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Gandhi and Congress, 1919-27 » Congress, the Muslims, the Untouchables and Jinnah

What you'll learn this session

Study time: 30 minutes

Edexcel spec: Paper 1, Depth study 4, Key topic 2

How Congress dealt with the British in the years 1922-27
What Congress thought about Muslims, and why many Muslims did not trust it
The role of Jinnah and why he broke with Congress
What Congress did, and did not do, for the untouchables

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Congress and the British in the 1920s

After 1922 Congress still wanted swaraj and still did not trust the British. But its leaders could not agree on how to deal with them.

🏛 Fight from inside

The Swaraj Party stood in the elections of 1923. It won about 40 of the roughly 100 elected seats in the central assembly in Delhi. That made it the biggest group there, but well short of a majority. Its members then voted against the government's budgets and laws, to prove that Dyarchy could not work. The viceroy simply used his special powers to pass them anyway.

🌾 Stay outside

Gandhi's followers would not touch the councils. After his release in 1924 Gandhi gave his time to what he called constructive work: spinning khadi, Hindu-Muslim unity and ending untouchability. He believed Indians had to make themselves fit for swaraj first.

There was also a split over the goal. Older leaders would have accepted dominion status. Younger men, such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, wanted to cut every tie with Britain. At its Madras meeting in December 1927, Congress voted for the first time that its goal was complete independence. So the attitude of Congress to the British was hardening, but it had no agreed plan of action.

Key terms:

Dominion status: ruling yourself while staying inside the British Empire, as Canada and Australia did.
Communal violence: fighting between religious communities, here Hindus and Muslims.
Untouchables: people placed below every caste in Hindu society and treated as 'unclean'.
Constitutional methods: working for change inside the law, through councils, votes and talks.

Congress and the Muslims

Congress said that it spoke for every Indian, whatever their religion. It had Muslim members and leaders: in 1923 two Muslims, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Muhammad Ali, each chaired a meeting of Congress. Gandhi made Hindu-Muslim unity one of his main aims. Most Congress leaders believed that religious quarrels were kept alive by British rule and would fade once India was free.

Many Muslims saw things differently. Muslims were a minority, less than a quarter of India's people. In the 1920s the distance between them and Congress grew, for three reasons.

Fear of majority rule. In a self-governing India decided by votes, Hindus could always outvote Muslims. That is why Muslim leaders valued separate electorates. Congress had accepted them in the Lucknow Pact, but many in Congress disliked them because they divided Indians by religion.
A Hindu feel. Most Congress members were Hindus, and Gandhi often used Hindu religious words and ideas. Some Congress leaders also belonged to the Hindu Mahasabha, a group that spoke up for Hindu interests and grew in the 1920s.
Violence. Once the Khilafat movement was over, communal violence spread across northern India. After serious riots at Kohat in the north-west in September 1924, Gandhi fasted for 21 days to plead for peace. But riots broke out in other towns in the years that followed.

The Muslim League had been pushed into the background during the Khilafat years. In 1924 it came back to life, with a full meeting at Lahore led by Jinnah.

The role of Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a successful Muslim lawyer from Bombay. He joined Congress in 1906 and the Muslim League in 1913, and belonged to both at once. Remember, he helped to bring the two together in the Lucknow Pact. He became known as the 'ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity'.

At the Nagpur meeting in December 1920, Jinnah spoke against non-cooperation. He was shouted down, and he left Congress for good. He had three reasons:

He believed in constitutional methods. He feared that mass law-breaking would end in violence.
He disliked the way Gandhi mixed religion with politics, including his support for the Khilafat movement.
Congress was now a mass movement led by Gandhi. There was little room in it for Jinnah's kind of politics.

The break mattered. Congress lost its strongest link to Muslim political leaders. Jinnah was elected to the central assembly in 1923 as an independent, and he put his energy into rebuilding the Muslim League.

Yet Jinnah still wanted a united India and a deal with Congress. At Delhi in March 1927 he and other Muslim leaders offered to give up separate electorates. In return they asked for safeguards, such as one third of the seats in the central assembly. Congress welcomed the offer at Madras that December. So in 1927 the gap was wide, but it could still have been bridged. You will see what became of the offer in the next key topic.

