The Raj continues wartime measure through the Rowlatt Act. Protests result. A peaceful gathering at Amritsar is massacred by General Dyer. Dyer is removed from his post. is treatment is brought to Parliament where he is praised by Lords but the dismissal is upheld by Commons after a speech by Churchill. Gandhi uses satyagraha in labor disputes but extends this to non-cooperation with the raj. He is arrested but soon released. Congress becomes a larger force among the Indian public.

1. Non-Cooperation
Age of Gandhi
“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one
as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”
Albert Einstein, 1944

2. India’s Greatest Icon
1. Mahatma Gandhi 53%
2. Mother Teresa 17%
3. Tata
4. Infosys Chief Mentor Narayana N.R. Murthy
5. Amitabh Bachchan, actor
NDTV poll in 2007

3. Swadeshi Movement
• “one’s own” “country”
• Self reliance atma Shakti
• Mass campaigns
• Boycott British goods
• Withdraw from British-run or aided schools
• Village improvement
• “Passive resistance”
• Withhold taxes particularly on land

4. 1917 Champaran, Bihar- Satyagraha
Note: term not used until ~1920
• Tenant farmers forced to grow indigo because of loss
of German chemical substitute
– Gandhi sets up local schools to educate farmers
– Abuses by landlords publicized
– Strikes against landlords
– Arrest of Gandhi leads to protests
• Landlords make concessions to farmers

5. 1918 Kheda Satyagraha
• Gujarat farmers unable to pay taxes because of crop
failures
– Sardar Patel organizes tax protests
– Government tax collectors seize personal property
– Those who attempt to buy this property are ostracized
• Government returns the property and suspends
taxes for two years

6. 1918 Ahmedabad Labor Dispute
• Textile mills had paid a plague bonus to keep workers
during plague but withdrew it when plague ended
• Mill workers strike
• Gandhi forms arbitration board but millowners
lockout workers
• Gandhi begins hunger strike and millowners give in
Workers get 27.5% rather than the 50% sought
• Note: Gandhi gets publicity; Provides leadership
after a mass movement had already begun

7. Rowlatt Act
Indefinitely extends the emergency measures of
Defence of India Act
• Arrest without warrant
• Preventive indefinite detention,
• Incarceration without trial and judicial review
• Juryless closed trials

8. 1919 Rowlatt Act Protests
• Open letter from Gandhi inviting satyagraha
• Hartal morphs into violence
• Arrest of Gandhi leads to further violence
• Punjab

9. Violence in Punjab

10. 1919 Amritsar Massacre

11. Events 1919
• 9 March Hartal speeches by Kitchlew and Satyapal
• 9 April there was a Hindu religious festival
• 10 April Popular leaders, Kitchlew and Satyapal
deported
• Move from peaceful protest to stoning of troops
• Troops fire: 12 dead and 20-30 wounded
• Buildings looted and five Europeans killed
• 12 April Ringleaders arrested

12. Dyer to the Rescue
• Dyer isordered to Amritsar to take command.
• 11 April Arrives in Amritsar with 475 British and 710
Indian soldiers.
• Indian leaders call on people to assemble in,
Jallianwala Bagh, a one time walled garden.

13. Dyer’s Proclamation
• 12 April
• Bans all movement into and out of the city
• Imposes a curfew,
• Forbids public meetings to be regarded as unlawful
assemblies and dispersed by force of arms if
necessary

14. Amritsar Events
Destroyed

15. Jalianwala Bagh (~170 m x 150 m)

16. Massacre depicted by German artist, Eduard Thöny, for
Simplicissimus

17. The Massacre 13 April
• Religious festival in which speakers condemned arrests of
several leaders
– No threats against Dyer or Government
• Official reports
– 90 Gurkha, Punjabi and Sikh troops
– Armored cars that could not enter site
– 1,650 rounds fired
– 379 dead; 1,100 wounded.
• Asquith called it one of the worst outrages in British
history. Yet the public view was that Dyer had saved a
second Indian Mutiny.

