India Remembers Chauri Chaura Incident With A Year-Long Commemoration Ceremony

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will commence a year-long remembrance of the Chauri Chaura incident that excavated Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement.

"Incident of Chauri Chaura was not limited to a police station being set on fire. The message of the incident was huge. Due to various reasons, it was treated as a minor incident, but we should see it in context. The fire was not just in the station but in the hearts of people," Modi said.

The commemoration will be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records and will last for a year starting from 4th February 2021. Releasing a postage stamp via video conferencing, Modi will inaugurate the commemoration ceremony.

The ceremonial equities will contain the following points-

1.      A total of 99 descendants of the India’s Independence Movement and participated in the incident will be honoured at Thursday’s event.

2.     The Yogi Adityanath government has announced mass recitation of Vante Mataram on 4th February which will include 20,000 students singing the anthem together.

3.     The UP government has designed a special logo in the remembrance of the 1922 incident and will use the logo for the year-long remembrance festivities.

4.     The year-long festivity remembering the revolutionaries also has a special theme song written by Virendra Vatsa, the man who wrote the theme song for 26th January UP’s tableau.

5.     UP CM has announced alteration for Mundera Bazar Nagar Panchayat( the then police post) to Chauri Chaura Nagar Panchayat.

6.     The Chaura Chauri Shahhed Sthal will be beautified and will be added to India’s list of tourist spots.

7.      The year-long commemoration ceremony will start with a cleanliness drive in all the 75 districts of Gorakhpur.

8.     Prabhat Pheris, a process in which groups will sing bravery anthems daily in the memory of the martyrs of the Chauri Chaura incident will be held for a year in the state.

9.     The Uttar Pradesh government has announced 400 government school students and other private schools’ visit to Chauri Chaura and other incident related sites.

10.  The secondary textbooks will include a chapter explaining the 1922 incident.

The Uttar Pradesh government has nodded to the event and Yogi Adityanath will be attending the inaugural event from Gorakhpur.

 

The history

Chauri Chaura, a small town situated on the state highway between Gorakhpur and Deoria marks supreme places in the Indian history. The town marks India’s Chauri Chaura incident that led to the revocation of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and cancellation of the idea of Satyagraha.

The happening of the incident dates back to 4th February when a group of town locals put the Chauri Chaura police station on fire which led to the demise of around 22 to 25 policemen. The then court prompted 172 of the 225 accused to death while sending the convicted 19 ultimately to death.

After Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi floated the Non-cooperation movement in India in 1920 aiming to boycott British goods, Indians started glorifying the idea of movement. Within years, the movement intensified as volunteers came forward to demolish foreign goods, especially machine-made goods and non-Indian products.

In the month of January-February 1922, the local peasant leaders gathered at the streets and stood up for peaceful protests blockading shops selling british goods. Soon after the police knew about the protests, it started to enforce its powers on the poor peasants, forced them to pay higher prices for the goods and started beating them. The indefinite action came into limelight when Bhagwan Ahir, a demolished British Indian Army was beaten by the police. As more peasants learnt about the atrocities held on the peaceful protestors, they touted into anger and decided to fight for their motive.

The police were agitated looking at the daily increased number of protestors and to inhibit the protest further, the police fired warning shots. The peasants anger escalated and claiming there’s no righteousness in torturing peaceful protestors, the peasants hijacked the Mundera market. When the situation seemed not to be controlled, the police shot three people and many of them were injured. The police action was intolerable, people were agitated. In a moment, the protestors decided to hijack the Chauri Chaura police station, controlled the police officers to run away from their anger and forced almost all of them to enter the police station. The protestors then set the station on fire, the policemen were burnt alive inside the station. If that was not enough, the policemen who tried to flee from the fire were also captured and forcefully dealt into the burning station. A total of 23 policemen were burnt alive.

The incident led to severe property damage and almost extinction of the entire police station. After the incident, the area was raided, protestors were booked, arrested and sent to gallows. Around 225 people were accused of murder and violation of laws, 172 of them were put under death accusations and around 20 of them were directly sent to the gallows by the sessions court.

Mahatma Gandhi immediately learnt about the horrific incident when he decided to abolish the Non-cooperation movement citing people’s unpreparedness for a mass movement. Gandhi also put himself into atonement by having a seven day fast as he believed himself of being an indirect participant in the incident. The non-cooperation movement was cancelled on February 12, 1922, India stalled the idea of Satyagraha.

After the incident, British officer William Morris declared a memorial in the remembrance of the police officers. This led to one of the biggest questions in the Indian history ‘How could the policemen who killed revolutionaries and shredded the peaceful protestors be termed as martyrs?’.

 

Even after India’s independence, none tried to question the existence of the memorial until Baba Raghav Das, also named as Gandhi of Purvanchal, Indian guru and freedom fighter decided to know the reason behind the memorial. Das being an active member of the Non-cooperation movement, saved 153 of the accused protestors from death sentence of the sessions court. Along with Motilal Nehru, Pandit Madanmohan Malviya and other prominent revolutionaries, Das tried to counter the British act of memorizing the Chauri Chaura police station, but the mission was somehow unsuccessful.

Even today, the question remains intact and unanswered!