NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE

THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY

TRENT UNIVERSITY
c£] Mr . 2^5

i
 By the same author

1. Gandhi's Truth and Non-violence X-rayed

2. Indian Feudal States and National Liberation Struggle
3. Social Background of Indian Nationalism
4. Recents Trends in Indian Nationalism
5. Rural India in Transition
6. Rural Sociology in India
7. Essays on Modernization Underdeveloped Societies (2 vols.
Ed.)
8. Slums and Urbanization (with S. Devadas Pillai)
9. A Profile of an Indian Slum (with S. Devadas Pillai)
10. State and Society in India—Essays in Dissent
11. A Positive Programme for the Indian Revolution (Ed.)
 Peasant Struggles
in
India

edited by
A.R. DESAI

BOMBAY
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
DELHI CALCUTTA MADRAS
1979
 Oxford University Press
OXFORD LONDON GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM CAPE TOWN

KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE JAKARTA HONG KONG TOKYO
DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI

© Oxford University Press 1979

Printed in India
by Jay Print Pack (P) Ltd., New Delhi 110 015
and published by R. Dayal, Oxford Univerity Press
2/11 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002
To
Kathleen Gough
who pioneered to give the
heroic struggles of the
exploited and oppressed
rural poor of India
their place in history
 Contents
Introduction XI

PART I

Tribal and Peasant Struggles: An Overview

Introduction 3

1 Background of Tribal Struggles

in India V. R. Raghavaiah 12

2 Tribal Revolts in Chronological

Order: 1778 to 1971 V. R. Raghavaiah 23

3 Messianic Movements Fr. Stephen Fuchs 28

*4 Agrarian
Revolts N. G. Ranga and Swami Sahajanand Saraswathi 47

5 Indian Peasants Struggles and

Achievements N. G. Ranga 66

6 Indian Peasant Uprisings Kathleen Gough 85

PART II

Agrarian Struggles in the 19th Century

Introduction 129

7 The Santhal Insurrection: 1855-56 L. Natrajan 136

8 Indigo Cultivators’ Strike: 1860 L. Natrajan 148

9 Maratha Uprising: 1875 L. Natrajan 159

10 Conclusion L. Natrajan 170

11 Unrest in Andhra Pradesh V. R. Raghavaiah 174

12 Peasant Struggle in Patna, 1873:

Its Legalistic Character Kaly an Kumar Sengupta 179

13 Agrarian Disturbances in
19th Century Bengal Kalyan Kumar Sengupta 189

PART III

Agrarian Struggles in the Early 20th Century

Introduction 211

14 Early Struggles: 1905-18 Sukhbir Choudhary 221

15 Post-War Awakening: 1919-21 Sukhbir Choudhary 237

PART IV

Agrarian Struggles in the Twenties and Thirties

Introduction 277

16 Sreerama Raju’s Uprising-1922-24 V. Raghavaiah 291

17 Village Repression by British

Rulers Report of India League Delegation in 1932 303

18 Agrarian Movements in Bengal and

Bihar: 1919-39 Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri 337

19 Damodar Canal Tax

Movement Buddhadeva Bhatlacharyya with
Tarunkumar Bannerjee and Dipak Kumar Das 375
 PART V

Agrarian Struggles on the Eve of British Withdrawal

Introduction 415

20 The Kisan Sabha Sunil Sen 428

21 Tebhaga Chai Sunil Sen 442

22 The Bargadars Bill Sunil Sen 453

23 The Dilemma Sunil Sen 461

24 Kakdwip Tebhaga Movement Krishnakant Sarkar 469

25 Social Origins of the Peasant Insurrection in

Telangana: 1946-51 _ D. N. Dhanagare 486

26 The Postwar Situation and Beginning

of Armed Struggle C. Rajeshwar Rao 517

27 Telangana P. Sundarayya 532

28 Hyderabad State—Its Socio-Political

Background P. Sundarayya 537

29 The Communist Movement in Andhra:

Terror Regime—1948-51 P.Sundarayya 545

30 Entry of Indian Army and Immediately

After P. Sundarayya 565

31 The Liberation Movement Among

Varlis S. V. Parulekar 569

32 The Struggle of 1946 S. V. Parulekar 583

 PART VI

An Overview

Introduction 597

y 33 Peasant Revolts in Malabar in the Nineteenth

and Twentieth Centuries K. N. Panikkar 601

34 Peasants of the Paraganas Asim Mukhopadhyay 631

35 Peasants and Revolution Hamza Alavi 671

36 Peasant Resistance and Revolt in

South India Kathleen Gough 719

37 Peasant Movement in India Uday Mehta 743

38 The ‘Two-Stages’ Theory of Revolution in the Third

World: Need for its Evaluation A. R. Desai 751

39 Unconventional Anthropology of ‘Traditional’

Peasantry A. R. Desai 760

Index 767
 Introduction

(U
This book attempts to provide a panoramic view of tribal and
peasant struggles in India during the colonial period. It is not a
source book, but the readings give an insight into various sources,
some of which are rare documents, not easily available and have
acquired the character of archival importance.
Recently, a number of books and articles have been published
on peasant movements in India.1 They deal with various categories
of struggles in different parts of the country launched by various
sections of the agrarian population through different periods of
British rule. Some of the books and articles give excellent detailed
accounts of specific struggles. However, there is no work which
provides an all-India picture of tribal and peasant' struggles which
took place during various phases of British rule. Nor do we find
an account, which portrays the historical development of these
movements during this period, which can reflect the varieties of
forms and methods adopted by these movements. Similarly, there
is no systematic analytical work which examines these struggles
from the point of view of delineating the roles of specific sections
and classes of the rural population which took leadership, provided
guidance, raised specific issues and elaborated various forms of
mobilization and struggle.
The present volume, through its arrangement of selections and
sectional introductions, endeavours to sketch such an outline. In
the absence of a comprehensive, historical account of tribal and
peasant movements, a work attempting such a perspective and
delineating the historical development of these movements, will
hopefully prove valuable for a proper appraisal of agrarian move¬
ments and their contribution to the nationalist movement in India.
The choice in highlighting particular movements (and omitting
others) was made with a view to exploring the inner dynamic of
the various social movements that emerged, revealing the methods
adopted, levels of involvement of various sections, types of alliances
and conflicts, ingenous devices adopted for mobilization, organi¬
zational innovations and forms, changing nature of issues around
XIV INTRODUCTION

zations and academies, successfully diverted attention from con¬

ducting methodically, large scale studies of the vital and crucial
theme of the deepening and widening struggles launched by various
categories of the rural population which played a significant role in
weakening the foundations of British colonialism in India. This
also prevented scientific studies of the increasing resistance or¬
ganized by various sections of the rural populace, who are being
subjected to subtle, varied and complex forms of exploitation,
oppression and repression in the post-independence period.
It should be acknowledged that a small group of historically
oriented radical social scientists and Marxists is attempting to
counteract this lacuna in scholarship. These researchers are trying
to focus their studies on tribal and peasant struggles during the
British and post-British period. This endeavour however is diffused,
scattered and concentrates on specific episodes and^movements.
Except for the pathbreaking effort by Kathleen Gough (reproduced
in the present work) nobody to my knowledge has ventured to
analyse the struggles of various strata of rural population in a total
historical context. I have given my reasons for this in the sectional
introductions. The present volume, as pointed out earlier, is specially
prepared to highlight the urgent necessity of further study on the
question of the role of the peasantry. By organizing the material
in historical order, and attempting to provide explanations in
sectional introductions, I have tried to draw a sketch, however
elementary, of this phenomenon in its overall matrix. I consider
such an exercise very necessary for a very important practical
reason. Without a proper comprehension of the tribal and peasant
movements in their overall context, it will not be possible to evolve
a correct strategy and tactics for shaping these movements as a
part of the larger struggle to end the evolving exploitative and
oppressive, socio-economic order and to replace it by a non¬
capitalist, socialist, socio-economic formation in India.

(4)
India was considered the brightest jewel in the British crown.
India a country of continental dimensions was subjected to the
most systematic and forceful transformation process by British
colonizers to suit their needs. They reduced this complex and
 INTRODUCTION XV

historically one of the few continuously enduring precapitalist

civilizations into a classic colony of the British empire. Unfortuna¬
tely a systematic analysis of the British impact on India is still
not available. The massive literature delineating this impact
portrays segmental pictures of the impact of various measures
adopted by the British, on different facets of rural life.
A synthesis of the British impact on reshaping the socio-economic
framework, class configuration as well as Indian political adminis¬
trative and cultural life of rural India is still not available. Jawaharlal
Nehru3, Dr K.S. Shelvankar4, and Rajni Palme Dutt5 endeavoured
to evolve such an outline. The present author has also tried to
capture the overall impact in his Social Background of Indian
Nationalism,6
The credit for the first serious attempt to assess the overall impact
of British rule in India, goes to Marx who hinted at the double
mission of this rule—one destructive and the other positive.
However, after the emergence of the independent Indian union,
an intense debate has been launched particularly among various
sections of Marxists to reappraise the nature of the transformation
that took place in India under British rule. This debate has great
relevance in shaping the programmes and policies for action
launched by various Communist and Marxist parties.
The issues round which this debate is carried on can be for¬
mulated in following manner:
1. Characterization of the socio-economic formation which
emerged during the British period.
2. Nature of the dominant mode of production generated by the
British impact on India.
3. Nature of changes generated by the British as consequences of
adopting measures such as the introduction to private property
in land; new modes of revenue collection; transformation of land
and asset into commodities; enforcing change in the objective of
production; introduction of commercialization in agriculture,
ushering in a novel principle of governance, based on a rule of law,
a bourgeois legal framework and an administration composed of
a hierarchy of offices, constituted of Imperial, provincial, and
local units and further composed of Class I, II, III employees
and other categories founded on the new principle of recruitment,
promotion and retirement.
 XVI INTRODUCTION

4. Whether the British expropriated political power from kings,

feudal lords, nobles and others or created new feudal classes and
shared power with them.
5. Whether the British introduced a bourgeois economic system,
without facilitating a capitalist mode of production in agriculture
or adequate industrialization of the country dr perpetuated and
strengthened the feudal and seni-feudal mode of production as
the dominant mode.
6. Characterization of the strata and classes such as zamindars,

with a chain of intermediaries such as tenants, sub-tenants, share

croppers, bonded labour, and agricultural labourers in zamindari
areas and the categories like absentee owners, rich peasants, middle
peasants, poor peasants, agricultural proletariat, and others in
Ryatwari areas, emerged as a direct consequence of the policies
and measures adopted by the British rulers.
7. Characterization of working conditions in rural areas which
appear to be precapitalist in the sense of non-free labour, but
operating and serving the capitalist world market, not unsimilar
to slave labour in southern U.S.A. or indentured and bonded
labour which emerged in the process of proletarianization and
pauperization in a large number of colonial countries.
How does one describe a peasantry which is indebted and bonded
and which in the context of pauperization and proletarianization
in colonial countries, provides extremely cheap labour, and is
subjected to super-exploitation, in forms reminiscent of descriptions
provided by Marx in Capital (in the chapter on primitive accumula¬
tion)? Should this labour be designated as indicative of a feudal
and semi-feudal mode of production, or a type of labour, which
assists expansion of the sphere of the capitalist mode of production?
Should this mode of exploitation be described as initiating and
' strengthening feudal and semi-feudal relations of productions for
keeping colonies backward and thereby creating feudal and semi-
feudal allies, or should it be considered as a peculiar way in which a
capitalist socio-economic formation was ushered in without the
capitalist mode of production being made dominant in the agri¬
cultural sector?
8. Characterization of the type of socio-economic formation which

has emerged in India, after independence. Is it a neo-colony, a peri-

 INTRODUCTION XVII

pheral capitalism, a satellite formation or a backward capitalist

social formation?
9. Characterization of the nature of the state which has emerged
after independence and which has been reshaping the economy
and society of India on the basis of a ‘mixed economy’.
10. Nature of the revolution that is sought to be brought about in
India. Whether it will be National Democratic, Peoples’ Demo¬
cratic, New Democratic or Socialist Revolution?
11. Method of making Revolution: peaceful, realized through
parliamentary path, using extra-parliamentary methods as mere
pressure techniques to accelerate the pace of the parliamentary
path of struggle, or a forcible smashing of the power of the ruling
class basically via extra-parliamentary militant class and mass
struggles.
12. The class which will be the leader of the revolution, the classes
which will ally with the leading class, will remain neutral or act as
an enemy against whom revolutionary movements will have to be
directed.

Views held about the issues indicated above are not merely
academic discussions. They determine strategies, shape policies,
organize actions and frame approaches towards different sections
of the rural population. Holders of different views ranging from
Gandhian to Marxist, are locked in tense battles to implement
their concept of transformation.
The present volume attempts to bring together information
about the various agrarian struggles launched by the holders of
different views, and described by the architects of the movements,
as well as their evaluation of these very struggles when they sub¬
sequently split into different parties or became independent. It
also includes descriptions and evaluations of some of the struggles
by scholars specializing in this aspect of study.

(5)
The debate going on in India around the issues indicated above
is not restricted to that country, alone. It is a part of the great
debate going on around the world about the ‘revolutionary
potentiality’ of various sections of agrarian populations in different
XVIII INTRODUCTION

types of struggles going on largely in the underdeveloped world.

The massive participation of various sections of the agrarian
population, particularly rich, middle, and poor peasantry as well as
the agrarian proletariat in various types of struggles in colonial
and semi-colonial countries, have raised a number of crucial issues
which are discussed in academic circles in various countries and
international forums.
We will restrict our discussion to only three concepts which are
germane to our theme. The first concept is ‘revolution’. Concepts
like ‘peasant rebellion’, ‘peasant revolt’, ‘peasant protest’, ‘peasant
guerilla warfare’, ‘peasant movement’ etc. also need to be properly
defined. The term ‘peasant’ is also variously used. In fact a pro¬
minent section of scholarship is trying to restrict the term ‘pea¬
santry’ to a specific section of the agrarian population, and have
started designating entire societies as ‘Peasant Societies’.
The concept ‘Revolution’ is being used in such stereotyped,
ambiguous, jargonized manner that it looses its heuristic value.
Douglas Deal in his very thought provoking article reviewing the
discussion on ‘Are Peasants Revolutionary?' defines the word
‘Revolution’ as suggested by Perez Zagorin. ‘Revolution is any
attempt by subordinate groups to bring about, by violent means,
a change in (1) government (i.e., personnel) or policies (2) regime
(i.e., form of government), or (3) society (i.e., social structure,
system of property relations, of dominant values), whether this
attempt is justified by reference to past conditions or as an un¬
attained ideal.’7
The attempt by Douglas Deal to define ‘revolution’, itself reveals
how many categories are subsumed under this concept even by
him, making the definition vague, connoting large varieties of
peasant struggles, which are not aimed at a structural transformation
of social order, nor a transfer of power from one class to another.
The term ‘revolution’ is used even to describe political upheaval
which changes personnel of the government, (the term would deprive
the concept of its essential characteristics). Marxism has provided
a very fruitful definition of revolution by pointing out two crucial
elements—change in property relations, and transfer of power
from one class to another. In this context it has given a clue towards
defining revolution, which in recent times has taken two forms.
 INTRODUCTION XIX

viz., bourgeois-democratic revolutions and socialist revolutions.

Marxism has also pointed out that in the context of colonial and
semi-colonial countries, bourgeois revolution or colonial re¬
volution meant national liberation struggles from foreign rule,
establishment of a bourgeois regime to launch an independent
bourgeois socio-economic order, sometimes described as com¬
pleting the task of the bourgeois democratic revolution. The concept
of socialist or proletarian revolution is made clear by defining it
as a revolution, wherein bourgeois property relations are over¬
turned and political power is transferred from the bourgeoisie to
the proletariat.
During the imperialist phase of capitalism and particularly
after the great socialist October Revolution in a backward, pre¬
dominantly peasant country, an acute controversy has been going
on about the nature of revolution which would complete even
the bourgeois-democratic tasks. Can the bourgeoisie initiate
development which can lift the economy and social order from
colonial underdevelopment to even a bourgeois type of develop¬
ment experienced by advanced capitalist countries, or has the re¬
volution to be a socialist one, even in order to complete bourgeois
democratic tasks.
Whatever the discussions and differences among Marxists,
the major criterion adopted by them to define Revolution still
appears to me heuristically the most scientific and fruitful one. It
helps us to locate the role of different sections of rural population
in a struggle for bringing about a revolutionary transformation
of society.
One of the peculiar developments that had taken place in colonial
and the semicolonial countries particularly after the October
Revolution, with regard to nationalist movements to secure freedom
from imperialism, deserves careful attention.
The fear that the masses of the Third World may overthrow even
the indigenous bourgeois-landlord classes in the process of over¬
throwing imperialism, and thereby usher in a Socialist Revolution,
has led the national bourgeois and the bourgeois intelligentsia to
evolve a compromising ‘transfer of power’ from colonialism to
independence. This path of compromise is generally characterized
by bargaining and negotiating with imperialism backed
by varieties of reformist pressure struggles, wherein the exploited
XXII INTRODUCTION

behaviour of peasants in response to revolutionary stimuli around

the world is to be fully understood, their failure to rise, their
messianic lunges, sullen withdrawals, obeisance to paternalistic
superiors and their explosions of fury spent in vain must also be
thrown into relief.’12
A section of outstanding students of agrarian society are
attempting to define the peasantry in a very limited sense. Teodor
Shanin, representing this school of scholarship, defines this position.
‘The peasantry consists of small agricultural producers, who with
the help of simple equipment and the labour of their families
produce mainly for their own consumption and for the fulfilment
of obligations to holders of political and economic power.’ He
further clarifies the implication of his definition by stating that,
‘such a definition implies a specific relation to land, the peasant
family farm and the peasant village community as the basic units
of social interaction, a specific occupational structure and particular
influence of past history and specific patterns of development.13 A
massive body of literature has emerged which has assumed that
peasants constitute that section of rural population constituting
‘small-scale agriculturists mainly occupied with family subsistence
and the rendering of obligations to landlords and states.’ In fact,
on the basis of the acceptance of this definition, entire theoretical
models of societies are being built which are characterized as
‘peasant societies.’ However, it is my submission that defining
peasants in this manner, irrespective of the context of whether they
belonged to the ‘Asiatic’, slave, feudal, colonial capitalist, capitalist
or non-capitalist socialist societies, creates considerable confusion
about various categories of the rural population, with regard
to their position, role and future, particularly in the context of
capitalist, colonial and emerging non-capitalist societies during
the last two to three hundred years. Such a definition does not
clearly reveal the qualitative impact and differentiation that takes
place in the agrarian arena, as a result of the impact of the capitalist
system through an expansion of the market, changed objectives
of production, commercialization, introduction of a capitalist
type of private property in land resulting in the vital process of
differentiation within the agrarian population—resulting in the
emergence of rich, middle and poor peasants, a massive process
 INTRODUCTION XXIII

of pauperization and proletarianization creating a qualitatively

new category of agricultural proletariat, which as Wolf rightly
points out cannot be described as ‘peasant’, and which is clearly
a consequence of the impact of capitalist penetration in rural areas.
Douglas Deal has very succinctly pointed out the difficulties in¬
volved in the limited definition with regard to examining the posi¬
tion, role and the nature of participation of various strata of
peasants in the development of struggles in rural areas.
‘More troublesome and numerically significant are the rural
proletariat, who work on haciendas, plantations, capitalist farms,
and plots of better-off peasant proprietors; they may be permanent
or casual day labourers but they can earn a money wage and are
normally landless. Wherever there is population pressure on land
in a suitably commercialized economy, this proletariat will exist
in one form or another and may include, as part-time members,
poor peasants with less than subsistence holdings who are driven
to seek a supplementary income in order to survive. This proletariat’s
existence heralds the development of capitalism in the countryside
as some or most of the peasants lose their land to larger and more
commercially inclined owners responding to national and inter¬
national market forces. Indeed, this process of proletarianization
has itself been one of the major causes of agrarian revolutions
in the modern world. Whatever their differences, the fortunes of
landless labourers and peasant cultivator are so intertwined as to
render absurd the examination of each group without the other.’14
This approach neglects the dialectical process of stratification
and variations which develop within the peasantry as a result of
capitalist development and the possibility or otherwise of various
sections to improve their conditions within the framework of that
social order. In the context of the Indian situation, this approach
obscures the role and future of various sections of the rural po¬
pulation in the context of the type of society which has developed
in India.
I strongly feel that the larger definition of peasants as adopted
by Marxists is still fruitful. The division of the agrarian population,
as formulated by eminent Marxists like Lenin, Trotsky, Mao-
Tse-Tung and others, as landlords, absentee or otherwise, rich,
middle and poor peasant and the distinct class of agrarian pro-
XXIV INTRODUCTION

letariat, gives a more productive and objectively more authentic

approach to understanding the role of the peasantry in colonial
and post-colonial societies.
This definition clarifies more sharply the dynamic of transfor¬
mation in capitalistically reforged agrarian structures in colonial
and semi-colonial countries. It helps to understand the capacities,
and potentialities of different categories of rural population and
to identify issues around which the rural population will mobilize
and the manner in which it will organize its struggles. It also provides
the tools for conceiving a type of socio-economic formation within
which the basic problems of pauperization and proletarianization
can be eliminated and the preconditions established for a society
within which the bulk of the rural population can meet its require¬
ments of employment, education, health, housing etc.
The present volume, describing a wide variety of struggles,
involving different categories of the agrarian population and based
on varieties of issues, in a country which is probably the largest,
most complex and most systematically colonized will, I hope,
contribute to the clarification of the debate around the relation
of the ‘peasant’ to ‘revolution’.
It is hoped that this endeavour to present tribal and peasant
struggles in India for the first time in one place will serve the purposes
highlighted in this introduction. The inadequacies of this collection
will be more than compensated if it serves to stimulate more com¬
petent and comprehensive studies. The historically crucial role of
the Indian revolution not only in ending the prevalent exploitative
social system, but also in terms of the impact it would have on the
world capitalist system makes further study of the role of peasant
struggles, and the role of the proletariat in it, a vital issue.

(9)
I am thankful to those who permitted me to publish their valuable
works. I am also conscious of my debt to my young friends Dr Uday
Mehta, Dr M.N.V. Nair, Sunil Gavaskar and a number of other
friends who helped me in preparing this volume. I cannot forget
the enormous pains taken by my young friend Chandra Sen Momaya
in the difficult task of preparing the Index.
To my friends at the Oxford University Press, goes the credit of
 INTRODUCTION XXV

publishing this work in its present elegant form. Their assistance

in editing and organizing this volume is warmly appreciated.
Finally, I affectionately acknowledge the stimulating, and warm
atmosphere provided by my family members.

A.R. Desai
Bombay,
August 1978.

NOTES

1. It is difficult to list these books and papers. Some of the selections in the present
volume contain valuable foot-notes indicating such works.
2. Douglas Deal’s article ‘Peasant Revolts and Resistance in the ModemWorld—
A Comparative View, in Journal of Contemporary Asia contains in foot-notes
and Bibliography, one of the most useful list of such publications, pp. 435-45.
3. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India, Asia Publishing House, Bombay.
4. Dr K.S. Shelvankar, Problem of India.
5. R. Palme Dutt, India Today, Peoples Publishing House, Bombay.
6. A.R. Desai, Social Background of Indian Nationalism, Bombay, 1977.
7. Douglas Deal, op. cit., p. 415.
8. E. Wolf, ‘On Peasant Rebellions’ International Social Science Journal, Vol. 21,
1969.
9. Sbanin Tedor, ‘Peasantry as a Political Factor’, Sociological Review, Vol. 14
no. 1, pp. 5-27.
10. Douglas Deal, op. cit. pp. 414-45.
11- See Douglas Deal, op. cit. Bibliography.
12. Doughas Deal, op. cit. pp. 414.
13. Shanin Tedor (Ed.), ‘Peasants and Peasant Societies’, pp. 240, Penguin Modern
Sociology Readings Reprint 1976.
14. Douglas Deal, op. cit. pp. 417.
.
 PART I
Tribal and Peasant Struggles:
An Overview
0 it
 Introduction

(i)
The first selection by Raghaviah, a noted social worker attached
to Adim Sevak Samaj is a very valuable work which provides a
picture of Tribal Revolts on an all-India scale. Excepting Fr Stephen
Fuch's book, Rebellious Prophets, this is perhaps the only work
which gives a useful account of Tribal movements enveloping every
state in India.
The first article, ‘Background of Tribal Struggles in India'
describes British strategies in confronting tribal populations.
Raghaviah begins with a brief informative account of the tribal
population and describes the impact on them of various measures
adopted by the British. He briefly examines how these measures
uprooted the very foundations of tribal socio-economic structure
and hit at the basis of tribal communal-cultural life, generating
among them a deep sense of frustration, resentment and inevitable
need to struggle for sheer survival. Raghaviah summarizes the
observations made by various scholars and administrators like
B.S. Guha, Verrier Elwin, O’Malley and others. He also points
out the role of the Missionary Complex which evolved in the tribal
belt. V. Raghaviah is, however, silent over the non-revolutionary,
class-collaborationist and pro-Hindu role of Ashramas created by
Gandhian social workers endeavouring to assimilate the tribals in
the Hindu social system. However, his highlighting the functions
of Missions to directly or indirectly subserve the interests of the
British rulers gives a proper perspective for analyzing the role of Mis¬
sionary Complexes in India. A brief account of the tribal struggles
and also the non-tribal peasant struggles given by him is valuable
for seeing how the same forces operated on the tribal and non-tribal
rural population compelling them to rise in revolt.

(2)
The second selection, ‘Tribal Revolts in Chronological Order,
4 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

1778 to 1971’—is reproduced from the Appendix in V. Raghaviah's

abovementioned book. Its utility need not be stressed. It is the
first effort, to my knowledge, to compile in such a form the listing
of important Tribal Revolts. It demonstrates how the scholars,
social and political workers might prepare similar chronological
and other tabular materials for every state. It also suggests the
vital need of similar chronological and tabular material on peasant
revolts in the country.

(3)
The third selection, ‘Messianic Movements’ reproduced from
Rebellious Prophets by Stephen Fuchs, is included here to high¬
light specific features of certain categories of Tribal Revolts. Fuchs
has ably analyzed ‘characteristic common features found in certain
tribal movements. It helps us to grasp why certain types of tribal
revolts take on specific forms, and also point out their limitations.
While Fuchs’s work is valuable in this respect, he ignores the fol¬
lowing major elements in his delineation: (i) Colonial Capitalist
exploitative setting provided by the British rulers; (ii) Role of
Missions in helping British rule; (iii) the type of all-India socio¬
economic structure which would ensure economic and social libera¬
tion of tribal populations from their plight; and (iv) the need for an
all-India political organization to provide leadership to organize
movements.

(4)
The fourth selection ‘Agrarian Revolts’ is reproduced from
History of the Kisan Movement by N.G. Ranga and Swami Sahaja-
nand Saraswathi. The book was published by All-India Kisan Sabha
which acquired importance during the mid-thirties as one of the
series of publications brought out as a part of an educational
campaign launched by the organization. As it has gone out of print
for quite some time, it has acquired an archival significance.
The value’of the selection lies in the fact that it is one of the
first systematic reviews of agrarian revolts in India. It also presents
the assessment of these struggles by the chief architects of the
All-India Kisan Sabha.
The value of this article lies in its analysis of Gandhi as a conscious
strategist, utilizing the peasantry for reformist pressure and as a
 INTRODUCTION 5

consistent opponent of any class struggle against local exploiters

having the support of the British arms, laws and the police. It also
hints at how after the withdrawal of the Non-cooperation move¬
ment most of the subsequent militant struggles of the peasantry
were launched by groups and associations not basically approved by
Gandhi and his orthodox wing of leadership.
The article which brings the story of peasant struggles upto the
middle of 1930’s is useful because it indirectly raises some important
theoretical issues such as: (i) the inability of the peasantry in
evolving by itself an independent all-India political party; (ii) the
peasantry being led by parties representing either Bourgeois,
Pettie-Bourgeois or Proletariat interests; (iii) the necessity df
understanding properly the role of various classes in rural areas
and their links with various classes on a national scale; (iv) an
appraisal of the Indian National Congress from its inception as a
party of the Indian bourgeoisie, attempting to bring the peasantry
into the vortex of a larger national movement and taking up certain
issues and stimulating specific types of movements, associations,
institutions to channalize peasant struggles into specific, limited,
reformist movements to strengthen the bargaining position of the
Indian bourgeoisie.
The selection classifies struggles which emerged in India during
the British period upto 1936-37, into a number of major phases:
(i) Revolts upto and including 1857 i.e. during the regime of East
India Company were launched by the tribals and the peasants in a
crude and primitive fashion, but secured some concessions from the
government.
(ii) Revolts from 1857 upto the beginning of the twentieth century
against the British economic and political policies in the back¬
ground of famines, a new land-revenue system which was very
harsh, new administrative machinery and civil and criminal laws.
(iii) Peasant struggles in the first two decades of the 20th century
comprizing of two currents; (a) the earlier spontaneous basically
economic struggles against immediate foes like moneylenders,
traders, zamindars, British administrators and others; (b) conscious
agitation led by Indian National Congress taking up specific issues
like the Indenture System and subsequent struggles launched by
Mahatma Gandhi and his associates in places like Champaran,
Khaira, Borsad, Bardoli. During this period Gandhi endeavoured
6 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to provide specific direction to the peasant struggles within a

consciously evolved political matrix.
The authors point out how the Indian National Congress under
the leadership of Gandhi kept silent and systematically eschewed
the struggles of landless labourers, tenants and others against
their local exploiters. They also point out how the Indian
National Congress, avoided purposely, transforming the spon¬
taneous types of class struggles against local exploiting classes into
more organized, deepened and politically linked struggles with
other exploited strata on a national scale, which could have made
the anti-imperialist struggle more broad based, militant and
revolutionary.
(iv) The crucial impact of the Non-cooperation Movement the
first All-India Nationalist mass movement launched and sub¬
sequently withdrawn by Indian National Congress under the
guidance of Mahatma Gandhi is also discussed.
According to the authors the Non-cooperation Movement was
a watershed in the history of peasant movements in India for the
following reasons:—
(a) The Non-cooperation Movement revealed the importance of
peasant movement in the political struggle against Imperialism.
(b) It also pointed out how participation in larger national move¬
ments by the vast bulk of peasantry comprising of landless labourers,
tenants, poor and indebted middle peasants, ruined artisans and
others, enhanced their struggle not merely against foreign rule but
also against local exploiters like Princes, zamindars, landlords,
traders, moneylenders supported by the government.
(c) It also revealed how the Indian National Congress, evolv¬
ed under Mahatma Gandhi a new broader strategy of con¬
sciously involving the peasantry in the nationalist movement, but
stearing clear of the revolutionary possibilities offered by an
organized peasantry. If necessary it was even prepared to withdraw
the larger national movement so that such a development would
not take place. It also exposed how the Indian National Congress
under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi never permuted the
peasant movements to go beyond reformist pressure for economic
relief or a pressure movement for political bargaining with the
British rulers.
(d) Withdrawal of the Non-cooperation Movement by Gandhi
 INTRODUCTION 7

generated two major currents in the organization of peasant

movements:
(i) The non-Swarajist wing of the Indian National Congress under
the conscious direction of Gandhi evolved a strategy of elaborating
institutional devices to help Congress to systematically reach out
to the rural masses, give immediate relief to certain sections and
train a cadre of constructive workers who could take leadership
in rural areas for launching some political movements on non-class
lines. This strategy simultaneously enabled the Indian National
Congress to obstruct the exploited strata from taking, to the path
of revolutionary class struggles both against foreign rulers and
local exploiters which could have uprooted both the foreign and
local exploitative socio-economic system.
(ii) Some leaders who were organizing the struggles of the peasantry
and did not mind broadening and deepening the struggles even
against local exploiters got disillusioned. This eventually led to
the emergence of various political tendencies within and outside
the Indian National Congress. Such leaders endeavoured to ela¬
borate various institutional and organizational devices broadly
subsumed under Kisan Sabhas and Kisan Organizations.
(e) Ranga and Swami Sahajanand then describe the next phase in
the peasant movements wherein a number of political tendencies
develop. They hint at the emergence of communal political parties,
regional political parties, parties standing for some reforms with
regard to certain sections and specific grievances and the emergence
of socialist and communist groups and currents both within the
Congress and outside under Marxist ideology. With all their
limitations, these political parties and groups posed an alternative
programme to the Gandhian constructive programme strategy and
directed the struggles of various sections of the poor and the ex¬
ploited peasantry towards militant movements, both to end
foreign rule and also to fight the capitalist-landlord-money¬
lenders’ exploitation and oppression.

(5)
The fifth article is reproduced from N.G. Ranga’s book. Revo¬
lutionary Peasants first published in 1949. This article is significant
for a number of reasons: By this time Ranga had disassociated
himself with Kisan Sabhas which were now dominated by Com-
8 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

munists and Socialists. He became anti-Communist for two major

reasons: (a) Stalinist policy of forced collectivization led to tre¬
mendous suffering and uprooting of the peasantry in the Soviet
Union; (b) Communist Party of India's betrayal of national
liberation struggles in India by discouraging and sabotaging the
heroic peasant and workers struggles in the name of supporting
the British Government in the Second World War after 1941.
Ranga battled to evolve an alternate model viz. the Kisan Mazdur
Praja Raj, based on faith in cooperatives as the institutional
mechanism to save and strengthen the peasantry from both
capitalist and what he called communist depredation.
Revolutionary Peasants from which this selection is reproduc¬
ed was written during a transitional period when Ranga was
dreaming of building an international peasant organization to
strengthen the peasantry as an independent class to withstand
the impact both of Capitalism and Communism which, according
to him, were urban and therefore inimical to the interests of the
peasantry. He tried to discover the revolutionary potential of the
peasantry by locating its manifestation in their various struggles
in the past and the present. This article belongs to this phase of
his search. We need not analyse here the subsequent change in
Ranga after 1949, into a spokesman of the rich farmer class and
also his subsequent association with various parties in India
which increasingly expoused the cause of the rising Kulak class
in India.
What is important about his article is that Ranga as an active
participant of peasant movements during various periods of the
Indian national movement upto Independence, provides a very
useful account of peasant movements which took place in India
since the Revolt of 1857. He also highlights the direct and indirect
impact of the Nationalist movements in stimulating, broadening
and unleashing a number of peasant struggles both against the
British rulers and the local exploiters, and which as a consequence
brought various strata of the peasantry on the broader national
stage generating a broadened all-India and even international
political consciousness. The present selection is a rare account
which prominently brings out the role of peasant struggles in
Non-cooperation Movement, Civil Disobedience Movement, Quit
India Movement and the movements launched in various Indian
 INTRODUCTION 9

Feudal States known as State’s People's Struggles to either establish

constitutional governments or abolish these feudal relics per¬
petuated by British Rule in India in its own interest. Ranga’s
article draws attention to the movements which are either ignored
or underestimated by even Marxist scholars.
The selection reproduced here, is noteworthy on following
counts: (i) It strives to distinguish the struggles which were essenti¬
ally meant for redressing economic, social and political oppression
in local areas exhibiting an immediate, unorganized and spontane¬
ous character from the struggles(particularly from thesecond decade
of the 20th century) which were politically directed and which at¬
tempted to unify, transform and elevate them from the status of be¬
ing limited, purely sectional and economic or other grievances into
the status of a larger national struggle, (ii) It draws attention to
the Tribal and the Peasants’ struggles not only in British territory,
but also in various princely states, (iii) It draws attention to a
number of organizational experiments and political and national
perspectives which emerged to rouse the peasantry; (iv) It warns
against ignoring the role of the Nationalist Movement, the Congress
and other organizations in stimulating various types of peasant
movements, (v) It emphasizes the need to recognize the importance
of peaceful struggles, satyagrahas, marches, conferences, meetings,
processions, demonstrations, various educational and training
programmes and the emergence of various institutions in contribut¬
ing to the growth of peasant movements and elevating peasant
consciousness, (vi) It provides a corrective and a balance to the
one-sided picture of peasant movements drawn by some of the
Gandhian or communist groups.

(6)
The sixth selection ‘Indian Peasant Uprising’ is by Katheleen
Gough, who is well-known for her valuable studies on Indian
Village Communities and Peasant Movements in India. This article
sums up her views on Indian peasant struggles. This article is
noteworthy for following reasons:
(i) It clearly defines the scope of her study—examining social
movements which involved peasants as the sole or main force, and
where class struggles against those who extracted surplus from
peasants led to armed struggles in due course, (ii) It challenges those
10 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

scholars who underestimate the scope and significance of Indian

peasant uprisings. The author disagrees with those who consider
that the relative non-development of peasant movements in India
as compared to say China was due to the existence of the caste
system and the strength of bourgeois leadership against the land¬
lords and the British and the pacifying influence of Gandhiji on
the peasantry, (iii) It establishes her proposition by asserting
that even a cursory study reveals a history of 77 revolts—the
smallest of which engaged several thousand peasants in active
support and combat; about 30 revolts affecting several tens of
thousands; and about 12, several hundreds of thousands. While
recognizing that in China peasant uprisings had larger coverage than
India, she explains why this was so: (4) It points out thirteen major
features of colonial background created by British Rule, which
came unevenly and by stages, but once operative, created a structure
of underdevelopment which became endemic and which though
modified could never be eradicated even after independence,
(v) It endeavours to classify peasant revolts during the British
period into five types of actions in terms of goals, ideology and
methods of organization: viz. (a) Restorative rebellions, to drive
out the British and restore earlier rulers and social relations;
(b) religious movements for the liberation of a region or ethnic
group under new forms of government; (c) social banditry (to
use Hobsbawn’s term); (d) terrorist venegence with ideas of winning
collective justice; (e) mass insurrections for the redressal of parti-
ticular grievances, (vi) It attempts to classify uprisings of peasants,
except early revolts, to drive out the British and restore traditional
principalities, as pre-political or premature, but progressive in
the sense that they sought a new form of peasant society which
would be free from alien rule and would be based on some
traditional virtues and modern technology, and above all there
would be a popular government and would not revert to the pre-
Brtish social structures, (vii) It attempts to highlight remarkable
organizing abilities, potential discipline and solidarity of the
peasants and their determined militancy in opposing imperialism
and exploitative class relations. It also points to the peasant’s
inventiveness and potential military prowess and their aspirations
for a more democratic and egalitarian society, and even their
capacity for cooperating in class struggles cutting across caste.
 INTRODUCTION 11

religion and linguistic lines to redress their common grievances,

(viii) It points out how peasant revolts since 1920’s have been
coordinated within policies of oppositional political parties and
forming two major types: (a) political movements for independence
or for national and regional autonomy among blocks of Tribal
people like nationalist wars for independence in Kashmir, Nagaland,
Mizoram and Jharkhand Movement in Tribal Bihar, (b) peasant
struggles which were primarily class struggles and were guided by
one or another of India’s communist parties, (ix) It refers to seven
major uprisings under Communist guidance, first by the undivided
Communist Party of India and later by the Marxist groups, which
broke away from CPI (Marxist) in 1967. Katheleen Gough points
out how peasant movements led by communists differed in many
respects from peasant struggles either fought earlier or under the
leadership of other parties and groups, and how they were started
or stopped according to national or even international changes in
party line. She highlights the strength and weaknesses of these
movements.
Katheleen Gough’s article is worth studying because it attempts
to place the various peasant revolts in a certain framework. In spite
of the deliberate eschewing of reference to peasant struggles
launched under the auspicies of Indian National Congress or
Congress socialist party and numerous other political groups in
different part of the country, the article focuses attention on certain
aspects of peasant struggles hitherto ignored.
1 Background of Tribal Struggles In
India

V. R. Raghavaiah

Of all the tribes in India, it is the fight with the Assam tribes that
drew the British rulers into the vortex of an India-wide struggle with
the tribal people, which necessitated a drastic change in their
approach to the tribes and their problems. After getting a foretaste
of the intricacies involved in a struggle with the primitive peoples,
the British East India Company's Government had to face perhaps
the biggest of tribal insurrections in India, with the great Santal
people in 1855. By this time, the Britisher who had till then not
known what a clash with tribal people meant, had to set himself to
seriously think about this problem. That is why we find them more
cautious and more careful in dealing with the Santals and about
the same time with the Mundas, another great tribe of this country.
Soon followed a spate of revolts spearheaded by the Indian war of
Independence of 1857 which rocked the British Empire to its
foundations. The tribals too initiated struggles to safeguard their
honour, to protect their cherished freedom, and to get redress
against the moneylender, the Zamindar, and other parasitic land¬
holders, who tried to deprive them of all they had. It cannot be
said that they under-rated the strength of the enemy nor were they
over-estimating their own strength. They knew that their primitive
arms could not silence the Britishers’ guns. They also realized that
non-tribal India would not make common cause with their struggle.
They should have also been aware that ultimately they have to rely
upon their own strength and yet they gave a heroic fight for the
simple reason that they could not avoid it much less postpone it.
The Santals are one of the six largest tribes of India—in fact the
second largest tribe, with a population of 28,11,578 in 1951 which

Reproduced from Tribal Revolts by V. Raghavaiah. Andhra Rashtra Adimajati

Sevak Sangh, Nellore (A.P.), 1971, pp. 13-26.
 BACKGROUND OF TRIBAL STRUGGLES IN INDIA 13

rose to 31,54,107 in 1961. The largest tribe in this country are the
Gonds with a population of 32,01,004 in 1941, and 39,91,767 in
1961. The other large tribes of this country are Bhils with a popula¬
tion of 38,38,371, the Oraons numbering 14,44,554, the Mundas
claiming a population of 10,19,098 and the Khonds having a
population of 8,45,981. The total population of the Scheduled
tribes of India has been estimated in 1961 to be 29,88,347, though
taking into account many unscheduled but nevertheless possessing
all the characteristics of primitive people, the total tribal population
in this country, scheduled and unscheduled, can be roughly estimat¬
ed to be four crores. Madhya Pradesh is the State claiming the
largest tribal population of 66,78.410, that is, 20.63% of the total
State Population, Orissa closely following with a tribal population
of 42,04,770. The States having the largest percentage of tribal
population to the total population are Nagaland with 93.09 per cent,
Orissa with 24.07, Madhya Pradesh with 20.63, Assam with 17.42,
Gujerat with 13.35 and Rajasthan with 11.46.
The late Dr B.S. Guha, for a long time, the Director of the
Department of Anthropology, Government of India, who contri¬
buted a great deal to the anthropological lore in this country,
reviewing the disturbances that occurred in the Tribal areas,
observed that 'the underlying causes of these uprisings were the
deep dissatisfaction created among the tribal people, against
exploitation by their more advanced neighbours. Following the
measures taken principally in the U.S.A., after the initial stage of
exploitation was over, to segregate the tribes into special areas of
reservation, to protect their lives and interests, the Government of
India passed an Act in 1874 to specify the tribal areas into 'Scheduled
Tracts’. These areas were reconstituted under Section 52(A) of
the Government of India Act of 1919 and finally in 1935 more
stringent provisions for special treatment of Tribal areas were
incorporated by converting them into total and partially excluded
areas’. Enumerating a few of these uprisings the learned Anthropo¬
logist stated ‘several uprisings of the tribal people took place
beginning from Mai Paharia rising in 1772, the mutiny of the Hos
of Singbhum in 1831, the Khond uprising in 1846, to the Santal
rebellion of 1855. In like manner a punitive expedition was sent
to the Jaintia Hills in 1744 by the Company’s Government and in
1833 the confederacy of the Khasi Chiefs was defeated by the
14 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

British army. Other expeditions were sent, such as those to Chin-

Lushai Hills between 1850 and 1890, the Naga Hills expedition of
1878, the Abhor expedition of 1912, and finally the column sent to
the unadministered areas of the Naga Hills as late as 1939’.
Just as there has been a clash of economic interests in the various
tribal uprisings, there has been a clash of cultures also between
the tribals and their non-tribal vested interests, bulwarked by the
ruling authorities, who in their initial stages of administration
and unsettled authority had to lean upon the educated and the
landed classes, who were potential trouble makers—a policy con¬
tinuously followed by the British throughout their rule in this
country, which even the present administration is not yet quite
able to replace by a thoroughly democratic people’s rule. The
two types of interests were closely entwined and were sometimes
supplying the necessary momentum to each other. The tribal
reacted fiercely when his religious beliefs were scoffed at, when
his independence was attacked, when his traditional, customs and
manners, civic rights, judicial systems, standards of etiquette
and prestige and code of honour were brushed aside and deep
rooted conventions ignored and insulted and violated.... Accord¬
ing to the Santal’s and other tribals’ conception, particularly that
of the Assamese tribal people, the cultivable land of any village
was not alienable by any one individual and was the common
property of all. Distribution and redistribution of all village land
was effected by the village council of elders and all clearings of the
jungle, as well as the sowing and harvesting were carried out under
the supervision and initiation of the village priests and elders. The
residents of any village could use and improve separate plots of
land allotted to them and if any family had more members and
required more land they could under instructions from the elders
annex more land. When these well-established conventions were
ignored by the European rulers who had been given to an individua¬
listic and not to a collective pattern of living, the clash became
inevitable.
Tribal justice was summary. It was meted out by the village
elders, who could be expected to know the merits of each case
personally in some cases and by reliable hearsay in others, and do
full justice to the disputing parties.* The trials did not cost the

*See Verrier Elwin, Maria Murder and Suicide, Oxford University Press (1943),
1977. [ed.]
 BACKGROUND OF TRIBAL STRUGGLES IN INDIA 15

tribal anything and he had no need to walk scores of miles to the

British Law Courts, for numerous adjournments, pay lawyers and
argue out his case not by himself as he would do in his own village
tribal enquiry, but in a different language, through an intermediary
who could not have grasped the implication of tribal customs and
culture and before a judge who lived miles away from the scene
of offence and could not have had any knowledge of the locality
or its surroundings. In civil matters even when he at last got relief,
it was only on paper and he had to wait for longer durations execut¬
ing his decrees and meeting endless hair-splitting technical objec¬
tions relating to irregularities in the process of attachment, sale
etc.
This naturally vexed the tribal and when he ultimately realized
that it was not the course of events, so much as it was the skill of
the lawyer and the length of the client’s purse that brought him
success in the law courts, he got quite bewildered and lost faith in
the fairness of British justice. ,
In the tribal’s view the jungle is his ancestral home. It was his
birth place and cradle. In fact, he took to the jungle like fish to
water. Every sound was familiar to him in the woods. He could
recognize and name every bird, plant, animal and even insect.
He loved the jungle and was in turn loved and adored by it. He
never slew an animal for the mere love of hunt. He never cut any
tree for satisfying his whim or fancy. He was Nature’s child and
like a loving mother. Nature fed him, nursed him, lulled him and
protected him as a mother. In fact he is the overlord of it, an axiom,
so well understood by the primitive since the emergence of Man.
He had his collective ceremonial hunts in it. He worshipped the
Goddess of the jungle before each hunt as for instance the Garela
Misemma of the Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, and after each
hunt, offered selected parts of the ki'l to the Goddess. He loved the
jungle and was least afraid of its carnivorous denizens. He collected
a large part of his food from it in the shape of yams he could dig,
edible nuts, fruits, flowers and leaves he could pluck to satisfy
bis hunger. He could also gather from the jungle several items of
forest produce, including medicinal herbs, fuel, honey and housing
material.
One of the main reasons why tribal people in this sub-continent
feel disunited, isolated, and thwarted, is the gradual and steady
temptation to which they succumbed in the past one hundred
16 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

years, by allowing themselves to be easily converted by powerful

religious Missions, foreign as well as indigenous, not because
they really believed that their pattern of faith was inferior to that
of others, but because through conversion they fondly hoped to
secure economic betterment, freedom from exploitation and relief
from the Sowcar’s or Mahajan's (money-lender) harassment. The
earlier Christian missionaries who felt that the tribal areas served
as fertile fields for their proselytizing operations, worked in close
cooperation with the British administrators, that the impression
was inevitably created that redress from wrongs could be secured
quicker and more effectively from the Government'through the
intervention and influence of these intermediaries. This happened
in the State of Assam, in the Naga Land, in the Ranchi and sur¬
rounding areas of Bihar, in Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and
in every other part of this vast country where the Missions operated.
Criminal tribes’ settlements which were formed in every State by
the State Governments were entrusted for management to these
Missionary agencies some of which had no compunctions in
offering all manner of baits for procuring converts from these
miserable and helpless convicts. Possessing as Settlement Managers,
very wide powers in making or marring the future of thousands of
convicts entrusted to their care, the missionaries conferred favours
on those who accepted their faith and even unlawfully exercised
criminal and civil judicial powers against the prisoners. This
occurred on a large scale in the Lushai, Khasi and Jaintia hills as
well as in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Travancore-Cochin, thus
not only undermining the numerical strength of the tribal popula¬
tion as such, but also in effectively destroying the sense of tribal
culture solidarity, discipline and self-confidence among the tribal
people. Consequent on conversions, the tribals’ racial and national
feeling suffered a set back and duel loyalties came to be established
among the converts. With this jolt suffered in the tribal’s self-
confidence, he could not face his opponents, the indigenous ex¬
ploiters and their patrons, the alien rulers, and this naturally
resulted in eventual surrender to the wielders of superior skill and
greater might. It is this painful realisation that elicited the following
heartfelt warning from Mahatma Gandhi to the Indian Nation.
The Mahatma observed:
‘If we can bestow a little serious thought we will realize what a
 BACKGROUND OF TRIBAL STRUGGLES IN INDIA 17

great and pressing problem it is to improve the social and eco¬

nomic or moral and material condition of the Aborigines. We
can ill-afford to allow such a huge population as that of the
Adivasis to remain any longer illiterate, ignorant and labouring
under great hardships like abject poverty, unsympathetic ad¬
ministration, serfdom to Sowcars and landlords and unkind
exploitation by more advanced sections of the general
population’.
If the elite of the Society represented by the intelligentia, the
native chiefs, and the subordinate officials had evinced a fraction
of interest in tribal welfare as they did in feathering their own nests
in the widespread chaos that prevailed in the country in the wake
of the British conquest and their ‘divide and rule’ policies, or if
the destiny holders of this vast country here or in England had at
least a humanitarian interest, if not wise and far-reaching stateman-
ship, in dealing with their forlorn tribal populations, the massacre
of Santals and the pillage and arson perpetrated in their villages
would not have occurred. Dr Verrier Elwin writing in his admirable
book ‘A Philosophy for NEFA' has the following observations on
tribal land and its cultural and psychological significance to the
owners thereof. He remarked:
‘In other parts of India (than NEFA) where the tribal communities
have declined, in many ways, the first cause of their depression
was the loss of their land and forests. This had the effect of so
enervating the tribal organism that it had no interior resistance
against infection by a score of other evils. To the tribal mind.
Government’s attitude about land and forests is as important
as any scheme of development or education. If we look back
over the long series of Tribal rebellions against authority in
other parts of tribal India, we see that the majority of them arose
over this one point. Thus the Kol insurrection of 1833 was caused
by encroachment on tribal land. The Tamar rebellions repeated
seven times between 1789 and 1832 were primarily due to the
illegal deprivation of their rights in land, which the Hos, Mundas
and Oraons had suffered.’ (pp. 62-3)
Dr J.H. Hutton too had remarked in his work Modern India
and the West, that ‘the best land (of the tribals) passed into the
hand of outsiders...
It may not be correct to suppose that the tribal revolts were un-
18 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

connected with the general popular discontent resulting from the

ruthless exploitation engineered by the British East India Company’s
unscrupulous and commercial administration. Though the eruptions
of this unrest took firm shape from the mid-nineteenth century
onwards, trouble was undoubtedly brewing virtually in every part
of the country among almost every section of the people, like the
peasants, intelligentia, trading communities, the military, the
scions of native royal dynasties, who were deprived of their terri¬
tories by the application of the Doctrine of Lapse, conquest and
various other pretexts found for justifying annexation. The peasants
were badly hit by rack-renting by the Zamindars and rich land¬
holders and reduced to poverty owing to the unhelpful attitude
of the Company’s courts, which were mostly supporting the claims
of the vested interests of the creditors. It was clear to every litigant
that the then Government was solidly behind the vested interests
though they took shelter under some law or other, either imported
from their own country or by a tortuous interpretation of the
prevailing local laws, which did not take notice of the Indian
conditions of tenancy, collective, inalienable ownership of land,
and other time-honoured practices, which assured the actual tiller
undisturbed and continued right to enjoy the land, which his
ancestors tilled.
The revolts of the tribal people were not isolated and on the other
hand, shared many features in common with the revolts of non-
tribal, agrarian and small trading communities. For various reasons
that particular period might have been chosen by the suffering
masses to ventilate their grievances in an organized manner. The
country was disturbed all over with wars between one ruler and
another, mostly formented by the Company’s skilful civil servants,
militant lieutenant Governors and adventurers, with previous
experience of raking up trouble as well as fanning it. There were
also other causes like wars between the Company and the native
rulers like Tippu, the fading remnants of the Maharashtra Peshwas,
Oudh’s ruling chiefs, Ranjit Singh’s petulant and belligerent forces,
the potential foreign rivals and festering discontent among low
paid Indian sepoys, the much exploited indigo farmers and labourers
of Bengal and Bihar, not to mention the wholesale evictions from
their lands carried on by the Jenmi Namboodri Brahmin wealthy
land-lords of Kerala whose rights in land were suddenly converted
 BACKGROUND OF TRIBAL STRUGGLES IN INDIA 19

from a pattern of partnership with the Mopla Muslim tenants and

landless labourers, into one of absolute ownership with right to
evict the tenants at will. In addition, the disbanded soldiery of the
dispossessed native chiefs swept across the country under the names
of Pindaris, Thugs etc., committing dacoities and rendering the
highways unsafe every where. Added to this, the textile and other
artisans whose ancient cottage industries were ruthlessly destroyed
by the Company’s officials, to promote import of British fabrics,
iron and steel goods etc., caused unheard of unemployment and
acute misery and poverty.
Popular and country-wide uprisings occurred among the indigo-
cultivators of Bihar and Bengal in 1860, among the rack-rented
peasants in Bogra and Pabna in 1872 in Bengal, among the farmers
of Poona and Ahmednagar in Maharashtra in 1875, and among the
Moplas of Malabar in 1836, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1854, 1855, 1873,
1880, 1894, 1896 and 1921. L. Natarajan has given a brief account
of these uprisings in his pamphlet Peasant Uprisings in India. The
indigo-cultivators of Bihar struck against the European land-
owners and merchants, who, using their influence with the East
India Company’s administration, began to compel the ryots of
Bihar to cultivate indigo, which they exported on a monopoly
scale to Britain, for colouring her textiles, as the chemical dyes
were not invented by that time, They purchased huge estates from
the Zamindars and compelled the tenants not to grow any other
crop including food crops. The prices offered were so ridiculously
small that the tenants loudly protested and forced the Governor-
General of the Company on 13-7-1810 to concede that the Euro¬
pean Zamindars were committing acts of violence, causing death
to the farmers, were unlawfully detaining and confining them for
refusing to cultivate the land with indigo, were engaged in large
scale violent attacks hiring unruly elements, and were even causing
death and severely injuring the farmers frequently. The Governor-
General in Council, therefore, resolved to ‘adopt such measures
as appeared to him under existing circumstances, best calculated
to prevent the repetition of offences equally injurious to the English
character and to the peace and happiness of our native subjects’.
This promise remained a dead letter until the harassed cultivators
rose in revolt in 1860. It was further conceded by the Judge of
Nadia in his letter to the Secretary to the Bengal Government on
20 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

20-4-1854, that every two and half bighas of land were considered
by planters as only one bigha and not content with this, the planters
took away two bundles from their fields. The agitation soon assum¬
ed the proportions of a rebellion driving the surprised Europeans
into panic, and they sought the Government’s intervention, which
was not forthcoming readily, in view of the violent Santal revolt
of 1855-6 and the Indian War of Independence of 1857, which
left unforgetable impressions on the foreigner as well as on the
sons of the soil. The Lieutenant Governor of Bengal gave assurance
to the ryots to protect them against the hooliganism of the Euro¬
peans and after meeting a rebellious assembly of 2,000 angry tenants
in one of his tours, and realizing the gravity of the situation, an¬
nounced that the peasants were free to raise any crops they liked
and that all the harassment and restrictions in vogue till then were
removed. In 1917-8 the indigo planters’ problem again cropped
up and under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership the peasants once
again repeated their struggle against the European planters and
by adopting the weapon of Satyagraha known as the Champaran
Satyagraha, came out victorious.
Enhancement of rent and cesses was the root cause of the conflict
that broke out between the Zamindars and the peasants in Pabna
and Bogra in 1872-3. The landlords began to force the tenants to
enter into registered agreements relating to the conditions of
tenancy, taking advantage of the ignorance and illiteracy of the
latter, by inserting new terms, injurious to the tenants and dragging
them into costly litigation in distant courts, where unfamiliar
laws foreign to the country’s genius held mastery over illiteracy
and poverty. Taught by bitter experience the courts fell in line with
the spirit of the times and the agitation of the peasants and ulti¬
mately passed orders justly and in favour of the tenants.
The Sapa rising of peasants (1875) was due to same or similar
causes that erupted the other insurrections. The land settlements
of the East India Company were motivated with a commercial
basis, namely of squeezing as much revenue from the peasant as
one could secure, irrespective of his ability to pay the enhanced
assessments fixed at an exaggerated estimate of the yield of the soil.
This, the ryots could not pay, not only that, the required payment
was directed to be paid in cash which again affected him adversely
owing to fluctuating prices. The convenience of the Government
 BACKGROUND OF TRIBAL STRUGGLES IN INDIA 21

was evidently not the same as the facility of the subject. This new
method of collecting land revenue was at variance with that of the
traditional Moghul rulers and drove the cultivators into the greedy
hands of money-lenders, whose rates of usury ranged between
fifty and hundred percent. Indebtedness resulted in suits for taking
possession of the peasants’ lands, through law courts, whose
decisions were taken far away from the villages of the ryots and in
utter ignorance and disregard of the conditions prevailing, involv¬
ing costs which the poor peasant could not afford to incur. Between
1851 and 1865 the number of suits in Poona and Ahmednagar, where
the discontent prevailed, rose seven to eight and half times. Even
the Company’s Governor-in-council was obliged to acknowledge
that ‘our Civil Courts have become hateful to the masses of our
Indian subjects from being made the instruments of almost in¬
credible rapacity of usurious capitalists. Nothing can be more
calculated to give rise to widespread discontent and disaffection to
the British Government than the practical working of the present
laws’. This warning did not produce any visible effect, as the
peasants had to wait for 12 years more i.e., in 1870 in which another
high Government official thought it necessary to sternly warn that:
‘The Santal rebellion arose out of the things precisely similar
to that now existing in the west of Khandesh’. Even this did not
move the Government to a realization of the discontent prevailing.
It again slept over the matter quite unmoved by the warnings even
of its own officials. In December 1874 the peasants of village
Kardeh of the Sirur Taluka fired the first shot. They took the law
into their own hands by attacking the moneylenders so that they
might destroy the agreements relating to debts and sales of land,
effected under pressure and in ignorance. A severe social boycott
was organized against the Sahukars who became helpless and
quietly surrendered the documents and cash they possessed. In
some cases even violence was used by the villagers against Marwari
moneylenders. There were other uprisings in several neighbouring
villages in Shrigonda, Parner, Nagar and Karjat talukas. The
Government now came down upon the peasants heavily and
arrested more than a thousand of them. As expected, the revolt was
quelled in less than three weeks.
Yet another revolt that rocked South India was that of the
combustible Mopla muslims who were descendants of both early
22 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Arab settlers as well as converted Hindus. The struggle here was

against the Zamindar Nambudiris by the peasant tenants, the
cause being the conversion by the British Indian Government of
the status of a Jenmi from that of the traditional partner to that
of an absolute owner of the land, with right to evict the Mopla
tenants, a right he had not before. This resulted in the enhancement
of rents and wholesale evictions for non-payment of rents.
The Moplas revolted under the able leadership of a young
lawyer Shri Narayana Menon and struck against the land-holders.
Between 1836 and 1854 there were twenty two uprisings resulting
in pitched battles in which several Moplas lost their lives at the
hands of the security forces. There were riots in 1851 and 1852,
1855, 1873, 1880, 1883 to 1885, 1894 and 1896 and finally in 1921
when thousands of rebels who were guilty of arson, and murder
of land-holders and their supporters were arrested and hundreds
executed by the British authorities. Shri Narayana Menon who
entered the Coimbatore jail at the age of 30 for leading the peasant
revolt secured his release only when he served a long term of more
than twenty years for a life sentence. It is thus seen that in every
one of the revolts, tribal or non-tribal, the parties to the disputes were
originally the tenant and the land-grabber and as revolt and violence
flared up, the Government invariably stepped in to safeguard the
vested interests of moneylenders, zamindars, and the intelligentsia.
Undoubtedly revolt was not only in the air but got into the
blood of every one’s veins in the mid-nineteenth century period
of India’s chequered history. There is, therefore, no point in trying
to find out who ignited the first spark, the tribal or the non-tribal?
Surely the Santal revolt of 1855 should have taught a few lessons to
the leaders of the National revolt of 1857, and this must have been
of immense help in estimating the seriousness of events that hap¬
pened subsequent to it. Both tribal and non-tribal revolts could not
dislodge their common adversary namely British Government from
its entrenched position in India until its dissolution was
accomplished in 1946-7...
 2 Tribal Revolts in Chronological
Order: 1778 to 1971

V. Raghavaiah

1778 Revolt of the Pahariya Sirdars of Bihar

against the British Government.

1784-5 Koli disturbances (Maharashtra) at the insti¬

gation of a Rani of Jawahar.

1789,1794-5 Revolt in Tamar of Chota Nagpur.

1795-1800 Revolt of the Chuari Movement in Bihar.

1798 Panchet estate sale revolt.

1801 Tamar revolt in Bihar.

1803 Koya uprising in the Rampa area of the East

Godavari Agency, Andhra Pradesh.

1807-8 Chota Nagpur Tribal revolt.

1809-28 Bhil revolt in Gujarat.

1811, 1817, 1820 Bihar agrarian Tribal revolts.

1818 The Koli revolt (Maharashtra) after a

conspiracy.

1816-24 Burmese invasions of Assam and their reign

of terror.

1824-6 First Burmese war against the Burmese oc¬

cupation of Assam in which the British first
espoused Assam’s cause and after defeating
Burmese, usurped Assam.

Reproduced from Tribal Revolts by V. Raghavaiah op. ct. pp. 261-66.

24 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

1825 : Singphos attacked and set fire to the British

magazine at Sadiya.
1827 : Mishmis murdered explorer Wilcox.
1828 : First revolt of Assam tribes against the British
under Gomdhar Konwar who was defeated by
Lt. Rutherford.
1828 : Singpho’s Chief attacked Sadiya with 3000
tribal warriors.
1829 : Revolt of Khasis of Assam
1829 : Teerut Singh (Assam) massacred the British
generals and their Indian Sepoys.
1833 : Teerut Singh’s surrender.
March 1834 : Teerut Singh’s death.
1831-2 : The Great Kol insurrection.
1820,1832, 1867 : Munda revolts in Bihar.
1832-3 : The Kherwar rising under the leadership of
Bhagirath in Bihar.
Hazari Bagh rising of Kherwars-leader Dubia
Gossaian-Bihar. Phatel Singh of Palmau was
later risings’ leader in Bihar.
1834-41 : Lushais (Assam) raid British subjects.
1835 : Dallas of NEFA (Assam) raided British Plains’
subjects and British took to reprisals to revenge.
1835 : Raja of Jaintia hills (Assam) was deposed by
the British owing to his anti-British activities,
and given a pension.
1836 : Mishmis (Assam) killed botanist Griffith sus¬
pecting his intentions.
1838 : Naik revolt in Gujarat.
1839-43 : Khampti (Assam) rising.
1839 : Khamptis attacked and killed the British
 TRIBAL REVOLTS 1778-1971 25

Agent, Adam White and 80 other officers and

soldiers.

1842 : British annex Sadiya and Muttock country in

Assam.

1842 : Captain Blunt’s troops attacked by Bastar

Gonds. Blunt had to withdraw.

1842 : Lushais (Assam) raided the British territory

of Arakan, Sylhet and defeated the British
forces.

1843 : Singpho Chief Nirang Phidu attacked the

British garrison and killed several soliders.

1844 : Lushais attack Manipuri villagers and massacr¬

ed taking 20 heads as trophies. Reprisal by
the British followed. Lushai leader Lai Sukla
arrested and transported for life.

1846 : Bhil revolt under Kuwar Jive Vasavo in

Gujarat.

1849 : Kadma Singpho attacked British villages in

Assam and was captured.

1850 : Lushais were punished by the British raid

under Colonel Lister.

1850 : Revolt of Chakra Bisoyi, the Kondh tribal

leader in Orissa.

1854 : Kachari chief in North Kachari hills of

Assam submitted and permitted the British
to annex his territory.

1855 : The revolt of the Santals in Bihar.

1855 : Eden’s punitive expedition against Mishmis to

avenge their killing of 2 Missionaries.

1858 : Naikdas’ revolt against the British in Gujarat.

1857-8 : Bhil revolt (Gujarat) under the leadership of

Bhagoji Naik and Kajar Singh.
26 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

7-9-1857 Revolt of Maniram Dewan and Saring Raja

of Assam, their arrest by the British
Government.

1860 Lushai Chief raided—British Tripura and killed

186 British subjects.

1860-2 Revolt of Syntengs of Jaintia Hills.

1861 The Phulaguri uprising of tribal peasants.

1861 The Juang revolt in Orissa.

1862 Syntengs of Jaintia Hills revolt.

1862 Andhra Agency Koya tribal revolt against

Muttadars (Petty tribal Zamindars) and their
supporters, the British.

1867, March Sentinal islanders (Andaman group) attack

Humphrey.

1868 Naiks’ revolt under Joria’s leadership in

Gujarat.

1868 Revolt of the Raig-Mels of Kamrup and

Darrang.

1869 Final peace between the British and the

Singphos.

1869-70 Dhanbad Santal unrest (Bihar) against Raja

of Tundi subsequently settled by Colonel
Dalton.

1871-2 Treaty signed between Lushais and British.

1872-3 Daflas quelled by British military: expedition.
1879 Naga revolt.

1879 Andhra Agency Koya revolt against Muttadars

and the British.

1880 Koya’s revolt under Tammandora’s leadership

Malkangiri, Orissa.
 TRIBAL REVOLTS 1778-1971 27

7-8-1883 Sentinal islanders attack Humphrey

(Andamans).

1889 Sardari (Munda leaders) agitation against the

British Government.

1891 Manipur revolt led by Tikendrajit Singh

against the British.

1892 Eastern Lushais rising against the British.

27-8-1895 Birsa Munda’s arrest.

1911 Bastar tribal uprising.

1913, 1914,
1920, 1921 Tana Bhagat rebellion in Bihar.

1922 Rampa rebellion of Koyas under Alluri Sree

Rama Raju against the British.

1932 Rani Guidallo’s Naga non-Christian revolt

(Assam).

1941 Gond and Kolam revolt against the British

Government, in Adilabad district of Andhra
Pradesh, led by Bhimu.

1942 Lakshmana Naik’s Koraput revolt in Orissa.

1942-5 Revolts against Jap occupation army by the

Tribes of Andaman group of islands:

1946-8 Warli revolt (Maharashtra).

1963-71 Naga revolt.

1966-71 Mizo revolt.

1967-71 Naxalite revolt.

 3 Messianic Movements

Fr Stephen Fuchs

It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a precise definition of

messianic movements. But it is possible to enumerate and
describe certain characteristic features which, either together or
at least in part, can be found active in these movements. The
characteristic common features which in greater or lesser pro¬
minence appear in almost all these movements are: (1) A society
intensely dissatisfied with the social and economic conditions which
it is forced to accept; (2) the existence in this society of emotional
unrest with certain hysterical symptoms; (3) the appearance of a
charismatic leader; (4) the demand of this leader for implicit
faith and obedience from his followers; (5) the test of this un¬
questioned faith and obedience consisting either in a radical change
of life (cessation of cultivation of land, change of occupation, etc.)
or even the wholesale destruction of property (furniture, houses,
livestock, etc.); (6) the rejection of established authority and call
for rebellion against it; (7) the threat of severe punishment of
opponents of, and traitors to, the movement; (8) the remembrance
of a 'Golden Age’ in the distant past; (9) 'Revivalism’, i.e. a re¬
newed interest in the traditional religion, coming as a rule after
a period of indifference or decline, and accompanied with expres¬
sions of great emotional excitement; (10) 'NativisnT, i.e. the
attempt of a backward people to restore selected parts of its pristine
culture and to reject certain alien elements adopted from foreign
cultures; (11) ‘Vitalism’, i.e. the desire of the members in the
movement for alien goods, especially spiritual ones, from 'heaven',
through magic or supernatural powers; (12) 'Syncretism’, i.e.
the indiscriminate adoption of various cultural traits of a superior
civilization by a backward people; (13) 'Eschatologism', i.e. the
expectation of a world renewal through world-wide catastrophic

Reproduced from Rebellious Prophets by Stephen Fuchs, Asia Publishing House,

Bombay, 1965, pp 1-20.
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 29

revolutions and upheavals; (14) ‘Millenarianism’ or ‘Chiliasm’,

i.e. the hope or expectation of a paradise on earth for a thousand
years or some such long period of time.
(1) A society intensely dissatisfied with the social and economic
conditions which it is forced to accept.
This is the result of a clash between two cultures, on vastly
superior and the other retarded. The members of the backward
culture often live in very simple and primitive economic and social
conditions, with no incentive nor prospect for improvement, relief
or progress. In the past, before the clash with the superior form
of culture, they were quite content with their lot and desired
nothing better. They realized their backward condition only
after seeing a class of people leading a life entirely above their
own, often radically different, incomprehensible and unattainable
for them by natural effort.
Such a clash of cultures took place nearly always in colonized
countries which were economically underdeveloped, highly isolated,
politically acephalous, i.e. without centralized polity and, on the
whole, in a state of passive acceptance of alien rule. In India,
prior to the advent of the European powers, we do not speak of
‘colonizers’ and the ‘colonized’ but the effort of high-caste Hindu
and Muslim rule on the low castes and aborigines was practically
the same as in other countries colonized by Europeans.
The backward communities when confronted with the superior
alien society became aware of their own abject poverty and began
to feel the desire to alleviate it.
The emotional reactions of the backward and colonized
communities are of jealousy and, often enough, hatred of the
aliens who neither share the good things they possess as friends
nor initiate them into the mysteries of their production or purchase.
Their intellectual problem is first to explain the aliens’ success
and secondly to find a way to achieve similar success. But the
problem must be solved in terms of the experience of the backward
societies.
They attribute the aliens’ wealth to their religion, or magic,
or their peculiar way of life; they never think it could be due to
hard work and an inventive mind. When, consequently, they
adopt the foreigners’ religion, or ape their customs and way of
life, the results are disastrous. They break loose from their own
30 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

culture and lose their mental bearings, while at the same time they
enter only very superficially into the mentality of the foreigners’
religion and culture. Moreover, they are not accepted by the
foreigners as equals. They thus lose their mental security and
equilibrium, and become a prey to insecurity and anxiety, emotions
which express themselves in hysterical symptoms. This leads us
to the next point.

(2)The existence in this society of emotional unrest with certain

hysterical symptoms
This emotional unrest is caused by a confusion in spiritual and
social values. This confusion is the consequence of the influx
of a new and dominating culture, and of the rules and regulations
enforced by this dominating power. These new ideas are not
properly understood by the dominated subjects, and often are
contrary to their old beliefs and practices. This clash places them
in a dilemma and makes it difficult for them to choose between
the old and the new values. Should they, for instance, give up
growing food for their families and seek employment as servants
or labourers of the foreigners? Should they change their old methods
of farming as the agricultural officers suggest? Or should they still
continue to increase fertility by magic or religious means? Should
they get married according to tribal law, or should they follow
the laws of the new religion which they have adopted? Should
they in case of murder take blood-revenge or call in the police?
Intellectually bewildered and perplexed, their culture in which
their ethical values are imbedded partially disrupted by the impact
of the alien culture, yet desirous of the aliens' wealth, the members
of the subject-culture attempt, within the terms of their knowledge
and based on their ancient traditions, to grasp the modern tech¬
niques of making wealth.
But the aliens share neither the technique nor the wealth with
their colonized subjects. The latter believe that this is deliberate;
and with their traditional ideas of a cooperative social system they
consider this withholding to be profoundly immoral. The aliens,
on the other hand, have different property concepts and regard
the demands of the subject people as arrogant and unjust. More¬
over, they areoften incapable of teaching their subjects the essentials
of their culture, because they do not understand their difficulties
and their way of reasoning.
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 31

The same is true with regard to their ethical values. They are
told that their ethical values and rules of behaviour are wrong,
immoral, repulsive and ridiculous. Many of their actions in
obedience to their ancient traditional ethics ate punished, some¬
times very severely, in the courts of law set up by the dominating
culture. Blood-revenge, head-hunting, human sacrifices, cannib¬
alism, bride-capture, duels, etc. fall under this heading.
Their tribal mythology—myths are primitive forms of ex¬
planatory theories for the events of nature—which have hitherto
satisfied their naive curiosity about the origin of the world and
of man and of human institutions, are ridiculed and judged to be
foolish, inadequate and wrong.
This mental confusion and despair, often aggravated by eco¬
nomic oppression and social degradation, leads to mass hysterias
which may express themselves in mental disturbances, acts of
violence or suicides.
Similar conditions prevailed in India in pre-colonial times:
the Hindu high-castes treated the backward classes as half-human
brutes or as untouchables, while the Muslims regarded them as
despicable ‘infidels’. In this respect Hindus and Muslims scarcely
differed from the haughty Anglo-Saxon administrative officials
and army officers of the British colonial period.
To increase the confusion, Christian missionaries, on the other
hand, insisted on equal rights for all, and condemned racial and
social discrimination; so did the Muslim missionaries according
to whom a convert acquired the right to humane treatment on
entering the Muslim brotherhood. But there were also Hindu
sects, particularly the Vaishnavas, who insisted on social equality
and preached fraternity and abolition of caste.
The privileged position which the aliens claim for themselves
as their heritage is thus exposed by the missionaries as unjustified
usurpation, as criminal expropriation of a helpless people by the
strong and dominating invaders. This awareness among the back¬
ward classes leads them to envy, hatred and injured resentment.
If in this perplexity and mental confusion a strong, authoritarian
leader arises who pretends to know ‘all the answers’ and takes the
lead, a messianic movement is generated.

(3) The appearance of a charismatic leader

The position of the leader starting and continuing a messianic
32 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

movement requires careful investigation. Sometimes the ostensible

leader is only a figurehead and not the real driving force behind a
movement. There is a sort of Machiavelli-like figure behind him
who is the real—often purely—political force behind the prophet.
Religion is used intentionally and deliberately in the service of
politics.
In some cases it is the leader who inaugurates a movement,
while in other cases a social group is responsible for the rise of a
movement who then search for and find a leader. But it may also
be that the movement is the result and outcome of the situation in
which both leader and followers find themselves and which forces
them to concerted action.
It may happen that when the founder of a movement is not
very successful, or loses his life early in his career, a successor takes
over and leads the movement to success and gains many adherents.
The leader of the movement is usually a member of the
community in which the movement rises, but sometimes he is an
outsider who, however, identifies himself completely with the aims
of the people he is leading.
The inaugurator of a movement has often had an intimate
knowledge of the community against which the movement is
directed; he has either received his education from its members,
or worked for them, or lived with them for a shorter or longer
period.
His messianic vocation is either the result of an inner conversion,
and conscious aversion from the alien oppressor, or he has been
rejected or slighted by him, and the messianic movement is initiated
in revenge. Leader and followers need not always have the same
motives and aims.
Most of the self-styled leaders are hardly educated, and often
they are seriously mistaken about the extent of their own powers
and abilities and about the power of the community which they
are going to oppose.
A typical feature in all these movements is the claim of the
founders—whether men or women—to be recipients of divine
revelations regarding doctrines, ceremonies and policy. They
possess the greatest self-confidence in their mission and are
unshakable in their convictions and decisions.
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 33

Generally theirs was a youth spent in poverty and obscurity;

sometimes they are sickly; often they suffer from nervous
disturbance or disease. Some are epileptics.
Often they claim for themselves—and are granted by their
followers—a sort of divine veneration. In India, Hindu Messiahs
often claim to be incarnations of one or other of the powerful
Hindu gods, Vishnu, Krishna or even Durga. The Muslim Messiahs
claim to be Mahdis, Imams or great saints of the Sufi Orders. A
few others claim to be incarnations of God, or of Christ on his
second arrival as promised and foretold by Christ himself.
>Most Messiahs claim to possess magic power, or the power to
work miracles; they can heal the sick, make people invulnerable,
turn bullets into water, multiply food, foretell the future, and the
like.
Very impressive to perplexed and drifting minds is the authority
and self-assurance with which these self-styled leaders carry
themselves. Guided by a divine inspiration, they inspire hope
and confidence in their followers. They pretend to know the root
and cause of the evils which beset the community and to know
also the way out of the trouble. If success fails to follow their
remedial intervention they have an explanation and excuse ready.
Generous assurance is given that all obstacles will presently be
removed. Success is always just round the corner. This hope is
infused into all new disciples of the movement; it inspires those
interested in the cause to exert themselves and in fact stimulates
unexpected energies and abilities.

(4) The demand of this leader for implicit faith and obedience
In all messianic movements the leader demands implicit faith
and obedience from his followers. This is an indispensable
condition for admission into the brotherhood. This absolute
obedience and devotion to the cause are demanded because the
leader is convinced either of his superhuman dignity or of the
divine guidance and inspiration which he receives. Opposition
to his utterances and decisions is consequently regarded as
blasphemy. When the movement is successful, the leader often
assumes royal dignity and rights. He behaves like a king and
expects to be treated like one.
34 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The recruitment of his followers is in most cases selective; at

least at the beginning of the movement only such disciples join
who are easily led and gladly obey. Later on, when the movement
gathers impetus and becomes large, these early and most trusted
followers advance into important positions lor which they are
grateful to the leader and which they repay by redoubled devotion
and submission.
Naturally, not all the disciples and intimates of the leader are
sincere. There may be a large degree of hypocrisy and sycophancy
in this; but the retinue of adoring disciples and cringing followers
increases the self-assurance and inflates the ego of the leader.
No doubt, even the most self-confident leaders have their hours of
doubt and depression, especially after disappointment or defeat,
but the group of devoted followers is usually able to reassure the
leader and to enwrap him in an atmosphere of exaltation from
which he rarely escapes to judge his true position realistically.
Although these leaders are anxious to gain many followers to
their movements, almost invariably they make high claims and
demand heavy sacrifices as an indispensable condition for admission
into the brotherhood. The higher the price the candidates have
to pay, the greater their subsequent devotion and the more absolute
their submission to the cause of the leader.
In many instances the intimate disciples of such a leader are
tempted into committing actions which bring them into collision
with the established authority in the country, i.e. with the govern¬
ment of the dominating culture against which their movement is
directed. They then see their only salvation in a victory for their
movement. A failure of their agitation would probably land them
in jail; even a worse fate may await them. Hence their extreme
devotion to the cause and their utter submission to the leader to
whom they transfer all responsibility for their own actions. He
will, as they hope, take on himself all responsibility and blame if
the movement ultimately should fail.

(5) The test of this unquestioned faith and obedience consists either
in a radical change of life or a wholesale destruction of property
The leader advises methods by which his followers can achieve
their revolutionary objectives. These methods are often radically
different from their former ways of life.
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 35

For the inner circle of disciples the movement means a whole¬

time job. They must abandon their former way of life and devote
all their time and energy to the movement. Since most of these
individuals up to the time of joining the movement had an occupa¬
tion by which they earned their livelihood, they are now forced
to give this up and to take on the duties which the leader assigns
to each of them.
For the great majority of followers this change of occupation
may become a necessity only when the movement reaches the
climax. At that moment all men have to be engaged in carrying
out the task set before them. It is the aim proposed by the leader
of the movement, which has caught their imagination and found
their approval. In fact that was their motive in joining the movement.
Now that the moment has come to attain the desired goal, all are
called up for concerted action to realize it. This often means giving
up the occupation by which followers had previously earned their
livelihood for themselves and for their dependents.
Another motive for giving up their former occupation is the
conviction that a new era is being inaugurated in which everything
will be changed. To pursue one’s old occupation is a sign that
the follower does not really believe in the movement and doubts
its success. The test, therefore, lies in giving up all independent
resources and in relying completely and without reservations on
the leader and on the group carrying on the movement.
It may also be that the pursuance of certain occupations is
being made responsible for the decline of the whole community
(in the case of the Chamars, for instance, the dealing in hides and
leather-work). A ritually pure job must be pursued in place of
the old polluting occupations.
If a,certain messianic movement is connected, as it often is, with
the belief in a coming Golden Age, or a Millennium, no labour
or physical exertion would in future be required, nor would there
be any need to preserve and store food, clothing, etc. Everything
would be provided in the coming age of plenty; any individual
effort and initiative would only be an expression ot doubt in the
leader and in his helpers. In the Golden Age soon to come
better goods would be offered to the followers; why then keep the
present inferior goods? It is a declaration of faith in the leader
to renounce one’s property before the Golden Age has really
36 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

arrived and before the prophecy of the leader has been fulfilled.
On the other hand, if the messianic movement contains the
element of eschatologism, or in other words, if the followers of the
movement believe that the change of things will come through a
great catastrophe, there is in that case still no need for further
exertion or provision for the future.
Sometimes the radical change of life for the followers, even the
wholesale destruction of property, livestock, houses, etc. is the
outcome of their complete rootlessness and despair. They hope
by turning everything upside down to regain their loss of balance
and security, and to get a hold on reality. This is often accom¬
panied by an expression of intolerance, and where non-members
refuse to join the movement they carry out the desperate act of
destruction. Subconsciously they attribute a magic value to this
act of despair; any refusal to join in it means a weakening of the
magic effect, and is therefore strongly resented and severely
punished.

(6) Rejection of the established authority and call for rebellion

against it
From the outset any established and properly functioning
authority or government will be against any violent change which
brings disorder and confusion in its wake. Consequently it is
opposed to messianic movements. But such a movement has been
created just for the purpose of bringing about a change and forcing
the self-established authority to abrogate its privileges and to
hand over control and power. It even aims at a violent overthrow
of the imposed domination.
Where the subject societies are weakly organized politically
and without powerful chiefs or kings, it is easy for a messianic
movement to forge a new hierarchical system of its own which
completely cuts across old ties and boundaries between peoples
and thus channelizes their loyalty in a new direction. In this wqy
messianic movements easily become political.
Messianic movements, being in their very essence revolutionary,
become provocative and dangerous to the established government
if the leaders are strong and militant. The established government
often reacts violently to such provocation and suppresses the
movement w'ith great severity. If this is done when the movement
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 37

is still in its initial stage, and when the government succeeds in

eliminating the ring-leaders, such a movement can be completely
suppressed. But once the movement has gained momentum and
spread over a wide area and attracted many’ followers, even the
removal of the leader is abortive. New leaders rise in place of
the old one, and often they are more violent and extreme, more
efficient and more capable of leadership than their predecessor.
Not infrequently the religious leader of a messianic movement
assumes the political role forced on him by circumstances or by
his followers. He then more or less abandons his religious aims
and aspirations. But it may also happen that another individual
takes over from the religious leader, and pursues the political
aims either in close cooperation with or even in complete super-
session of the religious leader. Often there is an almost dynastic
succession of messianic leaders, the father being the creator and
inaugurator of the movement and aiming at a religious change,
while the succeeding sons or adopted disciples later turn the
religious movement into a political one.
Where the dominating culture which causes the confusion and
despair in the inferior community is at the same time the established
authority and government (often indeed a self-imposed authority
which the subjects have never really accepted) opposition to the
domination of the superior community appears also as rebellion
against the established authority and government. A messianic
movement, born out of the clash of two vastly different cultures
and supported by the inner rejection and smouldering hatred of
the subject community against its masters, is essentially a
revolutionary movement. A religious revolution will in such a
predicament always turn into a political revolution.

(7) Threat of severe punishment of opponents of and traitors to,

the movement
Opponents offend a God, or a representative of God, and reject
the inspirations of God. Moreover, opposition implies criticism
of the justification of the cause. It is blasphemy and sacrilege.
The conviction is strong that corporate action is required, and
all must fall in line. The movement must be an action of the whole
community, as it is for the salvation and benefit of the whole
society.
38 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

If members of the community keep aloof they weaken the cause,

endanger its success, bring on the disapproval and anger of the
divine agency that decreed the movement. They also impair the
magic effect of corporate action.
There is an innate intolerance in primitive society, and in heavily
oppressed social groups because they are mainly ruled by public
opinion which enforces the sanctions. Moreover, such communities
cannot tolerate indiscipline nor afford to take liberties with tribal
laws. This would endanger the survival of the whole group. Thus
the sanctions are severe and must be strictly enforced. A messianic
movement which is accepted and approved by the whole community
enjoys therefore all the privileges of tribal action in the vital interest
of the society. Non-cooperation, and even more so defection are
crimes in the eyes of the community. The greater the movement
and the more important the position of its leader, the more heinous
the crime.

(8) The remembrance of a ‘Golden Age in the beginning of mankind

’

Remembrance of a ‘Golden Age’ or paradise in the earliest

times of mankind is found among many peoples all over the world.
It is almost universal. The descriptions of this ‘Golden Age' differ
widely, and they change with the cultural standards of the peoples
relating such myths. But all describe it as a place of pure and
unmixed happiness, without suffering, without sorrow and death.
Almost always the emphasis is on material and physical happiness,
combined with sensual pleasures; though spiritual and intellectual
enjoyments are also mentioned. Moreover it is always clearly
stated that man in this ‘Golden Age’ is good, innocent, a friend
of God, and obedient to his commandments.
Almost all the myths about a ‘Golden Age' include the story
of its tragic conclusion, either through human guilt, or through
the seduction of man by an evil spirit, or by some unfortunate
coincidence. Thus such myths explain satisfactorily the existence
of pain and sorrow, suffering and death in the world.
The consequences of this loss of the ‘Golden Age’ are, however,
not final. For in many of the myths the promise of a return of
the ‘Golden Age’ in the fullness of time is held out to mankind.
It is exactly this ‘Golden Age’, or paradise, which the founder
of the messianic movement wants to inaugurate. He usually
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 39

makes a deep impression on his audience because this tradition

is still very much alive in the community and his promises therefore
do not sound unrealistic or unbelievable. The preacher usually
promises an earthly paradise, with material benefits in abundance.
His preaching is clothed in popular language, easily understood
by his audience. He uses expressions which vividly appeal to the
longing of the masses for happiness and for freedom from suffering
and want. Poor and rootless people, the sick and needy are promised
immediate relief.
Hatred against the superior community is incited by a
description of the paradise as it existed in times previous to the
arrival of the invaders. Loss of the paradise is often attributed
to the invaders. In strong contrast to the Golden Age in the past
stands the present age with all its misery, degradation and oppres¬
sion. The blame for all this is put on the superior community.
The messianic movement is meant to restore the Golden Age
destroyed or filehed from them by the invasion of the superior
community.

(9) Revivalism, i.e. a renewed interest in the traditional religion,

coming as a rule, after a period of indifference or decline, accompanied
with expressions of great emotional excitement
Revivalism is a result of calling back to mind the lost existence
of a “Golden Age’. It is often believed that the Golden Age will
return if the conditions are restored of that life in which man
lived in those happy days. Thus the revivalists try to reconstruct,
as related in the myths, the times and conditions of life in the
Golden Age.
This results in a renewed interest in the traditional religion,
as also in the whole culture of the community. It leads to a practice
of the religious rites and even to the restoration of obsolete social
and cultural institutions.
The old religious cults especially are repeated, and with much
wishful thinking the revivalists pretend that they have already
the feeling of happiness. It is a dangerous make-belief because
it leads to a rather artificial excitement of the emotions and the
creation of a happy feeling which does not have any foundation
in reality. The situation has not really improved; the revivalists
only dream of it.
40 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

These rites of revivalism are often accompanied by para-

psychological phenomena, such as visions, trances and ecstasies,
hysterical weeping, glossalalia, etc.
This revivalism comes after a period of indifference or decline
of traditional religion and culture. The messianic leaders now
attribute the present unhappy state of the community to this
neglect of traditional religion and to the abandonment of its
practice. They therefore insist on the faithful performance of
these rites with renewed vigour. This leads not seldom to an emo¬
tional excitement with hysterical symptoms. Frequently in these
ceremonies decorum is offended, and the excitement may lead
to sexual licence and debauchery.

(10) Nativism, i.e. the conscious attempt of a backward people

to restore selected aspects of its pristine culture and to reject alien
elements previously adopted from foreign cultures
A messianic movement, accompanied as it usually is by a rebel¬
lious attitude of its members against foreign overlordship, is not
solely prompted by the resentment of a certain class in the com¬
munity such as chiefs and medicine men whose vested interests had
been most affected. It arises chiefly out of the deep-reaching changes
which the new way of life had been bringing into the rhythm of
daily life, with inevitable but unwanted obligations that it laid
upon individuals.
This led to the conviction that they were happy, powerful, and
of strong vitality, before they had ever heard of the disturbing
new-comers and before they had been tempted by them to abandon
their old ways of life, their religion and their social habits. The
logical conclusion out of this is the belief that a return to pristine
habits of thinking, believing and living will restore their lost para¬
dise and wipe out the nightmare of present misery. This thought
finally leads to a deliberate rejection of all that is new and to an
exaggerated evaluation of the old values.
The messianic movement is consequently often strongly
grounded in the indigenous culture. For example, all leaders of
the movement claim some sort of contact with the spirit world,
or the gods, or ancestors, or culture heroes, etc. of the community.
They claim to have received their vocation and mission from
these divine or semi-divine patrons and protectors of the com-
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 41

munity and they pretend to derive their authority from them.

Thus the means and rites by which they try to placate the gods
and spirits of their old religion and by which they hope to regain
their goodwill are often magical. Supernatural techniques are
employed, such as prophecy, divine possession and exorcism of
evil spirits. On the other hand, adoptions' from alien cultures
are discredited and discarded as polluting and harmful, and
making the old gods angry and jealous.

(11) Vitalism, i.e. the desire of the members in the movement for
alien goods, especially spiritual ones, from "heaven , through magic
or supernatural powers
The leaders of messianic movements become quickly aware that
their resources for a campaign against their alien and vastly superior
masters are pitifully inadequate and insufficient. Thus they try
to provide quick and easy solutions of all their problems through
magic and supernatural means. When these means fail to achieve
their object (as they invariably do) the effect on the adherents of
the movement is usually complete demoralization, passive
resignation and despair.

(12) Syncretism, i.e. the indiscriminate adoption of various cultural

traits of the superior culture by a backward people
In spite of all nativism (i.e. return to the traditional culture
and the weeding-out and condemnation of all alien culture traits)
there is a large amount of indiscriminate borrowing of various
elements from the dominating culture by a backward and subject
people.
The leaders of a messianic movement attribute the economic
and social superiority of their masters to their religion. They
believe that certain elements in their religion are responsible for
their superiority, consequently they adopt them and graft them
on to their old beliefs and practices.
Social considerations also come into play here. It is believed
that borrowings from the dominating culture will raise the status
of the subordinate community. Through the adoption of these
traits they will be able to put themselves on an equal footing with
their masters and reduce the extent of subordination under which
they suffer.
42 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Concomitantly with the introduction of such new elements the

leaders stress the necessity of abandoning certain old ways, which
do not go well with the innovations. Since these leaders, uneducat¬
ed as they are, usually fail to understand the true nature of the
salient features in the alien superior culture, and hit on very unes¬
sential, though perhaps superficially striking culture traits, their
new cult doctrine is hopelessly illogical, contradictory and greatly
over-simplified.
(13) Eschatologism, i.e. the expectation of a world renewal and
improvement after a world-wide catastrophic revolution and upheaval
Eschatologism is based on the largely mystical belief that things
can only improve after they have become really and extremely
bad.
Moreover, the inner unrest and insecurity of the mind is
transferred to nature, and a natural cataclysm is expected because
it takes place in the mind of the leaders of a movement.
Hidden in this expectation of a general upheaval and wholesale
destruction is the hope that in such an event the social and eco¬
nomic positions would change, the superior community would
lose its dominating position and the backward society would come
out on top, without much personal effort.

(14) Millenarianism, or Chiliasm, i.e. the hope or expectation of

a paradise on earth, lasting a thousand years or some indefinitely
long period
Millenarianism, or Chiliasm, is based on the belief in a Golden
Age which is going to return or which can be restored in the fullness
of time.
It is often expressly stated by the founder of a messianic move¬
ment that it is he who can hasten the arrival of the Golden Age.
He expects to become the ruler in this Golden Age, in which pure,
unmixed happiness, perfect harmony and peace, devoid of sorrow
and suffering, want and death, will be maintained for a thousand
years or at least for a very long time.
This Golden Age is frequently to be inaugurated by a preliminary
world catastrophe in which almost the whole of mankind is destroy¬
ed and only the faithful followers of the movement survive.
These fourteen traits are found more or less strongly represent¬
ed in almost all messianic movements all over the world, as in India.
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 43

These common features, characteristic of messianic movements,

are often strikingly similar down to small details. But this similarity
need not be explained always in terms of diffusion or mutual
borrowings. It may be attributed rather to similar social and
economic situations, to which the human mind reacts the world
over in a similar manner. In fact, in a number of cases the mutual
influence of such movements can positively be ruled out.

Messianic Movements in India

It goes without saying that in India live large population groups

which are fertile soil for the growth of messianic movements.
Such population groups in India are mainly of two types: one
type can be classified under the term 'primitive tribes’, officially
‘scheduled tribes’, or ‘aboriginals’ (adivasi), while the so-called
‘scheduled castes’ (untouchables and other low castes) belong to
the second category. The ‘scheduled tribes’ differ from the ‘schedul¬
ed castes’ in their culture and religion. The tribes have retained
more of their original tribal culture and religion, while the ‘schedul¬
ed castes’ have been much more ‘Hinduized’, though for certain
ritually unclean habits and practices they are excluded by orthodox
Hindus from participation in Hindu worship and social life.
These two categories constitute since immemorial times the
under-privileged populations of India. However, a few revolu¬
tionary movements of a messianic type can also be found among
peoples who for one reason or another have suffered a temporary
eclipse and have for some time experienced economic, social or
political oppression.
While the Hindu (and Muslim) ‘scheduled classes’ are distribut¬
ed in almost equal numerical strength all over India, the ‘scheduled
tribes’ are found mainly in three areas: they are in greater con¬
centration in the north-eastern part of Central India, in Assam
(including West Bengal), and in the hilly parts of South India.
Western and northern India also have their contingent of primitive
groups, but they are scattered in small communities and are, with
the exception of the Bhils, almost completely detribalized under
the influence of the overpowering Hindu and Muslim populations.
The most important and fairly compact group of primitive
tribes is found in Central India. Indeed, in certain areas the primi-
44 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

tives form the majority of the population. Here the tribes have
preserved their tribal culture and tradition to a remarkable extent.
Numbering over twelve million, they have so far successfully
resisted any attempts at assimilation and detribalization, though
they were subjected for centuries to the domination and arrogant
interference of Hindu and Muslim overlords. Needless to say
most of the messianic movements in Central India have arisen
among these tribes. Only one movement can be reported of a
powerful untouchable caste (Chamars) in Central India.
The second largest group of aboriginals is found in Assam
(including West Bengal) and the North-East Frontier Agency.
Until a few decades ago the tribes in the Frontier Agency enjoyed
much freedom and suffered little disturbance in their traditional
manner of living. Only since independence has the Indian Govern¬
ment earnestly attempted to introduce its administration into this
frontier region of India and tried to integrate the tribes in the
national Indian culture. The Nagas—as the tribes are called in
this part of India—resist vigorously and fight for complete in¬
dependence or at least a partial autonomy. No messianic move¬
ments are reported from the Frontier Agency, but they may arise
in the near future. In Assam and West Bengal several such move¬
ments have arisen among the tribal people as well as among the
low caste population. Some centuries ago, when Vaishnavism
was young and vigorous, some of its apostles assumed a messianic
role while spreading their gospel of human equality and the right
of all to worship God in devotion and love. They were ready even
to take up arms and to fight for their rights. In more recent times
the leaders of messianic movements have come mainly from
Muslim sects with strong reformative tendencies.
In northern India, where today the tribals form a negligible
minority, messianic movements were active among the Moham¬
medan and Sikh converts from the lower castes of Hinduism. In
pre-British times such movements owed their origin often to
Mahdavi conceptions, while later they began with reformative
attempts of an allegedly adulterated Islamic or Sikh faith, but
in their later phases these movements turned invariably against
the British colonizers who not only appeared to disturb their
religious and cultural traditions, but also restrained their political
ambitions, and imposed their rule and law upon them.
 MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS 45

In western India, in Maharashtra and Gujarat, we find messianic

movements among the primitive Naikdas and Warlis, the low-caste
Kolis, and some stray Muslim groups under the influence of
Mahdavi conceptions while the insurrection headed by Wasudeo
Balwant Phadke is of a unique and extraordinary type. A number
of Hindu reform movements can be reported to have taken place
in the large and important Bhil tribe, which here and there have
developed into revival or even messianic movements. Their leaders
were often outsiders, not Bhils.
The primitive tribes of South India are divided into numerically
small and insignificant groups; they have been decimated and
scattered and so completely subdued by the superior cultivating
Hindu castes that they have lost all their fighting spirit. They are
everywhere on the retreat. Their disappearance as tribal entities
or their assimilation by the lowest strata of a classless Indian
proletariat is only a question of time. Naturally few messianic
movements can be expected from the primitive tribes of South
India.
The situation is different with regard to the untouchable and
backward Hindu castes of this region. They are much stronger
in numbers and have preserved their caste solidarity in spite of
their ages-long oppression by the superior Hindu castes. Several
times they have tried to assert their social and political position
in South India on the strength of their numbers and their ancient
history. Some castes of this category have preserved memories
of former greatness and glory. Still, so far only the low castes
of Kanara could be stirred up by a great religious leader, the
Brahmin Basava, the second founder of the Lingayats. A more
recent movement in South Kanara and North Coorg, among the
Gaudos failed to develop. In Kerala only the Ezhavas have produc¬
ed leaders who claimed the charismatic role of saviour for their
community.
A similar movement can be reported of the Nairs who, though
never low-caste, experienced a temporary setback of their social
and political importance.
The lowest castes in South India, like the Pulayas and Parayas
in Kerala and the Madigas in Andhra, are apparently still too
much demoralized by centuries of severe economic exploitation
and social degradation to stand up and fight for a place in the
46 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

sun. A solitary Parayan leader styled himself Messiah, but he was

not able to create a movement strong enough to survive him long.
The same is true of the Madiga Messiah, Virabramham.
It goes without saying that the eventuality of the appearance
of a Messiah or Saviour depends on a combination of numerous
factors. The history of the messianic movements in India shows
that in some cases it was the individual who, gifted with the peculiar
abilities required for such a role, placed himself willingly at the
helm of the movement and often provoked and inspired it. In
other cases it was severe economic distress, coupled with social
degradation and political oppression, that gave birth to it. The
role of the Saviour or Messiah was assigned by the members of the
community to an individual adjudged by public consent to possess
the necessary qualities for such leadership. Sometimes the leaders
thus chosen did not really possess the necessary qualifications
and sometimes even lacked the ambition to lead such movements.
In this latter category of leadership are consequently found most
of the failures of messianic movements.
 4 Agrarian Revolts

N.G. Ranga and Swami Sahajanand Saraswathi

The kisan movement has had a history of at least 120 years since
the British regime came to be established in India. To those of
us who are used to peasant agitations organized and led by some
conscious leaders having a political ideology and struggling for
the collective and progressive welfare of peasants, the earlier agita¬
tions of peasants may seem to be rather unorganized and spasmodic
groupings of the semi-conscious masses in the dark. Yet a brief
review of such groupings will be of great interest to us who are
anxious to develop a conscious, organized and militant kisan
movement bent upon the achievement of Kisan and Muzdoor
Raj.

Mass Emigration
The Districts of Cuddapah, Kurnool, Anantapur and Bellary
were ceded to the British by the Nizam about the beginning of the
19th Century. The local peasants were made to pay in full the
excessive land revenue and other innumerable cesses and imposts
previously imposed by the Nizam, where as in the past, the Nizam’s
Collections were not so regular; the burden of such taxes became
too heavy. But all the complaints made by peasants were of no
avail and the British administrators were anxious only to increase
their collections year after year. In their unholy anxiety to increase
their collections, the Collectors insisted upon every ryot taking
a particular portion of waste land, whose extent was increasing
into cultivation and paying tax on it in proportion to the land
cultivated by him whether such land is cultivated or not and
desired or not by the peasant. In despair large numbers of peasants
of these districts, now known as Rayalasima had begun to emigrate
to the neighbouring forests and Mysore, only to escape from

Reproduced from History of Kisan Movement by N.G. Ranga and Swami Sahajanand
Saraswathi, All India Kisan Publications, Madras G.T.
48 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

these increasing burdens of taxes. They had abandoned their

lands and homes and beloved surroundings since at that time,
the possession of land became more a burden than an asset. This
naturally opened the eyes of the Government. Hundreds of desert¬
ed villages and lakhs of acres of abandoned land smote the rulers
in the face and threatened the solvency of the Provincial Govern¬
ment. In a hurry. Sir Thomas Munro was sent to settle the land
revenue payable by peasants and the Government agreed to his
proposals and carried out in 1820-30 the drastic reduction of land
revenue and he systematized the survey and settlement and land
records. This was the first triumph of our peasants during the
nineteenth Century.

Famines and Peasants

Between 1770-1897 there were several disastrous famines all
over India; those of Rayalasima were the worst, resulting in the
death of lakhs of workers and peasants. Special mention has to
be made of the famine years 1770, 1896 and 1897 when millions
of poor people died for want of food and water. The advent of
railways had only slowly enabled the State to import cereals and
pulses to the famine stricken areas and so in most places the prices
of food grains had gone up and even the higher and lower middle
classes were being hopelessly impoverished by their attempts to
purchase food and raiment and maintain themselves during times
of unemployment. It is a sad commentary on the political capacity
of our people that despite such terrible sufferings of the masses
and the mass-deaths of workers and peasants and the outbreaks
of cholera and other epidemics, in the wake of starvation and
consumption of horrible things (ending in cannibalism also) no
real and effective mass protest was organized by anyone or any
organization against such inhuman state of things.
Yet some dare-devils preferred dacoity to degrading death as a
result of starvation and a large number of bandits began to infest the
towns and countryside, striking terror into the hearts of not only the
townsmen and rich people but also the big landlords and even
the local officials. Coupled with the new spirit of philanthrophy
and public spirit that was slowly manifesting itself in the towns
and through the newspapers, this growing danger to the property
and safety of the propertied classes was responsible for forcing
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 49

Government to appoint successive Famine Commissions and to

devise and enforce the Famine Relief System. That this system
was devised not so much with any laudable philanthrophic senti¬
ments as by the anxiety of Government to protect the institution
of property and stave off the growing threat to the established
order is indicated by the content of this Famine Relief system.
To ascertain whether there is any famine at all in any area.
Test Works have to be run for 15 days to employ workers on the
hardest and most cruel task of breaking stones for 8 to 10 hours
a day in burning sun and blinding winds, on a payment of | anna
per day i.e. a wage which is not enough to give even half of a full
meal a day. If the suffering workers flock to such test works in
ever growing numbers for those 15 days, then alone is a famine
considered to exist. Even after a state of famine is declared to
exist and famine relief works are opened, workers are paid only
1| annas per head per a day of ten to twelve hours for work that
breaks anyone’s strengths and spirit. Thus the most meanminded
and cruel relief has been provided for our famished masses with
a view just to prevent them from defying the society as a whole
because of gnawing hunger and also to tie them down to work,
which succeeds in weakening them. Thus the very potential revolu¬
tionary capacity of peasants and workers was met first by some
relief and next by a process which weakens them every moment.
Famines occurred in 1868 in Northern India.
1876-8 in South India.
1888-9 in Madras.
Again there were famines in 1891, 1896, 1899, 1906, 1907.
1877 famine:— area affected 200,000 square miles.
Population affected:— 360 lakhs.*
1878. N.W.F.P. and Punjab—220 lakhs of people were affected.
Mortality 55 lakhs.
Expenditure Rs 8 crores and loss of revenue Rs 3 crores.
1874. Bengal Famine. Cost Rs 6.75 crores.
1875-8. South Indian famine. Cost Rs 9.25 crores.
Estimate of annual cost of famine in loss of revenue and actual
expenditure made in 1878—150 lakhs of pounds (sterling).
Three Famine Commissions were appointed in 1880, 1898, 1901.

10 lakhs = 1 million; 100 lakhs = 1 crore.

50 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Recommendations of Famine Commissions

1 Extension of irrigation at a total cost of Rs 44 crores.
2 Granting loans and advances to cultivators to enable
them is execute private agricultural improvements.
3 Emigration.
4 Promotion of agriculture.
Action taken by Government:
1 Famine Code.
2 Agricultural Loans Act.
Land Improvement Act.
3 Deputation of Sir Frederick Nicholson and his report
on Continental cooperative Movement.
4 Passing of the Indian Co-operative Act 1911.
5 Development of Minor Irrigation and unproductive Irriga¬
tion Works.

Bengal Tenants Outburst

The Bengali Zamindars prospered under the aegis of Permanent
Settlement at the expense of the industry and of the hard working
peasants. The special gift of nature to Bengal, the culture of jute
which came to be in great demand in the world has only enriched
these zamindars and served only as another lever with which rents
can be forced upon them. Legal and illegal imposts were multiplied
and Nazaranas or premiums were heaped upon peasants. Owing to
the tightened alliance between the British and zamindars during
and after the Indian Mutiny, even the Courts had begun to decree
that the land itself had also belonged to Zamindars and peasants
were only tenants-at-will. There seemed to be no limit to the
capacity of zamindars and their persecution of the peasants. Just
about 1870-80, the economic depression had also contributed
its share towards the growth of poverty of peasants.* Naturally
peasants—the various grades of them began first to fall into arrears
of rent, then to be threatened with the loss of lands and eviction
from their homesteads. It thus so happened that thousands of
peasants came to consciously refuse the rents, disobey the dictates
of Courts, obstruct their eviction and finally to fight with whatever
weapons were available, (the agents of Courts and Zamindars).
A regular state of anarchy came to prevail in a large part of Bengal

*See also W.W. Hunter’s Annals of Bengal.

 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 51

and Santal countryside and a reign of terror was set afoot. The
state rushed to the rescue of its allies, the Zamindars, mowed
down thousands of peasants and established a counter and more
cruel and organized state of official terrorism. Thus in blood and
fire was the great uprising of suffering tenants of Bengal and
Santhal Parganas suppressed.
But it only served as a warning to the British Government and
so an enquiry Committee was appointed and the first statute the
Bengal Tenancy Act was passed, conferring permanency of tenure
upon some classes of tenants and thus staying off the immediate
danger.
The next agitation came from Mahratta in 1875. The Mahratta
peasants to their horror, learnt that according to the British Civil
Law, they could be imprisoned for their failure to pay off their
debts, whenever demanded by their creditors. They were hard
hit by the slump in cotton prices after the cessation of Civil War
in America and, so the burden of their debts became too unbearable.
Just at that time, the moneylenders began to take advantage of
the Civil Laws and purchase the lands of peasants, evict their
debtors from their ancestral houses and consign those of them
who became unable to pay in time to Civil Debtors Jails. This
was the limit for the patience of the warlike Mahratta Peasants.
So they rose in their thousands against these moneylenders. They
raided the houses of moneylenders, tore away almost in a frenzy
the promissary notes and other papers, pertaining to their debts
to them. In many places, they were obstructed by some money¬
lenders and so resorted to violence. Several moneylenders and their
supporters were killed or beaten badly. Even a large number of
police were severely dealt with, whenever they had tried to save
moneylenders or whenever they attempted to harass peaceful
peasants. For a time, it looked as if the whole Mahratta country¬
side was up in arms against the British Raj itself. When the British
Government took its cue from this fury of the masses and hurriedly
passed the Deccan Agriculturists Relief Act, whereby no peasant
of Mahratta could be sent to the Civil Debtors jail for failure to
repay debts.

Protection of Punjab Peasants

A similar uprising took place in the Punjab in 1890-1900 against
the growing alienation of peasants’ lands to the moneylenders
52 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of towns. The Sikh, Muhammaden and Hindu peasants who had

till recent past enjoyed an independent Sikh state could not brook
the superiority of the moneylenders, conferred upon them by the
British Civil Laws. No wonder the murders or assaults on money¬
lenders began to increase rather alarmingly. The British Govern¬
ment quickly passed the Punjab Land Alienation Act in 1902-03
prohibiting the transferring of land from Kisan tribes or other
classes and prohibiting the usufruct mortagages for more than
twenty years.
Similarly because the Punjab peasants began to protest against
the oppressive incidence of land revenue, the Government passed
the Shaharanpur Rules, according to which the Land Revenue
should never exceed 50 per cent of net-income from land, either
at the original settlement or at any resettlement.
Thus it can be seen that the four major fights apart from the war
of Independence put up by our peasants in their crude and primitive
fashion have resulted in considerable concessions from Govern¬
ment. The British Government had also shown itself quite capable
of meeting mass movements more than half way, lest the masses
should either through their struggles develop their political con¬
sciousness or fall into the hands of politicians. There were neither
political organisations nor class organisations at that time either
to stimulate, engineer and develop peasants’ risings, or to exploit
the spontaneous uprisings of peasants with a view to strengthen
any political movement for freedom.
Hence the extraordinary vigilence displayed by Lord Curzon
to examine the complaints' made by Ramesh Chandra Dutt,
C.I.E. that the land Revenue Assessment was too heavy, that
British Government did wrong in undermining the strength and
influence of Zamindars and that Government should not have
refused to extend Permanent Settlement of land revenue to all
parts of India. He obtained fairly detailed reports of land revenue
practices from all provincial Governments and in the resolution
of the Governor General in Council, he laid down general princi¬
ples, to guide, the settlement officers and Provincial Governments
in making settlements and resettlements. It was through that
resolution that Lord Curzon insisted that in no case the resettle¬
ments ought to exceed 18 per cent of the original assessment. At
the same time, he laid it down as the policy of Government to
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 53

protect peasants as against the rapacity of Zamindars. The Resolu¬

tion of Government of India on ‘Land Revenue Policy.’ This he
did, in 1905 in order to prevent the Indian National Congress,
of which R.C. Dutt was the economist, to capture the heart of the
peasants. He wanted to make the Government pass for the real
champion of peasants. But unfortunately the Indian National
Congress did not follow up its advantage by adopting a bold and
forward policy in regard to the protection of peasants.
There was, however, one great struggle engineered by our
nationalists under the leadership of the Congress on behalf of
our voiceless peasants. It was aimed at the abolition of the Indenture
System. According to this system, lakhs of our peasants and workers
used to be somehow or other induced to sign some indenture bonds,
agreeing to work for a specified number of years for some specified
employer on his estate and in his province or country and con¬
senting to all the penalties that the employer might inflict upon
them for any breach of the bonds. Under this system our rural
folk used to be recruited for work in South Africa, Malaya,
Ceylon and other overseas countries and also for plantation work
in Assam, Bengal, Madras and U.P. For years, lakhs of these
unfortunate people who had agreed to go and work on the estates
of employers, most of whom were Europeans, were persecuted in
an unspeakable manner. There was not an indignity that could
not be hurled at them and not a punishment that could not be
procured by their influential employers from the too willing courts
for even petty offences. The criminal law of our country and the
legal systems of other countries were so criminal in their concep¬
tion and effect that in actual practice, our indentured labourers
were converted into virtual slaves of their employers. Against
this inhuman system, our Indian National Congress waged a
relentless war and the great Bankim Chandra Chaterjee brandished
his powerful pen for espousing the cause of these sufferers. At
last the Congress had triumphed and the indenture system was
abolished by Government which had agreed to shoulder the
responsibility for the safety, economic well-being and cultural
uplift of all immigrant and emigrant labour. Today Government
of India has its agents in Ceylon, Malaya, Burma and South Africa
to look after the interests of our emigrants and Protectors in
Assam to watch the interests of our plantation labourers. Thus
54 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Government of India also seeks to secure a minimum wage for

our workers in ceylon and Malaya, in addition to fighting for their
political status.
1905-19: It is however true to say that the Indian National
Congress did not lay as much stress on the need for relief for our
peasants, during 1905-19 as it did on the needs of our industrialists.
There were many causes for this but the most important of them was
the predominent voice our industrialists and disciples of Justice
Ranade led by Ferozshah Mehta, and Gokhale, were then having
in the counsels of the Congress. Our nationalists continued to
press for the establishment of permanent settlement of land revenue,
the abolition of salt-tax and excise revenue; but since they were
preoccupied with their fight for protection for our industries and
state assistance to our industrialists, they could not do anything
more than formally reiterating these demands on behalf of our
agriculturists. Even in this regard, for some reason, not easily
explicable, they kept themselves scrupulously silent about the
fate of our crores of zamindari tenants of U P., C.P., Orissa, Bihar,
Bengali Assam and Madras. Lord Curzon’s challenge to Ramesh
Chandra Dutt. an ex-President of the Congress that it was the
Government which had done more to protect tenants from the
rapacity of Zamindars, remained unanswered probably because
the then leadership of the Congress was so over-whelmingly
zamindari and capitalistic in its class content.

Champaran Struggle 1917-8

The next phase in the awakening of our Kisan owed its develop¬
ment and success to the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and
Rajendra Prasad in the famous Champaran struggle against the
indigo planters, many of whom were Europeans, who were perse¬
cuting the local Bihari peasants to grow Indigo against their will
on (Tinkathia) pain of paying higher taxes and collecting several •
illegal exactions. Mahatma Gandhi initiated the method for that -
time extremely novel and original, of conducting a systematic
and authoritative enquiry into the real nature and degree of the
sufferings of the peasants at the hands of the planters. Thousands
of suffering peasants flocked round the Mahatma and Rajendra
Prasad and detailed their woes. But the Provincial Government
took fright and prohibited them from pursuing their enquiries.'
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 55

On their refusal to obey this prohibitory order, there arose a crisis,

in which the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi and subsequent release
were followed by the appointment of an enquiry Committee with
Mahatmajee as one of its members. Eventually the Bihar Govern¬
ment accepted the recommendations of the Committee whose
report bears the imprint of Mahatma’s personality. An enactment
based on the Report relieved peasants from their most immediate
and pressing troubles and freed them from the special impost laid
on them by the Indigo planters. But just as the earlier Congress
agitation led by Ramesh Chunder Dutt against temporary settle¬
ments did not embrace the exploitation of our peasants by
zamindars, so also this agitation led by the Mahatma in Champaran
did not lead up to any fight against the main causes for the terrible
poverty and sufferings of Champaran peasants, namely the exces¬
sive rents and exorbitant incidence of debts. It may be because
of Mahatmaji’s growing habit which later on came to be consider¬
ed as one of his political virtues of concentrating upon one thing
at a time. But it does strike one as rather significant that both he
and Rajendra Prasad should have remained scrupulously silent
upon the ravages of the zamindari system and the extreme need
for liberating peasants from its cluches. Anyhow, this Champaran
satyagraha movement of 1917 i.e. during the Great War had the
excellent result of awakening not only of the Bihar peasantry but
also the general public of India to the tremendous revoluntionary
potentialities latent in the bosom of our peasants.

