All that you need to know about the non-cooperation movement has been presented in one single presentation. Not only this, it has also been presented in bullets so that it becomes easy to remember and recollect.This presentation can also be presented in an easy way even by someone who reads it for the first time. A presentation brought to you by Rahul Kumar

1. The Non-Cooperation
Movement and Mahatma
Gandhi
Made by :- Rahul Kumar

2. As we all know, the British East India company established themselves in India in the year 1600
with the sole purpose of trade. But their hungry imperialistic rulers didn’t restrict themselves only
with trade . They moved on to conquer the lands of India because it was no sooner that they
discovered its political, geographical and economical importance. It all started with the battle of
Plassey and Buxar in the years 1757 and 1764 respectively in Bengal. These two battles were
followed by the widespread conquest of the whole Indian subcontinent within the next few years.
And that was the beginning of a new colonial rule that would last for a reigning 190 years.
For the first few decades, people thought that it was for the betterment of the society that the
“East India Company” had overthrown the Indian rulers. But it was not long before the natives
came to know about the lurking greed of the colonizers, and started revolting. It is to be noted that
this fight for freedom took a lot of time and an organized sense of protest before it could
transform itself from mere revolts to a big war for independence.
More importantly, it took a sense of collective belonging to fight the British. On looking back at the
past, we find out that it was only after Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, an ordinary barrister in
South Africa, came to India that the country unified and a unanimous feeling of freedom was felt.
The first huge wave was that of the “Non-Cooperation Movement” which started in 1919. This is
precisely what we’ll be discussing in the following presentation.
Hope you like it.

3. • The first World War created a new economic and political situation. It led
to the huge increase in defence expenditure which was financed by war
loans and increasing taxes that were paid by the Indians and a new “income
tax” was introduced.
• The prices of goods and services increased- doubling between 1913 and
1918. It led to extreme hardships among the common people, which led to
hyperinflation.
• Villages were called upon to supply soldiers and the process of forced
recruitment- a process by which the colonial state forced the people to join
the army, in rural areas caused widespread anger.
• In 1918-19 and in 1920-21, crops failed in many parts of India causing
acute shortages of food. This resulted in unhygienic living condition and an
influenza epidemic broke out, resulting in the deaths of 12 to 13 million
people.
• At first, the people thought that with the end of the world war, the British
would leave the Indian subcontinent, but this did not happen. As a result
of these many incidents, a new sense of “not bearing the British” was felt.

4. Posters inspired
the youth to join the
army
Inflation caused small
things to cost a lot
Forced recruitments were made into the
British Indian Army Famine caused a lot of loss of life

5. •Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the year
1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat, India. He was born to a Diwan
of Porbandar, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi and his
wife, Putlibai Gandhi.
•He went abroad in the year 1888, left by steamer for
London to attend law school. He attended the University
College of London law school and was called to the
English bar on June 10, 1891.
•He went to South Africa to practice law and did only
fairly well career wise. He was not that good an orator as
he was a writer. He did fight many cases but could succeed
only in a few. There he was exposed to the biggest factor
that encouraged him to fight against the colonizers-
Racism
•The most prominent of the incidents that shaped
Gandhi's ideologies, was when he was thrown out of a
train because Indians, colored and black people could not
sit in a coach that was meant to be for the British even if
they did have a ticket legitimately.
•Gandhi spent 21 years of his life in South Africa shaping
his political views, ethics and political leadership skills.
Gandhi in Durban
Young Gandhi

6. •Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in
January 1915.
•He successfully introduced the idea of
SATYAGRAHA which was a novel
method of mass agitation
without the use of violence.
• After arriving in India, Mahatma
Gandhi successfully organised
SATYAGRAHA movements in various
places including CHAMPARAN in
Bihar and KHEDA and
AHMEDABAD in Gujarat.
Gandhi with his
wife
Gandhi as a
barrister
Wearing his
trademark khadi cap

