The Non-cooperation Movement

1
INTRODUCTION
The Centenary of the non-cooperation struggle (as also the
Centenary of the all-India protest against the Rowlatt legislation
of 1919) inevitably brings together memories and peoples of
the entire subcontinent and beyond (Nauriya, 2006). Like the 1919
all-India protest over the Rowlatt legislation, the Non-cooperation
Movement stretched in geographical scope from Peshawar to
Rangoon, and had reverberations also in Colombo. Colonial civil
servants acknowledged the force, intensity and impact of the
Movement. Penderel Moon wrote that it created ‘a widespread
resistance to British authority unparalleled since the Mutiny’, and
that a ‘rent had been made in the mystic fabric of British authority’,
which had come to envelop colonial rule after the quelling of the
Indian Rising in 1857 (1968: 113). Historian David Hardiman has
written that the Non-cooperation Movement of 1920–1922 ‘proved
to be a remarkable campaign that brought unprecedented numbers
of Indians into nationalist politics in largely nonviolent ways’ (2018:
213). And yet, as he has observed, ‘As a movement, it has been
largely ignored in the literature on Gandhian nonviolence’ (ibid.).
This is paradoxical because the non-cooperation movement was the
largest mass movement in India since the Rising of 1857. Humayun
Kabir wrote that the ‘Non-co-operation Movement deeply stirred
the Indian national consciousness and affected all social classes and
groups’ (1962: 112–13). There were several nation-wide resignations
by Indians from state-affiliated institutions, and a significant number
of lawyers also gave up practice as part of the boycott of courts.1
ANIL
NAURIYA
THE
NON-COOPERATION
MOVEMENT
Autumn 2021, Volume 48, Number 2
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I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
The peasant movement in India also expanded at this time.
Acharya Narendra Deva, scholar, socialist and freedom fighter,
did not view the non-cooperation movement and peasant risings
as competing phenomena; he saw the symbiosis between them.
He remarked, for instance, of the peasant struggle at the time
in Avadh:
The strongly organized Kisans compelled the Oudh officials
to reconsider the rent-revenue legislations…. At that time the
Non-co-operation movement was at its height. The Government did
not want the Kisan agitation to get linked up with that movement.
For this reason also the Government became more responsive to
the Kisan demands (1946: 60).
Many constructive work activities, including the promotion of
khadi, the hand-spun and handwoven cloth that, in the words of
Jawaharlal Nehru, had become the ‘livery of freedom’ came to life
with the non-cooperation movement. A decade later a Viceroy
would note that fundamental and long-lasting changes had occurred
on this front.2 The boycott of governmental institutions that noncooperation
entailed led to a spurt in non-governmental ‘National
Schools’ across the country. Jamia Millia Islamia, the Kashi, Bihar
and Gujarat Vidyapiths and many others emerged at this time—
from the North-West Frontier Province and Punjab, to Assam in
the north-east, Bengal and Odisha in the east, and Tamil Nadu in
the south. A literary renaissance also took place with poets and
writers across India responding vigorously to the times. Vallathol
K. Narayana Menon, Satyendranath Datta, Kazi Nazrul Islam and
Akbar Allahabadi, among others, wrote of these events (Das, 1995:
64–68). As K. T. Paul noted in a contemporaneous work, there was
at this time an ‘outburst of new literature and art, in songs, dramas,
romance, music and painting’, which became ‘a distinct feature in
this epoch’ (1927: 145).
The movement brought together Indians of all religions and
even non-Indians like S. E. Stokes.3 There were leading Dalits like
Chaudhuri Beharilal and Juglal Chowdhury, and Akali Sikhs led
by Baba Kharak Singh and Sardar Mangal Singh, to name a few.
Sarojini Naidu was President of the Bombay Provincial Congress
Committee during the movement. She toured widely to organise
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A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
the struggle and, along with Perin Captain and others, founded a
body of women activists, the Rashtriya Stree Sabha. And, of course,
there was the redoubtable mother of the famous Ali brothers. As
Konda Venkatappayya, Chairman of the Reception Committee of the
Cocanada Congress in December 1923 would record:
We cannot forget the services of that most revered grand old lady
known throughout the country as Bi Amman. In spite of her age
she has gone round the country carrying the message of non-violent
non-co-operation and inspiring the people by her personality with
the true spirit of patriotism and sacrifice.4
In chronological terms, too, the non-cooperation movement
stretches far beyond 1920, not ending with the incident at
Chauri Chaura, Gorakhpur, in 1922, as is often suggested. After
Chauri Chaura, what was suspended or withdrawn was the civil
disobedience that had been contemplated in Bardoli and elsewhere.
