Non-Cooperation Movement

The Non-Cooperation Movement was the first organised mass struggle launched by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi under the Indian National Congress, formally adopted at the Calcutta Special Session in September 1920 (presided over by Lala Lajpat Rai) and ratified at the Nagpur Session in December 1920. Its immediate provocations were threefold: the Rowlatt Act (1919), the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919 and the punitive Hunter Committee whitewash, and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Caliphate after the First World War, which aggrieved Indian Muslims. Gandhi fused the Khilafat cause with the demand for Swaraj, producing an unprecedented Hindu-Muslim entente alongside the Ali brothers (Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali). The movement was grounded in Gandhi's doctrine of satyagraha and non-violence, and rested on the theoretical premise that British rule survived on Indian cooperation, the withdrawal of which would render governance impossible.

The programme had a constructive and a negative dimension. The negative or boycott programme included surrender of government-conferred titles and honours, boycott of legislatures, courts, government schools and colleges, foreign cloth, and the proposed boycott of the 1921 visit of the Prince of Wales. The constructive programme stressed promotion of khadi and the spinning wheel (charkha), national schools such as Jamia Millia Islamia and Kashi Vidyapith, Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, and enrolment of Congress volunteers. Gandhi promised "Swaraj within one year." The movement saw dramatic participation — Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das gave up their legal practices, students left colleges, and the boycott of foreign cloth caused imports to fall sharply. Regional currents diverged from the Congress line, including the Moplah (Mappila) Rebellion in Malabar (1921) and the Akali agitation in Punjab.

The movement collapsed when Gandhi unilaterally suspended it on 12 February 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident of 4-5 February 1922, in Gorakhpur district, United Provinces, where an agitated mob set fire to a police station killing twenty-two policemen. Gandhi, viewing this as a betrayal of non-violence, called off the struggle through the Bardoli Resolution, a decision criticised by Subhas Chandra Bose, Motilal Nehru and others as demoralising. Gandhi was arrested in March 1922 and sentenced to six years in the Great Trial before Judge Broomfield. The withdrawal triggered the Swarajist split, with C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru forming the Swaraj Party in 1923 to contest councils. Despite its abrupt end, the movement transformed the Congress into a mass organisation and established non-violent non-cooperation as the principal method of the freedom struggle.

For the UPSC exam, this topic is central to the Modern Indian History segment of Prelims and to GS Paper I (Mains) on the Freedom Struggle. Typical question angles include the causes and significance of the movement, the Gandhi-Khilafat alliance, the reasons for and critique of the Chauri Chaura suspension, and comparison with the later Civil Disobedience Movement (1930). Aspirants must distinguish the Nagpur Session resolutions and link the movement to the rise of mass nationalism and the Swarajist debate.