Gandhi Journal Article-I ( JULY 2017 ) - Mohan to Mahatma journey through Champaran

Gandhi Journal Article-I ( JULY 2017 )

Mohan to Mahatma  journey through Champaran

By Ansuman Tripathy 

He had arrived in India two years before and following the advice of guru Gokhale had travelled the length and breadth of the country to see, feel and comprehend the miseries of his people before plunging into public service. He was deeply moved by the poverty, hunger, disease, superstitions, evil caste system and all other financial, moral and social maladies that had encased his countrymen and encompassed his country. He had taken a secret vow to eradicate the maladies as best as he could, of course, under the rule of the union jack. Freedom of his country was not at the wildest of his dreams then.

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Gandhi Journal Article-I ( MAY 2017 ) - What Champaran gave to Gandhi and India's freedom struggle

Gandhi Journal Article-I ( MAY 2017 )

What Champaran gave to Gandhi and India's freedom struggle

By Ramchandra Guha 

A hundred years ago on April 10, 1917, Mohandas K Gandhi arrived in the district of Champaran in North Bihar. He spent several months there, studying the problems of the peasantry, who had been forced by European planters to cultivate indigo against their will. Farmers who refused to meet this obligation had their land confiscated.

Through his interventions with the colonial State, Gandhi was able to get substantial concessions for the peasantry. Rents were radically reduced, and the compulsion to grow indigo replaced by a system of voluntary compliance. This was a major victory for the peasants, and a significant triumph for Gandhi himself, since it established his credibility as a leader within India (as distinct from South Africa).

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Gandhi Journal Article-II (May 2016) - Gandhi's Champaran Mission : Its Context and Implications

Gandhi Journal Article-II (May 2016)

Gandhi's Champaran Mission : Its Context and Implications 

When GANDHI WAS in Santiniketan after returning from South Africa in 1915, at the enquiry of C.F. Andrews about whether there was any possibility for him to start satyagraha in India, Gandhi replied that such a possibility would not arise for another five years. Little did he think at that time that his first encounter with the British authorities in India would come within two years in Champaran in Bihar. The situation in Champaran was not a creation of Gandhi but his mission there initiated a process that shaped the destiny of the nation and the destiny of his own.

The encounter came in the form of passive resistance. Passive resistance of Gandhi came out of his concept of authority. To him, force was the basis of the state authority. The authority based on force could not have moral sanction. In this matter the positions of Thoreau and Gandhi were identical. Thoreau said: "The authority of Government... is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed."¹ Both Thoreau and Gandhi believed in the moral authority which stood above the legal authority. The man-made laws were not necessarily binding on the people. Gandhi said: "So long as the superstition that man should obey unjust laws exists, so long will their slavery exist."² Thoreau wrote: "Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavour to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?"³ As a philosophical anarchist, Gandhi thought that moral authority came from the people because it was the people who resisted the immoral authority. But the people were inordinate force. So, finally, he wanted to be much more definite and felt the need of building the Congress as an active moral body which will act as an effective Countervailing force on the British government. 

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