The Non-Cooperation Movement: Programme, Spread and Chauri Chaura (1920-1922)

Introduction: From Convergence to National Campaign (1920)

Why Non-Cooperation Was the Turning Point

Why this matters: the grievances of 1919, the Rowlatt Act, Jallianwala Bagh and the Khilafat question, had broken Indian faith in British justice. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920 to 1922 was the first time that anger was turned into a single, organised, all-India campaign.

What is the significance of Non-Cooperation: it converted the Congress from a debating body into a mass movement, gave it a method that ordinary people could practise, and drew students, peasants, tribals and women into politics. Its reach and its sudden end are traced below.

The Spread of the Movement at a Glance

Distinguishing the geography of the movement is the key to understanding it. A single national call was taken up in very different local forms: a peasant upsurge in Awadh, a Moplah rising in Malabar, the Akali movement in Punjab, and tribal defiance in the Andhra hills.

What ties them together is that all marched under the one banner of Swaraj, even as each carried its own grievance. The spread of the movement is shown below, before we turn to how it began.

The Causes and the Adoption: Calcutta and Nagpur (1920)

The Causes: Punjab, Khilafat and the Demand for Swaraj

What is the significance of the causes: they gave the movement a Hindu and a Muslim grievance at once. Gandhi built Non-Cooperation on three wrongs: the Punjab wrong of Jallianwala Bagh, the Khilafat wrong over the Caliphate, and the failure of the reforms to grant real self-rule, so that only Swaraj would satisfy the nation.

Distinguishing the new mood: where the Moderates had petitioned and the Extremists had agitated in the towns, Gandhi now offered a programme of active withdrawal of cooperation, peaceful but total, that could be practised across the country.

Adopting the Programme and Reorganising the Congress

Observable outcomes came in two Congress sessions. At the special session in Calcutta in September 1920, the Congress adopted Gandhi's Non-Cooperation programme, and at the Nagpur session of December 1920 it was confirmed and the Congress itself was reorganised for mass work, with provincial committees on a linguistic basis.

A distinguishing promise framed the whole campaign: Gandhi pledged that Swaraj would come within one year if the programme was fully carried out. The Congress was now committed, for the first time, to extra-constitutional mass action.

The Two-Limb Programme: Boycott and the Constructive Agenda

The Boycott: Schools, Courts, Councils, Titles and Foreign Goods

What is the significance of the boycott: it was the negative limb, the withdrawal of Indian cooperation from every arm of the Raj. Indians were asked to surrender titles and honours, to boycott government schools, law courts and the new legislative councils, to resign from official service, and above all to boycott foreign cloth.

Distinguishing the forms of the boycott shows how wide it reached, as the list below sets out, and the diagram that follows pairs it with the constructive limb.

• Schools and colleges: students left government institutions in large numbers.
• Law courts: lawyers such as C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru gave up their practice.
• Legislative councils: the new councils were boycotted at the elections.
• Titles and honours: titles conferred by the Raj were surrendered.
• Foreign cloth: bonfires of foreign cloth became the symbol of the movement.

Swadeshi, Khadi and National Education

Observable outcomes appeared in the positive, constructive limb. Refusal alone was not enough; the nation had to build itself. National schools and colleges such as the Jamia Millia Islamia and the Kashi Vidyapith were founded, panchayat courts settled disputes, and Hindu-Muslim unity and the removal of untouchability were pressed as national duties.

At its centre stood khadi. The spinning wheel and hand-spun cloth became the symbols of self-reliance and the dignity of labour, and the boycott of foreign cloth was matched by the positive promotion of swadeshi. The constructive programme made the movement a daily practice, not merely a protest.

Not everyone agreed with the boycott of schools. Rabindranath Tagore feared it would harm a generation of students and warned against a narrow, exclusive nationalism, a reservation that marked his wider difference with Gandhi over both education and the very idea of the nation.

The Spread and the Social Base

Students, Peasants, Tribals and Women

What is the significance of the social base: it was far wider than anything the movement had known before. Students left government schools, peasants in Awadh voiced their grievances over rent, tribals in the Andhra hills defied the forest laws, and women took part in picketing and spinning for the first time on a large scale.

Distinguishing the groups shows how each brought its own concern under the single banner of Swaraj, as the diagram below sets out. The urban middle classes joined the boycott, but it was the entry of the masses that made the movement new.

The Regional Upsurges: Awadh, Malabar, Andhra and Punjab

Observable outcomes took strikingly different regional forms. The national call merged with local struggles, and in some places it spilled beyond Gandhi's strict non-violence, as the table below records.

A measured note is needed here. Some of these upsurges, especially the Moplah rising, took a violent and communal turn that Gandhi could not control, a sign of how far the movement had outrun its leadership.

Chauri Chaura and the Withdrawal (1922)

The Violence and Gandhi's Decision

What is the significance of Chauri Chaura: it ended the movement at its height. On 4 February 1922, at Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces, a procession of protesters clashed with the police, and an angry mob set fire to the police station, killing some twenty-two policemen inside.

Distinguishing Gandhi's response: for him, the violence was decisive. He held that the country was not yet ready for non-violent mass action, and he withdrew the movement in February 1922, accepting the criticism rather than let the struggle turn violent. The course of these two years is shown below.

The Great Trial and the Criticism

Observable outcomes followed swiftly. In March 1922 Gandhi was tried for sedition in the famous Great Trial, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to six years imprisonment. The withdrawal left many younger nationalists, and leaders such as Motilal Nehru and C. R. Das, dismayed at the halt when the movement was at its peak.

A balanced verdict is fair. The critics argued that a single local outrage should not have stopped a national movement; Gandhi answered that means and ends were inseparable, and that a movement built on non-violence could not survive a turn to violence. The debate over the withdrawal has continued ever since.

Significance: From Middle-Class Petition to Mass Movement

Why Non-Cooperation Changed the Movement

Contemporary linkages run from Non-Cooperation through the whole later struggle. It transformed the Congress from a body of the educated middle class into a genuine mass organisation, gave nationalism the weapons of boycott and swadeshi, and proved that millions could be moved by a single moral call.

The larger significance is that, even in apparent defeat, the movement changed Indian politics for good. The masses had entered the national stage and would not leave it. The next part follows what the Congress did in the lull that followed, in the Swaraj Party and the council-entry years of 1922 to 1928.

Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Non-cooperation movement (1919-1922)
• Wikipedia: Chauri Chaura incident
• Wikipedia: Moplah rebellion
• Wikipedia: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• NCERT, India's Struggle for Independence / Themes in Indian History III
• Ministry of Culture: Indian Culture Freedom Archive
• Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (Freedom Movement portal)
• Press Information Bureau, Government of India
• National Portal of India