Question

How did the Non-Cooperation movement start with participation of middle-class people in the cities? Explain its impact on the economic front.

Answer 1

The non-cooperation movement was successfully launched by Mahatma Gandhi on 31st August 1920 by the Indian National Congress (INC). In this movement, Gandhi stated a few principles that have to be followed. They are

• Adopt swadeshi principles
• Adopt swadeshi habits including hand spinning & weaving
• Work for the eradication of untouchability from society

Middle-Class participation in cities and economic impact

• Thousands of groups of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned and lawyers gave up their legal practices.
• The council elections were boycotted in almost all provinces except Madras. In Madras, the Justice Party, the party of the non-Brahmans, felt that entering the council was a single way of gaining some power. This is something that usually only Brahmans had access to.
• The effects of non-cooperation on the economic front were more dramatized.
• Foreign goods were boycotted and eliminated from the markets.
• Liquor shops were picketed and foreign cloth was burnt in large bonfires.
• The import of foreign cloth reduced to half between 1921 and 1922. The value of these goods drastically dropped from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore.
• In a large number of places, merchants, peasants, and traders refused completely to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade.
• As the boycott movement spread like a fire and people were aware of this movement. People started discarding imported clothes and wearing only Indian ones, and production of Indian textile mills and handlooms went up.
• But this movement in the cities gradually slowed down for numerous reasons.
• Khadi cloth was normally more expensive than mass-produced mill cloth and poor people could not afford to buy it.
• Similarly, the boycott of British institutions created a problem for many students and teachers.
• For the movement to show its success, alternative Indian institutions had to be set up so that they could be used in place of the British ones.
• These institutions took time to come up.
• So students and teachers began moving back to government schools and lawyers restarted their work in government courts.

Refer more

• Why did Mahatma Gandhi launch the ‘Non-Cooperation movement’? How did this movement unite the country? Explain.
• Explain Why Gandhiji decided to withdraw from the Non-Cooperation Movement