Satyagraha

Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"

Meaning

Satyagraha ("truth-force": satya = truth, agraha = holding firmly) was Gandhi's method of fighting injustice without violence. The satyagrahi (the person doing satyagraha) holds on to truth, refuses to obey an unjust law, and accepts the punishment without hitting back. The aim is to make the wrongdoer see the wrong and change his own mind.

It matters because Gandhi turned Indian nationalism into a mass movement with this one method. Between 1917 and 1919 it took him from local struggles for peasants and workers to his first all-India protest against the British government.

Explanation

The idea and its rules

• Origin: Gandhi built the method first in South Africa. He brought it to India after he returned in 1915. Britannica calls satyagraha the practice Gandhi developed there and then used in India through campaigns such as Champaran and Kheda. [2]
• How it wins: It wins by appealing to the conscience of the oppressor (his inner sense of right and wrong). It does not try to beat him by force.
• The satyagrahi refuses to obey an unjust law.
• He accepts jail, lathi blows or fines without fighting back.

• His suffering is meant to make the opponent see the wrong.

• Not "passive resistance": Gandhi said satyagraha was not a weapon "of the weak". It is soul-force, and only the strong can use it. In his view a coward cannot be non-violent. A coward is only helpless.

• No hatred: Hate the injustice, not the enemy. So the struggle must stay non-violent even when the other side is brutal.
• Means and ends go together: If a satyagraha turns violent, it must be stopped. This rule explains why Gandhi later called off his own campaigns.

The training ground: three local campaigns (1917–18)

These campaigns were small, local and about money matters (rent, wages, land tax). Each one ended in a win.

• Champaran, 1917 (Bihar): indigo tenants
• The tenants' complaint was the tinkathia system. By law a tenant had to grow indigo for the planter on 3 out of every 20 parts (3 kathas in a bigha) of his land. [3][4]
• Indigo wore out the soil and cost a lot to grow, so tenants fell into debt.
• Gandhi was ordered to leave the district. He refused and offered to take the punishment. This was satyagraha in its pure form.

• The government set up an enquiry committee with Gandhi as a member. Its main accepted recommendation was the complete abolition of tinkathia. [3]

• Ahmedabad, 1918 (Gujarat): mill workers

• The quarrel was between mill owners and workers over pay, after the plague bonus was taken away.
• Gandhi asked the workers to promise to stay non-violent. He went on a fast to hold them to that promise.

• The owners agreed to arbitration (a neutral person decides the dispute). The workers got a 35 per cent wage increase. [2]

• Kheda, 1918 (Gujarat): land revenue

• Crops failed and plague spread. Under the revenue rules the peasants could claim remission (the land tax is cancelled or put off). The government refused and demanded full payment. [2]
• Gandhi backed a no-revenue campaign: peasants promised not to pay.
• Vallabhbhai Patel joined, and Kheda made him a mass leader. [2]

• The government quietly gave way. Only those who could pay were made to pay, and seized property was returned.

• The pattern these campaigns set: local complaint → enquiry → pledge (a public promise) → non-violent pressure → settlement.

From local to all-India: the Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919)

• The Rowlatt Act, 1919 kept wartime emergency powers in force during peacetime. It allowed detention without trial (jail on suspicion, with no charge and no appeal).
• Popular slogan: "no vakil, no dalil, no appeal" (no lawyer, no argument, no appeal).

• Every Indian member of the Imperial Legislative Council opposed it, and it was passed anyway.

• Why it angered Indians: Indians had given men and money for the First World War and expected self-rule in return. They got repression instead.

• Gandhi's answer was a satyagraha against the Act, his first all-India political action.
• It began with a hartal on 6 April 1919. Shops shut, work stopped, and people fasted and prayed.
• Then specific laws were broken on purpose, such as selling banned books or selling salt without a licence.

• He kept the programme simple so that ordinary people, not only the educated, could join.

• Violence and repression in Punjab:

• Gandhi was barred from entering Punjab.
• In Amritsar, a crowd was fired on (10 April) and riots followed. Then came martial law (army rule) and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919 under Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer. [7]

Results and lessons

• Gandhi called the movement off when violence spread. He called his own decision to launch mass action, before people were trained in non-violence, a "Himalayan blunder".
• Even so, the Rowlatt Satyagraha made Gandhi a national leader. Before 1919 he was known for local causes. After 1919, Indians in every province looked to him.
• Two lessons for the next stage:
• The Rowlatt protest was mostly urban (cities, students, traders). To shake the Raj, satyagraha had to reach the villages.
• It needed a wider social base, above all Hindu–Muslim unity. This led Gandhi to the Khilafat issue and to Non-Cooperation (1920–22).

