About the author

Louis Fischer (1896-1970) was born in Philadelphia. He served as a volunteer in the British
Army between 1918 and 1920. Fischer made a career as a journalist and wrote for The New
York Times, The Saturday Review and for European and Asian publications. He was also a
member of the faculty at Princeton University. The following is an excerpt from his book-
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. The book has been reviewed as one of the best books ever
written on Gandhi by Times Educational Supplement.
When I first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, in central India, he said, “I
will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in
1917.”

He had gone to the December 1916 annual convention of the Indian National Congress
party in Lucknow. There were 2,301 delegates and many visitors. During the proceedings,
Gandhi recounted, “a peasant came up to me looking like any other peasant in India, poor
and emaciated, and said, ‘I am Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to
come to my district’!’’ Gandhi had never heard of the place. It was in the foothills of the
towering Himalayas, near the kingdom of Nepal.
Under an ancient arrangement, the Champaran peasants were sharecroppers. Rajkumar
Shukla was one of them. He was illiterate but resolute. He had come to the Congress session
to complain about the injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, and somebody had probably
said, “Speak to Gandhi.”
Gandhi told Shukla he had an appointment in Cawnpore and was also committed to go to
other parts of India. Shukla accompanied him everywhere. Then Gandhi returned to his
ashram near Ahmedabad. Shukla followed him to the ashram. For weeks he never left
Gandhi’s side.
“Fix a date,” he begged.
Impressed by the sharecropper’s tenacity and story Gandhi said, ‘‘I have to be in Calcutta
on such-and-such a date. Come and meet me and take me from there.”

Months passed. Shukla was sitting on his haunches at the appointed spot in Calcutta when
Gandhi arrived; he waited till Gandhi was free. Then the two of them boarded a train for the
city of Patna in Bihar. There Shukla led him to the house of a lawyer named Rajendra Prasad
who later became President of the Congress party and of India. Rajendra Prasad was out of
town, but the servants knew Shukla as a poor yeoman who pestered their master to help
the indigo sharecroppers. So they let him stay on the grounds with his companion, Gandhi,
whom they took to be another peasant. But Gandhi was not permitted to draw water from
the well lest some drops from his bucket pollute the entire source; how did they know that
he was not an untouchable?
Gandhi decided to go first to Muzzafarpur, which was en route to Champaran, to obtain
more complete information about conditions than Shukla was capable of imparting. He
accordingly sent a telegram to Professor J.B. Kripalani, of the Arts College in Muzzafarpur,
whom he had seen at Tagore’s Shantiniketan school. The train arrived at midnight, 15 April
1917. Kripalani was waiting at the station with a large body of students. Gandhi stayed there
for two days in the home of Professor Malkani, a teacher in a government school. ‘‘It was an
extraordinary thing ‘in those days,’’ Gandhi commented, “for a government professor to
harbour a man like me”. In smaller localities, the Indians were afraid to show sympathy for
advocates of home-rule.
The news of Gandhi’s advent and of the nature of his mission spread quickly through
Muzzafarpur and to Champaran. Sharecroppers from Champaran began arriving on foot and
by conveyance to see their champion. Muzzafarpur lawyers called on Gandhi to brief him;
they frequently represented peasant groups in court; they told him about their cases and
reported the size of their fee.

Gandhi chided the lawyers for collecting big fee from the sharecroppers. He said, ‘‘I have
come to the conclusion that we should stop going to law courts. Taking such cases to the
courts does litte good. Where the peasants are so crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are
useless. The real relief for them is to be free from fear.’’

Most of the arable land in the Champaran district was divided into large estates owned by
Englishmen and worked by Indian tenants. The chief commercial crop was indigo. The
landlords compelled all tenants to plant three twentieths or 15 per cent of their holdings
with indigo and surrender the entire indigo harvest as rent. This was done by long-term
contract.
Presently, the landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic indigo. They,
thereupon, obtained agreements from the sharecroppers to pay them compensation for
being released from the 15 per cent arrangement.
The sharecropping arrangement was irksome (Irritating) to the peasants, and many signed
willingly. Those who resisted, engaged lawyers; the landlords hired thugs. Meanwhile, the
information about synthetic indigo reached the illiterate peasants who had signed, and they
wanted their money back.
At this point Gandhi arrived in Champaran. He began by trying to get the facts. First he
visited the secretary of the British landlord’s association. The secretary told him that they
could give no information to an outsider.
Gandhi answered that he was no outsider. Next, Gandhi called on the British official
commissioner of the Tirhut division in which the Champaran district lay. ‘‘The
commissioner,’’ Gandhi reports, ‘‘proceeded to bully me and advised me forthwith to leave
Tirhut.’’
Gandhi did not leave. Instead he proceeded to Motihari, the capital of Champaran. Several
lawyers accompanied him. At the railway station, a vast multitude greeted Gandhi. He went
to a house and, using it as headquarters, continued his investigations. A report came in that
a peasant had been maltreated in a nearby village. Gandhi decided to go and see; the next
morning he started out on the back of an elephant. He had not proceeded far when the
police superintendent’s messenger overtook him and ordered him to return to town in his
carriage. Gandhi complied. The messenger drove Gandhi home where he served him with
an official notice to quit Champaran immediately. Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice and
wrote on it that he would disobey the order.
In consequence, Gandhi received a summons to appear in court the next day.
All night Gandhi remained awake. He telegraphed Rajendra Prasad to come from Bihar with
influential friends. He sent instructions to the ashram. He wired a full report to the Viceroy
(a person to govern the state).
Morning found the town of Motihari black with peasants.

