UPSC Prelims 2018 · Question 69 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2018 question on Champaran Satyagraha
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2018
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectModern History
- TopicIndian National Movement
- DifficultyEasy
- TypeDirect
Which one of the following is a very significant aspect of the Champaran Satyagraha?
Show answer
Answer: C. Joining of peasant unrest to India's National Movement
Analysis
The significant aspect was the joining of peasant unrest to the national movement, so the answer is (c).
The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 opened a new phase in the national movement by joining it to the struggle of the Indian peasantry for bread and land. It was the first peasant movement to gain nationwide attention, and it yoked peasant unrest to the freedom struggle. Gandhi's subsequent localised movements at Ahmedabad for mill workers and at Kheda for distressed peasants served as training grounds for the nationwide protests that followed 1919.
Option (a) describes a feature of later mass movements rather than of Champaran, which was a localised agrarian struggle. Option (b) misattributes the social base. Option (d) confuses the outcome, since the significance lay in the political linkage rather than in any measured fall in plantation cultivation.
Source
Old NCERT, Bipan Chandra; Indian Express column on the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917.
How to crack it
Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda form a set of three early Gandhian experiments, each localised and each attaching a specific economic grievance to the national cause. Learn what each contributed rather than just the dates, because UPSC asks about significance and not chronology here, and options describing all India participation belong to the post 1919 phase.