Mahatma Gandhi
Little over a hundred years ago, Gandhiji launched his first satyagraha movement in India, in Champaran.
Satygraha Beckons: Indigo, the blue dye, was in great demand in 19th century Europe. European planters in India forced farmers to grow indigo on their fertile fields where they would have otherwise grown rice.
While the planters sold the indigo at great profits and became rich, the farmers suffered because the indigo plant rendered the land totally useless for further cultivation.
In March 1859, thousands of farmers in Bengal refused to grow indigo. The British grew alarmed as they had faced the uprising of 1857 and did not want another rebellion. They sided with the farmers and declared that planters could no longer force the peasants to grow indigo. After the revolt, indigo plantation collapsed in Bengal and the planters moved base to Bihar. The plight of the indigo farmers there came into focus when Mahatma Gandhi took up their cause during the Champaran satyagraha in 1917.
At the time, Mahatma Gandhi, who had returned to India from South Africa, was travelling through the length and breadth of the country. When lawyers from Bihar sought his help in finding a solution for the plight of ryots(farmers/cultivators) exploited by the European indigo planters, he went to Champaran to study the problem first-hand.
He sought meetings with the planters but they were openly hostile. Government officials refused to cooperate and when he started meeting the ryots, the collector ordered him to leave Champaran. Gandhiji refused and was hauled up in court.
Gandhiji was courteous to the officials, respectful to the court but firm in his resolve not to leave Champaran.
“As a law-abiding citizen, my first instinct would be, as it was, to obey the order served upon me,” said Gandhiji, in court. “But I could not do so without doing violence to my sense of duty to those for whom I have come. I feel that I could serve them only by remaining in their midst.”
He declared that he would submit without protest to whatever penalty was imposed upon him.
The court was adjourned. The government officials were thrown into confusion. What do you do with a man who refuses to obey the law on moral grounds but agrees that the court should punish him and expresses willingness to submit to the punishment? As Gandhiji wrote later, it looked as if it was the government and not Gandhiji who was on trial.
The government beat a hasty retreat and allowed Gandhiji to stay. Later Sir Edward Gait, the Lt Governor, asked him to serve as a member of the official committee of enquiry. After the enquiry, the committee upheld the demands of the ryots.
The ryots had wanted Gandhiji to save them from the planters. Gandhiji did that and more. He opened a school for their children and he taught them the value of cleanliness and basic hygiene.
Lesson in Unity: During the final leg of India’s freedom struggle, Naokhali, a district of Bengal (now in Bangladesh), witnessed horrific communal riots in which thousands of people were butchered. Gandhiji visited the strife-ridden area with the single-minded purpose of ending the senseless violence.
He briefly halted at a villager’s home and was warmly welcomed by the people. A villager, Asghar Bhuyan, was keen to show Gandhiji a unique tree.
He said, “See, the branch of this tree has two kinds of leaves. Is it not strange?”
Gandhiji smiled and said, “No, it is God’s creation. Two different kinds of leaves are flourishing side by side in the same branch of one tree…just like Hindus and Muslims of the same soil. They demonstrate that we should live as brothers in the same land just as these leaves are growing on the same tree.”
The villagers understood the point of Gandhiji’s message and agreed that Hindus and Muslims should live together peacefully.
