Non-Cooperation
movement, (September 1920–February 1922), unsuccessful attempt, organized by
Mohandas Gandhi, to induce the British government of India to grant
self-government, or swaraj, to India. It arose from the outcry over the
massacre at Amritsar in April 1919, when the British killed several hundred
Indians, and from later indignation at the government’s alleged failure to take
adequate action against those responsible. Gandhi strengthened the movement by
supporting (on nonviolent terms) the contemporaneous Muslim campaign against
the dismemberment of Turkey after World War I.
The movement was to be nonviolent and to consist of the
resignations of titles; the boycott of government educational institutions, the
courts, government service, foreign goods, and elections; and the eventual
refusal to pay taxes. Noncooperation was agreed to by the Indian
National Congress at Calcutta (now Kolkata) in September 1920 and
launched that December. In 1921 the government, confronted with a united Indian
front for the first time, was visibly shaken, but a revolt by the Muslim
Moplahs of Kerala (southwestern India) in August 1921 and a number of violent
outbreaks alarmed moderate opinion. After an angry mob murdered police officers
at Chauri Chaura (February 1922), Gandhi himself called off the movement; the
next month he was arrested without incident. The movement marks the transition
of Indian nationalism from a middle-class to a mass basis.
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