BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 12 of 142

Correct — B, Mahatma Gandhi. The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, in what is now the West and East Champaran districts of north Bihar, was Gandhi's first satyagraha on Indian soil, and it is the event that turns him from a returned South African lawyer into a national leader. He was brought there by Raj Kumar Shukla, a cultivator of Champaran who had pursued him since the Lucknow session of the Congress in 1916 with an account of the tinkathia system — under which tenants of the indigo planters were obliged to plant three kathas in every twenty of their holding with indigo for the factory, and were then charged a lump sum called tawan when the planters wanted to be released from the obligation as synthetic dye destroyed the market. Gandhi reached the district in April 1917, was served with an order to leave under the district magistrate's powers, refused, and offered to accept the penalty — the act that made the case famous, since the government withdrew the prosecution rather than jail him. He then took evidence from thousands of tenants. The government's response was to negotiate: Gandhi held interviews with the Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa and his Executive Council at Ranchi from 4 to 6 June 1917, a resolution was passed on 10 June and published on 12 June appointing a Champaran Agrarian Enquiry Committee, and Gandhi joined it as a member — on his own three conditions, one of which was the government's acknowledgement that by sitting on it he did not cease to be the ryots' advocate. The Committee sat under F. G. Sly, held its first public sitting at Bettiah on 17 July 1917, heard Raj Kumar Shukla for the tenants on 19 July, and produced a settlement under which the planters refunded a quarter of the tawan they had taken. It was given legal effect by the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918. No other name on this list is connected with any of it.

• (a)Sardar Patel — The strongest distractor, because Patel did lead peasant satyagrahas — just not this one, and not in this province. He led the Kheda satyagraha in Gujarat in 1918, when the administration refused to suspend land revenue in a year of crop failure, and the Bardoli satyagraha of 1928 against a steep revenue enhancement, which earned him the title Sardar. Both are Gujarat, both are revenue disputes with the government, and neither is Champaran, which was a dispute with private European planters.
• (c)Subhas Chandra Bose — Chronologically impossible. In 1917 Bose was a student; he went to Cambridge, passed the Indian Civil Service examination in 1920 and resigned it, and entered politics under C. R. Das in Calcutta only from 1921. His leadership belongs to the 1930s and 1940s — Congress President in 1938 and 1939, the Forward Bloc, and the Indian National Army.
• (d)Jawaharlal Nehru — In 1917 Nehru was a young barrister recently returned from England and active in the Home Rule League, not a leader of any agrarian movement. His own association with peasant agitation begins in 1920, when he toured the Awadh countryside during the Kisan Sabha movement of Rae Bareli and Pratapgarh — three years later and several hundred kilometres to the west.

Champaran matters for three reasons beyond Gandhi's personal biography. First, it was the moment peasant grievance was joined to the national movement — until then the Congress had been a body of professionals passing resolutions about councils and services, and Champaran showed that a mass constituency existed in the villages. Second, it established the method: go to the place, gather evidence in detail, refuse to leave when ordered out, accept the legal penalty rather than resist, and negotiate from the moral position that creates. Third, it built the Bihar leadership of the next thirty years. Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad and Mazharul Haque worked with Gandhi in Champaran, as did J. B. Kripalani and Mahadev Desai; every one of them became a figure of the freedom struggle, and two of them — Rajendra Prasad as India's first President and Sri Krishna Sinha as Bihar's first Chief Minister — went on to run the country and the State.

This is a one-line recall question, and the useful preparation is not the name but the surrounding grid, because that is where BPSC and UPSC both go next. Hold four satyagrahas with their place, year and grievance: Champaran 1917 in Bihar, against indigo planters and the tinkathia system; Ahmedabad 1918, a mill-workers' dispute in which Gandhi first used a hunger strike; Kheda 1918 in Gujarat, for suspension of land revenue after crop failure, with Patel prominent; and Bardoli 1928 in Gujarat, against a revenue enhancement, led by Patel. Two further discriminators are worth carrying because both have been examined. It was Raj Kumar Shukla, not Rajendra Prasad, who persuaded Gandhi to come to Champaran — UPSC has tested exactly that confusion. And the Champaran Agrarian Committee was appointed by agreement between the government and Gandhi himself, which the 71st CCE asked directly; Raj Kumar Shukla appeared before that Committee as a witness rather than as a party to its creation.

• The tinkathia system obliged a tenant to plant three kathas in every twenty of his holding with indigo for the planter's factory; commutation of the obligation was charged for in a lump sum called tawan.
• Gandhi negotiated with the Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa and his Executive Council at Ranchi from 4 to 6 June 1917; the government resolution appointing the Champaran Agrarian Enquiry Committee was passed on 10 June and published on 12 June 1917.
• The Committee was presided over by F. G. Sly, Commissioner of the Central Provinces, with L. C. Adami ICS, Raja Harihar Prasad Narayan Singh, D. J. Reid, G. Rainy ICS and M. K. Gandhi as members; its first public sitting was at Bettiah on 17 July 1917 and Raj Kumar Shukla gave evidence for the tenants on 19 July.
• The settlement required the planters to refund 25 per cent of the tawan collected; the Bettiah Raj refunded Rs 1,60,301-9-9 out of the tawan taken by eighteen factories. The Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918 gave the settlement statutory form.
• Gandhi's Bihar co-workers in Champaran included Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad and Mazharul Haque, along with J. B. Kripalani and Mahadev Desai.

• Crediting Rajendra Prasad with bringing Gandhi to Champaran. It was Raj Kumar Shukla, a Champaran cultivator, who pursued him from the Lucknow Congress of 1916; Rajendra Prasad joined the work after Gandhi arrived.
• Confusing Champaran with Kheda or Bardoli. Champaran was in Bihar and against private European planters; the Gujarat satyagrahas were against the government over land revenue.
• Calling Champaran Gandhi's first satyagraha anywhere. It was his first in India — the method was developed in South Africa from 1906.

BPSC treats Champaran as home ground and asks it every few editions from a different angle — who led it, what the government did in response, who the Agrarian Committee was agreed between, which Bihari leader is matched with which event. UPSC asks it once and asks it analytically, wanting the significance rather than the name: its 2018 question asked what was significant about Champaran and keyed the joining of peasant unrest to the national movement.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The tinkathia system, against which the Champaran Satyagraha was directed, required a tenant to cultivate indigo on

  • (a)three kathas in every twenty of his holding
  • (b)one third of his holding
  • (c)half of his holding
  • (d)the entire irrigated portion of his holding

  Answer(a) three kathas in every twenty of his holding — the obligation the planters imposed on the tenants of Champaran, with a lump sum called tawan charged for release from it once synthetic dye had destroyed the indigo market.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who persuaded Mahatma Gandhi to visit Champaran in 1917 to investigate the condition of the indigo cultivators ?

  • (a)Rajendra Prasad
  • (b)Brajkishore Prasad
  • (c)Raj Kumar Shukla
  • (d)Mazharul Haque

  Answer(c) Raj Kumar Shukla — a cultivator of Champaran who followed Gandhi from the Lucknow session of the Congress in 1916 until he agreed to come. Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad and Mazharul Haque all worked with Gandhi in Champaran, but after his arrival.