A day after reaching Motihari to study the condition of the indigo farmers and its legal aspects, Mohandas Karam-
chand Gandhi decides to go to a village some 5 miles away, on April 16, 1917, where a peasant had been tortured. He along with lawyer Dharnidhar Prasad left in the morning riding an elephant.
“The use of elephant in Champaran is as common as bullock carts in Gujarat,” Gandhi noted. Hardly had they covered half of the distance, a messenger of Police Superinte-ndent stopped him at Jasulipatti village and said, “Superinte-ndent sahib ne aap ko salam bheja hai.” The message was clear that Gandhi was not allowed to move ahead.
When Gandhi went to the office of the police chief he handed him out a notice asking him to leave Champaran within 24 hours. “I have no intention to leave Champaran. I have to go ahead and conduct inquiry for which I have come here,” when Gandhi said this he was asked to present himself in the court next day for disobeying the order. This was the beginning of the Satyagraha on Indian soil under British rule.
The news of court summon to Gandhi spread like a wildfire. “Unprecedented scenes were witnessed in Motihari..... They (kisans) received me as though we had been age-long friends. It is no exaggeration, but the literal truth, to say that in this meeting with the peasants, I was face to face with God, Ahimsa and Truth. That day in Champaran was an unforgettable event in my life and a red letter day for the peasants and for me. According to the law, I was to be on my trial, but truly speaking Government was to be on my trial. The Commissioner only succeeded in trapping Government in the net which he had spread for me,” said Gandhi.
Professor JB Kripalani, who joined Gandhi observed, “Here for the first time was a man who had defied the might of the British Empire and was willing to court imprisonment and suffer the hardships of jail life. Such a thing had never happened before in India. With Gandhiji’s defiance of the law, the people of Champaran felt as if their age-long chains had been broken and they were free men.”
It was a real success story of Gandhi in Chamapran where nobody knew him. He mentioned, “Champaran is situated in the lowland of Himalayas and new world for me where Congress had not reached and those who heard about it wanted to keep a safe distance. Here Congress means infighting among lawyers, attempt to give law a slip. So I decided not to involve Congress in this agitation.”
The trial started with visibly worried Government pleader and magistrate who were unsure of how to move. The Government lawyer was pleading to postpone the trial but Gandhi insisted there was no need for adjournment saying he has admitted that he defied the section 144 and ready to undergo punishment. Still the case was postponed.
Gandhi sent a telegram to the Viceroy detailing all the happenings. When he reached the court on the given time to hear the judgement, he
was told that the case had been withdrawn with the orders of the Governor and the Collector wrote that he was allowed to go ahead with his inquiry and can seek help from the officials.
Kripalani summed up, “The success in Champaran was an object-lesson to the whole country in the potency of Satyagraha. The most helpless and timid section of the Indian population had been roused as though by a miracle to cast off their fear and had become conscious of their self-respect as human beings.”