They did not know Gandhi’s record in South Africa. They had merely heard that a Mahatma
who wanted to help them was in trouble with the authorities. Their spontaneous
demonstration, in thousands, around the courthouse was the beginning of their liberation
from fear of the British.
The officials felt powerless without Gandhi’s cooperation. He helped them regulate the
crowd. He was polite and friendly. He was giving them concrete proof that their might,
hitherto (until a particular time) dreaded (feared) and unquestioned, could be challenged by
Indians.
The government was baffled (confused). The prosecutor (an official charging somebody in a
court) requested the judge to postpone the trial. Apparently, the authorities wished to
consult their superiors.
Gandhi protested against the delay. He read a statement pleading guilty. He was involved,
he told the court, in a “conflict of duties”— on the one hand, not to set a bad example as a
lawbreaker; on the other hand, to render the “humanitarian and national service” for which
he had come. He disregarded the order to leave, “not for want of respect for lawful
authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience”. He
asked the penalty due.
The magistrate announced that he would pronounce sentence after a two-hour recess and
asked Gandhi to furnish bail for those 120 minutes. Gandhi refused. The judge released him
without bail.
When the court reconvened, the judge said he would not deliver the judgment for several
days. Meanwhile he allowed Gandhi to remain at liberty.

Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and several other prominent
lawyers had arrived from Bihar. They conferred (discussed) with Gandhi. What would they
do if he was sentenced to prison, Gandhi asked. Why, the senior lawyer replied, they had
come to advise and help him; if he went to jail there would be nobody to advise and they
would go home.

What about the injustice to the sharecroppers, Gandhi demanded. The lawyers withdrew to
consult. Rajendra Prasad has recorded the upshot (outcome)of their consultations — “They
thought, amongst themselves, that Gandhi was totally a stranger, and yet he was prepared
to go to prison for the sake of the peasants; if they, on the other hand, being not only
residents of the adjoining districts but also those who claimed to have served these
peasants, should go home, it would be shameful desertion (abandonment).”
They accordingly went back to Gandhi and told him they were ready to follow him into jail.
‘‘The battle of Champaran is won,’’ he exclaimed. Then he took a piece of paper and divided
the group into pairs and put down the order in which each pair was to court arrest.
Several days later, Gandhi received a written communication from the magistrate informing
him that the Lieutenant-Governor of the province had ordered the case to be dropped. Civil
disobedience had triumphed, the first time in modern India.
Gandhi and the lawyers now proceeded to conduct a far -flung (spread over a wide area)
inquiry into the grievances(complaint) of the farmers. Depositions by about ten thousand
peasants were written down, and notes made on other evidence. Documents were
collected. The whole area throbbed with the activity of the investigators and the vehement
(forceful) protests of the landlords.

In June, Gandhi was summoned to Sir Edward Gait, the Lieutenant-Governor. Before he
went he metleading associates and again laid detailed plans for civil disobedience if he
should not return.
Gandhi had four protracted interviews with the Lieutenant Governor who, as a result,
appointed an official commission of inquiry into the indigo sharecroppers’ situation. The
commission consisted of landlords, government officials, and Gandhi as the sole
representative of the peasants. Gandhi remained in Champaran for an initial uninterrupted
period of seven months and then again for several shorter visits. The visit, undertaken
casually on the entreaty of an unlettered peasant in the expectation that it would last a few
days, occupied almost a year of Gandhi’s life.
The official inquiry assembled a crushing mountain of evidence against the big planters, and
when they saw this they agreed, in principle, to make refunds to the peasants. “But how
much must we pay?” they asked Gandhi.

