5 Indigo not to be republished - NCERT

1 46/FlamingoIndigoIndigoIndigoIndigoIndig oAbout the authorLouis Fischer (1896-1970) was born in served as a volunteer in the British Army between1918 and 1920. Fischer made a career as a journalistand wrote for The New York Times, The Saturday Reviewand for European and Asian publications. He was alsoa member of the faculty at Princeton University. Thefollowing is an excerpt from his book- The Life of MahatmaGandhi. The book has been reviewed as one of the bestbooks ever written on gandhi by T imes these expressions in the their meaning from the the departureyharbour a man like meyconflict of dutiesyseek a propWhen I first visited gandhi in 1942 at his ashram inSevagram, in central India, he said, I will tell you how ithappened that I decided to urge the departure of the was in 1917. He had gone to the December 1916 annual conventionof the Indian National Congress party in Lucknow.

2 Therewere 2,301 delegates and many visitors. During theproceedings, gandhi recounted, a peasant came up to melooking 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 neverheard of the place. It was in the foothills of the toweringHimalayas, near the kingdom of an ancient arrangement, the Champaranpeasants were sharecroppers. Rajkumar Shukla was oneof them. He was illiterate but resolute. He had come to the55555 NCERTnot to be republishedIndigo/47 Congress session to complain about the injustice of thelandlord system in Bihar, and somebody had probably said, Speak to gandhi . gandhi told Shukla he had an appointment inCawnpore and was also committed to go to other parts ofIndia. Shukla accompanied him everywhere. Then Gandhireturned to his ashram near Ahmedabad.

3 Shukla followedhim to the ashram. For weeks he never left gandhi s side. Fix a date, he by the sharecropper s tenacity and storyGandhi said, I have to be in Calcutta on such-and-such adate. Come and meet me and take me from there. Months passed. Shukla wassitting on his haunches at theappointed spot in Calcutta whenGandhi arrived; he waited till Gandhiwas free. Then the two of themboarded a train for the city of Patnain Bihar. There Shukla led him tothe house of a lawyer namedRajendra Prasad who later becamePresident of the Congress party andof India. Rajendra Prasad was outof town, but the servants knewShukla as a poor yeoman whopestered their master to help theindigo sharecroppers. So they lethim stay on the grounds with hiscompanion, gandhi , whom they tookto be another peasant. But Gandhiwas not permitted to draw waterfrom the well lest some drops from his bucket pollute the entiresource; how did they know that he was not an untouchable?

4 gandhi decided to go first to Muzzafarpur, which wasen route to Champaran, to obtain more completeinformation about conditions than Shukla was capable ofimparting. He accordingly sent a telegram to Kripalani, of the Arts College in Muzzafarpur, whomhe had seen at Tagore s Shantiniketan school. The train11111 .Strike out what is not true inthe Shukla was(i) a sharecropper.(ii) a politician.(iii)delegate .(iv) a Shukla was(i) poor.(ii) physically strong.(iii) .Why is Rajkumar Shukladescribed as being resolute ?33333 .Why do you think theservants thought gandhi to beanother peasant? NCERTnot to be republished48/Flamingoarrived at midnight, 15 April 1917. Kripalani was waitingat the station with a large body of students. gandhi stayedthere for two days in the home of Professor Malkani, ateacher in a government school. It was an extraordinarything in those days, Gandhicommented, for a governmentprofessor to harbour a manlike me.

5 In smaller localities,the Indians were afraidto show sympathy foradvocates of news of gandhi sadvent and of the nature ofhis mission spread quicklythrough Muzzafarpur and toChamparan. Sharecroppersfrom Champaran beganarriving on foot and byconveyance to see theirchampion. Muzzafarpur lawyerscalled on gandhi to brief him;they frequently representedpeasant groups in court; theytold him about their cases andreported the size of their chided the lawyers forcollecting big fee from thesharecroppers. He said, I havecome to the conclusion that weshould stop going to law such cases to the courtsdoes litte good. Where the peasantsare so crushed and fear-stricken,law courts are useless. The real relieffor them is to be free from fear. Most of the arable landin the Champaran districtwas divided into large NCERTnot to be republishedIndigo/49estates owned by Englishmen and worked by Indian chief commercial crop was Indigo .

