How did the Non-Cooperation Movement unfold in the cities and towns of India?
- The Non-cooperation movement started with middle-class participation in the cities.
- Thousands of students left government-controlled schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned, and lawyers gave up their legal practices.
- The council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party, the party of the non-Brahmans, felt that entering the council was one way of gaining some power – something that usually only Brahmans had access to.
- Foreign goods were boycotted, liquor shops picketed, and foreign cloth burnt in huge bonfires.
- The import of foreign cloth halved between 1921 and 1922, its value dropping from Rs 102 crore to Rs 57 crore.
- In many places, merchants and traders refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade.
- As the boycott movement spread, and people began discarding imported clothes and wearing only Indian ones, production of Indian textile mills and handlooms went up.
