Road To Freedom

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• For God and Country
• The Empire Builders
• Tribal Uprisings
• Sepoys on the Move
• British Authority Collapses
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Roll of Honour
• The Trial of the Last Emperor
• English Education
• The Blue Mutiny
• Perishing in Peace
• ‘Rani Ka Hookum’
• Barbarous Britannia
• Return to Swadeshi
• The Delhi Durbar
• Hunger Deaths
• The One-Man Army
• Mamool Raj
• The British Raj in Black and White
• Europeans Take To The Street!
• Pressing On !
• The Battle For A Free Press
• The Battle Lines are Drawn
• Women : Crossing the Threshold
• An Old Man's Dream
• Father of Indian Unrest
• The Monk Who Shook The Nation
• The Battle is Taken to the Legislature!
• Partition of Bengal
• The Great Divide
• The New Spirit of India
• Swadeshi Enterprise
• From Swadeshi to Swaraj
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Heroes and Martyrs
• Revolutionaries Outside India
• Carrot and Stick
• Gandhi in Champaran
• The Gentle Satyagrahi
• Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh
• Jallianwala — The Aftermath
• A People Reject Their Rulers
• The Himalayan Blunder
• Gandhiji Withdraws from Political Activities
• Bardoli
• Saga of Indian Revolutionaries
• A Pinch of Salt!
• Gandhi and Ambedkar
• Leave India to God… or to Anarchy
• Quit India
• The Last War of Independence
• Apostle of Peace
• India Wins Freedom
• The Light Has Gone Out
• Under One Flag

Gandhi in Champaran

Gandhi in Champaran

After his release from prison, Bal Gangadhar Tilak along with Annie Besant plunged into the Home Rule agitation. Home Rule meant the country would govern itself but the British monarch would remain the head of the government. When the government tried to place restrictions on Tilak and demanded a personal surety bond of 20,000 rupees, he contested the order. Tilak's case was brilliantly argued by barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah who got the order quashed by the court. The Lucknow Congress of 1916 witnessed the return of Lokmanya Tilak to the Congress. The Congress president Ambica Charan Muzumdar hailed the return of Tilak saying that "Brothers have at last met brothers." It was at the Lucknow Congress too that differences between the Congress and the Muslim League were ironed out enabling the two parties to come together to work for the common goal of self-rule. Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote in 'Kesari' : "When Hindus and Muslims jointly ask for Swarajya from a common platform, the British bureaucracy has to realise that its days are numbered." In a public speech in Pune on December 30, 1916, Tilak made his now famous declaration : "Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it." Annie Besant who initiated the Home Rule agitation, in a message to British labourers pleaded: “Help us to become a free commonwealth under the British crown... our people have died in your war for freedom. Will you consent that the children of our dead shall remain a subject race?” The Home Rule agitation was a landmark on the road to freedom. All communities participated in the agitation. While Tilak was busy with the Home Rule agitation, M.K. Gandhi who had returned to India was travelling through the length and breadth of the country. Everywhere he went he saw poverty, ignorance, superstition, prejudice and suffering. He was a man of action. If he found the surroundings unclean, he was quite capable of asking for a broom and sweeping out the dirt himself. He was also a man who could think clearly. He believed in studying a problem objectively before chalking out a plan of action based on what he called Satya, truth and Ahimsa, non-violence.

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When lawyers from Bihar sought his help in finding a solution for the plight of ryots exploited by the indigo planters who were all Europeans he went to Champaran to study the problem first hand.
He sought meetings with the planters but they were openly hostile. Government officials refused to cooperate and when he started meeting the ryots, the collector ordered him to leave Champaran. Gandhi refused and was hauled up in court.
Gandhiji was courteous to the officials, respectful to the court but firm in his resolve not to leave Champaran.
“As a law-abiding citizen my first instinct would be, as it was, to obey the order served upon me,” said Gandhi, in court. “But I could not do so without doing violence to my sense of duty to those for whom I have come. I feel that I could serve them only by remaining in their midst.”
He declared that he would submit without protest whatever penalty was imposed upon him.
The court was adjourned. The government officials were thrown into confusion. What do you do with a man who refuses to obey the law on moral grounds but agrees that the court should punish him and expresses willingness to submit to the punishment?
As Gandhi wrote later it looked as if it was the government and not Gandhi who was on trial.
The government beat a hasty retreat and allowed Gandhi to stay. Later Sir Edward Gait, the Lt. Governor asked him to serve as a member of the official committee of enquiry. The committee after the enquiry upheld the demands of the ryots.
The ryots wanted Gandhi to save them from the planters. Gandhi did that and more. He opened a school for their children and he taught them the value of cleanliness and basic hygiene.
In one of the villages he found the women dressed in filthy clothes. He asked his wife Kasturba to speak to them and she did. Later one of the women took Kasturba to her hut and said:
“Look, there is no box or cupboard here. The sari I am wearing is the only one I have. How am I to wash it? Tell Gandhiji to get me another sari. Then I promise to bathe and put on clean clothes every day.”
Thus Gandhi came face to face with the poverty of his people. He could take on the British. But could he help a poor woman get another sari?