6 The landlordscompelled all tenants to plant three twentieths or 15 percent of their holdings with Indigo and surrender the entireindigo harvest as rent. This was done by long-term , the landlords learnedthat Germany had developedsynthetic Indigo . They, thereupon,obtained agreements from thesharecroppers to pay themcompensation for being releasedfrom the 15 per cent sharecropping arrangementwas irksome to the peasants, andmany signed willingly. Those whoresisted, engaged lawyers; thelandlords hired thugs. Meanwhile,the information about syntheticindigo reached the illiterate peasantswho had signed, and they wantedtheir money this point gandhi arrived in began by trying to get the facts. First he visited thesecretary of the British landlord s association. The secretarytold him that they could give no information to an answered that he was no , gandhi called on the British official commissionerof the Tirhut division in which the Champaran districtlay.

7 The commissioner, gandhi reports, proceeded to bullyme and advised me forthwith to leave Tirhut. gandhi did not leave. Instead he proceeded to Motihari,the capital of Champaran. Several lawyers accompanied the railway station, a vast multitude greeted gandhi . Hewent to a house and, using it as headquarters, continued hisinvestigations. A report came in that a peasant had beenmaltreated in a nearby village. gandhi decided to go and see;the next morning he started out on the back of an had not proceeded far when the police superintendent smessenger overtook him and ordered him to return to town11111 . List the places that Gandhivisited between his firstmeeting with Shukla and hisarrival at . What did the peasants pay theBritish landlords as rent? Whatdid the British now wantinstead and why? What wouldbe the impact of syntheticindigo on the prices of naturalindigo?

8 NCERTnot to be republished50/Flamingoin his carriage. gandhi complied. The messenger droveGandhi home where he served him with an official notice toquit Champaran immediately. gandhi signed a receipt forthe notice and wrote on it that he would disobey the consequence, gandhi received a summons to appearin court the next night gandhi remained awake. He telegraphedRajendra Prasad to come from Bihar with influentialfriends. He sent instructions to the ashram. He wired afull report to the found the town of Motihari black with did not know gandhi s record in South Africa. Theyhad merely heard that a mahatma who wanted to help themwas in trouble with the authorities. Their spontaneousdemonstration, in thousands, around the courthouse wasthe beginning of their liberation from fear of the officials felt powerless without gandhi scooperation.

9 He helped them regulate the crowd. He waspolite and friendly. He was giving them concrete proof thattheir might, hitherto dreaded and unquestioned, could bechallenged by government was baffled. The prosecutor requestedthe judge to postpone the trial. Apparently, the authoritieswished to consult their protested against the delay. He read a statementpleading guilty. He was involved, he told the court, in a conflict of duties on the one hand, not to set a bad exampleas a lawbreaker; on the other hand, to render the humanitarian and national service for which he had disregarded the order to leave, not for want of respect forlawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of ourbeing, the voice of conscience . He asked the penalty magistrate announced that he would pronouncesentence after a two-hour recess and asked gandhi tofurnish bail for those 120 minutes.

10 gandhi refused. Thejudge released him without the court reconvened, the judge said he wouldnot deliver the judgment for several days. Meanwhile heallowed gandhi to remain at liberty. NCERTnot to be republishedIndigo/51 Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana MazharulHuq and several other prominent lawyers had arrived fromBihar. They conferred with gandhi . What would they do ifhe was sentenced to prison, gandhi asked. Why, the seniorlawyer replied, they had come to advise and help him; ifhe went to jail there would be nobody to advise and theywould go about the injustice to the sharecroppers, Gandhidemanded. The lawyers withdrew to consult. RajendraPrasad has recorded the upshot of their consultations They thought, amongst themselves, that gandhi was totallya stranger, and yet he was prepared to go to prison for thesake of the peasants; if they, on the other hand, being notonly residents of the adjoining districts but also those whoclaimed to have served these peasants, should go home, itwould be shameful desertion.