18. Events
• 15 April Martial law applied and backdated to March
30
• 852 accused, 581 convicted; 108 were sentenced to
death, and 264 (including Kitchlew and Satyapal)
imprisoned or exiled. [Many overturned by royal
proclamation]

19. Humiliation
• Making all males do
work of sweepers
• Making people touch
noses to the ground
• Crawling Lane

20. Resident and Governor
• Udham Singh (1899-1940)
– Became involved in armed
resistance
• Michael O’Dwyer (1864-1940),
Lt. Governor who brought in
Dyer and endorsed his actions
Singh in 1937 movie Elephant
Boy

21. Reactions
Gandhi "We do not want to punish Dyer. We have no
desire for revenge. We want to change the system that
produced Dyer”
Ben Spoor, Labour Party "Amritsar was not an isolated
event any more than General Dyer was an isolated
officer.”

22. Amritsar Massacre
• Churchill
– "a monstrous event",
– a "great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of
people, with the intention of terrorising not merely, the
rest of the crowd, but the whole district or country".

23. Disorder Inquiry (Hunter) Commission
• Hunter Committee named for its chair
– Four British members; three Indian members
• Findings
– Majority agreed with imposition of martial law and
thought it improbable that the crowd would have
dispersed without firing
– Dyer fired without warning
– Dyer continued firing after the crowd tried to disperse
– Relieved Dyer of command and sent him to England
– Condemned satyagraha as partially responsible

24. Dyer testimony
Q. No question of having your forces attacked entered into your
consideration at all ?
A, No. The situation was very, very serious. I had made up my
mind that I would do all men to death if they were going to
continue the meeting.
Q, You commenced firing the moment you had got your men in
position ?
A, Yes.
Q, The crowd had begun to go away when you continued firing ?
A, Yes.

25. Dyer testimony
Q. From time to time you changed your firing and directed it to
places where the crowds were thickest ?
A. That is so.
Q, Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armoured
cars to go in would you have opened fire with the machine-guns
?
A, I think, probably, yes.

26. Dyer testimony
Q. I take it that your idea in taking that action was to strike terror
?
A. Call it what you like. I was going to punish them. My idea from
the military point of view was to make a wide impression.
Q. To strike terror not only in the city of Amritsar, but throughout
Punjab?
A. Yes, throughout the Punjab. I wanted to reduce their morale;
the morale of the rebels.
A. Yes : I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed them
perhaps even without firing.

27. Findings of the Hunter Commission
Majority agreed with imposition of martial law and
thought it improbable that the crowd would have
dispersed without firing
Dyer fired without warning
Dyer continued firing after the crowd tried to disperse
Relieved Dyer of command and sent him to England
Condemned satyagraha as partially responsible
Condemned use elsewhere of armored trains and
airplanes to attack villages

28. Congress Committee of Inquiry
• Gandhi, C. R. Das, Fazl-ul-Huq and Abbas Tyabji.
‘A calculated piece of inhumanity towards utterly innocent
and unarmed men, including children ... unparalleled for its
ferocity in the history of modern British administration’
• Report blamed both Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the
Governor of Punjab, and Brigadier General Dyer
• Urges the government to relieve them of their
responsibilities.

29. Conclusions of Congress
• “Incensed O’Dwyer administration by reason of his
studied contempt and distrust of the elected classes
and by reason of the cruel and and compulsory
methods”
• The Rowlatt agitation meant loss of good will in the
Government but was neither anti-British nor a
conspiracy to overthrow the government
• Amritsar is a result of firing on the railway bridge
• Mob violence is regrettable

30. Congress Seeks
• Repeal of the Rowlatt Act
• Relieve O’Dwyer, Dyer, Col. Johnson, Col. O’Brien, Rai
Shib Sri Ram Sud and Malik Sahib Kahn of positions
• Investigate corruption
• Replace the Viceroy
• Refund fines collected under martial laws

31. Dyer’s Appeal
• Turned down by Army Council which decided
decided that he had completely failed to act in
accord with the principle of minimum force, had
inexcusably omitted to give a warning, and had failed
in his obvious duty to give succour to the injured,
and finally declared that the crawling order was an
offence against every canon of civilized behaviour.
• Appeal to Edward Montagu, Sec. of State for India

