Indigo
Louis Fischer
When I first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, in central
India, he said, "I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the
departure of the British. It was in 1917."
He had gone to the December 1916 annual convention of the Indian National
Congress party in Lucknow. There were 2,301 delegates and many visitors.
During the proceedings, Gandhi recounted, "a peasant came up to me
looking like any other peasant in India, poor and emaciated, and said, 'I am
Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my
district!" Gandhi had never heard of the place. It was in the foothills of the
towering Himalayas, near the kingdom of Nepal.
Under an ancient arrangement, the Champaran peasants were
sharecroppers. Rajkumar Shukla was one of them. He was illiterate but
resolute. He had come to the Congress session to complain about the
injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, and somebody had probably said,
"Speak to Gandhi."
Gandhi told Shukla he had an appointment in Cawnpore and was also
committed to go to other parts of India. Shukla accompanied him
everywhere. Then Gandhi returned to his ashram near Ahmedabad. Shukla
followed him to the ashram. For weeks he never left Gandhi's side.
"Fix a date," he begged.
Impressed by the sharecropper's tenacity and story Gandhi said, "I have to
be in Calcutta on such-and-such a date. Come and meet me and take me
from there."
Months passed. Shukla was sitting on his haunches at the appointed spot in
Calcutta when Gandhi arrived; he waited till Gandhi was free. Then the two
of them boarded a train for the city of Patna in Bihar. There Shukla led him to
the house of a lawyer named Rajendra Prasad who later became President of
the Congress party and of India. Rajendra Prasad was out of town, but the
servants knew Shukla as a poor yeoman who pestered their master to help
the indigo sharecroppers. So they let him stay on the grounds with his
,companion, Gandhi, whom they took to be another peasant. But Gandhi was
not permitted to draw water from the well lest some drops from his bucket
pollute the entire source; how did they know that he was not an
untouchable?
Gandhi decided to go first to Muzzafarpur, which was en route to
Champaran, to obtain more complete information about conditions than
Shukla was capable of imparting. He accordingly sent a telegram to
Professor J.B. Kripalani, of the Arts College in Muzzafarpur, whom he had
seen at Tagore's Shantiniketan school. The train arrived at midnight, 15 April
1917. Kripalani was waiting at the station with a large body of students.
Gandhi stayed there for two days in the home of Professor Malkani, a teacher
in a government school. "It was an extraordinary thing 'in those days,"
Gandhi commented, "for a government professor to harbour a man like me".
In smaller localities, the Indians were afraid to show sympathy for advocates
of home-rule.
The news of Gandhi's advent and of the nature of his mission spread quickly
through Muzzafarpur and to Champaran. Sharecroppers from Champaran
began arriving on foot and by conveyance to see their champion.
Muzzafarpur lawyers called on Gandhi to brief him; they frequently
represented peasant groups in court; they told him about their cases and
reported the size of their fee.
Gandhi chided the lawyers for collecting big fee from the sharecroppers. He
said, “I have come to the conclusion that we should stop going to law courts.
Taking such cases to the courts does litte good. Where the peasants are so
crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is
to be free from fear."
Most of the arable land in the Champaran district was divided into large
estates owned by Englishmen and worked by Indian tenants. The chief
commercial crop was indigo. The landlords compelled all tenants to plant
three twentieths or 15 per cent of their holdings with indigo and surrender
the entire indigo harvest as rent. This was done by long-term contract.
Presently, the landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic
indigo. They, thereupon, obtained agreements from the sharecroppers to pay
them compensation for being released from the 15 per cent arrangement.
,The sharecropping arrangement was irksome to the peasants, and many
signed willingly. Those who resisted, engaged lawyers; the landlords hired
thugs. Meanwhile, the information about synthetic indigo reached the
illiterate peasants who had signed, and they wanted their money back.
At this point Gandhi arrived in Champaran.
He began by trying to get the facts. First he visited the secretary of the
British landlord's association. The secretary told him that they could give no
information to an outsider. Gandhi answered that he was no outsider.
Next, Gandhi called on the British official commissioner of the Tirhut division
in which the Champaran district lay. "The commissioner," Gandhi reports,
"proceeded to bully me and advised me forthwith to leave Tirhut."
Gandhi did not leave. Instead he proceeded to Motihari, the capital of
Champaran. Several lawyers accompanied him. At the railway station, a vast
multitude greeted Gandhi. He went to a house and, using it as headquarters,
continued his investigations. A report came in that a peasant had been
maltreated in a nearby village. Gandhi decided to go and see; the next
morning he started out on the back of an elephant. He had not proceeded far
when the police superintendent's messenger overtook him and ordered him
to return to town in his carriage. Gandhi complied. The messenger drove
Gandhi home where he served him with an official notice to quit Champaran
immediately. Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice and wrote on it that he
would disobey the order.