Kaira Satyagraha
Soon the Kaira and Bardoli drought and the consequent failure
of crops claimed the attention of Mahatama Gandhi. The half¬
blind Bombay Government insisted upon its pound of flesh by
demanding the payment of land revenue despite the inability of
peasants to pay. Gandhiji’s Satyagraha came to the rescue of these
much harassed kisans and Bombay Government had also to eat
the humble pie in the face of this rising peasant revolt led by such
an implacable fighter. It suspended the kist collection. It was
during this campaign that Com. Indulal Yagnik, now the Joint
Secretary of the All India Kisan Committee received his first
lessons in field work for our kisans. Even here Mahatmaji did
not complicate his campaign by trying to tackle the other troubles
56 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of our kisans such as their indebtedness, alienations of lands.

These two campaigns succeeded in establishing Mahatmaji as
a magic man of peasant satyagraha and to some extent awakening
our peasants to the use of satyagraha for achieving their purposes.
It is true that the great majority of our peasantry was still unaware
of politics, and was therefore not politically affected by these
triumphs. But they did open the eyes of a growing number of
the educated kisans, like myself, to the political possibilities of
our peasants’ mass-action.

Non-Co-operation Movement
But it was left to the great nation-wide Non-co-operation movement,
which succeeded in drawing in one effort millions of peasants with
its magical slogan of ‘Swaraj in one year,’ into its orbit. It shook
our peasants free from their age old political slumber and dragged
them, almost against their traditions into the whirlpool of our
national political life. For the first time they were told, to their
great satisfaction and wonder, that it was quite legitimate for
them to refuse to pay land revenue, the payment of which they had
come to look upon almost as a religious duty. To them, in those
early days of our national movement of direct action and in that
first flush of their political awakening, Swaraj meant freedom
from all tax burdens and especially the abolition of land revenue.
Naturally they hugged to their hearts both Mahatmaji’s name
and the slogan of ‘Non-payment of Taxes.’ When therefore
Gandhiji commenced his preparations for his open conspiracy
of ‘Non-payment of taxes’ campaign in Bardoli, the whole Kisan
India opened its eyes and began to spontaneously refuse or delay
the payment of land revenue or rent. Throughout India millions
of peasants, believing that the end of the British Raj was within
sight, abstained from paying their rents or revenue and began to
watch political developments with bated breath. If only Mahatma-
jee had given the much wanted command to our Kisans not to
pay their taxes, as was feared by the British and anticipated by
our kisans, who knows if Lord Lloyd’s fear of the destruction of
British power in India might not have actually materialised. As
it was, instead of that command, Mahatmaji suddenly withdrew
the whole non-co-operation movement and thus left millions of
our peasants as well as the country in mid-air.
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 57

With what consequences? Those lakhs of peasants alone know

to their bitter cost. They came to be penalised in thousand and
one ways by their zamindars, who not so long ago had been so
terror-stricken and who were only too glad to wreak vengeance
upon their kisans who had the temerity to hope for a better future;
those millions of peasants and workers alone can tell what terrible
disappointment they suffered when their very first hope of a bright
life was frustrated and their aspiration of winning Swaraj was
dashed to the ground. With the imprisonment of thousands of
active congress-men whose association with the peasantry was
very intimate and with the return to quasi-normal life of the other
disappointed and dazed congressmen, our peasants found so few
to fend for them and almost none to lead them in their struggles
against the enraged British Government and its more cruel allies,
the Zamindars.

Pedanandipad Campaign
The real revolutionary significance of this first mass upsurge of
our peasantry can be guessed from the phenomenal and dramatic
success of the following uprisings in particular. One took place
in Pedanandipad area of Guntur District. There for a good few
weeks, there was virtually Kisan Raj. In that area even the British
mounted police and regular Military forces could not make peasants
give them even information regarding the direction to any village
pond or well, not to speak of giving any supplies of food or water
or payment of taxes.

Oudh Kisan Rising

Laljee made an eloquent mention of this in his autobiography.
There lakhs of peasants rose spontaneously against the oppressive
zamindars and demanded not only Swaraj but also the removal
of their sufferings. It did not subside, even after the Bardoli debacle
until the Government hurriedly passed the Oudh Rent Act of
1921 which conferred the permanency of tenure upon the tenants.
Luckily for the Government, its ruse, played once before in
Maharashtra soon after the Deccan riots of 1897, negotiating
with a peasant rising by offering something to appease it, succeeded
in Oudh also, with the result that the Agra tenants of the same
Province have had to go without the benefit of permanency of
58 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

tenure until in 1938 the Congress Government has introduced its

bill to that effect.
Two other struggles need a mention in this connection, the No¬
tax campaign of Karnatak and the Mopplla Rebellion of Malabar.
The former bode fair to become as frighful an affair as that of
Pedanandipad but the withdrawal of non-cooperation movement
sabotaged it at its very early stage.

Mopplla Rebellion
The latter proved to be disastrous to all concerned, except the
British. In Malabar, Moppllas who are moslems by religion are
mostly either agricultural workers, or tenants or the most depressed
section of intermediary landholders with or without personal
cultivation. They were then being exploited mercilessly by the
Nambudris who were the virtual owners of the land and who
had the absolute right of electing any intermediary peasant, known
as Kanamdar or any of the actual cultivators. In fact these
Nambudris, who were Brahmins were often aided by Kanamdars,
most of whom were Nairs and they were freely exercising their
right to evict peasants from their homesteads and raising the
rents at their will and pleasure. No wonder an agitation sprang
up in the wake of the Religious Revivalist movement which later
on was prostituted by the Justice Party. Its leaders were the late
Sir M. Krishnan Nair and Mr M.P. Narayana Menon. One joined
the Justice party and rose to be an executive Councillor of the
Madras Government and the other entered the Congress and
came to be condemned for transportation for life for the alleged
crime of having incited Mopplas to wage war against His Majesty’s
Government to be released only in 1936.
This rent reduction and permanency of tenure agitation,
awakened the peasants, both Hindus and Moslems to the need for
political action. It helped Krishnan Nair to be returned to the
Madras Legislative Council. It gave a tremendous initial significance
to the Non-cooperation Movement of Malabar. But soon a com¬
munal turn was given by some very responsible Moslem leaders
and all the pent up enemity and disgust of peasants in general
and Moppllas in particular burst up like a volcano, and resulted
in blood-shed. The frightened Nambudris had in the meanwhile
made common cause with the leaders of Kanamdars agreed with
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 59

the Justice Party, of which the earstwhile leader of tenants M.

Krishnan Nair was an important pillor, over a compromise tenancy
legislation and rallied all the Hindus to aid them and thus helped
to make the whole thing a communal fight. The poor peasants
who were thus mislead by their religious leaders and intrigued by
their landlords and deceived by their colleagues, the Hindu tenants
who were in their turn humbugged by the Justice Party, rushed
headlong with their false religious slogans of hostility and war
against Hindus in general and their suicidal means of blood and
fire. Thus in a few months the heroic peasants of Malabar were
either mowed down by British fire or consigned to Andamans in
all their thousands. This fight has become notorious for the train-
tragedy in which nearly 80 Moppllas died of suffocation in a closed
railway wagon and also for the treachery perpetrated upon our
innocent peasants by religious leaders, reformist tenant agitators
and the withdrawal of all Congress adivce, leadership and support
from the sufferers just at the right nick of time.

Sitarama Raju's Fight

In the wake of the failure of the Non-cooperation Movement
and the six year sentence upon Mahatma Gandhi, a dreadful
gloom had set in all over the Country, except in a tiny quarter,
it lies on one of the broad backs of the Eastern Ghats, in the Jeypore
Zamindari and on the Borders of the Narsipatam Taluk. There
was enacted one of the most romantic dramas of revolutionary
life of modern India. Alluri Sitarama Raju a Kshatriya of west
Godavari District, went there and befriended with the Koyas
and other hill-people of that tract. He became a Sadhu, and an
expert healer both by spiritual powers and herbs. He saw the
sufferings of those ignorant but militant people helpless at the
hands of forest and excise officials. His appeals to officials for
mercy were in vain. Those hill-tribes were not allowed to carry
on their ‘Podu’ or ‘Jungle’ cultivation. They were made to pay
too many dues upon so many of their activities such as gathering
fuel, grazing their cattle in forests, felling fuel, grass, fruit, or gum,
gathered in the forest to any outsiders. Thus their very traditional
mode of life was threatened by Government. Raju saw no way
out of it except through rebellion. When all his appeals for justice
were in vain, he welcomed the spontaneous rising of those proud.
60 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

martial and brave Koyas against the Government. That rising

soon became a violent revolution and it was suppressed at great
cost to human life on both sides and to the Indian finances, by a
merciless and ruthless use of fire and iron by the British Govern¬
ment.
Thanks to the post-autonomy and Congress Governments,
M.P. Narayan Menon and hundreds of other Malabar victims,
and the few survivers of the Sitarama Raju’s ‘Pituri were released
recently.

Kamagatamaru
After the war another epoch of our peasant struggle began. Just
after the war the magic word went abroad that the British Prime
Minister’s plighted promise to India that Swaraj would be granted
soon after the war was over was broken and that the word came
for all patriots to strike their last blow at British Imperialism to
wrest from it India’s Swaraj. Mahatma Gandhi’s weapon of
Satyagraha evoked tremendous hopes in the hearts of our
nationalists. It was in that atmosphere that hundreds of Punjab
peasants flocked to the banner of revolution. Their brethren who
had emigrated to Canada, U.S.A. and South America not only
sent large sums of money but also despatched a shipload of men,
money and ammunition to aid their revolutionary work. Hopes
were raised all over the Punjab countryside of the impending
struggle and advent of Swaraj. But alas, the British got scent of it,
captured those famous Kamagatamaru heroes, clapped many
more peasants of Punjab villages into jails and persecuted in an
unspeakable fashion many thousands of the brave Sikh peasants
for their share in that adventurous scheme.
The Aka movement of Hardoi in U.P. stirred up the peasantry
of Sitapur, Raibarelli, Fyzabad and several other Districts in
1922-3 i.e. just after the Bardoli withdrawal of Satyagraha and
at the time of the Mopplla and Sitarama-Raju’s ‘Pituri’. It was
led by Nadari Pari, an actual peasant and the whole countryside
responded to him to a man. Government found it so hard to tackle
it since actual peasants were at its head and the leaders were not
specially wedded to the Gandhian ideas of non-violence in regard
to every detail. Eventually it was suppressed as all other peasant
struggles by the blood and fire of Government.
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 61

But all these great and spontaneous risings of our peasants

from one end of the country to the other succeeded as nothing
else had during the previous sixty years since the great Indian
war of Independence, to bestir our peasants bring them into the
whirlpool of our national politics, evoked in their hearts great
and even extravagant hopes and encouraged them to dream glorious
dreams of peace, plenty and prosperity on the advent of Swaraj.
If not for anything else, atleast for having opened the eyes of crores
of our peasants who would otherwise have continued to vegetate
with their Curzonian contentment and sense of atrophy, and
brought them once for all into our political area, the great Non-
Cooperation Movement and Mahatmaji’s slogan of ‘Swaraj
within one year’ were more than justified. But how one wishes
that the Congress had provided some defence forces to protect
our peasants on their retreat. How one deplores the failure of our
leaders to take a more realistic view of things and prevented such
a sudden and almost heartless (one is almost tempted to say,
irresponsible) withdrawal of Congress support from our peasants.
Three conclusions force themselves upon our minds as a result of
this cursory survey of the effect of introduction of national politics
into the life of our peasants, since 1917, by Mahatma Gandhi
and his followers, working through the Indian National Congress.
That our peasants were taken by suprise, they had either to absorb
the political thought of the day even if there were one or were
not provided with any political machinery in the shape of a self-
confident, self-conscious and local autonomous Congress or Kisan
organisation to stand up for them through thick and thin and to
constantly guide them. Instead as soon as Mahatmaji withdrew
his Non co-operation movement and abandoned all aggressive
political action, the local congress committees went limp and
congressmen became devoid of any initiative or leadership. Indeed
Congress had fought shy of having anything more to do with
Moppllas or Koyas or U.P. or Punjab Kisans or others and
Congressmen instantly dropped all Kisan work. Need one wonder
then if all over India, our peasantry quickly relapsed into their
traditional political somnombulence, nursing an aweful bitterness
against our politicians and their own miserable fate.
The second conclusion is that in too many cases were our peasants
struggles exploited either by communalists or religious maniacs
62 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

who had little respect to the creed of non-violence, that our peasants
were defenceless against their bad leadership, denied as they had
been of any political training, organisational ability or knowledge
of the effects and consequences of agitational work, which could
be gained only through their active participation in their class
or political organisations. Naturally there was too much exhibition
of violence at the fag end of our kisan struggles of those hectic
days of 1920-3 and it frightened away our Congressmen and thus
denied them of any active sympathetic, day to day support and
guidance of the Congress, which they then needed much more
than at any other time.
The third conclusion is that owing to their abandonment by
the Congress once their revolutionary temper went beyond the
mild expectations of the Congress leaders and thus upset the
calculations of the reformist leaders of the Congress of different
provinces of these days by threatening to shake to their roots the
very economic foundations of society, our peasants came in for
the cruel intentions of Government and zamindars and were
persecuted hopelessly for years in many a way.
It was in 1923 July-December, just when the members of Moppla
rebellion were dying out and the Sitarama Raju’s fight was going
on that I had begun to organize Ryots Associations (or Kisan
Sabhas as they had later on come to be known all over India)
Agricultural and Labour Unions in the Andhra on my return from
England. I met with instantaneous success in Guntur District
with the ryots since they were all disillusioned about the Govern¬
ment and the Justice Party which persuaded them into the belief
that no reprisals would be taken against them for their support
to the Pedanandipadu No-tax campaign and later on, inflicted
heavy penal-rates of assessment for their having dared to support
the Congress to bring ‘Swaraj within one year’ also helped them
to rally to my call to organize themselves into Ryots Associations.
It was just at that time that a very bitter controversy was going
on between the pro-changers headed by the late Moti Lai Nehru
and C.R. Das and No-changers led by Srijit C. Rajagopalachari
as to whether Congress should enter the legislatures or not. Though
in several provinces, Swaraj parties were organised the Congress¬
men went into legislatures under their auspices, in the Andhra
and in Guntur District in particular, orthodox Congress leaders
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 63

succeeded in preventing any great development of the Swaraj

Party. Naturally this gave an opportunity to our Ryots Association
to formulate its Election Manifesto, set up a selection committee
and nominate its candidates and make them, sign the peasants
pledge and conduct the electioneering on purely peasants’ lines.
At all the stages, even orthodox Congress leaders cooperated with
our Ryots Association. While the Non-Brahmin Party eschewed
all Brahmin candidates, our Ryots Association selected a Brahmin
candidate, thus demonstrating at its very inception, its non-
communal character and politics. Three out of its four candidates
were successful. One was sent to the Central Assembly and two
to the local council and two of them eventually joined the congress
and distinguished themselves in the country’s cause. This unexpect¬
ed success of the Ryots Association and the splendid response
given by peasants to its call excited the fear of Government and
jealously of some congressmen and most of the Justicites. So from
all sides we were attacked about the further need for such associa¬
tions. We could have gone on developing Ryots Associations all
over the province if only we had a sufficient number of workers
to carry on propaganda. Unfortunately we had none and we did
not then think of organising a Kisan school to train youths for
this work and to develop a selfrelient and independent cadre of
comrades for this extra congress work. Since neither the local
congress workers who were themselves few in number and hard-
pressed for time and resources nor peasants themselves were
forthcoming to aid us. Our Ryots Associations marked very little
progress between 1924-196, beyond spreading themselves to
West Godavari and Krishna Districts also and spreading and
popularising the idea of independent class organizations for
peasants and workers.

Bihar and U.P. Kisan Sabhas of 1926-7

In 1926-7, some comrades began to organise Kisan Sabhas in
Bengal, Punjab and U.P. on more or less idealistic lines with a
revolutionary programme. As they were too often mistaken for
communist organizations by the local Governments which were
only too anxious to nip in the bud everything that savoured of
revolutionary temper, they were banned before they could take
deep roots. Somehow the Bihar and U.P. Kisan Sabhas managed
64 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to keep up their existence until 1928, when they presented their

memoranda to the All Parties Conference presided over by the
late Pt. Moti Lai Nehru. So far as one could ascertain, these Kisan
Sabhas seemed to have favoured universal franchise, complete
independence and fundamental rights. It is significant that when
Dr Annie Beasant declined to provide for universal franchise
(when some of us suggested it to her in 1925 soon after the Delhi
conference) in her scheme for an Indian Commonwealth, the
Nehru Committee favoured it, especially when our Kisan Sabhas
also pleaded for it.

Andhra Ryots Association

The Andhra Provincial Ryots Association was organised by some
of us in 1928 under the Presidentship of B.V. Ratnam M.L.C. and
M.B. Needu M.Sc. One of the Parliamentary Secretaries of Madras
Ministry came out with a pamphlet on ‘Why Peasants Associations?’
and strongly advocated their establishment on the lines of the
American Farmers Unions. As he took an active part in that
Provincial Ryots conference, he was elected the General Secretary.
Even at that time there was a trial of strength between the Justicities
and Congressites over the issue of Congress boycott and so the
justicites staged a walk-out saying that Ryots conferences ought
not to meddle with politics.

Andhra Zamindari Ryots Association

In 1929 the Conference met under my presidentship and supported
the stand taken by the Congress in regard to politics and concerned
itself mostly with land revenue, agricultural indebtedness, un¬
employment and internal social reforms but did not try to tackle
the zamindari ryot problem. That was taken up by the Andhra
Zamindari Ryots conference organized by Mr R.M. Sharma with
the co-operation of some of us. But the conference only demanded
a radical revision of the Estates Land Act so as to minimize the
sufferings of tenants. Our peasant workers were not then prepared
to demand the abolition of the zamindari system, so unprepared
was the political world to grapple with such problems at that time.
The 1930 Civil Disobedience Movement, the preciptious fall
of prices of our agricultural commodities due to the economic
depression and the consequent pressure sudden and stunning
 AGRARIAN REVOLTS 65

brought to bear upon them by money-lenders and landlords and

the heroic struggles and achievements of Bardoli peasants in
J 928-9 and 1930-1 had all prepared the field for the spread of
bolder ideas among the peasantry and for the acceptance by our
peasants of our revolutionary lead and also for the adoption by
them of our tactics.

1928-9 Bardoli Triumph

It is impossible to over estimate the electrical effect the triumph
of Bardoli ryots of 1928-9 had upon our Indian peasantry. There
the Bardoli peasants rose against the unjust enhancement of land
revenue sought to be imposed upon them by the Bombay Govern¬
ment. They were led by Sardar Vallabhai Patel and assisted by
Mahatma Gandhi and financed by President Vithalbhai Patel.
But the chief factor which ultimately won for them their complete
success was their own limitless sacrifices and unexampled discipline
and determination. At last the Bombay Government had to yield
to the demand of peasants to appoint an impartial Enquiry Com¬
mittee. The Committee gave its award mostly in favour of peasants.
This well advertised triumph of Bardoli peasants put heart into
the Indian peasantry and evoked again their hopes of being able
to successfully rise against the Government.

* 10 lakhs = 1 million, 100 lakhs = 1 crore

See also W.W. Hunters’ Annals of Bengal.

 5 Indian Peasants’ Struggles and
Achievements

N.G. Ranga

War of independence: In all the areas in which the first war of

Indian Independence was in progress (1857-60) peasants played
quite a heroic part, suffered terribly, displayed great military skill,
prowess and achieved victories. But they were made to pay bitterly
for their display of patriotism. To this day, the peasants of Meerut
Division pay certain abwabs which were then levied as punitive
imposts for their participation in that revolution.
During that struggle, large numbers of peasants threw them¬
selves valiantly into the fray with such abandon that they did not
mind leaving their holdings in the care of their landlords. So many
of them forgot the wrongs done to them by their landlords and
made common cause with them in fighting for freedom. But alas,
when later the British had triumphed, their lands were treated as
the property of the Zamindars since the latter were found in actual
control and they were reduced from the status of proprietors to
that of tenants-at-will of their own former lands; so heavy were
their sacrifices. And the Zamindars had no scruples in grabbing
their lands so unjustly.
Unfortunately they could not rise beyond the limitations of
their feudal environment and hence were reduced to dust before
the British arms. And as yet, they had not developed the political
aspect of their cultural and traditional conception of unity of the
whole of India nor could they anticipate the later twentieth century
idea of achievement of a nation-wide organization, consciousness
and unified patriotic endeavour.
We can understand the magnitude of the sacrifice offered by
peasants in that struggle when we remember from what a high
state of customary rights, individual and collective, Indian peasants

Reproduced from Revolutionary Peasants by N.G. Ranga, op. cit. pp 33-59.

 PEASANTS’ struggles and achievements 67

fell by deciding to join the war against the British. They had been
members of village communities which, according to Elphinstone,
contained ’in miniature all the materials of a State within themselves
and are sufficient to protect their members if all other Govern¬
ments were withdrawn’.
That the lands were recognized even by the Mughals to be the
property of kisans is proved by the fact that Akbar and Aurangazeb
had to purchase lands from cultivators.
Todar Mai’s revenue settlement conducted under the order
of Akbar was made with individual peasants and not with any
of the Zamindars or even the headmen of a village. No wonder
Holt Mackenzie grew eloquent over the permanence of the rights
of these peasants. He observed ‘the village Zamindars.. .were the
immemorial occupants of the soil.... They sold, and mortgaged
their lands at will. They may have been bound in some cases to
a lower class of cultivators, who had by distinct engagements or
long usage acquired the right of occupancy so long as they paid
the customary rent.... Nothing but violence appears to have
disturbed the tenure of the village Zamindars; neither the exile
nor the longest absence, dissolved the tie that bound them to the
fields of their ancestors, nor destroyed their right to resume posses¬
sion when they returned.’
The British came to upset all this. Their early administrators
recognised the Taluqdars as the prototypes of English landlords
to subserve their political ends. But when they found that these
Taluqdars were also undependable. Lord Dalhousie decreed that
‘the settlement should be made village by village with the parties
actually in possession but without any recognition, either formal
or indirect, of their proprietory right so as to deal with the actual
occupants of the soil’.
Thus the U.P. peasants were being re-instated in their traditional
rights and holdings by the British who were losing faith in the
so-called landed aristocracy, as a political stabilising force. Lord
Canning who was no friend of the peasants had to confess that
‘as a question of justice the lands and villages taken from the
Talooqdars had, for the most part, been usurped by them through
fraud and violence.’
Naturally the British expected gratitude from those U.P. kisans.
They hoped that the kisans who were being helped to get back to
68 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

their lands from which they had been forcibly ejected by the
Taluqdars would betray the national cause and side with them,
the new beneficent rulers.
Lord Canning observed in 1858 that ‘it might have been expected
that, when insurrection first arose in Oudh.. .the village occupants
who had been so highly favoured by the British Government and
in justice to whom it had initiated a policy distasteful to the most
powerful class in the province, would have come forward in support
of the Government who had endeavoured to restore them to their
hereditary rights and with whose interests their interests were
identical. Such, however, was not the case. So far as I am inform¬
ed, not an individual dared to be loyal to the Government which
had befriended him.’
On the other hand, lakhs of peasants made common cause with
that war of independence. The British naturally decided that
‘the lands of men who have taken an active part against us should
be largely confiscated in order, among other reasons, to enable
us to reward others.’ ‘The Governor-General proclaims to the
people of Oudh that...the proprietory right in the soil of the
province is confiscated to the British Government which will
dispose of that right in such manner as to it may seem fitting.’
The consequence was that the great class of kisans fell, the
Taluqdars who were the usurpers and adventurers, rose and within
the course of a year, the kisans’ ‘rights had ceased to exist or were
reduced to a mere shadow; they were completely in the power
of the Taluqdars and were subject to every kind of oppression,
tyranny and exaction.’
Such was the bitter price paid by kisans for having made common
cause with Taluqdars in that first war of independence and such
indeed was the reward reaped by the faithless Taluqdars for their
rebellion against the British and their eventual submission to the
foreign rulers. Is this not typical of what happened in England
after Cromwell’s yeomen’s revolution, in the U.S.A. after the
attainment of independence and in the U.S.S.R. after the 1917
revolution and 1920-1 counter-revolution? Wherever and when¬
ever peasants have gone into any revolution without their own
leadership, ideological stand and definite political objectives but
under the leadership of other classes, they have uniformly been
cheated of the fruits of revolution or been the worst victims of
the failure of a revolution.
 PEASANTS’ struggles and achievements 69

Santhals' Revolution
Later came the 1855-73 Santhal and Bengal revolts, this time
not only against the British Raj as such but also against the
Zamindars who were invested with unjustified, and undreamt of
powers of ownership of land that peasants had customarily consider¬
ed and cultivated for millenniums as their own and also against
money-lenders who were given powers to get peasants imprisoned
for failure to repay their debts and against the autocracy of officials.
The Santhals never thought that they could be evicted from their
ancestral homesteads, holdings and forests for failure to pay
taxes and debts but that had come to happen.
The self-respecting, proud, if unorganized, Indian peasant
never could reconcile himself to the preposterous right conferred
by the British Government on the Zamindar to distrain his pro¬
perties, including his draught cattle, grain crops and that too
came to be the order of the day. So he rose in revolt against that
unjust order of the day, imposed upon them by British imperialism
through the convenient media of its allies, the Indian Zamindars
and money-lenders.
The peasants 'banded themselves (especially in Patna District)
to resist short measures; illegal cesses, and forced deliveries of
agreement (one-sided) to pay enhanced rents.’ And also 'there
had been combination of Raiyats (peasants) in East Bengal,
refusing to payments except what they considered just.’
The Santhals found their leaders in two brothers who claimed
to have received some occult blessings from the gods to put an
end to the zhulum of officers and to the deceit of merchants. As
many as 35,000 Santhals formed their bodyguard. They armed
themselves with their traditional weapons of bows, arrows, axes
and swords. They began to march to Calcutta to place their peti¬
tion before the Governor to free them from their oppressors. But
one Government Inspector obstructed their march and provoked
them on 7-7-1855 into violence. Thus had commenced their rebellion
and their resultant massacre at the hands of the British. The British
officers who had been smitten with remorse later confessed that ‘it
was not war, it was execution; we had orders to go out whenever
we saw the smoke of a village rising about the jungle. The Magistrate
used to go with us.. .1 surrounded the village with my sepoys and
the Magistrate called upon the rebels to surrender.’ To such an
unjust and peremptory order, the brave Santhals knew only one
70 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

answer to give. That was defiance. There upon they were brutally
fired upon and butchered en masse.
The Santhals displayed such exceptional courage and military
discipline that they faced successive vollies of British bullets with
reckless heroism and abandon.
Government had however to yield to these peasants, despite
its gratitude to the Bengal Zamindars for their treacherous betrayal
of the War of Independence and pass the Bengal Tenancy Act
which had come to re-establish the lost permanency of tenure
and fixity of feudal exactions.

Mahratta Peasant Awakening

With equal fury and fervour rose the Mahratta peasants in the
same generation, against the oppressions of money-lenders. They
could not brook the idea of obedience to the new laws w hich gave
such coercive powers to money-lenders that any money-lender
could with impunity move a court to imprison any one of his
peasant debtors. So they revolted, burnt down the houses, destroyed
other properties of money-lenders, killed a good many such op¬
pressors and even attacked those Government officials who were
supporting their oppressors.

Bombay Peasants' Revolts in 1871-75

These revolts were not well planned, nor were they widespread.
They took place haphazardly and in many districts like Kaira,
Ahmednagar. Poona, all unconnected with each other. The peasants
aimed their blows not on Government, but on money-lenders
and even when whole villages were in revolt, great care was taken
not to harm anyone else but marwari money-lenders. Generally
‘object of the rioters was to obtain and destroy the bonds, decrees,
etc., in the possession of their creditors; when these were peaceably
given up to the assembled mob there was usually nothing further
done. When the money-lender refused or shut himself up, violence
was used to frighten him into surrender or to get possession of the
papers’.
Again the might of British Raj came down on them and suppress¬
ed their risings. Yet it had to yield and redress their grievances
as least in part. Hence the passing of the Deccan Agriculturists’
Relief Act, whereby an exception was made for the Mahratta
 peasants’ struggles and achievements 71

peasants from the operations of the Civil Procedure Code in that

they could not be imprisoned for failure to repay debts—a great
concession indeed.

Punjab Discontent
Similarly the Punjab peasants too agitated and threatened to
revolt to prevent the rapid alienation of their lands to the urban
money-lenders for failure to repay debts. The British Government
could not await a similar rebellion as had taken place in Bengal
and Maharashtra since the armed and martial Sikhs might make
a formidable enemy. So it hastened to pass the Punjab Land
Alienation Act to prevent the alienation of peasants’ lands to
non-agricultural sections.

South India in Ferment

Similarly the Krishna and Godavari Deltaic peasants and the
Karnataka and Rayalaseema peasants too revolted several times
from the beginning of the 19th century to protest against the
exorbitant land revenue exactions, the neglect of irrigation facilities
and the extortionate method of tax collections. G. Lakshminarasu
Chetti organized a grand constitutional agitation against the
Madras Tortures Act and succeeded in getting it repealed and this
saved the South Indian peasants from being put to several cruel
and inhuman tortures for failure to pay taxes. The South Indian
peasants resorted to their ancestral method of satyagraha by
abandoning their lands and villages (a method of satyagraha
adopted by the Lohara peasants in 1936, and by those of the
Orissa States in 1939 with much less success) and migrating to the
neighbouring Indian States or even British districts. Since peasant
solidarity was so great in those days and also since the cultivation
of land under the then prevailing tax burdens was such an un¬
welcome task none would go and occupy their lands and houses
and Government had to climb down and agree to a reduction of
their tax burdens in order to persuade them to return to their
lands and villages.

Contribution of the Indian National Congress

With the beginning of the 20th century, the Indian National
Congress began to champion the cause of the oppressed peasants.
72 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

It imported a political significance—common cause with the

nation-wide freedom movement and anti-imperialist bias—into
every one of the struggles that peasants have had to wage in
order to free themselves from new imperialist impositions and
machinations. Thus country-wide campaigns were organised with
nationalism as their dynamo and economic pressure as their
propellers against the vicious indenture labour system, contract
labour in plantations, exploitation by European planters in India
and other parts of the British Empire. Now that political conscious¬
ness and organisation were added to economic grievances, success
began to dawn on the horizon of Indian peasants. The indenture
system was abolished and some relief was got for plantation labour.
A large number of risings took place in Malabar both in the last
and present centuries. They were misnamed communal riots
and their basic causes, the political and economic grievances of
peasants against the local landlords were not sought to be removed.
Of course there was always the tendency for communal leaders
to exploit these basic factors. But thanks to the sacrifices made by
the Mopilla (Moslem) peasants, the Madras Government had had
to pass the Malabar Tenancy Act which conferred permanency of
tenancy upon a very large section of peasantry.

Gandhiji and Peasant Satyagraha

An entirely new dynamic and political revolutionary tendency
has come to be imported into peasant struggles by Mahatma
Gandhi since his advent on the Indian politico-economic theatre
in 1916. He familiarised the peasants of Champaran in Bihar and
Kaira in Gujerat with his new weapon of Satyagraha, an open,
non-violent, organised, politically alive revolt against injustice—in
their struggles against the indigo planters and land revenue
collectors respectively. He introduced the technique of first enquir¬
ing into the essential facts of the peasants’ grievances, then formulat¬
ing their demands, educating them as to the nature and magnitude
of their needs and immediate demands, training them in the art
of internal self-sufficiency pointing out the need for economy in
case of a prolonged struggle against the authorities and steeling
their mind to the rigours to jails, and other harassments of imperi¬
alism. He would convince the peasants that the satisfaction of their
carefully moderated minimum demands was most urgently called
 peasants’ struggles and achievements 73

for by Dharma or social justice, and that it would be their sacred

duty to force the authorities to perform their Dharma towards
them. The injection of this inspiring and ennobling conception
of serving Dharma by revolting against injustice and by seeking
redress for their own grievances, would steel the determination
and fighting morale of the peasants. As the champions of Dharma,
peasants would go ahead, to face all their enemies without fear
and with perfect confidence in their own cause and in their duty
to and capacity for teaching their opponents how to conform to
Dharma. As Calvin strengthened the bourgeoisie by his casuistry
proving that they were helping society by helping themselves;
as Marx put new life into the proletariat by demonstrating that
they were the heirs of capitalism, chosen by Dame History, so
Mahatma Gandhi invested the peasants as well as the colonial
peoples with the saintly staff of satyagraha to achieve the protection
to Dharma for themselves and to oblige their opponents to con¬
form to Dharma and thus save humanity from injustice.

Bardoli Satyagraha
With the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi, his greatest kisan disciple,
Vallabhbhai Patel organised and led the Bardoli peasants against
the resettlement enhancements proposed by Government. Under
his inspiring guidance, peasants braved all risks, faced with courage
the loss of their beloved cattle and ancestral lands and even risked
eviction from their villages. At last, they triumphed over the
Government. That was in 1929.
Again in 1930, when Mahatmaji gave this call to the people
to rise against Imperialism to achieve national independence, the
Bardoli peasants rose to a man, refused to pay taxes, faced the
auction sales and eventual loss of almost all their lands and re¬
fused to have any truck with Government. Such was the marvellous
strength of their political revolt led by their great Sardar. When
the Congress was in Ministry in 1937-9 the loyal Sardar saw to
it that all their lands were returned. Thus did our peasants gain
their initiation in both economic and political Satyagraha.

Vizag Revolution and Raju's Leadership

The Vizag Agency tribes waged a two-year war against British
imperialism with the help of an extraordinary revolutionary leader
74 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Sitarama Raju. They made the fullest military use of the strategic
advantages of the hills and valleys and impassable gorges and their
own special knowledge of the terrain. They were strictly non¬
violent. They made full use of their traditional weapons. But
strangely enough, they pursued the Hindu Dharmic way of liberat¬
ing their enemies, once they fell into their hands and asked for
excuse, with the result that their secret dens came to be known and
their ways of organisation understood by their enemy.
What did they fight for? At first they started asking for free
use of the forest lands and produce. Rapidly their demands went
up and they wanted to establish Swaraj for the whole of the Agency
area, if not for the whole of India.
The tragedy of it all was that their struggle came off a year
after the great non-co-operation movement (1920-2) was over and
when nationalist India was just recovering from the shock of
reaction. The British Government was very cruel towards those
brave tribal people. It used all the modern weapons and killed
thousands of those unfortunate Koya and Savara people.
Great trouble set in upon these people after their noble and
resourceful leader Raju was killed. Most of their other leaders
were killed, several others were sent to jail and great reprisals
were hurled upon the masses. Yet the spirit of resistance of these
hill tribes did not die. It only awaited another inspired leader
and a suitable opportunity. This became clear in the August 1942
Revolution when again these people gave a fine account of their
anti-imperialist spirit.
But owing to the special attention paid by the police to this area
and its people, even such Congress constructive work as hand¬
spinning was not allowed. Government encouraged the local
Muthadars or village tribal chiefs to tyrannise over the people
and thus destroy their will to revolt. Despite all such repression,
Congress-men like P. Kodandaramayya and R.M. Sarma had
been doing yeoman service to these people. As a result of their work,
the Gothi system by which the hill tribes were kept down
as hereditary servants (bordering on slavery) of those Muthadars
and others who advanced small sums of money to these ignorant
and helpless people either for marriage or for drink has come to
be abolished since 1940. Yet so many of these people are even now
unable to take advantage of it. Secondly, the last Congress ministry
 PEASANTS’ struggles and achievements 75

has declared their lands inalienable. But during the war, the
Advisers’ regime again had allowed alienation of their lands subject
to the Collector’s permission.
The present Congress Ministry is trying to help these tribal
peoples. The All-India Adibasis and Excluded Areas Association
was founded in 1936. It has now become a powerful organisation
developing the political consciousness of these 20 million Adibasis
in our country.

Satyagraha Struggle between 1921-30

Ever since the Non-co-operation movement a number of Satyagraha
campaigns have come to be organised against so many unjust
laws and imposts; such struggles as those of Bardoli and
Pedanandipadu and Duddukuru in 1921 against the land tax;
the struggles against Karnataka forest laws in 1921 and 1931-4;
the rent exactions in U.P. and Bihar in 1921 and 1931-3; the anti¬
resettlement campaigns of Godavari and Kistna Deltas and a
number of peasant struggles against landlords of Venkatagiri
(1931) Tsadumu and Munagala (1939) were organised in the South
by some of us. There were also the Land Satyagraha in Bihar
(1939), the anti-Zamindari fight in Bengal, and Andhra, and
Canal Duties struggle of the Punjab and Bengal (1939), the Jute
prices struggle (1937-42), and the Debt Relief Agitation of Bengal.
All these campaigns shared the same new features.

Aboriginal Kisans
There are more than 200 lakhs of aborginal kisans in India. The
Santhal rebellion of the last century and the Koya revolt of the
thirties of this century and the recent agitation among the Bhils
of Dahanu, the tribes of Mymensingh, and Mayurbhanj have
shown that these aboriginal tribes too have in them the irrepressible
spirit of revolt that can shake up modern capitalist hegemony to
its very roots.
The pity is that the Santhal tribal people are not fully aware
of their legal rights accruing from the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act.
‘Even were they aware of it, not one in a thousand would have
the means and the courage to risk the Rajah's displeasure by
having recourse to the law. Hence, Rajahs and landlords ruthlessly
exploit this helplessness of the ryots’ observed Rev. Kanjiya in
1946. (Modern Review).
76 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

These Santhals are losing their lands to the plainsmen, whether

they be money-lenders, landlords or touts. Many are the causes
for this. The following are mentioned by Mr Ece Mculder in his
article in the New Review of February 1947.
(/') Rent suits and executions, (//) loans, (Hi) surrender by fraud,
(iv) wilfully defective settlement, (v) Zhulum and brute force of
landlords, officials, etc., (v/) illegal mutilation of kisans' names on
landlords’ registers, (v/7) misunderstanding of the tribal peoples’
rights by the courts, (v/7/) starting penshops on aboriginal land
and then quietly or suddenly rebuilding these shops into pucca
buildings, (lx) covering aboriginal areas with grogshops, instead
of providing wells, tanks and other forms of irrigation, (.x) the
threat ol leasing out forest and grazing lands to companies of
financiers, bankers or landlords.
As a result of the growing but forced landlessness of kisans
caused by the above methods pursued by money-lenders, land¬
lords and corrupt officials, the area of bakhast lands is increasing
almost in every tribal village, on which the landlord comes to have
the right to settle new kisans.
These complaints are to be met with in every tribal area all
over India. I conducted enquiries into the conditions of tribes
in Hyderabad in 1927 and in Nilgiris in 1929 and in the Andhra
hills in 1931-3 and again in 1936; everywhere the same vicious
economic forces were found to be at work to deprive the tribal
kisans of their rights.
To relieve their social and economic distress and win for them
the same political freedom and status as was being granted to the
other peoples of India, there was founded in 1936, the All-India
Excluded Area and Tribal Peoples’ Association and Sri P.
Kodandaramayya has been its soul ever since. A number of
provincial conferences also have been held. The Provincial Congress
Ministries, notably of Orissa, Bombay, and Assam have been
trying to improve educational facilities for these tribal peoples.
A few co-operative societies too have been formed. But because
we have not yet succeeded in grafting our new organisations on to
the traditional love of their own martyrs and heroes who had
fought for their freedom and their tribal democratic organisations,
as apart from their so-called Rajahs or Chiefs or Muthadars, our
 PEASANTS’ struggles and achievements 77

modern organisations have as yet remained largely beyond the

affections and reach of their masses.
Recently, we have put ourselves in touch with the natural leaders
of some of these tribes, such as Samant, Jaipal Singh, Nichols Roy
and with the Tribal or Adibasi organisations they have been building
up and we trust that very soon these tribal peoples too will be able
to march hand in hand with all other sections in our revolutionary
attempts to achieve Kisan Mazdoor Praja Raj.
We are encouraged in this hope by our recent discoveries of
the revolutionary traditions, legends and ballads that some of
these tribal people have built up. For instance, the Manipuri kisan
women became so adept in the modern intricacies of markets
for their agricultural produce that when the merchants and con¬
sumers of Manipur refused to pay them reasonable prices, they
organised and went on a strike. For weeks, they maintained their
strike and saw to it that there were no blacklegs. In the end, the
Manipuri merchants had to accept the demands of those worldly-
w'ise tribal women.
Secondly, when I visited Akola in 1945, and again Udaipur
in 1946, I came across the inspiring dance recital of a Bhil kisan
cum tribal revolt against their Jaipur and Udaipur Maharanas.
According to this recital, which, by the way, is based upon a popular
ballad woven by the Bhil poets several centuries ago, the Maharana
heaped so many taxes on the Bhils, oppressed them so much and
in the end his officers violated their hearths and the modesty of
their women, that they rose against his oppression. Their leader.
Ram Gopal, organized them for an armed rebellion. For weeks,
a guerilla fight went on between the State troops and the Bhils.
In the end, their leaders were killed, many of their ranks too fell
on the battlefields and out of disgust they left the State in a mass
exodus. But after a time, the son of the Maharaja, when he came
to the gadi, repented for the sins of his father and begged the Bhils
to return to the State.
This legend is woven into such a powerful and eloquent ballad
and it is sung, to the tune of a mass dance which inspires the Bhils
even today into such crescendoes of emotion, anger and abandon
that one can easily get an idea of the passionate mass movement
their rebellion must have been in its own day.
78 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The Adibasis who could organize such a movement and who

could perform such heroic deeds in an organized manner not
only in the Bhil area under their own Bhil leadership, and in the
far distant Manipuri under the leadership of their women but
also under the inspiration of an outsider like Sitarama Raju on
Koraput hills of the Andhra can be expected to take once again
their place in the vanguard of our present-day revolutionary
struggle for the democratic Kisan Mazdoor Praja Raj.

Indian States Peasants Rebel

Between 1937-46, the peasants of a number of Indian States were
in revolt against their horrible conditions of life, which were not
in any way different from the intolerable conditions, prevalent
in the days of Charlemagne, as described in the chapter on The
Peasant Bodo,’ in medieval Europe by Eileen Power.
The following few quotations from her book on Bodo’s life
will give us a realistic picture of a part of the misery of the Indian
peasants in almost all our Indian States and also in a number
of Zamindaris of British India.
‘Every year each man was bound to do a fixed amount of plough¬
ing on the domain land and also to give—Carvee—an unfixed
amount of ploughing every week when it was needed.’
In addition, there was ‘handwork—he had to help repair building
or cut down trees or gather fruits or make ale or carry loads. It
was by these services that the monks got their own seigniorial
farm cultivated.’... ,(p. 16).
The farmers ‘had to carry a load of wood to the big house (of
the landlord) in return for being allowed to gather firewood in the
woods; they had to pay some hogsheads of wine for the right to
pasture their pigs in the same precious woods; every third year,
they had to give up one of their sheep for the right to graze upon
the fields of the chief. Every farmer had also to pay other rents
in produce; every year he owed the big house three chickens and-
fifteen eggs and a large number of planks to repair its buildings;
often he had to give it a couple of pigs; sometimes corn, wine,
honey, wax, soap or oil. Even the wives of the farmers were kept
busy, if they happened to be serfs; for the servile women were
obliged to spin cloth or to make a garment for the big house every
year.’... .(pp. 16, 17).
 peasants’ struggles and achievements 79

The sufferings of the peasants in the Indian States were even

more intolerable and they have had to bear the burden of the
continually accumulating illegal abwabs or imposts. Their feuda¬
lism has inherited all the evils of the Mughal empire and had
been maintained by British arms and the Indian princes!
Against this terrible order, Indian peasants began to protest.
At first the Loharu, Patiala and Nabha peasants revolted. They
organized a ‘Farm Strike’, abandoned their villages and ran into
the neighbouring forests. The States sent out their armed police
and military on horse-back, to hunt the peasants as it were, and
force them to go back to their villages and cultivate their lands.
After some fight, the peasants gave up their Satyagraha. There
came the prolonged Mansa Peasants’ Satyagraha for rent reduc¬
tions. Partial success came their way after a three month struggle.
The Mysore and Travancore State peoples waged their state¬
wide struggles for responsible governments. Many were the
atrocities committed by the governments. Hundreds of peasants
and workers died in those shooting outrages. Only a few political
concessions were made and the feudal dues were reduced.
The struggle then spread to the Orissa States. For a while some
of the princes fled their states, so furious and all-enveloping were
the peasants’ revolts, and so helpless were their local police and
military forces. The princes hastened to promise to abolish a
number of feudal dues, such as forest fees, free supply of fuel,
wood, grass, forced labour and supply of animals. Rents too were
offered to be reduced. Soon the British forces went to their rescue
and the former concessions were mostly withdrawn. Thereupon,
the peasants again rebelled, and marched on the princes’ capitals
and demanded various economic and political concessions. But
the British military fired on them, killed large numbers and sup¬
pressed their risings. Cruel reprisals were thereafter instituted by
the princes. I had an occasion to see large numbers of peasants
who fell victims to those barbarities and they were such as to
bring shame upon the princes and their protectors, the British.
Women were raped, young boys were whipped on their tender
parts, peasants were immersed for many moments in rivers, houses
and villages were burnt down and grain was looted and cattle
confiscated.
Unable to bear these indignities, more than 30,000 peasants
80 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

left their villages in a number of States including Nilgiris, Dhen-

kenal, and marched into the neighbouring forests of Orissa
Province; built small huts out of the forest leaves and branches
and lived in those improvised camps for many months. At long
last, the States had to agree not to resort to any reprisals or indulge
in incendiarism or looting and also to abandon their demands
for forced labour and some of its more oppressive forms before
those peasants could be persuaded to return to their villages.
I visited their camps and interviewed their men, women and
leaders. It was an eye-opener to us. Those camps were perfectly
orderly. They were built according to the traditional village planning
of our peasants. They were ruled by their peasant panchayats. A
number of their leaders were women— old and bold. They display¬
ed their inherent qualities of leadership, organisation, discipline
and unity. Under the stress of that revolution, their traditional
caste distinctions were gone and untouchability was abolished
and they learnt to live as one united equalitarian society.
In the wake of these revolutions, rose the peasants of a number
of Maharashtra and Karnatak States. They too achieved a number
of triumphs and concessions.
Then rose the Jaipur, Gwalior and Udaipur peasants against
their local Thakors and other feudal lords. They made use of the
internal quarrels and contradictions between the States, princes
and the Thakors of Jaipur. They were led by the late Jamnalal
Bajaj, a merchant prince and a great follower of Mahatma Gandhi.
They achieved victory on their economic front. The Udaipur
revolt was put down cruelly. But forced labour had to be abandoned.
During the latter half of 1946, the Hyderabad peasants have risen
against their local feudal chiefs, the Deshmukhs. The Communists
and Congressmen provided the requisite leadership. But as it is
always the case with Communists, they tried to elbow out the
Congressmen and achieve a ‘closed shop’ for their organisation,
with the result that the ranks of the peasants were split and a
large section of the middle classes and merchants were forced to
join hands with the State authorities in order to save themselves
from Communist repression.
The State authorities and their local feudal and other allies
perpetrated many horrors on the Warrangal, Nalgonda and Bidar
peasants. Lootings, rapings, incendiarism and murders of peasants
 PEASANTS’ struggles and achievements 81

became the order of the day. It was after the States’ Peoples’
Organisation and the Andhra Congress had begun to champion
the cause of these'peasant sufferers, that the State has called a halt
to its campaign of repression. But this freedom from the feudal lords
of the States is being won at great cost by States peasants. All over
the Rajasthan States, peasants have had to struggle hard for
months after August 1947 to get rid of forced labour, abwabs
and eventually the Jagirdari or Thakurdari systems.
The sufferings of Hyderabad peasants were of a sterner type.
Owing to the intransigence of the Nizam and his ministry, the
States people had to offer heroic resistance to the Nazi terrorism
of Razakars, a gang of power-mad Moslems. The tribal people,
known as Koyas of Palvancha Taluk, the kisans of Nalgonda,
Warrangal, Mahaboobnagar districts struggled heroically against
the State’s campaign of violence and repression. The Koyas offered
many pitched battles in their mountain fastnesses on the banks
of the Godavari.
Fortunately the statesmanship and strong ‘Police Action’
organised by Sardar Patel, the hero of Bardoli peasant Satyagraha
of 1928, forced the Nizam to surrender. With his fall has come
down the Razakar terror and the power of the landlords.
The liberation of practically the whole princely order and the
consequent liberation of 70 million States peoples and their attain¬
ment of democratic government is the biggest and most romantic
achievement of post-partition India and it is significant that it
has been achieved by Sardar Patel, the kisan statesman. The
Indian States’ peasant masses have been in the vanguard of the
States’ peoples fight for economic and political freedom and thanks
to the attainment of freedom by India on 15th of August 1947
and the statesmanship and revolutionary capacity of Sardar
Vallabhabhai Patel, the States peoples have also attained control
of the government and the feudalism of the zamindari and jagirdari
orders is being liquidated.

Veera Gunnamma
An indomitable spirit of revolt and Satyagraha was displayed by
Veera Gunnamma of Mandasa. On the 31st March 1940, even
as I was being interned and imprisoned by the Madras Govern¬
ment, the local police and Magistrate were arresting seven of the
82 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

local peasant leaders of Mandasa on very flimsy grounds. The

gathering of peasants consisted of more women than men, since
the village was stormed by surprise while men were at work in the
field. The women protested against the unjust arrests. The police
insulted them. Gunnamma roundly abused them for their behaviour.
They fired on her. She sprung upon them like a lioness. She was
being shot at and she continued to vigorously protest against that
police brigandage and injustice until she was felled by the sixth
gunshot wound. Today the Vizagapatam peasants cherish the
memory of this great heroine, who, unarmed as she was, put to
shame, without flinching under the fusillade of shots tearing at
her body, the whole beastly might of British Imperialism. When
on the 1st of September 1941, Bharatidevi, the peasants’ president
was offering to Gunnamma's memory at her grave, the highest
honours due to a peasant martyr, there was a gathering of one
hundred thousand peasants. Peasants have learnt how to die
nobly and heroically and also how to honour their martyrs. It is
in the fitness of things that a woman, Gunnamma should preside
over their growing lists of martyrs.
Even in the realm of practical politics, peasants have achieved
quite a lot. Between 1937-40, a number of Provincial Govern¬
ments had to declare moratoria for rural debts, scale down debt
burdens, improve the rights of Zamindari tenants, reduce rents
and land revenue burdens for all peasants and grant educational
and cultural facilities for landless Harijans and prohibit the aliena¬
tion of the lands of the aboriginal peasantry and so on.

August Revolution and Peasants

During the 1942 August Revolution, it was the Indian peasant
who played the most heroic, dynamic and effective role. Students
and urban middle classes too contributed much. But peasants
excelled themselves. They rose spontaneously and simultaneously,
as if by design and upset the means of transport of the British war
machine. Police stations and other local officers of Government
were captured. Wherever they succeeded in overcoming the local
.governmental forces and agencies, they proceeded to establish
their panchayats and in several areas in United Provinces, Bihar,
Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamilnad, they established their rival
Governments. The most famous achievements were witnessed in
 PEASANTS' struggles and achievements 83

Midnapore and Satara Districts where for years, the British were
unable or regain their control over whole regions consisting of
the masses of peasants.
Thus the 20th century and post-August revolutionary peasants
have shown that they are bent upon achieving political power
and that they are no longer content with mere looting and occa¬
sional displays of their discontent and fury. One remarkable
feature of this peasant regime of post-August revolution is that
no harm was done to private properties, ordinary individuals or
their interests and only Government agents and properties were
attacked. Underground activities were highly developed and
both criminal and civil agencies of their Panchayat Raj were used
to maintain law and order in their emancipated peasant India.
Thus the peasant became the central figure of the 1942 revolution.
One other interesting feature of peasant revolution is the rapidity
with which peasant revolutionaries were able to construct the
whole edifice of separate panchayats for political, administrative
and judicial purposes and make them all work efficiently and in
harmony. In Satara district from the villages right upto the district
level, these tiers of panchayats were built up. And they did remark¬
able work. They were able to make and enforce laws. They could
collect taxes and cesses and administer public funds. All this was
possible because the hoary traditions of Panchayat Raj and demo¬
cracy were still there with the peasants in their folk-lore and day-to-
day settlement of village affairs and disputes. And they served as
foundations. So, neither the exercise of political power through
panchayat democracy nor the management of administration were
new. This is another proof, if proof were needed, to demonstrate
the capacity of Indian and Chinese and African peasants to run
their administration, if and when they capture political and eco¬
nomic power.
No longer are our peasants’ satyagraha campaigns isolated
struggles unobserved by the peasants of other parts, as Lenin
found Russians to be. Wherever there was a struggle, the peasants
of the whole of India came to be interested in it, collected funds,
observed sympathetic All-India Days and helped the sufferers in
every possible manner. Thus the Mandasa State subjects, the
Orissa State subjects. Refugee Camps, the Bengali Flood victims,
the Rayalaseema famine-stricken peasants, the Malabar peasants
84 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and so many others were helped on an all-India basis. True, the

All-India Peasants Congress had come to knit all the peasants
together under the aegis of a National Peasant unity. But it was
Mahatma Gandhi and the National Congress which laid the
foundations for the growth of the new consciousness and familiariz¬
ed the peasants with the potent idea of their national unity.
 6 Indian Peasant Uprisings

Kathleen Gough

In kilvenmani village in eastern Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, in 1969,

a group of Harijan landless labourers, influenced by the CPI(M),
struck for higher wages in view of the increased production and price
inflation brought about by the ‘green revolution’.1 Goons hired
by their landlords arrived on their street at night, imprisoned
42 men, women and children in a hut and burnt these people to
ashes.2 Again, in Chandwa-Rupaspur village, Bihar, in November
1971, a movement of Santhal tribespeople resisting encroachment
of their land was met by landlords’ thugs. Four Santhals were
roasted alive, 10 were shot dead or hacked to pieces, 33 were
severaly wounded and 45 huts burned down.3 These incidents
and many similar ones have illustrated a process of peasant resist¬
ance and landlord reprisals that has intensified in India during
the past se/en years. Since the Naxalbari uprising in West Bengal
in 1967 and the emergence of rebel and revolutionary groups
among both townsfolk and peasantry, several peasant struggles
have erupted, hundreds of landlords, police and moneylenders
have been assassinated, and thousands of peasants have died by
violence.4
Social movements among the peasantry have been widely
prevalent in India during and since British rule. We may define
a social movement as ‘the attempt of a group to effect change in
the face of resistance’5 and peasants as people who engage in
agricultural or related production with primitive (palaeotechnic)
means and who surrender part of their produce or its equivalent
to landlords or to agents of the state. This article is confined to
social movements which (a) involved peasants as the sole or main
force, (b) were class struggles against those who exacted surplus
from peasants and (c) undertook or were provoked to armed
struggle in the course of their careers.
Reprinted Rom Economic and Political Weekly Vol. IX 32-4, Special Number,
August 1974, pp. 1391-1412.
86 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Generally, the scope and significance of India’s peasant uprisings

have been understressed. Barrington Moore, Jr. for example, in
spite of acknowledging at some length instances of peasant
revolts described in recent Indian writings, concludes that China
forms ‘a most instructive contrast with India, where peasant
rebellions in the premodern period were relatively rare and com¬
pletely ineffective and where modernisation impoverished the
peasants at least as much as in China and over as long a period of
time'.6 Moore attributes the alleged weakness of Indian peasant
movements to the caste system with its hierarchical divisions
among villagers and to the strength of bourgeois leadership against
the landlords and the British and the pacifying influence of Gandhi
on the peasantry.7 I would argue that peasant revolts have in fact
been common both during and since the British period, every
state of present-day India having experienced several over the
past two hundred years. Thus in a recent brief survey I discovered
77 revolts, the smallest of which probably engaged several thousand
peasants in active support or in combat. About 30 revolts must
have affected several tens of thousands, and about 12, several
hundreds of thousands. Included in these revolts is the ‘Indian
Mutiny’ of 1857-8, in which vast bodies of peasants fought or
otherwise worked to destroy British rule over an area of more
than 500,000 square miles.8 The frequency of these revolts and
the fact that at least 34 of those I considered were solely or partly
by Hindus, cause me to doubt that the caste system has seriously
impeded peasant rebellion in times of trouble.
There does seem no doubt that, apart from the Mutiny, peasant
uprisings in China usually had a wider geographical scope than
those in India. At least since late Moghul times the reasons for
this may have included political fragmentation as well as diversity
of language and culture among India’s people. During the later
decades of Moghul rule the country had already disintegrated into
a number of virtually autonomous, mutually warring kingdoms
and principalities between whose peasants there was little contact.
The British conquered India piecemeal over a hundred year period
from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Early
revolts against their rule therefore tended to occur at different
dates in different regions, although there was inter-regional co¬
ordination among the largest—for example, those led by Raja
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 87

Chait Singh in Oudh and other areas in 1778-81. by Vizier Ali in

Gorakhpur in 1799. and by the military chiefs (poligars) of Madras
and Andhra in 1801-5.°
Shortly after the British had subdued most of India a huge upris¬
ing. widely backed by the peasantry, did sweep over most of
Northern and Central India in the shape of the Mutiny, but even
in this case resistance tended to be strongest in the areas more
recently conquered, while those which had earlier had revolts
that had been crushed, played lesser roles.10
After the Mutiny, British rule and military preparedness became
stronger than ever and the rural upper classes of landlords and
princes were either crushed totally or co-opted by the British
through concessions. At the same time, political disunity was
perpetuated by the division of India into British provinces inter¬
spersed with ‘native states’ having separate judicial systems.
Popular action was difficult to organise across these boundaries
as well as across ethnic and linguistic lines. Between the Mutiny
and Independence, the British government and army were also
better co-ordinated than those of China and India was not disturbed
by invasions. In these circumstances, politically disunited, under a
despotic Central government and opposed by their landed aristo¬
crats, after 1858 peasants engaged only in regional uprisings led
by religious figures or by local peasant committees until political
parties began to form peasant unions in the 1930s. Even so, some
of these revolts were impressive and wrung concessions from the
rulers. Since the mid-1930s peasant uprisings as well as non-violent
resistance by peasants have usually been at least partly guided by
political parties, especially by communists, or else by nationalist
and separatist movements of the formerly primitive tribes. In brief,
I would argue that the limitations of Indian peasant revolts have
sprung more from broader political forces at the level of the pro¬
vince and the colonial and post-colonial state than from the caste
system or from peculiarities of village structure. At least two Indian
authors have, indeed, argued that the caste system provided a
framework for the organisation of peasant rebellions, since in
many cases peasants were able to assemble quickly through the
medium of their caste assemblies.11
When peasant uprisings figure in the British literature, they are
often obscured under such headings as ‘communal riots’ between
88 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

major religions, fanatical religious cults, or the activities of‘criminal’

castes and tribes. While the armed struggles of peasants have
often had these characteristics, a large proportion of such move¬
ments has also, and primarily, been concerned with the struggles
of tenants, agricultural labourers, plantation workers, or tribal
cultivators, against the exactions of landlords, bureaucrats of
the state, merchants, moneylenders, or their agents, the police
and the military.

The Colonial Background

Information is limited about peasant uprisings and other forms
of violence against the rich and powerful in remote pre-British
times. Whatever the earlier record, revolts broke out in many areas
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the Moghul
bureaucracy became more oppressive and exacted harsher taxes,
as commercial relations penetrated the country side, and as local
rulers made increasing incursions into tribal hill territories.12 Promi¬
nent among the peasant rebellions against the Moghuls were those
of the Jats of the Ganges-Jamuna region from the 1660s to 1690s,
and of the Satnami religious sect in Namaul in 1672. In some, but
not all, of the revolts against the Moghul power, peasants placed
themselves under the leadership of local princes or land managers
(zamindars) who rebelled because the imperial land revenue pressed
so heavily on the peasants that there was little left for these local
dignitaries. In the eighteenth century, the rapid expansions of Sikh
and Maratha power and the growth of Thuggee bands in the heart¬
land of the empire owed much to the fervent support of peasants
suffering under Moghul revenue exactions.13 Outside the empire,
peasant opposition to encroaching royal authority in the eighteenth
century was instanced in the revolts of the Maomoria movement
against the kings of the Assam valley,14 and in south India, in the
resistance of the Kallar (literally, ‘Robber’) tribespeople against the
efforts of the rulers of Ramnad and Madura to extract taxes from
them in traditionally independent hill regions.15
As it spread gradually throughout India, however, British rule
brought a degree of disruption and suffering among the peasantry
which was, it seems likely, more prolonged and widespread than
had occurred in Moghul times.16 The effects of British rule came, of
course, unevenly and in stages, but once operative, they created a
structure of underdevelopment in the Indian countryside which
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 89

became endemic, and which has been modified but never eradicated
since Independence. Although I cannot analyse this structure in
detail here, the following seem to me to have been the major
changes that have affected Indian peasants during the 200-odd
years between the beginning of British rule and the present time.
1 The early decades of rule by the East India Company saw out¬
right plunder of the country’s wealth coupled with ruinous taxation
of the peasantry, in some areas up to twice that imposed by the
Moghuls. These no doubt contributed to the Bengal famine of 1770
in which a third of the people died. The collection of heavy revenues
was subsequently regularised in the Permanent Settlement of Bengal,
Bihar and Orissa in 1793 and in comparably harsh settlements in
other regions. Revenues in the early decades were used chiefly for
government expenses, wars, private fortunes, remittances to Britain
and public works designed to increase imperial trade.17
2 In later decades, land revenue declined to a much smaller
proportion of the crop than was exacted by the Moghuls, but
by that time surplus was being removed from the peasants by
other kinds of agents such as moneylenders, noncultivating inter¬
mediary tenants, landlords, merchants, the new professional classes
such as lawyers, and particularly, although less directly, by British
firms engaged in export crop farming, banking, shipping, exports
and imports and internal trade.18
3 The British land settlements for the first time made land private
property of a capitalist kind. The new landlords included zamindars
who had previously been revenue collectors under the Moghuls, a
variety of princes or subordinate rulers, village headmen, military
tenants, religious or secular functionaries of former governments, in
some cases peasant cultivators who had hitherto merely leased land
under customary regulation, and in other cases merchants or money¬
lenders who bought land rights, along with the right to collect
revenue, in government auctions when previous revenue collectors
proved unable to bring in the tax. While such persons gained private
landownership, the lower ranks of cultivating tenants, village
servants, and serfs lost their hereditary rights to work and tp share
the produce of village lands, and could be evicted if their landlords
found them unnecessary, recalcitrant or unable to pay their rents.
4 During and since British rule, there has been increasing
encroachment on tribal hill territories and oppression of tribes-
people by European and Indian planters, by government usurpa-
90 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

tion of forest areas, by landlords, merchants, and moneylenders

from the plains, and by government agents. To the loss of large
tribal areas was added exploitation in such forms as rack-renting,
unequal terms of trade, usury, corvee and even slave labour, and
the obligation to grow cash crops for little or no return.19
5 The British effected a reduction in the scale of at least some
Indian handloom and handicraft industries, especially those for
the production of luxury goods, through discriminatory internal
and external tariffs. Such measures virtually destroyed India’s
export of manufactured goods and also obliged Indians to buy
British industrial manufactures, notably cotton textiles.20 Reports
indicate that centres of manufacture such as Dacca and Agra, as
large or larger than London in the mid-eighteenth century, shrank
as a result of these and other British policies to a fraction of their
former size.21 Craftsmen deprived of their livelihood were driven
back upon the land as tenants or landless labourers or joined
the modern urban lumpen proletariat. Peasants had to sell their
produce for cash, often to moneylenders in return for advance
loans, in order to buy imported goods as well as to pay rents and
revenues.
6 On balance, India was plundered through the export of capital
to Britain by such methods as the repatriation of profits and salaries,
debt services for colonial wars and public works, ‘home charges’
and adverse terms of trade with respect to raw materials exported
from India and to imported manufactured goods.
7 In many regions various means were used to encourage or
compel cultivators to grow industrial crops, and even food crops,
for export. In addition to highland plantations for tea, coffee,
cinnamon, and later, rubber, large areas of the plains were at
different periods turned over to indigo, opium, cotton, oilseeds,
jute, pepper, coconuts, and other export crops.22 Landlords and
local merchants profited from their sales to British export firms,
and brought pressure on peasants to grow them in their roles as
wage labourers, serfs, tenants or indebted smallholders. Despite
the expansion of the total cultivated area, the production of export
crops reduced the area available for subsistence farming in at
least some regions such as Kerala.
8 Speculation and investment in land by merchants, bureaucrats,
landlords, and successful cash crop farmers made land sales increa-
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 91

singly common. The growth of absentee landlordism and of cultiva¬

tion for private profit meant that traditional paternalistic relations of
landlords and their tenants were disrupted in many villages, and
that tenants and labourers were exposed to new and more alienat¬
ing forms of exploitation, resulting in greater resentment on their
part.
9 Population increase occurred, especially after 1921, as modem
medical supplies and services reduced epidemics and infant morta¬
lity. Thus, the population of former British India more than doubled
between 1891 and 1951. At the same time, industry developed
very slowly, so that there came to be too many villagers for a
palaeotechnic agriculture to feed adequately and large-scale un¬
employment or underemployment in the villages. In India as a
whole, per capita agricultural output declined between 1911 and
1947.23 Some of the consequences of ‘agricultural overpopulation’
were fragmentation of landholdings leading to dwarf-tenancies;
competition for land among share-croppers and other tenants,
which encouraged rack-renting; moneylending and chronic rural
indebtedness; and the growth of debt bondage in some areas
and of poorly paid day labour in others. Although the data are
imperfect, it seems probable that there has been, both during and
since British rule, a decline in the proportions of landlords, rich
peasants and middle peasants and an increase in the proportions
of poor peasants and landless labourers.24 Today, India has
everywhere overburdened villages and underemployed and ill-
nourished villagers.25
10 From the 1850s with the building of the railways, the increased
movement of goods and people had profound effects. It fur¬
ther undermined the unity and self-sufficiency of villages. The
modern transport of foodgrains reduced the danger of severe
regional famines; at the same time, by permitting grain stocks
to be removed from prosperous areas it appears to have allowed
the growth of chronic malnutrition throughout the country.
Concomitantly, however, modern transport fostered the movement
of ideas between town and country and created links between
urban and rural people. Such links strengthened the Indian nationa¬
list movement led by the bourgeoisie; they also permitted a degree
of unity between peasants and urban workers in the more recent
revolts.
92 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

11 The most brutal feature of the British period was the famines.26
There were serious regional famines before British rule, notably
in the Deccan in 1630-32 and in 1702-4. It seems certain, however,
that the famines of the British period were more frequent. Thus,
14 major famines are known to have occurred between the early
eleventh and the late seventeenth centuries. During the period of
government by the East India Company, by contrast, in addition
to the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1770, there were twelve serious
famines and four periods of acute scarcity before the Mutiny of
1857, while Indian peasants were being tormented by excessive
revenue exactions. Still more devastating famines followed the
Mutiny. The worst occurred between 1865 and 1899, and the most
severe of all in 1896-7, when 97 million were seriously affected
and at least 4.5 million died. Another 650,000 died in 1898, and
a further 3.25 million in 1899. In the famines of the 1860s the
principal victims were landless labourers and unemployed weavers,
but by 1900 tenant cultivators formed the largest category employed
in government relief works during famines in the Deccan and
Gujarat, while landless labourers formed the next largest category,
and weavers were still prominent. The data suggest that by the
end of the century tenant cultivators had no reserves left and that
in famines they suffered almost equally with landless labourers
and with artisans thrown out of work by British industrial policies.
Using figures collected by Bhatia, and selecting only those which
record the deaths of more than 100,000 people in any single famine
year and region. I have calculated a total of 20,687,000 famine
deaths in India between 1866 and 1943. Because of the omission
of smaller figures this is undoubtedly far too low.
Probably thanks to improved transportation, there was no
very large famine between 1908 and 1943, when the stoppage of
rice imports from Burma by the Japanese invasion, coupled with
hoarding and speculation, produced the Bengal famine in which
3.5 million died. Since 1947 nO catastrophic major famine has
occurred in India proper (as distinct from Bangladesh), but un¬
known millions annually die untimely deaths as a result of illness
compounded with chronic malnutrition. A United Nations report
of 1963 charged that five million Indian children still died of malnu¬
trition each year.27 Severe shortages occurred in 1964-6, and
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 93

since 1971 the situation has become increasingly critical, with

famine deaths, suicides by starving people, food riots and other
forms of agitation in many parts of India.
Since Independence, and especially since 1954, foreign food
loans have augmented India’s food supply, but have also helped
plunge the country hopelessly into debt.28 India’s own food
production has roughly doubled since Independence. This is no
mean achievement, but even when combined with foreign imports
the increase is barely adequate to meet the needs of a population
which grew from 356 million in 1951 to 556 million in 1971. When
combined with hoarding, speculation and widening inequality in
incomes, it is not at all adequate.
12 Since Independence, land reforms have removed some of the
biggest landlords—the zamindars—and some of the non-cultivating
intermediary tenants, but in general laws on land ceilings have
been evaded.29 Before and after each act, landlords have evicted
numerous tenants on the grounds that they needed the land for
‘personal cultivation’ and have created new paper owners’ to
conform with the acts while leaving the real control undisturbed.
At least in some areas, therefore, land reforms have resulted in
an increase in the proportions of poor peasants working part-time
for wages, of landless labourers, and of both rural and urban casual
workers and unemployed.30
13 During 1965-71 the ‘green revolution’ increased productivity
in some regions. Reports indicate, however, that it tended still
further to polarise agricultural incomes, for it enriched the larger
owners while tenants and labourers gained little or none of the
increase during a period in which they were also being affected
by generalised inflation. As farms are consolidated and operate
as industrial capitalist enterprises, the green revolution dispossesses
some tenants, disemploys some landless labourers and drives out
of business small farmers who cannot afford the new technology
and cannot compete.31 In 1972-4, moreover, the gains of the green
revolution have for the most part been wiped out by seasonal
drought and flooding or, most recently, by shortages of fertilisers.
The above conditions form the background of agrarian revolt
from the late eighteenth century until the present. Directly or
indirectly, all of them have been either created or severely exacerbat-
94 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ed by British colonial policies or by the policies of the Indian

government, under the influence of imperialism, in the post-colonial
period.32

Types of Peasant Uprisings

Seventy-seven revolts, including the Mutiny, were considered in
preparation for this article. Eight of them occurred in East Bengal
(present-day Bangladesh); as it happened, none were selected from
regions lying in present-day Pakistan. The East Bengal revolts
help to illustrate general processes at work in British India. This
paper does not cover agrarian unrest in what became East Pakistan
and later, Bangladesh; it is evident, however, that there have been
peasant uprisings there since the end of British rule, especially
during the invasion by Yahya Khan's forces in 1971, and revolu¬
tionary movements based on peasants are continuing there.33
A rough classification of the revolts during British rule yields
five types of action in terms of goals, ideology and methods of
organisation: (1) Restorative rebellions to drive out the British
and restore earlier rulers and social relations; (2) religious move¬
ments for the liberations of a region or an ethnic group under a
new form of government; (3) social banditry (to use Hobsbawm’s
term);34 (4) terrorist vengeance, with ideas of meting out collective
justice; (5) mass insurrections for the redress of particular
grievances.
The first and second of these types are transformative, in the
sense that they sought from the beginning—and sometimes briefly
achieved—a largescale restructuring of society.3s Restorative
revolts were, however, backward looking, whereas India’s religious
peasant movements have been ‘nativistic’ in combining traditional
cultural elements and values with new themes, sometimes derived
from the oppressing groups, in a utopian vision of a Golden Age.
The third, fourth and fifth types are initially reformative in the
sense that they aim at only partial changes in society. Both the
third and the fifth types have, however, sometimes become trans¬
formative and have led to the seizure of a liberated zone. The
fourth type, terrorist vengeance, can take place sporadically and
spontaneously with little or no organisation; it has probably occur¬
red thousands of times in all parts of the country in the form of
small outbursts of retaliation against landlords, moneylenders.
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 95

etc. Occasionally, however, terrorist vengeance seems to develop

into an organised movement, sometimes involving a religious
cult; it is also usually present to some degree in all of the other
four types. Religious movements (type 2) are thus not completely
confined to attempts to liberate an ethnic group or a region:
some bandit groups, indeed, have special religious cults, as well as
some terrorist movements, and both restorative rebellions and
•

insurrections have usually been regarded as sanctioned by ‘normal’

religion. The religious movements for liberation are, however, a
sufficiently distinctive group, bearing messianic and millenarian
messages, to be placed in a separate category. Finally, both messianic
religious movements and agitations for the redress of special
grievances have, of course, occurred very frequently in non-violent
forms; but this paper deals only with armed revolts, or (in two or
three cases) with armed movements which engaged in forceful
action without actually resorting to fighting.
Since the mid-1930s peasant unions have been organised by a
variety of socialist and social democratic groups and since the
mid- 1940s several armed peasant uprisings have occurred under
communist influence. Some of these outbreaks took place in
regions already shaken by peasant uprisings in the British period—
notably, in Bengal, in various tribal hill regions and in Kerala.
With modifications, the communist-inspired outbreaks have parta¬
ken of the character of types 3,4 and 5, coupled with a consciously
revolutionary and transformative ideology having some elements
akin to type 2. There have thus been continuities as well as changes
between the earlier revolts and the modern communist ones. The
most significant changes have, of course, been the attempt at leader¬
ship by a vanguard political party, together with the possession
of a view of world history, an analysis of India, a strategy of revo¬
lution and a plan for the nation state at large, derived from the
theories of Marx and Lenin and, more recently, of Mao Tse-tung.
The goals and methods of those engaged in revolt varied with
their circumstances. Although no neat correlations are evident
I shall suggest some connections between contexts and types
of revolt. All of the revolts seem to have occurred under conditions
of relative deprivation,36 that is of deprivation considered out¬
rageous by comparison with the past or with the condition of others
in the present. All of them embodied ideas of freedom from undue
96 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

economic exploitation or deprivation; of some form of collective

independence from a domination conceived of as foreign and
unjustified; and of a just social order sanctioned by some religious
faith or all-embracing modern ideology, especially that of Marxism.
It is true of course that Marxism differs from religious belief in
its denial of the supernatural, and that the work of Marx and
his successors points a way towards non-dogmatic, scientific
analysis of social phenomena. As a political ideology, however,
especially when translated into the language and concepts of
peasants, Marxism has similarities to religious movements in that
it purports to offer a complete explanation of society and especially
of social evils, and in that parts of the explanation are accepted on
faith. Marxist movements are also dedicated to a future state of
ethical virtue, providing new relationships for a ‘blessed com¬
munity’. Finally, as in chiliastic religious movements, its followers
are ideally willing to sacrifice their lives to bring this state about.
Contrary to Cohn,37 I do not regard these qualities as undesirable
in times of oppression, nor as necessarily linked with lack of
realism or with collective paranoia.

Restorative Movements
Between 1765 and 1857 a large proportion of revolts were led by
Hindu or Muslim petty rulers, former revenue agents under the
Moghuls, tribal chiefs in hill regions and local landed military
officers (poligars) in south India. They were supported by masses
of peasants and sometimes of former soldiers. The revolts were
either against the conquest itself and the imposition' of heavy re¬
venues on existing nobles, or retaliatory attempts to drive out the
British after they had dispossessed a zamindar or a raja for failing
to pay the revenues and had replaced him with some other claimant
to the estate, with a Company officer, or with a merchant, money¬
lender or adventurer who had bought the estate at auction. The
goals of these revolts were complete annihilation or expulsion of
the British .and reversion to the previous government and agrarian
relations. The peasants were not blind loyalists. Their own griev¬
ances were bitter, for in their efforts to squeeze out the revenue
the Company’s officers often completely pauperised the peasants
or had them starved, flogged or jailed.38
Twenty-nine revolts involving peasants as the main force were
counted for this period, 12 by tribal chiefs and 17 by Hindu or
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 97

Muslim rulers or other former officials.39 Six took place in Bengal,

five in Bihar, three in Assam and 15 in central and south India.
The enemies in these rebellions included all British officials and
troops, British plantation owners, revenue agents, pro-British
landlords, moneylenders, and police. Rebel armies of peasants
and former soldiers holed up in forts, in the forests, or on hill tops
with stocks of grain, and from there made forays in bands of a
few hundred to several thousand, robbing and killing officials,
looting and burning treasuries, plundering merchant boats or the
homes of landlords and moneylenders, and ambushing or fighting
off police and troops with matchlocks, knives, swords, or bows
and arrows. All of the movements involved several thousand
armed rebels and supporting populations of tens or hundreds of
thousands. The largest rebellions produced alliances of nobles in
several districts, peasant insurrections over wide areas, the capture
of towns and the temporary expulsion of the British from one or
more local government centres.
Among these major uprisings were the revolt of Raja Chait Singh
and other Hindu and Muslim zamindars of Oudh in 1778-81;
the subsequent revolt of Vizier Ali, the deposed Nawab of Oudh,
in Banaras, Gorakhpur and surrounding areas in 1799; the massive
uprisings of the poligars and their peasants in Tinnevelly, North
Arcot, and the ceded districts of Andhra in 1801-5; the uprising
of the Chuar tribesmen of Midnapore in 1799;40 the revolt of the
Pazhassi Raja, which commanded tens of thousands of guerilla
fighters and affected most of the population of Malabar in 1796-
1805; and almost immediately afterwards, an insurrection further
south in Travancore and Cochin by Velu Thampi, the prime minister
of Travancore state, with professional army of 30,000 and even
larger numbers of cultivators. The last of these major rebellions
before the Mutiny was the famous Santhal tribal revolt of 1855-6,
involving a peasant army of between 30 and 50 thousand, village
assemblies in groups of 10,000, and tens of thousands of government
troops. All these revolts were, of course, eventually crushed by the
British. Some rebel leaders fled into banditry or, very rarely, were
reinstated with less exacting revenue settlements. More commonly
they were wiped out with exemplary savagery; Velu Thampi was
hanged publicly after his death. The Pazhassi Raja was executed
and his lineage dispossessed; his palace was razed and a road built
over the site. After a few of the revolts the revenue exactions on
98 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the peasants were reduced, but more often 'pacification' was

brutally effected. Half the Santhal army was murdered, and the
victors randomly flogged or imprisoned peasants as examples to
others. The Oudh revolt of 1778-81 ended with the zamindars’
forts destroyed, their owners expelled into banditry and fierce
plunderings and revenue exactions in the countryside which led
to the famine of 1784.
The largest restorative rebellion was, of course, the 'Mutiny’ of
1857-8. Begun by Hindu and Muslim soldiers in revolt against
their conditions and against offences to their religions, it engaged
millions of impoverished peasants, ruined artisans, dispossessed
nobles, estate managers, tribal chiefs, landlords, religious leaders
(Hindu, Muslim, tribal and Sikh), civil servants, boatmen, shop¬
keepers, mendicants, low caste labourers and workers in European
plantations and factories. The leaders included rajas and nawabs
with the emperor of Delhi as figurehead, native gentry, tribal
chiefs and village headmen some of whom set themselves up as
kings. The revolt was not centrally co-ordinated, but leaped from
district to district throughout most of northern and central India
and inspired scattered uprisings in the south.41 The racism of the
conquerors, their insults to religion, their eviction of rulers and
managers, and above all their ruination of agriculture and manu¬
factures, combined to provoke an anti-imperialist cataclysm. For
the peasants, years of rack-renting, famines, high prices, tariffs,
debts, land seizures and physical brutality were the main grievances;
for the artisans, loss of livelihood; for the workers, low wages
and sub-human conditions; and for the hill chiefdoms, incursions,
taxes and loss of land. The prime enemies were of course the British
government, military and planters, the big ‘IqyaP princes who allied
with them, the revenue officers, the wealthier merchants and the
money lenders. The revolt raged most fiercely in areas which had
been conquered after 1800. for example, Oudh (conquered in
1856), Chota Nagpur (1831-3), Jabalpur (1818), Nagpur (1854),
Jhansi (1853) and Berar (1853-60). Bengal, Orissa, the ceded
districts of Andhra and Madras, Kerala, Mysore and Bombay,
which had been conquered earlier and had already undergone
rebellions and repression, played lesser roles.
In the heart of the rebel area mass insurrections of armed peasants,
in addition to the mutinying troops and the private armies of rulers.
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 99

combined to massacre the British and to destroy government

buildings, revenue and court records, coffee and indigo plantations
and factories, telegraphs, railways and churches—in short, every
organ of British rule. The war was a holy war, so announced
repeatedly by rulers and religious Jeaders, but it was also most
interestingly a war in which Hindu and Muslim, tribesman and
Sikh, explicitly foreswore mutual enmity and combined in defence
of their own and each others’ customs and honour against infidel
conquest and oppression. Contrary to standard British accounts,
it seems to have come within an ace of ending the Company’s
rule.42 It failed, apparently, because it did not spread to all of India
and was not centrally co-ordinated (as was the British government
and army), and because, spreading at different dates from region
to region, the rebellion lost some strongholds, in particular Delhi,
before it could properly take hold in others. Nevertheless, for
several months it raged over a 500,000-square-mile region in which
the peasantry, including the lowest castes and the landless labourers,
formed the backbone of resistance.

Religious Movements
After the failure of the Mutiny and the annexation of India by
the Crown, rebel princes and chiefs were fpr the most part execut¬
ed, driven into exile, or co-opted by the government. Tribal chiefs
played a part in some of the later uprisings and also some religious
leaders with claims to royal or noble descent. In general, however,
peasant rebels from the Mutiny to the 1930s joined bandit troops,
engaged in insurrections under their own committees or local
popular leaders, or else took part in movements for local libera¬
tion under charismatic religious leaders. A number of such religious
movements had already occurred before the Mutiny.
Hobsbawm,43 Cohn,44 and Worsley45 have suggested that
millenarian movements were rare or absent in India and the view
is widespread that they stem usually from Judaeo-Christian origins
or influences. In the strict sense of belief in a thousand year period
in which the Evil One will be chained, this is probably true, but
most writers give a wider meaning to millenarian. Cohn cites five
characteristics: such movements are collective; they look forward
to a reign of bliss on this earth; the transformation from the present
evil age is to be total; it is imminent, its followers waiting in ‘tense
100 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

expectation of the millennium’; and it will come about by super

natural means.46
In this sense, a number of millenarian movements have arisen
among Hindus, Muslims and tribal peoples in India over the past
two centuries and probably earlier, although their prevalence
has until recently been overlooked by researchers. Stephen Fuchs’
‘Rebellious Prophets: A Study of Messianic Movements in Indian
Religions’47 describes more than 50 movements with messianic
and millenarian overtones. All had divine or prophetic leaders
who were believed to possess supernatural powers and looked
forward to a terrestrial state of righteousness and justice in which
their enemies would be removed or defeated. Most were trans¬
formative rather than reformative in their expectation of a sudden,
total change, and most believed the Golden Age to be imminent
and subject to some kind of supernatural intervention.
Fuchs records 19 such movements among peasants which
resorted to armed struggle against the British and against those
familiar foes, the landlords, merchants, moneylenders, revenue
agents and otjier bureaucrats, troops, and police. The Moplah
(or Mappilla) revolts of Malabar which took place between 1836
and 1896—actually 22 in number and varying somewhat in ideology
—are here counted as one further instance, for a total of twenty 48
Of these 20 revolts involving armed struggle, 10 occurred among
tribal peoples and 10 among predominantly Muslim or Hindu
populations. Ten arose before the Mutiny and 10 afterwards. Four
of the non-tribal movements occurred in Bengal, one in Gujarat,
one in Maharashtra, one in Malwa, one in Patiala, one in Kerala
and one in Assam. Six of the 10 non-tribal movements were Muslim
and only four predominantly Hindu, although most of the tribal
peoples were affected by Hinduism as well as Christianity and a
few by Islam. It is probable that other millenarian revolts may
yet come to light among the Hindu peoples of various regions;
certainly, there were some non-violent Hindu millenarian move¬
ments.49 At present it seems, however, that tribal and Muslim
minorities, especially in eastern India, were those most liable to
violent uprisings on a millenarian kind.
If this is true, I suggest that fervent chiliastic movements may be
most likely to arise among cultural minorities who have lost their
customary security, occupations or statuses and have suffered
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 101

unusual deprivation by comparison with their own past and with

those around them.50 This would apply particularly to the Muslim
cultivators of Bengal and Kerala who suffered acutely, often under
Hindu landlords, both as rack-rented or evicted peasants, and as
religious groups who were hated by those in authority because
their co-religionists had earlier wielded political power. I would
also apply to the tribal peoples, who, more than most groups in
India, suffered incursions, loss of land, swindling, bankruptcy,
and the undermining of their culture by literate and technologically
superior invaders, both British and Indian. It is noteworthy that
the Hindus who have joined religious movements with an egalitarian
and millenarian flavour, for example, the Vaishnavite Maomorias
of Assam in 1769-1839 and the followers of the Bengal Sanyasis
in the late eighteenth century, were also predominantly low caste
or of tribal origin, suffering unusual deprivation from evictions,
famine, and excessive rents or revenues.51
It seems likely that the more hopeless the real prospects of the
religious movement and the fewer its means of practical rehabilita¬
tion or redress, the greater the tendency to seek an imminent mil¬
lenarian outcome through nonempirical means, and to invest
the leader with marvellous, indeed magical, powers. Thus five of
the 19 movements studied were classically millenarian in character,
waiting in tense expectation of imminent deliverance, chiefly by
supernatural means. These movements included the early movement
of Moplah tenants in the 1830s to 1850, led by the Mambram
Tangal,52 the Naikda tribal movement in Gujarat under the
Hindu religious leader Joria Bhagat in 1867-70,53 the Munda tribal
movement under Birsa in the 1890s,54 and the Bhil tribal movement
under Govindgiri, a tribal convert to Hinduism, in 1900-12, fol¬
lowing a severe famine in 1900. The Bhil groups of the Panch
Mahals and the Naikdas, both of whom probably number fewer
than 10,000, came to believe that their leader was himself an
incarnation of the supreme deity (Parameswar or Siva among the
Naikdas and Vishnu among the Bhils). Both groups thought that
their divine leader would deliver them from British rule and establish
an independent, ethical tribal kingdom, which the Naikdas called
dharmraj (kingdom of virtue), a Hindu term. The Muslim Moplah
tenants, suffering from rack-renting, evictions and famine with the
spread of cash crop farming and the disruption of their formerly
102 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

stable tenancies,56 were taught by the Tangal that if they would

give up cultivating, pray diligently, and organise for battle, a ship
bearing arms and modern equipment for 40,000 men would mira¬
culously appear on the horizon and the British would be driven
out of Malabar—a clear case of a millenarian cargo cult. Birsa
received teaching from both Lutheran missionaries and Hindu
ascetics but then reverted to his Munda religion, bringing with him
beliefs and images from both major faiths. He taught the Mundas
first that he was a divinely appointed messenger come to deliver
them from foreign rule, and later that he was an incarnation of
God (Bhagwan) himself. His mission was to save the faithful from
destruction in imminent flood, fire and brimstone by leading them
to the top of a mountain. Beneath them, all the British, Hindus
and Muslims would perish, after which a Munda kingdom would
be ushered in.
Although their religious predictions failed, all of these movements
organised such numbers of fervent followers that they took instead
to empirical means and made armed attacks on their oppressors.
Birsa assembled a force of 6,000 Mundas armed with swords and
bows and arrows, some of whom burned Hindu temples and
Christian houses and churches, killed a constable and were finally
defeated in battle by government troops. Joria’s followers were
organised for revolt by Rupsing Gobar, a rebel leader who actually
founded a Naikda kingdom, collected revenues, and sacked two
nearby police stations before his army was subdued by British
forces. Govindgiri collected an army in the Mangarh hills in 1911
and plundered the surrounding Hindu and Muslim landowners,
but was conquered by state troops and British artillery. Bands, of
Moplah devotees numbering from three hundred to several hundred,
chiefly tenants facing eviction, carried out 22 uprisings over a
period of 60 years in several talukas of Malabar, in which they
assassinated numerous police, government officials, Hindu land¬
lords and British and Indian troops. Faced with insuperable odds,
but driven to frenzied action by continuing economic misery,
the Moplah movement became sustained by a redemptive ideology.
It was believed that the rebels, having first purified themselves by
religious ceremonies, would gain instant salvation by assassinating
their British and landlord oppressors until they themselves fell
in martyrdom.
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 103

All of the religious movements believed in a coming realm of

righteousness and invested their leaders with supernatural powers,
but the more powerful ones seem from the beginning to have relied
chiefly on their own efforts to usher in the new society. These
movements were especially prominent during the famines and
harsh exploitation of peasants in the early decades of Company
rule in Bengal. They included the Muslim Maulvis under Titu
Miyan, who spread over Barasat, Nadia, Faridpur, Jessore and
Calcutta regions in 1827-31; the Muslim Pagal Panthis, converts
from the Garo and Hajong tribes, under Tipu Shah in northern
Mymensingh in 1824-33; and the Muslim Faraizis of Bogra and
Faridpur in 1838-51. All of these movements attracted tens of
thousands of rack-rented and evicted peasants, recruited armed
bands of many thousands, and strove to drive out their Hindu
landlords and British rulers and establish a reign of Islamic righte¬
ousness. Tipu Shah and Titu Miyan conquered large territories,
set up administrations and levied tribute from the landlords.
Dudu Miyan, the Faraizi leader, ran a parallel administration to
that of the British from Bahadarpur in East Bengal, which he
divided into circles of villages under deputies. Each deputy settled
disputes among the tenants, forced Muslims to convert to the
Maulvi sect, and protected cultivators from the zamindars’ excesses
through a mixture of litigation and armed intimidation. The
British defeated Tipu Shah and Titu Miyan in battle and imprisoned
Dudu Miyan in Alipore jail—a site of confinement and ill-treatment
of revolutionary prisoners down to the present day.57

Social Bandits
Five of the revolts studied are best classified by Hobsbawm’s term
‘social banditry’. They are the Thuggee of north and central India of
1650-1850 or later,58 the Sanyasis and Fakirs of Bengal in the late
eighteenth century,59 the dispossessed military chief Narasimha
Reddi and his followers in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, in 1846-7,60
the tribal Lodhas of Midnapore, who became a ‘criminal caste’
in the nineteenth century after being evicted from their homelands,61
and the tribal Kallar of South India, some of whom operated as
bandits from their hill country in Madura into lowland Madura,
Pudukottai and Thanjavur in the late eighteenth to the twentieth
centuries.62 These groups form only a small proportion of the
104 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

large numbers of peasants, tribesmen, disinherited landlords

and disbanded soldiers who turned to part-time or full-time bandjtry
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they were deprived
of their livelihood, evicted from their homelands, or squeezed in
their tribal territories.
The Thuggee were the most colourful and numerous of Indian
bandits, the best of them combining a rather distant millenarian
prospect with a certain Robin Hood gallantry and a genius for
swift assassination. They arose about 1650 in the area between
Delhi and Agra and multiplied in late Moghul times as revenue
exactions became harsher. During British rule they spread through¬
out Bihar and into Oudh, Bengal, Orissa, Rajputana, the Punjab,
Mysore and the Karnatak. Operating in bands of about a dozen,
they left their home' villages periodically and waylaid wealthy
travellers many miles away, decoyed them by stealth and then
strangled them with yellow scarves, robbed them and burried them.
Precisely what was done with the booty is unclear, but in some
cases at least the Thuggee must have shared it with their fellow
villagers, for they had the peasants' loyalty in their own territories.
Thuggee were recruited from outlaws of the state, peasants and
disbanded soldiers—chiefly from the most oppressed classes of
their regions. Each band customarily contained members of
several Hindu castes, Muslims, and in the Punjab, Sikhs. Band
members observed normal social distinctions in their own com¬
munities but ate, smoked and drank together on their outings.
They were initiated into a movement devoted to the service of
their goddess, seen as Kali by the Hindus and Fatima by the
Muslims, by whom they believed their order to have been created
so as to root out evil beings and save humanity from destruction. As
in the case of the Moplahs and no doubt most of the other armed
religious movements, rites of dedication and purification preceded
each assassination. Thuggee were forbidden by their religion to kill
women, children, youth, Hindu and Muslim holy men, carpenters,
poor people, beggars, bards, water-carriers, oil-vendors, dancers,
sweepers, laundry workers, musicians and cripples—in short
almost every productive or defenceless category in the population.
They confined their assaults chiefly to merchants, soldiers, money-
carriers and servants of the Company. They are reported to have
assassinated more than a million people and plundered many
millions of rupe s.
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 105

The Thuggee, like the Kallar, the Lodhas and many other tribes
who raided rich plainsmen when their lands were invaded, must
be classed as reformative, since they sought not a liberated king¬
dom but only short-term relief for themselves and their fellows,
and believed only vaguely in a Golden Age hereafter. The Sanyasis
and Fakirs became, however, a transformative movement and for a
short time a highly successful one. These religiosi were originally
peasants, evicted and made homeless during the wars, depredations
and revenue exactions of the East India Company and various rival
Indian princes in the late eighteenth century. They first formed
bands of Hindu and Muslim holy men and survived as mendicants.
As their numbers swelled in the great famine of 1770, they gathered
together with disbanded soldiers and dispossessed zamindars,
formed bandit troops and scoured the countryside, raiding the
grain stocky and treasuries of the wealthy and distributing them to
the starving peasantry.63 In trying to consolidate its rule the
Company met with a large Sanyasi and Fakir rebellion in 1771
between Rangpur and Dacca which defeated a company of sepoys
and killed the commander. Bands of five thousand to seven thousand
bandits then spread over most of Bengal and eastern Bihar, set up
an independent government in Bogra and Mymensingh and almost
wiped out another British detachment in 1773. Further frequent
encounters took place between the Sanyasis-Fakirs and British
forces all over West Bengal and Bihar until the movement finally
disintegrated about 1800; according to Stephen Fuchs, its survivors
are believed to have migrated to join the Marathas in their wars
against the British.
The militant religious movements discussed in type 2 strove for
the liberation of an ethnic region—both from the British and from
‘foreign’ Indian predators and invaders—and for the establishment
of a divinely ordained kingdom of righteousness and justice. They
arose among severly exploited minorities most of whom, neverthe¬
less, remained in their home territories and were numerically
preponderant within a region. Many bandit movements resembled
the ethnic religious movements in possessing special religious
cults, charismatic leaders and a belief that their struggles would
eventually release the world from pain. Bandits apparently differed
from local religious movements for liberation, however, in being
recruited from displaced or outcast groups and individuals—
disbanded soldiers, unseated nobles, evicted peasants, unemployed
106 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

artisans, outlaws of the state although not necessarily of the local

community, and those who had lost all through war or famine.
They were thus men who, although they might maintain a home or
shelter in their villages, had no livelihood except plunder and were
free to roam far afield. Alternatively, bandits arose part-time
among tribal peoples squeezed by plains invaders and by the govern¬
ment, who could combine vengeance with predation by raising
plains’ landlords from their own base areas.
Being foot-loose, bandits had great adaptability and therefore
an ambiguous status in the larger society. As Hobsbawm stresses,
only some of them, probably a minority, were ‘social bandits’,
that is engaged essentially in class struggle and concerned with the
interests of the poor from whom they sought protection and with
whom they shared their loot.64 Many bandit groups, including
some Thuggee, served as mercenaries for established landlords
and princes as well as for dispossessed rebel nobles or for adventurers
seeking fortune and political power.65 Others served religious
messiahs bent on driving out the British.66 The Kallar of Madura
exemplify the diverse potentialities of bandits. Having fought
unsuccessful wars to maintain their tribal lands tax-free from the
Nayak rulers of Madura and the British in the mid-eighteenth
century, some Kallar became bandits (perhaps ‘social’) who robbed
merchants and officials on the high roads out of Madura. Others
hired themselves as mercenaries to the Maratha Raja of Thanjavur.
After British rule became established around 1800, bandit troops
from Kallar settlements of both Madura and Thanjavur became
cattle thieves operating among high caste rich peasants and land¬
lords of these districts. In their attempts to reduce cattle losses,
the plains landlords even appointed single families of Kallar as
watchmen (kavalgar) in their villages. These collected annual
bribes from the villagers on behalf of bandit groups to ward off the
bandits’ predations, or when cattle did disappear, arranged their
ransom.67 The system persisted in western Thanjavur as late as
1953. The Kallar Kavalgar of one village where I worked had
earlier murdered his cousin in a family dispute and had served
sentence in the Andaman Islands. On his return he came to live in
his wife’s village which belonged to Brahman landlords and obtained
the post of‘watchman’ there. At that date, small groups of youth of
Kallar communities long resident as tenants in Thanjavur villages
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 107

still engaged in plundering landlords and rich peasants through

cattle thefts, highway robberies and thefts from grain carts far
from home in the famine season and shared their loot with their
kinsfolk. Their untouchable servants of the Palla (landless labourer)
caste, specially trained in dacoity, sometimes assisted them. Two
miles from my place of work lived a famous (but retired) Palla
multi-murderer who told wondrous anecdotes. His neighbours
protected him with amused pride as a kind of village marvel.
When whole regions were ravaged by famine or excessive revenue
exactions, bandits sometimes led ordinary peasants in driving
out the rulers and landlords, as in the Sanyasi and Fakir rebellion.
The relationship of peasants to these liberators seems, however,
to have been characteristically uneasy. During the Bengal famine
of 1769-70 a third of the villages of Birbhum and Bishnupur districts
were wiped out, yet the Company still further increased its revenue
demands by twelve per cent between 1770 and 1776. Thousands of
peasants ruined by famine or rack-renting scoured the countryside
as bandits and in 1787 and 1788 sacked the Bishnupur treasury,
carrying off more than three thousands sterling pounds’ worth
of silver.68 In November 1789 the peasantry made common cause
with the bandits and drove out the British from Rajnagar and
Bishnupur. Very soon, however, the peasants came to be at odds
with the bandits and fell upon them, slaughtering them unmercifully,
and in 1790 peasants co-operated with the government to restore
‘peace and order’. The reason for this clash is unclear: perhaps
bandit rule proved less ‘social’ than the peasants anticipated, or
perhaps the peasants resisted bandit demands for division of their
lands.

Terrorist acts with ideas of vengeance and justice

Banditry involves assassination, whether routine or occasional,
but which is mainly for survival and predation, while restorative
and religious movements for liberation kill or terrorise in pursuit
of their aim to drive out the oppressor. The simplest, if least effec¬
tive, form of revolt, however, is that in which peasants rise up
and kill or maim the oppressors without plans for the future—
often, indeed, in the certain knowledge of being annihilated. In
India every village has its legends of individual or small group
acts of violence against landlords, revenue agents, moneylenders.
108 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

bailiffs, or other authorities or wealthy persons. More rarely,

when there is extreme suffering yet when it is impossible to drive
out the enemy, patterns of violence may emerge in which members
of a minority or even a whole region, engage in epidemic assassi¬
nations of key enemies, or burn buildings, stacks, or other property.
The individual terrorist kills and risks his life for his community,
in vengeance but also partly with a sense of group pride and natural
justice; sometimes, with a religious belief that this is his unavoidable
destiny and his road to salvation. Although the custom was ancient
among them, some of the Lushai Kukis’ headhunting raids into
Sylhet and Cachar in the first half of the nineteenth century seem
to have been in vengeance, 'not [as some charged] to get heads to
bury with [their dead chief] Laroo, but to avenge unfair dealing
of Bengalis at the frontier marts’.69 And although they sprang
originally from a millenarian ideology, most of the nineteenth
century Moplah killings of British officials, landlords and revenue
agents were carried out to avenge specific wrongs, to mete out
rural justice and to afford desperate paupers escape to salvation
through martyrdom.70 The British correctly estimated the element
of collective justice, for they levied heavy fines on the entire village
of those who died fighting after they had assassinated some high
ranking person.

Mass insurrections
Fourteen of the revolts studied were mass insurrections in which
peasants provided the leadership and were ffie sole or dominant
force.71 These revolts were sudden and dramatic. They lacked a
religious movement ideology and a single charismatic religious
leader. They aimed initially at the redress of particular grievances
and thus were at first reformative. They started characteristically
with peaceful mass boycotts or demands for the righting of wrongs,
but fought when reprisals were taken against them. Seven of the
revolts occurred in Bengal, two in the Punjab, three in the Deccan,
one in Mysore and one in Kerala. Several became revolutionary
in aim as they progressed and four actually achieved a temporarily
liberated zone. These were the revolts of the peasants and bandits
ofBishnupur and Birbhum in 1789,72 oftheJat peasants of Haryana
in 1809,73 of the peasants of Khandesh in 1852,74 and of the
Moplahs of Kerala in 1921.75 One revolt, that of the Santhals of
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 109

Bengal in 1870, was predominantly tribal, although plains’ peasants

took part in it.76 The rest involved Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs,
usually a combination of members of two religions. Six occurred
before the Mutiny, and eight afterwards. The biggest revolts, those
of Rangpur in 1783, of Bishnupur in 1789, of the Jats in 1809, of
the Mysore peasants in 1830-31, of the indigo growers in'Bengarin
1860, of the Deccan peasants in 1875, and of the Moplahs in 1921;
probably affected populations of more than a million. The revolts
characteristically lasted for several weeks, but the Moplah revolt
continued for six months.
All the uprisings involved tenants or small owner-cultivators.
All were against economic deprivations resulting from British
policies and in most cases also from landlords’ exactions.
The revolt in Rangpur and Diuajpur of 1783 and the Deccan
peasant uprising of 1875 provide earlier and later examples
of features characteristic of all these uprisings. In Rangpur in the
early years of Company rule, revenue exactions under the revenue
contractor Debi Singh were outrageous—his agents chained and
imprisoned selected peasants, then flogged and starved them until
their villages paid the assessment. On January 18, 1783, peasants
of many villages assembled in Tepah and elected a leader—the
son of a peasant who had served as leader in a previous insurrection.
The mob then stormed a prison and released the prisoners and
marched with drumbeats to demand revenue concessions from the
local agent. When his police fired and killed a peasant a fight
ensued in which the agent Gaurmohan was captured and several
peasants killed before the crowd could withdraw. Although the
peasants made clear that they wanted justice, not bloodshed, and
later presented a written petition to the government, they met
only attempts to renew the revenue collections. The situation was
so bad that, as they claimed, ‘we then sold our cattle and the trinkets
belonging to our women. We have since sold our children...’
Failing to get relief, they killed two revenue agents77 and raised a
huge armed force which marched through the countryside. The
revolt spread to Dinajpur, where peasants elected two more leaders
and sacked and robbed a revenue office. After five weeks British
troops put down the rebellion after killing many peasants, burning
their homes and hanging a village headman. No relief seems to
have been forthcoming from this uprising.
110 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The Deccan revolt of 1875 was joined by water-carriers, barbers

and even the house-servants of moneylenders in addition to culti¬
vators. It covered Poona and Ahmednagar districts and spread
into Gujarat. Excessive revenue exactions, low prices of grain and
cotton crops and evictions and land mortgages to moneylenders
drove the peasants to a three week insurrection. Tens of thousands
met in public gatherings in market places and vowed to boycott
the claims of moneylenders and to seize their documents. Some
moneylenders fled the area. Those who resisted the armed bands
who came for documents had their fodder stacks burned down,
although the peasants carried on very little personal violence.
After three weeks troops moved against the boycotters, hundreds
were arrested in each centre, and the government levied collective
fines throughout the area. The revolt produced some respite in
the Deccan Agriculturalists’ Relief Act of 1879.78
The famous Bengal indigo strike of 1860 was the first large strike
in India and one of the most successful. It illustrates the initiative
and discipline of which peasants are capable. It involved hundreds
of thousands of tenants on British plantations. The tenants were
forced to grow indigo at very low prices for the British textile
industry, to the exclusion of most other crops. When they refused,
slave drivers— some trained on United States southern plantations—
kidnapped or flogged them, exposed them in stocks, or murdered
them. Once decided upon, the strike spread rapidly. Tenants
assembled with staff's, swords, bows and arrows and matchlocks
to defend their settlements. In Pabna an army of 2,000 peasants
appeared and wounded a magistrate’s horse; otherwise, there was
little violence. The strike stopped indigo planting in Bengal and
forced the planters to move west to Bihar.
The Moplah rebellion of 1921 lasted longer than any other
peasant insurrection I have examined. It bridged the period of
‘pre-political-party, peasant uprisings and that of peasant actions
sponsored by political parties. In its first large all-India struggle
towards Independence, the Indian National Congress joined with
Muslims of the Khilafat movement79 to boycott British instituted
councils, law courts, titles, educational institutions and the purchase
of foreign goods. The boycott allied Hindu and Muslim middle
class leaders, a few landlords, high ranking non-cultivating tenants
and a large mass of poverty stricken cultivating tenants and landless
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 1 11

labourers, especially Moplahs, who formed a majority of the

population in the Eamad and Walluvanad taluks and who fol¬
lowed the Khilafat leaders. Both the Congress and the Khilafat
parties had begun to organise a movement for tenancy reforms,
which was strongly opposed by Malabar’s big landlords with their
memories of the nineteenth century Moplah revolts. The manager
of a large Hindu’princely estate persuaded the police to search the
local Khilafat secretary’s house for a gun that he alleged had been
stolen from the palace. Thousands of armed Moplahs were sum¬
moned by drumbeats to prevent their leader’s arrest. When police
broke into a mosque in search of the fugitive, Moplahs throughout
the two taluks rose in insurrection, sacking police stations, looting
government treasuries and destroying records of debts and mort¬
gages in courts and registries. For six months British rule became
inoperative throughout the region. A leader emerged to govern it
who was known as Raja by the Hindus, Amir by the Muslims,
and Colonel of the Khilafat army. He administered the territory,
supervised the execution of police, both Hindu and Muslim, who
had committed atrocities, and of traitors who helped the British
forces, put an end to the looting, and announced the suspension
of land revenue and rents for one year. He commanded poor
peasants to harvest their landlords’ crops and used the surplus to
feed his army. He issued passports to travellers entering and
leaving his kingdom and edicts against the harming of Hindus
by Muslims.
The Congress party under Gandhi withdrew its support from
the movement as soon as it resorted to violence and tried ineffectively
to mediate between the British and the revolutionaries. The resultant
wavering among Hindu followers roused suspicion among the
Moplahs and when British troops attacked and engaged in espionage
among the Hindus the movement acquired a communal flavour.
The rebels killed some 500 alleged traitors, chiefly Hindus, sacked
about a hundred temples and forcibly converted 2,500 Hindus to
Islam. A fierce struggle followed between British and Gurkha troops
on one side and the rebel army on the other, in which according to
A.Sreedhara Menon about 10,000 were estimated to have died.
There was prolonged guerilla warfare and two large battles were
fought. On reconquering the region the British took savage reprisals.
The rebel leaders were shot, hundreds of their followers were
112 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

hanged or deported to the Andamans and 61 prisoners suffocated

as a result of being enclosed in a railway goods-wagon on their
way from Tirur to Coimbatore jail. Considering the violent enmity
of the Hindu landlords, the wavering of the (largely Hindu) Indian
National Congress and the terror instituted by the British, the
rebel leaders’ conduct must be considered moderate and the
rebels’ communal reprisals a minor part of the revolt, which was
essentially a peasants’ insurrection. The Moplah rebellion illustrates
the fact that in India as elsewhere, agrarian classes usually have
a partial isomorphism with major ethnic categories, whether these
are Hindu and Muslim or culturally distinct blocks of Hindu
castes, or even, in some areas, co-resident linguistic groups.80
What is labelled inter-religious or inter-communal strife is often,
perhaps usually, initially a class struggle, but unity in the class
struggle is all too often broken by the upper classes’ appeal to and
manipulation of cultural differences, and under duress those most
oppressed may turn on all the co-religionists of their oppressors.