Non-cooperation was not withdrawn, but was the subject of a
debate, which stretched to 1924, and initiated a process that
went even further. For example, the picketing of foreign cloth by
non-cooperators had continued and it was in this connection that
Jawaharlal Nehru was arrested in May 1922. It is noteworthy that
even at the end of that year a resolution in favour of Council Entry
was actually defeated at the Gaya session of the Indian National
Congress (INC), held in December 1922. Further civil disobedience
was again contemplated in Bardoli and actually took place in Nagpur
and Borsad (Kheda) in 1923–1924.
One may enter various lanes and by-lanes in connection
with the non-cooperation movement. These include, for example,
the labour strikes that occurred at the time, the police firings on
peasants in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) in the north,
in January 1921, and on non-violent protesters in Dharwar in the
south, in July 1921; the proposals for a settlement that were mooted
in the run-up to the Prince of Wales’ visit to India in December 1921
(Nauriya, 1995); and the various incidents of violence that occurred
around the time of the Prince of Wales’ visit, as also the incidents
in the Malabar and elsewhere (Dhanagare, 1983). These happenings
preceded the Gorakhpur events of 1922 and some of these have
been the subject of study individually.
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I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
THE CONCEPT AND LOGIC OF NON-COOPERATION
The logic behind non-cooperation was clear enough. It was that
colonial rule over India had been possible only with the cooperation
of Indians. Non-cooperation with that rule would hasten its end.
It is necessary to appreciate the conceptual distinction between
non-cooperation and civil disobedience. The former was a voluntary
withdrawal from association with the colonial government. The
latter, on the other hand, proceeds further with the defiance of
specified laws or actions. Soon after the non-cooperation resolution
was passed at the special session of the Congress in Calcutta in
September 1920, Gandhi explained:
It is as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred
thousand white men should be able to rule three hundred and
fifteen million Indians. They do so somewhat undoubtedly by
force but more by securing our co-operation in a thousand ways
and making us more and more helpless and dependent on them as
time goes forward….They want India’s billions and they want India’s
manpower for their imperialistic greed.5
Such cooperation, Gandhi argued in March 1921, on the second
anniversary of the hartal and firing that had taken place in Delhi in
1919, ought to be withdrawn.
The problem before us, therefore, is one of opposing our will to
that of the will of the Government, in other words to withdraw our
co-operation from it. If we are united in purpose, the Government
must obey our will or retire.6
In pursuance of this understanding, on 4 October 1921, a manifesto
was famously issued from Bombay by Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana
Azad, Abbas Tyabji, Sarojini Naidu, Konda Venkatappayya,
M. A. Ansari, Lajpat Rai, S. E. Stokes, Yakub Hasan, B. F. Bharucha,
Vallabhbhai Patel, Vithalbhai Patel, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru,
C. Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad, Anasuya Sarabhai, Mahadev
Desai and others, declaring:
…It is contrary to national dignity for any Indian to serve as
a civilian, and more especially as a soldier, under a system of
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A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
Government, which has brought about India’s economic, moral
and political degradation, and which has used the soldiery and the
police for repressing national aspirations, as, for instance, at the
time of the Rowlatt Act agitation, and which has used the soldiers
for crushing the liberty of the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Turks and
other nations who have done no harm to India. We are also of [the]
opinion, that it is the duty of every Indian soldier and civilian to
sever his connection with the Government and find some other
means of livelihood.7
ITS GENESIS AND AFTER
The idea of non-cooperation germinated and evolved in stages. It was
initially mooted by Gandhi in conferences relating to ‘the Khilafat
question, otherwise known as that of the Turkish peace terms’.8
Although the name Khilafat derives from the Caliphate in Turkey,
the grievances over the issue were not confined, as is commonly
believed, merely to concern over the fate of that institution, but
included the outrage over the proposed dismemberment of Turkey
by the victors of the Great War of 1914–1918, and to the question of
the promises and pledges that had been made to secure the services
of Indian soldiers in that War. Within a few months of it being first
suggested, non-cooperation grew to embrace not only issues under
the rubric of, or related to, Khilafat, but also the matter of military
violence in Punjab in 1919 (‘the Punjab wrongs’), and the larger
question of swaraj or self-rule.
Asaf Ali, a secretary of the Reception Committee that had
organised the Khilafat Conference in Delhi on 23 and 24 November
1919, has suggested that the genesis of non-cooperation lay in
that conference.9 That is also the view of the activist Indulal Yajnik
(1971: 218). The initial proposal before this Conference was for a
boycott of British goods. Gandhi, who was present, opposed at this
stage the idea of a boycott and suggested non-cooperation instead,
perhaps using the latter expression for the first time:
Boycott is a sign of anger; to refuse co-operation, on the other
hand, is a sign of firmness. Boycott indicates our weakness; noncooperation
proves our strength. The solution to a momentous
issue like the Khilafat can be secured not by weakness but only
through strength.10
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I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
In the event, the conference approved both the boycott and the
non-cooperation proposals (Ali, 1994: 161). At the Delhi meetings
in November 1919, Gandhi had not yet comprehensively defined for
himself the scope and content of non-cooperation, which proposal
too he confined at this stage to the Khilafat question. The content,
extent and overall objectives of non-cooperation were to take shape
through improvisation with further experience. In the Amritsar
Congress at the end of December 1919, Gandhi, while supporting
the demand for swaraj in the sense of responsible government,
was willing to give a trial to the recently promulgated Montagu–
Chelmsford reforms (Nauriya, 2019).
