Indigo (CH-5) Notes – Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 5

In this post we have given the Notes of Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 5 Indigo (by Louis Fischer). These are useful for students preparing for their Class 12 board exams.

इस पोस्ट में कक्षा 12 अंग्रेज़ी (Flamingo) के पाठ 5 Indigo के नोट्स दिए गए हैं। यह उन सभी विद्यार्थियों के लिए उपयोगी है जो इस वर्ष कक्षा 12 की बोर्ड परीक्षा देने वाले हैं।

अध्याय का सार हिंदी में (Chapter Summary in Hindi)

“Indigo” (नील) पाठ लुई फिशर (Louis Fischer) की पुस्तक “The Life of Mahatma Gandhi” से लिया गया एक अंश है। यह 1917 के चंपारण आंदोलन की सच्ची घटना है।

दिसंबर 1916 में लखनऊ के कांग्रेस अधिवेशन में राजकुमार शुक्ल नाम का एक गरीब, अनपढ़ किसान गांधीजी से मिला और उनसे अपने ज़िले चंपारण आने की विनती की। गांधीजी ने चंपारण का नाम तक नहीं सुना था। शुक्ल बहुत दृढ़ निश्चयी (resolute) था। वह हफ़्तों तक गांधीजी के पीछे-पीछे उनके आश्रम तक गया। आख़िर गांधीजी कलकत्ता से उसके साथ पटना होते हुए चल पड़े।

चंपारण में ज़्यादातर खेती की ज़मीन अंग्रेज़ ज़मींदारों की थी। किसानों (sharecroppers) को अपनी ज़मीन के 15 प्रतिशत हिस्से में नील बोकर पूरी फ़सल लगान के रूप में देनी पड़ती थी। जब ज़मींदारों को पता चला कि जर्मनी ने कृत्रिम नील (synthetic indigo) बना लिया है, तो उन्होंने किसानों से इस समझौते से छुटकारे के बदले मुआवज़ा लेने के करार करवा लिए। सच्चाई पता चलने पर किसान अपना पैसा वापस चाहने लगे।

गांधीजी ने पहले मुज़फ़्फ़रपुर में तथ्य इकट्ठा किए। मोतिहारी पहुँचने पर उन्हें तुरंत चंपारण छोड़ने का सरकारी आदेश मिला। गांधीजी ने आदेश मानने से इनकार कर दिया। अगले दिन अदालत के बाहर हज़ारों किसान अपने आप इकट्ठा हो गए। गांधीजी ने अपना अपराध स्वीकार किया और कहा कि उन्होंने अपनी अंतरात्मा की आवाज़ (voice of conscience) सुनी है। कुछ दिनों बाद सरकार ने मुक़दमा वापस ले लिया। यह आधुनिक भारत में सविनय अवज्ञा (civil disobedience) की पहली जीत थी।

बिहार के वकील, जैसे राजेंद्र प्रसाद, भी गांधीजी के साथ जेल जाने को तैयार हो गए। एक जाँच आयोग बना जिसमें गांधीजी किसानों के अकेले प्रतिनिधि थे। गांधीजी ने 50 प्रतिशत धन वापसी माँगी, पर 25 प्रतिशत पर मान गए, क्योंकि उनके लिए असली बात यह थी कि ज़मींदारों को पैसा और अपनी प्रतिष्ठा, दोनों का कुछ हिस्सा छोड़ना पड़ा। इससे किसानों में साहस आया, और कुछ ही वर्षों में नील की खेती की यह व्यवस्था ख़त्म हो गई।

गांधीजी ने गाँवों में स्कूल खुलवाए, एक डॉक्टर की सेवा दिलवाई और कस्तूरबा ने साफ़-सफ़ाई सिखाई। उन्होंने अंग्रेज़ सी.एफ़. एंड्रूज़ की मदद लेने से मना करके अपने साथियों को आत्मनिर्भरता (self-reliance) का पाठ पढ़ाया।

संदेश: सच्चा नेता तथ्य जानकर, शांतिपूर्ण विरोध और समझदारी भरी बातचीत से न्याय दिलाता है, और लोगों को डर से मुक्त करके आत्मनिर्भर बनाता है। आज़ादी की लड़ाई में आम, गुमनाम भारतीयों का भी बड़ा योगदान था।

Key Points of the Chapter

• How the Champaran episode unfolds, from Rajkumar Shukla’s first request to the final settlement
• What the indigo-sharecropping system was and how the news of synthetic indigo affected it
• Gandhi’s way of working: collecting facts, peaceful defiance, mass support, negotiation and constructive work
• Why Champaran is called a turning point, and what qualities of a good leader Gandhi shows
• Language points from the chapter: direct speech, the comma rule and words of legal procedure

About the Author and the Text

Louis Fischer (1896–1970) was born in Philadelphia. From 1918 to 1920 he worked as a volunteer in the British Army. He then became a journalist and wrote for The New York Times, The Saturday Review and several European and Asian publications. Later he was a teacher at Princeton University.

