Gandhi & the mass movements (NCM, CDM, QIM)

The Rowlatt Prelude and Khilafat Fusion

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi transformed the Indian National Congress from an elite petitioning body into a mass organisation through three successive movements. The first was triggered by the Rowlatt Act (Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, March 1919), which authorised detention without trial. Gandhi launched a satyagraha; the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919, in which General Reginald Dyer's troops killed hundreds at Amritsar, and the punitive martial law under General O'Dwyer in Punjab, destroyed Indian faith in British justice. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood; the Hunter Commission (1920) whitewashed Dyer.

Gandhi fused the constitutional grievance with the Khilafat agitation led by the Ali brothers (Mohammad and Shaukat Ali), Maulana Azad and Hakim Ajmal Khan, who protested the dismemberment of the Ottoman Caliphate after the Treaty of Sèvres (1920). This Hindu-Muslim unity gave the Non-Cooperation Movement (NCM) its mass character.

The Non-Cooperation Programme, 1920-22

The NCM was adopted at the Nagpur session of the Congress (December 1920), which also restructured the Congress into linguistic Provincial Committees and admitted a 4-anna membership. The programme had a negative and a constructive arm. Indians were to boycott government schools, colleges, courts, councils, titles and foreign cloth; the constructive programme promoted khadi, national schools (Jamia Millia Islamia, Kashi Vidyapith, Gujarat Vidyapith), panchayats and Hindu-Muslim unity. C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru and others surrendered lucrative practices; students left government institutions.

The movement spread unevenly: peasant militancy in Awadh under Baba Ramchandra, the Eka movement (1921), the Moplah rebellion in Malabar (August 1921), and the Akali agitation in Punjab. Gandhi planned to escalate to no-tax civil disobedience at Bardoli. But on 4 February 1922 at Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur, UP), a crowd burned a police station, killing 22 policemen. Gandhi, insisting on non-violence as an inviolable principle, withdrew the movement at the Bardoli Working Committee resolution of 12 February 1922. He was tried for sedition under Section 124A IPC and sentenced to six years in the famous Great Trial of March 1922 before Judge Broomfield.

Significance

The NCM demonstrated that swaraj could be pursued through extra-constitutional, non-violent mass mobilisation. Its abrupt withdrawal disillusioned leaders like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru, who formed the Swaraj Party (1923) to contest the legislatures—the council-entry question. The collapse of Khilafat (Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate in 1924) removed the basis of Hindu-Muslim unity, and communal politics resurfaced through the 1920s. The candidate must retain the precise sequence: Rowlatt (1919) → Jallianwala Bagh → Nagpur (1920) → Chauri Chaura (1922) → withdrawal.

Civil Disobedience and the Salt Satyagraha

The second movement grew from the Simon Commission boycott (1928), the Nehru Report (1928) and the Lahore Congress (December 1929), where the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru's presidency adopted the Purna Swaraj (complete independence) resolution and fixed 26 January 1930 as the first Independence Day. Gandhi issued his Eleven Demands to Viceroy Irwin; their rejection triggered the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).

Gandhi launched it with the Dandi March (12 March–6 April 1930), a 240-mile walk from Sabarmati Ashram to break the salt law by making salt at Dandi. The salt tax, a symbol affecting every household, made the movement universal. It featured the Dharasana raid, the Peshawar uprising of the Khudai Khidmatgars under Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Sholapur events, and unprecedented women's participation (Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay). It differed from NCM: it actively broke laws rather than merely withholding cooperation.

The Gandhi–Irwin Pact (5 March 1931) suspended the movement and brought Gandhi to the Second Round Table Conference (1931) as sole Congress representative; it failed over communal representation. The Communal Award (16 August 1932) of Ramsay MacDonald granted separate electorates to Depressed Classes, which Gandhi resisted by a fast unto death, resolved through the Poona Pact (24 September 1932) with B.R. Ambedkar, substituting reserved seats. The CDM was formally withdrawn in April–May 1934.

Quit India: 'Do or Die'

The failure of the Cripps Mission (1942), wartime economic distress and the fear of Japanese invasion produced the third movement. On 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee at Bombay (Gowalia Tank) passed the Quit India Resolution; Gandhi gave the slogan 'Do or Die' (Karo ya Maro). The state arrested the entire leadership on 9 August under the Defence of India Rules, decapitating the Congress.

Quit India therefore became a leaderless, spontaneous and violent upheaval: railway lines torn up, telegraph wires cut, and parallel governments established at Ballia (Chittu Pandey), Satara (the Prati Sarkar), Tamluk (Midnapore's Jatiya Sarkar) and Talcher. Underground leaders—Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Aruna Asaf Ali (who hoisted the flag at Gowalia Tank), Usha Mehta (Congress Radio)—sustained it. The repression was severe; the movement was crushed by 1943 but proved that British rule rested on a withdrawn legitimacy.

Comparative Takeaway

NCM withheld cooperation; CDM broke laws; QIM demanded immediate withdrawal. Each broadened the social base and each was met by repression, but the cumulative effect made British departure a question of when, not if.

Why This Matters for the Exam

The Gandhian mass movements are the single most heavily examined cluster in UPSC GS-1 (Mains) and feature recurrently in Prelims. Prelims tests precise, datable facts: the year of the Rowlatt Act (1919), the cause of withdrawal of NCM (Chauri Chaura, 4 February 1922), the leaders of parallel governments in 1942, and the personalities of the Poona Pact (Gandhi–Ambedkar). Expect statement-matching questions ('Consider the following statements about the Civil Disobedience Movement') where one distractor inverts a fact—e.g. claiming NCM broke the salt law (it did not; CDM did).

The PYQ Angle

Mains questions are almost always analytical and comparative, not narrative. Representative directions: 'Why did the Non-Cooperation Movement fail to achieve its objectives?'; 'Examine the constructive programme of Gandhi'; 'How did the Quit India Movement differ from earlier movements in its character and leadership?' (a 2013-style framing); and questions on women's participation and the social base (peasants, students, business class, tribals). UPSC rewards the candidate who can periodise (1920–22, 1930–34, 1942), classify (negative vs constructive programme), and evaluate causation rather than merely list events.

High-Yield Retention List

• Nagpur 1920 (NCM adopted + Congress reorganised); Bardoli resolution February 1922 (withdrawal).
• Lahore 1929 (Purna Swaraj); 26 January 1930; Dandi March 12 March 1930; Eleven Demands.
• Gandhi–Irwin Pact (5 March 1931); Second RTC; Communal Award (1932); Poona Pact (24 September 1932).
• Quit India: Gowalia Tank, 8 August 1942; 'Do or Die'; parallel governments at Ballia, Satara, Tamluk; Usha Mehta's Congress Radio; Aruna Asaf Ali.

Use Bipan Chandra's India's Struggle for Independence and Sumit Sarkar's Modern India 1885–1947 as anchors. The examiner rewards the candidate who explains why each movement was launched and why it ended, links each to its constitutional context (Montagu–Chelmsford 1919, Government of India Act 1935, Cripps 1942), and integrates the subaltern dimension that the social-history school emphasises.