Mahatma Gandhi relaunched the Civil Disobedience Movement. For over a year, the movement continued, but by it lost its momentum. . How Participants saw the Movement Let us now look at the different social groups that participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement.
Why did they join the movement? What were their ideals? What did swaraj mean to them? In the countryside, rich peasant communities – like the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Uttar Pradesh – were active in the movement.
Being producers of commercial crops, they were very hard hit by the trade depression and falling prices. As their cash income disappeared, they found it impossible to pay the government’s revenue demand. And the refusal of the government to reduce the revenue demand led to widespread resentment. These rich peasants became enthusiastic supporters of the Civil Disobedience Movement, organising their communities, and at times forcing reluctant members, to participate in the boycott programmes.
For them the fight for swaraj was a struggle against high revenues. But they were deeply disappointed when the movement was called off in without the revenue rates being revised. So when the movement was restarted in , many of them refused to participate. The poorer peasantry were not just interested in the lowering of the revenue demand.
Many of them were small tenants cultivating land they had rented from landlords. As the Depression continued and cash incomes dwindled, the small tenants found it difficult to pay their rent. They wanted the unpaid rent to the landlord to be remitted. They joined a variety of radical movements, often led by Socialists and Communists.
Apprehensive of raising issues that might upset the rich peasants and landlords, the Congress was unwilling to support ‘no rent’ campaigns in most places. So the relationship between the poor peasants and the Congress remained uncertain. ‘To the altar of this revolution we have brought our youth as incense’ Many nationalists thought that the struggle against the British could not be won through non-violence. In , the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) was founded at a meeting in Ferozeshah Kotla