Do you consider the suspension of Non-Cooperation Movement a 'national calamity'?

Answer:

Gandhi's suspension of the Non-Cooperation Movement in February 1922, after the violence at Chauri Chaura, was denounced by many contemporaries as a national calamity. The judgement has force, but it overlooks both Gandhi's reasoning and the movement's lasting achievements.

The case for calling it a calamity

• The movement was at its height, with mass participation across the country.
• Leaders including Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das and Lajpat Rai opposed the decision bitterly.
• Subhas Bose called it a national calamity, holding that the enemy was on the verge of collapse.
• The withdrawal caused deep demoralisation and the Congress split into Swarajists and No-Changers.
• Khilafat cooperation lapsed and communal relations deteriorated sharply thereafter.
• Disillusioned youth turned to revolutionary terrorism.

Gandhi's reasoning

• Non-violence was for him a principle, not a tactic to be abandoned when inconvenient.
• Chauri Chaura showed the masses were not yet disciplined in satyagraha.
• A violent movement would have invited overwhelming repression the movement could not survive.
• He preferred an orderly retreat to a rout, believing the struggle would be long.

What the movement had achieved

• It was the first genuinely all-India mass movement, reaching peasants, students and women.
• The Congress was transformed into a mass organisation with a village-level structure.
• Boycott of schools, courts and titles shook the moral authority of the Raj.
• The fear of British power was decisively broken.
• Constructive work, khadi and national education continued afterwards.

The wider judgement

• Gandhi held that a movement abandoning non-violence would forfeit its moral authority.
• The repression of 1919 had shown what the state could do to an undisciplined movement.
• The Congress returned stronger in 1930 with Civil Disobedience.
• Judith Brown notes that withdrawal also preserved Gandhi's own leadership and method.

The verdict must therefore be qualified. As Bipan Chandra argued through his 'struggle-truce-struggle' model, the withdrawal was a strategic retreat rather than a surrender, preserving the movement's non-violent character and its organisation for the greater battles of 1930 and 1942, so 'calamity' overstates a genuine but recoverable setback.