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Others who opposed the Khilafat movement argued that the mobilized Muslims might invite the Afghans to invade India, in which case the country might be subjugated to Muslim Raj from British Raj. 30 Chittaranjan Das wrote to Lala Lajpat Rai that he did not fear the seven crore Muslims of India, but ‘the seven crores of Hindustan, plus the armed hordes of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Turkey will be irresistible’ 31 and posed a grave national threat to India. Gandhi discounted this fear too by saying he felt that ‘Hindus will not assist Mahomedans in promoting or bringing about an armed conflict between the British Government and the allies, and Afghanistan. British forces are too well organized to admit of any successful invasion of the Indian frontier’.
Meanwhile, Maulana Abdul Bari 32 had suggested that if the British continued with their obdurate stand of committing injustice to the Khalifa, Indian Muslims should give up the country in protest and migrate to a Muslim land or Dar-ul-Islam— Afghanistan. Following his fatwa, about 18,000 Muslims sold their properties to move to Afghanistan—a move that brought them severe ruin. Interestingly, instead of denouncing such a move, Gandhi, the leader of the Khilafat movement, said: ‘The flight of Mussulmans is growing apace—they are cheered en route. That it is better for them to leave [a] State which had no regard for their religious sentiment and face a beggar life than to remain in it even though it may be in a princely manner.’ 33 The seeds of Pakistan, it seemed, were sown three decades before it actually materialized.
Right from the very beginning, there were voices in the Muslim community that considered this a ruinous move. Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League opposed the Khilafat agitation. 34 The All-India Shia Conference passed a resolution of loyalty to the British in its meeting held at Nagina, a town in Bijnore district of the United Provinces, on 3 April 1920. 35 The honorary secretary of the Khilafat Committee, Badruddin Koor, had cautioned:
If Muslims [of India] embark on this ruinous course, I am afraid we may have to suffer even long after Khilafat controversy terminates. It is clear that non-cooperation report emphasizes that the Indian Mussulman should refrain from violence and bloodshed. But those who are fully acquainted with the Muhamedan temperament and feelings and who see the Indian atmosphere as at present charged with religious incitement and fervour will hesitate to believe that the advice will be acted upon if non-cooperation is to be made a living factor. I do not expect a large and unwieldy community of uneducated and highly sensitive people goaded to disappointment and despair by the apathy of Great Britain and its allies in the Khilafat question will ever do so. The risk is therefore clear. 36
Ironically, prior to his initiation into the Khilafat, Muhammad Ali himself had scoffed at the very idea of Muslims joining hands with the Hindus or the Congress on any political issue. In an article, ‘The Communal Patriot’, in his newspaper, The Comrade , Ali had lampooned the efforts of Indian Muslims to join hands with the Congress to fight victimization of the Muslims of Tripoli and Persia. ‘What has the Muslim situation abroad to do,’ he wondered, ‘with the conditions of the Indian Muslims?’ He believed that the fundamental differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities needed to be sorted out before any alliance could be forged. ‘Have the questions that really divide the two communities lost their force and meaning?’ he wondered and rationalized: ‘If not, then the problem remains exactly where it was at any time in recent Indian history.’ 37 It remains unknown what had changed for him to do a volte-face and support what he had ridiculed a few years ago. Barring the Ali brothers, the fact that several Muslim leaders were sceptic of the non-cooperation method is explained by Jawaharlal Nehru:
I remember the meeting 38 because it thoroughly disappointed me. Shaukat Ali, of course, was full of enthusiasm; but almost all the others looked thoroughly unhappy and uncomfortable. They did not have the courage to disagree, and yet they obviously had no intention of doing anything rash. Were these people to lead a revolutionary movement, I thought, and to challenge the British Empire? Gandhiji addressed them, and after hearing him they looked even more frightened than before. He spoke well in his best dictatorial vein . . . this is going to be a great struggle, he said, with a very powerful adversary . . . when war is declared martial law prevails, and in our non-violent struggle there will also have to be dictatorship and martial law on our side if we are to win . . . these military analogies and the unyielding earnestness of the man, made the flesh of most of his hearers creep . . . as we were coming home from the meeting, I asked Gandhiji if this was the way to start a great struggle. I had expected enthusiasm, spirited language, and a flashing of eyes; instead we saw a very tame gathering of timid, middle-aged folk. 39
That the Ali brothers had their misgivings about the nature of the movement even after joining it becomes apparent in the anecdote narrated by Swami Shraddhanand in his memoirs. A staunch Arya Samaji and a shuddhi activist, he had begun working with the Congress since its Amritsar session in 1919 that he presided over. He joined the nationwide protests against the Rowlatt Act and frequently interacted with maulanas to broker peace between the communities. In the Calcutta session of September 1920, he was sitting on the dais along with Shaukat Ali. He heard him loudly telling a few others in his company: ‘Mahatma Gandhi is a shrewd bania . You do not understand his real object. By putting you under discipline, he is preparing you for guerrilla warfare. He is not such an out and out non-violencist [sic] as you all suppose.’ 40 ‘I was shocked,’ said Shraddhanand, ‘to hear all this from the big brother and remonstrated with him, which he treated with humour.’