Modern Peasant Uprisings

Except for the early revolts to drive out the British and re-establish
traditional principalities, the uprisings so far discussed were
‘pre-political’ or ‘primitive’ in the special sense that they were
not addressed to the future of the nation state and thus were
doomed to failure when they aimed at revolution. These revolts
were, however, politically progressive in that they sought a new
state of peasant society which would combine freedom from alien
rule together with some traditional virtues and modem techno¬
logy and popular government, rather than merely reverting to
pre-British social structures. The revolts also amply illustrated the
remarkable organising abilities of the peasantry, their potential
discipline and solidarity, their determined militancy in opposing
imperialism and exploitative class relations, their inventiveness
and potential military prowess and their aspirations for a more
democratic and egalitarian society. The more impressive uprisings
also show that even in India, where inter-ethnic strife has produced
some of the most tragic modern holocausts, peasants are capable
of co-operating in class struggles across caste, religious and even
linguistic lines to redress their common grievances.
Peasant revolts since the 1920s have been co-ordinated within
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 11 3

the policies of oppositional political parties. They have formed

two major types. On the one hand, there have been political move¬
ments for independence or for national or regional autonomy
among blocks of tribal peoples. The most notable of these have
been the struggle for an independent state in Kashmir, the nationalist
war of the Naga and Mizo tribal peoples, and the Jarkhand move¬
ment for the political autonomy of the Santhals, Oraons and other
tribes. On the other hand, there have been peasant uprisings which
were primarily class struggles and were guided by one or another
of India’s communist parties.
Seven major peasant uprisings or episodes of revolutionary
struggle in the Indian countryside have occurred to my knowledge
under communist guidance. The first four were conducted by the
Communist Party of India before it split into two wings in 1964.
These were Tebhaga uprising in the north of Bengal in 1946, the
Telengana peasant war in former Hyderabad state (now part of
Andhra Pradesh) in 1946-8,81 a strike of tenants and landless
labourers in eastern Thanjavur for several weeks in 1948,82 and
a series of short strikes followed by attacks on granaries and grain
trucks in Kerala in 1946-8.83 The other three uprisings were led
by Maoist groups which began to break away from the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) in 1967. They included prolonged peasant
struggles involving land claims and harvest shares in 1966-71 led
by the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee;
the uprising in Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967; and the ‘annihila¬
tion campaign' of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
against landlords, moneylenders, police and a variety of political
enemies of the party, especially in Srikakulam, Mushahari and
Debra-Gopivallabpur in 1969-70.84
Communist sponsored uprisings differ in many respects from
those of earlier periods. First, of course, they are led at least ostensib¬
ly by a vanguard party which recruits members from urban petty
bourgeois, urban working class, or even landlord origins as well
as from the peasants and which draws on the theories of Marx
and Lenin as well as, more recently, Mao Tse-tung. In each uprising
the party involved has had as its ultimate goal the revolutionary
attainment of a People’s Democracy as a prelude to the transition
to socialism throughout India.85 Peasant revolts have been co¬
ordinated, and sometimes started, in accordance with current
114 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

party policy, and have sometimes been stopped by the party because
of national or even international changes of party line.86
Nevertheless, just as modern tribal nationalist movements, in
their goal of ethnic liberation, share common features with and may
even draw experience and organisational strength from earlier tribal
religious movements,87 so various communist struggles among the
peasants have had features in common with early peasant move¬
ments involving social banditry, terrorist vengeance with ideas
of popular justice, or mass insurrections for the redress of grievances.
The most successful communist led peasant actions were those
of Tebhaga in 1946, Telengana in 1946-8, Naxalbari in 1967, and
Andhra Pradesh in 1969-71. All of them involved a large component
of tribal people. All of these revolts began as strikes or other
forms of popular action initiated by the peasants or with their
willing consent for the redress of specific grievances. The Tebhaga
revolt began with a demand for reduction of the occupying tenants’
(jotedars')88 rights in the crop from half to one-third and a
corresponding increase in the rights of poor peasant sharecroppers
(adhiars or bargadars). It had been preceded in the late 1930s by
a campaign on behalf of middle peasants (the better-off tenants)
to abolish ‘feudal’ levies over and above the legal rents. In Telengana,
too, the initial demands were for abolition of illegal exactions by
the deshmukhs and nawabs—the feudal lords—and later on for
cancellation of peasants’ debts.89 In Thanjavur the demands were
for halving the rents paid by cultivating tenants and doubling the
wages of landless labourers. In Naxalbari the peasant unions began
by taking over land which the communist-led West Bengal govern¬
ment had already decreed should be removed from the jotedars,
the former occupancy tenants who by this time had become outright
owners of the land with the abolition of zamindari rights. The
land act provided for this land to be distributed to the landless,
but the proprietors refused to surrender it. Having driven out the
landlords, the peasant unions then went on to distribute all the
land among the peasants.99 Similarly, in Warangal, Khammam
and Karimnagar districts of Andhra Pradesh in 1969, the communist
peasant unions began their armed struggle by occupying land which
had been taken from them by neighbouring landlords and redistri¬
buting it among the tribal peasants.91
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 1 15

In all these struggles, much as in more successful of the traditional

peasant insurrections referred to earlier, the peasant unions were
able to secure temporary liberated zones which they governed for
several weeks or months through peasant committees supervised
by the Communist Party. In Thanjavur landlords, police and
bureaucrats remained in the area but obeyed the village committees;
in the other regions the peasants killed or drove out these figures
during the period of revolutionary government. The largest and
longest revolt was that of Telengana, which is reported to have
engulfed 2,000 villages in an area of 15,000 square miles, with a
population of four million and a peasant army of 5,000. In the
more recent Andhra Pradesh uprising of the late 1960s under the
Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee, which
took place partly in the same area, the revolutionaries claimed
in mid-1970 a liberated area of 7,000 to 8,000 square miles with a
population of 500,000 to 600,000.92 Repression has since greatly
increased and the movement appears to be temporarily crushed.
In contrast with these efforts, communist armed action has been
less successful when it employed tactics suggestive of banditry or
of terrorist vengeance, unaccompanied by mass insurrection or by
demands for redress of specific grievances and popular control
by peasant committees. These tactics predominated in the party’s
struggles among the peasants in 1948-9 in Kerala and in those of
the CPI(ML) in eastern India and elsewhere in 1969-72.93 In the
former instance the communists had earlier, in 1946, conducted
successful mass strikes for higher wages among landless labourers
and mass cultivation of the forest lands of big landlords. (As in
Bengal, they had also successfully organised strikes of middle
peasants against illegal levies during the late 1930s.) When, however,
police reprisals became heavy and several communists and peasants
were killed, the party went partly underground and squads of
party members and peasant leaders began to rob grain trucks and
'ransack the granaries of landlords and distribute food to the people.
Although poor peasants admired these exploits—much as they
admire those of dacoits who pillage the rich and powerful—the
peasants did not become organised through these actions and had
no control over them. In the course of these actions the police and
the armed goons of (Congress-supporting) landlords killed several
1 16 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

leading peasants and party members and arrested most of the others,
and the Communist Party became temporarily isolated from the
villagers.
In the second instance, the CPI(ML) moving away from its
earlier policy of mass struggles in Naxalbari and to some extent in
Srikakulam. developed the policy of 'annihilation' of landlords,
police, moneylenders, oppressive bureaucrats and enemies of
other political parties by secret squads recruited from young party
members and their associates in the cities, and, where possible,
from the most oppressed groups of poor peasants and landless
labourers in the countryside. Several dozens and probably hundreds
of landlords in eastern India were assassinated in a three-year
period. In their size, secrecy, primitive weaponry, utter devotion
and in the fact that they tended to operate some distance from
home, these revolutionary squads resembled those of the Moplah
peasant insurgents who carried out acts of terrorist vengeance in
Malabar in the nineteenth century—and no doubt also other Indian
terrorist groups in urban uprisings of the early twentieth century.
While commanding admiration in many villages, the squad tactic,
unaccompanied by mass organisation around specific economic
grievances, isolated the cadres and exposed a defenceless populace
to police and later to military reprisals. The annihilation policy,
along with other shortcomings, was criticised in a letter from the
Chinese government in November 1970, and helped provoke a
split in the party in 1971. Since the death of Charu Mazumdar,
the party chairman and the main exponent of the annihilation
tactic, in July 1972, it has been repudiated by most of the party’s
remaining leaders.94 At present, most of the CPI(ML)’s cadres
appear to have been arrested, or to have left the party, or to have
been killed in action or in jails.95

Conclusions
Indian peasants have a long tradition of armed uprisings, reaching
back at least to the initial British conquest and the last decades
of Moghul government. For more than 200 years peasants in all
the major regions have repeatedly risen against landlords, revenue
agents and other bureaucrats, moneylenders, police and military
forces. The uprisings were responses to relative deprivation of
unusually severe character, always economic, and often also in-
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 1 17

volving physical brutality or ethnic persecution. The political

Independence of India has not brought surcease from these distres¬
ses, for imperial extraction of wealth from India and oppression
by local property owners continue to produce poverty, famine,
agricultural sluggishness and agrarian unrest: Major uprisings
under communist leadership since British rule not unnaturally
show a continuity of tactics with earlier peasant revolts. Of these,
the more successful have involved mass insurrections, initially
against specific grievances, and the less successful, social banditry
and terrorist vengeance. Both in the case of communist revolts
and in that of earlier peasant uprisings, social banditry and terrorist
vengeance, when they occurred, appear to have happened in the
wake of repression of other forms of revolt.
Although revolts have been widespread, certain areas have an
especially strong tradition of rebellion. Bengal has been a hotbed
of revolt, both rural and urban, from the earliest days of British
rule. Some districts in particular such as Mymensingh, Dinajpur,
Rangpur and Pabna in Bangladesh, and the Santhal regions of
Bihar and West Bengal, figured repeatedly in peasant struggles
and continue to do so. The tribal areas of Andhra Pradesh, and the
state of Kerala, also have long traditions of revolt. Hill regions
where tribal or other minorities retain a certain independence,
ethnic unity, and tactical manoeuverability, and where the terrain
is suited to guerilla warfare, are of course especially favourable
for peasant struggles, but these have also occurred in densely
populated plains regions such as Thanjavur, where rack-renting,
land hunger, landless labour and unemployment cause great
suffering.
The more successful revolts of the recent period occurred under
irregular conditions which are unlikely to be repeated. The Tebhaga
revolt took place three years after a famine had killed ^hree and a
half million Bengalis, leaving a labour shortage. The British
government was nervous of offending the peasantry because of the
Japanese invasion; it failed to move against the rebels until the
Japanese had been defeated and the proportions of the rebellion
had become alarming.96 In Telengana in 1946-7 the change of
government created an emergency, as the Nizam of Hyderabad re¬
fused to accede to the Indian Union, and it was some time before
the Indian government decided to invade the state and mop up both
118 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the Nizam’s forces and the communists. In Thanjavur in 1948 the

government was occupied in invading Hyderabad and did not
immediately institute repression.
Today the Indian government is more heavily militarised than
it has'ever been. It has the experience of crushing recent peasant
struggles, of years of police repression in West Bengal and of the
invasion of Bangladesh. It also has the example of US methods
of repression in Indochina.97 The increasing poverty, famine and
unemployment make it seem certain that India’s agrarian ills
can be solved only by a peasant-backed revolution leading to
socialism, but the struggle will be very long and hard.
References
1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Conference on Peasants of
Asia and Latin America at the University of British Columbia in February,
1973.
2 The hut and charred bodies were photographed and are reproduced in Lasse
and Lisa Berg, ‘Face to Face: Fascism and Revolution in India’, Ramparts
Press, California, 1971, p. 55. For more details and an account of recent class
struggles in Thanjavur, see Mythily Shivaraman, ‘Rumblings of Class Struggle
in Thanjavur’, in Kathleen Gough and Hari P Sharma, eds, ‘Imperialism and
Revolution in South Asia’, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1973.
3 Rupert M Moser, ‘The Situation of the Adivasis of Chota Nagpur and Santal
Parganas, Bihar, India’, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs
Document No 4, Frekderiksholms Kanal 4 A, DK 1220 Copenhagen K,
Denmark, 1972.
4 A supporter of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), one of the
main Maoist groups, reported that an estimated 10,000 peasants and others
had been killed on the communist side in the three years from 1967 to 1970
(personal communication).
5 David F Aberle, ‘The Peyote Religion Among the Navaho’, Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1966. p. 315.
6 Barrington Moore, Jr, ‘The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy’,
Beacon Press, 1966, p. 202.
7 Op cit, p. 383. Moore is actually equivocal about the effects of caste on peasant
unrest, for on page 382 he writes, ‘Any notion to the effect that caste or other
distinctive traits of Indian peasant society constitutes an effective barrier to
insurrection is obviously false’, but on page 383, ‘Caste was also a way of organis¬
ing a highly fragmented society... Though this fragmentation could at times
be overcome in small ways and in specific localities, it must have been a barrier
to widespread rebellion. Furthermore, the system of caste did enforce hierar¬
chical submission. Make a man feel humble by a thousand daily acts and he
will behave in a humble way. The traditional etiquette of caste was no mere
excrescence; it had definite political consequences. Finally, as a safety valve,
caste does provide a form of collective upward mobility through Sanskritiza-
tion’. My view is that an enforced etiquette of submission does not necessarily
engender submissive feelings; if the subordinate comes to feel unjustly de¬
prived, having to observe the etiquette may engender rebellious feelings which

/
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 119

sometimes burst forth. In Thanjavur in 1952 I lived on a street of low ranking

and poverty stricken cowherds and sharecroppers, servants of Brahman land¬
lords. The caste etiquette was the most subservient I have seen outside of
Kerala. In private the sharecroppers often raged against their landlords as
‘evil’. In spite of severe reprisals involving flogging and being forced to drink
pints of cowdung and water, lower caste men in this village had frequently
resorted to violence. One once smote his landlord across the face; another
cut off his landlord's leg; two more bound their landlord to a cart-wheel,
thrashed him and drove him out of the village for seducing a kinswoman.
Sanskritisation permits upward mobility but only for a small minority. The
conflicts of interest among castes which are respectively composed predomin¬
antly of smallholders, sharecroppers, and landless labourers, are a serious
matter for revolutionary organisers, but such class conflicts among peasants
are worldwide.
8 S.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Civil Rebellion in the Indian Mutinies, 1857-9’, World Press,
Calcutta, 1957, p. 32.
9 See S.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Civil Disturbances During the British Rule in India (1765-
1857)’, World Press, Calcutta, 1955, pp. 56-8, 74-6 and 125-32 for accounts of
these revolts.
10 The Punjab appears to have been an exception. Although recently conquered,
the Sikhs in particular provided soldiers loyal to the British.
11 See E.M.S. Namboodiripad, ‘The National Question in Kerala’, Bombay,
1952, pp. 102-3; Irfan Habib, ‘The Agrarian System of Moghul India’, Asia
Publishing House, London, 1963, p. 332.
12 The formerly primitive tribes of India number about 45 million and form about
one-twelfth of the population.
13 For peasant revolts in the Moghul period see Irfan Habib, op cit, pp. 330-3,
337-51. See also Ramkrishna Mukherjee. ‘The Rise and Fall of the East India
Company’, Veb Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1957, p. 217.
Information on the Thuggee is taken mainly from an unpublished paper by
the late Saghir Ahmad, ‘Thuggees: Rebels or Criminals?’, which is being
edited for publication. Major sources include W.H. Sleeman, ‘History and
Practices of the Thug’, Philadelphia, 1839; W.H. Sleeman, Reports on the
Depredation Committed by the Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India’,
Calcutta, 1840, Francis Tuker ‘The Yellow Scarf, London, 1961; and John
Masters, ‘The Deceivers’, London, 1960.
14 Stephen Fuchs, 'Rebellious Prophets; A Study of Messianic Movements in
Indian Religions', Asia Publishing House, 1965, pp. 143-4.
15 W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers, Madura, Madras Government Press,
1906, pp. 88-91.
16 See, eg, Michael Barratt Brown, ‘After Imperialism’, Heinemann, 1963, pp.
58-60; Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘Foreign Capital and Economic Development
in India: A Schematic View’, in Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma, eds,
op cit, for analysis.
17 S.B. Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, p. 15.
18 See, eg, Barratt Brown, op cit, pp. 174-7; and A.K. Bagchi, loc cit.
19 See, for example, Martin Orans, 'The Santal’, Wayne State University Press,
1965, pp. 30-6: Rupert M. Moser, loc cit;SB. Chaudhuri. op cit, 1955, pp. 51-3.
20 The century old dispute regarding the extent, or even the occurrence, of ‘dein¬
dustrialisation’ in nineteenth century India has not abated. Most writers
acknowledge that there was certainly a decline in the proportion of Indian
craftsmen relative to the total population in the first half of the nineteenth
1 20 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

century, and some, that the decline continued throughout the century. The
agrument regarding the earlier period, in particular, seems unquestionable
in view of the staggering decline in exports of Indian craft goods and the stagger¬
ing increases in Indian exports of raw materials and in British imports to India
of manufactured goods. For evidence and figures see Barratt Brown, op cit;
A.K. Bagchi, loccit; B.B. Misra, ‘The Indian Middle Classes’, Oxford University
Press, 1961; and Daniel Thorner, ‘Deindustrialisation in India,’ Fn ‘Land
and Labour in India’, Asia Publishing House, 1962, chapter VI. Romesh
Chandra Dutt’s classic study, ‘The Economic History of India under Early
British Rule. 1757-1837’, Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1963, first published in 1901,
is still of great value, especially pp. 176-200. Dharma Kumar, who is mainly
concerned about stressing the existeftce of landless labour in India from pre-
British times, nevertheless points out that the agriculturally dependent popula¬
tion increased from about 60 per cent to 69 per cent between 1800 and 1901.
It had reached about 75 per cent by 1951 (‘Land and Labour in South India’,
Cambridge University Press. 1965. p. 181). In Kerala and Thanjavur in the
1950s I found many families in castes traditionally designated as Weavers,
Goldsmiths, Traders, Tile-Makers, high class Potters, Oil-mongers, Basket
and Mat-Makers, or other craftsmen, who became unable to ply their crafts
at some time during British rule and who became tenant farmers, landless
labourers, or casual workers in towns. Saghir Ahmad found the same in West
Punjab (see ‘Peasant Classes in Pakistan’, in Gough and Sharma, eds, op cit.
1973, pp. 203-21). Morris D. Morris has argued more strongly than other
recent writers against ‘deindustrialisation’, but I believe his arguments to have
been ably answered by several Indian authors. See Morris D. Morris, ed, ‘The
Indian Economy in the Nineteenth Century: A Symposium’, Indian Economic
and Social History Association, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi 7, 1969.)
21 The population of Dacca is reported to have fallen from 150,000 in 1757 to
between 30,000 and 40,000 in 1840. In 1787 the exports of Dacca muslins to
England amounted to three million rupees, but in 1817 they had ceased alto¬
gether. Murshidabad, Surat, Agra and also southern cities such as Thanjavur
suffered correspondingly (R. Mukherjee, op cit, pp. 337-9).
22 Opium, for example, was the chief agricultural crop in Malwa and lower
Rajputana in 1817-8 (S B. Chaudhuri, dp cit, 1955, p. 217). and this was still
true in 1860-80. Indigo in Bengal and Bihar, cotton in the north-west provinces,
central India and the Karnatak, jute and sugarcane in Bengal, and tea, tobacco
and coffee in north-east and south-east India, were among theexpon crops that
were greatly expanded in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Bombay
province in 1834-45 cotton occupied 43 per cent of cultivated land in Broach
and 22 per cent in Surat but the cultivators were reported to receive little or no
profit (R.C. Dutt, ‘The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, 1837-
1900’, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960, p. 98). Today about 40 per cent of the
land in Kerala state is devoted to export crops and Assam is similarly dominated
by a plantation economy; export crops occupy at least one-fifth of the cultivable
land of India as a whole (A.K. Gopalan, ‘Kerala Past and Present’, Lawrence
and Wishart, 1959, pp. 79-96). In addition to the expansion of industrial crops
for export, India also exported increasing amounts of foodgrains during the
nineteenth century, in spite of the growing population and the virtual stagnation
of subsistence agriculture. Thus, India exported 1.25 million tons of foodgrains
in 1879-80, whereas it had exported only 0.65 million pounds sterling worth
in 1842, 3.58 million in 1860 and 27.26 million in 1880 (B.M. Bhatia, ‘Famines
in India, 1860-1965’, Asia Publishing House, 1967, p. 38).
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 121

23 For a detailed treatment of trends in both commercial and subsistence agriculture

during British rule, see George Blyn, ‘Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947’,
Philadelphia, 1966.
24 There is uncertainty about the exact proportions of the different classes of
peasants and agricultural workers in various decades because of imperfect
records and differences in modes of classification. Dharma Kumar rightly
points out that there was a substantial class of agricultural labourers at the
beginning of British rule, usually enslaved and mainly untouchable. She estimates
its size at about 10 to 15 percent of the total population. Although she emphasises
continuities in the agrarian structure of India in the nineteenth century, Kumar
notes that, agricultural labourers had increased to an estimated 15 to 20 per
cent of the total population in the period between 1871 and 1901. Landless
labourers were estimated at 28 per cent of the total workforce in 1951 and 26
per cent in 1971. It is also relevant to estimate the proportions of agricultural
labourers in relation to the total population dependent on agriculture in the
various periods, and the latter in relation to the total population of India.
Rough estimates are as follows. Dharma Kumar estimates the agriculturally
dependent population at 60 per cent of the total population in 1800 or even
less. Agricultural labourers were probably about 17 to 25 per cent of the agricul¬
tural population. In 1901 the agricultural population was about 69 per cent
of the total with agricultural labourers about 27 to 29 per cent of the agricultural
population. In 1951 the agricultural population was about 75 per cent of the
total population and agricultural labourers about 38 per cent of the agricultural
population. In 1971 the agricultural population had declined again to 69
per cent of the total; agricultural labourers still formed about 38 per cent of
the agriculturally dependent population, but a larger proportion of them were
probably totally landless than were in 1951. (See Dharma Kumar, ‘Land and
Caste in South India’, Cambridge University Press, 1965, especially pp. 168-93;
Charles Bettelheim, ‘India Independent’, Monthly Review Press, 1969, p. 25;
and Government of India Censuses for the various decades.) In some states
where the agricultural population’s density is very high, the numbers of agri¬
cultural labourers have risen quite rapidly in recent decades. In Thanjavur
district, for example, they increased by 60 per cent between 1951 and 1961.
(See, eg, Mythily Shivaraman, ‘Rumblings of Class Struggle in Thanjavur’,
in Gough and Sharma, eds, op cit, p. 252.) When middle and poor peasants
lose their lands, moreover, not all of them show up in the category of landless
labourers. Some, like some former landless labourers, are forced to migrate to
cities, where they often join the lumpen proletariat of beggars, casual labourers
and underemployed craftsmen or service workers. The urban population
increased from about 25 per cent to 31 per cent of the total between 1951 and
1971.
25 See, eg, V.M. Dandekar and Nilakantha Rath, ‘Poverty in India: Dimensions
and Trends’, Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay January 2, 1971, pp.
106-46. (P. Bardhan. ‘Green Revolution and Agricultural Labourers: A Cor¬
rection’, Economic and Political Weekly, January 2, 1971, pp. 25-48).
26 See B.M. Bhatia, op cit, for the following information, especially pp. 10-13,
239-42 and 308-39.
27 Newsweek, June 17, 1963, reporting on the World Food Congress held in
Washington, DC, under the auspices of the United Nations.
28 P.L. Eldridge, ‘The Politics of Foreign Aid in India,’ Vikas Publications, Delhi,
1969, especially pp. 112-16. India imported only 2.6 per cent of its foodgrains
in the First Five Year Plan (1951-5), but this was increased, chiefly under US
122 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Public Law 430 loans, to 4.9 per cent in the Second Plan and 7.5 per cent in
the Third.
29 For the impact of land reforms, see, eg, Bhowani Sen, ‘Evolution of Agrarian -
Relations in India’, People’s Publishing House, Delhi, 1962; Grigory Kotovsky,
‘Agrarian Reforms in India’, People’s Publishing House, 1964; and Charles
Bettelheim, op cit, pp. 146-233.
30 See Hari P. Sharma, 'Green Revolution in India: Prelude to a Red One?’ in
Gough and Sharma. eds, op cit, pp. 88 and 94. Observations in Kerala in 1964
convinced me that these processes were widely at work there, partly as a result
of landlords’ reactions to successive land reform acts. In one north Kerala
village, for example, I found that whereas in 1948 poor peasants, landless
labourers and casually employed non-agricultural day labourers, having no
land or only one small garden, were 72.1 per cent of the population, by 1964
they were 88.2 per cent.
31 See, eg, Francine Frankel, ‘India’s Green Revolution: Economic Gains and
Political Costs’, Princeton University Press, 1971, for the increasing gap in
incomes brought about by the green revolution and the fact that it chiefly
benefits the larger farmers. Mohan Ram, (‘Maoism in India’, Vikas, Delhi,
1971, pp. 185-6) and Mythily Shivaraman, (loc cit) cite increases in landless
labourers and unemployed.
32 See Hamza Alavi, imperialism. Old and New’, The Socialist Register, 1964,
Monthly Review Press, 1964, pp. 104-26; and A.K. Bagchi, loc cit, for character¬
istics of neo-imperialism in India since Independence and for comparisons
and contrasts with the period of British rule. Alavi’s later essay, ‘The State in
Postcolonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh’, in Gough and Sharma, eds,
op cit, pp. 145-73, is also in many respects highly relevant to India.
33 See, eg, ‘Bangladesh Maoists’, Frontier, Calcutta, January 16, 1973, pp. 16-17.
34 E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘Primitive Rebels’, Manchester University Press, 1959, pp.
13-29; ‘Bandits’, The Trinity Press, London, 1969, pp. 13-23; and ‘Social
Bandits: Reply (to Blok)’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.
14, No. 4, September 1972, pp. 503-5.
35 Aberle, op cit, pp. 316, 318 and 322-3, for discussion of transformative move¬
ments.
36 For discussions of relative deprivation, see Aberle, op cit, pp. 326-9; and Aberle,
‘A Note on Relative Deprivation Theory as Applied to Millenarian and other
Cult Movements’, in Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed, ‘Millennial Dreams in Action’,
Mouton, The Hague, 1962, pp. 209-14.
37 Norman Cohn ‘The Pursuit of the Millennium’, Seeker and Warburg, London,
1957, pp. 307-14.
38 S.B. Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, pp. 16, 60, 61, el passim.
39 These revolts were those of (1) the Kallar of Madura 1710-84; (2) the Rajas of
Dhalbhum, 1769-74; (3) the Chuar tribe of Midnapore, 1799; (4) a chief in
Sylhet, 1787; (5) a dispossessed zamindar in Sylttet 1799; (6) Vizier Ali in
Banaras and Gorakhpur 1799; (7) the Raja Vizieram Rauze in Vizagapatam,
1794; (8) the Maratha Dhundia Wagh in Mysore, 1799-1800; (9) the Pazhassi
or ‘Pyche’ Raja in North Malabar, 1796-1805; (10) the poligars of Bellary,
Anantapur, Cuddapah and Kurnool, 1803-5; (11) the poligars of Tinnevelly,
1901; (12) the poligars of North Arcot, 1803-5; (13) Velu Thampi, the Prime
Minister of Travancore, 1808-9; (14) the heirs of the Desai of Kittur, 1824;
(15) the Bhils of Khandesh, 1818-31; the Bhils of Malwa, 1846; (17) the Khonds
of Orissa, 1846; (18) the Santhals of Bihar, 1855-6; (19) an ex-chief, Gopal
Singh of Bundelkhand, 1802-12; (20) the chiefs of forts in Aligarh, 1817; (21)
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 123

the Paiks and Khonds of Cuttack, 1817-8; (22) the Gujars of Sindhia, 1824;
(23) the Kols. Hos, and Mundas of Chota Nagpur, 1831-2; (24) the Bhumij
and Chuar of Manbhum, 1832; (25) the Khasis of Assam, 1829-58; (26) the
Garos of Assam, 1852, 1857, and 1872; (27) the Syntengs of Assam, 1860
and 1862; (28) the Mers of Merwara, 1820; and (29) the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ in
north and central India, 1857-8. For the Kallar, see W. Francis, op cit, pp. 66,
88-91; for the Garos and Syntengs, Stephen Fuchs, op cit, pp. Ill, 115, 126;
and for the Mutiny. Chaudhuri, op cit. 1957. The other rebellions are reported
in Chaudhuri, op cit. 1955. L. Natarajan includes further information on the
Santal revolt of 1855-6 in ‘Peasant Uprisings in India,’ 1850-1900, People’s
Publishing House, Bombay, 1953.
40 See Benoy Ghosh. ‘Prepolitical Rebellions in Bengal'. Frontier Calcutta, Vol. 5,
Nos. 27-9, October 14, 1972, pp. 9-14, for a recent account of the Chuar and
Santhal rebellions.
41 The Moplah revolt of 1857, for example, was influenced by the belief that the
British would soon be driven out of India by the northern rebels (W. Logan,
‘Malabar’. Vol. 1. Government Press, Madras. 1951. p. 576).
42 Chaudhuri op cit, 1957, p. 269.
43 Hobsbawm, op cit. 1959, p. 58.
44 Norman Cohn, ‘Medieval Millenarism; Its Bearing on the Comparative Study
of Millenarian Movements’, in Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed, op cit, 1962, p. 43.
45 Peter Worsley, ‘The Trumpet Shall Sound’, Schocken Books, New York
1968, p. 224.
46 Cohn, loc cit, p. 32.
47 Fuchs notes 14 characteristics of the movements he calls messianic. They are:
intense dissatisfaction with socio-economic conditions, emotional unrest with
hysterical symptoms, a charismatic leader, the leader’s demand for implicit
faith and obedience, his demand for a radical change of life or for destruction
of property, rejection of established authority and a call for rebellion, threat of
severe punishment of traitors and opponents, the remembrance of a ‘Golden
Age’ at the beginning of mankind’s career, revivalism or renewed interest in
traditional religion, nativism or the conscious attempt to restore selected aspects
of traditional culture and to reject alien elements, vitalism or the desire for
alien gifts from heaven, syncretism or indiscriminate adoption of various traits
in the oppressors’ culture, eschatologism or the expectation of world renewal
after a worldwide catastrophe, and millenarianism or chiliasm, the hope or
expectation of a paradise on earth. (See Fuchs, op cit, pp. 1-15.).
48 The fullest account of the Moplah revolts up to the mid-1880s is contained in
Logan, op cit, pp. 554-94. See also C.A. Innes, Gazetteer of the Malabar District,
Madras Government Press. 1908, pp. 82-9.
49 Fuchs records a movement among the Pankas of Raipur an untouchable caste
of weavers and village artisans; the messiah thought that a deity had entered
him and preached that good men’s crops would grow without sowing; when
his following grew large and the revenue fell off he was arrested in 1860 (Fuchs,
op cit, p. 106 ).
50 Cf Aberle, op cit, 1962, pp. 209-10.
51 Fuchs, op cit, pp. 134 et seq.
52 Logan, op cit, p. 567.
53 Fuchs, op cit. pp. 218-21.
54 Fuchs, op cit, pp. 28-34.
55 Fuchs, op cit, pp. 240-3. The fifth classically millenarian movement was that
of a Hindu messiah in Badawar, Patiala state, in the early nineteenth century who
1 24 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

believed that he was Kalki, the last of the incarnations of Vishnu, the inaugurator
of a happy and virtuous Hindu millennium. He announced that on an appointed
day he would overturn the foreign government and set up his kingdom. He was
arrested and his followers disappeared. Fuchs points out that Vaishnavism,
Shaivism, Jainism and Buddhism, all contain millenarian mythologies—Vaish¬
navism that of Kalki, Shaivism of the 26 or 28 incarnations of Shiva each
ushering in an age of liberation from evil. Jainism in the coming period of 63
saints whose saving qualities are similar to those to the Vishnu avatars, and
Buddhism with its belief in the Buddha Maitreya, a future saviour of the world
(Fuchs, op cit, pp. x-xi, and for the Patiala movement, p. 178).
56 Logan op cit. pp. 558-9.
57 There have been at least three massacres of political prisoners, chiefly members
of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) since mid-1970. In parti¬
cular on November 26, 1971, police admitted that six 'Naxalites’ had been
beaten to death with clubs and 237 wounded; according to some reports, how¬
ever, up to 50 were murdered and many of the injured, a». the time of reporting,
hovered between life and death (Frontier, Calcutta, December 4, 1971; and
Le Monde, Paris, November 30, 1971).
58 For a brief account and bibliography see 'Thug’, Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1958, Volume 21, p. 1095.
59 Fuchs, op cit, pp. 109-11.
60 Chaudhuri, 1955, op cit, p. 152.
61 Fuchs, op cit, pp. 71-72.
62 Francis, op cit, pp. 88-93.
63 Fuchs, op cit, p. 71.
64 E.J. Hobsbawm. ‘Social Bandits: Reply (to Blok)’, Comparative Studies in
Society and History. Volume 14, Number 4, September 1972, p. 504.
65 Stewart N. Gordon argues that Thuggee bands were employed by Maratha
chiefs in the late eighteenth century in Malwa in order to provide them with a
non-local source of revenue from plundering far afield during a period of
competition in small state formation and to pay for European-style artillery
and infantry (Gordon, 'Scarf and Sword: Thugs, Marauders and State-formation
in 18th Century Malwa’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
Volume 6, Number 4, December 1969, pp. 403-29).
66 Vasudeo Balvant Phadke, the Maratha Brahman religious leader who believed
himself an incarnation of Shivaji Maharaj, recruited Ramoshi bandits in
1879 and with them carried out robberies and attacks on police stations to
obtain supplies with which he hoped to build an army and drive out the British.
He was disillusioned, however, by the fact that the Ramoshis looted for their
own benefit, and so he turned instead to the Dhangar shepherd caste and to
the Kolis, who joined him because they believed they had been unjustly deprived
of a large part of their cultivated land (Fuchs, op cit, pp. 228-33).
67 Francis, op cit, pp. 91-2.
68 Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, pp. 66-7.
69 Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, p. 109.
70 Logan, op cit, p. 584.
71 Six of the revolts took place before the Mutiny, and are described by Chaudhuri,
op cit, 1955, sections 3, 4, 31, 43 and 45.
72 Chaudhuri op cit, 1955, pp. 65-7.
73 Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, pp. 175-6.
74 Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, pp. 171-2.
75 Menon, op cit, p. 179.
 INDIAN PEASANT UPRISINGS 125

76 Chaudhuri, op cit, 1955, p. 61.

77 The leader, Dirjinarain pleaded for the life of Gaurmohan the first agent, at
some risk to his own, because Gaurmohan was a Brahman and Brahmans
were exempt from execution by traditional law. The peasants, however, insisted
on killing him.
78 In ‘The Myth of the Deccan Riots’, Modern Asian Studies, November 1972,
Neil Charlesworth has argued that the extent of the uprising was much over¬
estimated in current and subsequent reports. His argument does not seem con¬
vincing in the light of data cited by Natarajan and other writers.
79 The Khilafat movement was begun to protest against Britain’s removing
various Middle Eastern territories from the control of Turkey in violation of
promises made by Lloyd George during the First World War.
80 See Kathleen Gough, ‘Indian Nationalism and Ethnic Freedom’, in David
Bidney, ed, ‘The Concept of Freedom in Anthropology’, Mouton, 1963, pp.
170-207, for further discussion.
81 See Hamza Alavi, ‘Peasants and Revolution’, Socialist Register, 1965 edi¬
ted by Ralph Miliband, Monthly Review Press, 1965, for accounts of the
Tebhaga and Telengana revolts. See also Mohan Ram, ‘The Telengana Peasant
Armed Struggle, 1946-51’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume Number 23,
June 9,1973, pp. 1025-32.
82 See John F. Muehl, interview with India’, John Day, New York, 1950, pp.
249-92.
83 See E.M.S. Namboodiripad, ‘Kerala Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’,
pp. 193, 196.
84 For all of these actions see Mohan Ram, ‘Maoism in India’, Delhi, Vikas,
1971, pp. 38-163. See also Mohan Ram, ‘Five Years After Naxalbari’, Econo¬
mic and Political Weekly Volume 7, Numbers 31-3, Special Number. August
1972, pp. 1471-6.
85 For differences in ideology and strategy among the Communist Party of India,
the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-
Leninist) and the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee, see
Mohan Ram, ‘The Communist Movement in India’, Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars, Volume 4, Number 1, Winter 1972, pp. 32-42.
86 The Cominform intervened in 1951 to induce the Communist Party of India
to abandon armed struggle (Ram, loc cit, 1972, p. 34).
87 The movement originally started by the Kacha Naga religious leader Jadonang
in 1929 and carried on intermittently by his woman disciple Gaidillu into the
1960s seems in particular to have been a forerunner of the Naga nationalist
movement, although confined to one tribe, and much smaller in scale (see
Fuchs, op cit, pp. 147-56).
88 By the time of the Tebhaga rebellion the zamindar or landlord retained rights
to only a small proportion of the produce and the jotedar or occupying tenant
received most of the surplus. By the time of the Naxalbari revolt the zamindars
had been removed and the jotedars were the landlords.
89 Hamza Alavi, loc cit.
90 Kanu Sanyal, ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region’, Libera¬
tion, Volume 2, Number 1, November 1968. For the circumstances surrounding
the Naxalbari rebellion and for the attitude taken towards it of the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) which was then in power in a coalition government in
West Bengal, see People's Democracy, weekly organ of the CPI (M), Volume 3,
Numbers 23-30, 1967. See also Mohan Ram, op cit, 1971, pp. 38-71.
91 Mohan Ram, op cit, 1971, pp. 165-9.
1 26 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

92 Mohan Ram, loc cit, 1972, p. 42.

93 Mohan Ram, op cit, 1971, pp. 136-63; loc cit, 1972, p. 41.
94 Frontier, Volume 5, Number 30, November 4, 1973, pp. 15-6.
95 Several massacres of Naxalites and supposed Naxalite supporters have been
conducted in the streets by police or gangs of hired hoodlums, notably one in
Baranagar on August 12,1971, when about 1,000 goons, under police protection,
rampaged over an area of two square miles and killed 150 Naxalites and their
sympathisers (Frontier, August 21, 1971, p. 1, and September 18, 1971, p. 10).
Using police figures, which in some cases are known to be much too low, it
has been estimated that 1,788 members of the CPI (ML) were killed outside
the jails in West Bengal between March 1970 and August 1971, and 42 (un¬
officially, 172) inside the jails in Midnapore, Berhampore, Alipore, Dum Dum
and Howrah (Frontier, Volume 5, Number 40, January 13, 1973, pp. 3-4.)
In the same period, 368 members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
were reported to have been killed outside the jails, but some of these are alleged
to have been people who had recently left the CPI (M) for the CPI (ML). Nine
members of other political parties, including the ruling Congress party, were
killed in this period and 66 police, businessmen, moneylenders, landlords and
others. In November, 1973, a trial began at Parvathipuram in Andhra Pradesh
involving 68 leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and
38 of the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee, perhaps
the largest trial of Communist revolutionaries in history. The trial continues
at the time of writing (May 1974). About 45,000 other revolutionaries or alleged
revolutionaries are still in jails in India, many of them under the legal classifica¬
tion of criminals rather than of political prisoners. Many have been held for
four or more years without being brought to trial.
96 See Hamza Alavi, loc cit, 1965.
97 On March 1, 1971, the Government of India sent about 10,000 paramilitary
personnel into the districts of Warangal, Khammam and Karimnagar in Andhra
Pradesh and subdued the revolutionary struggle there. Something similar to
the Vietnamese strategic hamlet plan has been attempted in Srikakulam district,
people of scattered villages being herded together in camps at three mile intervals
so that food supplies to the guerillas are cut off. No civilians are allowed out
after dusk. Some 50,000 tribes people were still confined in these hamlets in
April 1974. (See Mohan Ram, loc cit, 1972, p. 42, Frontier, Volume 5, January
27, 1973, p. 8; and Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 9, Number 17,
April 27, 1974, p. 666.).
 PART II
Agrarian Struggles In
The 19th Century
'

\
 Introduction

(i)
The seven articles in this section provide detailed descriptions of
some of the powerful tribal, tenant and peasant uprisings which
took place in various parts of India in the second half of the nine¬
teenth century. Further, they provide an idea as to how rural India
was being qualitatively transformed under the impact of the econo¬
mic, political, juridical and administrative measures adopted by
the British rulers.
The British ushered in a qualitatively new set of property relations
by making land a commodity, thereby giving a mortal blow to the
peculiar feudal relations prevailing in the countryside. This new
type of proprietory relations were called the zamindari and ryotwari
systems. 'Under the former, vast tracts of land comprising of
districts, talukas, villages and even large tribal areas were made
over to zamindars by the British as private property. In ryotwari
areas, every peasant within the village was transformed into a
proprietor of a specific piece of land, thereby freeing him from all
customary and earlier legal obligations which prevented him
from transfering his proprietory or possession rights in the market
to any bidder.
The British introduced a new policy of revenue assessment,
revenue payment and revenue collection—the prime source of
income for the new rulers. The assessment was based on the potential
productivity of land. Payment was to be made by the individual
assessee, the new zamindar or ryot (proprietors) and not by the
village community as a whole, on the basis of a proportion of share
of the total produce. Further, it had to be paid in cash and not
in kind as in the pre-British period. The necessity for cash
ushered in a process of sale, mortgage, transfer of proprietory
rights, assets and crops all of which made the alienation of land
a powerful feature in the peasant’s life. This led to a dependence
on the moneylender and trader who could give money in advance
to pay the revenue in cash. The transformation of land, assets
and crops into commodities involved a legal system and an admini¬
strative machinery and induced the moneylenders, traders, richer
130 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

landlords and men of means to advance money in lieu of various

types of hypothecation. These developments created in the zamin-
dari areas a chain of sometimes fifty to hundred intermediaries
between the chief zamindar, owning villages and estates comprising
thousands of acres of land, and the actual cultivators, who were
reduced to the status of share croppers, tenants and even landless
labours bound to the land with the status of almost semi-slaves.
It also generated a fierce competition for security of tenure and
of occupancy rights between various categories of tenants like,
jotedars, bargdars and a host of others. It also created a chain of
contractors, farmers (including even Europeans), moneylenders,
traders and others who leased the land from the zamindars to
grow particular types of crops like, jute, indigo, tea, etc.
In ryotwari area, a process of pauperization, proletarianization
and fragmentation of land set in with assets and crops passing
into the hands of usurers, traders and richer farmers creating a
peculiar type of stratification involving various categories of
groups related to the land in different ways.
The new tenure system deprived the tribal population of their
communal rights over forests and lands, forcing them to give up
many vital activities which were customary rights and essential for
day-to-day living. They were brought under a new bourgeois legal,
property and administrative set-up which uprooted them from
their own patterns of justice based on a different set of norms
and values. British policies encouraged an influx of zamindars,
their representatives, forest contractors, traders, moneylenders,
administrators, and educationists (predominantly missionaries)
into the tribal areas. These sections of people exploited the tribals
with the political and juridical backing of alien Government. Vast
sections of tribal people were transformed into landless labourers,
and bonded serfs, who were economically and socially dependent
on the various categories of people described above. This had a
devastating effect on every aspect of tribal life; there was no func¬
tional alternative to compensate for the loss of security and in¬
stitutional safeguards in the economic, social and cultural matrix.
This was an all-India process, operating unevenly.
In course of time the tribals were reduced to such a state that
they had no other way of existence, but to resort to activities which
the Government labelled ‘criminal’. The British Government
 INTRODUCTION 131

branded entire tribes as criminal tribes and isolated them in certain

areas, almost similar to vast concentration camps, where they
were kept like beasts in reserved forests or sanctuaries under the
terror of the British administration and the social and moral supervi¬
sion of the missionaries.

(2)
We have represented this background in brief for a number of
reasons: (1) to make intelligible the framework within which the
struggles described in the following pages were fought. It may be
added that the participants in the struggles were not conscious
of this framework. (2) To point out how the major historians, both
representing British apologists and the nationalist bourgeois and
petty bourgeois interests, either view these struggles as unhealthy
reactions causing law and order problems, or as misguided reactions
causing splits and diversions within the nationalist movement.
(3) To clear the confusion created after Independence by a dominant
group of marxists that in the rural areas feudalism is the prevailing
mode of production. (4) To highlight the fact that a proper under¬
standing of the agrarian problem in the post 1947 period can be
possible only if it is grasped that the British introduced a bourgeois
judicio-administrative and economic framework by .transforming
land into a commodity and demanding revenue in cash the British
rulers changed the Indian countryside by bringing it within the
framework of the world capitalist system. The phenomena of
indentured labour, plantation labour and forced cultivation of
various cash crops, though occurring within the share cropping or
tenant system does not imply feudalism but is a system of a quali¬
tatively different nature—the result of land being transformed
into a commodity.

(3)
The first selection in this part, ‘The Santhal Insurrection of 1855-
56’, is a brief, but vivid account of an episode representative of
similar revolts which took place all over the country. Indian
history during the British period is replete with such struggles.
Unfortunately, very little attention has been paid to them. The
selection describes the capacities and techniques of struggles
used by the tribal people and the brutal methods used by the rulers
1 32 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to suppress them ruthlessly. It also shows the emergence of a new

problem: the need for a leadership which could view these struggles
in the context of the larger socio-economic and political matrix
and evolve strategies on that basis. The present selection also raises
a very important point which has acquired acute poignancy after
Independence. Can the basic problems of the tribal population
be solved within the ‘exploitative capitalist social system’ even after
the withdrawal of the British rulers? Of course, L. Natarajan does
not clearly pose this issue in his study. However, subsequent
tribal struggles all over India beginning with the Nagas, Mizos,
Gonds, Bhils, Warlis, Naiks, Sovarias and others reveal the need
to examine this problem from this angle.

(4)
The second selection, ‘Indigo Cultivators’ Strike—1860’, unfolds
another aspect of the impact of British policies in rural India. The
cultivation of certain commercial crops were required to be develop¬
ed and expanded to satisfy the needs of the international trade
as well as to meet the requirements of the growing industries in
Britain. Tea, jute, cotton, indigo, sugar and a few other items
became vital. The British evolved an elaborate technique of either
procuring slave or indentured labour to provide the work force
to cultivate such crops not merely in India but in various occupied
territories which they captured and brought under their control.
Marx has described some aspects of this phenomena in his classic
section in Capital, Vol.I, on ‘Primitive Accumulation’.
This phenomenon of indentured labour took various forms which
still remain relatively unstudied. In India, it initially took the form
of buying off or leasing the lands from the zamindars by the British
traders, retired officials or trained slave drivers from USA. It also
took place in the form of occupying sparsely populated tribal
areas, where either specifically new crops like tea and others were
grown, or the cultivation of crops like indigo, jute, etc., were
expanded. These European planters adopted cruel and perverse
methods to force the cultivators to grow these crops at the cost
of food crops so essential for daily consumption. They broke up
the self-subsistent village economies and reduced the cultivators
to a semi-serf condition subjecting them to various types of social
and personal oppression. Though the tools and techniques of
 INTRODUCTION 133

production were the same, though the relations between the owners,
plantation owners, or owners of the cultivated land did not take
the form of wage labour, the objective of production and the legal
framework within which the production was carried on were
capitalist. It had all the characteristics of a new type of exploitation
and oppression, which though reminiscent of slavery and serfdom,
were linked to and a part of the growing world-wide capitalist
system and therefore qualitatively different.

(5)
‘Maratha Uprisings: 1875’, is reproduced next to highlight the
impact of British agrarian strategies in ryotwari areas. The pay¬
ment of revenue in cash, the assessment of revenue on the basis
of potential productivity of land, and the periodical reassessments
made the peasants more and more dependent on the moneylenders,
traders and other financiers. The moneylenders and traders utilised
this opportunity to put the peasants under their bondage and
generated, as indicated, a process of sub-division, fragmentation,
pauperization and proletarianization. The struggle against the
high land revenue assessment as well as the struggle against the
usurers became the main features of the struggles in the ryotwari
areas.
This selection helps us to search for the phenomenon of‘primitive
accumulation’ in various parts of the country practiced by other
communities who later on became the powerful sections of the
capitalist class after Independence.

(6)
The fourth selection, ‘Conclusion’ from Natarajan’s book, is
provided to disclose the manner in which eminent Marxists of the
united Communist Party of India, just after Independence, assessed
the forces generated by the British rulers and the reactions of the
tribals, indigo cultivators and indebted peasants in the ryotwari
areas to these forces. Natarajan’s piece is to my knowledge, one of
the first systematic appraisals of the ‘role of peasant revolts’ in
the context of British agrarian policies and their consequences
on the rural population. It also makes generalizations which show
how the academic scholarship emerging after Independence and
coming under the influence of British and American imperialist
1 34 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ideologies began to ignore the study of the process of revolutionary

modernization’ launched during the British period among the
exploited strata and revealed in the series of gigantic struggles
unleashed by them which threatened the capitalist development
initiated by the Indian bourgeoisie.
Natarajan’s ‘Conclusion’ is also included to highlight how the
peasantry and their role and activities during the British period
require to be analysed in a different manner for a correct assessment.

(7)
‘Unrest in Andhra Pradesh’ provides details about an area where
a series of revolts have taken place during the last two hundred
years, including the recent Naxalite uprising. It gives a clue to the
fact that similar conditions generated by the British economic,
political and cultural policies, produced revolts in all parts of the
country, thus helping us to clear some misconceptions which lead
to treating every revolt as a unique case.
It also shows how the persistence of certain socio-economic
structural conditions will always perpetuate the climate for revolts
and rebellions, whether the rulers are foreign or Indian.

(8)
The sixth and seventh selections ‘Peasant Struggles in Pabna’
and ‘Agrarian Disturbances in Eastern and Central Bengal in the
late 19th century’, draw attention to a type of development in the
zamindari area which has hitherto been ignored. Here, it was a
conflict between the Zamindars and the various strata of tenants
which emerged as a consequence of the permanent zamindari
settlement.
The operation of the zamindari system introduced during the
late 18th century in the course of the first half of the 19th century
had created a chain of tenants, sub-tenants, and share croppers,
who were being transformed into excessively poor tenants without
resources or very meagre resources operating on tiny pieces of
land. In many cases they were transformed into the status of agri¬
cultural labourers. The zamindari system, with the permanent set¬
tlement also inaugurated a process whereby the zamindars them¬
selves sold portion’s of their vast estates to augment their wealth,
sometimes to their own collectors of revenue or to merchants and
 INTRODUCTION 135

moneylenders who extracted various types of illegal exactions and

services with the help of brutal terrorist methods which even led
to evictions.
These legal and extra-legal practices caused a gigantic ferment
among the tenants. The British administrators, realizing its threat
to peace and security as well as its effect on agrarian production
processes (especially on the production of commercial crops like,
jute, indigo, etc.) passed the rent Act of 1859 which ensured oc¬
cupancy rights to certain sections of the tenants and also prevented
the zamindars from enhancing their rent claims arbitrarily. This
Act introduced a new feature in landlord-tenant relationship viz.
restrictions on the absolute proprietory rights of big zamindars,
recognizing occupancy rights of tenants and also restricting, at
least theoretically and judicially the arbitrary rights of zamindars
to enhance their revenue rates as well as to demand various types
of illegal dues and services. This Act is one of the earliest of the
series of Acts passed by the British rulers, to mitigate the injustice
which found expression in the unrests and agitations launched by
the oppressed and the exploited tenants. This Act opened up for
the tenants, sub-tenants, share-croppers and evicted peasants a
legal way to prevent the zamindars and their agents from perpetrat¬
ing legally disapproved exactions. While this advantage was
enjoyed predominently by substantial tenants, who in course of
time themselves became owners of the land, the other sections of
the peasantry could only secure a certain measure of protection
and temporary relief. The Act also opened up an avenue to form
associations and organizations, to ventilate grievances, to awaken
various sections of the tenants to their rights, to distinguish between
legal and illegal acts of landlords and their representatives and to
demand redress both against irregular practices of zamindars as
well as to rectify the laws which were either ambiguous or highly
unjust. Professor Kalyan Kumar Sengupta, in these two articles
provides a very vivid picture of the various devices adopted by
the zamindars to counteract, violate and bypass the Act.
The articles also give a glimpse of the emergence of new types of
associations, which espoused the cause of the tenants and which
launched an organized legal battle to rectify immediate grievances
and some of the illegal practices.
 7 The Santhal Insurrection: 1855-56

L. Natarajan

' We shall see how much twine could the Daroga procure, so as to fasten
all the peaceful Santhals whom the wicked Daroga wanted to send up.'

—Answer from Gocho, one of the Santhal leaders to the police

Daroga Mahesh Lai Datta.

The Santhals were a quiet unassuming people who worked under

primitive agricultural conditions. Sir George Campbell paid tribute
to them as being ‘most industrious and even skilful clearers of the
jungle and reclaimers of the soil’.1 With the establishment of the
Permanent Zamindari Settlement (1793), the lands which they had
cultivated for centuries were overnight turned over to the zamindars.
With this followed pressing demands for increased rents. The
Santhals found these new arrangements disturbing. Being peace-
loving by nature, they started retreating from the districts of
Cuttack, Dhalbhum, Manbhum, Barabhum, Chhotanagpur,
Palamau, Hazaribagh, Midnapur, Bankura and Birbhum.2 Hound¬
ed from their homelands, with great industry they cleared the
forests in the plains skirting the Rajmahal Hills and, bringing
large tracts of land under cultivation, started life anew. At that time
this area was called Daman-e-Koh.
Sir George Campbell described their situation thus:
‘They fairly think the land is his who first tilled it. If pressed
beyond that they would rather retreat further into the woods
and make new reclamations in places where they would not be
molested. Unfortunately, however, they have reached extreme
limits of retreat, and now find themselves on the borders of the
plains of the Ganges at the very place where the competition for
land is keenest and where rack-rents are screwed up to the highest
pitch.’3
Their peaceful existence in the new settlements was not to remain
for long undisturbed. The same class of zamindars who had hounded
Reproduced from Peasant Uprisings In India (1850-1900), by L. Natarajan, People’s
Publishing House Ltd., Bombay, 1953.
 THE SANTHAL INSURRECTION : 1 855-56 1 37

them out of their lands in their former districts was to harass them
again soon. As long as the forest lands were not cleared, the zamin-
dars kept themselves away. However, once the land was made
suitable for cultivation, they were not slow in coming up to claim
proprietorship of the soil and demand rents. ‘Greedy Zamindars’,
reported the Calcutta Review of 1856, ‘living near the borders of
the Daman had begun for some time to cast a wistful eye on their
lands.’ It cited a typical example:
‘Gangadhar is an influential Zamindar. The border of his Tuppeh
touches the boundary pillars of the Daman; within the pillars,
Manick Santhal has a lovely spot of corn-land which he has
nourished with frugal care; he has paid his rent for it for five
years. Gangadhar can by no means claim it, for even his own
ancestor has signed the plot away. As, however, Manick has
paid six annas per mensem, he (Gangadhar) thinks no harm of
levying on him the ‘lenient’ sum of six rupees in consideration
of the fact that he will thenceforth be relieved of his exactions
for that year!’4
Mr W.C. Taylor, Assistant Commissioner at Sreekand wrote
to Mr A.R. Thompson, Deputy Commissioner at Naya Dumkha
that the Rajahs of Maheshpur and Pakur were hated by the Santhals
because they granted leases of Santhal villages to non-Santhal
Bengali zamindars and moneylenders.5
A contemporary writer in the Calcutta Review described the
situation in these words:
‘Zamindars, the police, the revenue and court alas have exercised
a combined system of extortions, oppressive exactions, forcible
dispossession of property, abuse and personal violence and a
variety of petty tyrannies upon the timid and yielding Santhals.
Usurious interest on loans of money ranging from 50 to 500 per
cent; false measures at the haut (weekly market) and the market;
wilful and uncharitable trespass by the rich by means of their
untethered cattle, tattoos (small ponies), ponies and even
elephants, on the growing crops of the poorer race; and such
like illegalities have been prevalent. Even a demand by individuals
from the Santhals of security for good conduct is a thing not
unknown; embarrassing pledges for debt also formed another
mode of oppression.’6
Thus, besides the zamindars, there were the moneylenders too.
1 38 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The rates of interest as described above, were incredibly high.

The Santhal, wrote the Calcutta Review, ‘saw his crops, his cattle,
even himself and family appropriated for debt which (though)
ten times paid, remained an incubus upon him still.’7
Seeing the opportunity of good trade and profitable money-
lending, many moira and bania families from the districts of
Burdwan and Birbhum, and Bhojpuri and Bhatia families from
Shahabad, Chaprah, Betiah and Arrah had migrated to the Santhal
areas. Barahait, ‘the capital town of the hills’ was reported in 1851
to be ‘a substantial village with a large population and about fifty
families of Bengali traders’; two markets were held there every
week. The Santhals brought their produce to Barahait where the
traders bought it at ‘a price far below its true value.’8 Large quanti¬
ties of rice, bora, mustard and several other oilseeds were carried
on bullock carts by the merchants to Jangipur on the Bhagirathi.
From there on, they were sent to Murshidabad and Calcutta.
‘Much of the mustard was exported to England.’
On top of this, there was also oppression from Europeans
employed in railroad construction. The Calcutta Review of 1856
cites cases of ‘forced abduction of two Santhal women, and even
murder and some unjust acts of oppression as taking kids, fowls,
etc., without payment on the part of the Europeans employed on
the line of the railroad.’9
The oppression by the zamindars, the moneylenders, traders
and Europeans and the government officers had inflicted great
sufferings on the Santhal peasantry. The peacefulness of the
Santhals was taken for timidity. The extent of oppression was
intensified as time went by. All this was causing great discontent.
The Pakur Record of the Calcutta Review of 1856 indicated that
in 1854, some time before the actual start of the insurrection,
the village committees of the Santhals ‘seem to have begun in
right earnest to cogitate what might be the proper course for
them to pursue’. When finally they took the road to open insurrec¬
tion, it was forced on them by a ‘long course of oppression silently
and patiently submitted to by those unsophisticated people’. As
far as the government was concerned, it had learned nothing from
earlier Santhal uprisings in 1811, 1820 and 1831.
Warnings of the seething discontent were given by the events
in 1854. After consultation among themselves, the leading Santhals
 THE SANTHAL INSURRECTION: 1855-56 139

began by robbing the mahajans and the zamindars of their ill-

earned wealth. In the opinion of a contemporary writer in the
Calcutta Review, ‘these were well-merited reprisals for their un¬
provoked cruelties’. According to a detailed account by Digam bar
Chakravarthy, a pleader of Pakur, the moiras and dikus (the
Santhals called the Bengalis by these names), were frightened by
the secret meetings of the Santhals under the leadership of Bir
Singh of Sasan in Lachimpur. Among the other participants in
these meetings, were Bir Manjhi of Boiro, Kaoleh Pharmanik of
Sindree and Doman Manjhi of Hatbandha. The mahajans and
the local officials sought the assistance of Rani Ksemasundari, the
zamindar of Ambah Paragana (Pakur Raj). Babu Jagbandhu
Roy, her Diwan, summoned Bir Singh to the Zamindari Kacheri.
A heavy fine was imposed on him and he ‘was mercilessly beaten
with shoes before his followers.’10
The feelings of the Santhal peasantry were forcefully expressed
by Santhal Gocho when he was unjustly harassed by the Daroga
Mahesh Lai Datta. Gocho declared challengingly:
‘We shall see how much twine could the Daroga procure so
as to fasten all the peaceful Santhals whom the wicked Daroga
wanted to be sent up.’11
This was the warning of the coming storm. However, the apparent
calm prevailing at the close of 1854 was taken to have been caused
by cowardice on the part of the Santhals.
The repressive measures instituted by Mahesh Lai Daroga only
added fuel to the fire. Early in 1855, nearly six to seven thousand
Santhals from Birbhum, Bankura, Chhotanagpur and Hazaribagh
assembled for the purpose of avenging the punishment inflicted
on their comrades in the last year. They complained that ‘their
comrades had been punished while nothing had been done to the
Mahajans whose exactions had compelled them to take the law
into their own hands.’12
The decisions of this meeting were circulated to all the other
Santhals by the symbol of a sal tree, which is still used as a sign of
unity and for the purpose of passing the word around. As a result,
a large gathering of over 10,000 Santhals representing 400 villages
met at Bhagnadihi on the night of June 30, 1855. It was decided
that the time had come for the Santhals to rise as one man and get
rid of the control exercised by their oppressors. On the instructions
140 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of the meeting, ‘letters were then written by Kirta, Bhadoo, Sunno

and Sidhu, addressed to Government, to the Commissioner,
Collector and Magistrate of Birbhum, to the Darogas of Thanahs
Dighee and Rajmahal and to several zamindars and others’. To
the zamindars, they issued a clear ultimatum calling for ‘replies
within fifteen days’.13
In their letters, the Santhal leaders declared their solid deter¬
mination to get rid of the oppressions by the zamindars and the
mahajans and to ‘take possession of the country and set up a
Government of their own’.14 Nobody cared to answer their letters.
Although the government remained deaf to the Santhals’ letters,
other non-Santhals resident in the area threw their support behind
the Santhal peasantry. The extent of this support is evident from a
letter which the Commissioner of Bhagalpur wrote to the Secretary
to the Government of Bengal on July 28, 1855:
‘From all accounts it appears that the Santhals are led on and
incited to acts of oppression by the gowallahs (milkmen), telis
(oilmen) and other castes who supply them with intelligence,
beat their drums, direct their proceedings and act as their spies.
These people as well as the lohars (blacksmiths) who make their
arrows and axes ought to meet with condign punishment and be
speedily included in any proclamation which Government
may see fit to issue against the rebels.’15
Thus, with hope in their hearts, a song on their lips and bows and
arrows in their hands, the Santhal peasants raised the flag of
open armed insurrection against the unholy trinity of theii* op¬
pressors— the zamindars, the mahajans and the government.
Daroga Mahesh Lai Datta, who had been so ruthless toward
the Santhal leaders in 1854, became their immediate objective.
With his usual arrogance, the Daroga advised them ‘to disperse
quietly and cultivate their fields so that they might be able to pay
their rents’.16 This last minute concern of the Daroga for the
payment of rents was too much for the Santhals to stomach. After
chopping off the Daroga’s head, the Santhals proceeded to Barahait.
Seeing the strong demonstration of the outraged Santhals,
the zamindar’s agents, moneylenders and traders, took to their
heels. The insurgents were not slow to consolidate their early
gains. Establishing full control over the area between Borio and
Colgong, they started moving towards Bhagalpur and Rajmahal.
 THESANTHAL INSURRECTION: 1855-56 141

The Government, still officially expressing innocent surprise

at the insurrection, was making large-scale preparations to suppress
it. All available police and military forces were being alerted for
immediate action. Orders were also issued to the zamindars and
darogas of the neighbouring paraganas to aid in suppressing the
insurrection.
The insurrection was spreading rapidly. Mr Barnes, an indigo
planter at Colgong, wrote to the Commissioner of Bhagalpur on
July 1, 1855 that there was a general uprising in his area and called
for government assistance. Major F.W. Burroughs was dispatched
to Colgong after the insurgents had left the place. His letter of
July 11, to the Commissioner of Bhagalpur indicates clearly the
lines on which the Santhal fighting was being directed. He wrote:
‘We hear that the insurgents move about in very small parties but
on their drums sounding they assemble in parties of 10,000 men
each.’
Like all popular insurrections, the technique of guerilla fighting
and assembled battalions was combined by the insurgents. The
appearance of the Santhal insurgents on the Indian arena was a
novel experience. Here were the first people’s armies, composed
of rebellious peasants marching against their oppressors. It is a
supreme tribute to their organization and voluntary discipline
that, without any previous military training, such large numbers
of persons, exceeding 10,000, assembled and disassembled at a
very short warning.
Postal and railway communications between Bhagalpur and
Rajmahal were completely severed. The insurgents were in control
of the area lying between the two cities. The high road between
Pirpainti and Sakriguli was in the insurgents’ hands. Some persons
who had escaped from Pirpainti later reported that the insurgents
loudly proclaimed ‘that the Company’s rule is at an end; the regime
of their Subah has commenced’.
Major Burroughs was ordered to Pirpainti. Roundly defeated
in a serious encounter near Pirpainti at about 2 p.m. on July 16,
1855, he escaped leaving more than 25 soldiers and half a dozen
officers dead on the battlefield. ‘The rebels,’ he reported later,
‘stood their ground firmly and shot not only with hand-bows but
with bows which they used with their feet, sitting on the ground to
pull them and fought also with a kind of battle-axe.’
142 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The 40th Regiment N.I. headed by Major Shuckburgh, and the

Hill Rangers and the 7th Regiment N.I. commanded by Lt. Fajan,
were rushed into the battle. Railway operations had completely
stopped. The Government’s panic was ‘intense’. The situation
was entirely out of control.
Martial law was declared on July 19. The proclamation stated
that the insurrection had by now ‘assumed all the characteristics
of a rebeUron’, and sanctioned ‘the destruction of the rebels found
in arms’ and offered large rewards for the apprehension of the
leaders: for the ‘principal chief Rs. 10,000; for each of the Dewans
(supposed to be about 3 or 4 in number) Rs. 5,000, and for each of
the minor chiefs of the Pergunnah Rs. 1,000.’ The military was
empowered ‘to take all the measures considered necessary for the
extirpation of the rebels.’
With this began the most brutal suppression of the rebellion.
In spite of the brutality, the insurrection was spreading to Godda,
Pakur, Maheshpur, Murshidabad and Birbhum. Isree Bhakt,
Tilak Bhakt and Thootha Bhakhta of Litiparu—who, despite their
names indicating meek religious devotion, were ‘notorious even
amongst the Bhakts for devising and exercising inhuman cruelties
on the debtors’—paid for their crimes with their lives.
Now the Santhal forces were being helped by ‘a large number
of low-caste dikus’ (non-Santhals). With their ranks thus reinforced
by a brotherly bond which cut across all lines of castes and religions,
they marched to Sangrampur and from there on, under the combined
leadership of Sidbu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairab, laid siege to
Pakur. After three days they captured it. Dindyal Roy, the richest
moneylender of the place, being a corpulent man could not escape.
His servant Jagannath Sirdar, who was being kept in virtual slavery,
caught him and brought him before the Santhals. There Jagannath,
to avenge his life-long slavery, lopped off Dindyal Roy’s limbs bit
by bit with a tangi axe, exclaiming: ‘With those fingers you counted
your interest and ill-begotten wealth! With this hand you snatched
away food from the mouths of the hungry poor!’
Dindyal’s head was taken to the nearby temple of Siva Chakra-
paniswar and placed in a niche for all oppressors to see.
The Government was now counter-attacking with full force.
Captain Francis with the 13th Regiment, Lieutenant Loskart'
with the 7th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Liptrap with the
 THE SANTHAL INSURRECTION : 1 855-56 143

42nd Regiment engaged the Santhals in battle. A guard of one

thousand Garhawalis at a monthly charge of Rs. 3050 was hired
‘to watch the passes of the district.’ The zamindars and the indigo-
planters also threw their resources on the side.of the government.
Many of the zamindars in the Bhagalpur and neighbouring
districts lent their elephants for service with the different detach¬
ments operating over the battle-front. They expressed their wil¬
lingness ‘to receive no hire’, but preferred to lend the elephants
to the government only desiring that they should be ‘well-fed and
taken care of during the period of their employment’. The Nawab
Nazim of Murshidabad, too, supplied ‘a train of elephants at his
personal expense’. ‘The troops engaged against the insurgents’,
wrote the Commissioner of Burdwan on September 27, ‘were
supplied with funds by the European indigo-planters’.
With all the forces thus assembled, the Government moved
with ruthlessness to suppress the insurrection. Captain Sherwill
moved the 40th Regiment into action and during a tour following
July 29, ‘destroyed twelve Santhal villages’. Major Shuckburgh
started in a south-eastern direction to Deadeh and then turned
north-east through Khonerah and round the hills to Lohundia
‘destroying fifteen Santhal villages by the way and clearing that
part of the country of the rebels’. On the afternoon of July 29,
Major Burroughs sent Lieutenant Gorden with a detachment ‘to
destroy the Santhal villages of Munhan and Munkatro’ and the
next day Lieutenant Rubie ‘made a detour to the North-west and
destroyed the villages of Bhuggya, Titereah, Buskudar, Rangokitta,
Hurrialia and Bockai’. In all 36 Santhal villages were destroyed.
The Rajmahal Hills were drenched with the blood of the fighting
Santhal peasantry. In the face of this annihilation of their villages,
the Santhal peasants stood like granite rocks of courage defending
their homes and hearths. Typical of their heroism is the narration
given by L.S.S. O’Malley of one encounter.
‘They showed the most reckless courage, never knowing when
they were beaten and refusing to surrender. On one occasion,
forty-five Santhals took refuge in a mud hut which they held
against the Sepoys. Volley after volley was fired into it, and
before each volley quarter was offered. Each time the Santhals
replied with a discharge of arrows. At last, when their fire ceased,
the Sepoys entered the hut and found only one old man was
144 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

left alive. A sepoy called on him to surrender, whereupon the

old man rushed upon him and cut him down with his battle-
axe.’ 17
Despite the murderous repression, the Santhal insurgents, even
by the middle of August, ‘were still estimated to exceed 30,000
men’ in arms. Many of them were proceeding towards Monghyr
‘into the village of Mulheapur’. The Commissioner of Bhagalpur,
reviewing the government operations, wrote on August 11, to W.I.
Tucker, Magistrate of Monghyr; ‘They have as yet shown no signs
of submission to Government, but are on the contrary openly
at war with our troops’.
No repressive measure was regarded too drastic to be tried
against the Santhals. Finally, in August, Mr A.C. Bidwell, Commis¬
sioner of the Nadia Division, was appointed Special Commissioner
to carry out ‘the measures necessary for the entire suppression of
the insurrection’.
Despite their unflinching heroism, the Santhal’s were facing a
hopeless task. The rest of India was quiet and the entire army of
a mighty empire was moving against them. The number of troops
engaged against them ran into tens of thousands. ‘A number of
outposts,’ wrote K. Datta, ‘sometimes consisting of twelve to
fourteen thousand men drove away the insurgents from the open
country.’
The apologists of this criminal suppression by the government
loudly proclaimed the ‘inhuman cruelty’ displayed by the Santhals
and justified the harsh punitive measures employed against them.
One of them, L.S.S. O'Malley writes:
‘The insurrection proved them capable of inhuman cruelty.
When a Mahajan fell into their hands, they first cut off his feet
with the taunt that was four annas in the rupee; then hacked
off his legs to make up eight annas; then cut his body in two to
make up twelve annas and finally lopped off his head, yelling
out in chorus that he had full payment of sixteen annas in the
rupee.’18
Compare this pent up vengeance against the moneylenders,
erupting with volcanic fury from the anger repressed for decades,
with what the government did.
The account of the insurrection in Balfour’s Encyclopaedia
of India is a classic understatement: ‘The insurrection was not
suppressed without bloodshed’. With a cold-bloodedness which
 THE SANTHAL INSURRECTION : 1 855-56 145

only imperialist ruthlessness is capable of, the account concluded:

‘—indeed, half their numbers perished'.19
This means that out of a total of thirty to fifty thousand insurgents,
fifteen to twenty-five thousand were murdered before the insur¬
rection was finally suppressed. During those memorable days of
July and August, the Rajmahal Hills surely saw an unprecedented
blood-bath.
Kanhu and other leaders of the insurrection were captured by
the third week of February 1856 near Operbandhoh, north-east
of Jamatra and were executed. Evidently not satisfied with the
murder of fifteen to twenty-five thousand Santhals, the Editors
of the Friends of India and the Calcutta Review, asked for harsher
punishments for those who were left alive.
The Editor of the Friends of India wrote:
‘It is only by striking terror into these blood-thirsty savages,
who have respected neither age nor sex, that we can hope to quell
this insurrection. It is necessary to avenge the outrages committed,
and to protect the cultivators of the plain (sic) from a repetition
of them. The Santhals believe that they can enjoy the luxury of
blood and plunder for a month without a certainty of retribution.
It is absolutely necessary that this impression should be removed,
or obliterated, if Government would not in these districts sit
on bayonet points. To achieve this end, the retribution must be
complete, leaving no calculation of chances for future rioters;
so striking that none may fail to know and understand; and
so tremendous that people may know their lives and happiness
are not held of light account. It is to Pegu that we would convey
the Santhals, not one or two of the ring-leaders, but the entire
population of the infected districts. India has not arrived at the
point where armed rebellion can be treated with the contemptuous
forebearance with which the English Ministry can pardon a
knot of Chartists or banish a gang of Irish patriots. Let the
Santhals’ punishment be entrusted to a special Commission
as was done in Canada in 1838. Or even if this expedient be
too arbitrary, let the village be fined in an amount almost equal
to the plunder retained, and the sum distributed among the
sufferers. To secure the punishment of the race, and restore the
prestige of British authority the mass of the Santhals should not
remain unpunished.’
The unanimous voice of the outraged humanity of the Santhals
146 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

demanded peace and protection against their oppressors. The im¬

perialists, however, wanted more blood-letting, more punishment,
more desolation.
Large numbers of the Santhal peasants were taken hostages and
prisoners. K. Datta mentions that ‘there are two big files of cases
of Santhal prisoners in the Record Office of the Deputy Commis¬
sioner of the Santhal Paraganas.’20 All these still remain unexamin¬
ed. We do not know how many in all were tried and what severe
sentences they had to undergo. However, one folder from these
files has come to light. It shows that the Commissioner of the Santhal
Paraganas tried at one time a batch of 253 prisoners from 52
different villages. Of them three were released and two turned
approvers during the trial. Amongst the 248 prisoners tried, there
were 46 boys of ages ranging from 9 to 10 years, ‘who were’, accord¬
ing to the official version, given stripes of rattan after the manner
of school discipline.’ Others were sentenced to long-term imprison¬
ments varying from seven to forteen years.
Witnesses against the prisoners were hard to obtain. This indicates
the support they had among the population. The special Commis¬
sioner, A.C. Bidwell, pointed out in his letter to the Lieutenant-
Governor of Bengal that though he was in favour of ‘speedy
trials’, he was beset by difficulties in the matter of ‘procuring the
attendance of witnesses’.
The Great Santhal Insurrection was thus cruelly suppressed.
This was not the end of the oppressions against the Santhals, or
in point of fact, against peasants in other parts of India. On the
contrary, the oppression was intensified. And yet, the Santhal
Insurrection was highly successful in one important aspect. The
Santhal area, which had up to then been administratively broken
up and merged into the neighbouring districts, was now reorganized
into a separate entity known as the Santhal Paraganas. The Santhals
had thus succeeded in forcing recognition of their special status
as a national minority.
The din of the actual battles-of the Insurrection has died down.
But its echoes have kept on vibrating through the years, growing
louder and louder as more peasants from various places joined
the fight against zamindari oppression. The clarion call that
summoned the Santhals to battle on that fateful night of June 30,
1855 at Bagnadihi was to be heard in other parts of the country
 THE SANTHAL INSURRECTION: 1855-56 147

at the time of the Indigo Strike of 1860, the Pabna and Bogra
Uprising of 1872, the Maratha Peasant Rising in Poona and Ahmed-
nagar in 1875-6. It was finally to merge in the massive demand of
the peasantry all over the country for an end to the oppression of
the zamindars and moneylenders. The Santhal blood has etched
this slogan in letters, bold and large.
Glory to the immortal Santhals, who raised this slogan and
showed the path to battle! The banner of militant struggle has
since then passed from hand to hand over the length and the
breadth of India.

References

1 Abhay Charan Das, The Indian Ryot, (Calcutta, 1881), pp. 564-5.
2 Captain Walter Sherwell, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1851.
3 A.C. Das, op. cit., pp. 564-5.
4 Calcutta Review, 1856, pp. 238-40.
5 Kalinkar Datta, The Santhal Insurrection of 1855-57, (Calcutta, 1940), p. 7.
6 Calcutta Review, 1856.
7 Calcutta Review, 1860.
8 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1851, pp. 566, 574-6.
9 Datta, op. cit., p. 8.
10 L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (1917), p 255.
11 Datta, op. cit., p. 12.
12 Ibid., p. 12.
13 Letter from the Commissioner of Bhagalpur to the Secretary of the Government
of Bengal, dated July 9, 1855. Cited by Datta, op. cit., p. 14.
14 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
15 Calcutta Review, 1856.
16 Datta, op. cit., p. 16
17 Most of the details regarding the actual events during the Insurrection are
taken from Datta, op. cit., \
18 L.S.S. O’Malley, op. cit., pp. 193-4.
19 Balfour’s Encyclopaedia of India, III, p. 527.
20 Datta, op. cit., pp. 67-8.
 8 Indigo Cultivators’ Strike—1860

L. Natarajan

‘Let there be profit or le‘t there be loss. I will die sooner than cultivate
indigo. No, 1 won't cultivate indigo for any one on any account,' Dinu
Mandal of Mozumpore, factory Dalalnagar, Thana Damuhuda, to
the Indigo Commission (1860).

—Questions 1165-7 in Minutes of Evidence.

Centuries before the modern chemical industry began producing

artificial bluing dyes, Indian cultivators had been growing a plant
called indigo which yielded the dye necessary for bluing cotton
cloth. With the growth of the modern textile industry in Great Britain
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there was a
great expansion in the demand for this dye. Indigo trade became
a rich source of high profits for the East India Company in India.
However, its cultivation was too limited to meet the growing needs
of the British textile industry. Retired officers of the East India
Company, and young upstarts, who had previously been slave
drivers in America, therefore, decided to acquire lands from native
zamindars in Bihar and Bengal and extend the cultivation of this
crop on a large-scale as a plantation industry. Tenants were forced
to grow indigo under a system of great oppression.
The opposition from the cultivators to this serfdom was so great
that the Governor-General in Council was forced to issue a circular
as early as July 13, 1810 stating:
The attention of the Government has recently been attracted,
in a particular manner to abuses and oppressions committed
by Europeans, who are established as indigo planters in various
parts of the country.... The facts however, which have recently
been established against some individuals of that class before
the magistrate and the Supreme Court of Judicature, are of so
flagrant a nature that the Governor-General in Council considers
Reproduced from L. Natarajan, (1953), op. cit.
 INDIGO CULTIVATORS’ STRIKE— 1860 149

it an act of indispensable duty to adopt such measures as appear

to him, under existing circumstances, best calculated to prevent
the repetition of offences equally injurious to the English charac¬
ter, and to the peace and happiness of our native subjects.’1
The circular charged the planters with these grave offences:
T Acts of violence, which, although they amount not in the
legal sense of the word to murder, have occasioned the death
of the natives.
‘2 Illegal detention of natives in confinement, especially in
stocks, with a view to recovery of balances alleged to be due
from them or for other Causes.
'3 Assembling in a tumultuary manner the people attached
to their respective factories and others and engaging in violent
affrays with other indigo planters.
‘4 Illicit infliction of punishment by means of rattan or otherwise
on the cultivators or other natives.’
This concern by a callous alien government about the wrong¬
doings of the planters is not difficult to understand when it is acc to
realized that, faced with deadly wars with the Marathas, Tipu, Natarajan
and the French in India and with Napoleon in Europe, the British
under Lord Minto were interested in maintaining a facade of
peaceful intentions and avoiding serious popular disturbances.
That this pious declaration of the Government was only formal
and for the record is evident from the fact that nothing more was
done to prevent the oppression. As a result, during the course of
the next forty years, local monopolies and acquisition of zamindaris
by European planters were extended a great deal. With this, the
oppression of the cultivators was all the more intensified.
The sale of indigo was highly profitable to the planters. However,
the terms under which the peasants had to grow indigo involved
great, losses for them. It was necessary therefore to compel the
cultivators to grow indigo in place of other crops.
Even the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal was forced to admit
in his Minute on the Report of the Indigo Commission that:
‘Rejecting all extreme cases, and giving indigo the benefit of
all doubts, I cannot put the absolute loss to the ryot at a low
average, reckoning the net loss on the cultivation of indigo at
the highest price now allowed and the loss of the net profit
the ryot would make by any other ordinary crop at the market
The
tenants
(peasants) 1 50 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA
were
compelled
price, at less than seven rupees a beegah, equivalent at least to
to grow
indigo, a seven times the rent of the land.’2
cash crop, No wonder the cultivator had to be forced to grow a crop under
on fields
designated terms which were so unprofitable to himself. The nature of the
by the oppression was clearly expressed in a letter written by A. Sconce,
planters.
Judge of Nadia, to the Secretary of the Bengal Government on
They were
not allowed April 20, 1854. The letter, inter alia, stated that the tenants
to use their were forced to cultivate indigo and not anything else in the fields
land to
grow other chosen by the planters; every two and a half bighas of land were
crops, such considered by planters as only one bigha; not content with this,
as food
staples, the planters took away two bundles of indigo for one; the tenants’
which crops were wantonly destroyed by the planters, their households
would have harried, their houses burnt, and their cattle carried off as plunder
been more
beneficial or drowned. Mr Sconce, as District Judge in Nadia, was concerned
for their over the growing opposition from the tenants to this brutal oppres¬
sustenance
sion. He requested that the Government appoint a commission
The
to investigate the whole system of indigo cultivation.3 It goes without
planters saying that his request was turned down. The Government had
also not yet gone through the experience of the Santhal Insurrection
underpaid
for the of 1855-6.
indigo crop In the meantime, the excesses committed by the planters continued
yield by
taking "two to increase in intensity. From village after village and district after
bundles for district, petitions were sent to the Government to intervene. Typical
one," is this petition from the inhabitants of Nadia to the Lieutenant-
effectively
meaning Governor of Bengal on January 16, 1860:
they took ‘That your petitioners being severely oppressed by certain
twice the
amount of proceedings on the part of certain planters in the district of
indigo as Nuddea and having unfortunately met with no redress or protec¬
they were tion from district authorities, respectfully appeal to your honour
paying for.
This for the same.
practice ‘That on the 28th October 1859 Boroo Mundle and Chunder
drastically
reduced Biswas, ryots of your petitioners’ village, were by force carried
the away by armed people belonging to the factory, and they have
peasants' not been since heard of.... That their complaints before the
earnings,
as they magistrate were dismissed (although proved on local investiga¬
were tion) on the ground that the functionary had no authority to
essentially
being paid interfere in such cases. That these efforts made by your petitioners
for only half to obtain justice have infuriated the planters and on 2nd December
of what
Anund Sirdar of Gobindpore was carried off. Subsequently,
they were
forced to This false measurement system was a tactic that allowed planters to drastically
deliver. underreport the amount of land in use, and therefore reduce the payments or
benefits owed to the peasants, thereby unpaid the labor and reduced income for the
work they put in
 INDIGO CULTIVATORS’ STRIKE— 1860 1 51

again, on the 8th instant Oojul Mullah, and Patan Shaikh were
carried away from Soneprokooreah: Six other ryots of Sonepro-
kooreah have also been carried off... ’4
Planters, some of whom were former slave-drivers in America,
were repeating their brutal performance in India.
The names of the persons so brutally carried away by the planters
testify that Hindu and Muslim tenants stood shoulder to shoulder
against the planters’ oppression.
A. Grote, Commissioner of the Nadia Division in his Third
Weekly Report (March 10-17, 1860) to the Secretary of the Govern¬
ment of Bengal indicated the mood of the peasantry. He stated:
‘I have this week visited the Damoorhoodah subdivision. The
general impression is that the ryots are much more determined
here not to sow. The agitation is much stronger and evidently
better organized.’5
Indignation was spreading all over the indigo-growing districts.
Peasants’ resistance was growing in Nadia, Barasat and Pabna.
In place of mute protests, the peasants were getting together and
taking action on a mass scale. In April 1860, all the cultivators of the
Barasat sub-division undertook what was probably the first great
general strike in the history of the Indian peasantry. They declared
themselves against the oppression of the planters and refused to
sow any indigo. The planters were in panic. In a memorial sub¬
mitted in April 1861 to Sir Charles Wood, Secretary of State for
India, D. Mackintey, Chairman of the Landholders and Com¬
mercial Association of British India, declared that
‘the state of the mofussil had now (July 1860) become one of
entire confusion. The debtors were not content with repudiating
their debts and contracts, but they even combined to drive their
creditors and employers out of the country, and thus to get rid
of all Europeans in the province, to retain the property they had
seized and to cancel all debts and obligations due to Europeans.’6
Havildar Sheebho Khan, commanding the Second Bengal
Police Battalion, was at Neesanpore factory in the Pabna district
on April 10, 1860. In a letter, describing the events that followed,
he wrote:
‘In the morning we got ready and marched to a village called
Peeraree. We were almost immediately surrounded by about
2000 men armed with spears, bows and lathees; they came on
152 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and wounded the magistrate’s horse with a spear. It is stated

that the rioters were men from 52 villages; one man was conspi¬
cuous amongst them, from which direction there was some
firing.’7
Here we see that the peasants were not only content with declaring
a general strike. The very fact that over 2000 persons, drawn from
52 villages collected at. one point ready for action indicates the
extent of active unity and organization they had succeeded in
building up.
This was a unique event in the history of the Indian peasantry.
Indigo cultivators in the large districts of Pabna and Nadia
and in the Barasat subdivision had declared the first general
strike which soon spread to Jessore, Khulna, Rajshahi, Dacca,
Maldah and Dinajpur, encompassing most of Bengal. Even before
the start of the Indian working-class movement, even before the
birth of Mahatma Gandhi, the peasants in these districts had taken
to the path of general strike. That the indigo cultivators from these
districts, separated by so many miles, undertook this united action
testifies to the intensity of united support they had. If the area
over which the strike spread, and the number of peasants partici¬
pating in it are taken into consideration, it surpasses the campaigns
led by Mahatma Gandhi at Champaran, Kaira and Bardoli.*
Planters had experienced scattered opposition from the peasants
before and were prepared in their own brutal way, tried and tested
through decades, to meet it. Organized opposition on a mass scale,
however, was never anticipated by them. They were frantic when
faced with the immense unity and strength of the peasants^ opposi¬
tion. A. Forbes, Acting Secretary to the Indigo Planters’ Associa¬
tion, wrote to A.R. Young, Secretary to the Government of Bengal,
warning him that ‘a general rebellion throughout lower Bengal is,
in my opinion, inevitable, unless strict and decided measures are
without delay taken by the Government to put it down.’ The
planter slave-drivers, who Jiad relied upto then on their brutal
power, were now paralysed. The dissatisfaction,’ Mr Young
added, ‘is entirely out of the planters’ power to quelf without the
aid of the Government.’8
Here were the British planters calling for help against the wrath

Bardoli campaign was, accurately speaking, led by Sardar Vallabhai Patel.

 INDIGO CULTIVATORS’ STRIKE— 1 860 1 53

of an angered peasantry. The Government, however, was not to

be easily moved to rush troops against such peasant determination
and unity. The memories of the great Santhal Insurrection of
1855-6 were too fresh in their minds. Barely four years had passed
since then. Nor could they easily forget the mass support which
the peasants had given to the Rebellion of 1857.
There were other factors, too. The brutality of the indigo planters
was so obviously indefensible that the peasantry had succeeded
in winning wide support from other sections of the population,
such as the urban middle class and even some of the missionaries.
Harishchandra Mukhopadhyaya, Girish Chandra Basu, Dina-
bandhu Mitra, Sisir Kumar Ghosh, the founder of the ‘Amrita
Bazar Patrika’, and many other well-known intellectuals took
up the grievances of the peasantry and widely publicized them in
the local press. Dinabandhu Mitra wrote a highly popular play
‘Nil Darpan’ exposing the oppression and injustice of the planters
in Mollahati.
The extent of popular support to the indigo cultivators’ struggle
was so immense that even some of the missionaries were moved
to express sympathy with it. One of them, Reverend James Long,
published a widely circulated pamphlet in Bengali called ‘The
Oppression of the Indigo Planters’ and supported the demands
of the peasantry.9
Of all these factors, however, the consideration which influenced
the Government most with regard to the measures to be taken
against the peasantry was the haunting fear of the great Santhal In¬
surrection. It is clear how one mass uprising influences the course
and the outcome of another. Instead of sending troops to break
the general strike and quell the uprising, the Government announced
the appointment of a commission to investigate the whole system
of indigo cultivation.
The strong fears of the Government were expressed in the most
unequivocal words by a person no less than J.P. Grant, Lieutenant-
Governor of Bengal in his ‘Minute on the Report of the Indigo
Commission.’ Answering those who criticised the government
for not taking stronger measures to suppress the uprising, he stated:
‘If anyone thinks that such a demonstration of strong feeling
by hundreds of thousands of people, as we have just witnessed
in Bengal, has no meaning of greater importance than an ordinary
154 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

commercial question concerning a particular dye, such a person,

in my opinion, is fatally mistaken in the signs of the times.’ To
this he added that people who have ‘any responsibility for the
tranquillity of the country, and the strength of the British Govern¬
ment within it’ should consider this with great attention.10
He warned in unmistakable terms that,
‘no human power exerted in defiance of the law, in support of
the (indigo plantation) system, could have upheld it much
longer; and that if the Government had disregarded justice and
policy so far as to make the attempt, it would have been speedily
punished by a great agrarian rising, the destructive effects of
which upon European and other capital, no man can calculate.’11
These were not empty words on the part of the Lieutenant-
Governor. He himself had observed at first hand the extent of the
peasant resistance during a trip he made by boat through the river
Gadui, a branch of the Padma. On hearing of his trip, tens of
thousands of peasants lined the banks of the Gadui calling on him
to come ashore and hear their grievances. When the peasants gave
him their word of honour that he would not be molested, he ordered
his steamer ashore and consulted with the peasant leaders. He
had to promise them on the spot that everything in his power would
be done to relieve their grievances.
Faced with such solid unity and immovable determination of
the peasantry and haunted by the fear of another great agrarian
uprising, the government was compelled to issue a proclamation
in the form of instructions from the Hon. Ashley Eden, Chief
Magistrate at Kalawah sub-division. The proclamation was also
printed and published in Bengali. It read:
‘You will perceive that the course laid down for the police in
indigo disputes is to protect the ryot in the possession of his
lands, on which he is at liberty to sow any crop he likes, without
any interference on the part of the planter or any one else. The
planter is not at liberty, under pretext of having promised to
sow indigo for him, to enter forcibly upon the land of the ryot.
Such promises can only be produced against the ryot in the civil
court, and the magisterial authorities have nothing to do with
them, for there must be two parties to a promise; and it is possible
that the ryots, whose .promises or contracts are admitted, may
still have many irresistible pleas to avoid the consequence the
 INDIGO CULTIVATORS’ STRIKE— 1860 1 55

planters insist upon them.’12

This was a complete victory for the indigo cultivators. As a
result of the strike, indigo cultivation was largely forced out of
these districts to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
The commercial interests of the planters were important. But
certainly not more important than the future of the British
Government in India!
The investigations carried on by the Indigo Commission are
most revealing. The Commission’s Report on the strength, deter¬
mination and forthrightness of the indigo cultivators who were
called before it as witnesses is so eloquent that it is better to quote
it in full here. They reported:
‘The dislike to this particular kind of cultivation was so strongly
manifested and appeared to be so deeply seated that we could
not mistake the reality of the feeling. It is not easy to possess
those who have not witnessed the demeanour and heard the
language of the ryot, as we have donfc^with a just appreciation
of this intense dislike. Ryots of different concerns, at miles
distance from each other, have expressed to us the same idea
in language, clear, emphatic and pointed and striking as coming
from the mouths of persons in their rank of life, namely, that
indigo and its attendant evils had been the bane of their lives.’13
Witness after witness appeared before the Indigo Commission
and in clear and determined words testified to their intense hatred
of the system of indigo cultivation. Repeatedly, the Commission
asked them about the terms on which they would be willing to
sow indigo in future. Dinu Mandal of Mozumpore, Thana Damu-
huda. Factory Dalalnagar was emphatic in his answer. ‘Let there
be profit or let there be loss,’ he told the Commission, ‘I will die
sooner than cultivate indigo’.
But supposing a person in whose justice you had confidence
asked you to sow indigo, the Commission inquired of Kulin
Mandal of Kangrapore, Thana Mirpore, near Factory Nundanpore.
‘I would sow indigo for nobody, not even for my father and mother,’
was Kulin Mandal’s immediate answer.
Jurdan Mandal, a Muslim cultivator from Ramkistopore,
Thana Mirpore near Katuli concern replied: ‘I have lost everything
by indigo. I would rather be killed than sow indigo.’ Panju Mullah
of Arpara, Thana Hardi of Nadia district was equally bitter:
156 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

‘I would rather be killed with bullets and have my throat cut than
sow indigo.’14
The intensity of popular feeling against the indigo planters is
evident from the testimony of Reverend James Long of the Church
Missionary Society in Calcutta. He was a regular reader of the
vernacular press which frequently dealt with the subject bf the
planters’ oppression. Even in Calcutta, he said, the missionary
preachers were constantly pestered with the question:
‘Why do you not tell your countrymen, the indigo planters,
to be less oppressive? Go, preach them first.’15
Thus we see that the indigo cultivators’ strike was a powerful
mass movement which generated a wide popular support from
the intellectuals and some of the missionaries. The support for
the planters, however, was to come from somewhat unexpected
quarters. The planters, in their Memorial to the Secretary of State
for India, quoted statements from two well-known Indians, Raja
Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore, extolling the virtues
of the indigo planters and the plantation system. Raja Ram Mohan
Roy was quoted to have remarked:
‘As to the indigo planters, I beg to observe that I have travelled
through several districts in Bengal and Bihar, and I found the
natives residing in the neighbourhood of indigo plantations,
evidently better clothed and better conditioned than those who
lived at a distance from such a station.... There may be some
partial injury done by indigo planters, Jmt on the whole, they
have performed more good to the generality of the natives of
this country, than any other class of Europeans, whether in or
out of service.’16
In view of the fact that the Indigo Commission could not find
a single cultivator who would have a kind word to say about the
indigo planters, it would surely come as a great surprise to many
that the well-known reformer. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, was so
far removed from the people of his country and so much attached
to the Europeans that he had to make such a pitiful attempt to
defend a system that was so universally condemned.
Dwarkanath Tagore’s remarks in this connection are more
revealing. He stated:
‘I have found that the cultivation of indigo and the residence
of Europeans have considerably benefited the community at
 INDIGO CULTIVATORS’ STRIKE— 1860 1 57

large, the zamindars becoming wealthy and prosperous, the

ryots materially improved in their condition and possessing
many more comforts than the generality of my countrymen
where indigo cultivation and manufacture are not carried on....
I do not make these statements merely from hearsay, but from
personal observations and experience.’18
He went on to cite the example of prosperity on his estate which
before the introduction of the indigo cultivation ‘did not yield a
sufficient income to pay the Government assessment’, but which
now ‘gives me handsome profit’. Many of his relatives and friends
now ‘are receiving a large income from their estates’.17 Undoubted¬
ly Dwarkanath Tagore’s praise of indigo cultivation was solidly
based on the enlarged income he himself received from it. What
was good for Tagore, must have been good for the cultivators
too! He belonged to the planters’ class and no wonder he defended
his own class interests.
The sharp contrast between the testimony of the indigo cultivators
on the one hand and the certificates of good behaviour given to the
planters by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore
indicate vividly the gulf that divided these so-called reformers and
the masses of the people at that time. How far removed were
they from the pressing problems of the people!
Indian historians, while showering praises of Raja Ram Mohan
Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore, have completely neglected to
analyse this aspect of their opinions and activities. No wonder
then that most of them have been silent on the glorious struggle
waged by the indigo cultivators; if they mention it at all, it is only
in the form of a brief contemptuous reference under the heading,
‘Indigo Riots.’
No different has been the attitude of the historians-of the Indian
national movement. While playing up the Champaran Satyagraha
led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1917-8, they completely ignore the
glorious Indigo Strike of 1860. Through the magic of non-coopera¬
tion, Pattabhi Sitaramayya assures us, ‘the grievances which leaders
of the day and the Government (could do nothing about) for a
hundred years were thus in a few months removed.’18 Sitaramayya
writes of the potency of this ‘new weapon’ of non-cooperation
tried for the first time in the history of India. Nowhere does he
mention that as far as the indigo cultivators were concerned, there
1 58 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

was nothing new in non-cooperation. Nearly sixty years before

the Champaran Satyagraha, they had used it on a much vaster
scale and with much greater effectiveness. The support that
Mahatma Gandhi was able to get from the cultivators in Champaran
was in fact, in no small measure, due to the unforgettable memories
of the first strike by the indigo cultivators. But the official historian
of the Congress would not even refer to these facts least they restore
to the peasants of Bengal the richly deserved credit of having
launched the first large-scale non-cooperation movement, in the
form of a complete strike, in modem Indian history.

References

1 Indigo Cultivation in Bengal, Parliamentary Papers, (1861), Vol. XLV, pp. 70-1.
2 Ibid.,p. 77.
3 Ibid., pp. 6-7.
4 Parliamentary Papers, (1861), Vol. XLIV, pp. 171-2.
5 Ibid., p. 241.
6 Parliamentary Papers, (1861), Vol. XLV, pp. 5-6.
7 Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XLIV, p. 309.
8 Ibid., p. 195.
9 Cited by Abhay Charan Das, The Indian Ryot (Calcutta, 1881), pp. 294-5.
The pamphlet contained songs which were sung far and wide among the
peasants and were set to music.
10 Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XLV, p. 78.
11 Ibid., Vol. XLV, p. 75.
12 Ibid., Vol. XLV, p. 4.
13 Ibid., Vol. XLV, para 131 ;pp. xxxiii-iii
14 Ibid., Vol. XLIV, Question Numbers, 1165-7, 1250, 1262 and 3214; pp. 65, 69,
70, 204; also see Question Numbers, 918, 1248-9, 1165, 1351, 3214, 3230
15 Ibid., Vol. XLIV. Question Number 1625, p. 95.
16 Ibid., Vol. XLV, p. 27
17 Ibid.
18 B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, (Bombay,
1946), p. 140.
 9 Maratha Uprising: 1875
L. Natarajan

'If the example of these villagers be followed everywhere, and the

unanimity of the people secured, the pauperized state of our country
will certainly disappear soon.'

— Letter to the Editor of Dynan Chaksu (January 27, 1875) relating

the events in village Kardeh of Sirur Taluka.

The conditions which led to the agrarian uprising in the Poona and
Ahmednagar districts were in the main typical of conditions in the
entire ryotwari area. The Commission which was later appointed
to inquire into the uprising admitted that the,
‘condition of the villagers was such that even if Supa (where
the uprising began) had not taken the initiative, some other
place would have doubtless done so. The combustible elements
were everywhere ready; design, or mistake or accident would
have surely supplied the spark to ignite them.’1
The main concern of the East India Company administrators
was to obtain a steady flow of large revenue from the land. At
the time of the land settlements, therefore, the assessment imposed
on the cultivators was excessive. Moreover, it had to be paid in
cash and without respect to the crop conditions. As early as 1850,
Sif G. Wingate had drawn attention to this fact. ‘There can be
little doubt’, he wrote, ‘that the over-estimate of the capabilities
of the Deccan, formed and acted upon by an early collector, drained
the country of its agricultural capital.’ The Deccan Riots Commis¬
sion, too, agreed that the exorbitant assessment was based on
‘an exaggerated estimate of the peasants’ capabilities’.2
Famines and scarcity were by no means infrequent. But rain
or no rain, the government demands had to be satisfied. There were
also difficulties caused by fluctuating prices. Under the circum¬
stances, the farmers, to save their land from forfeiture and public

Reproduced from L. Natarajan, op. cit.

1 60 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

auction by the government for failure to pay revenue demands,

had to turn to the moneylenders.
Before this, the moneylender was no more than a humble village
servant, mainly a village accountant or a small shopkeeper. Now,
with land offered as a security and with a government ever ready
to grant his claims against the peasant, the moneylender assumed a
highly important role. If the peasant repaid the loan, he would
benefit from a high rate of interest; if the loan was not repaid he
would get the peasants’ land through a government decree. No
wonder in a business where there never was a chance of loss, the
moneylenders prospered rapidly.
Sir G. Wingate, with a deep knowledge of the working of the
British land settlements and of the civil courts, had drawn attention
to such a development nearly a quarter of a century earlier. He
warned:
‘The facilities which the law affords for the realization of debt
have expanded credit to a most hurtful extent.... All grades
of people are thus falling under the curse of debt, and should
the present course of affairs continue, it must arrive that the
greater part of the realized property of the community will be
transferred to a small moneyed class, which will become dis¬
proportionately wealthy by the impoverishment of the rest of
the people. No greater misfortune can befall any nation than
this, by which many are made miserable in order that the few
may be pampered. And yet this is the inevitable tendency of the
existing relations between debtor and creditor in our Presidency.’3
Sir G. Wingate had correctly forecast the course of events.
Peasants’ indebtedness was mounting. With it was also rising the
number of civil suits to take possession of the peasants’ land. In
the course of fourteen years, the number of civil suits increased
seven to eight fold.

Number of Civil Suits about Land: 1851-65

1851 1861 1865

Ahmednagar 98 318 689
Poona 75 282 632

Once the farmer’s land was mortgaged, it was practically lost.

The Commission stated ‘that the instances of redemption of mort-
 MARATHA UPRISING: 1875 161

gages are almost unknown; a mortgage is equivalent to a transfer

of the ryot’s title.’4
Mr Invararity, the Revenue Commissioner, submitted to the
Government in 1858 a report from Mr Tytler, 'the Collector of
Ahmednagar, ‘who was well known as an earnest and competent
officer’. The report stated:
‘The aid given by our courts is all on the side of the Marwari,
who alone knows how to turn that aid to his own advantage.
The position of the litigants is not, therefore, pimply of debtor
and creditor; it is the fraudulent Marwari, backed by civil
courts, versus the heiress ryot, signing any bond without even
a true knowledge of its contents and powerless to oppose any
decree that may be passed. This matter keeps up a constant
irritating sore throughout the society and the whole onus is
thrown by the people on the civil courts.... The question is
one of vftal importance both to the Government and the people.
Even the passive society of the East cannot bear so great a
burden without making from time to time convulsive efforts to
shake it off. The efforts must increase in frequency and strength.’5
The entire legal apparatus of the Government was thus in favour
of the moneylenders and against the peasants.
Since the strong warning from the Revenue Commissioner was
in a formal report, the Government had to take note of it. So the
Governor-in-Council passed the following resolution:
‘His Lordship in Council entertains no doubt of the fact that
the labouring classes of the native community suffer enormous
injustice from the want of protection by law from the extortionate
practices of the moneylenders. He believes that our civil courts
have become hateful to the masses of our Indian subjects from
being made the instruments of almost incredible rapacity of
usurious capitalists. Nothing can be more calculated to give rise
to widespread discontent and disaffection to the British Govern¬
ment than the practical working of the present laws. The attention
of the legislative council on the subject should be requested,
and a copy of the Revenue Commissioner’s letter forwarded
for their consideration.’6
One would imagine that after such an outburst of‘self-criticism’,
immediate steps must have been taken to make the laws more
favourable to the peasants. However, nothing of the kind happened.
1 62 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

As the Commission almost drily remarked: ‘The subject was then

for a time dropped.’
Nearly twelve years later, official attention was again focused
on the subject. In 1870, the Revenue Commissioner of the Northern
Division, sounding a menacing warning to the indifferent Govern¬
ment, reminded it
‘that the Santhal rebellion arose out of the things precisely
similar to that now existing in the west of Khandesh, and that
though no indications of an approaching outbreak may have
presented themselves here, neither did the Santhals give a word
of warning before they burst over the plains of Beerbhum with
an army of thirty thousand strong to avenge themselves on
the usurers who had robbed and enslaved them under the tacit
sanction of law.’7
A mountain might have moved, but not the Government of
Bombay, especially in matters concerning the wellbeing of the
people.
Meanwhile the conditions of the farmers were deteriorating
rapidly. Cotton prices which had sky-rocketed during the American
Civil War in the sixties had fallen into a deep slump. Together with
this, all other agricultural prices had started to fall rapidly. There
was a general agricultural depression. Farmers’ cash incomes suf¬
fered a disastrous blow. To add to this there was a major famine
in 1876.
Land revenue, which even in prosperous years was an unbearably
heavy burden, now became impossible to pay. The rigidity of the
revenue system was so notorious that the Deccan Riots Commission
ridiculed it with a popular story:
‘A man, it was said, desired to ford a river, and inquired the
depth at various distances across; in some places the stream
would be over his head, at another point but ankle deep, and
so forth. Finding the average to be within his depth, he attempted
to cross, and of course drowned.’8
Crops or no crops, high prices or low prices, the demands of
the government had to be met! Now even the moneylenders were
afraid that if the government proceeded first against the peasant
and took away his land for payment of arrears of revenue, they
would be unable to recover their debts. So there were more law
 MARATHA l PRISING : 1875 163

suits, more decrees and an endless chain of dispossession of farmers’

lands.
Nearly one-third of the cultivators was reported to be suffering
under heavy indebtedness. This, according to the Deccan Riots
Commission, meant certain transfer of their lands.
Peasants were bitter. They were yet unaware of the full workings
of the system which was oppressing them. While they had misgivings
about the government, they had no doubts about the role of the
moneylenders. Debts were mounting; decrees were being handed
out against them; their houses and lands were passing into the
hands of the moneylenders right before their own eyes. There was
no end in sight. Experience had shown that no relief was to be
expected.
Enraged at the loss of their lands, the peasants of Poona and
Ahmednagar districts let loose their accumulated anger against
the bonds, documents, deeds and decrees which the moneylenders
held against them.
The first warning of the approaching peasant uprising in these
two districts was given in December 1874 by the events at the village
Kardeh in Sirur Taluka.
Marwari Kalooram was the chief moneylender in Kardeh.
He instituted a suit against Baba Saheb Deshmukh, one of the
cultivators in Kardeh, and obtained a decree against him from
the court at Talegaon. Deshmukh’s house was put on auction and
Marwari Kalooram purchased it himself for Rs. 150. Not content
with this, he started pulling down the house and asked Baba Saheb
Deshmukh to evacuate it. Baba Saheb requested Kalooram not to
pull down the house and promised to repay his debts and pay rent
for the house while he occupied it. But Kalooram would listen to
none of this and continued the harassment.
Baba Saheb was now quite upset. He called together the villagers,
all of whom had some grudge against the Marwari moneylenders.
They resolved that as the moneylenders Kalooram, Sachiram,
Pratap and Shivram were intent on ruining them, they should have
nothing to do with them. The water-carriers, barners and even the
house servants of the moneylenders joined the village in this
boycott. The villagers opened a grocery shop for their needs. The
moneylenders were isolated and decided to run away to Sirur. It
I 64 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

was now the cultivators’ turn. They would not let them go. There
was nobody to drive their loaded carts. It was only with police
protection that they were able to escape to Sirur.9
The moneylenders and officers may not have realized the full
significance of this incident at Kardeh. However, the peasants in
various villages were busy consulting with each other and preparing
plans for future action. May 12, was the bazar day at Supa, Bhim-
thari Taluka. As usual, hundreds of peasants came there ostensibly
to make their periodic purchases. However, plans were already
laid for steps to be taken against the moneylenders. This was
certainly the most fitting ‘welcome’ that the Maratha peasantry
had planned for the visit of the Prince of Wales.
As the Deccan Riots Commission, later appointed to investigate
the causes of the uprisings, observed:
‘The object of the rioters was in every case to obtain and destroy
the bonds, decrees, etc. in the possession of their creditors;
when they were peaceably given up to the assembled mob,
there was usually nothing further done. When the moneylender
refused or shut himself up, violence was used to frighten him
into a surrender or to get possession of the papers.’10
Within twenty-four hours of the uprising at Supa, there were
similar incidents at Kheirgaon, situated fourteen miles away.
The fodder stacks of the chief moneylender were burnt down as
a warning and he was forced to surrender the bonds, deeds and
decrees which were burnt in an open fire in the village square.
In a few days, similar occurrences took place in four other
villages in Bhimthari Taluka. The flame lit by the peasant uprising
at Supa was spreading like wild fire. Many villages of the neighbour¬
ing districts of Indapur and Purandhar soon joined in the fight.
Marwari and Gujarati moneylenders were running away from
the countryside. At Vavra in Sirur Taluka, the moneylender
refused to give up his documents. Only a serious threat to his life
forced him to surrender them. Incidentally, only two years earlier,
his uncle had been murdered by debtors in the same village. Other
villages, including Kardeh, joined in the conflagration. At Damreh,
a moneylender had his leg broken and was saved from death by
the peasants massed outside his burning house.
While these uprisings were going on in Poona District, similar
outbreaks were also occurring in the neighbouring talukas of
 MARATHA UPRISING: 1875 165

Ahmednagar District. During a fortnight following the first signal

given at Supa on May 12, there were uprisings in Shrigonda,
Parner, Nagar and Karjat Talukas.
While the peasants in their desperation were trying to undo the
past injustices of the moneylenders by burning their documents,
the Government lost no time in moving against them. The Govern¬
ment, which in quarter of a century had not once lifted its finger
to help the peasants despite repeated urges and warnings from its
own officers, suddenly burst forth into repressive activity, thus
justifying the peasants’ earlier suspicions “that the Government
approved of the proceedings” of the moneylenders.11
All available police forces were sent into action to restore ’law
and order’. But they were helpless against the mass of the aroused
peasantry. Soon troops had to be moved in. A detachment of
infantry was sent to Supa. The Poona Horse, stationed at Sirur,
was ordered into action. Another detachment was moved to
Shrigonda. Punitive police and military posts on a large scale
were established and collective fines were levied on villages to
meet the expenses. Arrests on an unprecedented mass scale were
carried on. In just a fortnight, 559 persons from Poona District
and 392 from Ahmednagar District were arrested.12 The alien
government let loose the full force of its repressive machinery
against the unprepared and defenceless peasantry which was only
trying to settle accounts with the moneylenders in a united but a
rather moderate way.
By the first week of June, the punitive measures imposed by the
Government were successful in repressing the uprisings. Yet the
smouldering fire still kept on bursting out in to the open. On
June 15, there was again some upsurge at Mundhali in Bhimthari
Taluka. The peasants in Nimbut of the same taluka seized the
documents of the moneylender and cut off the nose of the official
who had come to enforce a decree of the civil court on June 22.13
The mood of the peasantry is clear from the Report of the Deccan
Riots Commission. The recurrence of outbreaks in Bhimthari
during June and July showed ‘that the warning conveyed by the
long catalogue of convictions and punishments, and the imposition
of punitive police posts had not extinguished, but only repressed,
the violent temper of the cultivators.’14
The echoes of the peasant uprisings in Poona and Ahmednagar
166 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

travelled far and wide. The news of the uprising 'had no doubt
reached all parts of the country’ and the cultivators in Kukrur, a
hundred miles away from the nearest point of the Poona District,
were not slow in starting a similar movement against the Gujarati
moneylenders. Over one hundred fanners attacked the house of
a moneylender, 'collected all papers and accounts which they found
in the house, destroyed them and dispersed.’15
The active phase of the uprising in Poona and Ahmednagar
lasted only three weeks. The peasants, unprepared as they were
to withstand the onslaught of terrific repression by the Govern¬
ment, had no alternative but to abandon active struggle. Only
through such bitter struggles were they to learn the lesson that
the Government was the protector of the moneylenders and the
landlords.
The short duration of the struggle should in no way detract from
the immense popular support which it had generated among the
masses of the people. It was almost impossible for the Government
to obtain ‘trustworthy evidence against’ the participants in the
uprising.16
Despite the serious grudges the peasants had against the money¬
lenders, the moderation they showed toward the person of the
moneylenders was a supreme example of self-restraint on the one
hand and of the wide popular support they had on the other. This
was not a general rebellion against the oppressive moneylenders
and government. The main purpose of the movement was ‘to
accomplish a very definite and practical objective, namely, the
disarming of the enemy by taking his weapons (bonds and accounts),
and for this purpose mere demonstration of force was usually
sufficient.’17 Behind this simple objective was the immature under¬
standing that the destruction of these bonds and other pieces of
paper would end the tyranny of the moneylenders. Only through
the experience of such struggles were the peasants *.o learn that
a complete redressal of their grievances could not be attained
without overcoming the power of the Government, which provided
the sanction and the effective force behind the claims of the money¬
lenders.
The speed and the ruthlessness with which the Government
suppressed the uprising is evident from the number of arrests made.
Within the course of just a fortnight, nearly a thousand peasants
 MARATHA UPRISING : 1875 167

were arrested in the two districts with a total population of only

16 lakhs.
To understand the significance of this figure, it may be noted
that the number of persons arrested at the peak of the first non¬
cooperation movement (early 1922) was 30,000; during the ten
months of the second non-cooperation movement (upto the
Gandhi-Irwin Pact in March, 1931), the number of persons senten¬
ced was 60.000 according to official reports and 90,000 according
to Congress sources.18 If the long duration and the total of 250
districts over which the non-cooperation movements spread are
taken into consideration, it may come as a surprise that the inci¬
dence of persons arrested during the peasant uprising in Poona
and Ahmednagar Districts in 1875 was in point of fact greater than
in the biggest non-cooperation movement launched by the Indian
National Congress.
The ashes of the bonds burnt during this uprising were in course
of time to spread all over the country, reinforcing one of the strongest
demands of the Indian peasantry: cancellation of the peasants'
debts.
Although the Government, through the sheer exercise of its
repressive machinery, was able to suppress the uprising it had
a lasting effect on the future of the Indian peasantry. It succeeded
in breaking to some extent the shell of masterly inactivity into
which the British rulers had withdrawn when it came to enacting
legislation protecting the peasants’ interests. The introduction of
the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act of 1879, placing some restric¬
tions on the alienation of the peasants’ lands and restraining usury,
was the direct result of Ihe forceful assertion by the Maratha
peasantry of its demands.
Some may wonder why the peasants, instead of being grateful
to the moneylenders for helping them to tide over their difficulties,
were so hostile to them. The Commission itself was concerned
with this and the moneylenders appeared before it as the innocent
unjustly hurt. ‘It is only when indebtedness is attended with circum¬
stances, which,’ the Commission observed, ‘produce in the mind
of the debtor a sense of hardship, of unfair treatment, of being
oppressed and having no redress, that a feeling of hostility is
aroused such as led, in the present instance, to actual violence.’1Q
The moneylenders were not like poor widows kindly loaning
168 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

pennies to needy neighbours from the saving of a lifetime. They

were rapacious usurers, who, in return for their support of an
alien government, were given the licence of looting the peasantry.
Naturally they were the immediate object of the wrath of the
angered peasantry.
There is another question of contemporary importance which
was quite categorically answered during the Poona and Ahmed-
nagar uprisings. Many have attributed the peasant's debts to his
extravagant expenditure on marriage, funerals, festivals and such
other occasions. Others, less jealous of the peasant's ‘indulgence’,
advanced his inefficiency and laziness as an explanation. The
Commission carried out a thorough on-the-spot investigation and
examined the whole question in great detail. Its conclusion on this
score is so important even today that it deserves to be cited in full.
The results of the Commission’s investigations show that
undue prominence has been given to the expenditure on marriage
and other festivals as a cause of the ryots’ indebtedness. The
expenditure on such occasions may undoubtedly be called
extravagant when compared with the ryots’ means, but the
occasions occur seldom, and probably in a course of years
the total sum spent in this way by any ryot is not larger than a
man in his position is justified in spending on social and domestic
pleasures. The expenditure forms an item of some importance
in the debit side of his account; by itself it rarely appears as
the nucleus of his indebtedness. The sums usually spent on
these occasions have probably been over-estimated, or the
operation of other causes in producing debt have been over¬
looked by officers who have attributed the ryots’ burdens so
largely to this cause. This oversight would indeed be a natural
consequence of the fact that it is only on marriages or similar
occasions that the expenditure by a kunbi comes under observa¬
tion. The amount spent by a kunbi of average circumstances
on a (marriage).. .is from Rs. 50 to 75, a sum which by itself,
even at 24 per cent interest, could be repaid without much
difficulty if his average margin of profit was not forestalled by
other debt, and he were treated with fairness and moderation
by his sowkar. The constantly recurring small items of debt for
food and other necessities, for seed, for bullocks, for the Govern¬
ment assessment do more to swell the indebtedness of a ryot
than an occasional marriage.’20
 MARATH \ uprising: 1875 169

The Commission went even further and condemned the whole

revenue system as the cause of peasants' indebtedness. It concluded:
it is evident that a revenue system which levies from the culti¬
vators of a district... the same amount yearly without regard
to the out-turn of the season, must of necessity lead to borrowing.
In bad years, the ryot must borrow. The necessity remains even
when the assessment is fixed far below the standard of a fair
season, for his creditor would not allow him to retain the savings
of a good year even if he were prudent enough to desire to do
so.'21

References

1
Report of the Deccan Ryots Commission. (Parliamentary Papers, Vol. LVIII,'
1878), p. 2; for the purpose of brevity, it shall be referred to as The Report.
The word ‘riot’ reveals the contempt with which the peasant uprisings have been
characterized in official records.
2 Ibid., p. 10.
3 Ibid., p. 16.
4 Ibid., paras 70-7.
5 Ibid., p. 16.
6 Ibid., pp. 16-7.
7 S.S. Thornburn, Mussalmans and the Moneylenders in the Punjab, (London,
1884), p. 64.
8 The Report, p. 24.
9 Letter from a traveller to the Editor of Dynan Chaksu, dated January 27, 1875;
cited by The Report, p. 1.
10 Ibid., p. 2.
11 Ibid., p. 3.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 4
18 Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, II, p. 876.
19. The Report, p. 33.
">0 Ibid., p. 20.
N> r

1 Ibid., p. 21.
 10 Conclusion

L. Natarajan

A number of highly significant facts emerge from the brief outline

of some of the peasant uprisings during the second half of the
nineteenth century.
1 It shows that the Indian peasants have a proud, militant
heritage. Each new uprising focused attention on the foremost
demands of the Indian peasantry: particularly, the end of zamindari
and moneylending oppression. The uprisings not only added
living reality to these demands but helped establish them as the
very core of the peasants' long-cherished aspirations. So long as
these aspirations remain unfulfilled, the peasant struggles will
go on.
2 Each struggle enriched the peasants’ consciousness and raised
it to a higher and more mature level. It was only through these
bitter struggles that the peasants were to learn that the real force
behind the zamindars and the moneylenders, their immediate
enemies, was the organized power of the Government; that the
Government, instead of being a neutral in the strife, was a direct
supporter of their oppressor.
The courage and unflinching heroism with which these peasants
raised the banner of militant struggle, at a lime when political
parties were unknown in India, testified to the reality of their
grievances and their steadfast determination to put an end to
their oppression. More than that, it also exposes the malice and
gross ignorance of those who today rush to brand the peasants’
struggle as a creation of foreign agents. No foreign agents did or
could rouse the Santhals, the indigo cultivators, the Maratha
peasants or the Moplahs to such heroic struggles.
3 Even with all the limitations of the sporadic and spontaneous
nature of their struggles, theirs were no mean achievements. As
a result of the Santhal Insurrection, the Santhal Paraganas were

Reproduced from L. Natarajan, op. cit.

