The Khilafat And Non-Cooperation Movement (1919-22)
A new stream came into the nationalist movement with the Khilafat movement. The ground for common political action by Hindus and Muslims had already been prepared by the Lucknow Pact. The nationalist agitation against the Rowlatt Act had touched all the Indian people alike and brought Hindus and Muslims together in political agitation. For example, as an example of Hindu Muslim unity in political action, Swami Shradhanand, an Arya Samaj leader, was asked by the Muslims to preach, from the pulpit of the Jama Masjid at Delhi while Dr Saifuddin Kitchlu, a Muslim, was given the keys of the Golden Temple, the Sikh shrine at Amritsar.
In this atmosphere, the nationalist trend among the Muslims took the form of the Khilafat agitation. The politically conscious Muslims were critical of the treatment meted out to the Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire by Britain and its allies who had partitioned it and insulted the Turkish Sultan, who was regarded as the Caliph of the Muslims. This was in violation of the earlier pledge given by the British. A Khilafat Committee was soon formed under the leadership of the Ali brothers (Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali), Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, and Hasrat Mohani, and a countrywide agitation was organised.
The All-India Khilafat Conference held at Delhi in November 1919 decided to withdraw all cooperation from the Government if their demands were not met. The Muslim League, now under the leadership of nationalists, gave full support to the National Congress and its agitation on political issues. Mahatma Gandhi viewed the Khilafat agitation as a golden opportunity for cementing Hindu-Muslim unity and bringing the Muslim masses into the national movement. Early in 1920, he had declared that the Khilafat question preceded other questions and announced that he would lead a movement of non-cooperation if the terms of peace with Turkey did not satisfy the Indian Muslims. In fact, very soon Gandhi became one of the leaders of the Khilafat movement.
Meanwhile, the Government refused to annul the Rowlatt Act or make amends for the atrocities in Punjab. The Hunter Committee appointed to enquire into the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre absolved General Dyer of all charges. In June 1920, an all-party conference met at Allahabad and approved a programme of the boycott of schools, colleges, and law courts. The Khilafat Committee launched a non-cooperation movement on 31 August 1920. Gandhi was the first to join in and he returned the Kaiser-i-Hind Medal awarded to him earlier for services during the War.
The Congress met in a special session in September 1920 at Calcutta. The Congress supported Gandhi’s plan for non-cooperation with the Government till the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were removed and Swaraj established. The people were asked to boycott government educational institutions, law courts, and legislatures and to practice hand-spinning and hand weaving for producing khadi, The decision to carry the agitation in a peaceful manner was endorsed at the annual session of the Congress held at Nagpur in December 1920. The Nagpur session also made changes in the constitution of Congress. Provincial Congress Committees were reorganised on the basis of linguistic areas. The Congress was now to be led by a Working Committee of 15 members which would enable the Congress to function as a continuous political organisation and would provide it with the machinery for implementing its resolutions. Congress membership was thrown open to men and women of the age of 21 or more on payment of only 4 annas as an annual fee, so as to enable the Congress to attract the lower classes and also to have a regular source of income. The Congress now acquired a mass character and assumed the leadership of the masses in their national struggle for freedom.
The years 1921 and 1922 were to witness an unprecedented movement of the Indian people. Thousands of students left government schools and colleges and joined national schools and colleges. It was at this time that the Jamia Millia Islamia, the Bihar Vidyapith, the Kashi Vidyapith and the Gujarat Vidyapith came into existence. Acharya Narendra Dev, Dr Zakir Hussain, and Lala Lajpat Rai were among the many distinguished teachers at these educational institutions. Hundreds of leading lawyers, including Chittaranjan Das, popularly known as Deshbandhu, Motilal Nehru, and Rajendra Prasad, gave up their legal practice. The Tilak Swarajya Fund was started to finance the non-cooperation movement and within six months over a crore of rupees were subscribed. Huge bonfires of foreign cloth were organised all over the land. Khadi soon became a symbol of freedom.
The Government again took recourse to repression. The Congress and Khilafat Volunteer Corps, whose duty was to unite Hindu and Muslim political workers at lower levels, were declared illegal. By the end of 1921, all important nationalist leaders, except Gandhi, were behind the bars. In November 1921, huge demonstrations greeted the Prince of Wales during his tour of India.
The movement spread deep among the masses. Thousands of peasants in U.P. and Bengal had responded to the call of non-cooperation. In Punjab the Sikhs were leading a movement, known as the Akali movement, to remove corrupt mahants from the Gurudwaras, their places of worship. . In Malabar, the Mappilas, or Muslim peasants, created a powerful anti-zamindar movement. On 1 February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi announced that he would start mass civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes at Bardoli in Gujarat unless within seven days the political prisoners were released and the press freed from government control.
But this event had to be reserved for a later date. On 5 February, a Congress procession of 3,000 peasants at Chauri Chaura, a village in the Gorakhpur District of U.P., was fired upon by the police. The angry crowd attacked and burnt the police station causing the death of 22 policemen. Gandhiji took a very serious view of this incident. It convinced him that the nationalist workers had not yet learned to wage a non-violent struggle without which, he felt, civil disobedience could not be a success.
He, therefore, decided to suspend the movement. The Congress Working Committee met at Bardoli in Gujarat on 12 February and passed a resolution suspending the movement. It urged Congressmen to donate their time to the constructive programme – popularisation of the charkha, national schools and temperance.
The Bardoli resolution stunned the country and had a mixed reception among the nationalists. While some had implicit faith in Gandhiji, others resented this decision to retreat. But Gandhiji was not to be easily forgotten and no one opposed him in public. They accepted his decision without open opposition. The non-cooperation movement virtually came to an end in 1922.
