Rajkumar Shukla

Rajkumar Shukla is the poor, illiterate sharecropper whose determination sets the entire episode in motion. Though humble and unlettered, he possesses an extraordinary persistence: convinced that Gandhi alone can help the Champaran peasants, he approaches him at the Lucknow Congress and then follows him from place to place — to Cawnpore, to the ashram near Ahmedabad, and finally to Calcutta — refusing to be discouraged until Gandhi agrees to come. His resolve is a quiet form of courage, and it shows that great movements often begin with the stubborn hope of an ordinary person. Shukla represents the suffering peasantry, but he also embodies the initiati …