Explain Gandhiji’s Champaranya satyagraha.
Answers
The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was the first Satyagraha movement inspired by Gandhi and a major revolt in the Indian Independence Movement. It was a farmer's uprising that took place in Champaran district of Bihar, India during the British colonial period. The farmers were protesting against to grow opium with barely any payment for it.
When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915, and saw peasants in Northern India oppressed by indigo planters, he tried to use the same methods that he had used in South Africa to organize mass uprisings by people to protest against injustices. Another important Satyagraha that followed the Champaran revolt was Kheda Satyagraha. Indigo was forcibly grown by the British in North India since 1750 to extract opium for the British trade to China, and thence smuggled to USA (where it was illegal).
Champaran Satyagraha was the first popular satyagraha (standing up for truth) to be started, but the word Satyagraha was used for the first time in Anti Rowlatt Act agitation. Champaran gave direction to India's youth and freedom struggle, which was tottering between moderates who prescribed Indian participation within the British colonial system, and the extremists from Bengal who advocated the use of violent methods to topple the British colonialists in India.
Champaran is a district which comes under the state Bihar. Under Colonial era laws, many tenant farmers were forced to grow some indigo on a portion of their land as a condition of their tenancy. This indigo was used to make dye. The Germans had invented a cheaper artificial dye so the demand for indigo fell. Some tenants paid more rent in return for being let off having to grow indigo. However, during the First World War the German dye ceased to be available and so indigo became profitable again. Thus many tenants were once again forced to grow it on a portion of their land- as was required by their lease. Naturally, this created much anger and resentment.