The non-cooperation proposal began to be considered
seriously in the first few months of 1920 when a series of meetings
was held to address Khilafat grievances. Maulana Azad recalls one of
the meetings held sometime after 20 January 1920:
Gandhiji presented his programme of non-cooperation. He said
the days of deputations and memorials were over. We must
withdraw all support from the Government and this alone would
persuade the Government to come to terms. He suggested that all
Government titles should be returned, law courts and educational
institutions should be boycotted, Indians should resign from
the services and refuse to take any part in the newly constituted
legislatures (1988: 10).
On 22 January 1920, Gandhi had spoken at a public meeting
in Meerut. On the Khilafat question, he advised satyagraha as,
according to him, the question could not be settled by ‘physical
force’. He also brought up the question of India’s freedom, saying,
according to the report in The Tribune, that this would not come
by the reforms; it ‘was bound up with the adoption of swadeshi’
as ‘India’s slavery dated from the day she gave up use of her
indigenous articles’.11
A series of developments, occurring almost simultaneously
with the enactment of the Reforms Act, or the Government of India
Act of 1919, turned events in the direction of non-cooperation.
On 7 March 1920, Gandhi wrote what came to be described as a
‘manifesto’ on non-cooperation, saying that this was ‘the only
remedy left open to us’. Addressed essentially to the Khilafat
7
A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
question, the statement insisted on adherence to non-violence, while
rejecting the idea of boycotting British goods.12
When on 23 March 1920 Gandhi went again to Meerut to
attend the Provincial Khilafat Conference, it was to ‘propound the
four-fold Non-Cooperation programme’ (Dalal, 1971: 30; Ali, 1994:
310). The work on the Congress Report on the Punjab atrocities
(of 1919) was complete by then and the Report was published two
days later.13 The question of redressal of the ‘Punjab wrongs’ thus
also came more specifically to the fore. In May 1920, the official
Hunter Committee Report on the disturbances of 1919 was also
published. The All-India Congress Committee (AICC) met at
Banaras at the end of May to consider both the Congress Report and
the Hunter Report. The Hunter Report was seen as whitewash, and
the British response thereafter aggravated Indian opinion further.
The AICC meeting at Banaras concurred with the findings of fact by
the Commissioners appointed by the Punjab Inquiry Subcommittee
of the Congress and described the enquiry conducted by the Hunter
Committee as ‘incomplete, one-sided, unsatisfactory’ and ‘tainted
with racial bias’.14 Another resolution adopted by the Banaras
AICC called for a revision of Turkish treaty terms, which had come
to be known by the middle of May.15 The Banaras AICC decided
to call a special session of the Congress at Calcutta ‘not later than
the 15th September’ of that year to consider non-cooperation.16
Views on this question were also sought from Provincial Congress
Committees and it was decided that the AICC should also ‘meet to
consider these views sometime before the Congress special session’.17
Thus, developments between the Amritsar session of December
1919 and the Banaras AICC at the end of May 1920 hardened
Indian public opinion against the colonial government, and ground
was laid for non-cooperation. Soon after the Banaras AICC, Gandhi
concluded a commentary on the Hunter Committee Report with
some recommendations of his own:
India has the choice before her now. If then the acts of the Punjab
Government be an insufferable wrong, if the report of Lord Hunter’s
Committee and the two despatches be a greater wrong by reason
of their grievous condonation of these acts, it is clear that we must
refuse to submit to this official violence. Appeal to the Parliament
by all means if necessary, but if the Parliament fails us and if we
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I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
are worthy to call ourselves a nation, we must refuse to uphold the
Government by withdrawing co-operation from it.18
On 22 June 1920, Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy giving notice that
non-cooperation might become ‘a dire necessity’.19 The context of
this letter is again restricted to the Khilafat question, presumably
because at this stage the Congress was yet to come to a definite
decision on non-cooperation, and its scope and object. Meanwhile,
Lajpat Rai called for the boycott of legislative councils, mainly with
the Punjab wrongs in mind; the boycott of legislatures was also
included by Gandhi in the proposed non-cooperation programme
(Yajnik, 1971: 220). A programme published by Gandhi on 4 July
1920 included, inter alia, non-registration in military or civil service
and boycott of the reformed councils.20 These were incorporated
in the programme announced three days later in the name of the
Non-cooperation Committee, appointed by the Khilafat Conference
held at Allahabad in June. It included the suspension of practice by
lawyers and boycott of government schools, and emphasised the
propagation of swadeshi.21 The Non-cooperation Committee set the
date for the inauguration of non-cooperation for 1 August 1920.22
Bal Gangadhar Tilak passed away on that day. Gandhi initiated noncooperation
the following day by returning the medals given to him
for his role in the defence of the Empire in South Africa (Sharma,
1972: 121).
