Champaran Satyagraha, Kheda Satyagraha and the Ahmedabad Mill Strike (1917-1918)

Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad Satyagraha at a Glance (1917-1918)

Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad Satyagraha: Dates and Chronology

The Champaran Satyagraha took place in 1917, and the Ahmedabad mill strike and the Kheda Satyagraha followed in 1918. In 1917 Gandhi took up the cause of the indigo peasants of Champaran in Bihar. In 1918 he turned to his home state of Gujarat, first to a wage dispute in the textile mills of Ahmedabad and then to the cultivators of Kheda, who could not pay their land revenue after a failed harvest. Each dispute was small and local, and each ended in a gain for the people who had protested.

On the map, Champaran lies in the north of Bihar on the border with Nepal, while Kheda and Ahmedabad lie close together in Gujarat, far to the west.

Why Gandhi Began with Peasants and Workers

Gandhi returned from South Africa with a method already tested there but little standing in Indian politics. Three steps took him from his return to the indigo fields of Champaran:

1. 1915: He came back to India and, on the advice of his political mentor Gopal Krishna Gokhale, spent a year travelling around British India to learn the country.
2. February 1916: At the opening of the Banaras Hindu University he reminded princes and philanthropists of the poor Indians who were absent, and said the country’s salvation could only come through the farmer.
3. December 1916: At the Lucknow session of the Congress, a peasant from Champaran told him about the harsh treatment of cultivators by British indigo planters and persuaded him to come.

Behind these steps lay a clear aim. Indian nationalism at the time was largely a movement of lawyers, doctors and landlords, and Gandhi wanted to bring in the peasants and workers who made up most of the population. The timeline below shows how quickly the three campaigns followed.

Champaran Satyagraha 1917: Indigo Planters and the Tinkathia System

The Tinkathia System and the Indigo Grievance

In Champaran, European planters made their tenants grow indigo on three kathas out of every twenty, the katha being a local unit of land. The arrangement was called the tinkathia system, from teen kathia, meaning three kathas.

The system had been in force for about a century when Gandhi arrived, and the tenants carried three separate burdens:

• Forced cultivation: Part of every holding went to indigo for the planter, whatever the tenant would rather have grown.
• Fixed prices: The dye had to be sold to the planter at a price the planter set.
• Rents and illegal dues: When synthetic dyes made in Germany ruined the indigo market by the end of the nineteenth century, the planters raised rents and took illegal dues before tenants could switch to other crops.

How Gandhi Reached Champaran: Raj Kumar Shukla and the Lucknow Congress

Gandhi did not go looking for Champaran. Raj Kumar Shukla, a cultivator from the district, approached him at the Lucknow Congress of December 1916 and kept pressing him until he agreed to investigate. Gandhi spent much of 1917 in Champaran. His aim, in the words of the NCERT textbook, was to obtain for the peasants security of tenure as well as the freedom to cultivate the crops of their choice.

He did not work alone. Lawyers and young nationalists from Bihar and beyond joined him in recording the peasants' statements, and several of them became leading figures of the national movement:

• Rajendra Prasad
• Mazharul Haq
• Mahadev Desai
• Narhari Parekh
• J. B. Kripalani

Defying the Order to Leave and the Champaran Agrarian Act

The Champaran dispute was settled in five steps, without a single act of violence:

1. Ordered out: When Gandhi reached Champaran, the authorities ordered him to leave the district at once.
2. Refusal: He refused and said he was ready to accept the punishment. This open, peaceful defiance of an unjust order made Champaran his first civil disobedience in India.
3. Inquiry allowed: The government backed down and let his inquiry go ahead.
4. Committee: A government committee examined the grievances, with Gandhi as a member, and accepted that tinkathia should end and the peasants should be compensated.
5. Settlement: The Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 abolished tinkathia. As a compromise, the planters refunded 25 per cent of the money taken, and within a decade they had left the area.

The larger result was political. For the first time, a peasant grievance was taken up by a leader of the national movement and won through non-violent means. Champaran joined peasant unrest to the national movement, which is the aspect UPSC Prelims 2018 asked candidates to identify.

Ahmedabad Mill Strike 1918: Gandhi's First Hunger Strike

The Plague Bonus Dispute and the 35 Per Cent Demand

In early 1918 Gandhi was drawn into a dispute between the cotton mill owners of Ahmedabad and their workers. During a plague outbreak the owners had paid the workers a plague bonus. When they moved to withdraw it, the workers, facing high wartime prices, demanded a large rise in wages instead.