They thought he would demand repayment in full of the money which they had illegally and
deceitfully (dishonesty) extorted from the sharecroppers. He asked only 50 per cent. “There
he seemed adamant (determine not to change mind),” writes Reverend J. Z. Hodge, a British
missionary in Champaran who observed the entire episode at close range. “Thinking
probably that he would not give way, the representative of the planters offered to refund to
the extent of 25 per cent, and to his amazement Mr. Gandhi took him at his word, thus
breaking the deadlock.”
 This settlement was adopted unanimously by the commission. Gandhi explained that the
amount of the refund was less important than the fact that the landlords had been obliged
to surrender part of the money and, with it, part of their prestige. Therefore, as far as the
peasants were concerned, the planters had behaved as lords above the law. Now the
peasant saw that he had rights and defenders. He learned courage.
Events justified Gandhi’s position. Within a few years the British planters abandoned their
estates, which reverted to the peasants. Indigo sharecropping disappeared.

Gandhi never contented himself with large political or economic solutions. He saw the
cultural and social backwardness in the Champaran villages and wanted to do something
about it immediately. He appealed for teachers. Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh, two
young men who had just joined Gandhi as disciples, and their wives, volunteered for the
work. Several more came from Bombay, Poona and other distant parts of the land. Devadas,
Gandhi’s youngest son, arrived from the ashram and so did Mrs. Gandhi. (Four sons of
Gandhi: Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devadas) Primary schools were opened in six villages.
Kasturbai taught the ashram rules on personal cleanliness and community sanitation.

Health conditions were miserable. Gandhi got a doctor to volunteer his services for six
months. Three medicines were available — castor oil, quinine and sulphur ointment.
Anybody who showed a coated tongue was given a dose of castor oil; anybody with malaria
fever received quinine plus castor oil; anybody with skin eruptions received ointment plus
castor oil.
Gandhi noticed the filthy state of women’s clothes. He asked Kasturbai to talk to them
about it. One woman took Kasturbai into her hut and said, ‘‘Look, there is no box or
cupboard here for clothes. The sari I am wearing is the only one I have.”
During his long stay in Champaran, Gandhi kept a long-distance watch on the ashram. He
sent regular instructions by mail and asked for financial accounts. Once he wrote to the
residents that it was time to fill in the old latrine trenches and dig new ones otherwise the
old ones would begin to smell bad.
The Champaran episode was a turning-point in Gandhi’s life. ‘‘What I did,” he explained,
“was a very ordinary thing. I declared that the British could not order me about in my own
country.”
But Champaran did not begin as an act of defiance (Disobedience). It grew out of an attempt
to alleviate (suffering)the distress (sorrow) of large numbers of poor peasants. This was the
typical Gandhi pattern — his politics were intertwined (Twist together) with the practical,
day-to-day problems of the millions. His was not a loyalty to abstractions (idea, thought); it
was a loyalty to living, human beings.
In everything Gandhi did, moreover, he tried to mould a new free Indian who could stand on
his own feet and thus make India free.
Early in the Champaran action, Charles Freer Andrews, the English pacifist (a person who
believe in peace) who had become a devoted follower of the Mahatma, came to bid Gandhi
farewell before going on a tour of duty to the Fiji Islands.

Gandhi’s lawyer friends thought it would be a good idea for Andrews to stay in Champaran
and help them. Andrews was willing if Gandhi agreed. But Gandhi was vehemently (in a
forceful) opposed. He said, ‘‘You think that in this unequal fight it would be helpful if we
have an Englishman on our side. This shows the weakness of your heart. The cause is just
and you must rely upon (to depend upon) yourselves to win the battle. You should not seek
a prop (support) in Mr. Andrews because he happens to be an Englishman’’.
‘‘He had read our minds correctly,’’ Rajendra Prasad comments, “and we had no reply…
Gandhi in this way taught us a lesson in self-reliance’’.

Self-reliance, Indian independence and help to sharecroppers were all bound together.

Theme of the Lesson

The chapter displays the importance of effective leadership in improving the lives of people.
The author tells us a few reasons which made Mahatma Gandhiji famous and loved by the
masses. He was concerned about the plight of the poor and fought for their rights.
Practice question
1. How was Gandhi’s strategy of sacrifice and non-violence, in the Champaran Indigo
movement, a formidable catalyst for change? (Indigo)
2. What can be inferred from Rajendra Prasad’s recorded upshot of the lawyer
consultations, at Motihari?
[Reference – The senior lawyer replied, they had come to advise and help him; if he went to
jail there would be nobody to advise and they would go home. What about the injustice to
the sharecroppers, Gandhi demanded.] (Indigo)