Gandhi Launches Non-Cooperation

In 1920, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement, a campaign asking Indians to withdraw their support from British colonial institutions by peaceful means. It was the first nationwide mass movement against British rule in India, and it transformed the Indian National Congress from a body of educated elites that petitioned the government into a popular organization with roots in towns and villages. It also established satyagraha, Gandhi's method of nonviolent resistance, as the central strategy of the independence struggle.

Several grievances converged to make the moment ripe. The Rowlatt Acts of 1919 extended wartime emergency powers and allowed detention without trial, provoking widespread anger. In April 1919, British-led troops under General Reginald Dyer fired on an unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, killing hundreds, and the official response seemed to many Indians to excuse the violence. At the same time, many Indian Muslims were alarmed by the postwar treatment of the Ottoman Empire and its sultan-caliph, a cause known as the Khilafat movement. Gandhi, who had gained a reputation through earlier campaigns in South Africa, Champaran, and Ahmedabad, saw an opportunity to unite Hindus and Muslims in a common cause.

The program was adopted by Congress at a special session in Calcutta in September 1920 and confirmed at Nagpur that December. It urged Indians to surrender British titles and honors, boycott government schools, law courts, and legislative councils, and refuse foreign cloth in favor of homespun khadi. Spinning became both a symbol and a daily practice. Congress also reorganized itself, creating local committees and adopting a more disciplined structure. Students left government colleges, lawyers gave up practices, and national schools and arbitration courts were set up, though participation varied widely by region and group.

The movement ended abruptly in February 1922, when a crowd at Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces set fire to a police station, killing a number of policemen. Horrified by the violence, Gandhi suspended the campaign, a decision that dismayed some of his colleagues. He was arrested in March 1922 and sentenced to six years in prison, though he was released early in 1924. The Hindu-Muslim cooperation of these years also frayed after the Khilafat cause collapsed when Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924.

Despite its immediate failure to win concessions, Non-Cooperation had lasting effects. It showed that millions of ordinary Indians could be mobilized and that British authority depended on their acquiescence. Gandhi's methods returned in the Salt March of 1930 and the Quit India movement of 1942, and they later inspired civil rights campaigners well beyond South Asia.