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

Causes of the Non-Cooperation Movement (1919‑1920)

Wartime Hardship, the Rowlatt Act and the Punjab Wrongs

The First World War left India poorer and angrier. Defence expenditure was financed by war loans and higher taxes, customs duties were raised and income tax was introduced, and prices doubled between 1913 and 1918. Villages were made to supply soldiers, and forced recruitment caused widespread anger. Crops failed in 1918‑19 and 1920‑21, and the acute shortages of food were accompanied by an influenza epidemic.

Political grievances came on top of economic distress. The Rowlatt Act of March 1919 allowed detention of political prisoners without trial for two years, and the protest against it ended in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919 and martial law in Punjab. These events came to be called the Punjab wrongs. The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, which formed the basis of the Government of India Act, 1919, failed to satisfy the demand for self-government.

Gandhi had already given the idea of non-cooperation its argument. In Hind Swaraj (1909) he declared that British rule had been established in India with the cooperation of Indians and had survived only because of it. If Indians refused to cooperate, he argued, British rule would collapse within a year and Swaraj would come.

The Khilafat Question and Hindu-Muslim Unity

The Khilafat wrong concerned the Ottoman Sultan, who was also the Khalifa, the spiritual head of the Islamic world. After the defeat of Ottoman Turkey in the First World War, a Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919 to defend the Khalifa's temporal powers. Leading figures of the Khilafat Movement included the brothers Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali, known as the Ali brothers, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. The Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August 1920 began the partition of the Ottoman empire that they had feared.

The Rowlatt Satyagraha had stayed mainly in the cities and towns, and Gandhi wanted a broader movement, which needed Hindus and Muslims to act together. The Khilafat issue gave him that chance. In 1920 an alliance was formed between the Khilafat leaders and the Congress, and Gandhi and the Khilafat leaders promised to fight together for both Khilafat and Swaraj.

Adoption at the Calcutta and Nagpur Congress Sessions of 1920

Calcutta Special Session of September 1920

Bal Gangadhar Tilak died in August 1920, and Gandhi became the undisputed mass leader of the Congress. The Congress met in a special session at Calcutta the next month, September 1920, under the presidency of Lala Lajpat Rai. There Gandhi convinced the other leaders of the need to start a non-cooperation movement in support of Khilafat as well as for Swaraj. The session approved a programme of non-cooperation to continue until the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were removed and Swaraj was established.

Many Congress leaders still had doubts. They were reluctant to boycott the council elections due in November 1920, and they feared that the movement might lead to popular violence. C. R. Das was among those unwilling to include the boycott of councils, but he accepted the decision of the Congress, and the leaders who had disagreed boycotted the elections. From September to December 1920 there was an intense tussle within the Congress between the supporters and the opponents of the movement.

Nagpur Session of December 1920: New Creed and Organisation

The annual session at Nagpur in December 1920, presided over by C. Vijayaraghavachariar, settled the differences and confirmed the Non-Cooperation programme. The session also made two lasting changes to the Congress.

• New creed: In place of self-government through constitutional means, the Congress made the attainment of Swaraj through peaceful and legitimate means its goal. It thereby committed itself to extra-constitutional mass struggle.
• New organisation: A Congress Working Committee of 15 members was set up to lead the party, Provincial Congress Committees were organised on a linguistic basis, and ward committees were formed.

Some senior figures left the Congress at this stage because they believed in a constitutional and lawful struggle. M. A. Jinnah left at the 1920 session after warning against mixing the independence movement with religious elements, and Annie Besant and Bipin Chandra Pal also parted ways with the Congress.

The Non-Cooperation Programme: Boycott, Constructive Work and Stages

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

A boycott is the refusal to deal with people, to take part in activities, or to buy and use things, as a form of protest. The programme of 1920 used it against every institution through which British rule worked. Indians were asked to:

• Titles: Surrender the titles and honours that the government had awarded.
• Schools and colleges: Withdraw from schools and colleges run or aided by the government.
• Law courts: Leave the government's law courts and settle disputes through panchayats instead.
• Legislative councils: Boycott the councils created under the Act of 1919 and their elections.
• Foreign cloth: Give up foreign cloth and wear khadi, made from hand-spun yarn, in its place.

