Campaign of non-cooperation

The Campaign of Non-Cooperation was a national popular movement of civil disobedience that originated from Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and ran from the fall of 1920 to February 1922. It marked the beginning of the Gandhi era in the Indian independence movement.

background

With the Rowlatt Act , wartime emergency legislation was extended indefinitely in India, thereby eliminating the effect of the Habeas Corpus Act . The police and the army were authorized to investigate everything and to confiscate every property, arrest and imprison every Indian without evidence. Proposed by the British Parliament , the Viceroy of India and the Imperial Legislative Council , the law came into force in March 1919.

Many Indians have already been upset by the decision by British authorities to send 1.3 million Indian volunteer soldiers to World War I without consulting the rest of the Indian people in any way. While Indians were mostly divided on whether to support or oppose the war, they were all united by their frustration at Britain's disregard and disregard for Indian views and the lack of respect for Indian political institutions that it expressed.

However, it was no coincidence that the British approached the Indian demand for political participation so ambiguously: Although India was not a British settler colony, the British made a significant part of their overseas investments in their Indian colony. Colonial politics forced India to give up a significant part of its food production in favor of growing tea , indigo , cotton and opium . The British controlled the extraction of salt and the salt trade . The huge fabric factories in Manchester flooded the Indian market and drove the Indian factories to ruin. In 1862 Dilke put it logically: "If we were to leave Australia or the Cape , we would still be the main buyers of these countries; but if we left India or Ceylon , these countries would have no buyers at all. As they drowned in anarchy, they would stop immediately to export their goods and to consume our products. "

In addition, India was a central power base of the British Empire . Without annoying objections from the British House of Commons , the Indian army provided considerable troops with which imperialist -minded cabinets in 1839, 1856 and 1859 in China , 1856 in Persia , 1867 in Ethiopia and Singapore , 1868 in Hong Kong , 1878 in Afghanistan , 1882 in Egypt , 1885 in Burma , in 1893 in Nyassaland and in 1896 in Sudan and Uganda . India was the "English barracks in the seas of the Orient" , which provided a quarter of a million soldiers and meant control over a huge reserve. Since the Indian Empire financed its army and its (British) wars itself, it enabled the Victorian cabinets to pursue a great power policy in the Orient and East Asia that was almost unmolested by parliament . While the Indian Army protected British trade, the rich income from that trade made this army possible and made a decent return on British investment. Indian participation would only have disturbed this model.

Were the demands of liberal politicians like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Ali Jinnah for autonomy, or more radical politicians like Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak for Home Rule , in the past always been accompanied by petitions , newspaper articles and large public gatherings and demonstrations, and not by disorder and obstruction to the government, neither did they demand to leave the British Empire . In fact, many were against it. Nevertheless, the British authorities saw the need to impose martial law on their rule over India .

Champaran, Kheda, Caliphate and Amritsar

Mahatma Gandhi had shown in South Africa, and also in Champaran , Bihar and Kheda , Gujarat , in 1918 , that the only way to gain the respect and attention of the British was through active resistance through civil disobedience to government activities. On two occasions in South Africa, Gandhi in the Natal Province had used his satyagraha methods to force the British authorities to repeal repressive laws and inhumane practices against Indian workers.

In 1918 he had moved extremely poor farmers from Champaran and Kheda: Not enough that they suffered from all kinds of social ills such as poverty, unsanitary living conditions, domestic violence, discrimination, oppression of women and untouchability , these farmers were forced without compensation, instead of food Growing crops such as indigo, tobacco, and cotton that yielded higher financial returns. Despite malnutrition and famine, they had to pay taxes and rent.

Gandhi organized a dedicated team of activists, encouraged the people, united Hindus and Muslims, and published detailed reports on the dire situation in the region. People refused to pay taxes and organized protests, prepared for arrests and property confiscation. Gandhi himself was arrested by police in Champaran, but the public outcry that followed was more damaging to the authorities. The whole nation was furious: hundreds of thousands protested across the provinces of Bihar and Gujarat, so that Gandhi had to be released in the end.

The provincial governments concerned agreed to the suspension of taxation in the face of the famine, allowed farmers to grow their own crops, released all political prisoners and returned property and property confiscated. It was the greatest victory over the British Empire since the American Revolution .

Gandhi was supported by a new generation of Indian revolutionaries such as Rajendra Prasad and Jawaharlal Nehru . In Kheda, the entire revolt was led by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , who became something of a lieutenant of Gandhi. These activists, and millions with them, were inspired and ready to do it again nationally. A new organization of volunteers, the Congress Volunteers , was formed at the national level . With the Amritsar , Punjab massacre , it was already clear that the application of British martial law under the Rowlatt Act would be tragic and unacceptable to all Indians.

Millions of Indian Muslims rejected the colonial government's support for Mustafa Kemal (later called Ataturk) in Turkey, who had abolished the Ottoman Sultanate , which functioned as the caliphate of Islam . Muslim leaders formed the Caliphate Committee to protest the actions and find a way to force the British authorities to stop ignoring their concerns. Gandhi supported the caliphate movement , which met with criticism from the then rather secular Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah .

At a public gathering of unarmed civilians on April 13, 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh , Amritsar , General Reginald Dyer had his troops open fire on the people without asking or giving them the opportunity to leave the place. According to the official whitewashing report, this massacre had killed 379 people and left 1,200 injured; In contrast, the factual, sober and truthful report that Gandhi wrote for the Congress party on the basis of careful document analysis and testimony, spoke of more than a thousand dead and several thousand injured. Neither women nor children nor old people were spared. Dyer, by his own admission, wanted to make an example. The bloodbath was intended to spread fear and terror and serve as a deterrent against further protests. The opposite was the case: the outrage in Punjab led to the arrest of thousands, brawls and more deaths by the police and some violent demonstrators. The Amritsar massacre is considered to be one of the most shameful events of British rule in India and heralded the end of colonial times.

