seats open for election. With the cooperation of other members they were able to stall many anti-people legislations of the colonial regime, and were successful in exposing the inadequacy of the Act of . But their efforts and enthusiasm petered out as time passed by and consciously or unconsciously they came to be co-opted by the Government as members of several committees constituted by it. In the absence of nationalist mass struggle, fissiparous tendencies started rising their head.
There were a series of communal riots with fundamentalist elements occupying the space. Even the Swaraj party was affected by the sectarianism as one group in the name of ‘responsivists’ started cooperating with the government, claiming to safeguard “Hindu against high prices. On February , a Congress procession, strong, was fired upon by police Enraged by the firing, the mob attacked and burnt down the police station. policemen lost their lives.
It was this incident which made Gandhi announce the suspension of the non-cooperation movement. The Congress Working Committee ratified the decision at Bardoli, to the disappointment of the nationalist workers. While the younger workers resented the decision, the others who had faith in Gandhi considered it a tactical retreat. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose were critical of Gandhi, who was arrested and sentenced to years in prison.
Thus ended the non-cooperation movement. The Khilafat issue was made redundant when the people of Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Pasha rose in revolt and stripped the Sultan of his political power and abolished the Caliphate and declared that religion and politics could not go together.