The boycott was to stay non-violent throughout, and the participants were expected to work for Hindu-Muslim unity and the removal of untouchability while they did so.

Constructive Programme: Khadi, National Schools and Panchayats

The boycott had a positive side, the constructive programme, which built Indian alternatives to the institutions that were being boycotted. Gandhi promoted swadeshi goods as a religious duty. Khadi was a symbol of self-reliance, a way to give work to millions of poor villagers, and a direct challenge to British textile imports, and Gandhi at the charkha (spinning wheel) became the most abiding image of Indian nationalism.

National schools and colleges were set up for the students who had left government institutions:

• Jamia Millia Islamia: Founded at Aligarh on 29 October 1920 by nationalist leaders and students of the Aligarh Muslim University; it moved to Delhi in 1925.
• Gujarat Vidyapith: Founded at Ahmedabad on 18 October 1920 by Gandhi as a national university.
• Kashi Vidyapith: Founded at Varanasi on 10 February 1921 by Shiv Prasad Gupta and Bhagwan Das and inaugurated by Gandhi.
• Bihar Vidyapeeth: Started at Patna on 6 February 1921, with Rajendra Prasad among its founders.

Panchayats were to settle disputes outside the colonial courts, and volunteers picketed shops selling foreign liquor and toddy. The Tilak Swaraj Fund, raised in Tilak's name to pay for the movement's work, was oversubscribed, with one crore rupees collected.

Two Stages: Non-Cooperation First, Civil Disobedience Later

Gandhi proposed that the movement should unfold in stages. It was to begin with the surrender of titles and the boycott of civil services, army, police, courts, legislative councils, schools and foreign goods. Gandhi promised Swaraj within a year. If it did not come and the government answered with repression, a second stage of mass civil disobedience would follow, including the non-payment of taxes.

Spread of the Non-Cooperation Movement in the Towns (1921)

Students, Lawyers and the Boycott of Foreign Cloth

The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921, and in the towns the middle classes took the lead. Thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, and headmasters and teachers resigned. About 90,000 students joined around 800 national schools and colleges that came up in these months. Many lawyers gave up their practice, among them Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, C. R. Das, C. Rajagopalachari, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad. The council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party, the party of the non-Brahmans, chose to enter the councils.

The effects were more dramatic on the economic front. Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops were picketed, and foreign cloth was burnt in huge bonfires. The import of foreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922, its value falling from 102 crore rupees to 57 crore rupees. In many places merchants and traders refused to trade in foreign goods, and the production of Indian textile mills and handlooms went up.

Gandhi and the Ali brothers toured the country together. On a tour of South India in 1921, Gandhi shaved his head and began wearing a loincloth to identify with the poor, and his new appearance came to symbolise asceticism and abstinence.

Why the Movement Slowed Down in the Cities

The movement in the cities gradually slowed down, for two main reasons. Khadi cloth was often more expensive than mass-produced mill cloth, and poor people could not afford to buy it for long. The boycott of British institutions also needed Indian institutions to take their place, and these were slow to come up. Students and teachers therefore began trickling back to government schools, and lawyers returned to work in the government courts.

Workers, the Prince of Wales's Visit and Government Repression

Workers joined the movement in large numbers. There were 396 strikes in 1921, involving six lakh workers and a loss of 70 lakh workdays. In Assam, strikes were organised on the tea plantations, the steamer services and the Assam-Bengal Railway, with J. M. Sengupta among the leaders.

The movement grew more defiant in the second half of 1921. In July the Ali brothers called on Muslims to resign from the army, and they were arrested for it in September; Gandhi repeated their call. The visit of the Prince of Wales to India in November 1921 was met with strikes and demonstrations, and the protests turned into riots. Talks between Gandhi and the Viceroy, Lord Reading, had already broken down in May 1921.

