In the year 1917, due to excessive rain in the Kheda area, crops of most of the farmers were destroyed and one-fourth did not yield. On this, the British prepared false figures of production and started collecting revenue from the farmers by force. The farmers requested Vallabhbhai to ask the British government to give exemption in rent.
Vallabhbhai himself visited the Kheda district and found out the truth and wrote to the Bombay government that even twenty-five percent of the crops were not done, so the farmers' rent should be waived. The British refused to waive the rent.
Vallabhbhai wrote to Gandhiji on this. Gandhiji accepted to conduct Satyagraha for the farmers of Kheda and wrote to Vallabhbhai that I want someone who will be with me all the time during the Satyagraha. On this Vallabhbhai gave up his foreign clothes and put on a dhoti kurta and himself also joined the Satyagraha. Thus the second important Satyagraha in the country after Champaran began in the Kheda region of Gujarat province.
This was Patel's first struggle in the freedom movement. Sardar Patel and Mohandas Gandhi called upon the farmers of Kheda region not to pay rent to the government. On this the government committed atrocities on the farmers and confiscated their lands. Land revenue was collected by auctioning the cattle of many farmers.