 CONCLUSION 171

organized as a separate entity, thus forcing recognition of their

special status as a national minority. Those who conceive of the
Santhals as ‘aboriginals’ and believe that the Santhals’ salvation
lies only in their assimilation into their more ‘cultured’ Bengali
and Bihari neighbours should realize how hollow are their claims
of superiority.
The Indigo Cultivators’ Strike succeeded in reasserting the
peasant's right to sow the crops he chose and in forcing the indigo
planters out from Pabna, Bogra and Barasat to Champaran and
other parts of India. The peasants in these districts did not have
to go through the terrible experience of the Champaran indigo
cultivators in the early 20th century when the planters passed on
the losses of a ruined industry to the peasants.
The Maratha Peasant Uprising forced the imperialist rulers to
undertake the first legislation offering some protection to the
peasants against usury and transfer of their lands. The Deccan
Agriculturists Relief Act of 1879 was a direct result of the uprising.
The peasants w'aged battles every inch of the w;ay and their
partial victories, were wrung out of the unwilling hands of their
oppressors.
One must also remember that the massive fights put up by the
peasantry had shaken the confidence of the British in their ability
to hold on to their dominion in India. A.O. Hume had seen the
voluminous evidence of the seething discontent in the country and
was aware that nothing could be more disastrous for British rule
than the possibility of a merging together of these potent under¬
currents of popular opposition. Something had to be done and that
something was the founding of the Indian National Congress. In
a memorandum found in his papers, Hume wrote:
The evidence convinced me.. .that we w'ere in imminent danger
of a terrible outbreak. I was shown seven large volumes...
containing a large number of entries.. .all arranged according
to districts, sub-districts, sub-divisions, and the cities, towns
and villages.. .from over thirty thousand different reporters—
all going to show that these poor men were pervaded with a
sense of hopelessness of the existing state of affairs, that they
were convinced that they would starve and die, and that they
wanted to do something. They were going to do something,
and stand by each other, and’that something meant violence....
172 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

It was considered also that everywhere the small bands would

begin to coalesce into large ones, like drops of water on a leaf...
and that very soon after the bands obtained formidable propor¬
tions, a certain small number of the educated classes, at the
time desperately, perhaps unreasonably, bitter against the
Government would join the movement, assume here and there
the lead, give the outbreak cohesion, and direct it as a national
revolt.’ (Sir William Wedderburn, A.O. Hume, Father of the
Indian National Congress, (1913), pp. 80-1.).
The fear of the spreading popular discontent and especially the
stubborn struggles waged by the rebellious peasantry sent Hume
rushing to Dufferin, the Viceroy of India at that time, with his
plan for the creation of the Indian National Congress. According
to the plan, the Congress was to draw into its fold the discontented
intelligentsia and to perform the role of a loyal opposition. Haunted
by the spectre of a mass uprising, they were thus trying to foreclose
the possibility of a real national rebellion emerging out of the
merger of these two currents—the peasant uprisings and the agita¬
tion by the intellectuals.
Thus, it was the militant peasantry, and not the mild-mannered
and soft-spoken gentry who pompously constituted themselves
into the Indian National Congress in 1885, that voiced the people’s
grievances and waged struggles to remove them. What greater
tribute could be paid to the real extent of the achievements of
these uprisings than the fact that they were responsible for the
creation of the Congress, thus placing their indelible impression
on the future history of India. No wonder the Congress remained
a body of pitiful speechmakers till the end of the First World War
when it realized the necessity of drawing in the peasantry.
4 Although these uprisings were spontaneous and sporadic,
the forms of struggle created by them have a deep historical mean¬
ing even today. Witness the last-ditch battles waged by the Santhals
in 1855; the massive strike by the indigo peasants in 1860 and the
burning of the moneylenders’ bonds, deeds, documents and decrees
by the Maratha peasantry in 1875. All these foreshadowed the
form in which peasant discontent is finding its expression in modern
India.
5 While the uprisings indicate a considerable amount of planning
and organization during their course, they were on the whole
 CONCLUSION 173

spontaneous outbursts of the peasants’ discontent against their

exploitation. When their grievances were aggravated to unbearable
proportions, due to a local famine, price decline, excessive repres¬
sion, forced auction of their lands or some such factors, they hit
back with heroic fury. In the face of the odds against them, however,
they could not hold out for long. The peasants’ understanding
of their opponents was immature and their ability to create, continue
and widen peasant organizations was limited. The uprisings,
therefore, were sporadic and spontaneous. They could not create
the basis for an ever-growing organized peasant struggle which
could lead to the complete realization of their aspirations.
These uprisings, however, were the necessary dress-rehearsals of
the future struggles of the Indian peasantry.
 11 Unrest In Andhra Pradesh

V. Raghavaiah

Unrest among the tribal people of Andhra Pradesh is not a

matter of yesterday or today. It has been raising its aggrieved and
ugly head now and then in the past 167 years. It is nOw also active
in the Agency Areas of Andhra Pradesh stretching out in a half¬
moon pattern its agitated arms, indicating a deep seated anguish,
resulting from dashed hopes, broken promises and frustrated
aspirations. The tribes in this part of the country live both in the
plains as well as in the hills and the jungles. While many tribes of
the plains are nomadic, landless, homeless and primitive, those
in the Agency Areas have their lands alienated, meagre properties
heavily mortgaged, and their health irretrievably shattered, owing
to the relentless attacks of malaria, year after year, sapping their
energy and thwarting all efforts at better living conditions and
purposeful lives....
Most of the South Indian tribes, including the 33 different tribes
of Andhra Pradesh, are pre-Dravidian and to some extent share
Negroid features. Ecologists assert that the early and the middle
palaeolithic civilisation of pre-historic times flourished in the dis¬
tricts of Kurnool, Guntur and Nellore in Andhra Pradesh.
Andhra Pradesh is a large State occupying a fourth place in the
Indian Union and covering an area of 106,286 sq. miles, with a
scheduled population of 13,24,368 most of whom live in the
Agency parts of the State which roughly covers 29,683 sq. miles.
In addition to these Agency tribes, Andhra Pradesh has a nomadic
ex-criminal and unscheduled population of six more lakhs of
tribals who can be classified as primitive. The scheduled tribes
form 3.68 per cent of the total population of Andhra Pradesh
of 3,59,83,447. The numerically largest groups inhabiting both
plains and Agency areas are Gonds, Koyas, Hill Reddis, Savaras,
Bagatas, Valmikis, Yerukalas and Yanadis, as well as smaller
Reproduced from V. Raghavaiah, op. cit. pp. 27-34.
 UNREST IN ANDHRA PRADESH 175

groups like Ronas, Kattunaikars and Bhils. Nearly 52.6 per cent
of the total tribal population of Andhra Pradesh consists of Koyas,
Yanadis, Yerukulas and Gonds. While Gonds are confined to the
district of Adilabad bordering on Madhya Pradesh, Koyas are
found in all the Agency districts. Gonds, Koyas, Bagatas and
Valmikis are more advanced than Khonds, Savaras, Hill Reddis
and Kolams. The Agency tribes inhabit parts of the main districts
as mentioned in the following table based on the 1961 Census
report:
District Extent No. of tribal
in sq. miles villages
(1) Sirkakulam 1303.04 462
(2) Visakhapatnam 6671.36 1565
(3) East Godavari 6637.70 699
(4) West Godavari 1492.56 105
(5) Khammam 6647.53 888
(6) Warangal 980.76 152
(7) Adilabad 4534.35 415
(8) Mahaboobnagar 1415.63 60

29682.93 4346

It is mostly in the first four districts that tribals revolts have been
occurring, though in Adilabad a sporadic uprising of the Gonds
led by Bhimu was summarily put down by the British. Some of
the revolts took place during the rule of the British East India
Company. The main seat and stronghold of the recent as well as
the current ‘Naxalite’ uprisings is the Srikakulam district which
borders on Orissa State, separated only by a long chain of low
hills which have been thoughtfully selected by the English-educated
Naxalite leaders from Visakhapatnam and East and West Godavari
districts for their strategic and logistic facilities. Rebels pursued by
the police found a cosy home in the caves and dugouts of these
hills access to which is somewhat difficult. Moreover they could
easily slip into Orissa....
Tribal revolts in Andhra Pradesh erupted on four occasions.
Though the immediate causes were somewhat different, the basic
factors that contributed the powder for the guns were on all occa¬
sions the same. The first of the revolts led by Rambhoopati took
176 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN 'NDIA

place in 1802-3, now popularly known as the Rampa Fithuri

(rebellion), named after Rampa near Chodavaram. The Rampa
country is the area covered by the Chodavaram taluk of the East
Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. The second revolt around
1879 led by Chandrayya, Sambayya, Thammandora and Ambul
Reddi spread over 5,000 sq. miles in the Rampa country. The
third uprising took place in 1922-4 under the leadership of the
saint-patriot hero Shri Alluri Sreerama Raju who was murdered,
after his voluntary surrender on May 7, 1924, at Koyyur on the
orders of a British Major, Goodall, against all canons of justice,
national or international. The fourth revolt is continuing since
the last two years in the district of Srikakulam, under the guidance
of educated pro-Chinese extreme Communists, known as Naxalites,
who have taken their name after a village called Naxalbari in the
Darjeeling district of West Bengal, where the first outburst took
place....
The first two rebellions were due to disputes relating to succession
to the Muttadari estates. The Muttadars were petty tribal chiefs
who were appointed by the British East India Company’s minions
for keeping peace and collecting a very nominal land revenue from
the tribal people more as a symbol of overall authority of the
Company’s Government, rather than as a source of revenue to
the State. Taking ample advantage of even this limited authority,
the Muttadars used all questionable and violent methods to terrorise
the poor Koya and Konda Reddi tenants and effect several illegal
and unconscionable exactions from the helpless and hapless tribal
farmers.

The Revolt of 1879-80

For nearly two centuries the British were in possession of the
Northern Circars including the Rampa country, though in Chodava¬
ram Taluk containing the Rampa area, no regular collection of
land revenue was enforced till the end of the 19th century. During
the period of the cession of the above country to the British, Rampa
was ruled by an independent zamindar, recognised by the Reddis
as their feudal lord or Mansabdar. During the revenue collection
of 1802-3 no settlement was done for Rampa. Ram Bhupati, the
Mansabdar seized some villages which were under British control,
but was soon repulsed and forced to acknowledge the Company’.,
 UNREST IN ANDHRA PRADESH 177

sovereignty. In 1813, an agreement was reached between the two

by which the Company restored the above villages to him free of
rent (Peshkash) on condition that he maintained peace in this
restless land. Ram Bhupati subleased these villages to his subordi¬
nate hill chiefs called Muttadars, on an annual payment of Rs. 8,750.
After his death his daughter succeeded to his estate though on a
hot contest by Ram Bhupati’s illegitimate son, she surrendered
the property to him. The Muttadars accepted him on condition
that he reduced the total rent to Rs 1,000 in 1848. He first agreed
to do so but later broke his promise and began to rackrent the
Muttadars and make illegal exactions which the hill Reddy
Muttadars and the tribal people refused to pay. In addition to
this, free drawing of toddy by the tribals was obstructed by the
Mansabdar and several types of taxes which were unknown before
were invented and levied. The tribals and their Muttadari tribal
leaders got vexed with litigation in the civil courts and finally the
call to revolt was given as the zamindar obtained ex-parte decrees
and attached the property of the tribals through the courts at
Rajamahendravaram. Cattle and property worth Rs 100 were
attached to realise a debt of only Rs 5. All the attached goods
were taken away with the police helping the Mansabdar and the
Courts decreeing for him. This left no alternative to the tribals
except to revolt and they did it in right earnest perhaps knowing
full well the consequences thereof.
The first outbreak of the rebellion occurred in March 1879
when the tribals captured 6 policemen under Thammandora’s
leadership near Boduluru, 22 miles from Chodavaram, kept them
in custody for several days and finally took them to Kodigandi
where a head constable and one constable were kept tied under
a tamarind tree. Thammandora himself severed their heads as
a sacrifice to the Goddess in the presence of 200 tribesmen. The
rebels then attacked the Chodavaram police station and reduced
to ashes the station at Addatigala. Soon the Rampa country was
ablaze and the rebellion assumed serious proportions.
The disturbances spread to Golugonda hills in Visakhapatnam
in April and to Rekapalli country in Bhadrachalam in July. Here
the immediate cause of the revolt was the sudden increase by the
Madras Government of the assessment of Podu lands by three
times while it was only four annas an acre hitherto. Further, the
1 78 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ryots were excluded from certain areas and a tax was newly levied
on the felling of certain varieties of trees. The fight with the tribals
who could penetrate unseen into the jungles and launch surprise
attacks—the manner of guerilla warfare avoiding direct confronta¬
tion-made the task of the Government troops very difficult.
Towards the end of 1879 the Government despatched from Madras,
6 regiments of the Madras Infantry, 2 Companies of Sappers and
Miners, a Squadron Cavalry, one wing of Infantry, besides several
hundreds of Police. The war with the tribal insurgents lasted till
November 1880.
 12 Peasant Struggle in Pabna, 1873
Its Legalistic Character

Kalyatt Kumar Sengupta

I
An obscure parganah, Yusufshahi, situated in the Serajgunge
sub-division of the district of Pabna1 became in 1873, the scene
of a powerful agrarian movement. This movement, conducted by
a well organised agrarian league2 created the conditions for the
launching of similar agrarian movements in other parts of Eastern
and Central Bengal3 in the decade which preceded the enactment
of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885.
The basic cause of this agrarian unrest was the persistent attempts
of the local landlords to do away with the right of occupancy of
a new class of ryots, the occupancy ryots, who had been brow¬
beaten into existence by the Bengal Rent Act X of 18594. The
agrarian movement in Pabna and other areas of Eastern and
Central Bengal, was moreover, basically, a movement of the sub¬
stantial section of this type of tenantry who saw in the newly
conferred occupancy right, a position of greater social responsibility
for them in the rural society and more effective share in land control.
In fact, this conflict between the zamindars and the richer tenants
marked the beginning of a long struggle in rural Bengal which
culminated, through the enactment of various tenancy legislations,
in the consolidation of the socio-economic position of the sub¬
stantial tenantry. In the 20th Century, these well-to-do peasants,
as jotedars, themselves became the exploiters of the share-croppers,
known in Bengal, as adhiyars and the burgadars.s
The primary aim of this movement of the substantial tenantry
was to defend and consolidate the occupancy status gained by the
Act X of 1859. Other sections of peasantry—the non-occupancy

Reproduced from Nineteenth Century Studies, Calcutta Vol. I No. 3, July 1973,
pp. 328-40.
180 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ryots, the under-tenants of the occupancy ryots, the share-croppers

and the agricultural labourers—participated in the movement
fairly willingly since the zamindar was supposed to be the common
enemy of all.6 However, the specific problems and the grievances
of a large majority of the peasant population consisting of the
share-croppers and the agricultural workers never came in for
serious consideration at any stage.
This agrarian movement in the district of Pabna, rarely degenerat¬
ed into a jacquerie. The tenantry on the contrary displaying a
remarkable sense of discipline fought the principal landlords of
Pabna, the Tagores, the Pakrasis, the Sanyals, the Banerjees and
the Bhaduris, in the civil courts.
However, scholars like Binay Chaudhuri and Suprokash Ray
have failed to take into consideration this particular aspect of the
character of the movement.7 On the contrary by underlining the
violent character of the movement they have uncritically accepted
the contemporary landlord press bias regarding the Pabna tenantry.8
The present paper seeks to emphasise this point and tries to show
that the legalistic passive character of tenant resistance was one
of the novel features of this important agrarian movement.

II
As the movement of the occupancy ryots of Pabna gradually
spread throughout the district, the Bengal landlords apprehended
that a further extension of the movement would adversely affect
the position of the landlord class as a whole. It was feared that the
Government would eventually be forced to review the entire
question of landlord-tenant relationship—a review which might
ultimately lead to a further amendment of the rent law in the interest
of the tenantry. Consequently the pro-landlord enthusiasts in the
city of Calcutta made a conscious attempt to confuse the issues.
A deliberate effort was made to create an impression that the Pabna
movement was not an agrarian movement at all but a movement
organised by men who wanted to use the peasants to further their
selfish interests.9 There was thus a persistent clamour that law
and order had practically ceased to exist in Pabna where the ryots
were committing all sorts of atrocities.
Thus Dwijendranath Tagore, poet and musician, one of the
famous cultural figures of 19th Century Bengal,10 drew the atten-
 PEASANT STRUGGLE IN PABNA, 1 873 1 81

tion of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal to the acts of wanton

violence committed by the Pabna peasantry upon the ‘inoffensive
people’.11 Tagore’s complaint was corroborated by a group of
Pabna mukteers, the agents of the local landlords, who in a petition
to the Government painted a livid picture of mob-violence in the
district.12 The Hindoo Patriot as well as the Amrita Bazar Patrika
also sent from Pabna highly coloured accounts of wanton plunder,
rape and arson committed by the enraged peasantry. The Hindoo
Patriot wrote: ‘The contagion rapidly spread in the Pubna district
in the quarters very near Shahazadpore. Its first fury had to be
borne by the residents of Gopalnagar where respectable men
were plundered, their females insulted and their homesteads burnt
down to ashes in broad daylight... .Then occurred a series of
plundering raids throughout that part of the Pubna district which
lies between Gopalnagar on the north-east and Padma near
Goalondo on the south.. .villages after villages were mercilessly
plundered and subjugated.... In this way, village after village
was, as was styled by them, brought to “subjection” till this danger¬
ous mob of ruffians, frenzied freebooters and ignorant credulous
peasants overran nearly the whole of Shahazadpore chowkee, spread¬
ing all sorts of rumours regarding the Government aid which they
were sure of getting.’13 The special correspondent of the Amrita
Bazar Patrika also sent from Pabna almost an identical report.14
‘The whole subdivision of Serajgunge in Pabna is in a state of dread
of excitement. Thousands of ryots have combined together and risen
against their Zamindars, plundering and devastating everything
in their way. The life, property and honour of the people are in
imminent danger.’ This then was the crux of the landlord position
and shows clearly enough that the Chaudhuri-Ray position is
really an uncritical acceptance of landlord press bias.

Ill
The enquiry conducted by the Government which followed the
publication of these reports in the pro-landlord Calcutta press
established, however, that most of them were either maliciously
false or deliberately exaggerated.15 This was confirmed by the
results of the Pabna trials which showed that the ryots arrested
on charges of rioting or plunder were either acquitted or let off
with light punishments.16 Most of the influential newspapers
182 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

also thought that the reports of mob-violence circulated by the

agents of the landlords were grossly exaggerated since the outrages
committed by the ryots were remarkably few.17 The Bengalee
thus wrote on August 9, 1873: 'After carefully suppressing every¬
thing favourable to the ryots and unfavourable to the Zamindars,
after charging the ryots with rape and other outrages on females
never committed by them, the Amrita Bazar Patrika sheds some
crocodile tears over the fate of the wretches who have been sent
to prison for their misdeeds. Lest it should be thought that our
contemporary by his unscrupulous advocacy of the landlord had
descended to the level of the famous Sampson Brass, he apostrophies
the ryots in the following strain: “O poor! misguided deluded men,
how you have been befooled by Mr Nolan”.’ The Friend of India
reported on July 17, 1873: 'Pubna continues quiet. The peasant
as resolute as ever against exaction, is no less determined to keep
within the law.’ The Pioneer stated on July 15, 1873: 'It is to be
hoped that some attention will be given to the real grievances of
the cultivators. The native newspapers which are almost entirely
under the influence of the Zamindars have been publishing ludicr¬
ously exaggerated accounts of “outrages” that have been perpetrat¬
ed by the ryots. According to these truthful historians, an epidemic
of rape and murder has fastened upon the ryots of Pubna. The
facts officially reported, however, reveal a very different tale. Two
or three houses have been burned, a few more have been gutted
and some persons have been moderately beaten. No one excuses
this illegal violence but the glib falsehoods of the native press
make it necessary that it should be accurately reported.’ The
opinions of these responsible and influential newspapers represent¬
ing respectively, the progressive middle class Bengalees, the
Christian missionaries and the English officials, thus unmistakably
underlined the fact, that the pro-landlord press represented by the
Hindoo Patriot and the Amrita Bazar Patrika did not accurately
report the facts pertaining to the agrarian movement in Pabna.
This will be more clear if we analyse the nature of the various
incidents which took place in Pabna during this period of agrarian
unrest.

IV
The first serious incident in the Sadar sub-division had taken
place at Gopalnagar and Faridpore on the 27th June, 1873 when
 PEASANT STRUGGLE IN PABNA, 1873 183

an attack was made on the estate of the local landlords, the

Mazumdars, where extra police under an inspector had to be
sent. On June 28, large bands of men had collected at Dhuboori
(Nakalia) and manhandled two constables in whose custody were
some recovered stolen articles. In the meanwhile a large crowd of
about a thousand men attacked the Mathura Police Station and
the Post Office presumably to assault the Officer-in-Charge, but
they left subsequently without doing any harm.18 The principal
objective of the rioters, it appeared to the Magistrates, was to
recover some stolen property seized by the officer. At Shagurkandi
where the rioters, some twelve hundred men, had attacked one
Govinda Dutta’s house on June 30, the damage was considerable
and according to W.V.G^ Tayler, the District Magistrate, who
visited the spot, the attitude of the rioters was ‘most malicious’.
It is significant that none of these very serious cases were in any
way connected with the rent question. The Gopalnagar and the
Shagurkandi incidents were caused by old zamindari quarrels19
while the Nakalia episode was the result of some private ill-feeling
between some of the rioters and the complainants. The complaint
however, fell through for lack of evidence.20
In Serajgunje sub-division, where the movement had originally
started, practically the entire countryside supported the tenantry.21
At Sallop, an illegal assembly had taken place and a number
of unionist ryots went in a threatening manner to some villages
which had not hitherto joined the movement. Assemblage of
ryots had also taken place at Ullahparah where buffalo horns
were blown at night to cause terror and intimidation. According
to Inspector Krishna Sundar, who was sent to the affected areas
by the Sub-Divisional Officer of Serajgunge, P. Nolan, the agents
of the zamindars had evacuated from the out-lying cutcheries,22
though no serious riot had taken place.23 At Mowpore, where
all the ryots had joined the combination there was not a single
case of violence.24 At Shahazadpore, there was a general panic
and scare among the zamindars but the only serious outrage was
committed upon the ryots of Sagtolla by the ryots of Nakalia to
force the former to join the combination. This incident was a
very complex one. A piece of land belonged to the Pakrasis, the
zamindars of Sthal, who had let it on a three years’ lease to two
Muhammedans residing at Nakalia for a sum of two annas in
excess of the old rent. The lessees proceeded to demand four
184 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

annas beyond the old rent upon which Sagtollah broke with them
and went over to the zamindars. After the agrarian movement
had commenced the lessees posed as the champions of the ryots
against the zamindar; but Sagtolla persistently refused to join
the combination. As a result, the two lessees organised and planned
an attack upon the village which had taken place when they
themselves were absent and in course of which many houses were
plundered.25 This was an exceptional case where the league was
misused for the purpose of intimidation. According to Nolan,
this outrage was committed for two distinct contrary reasons.
The lessees, who planned it, were excited against the cultivators
because they would not consent to an enhancement and, the ryots
who executed the design because they would not join the league.26
At Jamirta there were several cases of plunder and according to
the Tagores, the zamindars of the village, two women were ravished.
Nolan, however, found on enquiry that the reports were very
much exagerrated and the incidents were connected not with the
agrarian movement but with an old private dispute between the
Pakrasis and the Tagores. Nolan thus recorded in his diary of the
4th July, 1873: This is an instance of the way in which occurrences
of an ordinary nature got up very likely by the Zamindars them¬
selves are mis-represented as glaring outrages proving the anarchy
of the country.’27
At Gopalpore village, a serious dispute concerning the proprietory
right of the village had been going on for three years between Brojo
Bhaduri and Ishan Ray (who was also the principal leader of the
league) the lessees of five Hindu widows. The dispute however
assumed a new character with the outbreak of the agrarian move¬
ment as one of the contestants was also a leader of the unionists.
On the 3rd July, 1873, a clash between the rival parties, resulted
in gun shot injuries to two ryots belonging to Ishan Ray’s camp.
This outrage was also not even remotely connected with the agrarian
movement, but the landlords had taken advantage of the prevailing
excitement to obtain men to fight in their long-standing private
quarrels.28 At Jamirta char there were two cases of looting of
sheds of which one was proved false. The incident was a trivial
one and was not connected with the rent dispute.29 Though in
some cases the news of the league caused old rivalries to be revived
for the purposes of private interest, these cases were marginal to
 PEASANT STRUGGLE IN PABNA, 1873 185

the agrarian question and the question of tenant right. But it must
be granted that the news of the formation of the league did bring
these old rivalries out into the open.
V *

V
Basically therefore, the Pabna movement was a non-violent
agrarian rising. Instances of violence were rare since the peasant
leaders did not take the law into their own hands and actually
advised the ryots to keep themselves within the bounds of law.30
In fact in parts of Yusufshahi parganah where the influence of
Ishan Chandra Ray was greatest and most direct, namely Ullah-
parah, Doulatpore and Shahazadpore, all in the Serajgunje Sub¬
division, the movement was accompanied with the least excesses
and carried on in a legal manner. Whereas in the Sadar Sub-division
of Pabna, where he was least known, and where his influence was
hardly felt, there had been far more plundering and the rioting.31
Illegal violence, however, never formed an essential part of
the agrarian union.32 In many instances the rioting and plundering,
which was supposed to have its origin in the bad feeling of the
ryots, had been proved to have been instigated by some zamindars
against neighbouring landlords, against whom they had a grudge;
and then the movement was unfairly saddled with the whole
responsibility of disturbances for which it was only partially
responsible.33 At the worst the breaches of peace by the bona fide
tenants were rare, presenting a significant contrast to the outrages
of the Zamindars. The cases of violent crime apart from occurring
in conflicts between the followers of rival landlords were also due
to the criminal class who took advantage of the excitement.34
These bad characters were definitely responsible for violence in
certain areas.35 Even then the outrages committed by these bad
characters fell short of the outrages habitually perpetrated by the
zamindars of the district.36
The unionists thus strictly confined themselves within the bounds
of law since their organisation according to E.W. Molony, the
Commissioner of Rajshahi Division, was ‘essentially defensive
and dangerous only incidentally’.37 Nolan felt that the ryots who
commenced the movement combined to defend property and the
interest they possessed in their holdings as occupancy ryots against
present and future litigation.38 It is also significant that in spite
1 86 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of the class feeling prevailing in the Yusufshahi parganah, during

this period, the zamindars themselves were not molested, the
roads and ferries were not beset and the zamindars’ agents could
freely come to the Magistrates to lodge complaints or to present
their petitions.39 In fact, Nolan, who extensively toured the country¬
side when the excitement was at its height, found that most of the
disturbed villages (Sataintolla, Mowpore. Shahazadpore and
Jamirta) though determined to resist the extortionate demands of
the zamindars were at the same time maintaining perfect peace
and order.40 This fact clearly emphasised the legalistic character
of the movement.41 Thus, none was killed or seriously injured,
and there was no significant damage to property, even when the
miasma of class-hatred was spreading throughout the district.42
The Pabna peasants, in fact, did not imitate the crimes of their
landlords taking all the vengeance that makes a jacquerie, and
their movement never showed any tendency to graviate towards
the criminal courts.43 This led Sir William Hunter to remark:
‘They have [the rural population] fought with keen persistence
but with a few ebullitions of violence the struggle between the
landlords and tenants and are conducting before our eyes an
agrarian revolution by the course of law’.44 Indeed it was ‘an
agrarian revolution by due course of law’.

References

1 A district in Bangladesh, lying at the south-eastern corner of Rajshahi division.

Originally it formed part of the great district of Rajshahi but became a separate
district in 1832.
2 See. K.K. Sen Gupta, 'The Agrarian League of Pabna, 1873,’ Indian Economic
and Social History Review, vol. 7, no. 2, June 1970. pp. 253-69.
3 See K.K. Sen Gupta, 'Agrarian disturbances in eastern and central Bengal
in the late 19th century', Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 8,
no. 2, June 1971. pp. 192-212.
4 This point has been elaborately discussed in my two articles mentioned above.
5 See: Sunil Sen, Agrarian struggle in Bengal, 1946-47, New Delhi, P.P.H., 1972.
Sen describes in this book the tebhaga movement of the bargadars in Bengal
on the eve of independence.
6 Ibid. p. 82. Sen writes: 'So long as the abolition of zamindary system is the
main point at stake, the interests of all these categories of the peasantry are
the same. Once this is achieved different categories of the peasantry are likely
to be motivated by different aims and ambitions.’
 PEASANT STRUGGLE IN PABNA, 1873 187
i

7 Binay Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian economy and agrarian relations in Bengal, 1859-85’,

in N.K. Sinha, ed. History of Bengal, Calcutta, C.U., 1967. pp. 288-92.
Suprokash Ray, Bharater krishak vidroha o ganatantrik sangram, Calcutta,
Vidyodaya, 1966. Chapter on Serajgunge rebellion.
8 Chaudhuri, op. cit. p. 228. In describing the situation in Pabna in 1874-75,
Chaudhuri writes: ‘In Pabna itself the tension was far from resolved. The
number of overt hostilities, involving loss of life and property decreased entirely
because of strong police measures’ (italics mine). In criminal law an overt act
is an open act done in pursuance and manifestation of a criminal design. Quite
obviously Chaudhuri blieves that the agrarian movement in Pabna was a
violent manifestation of criminal design.
Ray op. cit.
Suprokash Ray also emphasises the lawlessness of the Pabna ryots.
9 Hindoo Patriot, July 14, 1873.
10 Eldest son of Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, the proprietor of the Tagore
estate in Pabna.
11 Bengal Judicial (Police) Proceedings (hereafter BJPP), File 448, no. 37, July 1873.
12 Ibid., no. 44, July 1873.
13 Hindoo Patriot, July 14, 1873.
14 Quoted in Hindoo Patriot, June 30, 1873.
15 P. Nolan. Letter to Gayler, no. 321, para 11.
In BJPP. File 448, nos. 111-13, July 1873.
16 BJPP. File 448, nos. 78-9, August 18, 1873.
17 Indian Daily News as quoted in Bengalee, July 19, 1873.
Bengalee, August 9, 1873. _
The Spectator as quoted in Bengalee, September 27, 1873.
Friend of India, July 17, 1873, and July 24, 1873.
Englishman, July 5, 1873, and July 12, 1873.
Pioneer, July 8, 1873, and July 15, 1873.
Indian Mirror as quoted in Pioneer, July 10, 1873.
Indian Observer, July 12, 1873.
Compbell. Letter to Argyll, dated July 8, 1873. In:
Argyll papers, item 8 (N.A.I. microfilms, reel 316).
18 BJPP. File 448, nos. 111-13, July, 1873.
19 Ibid.
—20 Ibid., nos. 78-9, August 1873.
2\"lbid„ nos. 111-13, July 1873.
22 A zamindar’s office.
23 Op. cit., no. 112, July 1873.
24 Nolan’s diary, dt. July 8, 1873. in: BJPP. File448.
25 Ibid., no. 112, July 1873.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., nos. 78-9, July 1873.
30 Pioneer, August 4, 1873.
31 Ibid.
32 Pioneer. July 29, 1873.
33 Pioneer, July 28, 1873.
34 Friend of India, July 24, 1873.
Indian Daily News wrote: ‘The disturbances were never of the essence of the
movement but the acts of a number of professional clubmen and thieves joined
1 88 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

by the more foolish and ignorant villagers. They were almost entirely confined
to the south of the Parasagur and Burral rivers which divide Pabna district into
two equal halves. The genuine rent union originated in and still hardly exists
out of the northern division. Where it prevails, it includes nearly all the villages
which were recently been subjected to enhancement of rent or from which an
enhancement has been demanded this year. The ryots in these parts are perfectly
peaceful and show no signs of regret for the step they have taken. They are
measuring their lands with the Collectors’ standard pole and when this work
is completed they profess to be prepared to deposit the rent which they acknow¬
ledge due to the Munsiff or to pay it to the zamindars if the latter are willing
to accept it.’ Quoted in Bengalee, July 19, 1873.
See also: C.E. Buckland. Bengal Under the Lieutenant-Governors: Vol. 1.
Calcutta, S.K. Lahiri, 1901. p. 545.
35 Nolan’s diary, BJPP. File 448, nos. 111-13, July 1873.
Bengalee, July 26, 1873.
Friend of India, July 17, 1873.
Pioneer, July 29, 1873.
Sadharani, Kartick 18, 1280 B.S. (November 2, 1873).
36 Pioneer, July 29, 1873.
37 Op. cit., no. 40, July 1873.
38 P. Nolan. Letter to Taytor, dt. July 1, 1873, BJPP, File 448, nos. 111-13, July
1873.
39 BJPP. File. 448.
40 Nolan’s diary, BJPP, File 448.
41 Friend of India, July 31, 1873, and August 14, 1873.
42 BJPP. File 448. nos. 78-9, August 1873.
43 Pioneer, July 8, 1873; Friend of India, July 24, 1873.
44 W.W. Hunter. Statistical Account of Bengal. Vol. 9. 1875. Preface.
The facts stated above clearly shows that Hunter was not 'over simplifying
the situation' as stated by P. Sinha. See: P. Sinha, Nineteenth century Bengal.
Calcutta, Firma K.L., 1965. p. 25.
 13 Agrarian Disturbances In
19th Century Bengal

Kalyan Kumar Sengupta

The decade which preceded the enactment of the Bengal Tenancy

Act VIII of 1885 was an important period in the history of agrarian
relations in Eastern and Central Bengal. It saw a perceptible change
in the relations between the landlords and the tenants, a change
which almost inevitably produced widespread agrarian conflicts
in the region.
The forerunner of these disturbances was the agrarian conflict in
the district of Pabna in 1873. It was a protest of the occupancy
ryots of the district against the conscious and systematic attempts
of the landlords to do away with the occupancy title granted to a
large number of cultivators by the Rent Act X of 1859. This resis¬
tance of the Pabna peasantry had assumed in course of time, the
character of an organised and legalistic agrarian upsurge under the
aegis of a powerful agrarian league which controlled and directed
the movement from its base at Serajgunje, the prosperous jute mart
of Eastern Bengal.
The movement in Pabna though it did not succeed in ending
landlord exploitation in the district, nevertheless greatly restricted
the landlords’ absolute power in estate management. By emphasi¬
sing the basically unstable nature of landlord-tenant relationships
the distrubances in Pabna inspired agrarian movements in other
parts of Eastern and Central Bengal which soon took the character
of a widespread peasant protest against the concept of high-
landlordism.1
This paper seeks to establish a historical link between the Pabna
revolt and the peasant disturbances in Dacca, Mymensingh,
Tripura, Backergunje, Faridpore, Rajshahi and Bograh: to analyse

Reproduced from The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol VIII, No.2,
1971 pp. 192-212.
190 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the causes of these conflicts, to examine the methods of peasant

resistance and to offer an explanation for the absence of agrarian
tensions in the neighbouring districts of Rangpore, Noakhali and
Chittagong.

I The Basic Causes of the Conflicts

According to some contemporary vernacular newspapers these
conflicts in Eastern Bengal were caused, partly by the arrogant
temper of the ryots themselves, partly by the conduct of the social
reformers, partly by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, George
Campbell’s pro-ryot policy, partly by the course of legislation,
partly by the faulty legal system, partly by the intrigues of ‘wicked
men’ and partly the increase of luxury among the people.2 The
Joint-Magistrate of Dacca, J.G. Charles in his report to the govern--
ment in 1873, also mentioned certain specific causes of the conflicts.3
According to him (a) the growing independence of the ryots, (which
was caused by the increasing knowledge of their legal rights and
marked increase of wealth, during the past few years, by supplying
them with the means of fighting for their rights in the civil courts)
and (b) the decline in the influence of the landlords (owing to a
strict application of the criminal law) actually precipitated a crisis
in the relations between the landlords and the tenants.
Apart from over-simplifying the complex problem of landlord-
tenant relationship, these sources thus deliberately propagated the
myth that the prosperity of the ryots of Eastern Bengal was an
important factor which contributed to the growth of agrarian
tensions in Eastern and Central Bengal. In fact, most of the local
magistrates who were in charge of the disturbed districts in this
period of unrest, maintained that the prosperity of the East Bengal
ryots was one of the primary reasons which facilitated the rapid
growth of agrarian leagues.4 This generalization however did not
correspond to reality. The majority of the cultivators of East
Bengal, barring a few richer ryots (who were to be found in every
village) generally lived from hand to mouth in the late nineteenth
century. A large number of them were also involved in debts from
which they found it hard to get out in their lifetime.5 In fact the
correct index of a ryot’s economic position, was the extent of his
holding in his possession. The statistics of the ryoti holdings
compiled from the Road Cess returns by the government showed
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 191

that in the districts of Dacca, Tripura and Faridpur about three-

fourth of the ryoti holdings did not exceed five bighas of land, the
money value of which was only Rs 61.8 as. with which a ryot not
only maintained his family but also paid his rent.6 An average ryot
of East Bengal in the late 19th century was therefore not rich by
any standards. His poverty, rather than his prosperity, indeed
induced him to resist the extortions by the landlords.
The fundamental cause of the friction in East Bengal was the
landlords’ persistent refusal to recognise tenant right which even
the law of the country partially accepted. The landlords had taken
their stand on what Dr. Binoy Chowdhury has called the doctrine
of high-landlordism.7 This concept was, however, clearly, incompa¬
tible with the spirit of the Act X of 1859 which had recognised the
concept of occupancy right. Not unnaturally, a large number of
East Bengal landlords made deliberate attempts during 1837-85 to
destroy this newly acquired right of the peasantry. The contempo¬
rary district officers, the leading members of the Bench as well as
the influential vernacular newspapers of the time fully corroborated
this fact. According to a district officer who knew both Bengal
and Behar, all proprietors and tenure-holders wished to see the
existing law changed since they desired two things, the limitation
or destruction of occupancy rights and increased facilities for
enhancing rents.8 In Chittagong Division according to the Com¬
missioner, most landlords during this period were taking precautions
against allowing their ryots to obtain occupancy rights.9 A petition
from the ryots of Attia Sub-Division of the Mymensingh District
alleged that the landlords were busy sending their lathiyals and
dependents from village to village to take leases for limited period
from the ryots.10 In Parganah Sherpore situated in the Jamalpore
Sub-Division of the district of Mymensingh there was a general
tendency on the part of the landlords to take kabuliyats for limited
periods in order to prevent the accrual of occupancy.11 In Dacca,
- according to a District Officer, as long as the ryots paid their rents
their tenancies were not interfered with unless the landlord was
anxious to prevent their acquiring a right of occupancy.12 In
Faridpur, in the years which preceded the enactment of the Tenancy
Act of 1885, the landlords had issued hundreds of temporary leases
for purposes of preventing the acquisition of rights of occupancy
under the new law.13 In Madaripur Sub-Division of this district
192 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

in particular, the landlords did not recognise the occupancy right

of their peasants and persistently refused to give them written
leases.14 The Sub-Divisional Officer, Sirajgunge, Peter Nolan
believed that occupancy rights were being very rapidly extinguished
in Eastern Bengal.15 This was also the considered opinion of
Justice O'Kinealy, amember of the Rent Law Commission (1879).16
A leading contemporary vernacular journal Sadharani wrote in
1875 that the East Bengal landlords were continually seeking
means of preventing their tenantry from acquiring occupancy
rights.17 The leading landlords, too, openly expressed their feel¬
ings against the concept of occupancy right. The British Indian
Association, the official forum of the Bengal landlords, declared in
its report for 1878 that the provisions of the Rent Law of 1859,
concerning the occupancy rights being opposed to the rights of the
zamindars were highly ‘objectionable’.18 A prominent Bengal
zamindar of the time, Joykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara in a letter
addressed to the Friend of India; expressed his views against the
concept of occupancy right. He wrote; ‘The law and the courts
have vested mere squatters on the land with rights of occupancy
.. .The most meagre evidence adduced by the ryots to support a
claim for right of occupancy.. .has been held sufficient to prove
their case’. 19
One of the principal aims of high-landlordism in Eastern and
Central Bengal in between the two Rent Acts of 1859 and 1885 was
therefore, the destruction of the rights of occupancy of a large
number of cultivators. The ruthlessness with which some of the
East Bengal landlords sought to fulfil this objective brought about
a sharp change in the relations between the landlords and tenants,
and planted the seeds of mutual discord and animosity which
directly led to combined peasant resistance in many East Bengal
districts.
Since the doctrine of high-landlordism also assumed the inherent
right of the landlords as the sole proprietors of the land so enhance
the ryots’ rents, the enhancement of rent became almost a
universal problem throughout East Bengal in the period under
review. The problem had become particularly acute in Munshigunje
Sub-Division20 and Utrashpur Estate21 in the district of Dacca.
In the rest of the district during 1876-85, the landlords wanting to
participate in what they considered the increased value of the
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 193

produce of the land persistently demanded enhanced rents and

illegal cesses.22 Consequently, the civil courts in Dacca became
flooded with rent suits.23 In the district of Mymensingh, the rent
problem had become particularly acute in Attea,24 Pakhuriah,25
Parganah Mymensingh,26 Kheliajori27, Hussainshahi,28 Narain-
dhar,29 Kagmari,30 Atharabari,31 Tangail and Jamalpur,32 and
Hussainpore and Alapsingh.33 The enhancement of rent by the
zamindars also created agrarian tensions in the district of Faridpore
particularly in Madaripur Sub-Division34 and in the large estates
of Mr David of Dacca,35 Rani Rangini Chowdhury of Narail36
and Raja Shyama Sankar Chowdhury of Teota.37
In Backergunje, too, the absentee landlords always looked for
opportunities to enhance the rents of their ryots and did not as a
rule display any positive feeling of goodwill for their tenantry.38
In areas like Bamna,39 Shingkhali, and Ulania40 and Dakhin
Shabazpur41 the enhancement of rent by the landlords caused
frictions between them and their tenants which considerably
strained the relations between the two classes. In fact since 1880-85,
the Backergunje landlords instituted a large number of enhancement
suits against their ryots.42 This only helped to widen the gulf which
separated the two classes. The problem was also very much acute
during 1875-85 practically throughout Tripura where the landlords
in addition to enhanced rent generally demanded illegal cesses
of various sorts.43 In the district of Bograh in Central Bengal,
the enhancement problem was particularly acute in the estates
which were leased out to the new Patnidars who in order to recoup
themselves for the high premium they had paid demanded rents
at exorbitant rates. 44 In this particular district as well as in the
neighbouring district of Rajshahi, the enhancement problem
baffled solution since 1881 when there was a marked tendency on
the part of the landlords to extort from the ryots as much as they
could before the proposed Rent Act came into operation.45 Conse¬
quently there was a spate of rent suits in these two districts.46
Thus we see that the demands for rents at exorbitant rates was
one of the basic causes of friction between the landlords and the
tenants in most districts of Eastern and Central Bengal in the decade
preceding the enactment of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. The
provisions of the Rent Act X of 1859 which conferred occupancy
title on all cultivators of 12 years’ standing also considerably res-
194 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

tricted the landlords’ powers to raise the rents of the occupancy

ryots. Consequently with a few exceptions, the enhancement of
rent of the occupancy ryots in Eastern and Central Bengal was part
of a deliberate policy of the landlords to annihilate the occupancy
rights which recognised the tenants’ right to pay rents at fair rate.
The doctrine of high-landlordism also assumed the landlords
complete freedom in the management of their estates. Naturally
the zamindars of Eastern and Central Bengal who practised this
doctrine did not generally keep themselves within the bounds of
the existing tenant law which did not allow them such unrestric¬
ted freedom. Consequently in most districts of Eastern and Central
Bengal, the adoption of various extra legal methods by the majority
of the landlords for the enforcement of their claims not only
strained their relations with, the tenantry but also planted the
seeds of widespread agrarian discontent. Thus in the district of
Mymensingh the landlords were in the habit of levying cesses in
excess of the road cess47 (imposed in 1871). There was also a
general tendency on the part of the landlords to credit the current
collections to the old arrears of rent.48 Apart from this, certain
landlords of Madaripur and Backergunje persistently refused to
give written leases and receipts to their tenantry even after obtaining
the rent due,49 while others demanded kabuliyats in which the
ryots were asked to incorporate the illegal cesses.50 Certain land¬
lords of Dacca, moreover, in a bid to weaken the morale of the
ryots sought to lure the leading tenants by offering them leases
on very easy terms. The plan of operations was simple: when a
village had gone on strike, the landlords used to single out a few
of the leading ryots and win them over to his side with a measuring
pole greater than that used in the village or he threw in a few bighas
or hoojoori or some other fancy name. These men then went to the
court ready to swear anything against the men on strike.51
It is thus clearly evident that in almost all the districts of East
Bengal where agrarian disturbances took place during the seventh
and the eighth decades of the 19th century the landlords invariably
sought to apply the doctrine of high-landlordism and challenged in
consequence the newly acquired occupancy rights of the cultivators
by illegally raising their rents and by applying various extra legal
coercive methods for the enforcement of their demands. The
nature of landlord extortion was thus practically the same every¬
where in East Bengal.
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 195

The ch^ienge of high-landlordism inevitably produced sharp

tenant responses in various districts of Eastern and Central Bengal.
The tenantry in these areas protested not only against one element
of oppression namely illegal rents but against the doctrine of
high-landlordism which rejected the very idea of tenant right. Thus
in Eastern and Central Bengal, the struggle between the landlords
and the tenants tended to assume the character of a conflict between
the two mutually contradictory concepts of high-landlordism and
tenant right.

II The Methods of Peasant Resistance in Eastern and Central Bengal

The occupancy ryots of Eastern and Central Bengal met the
challenge of high-landlordism by forming agrarian combinations.
Consequently the methods of peasant resistance in these areas
tended to have a more or less uniform pattern, very much similar
to those adopted by the Pabna ryots, in 1873. Moreover since the
character of landlord exploitation was practically similar through¬
out Eastern and Central Bengal the combined resistance of
the tenantry, represented not the ephemeral'discontent of a parti¬
cular local peasant group but a general protest against the concept
of high-landlordism, notwithstanding the fact that these agrarian
combinations had no common organisational base.
During the years 1870-85 agrarian combinations thus sprang
up in different areas of Dacca, Mymensingh, Tripura, Backergunje,
Faridpore, Bograh and Rajshahi;. the regions where, as we have
seen, the landlords were 'systematically enforcing the doctrine of
high-landlordism.
In the district of Dacca, the tenantry, invariably resisted the
high-rent demands by forming agrarian leagues.52 As a matter of
fact, there was a general inclination on the part of the ryots to
decline any communications whatever with their landlords except
through the medium of the civil courts,53 a fact which unmistakably
pointed to the uneasy relationship which existed between the
two classes.
The symptoms of this growing ill feeling between the landlords
and the tenants first manifested itself since 1870-71 in Munshigunje
Sub-Division round an area of alluvial formation on the Meghna,
an area which constituted about one-eighth of the Munshigunje
thanah.54 This region was mostly inhabited by the Muhammedan
tenantry among whom the Faraizies had an extensive following.55
196 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The localities to which this particular movement had extended

were the recent alluvial formations: Satgon, Borogaon and Turkeer
Char; the old alluvial formations: Jawar Bhuber Char and Jawar
Gajaria, and the high mainland areas: Jawar Abdullahpur, Jawar
Hyderabaj, Jawar Panchashar and Jawar Shirajbaj.56 The agrarian
leagues which came into existence in these areas had the support
of about 10,000 to 15,000 ryots who generally offered passive
resistance and on the whole the movement was marked by a respect
for the law except where the landlords had been the first to employ
force to coerce their ryots to submit to their terms.57
Gradually the movement of the tenantry spread to a wider area
and by 1874 the disputes between the landlords and the tenants in
the Utrashpur estate, formerly the property of the indigo planter
J.P. Wise assumed a very serious character when the ryots of this
estate combined against the new purchasers of the property.58 In
. this particular estate the unionist ryots on many occasions forced
some of the ryots to join the union against their will. This was
possible because the popular feelings against the landlords were too
strong. 59 Though the leaders of the league at first doggedly refused
to come to terms with the zamindars, the Commissioner of the
Dacca Division at last succeeded in settling the matters by arbitra¬
tion.60 Similar measures taken by the District Superintendent of
Police prevented clashes between the landlords and the tenants in
Munshigunje where also peasant combinations were very much
active.61 In the extensive estates of Kalinaray'an Roy of Bhawal
also agrarian combinations came into existence but the disputes
were settled amicably though not without difficulty by the local
government officials.62
Though no cases of aggravated land disputes were reported
during the years 1876-85,63 there was however no real concord in
many estates. Consequently the Civil Courts became filled with rent
suits.64 Thus throughout this period there was hardly any abate¬
ment of the tensions in spite of the outward quiet and the local
officials felt that the ‘stillness might any moment be broken’.65
In Mymensingh, since 1873 the ryots were beginning to feel their
own strength and were ready to repel force by force.66 Thus in this
district too, the tenantry protested not only against the enhance¬
ment of rent but also against the attempts of the landlords to
destroy the occupancy rights of the cultivators. This became stri-
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 197

kingly clear in 1873 when land riots broke out in the Mirzapur
village in the Attea Sub-Division,67 Parganah Pakhuria,68 Par-
ganah Mymensingh.69 Kheliajori and Hussainshahi Parganah.70
In none of these instances however the disputes were carried to the
extremes.71 In spite of the early dissolution of the Hussainshahi
combination in 1875 the relations between the landlords and the
tenants were far from cordial since the Kheliajori combination was
still doggedly carrying on its passive resistance along with brisk
litigation at the headquarters.72 One positive effect of this ill
feeling was the more frequent exchange of pattahs and kabuliyats
which both the parties were required to produce in the civil courts
in justification of their respective claims.73 Notwithstanding these
tensions the local government officials succeeded in settling some
of the disputes out of court and the zamindars, expecting an act
for the speedy realisation of arrears also remained quiet. Thus
throughout the year 1S77 there was an outward quiet, even though
the ryots were not paying the rents.74
The enhancement question was however not permanently
solved; it was merely postponed.75 This became clear when new
areas like Naraindhar,76 Kagmari,77 and Atharabari78 in Parganah
Hussainpore were affected by land disputes. In the Atharabari
estates, the tenants formed a union to resist the demands of the
landlord, Mohini Chandra Roy and declined to give him any
kabulivat.79 The agrarian league in Hussainpore Parganah tended
to become violent in the beginning but later on resorted to passive
resistance.80
As the year 1882 drew to a close, agrarian combinations were
being formed everywhere in Mymensingh. These unions became
particularly strong in the Parganahs Hussainpore, Mymensingh,
Alapsingh and Kagmari.81 Gradually the conflict spread to wider
areas and by 1884. Tangail and Jamalpore sub-divisions were
affected.82 In these areas the combined tenantry refused to give
written kabuliyats to their zamindars since they apprehended that
the execution of such kabuliyats would result in the destruction of
their occupancy rights.83
In Faridpore, the ryots by forming agrarian leagues, passively
resisted throughout this period the demand for high rent, the
attempts to destroy the occupancy rights and illegal coercion.
In Madaripore where the ill-feeling between the two parties had
198 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

appeared very acute since 1874, the agrarian combinations led by

the faraizis steadfastly opposed the landlords who systematically
tried to destroy the tenants’ occupancy right by refusing to give
them written leases.84 In Parganah Dhuldi of this Sub-Division
in particular, the landlords were not on good terms with the
tenantry.85 The former wanted the latter to cultivate indigo and
to pay a cess called bain khajna, a fee upon every pot placed upon
the fire for the purpose of manufacturing molasses. The ryots
objected to both these demands. The zamindars also instituted a
number of suits for arrears of rent and though no decided action
had been taken on either side,86 the relations between the two parties
were marked by an utter lack of cordiality.87
The relations between the landlords and the tenants in other
parts of the district were also full of tensions. On many occasions
the servants and the agents of the leading zamindars, Mr David
of Dacca, Rani Rangini Chowdhurani of Narail and Raja Shyama-
shankar Chowdhury of Teota fomented certain riot cases some of
which ended in loss of life.88 The ryots too, on many occasions
turned violent and tried to meet force by force. The murder in 1875
of Purna Chandra Roy, a zamindar who demanded illegal cesses is
an instance in point.89
In Backergunje the years between 1873 and 1879 were marked by
widespread discontent of the Muhammedan tenantry as a result of
which riots and affrays were taking place practically in all the
estates. In this district the tenant protest was directed against the
enhancement of rent, the imposition of abwabs and the attempts to
destroy the occupancy right. Naturally agrarian combinations
came into existence in all the estates where landlord oppressions
were particularly glaring.90 In fact the Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal, Sir Richard Temple, did not feel very happy as to the
prospects of affairs in that deltaic region in spite of the reassuring
reports sent by the local officials.91 The events in Backergunje
fully justified Sir Richard’s apprehensions. In 1879 the ryots of the
estates of Bamna and Singhkhali combined against their respective
zamindars.92 Agrarian combinations also became active in Mehdi-
gunje in 1880 under the leadership of Noa Meah, the son of the
faraizi Didoo Meah of Faridpore.93 In 1881, the Ulania zamindars
also came face to face with a powerful agrarian combination.94
In 1884 the discontent spread to Dakhin Shahabazpur where the
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 199

combined tenantry opposed the landlords who usually collected

from the tenantry on account of the road cess, an amount which
far exceeded the actual government demand and imposed in addi¬
tion certain illegal cesses.95
In Tripura, the tenants were quick to take up the challenge of the
landlords by forming agrarian leagues. Since they were capable of
organising such combinations at the slightest notice, the landlords
gradually found it more convenient to resort to the civil courts
rather than to coercive measures.96 But the spirit of combination
to resist the landlords’ demands even in the civil courts was spread¬
ing among the tenantry and gradually it meant active and passive
resistance to the execution of decrees of the civil court as a result
of which the landlords often hesistated to enforce the decrees obtai¬
ned by them.97
In thanah Chaugalnaya, at first, these conflicts became particularly
serious and threatened to disturb the peace of the entire region
during 1872-3.98 The original owner of the estate was the Raja of
Hill-Tipperah who had given it out from time to time in a number
of farming leases for short periods to the officers of his army who
agreed to pay rents at exorbitant rates.99 These farms were in
some cases underlet at a still higher rental. Naturally the new lease
holders demanded from the actual cultivators exorbitant rents
which at once led to misunderstandings and to disturbances.100
The ryots ‘carried the war into the enemies’ country’ by combining
to resist the farmers’ demands.101 Taking advantage of the absence
of collection papers they enterecfinto a league to pay no rents what¬
ever and to attack and drive away the farmers and their collectors
whenever they appeared on the scene.102
The unionists had a peculiar way of intimidating the minority into
joining the union. If any ryot was bold enough "to withstand the
league he received a solemn warning. A bundle of straw shaped
like a torch was placed in front of his house, an action which signi¬
fied that if he continued to hold out his house would be burnt.103
By this and other means a very large body of ryots had combined
into a powerful union for the purpose of resisting the landlords in
every way.
Gradually the movement spread throughout Chaugalnaya
Parganah and areas like Khandul, Julai Chandernagore, Ruthna-
• gore, Jugatpore, and Julai Gangapur became particularly affected
200 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

by this resistance movement.104 The revolt of the Chaugalnaya

ryots encouraged the tenantry in other areas to combine against
their landlords. In 1873, the ryots of Patoriah Parganah, an estate
belonging to Raja Satyananda Ghoshal of Bhukailash in Kidder-
pore, whose family had brought waste lands in this region since
the time of the Dewani administration in 1765,105 had combined
and stopped the payment of rent.106 The movement gradually
spread to Dihin Kangsoo and Gangamandal Parganah, the property
of Raja Kamal Krishna where the ryots formed similar combi¬
nations.107 In 1874, an agrarian league came into existence in
thanah Thollah.108 By 1875, the resistance movement spread to
the northern part of the Brahmanbaria Sub-Division where the
ryots formed a league and put up organised opposition to the
landlord’s demands.109 Thus practically all Triptma-was convulsed
by agrarian disturbances during the period 1873-9 and by 1880-1
it appeared that in Tripura at least the zamindars were hardly able
to hold their own against the ryots.110
In Bograh, the ryots, had become acquainted both with their
right and with their strength and had learnt that they enjoyed the
sympathy of the government. Thus they were growing less and less
disposed to comply with the demands of their landlords.111 This
invariably led to the growth of the peasants’ unions in the estates
where the landlords appeared oppressive.
The flames of the Pabna revolt had hardly died down when smoke
was rising in Bograh. 112 The estate of the Raja of Dighapatia was
the first to become the scene of an acute conflict in 1873 when the
ryots of Nowkhila Parganah who were praying for a reduction of
rent for the past few years began to combine against the landlord.113
Though during the years 1874-80 Bograh remained outwardly
quiet the combinations of the ryots in different estates were fully
active in preventing the landlords from demanding anything beyond
what was legally due.114 They were quick to resist the extortionate
demands through their combinations in the estates of the Raja of
Dighapatia and A.S. Chawdhuri.115 In Parganah Jaffarshahi the
relations were particularly unsatisfactory in the estates of Kali
Kishore Ray Chawdhury and Bisweswari Devi.116
In Rajshahi too, there was a general tendency on the part of the
ryots to combine against their landlords in the same way as the
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 201

ryots of Pabna did.117 In fact throughout the year 1873 when Pabna
was convulsed by serious agrarian disturbances, Rajshahi remained
in a state of tension.118 Yet barring a serious outrage committed by
the ryots of Kumashambhir,119 no serious land riots had taken place
in the district though it appeared that the feeling which began to
show itself in 1873 had not altogether died out.120 The district
remained more or less quiet during the next few years but since 1881
the relations between the two classes once again deteriorated because
the landlords from this time onwards began to serve enhancement
notices in large numbers.121 This, not unnaturally caused wide¬
spread discontent amongst the tenantry which found expression in
the combined movement launched by them against their landlords
in Meercha Deear 122 as well as in the estates of the indigo planters.
M/s. Robert Watson Company and Raja of Dhubulhati.123

Ill Why Certain Districts in Eastern and Central Bengal Remained

Free from Agrarian Disturbances
Chittagong, Noakhali and Rangpore, however, saw little of these
agrarian disturbances even during this period of acute tensions in
the rest of Eastern and Central Bengal. This was principally owing
to the peculiar system of land control prevailing in these areas. In
Chittagong and Noakhali the interest in land and wealth were more
evenly distributed among the people than in any other districts of
lower Bengal.124 Chittagong in particular, was a land of prosperous
middlemen who possessed an influence often not wielded by the
proprietors.125 The landlords of Chittagong were mostly in debt
and therefore were incapable of exerting an influence either for
good or evil.126 They were, with few exceptions, the same class of
men who would be tenants in other districts because in this district
the settlement was made with the tenants and consequently there
were hardly any proprietors of a village or whole parganah as else¬
where.127 The owner of an estate in this district was most frequent¬
ly a man who owned a multitude of small interests in a number of
others estates.128 Thus there was no distinct class of zamindars as
compared with the tenants. All were tenants quite as much as
Zamindars.129 Besides, the landlords had parted with most of
their rights by granting perpetual leases to a very large extent and
the rents of such tenants were always regularly paid.130 The persons
202 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

who obtained perpetual leases might have some difficulties with

his ryots but he in his turn also granted perpetual leases and often
possessed sufficient local influence to enforce his claims.131
In Noakhali too, the zamindars seldom dealt directly with the
tenantry but sublet to talookders who again sub-let to inferior
tenants.132 The very occupancy ryots under the title howlader claim¬
ed where it suited him to be a middleman and as a matter of fact had
tenants of various degrees paying rents to him. The result of this
arrangement was that each tenant was but little inferior in position
and wealth to the man immediately above him and no bitter class
feeling existed among them.133 In the district of Rangpore however,
the operation of a totally different phenomenon prevented any
clashes between the landlords and the tenants. In this district
land being at a premium the landlords were entirely at the mercy of
the tenants and that there was no need therefore for the tenants to
combine against the landlords because in case of any oppression,
they could always move to the next landlord’s estates where they
were always welcome.134

IV Conclusions
Thus we see that in the districts where the landlords did not or
could not apply the doctrine of high-landlordism, the ryots were
not inclined to combine against the former. But in the districts
where the landlords had taken their stand on this doctrine, the
tenantry invariably put up combined resistance against the
zamindars.
In all the areas where the struggle for the redefinition of The
respective rights of the landlords and the tenants was going on the
nature of landlord oppression was practically the same. Like the
Pabna landlords the zamindars of Eastern and Central Bengal also
sought to destroy the occupancy rights, raised the rents, demanded
illegal cesses and applied illegal coercive measures to enforce their
demands. This led the Pioneer's special correspondent to remark:
‘It is not only in Pabna where the ryots have found courage to
protest that the cultivating classes require to be protected from the
rapacity of the landlords. All Bengal is suffering from the political
disease which the government has undertaken to cure in
Serajgunje’.135
The methods of peasant resistance in all these areas also bore a
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 203

striking resemblance to those adopted by the Pabna ryots. In fact,

according to the Bengalee136 messengers from Pabna actually went
to Dacca and Tripura in 1873 where their example was immediately
followed. Consequently, in the districts where agrarian combina¬
tions came into being, the ryots following in the footsteps of the
Pabna ryots refused to give kabuliyats to the landlords,
resisted the imposition of illegal cesses and prevented the zamindars
from consolidating the rents and the abwabs and refused to pay the
enhanced rents.
The Pabna episode was therefore not an event per se\ rather it
was the symptom of a general ill-feeling existing between the land¬
lords and the tenants in serveral districts of which Pabna was one.
In other words the revolt of Pabna was not a fortuitous occurrence.
Properly considered, that conflict had reference to the respective
rights of the landlords and the tenants. In the rest of Eastern and
Central Bengal too, the agrarian conflicts were caused by the land¬
lords’ attempts to superimpose the concept of high-landlordism on
the concept of tenant right. Consequently, the movement which
started in Pabna unmistakably took the character of an extensive
protest of the occupancy ryots against the concept of high-land¬
lordism practically throughout Eastern and Central Bengal in the
decade which followed the Pabna uprising.

References

1 For details see my article ‘The Agrarian League of Pabna’. Indian Economic
& Social History Review, Vol. VII, No. 2, June, 1970, pp. 153-269.
2 Hindu Hitaishini, May 15, 1875, Sadharani, February 28, 1875, Bharat Sans-
karak, March 15, Dacca Prakash, Feb. 28, 1875 (R.N.P.).
3 Misc. Colin. 14, Nos. 26-7, paras 20/21, B.L.R.P., Jan., 1874.
4 Divisional Report, Rajshahi, 1867-8, B.G.P., Aug., 1868, para 6, ibid for
Dacca, 1873-4, para 26, B.G.P., Nov., 1874, ibid, 1874-5, para 34, B.G.P., Sept.,
1875, ibid, 1875-6, para 34, B.G.P., Aug., 1876, ibid, 1876-7, B.G.P., Sept., 1877,
ibid, 1877-8, paras 18,20,22,24, B.G.P.. Sept., 1878, ibid, 1880-1, para 26. B.G.P.,
Aug., 1881.
5 Statistical Reporter, June, 1876, p. 5, P.C. Roy. Rent Question In Bengal,
Calcutta 1881, pp. 246-52.
6 Ibid.
7 B. Chowdhury, in N.K. Sinha (ed.) History of Bengal, Calcutta 1967, pp.
268-9
204 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

8 Bengal Government Report on the Tenancy Bill. Vol. I, p. 11. Calcutta. 1883.
9 Despatch No. 6, dt. 21st March, 1882, Viceroy to the Secy, of State. Para
54, Quoted by P C. Roy op. cit.. pp. 124-37.
10 Ibid.
11 Divisional Report, Dacca for 1884-5, File 31/3/4. B.G.P., December, 1885.
12 Despatch No. 6, dt. 21st March, 1882, Viceroy to the Secretary of.State, Para
54. loc. cit.
13 Ibid.
14 Divisional Report, Dacca for 1875-6, File 129/1/2. B.G.P.. Sept.. 1876.
15 Despatch No. 6, dt. 21st March, 1882, loc. cit.
16 Ibid.
17 Sadharani. Aug. 22,1875.
18 The Progs, of the British Indian Association's 27th Annual General Meeting,
dt. 7th June, 1879, the Report for 1878.
19 Joykrishna Mukherjee’s letter entitled 'Ryots & Zamindars’, cf. Friend of
India Oct. 16, 1873.
20 Misc. colln. 14, Nos. 26/27, B.L.R.P., Jan., 1874, N. K. Sinha (ed.) op. cit.,
p. 288.
21 Divisional Report, Dacca for 1874-5. File 13/11/12, para 27. B.G.P., Aug.,
1875, N.K. Sinha (ed.) op. cit., p. 288.
22 Ibid for 1876-7, File 153-1-4. B.G.P., Sept., 1877.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid for 1873-4., File 5/32/33, B.G.P., Nov., 1874.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid for 1874-5, File 13/112, B.G.P., Sept.. 1875.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid for 1878-9, File 87/5/6, B.G.P., Nov., 1879.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid for 1879-80, File 38/20/26, B.G.P.. Aug., 1880.
32 Ibid for 1884-5, File 31/3/4, B.G.P., Dec., 1885.
33 Ibid for 1882-3, File 49/34, B.G.P. Nov.. 1883.
34 Ibid for 1875-6, File 129/1/2. B.G.P.. Sept., 1876.
35 Ibid for 1881-2, File 118/1/2, B.G.P.. Oct., 1882.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid for 1873-4, File 5/32/33, B.G.P.. Nov., 1874, ibid for 1880-1, File 120/1/2,
B.G.P.. Sept., 1881.
39 Ibid for 1879-80. File 38/20/26, B.G.P.. Aug.. 1880.
40 Ibid for 1882-3. File 49/3/4/, B.G.P., Aug., 1883.
41 Ibid for 1884-5, File 31/3/4, B.G.P.. Dec.. 1885.
42 The number of enhancement suits instituted in Backergunje during 1880-5:
1880-1-59; 1881-2-53; 1883-4-109; 1884-5-155.
Source—Divisional Reports, Dacca for these years.
43 Divisional Report, Chittagong for 1874-5, File 128/1, B.G.P., Aug., 1875.
44 Divisional Report, Rajshahi, for the years 1872-3, Fije 1/72/75. B.G.P.,Oct.,
1873, Para 122.
45 Cf. Divisional Report, Rajshahi for the years 1880-1, 1881-2, 1882-3, 1883-4.
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 205

46 Rent suits instituted 1880-84:

In Rajshahi, In Bograh
1880 - 1179 1880 - 476
1881 - 1335 1881 - 694
1882 - 1366 1882 - 913
1883 - 1978 1883 - 860
1884 - 1853 1884 - 1083
47 Divisional Report. Dacca for 1875-6, File 129/1/2, B.G.P., Sept., 1876.
48 Ibid for 1884-5, File 31/3/4, B.G.P., Dec., 1885.
49 Ibid for 1879-80, File 38/20/26, B.G.P., Aug., 1880. Ibid for 1885-6, File 21/7/8,
B.G.P. Oct., 1886.
50 Ibid for 1874-5, File 13/11/12, B.G.P., Sept., 1875. Ibid for 1882-3, File 49/3/4,
B.G.P., Nov.. 1833.
5! Ibid for 1872-3, File 1/52-54, B.G.P., Sept .. 1873.
52 Ibid for 1873-4, File 5/32/33, B.G.P., Nov., 1874.
53 Ibid.
54 Misc. Colin. 14, Nos. 26/27, B.L.R.P., Jan., 1874, N'.K. Sinha (ed.) op. cil.,
p. 288.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.. Appendix B, Hindu Hitaishini, Aug. 16, 1873 (R.N.P.).
57 Ibid., para 37.
58 Divisional Report, Dacca for 1874-5, File 13/11/12, para 27, B.G.P., 1875,
N.K. Sinha (ed.) op. cit., p. 288.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., paras 28-9.
61 Ibid., para 30
62 Ibid., Friend of India, Aug. 14, 1873, Amrita Bazar Pairika quoted in Friend
of India. Aug. 28, 1873, Hindoo Patriot, Sept. 22, 1873.
63 Cf. Divisional Reports of Dacca for these years.
64 Divisional Report, Dacca, 1876-7, File 153/1-4, B.G.P., Sept. 1877.
65 Ibid.
66 Divisional Report, Dacca, 1873-4, File 5/32/33, B.G.P., Nov. 1874.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
70 Divisional Report; Dacca, 1874-5, File 13/112, B.G.P., Sept., 1875.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid for 1875-6, be. cit.
73 Ibid for 1876-7, ioc. cit.
74 Ibid for 1877-8, File 110/1/11, B.G.P., Sept., 1878.
75 Resolution of the Lt. Governor, dt. 21st Sept., 1877, File 153/5, B.G.P., Sept.,
1877-9, para 27.
76 Divisional Report, Dacca, 1878-9, File 87/5/6, B.G.P., Nov. 1879.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid lor 1879-80, File 38/20/2c, B.G.P., Aug., 1880.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid for 1880-1, File 120/1/2, B.G.P., Aug., 1881.
81 Ibid for 1882-3, File 49/3/4, B.G.P.. Nov., 1883.
82 Ibid, for 1884-5, File 31/3/4. B.G.P.. Dec., 1885.
83 Ibid.
206 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

84 Ibid for 1875-6, File 129/1/2, B.G.P., Sept., 1876, Barisal Bartabaha, Aug., 26.
1874, (R.N.P.).
85 Ibid for 1874-5, File 13/1/1/12, B.G.P.. Sept. 1875, para 32.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid for 1875-6, File 129/1/2, B.G.P., Sept., 1876.
88 Ibid for 1881-2, File 118/1/2, B.G.P., 1882.
89 Ibid for 1875-6. loc.cit.
90 Hita Sadltini (Barisal), Aug. 11, 1874, (R.N.P.).
91 Resolution of the Lt. Governor on the Dacca Report for 1874-5. File 132/2,
B.G.P., Sept., 1875, Para 11.
92 Divisional Report. Dacca for 1879-80, File 38/20/26, B.G.P., Aug., 1880.
93 Ibid for 1880-1, File 120/1/2. B.G.P., Aug., 1881.
94 Ibid for 1882-3, File 49/3/4, B.G.P., Aug., 1883.
95 Ibid for 1884-5, File 31/3-4, B.G.P.. Dec., 1885.
96 Divisional Report, Chittagong, 1881-2, File 113/1/2, B.G.P., Oct., 1882.
97 Ibid.
98 Mangies, Commissioner, Chittagong to Bengal, dt. 2nd Jan., 1875, File 56/11/12,
B.J.P.P., April, 1875.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 The Magistrate, Mr N.S. Alexander’s, Report dt. the 10th Dec.. 1874, ibid.
104 Ibid. These villages were possibly inhabited by the Muslim weavers since the
term Julai roughly corresponds to the Bengali word Jolah which means a muslim
weaver.
105 W.K. Firminger (ed.). Letter Copy Book of the Resident at the Durbar of
Murshidabad on Gokul Ghoshal's Lease of Waste Lands. I am grateful to
Dr Barun De for this reference.
106 Hindoo Hilaishini, Aug., 16, 1873 (R.N.P.), Friend of India, Aug. 14. 1873.
107 Ibid.
108 Divisional Report, Chittagong, 1874-5, File 128/1, B.G.P., Aug., 1875.
109 Ibid., Dacca for 1875-6, File 129/2/2, B.G.P., Sept., 1876.
110 Ibid., Chittagong for 1880-1, File 34/4/5, B.G.P., Aug., 1881, para 84.
111 District Report Bograh, 1872-3, dt. 30th June, 1873, cf. Divisional Report
Rajshahi, 1872-3, File 1/72/75, B.G.P., Oct.. 1873.
112 Mis. colln. 14, No. I, B.R.L.P., Jan., 1874, Friend of India. Aug. 28, 1873.
The Englishman, Sept. 2, 1873.
113 Gram Barta Prakashika, Sept., 13, 1873 (R.N.P.).
114 Cf. Divisional Reports, Rajshahi for these years.
115 Ibid for 1881-2, File 124/1/2, B.G.P., Oct., 1882.
116 Ibid.
117 Educational Gazette, Nov. 7 and 14, 1873, Samachar Sudhabarshan, Dec. 13,
1873 (R.N.P.).
118 Police File 448, No. 8. B.J.P.P., July, 1873.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid.
122 Divisional Report. Rajshahi, 1882-3, File 18/2/26, B.G.P., Oct., 1883.
123 Ibid for 1884-5, File 22/1, B.G.P., Jan., 1886.
124 Ibid for Chittagong, 1875-6, para 27, File 26/1/2, B.G.P., Sept., 1876.
 AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES IN 19TH CENTURY BENGAL 207

175 Ibid.
126 Ibid for 1876-7, para 155, File 1561/1, B.G.P., Oct., 1877.
127 Ibid for 1880-1, para 83,'File 34/4/5, B.G.P., Aug., 1881.
128 Ibid.
129 Ibid.
130 Ibid for 1875-6, para 138, File 126/1/2, B.G.P., Sept., 1876, N.K Sinha (ed.j
op. cit., pp., 310-314.
131 Ibid.
132 Ibid for 1881-2, File 113/1/2, para 136, B.G.P., Oct., 1882, N.K. Sinha (ed.)
op. cit., p. 312.
133 Ibid.
134 Divisional Report, Rajshahi, 1880-1, para 38j, File 67/3, B.G.P., July, 1881.
135 The Pioneer, July, 1873.
136 The Bengalee, Sept. 27, 1873.

Abbreviations

B.G.P. — Bengal General Proceedings (West Bengal State Archieves)

B.L.R.P. — Bengal Land Revenue Proceedings (-Do-)
B.J.P.P. — Bengal Judic:al Police Proceedings (-Do-)
R.N.P. — Report on Native Press (-Do-)
■
 PART III
Agrarian Struggles In
The Early 20th Century
 .

-
 Introduction

(i)
The two selections from Sukhbir Choudhary’s Peasants and
Workers Movement in India are valuable for as they describe a
new category of struggles which emerged in the countryside during
the first two and a half decades of the twentieth century.
The period during which the peasant struggles took a qualitatively
new turn saw a number of tumultuous national and international
developments. During this phase the nationalist movement gathered
momentum in India, enveloping a larger and larger strata of
society. Broadly, the period could be divided into three major
phases in the context of Indian society; (a) the period from 1901
upto 1913; (b) from 1914-18 during which Indian society was drawn
into World War I by the British, and (c) the period from 1919 to
1923, wherein Indian society and polity became entangled in the
first phase of post-world war readjustments. This came as a
consequence of< the weakening of British Imperialism (though
victorious in war), and the emergence of the new Socialist state—
a result of the great October Socialist Revolution which took place
in Czarist Russia. The October Revolution inaugurated a new
epoch in the history of mankind, particularly generating a new
type of awakening and hope in the people of the colonial and semi¬
colonial countries.
The first decade of the twentieth century began in India with the
rapid development of objective and subjective situations for
various classes. In this period the nationalist movement gathered
momentum, enveloping a wide strata of the population including
the peasantry.
The terrible famines of the last decade of the 19th century
described vividly in various publications, particularly in the work
of Bhatia, had a shattering effect on the life of the peasantry and
also on the urban population in the context of the new measures
adopted by the British.
The growing unemployment among educated middle classes
and urban youth, the realization that Western white colonialists
are not invincible, was demonstrated by Japan’s defeat of Russia,
212 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and the impact of the first powerful insurrectionary upheaval in

Czarist Russia in 1905 generated among the colonial bourgeois
and the middle classes a new courage to offer resistance to the
imperialist masters. In India, the strategy adopted by the British
Rulers to use communalism to divide Hindu and Muslim upper
and middle strata by adopting the principle of communal electorate
and the partition of Bengal, generated a new level of indignation
and awareness. The policy of concession, counterpoise and coercion
adopted by the British, as revealed in the technique of giving
pacificatory constitutional reforms (Morley-Minto Reforms), parti¬
tion and withdrawal of partition of Bengal, and the ruthless policy
of coercion as revealed in repression of Swadeshi, Boycott, Anti-
partition and other movements launched by the militant wing of
Indian National Congress, pushed the Indian people into a new
phase of their political development.
During the second decade the Indian people were enmeshed in
the First World War. While involvement in the war assisted the
growth of certain industries and strengthened a section of the Indian
capitalist class, the British put as many obstacles as possible in the
path of this development. The war had a damaging effect on the
overall economy and the living conditions of the masses of the Indian
people. The ruthless policies adopted by the British against anti¬
war movements, aggravated the situation in the country. The
working people in urban and rural areas suffered heavily as a
consequence of the effects of the war on the Indian economy and
society. The war also exposed the Indian masses to larger inter¬
national politico-economic developments and generated a vague
but new awakening about larger issues, national and international.
It also evoked hopes among people that a new epoch may emerge, a
new political regime may be installed which would redeem their
grievances and usher in a new' phase in their existence. Under the
impact of wars and revolutions taking place on a global scale,
a revolution of rising expectations and hope for improvement
took root among various strata and they began to assert themselves
more prominently. The Nationalist forces launched some move¬
ments for Constitutional Reforms, Responsible Government and
Home Rule and agitated for the same, carrying the message to
rural areas in the form of opposition to recruitment for the war
and the collection of war funds. The anti-British sentiment deepen-
 INTRODUCTION 213

ed, and reached out to more and more layers of the peasantry,
who now saw the oppression and exploitation by their own local
landlords, zamindars and moneylenders as rooted in the British
raj and its policies to support and buttress local exploitation.
A social climate for an all-India anti-imperialist nationalist militant
struggle to overthrow British rule was created during this period
which burst out on a gigantic scale during the third phase of this
period—from 1918 to 1923.
The period from 1918 to 1923, has been crucial from many
points of view. The post-war disillusionment among various
strata of Indian society, the strategy of coercion, concession and
counterpoise adopted by the British, the explosive situation created
by economic aftermath of the World War I, the powerful impact
of the revolutionary movements, successful or unsuccessful in
various countries, the disillusionment with hypocritic democratic
pretentions of the Imperialist nations, the immense appeal of the
Bolshevik Revolution and heroic and successful resistance against
imperialist intervention to subvert Soviet Russia, and the widespread
discontent that enveloped various strata of Indian society, exploded
into some of the most powerful struggles of workers, peasants and
urban population in India, giving a new tone to Indian politics.
It manifested itself in the active intervention of the masses in
political struggles.
On a national scale, the call given by the Nationalist leaders for
struggles against Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, Anti-Rowlatt Act
agitation, boycotts, hartals, strikes, culminating into non-coopera¬
tion and civil disobedience movements brought a new awakening
among and participation by masses, lifting the spontaneous partial
and local struggles into wider, conscious, nationalist, anti-imperia¬
list struggles.
During this period the Indian National Congress emerged as a
mass organization spreading its influence among the masses.
Mahatma Gandhi emerged as the astute and the most farsighted
leader of the Indian bourgeoisie. He experimented with various
approaches to both politicize and also to regulate the mass and
class movements. He unleashed various movements, withdrew
them when he got frightened by the possibilities of these unleashed
forces getting out of control and leaping into mighty revolutionary
class struggles affecting both the imperialist masters and the local
214 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

exploiters. Mahatma Gandhi also elaborated during this period

astute organizational devices to prepare a chain of leaders to
organize workers and peasants in a manner which would harness
their energy and direct these energies into particular types of move¬
ments that would be reformist, economic, non-violent and based
on the principle of class collaboration, which was founded upon a
theory of the exploiting classes functioning as ‘trustees’ of the
people. However, it should be recognized that conscious unleashing
of movements by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress did
raise the consciousness of the peasants and workers and they could
view their problems in a wider nationalist perspective.
The withdrawal of the movement by Mahatma Gandhi after the
Chaurichaura incident, created tremendous discontent among
the intelligentsia, as well as among sections of peasants and' the
working class, leading to the emergence of various political currents,
which now actively and consciously evolved various political
platforms and modes of struggles. This phenomenon which initiated
the emergence of various political parties, class organizations and
tendencies within the Indian National Congress, become the major
theatre of Indian history during the subsequent period, described
in Part IV onwards.

(2)
The first selection ‘Early Struggles—1905-18’ provides a picture
of the peasant struggles not described so far by scholars in a compre¬
hensive manner. It covers the following categories of struggles.
1 Peasants opposition to subscribe to the war fund or to be
recruited for war as a response to Home Rule Agitation launched
by Tilak and Annie Besant and also by Liakat Husain through
his agitation against the Government’s move to ask people to
join the Bengal Regiment. Liakat Husain was arrested and prose¬
cuted under rule 23 of the Defence of India (Consolidation) Rules
1915.
This movement took many forms; desertion of villages by the
lower strata to avoid forcible recruitment; desertion from training
camps by those who were already recruited; withdrawal of applica¬
tions or non-appearance of youths at war recruitment centres;
agitation in the form of appeals, protests against internment of
Mrs Annie Besant, Messrs. Arundale and Wadia; refusal to
 INTRODUCTION 215

contribute to war loans; subscribing to the funds of Home Rule

Leagues or joining them.
This aspect highlighted by Sukhbir Choudhary requires closer
and more detailed inquiries for getting a rounded picture of the
peasant struggles during the war period. It also reveals how nation¬
alist leaders started approaching the rural population to involve
them in larger, political, anti-British struggles.
2 Sukhbir Choudhary, also describes the major peasant struggles
led by Mahatma Gandhi, who returned to India from South Africa.
Initially he undertook to help the British war efforts by participating
in a recruitment drive launched by the British. However, he sub¬
sequently groped for a strategy of struggles to pressurize the
British to rectify certain wrongs. The author describes the Champa-
ran struggle against the British Indigo Planters in Bihar and the
Satyagraha struggles of the peasant proprietors—the rich and the
poor in Gujarat against revenue collection carried on by the British
administrators inspite of scarcity conditions prevailing in certain
parts of that area. From now onwards, representatives of the
bourgeoisie, and the pettie bourgeoisie, realized the necessity
of approaching the peasantry, agitating among them, taking up
specific issues for struggles, either to redress their grievances,
build up an organization, training cadres to represent the various
sections of the peasantry, adopting various techniques of struggles,
and encouraging only certain methods while discouraging others.
These struggles also reveal how a number of educated urban
sons and daughters of the bourgeois, the landlords, and the profes¬
sional and salaried classes, began going to the rural areas to agitate,
to educate, and to organize movements to redress the grievances
and also to harness their energies for larger national movements.
It also reveals how the Indian National Congress acquired roots
in the rural area, and deepened its base and gave active direction
to the pieasant struggles in a particular manner.
3 The struggles described in these selections also draw attention
to certain important features of the emerging shape of the peasant
struggles which deserve careful attention to grasp the dialectics
of class struggles in rural India. These features can be enumerated
as below:
(a) Mahatma Gandhi emerges as the towering strategist evolving
various types of nationalist pressure movements involving workers.
216 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

peasants and middle classes launched in the interests of the Indian

bourgeoisie.
(b) He works out detailed techniques and forms of struggles,
issues around which struggles maybe organized, with an organiza¬
tional set up, necessary for elaborating, guiding and withdrawing
the struggles.
(c) He clearly formulates and the Indian National Congress
accepts as its policy the major premises on which the peasantry
was to be organized for the nationalist movement.
(i) The principle of Compensation as a basis for transfer of
ownership of land, (it included even lands acquired by fraud,
oppression, coercion and disposed of in the distressed conditions
of the peasants and further not cultivated by owners). Even owners
who used the ownership title to appropriate the surplus value from
tillers on the basis of ownership of land and other assets, were
to be compensated.
(ii) The exploited or oppressed strata were to remain strictly
within the bounds of non-violence, and to adopt only non-coercive
pressure on the oppressing and exploiting proprietory groups
to change their heart, and thereby to pursuade them to concede
to the demands.
(iii) To organize specific sections of the peasantry around issues
directly linked with British Rule. For instance issues like Land
revenue, famine relief, certain categories of taxes, canal and salt
taxes oppression by the bureaucratic apparatus of the British Rulers,
or pressing for enacting certain types of Acts or for proper
implementation of the Acts:
(iv) To avoid as far as possible struggles by exploited strata of
the peasantry, like poor peasants comprised of tenants, sub-tenants,
share croppers, landless labourers, and tribal poor, against native
exploiting classes like landlords, zamindars, money-lenders, traders,
and richer farmers. To avoid and oppose a revolutionary militant
path of overthrowing Foreign Rule by evolving struggles of expos¬
ed strata which could become the basis of organs of new administra¬
tion in a free India.

(3)
The second selection ‘Post-war Awakening (1919-21)’ is reproduc¬
ed as it deals with the third phase of the crucial period embodied
in this part.
 INTRODUCTION 217

During this period India becomes the theatre of the first nation¬
wide organized movement against Imperialism. It takes the form
of protest against Rowlatt Acts, Jallianwallah Bagh massacre,
and launching of non-cooperation, civil disobedience and Khilafat
movements against constitutional reforms proposed by the British
rulers in the form of Montague-Chelmsford Reform Act. During
this period a widespread movement of workers, peasants, and
middle classes burst out in various parts of the country, which in
the context of political calls given by the Indian National Congress
under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi acquired gigantic pro¬
portions. As mentioned earlier the post war international develop¬
ments including the Great Socialist Revolution in Czarist Russia
also created a deep impact on the Indian people.
Sukhbir Choudhary tries here to capture the flavour of this
gigantic international and national development. He further
describes in vivid details the entry of rural masses as active partici¬
pants in larger national movements.
The selection highlights the following facets of agrarian struggles
which emerged during this brief but stormy phase of Indian social
history.
It gives a detailed account of the peasant struggles in the United
Provinces; Moplah Revolt in Malabar, Peasant agitation in Bengal,
and no-tax campaign in Guntur. The selection also gives an account
of an independent peasant struggle which emerged in U.P. under
the leadership of a band of leaders emerging from the lower classes
and castes of the peasantry, famous as Ekka Movement after
Mahatma Gandhi withdrew his NCO and civil disobedience
movements and generated a deep frustration among the peasantry.
The selection while narrating the agrarian struggles in the
U.P. Zamindari area provides glimpses into various aspects of the
struggles such as;
(i) The awakened tenants and poor farmers, spontaneously
as well as under the impact of the message and organization evolved
for developing Non-Cooperation Movement in rural areas, acquire
self-confidence, militancy, and courage. They seized hoarded
grains and other objects. They took possession of godowns and
shops of the zamindars, traders and shopkeepers, and defied police
and even military repression organized by the British in the name
of maintaining ‘law and order’.
(ii) Descriptions of how poor tenants, agricultural labourers.
21 8 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

share-croppers and other sections of rural poor, generally joined

the Indian National Congress and deepened its influence on various
strata of Indian population both in urban and rural areas. The
INC tried to link economic and immediate grievances of various
strata to larger political nationalist movement. They gheraoed
and took possession of police chowkies, and even surrounded local
courts to release the arrested leaders from jails or police chowkies,
or prevent their false trials in the Courts.
(iii) The emergence of a new kind of unity among the fighting
peasants transcending caste and communal barriers, throwing
up a category of active leadership from the lower strata organizing
these movements.
(iv) Conscious, politically motivated movements of the rural-
poor towards towns and cities, taking various form such as ticketless
travelling in trains to attend meetings and participate in agitations,
processions and struggles, to halt unjust trials of their leaders or
even to free their arrested comrades and leaders.
The article also draws attention to certain important aspects
of the growing links between the larger national movement and
the peasant struggles. Emergence of a new leadership in the form
of politically oriented group of young and educated from urban
areas, large number of whom were dedicated and oriented to work
among the peasantry. These educated urban cadres, started going
to rural areas, began to form Kisan organizations, held meetings,
launched agitations, processions, and demonstrations, carried
on propaganda and pamphleteering work, called upon the peasantry
to oppose illegal dues of Zamindars, moneylenders, traders,
organized movements legal and even extra-legal but constitutional
to redress their grievances, and also spread the message of Non-
Cooperation and Civil Disobedience against British Rule. These
educated groups also through press and other means of propan-
ganda broadcast the developments in rural areas to larger areas
and thereby taking these issues to all India forums.
The article also points out another important phenomenon.
As a result of leadership in Champaran and Gujarat peasant strug¬
gles, as well as leadership in Anti-Rowlatt Act movement, Gandhi’s
name, his slogan of Charakha (spinning Wheel), strategy of Satya-
graha, civil disobedience and non-Cooperation as techniques of
redressal of wrong, acquired a symbolic significance for the new
 INTRODUCTION 219

urge of defiance and struggle among the peasantry. Gandhi acquired

a peculiar charisma and the exploited and the oppressed strata
believed that Gandhi was their new messiah and interpreted his
call for fighting injustice as a call to them to launch struggles—
peaceful and militant even on class fines. They organized massive
movements against local exploiters and oppressors, and the op¬
pressive British laws, police and military apparatus protecting
them. They interpreted (their subsequent disillusionment apart)
the call of non-cooperation, civil disobedience, satyagraha and
militant struggle against their local exploiters and local authorities
as a call for carrying and deepening the struggles on class struggle
fines.
This selection has tried to show how the Chauri Chaura episode
and its aftermath in the form of withdrawal of non-cooperation
movement by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress became
a watershed in the history of the peasant movements in India.
It further highlights the heroism, militancy and readiness to
struggle exhibited by rural poor which struck terror in the hearts of
the propertied classes in India. The display of courage and defiance
exhibited by the peasantry against British repression and the in¬
genuity shown by the fighting peasantry in evolving peculiar types
of organizations raised the spectre of ‘Soviets of peasants’. British
Rulers are baffled and taken aback by the fierce resistance offered
by the peasants even against their police and military forces.
Gandhi, crystalized his strategy of a non-revolutionary path of
opposition against the British rule to pressurize it to grant reforms
including Swaraj after realizing the revolutionary, heroic potentiali¬
ty of the peasantry, sensing and fearing that this militancy and
heroism exhibited by the poorer peasants* tenants, agricultural
labourers and ruined artisans may develop into bitter class struggle
against local exploiters and thereby transforming nationalist pres¬
sure movement against British rule into an alternative anti-imperi¬
alist freedom movement based on the Revolutionary path of class
struggle under the leadership of proletarian ideology slowly coming
to India on the ‘wings of Bolshevism’.
Gandhi withdrew the movement, got a resolution passed in the
Indian National Congress wherein the central principles of the
nature of struggles and the basic strategy of agrarian movements
under Indian bourgeois leadership were formulated. Sukhbir
220 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Choudhary by reproducing the resolutions and statements of

Gandhiji and the Indian National Congress indicates these princi¬
ples and strategies: the principle of Trusteeship, the principle of
Compensation as a basis of acquiring property and not confiscation,
the principle that ‘legitimate dues’ of zamindars, moneylenders,
traders and other proprietory classes should be paid by tenants,
share croppers and indebted peasants, the principle that exploited
and oppressed strata should adopt non-violence in their struggle.
The same Gandhi who did not mind recruiting soldiers for the
British army during the First World War, and who also never
clearly denounced the violence inherent in the state as an institu¬
tion, was the chief architect of these principles.
The description of the post-Chauri Chaura Ekka Movement in
UP after disillusionment with the Indian National Congress,
points out how*the lower caste and the lower classes of rural India,
evolved militant, well organized and heroic struggles, and projected
local leadership for local struggles, revealed the need for a larger
perspective as well as an appropriate theoretically armed leadership
and programme.

(4)
The two selections reproduced here deserve closer attention
for another reason. They expose the class bias, and hollowness of
the establishment scholarship which thrives on irrelevant surveys
of village communities, on the assumption that Indian peasantry
is traditional, change resistant, non-enterprizing, soaked in caste
prejudices, steeped in superstition and incapable of actions
transcending caste and village boundaries. It also invites attention
to the fact the Indian bourgeoisie and its astute leadership headed
by Gandhiji did evolve a strategy of involving the peasantry in
the larger nationalist movement and that these efforts of the bour¬
geois leaders did unleash a number of movements which generated a
new climate in the countryside enabling the peasantry to take to
larger national and international issues and lift their local, sectional
struggles into larger national and class struggles.
 14 Early Struggles (1905-18)

Sukhbir Choudhary

The First World War and Peasants

It is true that a large number of people living in the villages joined
the British Army when the first world war broke out. They became
mercenaries to defend an imperialist structure not because
they were loyal to the system but because of economic and social
compulsions. It is also a fact that people subscribed to the war
fund. But there is also the other side of the picture which had been
kept hidden from public notice so far. Digging the confidential
records of the government of that period in the National Archives
has resulted in revealing some very interesting developments.
At certain places the villagers were forbidden to subscribe to
the war fund. Writing on 19 May 1917 the district magistrate of
Satara in the Bombay presidency reported that he had recently
had an interview with a number of villagers, who informed him
that a party of four members of Tilak’s Home Rule League had
visited their village, delivered lectures on Home Rule and induced
several villagers to sign the roll of the League. The villagers informed
the district magistrate that the visitors had advised them not to
subscribe to the war loan because government was not for them and
they would lose their money and to Tilak, who was going to England
to ask for Home Rule. The British government, they said, would
soon come to an end and Home Rule would be established.1
At certain places the colonial police and authorities used high¬
handed measures which created an impression that villagers would
be forcibly recruited. When the district magistrate of Dacca visited
a village on tour in October 1917, a rumour went round that he
was going to take off all ablebodied labourers in his launch. The
night before he arrived all the lower class men of the village disap¬
peared and stayed away till he had gone. It was also reported that
in another village in the Bakerganj district a drum was kept handy

Reproduced from Peasants' and Workers' Movement in India 1905-1929 by Sukhbir

Choudhary, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi. 1971, pp. 23-40.
222 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

in the house of some influential villagers in order to raise an alarm

should any police officer try to enlist recruits. In the Mymensingh
district three duffadars were prosecuted for taking bribes for
promising to save people from being forcibly recruited for the
Labour Corps.2
Liakat Husain, the famous Calcutta agitator, made a violent
speech at Dacca in the middle of October 1917 in which he is
reported to have used most offensive language regarding persons
joining the Bengali Regiment and to have said that no one should
join until government altered its internment policy. He was arrested
and was prosecuted under rule 23 of the Defence of India
(Consolidation) Rules, 1915.3
Those recruited in Gujarat and sent to the Meerut cantonment
for training were reported to have deserted.4
Enrolment in the Indian Defence Force was quite slow. In
Malabar it was estimated that the total number for the district
might not ultimately go beyond 250.5 In Guntur district the col¬
lector referred to recruiting being opposed by the local Home Rule
politicians but serving as a healthy counter-excitement with many
of the younger men. That the same measure of enthusiasm did
not prevail everywhere was evident from the fact that in Tanjore
many of the youth who were under the influence of Mrs Besant’s
eloquence, though they had applications to join the forces, either
did not appear at all or definitely withdrew, while in South Arcot,
nearly half the original applicants had failed to put in a personal
appearance in response to the notices sent them. Again in Chingle-
put one candidate specifically withdrew his application with
reference to the interment of Mrs Besant and Messrs Arundale and
Wadia, writing that he did not “care to add to the strength of a
government that is stupid and mischievous enough to use the
powers it has to strike down the best and foremost of us, the most
innocent and law-abiding in the country’.6
Likewise the volunteering for the Indian Defence Force in the
Central Provinces was still not catching on. The Chief Commissioner
in his speech at the closing session of the Legislative Council held
on 16 October 1917 referred to the poor response made by the
people of this province to the call for volunteers, but it was to be
feared that no advice would be of any effect, as the people to whom
volunteering should have appealed were showing no sign of any
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 223

desire to come forward, the fact of the matter being that service of
the kind required was distasteful to the illiterate classes. Even the
entreaties of the extremist leaders fell on deaf ears* when a campaign
for enrolment of volunteers was started by the latter.7
At certain places even the promises to subscribe to the war
loan were not fulfilled. A striking discrepancy was reported from
South Kanara in Madras Presidency, where it is stated that the
actual subscriptions totalled only Rs. 1.73 lakhs as against promises
to the aggregate amount of Rs. 4.27 lakhs8.
Recruitment was slack in Alipore, while 120 convicts from the
Trichinopoly Central Jail entrained for Bombay.9

The Champaran Struggle

At about this time Gandhiji returned from South Africa. He
made the experiment of non-cooperation on a miniature scale
by leading the peasant struggles in Champaran (Bihar) and Kheda
(Gujarat). No doubt these struggles were carried out in a reformist
way. No doubt Gandhiji stuck to his fixed determination to keep
the local and circumscribed character of these struggles. It is also
a fact that a broadbased agrarian programme was not placed by
Gandhiji before the peasants. Still, it has to be recognised that here
one comes across, for the first time, the nationalist organising the
peasantry as a class against British feudal lords and the imperialist
government and carrying out a struggle on their economic demands.
All this demonstrated the probability of a broad organised peasant
struggle. These demonstrations filled the urban intellectuals with
enthusiasm.
The struggle of the peasants in Champaran launched in 1917-8
was a manifestation of peasants’ consciousness and thereby of an
opposition to the European planters who resorted to illegal and
inhuman methods of indigo cultivation at a cost which by no
canons of justice could be called an adequate remuneration for the
labour done by them. Besides, the struggle also reflected the spirit
of revolt against the exactions, oppression and annoyance to which
the poor indigo cultivators were exposed at the hands of the factory
servants employed by European planters could run an indigo busi¬
ness with great profit by forcible cultivation and low cost labour.
In his report submitted for the perusal of Mr Maude, the Chief
Secretary to the Government of Bihar, on 12 May 1917, Mahatma
224 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Gandhi stated all these grievances of the Champaran peasantry:

‘Indigo.. .may now be defined as an obligation presumed to
attach to the ryot’s holding.. .under coercion. It is inconceivable
that the ryots would agree to an enormous perpetual increase
in their rents against freedom from liability to grow indigo for
a temporary period, which freedom they were strenuously fight¬
ing to secure and honourably expecting... Under the tinkathia
system the ryot has been obliged to give his best land for the
landlord’s crops; in some cases the land in front of his house
has been so used, he has been obliged to give his best time and
energy also to it, so that very little time has been left to him for
growing his own crops—his means of livelihood... Inadequate
wages have been paid to the ryots.. .and even boys of tender
age have been made to work against their will... There can be
no doubt that the latter (planters) have inherited a vicious
system. They with their trained minds and superior position
have rendered it to an exact science, so that the ryots would not
only have been unable to raise their heads above water but would
have sunk deeper still had not the government granted some
protection. But that protection has been meagre and provokingly
slow and has often come too late to be appreciated by the ryots.’10
This report by Gandhiji was severely criticized by the editor of
the Madras Mail. Defending Gandhiji against the criticism made
in that paper, H.S.L. Polak wrote a letter to the editor of the news¬
paper. In the course of his letter he said:
‘You are likely shortly to have a severe shock and your vaunted
knowledge will be immensely enlarged when you come to
know the contents of the preliminary report just submitted
privately by Mr Gandhi to the Bihar government. Had Mr Gandhi
been the indiscreet professional agitator that you suggest him
to be, India would now be aflame from end to end and an angry
demand would be put forth from every platform in the country
to put an end to the horror that has disgraced your countrymen
and mine for many years in Bihar.’11
D.G. Tendulkar also wrote:
‘The tale of woes of Indian ryots, forced to plant indigo by the
British planters, forms one of the blackest chapters in the annals
of colonial exploitation. Not a chest of indigo reached England
without being stained with human blood.’12
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 225

Though outwardly the struggle was against the European planters,

from within it was also a reflection of their dissatisfaction agafnst
the ruling class which had racial ties with the planters. For the
sake of the planters the British bureaucracy was alleged to display
a strong bias in disposing of their petitions filed against the European
planters to get justice. In protest G'andhiji had written:
‘I have entered upon my mission in the hope that they as English¬
men born to enjoy the fullest personal liberty and freedom will
not fail to rise to their status and will not be grudging the ryots
the same measure of liberty and freedom.’13
The peasants of Champaran were led and organised by the
intelligentsia. The most prominent organisers besides Mahatma
Gandhi were Dr Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishore Prasad, Muzharul-
Haq and a number of other people belonging to the intelligentsia.
Gone were the days when the peasant movements could remain
confined to limited and local economic aims or could end in fiasco
without achieving any tangible results. No longer could they be
characterised now as spasmodic bickerings culminating in generat¬
ing more confusion and disorder. Neither was the struggle of the
peasant an isolated phenomenon, nor were the intelligentsia
disinterested witnesses to the whole show. The realization of the
interdependence of each other paved the way for not leaving \e
peasantry alone to face the organised oppression of a politically
and financially powerful alien feudal community, and finally to
suffer the consequences of the agonising episode. Supporting the
cause of the peasantry in his presidential address at the annual
conference of the Bihar Provincial Congress Committee held on
10 April 1914 Babu Brij Kishore drew the attention of the assembled
delegates towards the dichotomy:
‘Whatever good the planters might have done, their dealings
with the ryots have brought about a serious agrarian situation
and they have resulted in a considerable suffering and misery
to the poor and defenceless villagers. It is well known that the
ryots’ allegations against the planters, which have been held by
the courts to be generally well-founded, are to the effect that
they are bound to execute illegal sathas by methods of coercion
including the institution of vexatious cases; that fines and cesses
are unlawfully realised from them and they are ill-treated if
they attempt in the least to refuse compliance with the orders
226 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of the planters... I warn the government that there are rocks

ahead and they had better Jook out.’
In the same address he urged the provincial government to
appoint an enquiry committee composed of official and non-official
individuals to investigate the entire problem and thus to redress
the grievances of the tenants.14
Next year in 1915 the provincial conference of the Bihar Congress
Committee passed a resolution demanding an inquiry committee
to redress the hardships of the peasantry in Champaran. Nand
Kishore Lai, the president of the conference, also referred to the
strained relations between the planters and the ryots.15 A few
months afterwards Babu Brij Kishore moved a resolution in Bihar
Legislative Council in May 1915 in which he again urged the
authorities concerned to comply with his demand of the appoint¬
ment of a mixed committee.16 The contents of this resolution were
more or less the same as that moved by Him later in the 1916 Congress
session at Lucknow. However, the provincial government refused
to comply with his request.
At the 1916 Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress
the delegates assembled took up the cause of the Champaran
peasantry for the first time in its history. They listened to the grie¬
vances of the tenants. Raj Kumar Shukla who had borne the brunt
of the indigo planters’ oppression and who, in the words of'Gandhiji,
was ‘filled with a passion to wash away the stain of indigo for the
thousands who were suffering’,17 delivered a moving speech at the
session. The following resolution was proposed and unanimously
carried out on the second day of the session:
‘The Congress most respectfully urges on the government the
desirability of appointing a mixed committee of officials and
non-officials to inquire into the causes of agrarian trouble and
the strained relations between the indigo ryots and the European
planters in North Bihar and to suggest remedies therefor.’18
After returning from Lucknow Raj Kumar Shukla wrote the
following letter to Mahatma Gandhi on 27 February 1917:
‘In a corner of India, the inhabitants of this place (Champaran),
who have the proud privilege of being under the comfortably
cool shade of British umbrella, are leading their lives like animals
suffering from all kinds of miseries.’19
On 17 January 1917 the Pratap Press of Kanpur printed a leaflet.
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 227

entitled Prarthana.20 A few months later was organised the actual

struggle. Associating themselves with the struggle the intelligentsia
were ready to face all its consequences. In a letter written to the
district magistrate of Champaran, W.B. Heycoek, on 14 May 1917
Mahatma Gandhi stated emphatically:
The desire of the planters generally is that my friends and I
should not carry on our work. I can only say that nothing but
physical force from the government or an absolute guarantee
that the admitted or provable wrongs of the ryots are to stop
for ever can possibly remove us from the district. What I have
seen of the condition of the ryots is sufficient to convince me that
if we withdraw at this stage, we would stand condemned before
man and God and, what is most important of all, we would
never be able to forgive ourselves... The determination to
secure freedom for the ryots from the yoke that is wearing them
down is inflexible.’21
Gandhiji, who was acting in this matter entirely in accordance'
with the advice of the provincial leaders, had no intention of giving
up his investigation. In fact he had written for assistance from
Bombay. In the Bombay Presidency young men were being asked to
volunteer to assist Gandhiji. They were told that they would be paid
for the work out of funds placed by patriotic individuals at
Gandhiji’s disposal. It is said in a confidential report of the Central
Intelligence Department that Gandhiji was at one time anxious to
extend his investigations to the whole field of relations between the
zamindars and their tenants. It is well known that the disabilities of
the tenants were by no means confined to the indigo plantations own¬
ed by Europeans. But the local politicians of vested interest could
not afford to set the local landlords against themselves, and that was
the reason why Gandhiji’s investigations were so restricted.22
Resuming the study of the struggle, it may safely be stated that
no less significant was the contribution of the peasants themselves.
Actually, they were the main elements of the movement, for whose
sustenance the agitation was organised. In fact they were in the
struggle since its very inception in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. In the absence of the mitigation of their sufferings to any
extent or in any form their smouldering dissatisfaction frequently
found expression in violent protest in 1907-8. The peasants at
the Sathi Factory and other neighbouring factories stopped the
228 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

cultivation of indigo and organised an agitation. To quell it 19

persons were convicted in November 1908. Nearly 200 prisoners
awaited trial at Motihari under different charges, including
assaulting the alien planters, and arson.
On their refusal to pay the excessive revenues others were also
tortured. Among the methods adopted were setting Dhangars and
Dorns, the low caste people, on the high caste tenants besides the
policemen tying them down and beating them, and putting logs
of wood on their chest. In another method of torture the hands
were put underneath the leg and tied to the neck, the leg being raised.
If the peasants did not pay even then, they were brought to the
factories. They were forced to embrace a neem tree with both their
hands tied together, and set upon by policemen. On such occasions
the indigo planter used to be present on the scene. On the other
hand, the red ants on the tree would bite the man tied to the tree,
but he could do nothing as his hands were tied.23 Still other coercive
measures adopted against the tenants were the impounding of their
cattle, the stopping of their wells, compelling the Chamars to cease
to render their services to the tenants and the forcible taking of
thumb impressions. Besides the spasmodic violent activities against
the feudal planters they went on filing petition after petition to
the governmental authorities in order to get their grievances redres¬
sed, e.g. to prevent the exaction of higher rents from them, and to
stop the forcible cultivation of indigo without adequate payment
for the same and to prevent the forcible execution of the indigo
sathas.24
When their struggle took place in April 1917, the statements
of more than 8,000 tenants from about 850 villages in Champaran
against 60 factories of the European planters were recorded under
the supervision of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr Rajendra Prasad has
provided a graphic eyewitness account of the acti.ve participation
of the peasants:
‘The statements of tenants continued to be recorded the whole
day. There was such a continuous stream of these tenants that
there was not a minute's break between 6.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m.
Many had to stay overnight and still their statements could not
be recorded the next day.’25
The continuous recording of these statements for many days
showed the growth of a new political consciousness in the peasantry.

/
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 229

The presence of the intelligentsia amidst them generated more and

more confidence in the validity of their case. They became bold
enough to defy the authority of the European planters. Fearlessly,
they complained against Mr Lewis in his presence. They had realised
that if they lacked boldness this time in presenting their valid
grievances, their future would be doomed for ever. Observing
this change in the attitude of the peasantry Dr Rajendra Prasad
wrote:
‘It was an extraordinary thing for Champaran. Who could have
said before Mahatmaji’s visit that the tenant of Champaran, who
used to conceal himself at the very sight of the factory jamadar,
who used to suffer all kinds of disgrace and oppression silently
for fear of more and more oppression coming if he complained
about it, would in this way accuse the factory manager and the
subdivisional magistrate in their very faces. We were all much
struck by this change.’26
Mahatma Gandhi himself wrote later in this Autobiography
about this political awakening: ‘It was an ocular demonstration
to them (governmental authorities) of the fact that their authority
was shaken. The people had for the moment lost fear of punishment
and yielded obedience to the power of love which their new friend
exercised.’27
The legitimacy of peasants’ demands was recognised when
the Inquiry Committee composed of official and non-official
members submitted its recommendation. The outstanding features
of the recommendation were that tinkathia was to be abolished,
and sarahbashi was to be reduced by 20 to 26 per cent in various
factories. The tenants were allowed to hold their lands free from
any obligation to grow indigo. Proper arrangements to prevent
unnecessary litigation between the peasants and the planters were
promised by the authorities.
The victory of this peasant movement became a foregone
conclusion on the very day when on 29 November 1917 Mr Maude
introduced the Champaran Agrarian Bill in the Legislative Council
of Bihar and Orissa. During the course of his address to the House
Mr Maude stated most emphatically:
‘History for fifty years and more has been building up a case
for drastic action by government and that the findings of the
recent committee... have merely set the keystone in the case
230 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

for interference. The tinkathia system has outlived its day and
must perforce disappear... The sooner it disappears from off
the face of the country the better it will be.’28
The peasant movement reached its final stage of success when
the Champaran Agrarian Act was approved and assented to by
the Governor-General of India on 1 May 1918.
The success in the struggle generated a new confidence among the
peasants .in the invincibility of their power. They began to equate
their struggle to a movement against oppression. This political
consciousness led them to gradually integrate their struggle with
the political movement started by Mahatma Gandhi a few years
later. The significance of the contribution made by them for the
growth of nationalism in India can be gauged from the following
observation made by Dr Rajendra Prasad:
‘At that time the Home Rule agitation was at its height in India.
When we used to ask Mahatmaji to let Champaran also join that
movement, he used to tell us that the work that was being done
in Champaran was the work which will be able to establish Home
Rule. At that time the country did not perhaps realise the impor¬
tance of the work, nor did we who were there too do. But today
when we look back upon the methods of work pursued there
and consider the history of the national struggle... then we can
see that the great movement of today is only an edition of the
work in Champaran on an immensely vaster scale.29
Appraising the contribution of the Champaran struggle to the
development of nationalism, E.M.S. Namboodiripad writes:
‘... despite stiff opposition by the European planters and their
protectors in the bureaucracy, Gandhiji and his comrades were
able to bring the struggle to a successful conclusion. This, there¬
fore, may be said to be the first dress rehearsal of that type of
national struggle which Gandhiji was subsequently to lead on
more than one occasion. Here was a movement in which a band
of selfless individuals from the middle and upper classes identified
themselves with and roused the common people against the
powers-that-be in order to secure some well-defined demands.’30

Kheda Struggle
The alignment of the intelligentsia and peasantry again mani¬
fested itself in March 1919when the Kheda Satyagraha was launched
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 231

under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai

Patel, Indulal Yajnik, N.M. Joshi, Shanker Lai Pareekh and several
others. Like at Champaran! the Intelligentsia seized another
opportunity to acclaim itself a better champion and more sincere
benefactor of the mass of the peasantry than the alien bureaucracy,
against whose arbitrary assessment of land revenue the movement
had commenced. Incidentally, the Kheda campaign compelled
the educated public workers to establish contact with the actual
life of the peasantry. They learnt to identify themselves with the
latter and their capacity for sacrifice increased. While persons
like Amrit Lai Thakkar, N.M. Joshi and G.K. Deodhar inquired
into the conditions approaching famine owing to a largescale
failure of crops, on the non-official level, eminent personalities
like Vithalbhai Patel raised the issue in the Bombay Legislative
Council and waited upon the Governor in deputation more than
once.
The Gujarat Sabha submitted petitions and telegrams to the
highest governing authorities of the province. In their inquiries
and deputations, the leaders of the movement emphasised persis¬
tently that the peasantry of the locality was fairly justified in demand¬
ing the suspension of the revenue assessment for the year, according
to the rules of the Government Revenue Department, which
conditioned its non-payment if the crop was below four annas in
case of national calamity, or any other such unforeseen devastation.
But the officials maintained that the crop could easily be assessed
over four annas, and also considered the popular demand for
arbitration not justified. On the refusal of the authorities to accept
the demand of the peasantry Mahatma Gandhi exhorted the parti-
dars to resort to satyagraha. On the eve of launching their movement
more than 2,000 participants solemnly declared in a public pledge:
\ . .the government has not acceded to our prayer. Therefore,
we the undersigned, hereby solemnly declare, that we shall
not of our accord pay to the government the full or the remaining
revenue for the year. We shall let the government take
whatever legal steps it may think fit, and gladly suffer the con¬
sequences of our nonpayment. We shall rather let our lands be
forfeited, than that by voluntary payment we should allow
our case to be considered false or should compromise our
self-respect. Should the government, however, agree to suspend
232 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

collection of the second instalment of the assessment throughout

the district, such amongst us as are in a position to pay will pay
up the whole or the balance of the revenue that may be due.
The reason why those who are able to pay still withold payment
is that if they pay up, the poorer ryots may in a panic sell their
cattle or incur debts to pay their dues and thereby bring suf¬
fering upon themselves. In these circumstances, we feel that
for the sake of the poor, it is the duty even of those who can
afford to pay to withhold payment of their assessment.’31
In this movement too the intelligentsia played not an insignificant
role in seeking to ‘rid the agriculturists of their fear by making them
realise that the officials were not the masters, but the servants of
the people, in as much as they received their salaries from the tax
payer’.32 In fact they provided an anti-imperialist bias to every
struggle that the peasants had to wage in order to free themselves
from imperialist impositions and machinations. The countrywide
campaign was organised with nationalism as its dynamic and
economic pressure.
On pursuing the novel technique of the removal of the opium
crop from a field wrongly attached many people were arrested
and tried. The inauguration of the trial attracted huge crowds of
peasants to the court. After being convicted the satyagrahis were
escorted to the jail by the people in procession. ‘The Kheda Satya-
graha marks’, wrote Mahtma Gandhi, ‘the beginning of an awaken¬
ing among the peasants of Gujarat, the beginning of their true
political education... Public life in Gujarat became instilled with
a new energy and a new vigour. The patidar peasant came to an
unforgettable consciousness-of high strength. The lesson was
indelibly imprinted on the public mind that the salvation of the
people depends upon themselves, upon their capacity for suffering
and sacrifice.’33
This active demonstration of political consciousness by the
peasantry and the intelligentsia was interpreted by the alien bureau¬
cracy as a designed motive for threatening the stability of the
British regime in the war when it was at its critical and climactic
point. The regime threatened to adopt coercive measures to silence
the growing consciousness of the peasantry by confiscating the
peasants’ land. In reply to this arbitrary interpretation of the
peasants’ motives by the bureaucracy, Mahatma Gandhi wrote
on 15 April 1919:
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 233

‘The commissioner has invited a crisis. And he has made such

a fetish of it that he armed himself beforehand with a letter
from Lord Willingdon to the effect that even he should not
interfere with the commissioner’s decision. He brings in the
war to defend his position and abjures the ryots and me to
desist from our cause at this time of the peril to the empire.
But I venture to suggest the commissioner’s attitude constitutes
a peril far greater than the German peril, and I am serving the
empire in trying to deliver it from this peril from within. There
is no mistaking the fact that India is waking up from its long
sleep. The ryots do not need to be literate to appreciate their
rights and their duties. They have but to realise their invulnerable
power and no government, however strong, can stand against
their will. The Kheda ryots are solving an imperial problem of
the first magnitude in India. They will show that it is impossible
to govern without their consent. War cannot be permitted to
give a licence to the officials to exact obedience to their orders,
even though the ryots may consider them to be unreasonable
and unjust.’34
Such an emphatic reply by Mahatma Gandhi on the one hand
strengthened the agitation and inspired the peasant satyagrahis
to agitate with geater vigour and enthusiasm to redeem their
grievances, and on the other hand antagonised the bureaucracy,
which had remained so far unchallenged by any active anti-bureau¬
cracy demonstration. To counter the surge of the developing
consciousness among the mass of peasantry and its unswerving
attitude, the bureaucracy asserted its previous decision to resort
to coercion. The officials auctioned the peasants’ cattle and con¬
fiscated from their houses whatever movable property they could
lay hands on. Notices of fines and penalties were issued to the
‘seditious’ peasants and their standing crops in the fields were
attached. Despite these repressive measures the majority of the
peasant agitators remained stubborn in their struggle. The move¬
ment ended only when the officials accepted the peasants’ demands.
The agreement arrived at between the officials and the representa¬
tives of the peasants laid down that the well-to-do patidars would
pay up the rents and the poorer ones would be granted remissions.
The acceptance of the peasants’ demands brought a new
awakening among the peasantry. The struggle brought home to
them that their complete emancipation from injustice and exploi-
234 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

tation would not take place so long as their country did not achieve
complete independence. The bureaucracy appeared to these people
no longer their well-wisher but only an agent of the alien regime.

