100- Gandhi transforms-

 elitist into mass movement

एक दुखी परिवार-100

Non-cooperation movements

The independence movement as late as 1918 was an elitist movement far removed from the masses of India, focusing essentially on a unified commerce-oriented territory and hardly a call for a united nation. 

Gandhi changed all that and made it a mass movement.

First non-cooperation movement

At the Calcutta session of the Congress in September 1920, Gandhi convinced other leaders of the need to start a non-cooperation movement in support of Khilafat as well as for swaraj (self rule). 

The first satyagraha movement urged the use ofkhadi and Indian material as alternatives to those shipped from Britain. 

It also urged people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts; resign from government employment; refuse to pay taxes; and forsake British titles and honours. Although this came too late to influence the framing of the new Government of India Act 1919, the movement enjoyed widespread popular support, and the resulting unparalleled magnitude of disorder presented a serious challenge to foreign rule. However, Gandhi called off the movement following the Chauri Chaura incident, which saw the death of twenty-two policemen at the hands of an angry mob.

Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token fee, and a hierarchy of committees was established and made responsible for discipline and control over a hitherto amorphous and diffuse movement. The party was transformed from an elite organisation to one of mass national appeal and participation.

Gandhi was sentenced in 1922 to six years of prison, but was released after serving two. On his release from prison, he set up the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, on the banks of river Sabarmati, established the newspaper Young India, and inaugurated a series of reforms aimed at the socially disadvantaged within Hindu society — the rural poor, and theuntouchables.

This era saw the emergence of new generation of Indians from within the Congress Party, including C. Rajagopalachari,Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Subhas Chandra Bose and others- who would later on come to form the prominent voices of the Indian independence movement, whether keeping with Gandhian Values, or, as in the case of Bose's Indian National Army, diverging from it.

The Indian political spectrum was further broadened in the mid-1920s by the emergence of both moderate and militant parties, such as the Swaraj Party, Hindu Mahasabha, Communist Party of India and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Regional political organisations also continued to represent the interests of non-Brahmins in Madras, Mahars in Maharashtra, and Sikhsin Punjab. However, people like Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi, Vanchinathan and Neelakanda Brahmachari played a major role from Tamil Nadu in both independence struggle and fighting for equality for all castes and communities.

(Cont.    .)