One of the most mysterious stories surrounding Mahatma Gandhi’s Champaran Satyagraha has to do with an alleged attempt by a local British official to get him poisoned. There is no documentary evidence, but the tale lives on
With 100 years of Mahatma Gandhi’s Champaran Satyagraha, it is also a century-old story how a poor man saved the life of the person who is known as the flag-bearer of the India’s freedom. The story of Battakh Mian Ansari, though it has no documentary evidence, is apparently that he was the man asked to poison Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Champaran soon after the latter began hisSatyagraha against the indigo planters in 1917.
There are conflicting reports about Ansari, a cook, with some disbelieving his ‘heroic’ deed and some complaining that his memory was being erased; with one section saying Gandhi did not mention about this incident to anybody nor referred to it in his autobiography, and another countering that Rajendra Prasad, who, after independence became the country’s first President, was present when Ansari was coerced to serve poison-laced milk to Gandhi, which he refused to do and decades later revealed it publicly.
After British officials and indigo planters in Motihari, Gandhi’s first stopover in Champaran, failed in their attempts to dissuade Gandhi from launching the Satyagraha, one of them, WS Erwin, hatched a conspiracy. He invited Gandhi to his mansion, where Ansari served as cook, for talks and, after the meal, ordered the cook to serve milk in which poison was mixed by Erwin.
Though knowing little about Gandhi, Ansari took the bowl but told Gandhi not to drink it. Rajendra Prasad was witness to this episode. This infuriated Erwin no end and he tortured and fired Ansari, razed his home to the ground and confiscated whatever land he owned.
“Gandhi and Rajendra Prasad possibly did not mention this episode apprehending that the Satyagraha movement might be distracted”, said author Arvind Mohan in his latest title, Champaran Satyagraha ke Sahyogi, which detailed the Ansari incident.
Another author, Girish Mishra, who claimed he was present there as a school student when Rajendra Prasad disclosed this episode in Motihari in early the 1950s, said the first President, while going somewhere to condole the death of a relative, had addressed a small public gathering. There was commotion because security people were not allowing an elderly person to enter.
“Prasad saw this and went down and escorted that man and made him sit by his side. For a few minutes, he talked to him in the local dialect and then narrated how a planter Erwin tried his best to induce Battakh Mian to mix poison in the food and told the audience that, had the cook agreed to do the bidding of the planter, none of us including Gandhi would have been alive; besides, none could say about its impact on India’s freedom struggle”, Mishra claimed.
Patna’s Gandhi Sangrahalaya secretary Razi Ahmed expressed surprise that neither Gandhi nor Rajendra Prasad referred to such a major incident in their biographies, even though they made in-depth reference of even minor incidents of that time. Equally surprised is Jabir Hussain, a former Chairman of the Bihar legislative Council and litterateur who, over two decades back, wrote to Bihar Government for the rehabilitation of the Ansari family. “There is no documentary evidence but a letter of Rajendra Prasad to Bihar Government and his public confession”, said Hussain, who helped in building amazar of Ansari at Siswan Ajgari and a museum after his name at Chhatauni — the two villages in Motihari. He said due to some socio-political compulsions, Gandhi did not publicise this event.
Ansari’s grandson, Kalam Ansari, and other family members staged a protest under Gandhi’s statue here on the day when President Pranab Mukherjee was honouring the freedom-fighters. Kalam, Ansari’s grandson, in his late 60s, said then President Rajendra Prasad had directed the Bihar Government to give 20 acres of land to the family but only six acres were allotted at Ekwa Parsauni, their ancestral village, of which four acres was swallowed by Dalha river and the remaining two acres, which was forest land, was taken back. “We live in huts raised on our own land where our grandfather lived and do petty temporary jobs in the forest department” Kalam said, apparently upset with the treatment the authorities in independent India had given his family.
He lamented that while a lot of changes took place during the past one century, their condition never changed. “Even if it changed, it changed for the worse”. Hussain added.
(The writer is Patna-based Special Correspondent of The Pioneer)