“Indigo” is taken from his book “The Life of Mahatma Gandhi”. The Times Educational Supplement described this book as one of the finest ever written on Gandhi.

Nature of the text: “Indigo” is not a short story. It is a piece of biographical and journalistic writing that reports a real historical event. Fischer builds the account from Gandhi’s own recollections and from the words of eyewitnesses such as Rajendra Prasad and Reverend J.Z. Hodge. That is why the narration is full of direct speech and quotation marks.

Timeline of Events

1. December 1916, Lucknow: At the Congress session, the peasant Rajkumar Shukla asks Gandhi to come to Champaran and see the injustice of the landlord system.
2. The next few months: Shukla follows Gandhi wherever he goes, including his ashram near Ahmedabad. Gandhi finally fixes a meeting in Calcutta; from there they travel together to Patna.
3. 15 April 1917: Gandhi reaches Muzzafarpur at midnight to collect facts before going to Champaran.
4. Motihari: Gandhi is served an order to leave Champaran. He refuses to obey and is summoned to court.
5. The trial: Thousands of peasants surround the court. The prosecutor wants the trial postponed. Gandhi pleads guilty.
6. Some days later: The magistrate informs Gandhi in writing that the Lieutenant-Governor has ordered the case to be dropped. (The text does not give a reason.)
7. Afterwards: An official commission of inquiry is set up, with Gandhi as the only representative of the peasants.
8. The settlement: Gandhi asks for a 50 per cent refund; the planters offer 25 per cent and Gandhi accepts.
9. During his long stay: Schools open in six villages, a doctor serves for six months, and Kasturbai teaches cleanliness and sanitation.

The Story in Detail

1. Shukla Meets Gandhi at Lucknow

When Fischer met Gandhi at Sevagram in 1942, Gandhi explained how, in 1917, he had come to the decision to “urge the departure of the British”. It began at the Congress session in Lucknow in December 1916, which had 2,301 delegates. There a poor peasant, Rajkumar Shukla, came up to Gandhi, introduced himself as a man from Champaran and asked him to visit his district.

Gandhi did not even know where Champaran was. It is a district at the foot of the Himalayas, close to Nepal. Peasants there, like Shukla, worked as sharecroppers under an old landlord system.

Sharecropper: a farmer who cultivates a landlord’s land and pays rent as a part of the crop instead of money. In Champaran, the sharecroppers were bound by a long-term contract to grow indigo.

2. Shukla Does Not Give Up

Shukla could not read or write, but he was resolute (firmly determined). He went with Gandhi to Cawnpore, then to his ashram near Ahmedabad, and stayed close to him for weeks, repeatedly asking him to “fix a date”. At last Gandhi told him to meet him in Calcutta on a certain date. When Gandhi got there, Shukla was already sitting on his haunches at the agreed place, waiting for him.

The two then went by train to Patna, to the house of the lawyer Rajendra Prasad, who later became President of the Congress and of India. Prasad was out of town.

His servants knew Shukla as a poor peasant who kept troubling their master about the indigo sharecroppers. They took Gandhi to be just another peasant and let both of them stay on the grounds. But Gandhi was not allowed to draw water from the well, in case drops from his bucket polluted the whole well. The text pointedly asks how the servants could know that he was not an untouchable.

3. The Indigo System of Champaran

• Most of the farmland in Champaran was divided into big estates owned by Englishmen and cultivated by Indian tenants.
• Indigo was the main cash crop.
• Under a long-term contract, every tenant had to grow indigo on 15 per cent (three-twentieths) of his land and hand over the whole indigo crop as rent.
• When the landlords came to know that Germany had produced synthetic indigo, they got the sharecroppers to sign agreements to pay them compensation for being freed from the 15 per cent arrangement.
• The peasants found the arrangement irksome, so many signed willingly. Those who refused hired lawyers, while the landlords hired thugs.
• Later the news of synthetic indigo reached the illiterate peasants who had signed, and they demanded their money back.

