Class 12 English: Indigo — Literature Question Set

Correct option: (d). The author first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, in central India.

Correct option: (c). A peasant named Rajkumar Shukla, who looked like any other peasant in India, came up to Gandhi at Lucknow.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi was explaining that it was in 1917 that he decided to urge the departure of the British.

Correct option: (d). Champaran's remote location in the Himalayan foothills near Nepal explains why Gandhi had never heard of the place.

Correct option: (a). Shukla, poor and emaciated, was thin and worn out like any other peasant in India.

Correct option: (b). His plain, unhesitating introduction and his request reveal a firm, resolute manner.

Correct option: (c). Under an ancient arrangement, the Champaran peasants were sharecroppers, and Shukla was one of them.

Correct option: (a). He had come to complain about the injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, having probably been told to "Speak to Gandhi".

Correct option: (b). Though illiterate, Shukla was firm in his resolve to bring Gandhi to Champaran.

Correct option: (d). Gandhi said he had to be in Calcutta on a certain date and asked Shukla to come and take him from there.

Correct option: (c). Impressed by the sharecropper's tenacity and story, Gandhi agreed to be taken to Champaran from Calcutta.

Correct option: (a). Shadowing Gandhi everywhere for weeks shows Shukla's extraordinary persistence of purpose.

Correct option: (d). Shukla led him to the house of a lawyer named Rajendra Prasad, who was out of town.

Correct option: (a). Rajendra Prasad later became President of the Congress party and of India.

Correct option: (c). Since the servants mistook Gandhi for another peasant, they could not know his caste and feared caste pollution of the well.

Correct option: (a). The servants knew Shukla as a poor yeoman who persistently troubled their master to help the indigo sharecroppers.

Correct option: (a). Untouchability was practised even in the house of Rajendra Prasad, a future President of the Congress and of India.

Correct option: (a). Even after months, Shukla kept the date and waited quietly till Gandhi was free.

Correct option: (b). Muzzafarpur was en route to Champaran, and Gandhi wanted fuller information than Shukla could give.

Correct option: (c). Kripalani of the Arts College was waiting at the midnight hour with a large body of students.

Correct option: (a). The train carrying Gandhi reached Muzzafarpur at midnight, 15 April 1917.

Correct option: (b). A government-school teacher who sheltered a home-rule advocate like Gandhi risked official reprisal.

Correct option: (d). Professor Malkani gave shelter to Gandhi for two days, which was extraordinary in those days.

Correct option: (c). Despite the general climate of fear, Kripalani and his students came out openly at midnight to receive Gandhi.

Correct option: (a). The lawyers, who often represented peasant groups, told Gandhi about their cases and reported the size of their fee.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi rebuked the lawyers for collecting big fee from the poor sharecroppers.

Correct option: (c). Gandhi said the real relief for the crushed, fear-stricken peasants was to be free from fear.

Correct option: (b). Since the peasants were crushed and fear-stricken, Gandhi concluded that courts could bring them little good.

Correct option: (d). Gandhi rebuked the lawyers for the big fees they collected from sharecroppers.

Correct option: (a). The news of Gandhi's mission drew desperate peasants to him from all around, showing their eagerness for justice.

Correct option: (c). Most of the arable land was owned by Englishmen and worked by tenants, and the chief commercial crop was indigo.

Correct option: (b). The landlords compelled all tenants to plant three twentieths, or 15 per cent, of their holdings with indigo.

Correct option: (d). The tenants had to surrender the entire indigo harvest as rent.

Correct option: (a). The landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic indigo and wanted to release the peasants in exchange for compensation.

Correct option: (b). Those who resisted engaged lawyers; the landlords, in turn, hired thugs.

Correct option: (c). The sharecropping arrangement was troublesome and irritating to the peasants.

Correct option: (b). The secretary told Gandhi that they could give no information to an outsider.

Correct option: (c). Gandhi answered that he was no outsider in his own country.

