Remembering Chauri Chaura and its impact on India’s freedom movement

Discover the history of Chauri Chaura, a town in Uttar Pradesh, through a visit to the Shaheed Smarak and police memorial.

Twenty-five years before India got her Independence, a market town in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) shot into infamy because of a grisly incident. In February 1922 , a police station in the small town was set on fire and this led to Gandhi suspending his non-cooperation movement that he had launched about two years earlier.

No more than a paragraph or two was devoted to this incident in my school history textbook. But the name stuck in my mind and when we visit our son who is posted in Gorakhpur, I’m surprised to learn that Chauri Chaura is only about 20 odd kilometres away.  

One fine day, we head southeast on National Highway 53 from Gorakhpur and turn off onto a crowded market road choked with autorickshaws, mopeds, motorcycles, cars and cycle-driven carts, all waiting for the railway gates to open. We cross the railway lines, turn right and go down a kuchcha path all the way to a a gate with a board saying ‘Shaheed Smarak Chauri Chaura’. 

A tall granite memorial stands in the centre of a little waterbody and beside a two-storey building that announces itself as the sangrahalay or museum. We leave our footwear outside and head upstairs to a semi-circular hall, where we meet Lal Babu. The slightly-built man is sweeping the peeling linoleum floor around the pedestals that hold busts of freedom fighters, including of the 19 people accused of burning down the police station and hanged in prisons across the state.

There is another memorial, Lal Babu informs us. That is where the police station stood. “It is close to my home. I have heard stories of how the police landed up at the home of my grandparents and smashed and destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on. They did this not just once but at the slightest pretext, often leaving my grandmother with nothing to feed the family with.” He says a pucca building has now come up over the original thatched one that was burnt to the ground.

“There were 128 people charged with rioting and burning down the police station,” Lal Babu says. We duck our heads to avoid a pigeon that flies across the room and Lal Babu suggests we go downstairs. He wants to show us something, he says. In a dark and musty room with cupboards holding a sparse collection of poetry, essays and novels, Lal Babu pulls out a few bound books in English and Urdu. These are copies of the court documents, with details about charges brought against the 128 people who were imprisoned, their confessions and their sentences. Pointing to no. 45, Lal Babu says, “That is my grandfather, Dip Yadav. He was pardoned but 19 other people were hanged.” The names of the executed prisoners are engraved on the memorial. 

The memorial for the slain policemen was put up by the British in 1923 or 1924, which makes it a little more than a hundred years old this year. The 23 policemen had locked themselves up when they ran out of ammunition to fire on the mob outside. People had gathered there to protest the sale of foreign cloth and enforce a just price for meat and fish in the local market. Three people died and several were injured in the police firing. In retaliation, the crowd set fire to the police station, police and all.