Champaran Satyagraha: Retrieving Some Forgotten Heroes

Abstract

This essay primarily concerns itself with attempting to retrieve contributions of some of the local and regional leaders of the Champaran Satyagraha Movement who have largely been left out by the existing literature. Further, it draws upon some of the unexplored archival sources as well as some vernacular literatures, mainly Hindi besides memoirs as well as newspaper reports have been used for the study. Yet, one faces huge constraints of evidences to find answers to many pertinent questions, which emerge after delving into the subject. This essay has been able to cull out significant information about the contributions of Pir Munis, mostly through the memoirs of the Hindi literatures and Hindi newspaper, Pratap. There is still a need to trace out many other sources to find out details about many other local leaders, who have been mentioned in this essay. Besides retrieving the roles played out by the local leaders and vernacular intelligentsia at great personal risks of state repression, this essay brings out that the agrarian problems of Champaran still suffers from something which has been inherited as a legacy during the colonial era, and even after seven decades post-independence many issues remains unresolved.

Introduction

The Government of India as well as the State Government of Bihar is commemorating centenary of the Champaran Satyagraha, known as the Indigo Revolution. Long official celebrations are rightly underway, beginning from an academic seminar at Muzaffarpur on 10 April 2017, because on this day in 1917, Mahatma Gandhi had reached Muzaffarpur. Such celebrations will, however, serve better purposes if some of the most significant, yet hitherto unsung heroes, whose names have suffered erasures across schools of historiographies of the Champaran Satyagrah, are restored to the rightly deserved centre-stage of the histories of the Champaran Satyagrah.

Muzaffarpur town of north Bihar was, and continues to be, the headquarters of the Commissioner of the Tirhut Division under whose jurisdiction the East (Motihari) and West (Bettiah) Champaran Districts fall. From Muzaffarpur, Gandhi proceeded to Champaran. Here, Gandhi also came in contact with Acharya J.B. Kripalani (1888–1982), who was then teaching in the Bhumihar-Brahman College of Muzaffarpur, later named after its de facto founder Babu Langat Singh (1850–1912).³

The Bhumihar-Brahman Sabha (founded at Patna in 1889), at its annual session at Muzaffarpur in 1899, in collaboration with the Bihar Scientific Society, Muzaffarpur (founded on 24 May 1868, by the then Subordinate Judge Syed Imdad Ali, died 8 August 1886), set up this college on 3 July 1899, which was named in 1950, after its substantial benefactor, Langat Singh, a railway contractor and zamindar of the village Dharahra, Muzaffarpur, now in Vaishali district (Mohammad Sajjad, Contesting Colonialism and Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur Since 1857 (Delhi: Primus, 2014)).

Gandhi, in keeping with the methods he then employed, planned to meet the Divisional Commissioner L.F. Morshead to hear the official version from him, and to apprise him of his intention of proceeding to Champaran, to see things for himself. This approach was in consonance with his methodology of collaboration with confrontation being the course of last resort. Thus, he wrote a letter to the Commissioner, dated 12 April 1917, from the house of a pleader of Muzaffarpur, Gaya Prasad Singh, where Gandhi was staying.⁴

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereafter CWMG), online, vol. 15, 329.

On 8 April 2017, the Hindustan Times carried a column ‘The Man Who Brought Gandhi to Champaran’ by Ramchandra Guha. The piece written in the admirably easy style of the well-known author is, however, replete with factual errors apart from significant omissions. Guha, unwittingly, ignores certain significant researches about the most important, though hitherto lesser known, local leaders of the Champaran Satyagraha. He places inordinate reliance on the introductory essay added by, Bhairab Lal Das (2014), the compiler of the diary of Rajkumar Shukla (1875–1929).⁵

Bhairab Lal Das, ed., Gandhi Ke Champaran Andolan Ke Sutradhar—Rajkumar Shukla Ki Diary (Hindi) [The Stage Manager of the Gandhi’s Champaran Movement—Rajkumar Shukla and his Diary] (Darbhanga: Kalyani Foundation, 2014).

The diary in Bhojpuri language/dialect, originally in the Kaithi script, with which Shukla was familiar, has now been rendered into Hindi language and Nagri script. The most glaring omission in Shukla’s memoranda is that of Pir Muhammad Munis (1882–1949), who was undisputedly the most significant leader of the Champaran peasants in the third-phase of the struggle (1917), when the Gandhi appeared on the scene and the struggle acquired the title of Champaran Satyagrah. Be it added that the first-phase was during 1867–77, when peasant resistance remained couched within the legalities and resulted in ephemeral ripples with no long-term ripples.⁶

P.C. Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1955), 8–9.

Peasant Protests in Champaran (1907–09)

In the second significant wave of the peasant protests in Champaran (1907–09), there was defiance and violence as demonstrated by Razi Ahmad (1987),⁷

Razi Ahmad, Indian Peasant Movement and Mahatma Gandhi (Delhi: Shabd, 1987).

relying on archival evidence. It ‘form[ed] the background of Gandhiji’s later campaign. The villagers combined themselves under the leadership of a few persons like Sital Ray, Radhemal [a banker of Bettiah], Sheikh Gulab and others’.⁸

Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 19.

Shaikh Gulab (1857–1920), son of Sheikh Raktu, of the village Chand Barwah in Saathi thana, belonged essentially to a relatively well-off raiyat, though not much educated, he was said to have been an intelligent person. With him, a certain Sheikh Rajab Ali, of the village Kala Barwah, was also among the leaders of this phase.⁹

Ashraf Qadri, Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Hind Mein Muslim Mujahedin-e-Champaran Ka Muqaam. (Urdu) [Contributions of the Muslims of Champaran in the India’s Freedom Struggle] (Bettiah, Self-published by the author, 1992), 60.