In consequence, Gandhi received a summons to appear in court the next
day.
All night Gandhi remained awake. He telegraphed Rajendra Prasad to come
from Bihar with influential friends. He sent instructions to the ashram. He
wired a full report to the Viceroy. Morning found the town of Motihari black
with peasants. They did not know Gandhi's record in South Africa. They had
merely heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with
the authorities. Their spontaneous demonstration, in thousands, around the
courthouse was the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British.
The officials felt powerless without Gandhi's cooperation. He helped them
regulate the crowd. He was polite and friendly. He was giving them concrete
, proof that their might, hitherto dreaded and unquestioned, could be
challenged by Indians.
The government was baffled. The prosecutor requested the judge to
postpone the trial. Apparently, the authorities wished to consult their
superiors.
Gandhi protested against the delay. He read a statement pleading guilty. He
was involved, he told the court, in a "conflict of duties" - on the one hand,
not to set a bad example as a lawbreaker; on the other hand, to render the
"humanitarian and national service" for which he had come. He disregarded
the order to leave, "not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in
obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience". He asked
the penalty due.
The magistrate announced that he would pronounce sentence after a two-
hour recess and asked Gandhi to furnish bail for those 120 minutes. Gandhi
refused. The judge released him without bail.
When the court reconvened, the judge said he would not deliver the
judgment for several days. Meanwhile he allowed Gandhi to remain at
liberty.
Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and several other
prominent lawyers had arrived from Bihar. They conferred with Gandhi. What
would they do if he was sentenced to prison, Gandhi asked. Why, the senior
lawyer replied, they had come to advise and help him; if he went to jail there
would be nobody to advise and they would go home.
What about the injustice to the sharecroppers, Gandhi demanded. The
lawyers withdrew to consult. Rajendra Prasad has recorded the upshot of
their consultations "They thought, amongst themselves, that Gandhi was
totally a stranger, and yet he was prepared to go to prison for the sake of the
peasants; if they, on the other hand, being not only residents of the adjoining
districts but also those who claimed to have served these peasants, should
go home, it would be shameful desertion.”
They accordingly went back to Gandhi and told him they were ready to follow
him into jail. "The battle of Champaran is won," he exclaimed. Then he took a
Louis Fischer
When I first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, in central
India, he said, "I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the
departure of the British. It was in 1917."
He had gone to the December 1916 annual convention of the Indian National
Congress party in Lucknow. There were 2,301 delegates and many visitors.
During the proceedings, Gandhi recounted, "a peasant came up to me
looking like any other peasant in India, poor and emaciated, and said, 'I am
Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my
district!" Gandhi had never heard of the place. It was in the foothills of the
towering Himalayas, near the kingdom of Nepal.
Under an ancient arrangement, the Champaran peasants were
sharecroppers. Rajkumar Shukla was one of them. He was illiterate but
resolute. He had come to the Congress session to complain about the
injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, and somebody had probably said,
"Speak to Gandhi."
Gandhi told Shukla he had an appointment in Cawnpore and was also
committed to go to other parts of India. Shukla accompanied him
everywhere. Then Gandhi returned to his ashram near Ahmedabad. Shukla
followed him to the ashram. For weeks he never left Gandhi's side.
"Fix a date," he begged.
Impressed by the sharecropper's tenacity and story Gandhi said, "I have to
be in Calcutta on such-and-such a date. Come and meet me and take me
from there."
Months passed. Shukla was sitting on his haunches at the appointed spot in
Calcutta when Gandhi arrived; he waited till Gandhi was free. Then the two
of them boarded a train for the city of Patna in Bihar. There Shukla led him to
the house of a lawyer named Rajendra Prasad who later became President of
the Congress party and of India. Rajendra Prasad was out of town, but the
servants knew Shukla as a poor yeoman who pestered their master to help
the indigo sharecroppers. So they let him stay on the grounds with his
,companion, Gandhi, whom they took to be another peasant. But Gandhi was
not permitted to draw water from the well lest some drops from his bucket
pollute the entire source; how did they know that he was not an
untouchable?
Gandhi decided to go first to Muzzafarpur, which was en route to
Champaran, to obtain more complete information about conditions than
Shukla was capable of imparting. He accordingly sent a telegram to
Professor J.B. Kripalani, of the Arts College in Muzzafarpur, whom he had
seen at Tagore's Shantiniketan school. The train arrived at midnight, 15 April
1917. Kripalani was waiting at the station with a large body of students.
Gandhi stayed there for two days in the home of Professor Malkani, a teacher
in a government school. "It was an extraordinary thing 'in those days,"
Gandhi commented, "for a government professor to harbour a man like me".
