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Unit 10: National Movements and Indian Independence

villages had made a serious attempt to bring the ideology and the movement into their midst. Its Notes
success was bound to be limited, the weaknesses many. There were vast sections of the masses
that even then remained outside the ambit of the new awakening. But this was only the beginning
and more serious and consistent efforts were yet in the offing. But the change was striking.
The tremendous participation of Muslims in the movement, and the maintenance of communal
unity, despite the Malabar developments, was in itself no mean achievement. There is hardly any
doubt that it was Muslim participation that gave the movement its truly mass character in many
areas; at some places two-thirds of those arrested were Muslims. And it was, indeed, unfortunate
that this most positive feature of the movement was not to be repeated in later years once
communalism began to take its toll. The fraternization that was witnessed between Hindus and
Muslims, with Gandhiji and other Congress leaders speaking from mosques, Gandhiji being allowed
to address meetings of Muslim women in which he was the only male who was not blind-folded,
all these began to look like romantic dreams in later years.
The retreat that was ordered on 12 February, 1922 was only a temporary one. The battle was over,
but the war would continue. To the challenge thrown by Montagu and Birkenhead that ‘India
would not challenge with success the most determined people in the world, who would once
again answer the challenge with all the vigour and determination at its command,’ Gandhiji, in an
article written in Young India on 23 February 1922 after the withdrawal of the movement, replied:
‘It is high time that the British people were made to realize that the fight that was commenced in
1920 is a fight to the finish, whether it lasts one month or one year or many months or many years
and whether the representatives of Britain re-enact all the indescribable orgies of the Mutiny days
with redoubled force or whether they do not.’
Self-Assessment
1. Fill in the blanks:
(i) Non-cooperation Movement was started in September .............. .
(ii) On .............. the Khilafat committee at Allahabad unanimously accepted the suggestion of
non-cooperation.
(iii) The British public had demonstrated its support by helping the morning Post collecting
.............. for General Dyer.
(iv) All India Khilafat conference was held at Karachi on .............. and declared that it was
‘religiously unlawful for the Muslims to continue in the British Army.
(v) The Prince of Wales landed in Bombay on .............. .
10.2 Civil Disobedience Movement

The Lahore Congress of 1929 had authorized the Working Committee to launch a programme of
civil disobedience including non-payment of taxes. It had also called upon all members of
legislatures to resign their seats. In mid-February, 1930, the Working Committee, meeting at
Sabarmati Ashram, invested Gandhiji with full powers to launch the Civil Disobedience Movement
at a time and place of his choice. The acknowledged expert on mass struggle was already
‘desperately in search of an effective formula.’ His ultimatum of 31 January to Lord Irwin, stating
the minimum demands in the form of 11 points, had been ignored, and there was now only one
way out: civil disobedience.
By the end of February, the formula began to emerge as Gandhiji began to talk about salt: ‘There
is no article like salt outside water by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions,
the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The tax constitutes therefore the most inhuman poll
tax the ingenuity of man can devise.’ On 2 March, he addressed his historic letter to the Viceroy in
which he first explained at great length why he regarded British rule as a curse: ‘It has impoverished
the dumb millions by a system of progressive exploitation . . . It has reduced us politically to
serfdom. It has sapped the foundations of our culture . . . it has degraded us spiritually.’ He then
informed the Viceroy of his plan of action, as he believed every true Satyagrahi must: ‘. . . on the

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