Gandhian Ideology & Non - Cooperation

Deedhiti Das

Intellectual foundations of Gandhian Nationalism

Gandhi in South Africa

Gandhiji returned to India, in January 1915. His work in South Africa was well-known where non-
violent civil disobedience had succeeded in forcing the opponents to the negotiating table. The
blueprint for the ‘Gandhian’ method of struggle had been evolved. the South African experiment
prepared Gandhiji for leadership of the Indian national struggle. South Africa, then, provided
Gandhiji with an opportunity for evolving his own style of politics and leadership, for trying out new
techniques of struggle, on a limited scale. The South African ‘experiment’ was now to be tried on a
much wider scale on the Indian subcontinent.

Indian Scenario at the time of Gandhi’s Arrival

Nationalist movement in India before the arrival of Gandhi in 1915 has been described by Judith
Brown as "politics of studied limitations" (1972) and by Ravinder Kumar as "a movement
representing the classes" as opposed to the masses. (1971)

What these descriptions essentially imply is that nationalist politics until this time was participated
only by a limited group of Western-educated professionals, whose new skills had enabled them to
take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Raj in the form of administrative positions, seats
in the district boards or legislative councils. They belonged mainly to certain specific castes and
communities, certain linguistic and economic groups, living primarily in the three presidency towns
of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. D.A. Low (1968) has described these classes as "the underlings of
the British rulers", who were marginally, if at all, interested in any far reaching socio-economic
change in India. Apart from these groups, like the bhadralok of Bengal, the Chitpavan Brahmans of
Bombay or the Tamil Brahmans of Madras, the other sections of the society, like the lower-caste
Hindus or the Muslims, the landlords and the peasants, both rich and landless, and commercial men
of all kinds, showed reluctance to join Congress politics. They lived in Bihar, Orissa, the Central
Provinces and Berar as well as in the United Provinces and Gujarat, which could be described as the
"backward provinces" so far as Congress politics were concerned.

This early Congress politics was also limited in goals and rather unspectacular in achievements. After
the Surat Split of 1907, both the moderates and the extremists had lost credibility as they had failed
to achieve their stated goals. The constitutional politics of the moderates had failed to bring about
any changes as was reflected in the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909. Extremism was thoroughly
repressed. Deportation and long sentences broke the rank of their leadership and isolated the
movement from the people. In an age of moral vacuum and physical despondency, Gandhi promised
a political programme that was also spiritually noble.

The most immediate outcome of the World War 1 was a phenomenal increase in defence
expenditure, which instead of being cut back, kept on rising even after 1919. The result was a huge
national debt, which meant heavy war loans and thus, more indirect taxation on trade and industry.
Ultimately the burden of this new taxation fell on the common people, as it resulted in a
phenomenal price rise.

There was underproduction of food crops during the war period, caused by two extraordinary crop
failures in 1918-19 and 1920-21, affecting large areas of United Provinces, Punjab, Bombay, Central
Provinces, Bihar and Orissa. And when there was already serious shortage of food for home
consumption, export of food to feed the army fighting abroad continued. This resulted in near
famine conditions in many areas, where the miseries of the people were further compounded by the
outbreak of an influenza epidemic.

Between the years of 1914 and 1923 forced recruitment for the army was going on without
interruptions, leading to a steady accumulation of popular resentment in the countryside. At the
same time, while prices of industrial and imported goods and food crops were rising, affecting poor
peasantry, that of exported Indian agricultural raw materials did not increase at the same pace. The
outcome was a decline in export, rising stockpiles and falling acreage for commercial crops, causing a
crisis in the market in 1917-19. This adversely affected the richer peasantry. During this period, there
was a marked increase in the number of peasant-proprietors being dispossessed and turned into
tenants-at-will, and land passing into the hands of the non-cultivating classes, especially in Madras
and United Provinces. In some areas the mounting economic distress of the peasantry found
expression in organised peasant protests, such as the Kisan Sabha movement in UP which started in
1918.

The other major economic development during World War One was the growth of industries. Due to
fiscal requirements, economic necessities and nationalist pressure, there was a change in official
policy towards industrialisation, leading to noticeable developments in the jute and textile
industries. While the jute industry developed mainly with British capital, it was Indian capital that
was involved in the textile industry in Bombay and Ahmedabad. Here the big industrial magnates
remained loyal to the British, as they were dependent on exports and on government assistance for
keeping the prices of raw cotton low and in dealing with labour unrest. By contrast, the small and
middle traders had a series of grievances against the wartime taxes and the fluctuating rupee-sterling
exchange rates. The other important result of industrialisation was an expansion of the working class,
though this expanding working class was really hard hit by the extraordinary price hike of this period.
The wartime and the post-war periods witnessed super profits for businessmen, but declining real
wages for the workers.

World War One thus brought in social and economic dislocations for nearly all the classes of Indian
population, accomplishing the necessary social mobilisation for an impending mass upsurge.

Gandhi’s Ideology and Methods (Satyagraha) (IN ASSIGNMENT)

Gandhi derived his political ideas from various sources. He drew inspiration from his reading of
Western thinkers like Henry David Thoreau, john Ruskin, Ralph Waldo Emerson or Leo Tolstoy. He
was also influenced by Vaishnavism and Jainism, as he was exposed to these ideas during his early
life in Gujarat.

Gandhi argued that the ideology must be rooted in India and its ancient civilisation. The ancient
Indian civilisation-"unquestionably the best"- as it had an assimilative power of absorbing foreigners
of different creed who made this country their own. Religion had a stronger influence on popular
mind than economic class in India. He therefore successfully used religious idioms to mobilise the
masses towards a moral goal.

Gandhi's novel political ideology, as Judith Brown has argued, "appealed to few wholly, but to many
partially", as everyone could find in it something to identify with.19 Unlike the older politicians, he
was fully aware of Indian pluralism and took care not to alienate any of the communities or classes.
The earlier politicians wanted a hegemony of a nationalist ideology built on ideas borrowed from the
West, while Gandhi argued that the ideology must be rooted in India and its ancient civilisation.
Popular loyaJties in India, in his opinion, were not determined by the institution of class; religion had
a stronger influence on popular mind. He therefore successfully used religious idioms to mobilise the
masses. But this was not revivalism of the earlier politicians, as he was not referring to history, but to
religious morality. His goal was a moral goal, and therefore, a utopian goal-unattainable and ever-
elusive. He talked about swaraj as his political goal, but never defined it and therefore could unite
different communities under his umbrella type leadership. According to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay,
"Inclusivism" became identified as "Gandhi's unique style of politics"," which was based on a
recognition of the diversities of India.

He began with a trenchant critique of the "modem" civilisation. Industrial capitalism was held
responsible for all conflicts of interests, for it divorced economic activities from moral concerns and
thus provided imperatives for imperial aggression. Indians must avoid greed and lust for
consumption and revert to village based self-sufficient economy of the ancient times. As opposed to
Parliamentary Democracy, he advocated a concept of popular sovereignty where each individual
controls or restrains her/his own self.

His technique to achieve it was satyagraha, which he defined as truth force or soul force. It was
based on the premise of superior moral power of the protesters capable of changing the heart of the
oppressor through a display of moral strength. Non-violence or ahimsa was the cardinal principle of
his message which was non-negotiable under all circumstances.

Gandhi succeeded in uniting both the moderates and extremists on a common political platform. He
tactically combined the goal of the moderates with the means of the extremists. His method of
Satyagraha looked like the extremists but his insistence on non violence alleviated the fears of the
moderates. He tried to bridge the rift with the Muslims by supporting the Khilafat issue and thus,
uniting the Hindus and the Muslims in a combined battle against the British.