32. Dyer Appeal to Parliament
• Lords deplores the treatment he received (129-89)
• Commons
– Arguments that Dyer is a hero
– Arguments that Dyer prevented a mutiny
– Arguments that his actions were acts attempting to put
terror into the people of India

33. Montagu, Sec. State for India
There is a theory abroad on the part of those who have
criticised His Majesty's Government upon this issue
that an Indian is a person who is tolerable so long as he
will obey your orders, but if once he joins the educated
classes, if once he thinks for himself, if once he takes
advantage of the educational facilities which you have
provided for him, if once he imbibes the ideas of
individual liberty which are dear to the British people,
why then you class him as an educated Indian and as an
agitator. What a terrible and cynical verdict on the
whole!

34. Montagu continued
The whole point of my observations is directed to this
one question: that there is one theory upon which I
think General Dyer acted, the theory of terrorism, and
the theory of subordination. There is another theory,
that of partnership.
An HON. MEMBER: "Bolshevism!”
Mr. HOWARD GRITTEN He [Montagu] ought to resign.

35. Churchill speech, Commons, July 8, 1920
(0 to 4’; 6’ 30” to 9’ 14”
Churchill speech, Commons, July 8, 1920
Librivoxhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNia
Yf21PiI&t=795s

37. Swadeshi 1922

38. Khilafat Movement
• Grew out of a movement to
recognize the Ottoman
caliphate
• In India
– No celebration of war victory
– Boycott of British goods
• Conferences
– 1919 Delhi; Amritsar
– 1921 Karachi; Welcome Ataturk’s
stand for independence
– Later call for British protection
for Caliphate
Khadi
Hand-woven clothes of hand-
spun yarn

39. Buy Indian Swadeshi Boycott British

40. Visva-Bharati University
• 1921 Founded by Tagore with Nobel money
• Outdoor classes
• A national Indian school should use the Indian
languages, and not English alone.
• Should foster Asian cultural and aesthetic standards
• But it should also “perfect irrigation of learning”
based on international “co-operation”
From a 1919 lecture by Tagore described in
Manjapra, Kris. "Knowledgeable Internationalism and the Swadeshi
Movement, 1903-1921." Economic and Political Weekly (2012): 53-62

41. 1922 Chauri Chaura Police Station
• Police officer had beaten pickets at a liquor shop
• Mob burned the police station killing 22 police and 3
civilians
• Gandhi ended the non-cooperation movement and
went on a fast
• He was arrested, tried and
sentenced to six years

42. Indian Penal Code §124-A
• Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by
signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise,
brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt,
or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards
the Government established by law in India, shall be
punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine
may be added, or with imprisonment which may
extend to three years, to which fine may be added,
or with fine.

43. Application of §124-A
2017 Kerala writer, Kamal Chavara, for allegedly insulting
the National Anthem in a book
2016 August Sedition case filed against Amnesty India
[Amnesty India was protesting against “human rights
violations in Jammu & Kashmir”].
2014 Kashmiri fans who rooted for Pakistan
2012 Aseem Trivedi, a cartoonist who altered the three
lions, India’s national emblem, to lampoon corruption
1922 Mohandas Gandhi “If one has no affection for a
person or system, one should be free to give the fullest
expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not
contemplate, promote, or incite to violence.”

44. Gandhi Arrested - Newsreel
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GWdBjS
T5lw

45. Swaraj Party
• 1923 Congress splits and Chittaranjan Das,
Narasimha Chintaman Kelkar and Motilal Nehru form
the Congress-Khilafat Swarajaya Party
• Sought legislative seats
• Rejected requirement to spin khadi yarn

46. Gandhi returns
• 1924 released on grounds of health
• 1925 Bengal ordinance
• 1928 Simon Commission
• 1929 All India Congress in Lahore demands Indian
independence.
Radical nationalists, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, push
through the National Congress a resolution calling for
virtual independence within a year

47. Congress
Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari
1927