Peasant Movements: Champaran and Kheda

Gandhi gave the mantra 'Do or Die' in his speech to the AICC at the Gowalia Tank maidan, Bombay, on 8 August 1942, after the Quit India resolution was passed: 'We shall either free India or die in the attempt.' The leaders were arrested early the next morning, and the movement became a leaderless, largely spontaneous upsurge. The Individual Satyagraha of 1940-41 was a deliberately limited protest with no such call.

With the top leaders arrested on 9 August 1942, an underground network carried on the movement. In Bombay, Usha Mehta, then a young student, and her associates ran the secret Congress Radio, which went on air in August 1942 and broadcast news and messages until the police tracked it down in November 1942. Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the Congress flag at Gowalia Tank on 9 August and led the underground; Sucheta Kripalani was active in the underground organisation; Matangini Hazra was killed at Tamluk.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. In Kheda (Gujarat) the crops failed in 1917-18; under the revenue rules, a yield below one-fourth of the normal entitled the cultivator to full remission, but the government insisted on collection. Gandhi asked the peasants to take a pledge not to pay. Vallabhbhai Patel, then a young Ahmedabad lawyer, and Indulal Yagnik joined him, and the government later quietly ordered that revenue be recovered only from those who could afford it. Statement 3 is wrong: Gandhi's first satyagraha in India was Champaran (1917). Kheda is usually called his first non-cooperation.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. After the Viceroy's August Offer (1940) was rejected, Gandhi launched a limited, Individual Satyagraha in October 1940 rather than a mass movement, so as not to embarrass Britain during the war while still asserting the right of free speech against it. Selected satyagrahis made an anti-war speech and courted arrest: Vinoba Bhave was the first and Jawaharlal Nehru the second. Statement 3 is wrong: the Cripps Mission came in March-April 1942, after this campaign; its failure led to Quit India, not to the Individual Satyagraha.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. Haji Shariatullah of Faridpur began the Faraizi movement in the early 19th century, insisting on the faraiz (obligatory duties) of Islam. His son Dudu Miyan turned it into a peasant organisation: he declared that land belonged to God, opposed the illegal cesses (abwabs) of zamindars and the pressure of indigo planters, and set up his own village courts and agents. Statement 3 is wrong: the Faraizis were an independent east Bengal movement. The Wahabi movement of Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli had its centre at Patna and fought the Sikh kingdom in the north-west.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct. After his arrest on 9 August 1942 Gandhi was held in the Aga Khan Palace, Poona. In February 1943 he began a 21-day fast, in answer to the government's charge that he and the Congress were responsible for the violence of 1942; the government refused to release him, and three members of the Viceroy's Executive Council resigned. His secretary Mahadev Desai died there in August 1942 and Kasturba on 22 February 1944. Statement 4 is wrong: Gandhi was released on health grounds on 6 May 1944, more than a year before the war ended.

Champaran came first (1917). In Ahmedabad the mill dispute came to a head in February-March 1918, and Gandhi's fast of 15-18 March brought a settlement. The Kheda Satyagraha, with its pledge not to pay land revenue, was launched on 22 March 1918, days after the Ahmedabad settlement. The Rowlatt hartal followed in March-April 1919. The order is 2-1-4-3.

Pairs 1 and 2 are correct. K. Kelappan led a band of volunteers from Calicut to Payyanur, where the salt law was broken in April 1930. In Orissa, Gopabandhu Choudhuri organised the salt satyagraha on the Balasore coast at Inchudi; when he was arrested on the way, Acharya Harihar Das led the volunteers. Pair 3 is wrong: the Khudai Khidmatgars ('Red Shirts') of the North-West Frontier were organised by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan; Gopinath Bordoloi was a Congress leader of Assam.

Satyashodhak Samaj was an anti-caste movement in Maharashtra (c). Jyotiba Phule founded it in Pune in 1873 to free the lower castes and women from Brahminical domination. It held marriages without priests, and Phule and Savitribai Phule ran schools for girls and Dalits. His book Gulamgiri (1873) compared caste with slavery. The other options are wrong: Bihar's tribal movements were Birsa Munda's Ulgulan (a), Gujarat had no such temple-entry campaign (b), and Punjab's peasant movements were unrelated (d). The best-known temple-entry movements were Vaikom (1924–25) and Guruvayur in Kerala.

Phule was given the title "Mahatma" in 1888. Notice how his ideas later shaped the non-Brahmin movement and Dr Ambedkar, who called him one of his three gurus.

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Reducing the landlord's share from half to one-third is correct (a). In the Tebhaga movement (1946–47) in Bengal, led by the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha (linked to the Communist Party), sharecroppers (bargadars) demanded that the jotedar's share of the crop be cut from half to one-third; 'tebhaga' means 'three shares'. The movement drew on the Floud Commission's recommendation (1940). (b), (c) and (d) are wrong: ownership of land, abolition of zamindari and writing off debts were not the core demand.

Notice the legacy: the demand was partly met by the Bargadars Act (1950), and later by Operation Barga (1978) in West Bengal, which registered sharecroppers. Other peasant risings of the 1940s include Telangana (1946–51) and Warli (1945). Trap: tebhaga is about the share, not ownership.

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