Correct option: (d). The British official commissioner proceeded to bully Gandhi and advised him forthwith to leave Tirhut.

Correct option: (a). After a report that a peasant had been maltreated in a nearby village, Gandhi set out on the back of an elephant.

Correct option: (b). The vast multitude at the station shows the people's spontaneous support for Gandhi's mission.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi began by trying to get the facts, and going to the village himself reflects his method of first-hand inquiry.

Correct option: (c). Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice to quit Champaran and wrote on it that he would disobey the order.

Correct option: (b). All night Gandhi remained awake and telegraphed Rajendra Prasad to come from Bihar with influential friends.

Correct option: (a). He sent instructions to the ashram and wired a full report to the Viceroy.

Correct option: (c). The phrase is a vivid way of saying that thousands of peasants filled the town.

Correct option: (b). Not knowing his South African record, they came spontaneously on hearing that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble.

Correct option: (b). The demonstration around the courthouse was the beginning of the peasants' liberation from fear of the British.

Correct option: (c). The officials felt powerless without Gandhi's cooperation, which he nevertheless gave in regulating the crowd.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi was polite and friendly even while challenging the might of the officials.

Correct option: (b). The government was baffled; the prosecutor requested postponement apparently because the authorities wished to consult their superiors.

Correct option: (d). Gandhi told the court he was torn between not being a lawbreaker and rendering the humanitarian and national service for which he had come.

Correct option: (a). British might, dreaded and unquestioned until that time, was being challenged by Indians.

Correct option: (b). He disregarded the order not from want of respect for lawful authority but in obedience to the voice of conscience.

Correct option: (d). Though Gandhi refused to furnish bail for the 120 minutes, the judge released him without bail.

Correct option: (a). The judge said he would not deliver the judgment for several days and allowed Gandhi to remain at liberty.

Correct option: (b). Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and several other prominent lawyers had arrived from Bihar.

Correct option: (c). The senior lawyer said they had come to advise Gandhi, and if he went to jail there would be nobody to advise and they would go home.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi's question turned the lawyers' attention from his fate to the peasants' cause.

Correct option: (a). The court met again after the two-hour recess.

Correct option: (d). They realised that abandoning the peasants' cause would be shameful desertion since even a stranger like Gandhi was ready for prison.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi exclaimed this the moment the lawyers went back and told him they were ready to follow him into jail.

Correct option: (c). He divided the group into pairs and put down the order in which each pair was to court arrest.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi's readiness to go to prison for the peasants shamed the lawyers into offering to follow him to jail.

Correct option: (d). The lawyers would have abandoned their duty to the peasants had they gone home.

Correct option: (c). The orderly plan ensured that the protest would survive his own arrest.

Correct option: (d). The magistrate informed Gandhi in writing that the Lieutenant-Governor had ordered the case to be dropped.

Correct option: (a). With the case dropped, civil disobedience had triumphed for the first time in modern India.

Correct option: (c). Depositions by about ten thousand peasants were written down, along with other evidence.

Correct option: (a). In June, Gandhi was summoned to Sir Edward Gait, the Lieutenant-Governor.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi met leading associates and made contingency plans, showing he left nothing to chance.

Correct option: (d). Gandhi's later interviews with the Lieutenant-Governor were prolonged ones.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi had four protracted interviews with the Lieutenant-Governor.

Correct option: (c). The commission consisted of landlords, government officials, and Gandhi as the peasants' sole representative.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi remained in Champaran for an initial uninterrupted period of seven months.

Correct option: (b). The visit, undertaken casually on the entreaty of an unlettered peasant, grew into a year-long engagement.

Correct option: (c). Rajkumar Shukla's earnest pleading drew Gandhi to Champaran.

Correct option: (a). What began as a brief casual visit ended up taking almost a year of Gandhi's life.

Correct option: (c). The official inquiry had assembled a crushing mountain of evidence against the big planters.

