Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/400

 indigo concerns in 1908. Mr. Gourlay was deputed by the Government of Bengal to investigate the causes of the disturbances, and his report and recommendations were considered at a series of conferences presided over by Sir Edward Baker, and attended by the local officers of the Government and representatives of the Behar Planters' Association. As a result of these discussions, revised conditions for the cultivation of indigo, calculated to remove the grievances of the raiyats, were accepted by the Behar Planters Association. In 1912 fresh agitation arose connected not so much with the conditions under which indigo was grown as with the action of certain factories, which were reducing their indigo manufacture, and taking agreements from their tenants for the payment, in lieu of indigo cultivation, of a lump sum in temporarily leased villages or of an increase of rent in villages under permanent lease. Numerous petitions on this subject were presented from time to time to the local officers and to Government, and petitions were at the same time field by raiyats of the villages in the north of the Bettiah subdivision, in which indigo had never been grown, complaining of the levy of abab or illegal additions to rent by their lease-holders, both Indian and European. The issues raised by all these petitions related primarily to rent and tenancy conditions, and as the revision settlement of the district was about to be undertaken, in the