7 Chapter 6 Nonviolent Noncooperation

Chapter 6 Nonviolent Noncooperation The peaceful gathering in Amritsar had turned into a violent massacre. The Indian people now knew they could not rally against the government without fearing for their lives. Gandhi faced this fear bravely. He would stand up to the British government with his own weapon of noncooperation. He urged the Indian people to stand with him as well. But they would have to be willing to face the punishment that came with breaking the law. Gandhi spread the word in speeches at political meetings and through articles in his magazine, Young India.

In 1920, Gandhi became the leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), which adopted his nonviolent noncooperation campaign as its own. The INC was becoming a strong political voice for the Indian people.

Strikes had been one nonviolent way to stand up against unfair laws. Boycotts were another. A boycott is a refusal to buy certain items. In India, the British controlled the manufacture and sale of cloth. Gandhi urged Indians to refuse to buy the British cloth, so that the British cloth industry would make less money and profit in India. Instead, Gandhi supported Indians making their own cloth. By making cloth at home, the Indian community would keep more money instead of paying the British. Gandhi believed that spinning and weaving would help give Indians freedom from British control.

Gandhi himself vowed to spin thread every day. He even stayed up late into the night to spin if he had to. He started wearing khadi (clothing made of hand-spun cloth) with sandals, and a shawl in cooler weather. To Gandhi, the spinning wheel was not only a tool to make thread. It became a national symbol for India’s independence. In fact, a spinning wheel is still pictured on the flag of India today. GANDHI'S NONVIOLENT WEAPONS STRIKE: REFLISAL TO WORK BOYCOTT: REFLISAL TO BUY GOODS FAST: REFUSAL TO EAT It was not always easy for Gandhi to spread his message in a country covering more than 1.5 million square miles! Leaving his wife behind at the ashram, Gandhi reached out to the rest of India.

Most of the poor in India lived in villages that were hard to reach by train or car. So Gandhi did a lot of walking. Of his journeys throughout India, he said “You will never get to know the real India until you get out of Delhi, Bombay, and the other cities and see how the overwhelming mass of Indians, half-starved and in rags, pass their lives in their

wretched huts in half a million villages, toiling from dawn to dark in the nearby sun-parched fields to wrest a little food from a worn-out soil.”