Congress and the untouchables

Hindus were born into a caste, a fixed place in society. Tens of millions of people were placed below every caste. They did the jobs seen as unclean, and were kept out of temples, schools and village wells.

🤝 What Gandhi and Congress did

Gandhi said that untouchability was a sin and a stain on Hinduism. In 1915 he took an untouchable family into the community where he lived. Ending untouchability was part of the constructive work Congress took up after 1922. In 1924-25 Congress workers held a satyagraha at Vaikom in southern India to open the roads beside a temple to untouchables. Gandhi visited in 1925, and most of the roads were opened.

🚫 The limits

Most Congress leaders were high-caste Hindus, and many members did little. Gandhi wanted to change Hindu hearts, not to end the caste system. Congress treated untouchability as a social and religious problem, not a political one. Dr B. R. Ambedkar, a lawyer who was born an untouchable, said that kindness from above was not enough. Untouchables needed rights in law and power of their own. In March 1927 he led thousands of them to drink from a public water tank at Mahad in western India.

So by 1927 a second group, like many Muslims, doubted that Congress really spoke for them.

Common mistakes

Saying Jinnah wanted a separate Muslim country in the 1920s. He left Congress over its methods, and he still wanted a united India.
Saying Congress was against Muslims. Its aim was unity. The problem was that many Muslims did not trust it to protect them.
Saying Gandhi wanted to get rid of caste. He attacked untouchability, not the caste system itself.

Exam-style question

'The main reason why Indian nationalists had failed to win swaraj by 1927 was the division between Hindus and Muslims.'

How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks]

You may use the following in your answer:

Hindu-Muslim divisions
the end of the Non-Cooperation movement (1922)

You must also use information of your own.

Model answer

Division between Hindus and Muslims was a serious weakness for Indian nationalists by 1927. However, I only partly agree with the statement, because the best chance of swaraj had already gone before that division became serious.

Division did weaken the nationalists. In 1920 Hindus and Muslims had begun Non-Cooperation together, because Congress backed the Khilafat movement. After Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924 that link disappeared, and communal violence spread, such as the riots at Kohat in 1924. Gandhi's 21-day fast did not stop it. Jinnah had left Congress in 1920 and from 1924 was reviving the Muslim League, so nationalists no longer spoke with one voice. Many Muslims feared that Hindus would always outvote them in a self-governing India, and did not trust Congress to protect them. This made it far harder to put united pressure on the British.

However, the end of the Non-Cooperation movement was more important. The campaign was the one time in these years that the Raj was under real pressure: by January 1922 about 30,000 people were in prison. Gandhi called it off himself after 22 policemen were killed at Chauri Chaura in February 1922. This happened while Hindus and Muslims were still working together, so division cannot explain it. Once the pressure stopped, the British felt safe to jail Gandhi for sedition, and there was no new mass campaign in the years to 1927.

A third reason was that Congress itself was split and British power was still strong. After 1922 the Swaraj Party entered the councils while Gandhi's followers stayed out. The Swarajists became the biggest group in the central assembly in 1923, with about 40 of the roughly 100 elected seats, but under the 1919 Act the viceroy could pass laws without them. So swaraj could not be forced through the councils either.

Overall, Hindu-Muslim division was not the main reason. The best test is which factor ended the nationalists' strongest challenge to British rule. That was the calling off of Non-Cooperation in 1922, at a time when unity was still strong. Division mattered most afterwards: it grew out of that failure, and it made a new challenge much harder to build by 1927.

What lifts it to the top level: it covers three aspects (the stated factor, the second bullet and a point of its own), stays on the question throughout, and reaches a judgement using a clear test: which factor ended the strongest challenge.

Exam tip

An answer that uses only the two bullets cannot reach the top level. Here, bring in something of your own, such as the split in Congress over the councils or the viceroy's powers under the 1919 Act. Then use dates to judge: ask whether the division between Hindus and Muslims came before or after the campaign ended in 1922.

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