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EXPLAIN "KHILAFAT AGITATION" AND "NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT?
Though Rowlatt satyagraha was a wide spread movement, it was limited to cities and towns. Mahatma Gandhi now felt the need to launch a more broad-based movement in India. So he was certain that no such movement could be organised without bringing the Hindus and Muslims closer together. He took up the Khilafat issue. A Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay in March 1919. A young generation of Muslim leaders like the brothers Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, began discussing with Mahatma Gandhi about the possibility of a united mass action on the issue. Gandhiji saw this as an opportunity to bring Muslims under the umbrella of a unified national movement. At the Calcutta session of the Congress in September 1920, he convinced other leaders of the need to start a non-cooperation movement in support of Khilafat as well as for swaraj.

Mahatma Gandhi understood that British rule was established in India with the cooperation of Indians and had survived only because of this cooperation. If Indians refused to cooperate, British rule in India would collapse within a year, and swaraj would come. At the Congress session at Nagpur in December 1920, the Non-Cooperation programme was adopted. The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921. Gandhiji proposed the movement to surrender the titles that the government awarded, and a boycott of civil services, army, police, courts and legislative councils, schools, and foreign goods. Various social groups participated in this movement, each with its own specific aspiration. In the cities. Thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up their legal practices. Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed, and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires. It drew into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribals which were developing in different parts of India in the years after the war.


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