Gandhi appealed directly to the peasants and the vast masses afflicted by the dislocations of war.
Judith Brown has contended that the rise of Gandhi did not signify a radical restructuring of political
life in India or opening of modern politics to masses. It signified the rise of Western educated and
regional language literate elites of the backward areas in place of Western educated elites of the
presidency towns. It was the loyalty networks of these local elite leaders or so called subcontractors
which mobilised popular support for Gandhi in the country side and small towns.

Cambridge scholars like Anil Seal have opined that it was the colonial constitutional reforms that led
to the growth of a mass base in nationalist politics: specifically, the Indian Councils Act (or Morley
Minto Reforms, 1909) and the Government of India Act 1919 (or the Mont-Ford reforms) since they
increased the size of the electorate and forced the Indian leaders to participate in democratic
campaigning with the people: however, S Bandopadhyay has opined that this does not explain the
mass base of Gandhian nationalism, which in movements like the non-cooperation called for a
boycott of councils instead of participating in the electoral process.

Instead, Gandhi’s simple attire, use of colloquial Hindi, reference to the popular idea of Ramarajya,
skilful use of religious symbols and idioms made him popular among the common people. In popular
lore, he was invested with supernatural powers which could heal pain and miseries. The masses
interpreted Gandhi in their own ways and he became a symbol of power for the powerless.

In the imagination of the masses, Gandhi’s programme of non-violent non-cooperation was often
lost. The imagined Gandhi was bestowed with occult powers who could cure diseases and punish
non-believers who would dare defy his authority. If they wore a Gandhi cap or chanted Gandhi’s
name police bullets could not harm them. This broke the barrier of fear among the lower caste
peasants of Bihar and Bengal and unleashed their energy into unprecedented mass activism. (Amin)

So far as his methods were concerned, Partha Chatterjee has argued that they gave Gandhi immense
manoeuvrability in terms of real politics. There was an implicit recognition of an existing disjuncture
between morality and politics-the concept of ahimsa could bridge this gap. Failures could be
explained either in terms of the loftiness of the ideal or in terms of imperfections of human agency.
29 But this ontological space for manoeuvring notwithstanding, this problem of reconciling the
principles of non-violence with the realities of nationalist movement proved to be a perpetual
"dilemma" that Gandhi had to negotiate with throughout his career as a leader of Indian
nationalism, and this dilemma grew stronger over time as the movement intensified.'

Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda served as demonstrations of Gandhiji’s style and method of
politics to the country at large. They also helped him find his feet among the people of India and
study their problems at close quarters. He came to possess, as a result of these struggles, a surer
understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the masses, as well as of the viability of his own
political style. Gandhi gained nationwide popularity by championing these localised causes. But in
the process all these regions became strongholds of political support for Gandhi, as people here
responded eloquently to his later calls for political action.

NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT

Events leading to the Non-Cooperation Movement

Rowlatt Satyagraha: The movement was aimed against the two bills prepared by a committee under
Justice S.A.T. Rowlatt, to provide the government with additional coercive power post-war to deal
with terrorism, which in so doing had severely curtailed the civil liberties of the Indians. One of the
bills was passed in the Imperial Legislative Assembly on 18 March 1919 over the unanimous protests
of the Indian members. Also known as the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, 1919, it aimed
at extending the wartime emergency provisions of preventive detention and arrest without trial for
two years of any subject of British India suspected of terrorism. Ever since the content of the bill was
published, Gandhi proposed to resist it with satyagraha. He was opposed to the spirit of the bill,
which he described as the distrust for common men. It signified the reluctance of the government to
part with arbitrary powers and thus made a mockery of the democratic constitutional reforms.

Constitutional protest having failed, Gandhiji stepped in and suggested that a Satyagraha be
launched. On 26 February he issued an 'open letter' to all the Indians urging them to join the
satyagraha. He decided to launch a nationwide movement, starting with a general strike or hartal
on 6 April. But the movement soon lapsed into violence, particularly after Gandhi's arrest on 9 April.
This precipitated a crisis, provoking unprecedented mob fury in areas like Delhi, Bombay,
Ahmedabad and Amritsar. The government response was varied, as in the event of a complete
breakdown of communication, provincial governments reacted according to their own preconceived
notions. In Bombay the response was restrained, while in Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer unleashed a
reign of terror.

Jallianwala Bagh: In Amritsar, the arrest of two local leaders : Dr. Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, on
10 April led to an attack on the town hall and the post office: telegraph wires were cut and
Europeans including women were attacked. General Dyer issued an order prohibiting public meetings
and assemblies. On 13 April, Baisakhi day, a large crowd of people collected in the Jallianwala Bagh
to attend a public meeting. General Dyer, incensed that his orders were disobeyed, ordered his
troops to fire upon the unarmed crowd. The shooting continued for ten minutes. The brutality at
Jallianwala Bagh stunned the entire nation. The response would come, not immediately, but a little
later. For the moment, repression was intensified, Punjab placed under martial law and the people
of Amritsar forced into indignities such as crawling on their bellies before Europeans. Gandhiji,
overwhelmed by the total atmosphere of violence, withdrew the movement on 18 April.

As a political campaign, therefore, it was a manifest failure, since it failed to secure its only aim, i.e.,
the repeal of the Rowlatt Act. It also lapsed into violence, although it was meant to be non-violent.
Gandhi admitted to have committed a Himalayan blunder by offering the weapon of satyagraha to a
people insufficiently trained in the discipline of non-violence. But the movement was significant
nevertheless, as it was the first nationwide popular agitation, marking the beginning of a
transformation of Indian nationalist politics from being the politics of some restricted classes to
becoming the politics of the masses. The failure of the Anti- Rowlatt Agitation made Gandhi realize
the need for an impersonal political organization like the Congress.

Khilafat Movement: Khilafat movement originated from the rumours about a harsh peace treaty
being imposed on the Ottoman Emperor who was still regarded as the Khalifa or the spiritual head of
the Islamic world. The movement, launched by a Khilafat Committee formed in Bombay in March
1919, had three main demands: the Khalifa must retain control over the Muslim holy places; he must
be left with his pre-war territories so that he could maintain his position as the head of the Islamic
world, and the jazirat-ul-Arab (Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Palestine) must not be under non-Muslim
sovereignty. While the Khilafat Movement was clearly a pan-islamic movement with no specific
relevance for Indian leaders, Gail Minault has shown that the Khilafat was being used more as a
symbol, that could unite the Indian Muslim community divided along many fault-lines, such as
regional, linguistic, class and sectarian. To use Minault's words: "A pan-Islamic symbol opened the
way to pan-Indian Islamic political mobilization. " It was anti-British, which inspired Gandhi to
support this cause in a bid to bring the Muslims into the mainstream of Indian nationalism.

In the same month, the Hunter Commission Majority Report was published, and it did not seem
strong enough in condemning General Dyer's role in the Jallianwallabagh massacre. This infuriated
Indian public opinion. The Allahabad conference of the Central Khilafat Committee, held on 1-2
June 1920, decided to launch a four-stage non-cooperation movement: The whole movement was
to begin with a hartal on 1 August. Throughout the summer of 1920 Gandhi and Shaukat Ali toured
extensively mobilising popular support for the programme. Gandhi now pressed the Congress to
adopt a similar plan of campaign on three issues: Punjab wrong, Khilafat wrong and swaraj. In an
article in Young India he announced that through this movement he would bring swaraj in one year.
A special session of the Congress was convened at Calcutta on 4-9 September 1920, where Gandhi's
resolution on non cooperation programme was approved. The programme was then endorsed at the
regular session of the Congress at Nagpur in December 1920.

In the Nagpur Session of the Congress in December 1920, CR Das (who, along with Motilal Nehru,
had argued against the boycott of elections of Central legislative councils) changed his attitude and
accepted the resolution of non-violent [Link] programme of non cooperation was
accepted by the Congress as its own and included – the surrender of titles and honours; triple
boycott of schools, courts, councils; national schools and colleges were to be set up; hand spinning
and weaving was to be encouraged along with the promotion of Khadi. Thus the Nagpur session
committed the Congress to a programme of extra constitutional mass action.