These leaders could prevail upon the cultivators not to grow indigo and to resist the planters, if necessary by violence, as and when they tried to coerce the peasants to grow the cash crops like indigo and sugarcane. Sital [Rai] Ray was convicted and sentenced to two and a half years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹2,000/-, in default a further term of one year rigorous imprisonment. Sheikh Gulab was also convicted. Sital [Rai] Ray was described as the most dangerous of the active agitators. Radhemal was described as another dangerous and wealthy agitator’. Shaikh Gulab was tired on charges of unlawful assembly, arson, loot and instigating fatal attacks on the planters and their property. Many others were also convicted.¹⁰

Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 27.

The agitators were united in their opposition to the [European] planters irrespective of caste, creed and religion. Muslims took oath of loyalty on the Quran; the Hindus did so before their idols, cows and under the sacred Pipal trees. For a while, there was a widespread belief in the district that the reign of the English was over.

Explaining the [recent] history of the ‘Causes of the Bettiah Disturbances’ of 1907–08, W.R. Gourlay¹¹

W.R. Gourlay was the Director, of Industries, and of Agriculture of Bengal, who had knowledge of Bettiah subdivision and was supposed to be popular with both the raiyats and the planters. He had served as sub-divisional officer (SDO), Bettiah, and also collector, Champaran in past. For some time, the Gourlay Report was not made public, even though it was circulated among the Europeans.

Report 1908–09 records:

During September [1907], the raiyats, of some villages near Pursa indigo factory, 10 miles north-west of Bettiah, became restless. Matters came to a head at the Bettiah mela, held from the 29th of September till 10th of October, where large numbers of raiyats came together, and discussed matters amongst themselves. The outstanding men at these meetings were one Sheikh Gulab who had been the leader of an agitation against the Sathi factory, 15 miles north of Bettiah, last year, and Sital Rai, a resident of the village of Rampur Mathia, near Pursa. The subject discussed at these meetings appears to have been the growing of indigo and sugar for the factories, and the raiyats were exhorted to sow food-crops, and to beat the Managers of the factories and their servants should they interfere.¹²

Political Section (Confidential), A 20/1912, Bihar State Archives (hereafter BSA), Patna].

In fact,

[T]he set up of the tenancy in Champaran was such that a tenant could not walk with an umbrella opened within a mile of the kothi of the European planter. But it is this very oppression which brought out several martyrs who moved from village to village in 1907–08 and a secret organisation was set up in Champaran district to fight the tyranny of planters […] Sheikh Gulab was the prime mover and he raised a common fund for contesting cases and within a very short time the movement against the Planters’ Raj caught the whole of Bettiah subdivision. The raiyats at the instance of Sheikh Gulab, Sital Ray and others refused to grow indigo and they started sowing their own crops in the tinkathia portion of the field […] The planters were bewildered but the iron grip on the tenants tightened quickly and Sheikh Gulab and others soon found themselves made into special constables by the Administration. ...history was made in Bettiah subdivision in Champaran in 1908 when Sheikh Gulab and others refused to work as special constables. They were convicted under the Police Act but the Calcutta High Court set aside the conviction in March 1908.¹³

Ray Chaudhuri, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 45–46.

The repression against Sheikh Gulab, Sital Rai ‘a respectable resident of Mathia village’,¹⁴

Ibid., 47–48.

Radhemal, etc., caught the attention of the press. In November–December 1908, the newspapers like, the Amrit Bazar Patrika (more specifically 9 November 1908), and The Statesman (2 December 1908), reported and editorialised at length about the sufferings of the Champaran raiyats and their leaders.

Experience of Gandhi in Patna

Guha chooses largely to ignore the precursors; Gulab’s name gets cited as Ghulam (literally means slave), and the author having grown in north India would have surely known the widely different meanings of the two names. One could reasonably presume that Shukla’s diary did not receive much attention from Guha. It is a different matter that pages of the diary where the most crucial details are covered are largely wasted to trivial details. Even Gandhi had found his trip to Patna in the first week of April 1917 to be ‘a mistake and that his host Shukla was an idiot’.¹⁵

Arthur Herman, Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (New York: Random House, 2008), 225.

Gandhi was thoroughly disappointed with Shukla’s company, and also with the sorry spectacle of untouchability that he witnessed in the house of Dr Rajendra Prasad in Patna, who was away in Puri.¹⁶

Rajendra Prasad, Satyagraha in Champaran (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1949), 100.

On 10 April 2017, Gandhi wrote (in Gujarati language) to his son Maganlal Gandhi,

The man [Raj Kumar Shukla] who has brought me here doesn’t know anything. He has dumped me in some obscure place. The master [Dr Rajendra Prasad] of the house is away and the servants take us both to be beggars. They don’t even permit us the use of their latrine, not to speak of inviting us to meals. I take care to provide myself with a stock of the things I need and so I have been able to maintain complete indifference. I have swallowed a good many insults and the queer situation here does not trouble me. If things go on this way I am not likely to see Champaran. So far as I can see, my guide can give me no help and I am in no position to find my own way.¹⁷

CWMG, vol. 15, 328.

Gandhi also used certain expressions for Shukla, such as ‘ignorant’, ‘unsophisticated’, ‘rustic’ and that for the urban upper caste advocates, Shukla was more like their ‘menial’.¹⁸

CWMG, vol. 44, 391–94.

This explains why Arthur Herman called Shukla an ‘idiot’.