Correct option: (d). The planters expected a demand for repayment in full, but Gandhi asked only for 50 per cent.

Correct option: (c). The representative offered to refund to the extent of 25 per cent, and Gandhi took him at his word, breaking the deadlock.

Correct option: (d). Reverend J. Z. Hodge was a British missionary in Champaran who observed the entire episode at close range.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi seemed adamant at 50 per cent, refusing to give way.

Correct option: (b). The weight of evidence is described figuratively as a crushing mountain.

Correct option: (b). The settlement was adopted unanimously by the commission.

Correct option: (c). For Gandhi, the landlords' partial surrender of money and prestige mattered more than the sum refunded.

Correct option: (a). The peasants realised they had rights and defenders, and this gave them courage.

Correct option: (d). Within a few years the planters abandoned their estates, which reverted to the peasants.

Correct option: (a). Events justified Gandhi's position: indigo sharecropping disappeared.

Correct option: (c). The abandoned estates returned to the peasants.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi saw the cultural and social backwardness in the Champaran villages and wanted to do something about it immediately.

Correct option: (c). In response to Gandhi's appeal for teachers, primary schools were opened in six villages.

Correct option: (b). Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh, with their wives, volunteered, along with Devadas, Mrs. Gandhi and others.

Correct option: (d). Only three medicines were available — castor oil, quinine and sulphur ointment.

Correct option: (a). Anybody with malaria fever received quinine plus castor oil.

Correct option: (b). The limited medical facilities point to the miserable health conditions in the Champaran villages.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi noticed the filthy state of women's clothes and asked Kasturbai to talk to them about it.

Correct option: (c). The woman showed that she had no box or cupboard, for the sari she was wearing was the only one she had.

Correct option: (a). Owning just one sari and no box or cupboard reflects the extreme poverty in the Champaran villages.

Correct option: (d). During his long stay, Gandhi sent regular instructions by mail and asked for financial accounts.

Correct option: (a). He wrote that it was time to fill in the old latrine trenches and dig new ones before the old ones began to smell.

Correct option: (b). Kasturbai taught the ashram rules on personal cleanliness and community sanitation.

Correct option: (c). The author calls the Champaran episode a turning-point in Gandhi's life.

Correct option: (a). Gandhi explained, "What I did was a very ordinary thing. I declared that the British could not order me about in my own country."

Correct option: (b). The movement grew out of an attempt to alleviate the distress of large numbers of poor peasants.

Correct option: (c). In the typical Gandhi pattern, his politics were intertwined with the practical, day-to-day problems of the millions.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi sought to relieve the distress of the poor peasants.

Correct option: (d). Gandhi's loyalty was to living human beings rather than to abstract ideas.

Correct option: (c). Andrews was the English pacifist who had become a devoted follower of the Mahatma.

Correct option: (b). He came to bid Gandhi farewell before going on a tour of duty to the Fiji Islands.

Correct option: (a). The lawyers thought it would be a good idea for Andrews to stay in Champaran and help them.

Correct option: (d). Andrews was willing to stay, provided Gandhi agreed to the arrangement.

Correct option: (a). Andrews was known as a pacifist, one committed to peace.

Correct option: (c). Gandhi was strongly and passionately opposed to the idea.

Correct option: (b). Gandhi said that thinking an Englishman on their side would be helpful "shows the weakness of your heart".

Correct option: (c). Gandhi said they must rely upon themselves to win the battle and not seek a prop in Mr. Andrews.

Correct option: (b). Rajendra Prasad commented that Gandhi had read their minds correctly and they had no reply.

Correct option: (a). As Rajendra Prasad says, Gandhi taught them a lesson in self-reliance.

Correct option: (d). Gandhi asked them not to seek a prop — a support — in Mr. Andrews.

Correct option: (b). The three aims flowed into one another, making the struggle a fight for people, nation and self-respect at once.