Shraddhanand tried to warn Gandhi about the possibility that his ‘motives were being misrepresented’. But these were not taken seriously. In the Khilafat conference at Nagpur, maulanas recited ayats from the Quran that contained frequent references to violent jihad ‘against and the killing of kafirs ’. When Shraddhanand drew Gandhi’s attention to this, he ‘smiled and said: “They are alluding to the British bureaucracy”’. In reply, Shraddhanand told him that ‘it was all subversive of the idea of non-violence and when a revulsion of feeling came, the Muhammadan Maulanas would not refrain from using these verses against the Hindus’. 41 Once again Gandhi disregarded this politely.
Despite all these seemingly contradictory stands and opposition, Gandhi was obdurate that while the Khilafat was a matter of faith for Muhammad Ali, he himself would not mind ‘laying down my life for the Khilafat’. He hoped that this generous support would ‘ensure the safety of the cow, that is my religion, from the Mussalman knife’. 42 He even advocated three slogans for Hindus and Muslims alike, to be chanted one after another in every congregation: ‘Allaho Akbar, Bande Mataram/Bharat Mata ki Jai , and Hindu-Musalman ki jai .’ 43 About the diffidence about the first slogan, an overtly religious Muslim one, he implored: ‘Hindus may not fight shy of Arabic words, when their meaning is not only totally offensive but even ennobling. God is no respecter of any particular tongue.’ 44 Speaking in Karachi on 22 July 1920, Gandhi warned the Hindus that if they did not help the Muhammadans in their time of trouble, their [own] slavery was a certainty. 45 At a public meeting in Vadtal in Gujrat on 19 January 1921, Gandhi implored the masses:
I tell all the Hindu sadhus that if they sacrifice their all for the sake of the Khilafat, they will have done a great thing for the protection of Hinduism. Today the duty of every Hindu is to save Islam from danger. If you do this, God Himself will inspire them to look upon Hindus as friends and Hindus will look upon Muslims as friends. 46
However, as the sceptics had predicted, within a year of the launch of the Non-cooperation movement, the Muslims were growing restive and impatient. It was not as easy to secure British concessions on this issue, as Gandhi’s promise had held out to them. Gandhi himself acknowledged that ‘in their impatient anger, the Musalmans ask for more energetic and more prompt action by the Congress and Khilafat organizations. To the Musalmans, Swaraj means, as it must mean, India’s ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question.’ 4
7 He even advocated that he ‘would gladly ask for postponement of Swaraj activity if thereby we could advance the interest of the Khilafat’.
Muslim leaders such as Faqir Qayamuddin and Mohammad Abdul Bari jointly wrote to the president of the Central Khilafat Committee, Miya Mahomed Haji Jan Mohammad Chotani, on 14 May 1920:
Lessons of forbearance and patience are troublesome. Tell Mr Gandhi that while I myself will be guided by his advice, I will not restrain those people who in their haste go against it although I will not stimulate them, because in spite of entertaining different opinion, I have promised to go by his consent . . . but it should be borne in mind that we shall not sit (idle) relying upon him, but thanking him for his sympathy, will fulfil our religious obligation. This is a religious duty, which is unalterable. In its discharge, reliance can be placed on no one but God—whoever, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, prevent us from this, his tool will be included in the list of enemies. 48
Other Muslim leaders too were unwilling to heed the advice of patience and continue the Non-cooperation movement with Gandhi in the absence of tangible results. They did exactly what was feared they might—invite the Amir of Afghanistan to invade India for the pan-Islamic cause. In his misguided enthusiasm, Gandhi went to the extent of even supporting such a move: ‘I would, in a sense, certainly assist the Amir of Afghanistan, if he waged a war against the British Government. That is to say, I would openly tell my countrymen that it would be a crime to help a government which had lost the confidence of the nation to remain in power.’ 49 Even his most ardent supporters were shocked by such statements that had no roots in pragmatism or practicality.