7. Champaran Movement [1916]:
• It was a movement of workers in the indigo
plantations of the Champaran district of
Bihar. It was against the oppressive plantation
system.
Kheda Movement[1917]:
• Crop failure and plague epidemic made the
life of the farmers miserable in the Kheda
district of Gujarat. So, they started a
movement under Gandhiji’s leadership with
the demand for a reduction in land revenue.
Mill workers Movement:
• Low wages and poor working conditions
forced the mill workers of Ahmedabad to
start a movement under Gandhiji’s leadership
in 1918.
Gandhiji in Champaran
Gandhiji in Kheda

8. • This act was introduced by Sir Sidney
Rowlatt
• This act gave the government enormous
powers to repress political activities, and
allowed detention of political prisoners
without trial for two years.
• Aim of this act was to destroy the national
movement by imprisoning the national
workers.
• It was a black law because it was against basic
human rights.
• Under this act, DR. SATYAPAL and DR. SYED
KITCHLEW were arrested.
• Mahatma Gandhi wanted a non violent
protest against this act which would start on
6th
April 1919
SIR SIDNEY ROWLATT
Announcement of
Rowlatt act in
newspapers

9. •Following the Hartal launched by Mahatma
Gandhi on 6th
April 1919, rallies were organized
in various cities and workers went on strike in
railway workshops and shops closed down.
•Alarmed by the popular upsurge, and scared
that lines of communication such as railways
and telegraph would be disrupted, the British
administration decided to clamp down on
nationalists.
•Local leaders were picked up from Amritsar
and Mahatma Gandhi was barred from entering
Delhi.
•Martial law was imposed and General Dyer,
who was then a Colonel took over.
•On 10th
of April 1919, a peaceful procession
was fired upon, which provoked widespread
attacks on banks, post offices and railway
stations
Protest against Rowlatt Act

10. •On 13 April 1919, a public meeting was organized at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to protest
against the arrests of national leaders, namely Dr. Satyapal and Dr Syed Kitchlew. It was a
completely non-violent gathering
• Many villagers who came to attend a fair were also present in the park.
•Many of them were also passers-by who just stopped by to take a look of what all the crowd
was about.
•Some of the people present in the park were also pilgrims who were unaware about the
martial law that had been passed on that particular day.
•According to that martial law, not more than 4 people could be seen together. According to
the intelligentsia, this law was read out in Punjabi, Hindi, Sindhi, Urdu and English.
•But not many people were aware of this as, much of the public came to know about it later or
it was spread by word of mouth which, no doubt would have been unreliable.
• Colonel Dyer reached the meeting place along with the British troops. Without warning the
crowd to disperse, he blocked all the entrances. Dyer ordered the troops to start firing towards
the densest region where the people were accumulated.
•The firing lasted for nearly 10 minutes. About 1,650 rounds of bullets were fired.
•People were shot mercilessly.
•More than thousand people were killed and many were wounded. This incident is called
Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.
•When later on asked upon as to what was the motive behind such ruthless killing, General
Dyer declared that it was done to create a feeling of terror and awe in the minds of the
satyagrahis.

11. Colonel Reginald Dyer
Present day Jallianwala Bagh Memorial
Preserved bullet marks on the wall
“Martyrs’ Well” where the people jumped
Michael O’Dwyer
Shaheed Udham Singh

13. •As the news of Jallianwala Bagh spread, crowds took to the streets in many north
Indian towns.
•There were strikes, clashes with the police and attacks on government buildings.
•The government too responded with brutal repression, seeking to humiliate and
terrorise people: satyagrahis were forced to rub their noses to the ground, crawl on
the streets and do salaam to all the sahibs.
•People were flogged and villages (around Gurjanwala in Punjab, now in Pakistan)
were bombed.
•Seeing the atrocities of the Britishers, Mahatma Gandhi called off the movement.
•Even though the Rowlatt satyagraha had been a widespread movement, it was
restricted only to the cities and towns.