Very soon, the Khilafat question also lost relevance. The people of Turkey rose under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal and, in November 1922, deprived the Sultan of his political power. Kamal Pasha took many measures to modernise Turkey and to make it a secular state. He abolished the Caliphate and separated the state from religion by eliminating Islam from the Constitution. All these steps broke the back of the Khilafat agitation.
But, though the non-cooperation movement had ended in failure, the national movement had been strengthened. Nationalist sentiments had now reached the remotest corners of the land. The educated Indians had learnt to rely on their own people. The Indian people had lost their sense of fear-the brute strength of British power in India no longer frightened them. They had gained tremendous self-confidence which no defeats and retreats could shake.
Disintegration and disorganisation set in -after the withdrawal of the movement. Enthusiasm evaporated and disillusionment and discouragement prevailed in the ranks of the Congress party. Moreover, a serious difference arose among the leaders.
A fresh lead was now given by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru who advocated a new political strategy under the changed conditions. They said that nationalists should end the boycott of the Legislative Councils, enter them, obstruct their working, expose their weaknesses, and thus use them to arouse public enthusiasm. Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Dr Ansari, Babu Rajendra Prasad, and others, were known as nochangers, as they opposed Council-entry. They warned that legislative politics would weaken nationalist fervour and create rivalries among the leaders.
In December 1922, Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Congress Khilafat Swaraj Party with Das as President and Motilal Nehru as one of the secretaries. The new party was to function as a group within the Congress. It accepted the Congress programme except in one respect – it would take part in Council elections
The Swarajists and the “no-changers” were thus engaged in fierce political controversy. Even Gandhiji, who had been released on 5th February 1924 on grounds of health, failed in his efforts to unite them. But on his advice, the two groups agreed to remain in the Congress thought they would work in their separate ways.
Even though the Swarajists had little time for preparations, they did very well in the election of .. November 1923. They won 42 seats out of the 101 elected seats in the Central Legislative Assembly. With the cooperation of other Indian groups, they repeatedly outvoted the Government in the Central Assembly and in several of the Provincial Councils. In March 1925, they succeeded in electing Vithalbhai Patel, a leading nationalist leader, as the President (Speaker) of the Central Legislative Assembly. But they really failed to obstruct the working of the Councils and walked out of the Central Assembly in March 1926. The coalition they built up with other parties collapsed due to differences in communal issues. Many Swaraj Party leaders also fell prey to power and privileges and at times, collaborated with the Government. Meanwhile, the nationalist movement and the Swarajists suffered a grievous blow in the death of C.R. Das in June 1925.
As the non-cooperation movement petered out and the people felt frustrated, communalism reared its ugly head. The communal elements took advantage of the situation to propagate their views and after 1923, the country was repeatedly plunged into communal riots. The Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha, which was founded in December 1917, once again became active. Even the Swarajist Party, whose main leaders, Motilal Nehru and Das, were staunch nationalists, was split by communalism. A group is known as Responsivists, including Madan Mohan Malavya, Lala Lajpat Rai, and N.C. Kelkar, offered cooperation to the Government so that the so-called Hindu interests might be safeguarded. Similar was the case with the Muslim communalists in the Councils.
The youth was completely disillusioned with the withdrawal of the Non-cooperation movement as well as the failure of the Swarajists to paralyse the Government. So they again took to revolutionary terrorism, this time with socialist influence. A meeting of revolutionaries took place at Kanpur in October 1924, led by the veteran revolutionary Sachin Sanval and founded the Hindustan Republican Association (H.R.A.) to organise a rebellion against the British.
The government struck immediately, arresting a large number of youth in the Kakori Conspiracy case and hanging four people including Ramprasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan.
The terrorists soon came under the influence of socialist ideas, and, in 1928, under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and others reorganised the H.R.A. into the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
The revolutionaries outlined their ideology in a booklet called “The Philosophy of the Bomb”, drafted by B.C.Vohra and Bhagat Singh. Bhagat Singh also wrote a pamphlet called “Why I am an Atheist”. A dramatic manifestation of revolutionary terrorist activity was the assassination of a British police officer called Saunders in 1929 by Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru. Saunders had earlier ordered a lathi charge on an anti-Simon demonstration led by Lala Lajpat Rai. This had resulted in a fatal injury to the great Punjabi leader, known popularly as Sher-e-Punjab.
Similarly, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a harmless bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly in April 1929, in protest against the passage of the Public Safety Bill, which would have reduced civil liberties. They could have easily escaped after the act but deliberately chose to be arrested for they wanted to make use of the court as a forum for revolutionary propaganda. In Bengal too revolutionary. terrorist activities were revived. In April 1930, a raid was organised on the government armoury at Chittagong under the leadership of Surya Sen. The old terrorist societies were revived. A remarkable aspect of the terrorist movement in Bengal was the participation of young women. The Government struck hard at the revolutionary terrorists. Many of them were arrested and tried in a series of cases. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and a few others were tried for the assassination of police officers. Their statements in the courts and their fearless and defiant attitude won the sympathy of the people. Particularly inspiring was the hunger strike was undertaken by a young revolutionary, Jatin Das, in protest against the horrible conditions in the prisons. He attained martyrdom after 63 days and became a hero among the people. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were executed on 23 March 1931, despite popular protest.
Chandrashekhar Azad was killed in an encounter with the police in a public park, later renamed Azad Park, at Allahabad in February 1931. Surya Sen was arrested in February 1933 and hanged soon after. Hundreds of other revolutionaries were arrested, deported to Andamans or sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment.