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Khilafat and Non-Cooperation, 1919–1922

Gandhian movements, 1917–1922 · Part 2 / 2 · Fact-checked on 8 November 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

The Khilafat question and its leaders, the launch of non-cooperation on 1 August 1920, the Calcutta and Nagpur sessions and the new Congress constitution, the boycotts and the constructive programme with its national institutions, the Tilak Swaraj Fund and khadi, the Prince of Wales's visit, the peasant and regional movements, Chauri Chaura and the Bardoli resolution, Gandhi's trial, and an assessment of the first nationwide mass movement.

Part 1 ended with Gandhi, once a loyal cooperator, convinced by the Punjab killings and the mild official response that British rule could no longer be trusted. This part follows what he did next. Between 1919 and 1922 two separate grievances, the fate of the Ottoman Khalifa after the First World War and the wrongs done in Punjab, were joined into one campaign: the Khilafat Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement. For the first time the Congress set out to make British rule unworkable by withdrawing Indian help from it, and for the first time peasants, workers, students, women and traders in most provinces joined a single national struggle.

The Ottoman Sultan of Turkey was regarded by many Muslims as the Khalifa, the spiritual head of the Muslim world and the guardian of the holy places of Arabia. Turkey fought on Germany's side in the First World War, and after its defeat the Allies prepared to carve up its empire. Indian Muslims feared that the Khalifa would lose both his lands and his authority, even though British leaders had given reassurances during the war. The Khilafat Movement grew out of this fear. Its leading figures were the brothers Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Hasrat Mohani. A Khilafat Committee was formed in 1919, 17 October 1919 was observed across India as Khilafat Day, and at an all-India Khilafat Conference held in Delhi in November 1919 Gandhi was chosen to preside. He saw in the issue a chance to bring Hindus and Muslims into one movement.

During 1920 the remaining case for cooperation fell apart. The Hunter Committee's report, published in 1920, dealt with Dyer far more gently than Indians expected, and in Britain the House of Lords voted in his support. In August 1920 the Treaty of Sèvres imposed severe terms on Turkey and stripped it of its Arab provinces. The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919, which handed Indian ministers only some subjects in the provinces, struck many nationalists as a poor reward for wartime loyalty. In June 1920 a meeting at Allahabad accepted a programme of non-cooperation and the Khilafat Committee asked Gandhi to lead it. Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, gave back the Kaiser-i-Hind medal and the war medals he had received for his ambulance work in South Africa, and formally launched the Non-Cooperation Movement on 1 August 1920. On that same day Bal Gangadhar Tilak died in Bombay.

The Indian National Congress had still to give its approval. At a special session in Calcutta in September 1920, presided over by Lala Lajpat Rai, Gandhi moved the resolution that non-cooperation should go on until the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were set right and swaraj was won. The sharpest argument was over the boycott of the new legislative councils. C. R. Das and Bipin Chandra Pal, among others, wanted Indians to contest the coming elections and obstruct the government from inside, and several older leaders felt the party was being rushed. Gandhi's resolution was nevertheless carried, with strong support from the Khilafat leaders. When the first elections under the Act of 1919 were held in November 1920, Congress candidates stayed out and a large part of the electorate did not vote, so the new councils met without the party that most politically active Indians followed.

The regular session at Nagpur in December 1920, presided over by C. Vijayaraghavachariar, confirmed the decision; this time C. R. Das himself moved the main resolution. Nagpur also remade the Congress. Its aim, until then self-government within the British Empire to be sought by constitutional means, became the attainment of Swaraj by all peaceful and legitimate means, which left open the possibility of leaving the Empire. Provincial Congress Committees were redrawn on linguistic lines, so that people could organise in their own language. A Working Committee of fifteen members was created to run the party between sessions, and anyone could become a member by paying four annas a year. Some older leaders could not accept the new course; Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant and Bipin Chandra Pal moved away from the Congress around this time.

Non-cooperation had two sides. The first asked Indians to withdraw from the institutions through which Britain governed: to give up titles and honorary posts, to boycott the councils, the law courts and government schools and colleges, and to stop buying foreign cloth. If these steps were not enough, later stages could include leaving government service and refusing to pay taxes. The second side was constructive, because Gandhi wanted people to build as well as refuse. In place of the boycotted schools came national education in new institutions such as Jamia Millia Islamia, Gujarat Vidyapith, Kashi Vidyapith and Bihar Vidyapith; in place of the courts came panchayats to settle disputes. Hand-spinning, Hindu-Muslim unity and work against untouchability completed the programme. Gandhi told the country that if it carried out the programme fully, swaraj could be won within a year.

In the first half of 1921 the programme took hold. Thousands of students left government schools and colleges, and prominent lawyers gave up their practice, among them C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel and C. Rajagopalachari. The Tilak Swaraj Fund, started in Tilak's memory with a target of one crore rupees, crossed that figure by the middle of 1921. The campaign against foreign cloth became the most visible part of the movement: volunteers picketed cloth shops, and heaps of imported cloth were burned in public bonfires, while the charkha and khadi turned the old Swadeshi idea into a daily act and a kind of uniform for the movement. In July 1921 a Khilafat conference at Karachi declared that it was religiously wrong for a Muslim to serve in the British army. The Ali brothers were arrested and sentenced, and Gandhi and other leaders answered by publicly repeating the same words.

The visit of the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne, brought the movement to its height. When he landed at Bombay on 17 November 1921 he was greeted by a hartal: shops shut and streets emptied, and the same silent protest met him in city after city over the following months. In Bombay itself the day turned violent, with clashes between those enforcing the hartal and those who opposed it, which disturbed Gandhi deeply. The government, now under Lord Reading, banned the Congress and Khilafat volunteer corps and arrested leaders on a large scale; by the end of 1921 C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru and thousands of other workers were in jail. At the Ahmedabad session of December 1921 Hakim Ajmal Khan presided in place of the imprisoned C. R. Das. The session made Gandhi the sole executive authority of the movement and approved civil disobedience, to be started when and where he judged the people ready.

Outside the big towns, non-cooperation gave older local grievances a national banner, and each region shaped it in its own way. In Awadh, peasant sabhas built up in 1920 by Baba Ramchandra, with Jawaharlal Nehru among those who toured the villages, protested against illegal dues and evictions by taluqdars; late in 1921 the Eka, or unity, movement led by Madari Pasi took up similar demands. In Punjab the Akali movement set out to free Sikh gurdwaras from corrupt mahants, a struggle that cost many lives at Nankana Sahib in February 1921 and led in the end to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925. In Andhra the people of Chirala-Perala, led by Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya, left their town rather than pay a new municipal tax, and in Assam tea-garden workers walked off the plantations. In August 1921 the Malabar rebellion, also called the Mappila or Moplah rising, broke out in the Ernad and Valluvanad taluks; aimed first at the government and landlords, it later turned on Hindus and was crushed by the army.

By early 1922 Gandhi was preparing the next stage. On 1 February 1922 he informed the Viceroy that mass civil disobedience, including the refusal to pay taxes, would begin in Bardoli taluka of Surat district unless political prisoners were released and the curbs on the press and on meetings were lifted. Four days later, on 5 February 1922, came the Chauri Chaura incident. At Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces a procession of volunteers clashed with the police; the angry crowd then set the police station on fire, and 22 policemen were killed. Gandhi read this as proof that the country was not yet ready for the non-violent discipline that satyagraha demanded. On 12 February 1922 the Congress Working Committee, meeting at Bardoli, passed the Bardoli resolution, which suspended mass civil disobedience and asked Congressmen to turn to constructive work. On 10 March 1922 Gandhi was arrested; at his trial in Ahmedabad he pleaded guilty to sedition for his articles in Young India and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment.

