Nationalism in India Test - 4

At the Congress session at Nagpur in December 1920, a compromise was worked out and the Non-Cooperation programme was adopted. Non-Cooperation should begin with the surrender of titles that the government awarded, and a boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and legislative councils, schools, and foreign goods.

The movement started with middle-class participation in the cities.

• Thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up their legal practices.
• It drew into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribals which were developing in different parts of India in the years after the war.
• Plantations Workers too had their own understanding of Mahatma Gandhi and the notion of swaraj.

Mahatma Gandhi felt 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 doing this, he felt, was to take up the Khilafat issue. Gandhiji saw this as an opportunity to bring Muslims under the umbrella of a unified national movement.

Gandhiji saw Khilafat Movement as 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 start a non-cooperation movement in support of Khilafat as well as for swaraj.

when the tribals chanted Gandhiji’s name and raised slogans demanding ‘Swatantra Bharat’, they were also emotionally relating to an all-India agitation.

In the Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh, the colonial government had closed large forest areas, preventing people from entering the forests to graze their cattle, or to collect fuelwood and fruits. This enraged the hill people. Not only were their livelihoods affected but they felt that their traditional rights were being denied. When the government began forcing them to contribute begar for road building, the hill people revolted. Alluri Sitaram Raju came to lead them.

In Awadh, peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra – a sanyasi who had earlier been to Fiji as an indentured labourer.

C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party within the Congress to argue for a return to council politics. But younger leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose pressed for more radical mass agitation and for full independence.

Mahatma Gandhi believed that this dharma of non-violence could unite all Indians.Through the use of violence , truth was bound to ultimately triumph.

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 foreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922, its value dropping from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore. In many places merchants and traders refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade