CDS (I) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 6 of 120

Correct — C, Taking control of the law and order machinery of the State by the Congress Working Committee. Non-cooperation was built as a withdrawal, not a seizure. Indians were to take back what they had lent the Raj — titles, students, litigants, votes, custom — and to build voluntary substitutes alongside, so that the administration would grind to a halt of its own accord. Nothing in the programme put the police or the magistracy into Congress hands. Where the programme did touch the courts, it did so by boycotting them and asking Congress panchayats to settle disputes by arbitration — a parallel voluntary institution, the exact opposite of taking over the state's law-and-order machinery. The clinching evidence is what happened when a crowd did attack the state's coercive arm: after the burning of the police station at Chauri Chaura in February 1922, Gandhi suspended the whole movement, which he would have had no reason to do if capturing that machinery had been on the agenda. The other three options are all genuine parts of the programme.

• (a)The Congress organisation was to reach down to the village and the Mohalla level — This was part of the same package. The Nagpur session of December 1920, which settled the movement's creed as the attainment of swaraj by all legitimate and peaceful means, also rebuilt the Congress into a body that reached down to village and mohalla committees — a mass movement needs a mass organisation.
• (b)Boycott of government affiliated schools and colleges — A core item. Students were to withdraw from schools and colleges tied to the Raj, and national schools and colleges were to be set up in their place — the constructive half of the same step.
• (d)Surrender of titles and honours given by the government — The very first item of the programme, and the one that gave it its opening symbolism. Titles and honorary offices were to be given up, not retained and quietly unused.

The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920 to 1922 was the first all-India mass movement Gandhi led. Its programme had a negative half — surrender of titles and honours, boycott of government schools and colleges, of law courts, of legislative councils and of foreign cloth — and a constructive half — national schools, Congress panchayats for arbitration, khadi and hand-spinning, and strict non-violence throughout. It was also staged: civil disobedience and refusal to pay taxes were held back for a later phase, to be used only if swaraj did not come within a year and the government turned to repression.

The way through this item is to ask what kind of act each option is. Three of them are things Indians could do to themselves — give up a title, take a child out of school, rebuild their own party. The fourth is something that could only be done to the government, and by force. That asymmetry is the answer. It also matches Gandhi's own reading of the movement: non-cooperation worked because a government that rules with Indian consent collapses when the consent is withdrawn, so no storming of anything is required. Students who have read that the movement was 'revolutionary' sometimes over-read it into an attempt at parallel government; that came later and in a different form, and never as a Congress Working Committee takeover of the police.

• The programme was settled in 1920 and confirmed at the Nagpur session that December, where the Congress adopted the attainment of swaraj by all legitimate and peaceful means as its creed.
• Its negative items were surrender of titles and honours, boycott of government schools and colleges, of law courts, of legislative councils, and of foreign cloth.
• Its constructive items were national schools and colleges, panchayats to settle disputes, khadi and hand-spinning, and strict adherence to non-violence.
• Mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay taxes were reserved for a later stage, if swaraj had not come within a year and the government resorted to repression.
• Gandhi suspended the movement in February 1922 after a crowd at Chauri Chaura burnt a police station.

• Reading 'non-cooperation' as though it authorised taking over state institutions rather than withdrawing from them.
• Mistaking the Congress panchayats of the constructive programme for a claim on the state's courts and police.
• Forgetting that titles were to be surrendered outright — a favourite examiner variant flips this to 'retained without being used in public'.

Asked as a 'which was NOT part of the programme' item, where the odd option is the only one that would require force rather than withdrawal.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Non-Cooperation Movement was suspended by Gandhi following the violence at which one of the following places?

  • (a)Jallianwala Bagh
  • (b)Chauri Chaura
  • (c)Kakori
  • (d)Chittagong

  Answer(b) Chauri Chaura — a crowd burnt the police station there in February 1922 and Gandhi called the movement off.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the constructive side of the Non-Cooperation programme, disputes among Indians were to be settled by

  • (a)Special tribunals set up by the government
  • (b)Congress panchayats
  • (c)The Privy Council
  • (d)District magistrates

  Answer(b) Congress panchayats — voluntary arbitration bodies meant to replace the boycotted law courts.