Where did Gandhi conduct his first great experiment in Satyagraha in 1917?

Satyagraha, meaning "hold fast to truth," was Gandhi's method of nonviolent civil resistance: openly defying an unjust law or policy while accepting the legal consequences, and relying on truth and moral appeal rather than force to compel change.

In April 1917, invited by local indigo cultivator Rajkumar Shukla, Gandhi arrived in the Champaran district of Bihar to investigate the tinkathia system, under which European planters compelled tenant-farmers to grow indigo on three-twentieths of their land at fixed, unfavourable terms.

When colonial authorities ordered him to leave the district, Gandhi refused and courted arrest, applying Satyagraha in India for the first time; the resulting public pressure led the government to appoint the Champaran Agrarian Committee, and the Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 abolished the tinkathia system.

Checking against the other named places confirms this reading, since none hosted an agrarian Satyagraha in 1917:

• Nagpur — the venue of the December 1920 Congress session that adopted Gandhi's Non-Cooperation programme, three years after Champaran.

• Ahmedabad — the site of the March 1918 mill-workers' strike, a labour Satyagraha that followed Champaran by about a year.

• Delhi — the seat of British India's central administration, not the location of an agrarian Satyagraha campaign.

So Gandhi's first great experiment in Satyagraha in 1917 was conducted in Champaran, Bihar.