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Chapter I: Bardoli and its People

Bardoli (including Valod) is the easternmost taluka of the Surat district containing 137 villages, with an area of 222 square miles. It is bounded on the north by the river Tapti, beyond which is the Mandvi taluka of the Surat district, on the east and west by the territory of His Highness the Gayakwad of Baroda and on the south partly by the same territory and the Jalalpur taluka of the Surat distict. The fact that a large part of the boundary of the taluka is formed by the Baroda territory is a feature of which the reader will notice the significance as he goesthrough the history of the Satyagraha. Two or three rivers much smaller than the Tapti cut through the taluka and run into the Arabian sea. Scarcely any of them is bridged, or fordable in the thick of the rainy season. The soil in the western part of the taluka is rich black yielding all varieties of crops (the staples being, juvari, cotton and rice), but the eastern villages are wild and rocky and poor, and have a scanty water supply and an inferior climate.

The bulk of the population of something over 87,000 are agriculturists. One looks in vain in the old settlement reports of the taluka for accurate figures of the population as divided into the principal communities – the Kanbis, Anavlas, Vanias and Kaliparaj (now known as the Raniparaj). But according to a rough estimate over half of the population is accounted for by the Kaliparaj, 11,000 being the Kaliparaj proper and thirty to forty thousand Dublas. There is a sprinkling of parsis and a small percentage of Musalmans. The first two communities are occupants and cultivators of the soil, the bulk of the Vanias are moneylenders and may be classed under the term non-agriculturists, and the Kaliparaj (including Chodhas, Dhudias, Gamits and Dublas) are the agricultural labourers in the taluka. The Dublas however are a class apart, and there is very little that is voluntary about their labour. They get married at the expense of their masters, get into their debt, and remain attached to the masters practically as their serfs. The Musalmans are also agriculturists, though some of them carry on petty trades, and the few families of Parsis in the taluka are canteen keepers and occupants o large holdings.

An average village in the Bardoli taluka is very much smaller than a village in the Kheda district. Some of the Bardoli villages have as few as twenty-five or even ten houses, and though the density of population in the western villages is fairly high, there is nothing like the congestion that one finds in a Kheda village. The houses of the "higher" classes are tiled, have a front and back door and have large enclosures, but curiously enough the people accomodate their cattle also under the same roof as themselves.

These salient features indicate nothing unusual about the taluka. But one has to examine a little deeper to find out the distinctive features which have contributed to give Bardoli its place in the history of India.

Quite a considerable number of Gandhiji's Satyagrahis in South Africa were from Bardoli, and they had during that historical struggle given enough evidence of their courage and their determination. These included Kanbis, Anavlas and Musalmans who went there to try fortune and who have built up a considerable colony there. It was his familiarity with these Satyagrahis of Bardoli that led Gandhiji to approve of Bardoli as a suitable area in which to start his campaign of mass civil desobedience in 1921-1922. The idea ha to be dropped abruptly for reasons with which we are not here concerned, but the fact that it had the honour of being thus selected as the starting point of one of the biggest experiments in history remained, and though there was an inevitable lull among the people as a result of a sudden call-off of marching orders, the implications of the proposed step were not forgotten. Almost all the Patels in the taluka (most of them belonging to the Kanbi community) had delivered their letters of resignation to Gandhiji to be sent to the proper quarters at the opportune moment. Many villages had their national schools, and there was a better Khadi atmosphere in the taluka than elsewhere. A strong wave of social reform had passed over the Kaliparaj community, a large number of whom had taken solumn pledges to abjure liquor, toddy, etc. After Gandhiji's arrest the workers of Gujarat headed by Sjt. Vallabhbhai Patel made it their objective to carry out the constructive programme in Bardoli, so that it might vindicate itself in history as the first place for civil desobedience chosen by Gandhiji. Four centres of work were therefore established in four directions of the taluka, where some of the picked workers went and settled themselves to work among the people. These centres were at Bardoli, Sarbhon, Varad and Vankaner, places which have distinguished themselves in the Satyagraha of 1928. bardoli was the headquarters of their constructive activity, as it is the headquarters of the taluka, with a special training school of spinning, weaving and carpentry for the boys and youths of the Kaliparaj people. I have in a foregoing paragraph described these people by another name – Raniparaj.