RISE OF MAHATMA GANDHI AND THE CHAMPARAN SATYAGRAHA

Abstract

Mohandas Gandhi, after his return from South Africa, joined the Indian National Congress and the Lucknow Pact of 1916, having been signed between the Congress and The Muslim League, a new chapter was about to open in Indian politics. On Gokhale’s advice, Gandhiji spent a year travelling around British India, getting to know the land and its peoples and what he realized was simply this
that, in spite of its promising expansion, the Indian national Congress was still unable to bring forth every Indian, especially the unlettered, common, poor countrymen under its wings. This he made his immediate mission in politics, and the first tasting ground was Chamaparan. About more than three-fourth of the 2846 villages of the district were under the control of three big Zamindars - the
Bettiah estate, the Ramnagar estate, and the Madhuban estate. Early in the 19th century, indigo began to be grown there by European planters who, in course of time, secured, on temporary and permanent leases, the large tracts of land from the Zamindars of the district, particularly the Maharaja of Bettiah, who ran into heavy debts. The planters with the influence as members of the
ruling race, were soon able to get indigo grown by the tenants of the villages on portions of their holdings varying between 3/20th to 5/20th, and later on they regarded this compulsory cultivation as a matter of right , which they got recognised in the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. This system of growing indigo came to be known as Tinkathia. It created a havoc by extreme exploitation on the
local peasants. Gandhiji came to protest this exploitation and led a movement of mass mobilization on the principles of satyagraha. The present paper intends to look into the issue, in detail.