BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 135 of 144

Correct — C, Instituted the Champaran Agrarian Committee. Gandhi's own account in his autobiography sets out exactly how it came about, and it is worth following because the sequence is the answer. Gandhi reached Champaran in April 1917 at the insistence of Raj Kumar Shukla, an indigo ryot who had pursued him from the Lucknow Congress, and began recording the peasants' statements village by village; thousands were taken. The planters pressed the administration, and Gandhi received a letter from the Bihar Government asking whether his inquiry should not now end and whether he should not leave Bihar. He replied that the Government had two honourable exits: to accept the ryots' grievances as genuine and redress them, or to recognise that the ryots had made out a prima facie case for an official inquiry, which should then be instituted at once. It chose the second. Sir Edward Gait, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa, called Gandhi in, offered to appoint an inquiry, and invited him to serve on it. Gandhi accepted on three stated conditions: that he remain free to confer with his co-workers throughout, that Government acknowledge he did not cease to be the ryots' advocate by sitting on the Committee, and that if the result failed to satisfy him he remain free to advise the ryots on what to do next. Gait accepted all three as just and proper and announced the inquiry, with Sir Frank Sly as Chairman. The Committee found for the ryots and reported unanimously — Gandhi credits Gait's firmness for the unanimity — recommending that the planters refund a portion of the exactions the Committee had found unlawful and that the tinkathia system be abolished by law. The settlement fixed the refund at twenty-five per cent of the money unlawfully taken, a figure Gandhi accepted deliberately because the principle mattered more than the sum: the planters, who had never conceded that they owed the ryots anything, were now repaying. The recommendations were carried into law as the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918, over strenuous opposition from the planters. Tinkathia, in force for about a century, ended; within a decade the planters had left the district. That is what the stem means by a step taken "to address the issue", and it is also the classic colonial response to an agitation the administration could neither ignore nor safely crush — appoint a committee of enquiry, then legislate on its report.

• (a)Appointed Mahatma Gandhi as the Governor of Champaran — There was no such office, and the setter has built the option out of a half-true memory that Gandhi was given an official position. Champaran was a district of the Tirhut Division in the province of Bihar and Orissa, administered by a Collector — Mr Heycock at the time — under a Lieutenant-Governor at Patna; a district has a Collector, never a Governor. An Indian did briefly head a province under the earlier dispensation — Lord Sinha, the same Satyendra Prasanna Sinha who was the first Indian on the Viceroy's Executive Council, served as Governor of Bihar and Orissa in 1920-21 — but that was a Crown appointment to a whole province three years after Champaran, not a post any agitator was handed as the outcome of a satyagraha. What Gandhi actually received was a seat as an ordinary member of a government enquiry committee chaired by Sir Frank Sly, and he took it only on the express condition that it did not stop him acting as the ryots' advocate.
• (b)Enforced strict curfew and imposed Martial Law in the region — Plausible because martial law was a real colonial instrument, used in the Punjab in April 1919 after the Rowlatt disturbances — but Champaran went the other way, and that is precisely why it matters. The administration's coercive step was an order under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code directing Gandhi to leave the district. He disobeyed it, went to court, and pleaded guilty, telling the magistrate that he disregarded the order "not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience." Before judgment could be delivered the Lieutenant-Governor ordered the case withdrawn and the Collector wrote that Gandhi was at liberty to conduct his inquiry with whatever official help he needed. It was, in Gandhi's words, "the country's first direct object-lesson in Civil Disobedience" — the opposite of martial law.
• (d)Declared Champaran as an independent State — Historically impossible in every particular, and it is on the paper to make option (c) findable rather than to be believed. Champaran was British Indian territory, not a princely state, so there was nothing to declare independent; the largest landholding in it, the Bettiah Raj, was a zamindari estate under the Permanent Settlement, not a sovereignty; and the British conceded no territorial independence anywhere in India before 1947. Nor did the peasants ask for it — the Champaran demand was strictly agrarian, aimed at the tinkathia obligation and the illegal enhancements, and Gandhi kept it that way deliberately so that the administration could concede without appearing to concede on politics.

Champaran's grievance was contractual bondage dressed as tenancy. Under the tinkathia system a ryot was obliged, as a condition of his holding, to grow indigo for the European planter on three kathas out of every twenty of his land — twenty kathas making a bigha — and to sell it at a price the planter set. The system was already about a century old when Gandhi arrived. What made it explosive was that indigo had stopped being worth growing: German chemists had synthesised the dye, the world price collapsed, and the planters, no longer wanting the crop, converted the obligation into money instead — an enhanced rent known as sharahbeshi, or a lump-sum commutation known as tawan, extracted from tenants for release from an obligation the planter no longer had any use for. Then the First World War cut off German dye, indigo became briefly profitable again, and the same tenants were pushed back to the plant. That is the double squeeze Raj Kumar Shukla travelled to Lucknow to describe. Gandhi's method in response was investigative rather than confrontational: recording thousands of sworn statements, refusing to leave when ordered out, and forcing the Government to choose between prosecuting him and inquiring into the facts. The lawyers who worked with him on that survey — Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad, Mazharul Haq, alongside J. B. Kripalani, Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh — became, almost to a man, the political leadership of Bihar for the next forty years.