Thus, by the summer of 1920, India had clearly been alienated
further by the Hunter Committee Report and the sympathy expressed
in various circles in England for Brigadier General Dyer who had
personally overseen the firing at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, on
13 April 1919, as well as the Turkish Peace terms.23
Nationalist opinion in many areas such as Gujarat and Bihar
now committed itself to non-cooperation even before the special
session of the Congress at Calcutta. On the eve of the special session,
a political conference held at Ahmedabad in August, presided over
by Abbas Tyabji, one of the Commissioners in the Congress Punjab
Inquiry, lent its support to non-cooperation.24 Tyabji, the Grand Old
Man of Gujarat, as he was known, declared that ‘non-co-operation
was the last and legitimate resource for the weak nation against the
strong’.25 A similar conference was held in Bhagalpur, Bihar. This too
endorsed non-cooperation, expressly including also, at the instance
9
A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
of Braj Kishore Prasad, the demand for swaraj as one of the objects
of non-cooperation (Prasad, 2014: 112–13).
In the first draft of the resolution that Gandhi had prepared
for the Calcutta session of the Congress, non-cooperation was
proposed for redressal of the demands relating to Khilafat and the
Punjab wrongs. Later, C. Vijayaraghavachariar, who would preside
over the forthcoming Nagpur Congress in December 1920, Motilal
Nehru, who had presided over the previous Congress at Amritsar in
1919, and others suggested to Gandhi that the demand for swaraj
should also expressly be included in the resolution. Gandhi had
already spoken of freedom at the Meerut conference held earlier
in the year on 22 January 1920, saying this was tied up with the
adoption of swadeshi.26 The swaraj demand, underlined also by
the passing of Tilak, was now added to the resolution before the
Calcutta Congress.27 The three issues—swaraj, the redressal of the
Punjab wrongs, and the Khilafat grievances, attainment of which
had hitherto been considered more or less individually—now
converged. The non-cooperation resolution faced considerable
opposition within the Congress.28 But in the event, the Calcutta
Congress, presided over by Lajpat Rai, opted for non-cooperation,
with Gandhi’s resolution being passed on 9 September 1920. It had
been seconded by Motilal Nehru.
In the famous article, ‘Shaking the Manes’, which was cited
as one of the reasons for Gandhi’s arrest the following year, Gandhi
would specifically recall September 1920 as the date when India gave
notice that it ‘would be satisfied with nothing less than swaraj and
full redress of the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs’.29 The decision of
the special session at Calcutta would be ratified in December at the
Nagpur session of the INC (Deva, 2002: 179). Between the Calcutta
and the Nagpur sessions, a meeting of the AICC was held in Bombay
in October 1920 with Motilal Nehru in the chair.30 Instructions were
prepared and given on the promotion of swadeshi, the establishment
of the volunteer corps and the boycott: of titles; government
functions; schools and colleges owned, aided and controlled by the
government; law courts; councils; and foreign goods. Gandhi had in
the discussions in 1919 been opposed to the boycott of British goods
on the ground that non-cooperation did not mean punishment of
the British people, and now channelled this demand into a specific
focus on foreign cloth. Responding to a comment in the following
10
I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
year by his friend C. F. Andrews, after the bonfires of foreign cloth
started (1921), Gandhi wrote: ‘If the emphasis were on all foreign
things, it would be racial, parochial and wicked. The emphasis is on
all foreign cloth’ (Guha, 1972: 139).
The campaign to establish national educational institutions
as part of the non-cooperation programme was stepped up. On
29 October 1920, Jamia Millia Islamia was set up as part of the
movement, and on 15 November 1920 Gandhi gave the inaugural
speech at the Gujarat Mahavidyalaya (the Vidyapith was set up
sometime in October).
In November 1920, elections were officially organised under
the Government of India Act of 1919. These were successfully
boycotted in keeping with the new mood in the country. In the last
week of December 1920, at the Nagpur Congress, Gandhi moved a
resolution, seconded by Lajpat Rai, defining the object of the Congress
as ‘the attainment of Swarajya by the people of India by all legitimate
and peaceful means’; the Congress also endorsed non-cooperation, the
resolution on it now being moved by C. R. Das, who was seconded by
Gandhi.31 The freedom fighter and historian A. C. Guha wrote: ‘The
movement, really speaking, started only after the Nagpur session of
the Congress ending on 31st December 1920’ (1972: 233).