Alongside this, significant changes were introduced in Congress’s organizational structure. The goal
of the Congress was changed from attainment of Self-Government by constitutional and legal
means to the attainment of Swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means. The new Constitution of the
Congress was the handiwork of Gandhi. Now it had a working committee of 15 members to look
after its day-to-day affairs. Provincial Congress committees were organized on the linguistic basis
so that they could connect with the people by using local language. The Congress organization
reached down to the village and the Mohalla level by the formation of village and Mohalla
committees. The membership fee was also reduced to 4 Annas per year to enable the poor to
become the members. Mass involvement enabled the Congress to have a regular source of
income. In other words, the organization structure of Congress was both streamlined and
democratized.

Aims and Programmes

The programme of non-cooperation included within its ambit the surrender of titles and honours,
boycott of government affiliated schools and colleges, law courts, foreign cloth, and could be
extended to include resignation from government service and mass civil disobedience including the
non-payment of taxes. National schools and colleges were to be set up, panchayats were to be
established for settling disputes, hand-spinning and weaving was to be encouraged and people were
asked to maintain Hindu- Muslim unity, give up untouchability and observe strict non-violence.
Gandhiji promised that if the programme was fully implemented, Swaraj would be ushered in within
a year. The goal of the Congress was changed from the attainment of self-government by
constitutional and legal means to the attainment of Swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means.

Course of the Movement

The adoption of the Non-Cooperation Movement (initiated earlier by the Khilafat Conference) by the
Congress gave it a new energy and, from January 1921, it began to register considerable success all
over the country. A vigorous membership drive was launched reaching up to the figure of roughly 5
million members. Charkhas were popularized on a wide scale and khadi became the uniform of the
national movement. Resolutions were passed by Congress committees declared every civilian and
member of the armed forces should sever connections with a repressive government. The visit of
Prince of Wales in November 1921 was observed as a day of hartal all over the country. Clashes
emerged in various cities targeting Parsis, Christians and Anglo Indians. The whole sequence of
events left Gandhi profoundly disturbed and worried about the likelihood of recurrence of violence
once mass civil disobedience was sanctioned.

 The movement began in January 1921 the initial emphasis being on middle class
participation such as students leaving schools and colleges and lawyers giving up their legal
practice. There were efforts at developing national schools and arbitration courts raising a
Tilak Swaraj Fund and recruiting an equal number of volunteers.

 The educational boycott was particularly successful in Bengal, where the students in
Calcutta triggered off a province-wide strike to force the managements of their institutions
to disaffiliate themselves from the Government.

 But, perhaps, the most successful item of the programme was the boycott of foreign cloth.
Volunteers would go from house to house collecting clothes made of foreign cloth, and the
entire community would collect to light a bonfire of the goods.
 The AICC, at its session at Vijayawada in March 1921, directed that for the next three
months Congressmen should concentrate on collection of funds, enrolment of members
and distribution of charkhas. Charkhas were popularized on a wide scale and khadi became
the uniform of the national movement.

 Mohammed Ali, at the All India Khilafat Conference held at Karachi on 8 July, declared that
it was ‘religiously unlawful for the Muslims to continue in the British Army’ and asked that
this be conveyed to every Muslim in the Army. On 4 October, forty-seven leading
Congressmen, including Gandhiji, issued a manifesto reiterating that every civilian and
member of the armed forces should sever connections with the repressive Government.

 The next dramatic event was the visit of the Prince of Wales which began on 17 November,
1921. The day the Prince landed in Bombay was observed as a day of hartal all over the
country. In Bombay, Gandhiji himself addressed a mammoth meeting in the compound of
the Elphinstone Mill and lighted a huge bonfire of foreign cloth.

 The non-cooperation movement was most effective where the peasants had already
organised themselves. This peasant militancy, organised at the grassroots level by local
leader Baba Ramchandra, was later harnessed by the UP Kisan Sabha which was launched in
February 1918 in Allahabad. In north Bihar too, the Congress movement became most
powerful in those areas which witnessed the previous anti-planter agitation.

 By December 1921, the Government felt that things were really going too far and announced
a change of policy by declaring the Volunteer Corps illegal and arresting all those who
claimed to be its members. C.R. Das was among the first be arrested, followed by his wife
Basanti Debi, whose arrest so incensed the youth of Bengal that thousands came forward to
court arrest. In the next two months, over 30,000 people were arrested from all over the
country. This pushed the moderates away from the govt. And towards Gandhi.

 In a conference between the Viceroy Lord Reading and Gandhi mediated by Moderates,
aimed to convince Gandhi to call of the non-cooperation movement and hartal at Calcutta,
when the government refused Gandhi’s demands to lift the ban on civil liberty and release
political prisoners, the conference fell apart and Gandhi decided to go ahead with the civil
disobedience and no-tax movement at Bardoli planned for January 1922, though it became
sidelined due to the Chauri-Chaura incident.

 The final threshold was reached in the Chauri Chaura incident in Gorakhpur district of Uttar
Pradesh on 4 February 1922, when villagers burned alive twenty-two policemen in the local
police station. Here the local volunteers had gathered to protest against police oppression
and the high prices of certain articles. The police initially sought to deter them by firing in
the air. When they opened real fire, they were chased into the thana, which was then set on
fire.

 But for Gandhi it confirmed the absence of an environment of non-violence. The

Government could always cite the actual violence in one part as proof of the likelihood of
violence in another part of the country, and thus justify its repression. This would upset the
whole strategy of non-violent civil disobedience which was based on the principle that the
forces of repression would always stand exposed since they would be using armed force
against peaceful civil resisters. Gandhiji’s, decision to withdraw the movement in response
to the violence at Chauri Chaura raised a Controversy.
 Historians like R. Palme Dutt in India Today (1940), have continued to condemn the decision
taken by Gandhi. Their argument is that Gandhi did not withdraw the movement simply
because of his belief in the necessity of nonviolence. He withdrew it because the action at
Chauri Chaura was a symbol and an indication of the growing militancy of the Indian
masses, of their growing radicalization, of their willingness to launch an attack on the
status quo of property relations. In order to protect the interests of landlords and
capitalists who would inevitably be at the receiving end of this violence, Gandhiji cried halt
to the movement.

 Shahid Amin studies the different ways in which the event was transmitted to them and in
the variety of consequences that its reception prompted. Amin interviews the survivors and
village members are conducted in such a way as to construct an alternative picture of the
event. Through historical fieldwork he shows how the 172 accused of the Chauri Chaura
carnage transformed from those disobedient to Gandhian non-violent non-cooperation, into
nationalist martyrs over the years.

 The Non-cooperation movement remained more under the control of the Congress leaders
where there were homogeneous and dominant peasant communities holding sway over
lower caste agricultural labourers, such as the Mahishya peasant caste in Bengal or the
Patidar peasant caste in Gujarat through caste organisations and kinship networks.

 Many condemned the actions of Gandhi, on the lines of argument proposed by R. Palme
Dutt, in withdrawing the movement, seeing it as proof of the Mahatma’s concern for the
propertied classes. They believed that rather than a belief in the necessity of non-violence,
Gandhi suspended the movement because the action at Chauri Chaura was a symbol and an
indication of the growing militancy of the Indian masses, of their growing radicalization, of
their willingness to launch an attack on the status quo of property relations. Their argument
rested on the notion that Gandhi was afraid that the movement was going out of his hands
and into those of the radical elements, and therefore he called-off the movement to regain
control.

 These claims, however, have been refuted by a number of historians including Mridula
Mukherjee who notes that all the arguments put forward by the aforementioned school of
historiography stand on shaky ground, and that rather there is a definite indication that the
movement was on the verge of slowing down. Therefore, withdrawal or a shift to a phase
of non-conformation is an inherent part of a strategy of political action that is based on the
masses. As she eloquently put it, withdrawal is not tantamount to betrayal; it is an
inevitable part of the strategy itself.