Rajkumar Shukla was an illiterate but resolute sharecropper from Champaran in Bihar. He met Gandhi at the December 1916 Congress session in Lucknow and wanted Gandhi to come to his district to remedy the injustice of the landlord system there.

The servants took Gandhi to be another poor peasant like Shukla. Since they did not know his caste, they feared that drops from an untouchable's bucket might pollute the entire source of water.

Muzzafarpur was en route to Champaran, and Gandhi wanted to obtain more complete information about conditions there than Shukla was capable of imparting. He accordingly telegraphed Professor J.B. Kripalani and stayed for two days with Professor Malkani.

Professor Malkani taught in a government school, and in smaller localities Indians were afraid to show sympathy for advocates of home-rule. Sheltering a home-rule advocate like Gandhi was an act of real courage that could have cost him his livelihood.

The lawyers frequently represented peasant groups in court. They briefed Gandhi about their cases and reported the size of their fee, which drew Gandhi's rebuke for collecting big fees from the sharecroppers.

The landlords had taken compensation from the sharecroppers for releasing them from the 15 per cent indigo arrangement after synthetic indigo was developed in Germany. When the illiterate peasants later learned about synthetic indigo, they realised they had been cheated and demanded their money back.

The landlords compelled all tenants, by long-term contract, to plant three twentieths, or 15 per cent, of their holdings with indigo and to surrender the entire indigo harvest as rent to the English owners of the estates.

The British official commissioner bullied Gandhi and advised him forthwith to leave Tirhut. Gandhi did not leave; instead he proceeded to Motihari, the capital of Champaran, and continued his investigations.

Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice and wrote on it that he would disobey the order. In consequence, he received a summons to appear in court the next day.

The peasants did not know Gandhi's record in South Africa; they had merely heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with the authorities. Their spontaneous gathering in thousands around the courthouse showed that they had begun to shed their fear of the British.

On the one hand, he did not want to set a bad example as a lawbreaker; on the other, he had to render the humanitarian and national service for which he had come. He disregarded the order to leave not out of disrespect for lawful authority but in obedience to the voice of conscience, the higher law of our being.

They decided that it would be shameful desertion to go home while a total stranger like Gandhi was prepared to go to prison for their peasants. They went back and told Gandhi they were ready to follow him into jail, at which he exclaimed that the battle of Champaran was won.

He took a piece of paper, divided the group into pairs, and put down the order in which each pair was to court arrest. Several days later, the Lieutenant-Governor ordered the case to be dropped.

Andrews was an English pacifist who had become a devoted follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He came to Champaran to bid Gandhi farewell before leaving on a tour of duty to the Fiji Islands.

Gandhi believed that seeking a prop in an Englishman showed the weakness of his friends' hearts. Since the cause was just, they must rely upon themselves to win the battle and not depend on Andrews because he happened to be an Englishman.

He appealed for teachers, and volunteers such as Mahadev Desai, Narhari Parikh and their wives, Devadas and Kasturbai opened primary schools in six villages. Kasturbai taught the ashram rules on personal cleanliness and community sanitation, and a doctor volunteered his services for six months.

The three medicines were castor oil, quinine and sulphur ointment. A coated tongue brought a dose of castor oil, malaria fever brought quinine plus castor oil, and skin eruptions were treated with ointment plus castor oil.

He sent regular instructions by mail and asked for financial accounts. Once he wrote to the residents to fill in the old latrine trenches and dig new ones, otherwise the old ones would begin to smell bad.

The official inquiry produced overwhelming evidence against the planters, who agreed to refunds, and the peasants learned courage. Within a few years the British planters abandoned their estates, which reverted to the peasants, and indigo sharecropping disappeared.

In Gandhi's own words, what he did was a very ordinary thing: he declared that the British could not order him about in his own country. The episode marked his first successful civil disobedience in India and welded self-reliance, independence and the sharecroppers' cause together.