THE KHILAFAT ELEMENT
The Khilafat demand, which arose in and after the First World
War, predated non-cooperation and was not as such initiated by
Gandhi. The non-cooperation movement of the 1920s, as led by
the Congress, was based on three issues: the Punjab wrongs, i.e.,
the military violence in Punjab in 1919; the demand for swaraj;
and support for the Muslim grievances related to Khilafat. The
last involved not simply the question of the Caliphate in Turkey,
but the impropriety of Indian troops being used against countries
with which India had no animosity. Some current narratives are
critical of the Khilafat cause. Yet, some leading figures connected
with Hindutva were also part of, or supported, non-cooperation.
These included B. S. Moonje of the Hindu Mahasabha, a signatory
to the October 1921 manifesto calling for non-cooperation; K. B.
Hedgewar, who was arrested in 1921 for his participation in the
movement; and Bhai Parmanand. Incidentally, Subhas Bose also
approved of the Khilafat issue being raised as part of the movement.
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A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
His primary objection, in hindsight, was an organisational one. In
the 1930s, while reiterating the validity of the Congress stand on
the Khilafat issue, he wrote that the Khilafat Committees should
not have been allowed to function separately from the Congress
organisation (S. C. Bose, 1997: 67–68).
There is a view that the Caliph of Turkey was of little import
to the Indian people and that the issue was unnecessarily raised by
Gandhi in disregard of M. A. Jinnah’s wishes. The fact is, however,
that Jinnah had supported the Khilafat cause. On 27 August 1919,
Jinnah and three others sent to Lloyd George, the then British Prime
Minister, a representation on the Khilafat question on behalf of the
All-India Muslim League. The representation was concerned with
the position of the Sultan of Turkey as the Khalifa. The penultimate
paragraph of the representation reads thus:
We need not add that if Great Britain becomes a party in reducing
H. I. M. the Sultan of Turkey and the Khalifa of the Muslim world to
the status of a petty sovereign, the reaction in India will be colossal
and abiding (Pirzada, 1977: 73).
The representation was signed by Jinnah, Hasan Imam, G. M.
Bhurgari and Yaqub Hasan (ibid.). In his presidential speech at the
Calcutta session of the Muslim League in September 1920, Jinnah
described the Khilafat demand as one ‘which we consider, from a
purely Musalman point of view, a matter of life and death’ (Pirzada,
1969: 544; emphasis mine). What Jinnah, who originated essentially
in the Liberal school, was opposed to was not the Khilafat cause but
mass action.
The Khilafat demands were fortified by promises made
by the British government in the course of the War, and many of
those who supported the demands did so because they saw that the
government was reneging on assurances given.32 The origin of the
Khilafat agitation in India has to be understood in the context of the
utilisation of Indian, including Muslim, soldiers ‘for the purpose of
crushing the national spirit of the Egyptians, the Turks, the Arabs
and other nations’.33 The use of Indian soldiers against countries
towards which they had no feelings of hostility and in a fight in
respect of which some of them had a legitimate conscientious
objection lay at the core of the so-called Khilafat issue.
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I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
As Srinivas Sastri reminded the Imperial Conference in June
1921, in the Great War of 1914–1918 as many as 1,274,000 men
or ‘over half the total overseas forces employed in the war’ came
from India.34 And as Montagu admitted, after resigning as the British
Secretary of State in March 1922, ‘Turkey was beaten in the main by
Indian soldiers’.35
In order to secure such participation by Indians, the British
administration had made definite promises throughout the land.
Maulana Azad referred to these on 28 February 1920, at the Bengal
Provincial Khilafat Conference. Azad noted that in November 1914,
the government proclaimed that ‘no operations will be conducted
against the sacred seat of the Muslim Khilafat’. Azad observed that
the proclamation was widely circulated:
So much so that in every division, every district, every seat of
government and in every town, the Moslems were called to
assemble and copies of this declaration were read to and distributed
among them by local officers….No Muslim home in British India
was left in ignorance of this declaration (1920: 287–88).
In the event, the first mobilisation stressing and recognising Khilafat,
and its sanctity, was done by the Government of British India itself
so as to secure troops for the War. A year after Lloyd George’s own
assurances, offered in 1918 in the British Parliament, came the
Rowlatt Bills in India and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The public
feting of General Dyer in England followed thereafter.
The Treaty of Sevres was signed in August 1920, although
its terms had become known in May. The treaty virtually reduced
Turkey to a land-locked country; French, Italian, Greek and other
states were to be established on mainland Turkey. An already
prevailing sense of betrayal in India, and a sense of having been used,
was understandable.
