The dispute at Guru ka Bagh, twenty kilometres from Amritsar, was over whether Akali volunteers could cut firewood from land attached to the gurdwara. The mahant claimed the land; the reformers claimed it went with the shrine.
From August to November 1922 jathas of Akali volunteers walked to the site in batches, under a vow of non-violence, and were beaten by police with lathis. They did not raise their hands. Over 5,000 were arrested.
C.F. Andrews, the English priest and friend of Gandhi, watched the beatings on 12 September 1922 and wrote an account that was published and caused an outcry. He described the volunteers standing to be struck and compared what he saw to a crucifixion.
The beatings were stopped. The land was bought by a private supporter and handed over. The campaign is one of the clearest and largest demonstrations of disciplined non-violent resistance in India before the Salt March, and it happened in Punjab, run by Sikhs, and it is barely in the national story.
Gandhi's own movement had suspended non-cooperation in February 1922 after Chauri Chaura. Guru ka Bagh ran through the months when the national campaign was stopped.
The injuries were recorded. Volunteers were carried to hospital in Amritsar in numbers through those months, and the medical registers of that period are one of the few contemporaneous accounts of what the beatings actually did.
Jathas went in daily and were beaten by the police without resisting, day after day, in front of journalists and a visiting English clergyman whose account reached the British press.
Over five thousand were arrested. The morcha is the clearest demonstration of the method: no resistance, continuous supply of volunteers, and the beating done in public.