East Champaran Indigo Satyagraha Gandhi Motihari

East Champaran district is the site of Gandhi's first civil disobedience in India — the 1917 Champaran Satyagraha — where he exposed the tinkathia indigo cultivation system under which British planters forced peasants to grow indigo on 3/20 of their land as rent, resulting in the Bihar Tenancy Act reforms. Motihari, the district headquarters, contains the Gandhi Smarak where the indigo Satyagraha began, and is a pilgrimage site for Indian political history. East Champaran today grows banana, sugarcane, paddy, and mentha (mint) as major crops, and the district's Terai belt along the Nepal border supports sal forest and the Valmiki Tiger Reserve.