strikes involving 6 lakh workers.
• The Great Trial: sedition under Section 124A IPC, for articles in Young India, before Judge C. N. Broomfield at Ahmedabad, with a sentence of six years. [4][5]

Mains Points

• The first truly all-India mass movement.
• Before 1920, nationalism was mostly petitions from educated townspeople.
• Non-Cooperation brought in students, lawyers, merchants, mill workers, peasants and tribal people at the same time.

• "Swaraj" meant different things to each group: a constitutional goal for Congress, an end to talukdari rent in Awadh, an end to begar in Kumaun, free use of the forest in Andhra. That was its strength, because it could unite very different groups. It was also its weakness, because the leaders could not control what they had started.

• Chauri Chaura and the debate over means and ends.

• For the withdrawal: a violent mass movement would have brought crushing repression and destroyed the Congress's moral claim.
• Against it: stopping at the peak disheartened the ranks. It pushed younger people towards revolutionary groups (such as the HSRA) and other leaders towards Swarajist council entry.

• Either way, it made means over ends the Congress's working rule.

• Khilafat and the limits of Hindu–Muslim unity.

• The alliance was the high point of joint Hindu–Muslim action.
• But it rested on a pan-Islamic religious issue, not on a shared Indian political programme.
• When Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate in Turkey (1924), the alliance lost its basis, and communal tension returned in the mid-1920s. This is useful for any GS-I question on the roots of communal politics.

Related concepts

• Hind Swaraj
• Swaraj
• Khilafat movement
• Ali brothers
• Caliphate
• Jazirat-ul-Arab
• Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
• Calcutta special session 1920
• Nagpur session 1920
• Louis Fischer

Read more

• Non-Cooperation and Khilafat, 1920–22