Gandhi first met Shukla at the December 1916 annual convention of the Indian National Congress in Lucknow. Shukla then accompanied him to Cawnpore, followed him to his ashram near Ahmedabad, and never left his side for weeks. After months he was waiting at the appointed spot in Calcutta, from where the two took a train to Patna. At Patna Shukla led Gandhi to Rajendra Prasad's house, and then Gandhi went on to Muzzafarpur to gather information from Professor Kripalani and others. From Muzzafarpur he finally proceeded to Champaran.

Shukla was a poor, unlettered sharecropper, yet nothing could dampen his determination. He came all the way to the Lucknow Congress session to complain about the injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, probably on someone's advice to "speak to Gandhi". He shadowed Gandhi to Cawnpore and other places, followed him to the Ahmedabad ashram, and never left his side for weeks. He begged Gandhi to fix a date and, months later, sat on his haunches at the appointed spot in Calcutta till Gandhi arrived. It was this tenacity that finally drew Gandhi to Champaran.

Most of the arable land in Champaran was divided into large estates owned by Englishmen and worked by Indian tenants. The chief commercial crop was indigo, and the landlords compelled all tenants, through long-term contracts, to plant three twentieths, or 15 per cent, of their holdings with indigo and surrender the entire harvest as rent. When Germany developed synthetic indigo, the landlords obtained agreements from the sharecroppers to pay compensation for being released from the 15 per cent arrangement. Many signed willingly since sharecropping was irksome, but when the illiterate peasants learned about synthetic indigo, they wanted their money back.

Gandhi stayed awake all night, telegraphing Rajendra Prasad to come with influential friends, sending instructions to the ashram, and wiring a full report to the Viceroy. In the morning, the town of Motihari was black with peasants who had heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with the authorities. Their spontaneous demonstration in thousands around the courthouse was the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British. The officials felt powerless without Gandhi's cooperation, the trial was postponed, and eventually the Lieutenant-Governor ordered the case to be dropped.

Gandhi pleaded guilty and told the court that he was involved in a conflict of duties. On the one hand, he did not wish to set a bad example as a lawbreaker before the public; on the other, he had to render the humanitarian and national service for which he had come to Champaran. He made it clear that he had disregarded the order to leave not out of any want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience. Since he could not honour both duties, he chose conscience over the official order and asked for the penalty due.

When Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and other prominent lawyers arrived, Gandhi asked them what they would do if he was sentenced to prison. Their first reply was that they had come to advise and help him, and would go home if he was jailed. Gandhi then demanded to know what would happen to the injustice to the sharecroppers, forcing them to think of the peasants rather than of their professional role. They realised that while a total stranger was ready to go to prison for the peasants, their going home would be shameful desertion, and they declared their readiness to follow him to jail.

The official commission of inquiry assembled a crushing mountain of evidence against the big planters, who then agreed in principle to make refunds. They expected Gandhi to demand repayment in full of the money they had illegally and deceitfully extorted, but he asked for only 50 per cent, and then accepted the planters' offer of 25 per cent. For Gandhi, the amount mattered less than the fact that the landlords were obliged to surrender part of the money and, with it, part of their prestige. The peasants now saw that they had rights and defenders, and they learned courage.

Gandhi saw the cultural and social backwardness of the Champaran villages and wanted to do something about it immediately. He appealed for teachers, and Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh with their wives, volunteers from Bombay and Poona, his son Devadas and Kasturbai came forward. Primary schools were opened in six villages, and Kasturbai taught the ashram rules on personal cleanliness and community sanitation. Since health conditions were miserable, Gandhi got a doctor to volunteer for six months, with castor oil, quinine and sulphur ointment as the only medicines available.

When the Muzzafarpur lawyers briefed Gandhi and reported their fees, he chided them for collecting big fees from the sharecroppers. He concluded that such cases should not be taken to law courts at all, because where the peasants were so crushed and fear-stricken, the courts were useless. Any legal verdict delivered over the heads of a terrified people could not protect them, for the planters had behaved as lords above the law. The real relief, he said, was for the peasants to be free from fear, which is exactly what the spontaneous demonstration at Motihari and the refund settlement achieved.