The text does not openly state the landlords’ motive. A margin question asks the reader to think about what synthetic indigo would do to the price of natural indigo.

4. Gathering Facts at Muzzafarpur

Before entering Champaran, Gandhi went to Muzzafarpur to collect fuller information than Shukla could give him. He sent a telegram to Professor J.B. Kripalani of the Arts College there, whom he had met at Tagore’s school in Shantiniketan. The train reached at midnight on 15 April 1917, and Kripalani was at the station with a big group of students.

Gandhi stayed for two days with Professor Malkani, a teacher in a government school. Gandhi later remarked that in those days it was unusual for a government professor to give shelter to someone like him, because in small places Indians were afraid to show any sympathy for supporters of home rule.

The local lawyers told Gandhi about the court cases of the sharecroppers and mentioned their fees. Gandhi scolded them for charging the poor peasants such large fees. He said that going to court did little good when the peasants were so crushed and frightened; what they really needed was freedom from fear.

Gandhi then tried to hear the other side. The secretary of the British landlords’ association refused to give information to an “outsider”; Gandhi answered that he was not an outsider. Next he met the British commissioner of the Tirhut division, which included Champaran. The commissioner, in Gandhi’s words, bullied him and told him to leave Tirhut at once.

5. The Order to Leave and the Trial at Motihari

Gandhi did not leave. He went to Motihari, the main town of Champaran, where a huge crowd met him at the station. He set out on an elephant’s back to look into a report that a peasant nearby had been ill-treated. On the way, a messenger of the police superintendent caught up with him and ordered him to go back to town. There he was handed an official notice to quit Champaran immediately. Gandhi signed the receipt and wrote on it that he would not obey. He was then summoned to appear in court the next day.

Gandhi spent the night making plans. He asked Rajendra Prasad by telegram to come with influential friends, sent instructions to his ashram and sent a complete report to the Viceroy.

Next morning, Motihari was filled with peasants. They knew nothing of Gandhi’s work in South Africa; they had only heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with the officials. Their spontaneous gathering around the court, according to the text, marked the start of their freedom from fear of the British. The officials could not control the crowd without Gandhi’s help, and he helped them. He was polite and friendly, and at the same time he was showing them clearly that their power, feared and unchallenged till then, could be questioned by Indians.

The government did not know what to do. The prosecutor asked the judge to postpone the case. Gandhi objected to the delay and read out a statement admitting his guilt. He said he faced a “conflict of duties”: he did not want to set a bad example by breaking the law, but he also had to do the humanitarian and national service for which he had come. He said he had disobeyed the order not because he did not respect lawful authority, but because he followed a higher law, the voice of conscience. He asked for the due punishment.

The magistrate announced a two-hour break before sentencing and asked Gandhi to give bail for that time. Gandhi refused, so the judge let him go without bail. When the court met again, the judge said he would give his judgment only after several days, and allowed Gandhi to remain free in the meantime.

6. The Lawyers Decide and the Case Is Dropped

Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and several other well-known lawyers of Bihar came and discussed matters with Gandhi. Gandhi asked them what they would do if he was jailed. The senior-most lawyer said they had come to advise and help him; if he went to jail, there would be no one to advise, so they would return home. Gandhi then asked them about the injustice being done to the sharecroppers.

The lawyers talked it over. As Prasad later wrote, they felt that if a total stranger was ready to go to prison for the peasants, then they, who lived nearby and claimed to serve these peasants, would be guilty of shameful desertion if they went home. So they told Gandhi they were ready to follow him to jail. Gandhi exclaimed, “The battle of Champaran is won.” He divided them into pairs and fixed the order in which each pair would court arrest.

A few days later the magistrate wrote to Gandhi that the Lieutenant-Governor of the province had ordered the case to be dropped. For the first time in modern India, civil disobedience had succeeded.

Gandhi and the lawyers then carried out a wide inquiry into the peasants’ complaints. Statements (depositions) of about ten thousand peasants were recorded, and other documents were collected. The whole region was busy with the work of the investigators, while the landlords protested loudly.

7. Gandhi’s Method at Champaran (Study Summary)

These five headings are a study aid, not a list printed in the book. The book’s margin question asks students to find such instances and connect them with Gandhi’s ideas of satyagraha (holding firmly to truth) and non-violence.

