Modern India · Topic 15 of 20
First all-India Gandhian mass movement (1919-1922)
The Basics
By 1918 the British government had promised, through Montagu's 1917 declaration, a gradual move towards responsible government. It had not said how or when this would happen.
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By 1919, Indians who had supported the war effort expected real self-government in return. Instead, the Government of India Act 1919 offered only limited dyarchy in the provinces. Real power still remained with the British.
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By April 1919 Punjab was already tense from war-time repression and forced recruitment. The Rowlatt Satyagraha hartal had also turned violent in several cities. In Amritsar, the arrest of local leaders Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal on 10 April led to attacks on the town hall and post office. Some Englishmen were killed, and missionary Marcella Sherwood was assaulted. The army took over the city under Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, who banned public meetings and gatherings of more than three people.
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After the First World War, Ottoman Turkey faced harsh peace terms from Britain and its allies. Turkey had fought on the losing side. The Ottoman Sultan was also the Khalifa, the spiritual head of Islam for Muslims worldwide. Indian Muslims feared he would lose control over Muslim holy places. They also feared he would be stripped of territory needed to defend the faith. This felt like a betrayal. Britain had earlier promised not to deprive Turkey of its Turkish-majority lands.
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Early in 1920, before Congress decided, Gandhi was already testing his idea. On 22 June 1920, he wrote to the Viceroy. He claimed the age-old right of a subject to refuse help to a misruling ruler. This letter gave notice of non-cooperation. The Khilafat Committee at Allahabad had already accepted this path on 9 June 1920. The movement was formally launched on 1 August 1920. This was the same day Lokamanya Tilak died, so hartals of mourning and the first protests merged into one.
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By 1921 the Non-Cooperation Movement in the cities was already losing steam. Khadi cost more than mill cloth, alternative institutions were slow to appear, so students and lawyers began drifting back to government schools and courts. But the movement did not die; it moved into the countryside, the hills and the plantations, where it took on meanings far beyond the Congress programme.
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By early 1922, the Non-Cooperation Movement had shaken British rule as never before since the Revolt of 1857. On 1 February 1922, Gandhi threatened to launch mass civil disobedience from Bardoli taluqa in Surat district. His conditions were release of political prisoners and removal of press controls.
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- What changed: Before 1920, nationalist politics had largely been the preserve of the educated and the wealthy. After Non-Cooperation, ordinary peasants, artisans, traders and the urban poor took part directly in a national struggle for the first time. They also lost their earlier fear of British power.
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