________________
Some of them asked me my name, and made room for me. Patience was thus rewarded. I was dead tired, and my head was reeling. God sent help just when it was most needed.
In that way I somehow reached Delhi and thence Calcutta. The Maharaja of Cassimbazar, the president of the Calcutta meeting, was my host. Just as in Karachi, here also there was unbounded enthusiasm. The meeting was attended by several Englishmen.
Before the 31st July the Government announced that indentured emigration from India was stopped.
It was in 1894 that I drafted the first petition protesting against the system, and I had then hoped that this 'semi-slavery,' as Sir W. W. Hunter used to call the system, would some day be brought to an end.
There were many who aided in the agitation which was started in 1894, but I cannot help saying that potential Satyagraha hastened the end.
For further details of that agitation and of those who took part in it, I refer the reader to my Satyagraha in South Africa.
Chapter 136
THE STAIN OF INDIGO
hamparan is the land of King Janaka. Just as it abounds in mango groves, so used it to be full of indigo plantations until the year 1917. The Champaran tenant was bound by law to plant three out of every twenty parts of his land with indigo for his landlord. This system was known as the #tinkathis system, as three #kathas# out of twenty (which make one acre) had to be planted with indigo.
I must confess that I did not then know even the name, much less the geographical position, of Champaran, and I had hardly any notion of indigo plantations. I had seen packets of indigo, but little dreamed that it was grown and manufactured in Champaran at great hardship to thousands of agriculturists.
Rajkumar Shukla was one of the agriculturists who had been under this harrow, and he was filled with a passion to wash away the stain of indigo for the thousands who were suffering as he had suffered.
This man caught hold of me at Lucknow, where I had gone for the Congress of 1918. "Vakil Babu will tell you everything about our distress,' he said, and urged me to go to Champaran. "Vakil Babu' was none other than Babu Brajkishore Prasad, who became my esteemed co-worker in Champaran, and who is the soul of public work in Bihar. Rajkumar Shukla brought him to my tent. He was dressed in a black alpaca #achkan# and trousers. Brijkishore Babu failed then to make an impression on me. I took it that he must be some vakil exploiting the simple agriculturists. Having heard from him something of Champaran, I replied as was my wont: 'I can give no opinion without seeing the condition with my own eyes. You will please move the resolution in the Congress, but leave me free for the present.' Rajkumar Shukla of course wanted some help from