Gandhi’s experiences in Patna in April 1917, also tell a lot about prevailing social condition, which he noted down retrospectively in January–February 1929.

There was strict untouchability in Bihar. I might not draw water at the well whilst the servants were using it, lest drops of water from my bucket might pollute them, the servants not knowing to what caste I belonged. Rajkumar directed me to the indoor latrine, the servant promptly directed me to the outdoor one. All this was far from surprising or irritating to me, for I was inured to such things. The servants were doing the duty, which they thought Rajendra Babu would wish them to do. These entertaining experience enhanced my regard for Rajkumar Shukla, if they also enabled me to know him better. I saw now that Rajkumar Shukla could not guide me, and that I must take the reins in my own hands. ¹⁹

CWMG, vol. 44, 393.

Gandhi then recalled that he knew a Patna man in London, named, Mazharul Haq, whom he refers as ‘The Gentle Bihari’.²⁰

In his autobiography, however, it is Brajkishore Prasad (1877–1946) whom Gandhi refers as ‘The Gentle Bihari’.

Gandhi records:

I knew Maulana Mazharul Haq in London when he was studying for the bar, and when I met him at the Bombay Congress in 1915—the year in which he was President of the Muslim League—he had renewed the acquaintance, and extended me an invitation to stay with him whenever I happened to go to Patna. I bethought myself of this invitation and sent him a note indicating the purpose of my visit. He immediately came in his car, and pressed me to accept his hospitality. I thanked him and requested him to guide me to my destination by the first available train, the railway guide being useless to an utt[e]r stranger like me. He had a talk with Rajkumar Shukla and suggested that I should first go to Muzaffarpur. There was a train for that place the same evening, and he sent me off by it.²¹

CWMG, vol. 44, 393.

As for the long introductory essay (2014) by Bhairab Lal Das, it is by now, well-known that, Bhairab Das, for the reasons best known to him, has deliberately looked largely away from the significant researches brought out about the most important writer–activist of the Champaran Satyagrah, Pir Mohammad ‘Munis’ Ansari, as also about Harbans Sahay, Shital Rai and Sheikh Gulab. Shukla was an associate of Munis.

Dr Rajendra Prasad’s Autobiography (1957)²²

Rajendra Prasad, Autobiography, (Delhi: National Book Trust, 1957).

, as well as his book At The Feet of Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay, Hind Kitabs, 1955, 1), and lot more primary evidences, as well as secondary works, abundantly testify that the delegation which went to Lucknow to draw attention of the political note-worthies of the time in December 1916, consisted of Pir Munis, Harbans Sahay, and of course Rajkumar Shukla.²³

Rajendra Prasad wrote other two accounts, but details pertaining to some of the important local leaders of the Champaran Satyagrah remain wanting. Mahatma Gandhi and Bihar: Some Reminiscences (Bombay, 1949), and Satyagraha in Champaran (Ahmedabad, 1949); this was written in Hindi in 1919; translated into English in 1928), wherein Prasad (31) narrates:

It appears that Mr. Tanner’s inquiry did not satisfy the tenants, as Shaikh Gulab, who was considered to be the leader of the tenants, along with other tenants submitted a memorial to the Lieut. Governor in which he said about this inquiry: That the Sub-Divisional Officer of Bettiah went only to three Mouzas and made inquiries of some of your memorialists and then went away leaving the enquiry incomplete.

Janakdhari Prasad of Muzaffarpur wrote his Hindi memoir, Kuchh Apni Kuchh Desh Ki [Something About Me, Something About my Country] (Patna, 1970) and Anugrah Narayan Sinha (1887–1957) wrote his Hindi memoir, Mere Sansmaran [My Reminiscences] (Patna: Kusum Prakashan, 1942/1961). But all these memoirs fail to provide such details of the important local leaders.

Some of the leaders of the agriculturalists of Champaran, the chief among whom were Raj Kumar Shukla and Pir Muhammad Munis, also attended the ‘[Lucknow, 1916] Congress to represent their grievances’.²⁴

Rajendra Prasad, At the Feet of Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay: Hind Kitabs, 1955), 1.

Forgotten Heroes of Champaran

The travel of Shukla and Munis to Lucknow is said to have been funded by Hafiz Deen Mohammad Ansari (1881–1961) of village Chanpatiya.²⁵

The descendents of Deen Mohammad claim that he was a big merchant of tannery and hiding, and around 1904–05, he too was harassed by a European Planter named Coffin. He had a judicial battle with the planter in which Deen Mohammad came out victorious.

An affluent merchant, Deen Mohammad, is said to have been a good friend and companion of Sheikh Gulab in the struggle against the European planters in the first decade of the twentieth century. They were also joined by Hafiz Mohammad Saani (1888–1951). In our series of conversations with the members of the family, they claimed that most of the secret meetings in the first decade of the twentieth century took place at the residence of Deen Mohammad. Later it shifted to Bettiah at the residences of Hafiz Saani and of Pir Munis. This upsurge of 1907–08, in Hindi newspapers, is called as ‘Neel Vibhraat Andolan’ [Indigo Resistance Movement]. Munis had written on this ‘Neel Vibhrat Andolan’ with this very title, in Hind Kesri.²⁶

Shrikant, Pir Muhammad Munis: Qalam Ka Satyagrahi (Hindi) [A Satyagrah With Pen] (Patna: Gandhi Sangrahalay, 2011).