The government struck back in December 1921. Volunteer corps were declared illegal, public meetings were banned, the press was gagged, and nearly all the leading figures were arrested, though Gandhi was left free. Jawaharlal Nehru and Motilal Nehru were arrested on 6 December 1921, and some 40,000 participants were jailed during the movement. At the Ahmedabad session of December 1921, where Hakim Ajmal Khan presided in place of C. R. Das, who was in jail, the Congress made Gandhi the sole authority on when to begin civil disobedience.

Regional Spread of the Movement: Peasants, Tribals and the Akalis

Awadh Kisan Sabha and the Eka Movement

In Awadh the movement met a peasant struggle that was already under way. The talukdars (big landlords) demanded high rents and many other cesses, peasants had to do begar (forced labour without payment) on the landlords' farms, and tenants were evicted regularly so that they could gain no right over the land. Baba Ramchandra, a sanyasi who had once been an indentured labourer in Fiji, led the peasants. Jawaharlal Nehru began visiting the villages of Awadh in June 1920, and by October 1920 the Awadh Kisan Sabha (Oudh Kisan Sabha) had been set up under Nehru, Baba Ramchandra and others, with over 300 branches within a month.

The peasants demanded a reduction of revenue, the abolition of begar and a social boycott of oppressive landlords, and panchayats organised nai-dhobi bandhs that denied landlords the services of barbers and washermen. On 6 January 1921 the police fired on peasants near Rae Bareli. As the movement spread in 1921, the houses of talukdars and merchants were attacked, bazaars were looted and grain hoards were seized, often in Gandhi's name, in forms the Congress leadership did not approve.

The Eka Movement (Unity Movement) arose towards the end of 1921 in the northern districts of the United Provinces, Hardoi, Bahraich and Sitapur. Its grievances were rents above the recorded rates, by 50 per cent in some areas, the oppression of the thekedars who collected rent, and the practice of share-rents. At its meetings peasants vowed to pay only the recorded rent, to resist eviction and to refuse forced labour. Begun by Congress and Khilafat workers, it passed to the leadership of Madari Pasi and other grassroots leaders. Madari Pasi was not inclined to accept non-violence, and the movement lost the Congress's support. Severe repression ended it by March 1922.

The Eka Movement differed in kind from the later Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928, in which Vallabhbhai Patel led the peasants of Bardoli, a taluka in the Surat district of Gujarat, against an enhancement of land revenue. Eka was a protest against excessive rents taken by landlords and their agents, while Bardoli was a protest against the revenue demand of the state.

The Mappila Rebellion of 1921 in Malabar

In Malabar the movement met the old grievances of the Mappilas (also written Moplahs), the Muslim tenants of the region, against their landlords over insecure tenure, high rents, renewal fees and other exactions. The Khilafat Movement was brought into the district in April 1920, and leaders such as Gandhi, Shaukat Ali and Maulana Azad addressed Mappila meetings. After the national leaders were arrested, leadership passed to local Mappila leaders such as Ali Musliyar and Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji.

The rebellion broke out in August 1921 in the Eranad and Valluvanad taluks of south Malabar. The rebels first attacked the symbols of British authority, the courts, police stations, treasuries and offices, together with unpopular landlords. Once martial law was declared and repression began, the rising took a communal turn, and Hindus were attacked as well. In November 1921, 70 Mappila prisoners died after being shut in a closed railway wagon on the way to Podanur, an event known as the Wagon Tragedy. By the end of 1921 the rising had largely been put down. The Congress repudiated the rising, and historians still differ on whether agrarian grievance or religious feeling drove it.