8. The Commission and the 25 Per Cent Settlement

In June, Gandhi was called to meet Sir Edward Gait, the Lieutenant-Governor. Before going, he again made detailed plans with his associates for civil disobedience in case he did not come back. After four long interviews, Gait set up an official commission of inquiry into the condition of the indigo sharecroppers. It had landlords, government officials and Gandhi, who was the only representative of the peasants.

Gandhi stayed in Champaran for a first stretch of seven months without a break and returned several times later. Something he had taken up casually at the request of an unlettered peasant, expecting it to take a few days, ended up taking nearly a year of his life.

The inquiry collected overwhelming evidence against the big planters. They agreed in principle to return money to the peasants and asked Gandhi how much they should pay. They expected him to ask for the full amount they had illegally and dishonestly taken. He asked for only 50 per cent. According to Reverend J.Z. Hodge, a British missionary who was present, Gandhi seemed firm on this; the planters’ representative, probably thinking Gandhi would not move, offered 25 per cent, and to his surprise Gandhi accepted, which ended the deadlock.

The commission accepted the 25 per cent settlement unanimously. Gandhi explained that the size of the refund mattered less than the fact that the landlords had been forced to give up part of the money and, along with it, part of their prestige. Till then the planters had acted as if they were above the law. Now the peasant realised that he had rights and people to defend them, and he gained courage. Events proved Gandhi right: within a few years the British planters left their estates, the land went back to the peasants, and indigo sharecropping came to an end.

9. Freedom from Fear versus Legal Justice

This links to the textbook’s discussion topic: “Freedom from fear is more important than legal justice for the poor.” Use examples like the gathering outside the court and the result of the settlement to support your view.

10. Work for the Villages

The text says Gandhi was never satisfied with only big political or economic solutions. He saw how backward the Champaran villages were socially and culturally, and he wanted to act at once.

• Education: He asked for teachers. His young followers Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh, along with their wives, offered to help, and more volunteers came from Bombay, Poona and other places. His youngest son Devadas and his wife Kasturbai also came. Primary schools were started in six villages.
• Cleanliness: Kasturbai taught the ashram rules of personal cleanliness and community sanitation.
• Health: Health conditions were very poor. Gandhi persuaded a doctor to give six months of service. Only three medicines were available: castor oil, quinine and sulphur ointment. A coated tongue got castor oil, malaria got quinine and castor oil, and skin eruptions got ointment and castor oil.
• Poverty: Gandhi noticed how dirty the women’s clothes were and asked Kasturbai to talk to them. One woman took her into her hut and showed her that there was no box or cupboard for clothes; the sari she was wearing was the only one she owned.
• Ashram by post: Even from Champaran, Gandhi kept an eye on his ashram through letters. Once he wrote that it was time to fill up the old latrine trenches and dig fresh ones, or the old ones would start to smell.

11. The Charles Freer Andrews Episode

Charles Freer Andrews was an English pacifist and a devoted follower of Gandhi. Early in the Champaran campaign he came to say goodbye before leaving for duty in the Fiji Islands. Gandhi’s lawyer friends thought it would help their cause if Andrews, an Englishman, stayed with them in Champaran. Andrews was willing if Gandhi agreed.

Gandhi strongly opposed the idea. He told the lawyers that wanting an Englishman on their side in this unequal fight showed the weakness of their hearts. Their cause was just, so they must depend on themselves to win, and not lean on Andrews only because he was English.

Rajendra Prasad later admitted that Gandhi had read their minds correctly and had taught them a lesson in self-reliance. The chapter ends by showing that self-reliance, Indian independence and help to the sharecroppers were all linked together.

12. Why Champaran Was a Turning Point

Gandhi himself described what he did in very simple terms: he called it an ordinary thing, and said he had only declared that the British could not order him about in his own country.

Fischer, however, points out that Champaran did not start as an act of defiance. It grew out of an effort to reduce the suffering of a large number of poor peasants. This was the “typical Gandhi pattern”: his politics were mixed with the practical, everyday problems of millions of people. His loyalty was not to abstract ideas but to living human beings. In everything he did, he tried to shape a new, free Indian who could stand on his own feet, and in this way to make India free.

It was also in 1917, the year of Champaran, that Gandhi decided to press for the departure of the British, and it was here that civil disobedience won for the first time in modern India.

