After the police fired on the crowd, the crowd burned the thana; 22 policemen died, and Gandhi called off the Non-Cooperation movement.
01The thana burns
On 4 February 1922 a large crowd of volunteers marched past the Chauri Chaura police station to picket the Mundera bazaar, where liquor and foreign cloth were sold. Their leaders had been beaten by the police a few days before. The police fired, and some of the crowd were killed. The crowd charged, the police shut themselves in the thana, and the building was set on fire. Twenty-two policemen died, some in the fire and some as they ran out.
02Bardoli and the trial
Gandhi, who had made non-violence the condition of the movement, called it off at Bardoli on 12 February 1922, to the dismay of many Congress leaders and young revolutionaries. The Sessions Court sentenced 172 accused to death. On appeal, with Madan Mohan Malaviya among the defence, the Allahabad High Court upheld 19 death sentences; the rest were sent to prison or transportation. A memorial to the policemen and a shaheed smarak to the hanged men both stand at Chauri Chaura.
The suspension after Chauri Chaura turned many young men, among them Bhagat Singh’s generation, towards revolutionary paths.