NDA (II) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 124 of 150

Correct — C, Satyagraha in Champaran. Gandhi reached Motihari in Champaran on 10 April 1917 at the invitation of the local cultivator Raj Kumar Shukla, to look into the condition of tenants forced under the tinkathia system to grow indigo on part of their holdings. The centenary was therefore due in April 2017, and it opened with a national conclave on 10 April that year; the Postal Department issued three commemorative stamps and a miniature sheet on 13 May 2017, and the concluding ceremony was held on 10 April 2018. Only Champaran matches both the month and the hundred-year gap the stem specifies.

• (a)Satyagraha in Kheda — The Kheda satyagraha, against revenue collection after a failed harvest in Gujarat, belongs to 1918. Its centenary fell in 2018, a year after the one named in the question.
• (b)Dandi March — The Salt March ran from 12 March to 6 April 1930, so its centenary is due in 2030. It is also the wrong scale of event for 1917, since it opened the Civil Disobedience Movement thirteen years later.
• (d)Return from South Africa — Gandhi returned to India in January 1915, so the hundredth anniversary of that had already passed in January 2015, two years before the date in the question.

Champaran was the first satyagraha Gandhi conducted on Indian soil and the campaign that established his method in Indian politics. Under the tinkathia arrangement tenants of European planters in north Bihar had to grow indigo on a fixed fraction of their land on terms set by the planter. Demand for natural indigo revived during the First World War when German synthetic dyes were cut off, and pressure on the cultivators grew with it. Ordered by the authorities to leave the district, Gandhi refused, which he himself described as his first act of civil disobedience in India.

The campaign brought together the men who would run the movement for a generation — Rajendra Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Brajkishore Prasad, Mazhar-ul-Haq, J. B. Kripalani and Mahadev Desai. A government commission of inquiry, on which Gandhi sat, made the planters refund a quarter of the money they had wrongly taken, and the tinkathia system was dismantled; within a decade the planters had left. For a current-affairs item like this one, remember that the answer is dated to the paper. The 2017 exam was testing an anniversary in its own year, and by now the centenary sequence has moved on to the events of the 1920s and 1930s.

• Gandhi arrived at Motihari in Champaran on 10 April 1917, invited by the cultivator Raj Kumar Shukla.
• The grievance was the tinkathia system, under which tenants had to grow indigo on a fixed share of their land.
• Gandhi's refusal to obey the order to leave the district was, in his own account, his first act of civil disobedience on Indian soil.
• A government commission made the planters refund 25 per cent of what they had wrongly collected and ended the tinkathia system.
• Centenary celebrations began with a national conclave on 10 April 2017, and commemorative stamps were issued on 13 May 2017.

• Placing Kheda in 1917; it belongs to 1918 and its centenary fell in 2018.
• Treating Champaran as Gandhi's first all-India movement; it was local, and the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 was his first countrywide campaign.
• Reading a current-affairs question against today's calendar instead of the year of the paper.

NDA sets an anniversary from the year of the exam, or asks which was Gandhi's first satyagraha in India and where it was held.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The cultivator who persuaded Gandhi to come to Champaran in 1917 was

  • (a)Raj Kumar Shukla
  • (b)Brajkishore Prasad
  • (c)Anugrah Narayan Sinha
  • (d)Mahadev Desai

  Answer(a) Raj Kumar Shukla — a local peasant who followed Gandhi until he agreed to visit the district.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The tinkathia system that provoked the Champaran satyagraha compelled tenants to

  • (a)pay revenue in cash rather than kind
  • (b)grow indigo on a fixed part of their holding
  • (c)supply free labour to the district administration
  • (d)sell their grain only to the government

  Answer(b) grow indigo on a fixed part of their holding — on terms set by the European planters.