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.