 The movement, despite being called-off, clearly demonstrated that the support and
sympathy of vast sections of the Indian people lay with Gandhi and his followers. The
Congress party now reached out to a larger portion of the Indian population, and was no
longer limiting itself to the upper-classes or restricting itself to either constitutional reform
or extremist means. The capacity of the ‘poor dumb millions’ of India to take part in modern
nationalist politics was also demonstrated. The participation of Muslims, helped in no small
part by Gandhi’s alliance with Mohammed Ali and Shaukat Ali, was unprecedented. Although
this communal harmony was not to last in later years, Gandhi showed that Hindu-Muslim
unity was indeed the key to an effective movement against the British.
  The Non-Cooperation movement was a momentous part of the history of India’s struggle for
independence. It marked the first time in the history of the freedom movement that a mass
movement begun which threatened the hold of Britain on the subcontinent. For a brief
while, parties put aside their differences, religious divisions faded and India seemed like a
united force, which was demanding freedom from colonial rule. Most importantly, the Non-
Cooperation movement was instrumental in bringing Mahatma Gandhi and his ideas of
ahimsa and satyagraha to the forefront. In the years before its suspension, the movement
shook the very foundations of British rule and despite the incident at Chauri Chaura, it was
clear that the struggle for India’s independence had just intensified.

Impact of the Movement

The Non-Cooperation Movement had in fact succeeded on many counts. It certainly demonstrated
that it commanded the support and sympathy of vast sections of the Indian people. The figures for
school, colleges and court boycotts, while peasant and working class participation was more
impressive. The spatial spread of the movement was also nation-wide. The capacity of the ‘poor
dumb millions’ of India to take part in modem nationalist politics was also demonstrated. for many of
them, first contact with the modem world of nationalist politics and the modern ideology of
nationalism. The tremendous participation of Muslims in the movement, and the maintenance of
communal unity was also a remarkable achievement.

1. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India. Delhi: Orient
BlackSwan, 2001

2. Chandra, Bipan, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, Sucheta Mahajan, and K. N. Panikkar.
India's Struggle for Independence: 1857-1947. New Delhi: Penguin, 2009

3. Gordon, Richard. “Non-Cooperation and Council Entry, 1919 to 1920” in Modern Asian
Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1973), pp. 443-473

4. Low, D.A. “The Government of India and the First Non-Cooperation Movement – 1920-1922”
in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Feb., 1966), pp. 241-259

EVENTS LEADING TO THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT – (1922-29)

Post Chauri Chaura, the British arrested Gandhi in March 1922 with a 6-year sentence. After his
release from jail in 1924,Gandhi channelized his energies on constructive programs such as removal
of untouchability, building of the ashrams, use of charkha etc. the colonial government felt that he
was a ‘spent force’ politically.

The Congress was divided into no changers and pro changers. The former wanted to stick to the
Gandhian ways (Ansari, Iyengar) while the latter wanted to revert to constitutional politics (Motilal
Nehru, CR Das). The constitutionalists became more powerful and launched theSwaraj party within
the Congress. They wanted to participate in council politics and wreck the constitution from within.
However the Swarajists were not a stable group nor were they united by all India loyalty to achieve
that mission.
There were further fissures because of the growing influence of the Congress socialists under the
young leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and SC Bose and this turned into a Right-Left confrontation within
the Congress. The No-changers worked on constructive work within the villages. This included relief
work, promotion of Khadi, anti-liquor campaign, and social work among low castes.

The short-lived Muslim league-Congress alliance was also jeopardized by the decline of the Khilafat
movement. The Muslim league was divided on the issue of joint electorates and separate
electorates. There were communal riots all over. The All India Hindu Mahasabha gained in strength
in north and central India and its close association with the congress tarnished its secular image.

A major crisis for export oriented colonial economy culminated in a great depression in the 1920s.
The prices of exportable agricultural cash crops went down steeply and affected the rich peasantry.
The amount of revenue remained static worsening the situation. This led the Congress to mobilize
rich peasants in various parts of the country. In UP, repeated crop failures and shortfall in the
production of food crops led to the miseries of poor peasants. This led to the organization ofpeasant
movements outside the Congress, as it was clearly not interested in mobilizing radical lower peasant
groups. There was an emergence of a capitalist class during and in the years immediately after the
WW1.

In the 1920s there was a powerful and conscious capitalist class who organized themselves into
associations such as the Calcutta Indian Chamber of Commerce (founded by GD Birla in Calcutta in
1925) and the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (founded by GD Birla and
Purushottamdas Thakurdas, 1927) and came into conflict with the imperial government on many
issues: especially the 1s-6d rupee-sterling ratio fixed by the Hilton-Young Commission, due to which
the high value of the rupee led to greater Japanese and English imports at the cost of Indian textile
manufactures, coupled with lower prices for the exportable agricultural goods like raw cotton, and
the non-implementation of the recommendations of the Indian Textile Tariff Board Commission
(1926). They decided to side with the Congress to fight their battle who began to support many of
their demands making them into national issues. At the same time there was a lot of labour unrest in
India under the communist influence. However the influence declined as the government came
down heavily on them. This gave the Congress a chance to project themselves as a broad united
front where capitalists and workers(even if the working class support for it was weak) were under
the same banner.

Thirdly, a Tory government in London appointed an all white statutory commission under Sir John
Simon to review the operation of Constitutional system in India. When the Simon Commission
arrived in 1928, it was boycotted. This resulted in the holding of the All-Party Conference of 1928
where the Nehru Committee report (a memorandum by All Parties Conference in British India to
appeal for a new dominion status and a federal set-up of government for the constitution of India)
was finalized. Already at a conference in Delhi in March 1927, Jinnah had persuaded a number of
Muslim leaders to come out with a compromise formula. Separate electorates—the central plank in
Muslim programmes ever since 1906—would be given up in return for joint electorates with
reserved seats for minorities, a promise of one-third Muslim representation in the Central Assembly,
representa tion in proportion to population in Punjab and Bengal, and three new Muslim-majority
provinces (Sind, Baluchistan, North-West Frontier Province).

Though the AICC in May 1927 and the Madras Congress session in December 1927 had accepted the
Jinnah offer, Hindu-communalist pressure from Punjab and Maharashtra soon forced a disastrous
[Link] Nehru Report made a number of concessions to the Mahasabha. While there would be
joint electorates every where, reserved seats were conceded only at the Centre and in provinces with
Muslim minorities (and not in Punjab and Bengal). Sind would be detached from Bombay and made
into a separate province only after India acquired dominion status and subject to a weightage for the
Hindu minority there, and the political structure would be broadly unitary with the Centre keeping
residual powers. This finally led to his famous Fourteen Points (March 1929) which repeated the
demands for new provinces, one-third seats at the Centre, and federation with complete provincial
autonomy, and revived the slogan of separate electorates—till such time as the other points were
accepted by the Hindus.

 The Nehru Report was a sort of an entry of Gandhi once again into national politics. Motilal
Nehru wanted Gandhi’s support on this scheme as he wanted it to be smoothly accepted.
But for Gandhi, Swaraj was not a constitutional matter the British would give-it had to be
attained by mobilizing the masses.

 The other entry point for Gandhi into nationalist politics was Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928.
Despite being called off during the non-cooperation movement, constructive programs were
carried on in this area. Therefore when the government raised the land revenue by 22 % in
1927, a good deal of mobilization had already taken place. Vallabhbhai Patel launched the
Bardoli Satyagraha on 4th February 1928 with Gandhi’s blessings. This was a spectacular
success and covered by the press. According to Judith Brown, Bardoli lifted Gandhi out of
depression and the Calcutta Congress of 1928 witnessed his re-emergence as a national
leader.