Three of the four options can be struck out on general knowledge of how colonial administration worked, without knowing a single Champaran fact, and the exam is really testing whether you can then supply the fourth by name. No district in British India had a Governor; no part of British India was declared independent; and martial law, where it was used, was not described as a step to 'address the issue' but as one to suppress a rising. What is left is a committee, and the reason a committee is the right answer in general — not merely by elimination — is that a commission of enquiry was the standard colonial device for defusing an agitation it could not safely put down: it bought time, it looked judicial, and it produced a report the government could then legislate on. The single discriminating fact to carry is that the Champaran Committee had Gandhi himself on it as a member, chaired by Sir Frank Sly and appointed by Lieutenant-Governor Sir Edward Gait, and that its report produced the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918. Note the trap in the stem's opening words, 'mass agitation': Champaran was not a mass agitation in the sense of hartals and processions. It was an inquiry conducted under the protection of Gandhi's willingness to go to jail, and the government's response was proportionate to that — a committee, not a crackdown.

• Tinkathia obliged the ryot to grow indigo on three kathas out of every twenty of his holding (twenty kathas make one bigha), at a price fixed by the planter; the system had run for about a century when Gandhi reached Champaran in April 1917
• When German synthetic dye destroyed the indigo market, planters commuted the obligation into an enhanced rent (sharahbeshi) or a lump-sum payment (tawan); the First World War cut off German dye and the obligation to grow was pressed again
• Ordered out of the district under Section 144 CrPC, Gandhi pleaded guilty and told the court he had disregarded the order "not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience"; the Lieutenant-Governor withdrew the case before judgment
• Sir Edward Gait, Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa, appointed the enquiry and invited Gandhi onto it; Sir Frank Sly was Chairman, and Gandhi joined on three conditions — freedom to confer with his co-workers, recognition that he remained the ryots' advocate, and freedom to advise the ryots if the outcome did not satisfy him
• The Committee reported unanimously for the ryots: the planters were to refund part of what the Committee found had been unlawfully taken, and tinkathia was to be abolished by law; the refund was settled at twenty-five per cent
• The Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918 gave effect to the report over the planters' opposition; tinkathia ended and within a decade the planters had left the district
• Gandhi's Champaran co-workers included Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad, Mazharul Haq, J. B. Kripalani, Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh
• Centenary: the Prime Minister attended the concluding ceremony of the Champaran Satyagraha centenary at Motihari on 10 April 2017, and India Post issued three commemorative stamps and a miniature sheet on 13 May 2017

• Believing that martial law was imposed in Champaran. The coercive order used was Section 144 CrPC; martial law belongs to the Punjab in April 1919
• Crediting Rajendra Prasad with bringing Gandhi to Champaran. It was Raj Kumar Shukla; Rajendra Prasad joined the work afterwards
• Treating the twenty-five per cent refund as a defeat. Gandhi took it because the planters' admission that they owed the ryots anything at all was the point, and the tinkathia abolition was the substantive win

BPSC asks Champaran as a Bihar administrative and institutional fact — which committee, appointed by whom, in agreement with whom, leading to which Act — and it has asked the Champaran Agrarian Committee outright more than once, so the name and the machinery are examinable, not just the story. UPSC asks Champaran for its meaning in the national movement: what was significant about it (2018: peasant unrest joining the freedom struggle), who actually persuaded Gandhi to go and who worked with him (2010), and where his first satyagraha was launched (2000). Learn the institutional detail for BPSC and the interpretive line for UPSC; the same episode serves both.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The recommendations of the Champaran enquiry committee were given effect by which enactment?

  • (a)The Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885
  • (b)The Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918
  • (c)The Bihar Tenancy Act, 1934
  • (d)The Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950

  Answer(b) The Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918 — it abolished the tinkathia system in line with the committee's unanimous report. The Bihar Land Reforms Act of 1950 belongs to zamindari abolition three decades later.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the tinkathia system prevailing in Champaran, a tenant was obliged to grow indigo on

  • (a)three kathas out of every twenty of his holding
  • (b)five kathas out of every twenty of his holding
  • (c)one-third of his entire holding
  • (d)any land the planter selected, without limit

  Answer(a) three kathas out of every twenty of his holding — twenty kathas make one bigha, so the obligation ran to three kathas per bigha, at a price the planter fixed.