Characters in the Chapter

• Mahatma Gandhi: the leader who investigates facts, defies an unjust order peacefully, negotiates wisely and works for the daily welfare of the villagers.
• Rajkumar Shukla: a poor, illiterate but determined sharecropper whose persistence brings Gandhi to Champaran.
• Rajendra Prasad: a Patna lawyer (later President of India) who joins Gandhi and records the lawyers’ decision and the lesson in self-reliance.
• Professor J.B. Kripalani: receives Gandhi at Muzzafarpur station with students.
• Professor Malkani: a government school teacher who gives Gandhi shelter for two days.
• Brij Kishor Babu and Maulana Mazharul Huq: prominent Bihar lawyers who join Gandhi.
• Sir Edward Gait: the Lieutenant-Governor who appoints the commission of inquiry.
• Reverend J.Z. Hodge: a British missionary whose eyewitness account describes the 25 per cent settlement.
• Charles Freer Andrews: an English pacifist whose help Gandhi refuses.
• Kasturbai, Devadas, Mahadev Desai, Narhari Parikh: family and followers who help with schools, cleanliness and village work.

Leadership Qualities Shown by Gandhi

The textbook asks students to discuss the qualities of a good leader. The labels below are a study aid; the evidence comes from the chapter.

Theme and Message

Main theme: the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in winning justice for oppressed people through convincing argument and negotiation.

Sub-theme: the contribution of ordinary, unknown Indians to the freedom struggle.

In simple words, Gandhi gets justice for the Champaran peasants without force. He uses facts, open and peaceful disobedience of an unjust order, the support of the people and patient bargaining. He does not stop at the legal victory but continues with education, health and sanitation. At the same time, the determination of an unlettered peasant and the decision of the lawyers to risk jail show that the freedom movement was made by many people, not by one leader alone.

Style of Writing

Fischer writes as a journalist and biographer. He reports real events with checked facts and uses the actual words of the people involved instead of inventing conversations. Quotations from Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad and Reverend Hodge make the account believable and lively. The NCERT language exercise asks students to notice this use of direct speech and quotation marks.

Language Study

Using a Comma with Subordinate Clauses

The textbook uses three sentences from the chapter to show one comma rule:

Rule to remember: put a comma after the subordinate clause when it begins the sentence; do not use one when the main clause comes first.

Words Related to Legal Procedure

• Deposition: a formal written statement given as evidence (about ten thousand were recorded from the peasants)
• Summons: an official order to appear before a court
• Prosecutor: the lawyer who argues the case against the accused
• Magistrate: a judicial officer who hears cases and can give a sentence
• Bail: money or a promise given so that an accused person can stay free until the trial
• Judgment: the formal decision of a court
• Plead guilty: to admit in court that the charge is true
• Commission of inquiry: an official body formed to investigate a particular matter

Expressions to Notice

• Urge the departure: to press strongly for someone to leave (here, the British leaving India)
• Conflict of duties: being caught between two responsibilities (respecting the law and serving the peasants)
• Harbour a man like me: to give shelter to someone, often at a risk to oneself
• Seek a prop: to depend on someone else for support instead of oneself

Project Idea from the Textbook

The book suggests choosing a controversial issue in which the lives of the poor were affected, such as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy or the Narmada Dam Project. Students should find out the facts, present arguments and suggest a possible settlement, just as Gandhi did in Champaran.

Quick Revision

• “Indigo” by Louis Fischer is an extract from “The Life of Mahatma Gandhi”; it is biographical, journalistic writing, not fiction.
• Rajkumar Shukla, an illiterate but resolute sharecropper, met Gandhi at the Lucknow Congress (December 1916) and persuaded him to come to Champaran.
• Tenants had to grow indigo on 15 per cent of their land and give the whole crop as rent; after learning of German synthetic indigo, landlords took compensation from peasants for releasing them.
• Gandhi collected facts at Muzzafarpur (April 1917), then defied the order to quit Champaran at Motihari and pleaded guilty, citing the “voice of conscience”.
• Thousands of peasants gathered at the court; this began their freedom from fear of the British.
• The Lieutenant-Governor dropped the case: the first success of civil disobedience in modern India.
• The Bihar lawyers agreed to go to jail with Gandhi; he said, “The battle of Champaran is won.”
• The inquiry commission recorded about 10,000 depositions; Gandhi asked 50 per cent and accepted 25 per cent, because the landlords’ loss of money and prestige mattered more.
• Gandhi opened schools in six villages, arranged a doctor, and Kasturbai taught cleanliness; refusing Andrews’s help, he taught self-reliance.
• Theme: leadership through argument and negotiation; sub-theme: the role of ordinary Indians in the freedom movement.