Indigo — Class 12 MCQs with Answers

Indigo — important questions & MCQs with answers (Class 12 English)

2 solved questions from this chapter's difficulty levels, each with its answer and explanation. Tap an option to check yourself.

0 of 2 answered

1. Q1 of 2Medium

   What was the sharecropping arrangement in Champaran?

   ATenants worked the landlord's fields for wagesBTenants paid rent in cash onlyCTenants gave half their grain harvestDTenants planted 15 per cent of their holdings with indigo and surrendered the entire harvest as rent
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   Answer: Tenants planted 15 per cent of their holdings with indigo and surrendered the entire harvest as rent

   Explanation: The arrangement was 'three twentieths or 15 per cent' and was fixed by long-term contract.

2. Q2 of 2Medium

   What did the secretary of the British landlords' association tell Gandhi?

   AThat the peasants were lyingBThat he would helpCThat they could give no information to an outsider — to which Gandhi replied he was no outsiderDThat he should meet the commissioner
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   Answer: That they could give no information to an outsider — to which Gandhi replied he was no outsider

   Explanation: Gandhi's reply asserts his right to be in his own country.

Indigo notes: key concepts (Class 12 English)

An excerpt from Louis Fischer's 'The Life of Mahatma Gandhi'. An illiterate sharecropper follows Gandhi across India until he agrees to visit Champaran, where Gandhi wins a refund for the indigo peasants, defeats an eviction order by civil disobedience, and teaches self-reliance to lawyers and villagers alike.

Louis Fischer

Louis Fischer (1896-1970), born in Philadelphia, a journalist who wrote for The New York Times and The Saturday Review and taught at Princeton. This excerpt is from 'The Life of Mahatma Gandhi'.

Rajkumar Shukla

A poor, emaciated sharecropper from Champaran — 'illiterate but resolute'. He met Gandhi at the December 1916 Lucknow session of the Congress and followed him everywhere, to Cawnpore and to the ashram, begging 'Fix a date'.

At Rajendra Prasad's house

The servants took Gandhi for another peasant and would not let him draw water from the well 'lest some drops from his bucket pollute the entire source; how did they know that he was not an untouchable?'

Muzzafarpur

Gandhi went there first for fuller information, arriving at midnight on 15 April 1917. Professor J.B. Kripalani met him with students; he stayed with Professor Malkani — 'an extraordinary thing in those days for a government professor to harbour a man like me'.

The lawyers chided

They charged the sharecroppers heavy fees. Gandhi told them, 'Taking such cases to the courts does little good. Where the peasants are so crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is to be free from fear.'

The sharecropping system

English-owned estates worked by Indian tenants. Landlords compelled every tenant to plant 15 per cent — three twentieths — of his holding with indigo and surrender the whole harvest as rent, under long-term contract.

Synthetic indigo

Germany developed it, so the landlords obtained agreements releasing tenants from the 15 per cent arrangement in return for compensation. When news of the synthetic dye reached the illiterate peasants who had signed, they wanted their money back.

'He was no outsider'

The landlords' secretary refused information to an outsider; Gandhi answered that he was no outsider. The commissioner 'proceeded to bully me and advised me forthwith to leave Tirhut'.

Civil disobedience at Motihari

Served with an order to quit, Gandhi signed the receipt and wrote that he would disobey it. In court he pleaded guilty, describing a 'conflict of duties' and disobeying 'in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience'.

The lawyers' turn

Asked what they would do if he went to jail, the lawyers first said they would go home — then realised that for a stranger to go to prison for these peasants while they left 'would be shameful desertion'. Gandhi exclaimed: 'The battle of Champaran is won.'

The 25 per cent settlement

Depositions from about ten thousand peasants built 'a crushing mountain of evidence'. Gandhi asked for 50 per cent; the planters offered 25; he accepted at once. What mattered was that the landlords 'had been obliged to surrender part of the money and, with it, part of their prestige'.

Beyond politics

Primary schools in six villages, taught by Mahadev Desai, Narhari Parikh and their wives, with Kasturbai teaching cleanliness and sanitation; a volunteer doctor with three medicines — castor oil, quinine and sulphur ointment.