question_answer 5)

What did the peasants pay the British landlords as rent? What did the British now want instead and why? What would be the impact of synthetic indigo on the prices of natural indigo?    

Answer:

Most of the cultivable land in the Champaran district was divided into large estates owned by Englishmen where Indian tenants worked. The chief commercial crop was indigo. (The landlords forced the tenants to plant 15 per cent of their land with indigo and give up the whole indigo harvest as rent]   The landlords had now learned that Germany had developed synthetic indigo. Thus, they forced the sharecroppers to sign agreements to pay them compensation to be released from the 15 per cent arrangement.   The sharecroppers, who refused, engaged lawyers, and to counter them, the landlords hired thugs. But, when the information about synthetic indigo reached the peasants who had signed, they wanted their money back.