Munis, had already been writing news-reports and columns about the wretched subjugation of the Champaran peasantry in the Hindi Weekly (later it became daily), Pratap (of Kanpur), edited by Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi (1890–1931). Pir Munis was its local correspondent of the district. Guha, seems to have been misled into believing that it was Shukla who wrote in Pratap. Rather, it was Munis who arguably nationalised the cause of the Champaran peasantry, besides the reporting and editorials carried out during November–December 1908, by the Amrit Bazar Patrika, Statesman and Beharee. In fact, all historical records suggest that Shukla was not very educated except little knowledge of Kaithi script and Bhojpuri dialect in which he wrote his diary. Several local vernacular accounts have also mentioned that it was Munis who was the original author of the letters written in Raj Kumar Shukla’s name.²⁷

Qadri, Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Hind Mein Muslim Mujahedin-e-Champaran Ka Muqaami; Prasanna Kumar Chaudhry and Shrikant, Bihar Mein Samajik Parivartan Ke Kuchh Aayaam [Some Aspects of Social Change in Bihar], 1912–90 (Hindi) (Delhi: Vaani, 2001), 36–39.

Sheikh Gulab and Shital Rai had heard of Munis through his writings about the Champaran peasants in the Hindi press. As early as in 1910, Munis had travelled to Allahabad where he met Pundit Sundarlal (1857–1918), who introduced him, to Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, who was then working with Abhuday. Banarsidas Chaturvedi (1892–1985) in his Hindi memoir (Sansmaran, Kashi, Bhartiya Gyanpith, 1958), provides a lot of details about Pir Munis. B.B. Mishra’s collection of documents (1963), Guha has referred to, is also full of references to Munis. The colonial records had already declared Munis as a ‘badmaash’ (criminally oriented) journalist. Based on archival documents, correspondences and many other primary evidences, at least two thin biographical accounts of Munis have come out in the current decade. One is by Shrikant (2011),²⁸

Shrikant, Pir Muhammad Munis: Qalam Ka Satyagrahi.

a senior journalist who worked with the Hindi daily Hindustan (Patna), and is now the Director, Jagjivan Ram Institute of Parliamentary Studies and Politics, Patna; and another is by Afroz Alam Sahil (2015).²⁹

Afroz Alam Sahil, Pir Mohammad Munis (Delhi: Insaan International, 2015). Also see, Mohammad Sajjad, ‘Pir Mohammad Munis: An Organic Intellectual Activist of the Champaran Satyagraha’, 1 May 2013.

http://twocircles.net/2013may01/peer_mohammad_munis_organic_intellectual_activist_champaran_satyagraha.html; Mohammad Sajjad, Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours (London and New Delhi: Routledge, 2014), 16–17 and also his, Contesting Colonialism and Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur since 1857.

P.C. Ray Chaudhury (1955, 121) informs us that,

The [agrarian] enquiry [after Gandhi reached Champaran in 1917] was keenly followed by the press. There were three principal writers for the press—Ganesh Shanker Vidyarthi of the Pratap, Pir Muhammed Munshi [Munis], a powerful Hindi writer from Bettiah and Shri Harbans Sahay. They kept the press well posted with the development.

Sahay was

fondly called Master Sahab throughout the Champaran district was a teacher in Bettiah Raj School. He was one of the first associates of Gandhiji in Champaran. He was in Bettiah when the indigo disturbances broke out in 1907–08 and saw the great oppression that was made on the raiyats who refused to cultivate indigo led by Radhemal, Sheikh Gulab, Shital Rai and others […] Harbans Babu had met Annie Besant at Bhagalpur in 1910 when she came there to preside over the Students’ Conference. Annie Besant promised Harbans Babu to throw open the columns of New India if Harbans Babu would send authentic reports […] Surendranath Banerjee’s sympathy was also enlisted by a man of Motihari who went to Calcutta to meet him. Surendranath strongly supported the tenants in the columns of his paper Bengali.³⁰

Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 118–19.

Ray Chaudhury seems to suggest that Sahay has left his reminiscences, but he is not mentioning it anywhere in his account.³¹

We tried our best to trace Harbans Sahay’s memoir/reminiscences, but could not trace it.

The two biographers of Munis do cite evidences that soon after Gandhi landed from South Africa to India in January 1915, because of the writings of Munis in Pratap, in 1914–15, besides a pamphlet written by him, there were murmurs in the area that the man from South Africa will soon be in their midst to mitigate their indigo farming drudgery. One such pamphlet of Munis was captioned ‘prarthana’ (appeal), published first in Pratap, 17 January 1916. This advised the peasantry to collect evidences of oppression to be produced before the government. Copies of this pamphlet were seized by the darogha of Shikarpur. It was this pamphlet through which a rumour spread across Champaran that a man from South Africa, named Gandhi, will be coming to Champaran. The police abstract of Bihar and Orissa, 1916, reported that a teacher Pir Munis, Harbans Sahay and Pashupati Lal of the village Bathuwa, keep Pratap regularly posted with updates about the Champaran peasantry. The Commissioner of Tirhut held Munis and Shukla responsible for this.

On 3 April 1916, again Munis published a report in Pratap about unjustified (anuchit) acts of the Government of Bihar. This column of Munis castigated Braj Kishore Prasad (1877–1946),³²

Brajkishore Prasad’s elder daughter, Prabhavati Devi (1906–73) was married to Jai Prakash Narayan (1902–79), and the younger daughter, Vidyavati (d. 1946) was married to Mritunjay Prasad, son of Rajendra Prasad. Brajkishore Prasad was son of Ram Jiwan Lal, who was an opium agent at Gaya. Like Gandhiji, Braj Kishore Prasad regarded that social reforms would improve the conditions of the peasants. He worked hard for the emancipation of women who were mainly engaged in the household affairs with no role in the society due to illiteracy prevailing among them. He provided examples by encouraging his daughters to get education discard purdah and participate in the community affairs. He sent his daughter—Prabhavati—to live in Gandhiji’s Ashram—a bold step at that time. This had a salutary effect and people followed his example by letting their women folks to get education and involve in political and social activities. Women joined the freedom struggle and suffered imprisonment. Though indisposed, he kept a close watch on the civil Disobedience Movement and guided it from Patna. During the worst earthquake in Bihar in 1934, Braj Kishore Prasad with failing health supervised the relief work. He did not live to see the independence of India as he passed away in 1946, having suffered more crippling illness during 1936–46.