In smaller localities, the Indians were afraid to show sympathy for advocates of home-rule because such sympathy could invite official punishment. Professor Malkani was a teacher in a government school, yet he sheltered Gandhi in his home for two days. Gandhi himself commented that it was an extraordinary thing in those days for a government professor to harbour a man like him. By contrast, when Gandhi's case created trouble, thousands of ordinary people gathered at Motihari, showing how the climate of fear began to change.

After the triumph at Motihari, Gandhi and the lawyers conducted a far-flung inquiry into the grievances of the farmers. Depositions by about ten thousand peasants were written down, notes were made on other evidence, and documents were collected. The whole area throbbed with the activity of the investigators and the vehement protests of the landlords. The inquiry gave the movement an unshakeable factual foundation, and its findings later formed the crushing mountain of evidence before the official commission.

Gandhi received an official notice to quit Champaran and was summoned to court, but he signed the receipt with the declaration that he would disobey the order. The government, confronted by thousands of fearless peasants and its own baffled officials, could not prosecute him. Several days later, the magistrate informed Gandhi that the Lieutenant-Governor had ordered the case to be dropped. The author records that civil disobedience had thus triumphed, the first time in modern India, making Champaran a precedent for the later freedom struggle.

The text shows ordinary Indians playing a decisive part in the Champaran episode. Rajkumar Shukla, an illiterate sharecropper, pursued Gandhi for months and brought him to Champaran. Professor Malkani risked his government job by sheltering Gandhi, and Kripalani waited at the station with students at midnight. The unknown peasants of Motihari gathered spontaneously in thousands around the courthouse to support their Mahatma, and about ten thousand peasants later gave depositions. Their courage turned Gandhi's individual protest into a mass victory over fear.

As a result of the interviews in June, Sir Edward Gait appointed an official commission of inquiry into the indigo sharecroppers' situation, made up of landlords, government officials and Gandhi as the sole representative of the peasants. The inquiry assembled a crushing mountain of evidence against the big planters, who then agreed in principle to make refunds. After the settlement of a 25 per cent refund was adopted unanimously, the peasants learned courage. Within a few years, the British planters abandoned their estates, which reverted to the peasants, and indigo sharecropping disappeared.

Charles Freer Andrews, the English pacifist and follower of Gandhi, came to bid him farewell before leaving for the Fiji Islands, and the lawyer friends thought Andrews should stay and help them. Gandhi was vehemently opposed and told them that seeking a prop in an Englishman showed the weakness of their hearts. Since the cause was just, they must rely upon themselves to win the battle. Rajendra Prasad later commented that Gandhi had read their minds correctly and they had no reply, for in this way he taught them a lesson in self-reliance, which was bound together with Indian independence and help to the sharecroppers.

In "Indigo", Gandhi emerges as a leader of extraordinary patience, courage and practical idealism. He is drawn to Champaran not by any grand political design but by the entreaty of one unlettered peasant, Rajkumar Shukla, whose tenacity he respects. His method is always to get the facts first: he halts at Muzzafarpur, meets officials, consults lawyers and records thousands of depositions. His moral courage shines at Motihari, where he disobeys an expulsion order, pleading a "conflict of duties" and obedience to the voice of conscience rather than disrespect for law. He is firm without being arrogant, refusing bail yet helping officials regulate the very crowd gathered for him, and polite even to his opponents. Above all, he combines politics with humanity, opening schools, arranging medical relief and building self-reliance among the peasants, proving that his loyalty is to living human beings and not to abstractions.