The workers were organised by Anasuya Sarabhai, a social worker whose brother Ambalal Sarabhai was among the leading mill owners, so the dispute ran through a single family. The two sides' positions were far apart:

• The weavers: Wanted a far larger rise than the owners would give.
• Gandhi’s view: He judged a 35 per cent increase fair, advised the workers to strike for it, and asked them to stay non-violent.
• The mill owners: Offered only 20 per cent.

This dispute differed from Champaran in one important way. There was no colonial order to defy: the other side were Indian employers, some of them Gandhi's own supporters, and the aim was a fair settlement rather than a defeat for either side. Gandhi therefore argued from the figures, asked for a rise he could defend as reasonable, and insisted that the strike stay peaceful.

The Fast, the Award and the Textile Labour Association

As the strike dragged on and the workers began to waver, Gandhi went on a fast to strengthen their resolve. It was his first hunger strike in India. The fast also put moral pressure on the mill owners, many of whom knew Gandhi personally, and they agreed to settle. The workers received a 35 per cent increase in wages, the figure an arbitrator's award finally confirmed.

The dispute left a lasting institution. In 1920 the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association, known in Gujarati as the Majoor Mahajan Sangh, was founded by Anasuya Sarabhai with Gandhi's guidance. It became one of India's oldest and most disciplined trade unions, and showed that satyagraha could serve industrial workers as well as peasants.

Kheda Satyagraha 1918: The Campaign Against Land Revenue

Crop Failure and the One-Fourth Remission Rule

In 1918 the crops failed in the Kheda district of Gujarat, and famine and plague made the cultivators' position worse. Under the revenue code, if the yield was less than one-fourth of the normal produce, the cultivators were entitled to a remission of land revenue. The yield had fallen that low, but the authorities refused to grant the remission and pressed for full payment.

Gandhi took up the peasants' case and advised them to withhold the revenue. The cultivators agreed together not to pay, accepting that the state might seize their property rather than give in. Because it was a refusal to cooperate with the revenue administration, Kheda is remembered as the first non-cooperation.

Sardar Patel, Indulal Yagnik and the Quiet Settlement

Kheda brought a new generation of leaders to Gandhi:

• Vallabhbhai Patel: A successful Ahmedabad lawyer who threw himself into the campaign. A decade later he led the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928, and its success made him one of the main leaders of the national movement.
• Indulal Yagnik, Shankarlal Banker and Mahadev Desai: Among the others who worked in the villages.

The government did not concede openly. Instead it issued secret instructions that revenue should be recovered only from those who could afford to pay, so that the poorest cultivators were spared. The relief was partial and quiet, but the peasants had held together, the campaign had stayed non-violent, and a better-off peasantry had been drawn into disciplined resistance for the first time.

What the Early Satyagrahas Achieved for the National Movement

One Method Applied to Three Different Grievances

The three campaigns dealt with very different problems: a tenancy system, a factory wage and a revenue demand. The method did not change. In each, Gandhi began from a concrete local injustice, gathered the facts before he acted, kept the protest non-violent, and settled for a real but limited gain.

Seen together, the campaigns show how satyagraha worked in practice:

• Facts first: At Champaran the peasants’ statements were recorded before any demand was made.
• A fair demand: A figure that could be defended, such as 35 per cent at Ahmedabad or the remission the revenue code itself allowed at Kheda.
• Firmness with compromise: Non-violent pressure that stopped at a real gain, as when Gandhi accepted a 25 per cent refund at Champaran rather than the whole amount.

Why the Early Experiments Mattered

The NCERT textbook sums up the result: these initiatives in Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda marked Gandhi out as a nationalist with a deep sympathy for the poor. They also gave him a band of trusted organisers drawn from the places where the struggles were fought, and first-hand knowledge of what ordinary people would and would not do.

They were still local struggles. What they proved was that the method worked on Indian soil, and within a year it was tested nationally, in the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 and then the Non-Cooperation Movement.

Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad in UPSC Previous Year Questions

What UPSC Has Asked About These Campaigns

Since 2005, UPSC has set six objective questions on these three campaigns and the indigo system behind them, and they test precise details rather than broad themes. Knowing who did what, and why each campaign began, answers almost all of them.

The campaigns also serve as evidence in longer answers. The 2015 GS Paper I question on how difficult independence would have been without Gandhi is best answered with Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda as proof of what his method added.

Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Champaran Satyagraha
• Wikipedia: Tinkathia System
• Wikipedia: Kheda Satyagraha
• Wikipedia: Anasuya Sarabhai
• Wikipedia: Mahatma Gandhi
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part III (Class XII), Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement
• NCERT: Our Pasts III (Class VIII), Ruling the Countryside
• Ministry of Culture: Indian Culture Freedom Archive
• Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (Freedom Movement portal)
• Press Information Bureau, Government of India
• National Portal of India