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After arriving in India, Mahatma Gandhi successfully organised

satyagraha movements in various places. In 1916 he travelled to

Champaran in Bihar to inspire the peasants to struggle against theoppressive plantation system. Then in 1917, he organised a satyagraha

to support the peasants of the Kheda district of Gujarat. Affected

by crop failure and a plague epidemic, the peasants of Kheda could

not pay the revenue, and were demanding that revenue collection berelaxed. In 1918, Mahatma Gandhi went to Ahmedabad to organisea satyagraha movement amongst cotton mill workers.

1.2 The Rowlatt Act

Emboldened with this success, Gandhiji in 1919 decided to launch anationwide satyagraha against the proposed Rowlatt Act (1919). ThisAct had been hurriedly passed through the Imperial Legislative

Council despite the united opposition of the Indian members. It

gave the government enormous powers to repress political activities,and allowed detention of political prisoners without trial for twoyears. Mahatma Gandhi wanted non-violent civil disobedience against

such unjust laws, which would start with a hartal on 6 April.

Rallies were organised in various cities, workers went on strike in

railway workshops, and shops closed down. Alarmed by the popularupsurge, and scared that lines of communication such as the railways

and telegraph would be disrupted, the British administration decided

to clamp down on nationalists. Local leaders were picked up fromAmritsar, and Mahatma Gandhi was barred from entering Delhi.On 10 April, the police in Amritsar fired upon a peaceful procession,

provoking widespread attacks on banks, post offices and railway

stations. Martial law was imposed and General Dyer took command.Mahatma Gandhi on Satyagraha

‘It is said of “passive resistance” that it is the

weapon of the weak, but the power which isthe subject of this article can be used onlyby the strong. This power is not passiveresistance; indeed it calls for intense activity. Themovement in South Africa was not passivebut active …

‘ Satyagraha is not physical force. A satyagrahi

does not inflict pain on the adversary; he doesnot seek his destruction … In the use of

satyagraha , there is no ill-will whatever.

‘ Satyagraha is pure soul-force. Truth is the very

substance of the soul. That is why this force iscalled satyagraha. The soul is informed withknowledge. In it burns the flame of love. … Non-violence is the supreme

dharma …

‘It is certain that India cannot rival Britain orEurope in force of arms. The British worship thewar-god and they can all of them become, asthey are becoming, bearers of arms. Thehundreds of millions in India can never carry arms.They have made the religion of non-violence theirown ...’

SourceSource A

Read the text carefully. What did Mahatma

Gandhi mean when he said satyagraha is

active resistance?ActivityIndia and the Contemporary World

56On 13 April the infamous Jallianwalla Bagh incident took place. On

that day a crowd of villagers who had come to Amritsar to attend

a fair gathered in the enclosed ground of Jallianwalla Bagh. Being

from outside the city, they were unaware of the martial law that hadbeen imposed. Dyer entered the area, blocked the exit points, andopened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. His object, as he declaredlater, was to ‘produce a moral effect’, to create in the minds ofsatyagrahis a feeling of terror and awe.

As the news of Jallianwalla Bagh spread, crowds took to the streets

in many north Indian towns. There were strikes, clashes with thepolice and attacks on government buildings. The governmentresponded with brutal repression, seeking to humiliate and terrorisepeople: satyagrahis were forced to rub their noses on the ground,crawl on the streets, and do salaam (salute) to all sahibs; people were

flogged and villages (around Gujranwala in Punjab, now in Pakistan)were bombed. Seeing violence spread, Mahatma Gandhi called offthe movement.

While the Rowlatt satyagraha had been a widespread movement, it

was still limited mostly to cities and towns. Mahatma Gandhi nowfelt the need to launch a more broad-based movement in India.

But he was certain that no such movement could be organised without

bringing the Hindus and Muslims closer together. One way of doingthis, he felt, was to take up the Khilafat issue. The First World Warhad ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey. And there wererumours that a harsh peace treaty was going to be imposed on theOttoman emperor – the spiritual head of the Islamic world (the

Khalifa). To defend the Khalifa’s temporal powers, a Khilafat

Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919. A younggeneration of Muslim leaders like the brothers Muhammad Aliand Shaukat Ali, began discussing with Mahatma Gandhi aboutthe possibility of a united mass action on the issue. Gandhiji saw thisas an opportunity to bring Muslims under the umbrella of a unified

national movement. At the Calcutta session of the Congress in

September 1920, he convinced other leaders of the need to starta non-cooperation movement in support of Khilafat as well asfor swaraj.

1.3 Why Non-cooperation?

In his famous book Hind Swaraj (1909) Mahatma Gandhi declared

that British rule was established in India with the cooperation ofFig. 3 – General Dyer’s ‘crawling orders’ being

administered by British soldiers, Amritsar,

Punjab, 1919 .

57

Nationalism in IndiaNew words

Boycott – The refusal to deal and associate with

people, or participate in activities, or buy anduse things; usually a form of protestIndians, and had survived only because of this cooperation. If Indiansrefused to cooperate, British rule in India would collapse within ayear, and swaraj would come.

How could non-cooperation become a movement? Gandhiji

proposed that the movement should unfold in stages. It should beginwith the surrender of titles that the government awarded, and a

boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and legislative councils,

schools, and foreign goods. Then, in case the government used

repression, a full civil disobedience campaign would be launched.

Through the summer of 1920 Mahatma Gandhi and Shaukat Ali

toured extensively, mobilising popular support for the movement.

Many within the Congress were, however, concerned about the

proposals. They were reluctant to boycott the council elections

scheduled for November 1920, and they feared that the movementmight lead to popular violence. In the months between September

and December there was an intense tussle within the Congress. For a

while there seemed no meeting point between the supporters andthe opponents of the movement. Finally, at the Congress session at

Nagpur in December 1920, a compromise was worked out and

the Non-Cooperation programme was adopted.

How did the movement unfold? Who participated in it? How did

different social groups conceive of the idea of Non-Cooperation?

Fig. 4 – The boycott of foreign

cloth, July 1922.

Foreign cloth was seen as thesymbol of Western economicand cultural domination.India and the Contemporary World

582 Differing Strands within the Movement

The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921.

Various social groups participated in this movement, each with its

own specific aspiration. All of them responded to the call of Swaraj,

but the term meant different things to different people.

2.1 The Movement in the Towns

The movement started with middle-class participation in the cities.Thousands of students left government-controlled schools andcolleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up

their legal practices. The council elections were boycotted in most

provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party, the party of thenon-Brahmans, felt that entering the council was one way of gaining

some power – something that usually only Brahmans had access to.

The effects of non-cooperation on the economic front were more

dramatic. Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed ,

and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires. The import of foreigncloth halved between 1921 and 1922, its value dropping fromRs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore. In many places merchants and traders

refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade. As the

boycott movement spread, and people began discarding importedclothes and wearing only Indian ones, production of Indian textile

mills and handlooms went up.

But this movement in the cities gradually slowed down for a variety

of reasons. Khadi cloth was often more expensive than mass-

produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to buy it.How then could they boycott mill cloth for too long? Similarly theboycott of British institutions posed a problem. For the movement

to be successful, alternative Indian institutions had to be set up

so that they could be used in place of the British ones. These wereslow to come up. So students and teachers began trickling

back to government schools and lawyers joined back work in

government courts.

2.2 Rebellion in the Countryside

From the cities, the Non-Cooperation Movement spread to thecountryside. It drew into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribalsNew words

Picket – A form of demonstration or protest

by which people block the entrance to a shop,factory or office