 The young group within the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and SC Bose were against the
dominion status plea in the Nehru Report and wanted complete independence. Therefore
Gandhi proposed a compromise resolution that adopted the report but said that if the
government did not accept it by 31 December 1929 the congress would go in for a civil
disobedience movement and purna swaraj to achieve full independence. The then Viceroy
Lord Irwin proposed the “Irwin Offer” on 31st October, 1929 in which the Viceroy declared
Dominion Status to be the ‘natural issue’ of India’s constitutional progress and promised a
Round Table Conference after the Simon Report had been published. On 2 November,
Gandhi, Motilal and Malaviya accepted the offer, subject to four conditions: the Round
Table Conference should discuss the details of Dominion Status, not the basic principle which
the British should accept immediately; the Congress must have majority representation in
the Conference; and there should be an amnesty and a policy of general conciliation.
Negotiations broke down at Gandhi’s meeting with Irwin on 23 December, for the Viceroy
flatly rejected the Congress conditions.

 At the Lahore Session on December, 1929 the congress adopted the goal of Purna
Swaraj/Complete independence and decided to start a boycott of legislature as a
preliminary to the civil disobedience movement. However the response was cool and most
groups-the Muslims, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Sikhs and even the business groups moved
away from the congress. 26 January 1930 was celebrated as the Independence Day but
evoked little enthusiasm except in areas like Bihar, UP, Punjab, Delhi and Bombay.

CDM (1931-32) (SUMIT SARKAR, 1982)

The Lahore Congress was followed by a two-month lull while the country and the government waited
for Gandhi to decide on the precise methods of non-violent struggle for Purna Swaraj. An
independence pledge was taken at innumerable meetings throughout the country on 26 January,
1930 and Congress legislators were ordered to resign on 6 January.

Gandhi’s 11 point ultimatum to Irwin on 31 January seemed to many a sad climb-down from the
Purna Swaraj resolution, since no demand was made for any change in the political structure, not
even Dominion [Link], Sumit Sarkar argues that If the 11 points were a kind of retreat, they
also concretized the national demand and related it to specific grievances. The letter to Irwin
combined issues of general interest (50% cuts in army expenses and civil service salaries, total
prohibition, release of political prisoners, reform of the C.I.D., and changes in the Arms Act allowing
popular control of issue of firearms licenses) with three specific bourgeois demands (lowering of the
rupeesterling exchange ratio to 1s 4d, textile protection, and reservation of coastal shipping for
Indians) and two basically peasant themes—50% reduction in land revenue, and abolition of the salt
tax and government salt monopoly. Acc to Sarkar, salt linked up in a flash the ideal of Swaraj with a
most concrete and universal grievance of the rural poor (and one that unlike no-rent had no socially
divisive implications). It afforded, like khadi, the chance of paltry but psychologically important extra
income for peasants through self-help, and— like khadi, once again—offered to urban adherents the
possibility of a symbolic identification with mass suffering.

Gandhi’s Dandi March (12 March-6 April), from Sabarmati to the sea through the heartland of
Gujarat with 78 asrama members drawn from all parts of India attracted enormous publicity and
attention from the entire country and even on a world scale. Wholesale illegal manufacture and
auctioning of salt should begin, Gandhi declared on 11 March, after he had himself violated the law
at Dandi; it could be accompanied by boycott of foreign cloth and liquor, and indeed ‘everyone
(would have) a free hand’, subject to the pledges of non-violence and truth, after his own arrest,
though local leaders should be obeyed. The existence, right from the beginning, of pressures from
below was vividly revealed as village officials began to resign their posts all along Gandhi’s route; and
on 19 March Patidars of Ras (in Borsad taluk of Kheda district) demanded permission for start ing
immediate non-payment of revenue—a plea which Gandhi accepted with considerable reluctance. In
mid-May, after Gandhi’s arrest, the Working Committee sanctioned non-payment of re venue ‘in
provinces where the ryotwari system prevails’, a no-chaukidari tax campaign (not no-rent,
significantly enough) in zamindari provinces, and violation of forest laws in the Central Provinces.

Till towards the end of April, British reactions remained fairly moderate, though Patel was arrested
on 6 March and Jawaharlal on 14 April. The most revolutionary acts of the public were in Chittagong,
Peshawar, and Sholapur. The Chittagong group of revolutionaries headed by Surjya Sen brought off
the most spectacular coup in the entire history of terrorism on 18 April, seizing the local armoury, is
suing an Independence Proclamation in the name of the ‘Indian Republican Army’ and fighting a
heroic pitched battle on Jalalabad hill on 22 April where 12 revolutionaries were killed. Though
obviously very far removed in methods from Gandhi, the revolutionaries still celebrated the seizure
of the armoury with a cry of ‘Gandhiji’s Raj has come!’

In Peshawar, capital of the traditionally sensitive border area of North-West Frontier Province, Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, son of a prosperous village chief of Utmanzai near Peshawar, had started educational
and social reform work among his Pathan countrymen from 1912. He organized in the next year a
volunteer brigade, Khudai Khidmatgar, which wore red shirts because these got less soiled on village
tours. By 1929, Ghaffar Khan had become a fervent disciple of Gandhi: The creed of non-violence
helped to mitigate the traditional blood-feuds among Pathans, and as elsewhere served as a check
on internal social tensions (for the Khudai Khidmatgar included small and middling landlords, tenant
farmers, as well as poor peasants and agricultural labourers). After the Lahore Congress, membership
of the Khudai Khidmatgar shot up from 500 to 50,000 in six months. The arrest of Ghaffar Khan and a
number of other leaders on 23 April led to a massive upsurge in Peshawar, with crowds confronting
armoured cars and defying intensive firing for three hours at Kissakahani Bazar. The British were able
to restore order in Peshawar only ten days later, on 4 May, and a reign of terror and martial law was
unleashed in the N.W.F.P.

At the industrial city of Sholapur in Maharashtra, the news of Gandhi’s arrest led to a textile strike
from 7 May. Crowds, composed mainly of millhands, burnt liquor shops and attacked police
outposts, law courts, the municipal building, and the railway station; order could be restored through
martial law only after 16 May.

According to Sarkar, It is interesting that the work ing class, predominant in the Sholapur upsurge,
was quite active in some other centres, too, in the early days of Civil Disobedience—dock-labourers
in Karachi, Choolai Mill workers on strike in Madras, and Calcutta up-country transport workers and
Budge Budge mill-hands in the clashes with the police after the arrest of Nehru in mid-April and
Gandhi on 4 May. Such things happened despite the total ignoring of specific workingclass
grievances in the 11-points and in Congress strategy in general, and the general aloofness of
Communists from Civil Disobedience due to their new ultra-Left line.

In sharp contrast to what had happened after Chauri Chaura, Gandhi made no move to call off the
movement despite the violent incidents at Chittagong, Peshawar and Sholapur, but pushed ahead
with the non-violent mainstream despite sporadic incidents which were realistically recognized now
as more or less inevitable. According to Sarkar, in this as well as in several other respects, 1930
marked a definite advance in radicalism over 1921–22. The stated objec tive now was complete
independence, not the remedying of two specific ‘wrongs’ plus a very vague Swaraj, and the
methods from the beginning involved deliberate violation of the law, not mere noncooperation with
foreign rule. The risks in participation were greater in this movement, as the frightened government
from May onwards adopted a policy of senseless brutality even against absolutely peaceful
satyagrahis. Apart from life and limb, the meagre property of the poor was very much at stake, for
non-payment of land revenue or chaukidari tax was met by wholesale confiscation of household
goods, implements and even land. Another significant feature was the participation of women and
teenagers.

