BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 133 of 144

Correct — C, Ahmedabad Strike. The dispute was the Ahmedabad mill-hands' strike of February-March 1918, and Gandhi's own account of it in his autobiography is the best evidence there is. Anasuyabehn Sarabhai wrote to him about the condition of labour in the city; the workers wanted a fifty per cent rise, the owners offered twenty, and the owners — led by Anasuyabehn's own brother, Sheth Ambalal Sarabhai — refused to accept the principle of arbitration. Gandhi therefore advised a strike, on four conditions he made the workers accept beforehand: never to resort to violence, never to molest blacklegs, never to depend upon alms, and to earn bread during the strike by any other honest labour. The workers took a pledge at a general meeting, met daily under a tree on the bank of the Sabarmati, and paraded the city behind a banner reading "Ek-Tek" — keep the pledge. For the first two weeks they held. Then, as Gandhi writes, "they began to show signs of flagging", attendance at the meetings thinned, their attitude to the blacklegs turned menacing, and "the information was brought to me that the strikers had begun to totter." At a mill-hands' meeting the words came to him unbidden: "Unless the strikers rally and continue the strike till a settlement is reached, or till they leave the mills altogether, I will not touch any food." That is the first time Gandhi used the fast as an instrument in a public dispute in India, and it is the point of the question. Two details make it worth remembering precisely. First, the fast was aimed at his own side — at workers who were about to break a pledge taken at his suggestion — and not at the employers. Gandhi was explicit that a fast aimed at an opponent is not satyagraha: "With the mill-owners, I could only plead; to fast against them would amount to coercion." Second, he judged his own fast defective anyway, because he was on close terms with the owners and knew the fast "was bound to put pressure upon them, as in fact it did." It worked quickly. Anandshankar Dhruva was appointed arbitrator, the strike was called off after Gandhi had fasted only three days, and a settlement was reached on the twenty-first day of the strike; the arbitration eventually gave the workers the thirty-five per cent increase that lay between the two positions. Out of the same dispute grew the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association, the Majoor Mahajan Sangh, in 1920.

• (a)Non-Cooperation Movement — Two years too late and the wrong kind of fast. Non-Cooperation ran from 1920 to 1922, after Ahmedabad, after Kheda and after Rowlatt. Gandhi did fast during it, but the fasts of that period were penances for violence committed by his own side — most famously when he withdrew the movement after the burning of the police station at Chauri Chaura in February 1922 — not an instrument used to hold a campaign together. A penitential fast after a failure is a different device from a fast declared in the middle of a live dispute to keep a pledge alive, which is what Ahmedabad was.
• (b)Bardoli Satyagraha — Chronologically last of the four and not Gandhi's campaign at all. The Bardoli Satyagraha began on 12 February 1928 as a no-tax movement in Surat district against a twenty-two per cent enhancement of the land-revenue assessment, and it was led by Vallabhbhai Patel — it is the campaign that earned him the title Sardar. Gandhi supported it but did not direct it and did not fast for it. A candidate who reaches for Bardoli is usually remembering that it was a famous Gujarat agitation and forgetting that Ahmedabad, in the same province, came a decade earlier.
• (d)Rowlatt Satyagraha — The best distractor on the paper, because there genuinely was fasting in the Rowlatt Satyagraha — and it still is not the answer. Gandhi asked that the hartal of 6 April 1919 against the Rowlatt Act be observed as a day of humiliation and prayer, with a twenty-four-hour fast and a suspension of business; and after the violence that followed he fasted in penance for what he called his 'Himalayan miscalculation'. But a collective day of fasting is an act of observance by a whole movement, and a penitential fast is an act of atonement. Neither is the fast used as a weapon in a bargaining dispute, and both fall in 1919, a year after Ahmedabad.

The fast is the most misunderstood item in Gandhi's method, and he was stricter about it than his admirers. Satyagraha rests on self-suffering: the satyagrahi accepts injury rather than inflicting it, on the reasoning that suffering voluntarily borne can change an opponent's mind where argument and force cannot. A fast is the purest form of that, but Gandhi held that it becomes illegitimate the moment it is aimed at someone who does not love you, because then it stops being self-suffering and becomes blackmail. His fasts therefore fall into recognisable classes: fasts of penance for the failures of his own followers, as after Chauri Chaura; fasts to reform his own community, as the twenty-one-day fast for Hindu-Muslim unity in 1924 and the fasts against untouchability; and one fast unto death against a government decision, at Yerwada jail in September 1932, against the separate electorates for the Depressed Classes granted by Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award, which ended in the Poona Pact with Dr Ambedkar. Ahmedabad in 1918 is where the instrument first appears in India, and it appears in the first class — a fast directed at workers who were his own side, undertaken because, as he put it, the lapse was one "in which, as their representative, I felt I had a share".

