NCERT Class 8 - Our Pasts III • NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part III, Chapter 13

Gandhian Mass Movements 1919-1934

Between 1919 and 1934 the national movement became a mass movement. Gandhi's method of satyagraha - non-violent mass non-cooperation - drew in peasants, workers, students and women on a scale no earlier campaign had reached.

The first experiments

• Champaran, Bihar, 1917 - Gandhi's first satyagraha in India, on behalf of indigo cultivators forced to grow indigo under the tinkathia system; an inquiry committee followed and the system ended. Rajendra Prasad joined him here.
• Ahmedabad, 1918 - a strike of mill workers over wages, settled by arbitration after Gandhi's fast.
• Kheda, Gujarat, 1918 - a no-tax campaign by peasants after crop failure.
• These three showed that the method worked on specific local grievances before it was used nationally.

Rowlatt and Jallianwala Bagh

• The Rowlatt Act of 1919 allowed detention without trial; Gandhi called a nationwide hartal.
• On 13 April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, General Dyer ordered firing on an enclosed and unarmed gathering. The killing destroyed remaining faith in British justice.
• Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest.

Non-Cooperation and Khilafat

• The Non-Cooperation Movement, 1920-1922, was joined with the Khilafat cause, bringing Hindu and Muslim political action together on an unprecedented scale.
• The programme was surrender of titles, boycott of schools, courts, councils and foreign cloth, and the promotion of khadi, national schools and panchayats.
• Gandhi promised swaraj within a year, and the Congress became a mass organisation with a new constitution and village-level committees.
• The movement was withdrawn after Chauri Chaura on 5 February 1922, where a crowd burned a police station, because Gandhi held that a non-violent movement could not continue after such violence.
• The Swaraj Party was formed in 1923 by C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru to enter the councils and obstruct from within.

Civil Disobedience

• The Simon Commission of 1928 had no Indian member, which united almost all parties against it under the slogan "Simon go back".
• The Lahore session of 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, adopted Purna Swaraj, complete independence, as the goal.
• The Dandi March began on 12 March 1930 from Sabarmati and reached the sea on 6 April, where Gandhi broke the salt law - a law that touched every household.
• Civil Disobedience spread through salt making, boycott of foreign cloth and liquor, and refusal of taxes; women participated in very large numbers for the first time.
• The Poona Pact of 1932 between Gandhi and Dr B. R. Ambedkar replaced separate electorates for the Depressed Classes with reserved seats within the general electorate.
• The movement was finally called off in 1934, after which the Government of India Act 1935 introduced provincial autonomy.