Mazharul Haq (1866–1930), Sachidanand Sinha (1875–1950), etc., that the peasantry of Champaran did not expect much from these leaders, and that the newspapers of Bihar, for example, The Behari, Express, Pataliputra, etc., were not doing the needful to articulate the cause of the Champaran peasantry.³³

Maheshwar Prasad, the editor of the Beharee, had suffered a lot on having written about the indigo issues; the Governor manipulated and got him removed from the Beharee, ‘practically the only paper from Bihar (Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 121).

Even Gandhiji too was in a state of disbelief about the hefty fees charged by the advocates in Bihar and Bengal. He says,

The figures of the fees they charged and the standard of a barrister’s fees in Bengal and Bihar staggered me. ‘We gave ₹ 10,000 to so and so for his opinion’, I was told. Nothing less than four figures in any case.³⁴

CWMG, vol. 44, 394.

However, contrary to Munis’ remarks about Brajkishore Prasad, Gandhiji says,

Brajkishore babu acquainted me with the facts of the case. He used to be in the habit of taking up the cases of the poor tenants. There were two such cases pending when I went there. When he won any such case, he consoled himself that he was doing something for these poor people. Not that he did not charge fees from these simple peasants. Lawyers labour under the belief that, if they do not charge fees, they will have no wherewithal to run their households, and will not be able to render effective help to the poor people.³⁵

CWMG, vol. 44, 394.

The confidential official correspondences published by B.B. Mishra (1963) carry documents wherein Munis, the correspondent of Pratap, was on official surveillance.³⁶

B.B. Mishra, ed., Select Documents on Mahatma Gandhi’s movement in Champaran, 1917–18 (Patna: Government of Bihar, 1963).

The SDO of Bettiah, W.H. Lewis, had declared Munis to be a link leader between the educated, semi-educated and the raiyats,³⁷

Pol. Spl. 1511/1917, Pt. II.

and that ‘Munis was the most prominent one’ to have ‘offered assistance to Gandhi’ in persuading him to visit Champaran. Similar remark was given by Morshead, the Commissioner, Tirhut, in one of such confidential correspondences. In February and March 1917, Munis had written at least three letters to Gandhi persuading him to come to Champaran. It is quite unfortunate that although this fact has been acknowledged by most local vernacular historians as well as by Dr Rajendra Prasad, but most of the actual letters have been lost. Guha should not have overlooked all these significant accounts while writing on Shukla’s diary. Guha appears not to have consulted such documents in B.B. Mishra’s volume, not to mention the more recent biographical works on Munis just referred above. It is of utmost importance to draw attention to the fact that on arrival in Bettiah, Gandhi made it a point to first visit Munis’ house to meet his mother, on 23 April 1917, by 5 p.m.³⁸

Pratap, 30 April 1917; also see Chaudhry and Shrikant, Bihar Mein Samajik Parivartan Ke Kuchh Aayaam, 38.

Yet, Gandhi’s autobiography and the relevant volumes of his collected works completely omit the name of Munis.

We do not have much evidence to ascertain if Gandhi looked back to the wretched peasantry of Champaran after the Satyagrah of 1917, even though he did pay some more visits subsequently. Atrocities against Munis continued. Having dismissed him from the services as teacher from the Bettiah Guru Training School, his properties were seized, and in June 1918, a fake case of scuffles was slapped against him to imprison him for 6 months. This was reported and editorialised by Pratap, 30 September 1918, with a caption, ‘Pir Munis Jail Mein: Sansani Phailaaney Wala Muqaddama [Pir Munis put Behind Bars: A Sensationally False Case Slapped]’. It commented that Munis had come out of the jail on bail, but the atmosphere of fear and witch-hunt continued. Munis was being targeted for having played most important role in calling Gandhi to Champaran. It hoped that Gandhi will once again look into this issue wherein Munis had become eye sore to European planters. Cancelling the bail, Munis was once again going to be imprisoned on 2 December 2018. Against this, on 2 December 2018, Pratap published the report that Munis had been imprisoned for 6 months, but on appeal it was reduced to 3 months, and that the advocates, Mazharul Haq, L.P. Varma and Rajendra Prasad were now preparing to file an appeal in the High Court against the case. The report complained that the false police cases against the raiyats were on rise in 1918, even after Gandhi’s intervention in 1917 (emphasis added). On 15 February 1921, Pratap wrote an obituary of Munis (presumably, they had got a wrong report about the death of Munis), which appreciates selfless, hard work of Munis, who always preferred simple life and also stayed away from claiming even genuinely deserved fame. Thus, a number of the issues of Pratap, throughout 1918, kept reporting about the sufferings of Munis quite frequently. Intriguingly, we however, do not hear much about the details of the sufferings of Munis from the accounts, memoirs and diaries of Raj Kumar Shukla, of Gandhi, of Rajendra Prasad.

