Complete solutions to every exercise in the NCERT Flamingo textbook, Chapter 5 “Indigo” by Louis Fischer: the “Notice these expressions” box at the start of the chapter, the four comprehension checks printed inside the chapter, then Understanding the Text, Talking about the Text, Working with Words, Thinking about Language, and Things to Do. Try answering each one yourself first, then check.
1 Notice These Expressions
Before the chapter begins, the book prints a box: “Notice these expressions in the text. Infer their meaning from the context.” Here is what each one means where it appears in the chapter.
| # | Expression | Meaning in the context of the chapter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | urge the departure | Press strongly for someone to leave. In 1942 Gandhi told Louis Fischer, “I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in 1917.” His decision to press for the British to leave India went back to the Champaran episode of 1917. |
| 2 | conflict of duties | A clash between two duties, where obeying one means breaking the other. Gandhi told the court he was involved in a “conflict of duties”: on the one hand, not to set a bad example as a lawbreaker; on the other, to render the “humanitarian and national service” for which he had come. |
| 3 | harbour a man like me | Give shelter to someone like him, a man the authorities disliked. Gandhi stayed two days in the home of Professor Malkani, a teacher in a government school, and commented that it was an extraordinary thing “in those days” “for a government professor to harbour a man like me”. In smaller localities, the Indians were afraid to show sympathy for advocates of home-rule. |
| 4 | seek a prop | Look for someone to lean on for support. When the lawyers wanted C.F. Andrews to stay and help, Gandhi told them, “You should not seek a prop in Mr. Andrews because he happens to be an Englishman”: the cause was just and they must rely upon themselves. |
2 In-Text Comprehension Check
NCERT prints four short checks in the margin of the chapter itself, before the formal exercises. They are answered here too, since they are part of the book’s own text.
Q. Strike out what is not true in the following.
a. Rajkumar Shukla was (i) a sharecropper. (ii) a politician. (iii) delegate. (iv) a landlord.
b. Rajkumar Shukla was (i) poor. (ii) physically strong. (iii) illiterate.
Answer: (a) Keep (i) a sharecropper; strike out (ii) a politician, (iii) delegate and (iv) a landlord. The text says Shukla was one of the Champaran sharecroppers, “illiterate but resolute,” who “had come to the Congress session to complain about the injustice of the landlord system”; it never calls him a politician, a delegate or a landlord.
(b) Keep (i) poor and (iii) illiterate; strike out (ii) physically strong. Gandhi describes him as “poor and emaciated,” and the text calls him illiterate.
Q. Why is Rajkumar Shukla described as being ‘resolute’?
Answer: Because he would not give up. Although Gandhi had never heard of Champaran and had an appointment in Cawnpore and other commitments, Shukla accompanied him everywhere, then followed him to his ashram near Ahmedabad, and for weeks never left his side, begging, “Fix a date.” When Gandhi finally named a date in Calcutta, Shukla was sitting on his haunches at the appointed spot when Gandhi arrived, waited till he was free, and then took him on to Patna and Champaran. It was this tenacity that impressed Gandhi.
Q. Why do you think the servants thought Gandhi to be another peasant?
Answer: The servants at Rajendra Prasad’s house knew Shukla as “a poor yeoman who pestered their master to help the indigo sharecroppers.” Gandhi arrived as the companion of this poor peasant, and the servants had no idea who he was, so they took him to be just another peasant like Shukla.
Q. List the places that Gandhi visited between his first meeting with Shukla and his arrival at Champaran.
Answer: After first meeting Shukla at the Congress convention in Lucknow, Gandhi went to Cawnpore, where he had an appointment, and to the other parts of India he was committed to visit; then he returned to his ashram near Ahmedabad, then to Calcutta, then with Shukla to Patna (Rajendra Prasad’s house), then to Muzzafarpur, and from there to Champaran.
Q. What did the peasants pay the British landlords as rent? What did the British now want instead and why? What would be the impact of synthetic indigo on the prices of natural indigo?