Peasants Demand Swaraj

The establishment of the closer alliance between the peasantry
and the nationalist-minded intelligentsia and the success achieved
in the peasant movements repudiated the theory so far held that
only the upper classes, intellectuals and professionals mattered
in the growth of nationalism, that the ideals and aspirations of and
the endeavours and struggles launched by the mass of peasantry
could easily be set aside and ignored. Simultaneously, the mass of
the peasantry also came to realise that their struggle against feudal
exploitation had better chances of success if it was organised under
the guidance of the nationalist-minded intelligentsia which could
channel it on rational lines as it acquired knowledge through the
system of modern education. Secondly, the intelligent section of
the peasantry also came to realise that the end of the feudal ex¬
ploitation would not come so long as the alien domination in India
would continue. The development of this outlook gradually made
this class also the champion of self-rule which was being already
advocated by the intelligentsia.
The realisation by the either class of each others’ strength and
affinity of their interests promoted their further alignment in
December 1918 when nearly 700 peasant delegates from around
the Delhi area attended the Congress session of that year and
collaborated along with the delegates of the intelligentsia in the
demand of self-rule. Speaking in Hindi on the same issue Chaudhary
Peeru Singh (tenant delegate) stated:
Tt is said that only the educated people sat together to demand
swaraj. It is not so. We also demand it. I have said “demand”
accidentally’, we want to get swaraj, we are not beggars... Our
brethren have sacrificed themselves in Europe for which they
are being praised all over the world. I am a Jat and a cultivator and
a resident of the district which has supplied twenty-one thousand
recruits. We are all with Pandit Malaviya. We want that we
should manage our own affairs. But you will never get swaraj
till you carry the cultivators with you.35
 EARLY STRUGGLES (1905-18) 235

References

1 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, June 1917, File No. 438-41.
p. 18.
2 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, October 1917, File No. 2,
p. 10.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 2.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 20
7 Ibid., p. 2
8 Ibid.
9 The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. The Publications Division, Govern¬
ment of India, 1964, Vol. XIII, p. 385.
10 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, 1917, File No. 438-41, p. 4.
11 D. G. Tendulkar, n. 10, p. 1.
12 Ibid., pp. 65-6.
I? Rajendra Prasad, Champaran and Mahatma Gandhi, Delhi, 1955, pp. 63-5.
14 Ibid., pp. 66-7.
15 Ibid., p. 67.
16 The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Ahmedabad, 1926, p. 494.
17 Report 1916, p. 68. Also see Rajendra Prasad, p. 80.
18 Freedom Movement in Bihar, Government of Bihar, 1957, Vol. I, p. 194.
19 For detailed study see ibid., pp. 188-91.
20 Cited by Rajendra Prasad, Satvagraha in Champaran, Ahmedabad, Navjivan
Publishing House, 1949, 2nd ed.. p. 201. Also see The Collected Works of
Mahatma Gandhi, n. 61, p. 395.
21 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, June 1917, File No. 438-41,
p. 4.
‘The Bihar Labour Enquiry which Gandhiji had been conducting has the full
support of the party in Calcutta. It was proposed that Gandhiji should be
asked to undertake a similar investigation in connection with the grievances
of the labourers at the collieries in Bengal. Materials in this connection were
being collected and as soon as Gandhiji was able to finish his work in Bihar
he was to be asked to extend his labours to the Bengal coalfields’, (Ibid., p. 8).
22 Freedom Movement in Bihar, op. cit., n. 70, p. 544.
23 For further study of some of the petitions filed by the tenants see Rajendra
Prasad, Satvagraha in Champaran, op. cit., pp. 29-31.
24 Ibid., p. 121.
25 Ibid., p. 141.
26 Mahatma Gandhi, n. 2. p. 303.
27 Rajendra Prasad. Satvagraha in Champaran, Appendix A. n. 72. For further
study see also Rajendra Prasad, Mahatma Gandhi and Bihar, Bombay Hind
Kitabs Ltd, 1949; B.B. Misra, Mahatma Gandhi's Movement in Champaran,
Government of Bihar. Secretariat Press, 1963; and Dr K.K. Datta, Writings
and Speeches of Gandhiji Relating to Bihar, 1917 to 1947, Government of Bihar,
1960.
28 mid., pp. vii-ix.
29 E. M.S. Namboodiripad, The Mahatma and the Ism, People’s Publishing House.
1958, pp. 20-1.
30 For text see Gandhi Smarak Nidhi Papers.
236 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

31 M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Ahmedabad, Navjivan

Publishing House, 1945, fourth ed., p. 534.
32 Ibid., 538.
33 Text of the letter preserved in Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, New Delhi.
34 Report of the Special Session of the Indian National Congress Held in Delhi,
1918, p. 116.
 15 Post-war Awakening (1919-21)

Sukhbir Choudhary

Contribution of Gandhiji
Gandhiji’s mission to Champaran in 1917 and his organisation
of a labour strike in the Ahmedabad textile mills in 1918 were
no less significant a contribution to the growth of mass awakening.
It may be recalled that the work of Gandhiji had culminated for
the first time in the success of the peasantry and the labouring class
against their oppressors, viz the English indigo-planters and the
Indian industrial bourgeoisie. The news of his success had spread
like wild fire in urban and rural centres and had reached the exploited
masses—Hindus as well as Muslims.

Non-Cooperation
About this very time, when the exploited classes had grown aware
of the havoc wrought by British imperialism and by the local and
foreign exploiters and landlords, there appeared the non-coopera¬
tion movement.
It is an undeniable fact that the exploited masses of India not
only actively participated in all the boycott programmes of Gandhiji
(without whose cooperation the movement would have fizzled
out) but also organised their distinctive struggles simultaneously
to get their most acute grievances redressed. It will not be out of
context to provide the readers with some glimpses of these mass
struggles.

First Phase of Peasants' Movement

Although'peasant unrest was universal and peasant risings were
increasingly frequent at this time, the fury and unrest of the kisans
spent itself in isolated actions of vendetta and violence against
individual moneylenders and feudal lords.1 It was only from the

Reproduced from. Peasants' and Workers' Movement in India, (1905-1929), by

Sukhbir Choudhary, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi. 1971. pp. 73-114.
238 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

last phase of the first world war onwards that peasant unrest,
especially in the form of the Champaran and Kheda struggles,
advanced at a speed without any previous parallel, and, during the
non-cooperation and Khilafat movements, it acquired more and
•more a radical character. In the annual session of the Indian
National Congress at Amritsar in December 1919, the class demands
of the peasantry were put forward for the first time for adoption
in the national programme. A secret report of the British government
recorded that the resolutions submitted by the Kisan Sabha to
the Amritsar National Congress in December 1919 were as follows:
(a) That peasants all over India should be declared the actual
owners of the soil they cultivate;
(b) That peasants should be subjected to tax, but not to rent; and
(c) That in the provinces, where the zamindari tenure prevails, the
ownership of lands lent to the tenant should be bought up and
given over to the tenants.
Commenting on these demands the Director of the Intelligence
Bureau communicated to his superior: ‘Russian pro-Bolshevik
practice, in the matter of division of land, would appeal to him
(the Indian peasant) very much.’2

Peasant Movement in Rae Bareilly and Fyzabad Districts in the

United Provinces
The first big centre of the peasant movement was the United
Provinces (now known as Uttar Pradesh), where the agrarian
situation was truly appalling. The British conquerors had introduced
the most oppressive form of the zamindari system. Under the new
regulations large tracts of cultivated lands, pasture lands, forests
and irrigational schemes were permanently declared as the property
of landlords. The majority of the cultivators were thus reduced to
the status of serfs and tenants without any rights. They were thus
left to the mercy of landlords and moneylenders who cruelly
exploited them.3 According to the report of the Royal Commission
of Agriculture, there was far more pauperism in the United Pro¬
vinces than in other Indian provinces. In the postwar years the
wages of the agricultural workers fluctuated between 1.5 and 4
annas a day, whereas in the Punjab at that time 12 annas a day was
the usual wages.4 Jawaharlal Nehru concurred with these facts
when he wrote:
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 239

‘The progressive pauperism of the peasantry had been going

on for a long time. What had happened to bring matters to a
head and rouse up the countryside? Economic conditions,
of course, but these conditions were similar all over Oudh ...
Oudh ... was, and is, the land of taluqdars—the “Barons of
Oudh” they call themselves—and the zamindari system at its
worst flourished there. The exactions of the landlords were
becoming unbearable and the number of landless labourers
was growing.’s
Referrihg to the parasitic class character of these landlords, Nehru
said:
‘The taluqdars and the big zamindars, the lords of the land,
the “natural leaders of the people”, as they are proud of calling
themselves, had been the spoilt children of the British government,
but that government had succeeded, by the special education
and upbringing it provided or failed to provide for them, in
reducing them, as a class, to a state of complete intellectual
impotence. They did nothing at all for their tenancy such as
landlords in other countries have to some little extent often done,
and became complete parasites on the land and the people.
Their chief activity lay in endeavouring to placate the local
officials, without whose favour they could not exist for long,
and demanding ceaselessly a protection of their special interests
and privileges ... They have not even the virtues of an aristo¬
cracy. As a class they are physically and intellectually degenerate
and have outlived their day; they will continue only so long
as an external power like the British government props them
up.’6
In his telegram sent to the Secretary of State for India on
13 January 1921, the Viceroy recognised that the Tenancy
Act favouring the interests of the taluqdars admittedly needed
amendment and that genuine discontent of the tenants with the
working of the existing law was the main reason for the success
attained by the non-cooperators. He added that the opposition
of the taluqdars in the past had made the amendment of Tenancy
Law difficult, but that the need for concession had now probably
been brought home to them.7
Even in the summary report on the peasant disturbances prepared
by the Government of India in the light of the information provided
24C PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

by the UP government it was admitted that the agrarian population

... has legitimate grievances. They (government) consider the
difficulties of the problem are social and economic rather than
political and are considering the amendment of Oudh Rent Act.8
The fairly broad network of railways and important centres of
cotton textile industry and woollen industry in the province could
not provide relief by way of alternative employment to the tenants.
Deplorable conditions of underemployment and poverty caused
starvation; then there were terrible epidemics which spread like
wild fire and turned the province into a permanent breeding-ground
of those diseases.9 The failure of the harvest, culminating in wide¬
spread famine in 1920-21, deteriorated the situation further.
Being utterly tired of their economic and social background,
the peasants of Rae Bareilly and Fyzabad districts began to think
in terms of a rebellion on the pattern of the liberation struggle
waged by their predecessors in 1857. Their smouldering fury
burst into flame during the nationwide movement of non-coopera¬
tion in 1920-21 throughout the country.
In the meantime, one Ramchandra who was originally from
Maharashtra had drifted to the districts of Oudh. While he wandered
about reciting Tulsidas’s Ramayana, he listened to the grievances
of peasants. He possessed remarkable powers of organization.
He taught them to assemble periodically for a discussion of their
own problems, and thus created a feeling of solidarity among them.
Off and on big mass gatherings were held, and this produced a sense
of power. ‘Sita Ram’ was a traditional and common way of greeting
in the area, but he invested it with the significance of a war slogan.
‘Having organised the peasantry to some extent he made,’ writes
Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘all manners of promises to them, vague and
nebulous but full of hope for them.’10
At this time Nehru also joined the kisan movement. He paid
frequent visits to the villages and watched the kisan movement
grow in strength. ‘The downtrodden kisan began to gain’, he
wrote, “a new confidence in himself and walked straighter with
head held up. His fear of landlords’ agents and the police lessened,
and when there was an ejectment from a holding no other kisan
would make an offer for that land.’11 Though outwardly there
appeared a lull, it was a lull before the storm. Nehru’s enquiries
showed that agrarian upheavals were leading to jacqueries. The
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 241

peasants of part of Oudh in those days were 'desperate and at

white heat,’12 and 'a mere spark would have lighted a flame'.13
The foundation-stone of the coming struggle was laid by an
ordinary peasant who went up to a taluqdar as he was sitting in
his own house in the midst of his well-wishers, and slapped him
on the face for being immoral in his conduct towards his wife.14
Such physical assaults on the parasitic class of taluqdars led
to the growth of a new spirit of defiance among the peasants.
They were told to defy British rule itself which had imposed these
barons of feudalism on them. This defiance of British rule mani¬
fested itself in the form of peasants travelling by train in large
numbers without tickets, especially when they had to attend their
periodical mass meetings in which sixty to seventy thousand persons
used to participate. It was difficult to control them and bring
them to book. They openly defied the railway authorities, telling
them that the old days were gone.15
The crisis came to a head towards the close of 1920, when a few
peasant leaders were arrested for some minor offence. They were
to be tried in a town called Pratabgarh, but on the occasion of the
trial a huge concourse of peasants filled the court compound.
Thousands lined the route to the prison where the accused leaders
had been lodged. The judicial officer thought it expedient to post¬
pone the trial to the next day. But the crowd went on increasing
and besieged the prison, so to speak. The peasant could easily carry
on for a few days on a handful of parched gram. Finally the peasant
leaders were freed. ‘For the kisans this was a big triumph’, says
Nehru, ‘and they began to think that they could always have their
way by weight of numbers alone. To the government this position
was intolerable.’16
In the beginning of January 1921 the peasants revolted enmasse
against their taluqdars in the south of the Rae Bareilly district.
The Deputy Commissioner received reports to the effect that a
large crowd of villagers, numbering several thousands, was on the
rampage moving from one estate to another in tehsil Dalmau and
destroying crops on the sir (personal cultivation) land of the
taluqdars.
On 2 January 1921, the crops (tilled by the peasants) in the
fields of Sardar Nihal Singh, a taluqdar, whose family had acquired
these vast landed interests by its dubious role in the First War
242 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of National Independence in 1857, were destroyed at Aundu by

a large crowd of peasants.17
On 3 January 1921, crops owned by another national traitor
and taluqdar, Thakur Ram Pratab Singh, were destroyed in the
village of Chichauli. The taluqdar estimated the damage at Rs. 8,000.
On 4 January, another farm at the same place of the same taluqdar
was totally despoiled. A godown was forced open and its contents
looted, causing a loss of more than Rs. 5,000.18
On 5 January 1921, a mob of about a thousand peasants attacked
one Rup Singh, a henchman of a taluqdar called Thakurain Sheoraj
Kunwar, looted his textile merchandise in the Rustampur bazaar,
and also took away various other kinds of property, including his
gun, from his quarters in the courtyard of the Thakurain. Still
another landlord, Tribhuwan Bahadur Singh of Chandanian,
was besieged in his house by a mob of about three thousand peasants
led by one Baba Janaki Das. Some gold rings and coins are alleged
to have been extorted from the taluqdar. Fortunately for him the
Deputy Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police arrived
there in time accompanied by a harassed land-lord, Sardar Nihal
Singh, at the nick of time, and rescued him. Three peasant leaders
were arrested on the spot.19
On 6 January Sardar Nihal Singh’s store and zilladar’s office
were destroyed by a band of about one hundred men at Anti.
A crowd of about one hundred and fifty peasants looted the bazaar
at Mau, the property of the Raja of Tiloi. Sardar Birpal Singh’s
store at Khurenti was also looted by about five hundred peasants.
At Dih, on the Tiloi estate, the houses of two moneylenders,
contemptuously known as Badri Banya and Musammat Durajiya,
were looted by a party of about two hundred. The houses of two
more moneylenders, Sarju Banya and Mussamat Sadni, were
looted in Jagdishpur by a group of about two hundred men.20
On the same day a large band of peasants planned to attack and
loot the bazaar at Munshiganj, about two miles south of Rae
Bareilly. The attack at Munshiganj did not materialise as the place
was protected by a sufficient number of armed police. But a large
mob, about four thousand strong, attacked the Fursatganj bazaar
where the subdivisional magistrate was present with armed police¬
men.
In his confidential report submitted to the Deputy Commissioner
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 243

of Rae Bareilly, the magistrate said that when he arrived in the

bazaar, he found that a mob of three to four hundred men, most
of whom were armed with lathis, lances and even axes, had gathered
in the centre of the bazaar, shouting, 'Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai\
and 'Shaukat Ali, Muhammad Ali ki Jai\ Some of the leaders of
the mob were approached and reasoned with. Their names were
Ram Avtar and Ram Narain of village Pura Kalu and Ausan
Brahman of village Potni. They complained about the dearness
of grain and cloth and about the high handedness of the taluqdars
and zamindars. They said that unless these grievances were red¬
ressed, they would ‘not be satisfied, and would not return to their
houses, and would do all in their power’.21
In his usual way the officer asked the peasant leaders to address
petitions to the Deputy Commissioner. The peasants were not
satisfied with this routine reply. In the meantime, they were joined
by others who came in their thousands from the nearby villages.
They all rushed into the bazaar, formed themselves into a procession
and repeated the slogans already cited. Their number was conti¬
nually swelling. Commenting on the tension, the subdivisional
magistrate wrote:
‘I told them to preserve order in the bazaar and retire, but they
were so overpowered with excitement that nobody paid any heed
to us. Sometimes they said that banias (traders) have made heavy
profits, we should avenge ourselves on them. Sometimes they
complained about the dearness of the grain and cloth and said
that all shopkeepers should at once be ordered to sell cloth at
four annas per yard and flour at eight seers per rupee, otherwise
they will not be pacified but plunder the people and burn the houses.
For about two hours I with some other men continued to reason
with the mob but their excitement was growing and their numbers
swelling. In my opinion the mob swelled to about eight or ten
thousand and rushed into some houses and shops. They broke
open the lock and began to plunder and riot. To prevent them
from plundering and rioting I with the guard reached at once
near the shops. But as soon as we reached there the mob rushed
in upon us shouting ‘jai’, ‘jai’ and crying, 'Kill them, burn them
and take away their guns’. Some persons of the village and of other
villages who were with us and tried to reason with the mob were
also attacked. They attacked us with brick-bats and lathis, lances
244 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and axes and engaged in ‘marpit’. Scores of brick-bats and lathis

were thrown at us all. One of them threw a piece of wood at me,
which missing my head and fell on my breast, otherwise I would have
been severely hurt. They began to rob a few houses ... I ordered
the guard to fix their bayonets and to open their cartridge bundles.
They had no effect on the crowd; on the contrary they began to make
fun of us. Eventually I ordered the guard to fire in the air in order
that the mob might disperse. But the mob raised a cry, Take away
their guns; they are but few and can do nothing.’22
At this time one of the peasants aimed his axe at the sub-divisional
magistrate whom he believed to be an obstacle in the execution of
their plan. The magistrate immediately ordered the guard to fire.
It was reported that four men were killed and two wounded. An
additional force of armed police and mounted soldiers was des¬
patched from Lucknow by train on 6 January 1921. Several arrests
were made.23
Certain further developments took place on 7 January and on
the days that followed.34 Some peasant leaders like Baba Janaki
Das had been arrested in connection with the agitation. They had
been lodged in the local jail. Being full of the success they had won
at. Pratabgarh and the tactics that they had been adopted, the kisans
marched to the town of Rae Bareilly for a mass demonstration.
On 7 January they surrounded the jail en masse and demanded the
release of the kisan leaders. But this time the authorities had made
up their minds not to yield. Additional mounted police and the
military had been brought. They forcibly drove the peasants back
with the butts of their lances across the river. But near Munshiganj
the retreating mob was sufficiently enforced and augmented by
a peasant procession coming towards the city. The crowd at this
time was about ten thousand strong. The crowd again demanded
the release of their leaders. But the Deputy Commissioner admo¬
nished the crowd and said that their leader Ram Chandra, Baba
Janaki Das and Baba Ram Ghul&m were not in the Rae Bareilly jail.
They had already been transferred to Lucknow, he said, and they
would not be released in any case.25 This attitude of the officer
angered the peasants. A bitter scuffle ensued. The police sowars
opened fire, killing and wounding many and trampling others under
the hooves of their horses.26 The peasants retaliated with stones,
kankars, and lathis. Several of the mounted police were severely
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 245

injured and two unhorsed.27 Nehru, who also reached there

in the meantime, provides the following eye-witness account of
the situation:

‘As I reached the river, sounds of firing could be heard from the
other side. I was stopped at the bridge ... We found that men
had been killed in the firing. The kisans had refused to disperse
or to go back ... They refused to take their orders from men
they did not trust. Someone actually suggested to the Magistrate
to wait for me a little but he refused. He could not permit an
agitator to succeed where he had failed. That is not the way of
foreign governments depending on prestige.’28

Nehru held a meeting of the peasants, and tried to assuage their

fear and lessen their excitement. ‘It was rather an unusual situation
with firing going on their brethren within a stone’s throw across
a little stream ... But the meeting ... took away the edge from
the kisans’ fear’, writes Nehru.29
In thousands the peasants were arrested and sent to prison.30
This repression only served to infuriate the peasants. On 7 January
1921, in addition to the serious disturbances at Munshiganj, cloth
merchants at Bawanpur were robbed by a party of about sixty
men. The houses of Swaymbar Singh and Lalta Prasad were looted
by some three hundred men at Bimiaon on the Tiloi estate. Plans
had been prepared to loot several important bazaars at Jais and other
places. Capperganj bazaar was to be looted on 8 January 1921.
But these plans came to nothing because of government vigilance.
A deputy magistrate, Nasrulla by name, dispersed several crowds
in this way for days together.31 Alarmed by this peasant revolt,
the Chief Secretary to the Government of the United Provinces,
G.B. Lambert, reported to the Secretary to the Government of India,
Home Department, 13 January 1921:
‘The southern portion of the Rae Bareilly district was in a very
disturbed state and rapidly approaching anarchy. Serious crimes
amounting to decoity began to occur in alarming numbers.’32
Reporting the gravity of the situation, the Commissioner of
Lucknow, who formerly served in Rae Bareilly district as Deputy
Commissioner, and who had thus had personal experience of the
district, stated:
‘The situation at that time was extremely serious. The ignorant
246 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

peasantry had been persuaded by perambulating agitators that

not only the taluqdars but the British Raj would shortly cease
to exist and that under the beneficent rule of Mr Gandhi they
would enter on a golden age of prosperity in which they would
be able to buy good cloth at 0.4.0. a yard and other necessities
of life at similar cheap rates.’33
A correspondent of The Pioneer, in his report on the Rae Bareilly
disturbances telegraphed to the London press, said that peasant
‘Soviets’34 had been established all over the area controlled by
rebel peasants. On reading these accounts, the Secretary of State
for India was greatly alarmed. On 12 January, he wired the Viceroy:
‘Yesterday’s and today’s newspapers are full of accounts with
scare headlines and terrific posters of agrarian riots in Rae
Bareilly and Sultanpur districts beginning apparently from
January 4th. It is stated that the trouble is spreading, that civil
and police authorities are quite unable to cope with it, that the
rioters have a certain amount of justice in their cause, and that the
suppression by landowners of “Soviets” among tenants is one
of the reasons for disturbances. I am once again wholly without
news. Please telegraph an account of these incidents. Clear the
line: what is present situation and what are your anticipations
and how far Gandhi is connected with them.’3S
On 13 January 1921. the Viceroy stated in his reply that the
agitation which had been carried on amongst villagers had been
largely, if not solely, the work of noncooperators, though there
was no information to show how far the movement had been directly
inspired or controlled by Mahatma Gandhi himself. The Viceroy
also anticipated36 the possibility of similar disturbances breaking
out in other parts of Oudh.
On 18 January 1921 the Secretary of State despatched another
telegram to the Viceroy, in which he asked the latter to realise the
embarrassing position caused by his inability to speak with authority
on the events in India or to appraise the extensive danger posed
by the movements which had been reported. For example, he added,
he had never heard of the existence of the ‘Soviets’ referred to in
the report telegraphed by the correspondent of The Pioneer, and
did not know the correct information to answer to those who were
naturally anxious to know more about them.37
Meanwhile, according to the telegrams of the Indian News-agency
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 247

and the Chief Secretary to the Government of the United Provinces,

agrarian disturbances involving much damage to property again
broke out in the police circles of Baskhari and Jehangirganj in
Tanda tehsil of the Fyzabad district on 13 and 14 January 1921.
It may not be inappropriate to recall that the majority of the
villages were under zamindars or proprietors. The kisan sabha
movement was very well organised in this area. Its principal sup¬
porters and adherents were the small tenants or low-caste labourers
employed by the Brahmin zamindars. On 12 January 1921, a public
meeting was held by the kisan sabha, in which the low-caste serfs
and tenants were persuaded not to work for the old wages for their
zamindar employers. They were also exhorted to organise a strike.
An attack on the zamindars of Bankara was also urged. They were
told that it was the wish of Mahatma Gandhi that they should
loot. They willingly and readily consented to carry out this behest,
amidst sky-rending slogans of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai’.38 They
were also told that British raj was coming to an end and that
Gandhi raj was about to dawn.39
The success of this first operation inspired further action. On
the* following day (13 January), therefore, large bands of tenants,
consisting mainly of Chamars, Luniars and Ahirs, assembled and
proceeded to loot and plunder ‘every person of substance’.40 The
zamindars could not offer any resistance as the peasant bands came
in overwhelming numbers. Each band is believed to have consisted
of about five thousand men. For two days—on 13 and 14 January—
the looting continued in some thirty villages. In some villages
only the grain-stores were looted, whereas in others the looting
was thorough. Many of the houses were completely sacked and
the zamindars lost almost all their household possessions. Even
doors and mill-stones were carried off. In some instances the clothes
and ornaments of women were taken away. Even the tutors of
landlords’ children were plundered. Much of the loot carried
away was hidden, burnt or thrown into the wells. In all, the losses
were put down at over two lakhs of rupees.
On the first day, the movement was largely directed against
particular zamindars, but after that the object was loot, pure and
simple. The primary object of looting were houses of zamindars;
but bannias (moneylenders), sunars (goldsmiths) and patwaries
(village revenue officers), who were considered the henchmen of
248 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

zamindars, were also not spared. With the passage of every

hour the mobs grew in strength, and were followed by crowds
of women to carry off the plunder. The armed constabulary, led
by the Deputy Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police,
arrived in search of the peasants, who had already dispersed after
fulfilling their jobs. A few arrests were effected at the time of carrying
off plunder. Cart-loads of loot were recovered.
According to an official source, in all 346 persons were arrested.41
Intimidated by the police, some local people assisted them at
first in combing jungles in which the peasants, officially described
as ‘dacoits’, were believed to have taken refuge. With the arrival
of some of the leaders of the kisan sabha, however, the local people
withdrew their support to the police in their search for the rebel
peasants.
On 19 January 1921 two peasant leaders were assaulted and
beaten by a zamindar family whose women-folk had had their
clothes stripped off by some hooligans at the time of plunder.
One of the assaulted leaders thereupon addressed a meeting in
the bazaar in which he implied that he had been beaten at the
instance of the police and summoned a meeting for the next day at
Baskhari. The other declared his dharna (intention of sitting)
at the thana until the police apologised. The Deputy Commissioner
prohibited the meeting fixed for the following day. But the peasants
defied the order and on the morning of 20 January 1921 they
assembled in large numbers at Baskhari. The police could not
disperse them because of their overwhelming number. Large
bodies of peasants from nearby Akbarpur also came to attend
the meeting. It was obvious that the police could not disperse them.
The crowd was generally well behaved and refused to leave except
on orders from their leader.
The situation was saved as a result of an offer from the leader
to send the people back to their homes in return for an undertaking
by the government to inquire into the alleged assault. The result
of the inquiry was to be announced at a subsequent meeting to
be held at Akbarpur on 27 January 1921. All the same, at the time
of the inquiry, there was a hot altercation. The peasant leader
lost his temper and struck certain persons who he believed were
the cause of his dishonour.
On 27 January 1921 the public meeting was held at Akbarpur
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 249

as announced. A strong police force was present on the spot to

terrorise the peasants.
Shortly afterwards there occurred a riot at the Goshainganj
railway station. Two constables deputed to attend a meeting at
Baskhari were beaten. Thereupon thirteen persons were arrested.
A number of papers belonging to the leader of the kisan sabha
were recovered. These were mostly petitions to Mahatma Gandhi
relating to agrarian grievances.42
On 17 January 1921 the Chief Secretary to the Government
of the United Provinces sent the following despatch: ‘The agrarian
position in Oudh is still unsettled. The early revision of the Oudh
Rent Act (34 years’ old) is necessary.’43
According to a telegram sent on 24 January 1921 by the Chief
Secretary to the Government of the United Provinces to the Home
Secretary, serious riots occurred in village Sahgaon, Panchagaon,
and Thana Bachhrawan in the Rae Bareilly district, as a result
of agrarian discontent.44 According to the version of the Deputy
Commissioner, the peasants had turned loose the local zamindar’s
cattle upon his sugarcane field. The police arrived at the spot to
disperse the peasants and to defend the landlord. But it was a
market day and a large number of peasants had assembled in a
meeting to voice their grievances. They were advised by their
leaders, Ramavtar and Salik, to bring to an end the obsolete system
of zamindari. It would appear that the police present on the sport
considered the speeches objectionable and tried to intervene.
This resulted in a scuffle. While the police opened fire, the peasants
attacked the police with lathis and spears. One constable was killed
by a lathi blow which smashed the back of his skull. Some other
constables tried to escape, but the crowd chased them. Two of them
were beaten down and left for dead with severe wounds in the
head and other injuries.45
On 29 January 1921 a mob held up a train in order to rescue
a peasant leader who had been arrested.46
In order to silence the fury of their masters in London and keep
themselves in their good books, the English bureaucrats adopted
very severe measures to crush the upsurge. Firstly, they ridiculed
its progressive character. Secondly, they tried to demoralise the
arrested peasants in various questionable ways. Thirdly, they
took severe punitive measures. In fact, official reports for 1919-23
250 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

described most of the peasant movements in the United Provinces

as the operations of exclusive bands of ‘dacoits’,47 though the
compilers of the reports had to admit that these ‘dacoits' attacked
only the propertied classes like feudal lords and traders, attacked
the police, and were generally supported by the agrarian population.
The report for 1920 stated that in 1919 there were repeated clashes
between the police and ‘robber bands'. Simultaneously it pointed
out that the difficulty in combating the ‘dacoits’ was that ‘it was
absolutely impossible to find anybody who would stand witness
against them’.48
In the course of disorders in different parts of the Rae Bareilly
district, according to official sources, 1,024 persons were arrested.
108 men alleged to have been active in the Fursatganj disturbance
were given severe punishment 49 A few kisans were put in custody
at the police station. The sub-inspector of police was not present
at that time. The kisans reaching there shouted ‘Gandhiji ki Jai’.
In the meantime a few high officers reached there and ordered them
to shout ‘Sarkar ki Jai’ and ‘Gandhi ki Chhai’ (May destruction
attend upon Gandhi). The kisans refused to do so. These officers,
therefore, began to insult and humiliate them in different ways.
There-upon an advocate, who had suspended his practice in
pursuance of the noncooperation movement, said to the thanedar:
‘Are you not ashamed of your actions? How ungrateful you are?
Your life is only in the hands of God. These men who have been
locked up and who are patiently submitting to all your abuses
say it is only Gandhi who is withholding them from committing
violence. And you abuse him!’50
Outside the jail there began a reign of terror for every prominent
peasant worker or member of a panchayat. The colonial authorities
were determined tp crush the peasant upsurge. Hand-spinning on
charkha had spread among the peasantry. The charkha had,
therefore, become the symbol of revolt. All those who spun got
into trouble. The charkhas were confiscated and burnt.S1
As regards the punitive measures, in the daily Independent
( \llahabad) of 11 and 12 January 1921, there appeared statements
such as ‘troops have been pouring into Rae Bareilly only to exhibit
their capacity of shooting well’, ‘casualties inflicted on the unarmed
kisans must be appalling’, ‘infliction of reckless violence altogether
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 251

uncalled for’, ‘190 shots were fired’, etc.52 Commenting in an

editorial entitled ‘The Kisan Crisis’ on 11 January 1921, the news¬
paper continued:
‘Surely the military and police could have avoided infliction of
reckless violence which is altogether uncalled for. We thought
that the government of Sir Harcourt Butler was not much in
love with O’Dwyerian carelessness for human lives. But the
havoc which was wrought in Rae Bareilly will call for an answer
... If the kisan had paid the local bureaucracy in the same
coin, in the name of “peace and safety” it could have inflicted
greater atrocities. So far there is no knowing whether the district
officer and the machines of militarism will exercise a much
needed self-restraint.’53
In another article, entitled ‘New Era in Rae Bareilly’ in the
same issue:
‘Rae Bareilly, which is distinguished for taluqdar tyranny
as many other districts in Oudh, has been given a taste of military
violence ... A few superfluous kisan lives never matter to the
unscrupulous men clothed in authority.’
‘Apparently Mr. Sheriff thinks that his duty begins and ends
by using his uncontrolled power on behalf of the taluqdars of
Rae Bareilly. Taluqdar tyranny like the bureaucratic terrorism
is bad enough—but when the two combine the mischief becomes
rampant.’54
‘The Government of the United Provinces will no doubt consider
whether any action is desirable as regards these articles’, wrote
S.P. O’Donnell, Secretary to the Government of India, Home
Department, to G.B. Lambert, Chief Secretary to the Government
of the United Provinces.55 And subsequently the action was taken.
Not only was its security forfeited, its editor was also imprisoned.

Peasant Movement in Sultanpur

In the beginning of March 1921, yet another peasant disturbance
broke out in Sultanpur, an eastern district of the United Provinces.
Not bothering much about the genuine grievances of the peasantry,
the colonial authorities embarked upon a policy of repression.
Not only were the peasants arrested in large numbers, but they
were also maltreated and beaten and harassed in a manner which
252 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

could by no canons of justice be upheld. Vehemently opposing this

attitude of the authorities, ‘Independent’ of Allahabad wrote
(editorial) on 6 March 1921:
‘It is excessively painful to inform the general public how the
government has planned the destruction of the noble and sacred
movement of the kisans in this district. Police and zamindars
have been backed and encouraged by the government and they
work as right and left hands of government’s oppression. The
oppression is so great that it is beyond easy description ...
When a person is arrested, he is very mercilessly beaten until
he is senseless or unless he promises to make his statements
just as the police desire. (In accordance with the “plans” of
government it is the obvious innuendo.)’56

Further Uprising in Rae Bareilly

Another disturbance ending in loss of life occurred in the Rae
Bareilly district on 20 March 1921. The facts are as follows. Four
peasant leaders who had been making inflammatory speeches an¬
nounced that they would hold a large meeting and make speeches
at Karhaiya in the Salon tehsil on 20 March 1921, which was the
day of the weekly market. Orders were issued by the authorities
prohibiting speeches at the meeting and for the arrest of all the
four leaders. The sub-inspector of Salon, accompanied by another
sub-inspector and five armed policemen, went to Karhaiya on
20 March 1921 and arrested Brijpal Singh and Jhanku Singh,
two of the four leaders referred to above. In the process of arrest
the police were attacked by the assembled peasants who rescued
the prisoners in spite of the fact that the police fired on them.
The crowd drove back the police who retreated firing and took
shelter in a house of one Thakurain Jadunath Kaur. They were
besieged by the crowd who tried to break into the house, but were
repulsed by the fire of the police. Two of the chasers were killed
and five wounded.
In the scuffle one constable succeeded in escaping through a
window at the back and went off to Salon. The tehsildar of Salon
sent a message by car to the Deputy Commissioner. The latter,
accompanied by the Superintendent of Police, some other sub¬
ordinate officials and 28 armed police, arrived in time to rescue the
Fesieged party which would otherwise have been ultimately over-
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 253

powered and probably killed. The peasant leaders had in fact openly
expressed their intention to raze the house to the ground and kill
the constables. The crowd assembled at the spot was several
thousand strong. It was ordered to disperse. But nobody moved.
In fact the crowd assumed an attitude of defiance. Inflammatory
speeches were made by the leaders. There were shouts of‘Mahatma
Gandhi ki Jai\ This went on throughout the night. The leaders
were alleged to have told the crowd that Mahatma Gandhi would
arrive in the morning. The peasants many of whom were armed
with spears under the direction of their leader Brijpal Singh,
an ex-sepoy in the Ninth Bhopal Infantry, posted groups of men
all around the house and picketed the roads.
In the meantime a force of one defadar and ten sowars of the
mounted police which had arrived at the village in the morning was
held up on the road. It, however, eventually succeeded in evading
the pickets and reached the taluqdar’s house. The rebels also used
carts to block the road. There was a scuffle when the police pounced
upon the peasant assembly and tried to disperse it. Brijpal Singh
was arrested in the fray. When the Deputy Commissioner and the
Superintendent of Police tried to arrest Jhanku Singh, he struggled
and called to the crowd to rescue him. And the crowd made a rush,
surrounded the two officers and separated them from the main
body of the mounted police. At this a police constable fired and
tried to save the lives of the officers. In the confusion that followed,
Jhanku Singh managed to break away but was soon recaptured.
To defend the leader the mob again attacked the police which
opened fire. Some were killed and hundreds were wounded.57
According to government sources there occurred another bloody
disturbance next day (on 23 March 1921). The Prevention of Sedi¬
tious Meetings Act was extended to disturbed area.
The Governor in Council reviewed the disturbances and decided
to post additional police in the locality and to make the inhabitants
pay the cost of maintaining it. He also decided to prosecute the
leaders. The use of spears and swords was prohibited in the four
districts of Rae Bareilly, Pratabgarh, Fyzabad and Sultanpur for
a considerable period.58
Giving his approval to these repressive steps of the provincial
government, the Home Secretary to the Government of India,
C.W. Gwynne remarked on 24 March 1921:
254 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

‘We must agree. The recommendation is made by the Government

of the United Provinces including the ministers and it would
be madness to resist them ... (though the) result of yesterday’s
debate (in the Assembly) renders the application of extraordinary
laws more difficult than at present, we still could not tell the
United Provinces we did not agree with their proposal because
the members of the Assembly disliked the policy. The prime
duty to maintain law and order cannot be superseded by a
resolution of the Assembly.’59
Detailing all these repressive steps the Government of the United
Provinces issued a press communique which was answered by
the newspaper ‘Independent’ on 25 March 1921. The style shows
that no person other than Jawah'arlal Nehru could have written
the answer. It remarked:
‘The preliminary stages of the inauguration of bureaucratic
repression in this district (of Oudh) have already been promi¬
nently noticed in your columns towards the fag end of February.
Its development since has marked the systematic administration
of still stronger, hotter and Napoleonic doses of repression-until
now it presents a terrible tale of terrorism, harassment and
persecution ... It has now passed from the domain of conjecture
to that of hard reality that Mr. Ibbeston will leave no stone
unturned in strangling the panchayats and throttling the.kisan
movement.’60
The repressive measures further provoked the peasantry. On
the night of 17-18 April 1921 the Rae Bareilly Collectorate was
partially destroyed by fire. To frighten the peasants of Rae Bareilly
district a squadron of the 28th Cavalry made a route-march of the
week’s duration through the south of the district. Dispositions had
bden made w hich would place additional armed and mounted police
at points where their present was most needed to display the might
of British imperialism. Reserves totalling about 600 men had been
concentrated at important strategic centres. Thousands of armed
policemen and mounted police had been drawn off from the more
secure districts for this purpose.61

Political Conferences
Efforts were made to secure a demonstration of cultivators
at the meetings of the Allahabad district conference, held on 10
 post-war awakening (1919-21) 255

and 11 May 1921. Peasants from the Oudh taluk attended in large
numbers. The function assumed importance from the fact that it
was made to coincide with the marriage of Pandit Motilal Nehru's
daughter. Swarup Rani (later Mrs. Vijaylakshmi Pandit). All
the prominent political leaders were present on the occasion and
their presence was made the occasion of an ambitious political
demonstration. The meetings were fully reported in all sections
of the press. The District Commissioner reported, ‘a great deal
of panic on both sides, the city being full of probable arrests (of
the Ali brothers) and of action by troops, and the .Anglo-Indian
and Indian Christian community much alarmed about the alleged
intention to attack them on the 10th (May 1921).'6-
According to official sources, one special feature of the conference
w as the attempt to strengthen the hold of non-cooperators on the
kisan sabhas. particularly in the Oudh districts which had been pro¬
claimed under the Seditious Meetings Act. The campaign opened
w ith the distribution of a leaflet addressed to cultivators and signed
by Pandit Motilal Nehru. In Pratabgarh district they were dis¬
tributed among peasants by some youths who were promptly
dealt with under Section 108 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
According to the local press, the young men were criminally
assaulted and tortured by the police. This enraged the politically
advanced sections of the society. The daily newspaper 'Independent’
promptly wTote an editorial on 12 May 1921 severely criticising
the unw anted behaviour of the police. It said:
'Lord Reading has been denouncing violence, and quite rightly
too. We do not want any favour of Lord Reading as Viceroy
but he happens to be a bencher of the Middle Temple and w e
know he is a gentleman who is interested in fair dealing. We
believe that he will recoil from the crudf violence of an ill-
mannered policeman. May we. therefore, present him with the
incident w hich is reported from Sultanpur? It is a piece of sheer
bullying and torture to which only a wild animal would resort
(God forgive us if we do injustice to dumb animals). It is idle
to speak of the wickedness of violence in this province as long
as the man who commits violence happens to be a government
official. We are convinced of the futility of such a procedure.
The districts in Oudh have been handed over to the torture.
Unspeakable things have been done and more will be done.
256 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

No discrimination can save men from the violence of govern¬

ment; neither age nor youth nor station will be respected. But
we thank all the Gods that the brave lads who have been put to
the torture have refused to bend the knee to the torturer or to
the tyrant.’63
Next day Jawaharlal Nehru himself proceeded to distribute
the leaflet. But the government did not dare to take any action
against him. The leaflet was immediately proscribed. It was followed
by attempts to organise a big mass meeting of peasants at Allahabad.
Information of a serious agrarian disturbance in a village in
the Allahabad district on 22 May 1921 was published in the local
newspapers. It resulted in a serious tension between Muslim
zamindars and the villagers who were mostly Hindus. The clash did
not, however, take a communal colour. The usual causes of dispute
were not confined to the particular village in which the disturbance
occurred, but were like an epidemic and common^to a number of
villages in the vicinity. The Fortnightly Report of the Government
of the United Provinces for the second half of May 1921 blamed
local non-cooperators who, according to officials, 'usually hurry to
the scenes of such disorders like vultures’.64 Significant of the times
was also the widespread nature of the incendiary campaign carried
out in the forests of Kumaon and Garhwal. According to a govern¬
ment communique issued on 29 May 1921, 50 to 75 per cent of the
forest area was burnt down. Admitting that the damage was serious,
the communique held that incendiarism was due to 'irresponsible
people infected with the non-cooperation doctrine’. It added that
‘the grazing interests of the hill zamindars suffer too much from
forest fires for it to be likely that they were in any way involved.’65
The agrarian trouble continued unabated for months together
in the United Provinces. ‘There was a quick response,’ wrote
G.M. Lambert, Chief Secretary to the Government of the United
Provinces on 4 June 1921 to C.W. Gwynne, Deputy Secretary to
the Government of India, Home Department, ‘to the agitators’
appeal based on special agrarian grievances.’66
These peasant conferences and movements along with the other
activities of the non-cooperation movement played a historic role
in undermining British power and prestige. In his telegram dated
13 May 1921 the Chief Secretary to the Government of the United
Provinces reported to the Home Department in Delhi that the
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 257

‘situation is steadily deteriorating; confidence in power of govern¬

ment growing less; officers are losing heart; and the belief that
lives of Europeans are in danger is growing.’67 On 9 June 1921
the Viceroy telegraphed to the Secretary of State about the United
Provinces that here was ‘little sign of return to settled peace.’68

Salient Features of the Peasant Movement in the United Provinces

The peasant movement in the United Provinces had a number
of characteristic features. It was the most mature and organised
action of the Indian peasantry during this period. Appraising the
dynamic character of the movement The Times (London) wrote
on 6 March 1922:
‘Formerly the tenants crushed by requisitions of all kinds were
in no condition to effectively express their protest, but in connec¬
tion with the recent political awakening of the masses they bagan
to put up a fight for their rights.’
The class nature of the movement was very clearly defined. Unlike
the peasant movements in other provinces, religion was kept
completely out of the picture.
Heavy exploitation by the landlords and the fact that the majority
of the peasants in the United Provinces were Hindus also played
a certain role. In the course of the movement caste differences
faded into the background. The acknowledged leaders of the
peasants in Oudh generally came from the lower castes.
This movement against the feudal barons who were in league
with colonialist rulers obviously assumed an anti-imperialist
character and on many an occasion got mixed up with the anti-
British demonstrations going on in the urban areas. The peasants
actively supported the political agitations of the city people, and
the latter responded by giving their active support to the peasant
movements. Sometimes they even led these movements. It is
self-evident from the report submitted on 14 January 1921 by
the Deputy Commissioner of Rae Bareilly to the Chief Secretary
to the Government of the United Provinces. He stated:
‘The non-cooperators finding their efforts to stir up trouble
among students and the general public unsuccessful had to look
round for some more promising field for their operations. They
failed to influence the general public and students to any extent,
because these had no real grievances. They had succeeded in
258 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

stirring up the cultivators of Oudh to a state of considerable

excitement, because the cultivators have in many cases considera¬
ble grievances against the landlords ... What the kisans are
interested in is their own condition and in particular nazrana
and ejectments.’69
A resolution setting forth their version of the peasant disturbances
was issued by the Government of the United Provinces. It alleged
that the ‘local agitators had exploited the feeling against ‘coolie
labour.’ It also added that there had been some increase in extre¬
mist activity since the return of the Congress delegates from Nagpur.
It alleged that school masters, chaukidars and students showed
signs of restiveness. With the first two classes the trouble principally
was economic. But the students were ‘being made cat’s paw agitators
as in other cases,’ it declared.70
The peasant upsurge in the United Provinces, as in other parts
of India, merged with the nation wide anti-imperialist struggle,
producing a very tense situation throughout the country. The
British rulers were compelled to pay considerable attention to these
revolts. In a report of the military command responsible for suppres¬
sing them, it was admitted that the movement was very serious
and ‘... endangered the basis of the traditional land tenure system
and administration’.71 To put an end to the movement the autho¬
rities started making concessions to the Oudh tenants. Pretending
that they considered the complaints of the* peasants against the
landlords justified to some extent, the government arranged a
special investigation into the collection of rents in Oudh. It enacted
the ‘Rent Act for Oudh, 1921’. Under the new Act tenants were
recognised as permanent and they received the right of owning
the land for life.72 But the majority of the Oudh peasants were
temporary tertants and subtenants. They did not come under this
category and the landlords continued to exploit them mercilessly
and to evict them from the land. Later the authorities had to admit
in an official memorandum that the new Act left much to be de¬
sired.73
By introducing the Act of 1921 the authorities were trying to
improve the position of the wealthy tenants. They hoped, on the
one hand, to create a new foothold in the villages and on the other,
to retard the rapid decline in agriculture. Owing to the half-hearted¬
ness of the Act, however, neither of these aims was achieved. The
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 259

discontent of the peasants grew and the deterioration in agriculture

continued.

The Moplah Revolt

Towards the beginning of the middle of 1921 there arose a mighty,
unprecedented upsurge by the Moplahs in Malabar. For a considera¬
ble length of time British rule was completely wiped out from the
region and an independent Khilafat kingdom was established.
Though the main grievances of the Moplahs were related to agrarian
discontent, in the absence of a scientific, rational and secular
leadership, the movement passed into the hands of reactionary,
outmoded and orthodox priests and divines. In their traditional,
conventional way these divines perverted the dynamic character
of the upsurge into a communal strife by forcible conversion of a
considerable number of Hindus. The consequences of such short¬
sighted action could easily be foreseen.74 Isolated morally from
the rest of Hindu India and surrounded on all sides by the over¬
whelmingly superior and technically better-equipped imperialist
forces which blocked all routes of arms supply, the Moplahs
could not sustain their resistance-for long. The Moplah casualties
were quite heavy.75 More than 3,000 died; several thousand more
were wounded.76 Among the fifty thousand who surrendered there
were also the ruler of the Khilafat kingdom,77 Kunhahmad Haji,
and six of his lieutenants. They were shot on 20 January 1921.
Contrary to the principles preached by the non-cooperators,
the rebels had turned to armed struggle against the imperialists
and their henchmen, the landlords. The attitude of the Indian
National Congress towards the Moplah revolt was different from
that adopted towards the Akali movement. The Congress Working
Committee convened a special meeting to discuss the Moplah
question and expressed deep sorrow at the violent methods adopted
by the insurgents. The committee indicated that the people on
the Malabar coast had misunderstood the message of the Congress
and the Khilafat Committee, which as the committee pointed out
that the government report had exaggerated the harm caused by
the Moplah rising and under-estimated the cruelty of the autho¬
rities, 'in the name of peace and order.’78
The Moplah upsurge, a link in the chain of the anti-colonial
agitations of the masses during the postwar years, was of very great
260 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

significance, not for the peasants alone, but for the national libera¬
tion movement as a whole. Notwithstanding its drawbacks it
magnificently demonstrated the will of the peasantry to struggle
for its rights.

Role of the Peasantry in Bengal

The peasant movement at this period was not confined only
to the United Provinces and Malabar. There were struggles in the
other provinces too. The first move towards capturing the sympathy
of the peasantry on the lines of non-cooperation organised by the
leaders of the first nationwide anti-British movement may be said
to have taken place in February 1921 in Bengal. Even before the
Nagpur Congress it had apparently been realised that if success was
to be achieved in this direction something more concrete was re¬
quired to work upon than the wrongs done to the Punjab and the
Khilafat, and, accordingly, proposals were made to ryots in
December 1920 for the formation of national unions for the pur¬
chase and sale of all local produce without the agency of middlemen.
A raiyat association had been in existence since 1913 and this was
probably a move to capture its organisation. Nothing further was
done, however, until the launching of the Jute boycott campaign
in February 1921.
The real motive behind the boycott of jute was undoubtedly
the desire to catch the indignation of the ryot. It explained to the
peasants that the reduction of jute acreage meant more land for
raising foodgrains or cotton. In some places the ryots were told
that this was the wish of the government. In Mymensingh the
district Congress Committee went to the length of issuing a pamphlet
on growing cotton in place of jute. This scheme was said to have
been drawn up in consultation with the Agricultural Department.
By these and similar means cultivators in Barisal were made to
restrict jute cultivation to one-quarter of the previous year. At
Harirampur, in the Dacca district, the area was restricted to a
little more than half an acre under threat of social boycott, and
the price of jute seed accordingly went down from 2\ to 16 seers
a rupee. Whereas at Kaokhali, cultivators were still sceptical,
the crop was ploughed up by ‘strike’ students. This kind of boycott
made considerable progress in April 1921 and in no case was any
complaint lodged in the court. The one result of this agitation was
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 261

to make cultivators think of other methods in which they might

improve their position and prepare the way for the no-tax and
no-rent movement which afterwards appeared in eastern Bengal.79
Finally, the Ahmedabad session of the Congress and the Khilafat
Committee paved the way for a full civil disobedience movement.
The Intelligence Bureau of the government admitted that the
events of the first quarter of 1922 had confirmed the fear that
the peasant movement had got beyond the control of the leaders
of Bengal. It was clearly known that in the interior the authority
of the Bengal National leaders amounted to nothing, and even that
of the District Committees was rapidly lost in a ‘great wave of
lawlessness, which swept over’ the affected area of eastern and
western Bengal.80 The policy of civil disobedience had never been
accepted by the Provincial Congress Committee and the Khilafat
Committee, and there was no systematic inauguration of it in any
definite area, but the rural areas of the province were clearly drifting
towards it. The report of the Intelligence Bureau declared that the
spirit of violence and the contempt for authority which had begun
to show themselves were not due to the bourgeois leaders but to
the masses.81
The situation in Tippera had for some time given room for
anxiety to the authorities. In this area the rural police had ceased
work since November. No taxes were being paid, and no agricultural
rents could be collected, whether by the government or by private
landlords. Effforts to execute distress warrants and criminal pro¬
cesses were thwarted by assaults on the officers concerned. When
armed police was sent to make arrests, the villages were found to
be empty. It was remarked by the local intelligence that the agitation
was due entirely to Muslims, although it was not communal in
character. The peasants, according to it, were simply out to assert
themselves. A similar situation prevailed in other areas of Hast
Bengal. People had been told that their subscription to the Swarajya
Fund would exempt them from all future taxation, and they
literally believed it.82

No-Tax Campaign in Guntur

In Guntur district a civil disobedience campaign was engineered
by the local non-cooperators against the advice of Mahatma
Gandhi. The first move in this campaign was the refusal to pay
262 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

taxes. There was no open violence but village officers in considerable

numbers tendered their resignations. Those who showed themselves
willing to take their places were intimidated. The government
decided to impose punitive measures on a group of eighteen villages
in which the movement was most advanced. When the police
proved helpless, four armoured cars and a body of Indian Infantry
were sent to the district for a show of force. The refusal to pay
taxes continued throughout the month of January. Out of a total
revenue of Rs. 14.75 lakhs, the government could collect hardly
Rs. 3.5 lakhs. The special staff sent to carry out the processes for
revenue recovery met with passive obstruction everywhere, volunte¬
ers being at hand in every village to see that they were given no
help or information, though there was no active resistance to the
service of demands or to the restraint or attachment of property.
In addition to the Paddanandipadu firka, which was the centre
of the movement for nonpayment of taxes, there were various
isolated villages in Guntur district which had become affected
with a general spirit of defiance to British imperialism. The revenue
collection in the district up to 23 February 1922 amounted to a
mere Rs..32.5 lakhs, out of a total demand for the whole year
of Rs. 58.75 lakhs.83

Faith in Gandhian Leadership Shaken

In the course of the peasant movement there occurred certain
incidents which led to the shaking of the peasants’ faith in Gandhian
leadership. As already pointed out, at the behest of some or.e that
it was the wish of Mahatma Gandhi that they should plunder the
local landlord’s house, the peasants turned violent in Fayzabad
district. Later when Jawaharlal Nehru came to know about the
episode, he went to the village concerned, called a meeting of the
peasants, admonished them for the so called ‘shame’ which they
had brought on their cause, and called upon the so called ‘guilty’
persons to confess publicly by raising their hands.
This sort of strict Gandhian morality was all right for the
prominent followers of the Mahatma, as they enjoyed considerable
influence not only among the general public but also among officials.
But it was quite different in the case of the poor peasants. Many
of them were contemptously characterised as habitual criminal
offenders or absconders by the bureaucracy. Public confession
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 263

by about two dozen poor peasants of their guilt in the presence of

numerous police officials who were present at the meeting as
reporters meant certain trouble for them. As a result of this ad¬
venture of Nehru, which he himself later on regretted, a number
of poor peasants were exposed to long terms of imprisonment,
torture, and other kinds of oppression. For the bureaucracy this
was too good a chance to be missed. Full advantage of the occasion
was taken by it to crush the agrarian movement in the district
concerned. According to Nehru himself, over a thousand arrests
were made. He writes: ‘The district gaol was overcrowded, and
the trial went on for the best part of a year. Many died in prison
during the trial. Many others received long sentences... Some
of them, boys and young men, spending their youth in prison.’84
As the movement in the United Provinces practised violence
and was directed against private property, the National Congress
leadership not only refused to support it but adopted a definitely
negative attitude. Earlier, in 1921, while discussing this movement,
the Congress had, in its address to the peasants stressed:
‘.. .that they must not use sticks and knives.. .must not plunder
the estates, the peasants must win the stone-hard hearts of their
enemies by their kindness and love. The attempt to achieve their
aims by refusing to pay the lawful rent of the landlord or refuse
to fulfil their conscription duty to him may be looked upon as
an immoral act.’85
These directives were, of course, quite impressive as far as the
trained volunteer corps were concerned. To apply them to persons
who had been exploited since their birth by the oppressive economic
and social structure imposed by British imperialism was just
meaningless. The peasants were no longer in a position to tolerate
oppression silently. Their patience had been stretched to such an
extent that they were left with no alternative except to do or die,
‘marta kya no karta’. An incident relating to such a psychological
case occurred on the eve of the preparations being made by
Mahatma Gandhi to inaugurate his civil disobedience campaign
at Bardoli.

Chauri Chaura and Afterwards

The bazaar at Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur district of the United
Provinces) had been for some time the scene of vigorous picketing.
264 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Foreign cloth was totally excluded from sale and the licjuor shops
had no customers. This was resented and resisted by the local land¬
lord, the owner of the bazaar. On 1 February the local police
officer, notorious for his short temper, was alleged to have visited
the bazaar with a police force and to have beaten some of the
volunteers and peasants engaged in the picketing.
This provocative behaviour of the police officer led all the
volunteers of the surrounding villages to assemble at one place
on 4 February. They marched in a big crowd to the police station.
There the volunteers and peasants, it is said, wanted to know why
the subinspector had beaten them, expressed their determination
to picket the bazaar that day, and asked the police to prevent them
from doing so, if they dared. Some neutrals acted as peace-makers
and managed to pacify the angry procession, which then moved
on. Some straggler's who stayed behind were roughly handled
and abused by the constables. They hit back with brick-bats.
A scuffle ensued. The constables opened fire and killed a few.
The rest cried out for help.
The main procession then returned in a fury. All the twentyone
constables at the police station, along with the young son of the
subinspector were overpowered and both the station and the men
in it were set on fire. All of them died. Those who tried to run out
of the station were caught, beaten, soaked in kerosene, and hacked
to pieces. The mangled bodies were thrown into the raging fire.
In the meantime the railway communication between Chauri
Chaura and Gorakhpur were cut off. The centuri6s-old oppression
and humiliation had forced the Chauri Chaura peasants to express
their indignation in violence against the administrative apparatus
of colonial oppressions. In its appeal issued on 14 March 1923,
the Executive Committee of the Communist International appeared
to be right in its sarcastic evaluation that the ‘only crime’ of these
Indian peasants was ‘their hunger’, because in that unbearable
hunger they were forced to contribute too much to the waging of
the ‘war for democracy’ during 1914-8.86
The news of this violence on a minor scale shocked the bourgeois
leaders and resulted in the suspension of the civil disobedience
movement.
A close scrutiny of the columns of the journal Young India
of February 1922^shows clearly the most startling fact that it was
 POST-WAR SWAKENING (1919-21) 265

Madan Mohan Malaviya and M.R. Jayakar, the two Rasputins

of India, that exercised their most unhealthy influence upon
Mahatma Gandhi. Like the Russian Rasputin, who was an apostle
of arch reaction and who proved fatal and detrimental to the
growth of a healthy and progressive Russia, both Malaviya and
Jayakar presented a very dismal picture of a bloodthirsty India
coming up if violent incidents like that of Chauri Chaura were
further permitted to occur. Whatever may be the fact, they prevailed
upon Mahatma Gandhi and pressed him to suspend the great
anti-imperialist movement.87 And Gandhiji did likewise.
Besides the suspension of the movement, the Congress Working
Committee at Bardoli took note of the complaints having been
brought to their notice that ryots were not paying rents to the
zamindars. The working Committee advised Congress workers
and organisations to inform the ryots that such withholding of
rents was contrary to the resolutions of the Congress, and that
it was injurious to the “best interests of the country’. The Working
Committee also lost no time in assuring the zamindars that the
Congress movements in no way intended to attack their legal
rights and, that even where ryots had grievances, the committee
desired that redress should be brought by mutual consultations and
by the usual recourse to arbitrations.88
The Bardoli decision had cast a deep gloom over the peasant
movement. Whatever might be faith that Gandhiji had reposed in
the divine revelations of his inner voice, a large number of villagers
could not blindly follow him. To them it became clear that non¬
violent non-cooperation was not a type of action which would
annihilate the imperialist state structure, but one which was meant
to pressurise the colonial rulers into coming to an understanding
with the Congress.
They pointed out that the much-talked of dislike for violence,
however, was nothing but the obvious fear of the bourgeoisie that
once the masses enter the sphere of political action with their
own technique of struggle, the movement would cross the limits
set by it. That is why the Mahatma, who did not hesitate for a
moment to call for 'twenty recruits from every village’ to be offered
as cannon fodder in imperialism’s bloody war, shuddered at some
minor incidents of bloodshed which occurred when the masses
joined the sphere of action as an organised political force.
266 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The critics asked why, when the Mahatma himself had no doubt
that the police in Chauri Chaura ‘had given much provocation’
and that it was due to this provocation that the mob had set fire
to the police station and murdered the constables, he was not
prepared to condone this ‘mob violence’. Was it not clear to him,
they asked, that once the peasants had been made to revolt and
brought into action, such clashes between them and the upholders
of colonial rule would be inevitable? To try to escape from blood¬
shed and violence through metaphysical casuistry was the nega¬
tion of real politik.
It is interesting to recall here that aroused by the call of Gandhiji:
young militants like S.A. Dange, E.M.S. Namboodiripad and a
host of others joined the anti-imperialist movement and cheerfully
had gone to prison. But the debacle of 1922 terribly disappointed
them. They said good-bye to Gandhian leadership and organised
shortly afterwards a new militant Marxist organisation. Ridiculing
the Gandhian technique of independence. S.A. Dange wrote:
‘So Gandhism requires a change in human nature or purification,
which in due course will destroy the necessity of the present
system of life. Destroy vanity, love of show and there will be no
necessity to engage wage-earning slaves to produce silks and
luxuries. Destroy fear and love of power, wars will stop, and
militarisms and governments will melt. Destroy the devil within
man and the outside nature of incongruities will die out. Lenin
might as well answer to this: “Destroy the Universe and God
himself, who is the cause of all this, and everything will stop;
a madman’s reasoning; an impossibility.’89
Likewise M. Singaravelu Chettiar was very critical of Gandhiji’s
attitude. He complained that the Congressmen had not acted up
to the Bardoli Resolution of starting a civil disobedience movement.
‘It has been a disaster’, he added, ‘to have postponed the movement
after Chauri Chaura’. He also regretted that the Congress had
failed to take up the workers of India in the cause of swaraj. He
concluded his argument by stating: ‘We have suffered miserably
for our errors and mistakes.’90
Criticizing the Bardoli decision, E.M.S. Namboodiripad was
to write years later:
‘Gandhiji’s reaction was characteristic of the man and the
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 267

movement which he was to lead for nearly three deGades,-Far

from being inspired by the tremendous response of the masses
to his call for non-cooperation with the “satanic government”,
he was alarmed at the lack of what he called “that nonviolent
and truthful atmosphere which alone can justify mass civil
disobedience”.’
‘He was alarmed at first during the Rowlatt Act agitation when
“I retraced my steps, called it a Himalayan miscalculation,
humbled myself before God and man, and stopped not merely
mass civil disobedience but even my own, which I knew was
intended to be civil and nonviolent.”
‘It was, however, not till the Chauri-Chaura incident of 1922
(which he called his “bitterest humiliation”) that he came to
realise that the mass civil disobedience, which he had visualised,
and for which he was preparing, could often go completely
beyond his control. He then decided to suspend the civil
disobedience movement.’91
The Bardoli Working Committee resolutions suspending every
activity of an offensive nature and recommending social work to
achieve self-purification and national education, chilled the enthu¬
siasm of the whole of the militant wing within the national liberation
movement. ‘The Udaya’ (Amraoti) of 21 February 1922 observed:
‘The resolutions.. .have, indeed, sounded the death-knell of
the current politics in India... This altered form of the Congress
runs counter to the chief aim of the body, viz, devotion to Indian
politics... The nation is sure to receive a serious political setback
for about quarter of a century. Further, if the non-cooperation
movement was primarily started to cut off our cooperation with
the Britishers and paralyse the existing system of British ad¬
ministration in India, it has now ended in advising the people
to promote and emphasise unity among all classes and races
(even Europeans and Indians, etc.) and cultivate mutual good
will. Thus the movement has now completely eschewed politics
and become one of self-purification. What a conflict between
the definitions and scope of non-cooperation!’92
‘The Maharashtra’ (Nagpur) of 22 February 1922 observed:
‘It is high time for Mahatmaji’s friends and admirers to speak
out their mind candidly in India’s interest.’93
268 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Papers like ‘Rajasthan Kesari’ (Wardha) became increasingly

convinced of the impracticability of the Gandhian programme.
In an editorial the paper said:
‘...while vehemently condemning the idea of altering the
present programme (we believe) that any alterations in the
current national programme, especially at a' time when the
country is passing through a period of storm and stress, will
mean nothing but treachery towards those who have already
gone to jails in the cause of the country.’94
Five years later, on the occasion of the Madras session of the
Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru, who presided over the meeting of
the Republican Congress held in the Congress pandal on 28
December 1927, complained:
‘Since the failure of the non-cooperation movement the Congress
had been drifting to middle class or Babu politics and was
losing the support of the masses... It was important for them
to form some kind of an organisation which would keep the
National Congress up to the mark and also prepare the country,
not only in a republican ideal, but also in a right republican
ideal.’95
After the imprisonment of Gandhiji, a Civil Disobedience
Enquiry Committee was established to investigate whether the
country was prepared for a fresh struggle or not. The masses
were jubilant and expected that a new call would come from the
committee to continue the national liberation movement. But
they were disappointed when the committee decided not to renew
the call. ‘Rajasthan Kesari’, in its leading article on the report of
the Committee on 26 November 1922, remarked:
‘The committee has by its recommendation not only damped
the courage of the country, but has also exhibited that the nation
woefully lacks in leaders consistent in their views, conduct and
ideals’96

New Peasant Movement

The vacillating conduct of the Congress leaders which culminated
in the betrayal of the masses led to the growth of independent
peasant movements in various parts of the country. For instance,
the peasant movement in Oudh produced its ow'n leaders and put
forward its own demands which radically differed from those of
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 269

the Indian National Congress. The new organisation of the Union

of Peasants against Landlords became popular and was known as
Eka.97 Its leaders were two peasants, Passi Madari98 and Sahreb."
They both came from the lower castes.
The founding of this organization considerably strengthened
the peasant movement in the United Provinces. The official report
of the colonial authorities for 1922-3 stated that although ‘the
number of dacoits (i.e. the revolting peasants) even in 1921 was
almost unprecedentedly high, the first six months of 1922 showed
nearly double the number of cases reported during the last six
months of 1921’.100
Under the leadership of the Eka union, the peasants put forward
demands which were in the interests of wide sections of the rural
population—the poorest and the middle tenants and partly of those
who owned land. This can be seen from the programme of the
union as published in ‘The Indian Daily News’ of 10 March 1922.
It called on the peasants to refuse to leave the fields when they were
unlawfully appropriated, to pay only the fixed rent, to demand a
receipt for every payment, to do no work for the landlords without
adequate payments, to use the water from the ponds free of charge,
to allow their live-stock to graze in forests and on other lands, etc.101
The Eka programme showed that its leadership consisted of
representatives of the tenants, but it did not put forward any
demands for radical changes in the system of land tenure. This
displayed the narrow outlook of its leaders. But the movement
went beyond the framework developed by the Eka platform. In
February and March 1922 it developed into a. vigorous peasant
warfare.
At the beginning of 1922, over a hundred peasants in the Hardoi
district (north-east of Lucknow) armed themselves with lathis and
stones and attacked the houses of the zamindars. The police
were called and they opened fire on the peasants. The peasants
resisted stubbornly and suffered serious losses. According to ‘The
Times’ of London, many were killed. Several days after these
events the Eka Union organised meetings in the Bara Banki (east
of Lucknow) district. The speakers openly advocated the expulsion
of the British and called for the killing of the chief of the district.102
The authorities took all steps to localise and suppress the
movement. Reinforcements of mechanised infantry were sent
270 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to Oudh. Lorryloads of troops and cavalry detachments moved

about all over the province. Mass arrests were made and the
courts were kept busy from morning till night.
The movement, however, had its weaknesses. The peasant
revolts were not united. The Eka movement covered only a few
of the Oudh districts. The platform of the peasants was not clearly
formulated. It did not go beyond the demand that the arbitrariness
of the landlords should be curbed, and it failed to advance the
slogan for the abolition of landlordism. The peasants were practical¬
ly unarmed and could not put up strong resistance for long against
the police who were armed to the teeth. All this made it possible
for the government to round up all the leaders and suppress the
Eka movement and also crush the peasant movement in other
districts of the United Provinces.

References

1 The widely known peasants’ upsurges in the latter half of the nineteenth
century were the Santhal rebellion of 1855 and the Deccan riots of 1875.
2 Bolshevism in India, Report by the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Home
Department, Proceedings, January 1921.
3 It is worth noting that the total rural indebtedness of undivided India in 1921
was estimated between Rs 500 crores and Rs 550 crores by a British civilian
in the Punjab, M L. Darling. (See H.D. Malaviya, Land Reforms in India,
New Delhi, 1954, p. 49.) With the passage of time the amount went on increas¬
ing It amounted to Rs 900 crores in 1930 according to the Central Banking
Enquiry Committee Report; the rates of interest than ranged up to 300 per
cent. In the United Provinces the total indebtedness up to 1930 was, according
to the UP Banking Enquiry Committee Report, Rs 125 crores. In undivided
Bengal the extent of rural indebtedness increased from Rs 100 crores in 1930
to Rs 150 crores in 1944-45 according to the Ishaque Report of the Government
of Bengal. (Cited by Bhowani Sen, Indian Land System and Land Reforms,
People’s Publishing House, Delhi, 1955, pp. 23-4.)
4 Documents of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, VoL 1, 1935,
p. 206 (one anna = 6.25 paise now).
5 Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, Allied Publishers, New Delhi, 1962,
pp. 52-3.
6 Ibid., p. 58.
7 Disturbance in the Rae Bareilly andFyzabad Districts, Home (Pol.) Department,
Proceedings February 1921, File Nos. 195-216-A, p. 10.
8 Ibid., p. 7.
9 For further study see V.V. Balabushevich and A M. Dyakov, ed.. A Contempo¬
rary History of India, People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1964, p. 79.
10 Nehru, op. cit., p. 53.
11 Ibid., p. 57.
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 271

12 Ibid., p. 59.
13 Ibid.
14 Instance quoted by Nehru, op. cit.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., p. 60.
17 Disturbance in Rue Bareilly and Fyzabad Districts, op. cit., p. 11.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 11.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.. 22.
22 Ibid., pp. 22-3.
23 Ibid., p. 8.
24 See the telegram No. 21-F, dated Lucknow, 7 January 1921, from the Chief
Secretary to the Government of the United Provinces, Home (Pol.) Depart¬
ment, op. cit., p. 8.
25 Ibid., p. 8.
26 Telegram No. 41-E, dated Lucknow, 9 January 1921, Ibid., p. 8.
27 Ibid., p. 9.
28 Nehru, Ibid., pp. 60-1.
29 Ibid. p 60.
30 Telegram No. 41-E, dated Lucknow, 9 January 1921, Ibid, p. 9.
31 Ibid., pp. 11-2.
32 Ibid., p. 11.
33 Ibid., p. 12.
34 Ibid., p. 3.
35 Ibid., p. 9.
36 Telegram No. 36, dated 13 January 1921, from Viceroy to the Secretary of
State, Home (Pol.) Department, pp. 9-10.
37 Ibid., p. 13.
38 Nehru, op. cit., p. 61.
39 Home (Pol.) Department, op. cit. No. 17, p. 20.
40 Ibid., p. 15.
41 Ibid., p. 19.
42 Ibid., p. 19.
43 Ibid., p. 12.
44 Ibid., pp. 16-7.
45 Ibid., p. 17.
46 Ibid., p. 22.
47 It is interesting to remember that one of the kisan leaders. Baba Ram Ghulam,
was contemptuously characterized as a ‘registered criminal pasi'. Likewise
other leaders were ‘also really men of bad character in disguise. The garb
of a fakir is. of course, very commonly adopted by a criminal’, thus stated J.C.
Faunthorpe, Commissioner, Lucknow Division, in his report sent to the
Government of United Provinces on 18 January 1921. (Ibid., p. 30.)
48 India in 1920. Government of India. Delhi, 1920, p. 181.
49 Disturbances in the Rae Bareilly, op. cit., p. 21.
50 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, File No. 11, 1921, p. 34.
51 Nehru, op. cit. p. 61.
52 Disturbances in the Rae Bareilly..op. cit., p. 1.
53 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, File No. 112, 1922, serial
nos. 1-8, p. 25.
54 Ibid., p. 26.
272 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

55 Disturbances in the Rae Bareilly..., op. cit., p. 12.

56 Home(Pol.) Department, op. cit, n. 53, p. 27.
57 Account based on the telegram sent on 22 March 1921s by the Chief Secretary
to the Government of the United Provinces, Home (Pol.) Department, Govern¬
ment of India, Proceedings, March 1921, File Nos. 334-9, pp. 3-4.
58 See the semiofficial letter from G.B. Lambert, Chief Secretary to the Govern¬
ment of the United Provinces, to the Home Secretary dated 24 March 1921,
Ibid., p. 2.
59 Riots in Rae Bareilly District: Application of the Prevention of Seditious
Meetings Act, 1911, to the Districts of Pratabgarh, Rae Bareilly, Sultanpur
and Fyzabad in the United Provinces; Ibid., p. 1.
60 Home (Pol.) Department, op. cit., n. 53, p. 27.
61 Report on the Political Situation in India during Fortnight Ending 30 April
1921, Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, Proceedings, June
1921, File No. 13, p. 35.
62 Ibid., File No. 63, p. 13.
63 Ibid., p. 41.
64 Ibid., File No. 46, p. 13.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., p. 14.
67 op. cit., n. 62, pp. 1-2.
68 op. cit., n. 64, p. 31.
69 Disturbances in the Rae Bareilly.. ,,op. cit., p. 27.
70 Ibid., pp. 19-20.
71 Quoted in S.N.A. Jafri, History and State of Landlords and Tenants in the
United Provinces, Allahabad, 1922, p. 181.
72 Ibid.
73 Memorandum Submitted by the Government of the United Provinces to the
Indian Statutary Commission, London, 1930, p. 77.
74 For further study see author’s monograph Political Background of Indian
Nationalism (1919-31), Vol. I.
75 Ibid.
76 See The Life of Nationalities, Moscow, 1922, No. 1/7, p. 12.
77 E.M.S. Namboodiripad, A Short History of the Peasant Movement in Kerala,
Bombay, 1943, p. 7.
78 The Indian Congress, 1920-23: A Collection of Resolutions Passed at the
Annual Sessions of the National Congress, Allahabad, AICC, 1924, p. 119.
Also see the Report of the Thirty sixth Indian National Congress Held at
Ahmedabad on 27 December 1921, p. 48.
79 P.C. Bamford, Histories of Noncooperation and KhilaJ'at Movement, Home
(Pol.) Department, Government of India, File No. 185, 1925, p. 73.
80 Ibid., 81.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.,%2.
83 Ibid., p. 145.
84 Nehru, op. cit., pp. 61-2.
85 Cited from the preface written by R. Ulyanovsky to the book: M.K. Gandhi,
My Life, Moscow, 1934, p. 19.
86 J. Degras (ed.). The Communist International (1919-43), Documents, II,
Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 13.
87 In later years both these communalist leaders continued to exercise their evil
 POST-WAR AWAKENING (1919-21) 273

influence upon Gandhiji. At the time of approval of the Nehru Report, Jayakar
and a host of others thwarted all attempts to achieve a timely and pragmatic
solution of the communal question. Shortly afterwards at the Second Round
Table Conference in 1931, Malaviya blocked the emergence of Gandhiji as
the undisputed leader of the Hindus and Muslims.
88 Home (Pol.) Department, Government of India, File No. 489, 1922, p. 34.
89 S.A. Dange, Gandhi vs. Lenin, Bombay, Liberty Literature Co., 1921. pp. 33-4.
90 Report of the Gaya Session of the Indian National Congress, 1922, p. 118.
91 E.M.S. Namboodiripad, The Mahatma and the Ism, People’s Publishing House,
1958, p. 30.
92 Brambord, op. cit. p. 63.
93 Ibid., 64.
94 Ibid.
95 The Indian Quarterly Register, Calcutta, Vol. II, July-December. 1927.
96 Brambord, op. cit., p. 64.
97 India in 1921, An annual Report Exhibiting the Conditions of India, Govern¬
ment of India Press, p. 100.
98 See The Times, London, 13 March 1922.
99 The Life of Nationalities, Moscow, 1922, No. 14/149, p. 14.
100 Statement Exhibiting the Conditions of India during the year 1922-3, Government
of India Press, p. 78.
101 See V. Moskalyov, The National Revolutionary Movement in India in 1919-22,
Historical Journal, Moscow, 1940, No. 2, p. 85.
102 See The Times, London, 1 March 1922.
—
 PART IV
Agrarian Struggles In
The Twenties And Thirties
 Introduction

(i)

Part IV contains four selections. It covers peasant struggles

during a crucial period in Indian history starting with the with¬
drawal of the non-cooperation movement in 1921-2 and ending
with India’s involvement in the World War II. The four selections
included in this part attempt to illustrate four different types of
peasant struggles emerging in India.
The first selection ‘Sreerama Raju's Uprising 1922-4 des¬
cribes in vivid detail the mighty uprising of the tribal population
in Andhra Pradesh against the imposition of forced labour intro¬
duced by the British bureaucracy to build roads and other constru¬
ction works in the forest and hills inhabited by the tribal population.
Unlike the tribal revolts described earlier, wherein the exploited
tribals under the leadership of charismatic tribal leaders launched
their struggles against moneylenders, forest contractors, zamindars
and others, this struggle was a direct confrontation with the Govern¬
ment. This struggle was led by a leader who under the influence
of the Gandhian approach of constructive reformist work and the
spirit of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, settled in a tribal
area. Moved by the horrible plight of the tribal population he was
soon disillusioned with Government policies. Initially he adopted
the Gandhian method of non-cooperation and civil disobedience
but was compelled by force of circumstance to lead one of'the most
bitter, fierce and heroic armed struggles of the tribal population
against the British.
Sreerama Raju's own evolution, his own involvement and leader¬
ship of the uprising, his method of struggle, the strategy of his
warfare, the selectivity in choosing the foes to be attacked, and the
various tactics as well as limitations of manoeuvres in the battlefield,
reveal a number of features of tribal struggles which were subse¬
quently to become general and more pronounced. This struggle
also revealed some of the major limitations which tribal revolts
278 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

were to experience if they were to be carried out without the support

of the larger non-tribal population and also without the backing
of the proletariat, which though small in number to a great extent
controlled the modern means of transport and communication
and could prevent the rulers from augmenting their armed forces
and supplying armaments necessary to quell the revolts.
The article clearly points out the following important trends
of development.
1. The intense exploitation and oppression of tribal population
was linked up with the colonial-capitalist matrix which was evolved
during the British period, revealing the law of uneven and combined
development of capitalism generated by the British.
2. The exploiters and oppressors were foreigners, Indian and even
a small section of the local tribal beneficiaries.
The response of tribal people was to initiate struggles which
became increasingly better organized under the influence of the
ideologies of class struggles in particular and Marxism in general.
3. The overwhelming majority of the tribal population were
transformed into landless labourers, share croppers, serfs or bonded
labourers chained to forest contractors, moneylenders, traders
and a small section of absentee landlords as a result of the operation
of laws of the market and the money economy.
4. The struggle of the tribal population therefore, either takes
on the forms of a separatist movement, for autonomous regions or
states if the leadership does not take to class struggle, or increasingly
becomes a part of the class struggle which develops into a wider
movement of agrarian revolution under the leadership of Marxist
parties.
5. The movements of the tribal population always transcended
the limits of non-violence imposed by Gandhian leadership, even
compelling some of the middle class leaders to break through
Gandhian-bourgeois formulas and adopt the path of revolutionary
class struggles.

(2)

The second article is selected from one of the most important

‘forgotten’ books on India. It is a report of a committee appointed
in Britain, under the chairmanship of Bertrand Russell to objectively
 INTRODUCTION 279

assess the situation in India which developed as a consequence

of the second nationalist movement described as Civil Disobedience
Movement launched in 1930 under the leadership of Mahatma
Gandhi. This movement passed through two phases the Salt
Satyagraha and Gandhi’s famous Dandi March was the beginning
of the first phase of the Civil Disobedience Movement and continued
till the Round Table Conference with Gandhi participating there
as the representative of the Congress, and subsequently suspending
it on the basis of agreement or truce with the British. The second
phase began with the failure of the Round Table Conference and
the return of Gandhi and subsequently his arrest by the British
who then placed the country under the Ordinance Raj. This phase
of the movement was more or less spontaneous—though in the
spirit of Civil Disobedience. The Commission visited India to
study the situation, toured the country, met and interviewed a
large number of governmental and other agencies and individuals
and submitted the report on the Condition of India to the British
public.
The selection reproduced here describes how the British launched
a wave of repression in village India and how the rural population
faced that terror in the process of conducting a struggle in the
form of No Tax, No Rent and Civil Disobedience to the laws
framed by the British Government.
The article shows:
1. How Gandhi and the Indian National Congress evolved strate¬
gies, forms and types of struggles to deepen the disaffection against
British rule within a reformist framework and without permitting
the peasants to initiate class struggle against the local exploiters.
2. How Gandhi and the Indian National Congress restricted the
call to a specific, limited strata, unlike the larger call given during
1921 days of non-cooperation.
3. How the Congress under guidance of Gandhi first unleashed
movements and then regulated them by restricting their scope.
Whenever the British showed willingness to negotiate with the
Indian bourgeoisie to inaugurate some constitutional reforms such
movements were formally withdrawn. It reveals how the leadership
was keen on adopting a policy of negotiation with the foreign rulers
to secure as much as possible in the transfer and sharing of power.
Thus the mass movements were used more and more as instruments
of pressure to strengthen their bargaining position.
280 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

4. The article also reveals how the British adopted an astute policy
of concession, counterpoise and coercion in handling the Indian
situation. However, while carrying on diplomatic maneouvres to
sustain the policy of negotiations with various sections of the
Indian propertied classes and political parties, the rulers adopted
brutally repressive measures to terrorize the masses both in rural
and urban areas.
5. The article also reveals how even the limited calls given by
Gandhi and the Indian National Congress unleashed gigantic
political ferment among the peasantry, deepened the anti-imperia¬
list consciousness in various strata of rural India and linked the
rural masses with the larger nationalist anti-British movement.
It also reveals that the peasant struggles once launched, took rapid
strides and transcended limits imposed by the Gandhian leadership.
It was crying for a more dynamic, more militant and more revolu¬
tionary leadership capable of providing programmes strategies
and tactics which would orient the energies of the exploited strata
on revolutionary, uncompromising, lines of class struggle.
6. The selection is included here to rectify an error which is com¬
mitted by a number of Marxist scholars, particularly after Indepen¬
dence, who try to either belittle the role of the Indian National
Congress and particularly Gandhi in unleashing peasant struggles
and stimulating a nationalist consciousness among the rural popu¬
lation. In their zeal to emphasize the comprador pro-feudal, pro¬
imperialist and "collaborationist nature of the Indian proprietory
classes, they ignore the oppositionist role of the Indian capitalist
class and its party. They also forget that the Indian National Con¬
gress representing the Indian bourgeoisie, from its infancy, had a
particular philosophy and pfogramme of involving the peasantry in
its anti-British struggle. They forget that after the emergence
of Gandhi as the leader of the Indian National Congress this pro¬
gramme became more crystalized, and fairly consistent, leading to
an elaborate organizational framework, comprized of institutional
structures, cadres and their training on reformist economic, cultural,
educational lines. Day to day political programmes which involved
the specific strata of the peasantry in the movements launched by
the Indian National Congress, prevented the peasantry from organi¬
zing struggles that would have transcended the limits of reformism
and taking to revolutionary militant class struggles.
 INTRODUCTION 281

A section of Marxist scholars have also ignored the fact that

the Gandhian strategy included many programmes which took
up the issues of securing relief to the poor peasantry, the tenants,
share croppers crd the exploited tribals as well as specially aggrieved
strata like the untouchables and the artisans of lower classes.
Further, some of the reformist pressure movements were launched
against the local exploiters, not to destroy the exploiting classes
but to extract from them some reforms and concessions. These
facts should not be ignored. They help us to evaluate properly
the way in which the Indian National Congress and Gandhi played
a specific and important role in launching a number of struggles
among the peasantry and thereby deepening the hold of the Indian
National Congress in the countryside.
7. It is necessary for a proper understanding of Indian history,
to grasp how the Indian bourgeoisie and its leadership headed by
Gandhi developed a philosophy and worked its programme of
action and strategy evolving other levels of leadership and organi¬
zations. It is true that this philosophy and strategy was basically
capitalist in the context of the needs of the bourgeoisie in a back¬
ward country—wanting not to smash semi-feudal and feudal
relations prevailing in the country, but definitely to mend, curb,
and ultimately to recondition them in a certain manner. They
did this without unleashing forces which might destroy their own
class existence, and which would help capitalist development in
the country after power is transferred to them.
8. It should also be recognized that by pointing out that the
grievances of the masses could be removed only if British political
control was eliminated, the Indian National Congress suceeded in
linking up the immediate demands to political demands and enabled
various exploited strata to lift their consciousness from immediate
local grievances to politico-structural causes, which subsequently
helped them to see their problems in the context of larger issues
of Socialism and Capitalism
Thus, even within Congress two currents emerged; one represent¬
ed by the orthodox and reformist Gandhians comprising the
constitutionalists and the leaders of reformist economic and political
movements, and the other represented by a pettie bourgeois wing
increasingly being attracted to Marxism, socialism and the policy
of pursuing class struggles, as revealed in the growth of Socialist
282 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and radical movements, developing youth, Kisan and worker’s

organizations and struggles against the local exploiters. This
category of leadership attempted to interpret the technique of
civil disobedience and non-cooperation evolved by Gandhi as
a particular technique of struggle suitable for developing class
struggles in India, and viewed the Indian National Congress as
a movement rather than a party of the bourgeoisie.
Though the present selection does not consciously highlight these
aspects, it does point out to the fact that the nationalist movement
under bourgeois leadership did generate political conciousness
and political movements among the peasants.

(3)

The third selection, ‘Agrarian Movements in Bengal and Bihar,

1919-39’ by Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, is ‘an attempt to study
such actions of one of the groups, the peasantry of Bengal and Bihar
in the period between 1919-39—their aspirations and struggles
in the context of particular economic and political developments,
the interaction of their “social radicalism” with the mainstream of
the nationalist movement, and the extent of their success’.
The article discusses the following aspects of this peasant move¬
ment. He begins with a criticism of the entire scholarly tradition
which underestimates and ignores the extent of peasant movements
in India, by pointing out how peasant movements have been a
constant feature throughout British rule from its inception.
Chaudhuri’s characterization, that peasant organizations and
peasant struggles suffered from certain major limitations deserves
notice. Peasant movements according to him were spontaneous
and arose mainly out of particular grievances. The peasant asso¬
ciations which emerged were mostly in the nature of local groups.
They were generally dissolved as soon as the issues round which
the movement burst out had been resolved. Furthermore, according
to him, by relating the peasants’ grievances to some fundamental
social and economic institutions the programme of action of the
rebel peasants provided the rebels with broad perspectives for their
movement. Chaudhuri states that the representatives of the zamin-
dars, unnecessarily and wrongly attributed radicalism to some
educated middle class elements who tried to organize the peasants
 INTRODUCTION 283

for eliminating some immediate grievance. Chaudhury also asserts

that ‘the nationalist movement led by Congress had in its early
phase an elaborate agrarian programme, but, could not provide
an appropriate philosophy’ for a broad based peasant movement.
His evaluation that some Congressmen occasionally took part
in peasant struggles and were accidentally involved in the peasant
movement, by pointing to Gandhi's participation in the Champaran
struggle and by quoting from Jawaharlal Nehru’s impressions
about the character of the Indian National Congress and its acti¬
vities prior to Gandhi's intervention, requires a closer examination
because the reality of the situation does not warrant such a con¬
clusion.
It is unfortunate that Chaudhuri is unable to see the philosophy
worked out by Gandhi through his experiments with the peasant
struggles in Champaran, Borsad, Kheda, and elsewhere and his
elaborate strategy and tactics of reaching out to the masses by
evolving organizations and by starting training centres for the
leadership to work among the peasantry. His chain of Ashrams and
other organizations attempted to reach out to the peasants by
providing them relief from their day to day economic and social
hardships. Chaudhuri also forgets how the Indian National
Congress launched a number of struggles for rectifying day to day
grievances, and through fasting, satyagrahas, civil disobedience
movements, put moral pressure on local exploiting classes, and also
educating and involving them in the non-violent pressure move¬
ments against the British.
Chaudhuri, while giving illustrations and evidence for such
approaches, hesitates to draw logical conclusions from his own
observations. For instance, as pointed out in an earlier article by
Sukhbir Choudhury as well as the article reproduced in the present
section from the Report on India by the Bertrand Russell Committee,
the role of Gandhi and the nationalist movement in involving the
peasantry in the political struggles and thereby politicizing them
and awakening them cannot be denied. Chaudhuri is unable to see
the profound significance of the struggles launched in the United
Provinces against the Oudh Talukdari System compelling the
Government to pass the Oudh Tenancy Act, by winning over
an upper section of the tenants against the zamindars and Talukdars.
Similarly he does not see the significance of the Tenancy Act of
284 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

1885—a consequence of the Patna uprising, wherein a class of

upper tenants and jotedars, get certain privileges and security
thus creating further insecurity for bargdars, and share croppers
belonging to the lower strata of tenants. The increasing support
which the Indian National Congress secured from the upper sections
of the tenants helped it to spread its influence in rural areas. This
section of tenants enabled the Congress to launch some reformist
pressure movements against zamindars, either to bring them to
‘change their hearts’ or to raise the slogan of removing the inter¬
mediaries and abolishing zamindari through a takeover of lands
not cultivated by them by paying compensation.
Similarly Chaudhuri underestimates the strategy of Gandhi
in his withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement after Chauri
Chaura. In fact, as indicated earlier, withdrawal of non-cooperation
movement under the pretext of the Chauri Chaura incidents became
a model for the strategies to be adopted later by Gandhi and the
Indian National Congress in involving the peasantry in the larger
national movement.
Similarly, Chaudhuri does not take note of the various movements
which sprang up in the country attempting to transcend the limits
laid down by the Indian National Congress. The Ekka movement,
movements in Andhra Pradesh, in Malabar and other places
reveal how gradually a new, more militant current of peasant
movements searching for alternative paths of agrarian as well as
anti-imperialist movement, were emerging through a realization
of the significance of Marxism in providing the possible alternative.
The article provides a brief but very illuminating account of
the spread of Marxist ideas among the peasants, particularly in
zamindari areas. It indicates how after the non-cooperation move¬
ment, the bourgeois leadership did not penetrate deeper into the
lower strata of tenants, and was afraid to start any militant pressure
movements of bargdars and lower strata of the cultivators and
share croppers.
Chaudhuri goes on to provide an excellent picture of the spread
of Marxist ideas crystalizing very soon in the formation of the
Peasants and Workers Party (1926-8). He tells us how the Party
developed a Marxist world outlook, and how the party was formed
as an alternative to the Congress approach for developing nationa¬
list movement to secure freedom. It is interesting to note that
 INTRODUCTION 285

The Peasants and Worker’s Party formulated its programme which

was 'Complete Independence from British imperialism and demo¬
cratic organization of society involving the nationalization of key
industries and appropriation of land without compensation’.
This programme was in contrast with the one formulated by the
Indian National Congress which still stood for Dominion Status
within the empire and upheld the principles of private property
in industry and trade. The Congress also stood for the payment of
compensation for securing land from the zamindars and did not
favour the abolition of zamindari.
Chaudhuri gives a vivid account of how the Party proposed
militant programmes for action and developed working class,
peasant and youth organizations to organize such movements.
He also gives an idea of how journals, leaflets and other types of
literature were prepared in regional languages to spread those
ideas.
He describes the rise of the Workers and Peasants’ Party and
points out its historic significance' as a symbol of an emerging
revolutionary Marxist alternative to the Indian National Congress,
providing a new philosophy, programme, strategy and tactics for
a peasant movement.
But Chaudhury, ignores the question of how this party
operated in the background of a vascillating Commintern
dominated by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under the
finally triumphant Stalinist leadership, shaping the major shifts
in positions taken by the Indian Communist Party. He also does
not mention the crucial developments which took place in India
during 1923 and 1933, compelling Congress to pass a resolution on
complete Independence at Lahore session and then subsequently
launching the Civil Disobedience Movement beginning with
Dandi March by Gandhiji. He also does not reveal how as a conse¬
quence of the spread of Marxist ideas and activities of the Marxist
groups, a powerful working class movement developed, leading
to one of the longest and disciplined, militant textile workers’
strikes in Bombay, the launching of Kanpur and Meerut Cons¬
piracy Cases and also the rise of a revolutionary terrorist movement
started by Bhagat Singh, Chandra Sekhar Azad and others, which
subsequently came under the influence of Marxism, and provided
a group of cadres to various marxist groups in the country.
286 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Chaudhuri also does not indicate the emergence of the Congress

Socialist section which brought together the younger and radical
elements within the Congress and launched more militant peasant
movements under the influence of Marxism.
However, after describing the emergence of the Peasants and
Workers’ Party, he switches over to the description of the develop¬
ment of objective conditions, particularly the impact of the great
economic critis of 1929-33 extending upto almost 1936-7 in India,
which created a fertile ground for the spread of militant peasant
movements as well as the spread of Marxist ideas within the move¬
ment.
Chaudhury’s description and portrayal of the rise of Kisan
Sabhas, culminating in an all-India Kisan Sabha, is valuable.
His description of the peasant struggles launched under the consci¬
ous direction of Kisan Sabhas in Bihar and Bengal, is extremely
vivid and gives a glimpse of a new, more radical alternative to the
peasant organisations operating in rural areas under the inspiration
of the Gandhian class collaborationist, reformist approach.
Chaudhuri reports with remarkable clarity how Kisan Sabhas
launched various struggles in Bengal and Bihar and how the
Congress leadership became alarmed at this growth particularly
after the withdrawal of the civil disobedience movement. The
Indian National Congress developed a hostile attitude towards
this emerging alternative and tried in various ways to weaken its
influence within its own structure and finally curb its growth as
an alternative force in rural areas. His account of the growth of
Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, from an idealist and deep humanist
into a leader of all-India stature, building up a powerful peasant
movement particularly in Bihar under the influence of Marxist
ideas of class struggle is highly instructive. His brief reference to
the all-India Kisan Sabha’s experiences of its weakening strength
which came as a consequence of its reliance on an upper section of
tenants and peasants also deserves careful attention. It raises a
highly significant question as to what factors led to such a distortion
in the movement and organization basically inspired by Marxist
ideas. Chaudhuri also carefully notes how different regional
communal political parties also tried to influence and lead peasant
struggles. He points out how these parties used communal senti¬
ments of the poor tenants and share-croppers. This phenomenon.
 INTRODUCTION 287

he observes, was quite prevalent in many areas of Bengal where

the tenants and share-croppers belonged to the Muslim com¬
munity and the landlords happened to be upper caste Hindus.

(4)

The fourth selection. The Damodar Canal Tax Movement’

by Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya in collaboration with Dipak Kumar
Das and Tarun Kumar Bannerjee is presented here to provide a
detailed description of a particular type of movement which develop¬
ed as a protest against a governmental measure directly affecting
every section of a rural community.
Indian social scientists, generally speaking, have not paid much
attention to a proper appraisal of the function of rains, rivers and'
irrigation through the canals, tanks, and wells in the life of the rural
population in particular and Indian society in general. The impor¬
tance of dams as means of taming flooding rivers, checking floods
and ensuring water supply to the fields particularly during the
periods of scarcity or drought has not adequately been appreciated.
The art of taming rivers, regulating their water and preventing
its waste or preserving it for supply in case of drought, has played
a significant role in Indian history. For a long time the British
neglected this function. This neglect was also partly responsible
for famines. But from the beginning of this century and more
particularly after World War I, the British Government endea¬
voured to build canals and dams to assure a certain amount of
water supply in case of drought and also to prevent the further
decay of agriculture which affected their revenue from land. The
Government also took steps in this direction to ensure the safety
of the roads, railways and other means of transport and com¬
munication built by them. This was deemed essential for the move¬
ment of troops, administrative personnel, goods, labour, and also
to ensure law and order in the country. Such steps were absolutely
essential for the collection of revenue and taxes and to provide for
the smooth flow of trade.
However, the financial burden involved in building and dams
and maintaining canals was generally passed on to the rural
population through various categories of taxes imposed in the
name of betterment levies and taxes. Sometimes, Acts in the name
288 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of regional or state development, like the Bengal Development Act,

were passed and people were asked to pay a development tax.
These policies of regulation of rivers and building of canals
acquired a special significance in a number of areas, particularly
in Punjab, U.P., Bihar, Bengal and Sind. The British government
undertook such measures, though spasmodically and insufficiently
and for different purposes, in different parts of the country. How¬
ever, the impact of these measures was fek by all sections of the
rural community and extended to other areas of life in the country
sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. The burden of taxes
fell on all strata of society, but its impact varied from one class to
another. Precisely for this reason the struggles organized by the
different sections of the rural community differed in methods and
objectives. The burden of these taxes was felt much more by the
poorer section of the peasantry as compared to the upper section
of the peasantry. The upper section wanted to create a basis of
compromise with the government after launching a struggle,
whereas the exploited strata of the peasantry wanted to continue
the struggle till the total withdrawal of these tax measures.
Such struggles emerged more significantly from the twenties
and acquired greater and greater importance in India, not only
during the British period, but also after Independence. Struggles
against the state, which imposed various kinds of taxes for providing
canals and dams for irrigation and realized betterment levies in
the name of developmental programmes, grew sharper from the
twenties and became more intense after Independence. The State
imposed heavier financial burdens on the lower strata of peasantry
to such an extent that in most of the cases they could not even
take advantage of these facilities.
Prof. Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya’s selection acquires importance
for a number of reasons
1 It gives a meticulously detailed account of various strategies
adopted by the government and the various associations which were
involved actively in the struggle against the government.
2 It also familiarizes us with various categories of organizations,
and associations trying to develop movements, and thus gives us
an idea of how in rural areas a number of associations—national,
provincial, regional, secular, communal—were operating and
shaping peasant struggles. It also indicates how the phenomenon
 INTRODUCTION 289

of provincial autonomy and the demands of electoral politics at

state legislature level and at the level of ministry formation were
important political factors. These factors have a direct link with
the different types of activities going on in rural areas in which
different political parties and groups are engaged. The only objective
of these parties and groups is to gain influence among the peasantry
for electoral success.
3 It also acquaints us with the important individuals and leaders
who were to play significant roles in providing leadership to the
future political movements in Bengal.
4 It gives an intimate account of how in the course of struggles,
different groups representing different classes of peasantry, acquire
prominence and leadership, how they hesitate to go beyond a
particular level, how they withdraw and subsequently compromise
with the government.
5 It also gives some idea of the complexity of political stances
which different political parties took in two different situations:
one when they secured a majority in the assembly and formed
ministries, and the other when they were forced to be in opposition.
6 It also indicates how a proper comprehension of the politiciza¬
tion of the peasantry and various other classes within rural areas,
requires an understanding of the interplay of various political forces
and associations, and their links with different strata of rural and
urban communities.
The pattern discernible is one which has continued to this day,
.he peasantry (the lower strata) is organized for partial demands
as a pressure group for the advantage of the upper strata and then
dispensed with when the limited aim of securing political position
or some economic benefit of the latter is ensured.
This article though valuable in a number of ways, would have
gained in depth if it had examined the class strategies involved in
*he actions of various organizations and parties.
The article should have pointed out why the Congress, and the
Kisan Sabha under the leadership of the Communist Party behaved
as they did at the end of the struggle. It should have pointed out how
the underlying strategies behind this behaviour had far reaching
implications in terms of shaping the future movements of
the peasantry during the World War and post independence periods.
Inspite of the limitations mentioned above, this selection is highly
290 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

important for drawing our attention to a struggle over an issue

which is of vital significance. We believe a number of struggles
must have developed in other parts of the country around this issue.
The need of the hour is to record them systematically.
 16 Sreerama Raju’s Uprising—
-1922-24:

V. Raghavaiah

The third revolt of the Andhra Pradesh tribals against their

Indian exploiters and incidentally against the armed forces of the
British Government, took place in 1922 and lasted till March
7th, 1924 on which day the saint warrior Alluri Seerama Raju was
brutally murdered under the orders of an uncivilised brute, one
Major Goodall, by his equally unscrupulous Jemadar of the East
Coast Special Police, Kunchu Menon. This was perhaps the longest
war waged on the Indian soil between Indian freedom fighters and
their alien exploiters—the British. The leaders of the freedom
struggle were Shri Alluri Sreerama Raju, a Kshatriya youngman
from Mogallu in the district of West Godavari. The immediate
cause of the uprising was the extraction of free forced labour from
the tribal people of the Andhra Agency for constructing a highway
penetrating thick jungles and across low hills from Narsipainam
to Chintapalli. A Tahsildar, by name Bastion, well-known for
his tenacity and roughness, was posted to implement this rather
hard work. Bastion soon realised that he could not justify his
appointment without taking stringent measures to secure local
labourers for doing the road work. He began to insist on forced
labour from the Koyas who lost no time in resisting the demands.
Force was employed by Bastion and this worsened the situation
further. He attached the plough cattle of the tribals, stopped the
inflow of foodstuffs from outside for the use of the people and took
recourse to violent methods for achieving his objects.
By this time. Sreerama Raju who gave up his high school studies
and took to a life of meditation and prayer when he was only eighteen
years old, had arrived in these woods and was living nice a hermit
in one of the tribal villages. As he evinced much interest in the well¬
being of the simple, unsophisticated Koya people, the latter sought

Reproduced from 'Tribal Revolts' by V. Raghavaiah op. cii. pp. 35-50.

292 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

his help in escaping from the exactions of the unscrupulous road

builder.
Those were the days of non-cooperation and civil disobedience,
preached by Mahatma Gandhi. The saint from Mogallu cited
Gandhiji’s preachings and asked them to non-cooperate, with the
result that his advice was immediately accepted and word was
passed from one end to the other of the A.P. Agency to resist all
demands on their labour. The British authorities who were struggl¬
ing hard to suppress Mahatmaji’s country-wide agitation scented
greater dangers in allowing a tribal revolt to have its way in the
Agency areas, in view of the previous experiences the British had
had in the Rampa country, as well as in the Santhal Parganas and
from the Birsites in Bihar. The revolt which was already in the blood
of the Koya and the Konda Reddy burst forth and the entire
Agency country from one end to the other was ablaze with insur¬
rection. The record below briefly shows the march of events as
they took place from day to day as well as the repercussions the
struggle had on the alien rulers who were ill-advised by their panic-
stricken Indian employees.
Sreerama Raju was a student of yoga and astrology and he was
not interested in the material prospects, having been dedicated to
the life of a recluse and a seeker of Divine grace. He hardly deserved
the appellation of‘bandit and malcontent’ attributed by the Govern¬
ment officials. He was generous to a fault and listened to the
grievances of the simple Koya men and women, with remarkable
patience and purposeful sympathy. He was a votary of non-violence
and was keen on following the Gandhian path, even in solving the
tribals’ grievances and facing a ruthless enemy. It may be even
said that when he took up the leadership of the Koyas he least
imagined that the agitation would develop into such huge propor¬
tions that would involve the entire Agency tribal world from
Bhadrachalam to Parvatheepuram, and would last for over two
years, despite the combined military and police forces drawn from
all the adjacent States and the Frontier Rifles to boot. In fact, the
agitation led by the Raju did not take a violent turn till the latter
stages of the agitation, when he could not control the thousands
that flocked to fight under his banner, from taking to retaliatory
methods to meeting the brutal assaults and insults of despicable
armed men.
It is clear from the official records that at no time had Raju
 SREERAMA RAJU’S UPRISING— 1922-24 293

wielded the weapon and released a bullet or an arrow against the

intruding forces. He is reported to have strictly instructed his
followers not to take even a single Indian combatant’s life, but
inflict punishment only upon the foreign enemy. His instructions
were so meticulously followed that when a combined force of
Indians and Europeans was moving along the serpentine mountain
paths, his followers would let go the Indian part of the fighting
line unattacked but aim only at the European sergeants and com¬
manders. His attacks on the police situations showed a remarkable
self-control, for as soon as Raju’s force were spotted, the police
would surrender their arms and retreat to safety. This may be due
to a spate of rumours believed by his followers as well as his Indian
opponents, that the Raju possessed magical powers which would
turn bullets into water and that the persons of Raju and his followers
were immune to danger, a belief curiously shared in all the numerous
struggles of the tribesmen against the Britishers throughout India.
It may also be due to a patriotic reverence the Indian constable
had for the saint-leader, that no resistance was offered in any one
of the numerous encounters the Raju had with the Government
officers and police stations.
To characterise the Raju’s struggle for freedom as ‘not so much
a popular rising’ and to state that his movement had only sporadic
support, is to close one’s eyes to the immense suffering endured for
over two years continuously, by a hundred thousand forest folk
at the hands of the vicious Malabar special police, noted for their
unbridled curelty, and the Assam Rifles and to ignore the long¬
standing and deeply-rooted discontent the exploited Koyas and
Reddis were forced to entertain against the non-tribal money¬
lenders and their own Muttadars.
The following day-to-day events that occurred during the two-
year-old struggle may give a fairly accurate pen-picture of the
Raju’s famous fight, from the pen of the celebrated historian and
scholar, Sri M. Venkatarangaiah Garu of Hyderabad:
‘Raju was bom in 1897. He visualised the Agency struggle as
a political movement to first rid the Agency of the British rule by
resorting to guerilla warfare, on the lines of the great Maharashtra
hero-ruler, Sri Chatrapati Sivaji Maharaja, and later extend the
movement throughout the country. Raju was interested from his
boyhood in riding, and medicinal herbs, and was a keen student
294 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and believer in the science of Astrology and Yoga. At the age of

18 he became a Sanyasi, wandered in the hills of the Agency and
acquired the ability to tame wild animals. He soon gained the
confidence and admiration of the tribal people who credited him
with magical powers.
‘Sri Raju joined the Non-cooperation Movement of 1921,
organised Village Panchayats, was placed under police surveil¬
lance by the Government authorities, but later secured relaxation
from the surveillance and freedom of movement and then wanted
to visit Nepal. He was never a believer in non-violence, though
he was a scrupulously austere vegetarian, and had never been
known or seen wielding a weapon, though some attributed this to
him in the last days of the struggle. Even if it were true, it must
have been a measure of defence against the British forces. He was
convinced that to achieve freedom from a foreign rule he had no
other alternative except to choose the path of violence.
‘Sri Raju worked upon the usually well-known grievances of
the people against forest authorities. Namely, the restrictions
placed by the forest officials on the wasteful cultivation of ‘Podu’,
the slash and burn method by the tribals which even now consti¬
tutes a chief factor of tribal discontent; the forest rules and restric¬
tions which are still an eye sore for the tribal people as well as
farmers inhabiting villages bordering on Reserved forests, through¬
out the country; the high-handed misbehaviour of one. Bastion,
the then Tahsildar of Gudem, who was provoking the tribals
every day by enforcing free forced labour on them for constructing
the Narsipatnam-Chintapalli Agency road. It is the opinion of the
British officials that “Raju had the courage and influence to work
on this combustible material”.’

2 -8-1922— Cliintapalli Police Station raid:

3v0 strong, Raju raided the Chintapalli Police Station. The
attack yielded 11 guns, 1,390 rounds of ammunition, 5 swords
and 14 bayonets.

23-8-1922—K.D. Pet Police Station raid:

He gave advance warning to the Krishnadevipet Police Station
arid surrounded it. The police surrendered and all left the station
and fled before the Raju’s arrival.
 SREERAMA RAJU’S UPRISING— 1922-24 295

Rajavommangi Police Station raid:

Some resistance was offered here by the police force. Raju’s force
overpowered the police. This raid was undertaken by Raju to
release Veerayya Dora, who earlier in 1918 took part in an uprising
against the Government, known as the Lagurayi rebellion, and
was arrested and imprisoned but escaped and was re-arrested.
Raju rescued him in his onslaught and there after Veerayya became
his right hand supporter in the entire freedom struggle.
In this raid Raju’s forces seized 8 carbines, 825 bald cartridges.
About the same time Gam Gantam Dora and Gam Mallu Dora
also became his able lieutenants.
Raju now extended his operations to other Agency parts and
gathered more men and arms and built up a system of able espionage
and propaganda. He employed able and elusive couriers to convey
messages across the jungles from place to place. Their activities
were so carefully concealed that they wrung admiration from the
British forces.
The Government retaliated by posting Keene, Dawson, Saunders
and Scott Coward at Narsipatnam, Addatigala, Krishnadevipeta
and Chintapalli as their headquarters to quell the revolt.

Raju s victories
First encounter: ongeri Ghat was the first place where Raju routed
the Government forces and celebrated his first victory on 3-9-1922.
A second clash: occurred on the same day between the Raju’s
forces and those of Tremenhere in the course of which Tremenhere
was seriously wounded. Sri Raju’s forces were commandeering
their supplies from Koya villages.
A third clash: occurred between the two forces while the Raju
was engaged in the worship of ‘Kali’ at Dharakonda when the
special police party tried to attack him but failed. This incident
endowed Raju with divine powers and raised his esteem in the eyes
of the tribals.
The fourth encounter: occurred at Damanapalli Ghat. The battle
raged fiercely here. While the police were descending the ghats
four miles long, Raju ambushed them, only after allowing the
Indian police to pass through unhurt. He then attacked the rear
section consisting of Europeans. In this fight, Rayter and Scott
296 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

who were commanding the regiment were both shot dead and four
other policemen killed. Six (303) rifles and several cartridges
and bayonets were seized.
The fifth battle took place down the hill and the police were
repulsed according to the Agency Commissioner’s report. This
battle changed the method of the attack as Raju’s men were employ¬
ing guerilla tactics, which were more successful in this particular
terrain.
Despite three notorious man-eaters prowling around and the
equally tenacious armed police engaged in combing operations,
Raju’s forces were more than a match for the military who, with
their heavy equipment, could not cope with the quick movements
and the unfamiliar tracks used by Sri R'aju’s soldiers. The Com¬
missioner's report stated: ‘The Raju had better spies than our men,
the hide and seek tactics were all in their favour. The strategy
adopted by Raju is indeed far superior.’
At this stage the Agency Commissioner in charge of the opera¬
tions realised the inadequacy of the special police and urgently
appealed for military aid as well as the Malabar Special Police
force. Emphasis was laid by him on being on the defence and not
get lost on foraging moves, as Raju had better advantages in the
wooded country than the Government forces.
The sixth encounter: took place on 29th and 30th September
1922, Raju’s men raided Turamamidi and Lakkavarapupeta and
captured the Sub-Inspector of Police. The Commissioner proceeds
with the following description about Raju in that incident:
‘Raju was sitting on a cot surrounded by seventy men with an
automatic pistol by his side. The captured Sub-Inspector was
warned riot to repeat his spying activities and let off. The S.I.
prostrated before Raju when questioned by him about the move¬
ments of one, Pathi, whom Raju vowed to kill...’
The seventh encounter: took place on 12-10-1922 when Raju
attacked for the seventh time the Government forces at Addatigala
and Rampachodavaram. The police retreated. At Chodavaram
Raju sent for the Tahsildar and expressed regret that he was
handicapped in shooting the British troopers as they were usually
mixed up and accompanied by the Indian soldiers. He did not want
to take away the lives of Indians even by accident.
 SREERAMA RAJU’S UPRISING— 1922-24 297

18-10-1922: Mr Bracken, the Collector, in his report remarked:

‘The situation was pretty serious, this must tell seriously on the
prestige of the Government.’
21-10-1922: ‘N.C.Os. (Non-cooperators) were sympathising with
Raju. The attacks at Addatigala and Rampachodavaram told on
our prestige.’
The Commanding Officer’s remarks were as follows:
‘The Raju’s Intelligence Department is very able. All that we
receive from our intelligence force is only false news set aflot by
Raju to mislead us. His military movements are very intelligently
planned. His camps are always carefully chosen, easy for escape
if attacked.’
3-11-1922: Makavaram: The Raju captured Nityananda
Patnaik, a Sub-Inspector and released him.
17-11-1922: Chapartipalem and Rampolu were raided by the
Raju’s forces.
29- 11-1922: ‘We have learnt some lessons,’ said the Commander.
30- 11-1922: Anantasagaram and Velagapadu were raided by
Raju.
The eighth encounter: took place on 6-12-1922. This is the first set¬
back for the Raju. The rebels were surprised at Peddagaddapalem.
The engagement between the two lasted for one hour. Raju was
wounded and escaped. The following arms were seized from the
Raju: nine Police muskets, two 303 rifles, 748 rounds of ammunition,
17 bayonets, six Police swords, Raju’s bed and kit and miscellane¬
ous articles.
The ninth encounter: (Raju’s second reverse) on the same day.
These two disasters occurring on the same day lost Raju his in¬
fluence, though not his popularity, as claimed by the Commander of
the Government forces. On the head of Raju, a price of Rs 1,500/-;
against the Gam brothers, Rs 1,000 each; against Veerayya,
Rs 1,000; and for each of the other rebel leaders, Rs 50/- each
were announced and for some months there after, Raju’s movements
were not known. The freedom fighters moved farther into the in¬
accessible jungle recesses like Peddavalasa, Gudem, Dhara Konda,
Gurthedu. Every attempt was made to demoralise Raju’s forces.
Government Commanding Officer commenced several measures
to destroy their morale and even surreptitiously supplied them
298 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

through obliging intermediaries large quantities of intoxicants

and drinks.
4-2-1923: The Commanding Officer made the following remarks:
‘No rebel movements known from Kiravu to Gudem. It is getting
impossible to obtain information about Raju, and those harbouring
him.’
Bracken then ordered the prosecution of several village officers
for harbouring Raju and suppressing information about his
movements.
16-2-1923: Police captured 4 rebels.
March 1923: Government concluded that all villages below
the ghats had deserted the Raju and there was no likelihood of
rejoining him. They also resolved to send back the Malabar Police,
wireless, and mule transport, the intelligence squad, and the medical
outfit and decided to retain 300 police only.
Raiding of Anantagiri near Lagurayi which encouraged Raju
to re-commence his activities.
The tenth clash: on 18-4-1923: Raju appeared at Annavaram
Police Station suddenly. No arms were recovered as they were
removed by the Deputy Tahsildar. A Sub-Inspector of Police and
Postmaster took Raju to their houses; women washed his feet
and sprinkled the water on their heads.
The eleventh raid: occurred at Sankhavaram. A similar reception
was given to the Raju here also. The Government levied a collective
fine of Rs 4,000/- on this village. The Government concluded that
the support to Raju was once’again growing as strong as before.
The Raju’s men collected supplies from the people.
The twelfth clash: Gantam Dora appeared at Koyyuru, captured
the Sub-Inspector and Deputy Tahsildar, beat them and released
them. He also burnt the forest rest house. He also narrated the
misdeeds of Bastion. He said, i aimed my gun at Onjeri ghat
against Bastion but narrowly missed him, fortunately for him.
Either he should die or I should die.’ He then prostrated before the
Brahmin Tahsildar as a mark of respect.
15-6-1923: Kondakambedu and Malkangiri: Raju summoned
the Tahsildar and gave him an idea of his plans.
Raju wore a turban, long shirt and knickers—all of red coloured
khaddar. He had stockings and boots also. He had a flowing beard
 SREERAMA RAJU’S UPRISING— 1922-24 299

and was followed by Aggi Raju (probably alias for Pericherla

Suryanarayana Raju of Kumudavalli), lieutenant of the Raju.
He also wore red khaddar.
Raju always spoke in Telugu. He praised Gandhiji and vowed
to continue his campaign till Swaraj was established. The Tahsildar’s
statement stated, ‘Raju bragged of bullet-proof powers. He selected
auspicious days based on astrology for his fights. He wanted
to visit Rajahmundry and recruit forces and to get help from
Punjab.’
21-6-1923: The Raju visited Avulu and carried two spies with
him. Raju built a concealed military camp 58 yards from the
Government post near Gudem to be used whenever occasion
demanded.
14-8-1923: Raju visited several villages and collected rice and
provisions for his army.
The thirteenth encounter: 2-9-1923: Raju attacked but he
retreated. The punitive police withdrew in September.
17-9-1923 & 18-9-1923: Gam Mallu Dora was captured at
Nadimpalem while hiding in a bamboo paddy container on an
attack. Mallu Dora was the most dangerous hero among the
Raju’s lieutenants.
The fourteenth encounter: 20-9-1923: Raju attacked Gangaraju
Madugula.
The fifteenth clash: 22-9-1923: Raju visited Paderu, raided it
and moved towards Padua.
14-10-1923: Raju camped at Tokarayi.
It is clear from the above narration of events as corroborated
by the State records, that from the beginning the struggle of the
Raju was an unequal fight. Once again the bow quailed before the
bullet. It was indeed impossible for the impoverished, semi-starving,
simple Koyas to fight a long-drawn battle with the well-organised,
richly-fed, powerfully-armed, numerous forces of the British
Government. Owing to a complete encirclement of the Agency
forces by the military, cutting off all the communications between
the tribals and non-tribal people of the State, obstruction caused
to all supplies of food and materials into the Agency, the tribals
were reduced to misery and starvation. The few guns they snatched
from the police stations had no ammunition. The loss of the few
300 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

battles by the Raju towards the end of September 1923 dispelled

the till now unshaken belief in the magical powers of the Raju
to ward off a disaster. The simple tribal men and women got panicky
in the face of mounting disasters. They had killed every available
domesticated animal for sustaining their life, and at last a stage
came when they lost all their offensive and had to be content with
a defensive hiding which naturally demoralised them. The capture
of leaders one by one, and the wounding of the great Raju quickly
lowered their morale. Having scented this plight of the tribals,
the Government forces got emboldened to make more raids into
the tribal hamlets and molest men and women, destroy their crops
and inflict untold miseries on them. This resulted in streams of
men and women heading to the Raju for advice and encouragement
and shelter. Even Raju got unnerved, not due to fear for his life,
but owing to his sorrow at the plight of his followers. In a moment
of desperation and supreme sacrifice, the noble Raju thought
that he could stop the rout and bring relief to thousands of his
followers by surrendering himself to the enemy and bring an end
to the struggle.
With this object in view, Raju after offering his prayers, with a
small cane in his hand, wended his way along the course of narrow
hill stream towards Koyyuru, the roadside headquarters of Major
Goodall. Being an educated and highly cultured noble man, the
Raju thought that he would be meted out the same treatment as
was due to a prisoner of war and least expected that he would be
murdered most unceremoniously and cruelly in cold blood. As it
was already daylight, Goodall’s Jemadar of the East Coast Special
Police, arrested him and produced him before his Major at village
Mampa. By that time a large gathering of the neighbouring villages
was on the scene. An altercation ensued between Raju, now a
handcuffed prisoner standing against the roadside tamarind tree
and Major Goodall chuckling over what he thought was a windfall,
for which he was striving his best all these months. It is learnt
that in the course of this wordy battle, the Major was rude and
insulted Raju and was getting ready to shoot him, whereupon the
latter remonstrated that he was a prisoner of war and that the
Major had no right to kill him. He wanted to be produced before
Mr. Bracken who was the Collector or the Commanding Officer,
 SREERAMA RAJU’S UPRISING— 1922-24 301

so that he might be legally dealt with. Goodall taunted him that'

he was not going to provide him an opportunity to try his luck in
law courts and drew out his pistol threatening to shoot Raju.
On second thoughts he directed Kunchu Monon to shoot Raju,
which order was carried out immediately. Thus ended the life of
a great man whose unparalleled patriotism and intense devotion
to the suffering humanity had led him to unprecedented martyrdom.
Yendu Padal, an associate of Raju was killed on 26-5-24, by
two villagers. On 7-6-24, Gantam Dora, right hand man of Raju
lost his life in a skirmish with the police. By September 1924,
the revolt was all over.
The Andhra Provincial Congress Committee dropped a resolu¬
tion glorifying the Raju’s leadership and exploits as smacking of
approval of violence.
In the Madras Legislative Council a demand was made for
ascertaining the causes of the tribal revolt. Sri C.R. Reddy pleaded
(as a member of the said Council prior to Raju’s death) for putting
down the ‘fithuri’ (revolt) first and embark upon the enquiry
thereafter. All the speakers demanded the suppression of the revolt
but also condemned the violence and excesses of the police authori¬
ties against the tribal people.
The revolt under Srirama Raju’s leadership is similar to the
previous revolts of Santals, Mundas, Gonds and Bhils in that all
of them were provoked by genuine grievances against Government
officials who were unimaginative and wooden. All the three were
major revolts in which thousands of tribals took part actively and
staked their all for securing freedom from official interference and
oppression. In all these revolts the leaders paid the extreme penalty
of death. All the leaders were quite selfless and gave their all for
the emancipation of their fellow tribesmen. In all these uprisings
supernatural powers were claimed by the leaders so as to act as
powerful stimulants in inspiring their followers and not for selfish
aggrandisement. The after effects of all these revolts were crushing
and disastrous lo the defeated tribals. Coming to points of contrast
the Sarital, Munda, Gond and Bhil revolts were sparked off by
agrarian grievances caused by money-lenders and petty Muttadari
Zamindars while the immediate cause of the Raju-led revolt was
the enforcement of forced labour which the tribals resented. The
prior Rampa revolt of the Reddis was purely dynastic in nature,
302 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

in which the tribals played only a secondary part. The leader of the
1922-4 revolt was a non-tribal person of high prestige while the
leaders of the Santals and Mundas were ordinary tribals, whose
transparent sincerity and spirit of self-sacrifice were the sole moti¬
vating forces in attracting to the banner of revolt, thousands of
followers from almost every corner of their respective tribal lands.
As conceded by even his own opponents, Raju was a leader of
great organising calibre, skilful strategy and commanding talent
while the same cannot be said of Birsa Bhagwan, the Munda
leader, Kanu and Sidu, leaders of the Santals, though on that
account the latter were not even a whit behind Raju in patriotism,
purity of character and courage in facing danger at great personal
risk. Munda, Santal, Bhil, and Gond insurrections were short¬
lived and much simpler than the two year-old continuous struggle
of the Raju, which kept the British army successfully at bay. The
battle fronts of the Koyas and Reddis were located in steep ravines,
narrow winding mountain paths and thick jungles and fought in
the guerilla patterns in the jungle terrain, unlike the fights of the
Santals and Mundas, who tried to fight pitched battles with their
opponents.
As a direct result of all those struggles costly lessons were learnt
by the foreign rulers and the result was a grant of special treatment
to the Agency people for development, as a compensatory measure
for past neglect and a realisation on the part of the authorities
that the tribal required a protective approach rather than a mere
administrative one. This led to the separation of tribal legislation
and tribal welfare from the Central and the State Legislatures,
State Courts and State Cabinet authority and placing the same
in the hands of the State Governors, who could make laws or
regulations to suit the well-being of tribals and be responsible to
none except the President of India.
 17 Village Repression
by British Rulers

Report of India League Delegation in 1932

*.. .Upon the whole, the police have acted splendidly. They have acted often
under the greatest provocation. They have acted against tremendous odds
at great risk to their own lives and to the lives of their own families, and
they have acted, speaking generally, with admirable restraint and conspicu¬
ous moderation.'
(Sir Samuel Hoare, Parliamentary Debates, 29th February, 1932.)
‘Hereafter the Members of the Legislative Assembly, especially those
who live in villages, will be at the mercy of the village officers and village
chaprasis_Hereafter, we, M.L.A.’s, will have to play to the tune of these
village officers, and hereafter, we M.L.A.’s will have to keep the village
officers in good humour lest we should come under the provisions of this
clause. Not only we have to humour the village officer, but also his relatives
and any member of his family_By this enactment what the Government
are going to do is to terrorise Indians and to terrorise our souls. Government
talks of terrorism in India, but who are the real terrorists in this country?
It is the Government who are the real terrorists in this country.’
(Uppi Saheb Bahadur, M.L.A. (Moslem), Legislative Assembly Debates,
24th November, 1932.)