‘The Hindi newspaper of Kanpur, The Pratap published a booklet, Champaran Ka Uddhar (Emancipation of Champaran) which was sold widely throughout Champaran district. The Pratap had espoused the cause of the raiyats and had written a series of articles before Mahatma Gandhi’s arrival in Champaran’. P.C. Ray Chaudhury (1955, 103–04), having written this much, becomes silent as to who actually had written most of such articles. He does not tell us, as to who was the correspondent for The Pratap from Champaran. Thus, the correspondent, Pir Munis, was anonymised by P.C. Ray Chaudhury as well.

Arvind Narayan Das (1983) says that,

[T]he Gandhi’s Satyagraha in Champaran was no more than a 56 day wonder. Indigo was finished but exploitation continued. […] The movement neither ended nor indeed was aimed at ending exploitation. […] The people in Champaran explain through their folk saying, Nilahe gaye, milahe aaye (The planters have gone and in their place have come the sugar-mill owners). Artificial aniline dye dealt a stronger blow to indigo planters than did Gandhi through his messianic demonstrations […] The issue of agricultural labour wage-earners remained pathetically ignored.³⁹

Arvind Narayan Das, Agrarian Unrest and Socio Economic Change in Bihar, 1900–1980 (Delhi: Manohar, 1983).

D.N. Dhanagre (1983) therefore says that perhaps it was a sense of pity or remorse or both that prompted Gandhi to undertake some relief work for the poor peasants in Champaran. ... To run the schools and other ameliorative activities, Gandhi had to import volunteers from western India.⁴⁰

D.N. Dhanagre, Peasant Movements in India, 1920–50 (Delhi: OUP, 1983).

Local support was lacking, hence it could not be sustained. Shri Harbans Sahay mentioned with tears in his eyes: ‘we all went back to our professions and occupations. None of us followed Mahatmaji to continue the wonderful schools he started. His social and educational programmes were allowed to lapse by us and yet Mahatmaji retained his love and affection for Bihar’.⁴¹

Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 125.

Arthur Herman (2008, 230) also concurs, ‘Gandhi was unhappy that the Committee of agrarian Inquiry’s final recommendations did little to change the lives of Champaran’s cultivators, and the peasant schools he had set up all folded once he left Bihar’.

It is a minor mystery as to why Gandhi, while writing in detail of Shukla in his autobiography, omits to refer to Pir Munis, Harbans Sahay, Shital Rai and Gulab, etc. Of course, Shukla’s diary too almost omits references to these personalities.

In Motihari (1917), there was an attempt to assassinate Gandhi when a British manager of a planter invited him for dinner and instructed his cook Batakh Miyan Ansari (1867–1957) to mix poison in the milk to be served to the guest. The cook, while doing the master’s bidding also spilled the beans to the would-be victim. Eventually a cat consumed the milk and died. Dr Rajendra Prasad, accompanying Gandhi, was witness to it. Strangely Gandhi has not mentioned about this too, although in a letter, Prasad has acknowledged this fact. Strange enough, Kripalani’s My Times: An Autobiography (Delhi: Rupa, 2004) too maintains silence on all these subaltern action in Champaran Satyagrah. Strange too, that we do not find this issue written even by Munis. May be, it was there in his writings which have been lost. In 1950, in a public meeting in Champaran, the first President of the Indian Republic, Dr Rajendra Prasad, promised to give twenty-four acres of government land to poor Batakh Miyan.⁴²

We tried to ascertain it from the descendents of Dr Rajendra Prasad. We contacted Dr Ashok Prasad (Gorakhpur), grandson of Mritunjay Prasad and Vidyavati (d. 1946), that is, great-grandson of Dr Rajendra Prasad, from paternal side, and of Brajkishore Prasad from maternal side.

Ashok Prasad told us, ‘I did manage to get in touch with Sharad Verma, Babu Brajkishore’s great grandson (I am also one-in fact the oldest!), who has access to his papers that have not been published. He shall fish out the letters he has, and alert me. I also managed to speak to my very aged mother (born 1934) who has memories of the cook, Bakku Mian [this is how Batakh Miyan’s name is remembered by her], who refused to be enticed to harm Gandhiji. She heard it from Vidyavati, her mother, and as children we were all treated to narrations of this integrity. She states that this episode was widely known and many senior lawyers wanted this taken further but unsurprisingly the local administration dismissed the complaint. We were also told how Bakku Mian was penalized’.

In this meeting, economist–historian Girish Mishra was also present.⁴³

Girish Mishra, ‘Gandhi’s Champaran Struggle’, Mainstream, 13 February 2010. Note: Girish Mishra is an economist–historian, and an author of Agrarian Problems of Permanent Settlement: A Case Study of Champaran (Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1978).

But till recently it was unaccomplished, when the then President Pratibha Patil intervened to enquire about non-compliance of the Presidential Order of 1950.⁴⁴

B. Vijay Murty, ‘Family of Mahatma’s saviour in dire straits’, Hindustan Times, 22 January 2010. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/family-of-mahatma-s-saviour-in-dire-straits/story-8LAGZkViJtK0Yur1HHuwyI.html; Manzar Bilal, ‘Batak Mian—Forgotten patriot who saved Mahatma’s life in 1917’, 30 January 2010. http://twocircles.net/2010jan30/batak_mian_forgotten_patriot_who_saved_mahatma_s_life_1917.html; Ajaz Ashraf, ‘Batakh Mian vs Nathuram Godse: How Has India Forgotten About the Man Who Refused to Poison Gandhi?’, 17 April 2017. https://scroll.in/article/834667/batakh-mian-vs-nathuram-godse-how-has-india-forgotten-about-the-man-who-refused-to-poison-gandhi

It may therefore be noted that during 1946–50, hundreds of acres of lands in Saathi (Champaran) were being settled in the names of various influential people.⁴⁵

Das, Agrarian Unrest and Socio Economic Change in Bihar, 223–25.