Time, place and evidence

• Period: worked out in South Africa before 1915. Used in India from 1917: the local campaigns of 1917–18, then the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919.
• Places:
• Champaran (Bihar)
• Ahmedabad and Kheda (Gujarat)

• all-India for the Rowlatt hartal, with the worst violence in Punjab (Amritsar, Gujranwala)

• Key people:

• Gandhi
• at Champaran: Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, J. B. Kripalani and Mahadev Desai (later Gandhi's secretary)
• in Gujarat: Vallabhbhai Patel and Indulal Yagnik

• at Amritsar: Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal, the local leaders whose arrest on 10 April 1919 sparked the protests

• Evidence:

• Gandhi's 1917 letter to the District Magistrate of Champaran is kept in the national digital district repository on the Indian Culture Portal. [5]
• The house where Gandhi stayed in Champaran is preserved and listed in the same repository. [6]
• Government records of the Champaran enquiry committee recommended abolishing tinkathia. [3]
• The Hunter Committee report (March 1920) dealt with the Punjab events. It condemned Dyer but punished him in no way. [7]
• NCERT Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India" and Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement" are the main textbook sources.

Don't confuse with

• Passive resistance: Gandhi rejected this label. Passive resistance can be a tactic of the weak. Satyagraha is "soul-force" that only the strong can use, and it allows no hatred of the opponent.
• Hartal: A hartal (shops shut, work stopped) is one tool used inside a satyagraha. The Rowlatt Satyagraha began with the hartal of 6 April 1919. Satyagraha is the whole method.
• Champaran vs Kheda: Champaran (1917, Bihar) was about the tinkathia indigo system, with Rajendra Prasad. Kheda (1918, Gujarat) was about remission of land revenue, with Vallabhbhai Patel.
• Rowlatt Satyagraha vs Non-Cooperation Movement: Rowlatt (1919) was Gandhi's first all-India satyagraha. It was mostly urban and was called off after violence. Non-Cooperation (1920–22) came later and was joined with the Khilafat issue to win a wider base.

Prelims Hooks

• Champaran Satyagraha, 1917 was Gandhi's first satyagraha in India. It was against the tinkathia system: indigo on 3 of every 20 parts of a tenant's land. [3][4]
• Correct order: Champaran (1917) → Ahmedabad mill strike (1918) → Kheda (1918) → Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919).
• Ahmedabad, 1918: Gandhi fasted to hold the workers to their pledge. The result was arbitration and a 35% wage rise. [2]
• Kheda, 1918: the demand was remission of land revenue. Vallabhbhai Patel became prominent here. [2]
• Rowlatt Satyagraha was Gandhi's first all-India political action. It began with a hartal on 6 April 1919.
• Trap: Gandhi said satyagraha is not "passive resistance" and not a weapon of the weak.

Mains Points

• The early campaigns built the base for later mass movements:
• Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda were about rent, wages and revenue, not about British rule itself.
• They let Gandhi test the method on local issues he could win. They also gave him a team of leaders (Rajendra Prasad, Patel, Mahadev Desai) and won him the trust of peasants and workers.

• All this came before he challenged the colonial state in 1919.

• Rowlatt moved politics from the elite to the masses:

• Gandhi turned a law about court procedure into a moral issue any villager could understand: "no vakil, no dalil, no appeal".
• The hartal needed neither reading skills nor party membership.

• Nationalism moved from petitions in the council chambers to mass action on the street.

• Was calling off the movement a strength or a weakness?

• Critics' view: stopping a growing movement after violence wasted its energy and helped the Raj.
• Gandhi's defence: means and ends cannot be separated. An undisciplined movement would slide into violence, which the Raj could crush most easily.
• The same pattern came back at Chauri Chaura, 1922. This makes it a useful continuity point in GS-I answers.

Related concepts

• Rajkumar Shukla
• Champaran satyagraha
• Tinkathia system
• Ahmedabad mill strike
• Kheda satyagraha
• Mahadev Desai
• Rowlatt Act
• Rowlatt satyagraha
• Jallianwala Bagh massacre
• Michael O'Dwyer

Read more

• Satyagraha in action: Champaran, Ahmedabad, Kheda; Rowlatt and Jallianwala Bagh