Satyagraha

Gandhi's idea was an India-wide Satyagraha protest against the Rowlatt Act . All offices and factories should be closed. Indians were encouraged to leave schools and universities sponsored by the colonial Indian Raj , as well as the police, military and civil service, and lawyers were to leave the courts of the Raj. Indians were asked to resign from their lucrative offices and to forego promising careers. Public transport (railways), goods made in Great Britain, especially clothing, were boycotted. On the wave of initial enthusiasm, Gandhi had demanded Swaraj , complete independence within a year, but soon had to realize that this goal could not be achieved so quickly.

To increase the boycotts, he had a tax strike in the subdistrict Bardoli , Gujarat , planned. Finally, he announced a boycott of the elections that had just been scheduled, forcing the Congress politicians to take the extra-parliamentary route instead of the parliamentary route and to support Gandhi in doing so. He did not want any violence or coercion on the part of the demonstrators, but rather called on all demonstrators to accept imprisonment if necessary and to endure the beatings if the police attacked them without fighting back. Every Indian should respect the unity of Hindus and Muslims and cast off all caste or ethnic prejudices in order to promote peaceful insurrection through the unity of the country.

Many Indian politicians criticized Gandhi's plans. Veterans of the freedom struggle like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal , Ali Jinnah and Annie Besant disagreed with the idea. The Muslim League also criticized the ideas. But large parts of the younger generation of Indian nationalists were intrigued by the idea and supported Gandhi. The Congress Party adopted his ideas and received support from Muslims such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad , Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari , Hakim Ajmal Khan , Abbas Tyabji , Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali . Gandhi was elected President of the Indian National Congress and the All India Home Rule League in 1919 and 1920 . The latter still dominated Gandhi's critics such as Jinnah, Besant and Tilak for the time being.

Success and suspension

The success of the uprising came as a shock to the British authorities and a massive encouragement for millions of Indians to continue their struggle. In addition to an almost total boycott of the government apparatus, millions left the schools and colleges sponsored by the colonial empire, the police and the army to join the institutions developed by the nationalists, especially the Congress Party headed by Gandhi.

Gandhi, Azad, Nehru, Prasad, Ansari, Khan and the Ali brothers were imprisoned for many months. The army had to perform core functions in order to maintain the government. Many hundreds of thousands were jailed across India, but the revolt spread to the Indian towns and even the villages. European clothing and goods were burned on huge public stakes across the country. Thousands were injured by the army and police, hundreds killed. But there were also riots on the part of the demonstrators.

A series of revolts followed for three years. On February 4, 1922, an angry mob set fire to a police station in the small north Indian village of Chauri Chaura , killing 15 Indian police officers paid by the British. Before this outbreak of violence, there had been attacks on European civilians, police officers and facilities.

Gandhi came to believe that the uprising was out of control. In order to prevent the movement from changing its character through unbridled acts of violence and an angry mob against the police and military from rising, he decided to suspend the call for national resistance and not stop at an apology for the outbreak of violence. Many activists, although affected by the Chauri-Chaura incident , wanted to continue the fight, including Nehru, who was currently in custody.

Gandhi then announced an indefinite hunger strike to press for the campaign to end. After 21 days of uninterrupted fasting, millions of activists gave up, many surprised by the change of heart and angry at the arbitrary decision to abandon their insurrection in order to save Gandhi's life. Leaders in Congress now supported the call to end the revolt.

Aftermath

Despite single-handedly ending the national uprising, Gandhi was arrested immediately. During the campaign, the government refrained from doing so in order not to unnecessarily add fuel to the fire. Now she let him go through the trial, in which Gandhi made no attempt to defend himself, but instead took personal responsibility for the killings. He did not prepare the participants enough for the peaceful nature of the actions. Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison for subversive publications, with the British judge saying he would be happy if the government released him. The government in Delhi used a necessary appendectomy as an opportunity to release Gandhi from prison after just two years.

Most of the leading congressional party members rallied behind Gandhi, but were nonetheless disaffected. Given the outcome, many viewed Gandhi as empty-handed. Its political influence threatened to be lost, which was not inconvenient for the British government. The Ali brothers soon became harsh critics. Motilal Nehru , father of Jawaharlal Nehru , and Chittaranjan Das founded the Swaraj Party within the Congress Party , which Gandhi's leadership rejected. Many nationalists argued that the non-cooperation movement should not have ended because of a few isolated violent incidents.

Contemporary historians and critics suggested that the movement was successful enough to put an end to British rule before 1947. Others defended Gandhi's decision. If the revolt had continued violently, it would not have won the support of millions of Indians.

Salt Marsh

Gandhi's commitment to nonviolence was implemented between 1930 and 1934, when tens of millions of Indians took part in the Salt Satyagraha , which made the Indian struggle for independence world-famous as a non-violent conflict. The Satyagraha ended with an honorable success - the demand of the Indians was fulfilled and the Congress Party was recognized as the real representative of the Indian people. The Government of India Act of 1935 led to a preliminary stage of democratic self-government.

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1. ↑ Robinson-Gallagher-Denny: Great Britain and the partition of Africa, in: Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Imperialismus, Cologne, 1970, pp. 208 ff.
2. ↑ Fischer Weltgeschichte, Volume 33, Das Moderne Asia, 1969, p. 37.
3. ↑ Dietermar Rothermund: Under Gandhi's gentle leadership - The Indian struggle for freedom , in: Die Zeit-Lexikon Welt- und Kulturgeschichte, Volume 13, First World War and Interwar Period, ISBN 3-411-17603-2 , p. 476 f.