Yet it would be a considerable over-simplification to present Civil Disobedience as an unqualified

advance in every respect over Non-Cooperation. The stirring Hindu-Muslim unity of 1919–22 was
obviously a thing of the past in 1930, for between the two movements stood not only the breakdown
of the Nehru Report negotiations, but a decade of intensive communal organization and fratricidal
strife. Outside the N.W.F.P. and a few isolated pockets like Delhi, Muslim participation remained low
throughout the Civil Disobedience [Link] Non-Cooperation, once again, Civil Disobedience did
not coincide with any major labour up [Link] another contrast lay in the evident decline in the
older, more purely intelligentsia forms of protest like lawyers giving up their practice and students
leaving official institutions to start national schools and colleges.

The lag in respect of labour and the urban intelligentsia was counterbalanced, however, by the
massive response obtained from business groups and large sections of the peasantry.
Organizationally, too, the Congress now was much stronger in most parts of the country than in
1921–22, when it had just taken the first step on the road towards becoming a mass party. Yet,
ironically, in regions like the Central Provinces, Maharashtra, Karnatak or tribal areas of central India,
where Non-Cooperation had made little inroads and Gandhian ideas still had the flavour and
vagueness of novelty, an elemental and near-millenarian fervour could still be seen which was no
longer much in evidence in well established Gandhian strongholds like Gujarat, U.P., Bihar, or coastal
Andhra. Yet the basic Gandhian strategy of courting arrest meant that established leaders and cadres
were fairly quickly removed from the scene, and this often provided an opportunity for sporadic but
militant move ments from below, a kind of less inhibited ‘second wave’ which gathered strength in
the countryside particularly in the context of the deepening slump in agricultural prices from the
autumn of 1930 onwards.

According to Sarkar, the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-31) may be divided into 2 broad phases,
with September-October 1930 as a rough dividing line.

The first phase saw the high point of bourgeois participation in towns and controlled peasant
mobilization on issues selected by the Gandhian leadership (salt, no-revenue, picketing of liquor
shops, and non-payment of chaukidari tax) in the villages. While industrialists were major
contributors (READ IN ASSIGNMENT), merchants and petty traders, as in 1921 were on the whole
much more enthusiastic supporers of the national movement than industrialists. Collective ledges
by merchants not to indent foreign goods became very common in Bombay, Amritsar, Delhi and
Calcutta (where Marwari importers took such a pledge on 30 April), and represented a more
effective form of boycott than the spectacular picketing by (often largely women) volunteers. The fall
in prices due to the world depression no doubt sometimes made cancellation of further import
orders profitable as well as patriotic, but official reports from Bombay bear testimony to more long-
term and ideological considerations. Besides textile, other British imports also suffered, evident from
complaints from Imperial Tobacco, Dunlop and other ‘white’ firms.

In the countryside, the early ‘official’ type of Gandhian Civil Disobedience had its natural starting-
points and strongest bases in pockets which had already witnessed some amount of Gandhian rural
constructive work through local asramas—Bardoli and Kheda in Gujarat, Bankura and Arambagh in
Bengal, Bihpur in Bhagalpur district of Bihar, to give only a few better-known examples. Salt
provided the initial vital catalyst, but illegal manufacture became difficult with the onset of the
monsoon, and in any case could become the basis for a sustained campaign only in coastal like parts
of Bombay Presidency, Balasore in Orissa, or Midnapur in Bengal. Picketing of liquor shops and of
excise license auctions became an important form both in small towns and villages, while peasants in
many areas (north and central Bihar districts, and Midnapur, for instance) firmly refused to pay the
chaukidari tax despite enormous physical coercion and sale of property. Rural administration was
sought to be paralyzed by largescale resignations of village officials, and Anand, Borsad and Nadiad
talukas of Kheda district and Bardoli of Surat became centres of a very successful no-revenue
campaign.

In the Central Provinces, Maharashtra and Karnatak, the Congress leadership set up training camps
for ‘forest satyagrahis’ (as at Sangamner in Ahmednagar district), carefully selecting satyagraha
centres (106 in Berar for instance between July and September), and seeking to restrict the
movement to boycott of Forest Department auctions, peaceful mass violation of grazing and timber
restrictions and public sale by auction of illegally-acquired forest produce.

Acc to Sarkar, the strength of Civil Disbedience in its first phase was vividly reflected in the firm
stand taken by the national leadership at the abortive Yeravda jail negotiations, attempted by
Sapru and Jayakar as mediators in July-August 1930. The 15 August joint letter from Yeravda of
Gandhi and the Nehrus unequivocally reiterated demands for right of secession, a ‘complete national
government’ with control over defence and finance, and an independent tribunal to settle British
financial claims. Not surprisingly the talks broke down at this point. The strength of the movement
was also revealed by the fairly successful boycott of the September 1930 Legislative Assembly
elections.

However, from September 1930 onwards, there was a decline in enthusiasm and support from
urban merchants, with dealers breaking Congress-imposed seals on foreign cloth at Benares,
Amritsar traders selling foreign cloth on the sly at Fazilka, and, even in Bombay, merchants ‘with
large stocks of last year’s goods on their hands’ beginning, ‘to show signs of rebelling against the
Congress mandate’. (Home Political 18/X/1930) If merchants were having second thoughts mill-
owners had never been too enthusiastic, for the gains from Swadeshi demand were counter-
balanced by what Homi Mody in March 1931 des cribed as ‘frequent hartals which dislocated trade
and industry’ and created a feeling of considerable uncertainty. Thakurdas warned Motilal through
Lalji Naranji that ‘the capacity of the commercial community for endurance’ was reaching its limits,
and later reiterated that ‘But for Bombay the rest of India is well under control and will on the whole
die out before long… I fear that the Congress will have a set back and with it the country will suffer
heavily.’In the countryside, the more purely Gandhian forms based on relatively propertied peasant
groups were losing some of their early potency in the face of ruthless British policies of distraint
(property-seizure).

At the same time, there were signs of a ‘second wave’, taking less manageable and socially
dangerous forms, like no-rent or tribal rebellion. Among the Kolis of the western Ghats and the
Gonds of the Central Provinces, forest satyagraha had long passed beyond Gandhian controls, with
repeated violent attacks on police pickets and largescale and indiscriminate cutt ing-down of trees.
Elsewhere, too, in scattered incidents through out the country peasants were resisting the arrests of
their leaders and the seizure of their property, mobilizing neighbouring villages through the blowing
of conch-shells, and surrounding and attacking police parties. Pressures for no-rent were mounting
as prices fell, and the U.P. Congress had to reluctantly sanction it in October 1930.

REGIONAL DIMENSION:

Metropolitan Bombay remained throughout 1930 the principal citadel of Civil [Link]
Disobedience here had the support of the very large Gujarati population of Bombay, great majority
of whom were engaged in business trade or as clerks.

Gujarat—or, more precisely, Anand, Borsad, and Nadiad talukas in Kheda, Jambusar in Broach and
Bardoli in Surat, remained a Gandhian stronghold and reported significant arrears in revenue
collections due to political reasons in 1930–31. Yet even in Kheda, some Patidars had reached ‘the
stage of transition from non-violence to violence’ (Hardiman) by early 1931 in the face of wholesale
confiscation of land.

In Maharashtra, C.P., as well as Karnatak (which had been another area more or less untouched by
NonCooperation), forest satyagraha speedily became the most wide spread and militant form of Civil
Disobedience. By early 1931, preparations for a no-revenue movement had started in some Karnatak
districts, while attempts were reportedly being made in parts of Maharashtra ‘to influence the Khots
not to pay their revenue by inducing their tenants to withhold their rent’. There were some signs also
of a spill-over of popular agitation into neighbouring princely states: volunteers from Mysore
participated in the Kanara movement, and a powerful no-tax campaign developed under the
leadership of a notorious dacoit Mangal Singh in Chhatarpur, Bundelkhand.

