About this stamp
The Man Who Brought Gandhi to Champaran
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 18 December 2018 for Rajkumar Shukla (1875–1929), the peasant of Champaran, Bihar, who persuaded Mahatma Gandhi to come and see the plight of the indigo farmers. Under the system of European planters, the peasants were forced to grow indigo on 3/20 of their land and sell it at prices the planters fixed.
Champaran Satyagraha
Shukla reminded Gandhi of his promise at the Lucknow Congress to visit Champaran: “19 lakhs suffering people of Champaran are waiting to see you.” Gandhi reached Patna on 10 April 1917 and Motihari with Shukla on 16 April. Ordered to leave, he refused and was arrested; the order was withdrawn, and his open enquiry into the peasants’ grievances led to a government committee, with Gandhi as a member, and the end of the system. It was Gandhi’s first satyagraha in India. Gandhi wrote of Shukla in his autobiography, and Rajendra Prasad and J. B. Kripalani recorded his role.
On the Stamp
His portrait in a white cap, with a village building and an open book. It was designed by Sankha Samanta from material given by his grandson Mani Bhushan Rai and Swati Chandra, with the cancellation by Alka Sharma; 500,000 were printed by wet offset at the Security Printing Press, Hyderabad.
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