Differing strands within the movement - Concepts - Chapter 2 Class 10 History - Nationalism in India - History

Differing Strands within the Movement

The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921 . Various social groups participated in this movemen t. Everyone had their own specific aspirations . Everyone responded to the call of Swaraj but its meaning was different for different people.

The Movement in the Towns

• The movement started with middle class participation in the cities .
• Thousands of students left government -controlled schools and colleges.
• Headmasters and teachers resigned .
• Lawyers gave up their legal practices .
• The council elections were boycotted in most of the provinces except Madras , where the Justice Party , the party of the non-brahmans , felt that entering the council was one way of gaining some power - something that only Brahmans had access to.

• The effects of Non-cooperation on the economic front were more dramatic .
• Foreign goods were boycotted.
• Liquor shops were picketed .
• Foreign cloth was burnt in huge bonfires.
• The import of f oreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922 , dropping value from Rs 102 crores to Rs 57 crore .
• In many places merchants and traders refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade .
• People began discarding imported clothes and wearing only Indian ones.
• Production o f Indian textiles and Handlooms went up.
• But the movement slowed down for a variety of reasons in the cities.
• Khadi cloth was more expensive than mass-produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to buy it.
• Boycott of British institutions posed a problem.
• Alternative Indian institutions had to be set up so that they could be used in place of the British ones , for the movement to be successful.
• Students and teachers began trickling back to the government schools and lawyers joined back work in government courts .

Rebellion in the Countryside

• The Non-cooperation movement spread to the countryside from the cities and included the struggles of peasants and tribals in it.
• In Awadh , peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra - a sanyasi who had earlier been to Fiji as an indentured labourer.
• The movement was against the Talukdars and landlords who demanded exorbitantly high rents and a variety of other cesses from the peasants .
• Peasants had to do begar and work at landlord’s farms without any payments.
• As tenants they had no security of tenure .
• Being regularly evicted so that they could acquire no right over the leased land .
• The peasant movement demanded reduction of revenue, abolition of begar , and social boycott of oppressive landlords.
• Nai - Dhobi bandhs were organised by panchayats to deprive landlords of the services of even barbers and washermen .
• In June 1920, Jawaharlal Nehru began going around the villages in Awadh.
• By October, the Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up headed by J awaharlal Nehru, Baba Ramchandra and a few others.
• Over 300 branches had been set up in the villages around the region.
• The effort of the Congress was to integrate the Awadh peasan t movement into a wider struggle.
• However, the peasant movement developed in a way that the Congress leadership was unhappy with.
• In 1921 the houses of Talukdars and merchants were attacked .
• Bazaars were looted .
• Grain hoards were taken over.
• In many places, the local leaders told peasants that Gandhiji had declared that no taxes were to be paid and land was to be redistributed among the poor.
• The name of the Mahatma was being invoked to sanction all actions and aspirations.

Bardoli Satyagraha

• In 1928 , Vallabhbhai Patel led the peasant movement in Bardoli .
• A taluka in Gujarat , against enhancement of land revenue .
• This movement came to be known as Bardoli Satyagraha.
• This movement was success under the able leadership of Vallabhbhai Patel.
• The struggle was widely publicised and generated immense sympathy in many parts of India .

Idea of Swaraj for Tribal Peasants

• Tribal peasants interpreted the message of Mahatma Gandhi and the idea of Swaraj in another way.
• In the Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh , a militant guerrilla movement spread in the early 1920s .
• It was kind of a struggle that the Congress could never approve off.
• In the forest regions , 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 act enraged the hill people .
• Not only their livelihoods were affected but they felt that their traditional rights were being denied .
•  The government began forcing them to contribute begar for road building , and the hill people revolted .
• Alluri Sitaram Raju claimed that he had a variety of special powers ; he could make correct astrological predictions and heal people .
• He claimed that he could even survive bullet shots .
• Captivated by Raju , the rebels proclaimed that he was an incarnation of God .
• Raju talked of the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi , Raju was inspired by the Non-cooperation Movement.
• Raju persuaded people to wear Khadi and give up drinking .
• Raju was of the opinion that India could be liberated only by the use of force and not by non-violence.
• Gudem rebels attacked the police stations , attempted to kill British officials and carried on guerrilla warfare for achieving swaraj.
• Raju was captured and executed in 1924, and over time became a folk hero.

Swaraj in the Plantations 

• Workers too had their different understanding of Mahatma Gandhi and notion of swaraj.
• For the plantation workers in Assam , freedom meant the right to move freely in and out the confined space in which they were enclosed.
• It meant retaining a link with the village they had come from.
• Under the Inland Emigration Act of 1859, plantation workers were not permitted to leave the tea gardens without permission, and in fact they were rarely given such permissions.
• After hearing of the Non-cooperation movement , thousands of workers defied the authorities.
• They left the plantation and headed home .
• The workers believed that Gandhi Raj was coming and every worker would be given land in their own villages.
• However, they never reached their destination .
• Stranded on the way by a railway and streamer strike , they were caught by the police and brutally beaten up.
• They interpreted the term swaraj in their own ways, imagining it to be a time when all the suffering and all the troubles would be over.
• The tribals chanted Gandhiji’s name and raised slogans demanding ‘ Swatantra Bharat’, they were also emotionally relating to an all-India agitation .
• When they acted in the name of Mahatma Gandhi, or linked their movement to that of the congress , they were identifying with a movement which went beyond the limits of their immediate locality.