Differing Strands within the Movement The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January . Various social groups participated in this movement, each with its own specific aspiration. All of them responded to the call of Swaraj, but the term meant different things to different people. .
The Movement in the Towns The movement started with middle-class participation in the cities. Thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up their legal practices. The council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party, the party of the non-Brahmans, felt that entering the council was one way of gaining some power – something that usually only Brahmans had access to. The effects of non-cooperation on the economic front were more dramatic.
Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed , and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires. The import of foreign cloth halved between and , its value dropping from Rs crore to Rs crore. In many places merchants and traders refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade. As the boycott movement spread, and people began discarding imported clothes and wearing only Indian ones, production of Indian textile mills and handlooms went up.
But this movement in the cities gradually slowed down for a variety of reasons. Khadi cloth was often more expensive than mass- produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to buy it. How then could they boycott mill cloth for too 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 be used in place of the British ones. These were slow to come up. So students and teachers began trickling back to government schools and lawyers joined back work in government courts. .
Rebellion in the Countryside From the cities, the Non-Cooperation Movement spread to the countryside. It drew into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribals New words Picket – A form of demonstration or protest by which people block the entrance to a shop, factory or office The year is . You are a student in a government-controlled school. Design a poster urging school students to answer Gandhiji’s call to join the Non-Cooperation Movement.