The first major civil disobedience movement to be initiated by Gandhi was the Champaran Satyagraha in the small district of Champaran in Northern Bihar, which was a centre of revolutionary activity in April 1917. It redefined the freedom struggle and his identity in the struggle. Being predominantly agricultural, the area was poor and oppressed by the colonial powers, and it was not the political heart of British India, which was closer to Nepal.
Gandhi was already a global leader in the field of satyagraha – the philosophy of “moral force and truth-seeking” by 1915 when he returned to India from South Africa. Until 1917, however, he had been more of an onlooker to Indian politics. Champaran changed that. It was the time when he came back as an ex-patriate activist and became the moral conscience of the independence movement in India.
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The Indigo Fields of Exploitation
The Champaran trouble was related to the indigo plantation. European planters introduced a system called tinkathia for the tenant farmers, in which they were asked to plant 3 kathas of indigo out of the total twenty kathas of land, which equals 15%. When the soil was exhausted, it became infertile, and the peasant remained in debt and had to take advances and loans. At the beginning of the 20th century, when indigo became available in synthetic form in Germany, the price of indigo dropped all over the world, but the planters continued to collect rents and illegal levies.
Peasant Raj Kumar Shukla could have been ignored by the leaders, had it not been for his persistence and complaints. In 1916, he encouraged Gandhi, who was at Congress at Lucknow, to visit Champaran. Gandhi accepted, and in April 1917, he came to look into the matter. He discovered that institutional exploitation of peasants was tied to contracts under threat and heavy fines. The documents of the colonies recognised the conflict but minimised oppression. Gandhi had a strong desire to hear the firsthand accounts.
The British officers ordered Gandhi to be removed from Champaran within few days under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. He did not submit to, he did not obey, he preferred civil disobedience. He wrote to the district magistrate that he would disobey the order with respect since his conscience was saying to him that he should continue with his investigation.
This was no revolution but rather a disciplined action. Gandhi turned up in court and pled guilty and requested for the severest punishment. But the colonial officials decided not to pursue the indictment because they were unsure how to deal with an angry chief. This was a moral victory and a new political start in India.
As many as 8,000 statements were taken by Gandhi and his volunteers, including Rajendra Prasad and J.B. Kripalani, about forced cultivation, illegal cesses, intimidation and other matters. These concrete documents were evidence-based, not a spontaneous protest.
Negotiation as Nonviolent Power
As public interest grew, and careful records were kept, the government felt it was necessary to have an official inquiry committee to which Gandhi was appointed. In 1918, a compromise was reached with the planters. The settlement provided for refunds of a quarter of the illegitimate exactions and, most importantly, the phasing out of the Tinkathia system.
The money was the same, but the symbolic achievement was far more significant than the refund of percentages, Gandhi said. When colonial powers condoned the wrongdoing of indigo planters, it proved that nonviolent opposition could bring about structural change.
Subsequent work on colonial policy uncovered the problematic aspects of indigo contracts and substantiated numerous complaints from 1917. The movement shifted from the elite petitioning to the mobilisation of rural masses, in which almost 70% of Indians earn their livelihood from agriculture, and peasant mobilisation was necessary for national change.
The Making of a National Leader
Champaran transformed Gandhi from a regional to a national leader and was the first use of satyagraha as a mass strategy in India. He became the leader of the Non-Cooperation Movement in three years and of the Salt March in thirteen years, Champaran being the proving ground.
The movement also encouraged sanitation, education and self-reliance. Temporary schools & volunteers: raised awareness on hygiene and literacy. A combination of protest and social reform became his hallmark.
Historians view Champaran as an early turning point in the shift in Indian resistance from constitutional agitation to mass civil resistance, and as a crucial step in showing that rural grievances could play a role in politics without resorting to violence and that disciplined disobedience could pose a threat to an empire greater than rebellion.
The Heart of a Community that Changed a Nation
April 1917, in the conventional sense, was neither dramatic nor was it the time when pitched battles were fought, or independence declared. A new grammar of resistance, however, was written in the dusty court of Motihari and the indigo fields of Champaran.
Champaran Satyagraha was small in size but historic in impact. It did away with a wrongful agrarian system, made Gandhi a national figure and gave India a plan which would form the foundation of the struggle for the next three decades. Gandhi had not only begun a protest but also chosen to support poor farmers in their resistance to imperial rule. He began a revolution that would culminate in independence within the next three decades.
Champaran is an example of how revolutions are not confined to the capitals, but can begin in villages; how they are not fought with weapons in hand, but with truth.