Gudem Hills and Alluri Sitarama Raju

In the Gudem Hills of the Andhra region, tribal communities read the call for Swaraj in their own way. The colonial government had closed large forest areas, which stopped the hill people from grazing cattle and collecting fuelwood and fruits, and it forced them to give begar for road building. Their leader, Alluri Sitarama Raju, spoke of the greatness of Gandhi, said he was inspired by the Non-Cooperation Movement, and persuaded people to wear khadi and give up drinking. He also held that India could be liberated only by force, not by non-violence.

Hill tribes in northern Andhra violated the forest laws during the movement itself. The armed rising that Raju led, the Rampa rebellion, broke out later, in August 1922, after Gandhi had withdrawn the movement, and it took the form of guerrilla warfare. The rebels attacked police stations to seize arms. Raju was captured and killed in May 1924, and over time he became a folk hero.

Assam, Kumaun, Midnapore and Guntur

Plantation workers in Assam understood Swaraj as the freedom to leave the tea gardens and return to their villages. Under the Inland Emigration Act of 1859 they could not leave the gardens without permission, and they were rarely given it. When they heard of the movement, thousands of workers defied the authorities, left the plantations and headed home, believing that Gandhi Raj was coming. Stranded by a railway and steamer strike, they were caught by the police and brutally beaten.

In the Kumaun hills, peasants refused to carry loads for colonial officials under the system of coolie-begar. The Coolie-Begar movement began at the Uttarayani fair at Bageshwar on 14 January 1921, where Badri Datt Pandey led the gathering in an oath against the practice, and the village heads threw the registers of forced labour into the confluence of the Saryu and Gomati.

Some districts had already gone beyond non-cooperation to civil disobedience. A no-tax campaign against union board taxes was under way in Midnapore in Bengal, and another ran in Guntur in Andhra.

The Akali Movement in Punjab

The Akali movement, also called the Gurdwara Reform Movement, sought to free the Sikh shrines from the control of mahants (hereditary custodians). It began in 1920, and the Akali Dal was founded in Amritsar in December 1920 to assist the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). Its jathas (bands of volunteers) took over shrines one after another by non-violent means.

At Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the mahant's guards opened fire on a jatha on 20 February 1921 and killed many Sikhs. Gandhi visited the site soon after, and the leaders who came with him urged the Sikhs to join the national movement. The struggle over the keys of the Golden Temple's treasury followed in October and November 1921.

The government gave in, handing the keys to Baba Kharak Singh of the SGPC on 17 January 1922 and releasing the Sikhs it had arrested, and Gandhi telegraphed the SGPC: "Congratulations, first decisive battle for India's freedom won." The movement continued after 1922 and led to the Sikh Gurdwara Bill of 1925, which placed the historical Sikh shrines under the SGPC.

Regional Struggles of 1920‑22 at a Glance

The seven struggles differed in their leaders, their grievances and their relation to the Congress.

Chauri Chaura Incident and the Withdrawal (February 1922)

Burning of the Police Station on 4 February 1922

By early 1922 Gandhi was under increasing pressure from the Congress rank and file to begin civil disobedience. On 1 February 1922 he wrote to the Viceroy that he would launch civil disobedience from Bardoli in Gujarat unless political prisoners were released and the controls on the press were removed. The campaign had hardly begun when news came from Chauri Chaura, in the Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces.

On 2 February 1922 volunteers led by Bhagwan Ahir, a retired soldier of the British Indian Army, protested against high food prices and liquor sales at Gauri Bazaar, and the police beat them back and arrested several of the leaders. On 4 February a crowd of about 2,000 to 2,500 people marched to the bazaar to picket the liquor shop and protest against the police. The police fired on the advancing crowd and killed three people. The angry crowd then set fire to the police station, with the police who had taken shelter inside, and those who tried to flee were killed and thrown back into the fire. In all, 22 policemen were killed (some accounts give 23).

The colonial authorities declared martial law in and around Chauri Chaura and arrested hundreds of people. The Gorakhpur sessions court tried 225 people and sentenced 170 of them to death. On appeal, Madan Mohan Malaviya, who had given up legal practice, appeared for the accused, and with Baba Raghavdas he helped save about 150 from the gallows; the High Court at Allahabad confirmed the death sentence on 19 on 30 April 1923, and they were hanged.

