Throughout the 1930-1934 struggles, Kitchlew was repeatedly arrested, and
in all spent fourteen years behind bars.
Kitchlew was opposed to the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan
and later in the 1940s became President of the Punjab Congress Committee.
Kitchlew rose in the Congress Party,
heading its Punjab unit before rising to the post of AICC General Secretary, an important executive position in 1924.
While four of his daughters were married men from Pakistan, one daughter,
Zahida Kitchlew, was married to Malayalam music director M. B. Sreenivasan,
a Hindu man.
He died on 9 October 1963, survived by a son,
Toufique Kitchlew, who lives in a Lampur village on the outskirts of Delhi, and five daughters.
His ancestor, Prakash Ram Kitchlew, had converted to Islam and his grandfather,
Ahmed Jo migrated from Kashmir in the mid-19th century after the Kashmir famine of 1871.
Kitchlew went to Islamia High School in Amritsar,
later obtaining a B.A. from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from a German university, before practising law in India.
Kitchlew was also the chairman of the reception committee
of the Congress session in Lahore in 1929-30, where on 26 January 1930, the Indian National Congress declared Indian independence and inaugurated an era of civil disobedience and revolution aimed to achieve full independence.