14. •Mahatma Gandhi now felt that a more broad-based movement had to be launched in
India.
•He knew that there was no other way to do this except bringing the Hindus and
Muslims closer together.
•One way of doing this, he felt, was taking up the Khilafat issue.
• The first World War had ended with the defeat of the Ottoman empire. There were
also rumors that a harsh peace treaty was about to be imposed on the ruler of the
Ottoman empire- the Caliph, who happened to be the spiritual head of the Islamic
world( which was known as the Khalifa).
•To defend the Caliph’s temporal powers, a Khilafat committee was formed in Bombay
in March 1919.
•This committee was headed by a young generation of Muslim leaders like the Ali
brothers- Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali.
•Mahatma Gandhi saw this as an opportunity to unite the Hindus and Muslims.
•He began discussing with the Ali brothers, the possibility of a united action on the
Khalifa’s issue.
•Gandhiji saw this as an opportunity to bring Muslims under the umbrella of a unified
national movement.
•Thus, at the Calcutta session of Congress in September 1920, he convinced the other
leaders of the need to start a non- cooperation movement in support of swaraj as well as
in support of the Khalifa.

15. Members of the Khilafat Movement
Muhammad Ali (left) and Shaukat Ali (right)
Caliph of Ottoman empire
during WW1
Mehmed V

16. •Mahatma Gandhi, in his book Hind Swaraj(1909) declared that the British rule was
established in India only with the cooperation of Indians and had survived only because
of this cooperation.
•If Indians would refuse to cooperate with the British, the British rule would collapse
within a year, and Swaraj would come.
•But how could non-cooperation become a movement ? Gandhiji proposed that the
movement should unfold in stages. It should begin with the surrender of government
titles and awards that were given by the government.
•Then, a boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and legislative councils, schools
and foreign goods should be made.
•Further, in case the government used repression, a full scale Civil Disobedience
campaign would be launched.
•Through the summer of 1920, Mahatma Gandhi and the Ali brothers toured
extensively, mobilizing popular support for the movement.
•All this had to be done without the use of violence, thus causing a great resistance.

17. Cover of the original book
Hind Swaraj
Posters encouraging the Indians to Boycott the foreign dresses
Advertisement promoting Indian goods

18. •Many members in the Indian National Congress were concerned about
adopting the non-cooperation movement and the boycott movement.
• This was because they were reluctant to boycott the council elections of
November 1920.
•Also they feared that the movement might lead to popular violence.
•In the months between September and December, there was intense tussle
within the Congress.
•For a while, there seemed to be no meeting point between the supporters
and the opponents of this movement.
•But finally, in December 1920, a compromise was worked out and the Non-
Cooperation programme was adopted.

19. DIFFERING STRANDS
WITH THE NON-
COOPERATION
MOVEMENT

20. •In towns, the movement started with the participation of the middle class.
•Thousands of students left the government controlled schools and colleges.
Headmasters and teachers resigned and lawyers gave up legal practices.
•The council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the
Justice Party, a party for the non-Brahmins, felt that entering the council was one way
of gaining power – something that only the Brahmins had access to.
•The effects of non-cooperation movement on the economic front were dramatic.
Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops were picketed and foreign cloth was burnt
in huge bonfires. The import of foreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922, its value
dropping from 102 crore to 57 crore. In many places merchants refused to trade in
foreign goods or finance foreign trade.
•As the boycott movement spread, and people began disregarding imported clothes and
wearing only Indian ones, the production of Indian textile mills and handlooms went
up.
•But this movement in cities gradually slowed down for a variety of reasons. Khadi cloth
was more expensive than mass produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to
buy it. So, the boycott of foreign clothes was not for long.
•Similarly, the boycott of British institutions posed a problem. For the movement to be
successful, alternative Indian institutions had to be set up so that they could replace the
British ones. But these Indian institutions took a long time to come up. So, the
students, teachers, and headmasters started trickling back into the government schools
and lawyers joined back work in government courts.