There had been widespread displays of Hindu–Muslim unity
in the course of the Khilafat movement. But the petering out of
the agitation had a less pleasant aftermath, with a renewal of intercommunal
tensions. In due course, these communal tensions began
to be attributed to the movement itself. Some have gone so far as to
relate the very partition of the Indian subcontinent to these post-
Khilafat communal tensions. Nonetheless, this narrative requires
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A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
some cautious treatment. First, attributing subsequent communal
tensions to the Khilafat movement could be a classic case of the
fallacy of ‘after this, therefore because of this’. Second, there is an
aspect of this question that needs attention. In post-independence
India, inter-communal tensions, and even riots, have invariably
invited an enquiry into the role of the state. Why is the role of the
colonial state not a subject of enquiry in the context of riots which
occurred in the wake of the Khilafat movement? According to the
late President Rajendra Prasad, the first indication at the time of
the ‘seeds of disruption’ in (north) India came from the incidents
in Multan in 1922, about six months after Gandhi’s arrest. Prasad
recorded that the British Deputy Commissioner in Multan at the
time was believed to be at the ‘root of the trouble’ (1955: 139). Such
leads need following up as well.
GORAKHPUR: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
There is insufficient general appreciation, or even recognition,
of precisely what happened after the February 1922 incident at
Chauri Chaura, which had involved the killing of more than a score
policemen and some other persons.
To understand the nature of the Bardoli decisions taken
in its aftermath it is necessary to refer to the AICC session held at
Delhi on 4 and 5 November 1921, with Lajpat Rai in the chair.
This session had, in a resolution moved by Gandhi, conditionally
authorised ‘every Province on its own responsibility to undertake
civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes in the
manner that may be considered the most suitable’, but subject to
certain conditions, including adherence to non-violence, khadi
and swadeshi, Hindu–Muslim unity and commitment against
untouchability.36 In moving the resolution, Gandhi had reportedly
indicated that ‘although provincial autonomy was being granted to
provincial organisations in this matter’, the provinces ‘were advised
to wait before launching on it and see what he did, if it was at all
possible, in his own district of Gujrat (sic)…’.37 The Ahmedabad
session of the INC in December 1921 gave its imprimatur, inter
alia, to the decisions of the Delhi AICC, and keeping in view the
repression and arrests of Congress members that had occurred and
the further likely arrests, invested Gandhi with full powers of the
AICC between sessions.38
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I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
Referring to events that occurred in November 1921 after the
Delhi AICC, Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy on 1 February 1922 about
the civil disobedience contemplated in Bardoli:
It was intended under the resolution of the All-India Congress
Committee, before referred to, to make Bardoli the first unit for
mass civil disobedience in order to mark the national revolt against
the Government for its consistently criminal refusal to appreciate
India’s resolve regarding the Khilafat, the Punjab and swaraj.
Then followed the unfortunate and regrettable rioting on the
17th November last in Bombay, resulting in the postponement of
the step contemplated by Bardoli.39
He added that the Working Committee of the Congress had restricted
the adoption of mass civil disobedience
to only certain areas to be selected by me from time to time, and at
present it is confined only to Bardoli. I may, under said authority,
give my consent at once in respect of a group of 100 villages in
Guntur in the Madras Presidency, provided they can strictly conform
to the conditions of non-violence, unity among different classes, the
adoption and manufacture of hand-spun khadi and untouchability.40
This was the context and significance of the programme that was
contemplated in February 1922 at the Bardoli tehsil in Surat district
in Gujarat. After the Chauri Chaura incident, the Congress Working
Committee met at Bardoli on 11 and 12 February, and resolved that
‘the mass civil disobedience contemplated at Bardoli and elsewhere
be suspended…’.41
In the wake of the Gorakhpur incidents of February 1922,
what was suspended was the civil disobedience that had been
contemplated at Bardoli and any similar activities envisaged
elsewhere. Jawaharlal Nehru would acknowledge: ‘As a matter of
fact even the suspension of civil resistance in February 1922 was
certainly not due to Chauri Chaura alone, although most people
imagined so. That was only the last straw’ (1980: 85). Contrary to a
current perception, non-cooperation was not withdrawn; essentially,
the contemplated civil disobedience at Bardoli and elsewhere was
temporarily suspended. This was clarified by Gandhi personally
15
A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
more than once. The British Indian Intelligence Bureau’s account too
did not suggest that the non-cooperation movement was withdrawn
by Gandhi after the Gorakhpur incident.42
This precise point was underscored as well when the AICC
met in Delhi on 24 and 25 February 1922 at Hakim Ajmal Khan’s
house. The meet confirmed the Bardoli decision, making it clear that
non-cooperation had not been withdrawn. It stated:
The All-India Congress Committee wishes it to be understood
that the resolutions of the Working Committee do not mean
any abandonment of the original Congress programme of
Non-co-operation or permanent abandonment of Mass Civil
Disobedience….43
Gandhi himself clarified at the beginning of March 1922 that
‘Non-co-operation activities were not suspended’. This was
written in response to a placard which claimed that the noncooperation
movement had been withdrawn. ‘I can only conclude’,
wrote Gandhi, that the placard ‘was issued by or on behalf of the
Government….Hartals were specifically retained in the Bardoli
resolutions. Non-co-operation activities were not suspended.
