A History of India, Third Edition

THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

politicians—including those who had been outvoted at the special
Congress—had all withdrawn their candidatures. The liberals had captured
the seats and the new ministerial positions which the Congress politicians
would also have liked to occupy. Now, however, there was no use looking
back: their only option was to support Gandhi’s programme
wholeheartedly, and thus non-cooperation was endorsed almost
unanimously at the Nagpur Congress.
In the course of 1921 this programme lost much of its novelty and
attraction and would have petered out completely if the British had not
unwittingly contributed to a brief revival by sending the Prince of Wales on
a tour of India. Wherever the prince appeared the agitation was renewed,
but even this was only a passing phenomenon. The Government of India
adopted a skilful strategy in dealing with the movement: they refrained
from repression and did not even arrest Gandhi who was actually waiting
for his detention. When the movement took a violent turn with a mob
burning some policemen alive in their police station in the small North
Indian village of Chauri Chaura, Gandhi himself called off the campaign
and was then promptly arrested. When he was put on trial Gandhi refused
to defend himself and rather took this opportunity to explain to the court
why he had turned from a loyalist into a rebel. He got the same sentence as
Tilak, and accepted it proudly. But whereas Tilak had served his full term
of six years, Gandhi was released after two years because his health was
failing. His contemporaries thought he had reached the end of his political
career: he had had his innings and others would have to direct the
movement with new ideas.

The return to the constitutional arena

Gandhi was released in 1924 to find Indian politics in bad shape. The
Khilafat movement had lost its meaning as the Turks themselves had done
away with the caliph. Hindu-Muslim relations were strained, the
agitational alliance was soon forgotten: Gandhi had made a mistake in
putting everything on a card which turned out not to be a trump card at
all. Jinnah, who had criticised the Khilafat movement and Gandhi’s
involvement in it, had become isolated, had left the Congress and devoted
his energies to the Muslim League which now emerged once more as the
Khilafat movement faded away. The rivalry of Congress and League,
Gandhi and Jinnah, was to play a decisive role in Indian politics in
subsequent years.
The 1920s also witnessed a renewed interest in political Hinduism
which had been dormant for some time while Gandhi’s movement had
prevailed. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, the founder of the Banaras
Hindu University, had patiently nurtured a Hindu Sabha movement which
he wanted to keep within the Congress fold as a pressure group. A more