The reliable way through this question is a date line, because all four options are datable and only one of them is early. Gandhi returned from South Africa in January 1915 and spent his first year travelling. Champaran came in April 1917 — his first satyagraha on Indian soil, over the tinkathia indigo system, and it involved no fast. Ahmedabad came in February-March 1918. Kheda followed almost immediately in 1918. The Rowlatt Satyagraha is 1919, Non-Cooperation 1920-22, Bardoli 1928. Order the four printed options and Ahmedabad is the earliest by a clear year, which settles it without any knowledge of the fast itself. The single discriminating fact, if you want to be certain rather than merely early, is the target of the fast: at Ahmedabad it was pointed at the strikers, not the employers, and that is the signature of a Gandhian fast. The trap most candidates fall into is treating Champaran as the answer by reflex — it is the famous first, and it is a Bihar movement on a Bihar paper — but Champaran is not among the options, and importing it produces a guess. The second trap is Bardoli, which feels like a Gandhi campaign because it is Gujarat and 'satyagraha' is in its name; it was Vallabhbhai Patel's, and it is ten years later.

• Ahmedabad mill-hands' strike, February-March 1918: the workers asked for a fifty per cent rise and the owners offered twenty; the arbitration that closed the dispute eventually gave thirty-five per cent
• Gandhi's declaration at the mill-hands' meeting, in his own words: "Unless the strikers rally and continue the strike till a settlement is reached, or till they leave the mills altogether, I will not touch any food"
• He fasted for three days; the strike lasted twenty-one days in all; Anandshankar Dhruva was appointed arbitrator, and the mill-owners marked the settlement by distributing sweets to the workers
• The workers' case was brought to Gandhi by Anasuyabehn Sarabhai, whose own brother Sheth Ambalal Sarabhai led the mill-owners; Vallabhbhai Patel and Shankarlal Banker were among the co-workers Gandhi came to know closely during the strike
• The strikers met daily under a tree on the bank of the Sabarmati and marched behind a banner reading 'Ek-Tek' (keep the pledge); to keep them off charity, Maganlal Gandhi employed them carrying baskets of sand for the foundation of the Ashram's weaving school, with Anasuyabehn leading the line
• Gandhi called the fast defective in his own account — "With the mill-owners, I could only plead; to fast against them would amount to coercion" — and said it was undertaken for the labourers' lapse, in which as their representative he shared
• The Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association (Majoor Mahajan Sangh) grew out of the dispute in 1920, organised by Anasuya Sarabhai with Gandhi; UPSC's 2009 key attributes its founding to Gandhi
• For contrast, Gandhi's only fast unto death against a government decision came on 20 September 1932 at Yerwada jail, against the separate electorates for the Depressed Classes in the Communal Award; it ended in the Poona Pact

• Answering 'Champaran' from reflex because it was Gandhi's first satyagraha in India. Champaran involved no fast, and on this question it is not even among the options
• Assuming Bardoli was a Gandhi campaign because it is Gujarat and carries the word satyagraha. It was Vallabhbhai Patel's, in 1928
• Treating the fast as a device aimed at the government. At Ahmedabad it was aimed at the wavering strikers, and Gandhi held that a fast against an opponent is coercion, not satyagraha

BPSC asks the Gandhian years as first-and-which one-liners — which movement first used the fast, which satyagraha came first, who led which agitation — where the whole item turns on ordering three or four familiar names by date. UPSC works the same material harder: it pairs movements with the lieutenants who ran them (2005: Champaran-Rajendra Prasad, Ahmedabad Mill Workers, Kheda-Vallabhbhai Patel), it asks why a satyagraha was launched (2011, on Kheda), it asks what was significant about one (2018, on Champaran), and when it does ask about a fast it asks for the occasion and the reason rather than the movement (2012, on the 1932 fast and the Communal Award).

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was appointed arbitrator in the Ahmedabad mill-workers' dispute of 1918, on whose appointment Gandhi broke his fast?

  • (a)Anandshankar Dhruva
  • (b)Ambalal Sarabhai
  • (c)Shankarlal Banker
  • (d)Vallabhbhai Patel

  Answer(a) Anandshankar Dhruva — he was appointed arbitrator and the strike was called off after Gandhi had fasted three days. Ambalal Sarabhai led the mill-owners; Banker and Patel were Gandhi's co-workers in the strike.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Arrange the following in correct chronological order: 1. Kheda Satyagraha 2. Champaran Satyagraha 3. Bardoli Satyagraha 4. Ahmedabad mill-workers' strike

  • (a)2 - 4 - 1 - 3
  • (b)2 - 1 - 4 - 3
  • (c)4 - 2 - 1 - 3
  • (d)2 - 4 - 3 - 1

  Answer(a) 2 - 4 - 1 - 3 — Champaran April 1917, the Ahmedabad strike February-March 1918, Kheda from March 1918, and Bardoli from 12 February 1928 under Vallabhbhai Patel.