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WorkMahatma Gandhi

Freedom's Battle

Gandhi's newspaper campaign for non-co-operation, 1919 to 1921, ending on the statement in which he pleaded guilty to sedition.

by Mahatma Gandhi284 passages held

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First published
(aged 53)
Original language
English

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Overview

Its last pages were read aloud in a courtroom. On 18 March 1922 Gandhi, charged with sedition over three articles in his weekly Young India, pleaded guilty and explained how a man who had raised ambulance corps for the Empire in South Africa and again in 1914 had become its declared opponent; he was sentenced to six years in prison. The rest of the book shows how he got there. Published in Madras by Ganesh & Co., with an introduction by the Congress leader C. Rajagopalachari, it gathers the articles and speeches of 1919 to 1921 in which Gandhi joined three grievances into one campaign. The first was the Punjab, where troops had fired on a crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and, as Gandhi saw it, the officials responsible got off with reprimands. The second was the peace imposed on defeated Turkey, which Indian Muslims read as a broken British promise about the caliph, the khalifa, and the holy places of Islam. The third was the reforms of 1919, in which he had at first urged Indians to take part. His remedy was non-co-operation: hand back titles, leave government schools and courts, boycott the new councils and British cloth, and do all of it without violence. He returned his Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal and his two South African war medals to the Viceroy, and told a Congress audience at Calcutta that if the country responded, self-rule would come within a year. Much of the book argues with named English critics, printing their letters beside his replies. The year passed without self-rule. In February 1922, after a crowd killed policemen at Chauri Chaura, Gandhi called the campaign off, and a month later he was arrested.

Key concepts

What is non-co-operation, in practice?

Refusing, without violence, the everyday help a government depends on. Gandhi's programme came in stages: give back titles and medals, stay out of the new councils, leave the law courts and the government schools, boycott British cloth. Withdrawing soldiers and refusing taxes were kept for last, because the people had not yet learnt the self-control they need. Each step costs the person who takes it, which is the point: the campaign runs on self-imposed suffering.

What was the Khilafat question?

The fate of the caliph, the khalifa, whom Indian Muslims revered as Commander of the Faithful, with authority over Arabia and Islam's holy places. After the First World War the victorious Allies stripped the Turkish Sultan, who held that office, of much of his territory, although the British Prime Minister had pledged that Turkey would not be punished. For Muslims this was a religious wound, and Gandhi made it the first grievance of his campaign.

What is swadeshi, and why the spinning wheel?

Swadeshi means relying on what one's own country makes, above all its own cloth. Gandhi argues that India sank into economic slavery when it stopped making its own cloth and began buying from foreign mills. The way out, for the present, is hand-spinning and hand-weaving in Indian homes. A boycott of foreign cloth without that home industry would only leave people unclothed; with it, the boycott becomes a form of self-reliance.

Why does the book call the government satanic?

Because of what the system does, not because the English are wicked. Gandhi calls it satanic for refusing to set right the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs, for keeping Indians compliant with titles, medals and posts, and for forcing even decent officials to evade the one thing needful. He says plainly that he still believes in the goodness of human nature, English or any other, which is why he expects the English to leave, if they leave, as friends.

What was hijrat, the emigration the book mentions?

Leaving one's homeland as a religious protest. In 1920 growing numbers of Indian Muslims set out for Afghanistan rather than live under a government that had wronged the caliph; Gandhi cites one special train of 765 people, sixty women and forty children among them. He reads it as proof of an abiding faith, better a beggar's life than a state with no regard for one's religion, and offers non-co-operation as the direct action that keeps protest at home and non-violent.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Three Grievances, One Campaign

A Hindu leader took up a Muslim cause, joined it to a massacre in the Punjab, and asked a whole country to act on both. What turns separate wrongs into one shared duty is the question under every article.

Gandhi's case rests on broken pledges. The Prime Minister had promised that defeated Turkey would not be punished and that the caliph would keep his hold over Arabia and the holy places; the peace terms broke that, and Gandhi, a Hindu, took up the Muslims' grievance as a brother's. The Punjab added insult: a massacre at Amritsar, a man made to crawl down a lane, officials let off with mild rebukes. A government that cannot keep faith or punish its own, he argues, has lost its claim to help.

  • colonialism
  • imperialism
  • justice
  • political justice
  • political promises
  • political accountability
  • religious freedom
  • religion and politics
  • political legitimacy

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Withdrawing Co-operation

Every government runs on the help of the governed, down to the clerk and the schoolboy. Whether refusing that help is a citizen's right, a duty or a crime is what the campaign set out to test.

Non-co-operation, as Gandhi lays it out, comes in stages: hand back titles and medals, boycott the new councils, leave the courts and the government schools, give up foreign cloth, and only at the very end, once the people have learnt enough self-control, stop paying taxes. Each step is non-violent and costs the one who takes it. He answers critics who call it unconstitutional, and he ends in the dock, pleading guilty and asking for the highest penalty, because withdrawing from evil is as much a duty as co-operating with good.

  • non-cooperation
  • nonviolence
  • civil resistance
  • civil disobedience
  • collective action
  • political action
  • political resistance
  • political protest
  • political obligation
  • conscience
  • self-sacrifice
  • education

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Clean Hands Before Self-Rule

Indians abroad were treated as pariahs while Hindus at home kept millions untouchable. Whether a people may claim from its rulers what it withholds from its own decides how far the campaign has to reach inward.

Gandhi called non-co-operation a purifying movement, and he turned it on his own side. Untouchability, he wrote, is a custom and no part of Hinduism, and Indians have become the pariahs of the Empire because they made pariahs at home; a fifth of the population kept in bondage leaves the country unfit for self-rule. Hindu–Muslim unity and humility in victory, like the mango tree that bows under its fruit, belong to the same programme, since a people that cannot rule itself would only change masters.

  • self-government
  • self-rule
  • self-determination
  • moral responsibility
  • political responsibility
  • political equality
  • political representation
  • religious pluralism

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Within this work

passages held
284
distinct concepts
418
by passages held, corpus-wide
#264

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “non-cooperation” and “nonviolence”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
non-cooperationnonviolence27
civil resistancenon-cooperation17
civil disobediencenonviolence15
non-cooperationself-government13
civil resistancenonviolence12
justicenonviolence8
civil resistancepolitical legitimacy7
colonialismjustice7
justicenon-cooperation7
civil disobediencenon-cooperation6
colonialismpolitical legitimacy6
non-cooperationpolitical legitimacy6
nonviolenceself-government6
civil disobediencejustice5
colonialismnon-cooperation5
civil resistancejustice4
colonialismnonviolence4
colonialismself-government3
justicepolitical legitimacy2
nonviolencepolitical legitimacy2
political legitimacyself-government2
civil disobediencecolonialism1
civil resistancecolonialism1
civil resistanceself-government1
justiceself-government1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1909 Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (Hind Swaraj)

    Written in Gujarati in 1909 and put into English by Gandhi himself, the book states the politics he qualified in 1921 and still defended at the end of his life.

     EN
  2. 1922 Freedom's Battle you are here EN
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