The Nagpur session of the Congress held immediately thereafter, in December 1920, cemented Gandhi’s influence over the party. It endorsed several ideas that were close to his heart—promotion of swadeshi or homespun clothes, enforcement of prohibition of alcohol, striving for Hindu–Muslim unity and declaring the charkha or spinning wheel as a key to Indian freedom. Most importantly, Gandhi promised the Congress that his method of struggle through non-cooperation would lead to the establishment of swaraj within a year. This raised the hopes of all the members who decided to give it their best shot. However, and most interestingly, what swaraj actually meant was never clearly defined. It was left open and malleable to anyone’s interpretation. Some called it self-rule and complete independence, others termed it limited self-rule within the British dominion, while the staunch Khilafatists linked to it a strong desire for Afghan invasion.
The Nagpur session endorsed Gandhi’s plan of a triple boycott—legislatures, courts and educational institutions maintained or aided by the government, as part of the Non-cooperation agitation. Eminent leaders appealed to students to leave their educational institutions and this was met with a wholehearted and enthusiastic response by the youth across India. Many of these youngsters organized themselves into the corps of National Volunteers—a group of young men of daring, militant character. Forceful and sometimes violent imposition of hartals, and picketing to prevent the sale of liquor and foreign goods were conducted in several places. 50
As part of non-cooperation with the government, the Congress withdrew its candidates from the seats to the councils in an attempt to create an administrative deadlock. Gandhi had hoped that the Congress’s boycott of legislatures would lead to a wholesale abstention from the voting process by the voters too. ‘Will a single Moderate leader,’ asked Gandhi, care to enter any Council if more than half his electorate disapproved of his offering himself as a candidate at all? I hold that it would be unconstitutional for him to do so.’ 51 But he was mistaken. A quarter or less of the voters did not heed the Congress’s call and non-Congress candidates too contested the elections and were duly returned to the councils as well. They of course proved to be ineffectual in terms of true representation of the people. The Congress used this trump card to communicate that the elections held in the wake of the Reforms was not representative of the people’s mandate and was a complete failure. Even the British grudgingly acknowledged this, as Sir Frank Sly, the governor of the Central Provinces, mentioned in his speech on 22 November 1924: ‘At the first election many of the electors, under the influence of the Non-Cooperation movement, abstained from voting, and members were returned to the Legislative Council who could not claim to be really representative of public opinion, and some of them were unfit to exercise the responsibilities of their position.’ 52
Courts too were boycotted. Leaders of the Bar, like Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das, gave up their practice as an example of sacrifice and this was emulated by several others. Large numbers of students began a boycott of their schools and colleges, and held protest marches, black flag processions and so on. All these activities under the larger umbrella of non-cooperation created, for the first time in modern Indian history, a dedicated rank and file of full-time freedom fighters.
The government followed an initial policy of indifference and then persecution when maintenance of law and order became a problem. Finally, Gandhi met the viceroy, Lord Reading, in Simla six times between 13 and 18 May 1921. The proceedings were largely unknown but in the meeting, the viceroy managed to extract a promise from Gandhi to secure an apology from the Ali brothers for allegedly making incendiary speeches calling to violence during the Non-cooperation movement.
The government had intercepted a telegram—a wire sent to the Amir of Afghanistan inviting him to invade India and urging him to not make peace with the British—written in Persian, allegedly by Muhammad Ali. Swami Shraddhanand mentions this incident in his memoir. Muhammad Ali had feigned complete ignorance in the matter as he knew neither Persian nor Arabic and he was made a maulana only by virtue of the duties of tabligh (conversion) that he had conducted. On reaching Anand Bhawan, Pandit Motilal Nehru’s Allahabad residence, Muhammad Ali took Shraddhanand aside and taking out a paper from his handbag, gave him a draft of a telegram to read. ‘What was my astonishment,’ noted Shraddhanand, ‘when I saw the draft of the selfsame telegram in the peculiar handwriting of the Father of the non-violent cooperation movement!’ 53 Gandhi reached Anand Bhawan the next day and when asked by Sharaddhanand about this matter, did not remember to have sent any such telegram.