Answer: Under a long-term contract, the peasants had to plant three-twentieths (15 per cent) of their holdings with indigo and surrender the entire indigo harvest to the landlords as rent. Once the landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic indigo, they wanted money instead: they made the sharecroppers sign agreements to pay them compensation for being released from the 15 per cent arrangement. The book does not spell out the landlords’ motive, but it asks you to consider the impact: synthetic indigo would be likely to bring down the price of natural indigo, so the indigo harvest would be worth less to the landlords. That is why, when the information about synthetic indigo reached the illiterate peasants who had signed, they wanted their money back.
Q. The events in this part of the text illustrate Gandhi’s method of working. Can you identify some instances of this method and link them to his ideas of satyagraha and non-violence?
Answer: Gandhi first tried to get the facts, visiting the secretary of the landlords’ association and the Tirhut commissioner. When the commissioner bullied him and advised him to leave Tirhut, he did not leave; when served a notice to quit Champaran, he signed a receipt and wrote on it that he would disobey the order. In court he did not defend himself but pleaded guilty, explaining his “conflict of duties” and his obedience to “the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience,” and asked for the penalty due; he also refused to furnish bail. He stayed polite and friendly and even helped the officials regulate the huge crowd, and he later divided the lawyers into pairs to court arrest in turn. This is satyagraha in practice: open, peaceful refusal to obey an unjust order, willing acceptance of the legal penalty, and no violence or hostility towards the officials at any point.
Q. Why did Gandhi agree to a settlement of 25 per cent refund to the farmers?
Answer: For Gandhi the amount of the refund was less important than the fact that the landlords had been obliged to surrender part of the money and, with it, part of their prestige. Accepting 25 per cent broke the deadlock, and it showed the peasants that the planters, who had behaved as lords above the law, could be made to pay; the peasant now saw that he had rights and defenders.
Q. How did the episode change the plight of the peasants?
Answer: The peasants learned courage: they saw that they had rights and defenders and need no longer fear the planters. Within a few years the British planters abandoned their estates, which reverted to the peasants, and indigo sharecropping disappeared. Gandhi also began work on their social condition: primary schools were opened in six villages, a doctor volunteered for six months, and Kasturbai taught personal cleanliness and community sanitation.
3 Understanding the Text
Q. Why do you think Gandhi considered the Champaran episode to be a turning-point in his life?
Answer: Gandhi himself called what he did “a very ordinary thing”: he simply declared that the British could not order him about in his own country, by openly disobeying the notice to quit Champaran and accepting the legal consequence. But the episode mattered far more than its size suggested. Thousands of peasants gathered spontaneously around the courthouse, which the book calls “the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British”; several days later the Lieutenant-Governor ordered the case against him dropped, and the book says, “Civil disobedience had triumphed, the first time in modern India.” The inquiry and settlement that followed showed that fact-finding, open but peaceful defiance and negotiation could win justice for the poor. It was also the episode in which, as Gandhi told Fischer, he decided to “urge the departure of the British”.
Q. How was Gandhi able to influence lawyers? Give instances.
Answer: Gandhi first chided the Muzzafarpur lawyers for collecting big fees from the sharecroppers, telling them, “Where the peasants are so crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is to be free from fear.” Later, when Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and other prominent lawyers arrived from Bihar, Gandhi asked them what they would do if he was sentenced to prison. The senior lawyer replied that they had come to advise and help him, and if he went to jail they would go home. “What about the injustice to the sharecroppers,” Gandhi demanded. The lawyers withdrew to consult and realised that going home while a complete stranger risked jail for the peasants would be “shameful desertion,” so they told him they were ready to follow him into jail. “The battle of Champaran is won,” Gandhi exclaimed.
Q. What was the attitude of the average Indian in smaller localities towards advocates of “home rule”?
Answer: In smaller localities, the Indians were afraid to show sympathy for advocates of home-rule. That is why Gandhi commented that it was an extraordinary thing “in those days” for a government professor, Professor Malkani, a teacher in a government school, “to harbour a man like me”.