Ram Manohar Lohia (1910–67) had enquired into it. In their accounts, the peasant activists like Indradeep Sinha (Saathi Ke Kisanon Ka Aitihasik Sangharsh (Hindi). Patna, 1969), and Ramnandan Mishra (Kisanon Ki Samasyayen (Hindi), 1952) have written about the land loot in the village of Saathi (Champaran). Gandhiji and Sardar Patel (1875–1950) resented against the loot with tacit official support, and asked to cancel the settlements with Prajapati Mishra (a Congress leader), and Ram Prasad Shahi (an Excise Commissioner) and his brother. The ‘Sathi Land Restoration Act’ was also legislated in 1950. But the likes of Pir Munis and Batakh Miyan, remained landless even at this time after India’s independence. They died a wretched life, as landless as ever; even though the resistance of the landless labourers, under the leadership of the Socialists and Communists (moderate and radical), endured in Champaran and in rest of Bihar.

Further, contrary to Guha’s narrative about the economic position of Raj Kumar Shukla, Arvind N. Das says that Shukla’s holdings were seven times more than average landholding in Champaran, and that he was a big moneylender too (with a monthly income from interest being around ₹1,600–2,000).⁴⁶

Ibid., 57–70.

So were Sant Raut, and Khendar Rai, whose interest earning from money-lending, as said by Jacques Pouchepadass (1974), was whopping ₹1 lakh per annum.⁴⁷

Jacques Poucheapadas, ‘Local Leaders and the Intelligentsia in the Champaran Satyagraha’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, New Series, no. 8 November 1974.

‘Shukla, by no standard, was a needy or poor man. Earlier he was in the employ of a landlord in Benaras, but was dismissed on account of malfeasance’.⁴⁸

Kailash Dham and A.K. Biswas, ‘Paradox of Gandhi’s Champaran Struggle’, Mainstream Weekly, 27 March 2010.

Dr Rajendra Prasad, counts at least fourty kinds of abwab (cesses) extracted from the raiyats.⁴⁹

Prasad, Satyagraha in Champaran, 83–90.

When Gandhi wrote one of his first letters to the chief secretary listing such exactions, the sub-division officer, Bettiah and the collector of Champaran quickly replied that all these levies were no British inventions, that these were prevalent before the European planters came here in the early nineteenth century.⁵⁰

Dham and Biswas, ‘Paradox of Gandhi’s Champaran Struggle’.

Thus, these indigenous leaders would appear to be fighting the Europeans for their own class interest, and be it the interventions and writings of Gandhi and his upper caste urban advocates of Patna and Muzaffarpur, and of the subsequent historical writings, all remained directed only against the European planters, whereas local exploitative elements were left untouched. This explains why the local, vernacular, ‘subaltern’ heroes like Pir Munis, Sital Rai, Harbans Sahay, Sheikh Gulab, etc., remain unsung. It is indeed intriguing as to why do the accounts of the nationalist leaders, written/published even after independence, hesitate to mention the money-lending business of the local leaders of Champaran, including Sant Raut, Khendar Rai and Raj Kumar Shukla. In this backdrop, we need to take into account a version of the British planters deposed before the Champaran Agrarian Enquiry of 1917. It may give us a clue why the local moneylender-peasants were leading the peasant agitation against the European planters. J.V. Jameson, representing the Bihar Planters’ Association, told:

[T]he present unrest was ‘largely artificial’ having been fomented from the outside as well as by the local agitators....the mahajan [money-lender] in the bazaar was too willing to assist in the agitation against the planter for so long as the planter was a force in Champaran the mahajan could not either loan to the raiyats on his usurious terms nor could he acquire land which he may rent out on rack rents.⁵¹

Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 83.

As against this, Munis kept writing about the Champaran peasantry even in and after 1920.⁵²

Pir Mohammad Munis, ‘Champaran Mein Phir Nadirshahi’, Pratap, 30 August 1920.

Pir Munis was born in a family of such an economic position that his illiterate father, Fatingan Miyan, was a toddy-seller, with little land to cultivate, though to begin with he was not as poor. Yet, he managed to get a smattering of education. Though, what remains intriguing for a student of history, that in an era when Urdu and Hindi languages essentially around the issue of script, increasingly came to be identified respectively with Muslims and Hindus, (and despite this, in Bihar many Hindus including Rajendra Prasad learnt Urdu–Persian at the elementary level of their education), Munis not only received his education in Nagri–Hindi, he also fought the political cause of this through Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. In order to reconstruct a biographical account of Munis, one finds the least in the accounts of the likes of Rajendra Prasad; hence, one has to look into some of the accounts of the Hindi litterateurs.

His presidential address in the 15th session of the Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan (24 December 1937, Arrah, reveals that he was against sanskritised Hindi (panditon ki bhasha) and urged upon to make it simple so that it could be made popular (aam jan ki bhasha); he proposed to form ‘Ramayan Mandalis’ for this purpose.⁵³

Indian Nation, 25 December 1937.

In his address he welcomed the government decision to open a new department of rural development and he hoped that its newly appointed commissioner Prajapati Mishra and the education minister (Syed Mahmud, 1889–1971) would undertake development works as well as would make efforts towards popularising Hindi, in which he promised that the Sahitya Sammelan would extend all possible cooperation. He also proposed that the rural primary schools should be involved in popularising Hindi on large scale. He also praised the creditworthy works done by Chhabinath Pandey (this Hindu Mahasabha leader has published his Hindi autobiography Apni Baat) for strengthening the Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. He also acknowledged the Muslim contributions in development of Hindi language and literature, namely, Amir Khusrau, Kabeer Jayasi, Raheem, Mubarak, Ras Khan, Nazeer, Mir, Zahur Bakhsh, etc. He also took stock of the development of Hindi literature and periodicals in Bihar; acknowledged the roles of the weeklies like Navashakti, Yogi, Pataliputra, Jivan and Vibhakar; he was sad about absence of appreciable monthlies except Baalak (Laheria Sarai, Darbhanga); he appreciated Sahitya, the quarterly journal of the Sahitya Sammelan.