(I) What the Peasant Thinks

The avowed purpose of the Ordinance rule is ‘to prove that Civil
Disobedience cannot succeed against the organised resources of
the State.’1 In actual operation, the vast powers given to the exe¬
cutive and Police and Revenue officials have been used on a large
scale, and with little restraint, against masses of the people. Its
aim, and its effect, after many months of continuous repression,
has been to terrorise the villager either into submission or into
sullen discontent. In the village, the struggle between Government
and Congress is more acute than in the town and city, it affects
a larger percentage of people, in any given area, and it is more grim.
Reproduced from Conditions in India, Report of India League Delegation, 1932,
(Chairman Bertrand Russell), pp. 352-84
304 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

In cities like Bombay or Ahmedabad, while both resistance and

repression have been determined, large sections of the people
are still outside the ranks of the actual combatants. In the village,
however, owing to its more homogeneous character, its village
sense, and the character of Ordinance and Police methods, the
village as a whole is terrorised, suppressed or fighting. Some features
of Ordinance rule and Police excesses and their results are similar
to what obtains in the urban areas, and we do not propose to
multiply instances of such.

Principal Features
Among the items that, in our view, merit special attention and are
discussed in the successive sections of this chapter are:
(a) Village Opinion.
(b) Village Resistance.
(c and d) Pun*dve measures and excesses.
' The Consequences of the Repression.
Men and women have allowed their ancestral lands to be pillaged
and sequestrated, their houses looted and their furniture to be
broken up, when a formal apology or some indication that they were
opposed to Congress would have obviated all this and in addition
brought them material advantages.

Bardoli
The villages have persisted in their resistance. Bardoli is a typical
instance. The Government point to it as a success. Mr. Clee, of
the Bombay Government, who did not appear to share the facile
assumption that ‘Congress is crushed,’ pointed to Bardoli and
said rents are coming in. The Collector of Surat claims a success
in that he has collected revenue in Gandhi’s own Bardoli. It is
true that in 1932 Government collected revenue from the Taluka.
We shook off our police shadows when we went into the villages
of the Taluka and saw things for ourselves.
Bardoli has maintained its resistance for over a decade. During
this period it has seen repression of the worst kind. Once, when the
issues involved were investigated by Government, the findings
justified the position taken by the villagers and Government revenue
policy was found to be in the wrong. To-day, part of its lands have
been sold to outside capitalists, who have bought them for ridiculous
prices. They are, of course, the Government’s men, not villagers.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 305

Some of the inhabitants have left the village rather than pay.
There are still others who have allowed themselves to be reduced
to beggary rather than yield. Houses remain sealed, and crops,
as at Ras, cannot be reaped.

The Village and Politics

The Simon Commission expressed the view that ‘while abstract
political ideas may leave him (the villager) unaffected, the persona¬
lity of a leader, such as Mr. Gandhi, will make a great appeal.’
The Commission also says that ‘the politically minded in India
are only a tiny minority, but they may be able to sway masses of
men in the countryside.’
The assertions are true in a measure. The masses are behind
the politically-minded, but we did not find them apathetic to the
great issues before the country. They were illiterate but by no
means unintelligent, or unreceptive to ideas. The awakening in
the villages is no doubt to a great extent due to personalities like
Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Vallabhai Patel, Purshottamdas
Tandon, Jawaharlal Nehru. Kellapan, and others. But these men
have made their appeal on the basis of ideas and facts. Not all of
them have an all-India or international reputation, nor are all
of them reputed for the saintliness that Mr. Gandhi has.
We tested for ourselves in a number of places the extent to which
the villager has appreciated the issues, and understood the causes,
in the pursuit of which his property and person is being subjected
to losses and risks. In a Madras village, we spent quite a long time
in questions and cross-examination of villagers, individually and
in a gathering, and in talking with the village official. We found
that the economic and social issues were very live ones. We heard
about poverty, taxation, foreign exploitation, neglect of education
and all the other factors that are at the back of India’s resistance.
We found out that the villagers knew what the Congress stood for,
and also that they had no illusion about the enormity of the task
before the country. They knew it would mean suffering, perhaps
for a long time.

Swaraj
We went on to talk about Swaraj and why they wanted it. We%
suggested in great detail that their conditions would be better if‘
they had more schools, roads and other facilities, if their taxes
306 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

were lightened, and that to win Swaraj was merely a political

business. We expected this to go down and to be told that the
material improvements we suggested were all that they really
wanted. Instead, an old man who was a working agriculturist
himself, told us that Swaraj was a matter of self-respect, freedom,
and self-power.2 Also he felt quite sure that without ‘self-power’
the conditions which we had mentioned would not be obtained.

Economic Issues
In Allahabad the peasantry, who showed us their crops, which
they said were ‘all grass and no grain this year,’ knew how, ulti¬
mately, the economic plight was connected with politics. We were
pointedly asked, in a village near Allahabad, why rents of landlords
should be collected by a policeman, and whether a body of people
who did not fight obtained anything for themselves. It was also a
revelation to us that the Indian peasantry, who are so dependent
on the monsoon and the bounty of nature, who still cultivate their
land and order their lives on ideas and views which are intertwined
with their Faiths, now thought in terms of improvement by social
effort. The Indian peasant does not now think that the causes of
famine and drought are beyond remedy, though perhaps he does
not know just what that remedy is and how it should be applied.

Some Statements
An aged partly blind lady,3 who lives with her daughter in a thatched
hut, formerly a neighbour’s cowshed, discussed Swaraj with us.
Her lands have been confiscated; she, however, refused to run away
from the village. She said:
‘I am happy that the land has gone. We are still for Congress.
Mahatmaji has ordered us not to pay taxes. I cannot be on both
sides (Government and Congress). Congress is for making us
independent. We do not want to live under this Government.
If the others, the men of this village, wear bangles,4 what am I
to?5

Koholo Raghala, a Chodra, a hill tribe similar to the Bhills,

spoke to us about Congress and the Mahatma. Raghala wears
khaddar, is a Congressite, and has given up drink. The Mahatma,
he said, lived in his hut, seven years ago. Other Congressmen also
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 307

have lived in his hut on several occasions. He said: ‘To me a

Congressman is a Gandhi man. That is all I know. I want to do
what Gandhi says, but the memories of beating restrain me.’
We discussed Civil Disobedience and the non-payment of taxes
with a no-taxer, Isuharabhai Mundas, aged 60, of Sunav (Kaira
District). He said:

‘The Government is entitled to taxes, but why do they put

Mahatmaji in jail?’

We followed up the remarks with a number of questions, which

he answered. We reproduce them here, as they tend to show the
extent to which the villagers appreciate the issues involved.
Isuharabhai Mundas was not a specially selected witness, but one
from 3 crowd. He was not a specially sophisticated individual,
but an average Gujerati farmer.

Question: If Gandhiji breaks the law, what else can any

government do?
Answer: But there are too many laws. Government is both a
trader and a ruler. That is not good. It must be one or the other.
Q.: If you encourage boys to break laws, will it not lead to
difficulties when Swaraj comes?
A.: But this Government is bad. Monkeys destroyed the
Lanka of Ravana, but not the Ayodhya of Rama. This Govern¬
ment is bad. It is bad because the people get no bread under this
Government. Everything belongs to it and nothing is ours.
Q.: If the Government remits 75 per cent of the land revenue
and opens hospitals and provides for all comforts for villagers,
will you be satisfied?
A.: This Government cannot be trusted. They will again do
tlje same thing as now.
Q.: But will you have a bad Swaraj Government or a good
British rule?
A.: If there is Swaraj, in any case all our money will remain
here with our brothers, if not with us. But now they take every¬
thing to Vilayat (England).
Ras
In Ras, where all the cultivable land has been taken from the
villagers, as they are no-taxcrs, and part of it confiscated, and the
308 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

‘Congress House’ seized, the women told us ‘every house is a

Congress House.’ They also asserted with emphasis that they
would not give in till the freedom of India wa: won.6
The village view of the Police is that they are an oppressive force,
and in our own experience there was not one village which looked
on the police as a force that protected the people.

Kareli
‘We do not want a thana at all.’
‘The police are here not to protect but to beat us.’
These statements, made to us by villagers at Kareli in the presence
of Head Constable Ahmed Mian, might be taken as expressing
the general view. They added that some years ago there was fear
of dacoity, and the village undertook its own defence. There are
only two persons in the village with licences for firearms, and they
are ‘Government men.’ The police have never been attacked, and
the Head Constable confirmed the statement that the people were
peaceful.

(II) The Village and Civil Disobedience

The Civil Disobedience programme in the villages, and the methods
of resistance employed, are of a two-fold character, indicative, at
once, both of the causes of the Indian unrest and its present object¬
ives. On the agrarian side, rural India adopted the non-payment
of agricultural rents and taxes; and on the political side it carried
out the general Congress programme of boycott and disobedience
of law, both of which were practised with loyal adherence to the
doctrine of non-violence. Villages, nearer the forest areas, also
included the breach of the Forest Laws as a part of their programme.
The defiance of law is usually symbolic, and there is no attempt
to create disorder.

The Awakening in the Villages

The moral support given by villagers to the Congress, and to the
national movement generally, is a marked feature of the political
situation in India. Much of the rural awakening has begun to find
orientation and leadership in the village itself, while the methods
of Congress organisation, and the attitude of the volunteers, makes
the village a significant item and not merely useful ballast. The
 VILLI AGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 309

village is also conscious of the issues involved, and it understands

the main features and consequences of the activities and the risks
involved. Loyalty to the Congress is spontaneous, and the official
story of paid volunteers and Congress intimidation is unfounded.
The best reminder of this loyalty of the masses is seen in the total
failure of the Aman Sabhas, ‘Loyalty Leagues,’ and officially
organised meetings and conferences. These ventures are not merely
viewed sceptically, but laughed at. In the United Provinces the
Government has made very sustained efforts and harnessed to it
the support of landlords, loyal Indians, school teachers and officials.
But the Congress is still, in the people’s estimate, their organisation.
Another piece of evidence is the sacrifices which the villager makes.
The Government view is that the Congress was exploiting the
economic situation and fomenting discontent. The situation in
the United Provinces, where the peasantry had organised them¬
selves, was regarded as grave, and the Government looked upon
the action of the Congress in organising the peasants as a hostile
act and as a preparation for ‘war.’

Official View of Present Trouble

During the Truce period the Congress endeavoured to act as
intermediary between Government and the people, and the exposi¬
tion of Congress policy, and its interpretation of the Truce, amount¬
ed in the Government’s view to preparation for hostilities. The
Government case in this respect has been set forth in ‘East India
(Emergency Measures), 1932. Cmd. 4014.’
Pundit Jawaharlal and Vallabhai Patel, who were the main leaders
of Congress when Mahatma Gandhi was in London, and their
lieutenants are charged by Government with campaigning in
preparation for a renewal of Disobedience, and in evidence of its
allegation it cites Congress statements, as, for instance, extracts
from the All-India Congress Committee’s circular, dated 10th
March,7 signed by Jawaharlal Nehru:

it is vitally necessary that you should take immediate steps

to consolidate the position gained by the Congress during the
last year and to strengthen it still further. The immediate action
to be taken is to send out our workers, those who have been
discharged from jails and others, to the villages to explain exactly
310 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

what has been done in Delhi, further to see that there is no

harassment or oppression of any kind in the rural areas.
‘If we now establish firmly definite centres of work and activity
in rural areas we shall strengthen our organisation and prepare '
the people for any contingency that might arise. I need not tell
you that the provisional settlement at Delhi means a truce only
and no final peace. That peace can only come when we have
gained our objective in its entirety.’

The Government also argues that hy the middle of April (1931)

the Congress was pursuing a definite policy, the objects of which
were:

(a) To consolidate and extend Congress influence in rural areas

in preparation ‘for any contingency that might arise,’ the
settlement being regarded as a truce only;
(b) To intervene between Government and landowners in
regard to the payment of land revenue*and between the
landlord and the tenant in regard to the payment of rent;
and in effect to carry on with an ultimate political purpose,
under the cloak of the relief of economic distress, a campaign
against the payment of land revenue and rent;
(c) To establish institutions parallel to those of Government
where conditions were favourable.

The Charge
The gravamen of the official charge is that the Congress was acting
as an intermediary between Government and the people. Referring
to a manifesto issued by Mr. Gandhi, which was sent to Sir Malcolm
Hailey, the Governor of the United Provinces, beforehand, it
says:

‘But the chief mischief of the manifesto lay in its assumption

that Congress was an authority competent to decide what rents
should or should not be paid, to adjudicate disputes between
landlords and tenants, and to receive complaints against the
former lodged by the latter.’
4

The Government also took exception to what it alleged is the

Congress attitude to the landlord, and in his address to the
Legislative Council, on July 20th, Sir Malcolm Hailey said:
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 311

‘Tenants, already troubled by the economic distress, were told

that landlords are parasites, that their only hope for the future
is in a peasants’ and workers’ republic which will abolish land¬
lords, and that landlords who resist Congress now will be “swept
beyond the seven seas.” Again I refrain from applying an epithet
to this line of action. Once more: when certain newspapers are
allowed to tell the world that landlords habitually perpetrate
nameless horrors on tenants, that in order to force the payment
of rents they have habitually been burning villages, maiming
peasants, and raping their women, then clearly there is something
far beyond a mere desire to find a remedy for the economic dis¬
tress of tenants. Once more I refrain from applying any epithet
to this attempt to spread class hatred through the countryside.’

The Ordinances
As has been pointed out in Chapter.Ill, the situation had gone
from bad to worse, and Ordinances were promulgated in the
United Provinces on the 14th December.8
The Congress side do not deny, nor have they attempted to
conceal, the fact that it regards itself as the representative of the
people, and particularly of the peasantry. It, however, denies that
it violated the terms of the Truce or that it incited the people to
violence.
The main centre of the agrarian movement is the United Provinc¬
es, but it spread to every Province. Ordinances, promulgated for
all India, were brought into operation, and the provisions of the
ordinary law, notably the Forest Laws, were pressed into service
on a mass scale.
With the promulgation of the Ordinances and the termination
of the Irwin-Gandhi Truce, the no-rent and no-tax campaign was
definitely adopted by Congress as part of the Civil Disobedience
programme.9 The Congress organisation, which had ramifications
in thousands of villages, received instructions from the All-India
Congress Committee about the items of Civil Disobedience that
were permitted to be practised. The adoption of particular items
and plans were left to the local and Provincial committees. Refusal
to pay rents and taxes, which in normal times would be matters
for the courts, were now dealt with under Ordinance procedure.
312 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The Agrarian Issues

Under the system which obtains in India in some areas, the Govern¬
ment is the landowner. In Gujerat, for instance, we were told all
land is owned by the Government, from whom the cultivator holds
it. When rents were withheld from the Government, attachments
of movable and immovable property were effected, and in areas
and cases where resistance was particularly strong seizures and
confiscations took place. The tenants -who were thus displaced
have held their lands for generations, and in all but Revenue Law
it is their land, for which they pay Government certain dues.
Confiscation, therefore, in their view is a form of political reprisal.
The official argument, which was explained to us by a District
Collector, is that the tenant holds the land on condition of payment
of rent, and if he refuses the payment his right to hold lapses, and
it is open for the Government to take the land and do what it likes
with it.

Use of Political Weapons

While the rent and tax strike was in progress. Civil Disobedience
villages sought to intensify their resistance to the Government by
the adoption of political weapons also. Village officials, particularly
in Gujerat, resigned, orders about meetings and processions were
defied, and Congress volunteers courted arrests. The Government
met both the economic and the political protest in the same way
as in the first half of 1932. It extended to the landlord all the protec¬
tion it could give, and where rents were, payable to the landlord
it made these dues ‘notified liabilities’ under the Ordinances, failure
to pay which would be dealt with under Ordinance procedure.
Thus the collection of landlords’ arrears became no longer a
matter for the civil courts, but a political issue. In the debate on
the Ordinance Bill in the Assembly, Sir Harry Haig drew attention
to this as an argument in support of the Bill.
Armed policemen, whom we saw in the villages, watched and
dealt with political activity, and along with revenue officials engag¬
ed themselves in rent collection. In the carrying out of its policy,
however, the conduct of the Police and the Executive does not
show that what was aimed at was the realisation of arrears of
revenues.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 313

The No-Tax Campaign

The no-tax campaign was pursued on a mass scale in the
Allahabad and Rae Bareilly districts of the United Provinces, in
the Kaira and Surat districts of Gujerat, in the Canarese districts
of the Bombay Presidency, in certain areas of Bengal, such as
Contai, Midnapore, and Tamluk, in Bihar, and in the North-West
Frontier Province. In the rest of India, this item of the Civil Dis¬
obedience programme was not widely adopted, and where it
obtained it was a matter of individual rather than mass disobedience.
We visited villages in all these areas and made close investiga¬
tions. The campaign was still in progress everywhere except in
the United Provinces.10 Gujerat, Bengal, and the North-West
Frontier Province had suffered the most. In the villages in these
areas Government servants resigned their posts and cultivators
allowed their land to be seized. The extent of the movement may
be gauged from the following figures taken from a number that
we collected. In the United Provinces, in the district of Cawnpore,
in one Tashil alone 209 summonses had been issued, 298 attach¬
ments made, and 44 auctions had taken place.
In Ankola Taluk (Bombay Presidency), out of 40 major villages,
26 had taken up the campaign in the first six months of 1932,
and 11 out of 63 village officials had resigned.
In Ras, 16 police encampments, in which were posted parties
of armed police pickets, encircled the whole cultivated area. Out
of 2,600 acres, 500 acres had been confiscated and sold and 900
acres seized but not sold at the time we were there.
In Sisri (Karwar District), 19 persons withheld payment of
first instalment in 1932, over a hundred withheld the second instal¬
ment, and 210 attachments were made.
At Siddapur (Canarese), 233 persons withheld payment of first
instalment and 450 of the second instalment; 200 attachments
were made.
In the Broach District, 370 acres of land in Jambusur taluka
and 245 in Uber had been confiscated.
In the Bengal Council the Revenue Member stated that 261
estates had been sold for not paying the September instalment of
the Land Revenue.
314 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

In the Kaira District about 800 attachments had been made in

the first seven months of 1932.
These instances, which are taken at random from different
parts of the no-tax areas, indicate the extent of the no-tax move¬
ment.
The Government measures included:
1. Proclaiming that landlord rents may be recovered as land
revenue.
2. Police camps.
3. Special attachment officers.
4. Blockading of villages.
5. Prohibiting reaping of crops.
Apart from these measures as sanctioned law, as under the
Ordinances, the police terrorised the villages, and landlords took
the law into their own hands and smashed up tenants’ houses,
and took their property with the aid of the police.

Police Camps
Punitive police, for which the villagers had to pay, were stationed
in many areas. Police camps were built round the crops to prevent
tenants reaping their crops. In Ras we saw crops rotting.in the
fields. In some places, police had mowed the corn, while in others
it had been impossible to do this, where local labour was usually
not available for reaping confiscated crops, and the police imported
outside labour. In some areas the tenants set fire to the crop rather
than allow it to be reaped by others. The police encampments,
with the armed pickets, gave the place the appearance of areas
under occupation.
Attachment of property, usually a revenue process, has now
become a police job. The police raided the villages, beat the foremost
resisters, seized livestock, fodder, foodstuff, from them, pulled
down parts of houses, and none of these can be questioned in a
court of law even if Congress people decide to fight actions in
court. Police officials told us that they were being put on a revenue
job, while the revenue officials said that the police were responsible
for the trouble. The Revenue officials, however, are heads of the
police as well, and in any case, under the Ordinances, the police
are the officials who count, in fact.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 315

Blockading of Villages
Villages were blockaded, to round up people, and as a particularly
noxious form of coercion. In the Gujerat districts the police made
a practice of blockading villages for twenty-four hours or more.
It is the residential part of the village which is thus besieged, and
the object is to prevent people from going out into the fields for
their natural functions. This might be a piece of unauthorised police
tyranny, but blockading, of which we have given instances, in
our chapter on the North-West Frontier Province, is part of re¬
cognised police policy for coercion of villages.
Kuslabhai Hathibhai stated that on the 16th January and 21st
February his village was blockaded from five in the morning till
eleven at night, and no one was allowed to go out into the fields
or to fetch water.
Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, a member of the Round Table
Conference, also told us of cases of such blockading of which
he had knowledge.
f

Prohibition of Reaping of Crops

The land seized after the sowing was guarded by the police, and
the tenant was not allowed to sow his crop if he was a no-taxer.
In Sylhet, Assam, we saw in the village of Bhanubil acres of such
crops. The tenants had cultivated the land. The landowner, however,
claimed that the crops were his and the tenants had been ordered
not to reap the crops. We inquired what would happen to the crop,
and the answer was that it is a tradition among peasants that if
they do not reap the crops which they have sown, no one else will.
We understand that no labour would be available for the harvest
in the village if the landlord decided to reap the com. In similar
cases crops had been set on fire by peasants.
Dayabhai Jhaveribhai, of Amod village, is the tenant of the wife
of Poonambhai Shankarbhai, of the same village. The lady is a
no-taxer, and Shankarbhai had already suffered imprisonment
because he manages his no-taxer wife’s estate. Dayabhai, the tenant,
paid his land revenue, when his buffaloes were attached, and he
had paid all his dues to the landlord as well. The next instalment
of land revenue fell due on January 5, 1933. Dayabhai had been
served with a notice (about October, 1932, when we were there)
316 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

not to remove his crops unless he gave security for taxes due from
his landlord. He said that the crop was already overripe and would
be useless in a week.

(III) Punitive Measures and Results

Among punitive measures and excesses11 to which rural India
was subject should be mentioned:
(1) Attachments.
(2) Looting and pillage (by landlords and Government agents).
Women.
(3) Intimidation and humiliation Neighbours.
Civil resisters.
(4) Attacks on constructive work.
(5) Punitive police and taxes.

A ttackments
The Ordinances have, as has been already noted, made landlords'
rents recoverable in the same way as the Government’s taxes.
Apart from direct seizure and confiscation of lands, attachment
of movable and immovable property and livestock, and their
sale for ridiculous prices, have taken place on a large scale. In
this process the law of the country has been disregarded in several
ways.

Illegal Seizures?
Plough animals. Agricultural implements and Seed are not liable
to attachment in lieu of debts and arrears of rents or taxes. It is
a principle accepted by law, since the deprivation of these ‘tools’
of his craft renders the agriculturist incapable of earning his sus¬
tenance and of paying his debts.
In the present campaign, animals, implements and stock have
been seized and sold for nominal prices, or destroyed.
Peasants’ houses have been sealed by the police; we saw a number
of these, and not only movable property, but detachable parts of
houses, such as doors, window shutters, galvanised iron roofing
and even bricks from the walls have been taken away.

(1) Ramabai Butcha Bai, aged about 60, of Bochasan, Borsad

Taluka, the wife of a blind man, made a statement to us. Her son.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 317

aged 24, was in jail, and so eight out of her ten acres of land could
not be cultivated. Her buffalo was attached for land revenue.
She had bought it for Rs. 100 on instalment payments. Only the
first instalment had been paid. She is now in debt for the balance,
though she no longer possesses the animal.

(2) Mangalabhai Vajhibhai was released on ‘parole’ on the

14th January, and ordered to report to the police and not to enter
the village. He obeyed the order, and his wife, Dahi Bhen, who
was a Congress worker, was angry. The lady had been fined Rs. 100
and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for her activities.
The police took away two sets of doors, a cradle, corrugated iron
roofing, spinning wheels and other property.

(3) Ishwarbhai Mundas, of Sunav village, aged 60, owed Rs. 8

in taxes. All his movable property, estimated at Rs. 200, was
attached in January, when he was away in the fields and no one
was in the house. His wife and children were visiting in the next
village. After a month a demand for taxes was made, and he refused
to pay. He was then sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and
fined Rs. 50. In the fourth month the police went to his family
house and attached the buffalo, whereupon his brother paid Rs. 20
for tax. Government costs, fees, etc. The next day the police again
went to this brother’s house and demanded the fine of Rs. 50,
and threatened to take away the buffalo. He was then released.
None of the movable property originally taken has been returned.

(4) Motliibhai Hathibhai, a no-taxer of Sunav, owed Rs. 6 in

taxes. His tobacco crop, worth Rs. 250, was attached, and he
received nothing from the sale of it, nor any receipt of any kind.
He heard from the headman that the crop was sold for Rs. 11.

(5) R. Nadhabhai Kaldas, aged 65, of Gana village, told us a

story of torture.12 The revenue due from him was Rs. 15 and Thakavi
(loan) Rs. 10. He had been manhandled by the police, and finally
they were forcing him to touch the battery of a motor car when
another man out of pity offered to pay the revenue. The Government
had already taken Rs. 200 worth of property, which had not been
318 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

refunded. He stated that he refused to pay because the Government

had put Mahatma Gandhi in jail.

(6) Chathurbhai Baijabhai owned 13 acres of family land. He

and the family ran away with three buffaloes when a police party
arrived. The police entered their houses and broke up cooking
vessels and household articles, etc. They destroyed the hayrick
and took possession of agricultural implements.
The Government had attached and sold his crop, which he said
was worth at least Rs. 70. It was bought by the Head Constable
Allabux Hussain, for Rs. 5, in May, 1932. His whole property
is worth Rs. 16,000. He had reaped the rest of his crop. He owed
Rs. 125 in-revenue.
Sipahi Lai, of Karma village, U.P., stated that he was unable to
pay his rent. Hi$ land was taken without notice. He continued to
cultivate the land and was accused of trespass and fined Rs. 100.
He was unable to pay and therefore was sent to prison. His four
bullocks and one cart were then attached and sold. He had 20
acres of land and was in difficulty only on what was due from a
plot of 3 j acres. As he had only two bullocks left, he was unable
to cultivate his land properly.
Paramufty Village, United Provinces—We came across a
number of instances where people were unable to pay land revenue,
some of them women, who had sold everything they had and found
it impossible to feed their starving babies and children.
One peasant stated that he had 20 bighas of land and had to
pay Rs. 175 per year in taxes. He owned five bullocks, one cow
and six calves. He had a wife and four children. His brothers’
widows and their children made the joint family of fourteen
members. All his property, including the cattle and five mango
trees, had been attached.
A widow with three sons, of whom the eldest was ten, said that
she owned four bighas of land; but all of it had been attached,
and she had been turned off the land, and she and her children
were actually starving. They had had nothing to eat for the ‘last
two days’ (28th September, 1932).
In Karchana, about 14 miles out of Allahabad, the crops had
failed. Peasants had been unable to pay revenue dues. Buffaloes
worth over Rs. 50 had been attached and sold for about Rs. 5.
The people were starving.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 319

We also saw in the villages of the North-West Frontier Province

the results of wholesale attachments, both in the homes of the poor
and the comparatively well-to-do. We have referred to instances
in the chapter on the Frontier Province.
In Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s13 own house we saw that all the furni¬
ture had been taken away, in lieu of land revenue; the Khan himself
is in jail, without trial.

Looting and Pillage

Where punitive police are stationed, entering of houses, taking
away of goods, looting and destruction take place as part of Police
Raj, according to the evidence we received and the results that
we saw. In the villages, mainly in Gujerat, looting has followed
in the wake of tax collection.
Houses Entered
We went into a large number of houses in the Gujerat villages
and saw the destruction that had been wrought. Utensils and fur¬
niture had been broken up where they had not actually been taken
away. In Ras and Bochasan we saw house after house, in which
the huge earthen jars, in which grain is stored, were broken up.
These are part of the peasants’ stock, and they have been in posses¬
sion of these families for generations. It was stated to us that
armed police had entered and broken up things with the butt ends
of their rifles, lathis, or anything else they could lay hands on.
Beds, food, etc., had also been taken away in* villages in Bengal,
the North-West Frontier Province, and Gujerat. We have the
particulars of a number of instances, some of which we give below.
In one village alone (in Borsad Taluka), out of 800 houses about
200 had been entered by the police. In Ras, there was hardly a
house which the police had not entered and looted.
Ishvarbhai Mundas, of Sunav, whose statement about attach¬
ments of property we have already cited, stated to us in cross-
examination that ‘the police resident in Sunav usually buy their
things from the shops in that village or from Petlad (the next
village), but when attachments are made they take things not only
for the Government but for themselves, and they take what they
like.’
Khusalbhai Hathibhai made a statement14 that about ‘fifty police¬
men who were brought from Anand by Revenue Officer Manilal
320 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Gandabhai were posted at every corner in the village and practically

all the houses were entered. They broke up water pots, big jars,
and boxes, and beat people, several of whom were aged men.
Gangaben, wife of Chathrubhai Baijubhai, aged 26, stated15
that the police and the Mamlatdar asked her to say where she had
hidden money. The police, armed with rifles, went to her house.
She was asked to show the buffaloes. The Mamlatdar took away
ornaments from the house.
(Her husband's lands, which she said were worth Rs. 20.000,
have been confiscated and sold for Rs. 200. They were bought by
Abdul Ahmed, who does not belong to the village.)

Elephants to Destroy Houses

We saw the results of some of the looting and destruction in
Bhanubil, in Sylhet. The village is about ten or twelve miles from
the nearest road, and there is not even a cart track to reach it.
We travelled on an elephant, which negotiated the muddy fields
and numbers of little rivulets which had to be crossed.
The village belongs to a Zamindar, who is alleged to have in¬
creased the rent from 13j annas to Rs. 2.80.16 The tenants refused
to pay, and the Zamindar got a decree of ejectment. Armed Gurkhas
and constables, headed by a Superintendent of Police, helped in
the ejection of the tenants. The Zamindar brought his elephants
and pulled down the houses, which were razed to the ground and
all the property trampled on. Over fifty houses were thus destroyed.
We met one of the victimised families. Lapoi Devi, whose husband
was in jail, told us .that these elephants were brought out and three
houses which belonged to her family, all in the same compound,
were destroyed. The rent due originally was Rs. 20. It had been
enhanced. The houses are estimated to be worth Rs. 680. The
Superintendent of Police was present. Representations were made
to the Government before the incident; the answer was that it
would not interfere.
The rents were not paid, Lapoi Devi told us, because they could
not afford the enhanced amount. Their lands were taken away,
but they were cultivating them, all the same, without permission.
She also said that there were many people similarly victimised.
They were given no opportunity of removing their belongings.
They now live in huts, which they have built on the Zamindar’s
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 321

land without permission. The Zamindar and the police, she said,
took away their cattle, and she was not sure that they would be
allowed to reap the crop they had sown, as they were trespassers.
Her father, Bijendanath Sharma, and her uncle, Harimohan
Sharma, were arrested, one for being a member of an unlawful
assembly and the other for trespass, for building the house in which
she now lived.
‘The police,’ she said, ‘even now come into our houses and take
away our utensils, grain, bedding and clothes. The Sub-Divisional
officer visits the house and abuses us from a distance.’
In Bengal, as in the North-West Frontier Province, police pillage
has reached excesses comparable only to conditions under military
occupation in times of war.

Cases Cited in the Assembly

Mr S.C. Mitra cited17 in the Assembly cases,18 and produced docu¬
ments and photographs in evidence. The details could not be
published in the press owing to the Press Law. We quote some
extracts: v.
‘In the house of Mahendra Nath Jana, of Dalimba Chauk,
Sutahata Police Station, all his movable properties were looted,
and even the image of the goddess “Laxmi Devi” was thrown
away from its place. The other is about the occurrence of the
house of Jogendra Nath Kalsa, of Dundipur, on the 22nd
September, 1932 Here the District Magistrate, Mr Burge, and
the Sub-Divisional Officer, Mr Richardson, were also present
whfen the police destroyed their granary, and spoilt the paddy
collected there.
‘This is the photograph of that place (shown). Here is another
case where, in the village of Bar-Basudebpur, in the house of
Brojalal Kniti, the Bhagwat-Geeta was torn to pieces and put
into the boiling handi, and the man was beaten. This is the state¬
ment, and this is the photograph, which will indicate how these
things are done.... Iam giving you the date at the very time—
September last. In the village of Hadia, in the house of Kartick
Chundar Das, the punitive police burnt the teakwood furniture
and burnt the doors and windows. In the same village, in the
house of Pran Krishna Das, they entered the temple and stole
ornaments even from the body of the image of the family god.
322 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

I particularly give these instances to show that in Eastern countries

people are very sensitive when their religious sentiments are
hurt in this way, so that the mighty Government at Simla also
should know how. the day-to-day administration is being carried
on under the Ordinances that are now going to be made law....
‘There are numbers of pictures taken. I am now showing the
House a few only to prove that we do not draw these pictures
from our mere imagination. Here is another case where, on the
24th September, 1932, in the house of Bihari Lai Maiti, for a tax
of Rs. 24.9, 320 maunds of paddy were taken away in the absence
of male members. Then this is another picture of a place where
Swadeshi Khadi is sold, and they have destroyed all these things.
Of course, they may have a special grudge against the Swadeshi-
wallahs. This is the photograph of the house of Ajit Kumar
Maiti, of Dari-Bera, where the doors and windows have all
been taken away, and property destroyed. Here is the photo¬
graph of a place of the house of Rakhal Chandra Samanta, of
Hadi, where the corrugated tin shed has been destroyed. Here
is a picture of a house belonging to Gora Chand Kaisher, of
Dundipur village, where the cottage has been destroyed and all
the thatched roofs have been brought down....
‘Here is a photograph of a place where all the trees, banana
trees, were cut, etc. How all these things are necessary for the
realisation of a tax one can easily imagine. Here, on the 24th
September, 1932, at about one o’clock, the second officer of the
Thana, Dhirendra Nath Chatterjee went to the house of Sukuma
Maiti for collecting the tax, but he destroyed his thatched house
and his walls. This is another picture of a house of Keshab
Chandra Mandal, of Dundipur, where all the ceilings have been
destroyed. How the destruction of property or the ducking of
a man in the tank helps the realisation of punitive tax has got to
be explained. This is another picture of a stationery shop belong¬
ing to Nagendra Nath Das, where the entire property was
destroyed. Now, this is the picture of a pharmacy where all
the medicine bottles have been thrown out and destroyed.’19

Intimidation and Humiliation

The presence of troops in the villages of Bengal is one of the more
glaring instances of mass intimidation. Sieges of villages by police
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 323

and threats to women and those giving hospitality to Congressmen,

collective fines, and action against the neighbours of persons
arrested, are other forms.

Some Cases
At Kareli, villagers stated to us that those who gave shelter to
non-cooperators were beaten. Villagers who took food and water
to women non-co-operators were also maltreated. The police
sealed the doors of the temple, where the non-cooperators were
staying. Villagers removed the doors. They were charged with
theft. They were acquitted after six months, but had been beaten
severely. Some cases were treated in the Government hospital at
Broach.
Soma Shankar stated that on the 18th September he was stripped
naked by the police in the Chora.
Bahji Bawa, aged 14, also stated that he was stripped of his
clothes and beaten by Constable Mahomed Mustafa. Sub-Inspector
Bapu Bhai took out his knife and threatened to cut off his genital
organs.
Jetha Bhai, aged 19, made a similar statement, that P.C. Mahomed
Mustafa stripped him naked.
P.C. Mahomed Mustafa was present when Jetha Bhai made
this statement, and we asked him if it was true. He said: ‘It was
not I who stripped the boy naked; the Sub-Inspector did it.’ On
second thoughts, he added: ‘Nobody stripped him naked. A search
was made of everybody.’
We asked. ‘What kind of a search: for weapons? These people,
with so few clothes, can be searched without taking off their clothes.’
Mustafa made no reply.
Village of Gujera.—One hundred and fifty people were arrested
at a Taluka conference on the 18th September. Forty were taken
upstairs one by one and beaten. Six were severely injured, others
were given blows on the face and body. Fifteen were stripped naked.
Inspector Khambatta and Sub-Inspector Bapu Bhai were concerned
in the beatings, but the former was not present when the stripping
took place.
Desai Pursotam, aged 35, cultivator of Kareli, stated that Sub-
Inspector Bapu Bhai slapped him and kicked him with nailed
boots till he fainted. He was taken the next day to Jambasur lock-
324 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

up for two nights. He was then bleeding from the intestines. He

was convicted for six months, and was in the jail hospital for three
days. The doctor sent him to the hospital after examining the
injuries. He was on a barley water diet for some days.
Bahmatpur, Monghyr District. The women came in large numbers
to tell us of abuses and insults which they received at the hands
of the police. Some of them, though very poor, had been called
on to pay punitive taxes; Dhane Masomat, a widow, had been
taxed Rs. 2, though she earns her living as an agricultural labourer
on two or four annas a day, when she obtains work.
Dhansi Sahu, a labourer without land, had been ordered to
pay Rs. 38. He had an aged sick wife and four children. The police
entered his house, beat him, on the day we were in the place (23rd
September, 1932). The old man said: ‘We have no weapons, but
we cannot bear this.’
In Jahman Village (Punjab), women alleged attempts by the
police to dishonour them. One lady said that her door had been
broken open many times, and if there was a prosecution of the
police she would be willing to give evidence.

A Pro-Government Group
In the same village we met the pro-Govemment party—a group
who told us that we had heard only one side. They said to us:
‘We thought it our duty to help the British Government, so we
gave the police milk, etc.’
There were nine of them present, and they said there were thirty
or forty others. They were Sikhs and Mohammedans. Bhuj Singh,
the spokesman, said: ‘None of us had to pay punitive taxes. We
were exempt. We do not want self-government. We always pray
for the gracious Government.’

Indecent Attacks?
Attempts at indecent assault on boy prisoners were alleged in
several reports made to us. We took a very full statement in one
case,20 which is in our possession.
The use of filthy language to young women and aged men,
who take part in Civil Disobedience, was alleged in statements
all over the country. Indian women, who are to-day in the Congress
fight, have been accustomed to sheltered lives, and this form of
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 325

coarseness is intended to frighten them away. It was accompanied,

in some cases, by violence, and in others by taking them out of
their towns or villages to distant and lonely places and leaving
them stranded there.
Jinabhai Jijibhai, aged 56, of Porda, Borsad Taluka, stated to
us that he was arrested by British police in Baroda State territory,
where he and other villagers had gone, because there was plague in
Porda. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was taken to
Sunav lock-up at night.
Sub-Inspector Mejha, and Head Constable Chiman, used filthy
and insulting language about his mother and sister. He was beaten.
The Head Constable used more filthy language and dragged him
towards the wall, and said that he was ‘going to give him Swaraj,’
and putting his hands on the man's shoulders pounded him against
the wall. Mr Jijibhai was then subjected to more filthy abuse. We
asked him to tell us what it was, but he said, i am an old man and
would not like to repeat it.' He was then shown the statement made
by a boy who had alleged that the police attempted an unnatural
offence on him, and the old man said that the language was of the
same kind.
Khusalbhai Hathibhai stated that his daughter-in-law, Dahi
Bhen, was surrounded by the police, who called at the house when
he was in the field and beat her with sticks.

Women Insulted
Rami Nathabhai katdas, aged 65, stated that he was taken to the
village office, and his shirt and cap removed by force. The police
entered the house, took utensils and other movables, threatened
his daughter-in-law, who was ill in bed, with beating, and asked
for her ornaments. The Mamlatdar (Magistrate) Manibhai Ganda-
bhai took her out of the house, locked it up and took the keys away.
His son was also brought to the village office. They were taken to
the field after an hour. In the field they were stripped of all their
clothes, and they were made to bend and touch their toes. Two
police with sticks were on either side, and whenever they tried to
stand up they were given blows by the Mamlatdar.
Gangaben, the wife of the owner of the field, was then brought
by the village police to see them in that condition. She was question¬
ed about her husband and ordered to look at the naked men.
326 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The old man said he was kicked with nailed boots, at intervals,
violently. (Scars of nail marks were visible on his back.)
Gangaben, the wife of Chaturbhai Bhajibhai, aged 26, who it
was alleged in the previous statement, was insulted and intimidated,
was then examined by us.
She confirmed the story and also said that the Mamlatdar used
foul language.

Forced Labour
Shivabhai Jagabhai, aged 50, a barber, stated:
‘On the night of the 5th February (1932), when I was asleep,
the police came and knocked on my door with big sticks. I was
ordered to come down, which I did. I was dragged out and
beaten with a lathi on my back and with hands on my head and
face. I was bleeding. With the next blow on the head I fainted.
My mother, who was eighty years of age, cried out, “Don’t kill
my son!”
‘The police went to her bed and beat her. She died after about
a month. I was taken to the village office along with another
barber and beaten again.
‘We were asked to do work for the Circle Inspector, two clerks,
and the second-class Magistrate. Bagar (forced labour) for two
days had been demanded of us both. We refused. That was our
offence. We have always paid our land revenue and we are not
connected with the Congress.’
Koiolo Raghala, 21 of the Chodra (aboriginal,) tribe made,a state¬
ment to us of terrorisation.
‘In last April or May (1932), the police stopped a procession,
after beating all the volunteers. Sub-Inspector and constables
came to me at nine o’clock at night. They fell on me, the Sub-
Inspector beat me with his cane and the Head Constable with a
lathi. The others also beat me. This continued for over half-an-
hour. I was taken to the police office at Marvi and compelled to
prostrate. I was threatened with death if I entertained Congress
people any more.’
He also stated that police officers were forcing people to sell
lottery tickets, and threatening to attach lands if sufficient were
not sold.
Maghanbhai Ranchojai, aged 22, Khoti by caste (aborigine).
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 327

of Karadi village, and Ukhabhai Panchibhai, also a Khoti, made

statements of terrorisation and beating.

IV Attacks on Constructive Work

Constructive work carried on by Congress, its allied organisations,
and other independent bodies, has suffered under Ordinance rule
in several ways, which include22:
(1) Direct and deliberate attacks on organisations and
individuals.
(2) Deprivation of leadership as a result of arrests, etc.
(3) The state of fear and suspicion created by Police and
Ordinance Raj.
(4) Police excesses and action taken by over-zealous officials.
(5) Attacks made under misapprehension of the nature of the
institutions concerned.
(6) Stoppage of funds.

Direct Attacks
Many Congress Ashrams, which have scrupulously refrained from
politics, have been broken up or closed down by the police. One
of the worst instances that we saw was in Sitanagaram, in the
Telugu area, where the building was under police occupation, and
the looms and doors, which had been wantonly smashed, were
being eaten by white ants. With the breaking up of that Ashram
much medical, educational, and cottage industries work, for which
it was the centre, had been destroyed. The destruction of looms
and smashing of other property is no doubt legal, because no action
taken under the Ordinances can be called into question in a court
of law, and no officer can be held responsible for his conduct.
But the wanton destruction, the result of which we witnessed, is,
in our opinion, one of the most eloquent comments on Police Raj.
All over India, such centres, including schools, have been
seized and broken up. If the Government holds that they are run
by men whose sympathies are with Congress, and should therefore
be closed, they should have seized Mr Gandhi’s Ashram at Ahmeda-
bad. Policy here, as elsewhere, is haphazard, and left to the man on
the spot, who, in these regrettable instances, appears to mistake
aggressiveness for zeal.
In another Gandhi Ashram in South India, at Thiruchengodu,
328 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

there was a doctor whom the settlement had sent for training in
the treatment of leprosy. The gentleman returned to his duties to
find that he was served with a restraint order, severely curtailing
his movements in the villages in which he had to work. As a leprosy
doctor for the settlement he became useless, and as a man he felt the
order a humiliation, and he disobeyed it. He was sent to prison, and
lepers go untended.
Government policy has also added to the misery of some of the
peasantry in certain areas, as in the villages of the United Provinces,
where the repression has resulted in the breaking up of the spinners’
organisations to some extent.
Leadership
The constructive work in the Indian village has largely centred
round the Congress volunteer, who is now either barred from the
village or is in prison. Organisation, and the sense of village con¬
sciousness, which their work inculcated, is now arrested, or, where
it is still virile, is canalised in civil resistance. Anyone attempting
similar work is taking a great risk.23
Fear and Suspicion
Police action against Khaddar in different parts, and the surveil¬
lance that is exercised, have struck terror into rural areas. Where
repression has been severe, as in the Surat District, the Government
have crushed the people, so that few are left to take the risk of doing
anything that will bring the police on their trail. Ordinances, and
police conduct, preclude any safeguards which appeals to law or
the assertion of rights may be expected to provide.

Police Zeal
It is probably true that in some instances higher officials are either
ignorant of, or have not sanctioned, some of the measures which
the police practise. They probably are not responsible for the per¬
secution of well-meaning men or for restricting their movements.
The actual state of affairs is that anyone is liable to arrest and any
kind of activity is suspect.

Cases of Misapprehension
Mr S.C. Mitra quoted in the Assembly24 a case in which, on the
28th September, 1932, the police destroyed the Co-operative Bank’s
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 329

accounts and the ploughs in the house of Purna Chandra Das, of

the village of Hadia, in Bengal.
Mr N.M. Joshi25 referred to the case of a colleague of his,
Mr Thakkar, of the Servants of India Society:
‘After the Civil Disobedience movement was started and several
Congressmen were sent to jail, Mr Thakkar was given a small sum
by a gentleman in order that the wives and children of Congress¬
men who had gone to jail should not die of starvation. Only a
few days ago, one of the District Magistrates in Gujerat called
Mr Thakkar in order to bully him and browbeat him. He asked
whether he was supplying funds to the wives and children of the
people who had gone to jail. Now, Mr President, I want to ask
this question: Why should an officer object to anyone relieving
the distress of the wives and children of Congressmen? I can
understand Government putting the Congressmen in jail, but
certainly it is not according to the rules of any civilised warfare
that a combatant should desire that the wives and children of
his opponents should die of starvation....
‘You have given so much power that if a man does anything
which the officer does not like, he calls him to his office and asks
him not to do it. This is not the only thing. You ask your officers
— here I am not talking of the petty officers, but of the higher
officers—not only to defeat the Congress but to crush and uproot
the Congress.’
Professor Joshi,26 a trustee of the Bhagini Seva Mandir, of
Poona, told us of the case of his organisation. It has six trustees,
three of them Congressmen and three members of the Servants
of India Society. One of the bodies connected with Congress was
a tenant in its buildings. To avoid difficulties, the trustees terminated
the lease. Nonetheless, the police asked for an undertaking that
the Mandir would not enter upon unlawful activities. Under¬
taking was not given. Policemen were posted at the gates.

Funds
People are afraid of subscribing to any organisation which may
be suspected by some policeman or stated to be under suspicion.
Good causes are thus deprived of their resources, which are essential
to their work. Also, as in the case of the Gujerat Sabha, funds are
sequestered without justification.27
330 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Punitive Police and Taxes.

Additional police forces have been quartered in a number of villages
in several Provinces in India. In the no-tax areas of Bombay,
Bihar, Madras, the United Provinces, the Punjab, and Bengal,
the terrorist areas of Bengal, and the Red Shirt villages of the
North-West Frontier Province, such Forces have been quartered.
Punitive Police
The Punitive Police are, as far as we saw, and ascertained, armed.
They are quasi-military in character and usually the members of
the Force do not belong to the Province in which they are quartered.
Official reports, to some of which we have referred, have pointed
to the bad discipline and organisation of certain sections, at least,
of this force. Among the people the punitive and special police
have a thoroughly bad reputation. They are comparable to military
detachments of occupation in a martial law area.
In Bengal, punitive police have been stationed in certain areas
where those wanted for terrorist outrages are believed to be at
large. The view taken is that the village is conniving at terrorism,
and without local assistance it would be impossible for the offenders
to be in hiding.
Fines
The cost of the force is met, at least in part, by the levying of fines,
which, we understood, were collected by the police themselves
and not by the Revenue Department. Those who criticise the station¬
ing of punitive police ask whether the people are to be penalised
and taxed because they are not able to perform the task in which
the Police Department have failed, namely, tracking down terrorists.
The levying of fines is left to local discretion. In the terrorist
areas it is the Hindu population who are as a rule fined, though
they are in a minority. This discrimination has canvassed for the
Government the support of Conservative Moslems.28
The punitive police posted in the other areas are either as a
punishment for. or to deal with the difficulties created by, the
no-rent campaign.

The Government's Case.

The general Government case for the imposition of such fines is,
perhaps, best stated in the following extract, which we have taken
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 33 1

from a communique issued by the Bihar Government on the

28th May:
‘The Local Government are not in a position to keep so con¬
siderable a force of police detached from their ordinary duties,
but on the other hand, in view of the sustained and deliberate
defiance of the villagers, in spite of many warnings, it is unsafe to
leave the village unpoliced. The Local Government has according¬
ly declared that the village is in a disturbed and dangerous state,
and that a force of additional police will be employed in it for a
year at the expense of the inhabitants.
‘Exemptions will be granted to those who have kept themselves
aloof from the movement.’

Authority to Quarter Punitive Police

The actual imposition of these forces may be in exercise of the
power conferred by emergency legislation like the Bengal Ordi¬
nances or the Emergency Powers Ordinance, or under the Police
Act.
We were informed that the posting of such punitive forces is
a matter within the discretion of the Local Government but Indian
opinion holds that the terms ‘Local Government’ and ‘Local
Official’ are in fact interchangeable in matteciof administration.29
A proclamation is issued, and the specified area is made responsible
for its maintenance. We print below the copy of a proclamation
which would help to explain the procedure and the character of
the arrangement:
June 1, 1932.
PROCLAMATION
The 26th May, 1932.
No. 312. P.R.
In exercise of the powers conferred on him by Section 15 of
the Police Act, 1861 (V. of 1861), as amended by Act VIII. of 1895,
the Governor-in-Council declares that the conduct of the in¬
habitants of the area specified below within the jurisdiction of the
Lakhisarai Police Station, in the District of Monghyr, has
rendered it expedient to increase the number of police by the
appointment of an additional force consisting of one Deputy
Superintendent of Police, one Inspector, two Sub-Inspectors,
eight Havaldars and one hundred armed constables, to be
332 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

quartered in the said villages, at the cost of the inhabitants thereof,

subject to any orders which may be passed exempting any
person or class or section of the inhabitants. This proclamation
shall remain in force for a period of one year with effect from
1st June, 1932.
2. The above proclamation shall apply to the whole of the
village named in column 2 below.
Thana No. 1. Name of Village.
187.
Barahiya including three tolas, viz.,
Chuharchak, Tajpur and Bodhnagar,
English (Barhiya).
By Order of the Governor in Council.
P.C. Tallents,
Offg. Chief Secretary to Government.

Police ‘‘Garrisons'
Some of the worst police atrocities in India are the work of the
Special Police Forces, as different from the Regular Force. They,
unlike the Regular Force, have no houses in the areas in which they
are stationed, and are rather like a garrison, indifferent to and
ignorant of the sentiments of the community in which they live.
They lack the discipline which longer service and the performance
of duties, other than coercive, give to the members of the Regular
Force. Roughnecks are recruited to the Force as a deliberate
policy, while the task which they are set would affect the morale
of even disciplined men.
(1) Looting and pillage.
(2) Outrages on women.
(3) Intimidation and violence.

Looting by Punitive Police

Houses have been entered and property smashed. We have already
referred to some of these. In Madhkaul, a small village, we saw
some of the results of the conduct of the punitive police. Granaries
had been looted, women insulted, bayonets thrust into kitchen
pots and vessels. In the village we saw a store which had been
wrecked. The kerosene oil in the store had been poured over the
stores of rice and pulses. The villagers, through their spokesman,
told us. a story of wrecking and looting.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 333

Sabuj Mishra, a cultivator, whose house had been looted, told

us that his cash box had been broken open and the family ornaments
taken away. We asked him whether he had reported this robbery
to any officials, and he said that he reported the wrecking and
looting of the house to the Sub-Divisional Officer, an Indian, who
replied, ‘Don’t come to me with your complaints. I am not going
to hear of these things. Pay your taxes.’
Shops had also been looted, and we discovered, from the
information we gathered, that complaints had sometimes been
made to officials, but it was little use, as the police did what they
liked and the regular officials had little control over them.
We asked the old villager &ho had acted as spokesman whether
he thought that the police were acting lawfully. His answer was:
'Our throats are being cut by the servants of a Government which
says it is the law, and you ask if it is just! The Moghals never did
this.’
In the next village, Sheohar, we learned that the trouble, which
was the cause of the firing which led to the posting of the punitive
police, was started by police agents. No proper inquiry was made.

Terrorisation
From the statements and information in our possession, we could
give instance after instance of the terrorising activities of the
police garrison, which is what the punitive police resembles.
They levy blackmail, and rob women, visiting the area, of their
jewels.
The punitive fines must be paid, if the officials say it must be
paid, whether one can afford or not, or whether one is Congress
or not.
At Sheohar, Sobhai, a Moslem, told us the story of his daughter,
a married woman, who, while cutting com in the field, was rushed
at by the punitive police and violated.
At Midnapore, we saw people who had received wounds at the
hands of the punitive police. In Tamluk, Bengal, Pathans, Punjabis,
and Gurkhas have been planted all over the district. The people
had been beaten, robbed, fired on, and tortured and made to pay
for the very force that was responsible for these acts.30
What we have said of the punitive police may, perhaps, leave
the erroneous impression that they are a band of guerillas who
take the law into their own hands, and that higher officials are
334 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

not aware of what is being done. Guerillas they may be; they may
take the law into their own hands, but it is still ‘law’ in India.
They, however, act under orders, which, as the villagers say every¬
where, are ‘Smash everything.’
People Defend Themselves
In some areas, like Tamluk, people are developing a form of defence
against official terrorism. When the punitive police approach the
village, the women blow a conch shell as a warning, and the culti¬
vators take their wives and daughters away to the depths of jungle
swamps. At the time of our visit, women in the villages of the Tamluk
District had taken to sleeping in the fields, out of fear of night
raids of their houses by the punitive police.
Under the punitive exactions and persecution people are fleeing
from the villages. Press reports, which we saw in India at the time,
stated that from the villages of Sijbena, Rajarampur, Shivramnagar,
and several others, people had left their homes and the Uffion
Board were therefore not able to raise the taxes.
Shortly after our visit to Tamluk, we saw the following press
report about a raid:
‘On the 10th instant (September), Punitive Police surrounded
the village Keorakhali, in Sutahata, P.S., in order to realise
punitive tax. The villagers began to vacate their homes. The
wife of Sj Upendra Nath Das, of Hadia, who was in an advanced
stage of pregnancy and was running away, stumbled and fainted.
She was taken care of and removed to Basanchak, where she
expired after two hours. Another lady of Keorakhali, with her
sucking baby of five months was fleeing away. She had to cross a
marshy land. There her baby slipped from her arms. She
searched for the baby for some time till she got it back alive.’
Exactions
The fines, as we have stated, are attached by the police. Illiterate
villagers are not always able to ascertain what is due and what is
receipted for, as the copies of receipts below will show:
KACHA (TEMPORARY) RECEIPT
Received Rs. 6 annas 15 (6/15)31 only. 77. Dhisendralal Rakhit,
c/o Ramchandra Rakohit, of Amuchia, as Punitive Police tax.
(Sd.) A.C. Biswas.
Dhorala Subthana.
29/6/32.
 VILLAGE REPRESSION BY BRITISH RULERS 335

PUCCA RECEIPT
Govt, of Bengal. A855380.
No. 6. —
Dated 3/7/1932.
Received from 77. Dhircudralal Rakshit. 87. Ram Chandra
Rakshit, of Amuchia, through a/c Dhorala, Rs. 5 annas 3 only-
Credited to P. Tax.
Suryya Gupta.32
AS.I

References

1 Sir Samuel Hoare in the House of Commons. (Hansard, Vol. 267, No. 120.)
2 He used the words Swathanthriva and Swashakti, which mean freedom and
self-power. This was in a Telugu village.
3 At Khojhpardi, in Bardoli.
4 This expression means, ‘If they are cowards.’ She was referring to those who had
submitted to terrorisation. Her own menfolk had refused to surrender. This village
had been cowed down by terrorism. People were tired of fighting. They were still
opposed to the Government but were afraid even to talk.
5
6 We have described the conditions in Ras later in this chapter.
7 The Congress was at that time assisting in the collection of Revenue as a result
of the Irwin-Gandhi agreement. The agreement did not preclude Congress organisa¬
tion in the villages, and, indeed, in view of its being intermediary between peasants
and the Government its organisation work was a natural consequence.
8 Mr Gandhi was in London at the time.
9 Cf. Chapter III. Congress resolution, January, 1932.
10 In the United Provinces the drastic operation of the Ordinances, preventing
workers from going into the villages, the arrest of all workers in the villages, and
the severe handling of demonstrators in the villages, was followed by concessions
to the villages. We were told that the Government, after delivering its blow against
the Congress, made greater remissions, in many cases, than were demanded by
Congress at truce time as a means to maintain peaceful relations.
11 We have referred in this section mainly to classes of instances, to which attention
has not already been drawn in the chapter on Police Raj in Action.
12 Cf. p.299
336 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

13 This was denied in part by the official spokesman in the Legislature. The statement
here refers to what we have seen ourselves, and we therefore print despite the denial.
14 The statement was made to us at Sunav. The additional police were brought
from Anand. We are not certain whether the village referred to is Sunav or one of
the neighbouring villages. The entry in our notes is indistinct.
15 The parts of the statement dealing with Intimidation appear on p. 375.
16 We are not sure whether the enhancement was uniform for all lands in the village.
Under the permanent revenue settlement, the Zamindar’s taxes to the Government
cannot be enhanced, and, as an absentee landlord, he does nothing for the land or
the tenants.
17 Assembly Debates, Vol. VII., No. 5.
18 Most of the incidents took place while we were in India.
19 The debates in the Provincial Councils and the Assembly on the Ordinances and
the Ordinance Bill and the questions and answers on administration are replete
with instances of police terrorism.
20 There are several sworn statements in the Katyu (non-official) Jail Committee
of the United Provinces, whose report we have used in writing the chapter on Jails.
21 He belongs to a tribe like the Bhills. Mr Gandhi stayed in his hut some years
ago.
22 We have dealt with these in-other chapters, where we have discussed the construc¬
tive programme.
23 Under Section 51 of the Emergency Powers Ordinance and now corresponding
provisions in the ‘Ordinance Act.’
24 Assembly Debates, Vol. VII., No. 5.
25 Assembly Debates, Vol. V., No. 9.
26 Not Mr N.M. Joshi, mentioned above.
27 We have already referred to Government policy in relation to Swadeshi and
the ‘Buy Indian’ movement, both as officially stated and as in actual fact.
28 Mr Abdul Matin Chaudhury, speaking in the Legislature on the 3rd December,
1932, said: ‘Under these Ordinances, the Frontier Mussulmans have been terrorised;
the Red Shirt movement has been crushed; the Ahrars have been suppressed; the
Moslem Press has been throttled; and even in this Imperial City of Delhi, under
the very nose of the Government of India, the sanctity of the Moslem mosque was
violated. Wherever the Mussulmans have shown any sign of life, activity or vigour,
they have been put down with an iron hand, and there is nothing to be surprised at
in this, because when you give this autocratic power to the irresponsible executive
it is bound to be abused.’
29 In Stuart times one of the items against which the early champions of British
liberty fought was the ‘billeting of soldiers.’
30 Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Osborn, D.S.O., in his book. Must England Lose India?
quotes an official who told him: ‘I give you my word that after some of my punitive
police have been stationed in a village for a few days the spirit of the toughest of the
political agitators is broken.’ Lieut.-Colonel Osborn inquired, ‘How?’ ‘Well, they
will help themselves to everything. Within twenty-four hours there will not be a
virgin or a four-anna piece left in that village.’
31 Italics ours. Note the difference in the amounts.
32 The name on our copy is not very clear.
 18 Agrarian Movements in
Bengal and Bihar, 1919-39

Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri

This paper is an attempt to study such actions of one of the groups,

the peasantry of Bengal and Bihar in the period between 1919
and 1939—their aspirations and struggles in the context of parti¬
cular economic and political developments, the interaction of
their ‘social radicalism’ and the mainstream of the nationalist
movement, and the extent of their success.
Peasant movements were, however, by no means an entirely
new development in the period under review. In fact, the strength
and extent of such movements before have been greatly under¬
estimated.1 Combined peasant resistance could be traced right
from the beginning of British rule. It became increasingly strong
in the second half of the 19th century, particularly in Bengal.
The revolt of the Pabna peasants in 1873, sparked off a series of
similar revolts in other districts. The resistance was most widespread
during the period of the controversy over the Bengal Tenancy
Bill (1879-85), which was finally enacted in 1885. The Bill aroused
in the peasants extravagant expectations, and they construed
it as a moral approval of their stand by the Government. All sorts
of rumours were circulating: the despotic power of zamindars
would soon be gone forever, and with it the scare of enhancement
of rent; the rent-rate would be reduced everywhere and legislation
would deprive zamindars of all powers to enhance it. As long as
the peasants had nothing to hope for, they remained tame. Hope
now made rebels of them.
The Bihar peasants also rebelled from time to time, though
such uprisings were mostly confined to the indigo cultivators and
the tribal people.
Reproduced from 'Socialism in India\ (ed.), B.R. Nanda, Vikas Publications
Delhi 1972, pp. 190-229.
338 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The novel features of the peasant movement in the period under

review mainly relate to its organization. Peasant associations
(Kisan Sabhas) were created nearly in every district under a unified
command. Certain strata of the peasantry which previously re¬
mained largely inactive or aloof, increasingly participated in the
kisan movement. Moreover, the initiative of the peasants now
remained sustained over a much longer period than before.
The peasant organizations which already existed were far from
adequate for building up a sustained movement. The peasant
associations were mostly local groups, because the peasant rebel¬
lions arose mainly out of particular local grievances. Some move¬
ments did spread outside the localities. The rebellion in Pabna,
for instance, encouraged similar rebellions in the neighbouring
districts. The movement pertaining to the Bengal Tenancy Bill
was also fairly widespread. But here also the organizational base
was very weak. In the first case, the rebels of Pabna had only
tenuous links with their followers in other districts, such as trans¬
mission of inflammatory messages by the emissaries from Pabna.
The basis of the second movement was identical hopes shared
by a large section of the peasantry. With the growing disenchant¬
ment of the peasants over the Bill, the movement soon petered
out.
A far more serious shortcoming was the absence of what may be
called a philosophy behind the programme of action of the rebel
peasants, which, by relating the peasants’ grievances to some funda¬
mental social and economic institutions, could provide the rebels
with a broad perspective for their movement. The main concern
of the peasants was the removal of some specific immediate grievan¬
ces. The criterion of judging what particular set of conditions
properly constituted a grievance was whether the existing law
approved or disapproved of such conditions. For instance, the
asking by zamindars of a larger quantum of rent irrespective of
form or occasion, constituted a grievance where the law dis¬
approved of it. The abruptness with which such demands were
made by the zamindars made them all the more galling to the
peasants. The acceptance by the peasants of this criterion, naturally
imposed serious restraints on their movements, from the very
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 339

beginning. This meant that they did not question those institutions
the working of which added to their grievances. The removal
of such grievances, therefore, deprived the movement of the basic
impulse which could sustain it over a long period.
It was once thought that the participation of a section of the
intelligentsia in the movement of the peasants, which was a parti¬
cularly striking phenomenon during the agitation over the Bengal
Tenancy Bill (1879-85), gave the movement a radical tone. Jatindra
Mohun Tagore, Secretary, British Indian Association (an organiza¬
tion dominated by zamindars) explained the social roots of this
alleged radicalism and its nature thus:
‘They have neither status nor stake in society, and to attain the
one or the other or both, they resort to various kinds of agitations,
social, religious, reformatory and so on.... They are for the
most part East Bengal men, joined by some English-returned
natives, who also hail from that part of the country. Many of
them have seen something or read still more of the doings of
the Irish agitators, and with a natural love of emulation and a
highly ambitious mind, they would fain try their chance in the
socialist line to eke out, if possible, a living, or create a position
for themselves by following in the footsteps of their European
examplars.... They go to the ryots, pretend to be their friends,
sow seeds of dissension between them and the zamindars, and
thus set class against class.... In their pretended zeal in the
interests of the ryots they had, two years ago, nearly brought
the country to a blaze by inciting agrarian insurrection....
The Bengal Tenancy Bill... has proved a powerful weapon in
their hands for setting class against class.2
Such a characterization of their plans of action was far from
correct. It was not enough that some of them had radical faiths.
In fact the peasant movement was not appreciably affected
by such faiths, and they scarely left any trace after the Tenancy
Bill agitation had died out.
The nationalist movement led by the Congress had in its early
phase an elaborate agrarian programme, but could not provide
an appropriate ‘philosophy’ for a broad-based peasant movement.
The Congress agrarian programme was mostly confined to a
critical analysis of the British land revenue administration in
India. The British land revenue policy, a feature of which was
340 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

believed to be a drive for the maximization of land revenue, was

denounced by the Congress as one of the most vital causes of India’s
poverty, since the high revenue demand was thought to be the
biggest single drain on the surplus generated in the agricultural
sector, thus keeping the accumulation of capital at a frightfully
low level and making the peasant economy increasingly vulnerable
to -occasional failures of crops. Arguing from this premise, the
Congress concluded that a demand for the fixation of the land
revenue would help to resolve the crisis in the nation’s economy.
Hence its plea for the extension of the permanent settlement of
the Bengal type to other parts of India. The support for the Bengal
model however did not necessarily imply a support for the parti¬
cular zamindari system of Bengal, with which the permanent settle¬
ment was associated from its beginning.
Curiously enough, the Congress accepted the zamindari system
for granted, and tended to ignore the fact that most of the zamindars
were mere parasites living off the labours of peasants, and that
the numerous exactions on their part did constitute a factor in the
impoverishment of the peasantry.
Some Congress leaders occasionally took part in the peasants’
struggle, but the fact was that sometimes they were drawn into
it in spite of themselves and this participation was not part of any
commitment by the Congress as an organization to the struggle.
We can take Gandhiji’s defence of the interests of the indigo
cultivators of Champaran (1917) as an illustration. The Congress
had nothing to do with the movement. In fact, as Gandhiji wrote,
it was practically unknown in those parts. His confessions are
revealing:
I did not then know the name, much less the geographical posi¬
tion, of Champaran, and I had hardly any notion of indigo
plantations. I had seen packets of indigo, but little dreamed
that it was grown and manufactured in Champaran at great
hardship to thousands of agriculturists.3
To Gandhiji, however, the indigo system appeared as an isolated
instance of an unjust system, and not as a part of a wider institu¬
tional set-up. Moreover, he was cautious not to give the movement
a political colour. His stand was justifiable once we assume the
correctness of his understanding and characterization of the indigo
system and of the aims of his movement, i.e. to reform the indigo
system for the time being and not to destroy it.4
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 341

The first significant contacts of Jawaharlal Nehru with the

peasantry too were quite fortuitous. ‘I was thrown,’ he tells us,
'almost without any will of my own, into contact with the
peasantry.’5 This is explicable once we keep in mind the particular
aims of the Congress at the time, and also the nature of the social
groups whose interests the realization of such aims would have
promoted. What Nehru wrote of the kind of politics he had been
engaged in, till 1919-20, largely applies to the politics of the domi¬
nant Congress leadership at the time:
My politics had been those of my class, the bourgeoisie. Indeed
all vocal politics then were those of the middle classes, and
Moderate and Extremist alike represented them and, in different
keys, sought their betterment. The Moderate represented especial¬
ly the handful of the upper middle class who had on the whole
prospered under British rule and wanted no sudden changes
which might endanger their present position and interests.
They had close relations with the British Government and the
big landlord class. The Extremist represented also the lower
ranks of the middle class. The industrial workers, their number
swollen up by the war, were only locally organized in some
places and had little influence. The peasantry were a blind,
poverty-stricken suffering mass, resigned to their miserable
fate and sat upon and exploited by all who came in contact with
them—the Government, landlords, money-lenders, petty officials,
police, lawyers, priests.6

II

It was in the period under review that we find the gradual emergence
of a strong peasant movement equipped with the philosophy of
a kind which enabled it to transcend peculiarly local limits. Such
a movement, however, cannot be traced from the beginning of this
period. A great upsurge did occur among the peasantry in 1920-21,
primarily as a consequence of the Non-Cooperation movement.
For the first time after the widespread agitation against the parti¬
tion of Bengal (1905), the nationalist leadership sought to draw
the masses into the nationalist movement. This by itself could
not move the peasants much. The Congress leadership did not
intend it either. But the Non-Cooperation movement created an
atmosphere which was favourable to the growth of an independent
342 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

peasant movement. The scope of the Non-Cooperators’ programme

tended to widen, and included at one time agitation against the
payment of choukidari (village police) tax and land revenue.
Examples of non-payment of land revenue to the Government
by the peasants (where such a system of direct payment prevailed)
undoubtedly encouraged similar evasions of payment of rent to
zamindars. It is also probable that some local leaders having radical
faiths and acting on their own judgement irrespective of Congress
leadership had a hand in the peasant agitations, which gradually
grew to an alarming extent.7
With the calling off of the Non-Cooperation movement, the
main impulse behind the peasant agitations quickly disappeared.
Even if the former movement had continued it is doubtful whether
the Congress leadership could have for long ignored the implica¬
tions of the growing peasant movement for the nationalist move¬
ment. Though the Congress wanted the peasants to participate
in the nationalist movement the emphasis throughout was on how
to strengthen it through such participations. If the peasants through
an independent movement of their own threatened to be a divisive
force in it then the Congress would have preferred doing without
them. The resolution of the Congress Working Committee at
Bardoli (12 February 1922) was bitterly critical not only of the
occurrence of violence in the movement, but also of any independent
peasant movement inevitably developing into a kind of ‘No Rent’
movement:
The Working Committee advises Congress workers and organiza¬
tions to inform the peasants that withholding of rent payment
to the. zamindars is contrary to the Congress resolutions and
injurious to the best interests of the country. The Working
Committee assures the zamindars that the Congress movement
is in no way intended to attack their legal rights, and that even
where the ryots have grievances, the Committee desires that
redress be sought by mutual consultation and arbitration.
As a result the peasant movement suffered a great set-back.
However, peasants got opportunities to renew their activities
when the Government brought a Bill in 1923 for amending the
Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. The changes that were contemplated
were many, but the one that created quite a stir at the time related
to the sharecroppers, bargadars, who constituted a considerable
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 343

group. They had neither legal rights, nor in most cases any custo¬
mary rights in the lands they cultivated. The zamindars or the
richer peasants whose lands the bargadars cultivated could evict
them without much ceremony. The Government contemplated
conferring on them the status of ‘occupancy ryots,’ a group enjoying
special legal protection in regard to the tenure of their holdings
and the level of their rent. This daring move created much enthu¬
siasm among the bargadars. They formed, for the first time, their
own associations in various places. But their enthusiasm was not
enough to create a strong movement for which they needed active
co-operation of other social groups. This was mostly wanting.
On the other hand the zamindars and the substantial peasants
whose interests were threatened by the Bill opposed it strongly.
Several newspapers and journals which used to uphold their point
of view also joined the protest. So did the members of the Swaraj
Party and, of course, the representatives of the zamindars in the
Legislative Council. Moreover, some zamindars and richer peasants
fearing that some revolutionary measures would soon be adopted,
hastened to evict their bargadars, in a desperate attempt to save
as much as possible before the worst came to the worst, even though
this rash step resulted in an appreciable contraction of cultivation.
This opposition persuaded the Government to leave bargadars
and landowners to themselves.

Ill

The formation of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (1926-28),

constituted a turning point in the history of the growth of the
peasant movement, particularly in Bengal. Its origin and programme
was thus described by the Defence Counsel at the Meerut Cons¬
piracy Case:
Its world outlook was Marxian, and it applied Marxian principles
to its study of the contemporary political situation and the social
and economic organization in India. The background of the
formation of the party was the result of a growing feeling that
the way the Congress had been leading the country’s struggle
for freedom was wrong. The Congress, the founders of the Party
felt, misunderstood the class character of the groups hostile to
this struggle, and this had resulted in weakening the struggle.
344 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The Principles and Policy of the Party says:

The chief exploiting interests were British imperialism, Indian
capitalists, landlords and princes, and there were no chances
of any serious divisions among the ruling classes, and they
jointly exploited the large masses of workers and peasants.
The Congress was not sufficiently aware of this. The members
of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party felt indignant at the way
the Congress had been used for their own purposes by the land¬
lords and capitalists. The collapse of the Non-cooperation
Movement and the experience of the Swarajists in the Assembly
had convinced them that the programme based on the co-opera¬
tion of the exploiting classes, who were themselves in part a
creation of an alien rule, was not enough to achieve national
liberation. They decided that the dynamic force of a mass move¬
ment should be the sole basis of national struggle.
The Programme of the Party was ‘complete national independence
from British imperialism and a democratic organization of society
involving the nationalization of key industries and appropriation
of land without any compensation.’ For achieving this the Party
‘decided to establish contacts with all anti-imperialists organiza¬
tions and work among all politically revolutionary social strata.’
To increase the momentum of the mass movement it was decided
to establish mass organizations and organize mass demonstrations
and mass non-payment of taxes and rent and general strike.
The Party preached these ideals in Bengal through two Bengali
journals, Langal (Plough) and Ganavani (Voice of the People).
Here was a plan of integrating an independent peasant movement
with the general anti-imperialist struggle.
It is not known whether Marxian ideas influenced the leaders
of the peasant movement before the October Revolution in Russia.
There is no doubt that such ideas quickly spread in Bengal after
the Revolution. The reports of the Intelligence Branch of the Politi¬
cal Department of the Government of Bengal suggest that by 1920
the circulation of ‘Bolshevik’ literature was large enough to attract
the attention of the Government. A number of leading journals
of the time (like the Samhati, Atma-sakti, Samkha, Bijli, Dhumketu
and Dainik Basumati) show how deeply the revolution had moved
a sizeable section of the Bengali intelligentsia. The stir created by
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 345

it soon reached even the rural masses. The ideas that attracted
them most were in fact simplified versions of the Marxian concepts
of social struggle. The educated members of society, with whom
rural masses presumably came into contact, taught them that the
zamindars were mostly responsible for their poverty and misery,
and that the destruction of the zamindari system would bring them
prosperity and happiness. What had happened in Russia was
presented as a prototype of the things to come in Bengal after the
elimination of the tyrannical zamindars. Lenin represented to
them the ideal type of leader to lead them to such a goal. Rathindra
Nath Tagore, son of the poet Rabindra Nath Tagore, visited their
estates in East Bengal a few years after the first world war. At
that time he met a number of peasants who were inspired by such
faiths. Once when he was discussing with a group of peasants how
best to improve agriculture, a fairly old peasant intervened and
talked disparagingly of the nationalist leaders. According to him,
they talked big but were completely ineffective when it came to
concrete action. He concluded his discourse thus: ‘Were there
such a man as Lenin in the country, everything would be put
right.’8 The poet Tagore himself saw when he visited some parts
of Eastern Bengal in 1926, how ‘innumerable’ local literary journals
were propagating a cult of violence directed against zamindars
and money-lenders.9
The influence of the Marxian ideas was thus gradually spreading.
The formation of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was, however,
a significant point in the process. Instead of various agencies
scattered over the country, including a number of literary journals
which had seldom any consistent social and political philosophy,
an organized group (in addition to one or two more) now took
upon itself the propagation of Marxian ideas and it formed a
nucleus for the growth of independent peasant associations.
One finds here the vital role of ideas in building up the base of
a peasant movement. It is, however, doubtful whether a ‘philo¬
sophy’ alone could produce, let alone sustain it. Without the
presence of objective political and economic conditions, the new
ideas would have soon lost their force. Such conditions emerged
mainly as a result of the economic depression of the thirties.
Awadheswar Prasad Singh, Secretary to the Bihar Provincial
346 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Kisan Sabha, emphasized the point in 1938: ‘The Kisan movement

as developed today is the direct outcome of the objective situation
intensified by the agricultural crisis.’10
Fluctuations in the prices of agricultural produces occurred in
Bengal and Bihar. Changes in the state of crops, either a short¬
fall in the production or a bumper harvest in the context of a more
or less fixed market, reacted sharply on the prices. Two other
characteristics of a predominantly peasant economy, particularly
of its monetized sector, also account for such variations—the
tendency of the output of primary products to be inelastic and the
fluctuating demand for such products.11
When depression set in, the prices slumped. In the period between
1929 and 1935 a fall by 60 per cent to 70 per cent was a common
phenomenon in many districts of Bengal and Bihar. There was
a steep fall in the prices of jute, which was the most important
cash crop of the peasants in many districts. The crash came abruptly.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the jute prices showed a
steady rise, aggregating to about 150 per cent in the period between
1900 and 1929. The peak year was 1925, when the prices shot to
Rs. 16 per maund. In 1933 the harvest prices fell as low as a little
over Rs. 3/-. It was remarkable that for the first time since 1900
there came about an organized move for restricting jute culti¬
vation.12
The extent of the fall in the prices was not however entirely
unprecedented. What was particularly striking was the duration
of the depression and its universality. The steep fall in the prices
was of course a disaster for the peasants, but their recovery from
its effects would have been easier if the disaster had not continued
beyond a single year. It lasted for about eight years. Moreover,
the depression affected not only one or two agricultural produces,
but all the produces at the same time. Previously this was scarecely
the case, so that the loss from one crop was at least partly made
up by the gains from another crop. Where, for instance, the condi¬
tions of soil and climate made the cultivation of jute possible,
a slump in the prices of rice resulting mostly from a bumper harvest
led the peasantry to increase the cultivation of jute. Similarly, a
fall in the prices of jute, so much so that its cultivation scarcely
repaid the producers, led them to abandon it for the time being
and to concentrate on rice. The well-known phenomenon of the
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 347

interchangeability of rice and jute thus partly resulted from the

movement of their relative prices.
The depression suddenly aggravated all the ills from which the
peasants had long been suffering. Where their income was derived
almost entirely from the sale of their crops, the consequences
are not hard to realize. The burden of their normal unavoidable
financial obligations suddenly increased, since they had to part
with a far larger quantity of their produce than before to meet
their old obligations. The upward movement of rent during the
long spell of high prices of nearly two decades and a half, parti¬
cularly since 1905, made the rent obligations heavy indeed. Rents
were not automatically reduced when the depression had set in,
at least not proportionately to the fall in the prices. Arrears of rent
thus tended to accumulate, leading in several cases to eviction of
the peasants. Where the commutation of produce rent into money
rent had taken place on a considerable scale during the period of
the high prices, the distress of the peasants was naturally far greater,
since the system of produce rent imposed a much heavier burden
on the peasants in tends of the quantity of produce they had to
surrender to the zamindars. It is, however, wrong to suppose, as
Dr Walter Hauser did,13 that the kisan movement in Bihar was
mostly confined to the regions where the system of produce rent
prevailed. The intensity of the distress resulting from the depression,
varied of course from region to region, but it was severe enough to
produce deep discontent in the peasants which resulted in kisan
movements. That was why in Bengal proper where the system of
produce rent was confined to small regions the kisan movement
was no less widespread or intense. This was partly because of the
fact that rent formed a small part of the total financial obligations
of the peasants. In fact, their debt obligations were also quite
heavy, and indeed exceeded the rent obligations in several places.
Even where the peasants had not incurred fresh debts, the falling
prices by themselves made the debt obligations still heavier.
The depression with all its consequences seemed to reinforce
the Marxian class analysis. The poverty and misery of the peasantry
which the depression had suddenly brought to the surface, were
attributed to the particular class composition or society, which
according to the Marxists was mainly determined by the fact that
the law had invested in the class of zamindars property right in
348 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the land. Elimination of this poverty and building up the base of a

new peasant economy therefore necessitated the destruction of the
zamindari system. For this the peasants had to organize themselves
and fight the system out.
In view of the magnitude of the economic crisis produced by the
depression, it seems surprising that it was only in 1936 that the
abolition of the system was formally stated as one of the basic
aims of the kisan movement.
This formed a strikingly new feature of the peasant movement.
Even earlier, peasant agitations had occasionally led to a complete
suspension of rent payment. This, however, did not result from any
doubts on the part of the rebel peasants as to the propriety or
legality of the institution of zamindari, but from a dead-lock created
by the resolve of the peasant community not to pay rent exceeding
a certain rate which the zamindars on their part had found un¬
acceptable. The warring groups soon found a way out, and rent
payment became normal. The aim of eliminating the zamindari
system was indeed revolutionary. This inevitably meant that the
struggle would not end with the mere removal of some particular
grievances. Independent peasant movements in several places
gradually came to be influenced by ideas derived mainly from the
Marxian philosophy. This transformation can be clearly traced
in Bihar.14
It was a deep compassion for the wretched peasantry, a basically
humanitarianism that first led Swami Sahajanand and others to
try to organize them around some specific demands. Being nationa¬
lists they had no doubt whatsoever, in the beginning, about the
priority of the nationalist movement, and did not hesitate to sub¬
ordinate the kisan agitation to it. However they gradually outgrew
their belief that this subordination would eventually do real good
to the peasants. This happened as a result of ideological influences.
It is significant to note that in the long period between 1920,
the year in which he took a leading part in the Non-cooperation
movement in Bihar, and 1927, when he first began to take a keen
interest in the problems of the peasantry, Swami Sahajanand
seemed to have been completely unaware of the existence of a
distinctively peasant question. This was partly due to the fact
that after the movement of the indigo peasants in Champaran a
peasant movement worth its name was virtually non-existent in
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 349

Bihar. With the abrupt withdrawal by Gandhiji of the Non-

Cooperation movement, the Swamiji, like a number of Congress
leaders of Bihar at the time, became actively associated with an
organization of the prominent zamindars belonging to the Bhumiar
Caste— Bhumiar Brahmin Sabha. He was asked by the Bhumiar
zamindars to establish at Bihta in Patna district, an ashram mainly
for the purpose of giving their children lessons in Sanskrit. The
ashram came into existence in 1927.
It was in the zamindari estates around the ashram that he had
his first contacts .with the peasants. He understood some of the
worst features of the zamindari system, including the system of
forced labour, begar, and thus gradually realized the need for an
independent organization of the peasants. In 1929 the Bihar
Provincial Kisan Sabha was set up with the co-operation of the
major Congress leaders. To begin with, he conceived of the kisan
movement ‘in the spirit of a reformist.... At that time I did not
know what revolution was, nor did I understand its import....
What we had in our mind was to do some good to peasants by
exerting constitutional pressure and getting their grievances
redressed.’
Even this ‘reformist’ movement could not be reconciled with
the nationalist movement. When the Congress started the Civil
Disobedience Movement, the Swamiji promptly suspended the
kisan agitation since he feared an independent kisan agitation would
tend to ‘weaken our struggle for freedom.’
A large number of peasants did participate in the Congress
movement, but the utter indifference of the Congress leadership to
the grievances of the peasants shocked the Swamiji. Peasants in
numerous places, as in Gaya under the leadership of Sri Jadunandan
Sharma, a close associate of the Swamiji, sent numerous petitions
to the Congress Agrarian Committee (1931), explaining such
grievances. The Committee, however, had scarcely anything new
to say.
The disillusionment with the Congress leadership alone was
not enough to make a radical peasant leader of the Swamiji. He
also needed a social philosophy, and his close association with the
leaders of the Congress Socialist Party soon provided him with one.
The Programme adopted by the Party in October 1934 particularly
impressed him. It included, among other things, transfer of all
350 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

power to the producing masses, elimination of zamindars and ‘all

other classes of exploiters without compensation’ and redistribution
of land to the peasants. The Swamiji’s radicalism can in fact be
dated back to 1934 when he started thinking in terms of abolition
of the zamindari system. Initially, however, he feared that this
stand would alienate a considerable number of supporters from the
Kisan Sabha, particularly the small landholders. Such doubts were
soon overcome. The manifesto of the Bihar Provincial Kisan
Sabha (11 July 1936) outlined some of the Sabha’s ‘basic’ demands.
These included abolition of the zamindari system, the creation of a
system of land tenure where peasants could own land and the
provision of ‘gainful employment’ to the landless.
Similar Kisan Sabhas were gradually formed in other parts
of the country. Such sabhas, however did not for long remain
isolated from their counterparts. The first session of the All-India
Kisan Sabha with Swami Sahajanand as the President, was held
on 11 April 1936. The ‘Manifesto of Demands of the Kisans of
India’ adopted by the All-India Kisan Sabha Committee (21
August 1936) formulated the ‘main object’ and the ‘main task’
of the Kisan movement. The ‘object’ was—‘complete freedom from
economic exploitation and achievement of full economic and
political power for peasants and workers and all other exploited
classes.’ The ‘task’ was—‘organization of peasants to fight for
their immediate political and economic demands in order to
prepare them for emancipation from every form of exploitation,’
and this was to be done through ‘active participation in the national
struggle for independence.’

IV

The Kisan Sabha was not, however, the only organization of the
peasants at the time. In Bengal the Muslim League sought to
‘wean away’ the peasants from the influence of the Kisan Sabha.
The League feared that increasing activities of the Kisan Sabhas
among the Muslim peasants would endear the Congress to them and
thus eventually result in weakening the League’s hold over them.
To prevent the Muslim peasants from attending the session of the
All-India Kisan Sabha at Comilla (in Eastern Bengal, May 1938),
the League members went to the extent of scattering pages from
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 351

the Koran on the main road to the Conference, believing that the
Muslim peasants would not be bold enough to trample on them.
The success of the League was only partial. Whatever success
it had, was largely attributable to the particular composition of
the Bengal peasantry. The majority of them were Muslims, while
their zamindars were mostly Hindus. The League, professing to
defend the interests of the Muslim community, succeeded to a
certain extent in influencing the Muslim peasants by playing on
their religious sentiments. It, however, did not set up any separate
peasant organization.15
The Krishak Proja Party^ another organization working among
the peasants in Bengal, had a much wider influence on the peasantry,
though it was mostly confined to the richer section of the Muslim
peasantry. The proclaimed aims of the Party gave it the look of
a radical peasant organization. The Party’s programme advocated
the abolition of zamindari as also the elimination of the host of
intermediaries between the state and the actual peasant cultivators.
It stood for a ‘permanent peasant proprietary system of land’
where ‘all proprietors of land will be the actual cultivators,’ and
would pay a fixed tax, not rent or revenue to the state.
The differences between the Krishak Proja Party and the Kisan
Sabhas were, however, fundamental. The former conceived of
the peasant movement primarily as an economic movement,
unrelated to the struggle for the country’s freedom. To the latter,
the peasant movement formed a vital part of the freedom struggle,
since the zamindari system, which the movement aimed to destroy,
was propped up by British rule. Moreover, the Krishak Proja
Party had serious reservations about the way the Kisan Sabhas
had been leading the peasant movement, and strongly disapproved
of any class struggle of the Kisan Sabha style, which necessarily
involved some violence at a certain stage. This was how two leaders
of the Proja Party felt over the question. Qazi Imam Husain
remarked:
‘The distinction between the kisan movement in the United
Provinces.. .and the Proja movement of Bengal is remarkable
in the fact that the former one is a little aggressive, inclined
towards socialism.. .while the latter is purely economic, parlia¬
mentary in its demand and is averse to violence.’16
The worsening situation in regard to rural indebtedness which
352 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

reduced several small owner-peasants to the status of agricultural

labourers provoked N. Azizul Haque, another Proja leader, who
remarked:
The process has to be stopped if a univeral agrarian unrest with
its disastrous repercussions on the province as a whole has to
be avoided. The average Bengal agriculturist is much too conser¬
vative, spiritual and resigned to his fate to be easily amenable to
socialistic and communistic preachings. But a province with a
vast mass of landless labourers as one of the features of its rural
economy has within it the seeds of real danger. Dictatorship of
the proletariat is a very comprehensive phrase and may be
twisted and distorted to appeal to the sentiments of the aggrieved
and suffering classes. Release the cultivator from the bonds of
indebtedness, help him to make agriculture pay and the country
will be saved from some of the dangers of communism.’17
The Proja leaders, naturally, wanted the peasants to keep away
from mass movements. The initiative of the peasants inevitably
languished under such circumstances, and often the leaders acted
on behalf of the peasants. Through the provincial Legislatures
they put pressure on the Government for the adoption of particular
measures for redressing some of the grievances of the peasants.
The peasants were mainly supposed to elect them to the legislature.
The Proja movement was aptly described by Qazi Imam Husain
as being ’parliamentary in methods.’ Such a movement could do
little harm to the radical kisan agitation.

The ultimate aim of the Kisan movement was, as we have noted

earlier, ‘complete freedom from economic exploitation and achieve¬
ment of full economic and political power for peasants and workers
and all other exploited classes.’ The achievement of political power
for peasants was part of the larger question of the country’s political
freedom. And until political freedom was achieved the Kisan
movement aimed mainly at the destruction of the zamindari system.
The demand for abolition of the zamindari system came from
various other quarters also. The assumption that this abolition
would have a big role to play in the economic regeneration of
Bengal was so widespread that an enquiry into its feasibility formed
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 353

one of the terms of reference of the newly set-up Bengal Land

Revenue Commission (November 1938). The Kisan Sabhas did
not, however, leave the question to the Commission. It launched a
countrywide agitation to press its demands.- The Commission in
fact recommended the abolition of the zamindari system.
The immediate programme of the Kisan Sabhas had various
aspects. The struggle for the reduction of rent and debts was by
far the most important.
The Civil Disobedience movement had already created among
the peasants a spirit of defiance against their zamindars. Some
zamindars of the Tamluk sub-division of Midnapur, for instance,
were threatened by their tenants that ‘they would not any longer
receive the customary services of the labourers, barbers, dhobis
(washerman) etc.’18 The Depression made reduction of rent an
increasingly urgent question for the peasants. And with the increas¬
ing strength of the Kisan movement, the struggle for such reduc¬
tions soon developed into a virtual ‘no rent’ movement. By 1932,
the spread of the movement was alarming enough to call for the
adoption of preventive measures by the Government. In the worst-
affected districts like Noakhali and Tippera, the Government
promulgated Ordinance No 111 of 1932 under which any person
who instigates directly or otherwise any person or class of persons
not to pay rent was made liable to six months’ imprisonment.
Notices under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code were
issued by the Sub-divisional Officers prohibiting meetings organized
by the Krishak Sabhas. A common slogan of the peasants in many
parts of Bihar was ‘Malguzari lo ge kaise, danda hamara zindabad’
(How could our rents be realized? Long live our cudgels).
The militant peasants could not, however, be tamed. In fact,
several developments between 1934 and 1939 tended to harden
their attitude. The anti-money-lender legislation of the period was
one such development. Initially it had a modest scope and aimed
at curbing mostly the non-Bengali money-lenders, particularly
the itinerant Pathans and Kabulis. More stringent measures were
taken in 1936. By the Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act, the Govern¬
ment imposed ceilings on interest rates and set up arbitration
Boards (called Debt Settlement Boards) empowered to write off a
portion of agricultural debts. The existing debts were thus consider¬
ably reduced. The peasants however were reluctant to pay even the
354 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

reduced debts. The result was a virtual moratorium on the payment

of debts in many places.
The question of rent was outside the purview of the Act, but an
idea increasingly gained ground among the peasants that the Act
applied to payment of rent as well. This naturally strengthened
the ‘no-rent’ campaign. Complaints of the zamindars on this score
became nearly universal,19 and the Government admitted that
they were well-founded.20
The peasants were encouraged in this by the ‘electioneering
speeches' in 1937. The new Act of 1935 greatly increased the size
of the electorate, and during the first election held under the
Act (1937) the candidates made big promises to the peasants with
a view to getting their votes. Townend. then Commissioner of the
Burdwan Division observed:
‘This tendency to refuse rents undoubtedly has its origin in
the irresponsible electioneering speeches made by candidates
of all parties who sought election to the legislature.... To get
the cultivators’ vote they spoke as if the interests of the cultivators
alone would be considered in future. There was talk of the aboli¬
tion of the Permanent Settlement, which was understood to
mean the abolition of all tenures, and everything possible was
done to arouse discontent and to inflate expectations.’21
Such expectations further arose as a result of the countrywide
agitation in 1937 and 1938 over the amendment of the Bengal
Tenancy Act. Some provisions of the Bill, debated in the provincial
legislature in April 1937, were quite favourable to the peasants.
The Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha launched an agitation
demanding the resignation of the Coalition ministry if it failed to
pass the Bill. (The Act was passed in August 1938). An official
report noted that partly as a result of this there occurred ‘a general
change in the ideas of the tenants regarding their own rights in
the land.’22
The organization of the Kisan Sabha vastly improved at the same
time. This was due to the fact that a number of political workers
who relied till then on ‘terrorist methods’ increasingly lost faith
in their efficacy and were attracted by the Marxian ideas relating to
class struggle and organization of industrial workers and agri¬
cultural labourers. The terrorist activities appreciably declined by
1935. A police report of the year records:
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 355

‘A fresh wave of revolutionary activity is gathering momentum.

A large number of the terrorists are involved in this new move¬
ment, which is closely connected with communism and the
methods adopted by the Russian revolutionaries. Terrorists
have already realized that a revolution cannot be brought about
by terrorism alone. It does not produce the social and economic
chaos which is the necessary preliminary to a violent revolution.
Vigorous propaganda on these lines is going on in many
quarters.. .among students, industrial workers and agricultural
labourers.23
This trend was not later reversed. Another police report of
1938 says:
‘Information in the possession of the Government shows beyond
a shadow of doubt that a large proportion of the ex-terrorists
and revolutionaries... are obsessed in varying degrees by theories
of communism.... These doctrines are being assiduously
propagated among youths and students, labourers and
peasants.... The influence of prominent communists is visible
in practically every organization.’24
The release, by the end of 1938, of most of the persons detained
under Regulation III of 1818, the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment
Act of 1930, and the Bengal Suppression of Terrorists Outrages
Act of 1932, resulted in bringing a new vigour to the kisan sabha
and similar other ‘mass’ organizations.25 The Mymensingh Land¬
holders’ Association despairingly told the Land Revenue Com¬
mission in 1939 that ‘the leadership of rural areas has fallen into
unworthy hands, and the result is going to be chaos, confusion
and communism.’ By ‘unworthy hands' the Association meant
‘socialists, who are a class of educated landless people having no
stake in the country.’26 The Bengal Land Revenue Commission
had to admit that the growth of a ‘no-rent mentality among the
raiyats had threatened the stability and security of the land system
as a whole.’27
A similar resistance was organized against money-lenders.
In fact the no-rent movement and the anti-money-lender movement
progressed side by side. In Noakhali, for instance, prior to the
launching of a no-rent campaign, anonymous notices were reported
to have been received by several money-lenders threatening them
with execution if they failed to return the bonds.28 A meeting in
356 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Noakhali of the representatives of the Joint Stock Banks and Loan

Offices on January 4, 1932 ‘viewed with alarm the present situation
arising out of the propaganda carried on by some agitators through¬
out the district instigating people for non-payment of all rents,
debts and other dues.’29 A resolution passed at another meeting
in the district held on the same day urged the money-lenders ‘to
exempt debtors from all interests and to accept the principal only
in 20 instalments in view of the present economic crisis.’30 A police
report of 1934 attributed the increase in ‘dacoity’ in Tippera and
Noakhali ‘to the activities of the krishak samities which are secret
organizations whose main object was to loot wealthy money¬
lenders and destroy their documents.’31
When the Congress formed the ministry in Bihar (1937), the
Kisan Sabha persuaded it to intervene on behalf of the peasants.
The measures of the Congress, however, disappointed the kisan
leaders. At the 1937 session of the All-India Kisan Sabha, it was
resolved that, if by December 1937 the Congress had failed to
adopt more effective measures, ‘the peasants should be entitled
to declare a moratorium themselves and further to boycott any
legal machinery set up for reducing or negotiating debts and take
all the concerted measures they might deem fit to promote the
object in view.’32
The Kisan Sabhas also succeeded to some extent in organizing
the sharecroppers (bargadars). The bargadari system was in many
places part of the larger question of rural indebtedness. Small
owner-peasants, unable to repay accumulating debts, gradually
lost their lands to money-lenders. The latter, not considering it
worthwhile to cultivate such lands themselves, let them out to
the expropriated peasants. These peasants continued to cultivate
them agreeing to surrender half the gross produce to their creditors.
The bargadars were not a docile group. There are several ins¬
tances of combined resistance by them particularly in the 1920’s.
This resistance owed much to the hopes aroused in them by a move
on the part of the Government for a better legal definition of their
rights on land. Towards the end of 1924, the Muslim bargadars
of the Manikganj subdivision of Dacca district collectively decided
to ‘boycott the Sabha community,' to which their creditors mostly
belonged, ‘on the ground that members of the caste ill-treat their
/
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 357

servants, charge interest at exorbitant rates and foreclose on

their debtors’ lands.’ Despite its apparent 'religious tinge,’ the
movement was 'fundamentally economic—a case of peasant
versus capitalists,’ as an official report put it.33 The movement
gradually spread to other parts of Dacca and to Mymensingh, and
continued upto 1930.34 In 1929, in some parts of Jessore the bar-
gadars demanded two-thirds of the crop as their share. The zamin-
dars disagreed with their demands with the result that cultivation
was stopped. As a consequence the area under cultivation shrank
considerably.35
The Depression further aggravated the plight of bargadars.
The high level of rent, usually half the gross produce, was by itself
enough to reduce them to dire poverty. Their distress increased
in the context of a steep fall in the prices of agricultural produce.
At the same time, the number of bargadars went on increasing,
primarily because more owner-peasants lost their lands to money¬
lenders. The anti-money-lender measures of the Government,
like reducing the debts of the peasants, gave them some relief.
This was, however, temporary, and before long the peasantry
realized the adverse effects of these measures. Scared by such
measures, the creditors refused to lend any money at all. Rural
credit was nearly frozen as a result. But since the peasants in
the grip of the depression could scarcely do without borrowing,
they eventually agreed to borrow on more stringent conditions
than before. Curiously enough, though the size of indebtedness
actually diminished in the late 1930’s, the number of distress
sales of peasants’ holdings largely increased. The Bengal Land
Revenue Commission estimated the size of the barga cultivation
in 1939 at more than 20 per cent of the total cultivation.
The influence of the Kisan Sabhas among the sharecroppers
was mainly visible in some districts in northern and eastern Bengal.
In northern Bengal, the main centre of their activities was the
district of Dinajpur where their primary concern was the problem
of the adhiyars, the local name for sharecroppers. The adhi system
was quite extensive, and about 25 per cent of the cultivation in
the south and west of the district was done by the adhiyars.36
They were indebted to the landowners, jotedars, as they had a
precarious tenure in the lands they cultivated. Indeed, such was
358 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

their ‘precarious position’ that ‘instances have been found where

the threat of withholding adhi settlement has been used to force
surrender in social quarrels’.37
The adhiyars had tamely accepted their fate without a protest
till the Kisan Sabhas appeared on the scene. The Kisan Sabhas
found it very difficult to break this inertia. But once roused from
indifference they seldom relapsed into it thereafter. The struggle of
the adhiyars developed mainly over two demands. The first related
to the question of the place where the crops would be stored before
division. Previously the place used to be the khamar (own place)
of the jotedars. This gave the jotedars opportunity for intrigues,
and it often happened that the adhyar’s share dwindled to insigni¬
ficance, because they claimed much of it on one pretext or another.
The adhiyars now demanded that the place for storing the crop
should be of their choice. The second demand related to the rates
of interest charged on the grain-loans made by the jotedars. The
adhiyars could scarcely do without such loans, since their stock
of grain used to be insufficient. The rate of interest used to be
about 50 per cent. They now refused to pay more than 25 per cent.
If the grain lent was exclusively seedgrain, they were reluctant to
pay any interest.
The struggle began in 1939 and gradually intensified. Even
severe police repression on the Kisan leaders could not suppress
it. The jotedars eventually came to a compromise, mainly as a
result of the intervention of the Magistrate. The settlement of
the main points of dispute was now left to a Board (panchayat)
composed of members chosen by both adhiyars and jotedars.
In eastern Bengal, the main area of the Kisan Sabha activities
among the sharecroppers was the pargana Susang, in the district of
Mymensingh, inhabited largely by tribes, including the Hajangs
and Garos. The Kisan movement, beginning in 1938, was aimed
against the most widely prevailing system of rent payment—the
tanka system. Under it a fixed portion of the produce had to be
paid as rent, whatever the produce. The movement partly succeeded.
The tanka system was not formally abolished, but the Hajangs
were given the option of paying their rent in kind or cash. This
was no small gain, in view of the tendency of the agricultural
prices to rise since 1939.
In 1939 the Kisan Sabha sought to organize a larger movement
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 359

in northern Bengal. It demanded an increase in the share of the

bargadar from one-half to two-thirds. The movement did not
catch on. However, it was the beginning of the tebhaga movement,
which started in 1946.
The Kisan Sabha was aware that such reforms were only partial
solutions of the problem of bargadars. To the Sabha the real
solution was the abolition of the barga tenure altogether and the
eventual conversion of bargadars into occupancy ryots, defined
and protected by law. While struggling for the reforms the Sabha
never lost sight of this ultimate goal. It is quite likely that the
arguments of the Bengal Land Revenue Commission (1940), in
favour of abolition of the barga system were influenced by the
constant preachings of the Kisan Sabha.
In Bihar the Kisan Sabhas had another grim battle to fight to
stop evictions of peasants by zamindars from the so-called bakhast
land. These lands were the zamindars’ ‘own’ lands, distinguishable
from the lands cultivated and owned by the peasants. The origin
of the bakhast land can be traced to the dispossession by zamindars
of the owner-peasants on grounds of non-payment of rent. The
formal dispossession, however, rarely resulted in the change of
cultivators. Evictions on a considerable scale began in 1937.
The zamindars were provoked largely by the agitation at the time
over the amendment of the Tenancy Bill. They feared that the
amended Act would confer on the cultivators the status of occu¬
pancy ryots, which in fact was precisely one of the demands of
the Kisan Movement.
The Kisan Movement was aimed both at restoring to the owner-
peasants the lands they had lost and preventing the evictions from
the bakhast lands. The measures of the Congress ministry in
regard to the first question disappointed the kisan leaders. These
measures provided for the restoration of all lands, in respect of
which the rent was enchanced or commuted into cash in the years
between 1911 and 1937, and also of the lands sold in the years
between 1929 and 1937. They, however, did not apply in cases
where the zamindar was exempted from the payment of agricultural
income-tax and where the land had already been settled with other
tenants ‘in good faith.’ Thus only a small portion of the bakhast
land was affected.
Far more difficult was the problem arising out of the evictions
360 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

from the bakhast land. The Kisan Sabhas organized satyagrahas

by the evicted peasants—thereby preventing others from cultivating
the land. This resulted often in violent clashes. Such clashes were
most numerous in Barhayiatal in Monghyr district, a place mostly
inhabited by the low-caste Dhanuks. The Kisan Sabha had a strong
hold there, having led in 1936 a fight against begari (unpaid labour).
The All-India Kisan Sabha observed the ‘Bihar Kisan Day’ on
18 October 1937 as a mark of protest against severe police repres¬
sion on the satyagrahis.38
Another problem which the Bihar Kisan Sabha had to face was
that of the sugarcane growers. The peasants cultivated sugarcane
with or without advances from the sugar mills. With decreasing
demand for sugar, the demand of the sugar mills for sugarcane
suddenly fell. Earlier in similar circumstances the sugarcane
growers could partly make up for the loss by pressing the sugarcane
themselves and making molasses and gur. Now that the market for
gur also shrank, the producers had no other alternative but to
accept whatever prices the sugar mills had offered. The Kisan
Sabha organized a movement for securing higher prices. In 1933,
it asked the producer not to enter into contracts with the mills
except through the newly set-up Provincial Sugarcane Sabha.
The Kisan Sabha contended that in face of combined opposition
by the sugarcane growers the mill-owners would eventually prefer
paying higher prices to shutting their mills for want of sugarcane.
Similar agitations on a much larger scale took place in 1935 in the
Dinajpur subdivision. The Sugar Factories Control Act passed
by the Congress ministry fixed a minimum price for sugarcane.
In fact this did not help the producers. The Kisan Sabha soon found
that ‘the minimum has invariably become the maximum, as millers
have never thought it fit to pay even a pie more than the minimum
price fixed by the Government.’ The Kisan Sabha’s success was
only partial in respect of this problem.
In the context of the falling prices of agricultural produce, the
rates fixed on the basis of the pre-depression prices for the use
of the canal water in the Sone canal area in Sahabad and in the
Damodar Canal area in Burdwan became extremely iniquitous
for the peasants using water for canals. A significant aspect of the
Kisan Sabha activities was a fight for a reduction in the water-
rates. The peasants won a complete victory in the Damodar canal
area.
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 361

VI

The peasantry in Bengal and Bihar was not at all a homogeneous

group. This again posed problems for the Kisan Sabha. The strategy
of the Kisan movement in its early phase does not seem to have
been influenced very much by the heterogeneous nature of the
peasantry. The earliest constitutional document of the Bihar
Kisan Sabha (1929), defined a peasant as anyone whose primary
source of livelihood was agriculture. The more elaborate constitu¬
tion of the Sabha (1936) said essentially the same thing.39 The
Sabha ignored the different aspects of production in agriculture.
In fact agriculture provided means of livelihood to different groups
in different ways.
It was in the introduction to the Hindi edition of the Manifesto
of the Bihar Kisan Sabha (1936), that Swami Sahajanand for the
first time considered an agricultural labourer as a peasant. He
said: ‘A peasant is known as a Grihasta, a person who earns his
livelihood by cultivation and agriculture, be he a petty landlord,
ryot or labourer working on wages for ploughing fields.’
A separate organization of agricultural labourers was not however
considered necessary: The Kisan Sabha does not desire that
by creating a separate organization of agricultural labourers any
strife should be let loose between them and landlords and ryots,
nor should the latter oppress agricultural labourers.’40 At the
1937 session of the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha at Niyamatpur
in Gaya district (15 July 1937), Sahajanand said: The interests
of the agricultural labourers and the Kisan are the same’.41
The ideas of the Kisan leaders gradually changed, presumably
because of a better understanding on their part of the then existing
agrarian structure. At the first session of the Mynjensingh District
Krishak Samiti (24 February 1938) the President Muzaffar Ahmed
classified the peasants into four groups: (a) those who tilled other
men’s lands; (b) those who tilled their own lands and also other
men’s lands, because their own holdings were not large enough
for their subsistence; (c) those who had lands just enough for them,
and (d) those who had enough land and got it cultivated by hired
labour. Ahmed felt that the last group should not join the Kisan
movement, and that its strength should come from the first three
groups.42 The Secretary of the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha,
Awadheshwar Prasad Singh, also thought alike, though he thought
362 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

that the Depression had tended to blur the distinction between

a large number of owner-peasants and agricultural labourers.43
Gradually the emphasis further changed, and the Bihar Kisan
Sabha under the leadership of Swami Sahajanand tended more
and more to rely on the ‘lowest strata of the peasantry’ as the back¬
bone of the Kisan movement. He said in 1944:
‘It is they, the semi-proletarians or the agricultural labourers
who have very little land, or no land at all, and the petty cultivators
who anyhow squeeze a most meagre living out of the land they
cultivate.. .who are the kisans of our thinking.. .and who
make and must constitute the Kisan Sabha ultimately.’44
It seems, however, that the Kisan Sabha’s success was only
partial in bringing the ‘lowest strata of the peasantry’ into the
Kisan movement as a permanent force. An enquiry made in 1939
by the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha into the nature of the compo¬
sition of the membership of the Sabha in the Kishoreganj sub¬
division of Dacca showed that ‘the majority were raiyats, and a
smaller number were under-raiyats and bargadars.’45 Swami
Sahajanand admitted that even as late as 1944 it was ‘really the
middle and big cultivators... (who were) for the most part with
the Kisan Sabha.’ He even suspected that the ‘middle and big
cultivators’ were ‘using the Kisan Sabha for their own benefit
and gain.’46
\

VII

The thirties - in which the Kisan movement came into existence

and became a powerful force in rural Bengal and Bihar was also
the period of great advances in the nation’s struggle for freedom led
by the Congress. For the sake of convenience the present study
of these relations is confined to Bihar. Apart from other reasons,
the evaluation by the Kisan Sabha of the performance of the
Congress ministry in Bihar, particularly in regard to the peasant
question, was a decisive factor that influenced the attitude of the
Sabha to the Congress.
The relations were at first quite cordial. This was partly due to
the nature of the Kisan leadership. Most of the Kisan leaders
in the early phase of the Kisan Movement were also actively
connected with the Congress. They believed that by drawing the
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 363

peasants into the freedom struggle they were only strengthening

the Congress organization. They were naturally averse to doing
anything which would result in weakening the Congress. Indeed,
where the Kisan Movement was thought to be a division force in
the nationalist movement, the Kisan leaders promptly called it
off.47
At the same time, the Kisan leaders had no doubt about the
need for an independent organization of the peasants. This was
not because of any assumption that by its very structure and com¬
position the Congress would necessarily be hostile to the peasants,
but because of a feeling that the Congress was too preoccupied
with political questions to take interest in a distinctively peasant
question. The Congress included in its fold various interests,’
but such diverse interests did not at first appear irreconcilable to
the Kisan leaders. On the contrary, they believed that the Congress
could be made a real Kisan organization. In fact they justified
an independent Kisan organization precisely on the ground that
the pressure put on the Congress by it through a broadbased
Kisan Movement could prevent the domination of the Congress
by vested interests hostile to the Kisan.
This optimism gradually disappeared. During the Civil Dis¬
obedience movement, the Kisan leaders did much to draw the
peasants into it and went to the extent of calling off an independent
movement of the Kisans out of a fear that the former might suffer,
only eventually to find the Congress utterly indifferent to the woes
of the Kisans. The Kisan leaders gradually started doubting the
earnestness of the Congress in this regard. Such doubts developed
into a positive mistrust after the Congress Ministry had begun to
function (August 1937).
The Bihar Kisan Sabha had serious reservations about the
acceptance of office by the Congress. The Bihar Provincial Kisan
Council at a meeting on 24 February 1937, with Swami Sahajanand
in the chair opposed it on the ground that 'the Government of
India Act was brought with a view to entrenching the vested interests
in power and making the imperialist grip stronger.’48
However, when the Congress finally decided to form the govern¬
ment, the Kisan Sabha did not in any way seek to undermine it.
On the contrary, the Sabha decided to make use of it, as far as
possible for promoting the peasants’ cause. It tried to convince
364 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the government of the urgency of the peasant question by organiz¬

ing big peasant rallies. The Kisan leaders, for instance, asked the
peasants throughout Bihar to muster strength before the
Legislative Assembly on 23 August 1937, the opening day of
the Assembly. The Kisan leaders thus exhorted the peasants on
the occasion-:
‘Constant agitation should be made.. .so that you can be free
from rural indebtedness, imposition of numerous taxes, and
oppressions of many a person. It is you, tillers of the soil, who
have chosen your representatives in the Assembly, and it is
you who shall draw their attention to your needs and wants....
Your fight has reached a critical stage, and it is time for you to
keep alert.... Simply saying that the Congress is now the
Government will not take you anywhere.’49
The peasants responded warmly. Twenty thousand peasants
gathered near the Assembly shouting the slogans: ‘Give us water,
we are thirsty; give us bread, we are hungry; remit all our agri¬
cultural loans; down with zamindars and save us from oppres¬
sion.’50 The Kisan demonstration was unprecedented in the history
of Bihar.
The Kisan leaders evidently expected much of the new govern¬
ment, and sought to persuade the Congress to make a firm com¬
mitment to the defence of the peasants’ interest. The Bihar Pro¬
vincial Kisan Council, at a meeting held on 4 November, 1937
said: ‘There are numerous interests which are opposed to the
interest of the Kisans, but the responsibility of the Congress is
towards the exploited and the downtrodden rather than towards
the privileged and vested interests.’51
The performance of the Congress Ministry disappointed the
Kisan leaders although some of its measures undoubtedly helped
the peasantry.52 Rent was reduced by about 25 per cent, on an
average. Peasants’ holdings were made transferable without the
prior consent of zamindars, and the salami that was previously
payable to them at the time of such transfers was greatly reduced.
Sales by zamindars of the entire holdings of peasants on grounds
of non-payment of due rent were made illegal. Zamindars could
sell only a part of the holdings, which was enough for the realiza¬
tion of the arrears of rent. The Ministry persuaded the zamindars
to agree not only to a reduction of the cash rent, but also of the
share of the crop.
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 365

The Kisan leaders however expected much more. The problem

of rural indebtedness remained as chronic as before. The Congress
ministry did very little towards solving the bakhast land question.
A meeting of the All India Kisan Committee in Calcutta on 27
October 1937, expressed "strong dissatisfaction with the piecemeal,
superficial and perfunctory manner in which the Congress ministries
have dealt with only some of the problems affecting the Kisans.’53
The kisan leaders in fact wanted the Congress to establish a kind of
Kisan raj. ‘Kisan raj kaem ho’ (a kisan regime would soon be
coming) was one of the popular slogans with the Kisan demons¬
trators.54 This involved confiscation of the zamindar estates and
the distribution of the lands thus acquired among the landless.
The Congress ministry found the Kisan slogans much too
radical for their taste, and made no bones about it. The Prime
Minister Srikrishna Sinha once observed: ‘If lands are taken
without compensation, volcanic eruption will be sure to follow.,S5
The Kisan leaders sought to explain the failure of the Congress
ministry in terms of class interests. ‘All the fights of the Congress,’
said Swami Sahajanand at a Kisan rally at Siwan on 26 November
1938, ‘had been fought by the masses, whilst the capitalists and
landlords sided with the imperialist forces. Zamindars and capi¬
talists seeing that they had no hope from the imperialists, were
now joining the Congress and monopolizing it.’56 According
to the Kisan leaders the failure of the Congress ministry was due
to the structural weakness of the Congress movement. Pandit
Jadunandan Sarma observed:
‘Unfortunately, politics have so far dominated the Congress....
The masses have so far been kept in a mere state of emotional
exaltation, and the Congress has always tried to reconcile the
irreconcilable interests in its attempts to keep intact its national
character.... The masses who staked their all have not been
allowed to ventilate their genuine grievances against their ex¬
ploitation by Indian feudalism and rising capitalism. It is time
for the leaders to realize that the exploiters and the exploited
cannot be benefited at one and the same time. It is high time for
them to realize the absurdities of the position that there cannot
be compromise between landlords and tenants.’57
Swami Sahajanand stressed the point at the Comilla session of
the All-India Kisan Conference (May 1938):
‘It is dangerous to agree that the Congress is a Kisan organiza-
366 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

tion.... I do not want that the Congress should be a Kisan

organization in name only. I want it, if ever, to be so in its
ideology.... I want that the Congress should reflect the class
interests of the Kisans and cease!- to be dominated by the those
who fatten on the exploitation of the Kisans.’58
The Congress could not for long afford to ignore such criticisms.
The criticism that the interests of the Kisans were not safe in their
hands and aspersions at their moral integrity59 incensed the
Congress leaders. The Congress also reproved the Kisan Move¬
ment for its being prone to violence. Gandhiji went to the extent
of saying that such a movement ‘would be something like fascism.’
Reforming the land system, the Congress believed, did not at all
necessitate violence.60
In December 1937, the Congress took the decision forbidding
Congressmen from participating in the Kisan Sabha activities.
The Saran District Congress Committee on 7 December 1937,
asked Swami Sahajanand to suspend his proposed tour in Saran
district, since it feared ‘his presence might lead to unrest among the
Kisans and tenants.’61 The Congress members were asked ‘not to
attend or organize or help in organizing Kisan Sabha meetings to
be addressed by Swami Sahajanand.’ Other district committees
soon followed suit. The Bihar Provincial Congress Committee
formally approved of the ban of 14 December 1937. In justification
of their action they said that the propaganda of the Sabha ‘has
been responsible for producing a poisonous atmosphere....
Attacks are being made on the principle of Ahimsa which is the
cherished creed of the Congress. An atmosphere is developing in
certain parts of the province which, it is apprehended, is likely to
do much harm to the country and put obstacles in the way of the
country’s march toward freedom.’62 Prominent Congress leaders
toured different parts of the province and sought to explain
Congress’ stand towards the Kisans. In his two-day tour in Saran
in April 1938, Vallabhbhai Patel asked them not to be misled by
‘what is inspired by western ideas and also by the Red Flag,
which is the symbol of violence and against the culture and
tradition of India.... Comrade Lenin was not born in this
country and we do not want a Lenin here. We want Gandhi
and Ramachandra. Those who preach class hatred are enemies
of the country.63
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 367

Misunderstanding between the Congress and the Kisan Sabha

thus tended to increase. At the Gaya session of the All India Kisan
Conference (9-10 April, 1939) radical Kisan leaders like Swami
Sahajanand wanted a complete breach with theCongress. Moderate
opinions, however, ultimately prevailed, and the formal breach
did not occur.