Withdrawal of the Movement at Bardoli, February 1922

Gandhi held that no provocation could justify the brutal murder of men who had been rendered defenceless. He went on a five-day fast as penance, and on 12 February 1922 he called off the Non-Cooperation Movement. The Congress Working Committee met at Bardoli in February 1922 and resolved to stop all activity that involved breaking the law and to turn instead to constructive work.

Gandhi had reasons beyond the one incident:

• Unready for non-violence: The people, in his judgement, had not yet learnt the method of non-violence, and the movement was turning violent in many places, as the riots during the Prince of Wales's visit and the rising in Malabar had shown.
• Training needed: Satyagrahis had to be properly trained before they would be ready for mass struggle.
• Danger of repression: A violent movement could easily be crushed, because the government could use violence as an excuse to turn the armed power of the state on the protesters.
• Fatigue: The movement was showing signs of fatigue, and the government was in no mood to negotiate.

The Khilafat question, a central theme of the agitation, also lost its relevance soon after. In November 1922 the Sultan of Turkey was deprived of political power, and in 1924 the office of Khalifa, the Caliphate, was itself abolished.

Reactions to the Withdrawal and Gandhi's Trial of March 1922

Many leaders were bewildered by the decision. Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, C. R. Das and Subhas Chandra Bose disapproved of it, and many nationalists felt that the movement should not have been stopped because of isolated incidents of violence. Subhas Chandra Bose wrote that to sound the order of retreat just when public enthusiasm was reaching the boiling point was "nothing short of a national calamity". The debate over the withdrawal continues among historians.

Gandhi himself was arrested in March 1922 and charged with sedition. At his trial he invited the highest penalty for "what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen". The judge, C. N. Broomfield, said that in the eyes of millions of his countrymen Gandhi was a great patriot and a leader, and on 18 March 1922 sentenced him to six years' imprisonment. Gandhi was released in February 1924 on grounds of ill health.

The lull that followed divided the Congress. C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party to fight the government from inside the legislative councils, while younger leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose pressed for more radical mass agitation.

Effects of the Non-Cooperation Movement

Achievements: A Mass Movement and a Mass Organisation

The movement changed the scale of Indian nationalism. It was no longer a movement of professionals and intellectuals, because hundreds of thousands of peasants, workers and artisans now took part, and nationalist feeling reached students, the urban poor, women and traders as well. The British Raj was shaken to its foundations for the first time since the Revolt of 1857.

Its main achievements were these:

• A mass base: Indian nationalism moved from a middle-class base to the masses.
• A new organisation: The Nagpur constitution, with its Working Committee and linguistic provincial committees, made the Congress capable of mass work.
• Loss of fear: The people lost their fear of colonial rule and its repressive power.
• Economic boycott: Imports of foreign cloth halved, and khadi became a symbol of swadeshi and self-reliance.
• National education: Institutions such as Jamia Millia Islamia, Gujarat Vidyapith and Kashi Vidyapith outlived the movement.

The American biographer Louis Fischer wrote that non-cooperation "was negative enough to be peaceful but positive enough to be effective".

Limits: The Khilafat Decline and the Communal Strain

The movement fell short of its promise of Swaraj within a year, and its alliance did not last. The Khilafat issue brought the urban Muslims into the national movement, but the national leaders did not turn that religious and political feeling into a secular political consciousness. After the decline of the Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement, a large section of Muslims felt alienated from the Congress, and the following years saw Hindu-Muslim riots in several cities. The movement also showed that the masses did not always follow the leaders' discipline, as the risings in Awadh and Malabar proved.

Gandhi and Tagore on Education and Nationalism

Rabindranath Tagore stood apart from the movement's methods, though he shared its opposition to British rule. He had returned his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He was also a humanist, a universalist and a critic of nationalism, who wanted India to assert its right to independence without denying what it could learn from abroad.