Munis was strong advocate of Hindustani, simple Hindi with word-stock and diction from local languages/dialects; and refused to consider Hindi and Urdu as two separate languages. Various presidential addresses of the Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammelan since 1919 generously acknowledge the contributions of Munis in strengthening it.

In 1930 Munis was imprisoned in the Patna Camp jail for 3 months for his participation in the Salt Satyagraha of the Civil Disobedience Movement.⁵⁴

Qadri’s Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Hind Mein Muslim Mujahedin-e-Champaran Ka Muqaam also lists many types of taxes extracted from the raiyats.

In 1937, when the Congress ministry was there, he provided leadership to the sugarcane producers protesting against the intermediaries who were pocketing bulk of the income accrued from.⁵⁵

KW 14/34, Report of the Commissioner, Tirhut, Muzaffarpur; The Searchlight, 29 December 1937.

He addressed a public rally of the Harijan employees of the Bettiah municipality who were on strike protesting against few issues.⁵⁶

The Searchlight, 19 December 1937.

He was also elected member of the Champaran Zila Parishad (District Board) on the Congress ticket, and became President of Bettiah Local Board, from which he resigned and subsequently jumped into the Individual Civil Disobedience Movement. Munis however died a wretched man having got severe ailments during frequent long incarcerations for his pro-peasant and anti-colonial adventures. He was dismissed from his services as teacher in the Bettiah Guru Training School. Compare it with Shukla’s sufferings,⁵⁷

Ray Chaudhury, Gandhiji’s First Struggle in India, 80.

who served jail for three weeks only once in 1914 on the fake charges of picking a fight with a planter.⁵⁸

‘A.C. Ammon, an indigo planter from Britain, who was based at Belwa in then Champaran; was the bête noire of Rajkumar Shukla; And yet, it was Ammon who ensured dignity for Shukla; after waging a sustained battle against indigo planters since the first decade of the twentieth century, Shukla had sold all his landed property by the time he died in 1929. Most of his court cases were against Ammon under whose jurisdiction Shukla’s land fell.

After learning of Shukla’s death and the economic condition of his family, Ammon, sent ₹ 300 through one of his staff members, for Shukla’s post-death rituals. The British planter also visited Shukla’s native place in Satbaria village [P.S. Lauriya, Chanpatia Block, West Champaran] for his [last rites] shraadh.

When Rajendra Prasad, who went on to become the first President of independent India, taunted Ammon by saying he must be a happy soul now that his arch enemy was no more, Ammon came up with a reply very few had expected. ‘He was the only Man in the crowd of these farmers. And take it from me that I am not going to live for long after his death’, Ammon replied.

As was destined, Ammon died just three months after Shukla breathed his last on 20 May 1929. But before he died, Ammon helped Shukla’s family through his influence in the British government. He helped one of Shukla’s grandsons get a police job’. (Sanjeev Kumar Verma, ‘Sweet-bitter Tale of Champaran Diary’, The Telegraph, 24 November 2014).

Note: It is largely believed that Shukla belonged to an upper caste Brahman; Rajendra Prasad, in his Satyagraha in Champaran, repeatedly refers him as Pandit Raj Kumar Shukla whereas the people in the village Satwaria testify that he belonged to the disadvantaged caste of Raj Bhaant.

Banarsidas Chaturvedi’s memoir (1958) contains Munis’ letters of privations, in his personal life, during his last days, because of which, despite Chaturvedi’s insistence in 1944, Munis could not find time to write his own memoir. A profile of him is written by Acharya Shivpujan Sahay (1893–1963) also. Rahul Sankritayan (1893–1963) has also written about him at length. In 1958–59, historian K.K. Datta (1905–82), from the house of Munis, had obtained some correspondences and a manuscript of Munis on the history of Champaran.⁵⁹

K.K. Datta reported it in the Regional Records Survey Committee Report of 1958–59.

Unfortunately, all these are lost now. Quite a lot of Munis’ essays collected for compiled publication were destroyed in the earthquake of 1934.

Conclusion

May one therefore say that a thankless nation has forgotten the man who suffered so much for emancipation of hapless peasants of his area and later for the larger freedom struggle. It surprises the present authors as to why the Congress did not put forward Munis as a symbol of struggle against divisive forces during 1937–46 elections. For the Congress, Munis had resigned from the Chairmanship of the District Board in 1939. He was among the founders of the District Congress Committee of Champaran in 1921, and never quit the Congress. A meticulous historian like Guha, howsoever unwittingly, should not have been as unkind to this hero as the nation has thus far regrettably been to such unsung heroes.

Moreover, few more questions emerge about the historiographies of the Champaran Satyagraha. Why did Gandhi and his companions, upper caste urban advocates of Patna, Muzaffarpur and Motihari, as well as the likes of Shukla and most of his companions, leave the suffering peasantry of Champaran in lurch? Why did Gandhi, and the Congress, choose the European Indigo planters of Champaran, but left out more exploitative opium zamindars?

It should be hoped that the centenary celebrations of the Champaran Satyagraha would pave way for historical explorations towards retrieving all these histories and history-makers.