First civil resistance movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in India in 1916
The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience in India, directly challenging colonial agricultural exploitation and shaping India's independence strategy.
Key Facts
- Year
- 1917
- Leader
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Region
- Champaran district, Bihar, British India
- Peasant reimbursement secured
- 25% of unlawfully collected funds
- System abolished
- Teenkathia (forced indigo cultivation) system
- Outcome for planters
- Planters left the area within a decade
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Under British colonial law, tenant farmers in Champaran were compelled to cultivate indigo on a fixed portion of their land under the Teenkathia system. When German synthetic dye briefly reduced indigo demand, some tenants paid higher rent to avoid growing it, but wartime disruption of German supply restored indigo's profitability, forcing farmers back into the exploitative arrangement with minimal compensation, generating widespread resentment.
Invited by peasant Raj Kumar Shukla, Gandhi traveled to Champaran in April 1917 accompanied by Rajendra Prasad and other prominent figures to investigate farmers' grievances. When colonial authorities ordered him to leave, he refused and accepted potential punishment, marking his first act of civil disobedience on Indian soil. His defiance prompted the British to establish a Government Commission of Inquiry on which Gandhi served.
The commission's findings led to a negotiated settlement requiring indigo planters to reimburse peasants 25% of unlawfully collected funds and abolishing the exploitative Teenkathia system entirely. Within a decade the planters vacated the region. The movement provided a model of nonviolent resistance that guided India's broader independence struggle and demonstrated a middle path between moderate collaboration with British rule and radical violent methods.