Aggressive civil disobedience and aggressive activities preparatory
thereto were suspended’.44
Had the non-cooperation movement been withdrawn in the
wake of Chauri Chaura, there would have been no occasion for the
debate between the No-Changers and Pro-changers that went on
long after the Gorakhpur incidents and did not conclude until after
Gandhi’s release from prison some two years later. He was arrested
on 10 March 1922 and not released till 5 February 1924. It is
noteworthy that even as late as December 1922, when Gandhi was
in prison, C. Rajagopalachari’s resolution seeking to continue the
boycott of Councils was passed at the Gaya session of the INC in the
teeth of opposition from C. R. Das and others who sought a change
in Congress policy.45 Many of those who were initially reluctant
non-cooperationists were the ones who expressed disappointment
with the suspension of the contemplated civil disobedience at
Bardoli and began to turn toward Council Entry (Deva, 2002: 184).
The non-cooperation idea had seeped into Indian consciousness
and even those canvassing for Council Entry had to claim that their
16
I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
purpose was essentially to go into the Councils to non-cooperate.
After Gandhi’s release from prison, his focus was on stemming the
deteriorating inter-communal situation and creating the greatest
possible unity against official repression, especially in Bengal
(ibid.: 187–88). This led to the joint statements on 22 May 1924 and
6 November 1924, with C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru representing
the swarajists who favoured Council Entry, and Gandhi’s
recommendation to the Congress to suspend non-cooperation
except for the boycott of foreign cloth, and concentrate on the
Constructive Programme.46 This programme had been conceived
and laid out in the midst of the non-cooperation movement at
the widely-attended AICC session held in Bezwada at the end of
March 1921. The constructive programme, set out in a resolution
moved by Gandhi and seconded by C. R. Das, was seen as the link
between non-cooperation and civil disobedience. The programme
was expected to create the conditions that would equip and prepare
the country and the people for civil disobedience. It was aimed,
inter alia, at ‘a complete economic boycott of the most important
of foreign imports of the country’, that is foreign cloth.47 These
decisions were ratified in December 1924 by the Belgaum session
of the Congress, presided over by Mahatma Gandhi.48 It would be a
few years before civil disobedience would re-emerge, first in the late
1920s in Gujarat and then on a nation-wide scale in 1930.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article is dedicated to the memory of the late Dr. S. R. Mehrotra.
I am grateful to Anita Joshua for her help in shortening an earlier draft of this article.
NOTES
1. For details see, for example, issues of Young India for the relevant periods.
2. The spread of the movement for handspun cloth would over time be significant
enough for a Viceroy to acknowledge a decade later that ‘…Lancashire must
realize that the movement against foreign cloth has attained great influence
which it is going to retain’. (Irwin to Viscount Goschen, March 1931, National
Archives of India, Halifax Papers, Microfilm, Accession No. 3898.)
3. See as a ready sample the names of the signatories to the manifesto of 4 October
1921 in Young India, 6 October 1921, vol. 21.
4. Indian Annual Register, 1923, vol. 2, p. 18.
17
A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
5. Young India, 22 September 1920, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereafter
CWMG), vol. 18, pp. 270–73 at p. 271.
6. Young India, 30 March 1921, CWMG, vol. 19, pp. 491–93 at p. 491.
7. Young India, 6 October 1921, CWMG, vol. 21, pp. 235–36.
8. Young India, 28 January 1920, CWMG, vol. 16, p. 517.
9. See Ali (1994: 160–61). This work is an almost seamless blend of Asaf Ali’s
Memoirs and biographical remarks by his biographer G. N. S. Raghavan. One
has therefore to be careful to see where an observation is by Asaf Ali himself
(as evidenced by his use of the first person), and where the biographer is writing,
referring to Asaf Ali in the third person. There are portions in the book where the
distinction between the two gets blurred. See also Sharma (1972: 120).
10. [From the Gujarati], Navajivan, 7 December 1919, CWMG, vol. 16, p. 319–23 at
p. 322.
11. The Tribune, 12 February 1920, CWMG, vol. 16, pp. 494–95.
12. Young India, 10 March 1920, CWMG, vol. 17, pp. 73–76.
13. An analysis of the salient principles emerging from this report can be found in
Nauriya (1996).
14. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 106.
15. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 107.
16. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 105ff. See also Deva (2002: 179).
17. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, pp. 107–8.
18. Young India, 9 June 1920, CWMG, vol. 17, p. 483.
19. Letter dated 22 June 1920, CWMG, vol. 17, pp. 502–4 at p. 504. Gandhi would
recall later, on the death of his friend S. K. Rudra, the first Indian Christian
Principal of St Stephen’s College, Delhi, that ‘my open letter to the Viceroy, giving
concrete shape to the Khilafat claim, was conceived and drafted under Principal
Rudra’s roof. He and Charlie Andrews were my revisionists. Non-cooperation
was conceived and hatched under his hospitable roof’ (Young India, 9 July 1925,
CWMG, vol. 27, pp. 350–51 at p. 351). However, the letter, dated 22 June 1920,
was written by him from Bombay. It is possible Gandhi was referring in 1925 to
his correspondence with the Viceroy and his advisers in April 1918, including
the letter dated 29 April 1918 carried on his behalf from Delhi to Simla by Rev.