The two men differed on education and on nationalism:

• Purpose of education: Gandhi asked students to leave government schools for national schools such as Gujarat Vidyapith and Kashi Vidyapith, and he later set out Nai Talim (basic education), in which knowledge and work are not separate and a craft stands at the centre of learning; a national education conference on it met at Wardha in October 1937. Tagore disliked rote learning in the classroom and founded Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, whose foundation stone was laid on 24 December 1918, as a world centre for the study of humanity beyond the limits of nation and geography.
• Idea of the nation: Gandhi built a mass political nationalism around swadeshi, khadi and the boycott of British institutions. Tagore distrusted strongly nationalist forms of the struggle, and in 1925 he criticised the charkha in his essay "The Cult of the Charkha".
• Road to freedom: Gandhi offered Swaraj through mass non-violent action. Tagore preferred a steady and purposeful education and self-help, and in 1921 he set up the Institute for Rural Reconstruction, later Sriniketan, in a village near Santiniketan.

Both men opposed colonial rule and both looked to the village and to self-reliance, so the difference lay in method and emphasis rather than in the goal of a free India.

Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movements Compared

Method, Goal and Social Base Compared

The Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930 went a step further than Non-Cooperation. During Non-Cooperation people were asked only to refuse cooperation with the British, while in 1930 they were asked to break colonial laws as well, beginning with the salt law at Dandi. The goal had also changed, from Swaraj within a year to Purna Swaraj, or complete independence, declared at the Lahore Congress of December 1929.

Constructive Programme from Non-Cooperation to Civil Disobedience

The constructive programme ran through both movements and kept the Congress at work between them. During Non-Cooperation it meant khadi and the charkha, national schools, panchayats, temperance, Hindu-Muslim unity and the removal of untouchability, and the Working Committee's decision at Bardoli in 1922 turned the Congress to constructive work once the defiance had stopped.

The same work continued in the Civil Disobedience Movement. Foreign cloth was boycotted and liquor shops were picketed again, and this time women did much of the picketing. Gandhi declared that Swaraj would not come for a hundred years if untouchability was not eliminated, organised satyagraha to open temples, wells, tanks, roads and schools to the "untouchables", whom he called Harijans (people of God), and founded the Harijan Sevak Sangh in 1932.

Sources

• NCERT: India and the Contemporary World II, Class X, Chapter 2, Nationalism in India
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part III, Class XII, Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement
• NCERT: Exploring Society, India and Beyond Part II, Class VIII, Chapter 2, India's Long Road to Independence
• Prime Minister's Office: PM to inaugurate Chauri Chaura Centenary Celebrations on 4th February
• Press Information Bureau: Chauri Chaura martyrs have not been given due prominence: PM
• Gorakhpur District, Government of Uttar Pradesh: History
• Wikipedia: Non-cooperation movement (1919‑1922)
• Wikipedia: Chauri Chaura incident
• Wikipedia: Madan Mohan Malaviya
• Wikipedia: List of presidents of the Indian National Congress
• Wikipedia: Jamia Millia Islamia
• Wikipedia: Gujarat Vidyapith
• Wikipedia: Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith
• Wikipedia: Bihar Vidyapeeth
• Wikipedia: Eka Movement
• Wikipedia: Malabar rebellion
• Wikipedia: Wagon tragedy
• Wikipedia: Rampa Rebellion of 1922
• Wikipedia: Alluri Sitarama Raju
• Wikipedia: Coolie-Begar movement
• Wikipedia: Akali movement
• Wikipedia: Nankana massacre
• Wikipedia: Indian Councils Act 1909
• Wikipedia: Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms
• Wikipedia: Treaty of Sèvres
• Wikipedia: Rabindranath Tagore
• Wikipedia: Nai Talim
• Wikipedia: Harijan Sevak Sangh
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers