Indigo and civil disobedience

Most of the arable land in Champaran was divided into large estates owned by Englishmen and worked by Indian tenants. The chief crop was indigo. By a long-term contract, the landlords forced all tenants to plant 15 per cent of their land with indigo, and to give the whole indigo harvest as rent.

Then Germany developed synthetic indigo. The British planters knew that natural indigo would soon be worthless. So they got the sharecroppers to sign agreements to pay them compensation for being released from the 15 per cent arrangement. Many signed willingly; others resisted, hired lawyers, and then heard about the synthetic indigo, and wanted their money back.

Gandhi began by gathering facts. He went to the secretary of the British landlords' association, who said nothing could be given to an outsider. He called on the British official commissioner of the Tirhut division, who tried to bully him and advised him to leave Tirhut at once.

Gandhi did not leave. He went to Motihari, the capital of Champaran, where a crowd greeted him. The next morning he set out on the back of an elephant to see a peasant who had been ill-treated in a nearby village. On the way he was stopped by the police and served with an official notice ordering him to quit Champaran immediately. Gandhi signed a receipt for it, and wrote on it that he would disobey the order.

He was summoned to court the next day. That morning, the town of Motihari was black with peasants: thousands gathered around the courthouse, a spontaneous show of support. The officials were baffled, and the police could not control the crowd without Gandhi's help.

In court, the government asked for the trial to be postponed. Gandhi protested. He read a statement pleading guilty: he said he had disobeyed the order not out of disrespect for the law, but in obedience to 'the voice of conscience', and he asked for the penalty. The lawyers who had come with him at first said they would go home if he went to jail; then, ashamed, they agreed to follow him to jail. A few days later, the case was dropped. Civil disobedience had triumphed, for the first time in modern India.