Ireland, as related by Gandhi in his Autobiography. In the April 1918 letters, sent
from Delhi, Gandhi wrote, inter alia, of India’s expectation ‘in the near future,
to be partners in the same sense as the Dominions overseas’ and also sought
assurances on the ‘Mahomedan states’ affected by the War (CWMG, vol. 14,
pp. 377–80 at 377–78 and 379). The involvement of figures like S. E. Stokes,
C. F. Andrews and Rudra, and public knowledge of this, was a factor that also
served to keep the movement non-xenophobic and non-sectarian.
20. [From the Gujarati] Navajivan, 4 July 1920, CWMG, vol. 18, pp. 4–7.
21. Young India, 7 July 1920, CWMG, vol. 18, pp. 13–14. The members of the
committee included M. K. Gandhi, Abul Kalam Azad, Shaukat Ali, Ahmed Haji
Siddick Khatri, Saifuddin Kitchlew, F. Hasan, Hasrat Mohani and Mahomed Ali.
See also Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 117.
18
I I C Q U A R T E R L Y
22. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 116. See also Sharma (1972: 121).
23. For some British reactions, see Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 460ff.
24. On certain aspects of the evolution of the non-cooperation movement, see Yajnik
(1971: 221).
25. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, p. 51. Years later, in a talk with Assam
Congressmen in 1946, Gandhi recalled the fact that his (Gandhi’s) noncooperation
proposal (in 1920) was passed by a Provincial Conference presided
over by Abbas Tyabji, even before it was passed by any all-India body of the
Congress. Gandhi, who was speaking from memory, mentioned 1918. The
correct date is 27 August 1920.
26. The Tribune, 12 February 1920, CWMG, vol. 16, pp. 494–95 at p. 495.
27. See Gandhi (1970), reproduced in CWMG, vol. 39, pp. 397–98. See also Yajnik
(1971: 221). In his Presidential address at the Nagpur Congress in December
1920, C .Vijayaraghavachariar however said he preferred in place of the word
swarajya nearly to say that ‘we seek simply responsible government like that
of the United Kingdom and of the Self-governing Dominions’ (Indian Annual
Register, 1920, vol. 2, p. 118).
28. How Gandhi overcame the opposition in 1920 is discussed in Broomfield (1968:
225–60).
29. Young India, 23 February 1922, CWMG, vol. 22, pp. 457–58 at p. 457.
30. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 1, pp. 129–32.
31. Indian Annual Register, 1920, vol. 2, pp. 169–84.
32. Some of the British assurances are documented in Mahmud (1921).
33. Congress Working Committee Statement, October 1921, quoted in Jayakar (1958).
34. Indian Annual Register, 1922–1923, vol. 2., p. 210.
35. See Montagu’s speech on 11 March 1922, Indian Annual Register, 1922–1923,
pp. 150–51.
36. Indian Annual Register, 1921–1922, vol. 1, pp. 51ff and 297. See also Deva
(2002: 179).
37. Indian Annual Register, 1921–1922, vol. 1, pp. 294–95.
38. Indian Annual Register, 1921–1922, vol. 1 (Appendix 1), p. 50.
39. Young India, 9 February 1922, CWMG, vol. 22, pp. 302–5 at p. 303.
40. Ibid., p. 304.
41. Young India, 16 February 1922, CWMG, vol. 22, p. 378.
42. See the confidential report, ‘History of the Non-co-operation Movement
(1919–24)’, prepared in the mid-1920s by P. C. Bamford, Deputy Director of the
Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India, and reproduced in
Chopra (1979: 85).
43. Indian Annual Register, 1921–1922, vol. 1, pp. 402–5. See also Young India, 2
March 1922, CWMG, vol. 22, p. 468.
44. Young India, 2 March 1922, CWMG, vol. 22, p. 508.
45. See Rangarajan, et. al (2014: 422). See also Indian Annual Register, 1922–1923,
vol. 2, p. 847.
19
A n i l Nau r i y a : T h e N o n – c o o p e r ati o n M o v e m e n t
46. The Hindu, 23 May 1924, CWMG, vol. 24, pp. 109–11. See also Young India,
13 November 1924, CWMG, vol. 25, pp. 288–89.
47. Gandhi’s speech at Bezwada AICC, 31 March 1921, The Hindu, 1 April 1921,
CWMG, vol. 19, pp. 494–95.
48. Indian Annual Register, 1924, vol. 2, pp. 404–48.
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