Kheda Satyagraha

Kheda Satyagraha

Gandhi in 1918, when he led the Kheda Satyagraha.
English name	Kheda Satyagraha
Date	1918
Location	Kheda district of Gujarat, India during the period of the British Raj
Organised by	Gandhi,Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Indulal Yagnik, Shankarlal Banker, Mahadev Desai, Narhari Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravi Shankar Vyas

The Kheda Satyagraha of 1918, in the Kheda district of Gujarat, India during the period of the British Raj, was the second Satyagraha movement inspired by Mohandas Gandhi and a major revolt in the Indian Independence Movement. It was the second Satyagraha movement after [Champaran Satyagraha].Gandhi ji organise this movement to support peasants of kheda district.The peasants of kheda could not be able to pay high taxes of british due to crop failure and plague epidemic.

In Gujarat, Gandhi was chiefly the spiritual head of the struggle. His chief lieutenant, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and a close coterie of devoted Gandhians, namely Indulal Yagnik, Shankarlal Banker, Mahadev Desai, Narhari Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravi Shankar Vyas toured the countryside, organised the villagers and gave them political leadership and direction. Many aroused Gujaratis from the cities of Ahmedabad and Vadodara joined the organizers of the revolt, but Gandhi and Patel resisted the involvement of Indians from other provinces, seeking to keep it a purely Gujarati struggle.

Patel and his colleagues organised a major tax revolt, and all the different ethnic and caste communities of Kheda rallied around it. The peasants of Kheda signed a petition calling for the tax for this year to be scrapped in wake of the famine. The government in Bombay rejected the charter. They warned that if the peasants did not pay, the lands and property would be confiscated and many arrested. And once confiscated, they would not be returned even if most complied. None of the villages flinched.

The tax withheld, the government's collectors and inspectors sent in thugs to seize property and cattle, while the police forfeited the lands and all agrarian property. The farmers did not resist arrest, nor retaliate to the force employed with violence. Instead, they used their cash and valuables to donate to the Gujarat Sabha which was officially organising the protest.