Rajkumar Shukla, a sharecropper of Champaran, is one of the anonymous heroes of the freedom movement. Poor and emaciated like any other Indian peasant, he is illiterate but resolute. Recognising the injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, he comes to the December 1916 Lucknow Congress on someone's advice to "speak to Gandhi". His defining quality is perseverance: he accompanies Gandhi to Cawnpore and other parts of India, follows him to the ashram near Ahmedabad, and never leaves his side for weeks, begging him to fix a date. Months later he is found sitting on his haunches at the appointed spot in Calcutta, waiting till Gandhi is free. This patient, dogged commitment draws India's greatest leader to Champaran, showing how an ordinary man's persistence can alter the course of history.

The author calls Champaran a turning-point because it was here that Gandhi first applied, on Indian soil, the method of peaceful civil disobedience that he had tested in South Africa. What began as an attempt to alleviate the distress of poor peasants ended with the British dropping his case, the first triumph of civil disobedience in modern India. Gandhi himself described it modestly as "a very ordinary thing" — declaring that the British could not order him about in his own country. The episode transformed the peasants, who shed their fear, learned their rights and ultimately won back their lands as the planters abandoned the estates. It also stamped the typical Gandhi pattern on Indian politics: intertwining national issues with the practical, day-to-day problems of the millions and moulding self-reliant Indians who could make India free.

Gandhi's experience in Champaran shows that legal remedies are powerless before a frightened people. The Muzzafarpur lawyers had represented peasant groups in court for years, yet the peasants remained "crushed and fear-stricken", and Gandhi concluded that taking such cases to the courts did little good. The planters had behaved as lords above the law, so no verdict delivered in their own courts could really protect the sharecroppers. The moment the peasants gathered spontaneously in thousands at Motihari, however, the officials themselves felt powerless, and the tide turned. The refund of 25 per cent mattered less than the fact that the peasants saw that they had rights and defenders, and "learned courage". Real justice for the poor, the chapter teaches, begins when they lose their fear of the powerful.

The chapter repeatedly demonstrates that Gandhi's loyalty was not to abstractions but to living human beings. He went to Champaran not for a political platform but because one poor sharecropper begged him to see the injustice there. Even before defying the British, he spent his energies on gathering facts, chiding lawyers, and recording the grievances of ten thousand peasants. After winning the refund, he did not stop at a political victory: he noticed the dirty clothes of the women, the miserable health conditions and the absence of schooling, and immediately opened primary schools in six villages, brought a doctor, and had Kasturbai teach cleanliness and sanitation. In everything he did, he tried to mould a new free Indian who could stand on his own feet — for Gandhi knew that only such self-reliant individuals could make India free.

Gandhi's insistence on self-reliance runs through the whole episode. He questioned the Bihar lawyers until they shed their readiness to go home and declared themselves willing to follow him to jail, transforming hired professionals into committed companions of the peasants. He chided them for charging big fees, teaching them that a cause must be served, not billed. When the lawyers wanted an Englishman, Charles Freer Andrews, to lend weight to their fight, Gandhi refused outright, saying that seeking a prop in Mr. Andrews because he happened to be an Englishman showed the weakness of their hearts. With the peasants, he won them freedom from fear rather than dependence on him: at Motihari they gathered on their own, and after the settlement they knew they had rights and defenders. A people who could act without props could make India free.

Champaran demonstrated that moral courage, supported by united and peaceful mass action, could bend an empire. Gandhi's method was thoroughly non-violent: he investigated patiently, complied with the messenger who escorted him back, yet calmly wrote that he would disobey the unjust order. In court he pleaded guilty and appealed to conscience rather than resisting the judge. Yet the sight of the Mahatma in trouble brought thousands of unarmed peasants to the courthouse, and the officials, who felt powerless without Gandhi's cooperation, found their dreaded might challenged by Indians for the first time. The government retreated, dropped the case, appointed a commission of inquiry, and was finally forced into refunds. Civil disobedience triumphed for the first time in modern India without a blow struck, showing the British that their authority rested on the fear of subjects who had now ceased to be afraid.