In smaller localities, the Indians were afraid to show sympathy for advocates
of home-rule.
The news of Gandhi's advent and of the nature of his mission spread quickly
through Muzzafarpur and to Champaran. Sharecroppers from Champaran
began arriving on foot and by conveyance to see their champion.
Muzzafarpur lawyers called on Gandhi to brief him; they frequently
represented peasant groups in court; they told him about their cases and
reported the size of their fee.
Gandhi chided the lawyers for collecting big fee from the sharecroppers. He
said, “I have come to the conclusion that we should stop going to law courts.
Taking such cases to the courts does litte good. Where the peasants are so
crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is
to be free from fear."
Most of the arable land in the Champaran district was divided into large
estates owned by Englishmen and worked by Indian tenants. The chief
commercial crop was indigo. The landlords compelled all tenants to plant
three twentieths or 15 per cent of their holdings with indigo and surrender
the entire indigo harvest as rent. This was done by long-term contract.
Presently, the landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic
indigo. They, thereupon, obtained agreements from the sharecroppers to pay
them compensation for being released from the 15 per cent arrangement.
,The sharecropping arrangement was irksome to the peasants, and many
signed willingly. Those who resisted, engaged lawyers; the landlords hired
thugs. Meanwhile, the information about synthetic indigo reached the
illiterate peasants who had signed, and they wanted their money back.
At this point Gandhi arrived in Champaran.
He began by trying to get the facts. First he visited the secretary of the
British landlord's association. The secretary told him that they could give no
information to an outsider. Gandhi answered that he was no outsider.
Next, Gandhi called on the British official commissioner of the Tirhut division
in which the Champaran district lay. "The commissioner," Gandhi reports,
"proceeded to bully me and advised me forthwith to leave Tirhut."
Gandhi did not leave. Instead he proceeded to Motihari, the capital of
Champaran. Several lawyers accompanied him. At the railway station, a vast
multitude greeted Gandhi. He went to a house and, using it as headquarters,
continued his investigations. A report came in that a peasant had been
maltreated in a nearby village. Gandhi decided to go and see; the next
morning he started out on the back of an elephant. He had not proceeded far
when the police superintendent's messenger overtook him and ordered him
to return to town in his carriage. Gandhi complied. The messenger drove
Gandhi home where he served him with an official notice to quit Champaran
immediately. Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice and wrote on it that he
would disobey the order.
In consequence, Gandhi received a summons to appear in court the next
day.
All night Gandhi remained awake. He telegraphed Rajendra Prasad to come
from Bihar with influential friends. He sent instructions to the ashram. He
wired a full report to the Viceroy. Morning found the town of Motihari black
with peasants. They did not know Gandhi's record in South Africa. They had
merely heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with
the authorities. Their spontaneous demonstration, in thousands, around the
courthouse was the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British.
The officials felt powerless without Gandhi's cooperation. He helped them
regulate the crowd. He was polite and friendly. He was giving them concrete
, proof that their might, hitherto dreaded and unquestioned, could be
challenged by Indians.
The government was baffled. The prosecutor requested the judge to
postpone the trial. Apparently, the authorities wished to consult their
superiors.
Gandhi protested against the delay. He read a statement pleading guilty. He
was involved, he told the court, in a "conflict of duties" - on the one hand,
not to set a bad example as a lawbreaker; on the other hand, to render the
"humanitarian and national service" for which he had come. He disregarded
the order to leave, "not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in
obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience". He asked
the penalty due.
The magistrate announced that he would pronounce sentence after a two-
hour recess and asked Gandhi to furnish bail for those 120 minutes. Gandhi
refused. The judge released him without bail.
When the court reconvened, the judge said he would not deliver the
judgment for several days. Meanwhile he allowed Gandhi to remain at
liberty.
Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and several other
prominent lawyers had arrived from Bihar. They conferred with Gandhi. What
would they do if he was sentenced to prison, Gandhi asked. Why, the senior
lawyer replied, they had come to advise and help him; if he went to jail there
would be nobody to advise and they would go home.
What about the injustice to the sharecroppers, Gandhi demanded. The
lawyers withdrew to consult. Rajendra Prasad has recorded the upshot of
their consultations "They thought, amongst themselves, that Gandhi was
totally a stranger, and yet he was prepared to go to prison for the sake of the
peasants; if they, on the other hand, being not only residents of the adjoining
districts but also those who claimed to have served these peasants, should
go home, it would be shameful desertion.”
They accordingly went back to Gandhi and told him they were ready to follow
him into jail. "The battle of Champaran is won," he exclaimed. Then he took a
