Gandhi: 100 years on, Gandhi's Champaran methods remain relevant ...
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100 years on, Gandhi’s Champaran methods remain relevant
Avijit Ghosh | TNN | Apr 15, 2017, 05.43 AM ISTHighlights
- Social scientists and researchers feel that Gandhi's methods remain relevant, even desirable, in today’s fractured times.
- They cite Champaran struggle as a very good example of a restrained moral struggle combined with social responsibility.
NEW DELHI: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's struggle to bring succour to distressed peasants forced to cultivate indigo in Bihar's Champaran district happened exactly 100 years ago, but social scientists and researchers feel his methods remain relevant, even desirable, in today's fractured times.
The Champaran struggle is a very good example of a restrained moral
struggle combined with social responsibility, says Salil Mishra, who
teaches history at Dr B R Ambedkar University.
"It shows how to mobilize opinion and support for a cause without resorting to moral hysteria," he says.
Sandeep Bhardwaj of Centre for Policy Research points out that there were no marches or strikes in Champaran. "Instead of defeating the opposition, Gandhi sought to win it over through the art of political persuasion. In contrast, the tendency in today's politics is often to burn down the house to light a candle - achieve a political victory by any means necessary, even if it comes at the cost of larger communal harmony," says Bhardwaj, who blogs at revisitingindia-.com That's why, says social scientist Ashis Nandy, Gandhi's methods remain relevant. "There is an ethical component in his actions which has tremendous power and validity," he says.
Indigo was an important crop for European planters in India. The conditions under which the peasants worked were oppressive. In his book, Gandhi in Champaran, D G Tendulkar quotes a former magistrate of Faridpur, Mr E De-Latour of the Bengal Civil Service saying, "Not a chest of Indigo reached England without being stained with human blood." Dinabandhu Mitra's play, Nil Darpan (1860), highlights the anguish of the peasant tenants (ryots).
"The story of Champaran begins in the early 19th century," writes Mridula Mukherjee in 'India's struggle for Independence', "when European planters had involved the cultivators in agreements that forced them to cultivate indigo on 3/20th of their holdings (known as the tinkathia system)."
The peasants had to pay enhanced rents over a period (sarahbeshi) or simply get out of the system paying a lump sum (tawan).
Gandhi arrived by train at Motihari in Bihar's Champaran district on April 15, 1917. He had come to the region following the request of Raj Kumar Shukla, a local cultivator. The next day, he was asked to leave. He refused, was taken into custody and summoned to court on April 18.
When Gandhi pleaded guilty, the colonial government was nonplussed. Unwilling to make him a martyr, authorities decided to withdraw the case and let him continue to gather statements of cultivators. On April 21, the case was withdrawn.
"Armed with evidence collected from 8,000 peasants, he had little difficulty in convincing the Commission that the tinkathia system needed to be abolished and that the peasants should be compensated for the illegal enhancement of their dues," writes Mukherjee.
Misra points out that Champaran was the first systematic effort to introduce the peasant question into the nationalist politics. "Till then the two had proceeded apart from each other.
Nationalist politics was almost 'peasant neutral' and peasant protests were local and spontaneous. Gandhi, who was an outsider to Champaran, introduced satyagraha and organised politics in the rural areas. He thus combined the rural with the national," he says. "It was also at Champaran that Gandhi applied his techniques of satyagraha (perfected in South Africa) in India for the first time.
"It shows how to mobilize opinion and support for a cause without resorting to moral hysteria," he says.
Sandeep Bhardwaj of Centre for Policy Research points out that there were no marches or strikes in Champaran. "Instead of defeating the opposition, Gandhi sought to win it over through the art of political persuasion. In contrast, the tendency in today's politics is often to burn down the house to light a candle - achieve a political victory by any means necessary, even if it comes at the cost of larger communal harmony," says Bhardwaj, who blogs at revisitingindia-.com That's why, says social scientist Ashis Nandy, Gandhi's methods remain relevant. "There is an ethical component in his actions which has tremendous power and validity," he says.
Indigo was an important crop for European planters in India. The conditions under which the peasants worked were oppressive. In his book, Gandhi in Champaran, D G Tendulkar quotes a former magistrate of Faridpur, Mr E De-Latour of the Bengal Civil Service saying, "Not a chest of Indigo reached England without being stained with human blood." Dinabandhu Mitra's play, Nil Darpan (1860), highlights the anguish of the peasant tenants (ryots).
"The story of Champaran begins in the early 19th century," writes Mridula Mukherjee in 'India's struggle for Independence', "when European planters had involved the cultivators in agreements that forced them to cultivate indigo on 3/20th of their holdings (known as the tinkathia system)."
The peasants had to pay enhanced rents over a period (sarahbeshi) or simply get out of the system paying a lump sum (tawan).
Gandhi arrived by train at Motihari in Bihar's Champaran district on April 15, 1917. He had come to the region following the request of Raj Kumar Shukla, a local cultivator. The next day, he was asked to leave. He refused, was taken into custody and summoned to court on April 18.
When Gandhi pleaded guilty, the colonial government was nonplussed. Unwilling to make him a martyr, authorities decided to withdraw the case and let him continue to gather statements of cultivators. On April 21, the case was withdrawn.
"Armed with evidence collected from 8,000 peasants, he had little difficulty in convincing the Commission that the tinkathia system needed to be abolished and that the peasants should be compensated for the illegal enhancement of their dues," writes Mukherjee.
Misra points out that Champaran was the first systematic effort to introduce the peasant question into the nationalist politics. "Till then the two had proceeded apart from each other.
Nationalist politics was almost 'peasant neutral' and peasant protests were local and spontaneous. Gandhi, who was an outsider to Champaran, introduced satyagraha and organised politics in the rural areas. He thus combined the rural with the national," he says. "It was also at Champaran that Gandhi applied his techniques of satyagraha (perfected in South Africa) in India for the first time.
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14 hours ago - 100 yrs on, Bapu's Champaran methods still relevant. The Times ... feel his methods remain relevant, even desirable, in today's fractured times.
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