In Tamil Nadu, the Gandhian No-Changer leader C. Rajagopalachari organized a march from
Trichinopoly to Vedaranniyam on the Tanjore coast to break the salt law in April 1930, followed by
widespread picketing of foreign cloth shops, and, as in 1921, an anti-liquor campaign in interior Tamil
Nadu towns like Coimbatore, Madura, and Virudhanagar. But, as elsewhere, Civil Disobedience in
Tamil Nadu ‘thrived upon the violent eruptions of the masses and the violent repression of the
police.’ (Arnold in Congress and the Raj, p. 265) These began with largescale clashes on Madras
beach (27 April); unemployed weavers attacked liquor shops and police pickets in north Arcot, and
peasants suffering from falling prices rioted in August at Bodinayakanur in Madura. A link between
Depression and discontent seems clear also in Madura town, where the movement acquired
considerable strength due to support from merchants and weavers of the Saurashtra community.

In Malabar, salt marches were organized by Kelappan, a Nair Congress leader who had established
contacts with the lower-caste Ezhavas through the Vaikom temple satyagraha of the mid-1920s.

Organizationally, the Congress in Madras Presidency had its strongest base in coastal Andhra, where
the No-Changer-Swarajist rift had been much less acute than in Tamil Nadu, and where, an agitation
against revenue enhance ent had been going on since 1927. District salt marches were organized in
east and west Godavari, Krishna and Guntur, merchants contributed readily to Congress funds, and
dominant-caste Kamma and Raju cultivators defied repressive measures which included
withholding of irrigation water to 1420 acres in west Godavari (Stoddart in Congress and the Raj, p.
121). Yet the elemental fervour of 1921–22 was largely absent in costal Andhra. Civil Disobedience
convictions in Andhra in 1930, together with Tamil Nadu, came to less than 6% of the all-India figure.

In Orissa, which had a strongly Gandhian leadership from the 1920s under Gopabandhu Chaudhuri,
salt satyagrapha proved a very effective movement in the coastal areas of Balasore, Cuttack and Puri
districts.

In Assam, like Andhra, Civil Disobedience failed to regain the heights attained in 1921–22, due mainly
to a whole series of divisive issues: the growing conflicts between Assamese and Bengalis, Hindus
and Muslims, and the tensions developing from the inflow of Muslim peasant immigrants from
densely-populated east Bengal. Sylhet became the principal base of the move ment, with
significant impact of forest encroahments, but the Assam Congress leadership refused to take up
forest satyagraha officially.

In Bengal, Midnapur, Arambagh and a number of other rural pockets, saw powerful movements
developed around the issues of salt and chaukidari tax,and incidents like Chittagong raid happened in
areas where Gandhian and Congress influence was less. Still the contrast with 1921 remains clear, in
the lack of an effective central leadership which C.R. Das had then provided, the relative passivity of
industrial labour, the absence of elemental tribal and poor peasant upsurges of the type then seen in
outlying areas like Rangpur, Chittagong and Tippera, and above all in the general aloofness of the
Muslims. Early trends towards some amount of Muslim participation were cut short by communal
riots, in Dacca town and Kishoreganj villages, which recent research indicates could have been
manipulated to a more anti-imperialist cause with a more radical nationalist leadership because in
both places communalism was a distorted expression of social tensions: riots targetted Hindu
moneylenders’ and Muslim Talukdars’ houses.

A somewhat similar pattern can be seen in the Punjab, where the Congress reputation of being a
predominantly urban Hindu trader party made mobilization of Muslim and Sikh peasants difficult
now that there were no unifying religious issues like Khilafat or purification of Gurdwara
management. In sharp and significant contrast, radicalism among urban youth was stimulated
further by the death sentence passed on Bhagat Singh on 7 October.

Bihar saw a primarily village-oriented movement, though the provincial leadership with its strong
small-landlord links firmly refused, however, to take up no-rent despite growing kisan distress as
prices fell.

The tribal belt of Chotanagpur was also astir, with Bonga Majhi and Somra Majhi leading a
movement in Hazaribagh which combined socio-religious reform along ‘Sanskritizing’ lines with
Congress sympathies (followers were asked to give up meat and drink, and use khadi only), while
Santals elsewhere were reported to be taking up illegal distillation on a largescale under the banner
of Gandhi.

The pattern of two phases in Civil Disobedience was perhaps clearest in the United Provinces, and
Jawaharlal Nehru summed it up neatly in a comment drawn from experiences during a brief spell out
of jail in midOctober 1930—‘The cities and the middle classes were a bit tired of the hartals and
processions’, but ‘a fresh infusion of blood’ could still come ‘from the peasantry’, where ‘the reserve
stocks…were enormous’. Despite there being a growing unrest in villages, the ambivalent
relationship between Congress organization and peasant militancy remain clear in U.P., too, as
Gyan Pandey has shown through a study of local variations: Congress discipline was most marked in
Agra, and the most violent outbursts took place after March 1931 in areas relatively untouched by
Congress agitation and organization—in the doab tehsils of Allahabad, for instance, which had been
avoided by the Congress because here Muslim landlords faced Hindu tenants, and there was a
danger of communal riots.

Despite many local variations, available regional data thus seem to indicate a broadly similar pattern
from the autumn of 1930 onwards of simultaneous decline and radicalization: a weakening in
forms of struggle associated with bourgeois groups or peasant upper strata (e.g., urban boycott and
no-revenue), accompanied by sporadic but fairly widespread tendencies towards less manageable
forms (no-rent, tribal outbursts, popular violence). Acc to Sarkar, In such a situation, moves towards
some kind of compromise settlement were only natural, both for the Gandhian leadership with its
faith in controlled mass participation, as well as for business leaders with their counting-house
mentality and fear of peasant radicalism.

(SHORT NOTES)

 All leaders and most volunteers were arrested and the movement began to decline from
September 1930 onwards as people lost interest. In a conciliatory gesture, the Viceroy
suggested that the First Round Table Conference would be held in London in November
1930 but the Congress boycotted it and it was a meaningless exercise.

Truce and Second Civil Disobedience Movement –

 Meanwhile the government now made attempts to negotiate an agreement with the
Congress. As a part of this on 25th January 1931, the Viceroy announced the unconditional
release of Gandhi and all the other Congress leaders.

 After much deliberation, the Congress authorized Gandhi to initiate discussions with the
Viceroy, which culminated on 5th March 1931 in the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. It was described as a
truce and a provisional settlement.
  The Gandhi Irwin Pact is a subject of great controversy as to why Gandhi signed it. Some
historians say that certain Congress leaders persuaded Gandhi because they felt that the
Round Table Conference had potential of further devolution of power in India while others
said that Gandhi was a satyagrahi and was always open to compromise. According to Sumit
Sarkar, the Indian bourgeoisie, Gandhi’s staunchest supporters pressurized him as their
businesses were suffering and thus played a crucial role in the subsequent withdrawal.
Historians such as Judith Brown, Claude Markovits and Basudev Chatterji have accepted
this position.

 The terms of the pact included the immediate release of all political prisoners not convicted
for violence, inquiry into police repression and that the land confiscated from peasants is
returned to them. The government also conceded the right to make salt for consumption to
villages along the coast as also the right to peaceful and non-aggressive picketing. The
Congress on its part agreed to discontinue the Civil Disobedience Movement. It was also
understood that the Congress would participate in the next Round Table Conference.

 Many of the Congress leaders, particularly the younger left wing section were opposed to
the Gandhi Irwin Pact for the government did not accept even one of the major nationalist
demands. However Gandhi was satisfied and convinced that Irwin and the British were
sincere in their desire to negotiate on Indian demands. Gandhi went to England in
September 1931 to attend the Second Round Table Conference but in spite of his powerful
advocacy, the British government refused to concede to the basic demand for freedom by
granting Dominion Status. Thus the negotiations with the government failed and Gandhi
returned empty handed in December 1931.

 Meanwhile, peasant unrest had developed in several parts of the country. In UP, the
Congress agitated for a reduction of rent and prevention of eviction of tenants. While in the
North West Frontier Province there was a peasant movement against the government’s land
revenue policy. Thus on his return to India, Gandhi had no choice but to resume the Civil
Disobedience Movement in January 1932.