Q. How do we know that ordinary people too contributed to the freedom movement?
Answer: Rajkumar Shukla, an illiterate but resolute sharecropper, is the one who brings Gandhi to Champaran at all, through months of persistence. The thousands of peasants who gather around the Motihari courthouse do so spontaneously, without even knowing Gandhi’s record in South Africa, simply because they had heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with the authorities; the book calls this “the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British.” Later, depositions by about ten thousand peasants are written down in the inquiry. The book’s own sub-theme is “Contributions made by anonymous Indians to the freedom movement.”
4 Talking about the Text
Q. “Freedom from fear is more important than legal justice for the poor.” Do you think that the poor of India are free from fear after Independence?
Answer: The chapter strongly supports the first half of this statement: Gandhi himself tells the lawyers that law courts are “useless” where the peasants are “so crushed and fear-stricken”, and that “the real relief for them is to be free from fear”. The Champaran case was not won by any court judgment: it was dropped by order of the Lieutenant-Governor, and the peasants’ spontaneous demonstration is called “the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British.” Whether the poor of India are free from fear today is a discussion question with no single correct answer; a strong response should take a clear position and support it with real or reasonably assumed examples, rather than simply repeating the chapter’s own conclusion about 1917.
Q. The qualities of a good leader.
Answer: This is a discussion question, best answered using the chapter’s own evidence. Gandhi shows patience and humility in taking an unlettered peasant’s complaint seriously and investigating it himself; courage in openly disobeying an unjust order and accepting its consequence; the power to lead by example, since his readiness to go to prison made the Bihar lawyers decide that going home would be “shameful desertion”; firmness in refusing Andrews’s help so that his followers learn self-reliance; and genuine care in following the legal victory with schools, healthcare and sanitation rather than treating the case as fully won once the settlement is signed. A strong answer picks two or three of these and supports each with a specific instance from the chapter.
5 Working with Words
Q. List the words used in the text that are related to legal procedures. For example: deposition. List other words that you know that fall into this category.
Answer: Words used in the chapter itself that relate to legal procedure include deposition, summons, prosecutor, magistrate, bail, judgment, notice, plead guilty, penalty and commission of inquiry. Other legal-procedure words a student might know include affidavit, plaintiff, defendant, verdict, testimony, subpoena, and cross-examination.
6 Thinking about Language
Q. Notice the sentences in the text which are in “direct speech.” Why does the author use quotations in his narration?
Answer: The chapter is full of direct speech: Shukla’s “I am Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran,” Gandhi’s own statement to the court about his “conflict of duties,” and Rajendra Prasad’s and Reverend J.Z. Hodge’s exact remarks are all quoted rather than summarised. One good answer: Fischer uses direct quotation because this chapter is a work of journalism and biography, not fiction. Reporting real people’s exact words makes the account authentic and convincing, and it lets the reader hear Gandhi’s own reasoning, and other people’s judgment of him, in their own voices.
Q. Notice the use or non-use of the comma in the following sentences: (a) “When I first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, he told me what happened in Champaran.” (b) “He had not proceeded far when the police superintendent’s messenger overtook him.” (c) “When the court reconvened, the judge said he would not deliver the judgment for several days.”
Answer: Sentences (a) and (c) use a comma because the subordinate (“when…”) clause comes before the main clause. Sentence (b) uses no comma because the subordinate clause comes after the main clause. The rule illustrated is: place a comma after an introductory subordinate clause, but do not use one when that same clause follows the main clause instead.
7 Things to Do
Q. 1. Choose an issue that has provoked a controversy like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy or the Narmada Dam Project in which the lives of the poor have been affected.
2. Find out the facts of the case.
3. Present your arguments.
4. Suggest a possible settlement.
Answer: This is a project-style activity with no single correct answer, modelled directly on Gandhi’s own method in this chapter. A strong response follows the same four steps the book itself demonstrates: first, gather the facts independently rather than relying on one side’s account (as Gandhi did at Muzzafarpur); second, identify exactly who is affected and how; third, present a reasoned argument for the affected group, as Gandhi did before the Lieutenant-Governor; and fourth, propose a realistic settlement that balances what is owed against what can practically be achieved, the way Gandhi accepted 25 per cent instead of the 50 per cent he had asked for.