Measured against its own promise, the movement failed: swaraj did not arrive within a year, the Punjab wrongs were not righted, and the Khilafat question was settled in a way no Indian campaign could influence, when the new Turkish state under Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate itself in March 1924. Many leaders, among them Motilal Nehru, C. R. Das and the young Subhas Chandra Bose, were dismayed that the whole country had been halted because of violence in one place, and the use of a religious cause to build political unity left an uneasy legacy, as events in Malabar showed. Yet the Non-Cooperation Movement changed Indian politics for good. The Congress became a mass party with an organisation reaching into villages, ordinary people lost much of their fear of the government and its prisons, Hindus and Muslims acted together on a scale rarely seen again, and the charkha and khadi became lasting symbols. Gandhi was released on grounds of health in February 1924, and the questions left behind, whether to enter the councils and how to begin the next struggle, shaped the years that followed.

Exam traps

• The Non-Cooperation Movement was launched on 1 August 1920, the day Tilak died; the Congress approved it at the special Calcutta session (September 1920) and confirmed it at Nagpur (December 1920).
• Calcutta 1920 was presided over by Lala Lajpat Rai, Nagpur 1920 by C. Vijayaraghavachariar, and Ahmedabad 1921 by Hakim Ajmal Khan acting for the jailed C. R. Das.
• C. R. Das opposed the council boycott at Calcutta but moved the main non-cooperation resolution at Nagpur.
• Nagpur, not Calcutta, changed the Congress aim to swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means and set up linguistic provincial committees and the Working Committee of 15.
• Gandhi presided over the all-India Khilafat Conference at Delhi in November 1919; the Ali brothers were Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali.
• The Caliphate was abolished by Turkey itself under Mustafa Kemal in March 1924; the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) only imposed harsh terms on Turkey.
• Chauri Chaura is in Gorakhpur district (Uttar Pradesh); the movement was withdrawn by the Bardoli resolution of 12 February 1922, which is different from Patel's Bardoli satyagraha of 1928.
• The Prince of Wales landed at Bombay on 17 November 1921 and was met by a hartal; the Simon Commission's 'go back' protests came later, in 1928.

Recap

• Khilafat: fear for the Ottoman Khalifa after 1918; Ali brothers, Azad, Ajmal Khan, Hasrat Mohani; Khilafat Day 17 October 1919; Delhi conference November 1919 under Gandhi.
• 1920: mild Hunter report, Lords back Dyer, Treaty of Sèvres (August), Allahabad meeting (June); launch on 1 August 1920.
• Calcutta special session (September 1920, Lajpat Rai): non-cooperation adopted; councils boycotted in the November 1920 elections.
• Nagpur (December 1920, Vijayaraghavachariar): swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means, linguistic PCCs, Working Committee of 15, four-anna members.
• Programme: give up titles; boycott councils, courts, schools, foreign cloth; national schools, panchayats, charkha, Hindu-Muslim unity, anti-untouchability.
• 1921: lawyers and students leave, Tilak Swaraj Fund passes one crore, cloth bonfires, khadi; Karachi Khilafat conference (July), Ali brothers jailed.
• Prince of Wales at Bombay, 17 November 1921: hartal; volunteer corps banned; Ahmedabad session (December 1921, Ajmal Khan acting).
• Regions: Awadh kisan sabhas and Eka, Akalis and Nankana Sahib, Chirala-Perala, Assam tea workers, Malabar rebellion (August 1921).
• Chauri Chaura, 5 February 1922; Bardoli resolution, 12 February; Gandhi arrested 10 March, six years for sedition; released February 1924.
• Result: no swaraj in a year and Caliphate abolished (1924), but the Congress became a mass party and fear of the Raj weakened.

Practice questions

Sources

• The Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 (Punjab Act VIII of 1925); the Indian Penal Code, 1860, section 124A (sedition), the charge at Gandhi's trial in March 1922 — https://www.indiacode.nic.in
• Records of the Home Department (Political) on the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements, the visit of the Prince of Wales, the Malabar rebellion and Chauri Chaura, 1919–1922, with the reports of the Congress sessions at Calcutta (September 1920), Nagpur (December 1920) and Ahmedabad (December 1921); National Archives of India, Abhilekh Patal — https://www.abhilekh-patal.in
• The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Publications Division, Government of India (volumes covering 1919–1924, including Young India and the statement at the trial of 18 March 1922) — https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php