To prevent their prosecution, as threatened by the viceroy in the Simla meeting, Gandhi managed to extract an apology from the Ali brothers. This lowered the prestige of Gandhi as well as that of the Ali brothers and weakened the Non-cooperation movement to an extent. The leaders were seen as striking deals with their opponent. The Ali brothers tried to wriggle out of the embarrassment by making several public statements that the apology was just incidental.
Subsequently, their call to Muslims, through convenient fatwas issued by clerics, which deemed working for the British as irreligious, led to their prosecution and sentence to two years’ rigorous imprisonment. This reinvigorated the flagging Non-cooperation movement and gave it new impetus. Nationwide strikes, agitations, boycott of the Prince of Wales Edward VIII’s visit and other programmes were implemented with great gusto, inviting repressive measures from the government. The movement was not without violence. In Bombay, in November 1921, protests degenerated into mob violence and looting, policemen were beaten up in three days of rioting and about fifty-eight civilians killed, with 400 injured. 54 Gandhi expressed deep remorse at this violence.
The one year that Gandhi had declared for the attainment of swaraj was coming to an end. At this time, negotiations for an amicable settlement began with Chittaranjan Das and Madan Mohan Malaviya of the Congress acting as conduits between Gandhi and the viceroy. The latter stated his terms clearly. If the Congress agreed to call off the movement, the government would release all political prisoners imprisoned during the movement, and in due course, the Ali brothers too. They would also summon a Round Table Conference between the government and the Congress to settle the future constitution of India. Young Subhas Chandra Bose, who was an active volunteer of the movement and jailed for participation, reminisces:
Rightly or wrongly, the Mahatma had promised swaraj within one year. That year was drawing to a close. Barely a fortnight was left and within this short period something had to be achieved in order to save the face of the Congress and fulfil the Mahatma’s promise regarding swaraj. The offer of the Viceroy had come to him as a godsend. If a settlement was made before December 31st and all the political prisoners were released, it would appear to the popular imagination as a great triumph for the Congress. The Round Table Conference might or might not be a success, but if it failed, and the Government refused to concede the popular demands—the Congress could resume the fight at any time, and when it did so, it would command greater prestige and public confidence. 55
But Gandhi’s insistence on the release of the Ali brothers as being contingent to any compromise ruined the deal. Chittaranjan Das who was playing interlocutor was ‘beside himself with anger and disgust. The chance of a lifetime, he said, had been lost.’ 56
Gandhi then embarked on a mass Civil Disobedience movement from Bardoli, a small tehsil in the Surat district of the Bombay Presidency, on 1 February 1922. Gandhi mentioned in his letter to the viceroy that this was to carry on till all prisoners convicted in the movement were released, the press freed from interference, and the redress of the Khilafat and Punjab wrongs was taken up. It was undoubtedly a bold ultimatum. From Bardoli the fire spread to Assam, Bihar, Central Provinces, Madras Presidency and other parts of India. No-tax campaigns, boycott of foreign goods and picketing were planned all over the country, shaking the very foundations of the British government.
On its part, the government did not take the developments lightly. On 6 February, the viceroy virtually declared war, bent upon crushing this upsurge. Just a day earlier, on 5 February, an incident in a small village called Chauri Chaura near Gorakhpur in the United Provinces inadvertently provided a way out of the deadlock. The police had opened fire on demonstrators, before running out of ammunition and locking themselves up in their station. The excited mob set fire to the police station and as the harried officers came running out, some twenty-two of them were hacked to death and their bodies thrown into the flames. After that, events progressed quickly. Gandhi decided to use the Chauri Chaura incident as an excuse to call off his movement at a time when it had peaked and agree to a Round Table Conference instead. In a speech on 10 February at Bardoli, calling off the much-hyped and anticipated movement, Gandhi blamed this on the fact that the ‘country at large has not accepted the teaching of non-violence. I must, therefore, immediately stop the movement for civil disobedience’. 57 Two days later, on 12 February, the working committee called off the movement formally and with its adoption by the AICC in a fortnight, Civil Disobedience was history.