Gandhi and The Champaran Satyagraha Select Readings

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Suranjan Das is Vice-Chancellor, Jadavpur University and Honorary Director, Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata. He is also an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter. He specializes in South Asian history and politics and has authored six monographs, co-authored five books, co-edited seven volumes and published thirty articles in referred journals and edited volumes, which are widely cited.

This volume was planned joint endeavour with my mend Mushirul Hasan IDB commemorate the centennial of the Champaran Satyagraha. But tragically, before the project could take off, Mushir suffered a serious injury in a car accident finally succumbed to it on 10 December 2018. For me and many in my generation that was a very unkind cut. However, I thought I should complete the work that my friend and I had envisaged, although was acutely aware that the quality of the exercise would be substantially different without Mushits expert touch. Me preoccupation with university administration also unfortunately contributed to impeding the pace of the Project.

The research that resulted in this publication would not have been possible had it not been sponsored by the Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata, through a grant from the Government of West Bengal, to whom I express my sincere gratitude. I also take this opportunity to thank Anjum Katyal, Paulomi Mallick, and Debalina Ray for their help in the collecting, collating and initial editing of the material for the book. Promodini Varma meticulously did the final copy-editing, and I gratefully acknowledge her contribution. Primus Books once again demonstrated its academic commitment by readily agreeing to publish the present collection, and I particularly thank Bhola Varma for taking a personal interest in ensuring its publication within a remarkably short period of time, that too in the midst of the present pandemic.

The present volume brings together excerpts from contemporary accounts and scholarly contributions on Mahatma Gandhi's Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, in order to provide readers with an idea of how the first Gandhian mass political intervention in India has been captured, recaptured, contextualized, analysed and assessed for impact. It has five parts: the first comprises passages from Gandhi's own recollection of the satyagraha; the second, excerpts from the accounts of Rajendra Prasad and Acharya J.B. Kripalani, who were participants in the satyagraha; the third, examples of statements of indigo rots; the fourth, selections from official documents concerning the satyagraha; and the fifth, extracts from the works of historians and analysts who have commented upon it. Finally, some archival visuals have been included at the very end.

THE SATYAGRAHA

The Champaran Satyagraha was a peasant upsurge against British indigo planter-landlords of the poverty-stricken Champaran district in the Tirhut division of north Bihar. Indigo is a natural dye extracted from the leaves of certain plants. India was one of the earliest producers of indigo, although its modern story would come to be intimately tied with the global fortunes of European colonialism. The American War of Independence, the slave revolts in the Caribbean, and growing profits from sugar plantations made Europeans look beyond North America.

Champaran is bounded in the north by Nepal, in the west by the district of Gorakhpur, in the east by Muzaffarpur district and in the south by Saran district. It had two towns only-Motihari which was then the district headquarters, and Bettiah which was then the seat of the Maharaja of Bettiah and headquarters of a sub-division.