VIII

During the period under review, unlike the earlier period, the Kisan
Movement was sure of its ground from the point of definition of
aims and also of organization. The Kisan leaders sought to build
an appropriate organization, though it remained, admittedly,
an imperfect one.64
However, the elements of weakness in the Kisan Movement
should not be overlooked. In view of the Depression and the
aggravation by it of the manifold evils of the agrarian society,
the movement would have been stronger. Barrington Moore
found the Indian peasants far less rebellious than the Chinese
peasants, and attributed the phenomenon partly to the particular
character of the nationalist leadership in India. ‘The character of
nationalist leaders imparted to their movement a quietist twist
that helped to damp down what revolutionary tendencies there
were among the peasants.’65 The point is debatable. The dis¬
approval by the Congress of the particular form of the Kisan
agitation in Bengal and Bihar has been noted. The Congress
occasionally succeeded in drawing the peasantry into the nationalist
movement, but it did not lead any appropriate peasant organiza¬
tion. It had failed not only to keep up their enthusiasm, but also
alienated them when ‘violence’ on the part of the peasants, as
the Congress understood the word at the time sometimes led it to
call off the nationalist movement. Indeed, the Kisan Movement
developed in spite of the adverse reactions of the Congress leader¬
ship. Such reactions, therefore, could not be a real source of weak¬
ness of the Kisan Movement.
Moore was aware of the ‘the huge size and appalling misery of
India’s rural proletariat,’66 but he pointed out that tension of
the kind that one would, under the circumstances, assume to
have built up in the rural society, was largely nonexistent. According
368 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to him apart from the fact that ‘many’ of the agricultural labourers
were 'tied to the prevailing system through possession of a tiny
plot of land,’67 the caste system provided a niche for landless
labourers and tied them into the division of labour within the
village, while its sanctions depended for their operation less directly
on the existence of property.68 Moreover, 'the system of caste
did enforce hierarchical submission. Make a man feel humble
by a thousand daily acts and he will behave in a humble way.
The traditional etiquette of caste was no mere excrescence; it
had definite political consequences.’69
A ‘very high correlation between caste ranking and superior
and inferior rights to land'70 was undoubtedly a significant feature
of the land system in Bengal and Bihar. But how did the caste
system, involving as it did a system of sanctions, correct the im¬
balance in the rural society resulting from the reduction of a
sizeable sanction of owner-peasants to the status of agricultural
labourers? Could it just sanction away such a reality? The caste
system could not surely provide employment for the dislocated
group. The relative infrequency of rebellions by the agricultural
labourers need not be related to the 'submissiveness’ enforced
by the caste system. They hesitated to rebel, partly because they
were not sure of the results of such rebellions.
For the sources of weakness in the Kisan Movement we must
therefore look elsewhere. The Kisan Sabha had a formal organiza¬
tional structure, but, as Hauser puts it, 'It is more accurately
characterized as a movement than an organization as such. Its
primary instruments were numerous meetings, the rallies and annual
sessions.’71 The number of formal members seems impressive
(250,000 in Bihar in 1938 and 50,000 in Bengal in 1939), but the
organization largely depended on a small group of dedicated
workers. It, therefore, sometimes failed to cope with the task of
organizing large movements.
Another source of weakness can be attributed to the particular
agrarian relations in Bengal and Bihar. The Depression created
for the peasantry an extremely difficult situation, but the class
relations did not admit of any adjustment, though whether the
Indian caste system made the process any easier, as Gunnar Myrdal
thinks,72 is an open question. The zamindars were not a parti¬
cularly rapacious tribe enforcing their rent demands regardless
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 369

of whatever had happened to the peasantry. The steep fall in the

prices made the old level of rent grossly iniquitous to the peasants,
but, in fact, many of them just defaulted without necessarily
provoking ‘legal actions' on the part of the zamindars. Rent arrears
and also arrears of debt tended to accumulate. Zamindars had
the legal power to evict them and money-lenders to force the pay¬
ment in various ways. But many of them did not go as far as they
could. The forbearance of the zamindars was not entirely a matter
of kindness for the afflicted peasantry. They realized that as long
as the Depression continued, changing peasants for the cultivation
of their lands would not be of much use. Moreover, where the
majority of the peasant community defaulted, other legal steps
short of eviction were seldom more effective, particularly because
the legal process was tardy as well as costly.
The elements of weakness in the Kisan movement also partly
resulted from the particular composition of the peasant community
itself. It is wrong to describe a village in Bengal and Bihar as one
‘composed entirely mass of poor tenants united in opposition to
the absentee landlords and their agents.’ The peasant community
was not a homogeneous group. It was a complex structure composed
of elements which were sometimes naturally hostile. The Kisan
Sabha, therefore, found it difficult to organize all the groups in
a united movement. For instance, where bargadars were employed
by richer peasants, as was often the case, the Kisan Sabha, fighting
with the former, risked alienating the latter, which had backed
them once in their fight against zamindars. In Bihar, Swami
Sahajanand was shocked to find how big occupancy ryots had
largely succeeded in turning the Kisan Sabha into an instrument
for promoting their own interests. This was the reason for the
increasing emphasis afterwards on the need to bring the agricultural
labourers and ‘the lowest strata of the peasantry’ into the Kisan
Movement.
Where bargadars or agricultural labourers were involved, the
Kisan Sabha sometimes failed to attract them largely because of
their fear that by opposing their employers they risked losing their
tiny plots of land, which were their only means of subsistence.
Such fears, as we have seen earlier, were not baseless. This was
the reason why the settlement officers carrying on survey and
settlement work often failed to persuade a sizeable section of the
370 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

bargadars to declare their status, so that this could be included

in the settlement records. Such was the hold of their employers
over them that many bargadars altogether denied that they had
cultivated lands on a crop-sharing basis.

IX

The Kisan Movement began to decline towards the end of the

period under review particularly in Bihar. Hauser attributed it
partly to the tactical mistake of the Kisan Sabha leadership domi¬
nated by the personality of Swami Sahajanand and partly to a
series of developments which tended to reduce the misery of the
peasants.
‘The Kisan Sabha was a strong movement of agitation. It was
not organized structurally because of the impatient and arti¬
culate leadership which Swami Sahajanand provided. He was
a Swami who sought change, a charismatic revolutionary.
So long as he maintained that attitude within the framework
of the nationalism which sustained all political activity in India
during this period, the movement was effective. When he was
attracted to ideological politics of the anti-national Left, he
and the movement he had created found no support among the
peasants of Bihar.’73
According to Hauser, the new legislative measures reducing
the rents in the south Bihar districts between 1937 and 1940, and
the improved price situation of the war period, were responsible
for diminishing the distress of the peasants.
Hauser’s view with regard to the responsibility of Sahajanand
for the decline of the Kisan Movement seems to be of doubtful
validity. The main strength of the movement lay not in its appeal
to nationalist sentiments, but in its particular stand on the basic
grievances of the peasantry. It may, however, be true that the
Swamiji’s increasing inclination towards the ‘Left’ in the country’s
politics alienated a number of persons actively connected with the
leadership ofthe Kisan Movement. The rank and file of the peasants
do not seem to have been much affected by the alleged political
bias of the Swamiji.
The tendency of the prices to rise since the end of 1938, parti¬
cularly since the beginning of the second world war, undoubtedly
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 371

helped the peasantry in making a recovery from the effects of the

long Depression. So did the measures reducing the rent burdens.
Needless to say, these were temporary reliefs. The basic malad¬
justment in the peasant economy and agrarian society persisted.
In fact, certain developments made this still worse, particularly
the drying up of rural credit as a result of the legislative measures
designed for reducing rural debts. We have seen how more peasants
lost their land as a result. The famine of 1943 left the peasant eco¬
nomy in ruins. The background for a wider Kisan agitation was
thus formed. It began soon after the end of the war and became
stronger year after year.

References

1 I have elsewhere made a detailed study of the peasant movement in Bengal

and Bihar in the second half of the 19th century. ‘Agrarian economy and agrarian
relations in Bengal, 1859-1885’ (unpublished Oxford D. Phil dissertation,
1968), Ch. 5
2 Private correspondence of Ripon with persons in India, 1883, Vol. 1; Letter
No. 335; Tagore wrote the letter to Bayley, Member of the Viceroy’s Council,
and it was enclosed in Bayley’s letter to the Private Secretary to the Viceroy,
5 June, 1883.
3 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography (Ahmedabad, 1945) Part V, Ch. 12.
4 T had decided that nothing should be done in the name of the Congress... For
the name of the Congress was the bete noire of the Government and their
controllers—the planters_Therefore we had decided not to mention the
name of the Congress and not to acquaint the peasants with the organization
called the Congress.’ (Ibid, Ch. 14).
5 Ibid., Ch. 8.
6 Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography (Calcutta, 1962), p. 48.
7 This was how some of the local journals reacted:—
Tippera Guide, Comilla, (24 January 1922): ‘The spirit of non-cooperation has
spread into the lower stratum of society. The non-cooperation movement
has assumed threatening proportions and the storm of unrest is blowing over
the villages.’
372 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Harald, Dacca (9 February 1922): if the proportion of private owners of land

be taken to be 10 per cent, it would be much more in Eastern Bengal, then
the campaign of non-payment of taxes would at once mean a fight between this
10 per cent, on one side and the 90 per cent on the other. On the one side will be
skill, resource and accumulated strength and on the other shall be numbers
to swamp the other side. There will be set in the country a regular civil war.’
Atrna Sakti, Calcutta (5 April 1922): ‘A social revolution without political
freedom will be injurious to a dependent country.. .. Who will deny that if
the ire of the masses is once roused against social oppressions, etc., to which
they have been subjected for centuries, it will consume the whole community
like a volcanic eruption.'
8 Rathindra Nath Tagore, Pitri Smrili (Reminiscences of my Father).
9 ‘Raiyater Katha’ (About the Peasants) in Collected Works, (Centenary Edition),
Vol. 13, pp. 345-6.
10 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 April 1938, Report on the Second Session of the Gaya
District Kisan Conference, held on 23-4 April 1938.
11 Discussions on the point are innumerable. Here is a good summary: ‘The
output of primary products tends to be inelastic, which means that it does not
change very much in response to changes in the price. This is essentially a
matter of time-periods. The output of manufactured goods can often be increased
quite quickly by putting in new plant and equipment, or simply by working
overtime; but it takes a long time to grow more rubber trees or sink a new
copper mine. Similarly, the output of manufactured goods can be reduced by
laying men off; but coffee trees or cotton plants will go on producing regardless.
Moreover, the demand for primary producing fluctuates much more than the
demand for manufactured goods, precisely because it is known that a shortage
will not result in much extra production, so that people will react to any hint
of a shortage by intensive stock-piling; and similarly, when the threat of a
shortage disappears, will live off their stocks and thus drastically reduce their
demand for what is currently being produced.’ Big variations in price inevitably
result from a combination of these two circumstances. (Michael Stewart,
Keynes and After, a Pelican Original, pp. 260-1).
12 Report of the Bengal Jute Enquiry Committee, 1934; Vol. 1, Majority Report,
Para 13.
13 Walter Hauser, 'The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sahha, 1929-42; A -Study of an •
Indian Peasant Movement' (unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, the University of Chicago,
1961). I have used a copy in microfilm kept in the Nehru Memorial Museum
and Library, New Delhi.
14 Ibid.
15 The Muslim League leaders, unlike the wahabi and ferazee leaders working
among the peasantry in Bengal in the 19th century, were not in the least influenc¬
ed by the social radicalism of Islam.
16 Qazi Imam Husain, ‘Nature of the Proja Movement in Bengal,’ in Amrita
Bazar Patrika, 31 March 1937.
17 M. Azizul Huque, The Man Behind the Plough, pp. 151-2.
18 Bengal Land Revenue Administration Report, 1930-31, para 38.
19 Bengal Land Revenue Commission (also called the Floud Commission) heard
these complaints day after day. The Jessore Landholders’ Association said:
‘The Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act has supplied additional impetus and
strength to the agrarian agitation and no-rent campaign, and has caused an
all-round suspension of rent.... It has engineered a class war and an all-round
 AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR, 1919-39 373

communist spirit’ (Volume IV of the Commission’s Report, p. 67). One of

the popular slogans was: ‘Rent is payable when able, land belongs to those
who plough.' According to the Khulna Landholders’ Association: ‘The ignorant
mass has been over-encouraged to think that they can avoid all sorts of payment
by taking resort to the law’ (ibid., p. 95). The Maldah Landholders’ Association
remarked: ‘By the passing of the Act an impression has been firmly rooted in
the minds of the agriculturists that they have been released from all liabilities
of payments of debts as well as rents’ (Ibid, p. 111). Equally categorical was
the observation of the Bengal Landholders’ Association: ‘Tempers have been
roused to such a pitch by incessant preaching of class hatred and zamindar-
baiting in particular that cool reasoning can no longer be expected.... The
impression is now common that all debts and even arrears of rent can be wiped
out by executive order or legislation.’ (Vol. Ill, pp. 84 and 107).
20 Bengal Land Revenue Administration Report, 1938-39, para 39.
21 Report of the Floud Commission, III, 423.
22 Bengal Land Revenue Administration Report, 1937-38, para 38.
23 Bengal Police Administration Report, 1935, para 32.
24 Bengal Police Administration Report, 1938, para 32.
25 Bengal Police Administration Report, 1939, para 32.
26 Report of the Land Revenue Commission, IV, pp. 286 and 314.
27 Report, I, para 88.
28 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 5 April 1932.
29 Ibid., 8 January 1932.
30 Ibid., 7 January 1932.
31 Bengal Police Administration Report, 1934, para 31.
32 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 November 1937.
33 Bengal Land Revenue Administration Report, 1923-24, para 2.
34 Ibid., 1925, para 35. Ibid., 1927-28, para 35. Ibid., 1929-30, para 38.
35 Ibid., 1928-29, para 2 and 38.
36 F.O. Bell, Dinajpur Survey and Settlement Report, 1934-40, para 20.
37 Ibid.
38 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 16 November 1937. ‘Agrarian trouble in Barhayiatlal’
A statement by Karyanand Sarma, Secretary, Monghyr District Kisan Sabha,
15 November 1937.
39 Hauser, n. 13, Ch. 1.
40 Ibid.
41 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 July 1937.
42 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 27 February 1938.
43 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 April 1938.
44 Hauser, n. 13, Ch. 1.
45 Oral Evidence of the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha before the Floud Commis¬
sion, 22 March 1939. Report of the Floud Commission, Vol. IV, p. 62.
46 Hauser, n. 13, Ch. 1.
47 Swami Sahajanand, for instance, did it once during the Civil Disobedience
movement.
48 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 27 February 1937.
49 Ibid., 20 August 1937.
50 Ibid., 24 August 1937.
51 Ibid., 6 November 1937.
52 For details see Rajendra Prasad, Autobiography (Hindi), New Delhi, 1955,
pp. 454-9.
374 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

53 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 30 October 1937.

54 Ibid., 12 January 1938.
55 Ibid., 30 January 1938.
56 Ibid., 29 November 1938.
57 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 January 1938.
58 Ibid., 15 May 1938.
59 Congressmen with khaddar and their Gandhi caps were compared to Sadhus
who with their tilaks and other marks cheated the people. Rajendra Prasad’s
statement on 11 January 1938, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 12 January 1938.
60 Gandhian notion of eventual change of heart of the property owners greatly
influenced them. He said: T want them (zamindars and ruling chiefs) to outgrow
their greed and sense of possession, and to come down in spite of their wealth
to the level of those who earn their bread by labour.’ Economic and Industrial
Life, I, 119. In the Harijan of 23 April 1938, he remarked that if the zamindars
did not change, ‘they will die a natural death.’
61 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9 December 1937.
62 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 16 December 1937.
63 7Z>/z/., 10 April 1938.
64 The presence of these two features also distinguished the Kisan movement
from the radical millenarian peasant movements in several parts of the world,
of which much has been written. The essence of the millenarianism was ‘the
hope of a complete and radical change in the world which will be reflected in
the millennium, a world shorn of all its present deficiencies.’ (E.J. Hobsbawm,
Primitive Rebels, Ch. 4). This hope gave the movement a tremendous force.
However, they shared ‘a fundamental vagueness about the actual way in which
the new society will be brought about,’ and a notable thing about them was
their indifference to the question of organization. ‘Its (the movement’s) followers
are not makers of revolution. They expect it to make itself, by divine revelation,
by an announcement from on high, by a miracle—they expect it to happen
somehow. The part of the people before the change is to gather together... to
undertake certain virtual measures against the movement of decision and
change, or to purify themselves, shedding the dross of the bad world of the
present so as to be able to enter the new world in shining purity’. (Ibid.).
65 Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, p. 378.
66 Ibid., p. 455.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid., p. 213.
69 Ibid., p. 383.
70 Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama Vol. II, (London, 1968), p. 1059. For some
evidence on the point see Benoy Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian economy and agrarian
relations in Bengal 1859-85,’ in History of Bengal, 1757-1905 (published by
the University of Calcutta), pp. 315-16 and 321-22.
71 Hauser, n. 13, p. 87.
72 Myrdal, n. 70, p. 1061. He writes: ‘A social environment in which high status
is accorded to abstinence from physical work encourages adjustments by the
more privileged strata to relieve at least the direct distress of the dispossessed.’
73 Hauser, n. 13, p. 156.
 19 Damodar Canal Tax Movement

Buddhadeva Bhattacharyya
with
Tarun Kumar Bannerjee and Dipak Kumar Das

In the late 1930s serious popular discontent gathered force in

the canal areas of the river Damodar over the question of the
Bengal Development Act and the levy imposed thereunder. A
movement crystallized and awakened the unsophisticated village-
folk of Burdwan. To understand its nature it is necessary to go
deep into the history of the Damodar Canal.
Till the close of the 18th century the river Damodar had been
connected, on either side, with a number of spill-channels, streams
and watercourses and had served the purpose of irrigation in the
whole of the Burdwan zamindary. A cess called ‘poolbundy’1
was levied on the ryots of the riparian areas to meet the cost of
repair and maintenance of the banks of the river. When the Burdwan
Raj was relieved of its responsibilities and liabilities to maintain
the poolbundy works at the end of the 18th century, tne Govern¬
ment admitted its obligation to keep the watercourses, spill-
channels, streams, dykes, pools, tanks and their embankments,
etc. in a proper state. Eventually, however, the Government was
found to have failed to keep its promise and worked in the opposite
direction. After taking over the poolbundy works, it thoroughly
strengthened the left embankment and made it watertight. As a
result its innumerable spill-channels were closed, and subsequently,
the zamindars and tenants, according to Sir William Willcocks,
made numerous secret breaches through the embankment. In the
period between 1856-9 the Government cut off 20 miles of embank¬
ment on the right side of the Damodar with a view to protecting
Reproduced from Satyagrahas in Bengal. 1921-9, Minerva Associates, (Publications),
Calcutta, 1977.
376 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the E.I. Railways and the G.T. Road and left the right embankment
unrepaired. All this accelerated the silting up of the river bed,
reduced the sectional area, and indirectly caused the death of the
live channels. Sir William Willcocks called them satanic chains
of the Damodar which doomed the once healthy and prosperous
tract to malaria and dire poverty.2
To fulfil a part of its obligation and to compensate the people
of Burdwan and Hooghly the Government opened the Eden Canal
in 1881 and the Damodar Canal in 1933. The Damodar Canal
Project as sanctioned by the Secretary of State in 1921 was intended
to irrigate nearly 200,000 acres of rice-producing area every year
(140,000 acres according to a press report) in 379 villages. The canal
was expected to supply water to the Eden Canal also for irrigation
of at least 24,000 acres in-addition to the area then supplied by
the Eden Canal. The expenditure to be incurred for the purpose
was estimated to be about Rs. 73 lakhs, but the actual cost rose
up to about 1 crore of rupees and a quarter. The construction of
the canal started by 1926-7 and the new canal began supplying
water for irrigation in May 1932, but it was formally opened at
Rondia headworks, some 30 miles away from Burdwan, by the
Governor of Bengal on 22 September 1933. It was practically
completed in 1935-36. Then the area served by it stood at 134,464
acres extending over 297 villages.3

II

After the formal inauguration of the canal the Government

began to think of realizing a part of the capital expenditure by
imposing a canal tax on the ryots who derived benefit from the
canal. At first it wanted to collect the canal tax through a lease
system by appointing mukhia in each village. The tax being heavy
the ryots refused to execute any lease to get the canal water. As
a result, the Government thought it proper to impose a compulsory
levy by means of a suitable legislation.4 With that end in view on
18 February 1935 Khwaja Nazimuddin, Minister-in-charge of
Irrigation, introduced the Bengal Development Bill, 1935 which
provided for the improvement of land in Bengal and imposition
of a levy in respect of increased profit resulting from improvement
works constructed by the Government.5
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 377

As the Bill referred to above became the cause of a bitter popular

struggle against governmental high-handedness it is necessary for
us to acquaint ourselves with the object, nature and scope of the
aforesaid bill. The object of the bill, according to the Minister
introducing the Bill, was to tide over the financial difficulty which
prevented the Government from taking up works undoubtedly
necessary for the prosperity of the province and to enable complex
and far-reaching schemes of improvement to be undertaken with
the knowledge that so far from being a burden on the provincial
resources they would prove remunerative. In accordance with the
spirit of the Bill, the cost of the schemes financed by the Government
out of loan-funds should be met by means of tax levied at a flat
rate on the total area benefited and provisions for appointment
and realization should be made as elastic as possible. The principle
was that the Government should be entitled to recover a portion
of the increased profits which accrued to private individuals and
companies from land of any description, whether used for agri¬
culture or not, owing to works undertaken at the cost of the State
and which they would not have otherwise enjoyed. The principle
was applicable to areas where schemes for the improvement had
only recently been carried into effect, as well as to areas where
such schemes were to be undertaken in future.6
As regards the nature and scope of the Bill, the Minister said that
when the Government had improved the outturn of land it should
be allowed to take back for itself at least half of the net increase.
In his opinion, it was a fair proposition : ‘I shall give you a rupee
if you give me back eight annas.’ The Bill, it was argued, would
not only compel the ryots to pay up to half of their increased
profits, but also would enable them to make increased profits
by taking advantage of the improvements. The Minister in justifica¬
tion of his stand said that during years of normal rainfall the
people did not take the canal water, rather they treated the irriga¬
tion canal as an insurance against a failure of the monsoon. It
was impossible, he said, to finance irrigation works by recoveries
only in years when the monsoon failed, and if the people regarded
the irrigation works as an insurance they ought to pay every year
for that insurance. It was not unreasonable, he argued, that the
people who possessed lands were under a moral obligation to
society to develop these lands in the best possible way; and in the
378 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

malarious tracts of the delta when anyone refused to take advantage

of flood irrigation he was actually encouraging malaria or not
helping in its eradication. He emphasized that if individuals were
allowed to act in accordance with their sweet will, the schemes
simply would not work. That was why the Bill proposed that if
any man indulged in the luxury of keeping land underdeveloped,
he should at any rate pay as the man who co-operated in the im¬
provement by cultivating his land. In his opinion it could hardly
be regarded as a harsh measure. Further, he observed that not
more than half the net increase in outturn was the maximum
levy to be imposed under the Bill. As the yield of the lands varied,
there would have to be a full inquiry before the rate of any improve¬
ment levy was fixed, and the idea would be to fix it at such a rate
as to leave the prayer substantially better oflf. The improvement
levy would not be a tax in the ordinary sense, but so far as it could
be called a tax, it would be ‘what the Government is looking for—
a tax that would not hurt anybody but benefit everybody.’ He
admitted that the Bill did not specify the classes of persons who
would be liable to pay the improvement levy; it left this to be
determined by rule. There was a risk in such an attempt of allowing
certain persons to escape their obligation to pay under the proposed
Act and of causing hardship to persons who had had no real benefit
from improvement. So it was intended to determine after a full
inquiry, when any area was taken up for improvement levy, what
particular classes in it ought to be assessed. The improvement
levy was to be paid out of the profits due to the improvement and
so it should be paid by persons who get the benefit. As regards
the question of assessment, he observed that the Government
wanted to estimate the average outturn before and after improve¬
ment. As regards the period for which an assessment would hold
good, he said that it would be convenient alike to the Government
and to the assessees if the rate did not vary too often; but until the
conditions returned to normal the rate might have to be revised
(according to fluctuations in prices) at comparatively short inter¬
vals, perhaps every year. The questions of assessment and revision
were to be left to a process of trial and error and to be governed
by rules. Another most important feature of the Bill was the provi¬
sion that the civil court should not interfere. The Government
feared that a court might, at any stage, on some nice point of law
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 379

declare some action illegal and throw the whole, or a large part,
of the cost of a scheme of improvement upon the provincial reve¬
nues. There was also a risk that it might pass orders which could
paralyse administration and be fatal to an improvement scheme.
These were the problems facing the province; and it was therefore
necessary to steer clear of these difficulties by providing for special
appeal authorities to deal with all disputes which might arise in
connexion with the scheme. Hence the Government asked for
wide and drastic powers. The non-interference by civil courts,
the rule-making power, the assessment by executive authority
and the refusal to recognize as a matter of course the right to
compensation were some of the provisions of the Bill which some
members of the Legislature opposed.7 The Bengal Development
Bill was, however, finally passed on 3 October 1935.
Even a cursory reading of the Bengal Development Act, 1935
would suggest that though certain provisions of the Act were
sugar-coated, it was, in essence, detrimental to the interests of the
poor cultivators. The difficulties facing the Government as regards
the costs of construction, maintenance and establishment of the
Damodar Canal were attempted to be overcome by bringing the
canal area under the operation of the above-mentioned Act.
Within the area notified as benefited by the canal, water was
supplied, though no application was made under section 74 of
the Bengal Irrigation Act and the Government imposed a levy at
the rate of Rs 5-8-0 per acre per year irrespective of the benefits
derived or likely to be derived from the irrigation facilities of the
canal.8

Ill

The primary motive behind the canal tax agitation was, of course,
political. It was aimed at stimulating resistance against the colonial
rule. Secondarily, the movement was based on the grievances of
the local peasantry burdened with a heavy rate of improvement
levy. The Bengal Development Act, 1935 and the tax rate imposed
thereunder—these two being clearly interlinked—together sowed
the seeds of agitation and disaffection among the cultivators of
the canal area.9
Shortly after the Bengal Development Bill was proposed, the
380 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

drastic provisions of the Bill stirred the members of the Burdwan

Bar Association and other literate people of the town. Later when
a heavy burden of tax was imposed under the enactment it had a
crushing effect on the already famished peasantry. The National
Congress was then lying low in the district. The illiterate rural
masses are wont to attribute their miseries to an unkindly provi¬
dence. To rouse the inert and sluggish peasantry and to give some
relief to their mute and inglorious life half a dozen members of
the Bar came forward. They formed an association, namely the
Burdwan District Raiyats’ Association, with D.P. Chaudhuri
and Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay as President and Secretary
respectively, to fight the regressive measures as embodied in the
aforementioned Act and to agitate against the canal tax.10
In the initial phase the Burdwan District Raiyats’ Association
organized a meeting on 27 July 1935 in the Burdwan Town Hall
in protest against the Bengal Development Bill which was yet to
be adopted as an enactment by the Legislature. The meeting was
presided over by Sir Nalini Ranjan Chattopadhyay. Sir Bijoy
Prasad Sinha Roy, while delivering his speech, said that ‘we have
assembled here to criticize this Bill, not to protest against it.’
Then Abdus Sattar, Secretary, District Congress Committee,
opposed Sir Bijoy Prasad and said that ‘we have assembled here
to protest against the Bill, not only to criticize it.’ He emphasized
that the Bill must be revoked. Sriharsa Mukhopadhyay, President
of the reception committee for the meeting, supported Abdus
Sattar and voiced the opposition of the general masses towards
the Bill.11
When the Government enacted the Bill in October, 1935 in
utter disregard of public opinion, the Raiyat’s Association decided
to hold public meetings and publish pamphlets explaining to the
people the motive of the Government and the effect of the legis¬
lation.12
On 20 December 1935 a mass meeting attended by the peasants
of about 500 villages of the Damodar Canal area was held under
the auspices of the Raiyats’ Association at Bangsagopal Hall
with Md. Yasin in the chair. The meeting adopted a number of
resolutions repudiating the figures regarding estimates of the
produce of lands in the pre-canal and post-canal days and protesting
against improper application of the Development Act and the rules
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 381

framed thereunder. The meeting also decided to send copies of

the resolutions to the District Magistrate, Burdwan, the Member,
Board of Revenue, the Member-in-charge of the Irrigation Develop¬
ment, Bengal, and to the Governor of Bengal.13
Three months earlier the Congress had started its election
campaign in Burdwan. Though the Congress had not yet formed
any separate organization exclusively meant for the canal tax
agitation, the Congress leaders discussed canal tax issues at several
election meetings with an eye to the ensuing election. The campaign
continued till the end of January 1937. The Congress propaganda
no doubt helped the people of the canal area to form a definite
opinion about the Bengal Development Act and the tax imposed
in accordance with its provisions.14
The Raiyats’ Association organized another meeting which was
presided over by Netai Gupta and addressed by Jadabendra Nath
Panja at Sodya on 31 January 1937. It is interesting to note that
this was attended by the members of the Krishak Samiti.15
By the beginning of February the agriculturists of the canal
area were seriously affected on account of the enforcement of
the Development Act. The Government started harassing poor
cultivators for the realization of the canal tax and began to recover
the arrears of taxes by notice of demand, certificate procedure and
the like.16
As regards the grievances of the cultivators in the Damodar
Canal area an informal discussion took place on 10 February in
the Burdwan Raj Palace with the Maharaja in the chair. Besides
the two Kumars the following gentlemen attended on invitation:
Durga Pada Chaudhuri, Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, Prafulla
Kumar Panja, Mahadeva Roy, Lakshman Kumar Chattopadhyay,
Helaram Chattopadhyay, Secretary, Krishak Samiti, Maulavi
Golam Mortuza and S.N. Batabyal. The President and the Secre¬
tary of the Burdwan District Raiyats’ Association described in
detail how the improper application and missuse of the Bengal
Development Act, 1935 by the officials concerned had caused
great hardship to the ryots who had failed to get any relief even on
repeated representations to the Government authorities. Further,
they pointed out that the imposition of the development tax at
the rate of Rs 5-8-0 per acre had badly hit the tax-payer. There¬
after the Maharaja suggested that a public protest meeting should
382 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

be held with Maharaj Kumar Uday Chand Mahatab as president

to formulate the grievances of the ryots in the form of resolutions
and place them before the Government for consideration. The
Kumar would meet such officers as he might think necessary
in order to get their grievances redressed and would propose in
the provincial Assembly such amendments to the Bengal Develop¬
ment Act, 1935 or table such resolutions as might be necessary for
the purpose. In the meantime, the Maharaja urged, the present
gentlemen should send through him a formal representation to
the District Magistrate of Burdwan for the purpose of mitigating
the rigours of the executive proceedings for the realization of the
arrears of the canal rates.17
On 14 February 1937 about one thousand representatives of
the cultivators of the Damodar Canal area attended a conference
held at the Town Hall Maidan under the presidentship of Niharendu
Dutta Mazumdar to decide their future course of action in view of
the Government demand of Rs 5-8-0 per acre as development tax.
The president referred in his speech to the miserable condition of
the peasantry in India and the crushing burden of taxes on their
shoulders. He characterized the canal tax as exorbitant and unjust
and urged for unity among all sections of the people to give vent
to their feeling and to make their demands effectively felt by the
Government.18 The resolutions passed at the conference were
as follows: That in the opinion of the conference the principles
underlying the Bengal Development Act and sections thereunder
were arbitrary, opposed to the interests of the prajas and krishaks
in general in the sense that they had been placed outside the juris¬
diction of the civil court so that the application of the Act might
make the executive officers all-powerful and give them absolute,
arbitrary and unfettered authority which was sure to be used to
oppress the ryots; that an estimate of the surplus produce of lands
in the Damodar Canal area made by the officials of the Irrigation
Department was devoid of logic and was not based on facts; that
the amount of paddy produced in the canal area did not admit of
a taxable surplus after the deductions for payment of rent to the
zamindar and expenditure on cultivation; that the conference
recorded strong protest against the remarks made by the Collector
of Burdwan that the cultivators were ready to pay at £ rate of the
canal tax, and that the Government be requested to appoint a
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 383

committee of enquiry to investigate how the Eden and the Damodar

Canal might be best utilized for the benefit of the local people.19
On 24 February 1937 a meeting attended by about three thousand
people was held at Bhatar bazaar under the auspices of the Raiyats’
Association. This meeting too resolved to fight the canal tax.20
By the end of the month the working of the canal system embit¬
tered the people at large and a vast number of villagers of the non¬
canal areas submitted petitions to the canal authorities requesting
the latter not to extend branch canals to their areas.21 It was also
learnt that about 40,000 certificates had even been prepared for
the realization of the canal dues.22
On the first day of March 1937 - the Raiyats’ Association
organized another meeting of the cultivators of the canal area at
the Town Hall Maidan under the presidentship of Maharaj Kumar
Uday Chand Mahatab. The Maharaj Kumar said that though there
might be differences of opinion as regards the utility of the canal,
there could not be any doubt as to the fact that the canal rate was
excessive. He urged the cultivators to send petititons to the Divi¬
sional Commissioner praying suspension of the issue of certificates
and assured the audience that he would support their cause so
long as they would fight through legal means. Then Bankim
Mukhopadhyay, an important leader of the Communist Party
of India, said that they did not want to adopt any illegal course,
but at the same time the Government should proceed in a legal
way; if the Government remained obstinate and intractable and
did not submit to people’s legitimate demands, the people must
surely be prepared for a bitter fight. The meeting resolved that
since there had been no development, and no increased outturn
of lands situated in the Damodar Canal area, no improvement
levy as such could be imposed under the Bengal Development
Act, 1935; that the improvement levy had been fixed solely with
reference to heavy and extravagant capital expenditure and costs,
etc. incurred by the Government in the construction and main¬
tenance of the said canal without any regard to the paying capacity
of the agriculturists and actual benefit, if any, derived by them;
that the improvement levy as assessed by the Government was
totally illegal, unjust, unreasonable and contrary to facts and
opposed to natural justice; that the scheme and provisions of the
Bengal Development Act were too drastic and arbitrary and were
384 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

prejudical to the interests of the peasants and cultivators in general

inasmuch as the Act made no provision for considering the objec¬
tions or grievances of the cultivators in respect of their liabilities
and amount of assessment, and moreover, by shutting out the
jurisdiction of the civil court, the Act had placed the entire canal
administration under the control of a few executive officials of
the Government; that with a view to redressing the above grie¬
vances of the people, the scheme, principle and the provisions of
the Bengal Development Act ought to be thoroughly revised and
recast as early as possible and the newly elected members of the
Bengal Legislature advised accordingly to urge for early amend¬
ment of the Act.23
Apart from the meetings organized by the local organizations,
the citizens of Calcutta convened a meeting at Albert Hall on
9 May 1937 under the presidentship of Santosh Kumar Bose MLA.
The meeting unanimously demanded a joint enquiry committee
consisting of official and non-official members to probe the grie¬
vances of the cultivators of the canal areas in the districts of Burdwan
and Hooghly regarding the imposition of canal taxes under the
B.D. Act and urged that pending the report of the enquiry committee
the realization of arrears of canal tax by the Government by means
of attachment or otherwise be kept in abeyance. In his speech
Santosh Kumar Bose emphasized that for a proper understanding
of the situation arising out of the Government’s efforts for realizing
canal dues it was necessary to look at the question in its proper
perspective. It was true that the Government had spent a huge
sum of money for the construction of the canal. But it arbitrarily
decided to impose a levy at an exorbitant rate upon all lands
commanded by the canal, irrespective of any consideration of the
actual benefit derived or likely to be derived from the canal water
by the cultivators. It was suggested by many that the method of
flood irrigation was necessary for improving the productive power
of the land and also useful in coping with malaria. But the Govern¬
ment refused to take all those suggestions into consideration and
tried to throw the whole burden of the tax on the shoulders of the
tenants whose paying capacity had already been strained to the
limit. The speaker demanded that an impartial inquiry should
be made and alternative methods of assessment be explored.
Meanwhile, he said, the order for realization of the arrears of canal
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 385

tax should be revoked. Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay MLA,

Sukumar Dutta MLA and Bankim Mukhopadhyay also addressed
the audience and demanded an immediate inquiry into the grie¬
vances of the peasants. Among others present were Kamal Krishna
Roy MLA, Hemanta Kumar Bose, Mahendra Chandra Sen,
Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, Sailendra Nath Roy, Panchanan
Bose, Satindra Mitra, Abdus Sattar, Dasarathi Tah, Basantalal
Murarka and Kalipada Mukhopadhyay. The meeting unanim¬
ously resolved that the imposition of the levy under the B.D. Act
at the high rate of Rs. 5-8-0 per acre irrespective of the benefit
derived »r likely to be derived was inequitable, unjust and oppressive
and caused hardship to the poor peasantry of the canal area.24
Meanwhile with the intensification of people’s agitation against
the canal tax the Government officials at the local level began to
resort to repressive measures like the issue of certificates and attach¬
ment of movable properties for the realization of arrears. According
to a report dated 24 April 1937, a large number of certificates
were issued for the realization of arrears of tax in the canal area,
.and seven cows and calves of Gostha Muchi of Samsore were
attached and kept in the village pound. It was also learnt that
movable properties of the inhabitants of Bhatar, Palar, Natun
Gram, etc. were liable to be attached as thirty days had expired
from the date of issue of the certificates.25 The officials of the Canal
Development also attached and seized one calf, one bullock, two
buffaloes and five cows for the realization of Rs 133-6-0 from
Panchanon Maitra and Dharmadas Maitra of the villages of
Mahuagram and kept the attached animals in the municipal
pound. But these repressive measures failed to cow the aggrieved
peasantry and break their morale.26
In the middle of May 1937 the Burdwan Districk Krishak Confe¬
rence was held at Ghuskara under the presidentship of Muzaffar
Ahmad. The conference lent its support to the resolutions passed
at the meeting of the representatives of the cultivators and tenants
of the Damodar Canal area at the Burdwan Town Hall Maidan
under presidentship of Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar MLA on
14 February 1937 and also to those adopted in a meeting called
by the Raiyats’ Association at the same place on 1 March 1937
under the presidentship of Maharaj Kumar Uday Chand Mahatab
MLA. It expressed its deep resentment at the forcible collection
386 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of taxes, assessed on the basis of wrong data by Government

servants, by issuing certificates, attaching movables, etc. and
applying the old repressive policies, and drew the attention of the
Government to the fact that the dissatisfaction amongst the culti¬
vators was growing more and more serious and urged it to im¬
mediately appoint a non-official enquiry committee, reduce the
assessed tax and remit the unrealized tax in proportion to the tax
so reduced.27
In the foregoing paragraphs we have referred to the proceedings
.of the several meetings organized mainly by the Burdwan District
Raiyats' Association. Apart from these, a kisan conference presided
over by Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar was held on 13 June in the
district of Burdwan. The conference dealt with the canal tax move¬
ment.28 Further, the first meeting of the All India Kisan Committee,
held on 14 July at Niramatpur in Gaya district (Bihar) endorsed
the criticisms levelled against the Bengal Development Act by the
local peasantry which were supported by the Bengal Kisan Con¬
ference. It strongly condemned the action of the Government in
repressing the peasantry of the villages adjacent to the canal area,
the wholesale attachment of the properties of the defaulters and
the delay in settling the issue.29
Besides, Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, Secretary of the Raiyats’
Association, issued statements from time to time drawing the
attention of the members of the Bengal Legislature as well as of
the Ministers to the serious situation created by the imposition of
the ‘improvement levy’ in the canal area and demanding an open
inquiry into the actual state of things. The Government, on the
other hand, characterized in its communique’s those meetings
and deliberations as ‘mischievous machinations of designing
agitators from Calcutta.’30
The Burdwan District Congress, which had so long kept quiet
or had not actively intervened, took up the matter seriously only
in the middle of 1937. Jadabendranaffi Panja, in accordance with
the resolutions of the District Congress Committee, appointed
an enquiry committee on 9 June 1937. The committee first met in
Calcutta on 12 June and it was decided that it would inquire how
far the Damodar Canal was helpful to the people concerned for
the purpose of irrigation and whether the assessment was just
and the rvots were in a position to pay for the benefit, if any, derived
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 387

from the canal. J.N. Bose was appointed President, Priya Ranjan
Sen, Secretary and Hemanta Kumar Dutta, Assistant Secretary
of the committee.31
On 25 June, for the first time, at the invitation of Maharaja
Srish Chandra Nandy, Minister-in-charge of Communications
and Works, a representation was made on behalf of the cultivators
of the Damodar Canal area by Abdul Hashem MLA, Balai Chand
Mukhopadhyay, Radhagobinda Hati, Advocate, Maulavi Fakir
Mandal and others. The deputation pointed out that the Damodar
Canal had done some good to the people but the Government
should reduce the rate of the canal tax; otherwise Burdwan would
turn into a ‘second Midnapore’. (The reference is here to the Contai
Union Board Boycott movement.—B.B.) The Minister gave them
a patient hearing for three hours and promised to give early relief
to the cultivators of the canal area.32 However, the Canal Kar
Pratikar Samiti33 held that the members of the deputation were
pro-establishment and hence could not truly represent the interests
of the suffering peasants. It observed that the resolutions adopted
in the meetings at the Burdwan Town Hall on 14 February and
1 March should be taken as their charter of demands.34
Realizing the gravity of the situation the Government issued
a press communique on the Damodar Canal issue which was
published on 10 August 1937. The communique refuted the allega¬
tions of the agitators that the increase in the value of outturn had
been overestimated and was not so much as to justify the charge
of Rs. 5-8-0 per acre. Referring to Townend Report dated 10 March
1937 it defended the methods employed in estimating the pre-canal
and post-canal yields and in fixing the rate of assessment. It said
that the Government accepted the principle of assessment under
the Bengal Development Act as scientific and was satisfied that
the charge of Rs. 5-8-0 which was as a rule much less than half
the value of the excess produce due to irrigation, was fair and
equitable. It, however, admitted that much hardship was caused
to the cultivators as the assessment for 1934-5 was made very
late and the rates had, therefore, to be paid in the following year.
In order to give some relief, it said, the Government had decided
to grant a remission of four annas in the rupees on the demand
for the year 1936-7.35
On 16 August Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay once again issued
388 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

a statement refuting the arguments put forward by the Government

in its defence in the above-mentioned press note. He tried to draw
the attention of the members of both the houses of the Legislature
to the utter helplessness of the poor cultivators of the canal areas
who on several occasions prayed, but in vain, to all the powers
that be, ranging from the canal zamadar and the District Magistrate
to their Excellencies, the Viceroy and the Governor and the
Hon’able Ministers. He once more appealed to the members of
the said legislative bodies to compel the Government to hold an
open inquiry into the matter.36
In response to these appeals Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay
moved two cut motions in the Bengal Legislative Assembly on
28 August to discuss the appalling conditions of the people living
in the canal areas. He said that the canal project was intended to
serve two purposes—one of supplying water to the area under
irrigation and the other of fighting malaria. The canal was also
expected to distribute 'liquid gold’ all round. But its actual operation
belied all those hopes and expectations. True, the canal project
cost the Government of Bengal a sum of Rs. 124 lakhs and the
Government of India raised a loan at a high rate of interest to
meet the capital expenditure. But, Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay
said, Sir Otto Niemeyer’s report37 enabled the Government of
Bengal to liquidate all those obligations to the Government of
India with certain exceptions and so far as the capital which was
borrowed from the Government of India and the interest charge
on that capital were concerned, they had been written off. Therefore,
he observed, the plain position was that under section 12 of the
B.D. Act the people of the locality were bound to pay levy only
for the maintenance, establishment and the repair charges of the
canal area. Thus, even for fiscal purposes, he said, it was not neces¬
sary to continue the levy at the rate of Rs. 5-8-0 per acre in the canal
area. He maintained that it was an intolerable burden on the
peasantry. He refused to regard the question as a local one because
Mr Townend said that the Damodar Canal area was the testing
ground for the whole of Bengal. For all these reasons, he said,
the question should receive serious consideration from the Govern¬
ment, the area should be surveyed and the grievances of the pea¬
santry carefully ascertained. He requested the Ministers concerned
to visit the area ahd settle the issue so as to alleviate the distress of
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 389

the canal area. Then the Maharaj Kumar of Burdwan intervening

in the debate said that though the Government had proposed to
give some concessions to the people for paying up their arrears
the actual trouble remained there. He suggested that the Irrigation
Minister should at his earliest convenience visit the area, hear the
grievances direct from the people and try to come to some sort
of settlement. He also demanded that no further expansion of the
Damodar Canal should be undertaken until proper inquiry was
made and the present question of levy settled. Thereafter Banku
Bihari Mandal spoke in support of the motion. He said that the
oppression perpetrated by the certificate officials for the realization
of the canal rate had become so much severe that the Damodar
Canal was 'now... a menace’ to the people of Burdwan. He
urged the Minister-in-charge of Irrigation to consider the case of
the cultivators, reduce the tax and extend the time for the payment
of arrears of taxes As regards the appointment of the enquiry
committee he said that it should consist of non-official members
along with some members of the Cabinet. Among others who
supported the cut motion moved by P.N. Bandyopadhyay were
Al-Haj Maulana, Dr Sanaullah, Adwaita Kumar Majhi, Abul
Hashem and Bankim Mukhopadhyay. Thereafter F.C. Brasher
spoke on behalf of the European group and opposed the motion.
In reply Maharaja Srish Chandra Nandy of Cossimbazar, Minister-
in-charge of Irrigation, assured the House that the Government
had decided to appoint an enquiry committee with the Premier as
its Chairman to examine the Damodar Canal issue in all its aspects
and submit a report at the earliest opportunity. Premier A.K.
Fazl-ul-Huq admitted in his speech that there had been a wide¬
spread agitation in the canal area against the B.D. Act and the
tax-rate imposed under the same. Since the question was a compli¬
cated one, he observed, nothing could be done except by appointing
a committee to investigate the matter. As regards the personnel
of the committee, he assured the House that the Government
would consult the leaders of various groups before it came to a
final decision. At last the motion was withdrawn in view of the
assurance given by the Premier.38
On 31 August 1937 about 1,000 cultivators from the villages
of Sodya, Simpra, Korori, Saligram, Chakundi, Bora, Hatgobinda-
pur, Bongram, Paisa, Nabastha, Bhodhpur, Begut, Kuchut,
390 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Faridpur, Bakalsa, Bararuntia, Jarui, Ataghat, Tajpur, Sukur and

twenty other villages of the Damodar Canal area arrived in the
town and entered the court compound to impress upon the collector
the fact that they were unable to pay the canal tax at the present
rate and the arrears thereof. As he was not present, the cultivators
approached the Sadar Subdivisional Officer and urged him to
contradict the Government communique on increased outturn.
The Subdivisional officer, while regretting his inability to do so,
assured that he would place before the Government through the
Collector their demands regarding reduction of the canal tax,
suspension of certificate orders pending the publication of the report
of the enquiry committee and inclusion of a sufficient number of
their representatives in that committee. The cultivators then met
the Revenue Officer and requested him to stop executing certificates
till the next harvest. The Revenue officer said that he could defer
it up to September 30 after which a fresh order from the Government
was required for suspending the execution till the next harvest.
Afterwards the cultivators went out in a procession shouting
different slogans along several thoroughfares of the town.39
During the next two months no fruitful attempt was made to
settle the canal issue except a few statements and counter-statements
by the Government and the Congress Committee.40 It was on
11 November 1937 that a conference regarding the Damodar
Canal dispute was held at the Writers’ Building and attended by
Sir B.P. Sinha Roy, Maharaja Srish Chandra Nandy, Maharaj
Kumar U.C. Mahatab MLA, Adwaita Kumar Majhi MLA and
some other gentlemen from Burdwan. Sir B.P. Sinha Roy said
that he would like to have a fresh discussion with the gentlemen
present with a view to arriving at a solution of the problem. He
was ready to conduct a fresh crop-cutting experiment in such a
manner as would win support from all quarters. In this experiment,
he said, four villages from each union would be selected and the
lands classified before crop-cutting in the presence of the villagers.
The only object of this experiment would be to find out the actual
increase in outturn. He agreed to accept the pre-canal yield as
six maunds per bigha and hoped that the people would not refuse
to pay 50 per cent of the average increase in outturn. Then Balai
Chand Mukhopadhyay said that the cost of cultivation actually
left no margin of profit to the cultivators to pay the canal tax.
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 391

He also observed that the Government was trying to make profit

instead of doing any good to the cultivators and since the Govern¬
ment had been still persisting in applying the B.D. Act, it was use¬
less to discuss the matter any further. He asserted that the pre-canal
yield was not less than eight maunds per bigha on average. At
this stage Maharaja Srish Chandra Nandy brusquely remarked
that the cultivators might be heavily indebted, but the Government
was not concerned with their miseries. Thereafter Sir Bijoy Prasad
requested the representatives of the cultivators to ask the people
of the canal area to pay off the canal tax. In reply Sri Kumar Mitra
said that they could not ask the people to do so unless the Govern¬
ment gave them substantial relief immediately. At last Sir Bijoy
Prasad and Maharaja Nandy assured them that they would soon
visit the canal area to make an on-the-spot study of the situation.41
On 25 November Maharaja Srish Chandra Nandy and Sir
Bijoy Prasad came to Burdwan and went to a village, about 17
miles away from the town, where they met about 6,000 agriculturists
and discussed with them the Damodar Canal issue in detail. The
local people complained of the high rate of canal tax which, they
said, they were not in a position to pay because of the fall in the
prices of agricultural produce. But they intimated their willingness
to pay a reasonable rate. They all accepted the suggestion of the
Ministers relating to a fresh crop-cutting experiment to determine
the actual outturn and agreed to co-operate with the local officials
to make the experiment a success. The Ministers asked them to
make a part payment of the arrears of taxes pending the crop¬
cutting experiment and final decision regarding the canal tax, so
that they might not have to pay a heavy sum at a time. The Ministers
said that the part payment might be made at a lower rate to be
shortly announced by the Government and necessary adjustment
would be made against next year’s payment. The Ministers also
assured that the crop-cutting experiment would be conducted in
their presence and with their help. Later the Ministers visited
Galsi and met 7,000 people and held a discussion on the same
line.42
Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay said in a statement on behalf of
the Raiyats’ Association on 6 December that the Government,
instead of determining the average yield of pre-canal days from
the pre-canal settlement records, old registered deeds and decrees
392 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of civil courts, had this time quite arbitrarily assumed the average of
pre-canal yield to be six maunds per bigha. The Government by
proposing a new crop-cutting experiment following a curious
method of chance lottery in the classification of lands and making
this experiment on the current year’s crop, would be taking ad¬
vantage of an exceptionally good year of bumper harvest. He
regarded it as a matter of regret that the authorities of the Revenue
and Irrigation Departments, instead of making an earnest endeav¬
our to arrive at an honourable settlement, appeared to be confusing
the real issue.43 The same day an almost similar statement was
issued by Jadabendranath Panja, President, Burdwan District
Congress Committee.44
It was reported on 16 December that the Government after
dragging its feet for a long time had, in pursuance of the assurance
given in the last session of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, ap¬
pointed an enquiry committee with Mriganka Bhusan Roy, Revenue
Officer, as Secretary.45 The first meeting of the newly appointed
Damodar Canal Enquiry Committee was held on 15 December,
Sir B.P. Sinha Roy presiding in the absence of the Premier. During
the long discussion it was pointed out that because of the irriga-
tional facilities the canal areas were yielding a crop which was
50 per cent more than the amount the cultivators used to get in
the pre-canal days and hence the rate was to be fixed on the basis
of that increased outturn. The Government was, however, prepared
to consider the question in all its aspects and ready to fix the rate
at Rs 3 per acre. But the Government had to accept Townend
Report as the basis of calculation although by its own admission
it had no intention to regard the said report as infallible. One of
the members of the committee asserted that the levy should be
imposed only to meet the maintenance, establishment and repair
charges for the canal, since the capital expenditure incurred for
the construction of the canal had been paid off by the Government
of India on the latter’s acceptance of Otto Niemeyer’s Report.
However, it was finally decided that a few sites would be selected
and the committee would visit those places in order to ascertain
facts and figures.46
On 17 December Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay made a statement
on behalf of the Raiyats’ Association. Referring to the official
enquiry committee and its first conference he said that the task
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 393

of the committee would be difficult and hazardous in view of its

restricted and undefined scope and terms of reference. He resented
the Ministers’ decision to stick to their previous stand and their
refusal to consider whether the cultivators had actual capacity to
pay the high rate of canal tax or not.47
In the last week of December the Government announced its
decision relating to ad interim relief. A press note issued on 23
December said that it might take some time for the enquiry com¬
mittee ’to submit its report and for Government to consider it
and to reach a decision thereon. To prevent an accumulation of
arrears, it has been decided by Government that three-fourths
of the demand should be collected now as an ’ad interim’ measure
pending their final decision on the subject. As the demand has
already been reduced from Rs. 5-8-0 to Rs. 4-2-0 per acre by the
grant of a rebate of 25 per cent, the collection be made at the rate
of Rs. 3 per acre which approximates to three-fourths of the demand
after deducting the rebate.’ The communique further added that
‘...the above concession and the rebate will be admissible to
those who pay up their dues by the end of February, 1938.’48
The Government decision to give some ’ad interim relief’ to
the cultivators of the canal area was criticized by Balai Chand
Mukhopadhyay and Jadabendranath Panja. Their point was
that when the Government had decided to hold an inquiry and
start fresh crop-cutting experiment, it should not urge the culti¬
vators to pay the arrears of canal tax at the rate of Rs. 3 by the
month of February 1938 pending the report of the enquiry com¬
mittee. The Government should await the report of the said com¬
mittee and concede the demands of the agriculturists.49
By the first week of January 1938 the Damodar Canal authorities
were reported to have finished their crop-cutting experiments.
Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay lodged his protest against the irregular
and unreliable methods and procedures adopted by the authorities
concerned in the matter. He said that crops of several plots of
land were cut and measurement thereof taken by Government
officials without letting the respective owners or cultivators know
anything about the matter. The final measurement or weighting
was not done in the presence of local men. Hence, he observed,
the aggrieved cultivators could not have any confidence in the
experiments made in such a perfunctory and surreptitious way
394 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and the data or figures collected by such wrong and improper

devices could not be relied upon for a fair and correct estimate
of the increased outturn.50
On 29 January twelve of the eighteen members of the Damodar
Canal Enquiry Committee including Sir B.P. Sinha Roy. Maharaja
Srish Chandra Nandy, J.N. Bose, B.B. Mandal. A. Majhi, Maulavi
A. Hashem and Maulavi N. Ahmed visited Khana junction, about
12 miles west of the Burdwan town. There Sir B.P. Sinha Roy
addressed about 1,000 people and explained to them the purpose
of their visit. Jadabendra Nath Panja, President, District Congress
Committee and a resident of the area, submitted a memorial on
behalf of the local cultivators. The members of the enquiry com¬
mittee then went to a village, Balgona, where Chandra Sekhar
Konar submitted on behalf of 2,000 cultivators a memorial similar
to that of Mr Panja. Netaipada Gupta of Saligram placed before
the members of the enquiry committee an account of the production
of the last five years (1339 B.S. to 1344 B.S.) to show that the culti¬
vators earned no profit from the canal. The memorial submitted
by the inhabitants of the villages affected by the improvement
levy may be summarized as follows.
\ .. There is no increase in the outturn of paddy owing to irriga¬
tion from the canal.... The crop-cutting experiment at the last
harvest season was vitiated by the fact (i) that the lands were not
classified according to the quality of the soil (ii) that the plots in
which crop-cutting operations were held were not selected in the
presence of the villagers concerned, (iii) that crop-cutting was
mostly made without notice to the owner of the field and in his
absence, (iv) that in some cases crops were cut from a larger area
than the standard one of 11 x 9 ft. and (v) that no allowance was
made for the boundary ridges (ayils) of the fields and the inevitable
wastages of the produce in reaping, stocking, carrying and storing
the paddy. At least one sixteenth should be deducted from gross
produce for the last item.’ The memorial also said that ‘the total
cost of the construction of the canal was met by the loan from the
Government of India. With the inauguration of the provincial
autonomy, on the basis of Sir Otto Niemeyer’s Report, the Govern¬
ment of India remitted the loan, thereby exempting the Bengal
Government from the payment of the cost of construction. The
Government now can demand at the utmost the most reasonable
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 395

maximum cost of maintaining the canal in proper condition.’

But, the memorial continued, .the whole cost of maintaining
the canal cannot be equitably charged upon the impoverished
peasants alone, inasmuch as one of the objects of the Damodar
Canal is to mitigate the strength of the flood, which may even
endanger the city of Calcutta. Having regard to those facts, the
East Indian Railway, the Grand Trunk Road, Burdwan-Katwa
Ligh Railway, the Bengal Nagpur Railway, the city of Calcutta,
towns and other vested interests which are benefited... should
be made to contribute to the cost.’ The memorialists admitted
that the ‘only benefit the peasants derive from the canal is some
sort of insurance against the uncertainty of rains—against drought
which occurs occasionally at an interval of 7 or 8 years.’ The memo¬
rialists, therefore, prayed that ‘the Committee may be pleased to
recommend to the Government of Bengal... that the agriculturists
holding not more than two acres of land may be exempted from
the levy; that the minimum rate may be levied upon your Memo¬
rialists adjudged by your Committee on due consideration of
facts set fortn in the memorial; that arrears outstanding may be
adjusted to the altered rate; and that steps may be taken to have
proper drainage for the low lands so as to save them from utter
ruin.’51
To the said committee Kiron Chandra Dutt submitted a separate
memorandum since he could not agree to the points contained in
the memorial of Jadabendra Nath Panja. He made out seven points
in his memorandum: ‘No development tax should be levied on
Burdwan people even if they have got benefit by the Damodar
Canal or even if their lands have improved. The estimate of the
“increased outturn” of land in the Damodar Canal area is...
arbitrary and too high. The supply of water is not regular and
scientific and great mischief is being done; comparatively lower
1st class Sali lands are becoming waterlogged and the high lands
do not get water—no water is available where it is necessary and
it is supplied where there is superfluity of it. Owing to the defect
in the system the quantity of silt carried in the canal water is negli¬
gible whereas on the other hand quantity of sand is so large that
sand carried by the canal water deteriorate them. There has been
no improvement at present. The cultivators at present in the canal
area have no taxable surplus after defraying their necessary costs
396 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and they have no paying capacity and the authorities while assessing
overlooked the economic condition of the cultivators and consi¬
dered only the heavy expenditure of the department; and the system
is expensive out of all proportion. The procedure of assessment in
the Act is not according to the fixed principles of public finance
and opposed to the interests of the peasants.’52
On 4 February 1938 a meeting of the official enquiry committee
was held in Sir B.P. Sinha Roy's room in the Assembly House,
Calcutta. After considering the facts and figures collected from
the cultivators the committee arrived at the conclusion that the
average increased outturn per acre was four maunds of paddy and
six pans of straw. Sir B.P. Sinha Roy said that the cultivators were
getting Rs. 6 as profit per acre and hence they should pay Rs. 3
as improvement levy. However, he said that the cost of main¬
tenance of the canal system was Rs. 320,000 per annum, and unless
Rs. 2-10-0 was paid to the Government as tax per acre to enable
it to meet the establishment costs, it would not be possible to
allow 15 per cent remission for fields which became waterlogged
and those which did not receive adequate supply of water. It was
learnt that P.N. Bandyopadhyay and Maulavi Abdul Hashem could
not accept the figures supplied by the Government about the results
of crop-cutting experiment.53 Abdul Hashem later submitted
a note of dissent and upheld the arguments as contained in Kiron
Chandra Dutt’s memorandum.
Both Jadabendra Nath Panja and Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay
later protested against the decision of the Government to fix the
canal tax at Rs. 2-10-0 per acre. Mr Mukhopadhyay said that the
cultivators were agreeable to pay Rs. 1-8-0 per acre for the only
benefit they derived from the canal as a drought insurance. He
asked the people not to lose heart but to take a bold stand and
resolutely assert their rights against the arbitrary decision of the
Government.54
On 14 February a big meeting was held at the Burdwan Town
Hall Maidan under the presidentship of Umapada Roy of Sodya.
In their speeches Sukumar Bandyopadhyay, Sambhunath Konar,
Chandra Sekhar Konar, Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay and
Aswini Kumar Mandal explained the attitude of the Bengal
Government towards the canal tax agitation and exhorted all to
stand united and fight back every unjust move of the Government.55
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 397

The Congress Canal Levy Enquiry Committee finalised its

report by the end of February. On examination of the pre-canal
accounts of agricultural produce, settlement records, decrees of
bhag chos suits in law courts, results of crop-cutting experiments,
quinquennial reports, figures available from other governmental
publications and records and the evidence collected from the
peasants, the committee came to the conclusion that ‘the Damodar
Canal has not, to any appreciable extent, increased the productivity
of the area served by it.... The yield per acre was about 24 maunds
before the canal and the same is the average even after the canal.’
The Report admitted: ‘There is, however, a general consensus of
opinion that the canal is really useful in years of drought. There¬
fore, if any levy can at all be imposed on the cultivators of the
canal area, it can only be on the basis of drought insurance benefit.’
But the committee held that ‘On the whole ... for the purpose of
levy on the ground of drought insurance, we may proceed on the
basis that there is drought in one year in course of six years, and
that once in six years there is half failure of crop. It further pointed
out that the benefit might, therefore, be calculated at half the full
crop i.e., twelve maunds of paddy per acre. Distributed over six
years, it came upto 2 maunds of paddy per acre, half of which might
be charged for according to the Development Act Rules. Therefore,
the Report said, ‘the levy per year then amounts to the price of
one maund of paddy and one maund (sic) of straw, the price
being calculated according to the current rates each year in January.
But in view of the fact that a large number of assessees are owners
of holding not exceeding one acre, and also that the cost of culti¬
vation in relation to the falling price of paddy is disproportionately
high along with the high rent the cultivator has to pay, the Com¬
mittee thinks it desirable that such cultivators (with holding not
exceeding one acre) should be exempted from the levy.’ The com¬
mittee admitted no question of realizing the capital expenditure
for the canal, because the Government of India exempted the
Government of Bengal from repaying the capital borrowed from
the former in accordance with Sir Otto Niemeyer’s report. It only
considered the question of running expenses for the canal. On
this point the Report said: ‘The levy which we are now recom¬
mending (viz. the price of one maund of paddy and one maund
(sic) of straw per acre in January which in the present year comes
398 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to about Re. 1 and 8 as.) may not be sufficient for the purpose.
But it is quite obvious from the history of the Damodar Canal
project that the canal was never meant for irrigation purpose
alone. It was intended ‘inter alia’ that the canal should protect
the railways, the Grand Trunk Road, the Burdwan town, the
port of Calcutta etc. by moderating the strength of the Damodar
flood.’ The Report, therefore, recommended: ‘...there are im¬
portant beneficiaries other than the cultivators of the canal area.
In all fairness and justice, if more money has to be raised for ‘he
purposes of maintaining the Damodar Canal, Government should
look to those beneficiaries for making good the deficiency, if any,
rather than overtax the poor cultivators for benefit which may
in a sense be said to be problematical.’56
In the second week of May the Government issued a communique
on the modification of canal rates. It said: ‘After due consideration
Government have accepted the recommendations of the Committee
and reduced the rate for the levy under the Bengal Development
Act for the years 1936-7 and 1937-8 to Rs 2-9-0 per acre to afford
the cultivators some relief on account of the present low price of
paddy and to enable them more readily to pay off the accumulated
arrears of the levy.... In view of the very great misconception
prevalent in the area commanded by the Damodar Canal regarding
the imposition of compufsory levy under the Bengal Development
Act, Government have decided to reintroduce the system of
voluntary irrigation through leases under the Bengal Irrigation
Act. On account of the prevailing low price of agricultural produce
the rates of the kinds of leases have been modified.... The chief
reduction is in the rate for an annual lease which is now Rs. 4 per
acre instead of Rs. 4-8.’57
A few days before the publication of the above press note, Balai
Chand Mukhopadhyay called the decision of the Government on
the modification of canal rates anomalous and inscrutable. He
condemned the ‘shop-keeper’s policy’ adopted by the Government.
Instead of giving any relief to the famished peasantry, said
Mukhopadhyay, the Government had poured ridicule on their
helpless condition.58 Jadabendra Nath Panja also blamed the
Government decision to collect the canal tax at a rate absolutely
beyond the paying capacity of the peasants.59
From the middle of May through the next two months several
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 399

protest meetings were organized in villages like Hatgobindapur,

Galsi, Mandalgram, Karuri, Kulgarh, Kuchut-Dharmarajtala,
Belgram, Baroshibtala, Uragram etc. Those meetings were ad¬
dressed by Jadabendra Nath Panja, Bankim Mukhopadhyay, Abdus
Sattar, Sasthi Das Chaudhuri, Manas Gobinda Ghatak, Abdullah
Rasul. Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay. Sachindradas Adhikari,
Chandra Sekhar Konar, Helaram Chatterjee, Dasarathi Tah,
Mahendra Khan. Jahed Ali, Gobinda Dutta, Ashutosh Hazra,
Mahaprasad Konar, Narayan Mandal, Balai Deb Sharma, Golam
Mahabul, Nakul Chandra Dutta, Aja Kumar Kesh, Balai Chandra
Haidar. Kartik Chandra Ghosh, Choudhury Ali Saheb, Phelaram
Mandal and others. They all exhorted the people of the canal
area not to bow down to the Government decision and take canal
water by signing lease deeds at a high rate. They urged the people
to carry on their agitation until their legitimate demands were
fulfilled.60
The Government, on the other hand, since the publication of
the press note in which it declared its decision to reduce the improve¬
ment or rather the compulsory levy to Rs 2-9-0, had kept quiet
and hoped that the people would happily agree to its decision and
pay up their arrears. The local peasants, however, considered the
Government decision arbitrary and refused to sign lease forms.
At last the Government broke the dreadful silence and began to
issue certificate notices for the realization of arrears of taxes.
In consequence, it was reported in October 1938, the peasants of
the canal area had marched on foot to the office of the District
Collector to lodge their complaints against the coercive measures
adopted by the canal authority.61
By the beginning of the following year the Government had
started attaching movable properties of the defaulters of the canal
area. On 12 January 1939 eight attached cows of the village of
Kadra had been kept in the village pound of Ausha. The peasants
divided in several groups had been trying to resist the attachment
operations. The local cultivators were determined to launch a
satyagraha movement and continue their agitation till all their
demands were fulfilled. On the other hand, the Government had
decided to send a large contingent of Gurkha soldiers and deploy
them on patrol duty in order to bring the situation under control.62
Within a month the satyagraha movement began to take shape.
400 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

In a statement Manoranjan Hazra, member, Bengal Provincial

Congress Committee and Kisan Sabha, appealed to the people
of Bengal for help. He said that for several months the people of
the canal area had been vigorously protesting against the imposition
of a high rate of canal tax and, at present, finding to their exaspera¬
tion that the Government had miserably failed to fulfil the demands
of the poor peasantry, they had resorted to satyagraha.63
According to a report dated 15 February, Rabi Majumdar,
Secretary, Volunteers’ Division of Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha,
said that at Aushagram a satyagraha camp had been set up to'
conduct the campaign in a peaceful and non-violent way. About
fifty satyagrahis had been keeping watch on the pound by turns
so that the police authorities could not take out the attached
cattle to put the same on auction. He also reported that seventeen
thousand certificates had so far been issued and a huge posse of
soldiers had been kept ready. But even in the face of all the repres¬
sive measures the satyagrahis remained undaunted in spirit and
unflinching in determination. The cultivators had expressed their
readiness to pay the canal tax at the rate of Rs 1-8-0. But they
were determined to resist any move of the Government to collect
the tax at a higher rate. The peasant women, under the leadership
of Nanibala Samanta, took an active part in the movement.64
Bankim Mukhopadhyay observed in a statement that the Govern¬
ment had promulgated section 7 Cr. P.C. and ordered the police
to attach movable properties of the defaulters. On 15 February,
he said, a procession of peasants was scheduled to be taken out,
but the local authorities prohibited it under section 144. In the
face of this provocation the peasant leaders decided to postpone
the holding of the procession.65
On 16 February Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay moved an ad¬
journment motion in the Legislative Assembly to discuss the serious
situation arising out of the notification No. 656 P, dated the 10th
February, 1939, of the Government of Bengal, extending the
provision of section VII of the Criminal Law Amendment Act
of 1932 to the whole of Burdwan district, excluding Asansol^ sub¬
division, and the promulgation on 13 February of section 144 Cr.
P.C. in certain parts of the district. In the said notification the
Government stated that ‘the arrears in that area come up to about
Rs 642,000 and the collections amounted to less than Rs 32,000
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 401

only. The result has been practically a stoppage of all collections

and ... that the stoppage in the collection has been due to political
agitation of an undesirable type involving the boycott of officials.
It is for this reason that Government have been obliged to despatch
armed police and motor lorries and buses for the purpose of
removing properties attached of the tenantry who are either unable
or unwilling to pay. They have also promulgated section 144
prohibiting public meetings and they have called in (s/c) their
assistance section 7 of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of
1932.’ Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay requested the Minister
concerned to put a halt to the ‘policy of terrorization' and settle
the dispute with the tenantry.66
An emergency meeting of the executive committee of the Burdwan
District Congress Committee held on 19 February adopted a
resolution strongly condemning the Government policy of letting
loose repression on the people of the district. The meeting demanded
immediate release of all persons arrested in this connexion and
repeal of all repressive measures. In another resolution it protested
against the false propaganda carried on by the Government that
the Congress had started a no-tax campaign. The meeting also
reiterated its stand on the canal tax issue and urged the people to
pay their arrears.67
On 21 February eighteen volunteers were arrested from the Ausha
satyagraha camp.68 Arrests were also made in other parts of the
canal area and a reign of terror prevailed.69
Till the middle of 1939 the satyagraha movement continued
unabated and the police could not demoralize the illiterate masses
of the canal area. However, even such a heroic and long-protracted
struggle failed to compel the Government to reduce the tax to
Rs 1-8-0. As a result the people subsequently accepted the Govern¬
ment rate of Rs 2-9-070 and paid the arrears. The Government,
on its part, released the convicted persons and thus ended the
movement.

IV

An attempt will be made here to make an analytical review of the

organizations which actively participated in the movement and
their differences regarding the formulation of the demands of the
402 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

peasantry and the methods they followed in the course of the

movement.
It is on record that the Burdwan District Raiyats’ Association
first plunged into the agitation and took up the issue in right earnest.
The reason was that the pleaders and advocates who were doyens
of the Association had landed interests in the canal area and
naturally they got alarmed about the possible financial drain
when the Government decided to impose a heavy burden of compul¬
sory levy on the ryots of the canal area.71 They admitted the utility
of the canal and never decried the scheme as such. What
they wanted to achieve through their agitation by means of‘appeals’
and ‘prayers’ was to persuade the Government to reduce the canal
tax to a rate w'ithin the paying capacity of the ryots. The Association,
at the initial stage, tried to ‘keep aloof from the Congress for
fear of government repression’ which, it thought, ‘would scare
away the peasants from uniting for a common cause.’72 The
Raiyats’ Association held several public meetings at the Burdwan
Town Hall Maidan and in different villages of the canal area.
The members of the Association established contact with the
masses through direct personal approach and propaganda by
means of publishing pamphlets and booklets and also by issuing
appeals and statements in newspapers. With a view to attracting
their attention to the grievances of the peasants they visited the
members of the Legislature and furnished them with facts and
figures.73
The Congress actively joined the movement after its defeat
in the elections,74 and stood by the side of the peasants till its
acceptance of the modified rate of canal tax fixed by the Govern¬
ment. The Congress first appointed an enquiry committee on
9 June 1937 to investigate the grievances of the ryots arising out
of the canal levy. The Congress Enquiry Committee took the trouble
of going to the rural areas for an on-the-spot-study. The committee
submitted its report in the first week of March 1938. In accordnace
with the report the Congress advised the cultivators to accept the
canal as a drought insurance and to pay one maund of paddy and
one pan of straw per acre.75 Moreover, the Congress organized
meetings and demonstrations and its leaders issued appeals to
the Government for reduction of the canal rate and published
statements on several occasions in newspapers either ventilating
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 403

the grievances of the local cultivators or refuting Government

communiques which always defended the canal scheme and the
rate imposed under it. Further, the Congress MLAs moved cut
motions compelling the Government to appoint an enquiry com¬
mittee to investigate the canal issue. The Congress Working Com¬
mittee during its session in Calcutta from 26 October to 1 November
1937 adopted resolutions sympathizing with the Damodar Canal
tax agitation.76 The Bishnupur Conference of the Provincial
Congress Committee also expressed its full sympathy with the
canal tax movement.77 On 28 May 1938 Subhas Chandra Bose
came to Burdwan and next day he discussed the canal tax issue
with the local workers of his party and urged them to see to it
that the peasants did not sign the lease forms. He also asked them
to launch a vigorous movement against the unjust tax imposed on
the poor cultivators.78 Not only did the Congress Working Com¬
mittee and its leaders sympathize with and lend support to the
canal tax agitation, its other wifigs too supported cause of the local
peasants. The Burdwan District Krishak Conference which was
held in the first week of June 1938 in the village of Kasipur under
the presidentship of Prafulla Chandra Sen of Arambagh condemned
the Government policy of imposing compulsory betterment levy
on the poor peasants. The conference resolved that the canal tax
should not be more than Rs 1-8-0 and the peasants with small
landholding be exempted from payment of canal tax.79
Nevertheless, from the material at our disposal, we can safely
observe that the Congress did not urge the local people to launch
any satyagraha movement or no-tax campaign against the Govern¬
ment when the latter had refused to accept the rate recommended
by it. Finally, when the Government in utter disregard, of the
popular sentiment intensified repression, the Congress only issued
statements in protest and its MLAs appealed to the Government
for an early settlement of the dispute, and strangely enough it
denied any connexion with the satyagraha movement and advised
the people to pay the arrears at the rate fixed by the Government.
The Krishak Samiti80 which mainly conducted the satyagraha
movement differed both from the Raiyats’ Association and the
Congress both in respect of the issues and the goal of the movement.
Before we dwell on those points, we should add a few words on
the justification behind ‘its co-operation with the Congress’.81
404 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The members of the Krishak Samiti constituted the left wing’

of the Congress. They tried to press the canal issue on the Congress
leadership soon after the Congress defeat in the election and persua¬
ded it to form a joint platform.82 As the two differed from each
other in their political convictions and moorings the organizational
progress of the newly formed Canal Kar Pratikar Samiti suffered
to a great extent. On many occasions the left-wing Congressmen
and the Communists had to fall in with the Congress leadership,
because they wanted to pursue a policy of ‘united front’83 with
the Congress with a view to giving the latter a ‘national revolu¬
tionary orientation’84 and to widen their mass base through it.
However, in the middle of 1938 the Congress-Krishak Samiti
alliance broke down on account of intransigence of both the
parties.8**1
The Communists or the leaders of the Krishak Samiti formulated
the issues of the movement in a slightly different way. To quote
one of them: ‘The Burdwan Canal Tax Movement was based on
the stand that availability of irrigation was to be there as a matter
of course. As a matter of fact, it was claimed that there had been
an irrigation system prevailing when the British established their
regime. If the system broke down, it was maintained that such
breakdown was due to the failings of the administration and the
landlords in commission and omission. So whatever irrigation
arrangement was being made was a belated compensation and a
meagre compensation at that for damages that had already been
done. Hence no levy was due from the raiyats.’87 But the Congress
Enquiry Committee considered the canal useful as a drought
insurance and its report did not Say a single word on the damage
done to the peasants by the administration. For that reason, the
Congress Enquiry Committee could fix the canal rate equal to the
price of one maund of paddy and one pan of straw—which was
then Rs 1-8-0. But it was not unknown to the members of the said
committee that the price of paddy fluctuated, and if the price rose
up the peasants were to pay more. The Krishak Samiti understood
the real implication of the Congress decision and declared that
it was ready to accept the rate of Rs 1-8-0 but would not accept
any rate in terms of agricultural produce as suggested by the
Congress and reiterated this stand in several meetings.87 When
members of the Krishak Samiti found to their utter consternation
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 405

that the Government would not budge an inch from its decision of
Rs 2-9-0 and the Congress had tactly accepted the rate, they
started satyagraha movement.88 They asked the people to surrender
their movable goods on demand by the executive officials for collec¬
tion of arrears. They exhorted the people to refuse payment at
the rate of Rs 2-9-0. Their volunteers kept vigil on the pound
guards so that they could not get out from the villages with the
attached animals and goods to put them on auction. They even
foiled the Government officials’ attempt to sell the attached articles
by auction by giving ‘no-bid’ calls.89

Now we will deal with the attitude of the Government and the
measures it adopted to curb the movement and the people's reaction
to them.
It becomes obvious from our chronological narration of the
events of the movement that the Damodar Canal tax agitation was
present in a nascent form even when the Bengal Development Act
was not finally passed. At the initial stage the Government did not
attach any importance to the movement and, accordingly, refrained
from taking any stern measures against the agitators. Several
meetings took place in Burdwan to register the protest of the ryots
against the Bill till its final passage in October 1936. When in the
beginning of 1936 the vast area adjacent to the Damodar Canal
was notified as benefited and improved by the canal and a rate of
Rs 5-8-0 per acre was fixed, the Burdwan District Raiyats’ Associa¬
tion came to the fore and initiated a movement against the applica¬
tion of the drastic provisions of the Bengal Development Act to
the canal area. They organized meetings, published pamphlets
and contacted peasants to express their resentment against the
high rate of canal tax. From the last quarter of 1936 till the end
of January 1937 the Congress was busy with the election campaign
and, side by side with its propaganda in election meetings, the
Congress leaders tried to explain to the peasantry the far-reaching
implications of the Development Act and urged the people to
agitate against the imposition of compulsory ‘improvement’ levy.
On February 13 the Congress appointed the Damodar Canal
Levy Enquiry Committee to probe the grievances of the raiyats
406 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and fix an equitable rate of tax. Now these hectic activities of the
Raiyats’ Association and the Congress made the Government
realize the gravity of the situation. Accordingly, it arranged to
send ministers and officials to the affected areas to mobilize the
support of the local people in favour of the Development Act
and the canal scheme. Meanwhile the Krishak Samiti joined the
movement and began to co-operate with the Congress. As a result
the movement gained added strength and momentum. In the
Bengal Legislative Assembly the Premier and the Minister of
Communications gave an assurance to form an enquiry committee
after a cut motion was tabled by a Congress MLA on behalf of
the people of the canal area. The local peasants submitted several
memoranda to the Ministers for the redress of their grievances.
The Government earlier announced a 25 per cent, rebate and was
now compelled to reduce the tax to Rs. 3-0-0. After a good deal
of vacillation it also appointed an enquiry committee which soon
began to work, though not in a satisfactory manner. By the first
week of March 1938 the Congress Enquiry Committee published
its report and recommended a levy equal to the price of the one
maund of paddy and one pan of straw per acre. Later, the official
Enquiry Committee fixed the improvement levy at the rate of
Rs. 2-9-0 per acre. But this partial fulfilment of the demand of the
poor peasants could not dissuade them from launching a satyagraha
movement even against the reduced rate. They refused to sign
lease forms and pay the modified rate. The villagers happily parted
with their possessions when attached and refused to participate
in the subsequent auction. Once a cobbler’s cow was attached in
Bhattar. Under the leadership of the Krishak Samiti nearly five
to six thousand peasants encircled the area so that the Government
officials could not go out of the villages with the attached goods.
Nine cows belonging to a Brahmin of the village Kandra (Sadar
P.S. Burdwan) were attached and taken to a village named Aula
situated in the Nabastha area for sale. Thousands of peasants
intercepted the Government party with the cows, set up camps
and started satyagraha. The peasants boycotted the canal officials.
The volunteers organized picketing. The Government, on its part,
unleashed repression. Section VII of the Bengal Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1932 (otherwise known as Anderson Act or
the Black Act) was enforced in Burdwan district, and section 144
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 407

Cr. P.C. promulgated everywhere. On 14 February 1939 about

fifteen to twenty thousand peasants under the leadership of the
Krishak Samiti assembled from all sides to enter the town of
Burdwan to violate section 144 in protest against the policy of
attachment. In the face of the Government's provocative measures
and the lukewarm attitude of the Congress, the Krishak Samiti
controlled the peasants and sent them back home in a disciplined
way. That night eleven lorry loads of the military personnel raided
the village of Aushagram. They marched inside the village singing
the tune of an infantry band. They beat the villagers and collected
money from them. The attached cows were brought under military
escort to the Burdwan Revenue office for auction. The peasant
volunteers picketed before the office. The local executive officials
issued seventeen thousand certificates in all and indiscriminately
attached movable properties of the defaulters and put them on
auction. The volunteers who organized picketing and resistance
were arrested and sentenced to six months' imprisonment under
clause 7(2) of the B.C.L. Act. Even in the face of these repressive
measures the satyagraha workers continued their agitation till
the middle of 1939 when the movement fizzled out for reasons
more than one.90

VI

Before we conclude we may divide the Damodar Canal Tax Move¬

ment into two stages. The first stage started with the introduction
of the Bengal Development Act and the imposition of the compul¬
sory canal levy of Rs. 5-8-0 thereunder. The next stage began with
the launching of the satyagraha movement by the Krishak Samiti.
In so far as the aim of the Raiyats’ Association and also of the
Congress was to compel the Government to reduce the canal rate
to an acceptable minimum, the movement was successful in the
first stage. The Government was forced to institute an inquiry,
modify the canal rate, withdraw the levy and reintroduce the lease
system. But since it was the goal of the Krishak Samiti in the second
stage to bring down the canal rate to Rs. 1-8-0 it was, no doubt,
a failure. The failure may be partially attributed to the fact that
though the Congress urged the people not to sign the lease form
for taking canal water at the rate of Rs. 2-9-0 for a few months and
408 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

condemned the repressive measures of the Government, it did

not provide any organizational support to the satyagraha move¬
ment. Its lukewarm attitude and half-hearted participation in
the later stage damped the spirit of the local people. The left wing,
on the other hand, stuck to their decision even when they realized
that they had no sufficient mass base to carry on the movement
without the Congress support. However, the Burdwan Canal
Movement considered as a w'hole was partially successful.01 It
goes to the credit of the organizers of the satyagraha movement
that they set in motion the politically inert peasants and taught
them to remain alert, even when engaged in a movement, about
the leadership which was often guided by its own class interests.
Finally, it must be recorded that the Communists, while committed
to an ideology of their own, adopted the non-violent technique of
satyagraha, for it proved the most effective weapon in a particular
historical context.

References

1 ‘The charge of cleaning the tanks and canals, the repairs of their banks, those
of rivers and causeways is known under the denomination of Poolbundy.’
Fifth Report, vol. II, p. 98, cited in the Memorandum submitted by Kiron
Chandra Dutt p. 5.
2 Sir William Willcocks, Lectures on the Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal
and its Application to Modern Problem, pp. 23-4. See also the Memorandum
submitted to the Damodar Canal Enquiry Committee by Kiron Chandra Dutt
of Burdwan on the 29th January, 1938; the Humble Memorial of the Peoples
of the Trans-Damodar Area for Relief Measures.
3 Report of the Damodar Canal Levy Enquiry Committee, Burdwan District
Congress Committee, 1939, pp. 2-3. Though we have accepted the figures as con¬
tained in the said Report, they are not similar to those given by the Government
in Townend Report and the Press Notes published in Amrita Bazar Patrika.
7.9.37, 14(3) and Hindusthan Standard, 12.5.38, 5(6-7).
Mr H.P.V. Townend was the Rural Development Commissioner, Bengal.
4 Interview with Hemanta Kumar Dutta, 21.11.71.
5 Nripendra Nath Mitra (ed.), Indian Annual Register, 1935, I (Jan.—June),I76.
6 Statement of Objects and Reasons, The Calcutta Gazette, Part IV, 14 February,
1935, p. 49.
7 Proceedings in Council, XLV, 7 March, 1935, 79-90, cited in the Bengal Acts,
pp. 951-6.
8 See note no. 4.
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 409

9 Interview with Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar, 27.10.72.

10 Interview with Durgapada Chaudhuri, 22.11.71. See also note no. 4.
11 Interview with Santosh Mandal, 4.11.71. See also Vardhaman Varta (a local
Bengali weekly), 17.7.39.
12 See note no. 4.
13 Proceedings of different meetings and conferences were made available to us by
Mr Kiron Chandra Dutt.
14 Vardhaman Varta, 17.7.39. Also interview with Santosh Kumar Mandat.
15 Vardhaman Varta, 17.7.39.
16 Advance, 12.2.37. 13(4); 14.2.37, 13(4).
17 Ibid., 12.2.37. 13(4); 13.2.37, 7(1).
18 Ibid., 19.2.37, 13(4-5).
19 Resolutions adopted by the peasants’ conference. See note no. 13. See also
Advance, 19.2.37, 13(4-5) and Congress Socialist, 11(17), 1.5.37, 21(1-2).
20 Vardhaman Varta, 17.7.39.
21 Advance, 3.3.37, 13(5).
22 Ibid., 4.3.37, 15(1).
23 From the proceedings of the meeting held on 1 March 1937. See note no. 13.
See also note no. 22.
24 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 10.5.37, 2(7)
25 Advance. 29.4.37, 12(2); Amrita Bazar Patrika, 27.4.37, 13(4).
26 Advance, 15.5.37, 12(1).
27 From the proceedings of the Burdwan District Krishak Conference. See note
no. 13. See also Vardhaman Varta, 17.7.39.
28 Congress Socialist, 11(25), 26.6.37, 22(2).
29 N.G. Ranga (ed.). Kisan Hand Book, pp. 33-4.
Later also the AIKC in its Tripura meeting held on 7-8 March 1939 ’greeted the
Kisans of the Damodar Canal area of Burdwan district (Bengal) in their heroic
struggle against the excessive canal tax imposed on them in the face of police
and military terror, and wished it complete success.’-M.A. Pasul, A History
of the All India Kisan Sablut, p. 48.
30 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9.4.37, 12(4); Advance, 14.4.37, 13(3).
31 The committee consisted of the following members: Jatindranath Bose MLA,
AtuI Chandra Gupta Advocate, Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay Bar-at-law,
Dr Prafulla Chandra Ghose. Jadabendranath Panja, President, Burdwan
District Congress Committee. Priya Ranjan Sen, Lecturer. Calcutta University
and Mr Hcmanta Kumar Dutta Pleader. Burdwan. See Advance, 11.6.37, 6(4);
13.6.37, 10(5) and Report of the Demodar Canal Levy Enquiry Committee, 2.
32 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15.6.37, 7(1).
33 A decision was arrived at in a meeting held in the village of Sodya to form a
Canal Kar Pratikar Samiti with all sorts of people and groups affected by the
imposition of the canal rate. However, a dispute cropped up as to the nature and
composition of the organization. The Communists and the Krishak Samiti
workers who represented the leftward tendency within the Congress held that the
doors of the organization should be thrown open to all who were agreed to fight
for the cause of the affected peasantry irrespective of their political conviction and
party affiliation. The District Congress leadership, on the other hand, insisted
on its control over the organization and demanded that the Samiti should owe
allegiance to the Congress and be affiliated to it. A convention to chalk out the
programme of the Canal Kar Pratikar samiti of the Congress was called at the
Bangshagopal Town Hall Maidan. The Communists and the Krishak Samiti
410 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

workers had to agree to the Congress proposals and enrolled themselves in large
numbers as members of the Congress-sponsored Kanal Kar Pratikar Samiti.
As many as fifteen committees were formed under the leadership of the District
Krishak Samiti and Communist workers. Three other committees owing al¬
legiance to the official Congress leadership were also formed. —Interview with
Syed Sahedullah, 16.2.72.
34 Advance, 13.6.37, 10(5).
35 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 10.8.37, 10(5-6).
36 Ibid., 24.8.37, 8(7); Advance, 19.8.37, 11(2-3).
37 The Government of India Act, 1935 provided for a scheme of federal finance.
Certain heads of revenue were made entirely federal. Certain others were made
entirely provincial and a few other heads of revenue were made partly federal
and partly provincial. A fourth category of taxes was to be administered by the
Federal Government, but the proceeds were to be transferred to the provinces,
subject to surcharges for federal purposes in cases of emergency.
Sir Otto Niemeyer was appointed by the Secretary of State to recbmmcnd the
proper distribution of the proceeds of a share of the income-tax and of the
export duty on jute to the provinces, as also the subventions to be paid to the
different provinces. His recommendations were adopted by an Order-in-Council.
In accordance with the recommendation of Sir Otto Niemeyer, the debts due
from the provinces to the centre were consolidated or cancelled, either wholly
or in part, and the balances held by the Central Government were decentralized.
See Pramatha Nath Banerjee, A Study of Indian Economics pp. 262-3.
This Pramatha Nath Banerjee was the Minto Professor of Economics of Calcutta
University and was not the same person as Pramatha Nath Bandyopadhyay
referred to in the text.
38 Extracts from Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, Second Session LI, 3-4,
20.8.37-30.9.37, 721-37. See also Advance, 29.8.37, 9(1-2).
39 Advance, 2.9.37, 5(5).
40 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 7.9.37, 14(3); 9.9.37, 6(4); Advance, 10.9.37, 12(2).
41 Hindusthan Stadard, 12.11.37, 5(3); Advance, 18.11.37, 12(4). For the reaction
of the District Congress Committee, see Advance, 26.11.37, 12(2).
42 Amrita Bazar Patrika. 27.11.37. 10(6).
43 Advance, 8.12.37, 11(3).
44 Ibid., 9.12.37, 8(5); Hindusthan Standard, 9.12.37, 13(2).
45 The committee consisted of the following members: the Hon’ble Abdul Kasem
Fazl-ul-Haq, Premier, the Hon’ble Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, Minister of Finance,
the Hon’ble B P. Sinha Roy. Minister of Revenue, the Hon’ble Maharaja
Srish Chandra Nandy, Minister of Communications and Works, the Collector
of Burdwan, Nizamuddin Ahmed MLA, Jatindra Nath Basu MLA, Maharaj
Kumar Uday Chand Mahatab MLA, P.N. Banerjee MLA. Adwaita Kumar
Majhi MLA. Banku Behari Mandal MLA, Maulavi Abdul Hashem MLA,
Maulavi Md. Abdul Rashid MLA. Maulavi Abdul Quasem MLA. Khan
Behadur Alfazuddin Ahmed MLA, Khan Sahib Maulavi S. Abdur Rauf MLA,
Maulavi Abdul Wahab Khan MLA, Mr David Hendry MLA, See Amrita Bazar
Patrika, 16.12.37, 2(7). The report of this committee was not published.
46 Hindusthan Standard, 17.12.37, 5(7).
47 Advance, 20.12.37. 12(5).
48 Hindusthan Standard, 24.12.37, 5(7).
49 Ibid.. 31.12.37. 13(4); 6.1.38. 13(3); Amrita Bazar Patrika, 31.12.37, 10(3);
Advance 2.1.38, 2(5), 7.1.38,6(5) and Ananda Bazar Patrika, 6.1.38, 11(7).
 DAMODAR CANAL TAX MOVEMENT 41 1

50 Advance, 5.1.38. 8(3)

51 Hindusthan Standard, 1.2.38. 13(6-7); Ananda Bazar Patrika, 31.1.38, 5(6-7) and
Advance, 1.2.38.9(4).
52 Memorandum submitted by Kiron Chandra Dutt of Burdwan on the 29th
January, 1938, 1.
53. Hindusthan Standard, 8.2.38, 13(5).
54 Hindusthan Standard, 10.2.38, 13(3); 13.2.38, 15(2).
55 Ibid., 16.2.38, 13(4).
56 Report of the Damodar CanaI Levy Enquiry Committee, 8-10. See also Hindusthan
Standard, 4.3.38, 4(6); 11.3.38, 6(2-3); 12,3.38, 6(2-3); Advance, 5.3.38. 6(4)
and Amrita Bazar Patrika, 4.3.38, 10(2).
57 Hindusthan Standard, 12.5.38, 5(6-7); Vardhaman Varta, 9.5.38, 1 & 3.
58 Advance, 28.4.38, 6(7); Hindusthan Standard, 28.4.38, 4(4).
59 Vardhaman Varta, 2.5.38,1 & 2; Hindusthan Standard, 14.5.38,3(7) and Advance,
15.5.38, 8(5).
60 Vardhaman Varta, 23.5.38; 6.6.38, 4; 20.6.38, 3; 4.7.38, 1 & 2; 11.7.38, 2.
61 Ibid., 24.10.38,4.
62 Ibid., 13.2.39, 4.
63 Jugantar, 14.2.39,4(1).
64 Ibid., 15.2.39, 7(6-7).
65 Ibid., 16.2.39, 4(5).
66 Extracts from Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, LIV(l-2), Sixth Session,
15.2.39-7.3.39, 99-103.
67 Vardhaman Varta, 27.2.39, 3.
68 Ibid., 27.2.39, 2.
69 Ibid., 6.3.39, 4-5; 27.3.39; 3.4.39; 10.4.39.
70 Ibid.. 4.12.39.
71 Interview with Santosh Mandal; Helaram Chattopadhyay and Sivaprasad
Dutta (3.11.71).
72 Interview with Durga Pada Choudhuri.
73 See note no. 4.
74 Interviews with Santosh Kumar Mandal; Syed Shahedullah.
75 Report of the Damodar Cana! levy Enquiry Committee, 10.
76 Indian Annual Register, 1937, II, 326.
77 Ananda Bazar Patrika, 28.1.38, 13(4).
78 Vardhaman Varta, 6.6.38, 1 & 3.
79 Advance, 8.6.38, 8(4): 'Vardhaman Varta, 4.7.38, 2.
80 The Burdwan District Krishak Samiti was formed in a meeting held in May
1933 at Hatgobindapur under the presidentship of Dr Bhupendra Nath Dutta.
Helaram Chattopadhyay was the Secretary of the Samiti. See M.A. Rasul,
Krishak Sabhar Itihas, 79-80.
81 Interviews with Helaram Chattopadhyay and Sivaprasad Dutt; Syed
Shahedullah.
82 See note no. 75.
83 Interview with Syed Sahedullah.
For an analysis of the CPI’s policy of United Front with the Congress, see
Gene D. Overstreet and Marshal Windmiller, Communism in India, pp. 166-70;
L.P. Sinha, The Left Wing in India, pp. 418-26 and M R. Masani, The Communist
Party of India, pp. 59-66.
84 See note no. 9.
85 Vardhaman Varta, 17.7.39.
86 Interview with Syed Shahedullah.
412 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

87 Interview with Helaram Chattopadhyay and Sivaprasad Dutt.

88 Cp. "The Congress leaders who had been carrying on the agitation felt that,
with their present strength of organization, it would be wise to strike the bargain
at that point. The pressure of the Government for the realization of water-rates
was great, and there were also signs of wavering and indecision among the
peasants, for the latter did not belong to one class, but ranged from a fairly
prosperous section to those who possessed no land. If a settlement could be
arrived at this point, it would at least lead to a sense of success among those who
had tried to resist. A consultation was held in the Congress office, when the
* senior members pleaded for acceptance of the Government offer. The younger
Leftists were however determined to stick to the lowest demand. Eventually
the negotiations failed.” (italics in original). See Nirmal Kumar Bose Lectures
on Gandhism, p. 27.
89 Interviews with Santosh Mandal; Helaram Chattopadhyay and Sivaprasad
Dutt: Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar; and Syed Shahedullah.
90 Interviews with Helaram Chattopadhyay and Sivaprasad Dutt; and Santosh
Mandal. See also Md. Abdullah Rasul, Rasul, Krishak Sabhar Itihas, pp. 79-80.
91 Dr Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, however, holds a different view: 'The peasants
won a complete victory in the Damodar Canal area.’ (emphasis added). See his
‘Agrarian Movements in Bengal and Bihar, 1919-1939,’ in B.R. Nanda (ed.).
Socialism in India, p. 217.
 PART V
Agrarian Struggles on the Eve of
British Withdrawal
 '

.
 Introduction

0)
The selections reproduced in this part are extremely important
for a number of reasons. They deal with peasant and tribal struggles
during the World War and the post-war periods which have not
yet been adequately examined by Indian scholarship.
A section of ‘established’ scholarship attempts to glorify the
strategy adopted by the leadership of the Congress viz. Gandhi,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and others in working out the
transfer of power. They highlight their skill in preventing the emer¬
gence of a gigantic civil war, and in adroitly managing to withdraw
the mass movement launched by the people under the slogan ‘Quit
India’. These articles point out how the leadership of the Indian
National Congress accepted the caretaker Interim Ministry after
conducting post-war elections on the basis of limited franchise
given under 1935 Act, and describe the skill used in drafting the
Constitution of India, through a Constituent Assembly, worked
out an ad hoc basis. They also point out the skills used in pressuris¬
ing the British and the legal talent displayed by the leaders of the
Indian National Congress in preventing the British diplomats from
using Native States as a force to balkanize the Indian sub-conti¬
nent, and the skills used to persuade, coerce or outwit some of the
Princes of the feudal states from making further ‘mischief, and
finally to work out their merger with the Indian Union.
Received scholarship, however, never explains why the Congress
Party accepted an unprincipled partition of India on communal
lines. It never explains why the creative, mass upsurge, which took
place in India during the war and immediate post-war periods was
not systematically organized to evolve a strategy of counteracting
the machination of the British or the communal diplomacy of the
Muslim League. It never highlights how during the ‘Quit India’
upheaval and after, workers, peasants, middle classes and the
people living in the feudal states showed unparalleled heroism
and readiness to launch struggles, partly organized but mainly
spontaneous to paralyze die administration in many areas of the
416 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

country. They also do not provide an adequate account of the

mighty upheavals which shook the police, army, navy, airforce, and
which if properly guided in the context of mass discontent and up¬
heaval, would have led to a new stage of anti-imperialist struggle.
The Congress could have avoided the partition of India, prevented
the spread of communal frenzy in the country, halted one of
the most hideous crimes of the uprooting of millions of people from
their homelands, and ushered in a totally different phase of the
freedom movement. It never explains why the Congress created the
climate for Quit India Movement, but never actively prepared
itself and the masses to organize that struggle in a proper form and
why they at the time of carrying on negotiations with the British,
disowned the responsibility of the movement by declaring it a
spontaneous mass reaction to the ‘Leonine Violence’ of the British.
It also does not explain why the leadership of the Congress which
did not mind participating in the violent, brutal, cruel war in the
name of ‘Defence of Democracy’ was so delicately and fearfully
afraid of the revolutionary force used by the masses to overthrow
British rule, and the supporters of the British rule in the country.
The overwhelming majority of the scholarly fraternity broadly
supporting the actions of National Congress have been reluctant
to present an objective account of the war period and immediate
post-war strategies and tactics- of the party which came to power.
They do not explain why the Congress government after coming
to power as a care-taker Ministry at the centre and also after the
transfer of power in the Indian Union, became so furious and ruth¬
less in suppressing all struggles launched by the exploited strata.
A systematic record of the various types of upheavals, and
struggles which took place in rural and urban India, including
feudal states, resulting in some areas and districts of various states
in a paralysis of the administration, and even in the formation
for sometime of alternate popular administrations, described
variously in different parts such as Path Sarkar (in Maharashtra),
has become necessary to properly account for the role of the masses
and the mass struggles in weakening British rule. It has become
necessary also to analyze the class character of the national leader¬
ship which utilized, circumvented and prevented these movements
from taking to revolutionary, democratic and militant anti-imperia¬
list struggles.
 INTRODUCTION 417

It is no accident that even during the twenty five years of Indepen¬

dence a full length account of workers, peasants, tribal and states
people’s struggles faithfully recording even their occurrences in
a proper chronological and issue-wise basis has not been worked
out by historians and social scientists. Even an exhaustive descriptive
picture of the history of these movements during the British period
or even the war and post-war periods prior to British withdrawal
has still to be written. Marxist scholarship too has failed to provide
a dialectical, all sided picture of the developments during the war
and immediate post-war periods in India. It provides better informa¬
tion about the peasants’ and workers’ movement in the country
as compared to the dominant anti-Marxist, pro-Congress scholar¬
ship, but their treatment of these struggles exhibits a certain one
sidedness, which suits their changing party positions.
They have given us some interesting accounts of the peasant
struggles which were spontaneous, and militant, and which provided
violent resistence to British repression, or zamindari or shahukari
oppression backed by the British sword. They also provide a
selective but useful account of some struggles launched by the
tribals, share-croppers, and others in zamindari areas between the
World Wars. However, they consciously or unconsciously avoid
providing information about the struggles launched by the Indian
National Congress, or pettie bourgeois militants inside and outside
the Indian National Congress, who helped to develop and at times
themselves adopted militant mass and even class struggles. They
also ignore the movements launched by the social democratic
Congress Socialist and other parties and groups, as well as by those
Marxist groups and parties who emerged independently or broke
away from the CPI. They do not examine these movements which
they opposed due to sudden shifts in their lines dictated by changes
in the policies adopted by the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union under Stalin. This scholarship is silent over the mighty
peasant movements unleashed during the Non-Cooperation Move¬
ment of 1919-21, or peasant movements which were taking
place from 1929-33 (the period of the Civil Disobedience
Movement), and also between 1941-5 under the impulse of the
'Quit-India' slogan. Further they do not explain how the CPI
instead of participating and deepening the movements launched
by the nationalists in the thirties and during the war period after
418 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

1941, opposed them and thereby harmed the cause of the move¬
ments, on the one hand by preventing them from developing into
more militant, anti-imperialist class struggles and on the other
hand by making Marxism appear as basically anti-national and
an alien instrument of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
They do not point out how they in the name of supporting the
anti-fascist war of the allies, isolated themselves from the sweep
of peasants, workers, state’s peoples and the tribal people of the
country, even actively opposed them, and reduced their activities to
some agitation for economic concessions or anti-feudal agitation
which would not obstruct the war efforts. They also do not clearly
describe the mighty sweep of peasant uprisings which unnerved
the Congress leadership and which if lead by a party of the prole¬
tariat, would have helped to evolve a powerful political leadership,
an alternative possible to the Indian National Congress, and would
have resisted and probably prevented the Indian National Congress
from back-door unprincipled horse trading with the British and
the Muslim League, culminating in the partition of India.

(2)

Section I in this part contains two selections providing a very rich

and vivid account of a mighty peasant struggle known as
the Tebhaga Movement in Bengal.
The reproduction from Sunil Sen’s writings (one of the architects
of Tebhaga Movement) is a narrative written in a lively dramatic
style giving an intimate picture of the background, the objective
matrix, and the unfolding of the Tebhaga Movement in its two
phases. It provides a useful though brief account of the growth of
the Kisan Sabha, the changing attitude of the Commintern which
shaped the strategy of the Communists in India with regard to
linking the peasant struggles with larger national struggles. It
gives us a valuable insight into the spread of the Kisan Sabha in
Bengal. It further provides a backdrop to the situation which led
to the agitation of Tebhaga Chai’ pointing out how the agitation
involved lower stratum of tenants, such as bargadars, adhiars
and others and was a struggle not merely against zamindars,
but also against a section of rich peasants, (both new owners and
permanent rich tenants) who benefited from legislation following
 INTRODUCTION 419

the Pabna revolt and described as jotedars to distinguish them

from old zamindars.)
In Bengal, agricultural labourers, share croppers, poor peasants
in the form of tenants of various categories, now become the driving
force against jotedars, zamindars, moneylenders, traders, and the
British bureaucracy. This section of landlords, jotedars, traders
and moneylenders provided opposition to British rule and high
landlordism and stood for the elimination of the zamindari system.
This struggle had the support of either the Congress or the Muslim
League who favoured the principle of compensation, and pressed
for a reformist opposition to the British rule. However, these
classes were deeply hostile to the agricultural labourers, share
croppers known as bargadars, adhiars and poorer peasants existing
either as independent farmers or as tenants. The Tebhaga struggle
represents a movement demanding a right to two thirds of the
share of produce and putting the crops after harvest in the enclosures
of the tenants rather than in the enclosures of the jotedars or land¬
lords. This movement was essentially an economic struggle, but
took a political form when it had to confront and battle the jotedars
and the political apparatus of the state.
Sunil Sen points out how Shurawardy introduced the Bargardar’s
Bill to take legal note of this confrontation and to show a considera¬
tion for these rent-paying tenants.
Sen portrays the heroic struggle against police-jotedar repression
in fascinating detail highlighting various forms of struggles in
depth.
The second article in the section by Krishnakant Sarkar deals
with an area called Kakdwip in Bengal. Sarkar has specially
prepared the article for this volume. It deals with the rise, growth
and conclusion of the Tebhaga Movement as it developed in an
area not covered by Sunil Sen. The peasant struggles that took
place in this area are not commonly known. Krishnakant Sarkar
gives a very vivid account of the history of the area, the land tenure
systems operating there, the class stratification which emerged
there during the British period, the nature of the exploitation and
oppression which was carried on in this area, and the conditions
of sharecroppers in the context of larger socio-economic problems
confronting this relatively unknown area in the Sunderbans of
Bengal. The value of Sarkar's article lies in the fact that it concretely
420 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

indicates the gains of Kakdwip Tebhaga movement in a number

of significant ways. It also points out how such struggles, while
not being permitted to go beyond particular limits, were also
taken note of by the Indian bourgeois state, particularly the regional
state, to curb and soften feudal and semifeudal conditions and
pave the way for creating conditions favourable for rich farmers,
jotedars and others, by curbing and restricting the feudal forms of
exploitation. It also points out how these struggles launched by the
Communist Party and the Kisan Sabha led by the Communist
Party were essentially fought on economic demands, and had no
plan for linking them to the larger political processes taking place
in the country.

