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Journeys in Time
The little man with the big, iron-tipped stick became a familiar sight as he frequently strode across the country -- and bestrode its imagination. Three of those journeys were epochal: Champaran, Bihar, in 1917 to protect the rights of peasants in indigo plantations; Dandi, Gujarat, in 1930, to launch the civil disobedience movement; and a desperate journey to Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, to try and heal a land shattered by communal carnage. Decades later, india today retraced the Mahatma's steps to seek his legacy. The memories are hazy; the memorials are few. But the hope he once gave a distressed nation survives the ravages of time. CHAMAPRAN Gandhi came here to lead a campaign against extortionist British indigo planters. Eighty years later leaky roofs and rubble are all that survive, writes SWAPAN DASGUPTA
Unless you are diverted to the Circuit House, adjoining the district magistrate's bungalow on one side and an abandoned church that could have easily been transplanted from rural Wiltshire on the other. It is not any other dak bungalow where lesser officials spent thankless evenings and the chhota sahib camped after a day with peasants and tiresome pleaders. It was, until the 1920s, the European Club of Bettiah where indigo planters from Champaran assembled for gram-fed roast mutton and convivial weekends. The marble floors, the teak banisters, the wooden staircase and the sprung floors of the grand ballroom should have been cherished as monuments to gracious living. But this is independent India, determined to exorcise its hated colonial past. The carpets have disappeared from the ballroom, the clubroom sketches from the walls have yielded to fading Bihar tourism posters and the top of the grand 16-seater teak dining table has been desecrated with sunmica. Yet, the ghosts of Messrs Lewis, Whitty, Cox and Jameson still haunt the unsuspecting visitor who steps out into the moss-covered portico terrace on sultry, moonless nights. "It should be remembered," Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, "that no one knew me in Champaran. The peasants were all ignorant. Champaran, being far up north of the Ganges, and right at the foot of the Himalayas in close proximity to Nepal, was cut off from the rest of India. The Congress was practically unknown in those parts." Some things never change. Just off the big four-point crossing in Motihari is a small, run-down bungalow. It was once the home of Babu Gorakh Prasad, pleader. When Gandhi first reached Motihari by train in April 1917, he spent the night at Gorakh Babu's place. It is now a tutorial home plastered with mysterious posters proclaiming "air force". Its occupants have never heard of Gorakh Prasad or the bungalow's association with Gandhi. Pic: Saibal Das It's the same story in Bettiah. On October 11, 1917, Gandhi arrived in Bettiah from Motihari by train. The local cid described his visit: "About 4,000 people were present. No sooner the train stopped than people began to shout Gandhiji ki jai, Gandhi Maharaj ki jai. There were bajas (bands), and flags at the station and all men from neighbouring and distant villages including schoolboys and mukhtiars were present. They showered flowers on Mr Gandhi and garlanded him. There was a red cloth spread at the platform for Mr Gandhi. Surajmal Marwari of Bettiah had brought his phaeton and a horse of Puran Babu Raj, an engineer, was harnessed ... Mr Gandhi was taken to Hazarimal's dharamshala (rest house) accompanied by all the villagers who had come to see him. The dharamshala was nicely decorated with flags, flowers, etc." D.G. Tendulkar's Gandhi in Champaran has a photograph of Hazarimal's dharamshala "where Gandhi camped and conducted his campaign". The site still exists as do newly painted signboards reading "Hazarimal dharamshala, established 1892". The original building has been half demolished and would have disappeared had the Bihar government not woken up belatedly. There is not even a plaque to indicate that Gandhiji made his debut in Indian politics, 80 years ago, from the site of the rubble. Yet, Gandhi lingers on in Champaran. Some 15 km from Motihari is a kasba called Daka. Turning right at the Maulana Azad Chowk is an apology of a road that soon gives way to a village track. Some 3 km through the paddy fields is Barharwa Lakhansen. On November 14, 1917, Gandhi opened his first school in Champaran in that village in a house donated by Babu Shiv Gun Mal. Some 80 years later, the Gandhi Vidyalaya survives with 16 teachers and 700 students, including 250 girls. Its entrance is marked by a statue of the Mahatma, with the name of the donors prominently inscribed in marble. Adjoining the statue are two pink obelisk with marble slabs. One announces that the shilanyas was done by Tariq Anwar and the other marks the unveiling of the statue by Rajmohan Gandhi. Paramdeo Raut succeeded his father as caretaker of the school in 1950 and retired from service in 1992. He still remains the caretaker, a sort of labour of love. He preserves the charkha (spinning wheel) that Gandhi used when he visited the village. But far from being a prize possession, the charkha is now stored in a loft held up by a wooden pole. There are no lights in that room and the roof leaks. Another monsoon or two and there may not be anything left of the original part of the building. "Who is there to listen?" complains Raut. The outhouse, which served as Gandhi's kitchen, is already a ruin. Gandhi arrived in Champaran to lead an agitation against extortionist British indigo planters. At its peak in 1882-83, India exported indigo worth £4 million to Europe and, according to the testimony of a British official in 1848, "Not a chest of indigo reached England without being stained with human blood". Indigo plantation in Champaran died in the late-1920s. In fact, the only indigo plant that survives in the district is in Pipra Kothi, the site of the largest indigo factory. The plant has been carefully nurtured by Mohammed Farooq, the caretaker of what used to be the factory manager's bungalow. It is a typical planter's bungalow -- spacious and comfortable without being ostentatious -- which went to seed until a local district magistrate with an eye to heritage had it renovated, pwd-style. It now functions as a guest house. One of the factory sheds in the sprawling 365-acre complex houses a primary school. The children read about the Father of the Nation. Champaran is not in the syllabus. "We may look on Mr Gandhi as an idealist, a fanatic or a revolutionary according to our particular opinions," wrote Bettiah's subdivisional officer W.H. Lewis to his commissioner on April 29, 1917, "But to the raiyats he is their liberator, and they credit him with extraordinary powers. He moves about in the villages, asking them to lay their grievances before him, and he is daily transfiguring the imaginations of masses of ignorant men with visions of an early millennium." That vision too is not part of the text.
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Editorial Office: © Living Media India Ltd |
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Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi loved to walk. Ever since he stepped
off a steam ship from South Africa in 1915, the time he
didn't spend in British jails, he spent on the road. 
BETTIAH
is not a town that deserved a Civil Lines. Now a district
headquarters, this unprepossessing cluster has everything
to deter a highway traveller: roads with craters, deadly
mosquitoes, piles of uncollected garbage and prolonged
power cuts. It is an ideal place to not visit. 