 On 4th January, Gandhi and other Congress leaders were arrested and it was banned. The
government repression succeeded in the end as it was helped by differences among the
Indians on many issues.

 The rich peasant groups, who had showed greater militancy during the first phase of the
movement, felt betrayed by its withdrawal and remained unstirred in many places while the
staunchest of Gandhi’s supporters - the merchants lost enthusiasm. The urban intelligentsia
also felt less inclined to follow the Gandhian path and thus the Civil Disobedience Movement
gradually waned. The Congress officially suspended the movement in May 1933 and
withdrew it in May 1934. Gandhiji once again withdrew from active politics.

 For the Congress however, the Civil Disobedience Movement was by no means a failure. It
had by now mobilized great political support and marked a critically important stage in the
progress of the anti-imperialist struggle.

COMMUNAL AWARD AND POONA PACT(1932)

 The constitutional history of India took a major turn when the British PM Ramsay MacDonald
announced his Communal Award in 1932. It apportioned representation among
 communities and extended provision among separate electorates to the untouchables as
well.

 Gandhi, who was in jail, saw this as a ploy to divide the Hindu society, as the untouchables
were an integral part of it. Therefore Gandhi took fast unto death to reverse the
arrangement. However the Dalit leader, BR Ambedkar supported the separate electorates.

 The British responded to Gandhi’s fast unto death declaration by stating that the
communal award would be amended if those affected by it agreed to do so. This provision
was widely publicized by the British highlighting the fact that it was an issue between
Gandhi and the depressed classes and not between Gandhi and the Govt. of India. This
strategy worked and many leaders like Sapru and Jaikar pressurized Ambedkar to give in.

 Both Gandhi and Ambedkar agreed to the idea of reserved seats and therefore the Poona
Pact of 1932 was signed which proposed a number of reserved seats for the reserved
/depressed classes to be increased and a two tier election system was recommended to
ensure proper representation of such classes.

 This was a victory for Gandhi and his moral stature was enhanced like never before both at
home and abroad as he challenged the government decision and emerged victorious. (DA
Low). The sinking morale of congress was lifted.

POST RTC-2: SECOND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1932-34

Gandhi returned to India on 28 December to find Nehru and Ghaffar Khan in jail and large-scale
repressive measures already under way in Bengal, U.P. and N.W.F.P.

Civil Disobedience in 1932–33 comprised a wide range of activities, in part because so very many
things had now become illegal, and civil liberties almost totally suppressed. The forms of defiance
included picketing of cloth and liquor shops, closing of markets and boycott of white or loyalist
business concerns, symbolic hoisting of Congress flags, holding in public of illegal Congress sessions
(as near the Chandni Chowk Clock Tower in Delhi in April 1932, and on the Calcutta Maidan next
year), salt satyagrahas, non-payment of chaukidari taxes, no-rent as well as no-revenue, forest law
violations, and a certain amount of illegal Congress functioning and use of bombs—the latter two
methods later strongly condemned by Gandhi. Willingdon’s letter of 4 April 1932 described Bombay
city and Bengal as the ‘two black spots’. Bombay city to its Governor remained ‘the keep of
Gandhism’, where the ‘Congress have got a deeper hold…than anywhere else in India’.

In the countryside, whether in Bombay or else where, response on the whole seems to have been
less than in 1930, for the Congress had spiked its own guns during the 1931 truce and missed the
psychological moment for an all-out no-revenue and no-rent movement.

A powerful no-tax movement developed in parts of Karnataka, particularly in Ankola and Siddapur
talukas of north Kanara where more than 200 villages withheld revenue, and the AICC reports refer
to scattered outbursts of forest satyagraha in many parts of central and south India.

Civil Disobedience was weaker in Tamilnadu and Andhra as compared to 1930, though there were
some active centres of urban picketing (e.g., Madras City, Madura and Virudhanagar in Tamilnadu),
and the British were seriously alarmed for a while in 1933 by signs of a revival of no-revenue
movements in coastal Andhra. In Bihar, there were several mass attacks on police stations in
Monghyr and Muzaffarpur districts in February 1932.
In U.P., Civil Disobedience was now becoming much more of an urban affair, Agra district for
instance was now quiet except for an isolated no-rent movement in Barauda village, while 80% of
land revenue due from Rae Bareli had been collected by July 1932, two months before time (G.
Pandey, pp. 177, 187).

In Bengal there was reportedly a revival of salt satyagraha in coastal areas, non-payment of
chaukidari taxes and Union Board boycott in many districts and no-rent in Arambagh sub-division of
Hooghly and parts of Tippera, Sylhet and Jalpaiguri. The continued failure of the Congress
leadership to espouse agrarian radicalism even in Depression conditions, however, encouraged
Muslim peasant movements to develop increasingly on separatist lines. Bengal remained a
nightmare for the British, however, because of terrorism.

The second Civil Disobedience movement coincided with significant upsurges in two princely states.
In Kashmir, the Muslim Conference was started in October 1932, and though it would be renamed
the National Conference only six years later, its leader Sheikh Abdulla had already started to develop
close contacts with a group of anti-autocratic Jammu Hindus under P.N. Bazaz. In the Rajasthan
state of Alwar in early 1933, there was a formidable rising against Maharaja Jaisingh Sawai’s
revenue enhancements, begar, grazing dues, and reservation of forests for hunting.

By the second half of 1932, Civil Disobedience was evidently going down in defeat. It is true that
the halo of sacrifice and martyrdom won by the Congress during 1930–34 helped decisively in the
winning of elections from 1934 onwards, yet David Hardiman argues that ‘voting was not the same
as [Link] days of the classic Gandhian satyagrahas had passed’. Propertied peasants would
go on voting Congress, but were no longer so ready to sacrifice their land, now that Gandhi had
failed to get it restored for them in 1931.

(SHORT NOTES) THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT 1935

The Government of India Act 1935 proposed the following-

1. In place of dyarchy, there would be responsible government in all the departments. This
was nullified by the wide discretionary powers given to the governors about summoning
legislatures; giving assent to bills etc. they also had special powers to safeguard minority
rights, privileges of civil servants and British business interests. Also, they could take over
and run the administration of a province indefinitely under a special provision.

2. At the centre, the act provided for a federal structure, but it would come into effect only if
more than 50 % of the princely state acceded to by signing an Instrument of Accession.
The act introduced dyarchy at the centre but subject to various safeguards.

3. Transfer of financial control from London to New Delhi because the Govt. of India was
demanding fiscal autonomy since a long time.

4. The electorate was enlarged to 30 million but enfranchised only 10% of the population. In
rural India, it gave voting rights to the rich and middle peasants, as they were the main
constituency for Congress politics. Therefore according to DA Low, it was a ploy to corrode
the support base of the congress and tie these important classes to the Raj.

5. In the bicameral legislature in the centre, members nominated by the princes would
constitute 30-40% of seats thus eliminating the possibility of a Congress majority. There
were separate electorates for Muslims and reserved seats for the [Link] act
 made no mention of granting dominion status promised during the civil disobedience
movement.

Nature

1. The Labour opposition argued that the act only proposed to protect British interests in India
by sharing power with the loyalist elements. Conservatives like Churchill thought this act
amounted to the abdication of empire.

2. However according to Carl Bridges, his colleagues had specially chosen the federal structure
as it would protect British interests rather than hand over control in vital areas. BR
Tomlinson says that the only change was that the apex of the system moved from London
to Delhi. The viceroy had new powers and essentially all imperial interests were protected.

3. The provincial part of this act took effect with the elections of 1937 where the Congress
won an absolute majority in 5 out of 11 provinces. However the federal part of the act
remained a non-starter, as no one was interested in it. The Muslim league feared Hindu
domination, the princes were reluctant to join it (as it did not resolve the issue of
paramountcy) and the congress were not happy with the proposed tie up with the princes.