Who accompanied Mahatma Gandhi during the Champaran Indigo Movement?
2023
Who accompanied Mahatma Gandhi during the Champaran Indigo Movement?
Answer: D. More than one of the above — Concept — The Champaran Satyagraha of April 1917 was Gandhi's first civil-resistance campaign on Indian soil, directed against the tinkathia system under…
- A.
Narhari Parikh
- B.
Mahadev Desai
- C.
Abdul Bari
- D.
More than one of the above
- E.
None of the above
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Correct answer: D
Concept — The Champaran Satyagraha of April 1917 was Gandhi's first civil-resistance campaign on Indian soil, directed against the tinkathia system under which the peasants of north Bihar were bound to plant indigo on a fixed share of their holding for the European planters. It was not a single act but a campaign that ran for more than a year through two distinct phases: a legal-evidentiary phase in which the ryots' own statements were recorded village by village, and a constructive phase of village schools, sanitation and simple medical relief. In a question of this form, "accompanied" means belonging to that documented working party in either phase, so every name has to be tested against the campaign's own record rather than against general closeness to Gandhi.
Applying it here — Gandhi's Champaran party was drawn from two streams:
The Bihar stream — local Congress lawyers already contesting the planters in court: Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad, Dharanidhar Prasad and Shambhusharan Varma, together with J. B. Kripalani, then teaching at Muzaffarpur. This group recorded the ryot statements until the enquiry was closed in June 1917.
The Gujarat stream — young co-workers from Gandhi's own Ahmedabad circle who came to him in the second half of 1917 and were sent to Champaran for the constructive work: Mahadev Desai, who joined Gandhi's entourage in November 1917, and Narhari Parikh, who was at Champaran with his wife Maniben by December 1917 in the volunteer education and sanitation contingent.
Checking each name — Placing each of the three named individuals against that record:
Name | What the historical record places against the name |
|---|---|
Narhari Parikh | Gujarati educationist and biographer of Gandhi's Ahmedabad circle; served in the Champaran volunteer contingent for village education and sanitation from December 1917, and later helped build Gujarat Vidyapith. |
Mahadev Desai | Gujarati lawyer, translator and diarist; joined Gandhi's entourage in November 1917, worked in the Champaran constructive programme, and remained Gandhi's personal secretary until 1942. |
Abdul Bari | Bihar Congress leader and trade unionist; his recorded public work begins with Bihar Vidyapith in 1921, and he became president of the Jamshedpur Labour Association in 1936, renaming it the Tata Workers' Union. |
Cross-check — Two of the three names — Narhari Parikh and Mahadev Desai — belong to the Champaran party of 1917, even though both came in for its constructive phase rather than for the ryot enquiry, while Abdul Bari's public career begins several years later and runs through Bihar's labour and communal-harmony politics. Since two of the three named individuals qualify, no single name can be the complete answer, and the aggregate reading "More than one of the above" is the accurate one; the reading "None of the above" is ruled out by those same two names. The official BPSC key for this paper marks the aggregate response.