रोबर्ट की चम्पारण वापसी

Shamboo Prasad Singh In the 19th century some of the British industrialists and businessmen started farming for Indigo (Neel) production in Champaran District of Bihar and established many factories at various places to produce Indigo from leaves and stems of the Indigo plants. The English bought land from Betia Raj to grovo Indigo crop and became independent landlords due to which no local landlord or king could interfere in their works. The Britishers independently and arbitrarily made the Indian farmers work on Indigo farms on their own conditions for a minimum wage and used to earn a huge amount of profit by selling it in the markets of Europe & Asia. In 1917 most of the English businessmen suffered a great loss in their Indigo business because of Neel-movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and nearly all of the English landlords living in Champaran sold their lands and went back to England. Jack Robert was a criminal drug dealer who misused the drugs to kill many people and looked their wealth. To escape from the police trap he with his family boarded on a ship of East India Company to reach Kolkata but here also the Indo-British police chased him and he left for Patna during his escape. With Shahi Robert came to Betia and with the help of Shahi he managed to stay here and changed his identity as Sam from Jack Robert to keep himself away from the reach of the law.                          But during the Neel-movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi the third generation member of Robert came back to London after selling the whole of his landlordism. But the stifling environment and stigmatized neglected life forced them to come back to India and the third generation of Robert again came back to India to join the main cultural stream of India.