21. Making of a bonfire of foreign clothes
Public announcement of the bonfire of foreign clothes
Students protesting

22. •From the cities, the non-cooperation movement spread into the countryside. It drew
into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribal's which were developing in different
parts of India in the years after the war.
•In Awadh, the peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra- a sanyasi who had earlier been
to Fiji as an indentured labourer. The movement here, was against the talukdars, and
landlords who demanded exorbitantly high rents and a variety of other cesses. Peasants
had to do begar and work at landlords’ farm without any payment. As tenants, they had
no security of tenure, being regularly evicted, so that they could acquire no right over
the leased land.
•The peasant movement demanded reduction of revenue, abolition of begar and social
boycott of oppressive landlords.
•In many places, nai-dhobi-bandhs were organized by panchayats to deprive the landlords
of even barbers and washermen.
•By October 1920, the “Oudh Kisan Sabha” was set up and headed by Jawarharlal
Nehru , Baba Ramchandra and a few others. Within a month, over 300 branches were
set up in the villages around the area. So, the next year, when the non-cooperation
movement began, one of the major efforts of the Congress was to integrate the Awadh
peasant struggle into the wider struggle.
•As the movement spread in 1921, the hoses of talukdrs and merchants were attacked,
bazaars were looted and grain hoards were taken over.
•The name of Mahatma Gandhi was invoked to sanction all action and aspirations
which were not even directed.

23. •Tribal peasants interpreted the message of Mahatma Gandhi and swaraj in yet another
way. In the Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh, a militia guerilla movement spread in the
early 1920s- which was not the spirit of the non-cooperation movement.
•Here, the colonial government had closed large forest areas, preventing people from
entering the forests to graze their cattle or to collect fuel wood and fruits.
•This enraged the hill people. Not only were their livelihoods affected but they felt that
their traditional rights were being denied. When the government began forcing them to
contribute begar for road building, the hill people revolted.
•The person who came to lead them was an interesting person by the name of Alluri
Sitaram Raju. He claimed that he had a variety of special powers: he could make correct
astrological predictions and heal people and also he could survive bullet shots.
Captivated by Raju, the tribals proclaimed that he was an incarnation of God.
•Raju talked of the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi, said that he was inspired by the non-
cooperation movement, and persuaded the people to wear khadi and give up drinking.
•But, at the same time, he asserted that India could be liberated only by the use of force,
not non-violence.
•The Gudem rebels attacked police stations, attempted to kill British officials and
carried on guerilla warfare for achieving swaraj.
•Raju was captured and executed in 1924, and over time, became a folk hero.

24. Alluri Sitaram Raju

25. •Workers too had their own understanding of Mahatma Gandhi and the
notion of swaraj.
•For plantation workers in Assam, freedom meant the right to freely
move in and out of the confined space in which they were kept in. It
meant a link with the village from where they had come.
•Under the Inland Immigration act(1859), plantation workers were not
allowed to leave the tea gardens without permission, and in fact, they
were rarely given such a permission.
•When they heard of the non-cooperation movement, thousands of
workers defied the authorities, left the plantations and headed home.
•They believed that Gandhi raj was coming and everyone was being
given land in their own villages.
•They however did not reach their destination. Stranded on the way by a
railway and steamer strike, they were caught up by the police and
brutally beaten up.

26. •Gandhiji withdrew the Non Co operation Movement because:
•The movement became violent in some places. In february 1922,
in Chauri chaura (Uttar Pradesh) people turned violent and set
fire to a police station. Twenty two police men were killed in this
incident. Gandhiji was against violence.
•The movement slowed down in urban areas.
• He thought that it was necessary to train the people in non
violent satyagraha.

27. •Non Co operation movement was a large scale mass movement.
It attracted common people from all social groups.
•Non Co operation Movement and Khilafat Movement went
together. So, they promoted Hindu-Muslim unity.
•Peasants’ and tribals’ movements became a part of the Indian
National Movement.
•It was a non violent movement. So, it popularised the Gandhian
idea of Non violent satyagraha.

28. THANK YOU