Examine the causes and the contribution to Non-Cooperation Movement of India’s Freedom Struggle. Why did Gandhiji couple Non-Cooperation Movement with khilafat Movement?

I. Causes and contribution of Non-Cooperation Movement :

(i) It was the Rowlatt Satyagraha that made Gandhiji a truly national leader. Emboded by its success, Gandhiji called for a campaign of “non-cooperation” with British rule. Indians who wished colonialism to end were asked to stop attending schools, colleges and law courts, and not pay taxes. In sum, they were asked to adhere to a “renunciation of (all) voluntary association with the (British ) Government”.

(ii) If non-cooperation was effectively carried out, said Gandhiji India would win swaraj within a year.

(iii) Students stopped going to schools and colleges run by the government. Lawyers refused to attend court. The working class went on strike in many towns and cities: according to official figures, there were 396 strikes in 1921, involving 600,000 workers and a loss of seven million workdays. The countryside was see thing with discontent too.

(iv) “Non-co-operation, “wrote Mahatma Gandhi’s American biographer Louis Fisher, “became the name of an epoch in the life of India and of Gandhiji. Non-co-operation was negative enough to be peaceful but positive enough to be effective. It entailed denial, renunciation, and self-discipline. It was training for self-rule.

(v) Hill tribes in northern Andhra violated the forest laws. Farmers in Awadh did not pay taxes. Peasants in Kumaun refused to carry loads for colonial officials.

(vi) The protest movements were sometimes carried out in defiance of the local nationalist leadership. Peasants, workers, and others interpreted and acted upon the call to “non-cooperate” with colonial rule in ways that best suited their interests, rather than conform to the dictates laid down from above.

(vii) As a consequence of the Non-Cooperation Movement the British Raj was shaken to its foundations for the first time since the Revolt of 1857.

(viii) In February 1922, a group of peasants attacked and torched a police station in the hamlet of Chauri Chaura, in the United Provinces (Now, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand), several constables perished in the conflagration. This act of violence prompted Gandhiji to call off the movement altogether.

II. Gandhiji and Khilafat Movement

Gandhiji believed in secularism and communal harmony. He wanted to get the maximum cooperation of Muslim community. Therefore he compiled Non-Cooperation Movement with Khilafat Movement. He join hand with the Khilafat committee that committee sought to restore the caliphate, a symbol of pan-Isoanoism which had recently been abolished by the Turkish ruler Kemal Attaturk.