(3)
The three selections in Section 2 of this part deal with a peasant-
tribal movement, which in its extensiveness, duration, intensity
and conscious direction was one of the most significant struggles
launched by the peasantry in India during the last phase of British
rule in India.
The Telangana peasant struggle beginning with 1946 and lasting
upto 1951 is in one sense a unique struggle fought by the peasantry
in India.
1 It was launched in the territory of Nizam State, one of the big¬
gest feudal states in India, with peasantry and population over¬
whelmingly Hindus and tribals, and an aristocracy, administrative
bureaucracy and the feudal chieftains springing from the Muslim
upper strata. The Nizam’s state spread across territories of many
linguistic groups, more particularly Andhras, Karnataks,
Maharashtrians and others. It had Urdu as its administrative
language. The Nizam, himself was the largest landowner in the
state. The Nizam, the landowing classes and the bureaucracy had
imposed many and varied types of taxes, legal and customary,
feudal, semi-feudal exactions, and levies on various sections of
the population. The Nizam, utilized the British strategy of giving
the feudal states an option of either a merger or as independent
sovereign states, without merging with the new Indian Union or
State of Pakistan.
The strategy and tactic adopted with regard to the problems
posed by the Nizam state, showed the strength and weaknesses of
 INTRODUCTION 421

various political parties which were trying to shape the future of

post-British India. In fact the struggle in Nizam State, culminating
with its merger into the Indian Union and dividing its territories
into future linguistic states of India, especially Andhra State and
the state of Maharashtra, the intense movements to bifurcate
Andhra State into two—Andhra and Telangana States deserves
a more careful study.
2 The Telangana struggle in the Nizam State, developed under
unique objective and subjective—local and international—con¬
texts. The rapid rise of the Communist leadership in the struggle,
its link with the states people movement launched under the leader¬
ship of the Praja Mandal headed by the Congress, Arya Samaj,
and other political currents, its links with Vishal Andhra Movement,
linking the movement with other belts of Andhra Pradesh, the
intense exploitation and oppression of landlords, moneylenders,
traders and Nizam officials, the deliberate launching of an armed
organization on communal lines in the form of Razakars by the
Nizam to terrorize the Hindu population—including traders,
merchants, farmers, poorer peasants and tenants, deserves a study
in depth.
The Indian National Congress, heading the caretaker interim
government at the centre, and working out the plans for a divided
India, evolved its pattern of cajoling or coercing the rulers of
states to merge with India. It adopted a special stance with the
Nizam, initially showing even readiness to keep the state intact
if the Nizam agreed to shed certain powers and vested them with
the Indian Union.
The interpretation and relevance of the Telangana struggle,
the role of various parties, the relation of the phase of that struggle
to national development, the impact of the changing policies of
the Soviet Communist Party, the zigzags of the Communist line
in India and in Telangana, the switch over of the Commrunist
Party in 1951 by winding up the Telangana struggle and taking to
parliamentary electoral politics, and contesting the first General
Elections—all these have become topics of acrimonious debates
and discussions, even among the different Communist parties
which have emerged after the great split in the united Communist
Party.
The three articles selected here provide a kaleidoscopic picture
422 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of this significant movement launched by the Communist Party

of India.
Dhanagare’s article is reproduced here because it is one of the
few compact, comprehensive analysis and evaluations of the social
origins of peasant insurrection in Telangana (1946-51). It not only
provides a matrix within which the Telangana struggle started,
developed and was wound up, but also examines some of the
important issues raised by various thinkers with regard to the role
of various classes, and particularly the role of rich farmers, and
middle peasantry as the crucial axis of peasant struggles.
The second selection on Telangana by C.Rajeshwar Rao, is
extremely useful for a number of reasons: (a) It provides a vivid
account of post-war situation as it affected the Nizam State. It
tells us how the CPI unit in Telangana along with the Party unit
in Marathawada was organizing various sections of the population,
viz. workers, students, women peasants and others and thus was
becoming a significant political force in Hyderabad, (b) It shows
how after the end of the War basic changes were taking place in
the international scene, (c) It refers to anti-imperialist national
liberation movements and national liberation wars which began
raging in the colonized countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America,
but does not refer to the role Communist’s played in opposing
such struggles in a number of countries, because of their policy of
supporting the War. (d) It does not explain how the Communist
Party of India, during the entire period of 1941 to 1945 had opposed
the Quit India Movement, lost the opportunity of taking leadership
not merely in few pockets of the country but to the anti-imperialist
wave which enveloped the whole country, (e) He refers to the
transfer of power as a mere neo-colonialist move, which according
to him did not succeed, without explaining why he makes both the
statements in such a summary fashion. He does not want to refer
to the Quit India Movement, the heroic battles of States’ People
Movements, the strikes of workers, and resistance movements by
urban and rural people during war period, (f) He also does not
want to refer to the parliamentary politics adopted by CPI just
after the Second World War when interim elections were organized
on old limited electoral basis to form state legislatures and an
interim caretaker government at the Centre, and the change in
line as a consequence of a shift in Soviet policy, described as the
 INTRODUCTION 423

"ZednofT Line', and subsequently criticized as left adventurism by

the CPI itself.
Rajeshwar Rao then provides an interesting, clear but contro¬
versial summing up of the lessons of Telangana for post-
Independence India. His conclusions very explicitly admit that the
aim of the CPI was only to realize anti-feudal, bourgeois political-
economic aspirations and the Telangana movement was essentially
a movement with limited objectives. Rajeshwar Rao does not
discuss the movement in the context of the larger matrix wherein
a gigantic game of transfer of power was being played in India.
The next selection by P.Sundaraiya is from the book Telangana
Peoples Struggle and its Lessons.
The purpose of publishing this work twenty years after the
withdrawal of the Telangana Struggle on October 21 1951, is to
provide an authentic narration of the origin, development and
withdrawal of the struggle, as no such narration even in outline is
available. It was also written to counteract tons of literature pro¬
duced by avowed enemies and detractors of this great movement
denouncing the struggle as Communist ‘violence, banditry and
anarchy’. It sums up the impressive record of achievements and
gains to the credit of the peasant uprising. It also highlights
Sundaraiya’s version of other gains, viz. ‘pushing the question of
agrarian revolution to the forefront', compelling the unwilling
hands of the Congress to embark upon various agrarian reforms,
and Vinobha Bhave to launch the Bhoodan Movement.
According to Sundaraiya, the Telangana struggle indirectly
forced the pace of states’ reorganization on linguistic basis, thereby
helping the democratic demand of linguistic nationalists for separate
statehood. The author emphasizes the contribution this struggle
made to national, democratic and agrarian problems confronting
India after the withdrawal of British rule. He further proudly pro¬
claims how the Communist Party, which led Telangana struggle,
along with numerous other struggles in Kerala, Bengal and other
places between 1946 and 1948, emerged as the single biggest op¬
position group in the first parliament following the 1952 general
elections.
However, according to Sundaraiya, the single biggest contri¬
bution made by the Telangana peasant revolt to the Communist
movement in India was in bringing to the forefront ‘almost all the
424 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

basic theoretical and ideological questions concerning the strategy

and tactics of the Indian People’s Democratic Revolution for correct
and scientific answers and realistic and practical solutions’. He also
asserts that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) after prolonged
inner-party struggle 'arrived at a fairly correct political line with
satisfactory answers to most of the problems posed’.
The author also feels that the germ of the future split in Commu¬
nist Party of India were laid during the Telangana struggle,
particularly during the Second phase of the Telangana struggle.
Section two of the essay provides a very detailed picture of the
socio-political background of Hyderabad State which enables the
readers to properly comprehend the matrix within which the
Telangana struggle emerged and grew. In this section, Sundaraiya
also analyses the larger political stances of various political parties,
with regard to World War II particularly during its first phase
when Soviet Union was not attacked, as a result of the Hitler-
Stalin pact and the Second phase when Hitler launched an offensive
against the Soviet Union. Sundaraiya confidently asserts that the
changes in the line adopted by CPI with regard to their attitude
towards the war effort—from opposition to support of British rule—
was justified.
In section three of the essay the author gives one of the most
detailed and lively accounts of the Communist movement in Andhra,
and Telangana. This part of the selection is valuable as it gives a
rare and brilliant portrayal of the actual struggles of the peasantry
under the leadership of the Communist Party. This section has to
be carefully studied as it is one of the few elaborate descriptions of
the peasantry in action, as well as glimpses of how the Communist
Party spread its influence and exhibited a heroic stance which
endeared it to the lower strata of the population.
Section four explains under what conditions the Communist
Party was forced to give a call for the withdrawal of the struggle.

(4)
The last selection in Part V reproduced from Revolt of the Varlis
by S.V. Parulekar, describes the struggles which were launched
in Dahanu and Umbergaon Talukas of Thana District by a tribal
population in Western India, just a few miles away from Bombay.
This booklet is a rare account of the awakening of Varlis against
their intense exploitation and oppression by forest contractors.
 INTRODUCTION 425

moneylenders, rich farmers and landlords with the backing and

support of the 3ritish bureaucracy. The selection portrays in detail
how the liberation movement of Varlis started in May 1945, when
they raised their red banner under the leadership of the Kisan
Sabha against their serf-like exploitation.
Parulekar discusses the struggle of the Varlis, after providing the
socio-economic matrix under which the Varlis were exploited and
oppressed. Though Parulekar himself participated in these struggles,
he describes these struggles as an observer, and not as a propagandist
of the Communist Party.
The selection describes how Varlis were brought close to the
Kisan Sabha, how they were convinced about the cause the Kisan
Sabha held, how the Kisan Sabha adopted various approaches
to reach out to Varlis, educate them, awaken them and prepare
them for struggles. The selection also highlights the heroism,
determination and astute understanding exhibited by Varlis while
carrying on their struggles against local exploiters and the British
repressive apparatus. By giving a pen-picture of a conference at
Mahalaxmi, Parulekar provides an understanding of the molecular
processes that builds up a movement.
The description of a strike of Varlis regarding the rate of cutting
grass which also lead to the strikes and struggles on other issues
against timber merchants in the forest also throws light on different
types of issues on which struggles developed in the tribal belts.
The relevance of this selection lies in the fact that this struggle
inaugurated a set of social currents in this area and also became
the focal point to try out various types of experiments in areas
of social and economic welfare, carried out by the post-independence
government as well as the reformist social service wings of the
Congress and other bourgeois and petti-bourgeois parties. It also
became a laboratory to test the veracity of different conceptions
of revolutions such as National and Peoples’ Democratic Revo¬
lutions, and the two-stage theory of revolution as formulated by
various Communist Parties.

(5)
The six selections reproduced in this part are extremely signi¬
ficant for a proper understanding of the role of the peasantry and
its various classes in shaping Indian history.
1 They point out that the peasantry by itself cannot project an
426 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

independent political national party. They have the support of

the parties of the bourgeois, petti-bourgeois or the proletariat and
have been politicized by these parties.
2 While exhibiting great ability to carry on mighty battles if
properly lead, they also point out how their energies could be
misdirected if wrong leadership is provided.
3 They reveal how the Indian National Congress and the
Muslim League were consciously pursuing a strategy of pressure
and bargain to inherit the British State apparatus and were not
interested in evolving a genuinely new alternative State apparatus.
They were aware from the beginning that any revolutionary path
of overthrowing British Imperialism, by involving exploited classes
would result in the exploited masses breaking the dams of bourgeois-
feudal framework and effect a socialist overthrow of the proprietory
classes in India.
4 The six selections also reveal how the Communist Party during
war and post-war period had no clear policy of an alternate strategy
for securing Independence. In fact during the entire war period,
when the Indian National Congress was elaborating a strategy of
securing Independence, on the basis of pressure cum negotiation,
and also based on occupying key positions after World War II,
the Communist Party had hardly any programme to prepare an
alternative.
5 The Communist Party during the war period strictly adhered
to opposing any movement to overthrow British Rule, and even
endeavoured to see that the wheels of Government were not
disturbed by opposition forces. Even during the post-war crucial
initial years, when the Communist Party’s line was to sharpen some
of the struggles of workers, peasants’, tribals, and middle classes,
it was essentially on immediate economic or short term anti-
feudal political demands as could be seen in the issues involved in
Tebhaga, Telangana and Varli revolts. In fact, it appears
that conceptions, subsequently projected like the two stage theory
of revolution either via National Democratic, or People’s Demo¬
cratic to Socialist Revolutions, were absent during the entire war
and immediate post-war period. Projecting these notions in the
Telangana struggle, as formulated by CPI, CPI(M), and even
CPI(ML) and their various factions, is an afterthought to justify
the subsequent policies.
 INTRODUCTION 427

6 The struggles launched by the Communist Party of India, in

Tebhaga, Telangana, and among the Varlis, reveals the readiness of
the masses to develop and deepen the struggles, to participate in
battles against both native and foreign exploiters, to evolve great
ingenuity in working out tactics for conducting a variety of strategies
during battles and even to establish local Soviet-council type
alternate administrative mechanisms to conduct their local rule.
These struggles also indicate the changing role of the various classes
in rural areas during their different phases and finally the role of
agrarian proletarian, share-croppers, or very poor peasants, who
constituted the bulk of rural population as the stable lasting and
crucial category to carry the agrarian revolution to its conclusion
only if it was led by the proletariat and the revolutionary party of
the proletariat. These struggles also reveal clearly that the Com¬
munist Party of India, did not provide that leadership, nor was
the Communist Party theoretically prepared for it. It had no con¬
ception of an alternate strategy for the seizure of power.
 20 The Kisan Sabha

Sunil Sen

Although jacquerie flared up in parts of Bengal in the nine¬

teenth century these hardly made much impact on the national
movement. The early Congress took no notice of the kisan. In
the tumultuous days of the swadeshi there was hardly any attempt
to build up peasant unions. In Russia the Narodniks, clad in
peasants’ clothes, went to the village to live among peasants and
hoped to bring about a revolution with their help. The revolu¬
tionaries in India relied on middle-class youth and foreign arms
to liberate the country. It was in the Gandhi era that the peasants
were drawn into the political movement, notably in Bihar and
modern Uttar Pradesh; peasants learnt the strength of collective
action at Champaran and Gujarat, Tamluk and Contai. By 1935
peasant unions had been formed in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra,
Malabar, Gujarat, Punjab and Bengal. Yet there was no central
organisation or any organised peasant movement in India.
We will briefly review the early history of the Kisan Sabha.
It seems that the Congress Socialist Party and some nonparty
individuals took a leading part in the formation of the Kisan
Sabha. Professor Ranga writes that the South Indian Federation
of Peasants and Workers convened an All-India Peasants’ and
Workers’ Conference in October 1935. The Bihar kisan leaders,
however, issued a statement opposing the formation of an all-
India organisation; they had a feeling that the conference was
being organised by moderate elements who would impose a liberal
programme on the kisans. Professor Ranga and Kamala Devi
Chattopadhyaya went ahead with the preparations of the confe¬
rence which was in fact held in Madras and appointed an organising
committee, with Professor Ranga as secretary, to get in touch with
provincial organisations. On behalf of Bihar kisan leaders Jaya-
prakash Narayan, leader of the newly-formed Congress socialist
Party, had a meeting with the Madras leaders and it was agreed
Reproduced from Agrarian Struggle in Bengal, 1946-47, by Sunil Sen, People’s
Publishing House, New Delhi, Chapter 2, pp. 16-32.
 THE KISAN SABHA 429

that a more representative conference would be convened in

Meerut in January, 1936. The Meerut conference decided to hold
an All-India Kisan Congress at Lucknow in April, 1936 at the
time of the annual session of the National Congress.1
Although the Communist Party was formally banned in 1934
it took a leading part in the formation of the Kisan Sabha. At
this stage it would be worth while to briefly review the programme
of the Communist Party which was to establish its leadership in
Kisan Sabha in the years to come. At the seventh congress of the
Communist International (1935) ‘left sectarianism’ of Indian
communists came in for severe criticism. In the words of Wang
Ming: ‘Our comrades in India have suffered for a long time from
left sectarian errors; they did not participate in all the mass demons¬
trations organised by the National Congress or organisations
affiliated to it. At the same time, Indian communists did not possess
sufficient forces independently to organise a powerful and mass
anti-imperialist movement’.2 The seventh congress gave the call
of united front and participation of Indian communists in the
anti-imperialist movement headed by ‘national reformists’. In
March, 1936, R.P. Dutt and Ben Bradley, leaders of the British
Communist Party, published a thesis in Labour Monthly. In this
thesis entitled. ‘The Anti-imperialist People’s Front in India’ Dutt
and Bradley sought to work out the policy implications of the
Comintern resolution. The salient points of the thesis may be
summed up. In the first place, the Congress had achieved ‘a gigantic
task’ in uniting the diverse elements seeking national liberation;
it could play ‘a great part and a foremost part in the work of creating
the anti-imperialist people’s front’. Secondly, the leadership of
the Congress was described as bourgeois leadership ‘whose interests
often conflict with the interests of the masses and with the interests
of the national struggle’. Thirdly, the mass organisations of workers
and peasants that were outside the Congress must be drawn in
it either by collective affiliation or united front agreement; the
working class could play increasingly the role of vanguard within
such a broad anti-imperialist people’s front. Fourthly, the demand
for a constituent assembly would be the central rallying slogan
which could be a mass mobilising force in the present stage of the
national struggle. Fifthly, the establishment of unity with all
leftwing elements within the Congress on the basis of a common
430 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

minimum programme was to be the immediate task which would

be a prelude to the united front of all anti-imperialist forces.3
It may be noted that Dutt developed the mam formulations in
this thesis with a mass of facts and statistical material in India
Today which remains his major work.
As decided at Meerut the All-India Kisan Congress (which
later changed its name to All-India Kisan Sabha) met at Lucknow
on 11 April, 1936. Swami Sahajananda Saraswati, the Bihar kisan
leader, was the president of the session. The congress elected an
All-India Kisan Committee in which socialists, communists and
congressmen were represented. The manifesto adopted at the
congress declared that 'the object of the kisan movement is to
secure complete freedom from economic exploitation and the
achievement of full economic and political power to the peasants
and workers and other exploited classes’; peasants to fight for
their immediate political and economic demands in order to
prepare them for their emancipation from every form of political
exploitation'. The fundamental demands centred on abolition of
zamindari and vesting of land in the tillers; the minimum demands
included moratorium on debts, abolition of land revenue and rent
from uneconomic holdings, reduction of revenue and rent, licensing
of moneylenders, minimum wages for agricultural workers, fair
price for sugarcane and commercial crops, irrigation facilities,
gradual income-tax, death duty and inheritance tax on landlords
and merchants.4
Evidently the Kisan Sabha sought to reconcile the interests of
all categories of peasants—from the rich peasant to landless
labour—and unite them on a common platform; the preservation
of peasant unity seemed to be the overriding consideration. The
emphasis was on immediate demands which could be realised,
so that it could appeal to the broad masses of peasants. First
September was to be observed as Kisan Day to popularise peasants’
demands. It was also decided to publish a weekly journal called
'Kisan Bulletin' with Indulal Yajnik, the Gujarat kisan leader, as
the editor. The Kisan Bulletin, which was regularly published,
helped to give a direction to the kisan movement in the formative
phase.
The formation ol the All-India Kisan Sabha opened a new
period of peasant movement. It branched out in the provinces.
 THE KISAN SABHA 43 1

In Bengal the communists took the lead in organising the Provincial

Kisan Sabha which held the first session at Bankura in March
1937; it had then only 11,080 members. Within a year Kisan Sabha
branches were formed in most districts. The Bengal Provincial
Kisan Sabha held annual conferences with elected delegates from
primary or village level kisan sabhas, and it became a regular
practice to end the conference with a mass rally which was consi¬
dered to be as important as the delegates’ session. The list of mem¬
bers of the Provincial Kisan Committee showed that they came
mostly from urban middle class; some intellectuals joined the
Kisan Sabha, notably Dr Bhupendranath Datta, brother of
Swami Vivekananda, Satyendranath Majumdar, eminent journalist,
and Gopal Haidar, novelist and journalist; there was not a single
peasant in the committee.5
It will be necessary to tell the story of the district level com¬
mittees which maintained direct contact with the broad masses
of peasants. How did Kisan Sabha workers go to the grassroots
and bring peasants within the organisation? What was the form
of kisan movement? How did Kisan Sabha workers train peasant
cadres? To what extent were they successful in uniting peasants
who remained divided by religion and caste? We will take up
the example of Dinajpur district, a strong base of the Kisan Sabha,
to seek an answer to these questions. With the material available
we can deal with these complex matters only particularly; but
even an examination of the bare outlines may be helpful.
Dinajpur, a North Bengal district, figures prominently in official
records mainly because it was one of the big zamindaris of Bengal
since the days of Murshid Quli. Buchanan-Hamilton has told us
that in the first decade of the present century adhi system developed
in the district; the adhiars were settled mainly in unreclaimed
lands in border areas. Over the years the barga system became
widespread; the jotedars were mostly Rajbansi and Muslim;
few were caste Hindus. The census figures of 1931 show that Muslims
comprised 53 per cent of the population, and Rajbansis 20 per cent.
Who are the Rajbansis? There is a legend that the Rajbansis were
the descendants of the kshatriyas who fled away to escape wrath
of Parasuram. According to Risee, ethnically Rajbansis, Paliyas
and Koches are the same. This is confirmed by Mr Bell: ‘Formerly
they (Rajbansis) were known as Paliyas. Officially in the census
432 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

they were listed as Rajbansi kshatriyas .... The Koch, Rajbansi

and Paliyas are really the three names of the same thing’.7 The
great majority of the Rajbansis were poor peasants and adhiars;
some were rapacious jotedars who owned between 300 and 500
acres of land. Unlike absentee landlords the jotedars lived in the
village and dominated rural life, and treated adhiars as their serfs.
The adhiars felt helpless before the powerful jotedars and turned
instinctively to the Kisan Sabha as the hope of the future. It was
among the Rajbansis that the Kisan Sabha found its earliest
recruits.
The Kisan Sabha was founded in Dinajpur in 1938 by a small
group of ex-detenus who had accepted Marxism in jail and left
the Congress. Bibhuti Guha, a university graduate, came out of
jail in 1937 and chose Dinajpur, his home district, as the field of
his political activity. He contacted Kali Sarkar, his old comrade
in Anusilan Samity who lived in Phulbari and had some land.
Sarkar became a full-time functionary and moved in the villages,
held baithaks and trained kisan cadres. In Dinajpur town there
was a small group of left congressmen vaguely inclined towards
Marxism; the members of this group, Sushil Sen, Ajit Ray, Janardan
Bhattacharya, joined the Communist Party. Thus was formed the
nucleus of the Communist Party which built up the Kisan Sabha
in Dinajpur.
The Kisan Sabha branched out in villages. Bibhuti Guha writes
that in eighteen months 30 village committees were formed, and
the Kisan Sabha held 250 meetings, distributed sixty thousand
leaflets and enrolled 4,000 members. When flood and famine
devastated Thakurgaon subdivision the Kisan Sabha adopting
Gandhian technique, perhaps unconsciously, organised a satya-
graha in the court of the subdivisional officer; the police tried to
disperse the peasants who refused to leave and stayed on until
late at night the SDO gave way and promised to supply agricultural
loan.
Led by Haji Muhammed Danesh and Satyen Ray the Kisan
Sabha also organised relief work. Haji Danesh, a graduate of
Aligarh University, a lawyer by profession, was a nationalist
Muslim and the president of the Sub-divisional Congress Com¬
mittee. Danesh who came from a peasant family was a remarkable
personality; he loved the peasants and was loved by them. The
 THE KISAN SABHA 433

Kisan Sabha found in him an able leader and an excellent speaker.

Although son of a rich jotedar Satyen Ray, a graduate, moved in
Thukurgaon villages, addressed meetings in Rajbansi dialect,
and was quickly accepted by the peasants as their leader.
Meanwhile some peasants had emerged as local leaders: Rajen
Singh, a rich peasant of Balia village, Atwari police station; Ramlal
Singh and Pathal Singh, two poor peasants who lived in Rajen’s
village; Benode Das, a middle peasant who lived in the vicinity
of Thakurgaon town. They were the first batch of kisan cadres who
drew hundreds of kisans within the fold of the Kisan Sabha.
In fact as the Kisan Sabha grew kisan cadres multiplied, and they
came increasingly from middle peasants and poor peasants. It
was the job of kisan cadres to arrange baithaks, organise public
meetings, distribute leaflets, enrol members and volunteers.
The Kisan Sabha took up simple demands which could be
realised and did not provoke a big clash with jotedars or the govern¬
ment. What developed as a popular movement not only in Dinajpur
but also in neighbouring Jalpaiguri and Rangpur districts was
the campaign against hat tola or levy exacted by landowners from
poor peasants who came to the hats or weekly markets to sell a
few seers of paddy or rice or vegetables. The volunteers marched
in weekly markets and fairs and called upon peasants not to pay
tola; sometimes landowners came to a compromise and exempted
peasants from paying tola. Another popular issue was lowering of
interest rates changed by jotedars for karja or paddy loans from
adhiars. Land to the tiller was certainly the central slogan which
was however used for propaganda, not for immediate action,
agrarian revolution still lay in the future.
It was not smooth sailing for the Kisan Sabha. Apart from police
harassment it was faced with the formidable opposition of the
Muslim League and the Kshatriya Samity. Invariably the Muslim
League tried to incite religious fanaticism of Muslim peasants
against Hindu landowners. The vicious propaganda of the maulavis
was countered by Haji Danesh who, as a devoted Mussulman,
was held in high esteem by the Muslims. The propaganda of the
Muslim League achieved limited success; class demands of Muslim
peasants seemed to have a stronger appeal than communal propa¬
ganda. It deserves mention that there was not a single incident
of communal riot in this district between 1938 and 1947. We will
434 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

presently see that Muslim peasants joined in large numbers the

Tebhaga struggle of 1946-7. It has become a ritual to emphasise
caste differences. The fate of Kshatriya Samity therefore deserves
particular mention. It tried to wean away the Rajbansis who were
told that the Kisan Sabha was dominated by Hindu bhadralok.
But the Kshatriya Samity had no economic programme, and mere
appeal to caste had little effect on poor Rajbansi peasants; in fact,
the candidates put up by this caste organisation were trounced in
the 1946 election when Rupnarayan won as a candidate supported
by the Kisan Sabha.8
We have concentrated on Dinajpur to illustrate the pattern of
activity of a district kisan sabha. In most districts the leaders
were drawn from former revolutionaries who had accepted Marxism
in jail: Benoy Chaudhuri, Hare Krishna Konar (Burdwan); Bhupal
Panda, Mohini Mandal, Deben Das (Midnapur); Provash Ray
(24-Parganas); Moni Singh (Mymensingh); Krishnabinode Ray,
Sukumar Mitra(Jessore); Sachin Bose, BishnuChatterjee(Khulna);
Dinesh Lahiri, Sudhir Mukherjee, Mohi Bagchi (Rangpur).9
It is noteworthy that very few intellectuals joined the Kisan Sabha.
In 1938-9 the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha had only 50,000
members. Surely the Kisan Sabha was developing but slowly.
The emphasis everywhere was on partial demands. It is reasonable
to ask if the Kisan Sabha formulated any agrarian programme.
In 1939 the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha submitted a memo¬
randum10 to the Land Revenue Commission (also called Floud
Commission after its chairman. Sir Francis Floud) appointed by
the Fazlul Haq ministry in November 1938. Since this memo¬
randum constituted the first serious treatment of the agrarian
question it deserves particular notice. Excerpts from this memo¬
randum are reproduced below:
“The government of Bengal consists predominantly of landlords
whose primary purpose ... is to maintain the status quo. That
such a government should feel obliged to consider either the
revision or the abolition of the permanent settlement only goes
to prove the reality of economic collapse and danger of political
upheaval.
‘... it is the permanent settlement which is responsible for the
present deplorable condition of our cultivators. In the minds of
the oppressed cultivator it is this system which perpetually strives
 THE KISAN SABHA 435

through its various agents, the landlord, the moneylender and the
police, to drive him off the land.
‘...the number of rent-receivers increased during the decade
1921-31 by about 62 per cent; this is simply an increase in the
number of intermediaries between the zamindar and the cultivator.
The process was started immediately after the framing of the per¬
manent settlement; with the inability or the unwillingness of the
zamindars to manage their own estates it gathered speed as new
lands were brought under cultivation; it became a mad race during
the period of the general rise in prices when rents were systemati¬
cally raised on all sides under the provisions of the tenancy act,
and the margin of profit between rents and revenue grew wider,
and now, in the last few years, it has become a frantic scramble
on the part of usurers and petty professional middle-class men to
buy their way into the rent-receiving class.
‘Not only has agriculture in the province failed to utilise the
advance of science to increase its productivity, not only have no
improvements in the land or in the mode of farming been made,
but we actually see that the productivity of the land per acre has
decreased with the fragmentation of holdings.
‘Payment of rents in kind is fairly frequent in Bengal.
‘The class of sharecroppers known in Bengal most widely as
bargadars (also adhiars, bhagchasi, etc.) are not strictly speaking
in the eyes of the law tenants at all. They have no tenure, no per¬
manent right in the land they till, but only a temporary or oral
lease. In practice there are cases in which the landlord allows the
bargadar to cultivate the same strips of land for several years in
succession, but one more often finds that the lease is only made
for one year and often not committed to writing.
‘Amongst other reasons encouraging the growth of share-
cropping, we may notice the growth of a new type of landlord—
the moneylender-cum-landlord ... the investment of capital in
land is more attractive to him under present conditions than invest¬
ment in industrial concerns.
‘Rent must go. In place of rent we must have the agricultural
tax. Like the income-tax agricultural tax must be graded.
‘If the law recognises democratically elected peasant committees
and appoints these committees with the functions of gathering
taxes and disbursing grants, loans, etc. from the state, the whole
problem is simply, cheaply and realistically solved.
436 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

‘The ownership of land by landlords is clearly incompatible

with our scheme above, and so to us inadmissible. The only two
alternatives are (a) state ownership and (b) peasant ownership.
The argument in favour of state ownership with annual leases to
the peasantry is that it is of advantage from the point of view of
centralised land reform. But such a system would be more open to
influences of corruption. In view of this danger, and in view also
of the opinion of the overwhelming majority ‘of the cultivators
themselves, we would advocate the transfer of full rights of property
to the individual cultivators.
‘But really it is no solution of his poverty. The average cultivator
has not the money to buy seed.
‘Reclaimed land should be state-owned and worked by agri¬
cultural labourers.’
In this memorandum, surely a memorable document, the empha¬
sis was on abolition of zamindari which correspondend to the
interests of all categories of peasants. No specific demand for
bargadars was formulated. Instead of nationalisation of land,
peasant ownership was the declared objective, although it was
conceded that it was ‘no solution to his poverty’. The need to develop
the large unit of cultivation in the form of collective farm was not
even the long-term goal; only reclaimed land was to be state-
owned. This programme, formulated in 1939, was to remain
basically unaltered in subsequent years.
The political orientation of the Kisan Sabha became increasingly
marked as war-clouds began to gather in Europe. Since its inception
it had declared its solidarity with the Congress movement for
independence. But landlord-dominated congress committees proved
to be hostile, and opposed the separate existence of the Kisan
Sabha; the proposal of ‘collective affiliation’ of peasant unions,
though backed by Nehru, was rejected by the Congress. On the
question of united front between Congress and Kisan Sabha
there were sharp differences among leading functionaries of Kisan
Sabha. It was argued, for instance, that the Congress did not want
unity; there could be no unity between exploiters and exploited;
national front was therefore a chimera. In a leading article published
in ‘National Front’ on the eve of the Gaya session of the All-India
Kisan Sabha held in April, 1939, P.C. Joshi, the then general
secretary of Communist Party of India, defended the united front
policy:
 THE KISAN SABHA 437

‘. it is necessary in every case to consciously work to get the

active cooperation of the local Congress Committee and thus to
transform every kisan struggle into a people’s struggle, and thus
build from below national unity. The division is between imperialism
on the one hand and the entire people on the other, the greatest
class struggle today is our national struggle, the main organ of
our struggle is the National Congress. Any course that takes the
kisan away from this straight course separates him from the people,
takes him away from the anti-imperialist struggle. It is the Congress¬
man unity which will move the Congress itself forward.’11
The differences within the Kisan Sabha were resolved, at least
on the theoretical level, at Gaya. It was the period of‘the gathering
storm’; anti-imperialist united front was the need of the hour.
Within a few months of the Gaya session came the ‘phoney war’.
Linlithgow, the Viceroy ‘with almost a rock’s lack of awareness’,
as Nehru put it, took no notice of the Congress offer of cooperation
in the war effort, and the Congress ministries resigned in October
in protest. Repression was let loose on the democratic movement,
the main target being the communists. It seems that in the face
of this repression the kisan movement beat a retreat and tried to
regroup its forces; only in two North Bengal districts, Jalpaiguri
and Dinajpur, kisan struggle assumed a popular character. The
most striking feature of the kisan struggle was mass participation
of Rajbansi bargadars. It ushered in a new period of kisan move¬
ment. No longer was it confined to middle peasants. The demands
raised by the bargadars were simple: right to stack paddy in their
khamar, and reduction of interest rates of karja. The Kisan Sabha
formed a volunteer corps, and the volunteers waving the Red
Flag marched from village to village. As the adhiars started stacking
the paddy in their khamar the jotedars got panicky and pressurised
- the government for action. Invariably the police came to the help
of the jotedars, and several clashes, minor in nature, occurred.
In Jalpaiguri the movement was suppressed, but it continued
in Dinajpur, and spread rapidly in the entire Thakurgaon sub¬
division. Ramlal Singh and Pathal Singh of Balia village emerged
as local leaders; they were middle peasants who assumed the
leadership of the adhiars’ struggle. Some petty landowners who
had earlier joined the Kisan Sabha now left it and became hostile.
The movement gathered momentum, and Satyen Ray toyed with
the idea of forming ‘soviets’. Then came severe repression; it
438 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

was easy for the police to suppress the movement which remained
confined to a subdivision of one district. Yet the social tension
between jotedars and adhiars began to grow and erupted in the
Tebhaga struggle in the same Thakurgaon subdivision in 1946.
In the autumn of 1940 Gandhiji launched ‘individual’ civil
disobedience movement in which selected individuals were to
shout antiwar slogan and court arrest. Vinoba Bhave, who later
became the leader of bhoodan movement, was the first satyagrahi
to offer himself for arrest. In Bengal the whole campaign was a
tame affair with little popular enthusiasm. What was the Mahatma’s
motivation is not clear, but the assessment of the government is
revealed in a secret report: ‘The immediate and local effect was
good; it put an end to the sort of agrarian discontent that Nehru
had been endeavouring to stir up'.13 It is a fact that ‘individual’
civil disobedience movement and kisan struggle did not merge in a
common anti-imperialist struggle. Although there were about
14,000 detainees by the spring of 1941 the movement petered out.
In 1940 the kisan movement was virtually driven underground;
several leading functionaries in the districts evaded vigilant police
hunt and went to the village and remained sunk among the peasants.
In Dinajpur there was considerable demoralisation after the collapse
of the adhiar movement; Satyen Ray left Thakurgaon; most
of the functionaries were interned in Dinajpur town; several kisan
cadres were in jail. Abani Lahiri, a student leader of Calcutta,
went underground and dressed like a peasant moved from village
to village in Thakurgaon. To his great surprise the kisan cadres
gave him shelter, worked as couriers, distributed leaflets. Ajit
Ray, a district leader, joined him and made Thakurgaon his head¬
quarters; communists came from other districts: Mohi Bagchi
and Jiban De from Rangpur, Basanta Chatterjee from Malda
and Subodh Sen from Dacca.14
The pattern was the same in other districts. In Jalpaiguri Naresh
Chakravarty, a local student leader who had just obtained the
Bachelor of Law degree, went underground, and worked among
the peasants in Debiganj police station. Charu Majumdar (now
the famous Naxalbari leader) was then a student, the only son of
his father who was the president of Siliguri Congress Committee.
From Siliguri Charu came to Jalpaiguri, went underground, and
became a full-time functionary of the Kisan Sabha.
The Kisan Sabha characterised the war as anti-fascist and declared
 THE KISAN SABHA 439

its solidarity with the Soviet Union. But the slogan of‘resist Japan’
hardly made any sense to the peasants who had not heard of Japan
or Germany. Furthermore, the war was being conducted not by
a national government. In February 1942 Swami Sahajananda,
president of All-India Kisan Sabha, issued a policy statement:
This war can effectively be converted into an Indian people’s
war only when it is fought under the leadership of a national
government’.15
But this approach was not acceptable to the socialists or nation¬
alists. The Congress under Gandhiji’s leadership chose to adopt,
despite Nehru’s opposition, a policy of non-cooperation with the
war effort; this policy culminated in the 'Quit India’ resolution
and the .August movement. In September 1942 Professor Ranga
(now a Swatantra stalwart) left the Kisan Sabha; he was followed
by Indulal Yajnik next year. Although Swami Sahajananda still
remained the president, he began to waver and finally chose to
leave the Sabha in 1945. With Swamiji’s exit the Sabha ceased to
be a multiparty organisation only communists remained in the
field.
Despite the split and initial setback the Kisan Sabha remained
with the people. In July 1942 the ban on the Communist Party
was lifted; leading functionaries emerged from underground and
made the best use of legal existence. The experience of the under¬
ground period was not lost; they remained sunk in the peasants,
carried on relief work, formed food committees and dharma-
goals, unearthed hoarded stocks, and undertook 'grow more
food’ campaign. Class struggle on which they had concentrated
in the proceeding period went imperceptibly into the background;
this was offset by organisational consolidation. Political classes
were held at the village level which helped to remould the outlook
of peasant cadres. About one thousand full-time functionaries
worked in the districts; the membership of the Kisan Sabha in
Bengal increased from 178,000 in 1944 to 255,000 in 1945.17 The
Kisan Sabha was on the eve of the great Tebhaga struggle.
440 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

References

1 N.G. Ranga, Kisans and Congress, op. cit. pp. 60-1.

2 Report of the Seventh Congress of Communist International, 1935.
3 R. Palme Dutt and Ben Bradley, 'The Anti-imperialist People’s Front’, Labour
Monthly, March, 1936.
4 L.P. Sinha, The Left Wing In India, 1919-47, pp. 391-3; Dr. Sinha gives a
connected account of the growth of All-India Kisan Sabha between 1936
and 1940; also Gene D. Overstreet and M. Windmiller, Communism in India,
p. 384.
5 For the list of members of the Bengal Provincial Kisan Committee, see A.
Rasul, Krishak Sabhar Itihash (in Bengali) which brings the story up to 1967.
6 (Footnotes follow original numbering, and have been left blank where extracts
have been ommited. — Ed.)
7 The typical Rajbansi has a short broad figure, with flat nose and thick lips, the
eyes are long and narrow, the cheek bones high; they speak a local dialect of
Bengali, generally use loin cloth, claim to be Hindus; they are found in North
Bengal districts; Jalpaiguri, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Malda, Cooch Behar and
Darjeeling (only Siliguri subdivision); they are poor and mostly illiterate. For
an account of the Rajbansis see C.C. Sanyal, 'The Rajbansis of North Bengal’,
Asiatic Society of Bengal. 1965.
8 B. Guha, 'Dinajpur Kisans Marching Ahead’, National Front, 13 August 1939.
Much of the material has been obtained from interview with B. Guha, A.
Lahiri, S. Sen and A. Ray.
Bibhuti Guha was secretary of Dinajpur District Kisan Sabha in 1938-39.
Sushil Sen was secretary of Dinajpur District Committee of CPI, 1942-47.
Sen, son of a local lawyer, obtained the degree of B.A. from Rajshahi College,
worked for some time as a school teacher, joined the CPI in 1938.
Ajit Ray, born in a middle-class family, was one of the builders of Kisan Sabha
in Dinajpur.
9 Hare Krishna Konar, bom in Raina, Burdwan, in 1915, son of a rice trader,
grandson of a rich peasant, joined the Congress movement while a student in
Bangabasi College, came in contact with revolutionaries (Hooghli Yugantar
Group), was arrested and sent to the Andamans in 1933, joined the CPI in
1938 and worked as a full-time functionary among Burdwan peasants.
Provash Ray. born in 1907 in Burul, 24-Parganas, son of a businessman, joined
the Congress movement in 1920s, came in contact with Chittagong group of
revolutionaries, remained in jail from 1931 to 1936, was elected secretary of
24-Parganas District Congress Committee in 1939, and simultaneously worked
among peasants.
Bhupal Panda, son of Brojomohan Vidyaratna, a Brahmin pandit and a small
landowner, joined a revolutionary group, the Bengal Volunteers, while a
college student, was arrested and sent to the Andamans, joined the Communist
Party in 1938.
Mohini Mandal, also a revolutionary, joined the Communist Party in 1938,
and was one of the builders of Kisan Sabha in Midnapur.
Deben Das was active in the Congress movement and joined the Communist
Party in 1938.
Krishnabinode Ray, bom in 1903 in a middle-class family in Jessore, obtained
the degree of Bachelor of Laws, joined a revolutionary group (Jessore-Khulna
 THE KISAN SABHA 441

Youth Association) linked with Anusilan, became a leading lawyer in Jessore,

joined the Communist Party in 1934 after the collapse of the civil disobedience
movement, was a member of the All-India Congress Committee in 1936,
1938, 1939, and was elected President of Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha in 1946.
Dinesh Lahiri, born in a landowner’s family, was active in the Congress move¬
ment, joined the Kisan Sabha in 1938, and was one of the builders of Kisan
Sabha in Rangpur.
Mohi Bagchi joined the Yugantar group, accepted Marxism in jail, went under¬
ground in 1939-40, and worked among the peasants in Dinajpur and Rangpur.
Sudhir Mukherjee, also a revolutionary, accepted Marxism in jail and joined
the Communist Party unit in Rangpur.
Sachin Bose and Bishnu Chatterjee, revolutionaries in their youth, accepted
Marxism in jail, and founded the Kisan Sabha in Khulna in 1938.
Moni Singh, born in Calcutta in 1901, was connected with Anusilan, arrested
and interned in Susang, his native village, and turned to kisan movement in
1936.
10 ‘Memorandum’ by the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha, 27B, Gangadhar Babu
Lane, Calcutta, 1939. Abani Lahiri told the present writer that this document
was mainly drafted by Rebati Burman, secretary, research department of BPKS,
in 1936-9. Burman was bom in a talukdar family in Kishoreganj. Mymensingh.
See for full text: ‘Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal, Vol. 6,
pp. 3-61’.
11 P.C. Joshi, "Kisan Movement: Review and Tasks’, National Front,! April,
1939. Joshi gives a short review of kisan movement between 1936 and 1938.
12 .
13 History of Civil Disobedience Movement, 1940-41 (Government of India,
unpublished), quoted in M. Brecher, Nehru: A. Political Biography, p. 135.
14 Interviews with A. Lahiri, A. Ray, S. Ganguli.
15 People's War, 14January 1945. Sahjananda’s appeal to Congressmen is publish¬
ed in full.
16 .
17 'People's War, 15 April, 1945. The membership of AIKS rose from 553,000
in 1944 to 825,000 in 1945; also see A. Rasul, op. cit., pp. 139, 140.
 21 Tebhaga Chai

Sunil Sen

The situation took a radical turn in February 1946. There

was a popular upheaval in Calcutta on the occasion of Rashid
Ali Day; for three days Calcutta witnessed mighty demons¬
trations, in which students took a prominent part, demanding
release of Abdur Rashid, an INA prisoner to whom clemency was
refused.5 Almost simultaneously there started the rising of the
ratings of the Royal Indian Navy. On 18 February the revolt of the
ratings began in Bombay; it quickly spread to Karachi and Madras,
Responding to the call of the Central Naval Strike Committee
the industrial workers of Bombay, led by the Communist Party,
observed hartal and came out in the streets. For three days (21-23
February) Bombay was in the vortex of an upheaval; British
troops were called in, and shootings took a toll of 250 lives. Indeed,
as the Central Naval Strike Committee declared in a manifesto:
Tor the first time the blood of men in the services and of men in
the streets flowed together in a common cause’. Finally, on 23
February under the pressure of Vallabhbhai Patel the Central
Naval Strike Committee decided to surrender.6
Yet, apparently, there was all quiet on the agrarian front; peasants
did not rise in struggle in this tumultuous period. The reasons are
not clear. It seems that peasants were watching events and waiting
for the harvesting season which was the normal period of bargadars’
struggle.
Meanwhile the national situation was taking an ominous turn.
Neither the nationalists nor the left could understand how deep
communalism had penetrated in the country. In the absence of
an agrarian movement it was relatively easy for the vested interests,
backed by powerful political leaders, to spread the poison of
communalism.
Communal riot appeared to be the dominant feature of Indian
politics; democratic movement was in shambles.
Reproduced from ‘Agrarian Struggle in Bengal, 1946-7', by Sunil Sen, op. cit.,
pp. 34-46.
\
 TEBHAGA CHAI 443

In this grim background Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha gave

the call for Tebhaga struggle in September 1946. It was a demand
for two-thirds share of the crop for bargadars, a demand
recommended by the Land Revenue Commission, 1940. The
kisan leaders addressed public meetings that were not always
largely attended, and leaflets written in very simple language were
distributed; demonstrations followed in some villages with such
slogans as ‘Inqilab Zindabad!, Nij Kholane Dhan Tolo! (Stack
paddy in your khamar), Tebhaga Chai! (We want tebhaga)'.
The Kisan Sabha enrolled volunteers who marched across the
villages, shouting slogans and distributing leaflets. The time for
action came in the harvesting season, and the first clash between
peasants and the police that heralded the bargadar revolt occurred
in Atwari police station in Dinajpur district.
As we have already noted, Dinajpur was a stronghold of the
Kisan Sabha. In 1939 the adhiars had launched a struggle that
ended in defeat. The kisan movement recovered between 1940
and 1945. In March 1946 Rupnarayan was elected to the Legislative
Assembly. In November the Kisan Sabha began preparations for
the tebhaga struggle. Sushil Sen went to Rampur village in Atwari
police station to start the movement. Presumably, Rampur was
expected to serve as an example to other villages. The Kisan Sabha
which was centred in Rampur had established village level com¬
mittees throughout Atwari; it was a centre of the adhiar struggle
of 1939. The leaders of this struggle, Ramlal Sing, Pathal Sing,
Rajen Sing, came from contiguous Balia village. Bhaben Sing,
Randal's grandson, and Naba Sing, Pathal’s son, represented the
new generation of kisan cadres. Sushil Sen held a baithak attended
by about one hundred kisan cadres, and the decision of launching
the struggle was taken.
On the following morning when the volunteers went to cut the
paddy in the land of Phuljari, a bargadar, the police came and
arrested Sen. This had no deterrent or restraining effect; next
morning the peasants went to cut paddy in the same village. Again
the police came, and as they started beating the peasants, Dipsari,
a young Rajbansi widow, waving a lathi rushed to them and the
volunteers armed with lathis followed her.
There was a clash and the police beat a retreat; things had certainly
changed since 1939. The news of the clash spread and there was
a temporary lull.11
444 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Soon after this incident, leading functionaries of the district

met in a hurriedly convened meeting in Thakurgaon town. There
could be no mistake about the mood of the masses manifested in
the Atwari clash. It was decided that leading functionaries would
immediately go into hiding to evade arrest and guide the movement.
The slogans remained unchanged; the general directive was to
stack the paddy in bargadar’s khamar. Bibhuti Guha, Ajit Ray,
Sushil Sen (who had just been released on bail), Gurudas Talukdar,
Sunil Sen, Janardan Bhattacharya, Basanta Chatterjee, Kali
Sarkar, Sudhir Samajpati went underground to take charge of
the zones marked out for them. Haji Danesh was to remain in
Thakurgaon town; his main assignment was to draw in Muslim
peasants. Sachindu Chakravarty, Hrishikesh Bhattacharya and
Satyabrata Chakravarty took charge of Dinajpur town.12 The
initial leadership of the movement came from the Kisan Sabha;
with the spontaneous support of bargadars it soon gathered momen¬
tum. What would be the future course of the movement was un¬
predictable, but the leading functionaries boldly decided to take
the plunge.
From their hideouts the leaders moved from village to village,
held evening baithaks which lasted till midnight, and sought to
give a direction to the developing movement. The bargadars’
response was overwhelming and spontaneous. Within a fortnight
the movement spread to 22 out of 30 police stations in the district;
it was particularly intense in Thakurgaon sub-division. Several
thousand peasants enrolled as volunteers. The peasants of one
village were called upon to assist those of another, not by beat of
drums out by shouting inqilab’. The carrying of lathis was compul¬
sory for volunteers; bands of lathials had been an institution
maintained by zamindars; now the volunteers became ‘lathials’
of the Kisan Sabha.
The special correspondent of The Statesman gives an eye¬
witness account of the movement in its early phase: ‘Dumb through
past centuries, he is today transformed by the shout of a slogan.
It is inspiring to see him marching across a field with his fellows,
each man shouldering a lathi like a rifle, with a red flag at the head
of the procession. It is sinister to hear them greet each other in
the silence of bamboo groves with clenched left fists raised to
foreheads and a whispered “Inqilab Comrade”.
‘The carrying of lathis is apparently compulsory. “The party
 TEBHAGA CHAI 445

requires that we carry the Red Flag and lathis”, one peasant who
looked like an aboriginal told me. “It is a sign of our solidarity”.
By the party he meant his peasant organisation, the membership
fee for which is an anna. A townsman sympathiser declared:
“To people who have been downtrodden for generations the lathi
gives courage”. They are not above using them despite their vehe¬
ment deprecation of violence’.13
Thakurgaon was once again the centre of the movement. As
the movement spread to distant villages it became physically im¬
possible for the few middle-class leaders to keep track of it, and they
relied invariably on kisan cadres. These cadres fixed up shelters
for underground leaders, acted as couriers, held baithaks and
maintained contact with peasant masses. Some of them emerged
as local leaders, and went underground as they were wanted by
the police. Rajen Sing, whom we have already mentioned, though
a rich peasant, did not hesitate to join the movement. In Atwari
police station the movement was led by Avaran Sing, middleaged,
sober, taciturn, who owned about 5 bighas of land, and Bhaben
Sing, young, energetic, restless, who never said ‘no’ to any assign¬
ment, however risky. In Baliadingi the undisputed leader was
Kamparam Sing, a middleaged man of indomitable courage,
short and stout, a middle peasant who gave away his life’s savings
to the Communist Party, and became a full-time functionary.
Doma Sing was another leader, handsome and cheerful, also a
middle peasant, whose entire family joined the Kisan Sabha.
From the same locality came Pastaram Sing, a poor peasant, who
became a full-time worker, left home with his wife Jaymani to
work in Rani-sankail as the local peasants urged Gurudas Talukdar
to send a leader to guide them. Jaymani, tall and pock-marked,
learned to read and write, and emerged as a leader of Rajbansi
women. As the story proceeds we will hear of brave Rajbansi
women who led the men in resisting police attack.
Meanwhile the movement had spread to Rajbansi villages in
adjoining Rangpur and Jalpaiguri districts. The pattern of the
movement was the same. The bargadars took the crop to their
khamar (instead of jotedar’s); volunteers shouldering lathis
marched across villages with the familiar slogans: 'Inqilab
Zindabad’, ‘Tebhaga Chai’. There was spontaneous response from
the bargadars, and the movement rapidly spread from village to
446 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

village. Anticipating police offensive middle-class leaders took

no risk and went underground. In Jalpaiguri the movement was
confined to three police stations: Debiganj, Boda and Pachagarh.
In Debiganj an old Rajbansi widow, affectionately called ‘old
mother’, took the lead. As the men vacillated, ‘old mother’ took
out a procession of women and started cutting the paddy. Then
the men came to the field and joined the women in cutting the crop.
In Boda the leader was Madhab Datta, an old kisan leader; three
peasant cadres, Bachcha Munsi, Indramohon and Radhamohon
Burman, played a leading role. Radhamohon, a middle peasant,
was a popular leader who polled 9,000 votes in the 1946 election
and lost by a small margin. Charu Majumdar had his first experience
of leading a kisan struggle at Pachagarh; how and whether this
experience ultimately led him to choose the ‘Naxalbari path’
is not known. Charu was assisted by Dulal Ghosh and Biren Pal,
two middle-class cadres. In Debiganj a young middle-class cadre
came to guide the movement—he was Samar Ganguli, who was
to become the leader of the tribal movement in the Duars in the
subsequent period.14
In Rangpur the movement remained confined to Nilphamari
subdivision which was severely hit by the great famine of 1943.
As in Thakurgaon the bargadars, mainly Rajbansi and Muslim,
were concentrated in this subdivision. Within a month the move¬
ment spread to six police stations—the leadership was taken by
Mohi Bagchi, Moni Krishna Sen and Mantu Majumdar who went
underground to evade arrest and guide the movement. Hundreds
of volunteers went to the field and removed the crop to bargadars’
khamar. In the second week of January there was a clash. Some
Muslim jotedars of Dimla. armed with guns raided the house of a
bargadar to snatch away the crop. The peasants, led by Bachcha
Muhammed and Tatnarayan Ray, resisted the attack, the jotedars
fired on the peasants; Tatnarayan was killed and Bachcha severely
wounded. The news of Tatnarayan’s death spread like wild fire and
about 3,000 peasants, armed with lathis and spears assembled in the
villages. Since the jotedar was a Muslim the leaders persuaded the
peasants, who were in a militant mood, not to attack his house;
they were afraid that attack on a Muslim jotedar could spark off
a communal riot. The peasants put the jotedar under social boy¬
cott and held a demonstration that marched through the villages
 TEBHAGA CHAI 447

to Nilphamari town. The jotedars fled the village and bided their
time.15
The Tebhaga struggle was no longer confined to North Bengal
districts; it spread to Mymensingh and Midnapur districts. In
Mymensingh in East Bengal the struggle was intense in Kishoreganj
subdivision. The peasants were mostly Muslim and tribal, and
zamindars and talukdars Hindu and Muslim. Despite the attempts
of the Muslim League to rouse communal passions there was
remarkable solidarity of Hindu and Muslim peasants.
Almost simultaneously the Hajongs in Susang started the tanka
movement. On 8 December about 5,000 Hajongs held a demons¬
tration demanding reduction of tanka rent and its conversion into
money-rent. Like adhi, tanka was produce-rent which a tenant
had to pay in a quantity fixed by the landowners, even if the crop
failed due to drought or heavy rains; the expenses of cultivation
were borne by the tenant; like the bargadar the tanka tenant had
no tenancy right and could be evicted by the landowner. In 1937
the Kisan Sabha started a movement for reduction of tanka-rent.
Apart from Hajongs the Muslims formed a large portion of tanka
tenants, and the movement first started among Muslim peasants of
Desal village in Susang. Moni Sing, originally a trade union worker
in Calcutta, and for a long time a prisoner under the Bengal Crimi¬
nal Law Amendment Act, came to Mymensingh, his home district,
remained sunk among the Hajongs, and organised them in the
Kisan Sabha after his release from the detention camp. There was
Lalit Sarkar, a popular Hajong leader, who had joined the Congress
movement in 1920s and 1930s, and was drawn in the Kisan Sabha
in 1937-8. On the crest of the tanka movement the Kisan Sabha
spread in this area, and several Hajong cadres, trained by the Kisan
Sabha came to the fore. The influence of Kisan Sabha considerably
increased when tanka-rent was reduced by Fazlul Haq ministry
in 1938.
The Statesman published a special article on 25 March, 1947 that
gives a fairly objective background of the tanka movement in
1946-7:
'Agrarian unrest in Mymensingh differs in cause and extent
from the unrest in the districts in Dinajpur. Jalpaiguri and Rangpur.
In these places, its effects are confined to ‘pockets’ or ‘former
communist strongholds’ as some prefer to call them; in Mymensingh
448 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

it is spread throughout a 50 mile long, ten mile wide belt south of

the Garo hills.
'Nobody seems to know much about the history of the Hajongs
except that once they were head hunters, offered human sacrifice,
and were guilty of unspeakable crimes in their tribal wars ....
The Hajongs, it appears, belong to Kachari group of tribes who
gave Cachar its name, held a warlike tradition and were once a
ruling people of Assam .... They exhibit no proportionate hostility
towards “foreigner” who came to their country and set new standard
ofexploitation of man by man. The tribes people, whatever other
vices they practised, did not know about greed for land until
“foreigners” arrived and proceeded to trick the owner out of it.
It was not until 1923 that this belt was declared a partially excluded
area. By the thirties 50 per cent of Hajongs had lost their land while
other tribes like the Hodis had been more thoroughly fleeced. In
1938, following tribal agitation, the government ordered a revisional
settlement and hundreds of thousands of rupees worth of land
was restored to its rightful owners.
'Another reform was the reduction of tanka ... after the revision
it is said to average about a quarter of the crop and the man who
pays it is a tenant. Tanka, unlike adhi rent, now has the sanction
of law, not custom alone.
'The present agitation to convert tanka into much lower money-
rent seeks to give to the peasant benefit of the postwar level of
agricultural prices and to make the eviction of tenant more difficult.
Money-rent has another advantage for the cultivator. If there is
a dispute and the landlord refuses to accept his rent the rent can
be deposited at the thana, if it is in money. But if it is in kind he
cannot do so for lack of storage facilities and is liable for interest.
‘Hajongs are in the fore of this struggle for change but they
know nothing about the tactics of agitation and this is where the
communists come in. The communist hold on the Hajongs is
remarkable. It is stated to date back to the outbreak of the Far
East war and the Congress movement of 1942, when communists
stepped into the shoes of that incarcerated party and basked in a
sort of official favour.
'The communist approach to the tanka problem is simple. It
was the peasant who cleared the land of the jungle, his labours
bring forth the crop; but it is the landlord who takes all the profit...
 TEBHAGA CHAI 449

their critics say that they gave away plots to Hajongs and bid them
cut wood from forest preserves. They are even charged with trading
on the religious susceptibilities of the Hajongs by telling them
‘join us and we will take water from your hands’. There were too
the usual promises of the coming of a ‘Hajong raj”.’17
In the entire northern Mymensingh comprising Netrokona,
Sadar and Jamalpur subdivisions the tanka movement rapidly
spread. The peasants took the crop to their houses and refused to
pay tanka until their demands were fulfilled; it was directed not
against the jotedar but the zamindar of Susang. The leading figure
was Moni Sing. In face of mammoth demonstrations of Hajong
peasants, landowners and even missionaries who worked in this
area for years evacuated their families to towns. Although Hajongs
were in the fore of the movement there was no incident of tribal
clash between them and Garos. There is no evidence to prove that
Hajongs resorted to violence or coerced other tribes; in fact the
movement was perfectly peaceful in the beginning, and took a
violent turn only towards the end of January 1947. In vain they
hoped for government intervention in reducing tanka-rent and
converting it into money-rent, and the nationalist press, inexpli¬
cably enough, remained silent until the peasant-police clash in
January.
The Tebhaga struggle also spread to some pockets in Midnapur,
a stronghold of the Congress since 1920. It was in this district
that the 1942 August movement assumed a popular character.
In Tamluk a ‘national government’ was formed which was in
existence from 17 December, 1942 to 8 August 1944. The hero of
Tamluk movement was Ajoy Mukherjee. Matangini Hazra, an
old woman who held the national flag in her grip when bullets
were flying, called upon the troops to join the freedom movement,
and was killed by a bullet, had become a legend.18
Although the Kisan Sabha was formed in this district in 1938
it remained weak; in the 1946 election Bhupal Panda was defeated
by the Congress candidate. But in December the peasants res¬
ponded to the call of the Kisan Sabha despite the opposition of
landlord-dominated Congress Committee. The bargadars were
mostly scheduled caste or tribal or Mahisya. As in other districts
the movement was spontaneous and rapidly spread in Mahisadal,
Sutahata and Nandigram; hundreds of peasants, men and women.
450 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

enrolled as volunteers. Following the tradition of the Congress

movement women joined the Tebhaga struggle in large numbers.
Bimala Mandal, a young woman who came of a middle-peasant
family, emerged as a local leader. There was Bhupal Panda, veteran
kisan leader, who was assisted by Ananta Maji, a young student of
B.Sc. honours class in Midnapur College, who came of a peasant
family, gave up studies, and became a full-time worker of the Com¬
munist Party.19 Ranjit Sukul with a group of students moved in
the villages of Nandigram and popularised the Tebhaga demand.
On 4 January 1947 the police opened fire on a peasant demons¬
tration in Talpukur village in Chirirbandar in Dinajpur district,
killing Sibram, a Santal landless peasant, and Samiruddin, also a
landless peasant, on the spot.
Chirirbandar, only six miles from Dinajpur town, was a new
base of the Kisan Sabha; the bargadars, Rajbansi, Santal and
Muslim, comprised a large section of the rural population. Sachindu
Chakravarty, a local communist leader, lawyer by profession,
held some public meetings in this area. There was spontaneous
response from the bargadars who started removing paddy from the
field to their khamar. The local leader was Sudhir Samajpati, a
young middle-class cadre who had joined the Communist Party
through student movement. Madhu Burman, a poor Rajbansi
peasant, who had recently joined the Kisan Sabha, went under¬
ground, held baithaks in villages and maintained contact with the
Dinajpur town unit. The jotedars lodged charges of‘paddy looting’,
and on 2 January Sachindu Chakravarty was arrested from the
Bar Library in Dinajpur town. On 4 January the police party came
to Talpukur village to execute arrest warrants. As the police
party entered the village about 400 peasants gathered and a quarrel
started. There is no sufficient evidence to establish that the move
was violent; it appears that the Santal peasants fought with bows
and arrows when the police started shooting. Sibram and Samirud¬
din fell dead; the bullets were flying; suddenly a Santal peasant
rushed towards the police party and pierced his arrow into the
abdomen of a policeman who died in hospital. It cannot be definitely
established whether this man was Sibram or someone else who
managed to escape. Pohatu Burman, a poor Rajbansi peasant,
was wounded, and his right leg had to be amputed. Several peasants
received bullet injuries. The People’s Relief Committee rushed
 TEBHAGA CHAI 45 1

medical aid tc the village, and Dr B.K. Basu personally attended

peasants who received bullet injuries.21 What was a striking
feature of the Chirirbandar incident was Muslim peasants’ partici¬
pation; in fact, one Muslim peasant was killed and several were
wounded. After the firing there was a temporary lull; but the move¬
ment had gathered momentum and spread to neighbouring villages.
The police could not arrest Sudhir and Madhu who remained
in hiding and continued to guide the movement.
On 6 January Torab Ali, the district magistrate, called a confe¬
rence of jotedars and adhiars at Thakurgaon town to evolve a
compromise formula, and sent invitations to Haji Danesh and
Sunil Sen. A pandal was erected in the court compound, and jotedars
came-from all parts of the district. A big demonstration organised
by the Kisan Sabha marched to Thakurgaon. Sen, who was under¬
ground, accepted Torab Ali’s invitation and reached Thakurgaon
at midnight on 5 January. Danesh came to meet him on the following
morning. A courier brought a message from Bidhuti Guha to the
effect that there could be a settlement only on one condition:
Tebhaga must be conceded. Sen and Danesh decided not to attend
the conference. There was nb chance that jotedars would concede
Tebhaga. The Chirirbandar firing rankled the peasants. If they
accepted any compromise formula the peasants would not relish it.
They had no right to take a decision over the heads of peasants.
Sen went straight to the maidan where the peasants had assembled,
and in his speech reiterated the tebhaga demand and condemned
Chirirbandar firing. Torab Ali, accompanied by a police force,
came to the maidan and stood silently as Sen addressed the peasants.
The peasants, shouldering lathis, formed into a procession and
marched through the streets of Thakurgaon. The jotedars watched
them from a distance. The beautifully decorated pandal looked
like ‘a banquet hall deserted’.
, Torab Ali kept his word; he did not order the police to arrest
Sunil Sen which could have precipitated a clash. Months later
Arun Guha, prominent Congress leader, wrote in Amrita Bazar
Patrika: ‘It is also a puzzle to us even now that a leader of that
particular political party, while in hiding, could come and address
an open meeting at Thakurgaon and yet was not apprehended’.22
The fact is that the police did search for Sen when the sun set.
But the bird had flown.
452 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

References

1 .
2 .
3 .
4 .
5 H. Mukerjee, 'The Gentle Colossus', 1964, p. 103; Professor Mukerjee gives
a fascinating account of this tumultuous period.
6 R.P. Dutt, India Today, 1947; pp. 471-4; Dutt severely castigates the national
leadership: ‘The upper class leadership of the Congress and Moslem League
found themselves in opposition to the mass movement and aligned with British
imperialism as the representative of law and order against the people’ (p. 474).
Dr Mb jmdar refers to this event in just one paragraph, see R.C. Majumdar,
op. cit., pp. 752-3.
7 .
8 .
9 .,
10 .
11 Interview with Sushil Sen. The present writer had been to Atwari exactly one
day after the clash. Dipsari had a daughter and lived in the house of her husband’s
brother, Tejnath Sing, an old member of the party who owned about 15 bighas
of land.
12 This writer was present in this meeting.
13 ‘Peasant Unrest in North Bengal’, The Statesman, 19 March, 1947.
14 Interview with Samar Ganguli; also People's Age, 22 December, 1946.
15 Interview with Mohi Bagchi; also Satyen Sen, Gram Banglar Pathe Pathe
(in Bengali), Dacca, 1970. Sen, a journalist of Bangladesh, writes a moving
account of this incident; Gholam Quddus who went to Dimla to cover the
Tebhaga story for Swadhinata also writes on it in Sambodhan, Calcutta, 1969.
16 .
17 ‘Tribal Unrest in North East Bengal’, The Statesman, 25 March 1947; A.
Rasul, op. cit., pp. 107-9; Pramatha Gupta, Mukti Yuddhye Adibasi (in Bengali),
1964. Gupta was active in kisan movement in Mymensingh district between
1938 and 1950. Altab Ali, ‘Moni Sing’, Saptaha, 14 August 1970; in this biogra¬
phical sketch Ali gives a brief account of tanka movement.
18 R.C. Majumdar, op. cit., pp. 653-55. 5.
19 Ananta Majhi’s note; interview with Bhupal Panda. Sukul later worked as a
school teacher and was murdered by jotedars during the land movement in
1970.
20 .
21 Swadhinata, 5 January 1947; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 22 January 1947; Sachindu
Chakravarty’s note on the incident; A. Rasul, op. cit., p. 157. Rupnarayan
Ray gives a different story in his assembly speech on 18 February 1947: the
police put Samiruddin under arrest and shot him dead without any provoca¬
tion from the peasants, and this infuriated the peasants; see ‘Assembly Pro¬
ceedings, Bengal Legislative Assembly’, Vol. 72, No. 1, 1947. Dr B.K. Basu
of the People’s Relief Committee was a member of the Congress Medical
Mission to China and lived for some years in Yenan, ‘red base’ of the Chinese
communists.
22 A C. Guha, ‘Lessons of Dinajpur’, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15 April 1947. Guha
rose to be a Minister in the Union Cabinet.
 22 The Bargadars Bill

Sunil Sen

It was only after a period of acute agrarian unrest that the govern¬
ment took any notice of the peasants’ demands. The Rent Act of
1859 and the Indigo Commission of 1860 came in the wake of the
“Blue Mutiny”; the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 was passed after
the Pabna peasant revolt had flared up in 1872-3 and spread to
Bogra district. What was Suhrawardy’s motivation in bringing
the Bargadars Bill is not clear. The Bill was shelved, and Jyoti
Basu, leader of the communist group in the Legislative Assembly,
accused the Muslim League ministry of ‘playing up to the gallery’
when they drafted the bill.1 Yet the positive effects of the bill cannot
be underestimated. No such legislation seeking to ameliorate the
condition of rent-paying tenants was undertaken by the Congress
ministries between 1937 and 1939. The fact cannot be denied that
rent-paying tenants remained unnoticed over the years. It was
after independence that the Congress ministry passed the West
Bengal Bargadars Act in 1950, whose provisions were bodily taken
from this bill.
The provisions of the Bargadars Bill may be summarized. In
the case in which the jotedar supplied ‘the plough-cattle, plough
and any other agricultural instruments and any manure’, the
bargadar would get half of the produce of such land. If the jotedar
did not supply these inputs, the bargadar would retain two-thirds
share. There were some provisions on the division of seed. If the
seed was supplied by the jotedar, it would be delivered to him by
the bargadar. If the seed was supplied by the bargadar, it would
be retained by him. If the seed was supplied partly by the jotedar
and partly by the bargadar, it would be divided between them in the
proportion in which the seed was supplied by them. Although
the declared objective of the bill was to stop evictions, wide scope

Reproduced from Agrarian Struggle in Bengal, 1946-7, by Sunil Sen, op. cit.,
pp. 47-56.
454 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

was left for the jotedar to evict bargadars. The bill provided that
the jotedar could evict a bargadar if he wanted ‘to cultivate the
land himself or with the aid of the members of his family’. There
were also other provisions, equally prejudicial to the bargadar.
For instance, he could be evicted if ‘there has been any misuse
of the land', or if he ‘has failed to cultivate the land properly’, or if
he ‘has failed to deliver to the owner such share of the produce
as he is bound, subject to the provisions of this Act, by any express
or implied agreement with the owner to deliver to such owner’.2
Yet the Bargadars Bill, with all its limitations, gave an impetus
to the tebhaga struggle. The jotedars could no longer say that the
tebhaga demand was illegal. The news spread that two-thirds share
for the bargadar had been conceded by the government. One
may recall the effects of the famous parwana of Ashley Eden,
published by Hem Chandra Kar, a deputy magistrate, in August
1859. As the knowledge of this parwana spread, the raiyats of
Barasat refused to sow indigo, and their example was followed by
the raiyats of other districts.3 Similarly, the knowledge of the
Bargadars Bill, which gave legal sanction to tebhaga.demand, gave
new heart to the vast number of bargadars who had so long remained
neutral, passive and hesitant. In fact there was the extension of the
movement to new villages where the Kisan Sabha did not exist.
Some of the heroic peasant struggles occurred not in the old bases
of the Kisan Sabha, but in these new villages, and the struggles
were led not by veteran cadres, who mostly remained in the back¬
ground, but by new cadres who came to the fore in the wake of the
movement.
Meanwhile the first phase of the struggle was almost over;
the adhiars had stacked the paddy in their khamar, instead of
jotedar’s. Now the struggle entered a new phase. In villages where
the Kisan Sabha had no base the adhiars had stored the paddy in
jotedar’s stacks. As the news of the Bargadars Bill spread they
thought that they should also act to reap the fruits of victory, and
they started, sometimes without the sanction of the Kisan Sabha,
removing paddy already stored in the jotedar’s stacks to their
khamars. It was a spontaneous movement which assumed a mass
character in Dinajpur and Jalpaiguri. The movement was not
always concentrated against the landowners; adhiars refused to
distinguish between large and small landowners, and argued that
 THE BARGADARS BILL 455

small jotedars also should concede tebhaga that had received legal
sanction in the Bargadars Bill. Inevitably new social tension
was created, and with it new complications. In the earlier period
social tension was primarily confined to large landowners and
the bulk of poor peasants; now its area extended to small land-
owners and rural middle class. It would however be fatuous to
think that these elements had been taking a neutral position; on
the contrary, they generally maintained a hostile attitude, and
their sympathies lay with large landowners.
The jotedars who had fled the village were biding their time,
and showed their sharp cunning when opportunity came. They
suddenly became very active, formed jotedar samity, raised funds,
and began to put pressure on the government. Suhrawardy referred
in his assembly speech to ‘the flood of telegrams which have been
pouring in from these areas complaining of looting from the
houses of various jotedars’.s The special correspondent of The
Statesman who toured North Bengal districts made some interesting
comments: ‘Some adhiars went further; they removed new paddy
already stored in the jotedar’s stacks to their own for their shareout.
It was an attempt to alter custom by force, but it is doubtful if
it amounted to a criminal breach of the law, and observer wise in
the ways of the country say it is an exaggeration to describe it as
“looting”. But the jotedars, wise also in these matters, lodged
charges of dacoity’.6 The jotedars constituted a formidable pressure
group, and exerted considerable influence on the Congress and
the Muslim League. It seems that the government yielded to the
pressure campaign, and sent armed police force to the villages to
arrest peasants and their leaders.
We will now briefly describe how this movement took shape and
focus attention on some major incidents. Pastaram and his wife
Jaymani, whom we have already mentioned, had been working
in Ranisankail, a new base of the Kisan Sabha. Anil Chakravartty,
a middle-class cadre, came to Ranisankail to help Pastaram. In
this police station the movement mainly took the form of removing
paddy stored in jotedars’ stacks to bargadars’ khamar. The jotedars
filed cases of ‘paddy looting’. On 2 February as the police came
to arrest some peasants, they were surrounded by Kisan Sabha
volunteers led by Bhandani, a young Rajbansi girl, who had
recently joined the Kisan Sabha along with her husband. She
456 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

snatched away the gun from the daroga who was overpowered and
confined in a house, and Bhandani kept watch throughout the
night. On the instructions of Gurudas Talukdar the daroga was
released next morning. Two days later he came with a large police
force, arrested several peasants and let loose a reign of terror.
There was no resistance. Pastaram, Jaymani and Bhandani,
however, managed to evade arrest.7 Along with Jaymani, Bhandani
continued to work among Rajbansi women, gave shelter to under¬
ground cadres, remained loyal to the Kisan Sabha when some old
cadres got cold feet in face of repression.
We have referred to police firing in Chirirbandar in Sadar
subdivision. From Chirirbandar the movement had spread to
Parbatipur and Nababganj. But Balurghat subdivision remained
quiet. It was a strong base of the Congress. During the 1942 August
movement several thousand people, mostly from rural areas, formed
a procession under the leadership of the local Congress leader,
Saroj Ranjan Chatterjee, besieged Balurghat town, cut telegraph
wires, burnt the court building and took control of the town.
Although Congress leaders were put in jail in 1942, their influence
in Balurghat was undiminished. In the face of the opposition of
the local Congress Committee the Kisan Sabha could not make
much headway in this subdivision. But the situation took a radical
turn towards the end of January. The peasants started removing
paddy from jotedars’ stacks to their khamar. The leadership of this
movement was taken by the Mohanto family of Patiram. Krishnadas
Mohanto who belonged to bairagi community came from Burdwan
and settled in Patiram, and had about 30 acres of land. He joined
the Congress movement in the 1920s and 1930s. His son, Nani
Das, a revolutionary belonging to Yugantar group, was sent to the
Andamans where he came in contact with communists and accepted
Marxism. After the collapse of the 1942 August movement the
Mohanto family joined the Communist Party, and Nani Das
became a full-time functionary of the party. In the first week of
February the movement became widespread in the adjoining
villages of Patiram; the most notable incident occurred in ‘Sinha
Cutchery’ where Gobinda Sinha, a rich jotedar, used his gun to
disperse the peasants who had gathered to remove the paddy
from his cutchery. The peasants did not disperse, and removed
the paddy to their khamar.8 This incident culminated in the Khan-
 THE BARGADARS BILL 457

pur armed clash to which we will presently refer.

In Boda, Pachagarh and Debiganj in Jalpaiguri district the
first phase of the movement was over in mid-January. The jotedars
mostly fled the village; the bargadars started threshing and sent
notice to the jotedars to take their one-third share. At this stage
there started a new movement, popularly called kholan bhanga,
in which bargadars began removing the paddy from jotedars’
stacks to their khamar. As in Dinajpur, jotedars lodged charges
of‘looting’ and ‘dacoity’, and the police was sent to arrest peasants.
This new movement became widespread and intense in the Duars
where tribals, much more militant than Rajbansis, pressed forward,
and were joined by tea-garden labourers, also mostly tribals. In
fact, a marked feature of the Duars movement was an upsurge
among tribals. Although the immediate issue was tebhaga, the
forces of an agrarian revolt had been gathering in this region for
a long time. The upsurge among the tribals merged with the general
upsurge among the peasantry in the postwar period, revealing the
same features of spontaneity and militancy. The communists
sought to lead this tribal upsurge and achieved lasting success.
The tribal peasants were organised in Kisan Sabha, and tea-
garden labourers in trade unions, and there was the awakening of
the tribals to a new life and to active struggle to realise their aspira¬
tions.
We will briefly describe the social condition of the Duars so
that we may comprehend why and how the tribal upsurge developed
in the situation. Covered with dense forest the Duars was drawn
into contact with the modern world as tea gardens began to be
established by European planters. The possibility of the growth
of the tea industry in India opened with the passing of the Charter
Act of 1833; British investors evinced great interest in this industry;
in fact, tea companies headed the list of sterling companies which
were registered between 1874 and 1904. The first garden in Cachar
was opened in 1855; the industry spread to the Tarai in 1862
and the Duars in 1874. Within eight years 47 tea gardens were
opened in the Duars; the number rose to 235 in 1901; in 1941
there were 189 tea gardens employing 141,387 labourers, of which
about five thousand were temporary labourers. Roads were built
and small trade centres sprang up. Along with the opening of tea
gardens, the settlement of land for cultivation progressed rapidly;
458 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

lands were reclaimed mostly by the tribals; and Rajbansi cultivators

came from Rangpur and Cooch Behar. The Bengal Duars Railway
was constructed in 1893, and a railway workshop was opened at
Domohini employing nearly 1,000 labourers. During the period
1901-11 cultivation made rapid progress in the Alipur Duars,
mainly because rents were low and the land was fertile. The Dam
Dim-Oldabari-Bagrakot railway was opened in 1901-2, and the
Mal-Madarihat line in 1901-3. By 1921 most of the land which was
not taken up by tea or remained reserved forest was brought under
cultivation. Despite the fact that death-rate due to malaria was
very high, there was a constant stream of immigration in the Alipur
Duars during the decade 1931-41. In 1931-3 several miles of railway
line were opened connecting Domohini with Barneshghat. During
the second world war Alipur Duars sprang into sudden importance,
and air strips were built all over the Duars and Alipur Duars sub¬
division9.
The Santals and Oraons constituted the bulk of the peasant
population; the Santals came from that part of Bihar and West
Bengal which is drained by the Damodar and Kasai rivers, and
the Oraons from Chotanagpur. It occurred to landowners that
the waste land might be reclaimed if Santals were imported and
settled in this region. The experiment proved such a success that the
influx continued; the Santals were followed by Oraons from Chota¬
nagpur. In fact, this is the history of land reclamation not only in
the Duars but also in Dinajpur, Malada, Midnapur, Bankura,
Birbhum and the Sundarbans. O'Malley, census superintendent
of 1911, gives the following account of their social life;
‘The system of tribal government among the Santals is closely
bound up with the communal system. Its unit is the village, at the
head of which is the Santal headman or manjhi. He is essential to
Santal life, every public sacrifice, ceremony and festival requiring
his presence.
‘The manjhi summons the villagers when any question arises
affecting their common interests, or when a villager has complained
to him and a communal judgement is required. The meeting is
called a panchayat or in Santali More-hor (literally five men),
a term which probably originally signified the headman and the
four other village officials. The latter are ex-officio members, and
the panchayat also includes any adult male belonging to the village.
 THE BARGADARS BILL 459

If there is dispute between Santals belonging to different villages,

the people of villages meet together to decide the case. If they cannot
arrive at a conclusion, or if one or both of the parties are dissatisfied
with their findings, a reference is made to a full bench consisting
of a parganait (who is the head of a group of villages), the village
headman of the group and other influential men in the neighbour¬
hood. As the manjhi has an assistant in the village, so the parganait
has an assistant in his circle called the desh-manjhi.
‘Every village has its council place (the manjhi than) where
panchayats are held and petty disputes are settled. The panchayat
also disposes of more serious questions, such as disputes about
marriage and inheritance. Questions of a serious importance are
referred to a panchayat consisting of the neighbouring manjhis
under the control of the parganait.
‘The tribal hunt is the one occasion in the year when the Santals
act as a united tribe, all local units and official being then sub¬
ordinated to the tribal session. It is a common hunt to which people
are summoned by an official called dihri, who acts as priest and
hunt master. The summons is sent by a sal branch being circulated.
In the evening, when the hunt is over, the people meet in council.
Here the manjhis and parganaits are, if necessary, brought to
justice; and if anyone has to be excommunicated, his case is dealt
with. Any matter, great or small, may be brought forward by
anyone; if the case cannot be finally decided then, it is kept in
abeyance till next year’s hunt’10.
What is relevant to this study is the fact that the Santals and
Oraons became organised in trade unions and the Kisan Sabha;
they were led and guided not by manjhis or village elders but by the
leaders of trade unions and Kisan Sabha who were mostly drawn
from Hindu middle class; instead of panchayats the trade unions
and the Kisan Sabha won their confidence and stood by them as
they rose in struggle to win partial economic demands.
Over the years the lands they had reclaimed passed into the hands
of landowners, who were mostly Muslim, while they had passed
into the army of bargadars and agricultural labour. They were
inducted by a landowner to reclaim a waste. They were usually
exempted from rent for the first year or two, and thereafter assessed
to a produce-rent for the next few years. As the land was reclaimed
and its fertility restored by good husbandry, the landowner began
460 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to be anxious to evict him and settle it with tenants willing to pay

enhanced rents. In fact, the bargadars in the Duars were the original
owner-cultivators who had been dispossessed of their lands by
various means by the jotedar-cum-mahajan. It was the same story
in other districts. The discontent of the Santals was revealed, as
in a flash, in the Santal insurrection of 1855-6; it had been crushed,
but not for good. Numerous disturbances, minor in nature, occurred
throughout the nineteenth century and continued in the present
century.

References

1 Speech by Jyoti Basu, 12 Match 1947, Assembly Proceedings, Vol. 72, No. 2.
2 The Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, 22 January 194f. The bill is published in
full.
3 Blair B. Kling, The Blue Mutiny, 1966, p. 63. Kling writes: ‘A regular league
was formed against indigo cultivation, oaths were subscribed to by both Hindus
and Mussalmans’.
4 ..
5 Suhrawardy’s speech in Bengal Assembly on 28 February, 1947, Assembly
Proceedings, Vol. 72, No. 1.
6 ‘Peasant Unrest in North Bengal’, The Statesman, 19 March 1947. The special
correspondent blames the communists for encouraging this form of movement:
‘But the communists seem to have paid little consideration to tactics-It
is they apparently who were behind the seizure of paddy that brought the police
in on the side of the jotedars.Most of the ‘looting’ took place in Dinajpur
district where there were consequently five peasant-police clashes’.
7 Swadhinata, 4 February 1947. Jaymani and Bhandani attended the state con¬
ference of the Communist Party in September-October, 1947.
8 Note of Sushil Sen.
9 For an account of tea industry, see S.K. Sen, Studies in Economic Policy and
Development of India, 1848-1926, 1966, pp. 51, 52.
10 L.S.S. O’Malley, Census Report, 1911; Bell, settlement officer in Dinajpur in
1934-40, writes that their houses, built of mud, are usually neat-looking; the
women help the men in agricultural work, and enjoy almost equal status with
them in social life, see J.C. Sen Gupta, West Dinajpur, 1965, p. 72.
11 .
 23 The Dilemma

Sunil Sen

When the tebhaga struggle began in November 1946, Calcutta

was quiet. The democratic movement had suffered a severe setback
after the great Calcutta killing in August. Months passed before
the democratic movement showed signs of revival. On 7 January
1947 the Mahatma started his famous ‘one night one village tour’
in riot-stricken Noakhali. Citizens’ committees were formed in
Calcutta. On 8 January the Tramway Workers’ Union with a
recorded membership of 8,000 served strike notice demanding a
rise in the basic wage from 20 to 40 rupees. The historic strike which
was to last 85 days actually began on 21 st January. It was a complete
strike which involved 8,000 tramway men1 and heralded a revival
of the working-class movement. By 26 January about 30,000
workers including clerical employees and industrial workers in
Howrah, Lilloah, Shalimar, Kamarhati, Palta and Kushtia were
on strike2. Yet the working class movement, compared to the
July days, remained weak.
Meanwhile the students were fighting a real battle in the streets
of Calcutta. On 21 January the Bengal Provincial Students’ Federa¬
tion, a leftwing student organisation affiliated to All-India Students’
Federation, gave a call to observe Vietnam Day. A mammoth
demonstration was brought out to express solidarity with the
struggle of Vietnam for independence as the French went ahead
with their machinations to reconquer the old Indochinese empire,
machinations which were to receive a crushing blow at Dien
Bien Phu. The police fired five times on the students’ demonstration;
one student was killed, 19 received bullet wounds, 50 were injured
and about 200 students were arrested.3 To protest against the police
firing the Bengal Provincial Trade Union Congress called a general
strike next day. On 22 January Calcutta was in flames. Barricades

Reproduced from Agranian Struggle in Bengal, 1946-7, by Sunil Sen, op. cit.,
pp. 58-62, pp. 65-8.
462 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

were erected; street battles were fought; students were joined by

workers and urban middle class. The Suhrawardy ministry let
loose an orgy of repression; the police, according to official report,
opened fire on three occasions; four persons received bufiet injuries,
and 70 people were arrested.4 No wonder people talked of 'the
miracle of Calcutta’. No trace seemed to remain of communal
bitterness. The student unrest spread to Mymensingh. On 22
January the students brought out a demonstration to protest
against police firing on Calcutta students. As the demonstration
entered the court compound, the police opened fire; Amalendu
Ghosh, a school student, was killed on the spot, Anita Bose, a
girl student of the degree class, received bullet wounds. This incident
sparked off serious disturbances. Government buildings were set
on fire; train services to and from Mymensingh were disrupted;
there was a complete hartal in Mymensingh town.5 Never before
Mymensingh had witnessed such an upheaval in which students
played the leading role.
Almost simultaneously the Hajong movement in Susang reached
its climax. On 21 January a muharrior (collector employed by the
landowner) was attacked by Hajong peasants as the carts carrying
paddy collected from Garos were being wilfully driven over standing
crops, but he escaped unhurt. On 31 January the police went to
Bahertali, a village four miles from Susang, to arrest some Hajongs
and their leaders. They raped two Hajong girls and dragged away
Saraswati who cried for help. Rasimani, a middle-aged widow,
leader of women volunteers, armed with a dagger, chased the police;
she was followed by Surendra Sarkar, young Hajong cadre and
several Hajong volunteers. There was a real battle on the banks
of the Someswari river. Rasimani and Surendra were killed. But
the Hajong volunteers continued to fight with bows and arrows
and spears and the police were routed; two policemen were killed
and their rifles taken away.6
On hearing the news of the Bahertali battle, demonstrations
were held in several villages. After Chirirbandar this was the second
incident in which policemen were killed. The Chirirbandar firing
was followed by the Bargadars Bill; after the Bahertali firing there
was severe repression. The government sent detachment of Eastern
Frontier Rifles to suppress the Hajong unrest.
The Amrita Bazar Patrika also reported the Bahertali incident:
 THE DILEMMA 463

‘On January 31 a clash took place at Bahertali between the police

and the aboriginals in which two police men and a number of
Hajongs were killed due to police firing. More police then entered
the area and the Hajongs are believed to have retreated to the
interior, leaving their property and paddy behind. From Bahertali
the police are reported to be advancing, but no details are available.
Reports of lawlessness have likewise been received from the Sherpur
side of communist-led aboriginals who are said to be withholding
rent in paddy’.8
The agrarian movement had indeed reached a crucial stage and
several questions had come to the fore. It was now becoming clear
that the government was not serious in passing the Bargadars Bill,
but had embarked on repressive policy. Threshing had begun in
Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Rangpur, but the jotedars, with their
sharp cunning, were not at all keen to take their share which
remained stacked in bargadars’ khamar. What should the peasants
do when the police would come to the village to arrest them and
snatch away their paddy? To resist or not to resist police repression
—this was the question which confronted the Kisan Sabha. A
decision had become imperative. Should the peasants, who were
in hiding, surrender or evade arrest? What would be the form of
peasant resistance? What should they do with the paddy that re¬
mained stacked in their khamar? The spontaneous phase of the
movement was over. In face of police repression the peasants,
particularly Muslim peasants, were showing signs of vacillation.
Only the Hajongs and Santals remained as militant as ever, but
they comprised a small section of the rural population.
It seems that on these questions there was no clarity. In its meeting
held in the second week of January 1947 the Provincial Kisan
Council admitted its failure to work out ‘the forms of struggle’
and to strengthen the volunteer corps; the council decided to set
up ‘Councils of Action’ in villages and to train volunteers.9 In
mid-February the Dinajpur District Committee of the Communist
Party of India met to review the new situation. Despite warrants
of arrest against them, most of the district leaders managed to
attend this meeting held in a village about ten miles from Thakur-
gaon. The police had got the information that ‘a special training
camp would be held, and that Ananta Sing was coming from
Calcutta as ‘the instructor’. How and by whom this information
464 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

was leaked to the police is not known. It was unanimously decided

to postpone ‘the training camp’, and Abani Lahiri rushed to
Thakurgaon town to send Ananta Sing, who had in fact arrived
at Setabganj, back to Calcutta. Next morning Bhowani Sen, the
then secretary of the Bengal Committee of the CPI, reached the
village via Rangpur, and heartily endorsed the decision.10 The
idea of ‘special training camp’ was nipped in the bud; it was not
to be revived during the entire phase of the tebhaga struggle.
What would be the tactical line and the forms of struggle in the
new phase of the movement? The development of the movement in
different regions was extremely uneven. In East Thakurgaon, for
instance, the bargadars were threshing the paddy, although
jotedars did not turn up to take their share. In the case of small
owners who were sometimes cadres of the Kisan Sabha, the question
of sharing out was amicably settled through a series of baithaks.
In West Thakurgaon the bargadars did not undertake threshing
despite prodding from leaders, mainly because jotedars did
not come to take their share. Fear of eviction had led a small section
of the bargadars, mainly Muslim, to surrender their paddy to the
jotedars. In Balurgat subdivision the kholan bhanga movement was
continuing. The middle peasants remained firm, but rich peasants
were generally taking a hostile attitude. The urban middle class
was positively hostile. Bhowani Sen put forward a new tactical
line which he later elaborated in an article published in Swadhinata.
His main contention seemed to be that the Kisan Sabha should now
proceed to build a broader movement for the abolition of zamindari;
the rallying slogan should be: land to the tiller.11 It was a rational
approach; the League ministry was also thinking of bringing a
comprehensive bill for the abolition of zamindari, and the movement
of the Kisan Sabha could rouse all categories of peasants against
zamindari system. But under existing circumstances the slogan
appeared like running after the will-o’-the-wisp. The essential
pre-condition for building a broader movement was success in
the continuing tebhaga struggle which was faced with severe
police repression. If the government succeeded in crushing the
movement there would be great demoralisation among the peasants.
The immediate question therefore was if and how to resist police
repression. There was no directive on this question and the move¬
ment was allowed to drift. Perhaps there was the lingering hope that
 THE DILEMMA 465

the League ministry could yet be forced by public pressure to pass

the Bargadars Bill.
The news of police firing at Khanpur and Thumnia became known
everywhere. The Kisan Sabha unit in East Thakurgaon took the
decision to hold a demonstration in Thakurgaon town to protest
against police firing on the peasants. It seems that the leaders still
hoped that protest demonstrations could influence government
policy. There could be no other justification for holding this demon¬
stration. Surely they did not hope that the Thakurgaon middle
class which took a consistently hostile attitude to the tebhaga
struggle would welcome the peasants. On the afternoon of 25
February several thousand peasants marched to Thakurgaon with
the familiar slogan, ‘Tebhaga Chai\ The police had already taken
positions in the maidan. The procession was declared illegal;
Rani Mitra and Bina Guha who had come from Dinajpur town to
address the peasants were served with externment order. As the
peasants began to disperse the police suddenly opened fire. The
demonstration was perfectly peaceful; the peasants had come not
to fight, but to hold a demonstration. Two Rajbansi peasants and
Hiramon Muhammad, a poor Muslim peasant, were killed on the
spot. Two Santal peasants received bullet injuries and died in
hospital. Niamat, a local leader whom we have already mentioned,
was wounded and his leg had to be amputated. There was hardly
any reaction in Thakurgaon town; the urban middle class did not
think it necessary to hold a protest meeting.19
Dusk had fallen when the news of Thakurgaon firing reached
the villages. Rumour spread that many peasants had been killed.
Hundreds of peasant cadres and volunteers rushed to Bibhuti Guha
and Ajit Ray who had organised this demonstration. They demand¬
ed arms. How could they fight with lathis the police armed with
guns’. What should they do now? The leaders racked their brains but
could not give any answer. There was no question of resisting police
attack with lathis. It was now clear that the police would shoot
the peasants if there was any resistance. Retreat was the only
course left. The morale of the peasants slumped, and the move¬
ment which reached new heights in Thakurgaon rapidly disinte¬
grated.20
On 27 February Jyoti Basu in his assembly speech held ‘the
governor and the bureaucracy’ as mainly responsible for sabotaging
466 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the Bargadars Bill: The policy of the ministry has been to ditto
the action of the governor and the bureaucracy and to surrender
to the vested interests .... and give way to the zamindars and
jotedars on the countryside. For instance, we find that the Bargadars
Bill has been thrown to the winds and successfully sabotaged. And
I am sure the abolition of the zamindari system will not come
about’.21 This was the first time that a spokesman of the Communist
Party publicly declared that the Bargadars Bill had been shelved.
On 26 February the Swadhinata published a secret circular of
the Bengal government with elaborate instructions to district
officers to suppress the agrarian struggle’.22 On 28 February
Saheed Suhrawardy made a long statement in the assembly which
was devoted to the theme that lawlessness’ had to be suppressed
with whatever means the government had at its disposal. There
was no reference to the Bargadars Bill in the whole statement.
Inflated accounts of ‘parallel trial courts’, ‘committees of action’,
‘volunteer corps’ were fabricated to justify repression. We will
quote extracts from this statement which historians are likely to
pounce upon as ‘primary source material’:
‘... there is not merely a general wave of unrest but of lawless¬
ness and defiance of authority .... The unrest has also spread
among the cultivators, fortunately in a few restricted areas, where
it has taken the form of tebhaga movement, in others, of nonpay¬
ment of tanka-rent and in still others of catching fish without
authorisation from beels or nonpayment of chowkidari-tax and
of agricultural loans. In some places such agitation is accompanied
with violence. Persons have been advised to resist arrest in spite
of warrants legally issued by a court of law and to rescue persons
arrested and to attack police, if necessary, to intimidating others
into accepting their demand, to remove crops by force from the
fields and sometimes from the houses of jotedars. Parallel trial
courts have been set up and persons are brought under confinement
and are convicted for opposing the movement. Personal indignities
are inflicted and punishment awarded. Lands are being cultivated
by force, in cases side by side with jotedars. Committees of action,
volunteer corps, propaganda leaflets, secret shelters have been
organised. Badges and lathis have been issued and the volunteers
are taught to drill and parade. It is a matter of greatest regret to
the government that innocent and law-abiding cultivators have
 THE DILEMMA 467

fallen a prey to this agitation and have resorted to such steps as

made it incumbent on our forces of law and order to use force
against force .... Fortunately as I have stated it is confined only
to a few areas of Dinajpur, Mymensingh and Jalpaiguri, although
some slight rumblings can be heard elsewhere.
‘Between the 7th and 17th February, 14 cases of paddy looting
were reported in two unions of Balurghat thana .... This looting
which has been done more or less on a mass scale in Dinajpur was
a result of constant propaganda inculcating a spirit of lawlessness
and definace. On the 16th of February warrant of arrest legally
issued by a court of law could be executed only against three persons.
Further arrests were made impossible without the interference
of the armed force’.
Suhrawardy then referred to Khanpur and Thumnia incidents
in Dinajpur which we have described. He continued commenting
on Mymensingh upsurge;
‘On the 21st January a large number of Hajongs attacked the
muharrior of Susang when he was bringing home paddy which
he collected from the Garos. He extricated himself with difficulty
from the place. 14 Hajongs were arrested although a clash was
averted as 2,000 Hajongs well-armed came to the scene. On 22nd
January Hajongs trespassed into Durgapur thana. On the 26th
January as many as 4,000 trespassed into the compound. They
broke the fencing, damaged the telegraph wire and set fire to postal
documents. On 30 January a meeting was held when it was decided
to resist the police. Two incidents occurred at Bahertali when a
police party arrived to execute warrants; they were chased with
bows and arrows and other weapons. Two armed constables were
speared to death .... Communist leaflets had been discovered
in remotest villages. In some villages large stocks of tankapaddy
and a number of spears, lathis and bows were discovered. As soon
as the headquarters of the agitators were searched they left their
villages and took to the hills.
‘On 5 February a body of Hajongs were holding demonstration
at Nalitabari when at the instance of the district magistrate pro¬
paganda leaflets were dropped from an aeroplane ... Reports
indicated that communists were still active in certain areas in
Sherpur and Jamalpur subdivisions. Only one section of the
Hajongs was now giving trouble’.
468 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The concluding paragraph was significant: ‘We are on the eve

of independence. We should proceed steadily and constitutionally
along the path of independence so that we might be in a position
to reap its fruits’.23
Indeed, a turning point had come. Peaceful transfer of power
was in the offing. At this point agrarian unrest appeared to be the
only obstacle in their path and had to be smothered. The Bargadars
Bill was buried. Scared by the sweep of the agrarian struggle the
Muslim League leaders chose to be representatives of law and
order, and sought to crush the movement with wholesale violence.

References

1 The Statesman, 22 January 1947.

2 Ibid., 26 January 1947.
3 Ibid., 22 January 1947.
4 Ibid., 23 January 1947.
5 Ibid., 24 January 1947.
6 P. Gupta, op. cit. In his assembly speech Suhrawardy suppressed the fact that
the police raped two Hajong girls.

8 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 5 February 1947. It was reported that the movement
was intense in Haluaghat, Nalitabari and Sherpur; aeroplanes were seen flying
over the area.
9 A. Rasul, op. cit, p. 157.
10 The present writer attended this meeting; of the district leaders Gurudas
Talukdar and Kali Sarkar could not come.
11 Swadhinata, 15 February 1947
12 .
13 .

16 .
17 .
18 ..
19 Ajit Ray’s note; interview with B. Guha; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 February
1947.
20 Interview with B. Guha.
21 Assembly Proceedings, Vol. 72, No. 1.
22 Swadhinata, 26 February 1947; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1 March 1947.
23 Assembly Proceedings, Vol. 72, No. 1.
 24 Kakdwip Tebhaga Movement

Krishnakant Savkar

Yoked to a defective socio-economic system, (‘Lotdari’ system)

which reduced them to tragic non-entities, the peasants of Kakdwip
rose in revolt against their traditional oppressors in a bid to
establish their right to live. It began as a movement of petition
and protest. But the main movement, Tebhaga, and the formulation
of its demand did not originate from below. It was not confined
to the area and did not start until the Communist Party came into the
picture. At the initial stage, the peasants could not think that their
demand, Tebhaga, would ultimately be met.1 ‘The famous Kakdwip
movement began’, observes Mr K.B. Ray, the then President of
Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha, ‘not as an independent and spon¬
taneous action but as a part of All Bengal Tebhaga Movement
sponsored by Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha’.2 The main objective
of Tebhaga movement was to establish ‘Tebhaga’ principle i.e.
two-thirds share of the produce for the share-cropping cultivators
instead of customary half.
When the Tebhaga movement in Kakdwip broke out in 1946,
very few knew about the condition of its people and of the nature
of this region. Although Kakdwip is only fifty miles to the south
of Calcutta the region as a part of the Sundarbans was very backward
and almost inaccessible from administrative centres. Mr Kangsari
Haider, the famous leader of this movement, says, ‘It would not
be wrong to say that before Tebhaga, the region was unknown to
the Civilized World’.3 And observing from administrative point
of view, a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly pointed
out ‘... it seems to be that the people of this region are not under
the British rule’.
As has been said earlier, the Kakdwip peasants did not move
of their own, they were actually brought into the vortex of the
movement by the Communist Organizers. From this one should

This article was especially written for this volume.

470 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

not come to the over-simplified conclusion that Kakdwip movement

was Communist engineered one. The objective conditions were
ripe enough for the movement to take a long plunge.

II

The Kakdwip area as a part of the Sundarbans of 24 Parganas

district was excluded from the Permanent Settlement of 1793.
The British rulers provided temporary settlement, a lease-holding
system for the region. The remarkable feature of this system was
that big lots of forest land were leased out to private individuals
for a term of 99 years or 40 years as provided by the Grant rules
of 1853 and 1879 respectively. The lease-holders, known as lotdars,
were held responsible for reclamation of their lots step by step
which had to be completed at the expiration of some specific years
failing which they would be liable to forego all rights and interests
theirin.5 Reclamation began at the end of the last century. But it
was not so easy to reclaim such big lots. Consequently, most lotdars
had sublet some portions of their grants to other individuals who
were called ‘chakdars’. Being entitled with the rights and obligations
of lotdars, the chakdars were equally held responsible to facilitate
Hat (market), Gola (barn), Ganj (habitation) and raiyoti settle¬
ment.6 Both the lotdars and chakdars were absentee landlords.
Only a few chakdars lived permanently in the area. They employed
their agents, known as naibs, managers and other persons to look
after the estate and these people became the actual rulers.
For reclamation, the lotdars made some initial expenses and
did only the preliminary works namely, ak katai (the first step of
deforestation) and boundary bandh (construction of embankment
around the lot to stop water inlets). And only after the initial stage
of deforestation, they hired landless cultivators from Midnapur
with the assurance of giving them tenancy right over the land they
would bring under cultivation. Allured by this assurance, peasants
of the lowest category came and started reclaiming their allotted
lands in right earnest, but ultimately they were denied of the pro¬
mised right.7 In this connexion one writer on this subject has
rightly remarked, ‘Before deforestation the bhagchasis (share¬
croppers) were assured of tenancy rights but even after the expiry
of five years following it they were not* given the ownership rights’8.
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 471

This deprivation was, as we shall see later, the immediate cause of

tension leading to peasant organization and movement in one
village. In view of our investigation in the area it is well-nigh
impossible on our part to accept the opinion of Dr Radha Kumud
Mookerjee when he writes, ‘In general, it may be stated that
zamindars brought the waste and jungle under cultivation ...
at their expense’.9
Most of the peasants who came in the hope of land had no other
means save their hands and hence could not purchase land by
cash.10 Consequently, the system of production that developed in
the area since the beginning was ‘bhag chas’ (share-cropping)
at the rate of half share of the produce for each party. The total
yield should be stacked at the landowner’s Khamar (yard) instead
of cultivator’s. All the landlords wanted to get it introduced since
they would be the party to derive the maximum from the system
with the least labour and risk.
On the other hand, the cultivators, compelled by their helpless¬
ness, had submitted themselves to the yoke of share-cropping
system. From our investigation in the area we have found that two
main factors, namely, landlords’ economic interests and cultivators’
helplessness were responsible for the development of share-cropping
system. It is interesting to point out that in interpreting the develop¬
ment of share-cropping system Dr Radhakamal Mukherjee did
not see the economic factor behind it.11 Our investigation confirms
the opinion of Dr K. Mukherji who observes, ‘The moneylender
will not cultivate the land himself and prefers produce-rent to
cash-rent since the former gives him more than the latter at the
present level of prices.’12
The extra-ordinary development of share-cropping system in
the area might be illustrated by our survey in two villages namely
Budhakhali and Haripur. Out of 70 and 31 investigated families
in two villages respectively it was found that 89% of the former and
64.5% of the latter were share-cropping families. It was also found
that 46.4% and 54.5% families in the villages respectively were
absolutely dependent on rented land. It was the picture of land-
relation in two villages in which the tebhaga movement was remark¬
ably intensive.13 The landowners not only took away the best
quality of the grains in their share, but also they looted the share¬
croppers as well as tenants as much as they could by extorting
 472 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and exacting various subscriptions, interests on advance, selami,

abawbs etc.
From individual statements of more than 40 local peasants and
also some landlords’ agents and police officers, we see below the
types of exactions and their approximate rate prevailing in Kakdwip
area before the tebhaga movement.14

» Approximate
rate
Nos. Name Meaning per bigha
1. Dera-bari (enforced borrow'ing 1 \ maund " "
by the share-croppers
at the rate of 50%
interest in kind
subject to increase at
compound rate)
2. Kayali (wage of the 3 to 5 seers " "
weightman of share-
cropping crops)
3. Khamar Chwilani (charge for prepara¬ 2 to 4 "
tion of landlord’s
yard)
4. Prachir ghera (charge for making 2 to 5 " " "
walls around the yard)
5. Naibiana (charge for account¬ 3 to 6 " " "
keeping by landlord’s
agent)
Hisabana
6. Dwaroani (charge for the service 1 to 3 * '
of landlord’s darwan
or guard)
7. Nazrana (occasional presen¬ 1 to 4 ' " '
tation to the landlord)
8. Parbani (charge for village 1 to 3 ' "
festivals)
9. Selami (annual charge for 1 to 1 ^ maunds
rented land) or Rs 4 to 7 ' *
10. Education cess. 3 to 4 seers * "
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 473

11. Golakamti (Paddy charged for 2 to 3 seers " "

its loss of weight that
resulted from its being
dried up in the
landlord’s barn
preserved for advance
to the share¬
croppers)

It was highly illegal to exact anything from the tenants but the
agents did not discriminate between the share-croppers and the
tenants in so far as exaction was concerned.15
The number and the respective rate of exactions varied from
one village to another just because of differences in the attitude
of the agent concerned. The most remarkable exaction prevalent
in every village was ‘dera-bari’. It was compulsory for every share¬
cropper to take advance at the rate of 50 per cent. Interest in kind
and refusal to accept advance led to eviction of share-croppers in
many cases since they had no tenancy right and there was no law to
protect them.16 Another factor that brought distress to all sections
of peasantry was the loss of crops by inundation of saline water
due to failure or negligence of lotdars and chakdars to keep embank¬
ments in an efficient state for which they were legally responsible.17
The pitiable plight of the cultivators of this region was reflected
in the settlement Report of Sundarbans and some relevant portions
of it have been stated below: “The paddy harvested is stacked in the
landlord’s own barn and what he receives after deduction of land¬
lord’s half share and his previous debt to him will hardly keep his
body and soul together for three or four months.... It is difficult
to extricate himself from the clutches of the landlord and mahajans
if he once incurs any debt from them.
In this manner the landlord can easily manipulate a large amount
of cheap labour who are more submissive than assertive’.18
The peasants of Kakdwip, mainly the great bulk of share-
cropping cultivators, were enchained to the lands of their master
and the actual position of them may be compared to that of ‘serf’
with ‘half-free status.’19
The social system of Kakdwip itself had certain peculiarities
unfavourable for the growth of organization of the peasants at
474 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

least in the initial stage. These were first, lack of unity resulting
from rigid caste structure; village factional quarrels, and communal
feelings; secondly, in spite of all oppressions, the allegiance and
dependence of the peasants to the landlord’s agents; thirdly, the
attitude of the peasants to the existing socio-economic system as
immutable which accounted for their passivity and conservative
outlook and finally, their fear of landlord’s power of money,
police and lathials (goondas).20 But we see that these unfavourable
factors could not impede the peasant organization and movement
at a time that saw the emergence of a local leader with a few followers
in a village backed by some members of the Communist Party.

Ill

When the Kakdwip peasants had gone below the subsistence

level, a heavy cyclone accompanied with devastating flood broke
out on the/17th October, 1942 which affected a population more
than one lakh, razed all their modest dwellings, destroyed cattles
and the standing aman crops of 1942-3; this along with the great
Bengal famine brought additional sufferings to the Kakdwip
peasantry already in a state of ruin.21 It was in this background
that along with others Satyanarayan Chatterjee and Jyotish Roy
as members of People’s Relief Committee, a voluntary organization
sponsored by the Communist Party, came to Kakdwip for relief
work and recruited Jatin Maity of Budhakhali who had political
background as a terrorist worker, sought his help in forming peasant
organization in the area under the banner of Kisan Samiti of the
Communist Party.22 With the help of Kangsari Haider, Manik
Hazra, Abdur Rajjak Khan, Nityananda Chowdhury who came
as relief workers of the said Committee, Jatin Maity had begun
to organize the peasants of Budhakhali. In 1951 B.S. Satis Shau,
a share-cropper of Budhakhali, allied himself with Jatin Maity,
the first local leader of Kakdwip. Next year they were joined by
five other peasants of the village and the comulative effect of all
these was the formation of a secret organization in the area.23 That
the peasant organization at Budhakhali, though not operating
openly, created some impact was proved by a joint petition filed
secretly by some peasants of the village before the SDO against
the manager Bijoy Banerjee’s rack-renting. The SDO acted upon
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 475

it which went in favour of the peasants, the Officer warned the

manager and thereby the peasants foiled the manager’s attempt to
evict his share-croppers involved in the matter.24
This success, however minor, at the initial stage created the
most favourable situation for organization in the village.
The resentment caused by rack-renting was further accentuated
by Bata Krishna Shau’s (a chakdar as well as usurer of Budhakhali)
calculated violation of the customary principle of ‘dera-bari’
(50 per cent interest of advance). How vicious was his attempt
appears from his insistence that the peasants were required to pay
in advance in cash rate of 50 per cent interest to be charged on the
market price of paddy borrowed. Besides, those who begged for
advance, received ill-treatment. The condition arising out of it
facilitated a better prospect for organization.25
The District Committee of Kisan Samity of the Communist
Party then decided to hold a peasants’ conference in 1944 at Budha¬
khali and vigorous propaganda was carried on to ensure its success.
Addressed by Nityananda Chowdhury, Kangsari Haider, Manik
Bazra, Jyotish Roy to name some of the leaders, led to the formation
of Kisan Samity at Budhakhali, in the same year.26
The formation of peasant organisation at Haripur can be attri¬
buted to the complete identity of Gajen Mali’s personal cause with
those of his community. Deprived of his land of one hundred fifty
bighas and its crops, because of Dwarik Samanta’s (landlord)
conspiracy, Gajen, who had urban background, in a bid to have
legal redress set for Diamond Harbour Court. When in the midst
of way, he was persuaded by Jatin Maity of Budhakhali to give up
this idea and urged him to set himself to the task of organising the
village peasants for redress.27 Consequent to that, a meeting was
held to protest against the various atrocities including dishonouring
of their women at ‘Tankpukur Ground’ of Haripur. This led to the
formation of Kisan Samity organization in this village of which
Gajen became the president, Balaram the Secretary and eleven
others including Kshirode Bera, Atul Santra, Ananta Kuiti, Girish
Mandal ordinary members.28 Sharply reacting against the growing
unrest and protest of the peasants, so long submissive, Dwarik
Samanta took the help of the police to nip the peasant organization
in the bud. To serve the interest of the landlord the police arrested
three share-croppers involved in the protest movement on charge
476 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of dacoity which, however, could not be established in the court

and the result was acquittal and release of the arrested peasants.
This situation immediately paved the ground for peasant organiza¬
tion.29
Our study of peasant organization and movement in two selected
villages show that organization of the peasants in the initial stage
is dependent on some factors: (i) quality of local leadership,
(ii) political party’s support, (iii) initial success of movement
against the landlords or their agents (as happened at Budhakhali
in foiling the manager’s attempt of eviction) (iv) the reaction of
peasants against the violation of customary practice (as happened
at Budhakhali in the case of Chakdar) (v) sudden attack of grievous
nature (as the case of Dwarik Samanta of Haripur).
Another factor which had influenced the Kakdwip peasant move¬
ment was the impact of the Midnapore Salt movement and heroic
mass movement of August 1942. Since most of the peasants of
Kakdwip (86% of Budhakhali and 60% of Haripur) came from
Midnapore, many of them had experience and background of move¬
ments.30 The local leaders of Kakdwip movement, namely, Jatin
Maity, Ananta Kuiti, Sujoy Barik had political background due
to their involvement in movements which broke out at Midnapore.31
When the peasant organization in some form had already been
developed in a few villages, Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha gave its
‘Tebhaga Call’ in September, 1946. In this connexion it may be
pointed out that what Sunil Sen says about the origin of the
Tebhaga32 runs counter to Bhowani Sen’s opinion which is as
follows: ‘Since 1938 Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha had been
persistently porpagating for the abolition of Zamindari and also
for conceding the demand for Tebhaga. I am adding by way of
supporting the former’s conclusion in regard to the origin of the
Tebhaga demand that it owed more to recommendations of the
Land Revenue Commission of 1938 than to the igenuity of the
Sabha.’33
Since Tebhaga was for the interest of share-cropping cultivators,
the peasants of Budhakhali of whom about 89% were share-croppers
first responded to the call. Along the tebhaga, other slogans were
‘Zamindari Khatam Karo' (abolish Zamindari), 'Nij Khamare
dhan tolo' (stock crop to own yard), ‘Samasta Zulum Bandh Karo'
(stop all oppression), Bhag jamir rasid chaii (give record of rights
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 477

on rented land), etc. The tebhaga slogan becarrie^so popular that

the movement spread in all parts of the area. In Kakdwip, where
it became remarkably intensified were Munsif’s lot, Fatikpur,
Bamanagar, Bisalakshmipur, Dwariknagar, Berar lot, Sibrampur,
Radhanagar, Durganagar, Chandanpiri, Layalganj, Haripur, Raj-
nagar, Debnibas and from Lakshmipur to Fragarganj. Everywhere
the share-cropping cultivators were being organized almost
spontaneously under the leadership of Kisan Samity. Inspired
by Kakdwip, peasants of Mathurapur and Sagar Island started
tebhaga movement spontaneously without Samiti’s leadership.
This is to indicate the popularity of the call.34
Everywhere in Kakdwip Kishan Samitis were formed on Union
basis; at the bottom was the local committee. Each Union Kisan
Samiti had a working Committee consisting of 6/7 members.
During tebhaga, tebhaga Committees were formed with the consent
of common peasants in the village meetings. As most of the peasants
were illiterate public meetings, gharoa meetings (indoor meetings)
processions, tebhaga songs and geets, tarja (a type of rural song)
on tebhaga were the main vehicles of propaganda.35 They used
to sing tebhaga songs early in the morning through the village
paths and meetings were held regularly for awakening the share¬
croppers.
As regards economic resources, the Kakdwip peasant movement
at the outset had to depend on financial assistance of the Communist
Party. But later on the organisation became financially self-
sufficient. The local peasant found interest in collecting 1 to 2
sheers of paddy per bigha and one anna as annual subscription
of the Kisan Samiti. It is reported that peasants did not always
pay their subscription generously.36
Decision-making is an important factor in every movement.
In the Kakdwip peasant movement, the Communist Party leaders
took decisions which were expressed through the Kisan Samiti.
But it was not always true that what the C.P.I. leaders decided
was always followed by the peasants of Kakdwip. As regards
decision-making, the Communist Party’s decision regarding the
movement had to undergo a change when the peasants of Kakdwip
took a different attitude from that which the Party in its policy
sought to adopt. This might be illustrated by the fact that due to
severe repression in 1947 the Communist Party had to decide that
478 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the share-croppers of Tebhaga movement should stock paddy at

the Jotedar’s yard. But the Kakdwip share-croppers’ movement
reached such a height that the peasants of this area were reluctant
to follow the party’s decision. Consequently, the Party had to
modify its policy and asked the peasants of different areas to act
as the situation warranted.37
The Kakdwip peasantry, though most of whom were share¬
croppers, did not constitute a homogeneous group. They regarded
themselves as ‘poor’, ‘middle’ and ‘rich’ in terms of their existing
poverty and prosperity. The term ‘poor’ stood for those families
which could not support themselves for several months of the
year. Most of the poor peasants had no land of their own and were
absolutely dependent on rented land. They themselves worked
and did not employ agricultural labour. The landless wage-labourers
belonged to this category. The ‘middle’ category was almost self-
sufficient in food-stuff; some had a few maunds’ surplus, while
others had a little deficit. Generally, the families of the category
had some bighas (20-70 bighas) of their own, some bighas of
rented land and a few of them employed wage-labourers.
The rich family was one which possessed considerable amount
of land (70-125 bighas) and did not rely on rented land. On the
contrary, some of them supplied land to share-croppers for rent
and they employed agricultural labourers and used to advance
‘bari’ for incurring interest.
Now let us see the attitude of each section of the peasantry to
the Tebhaga movement. Investigations in two villages, namely
Budhakhali and Haripur show that about 65% of the former and
41.7% of the latter were ‘poor’ families. And of the ‘poor’ category
about 89% at Budhakhali and 100% at Haripur actively participated
in the movement. It is clear that amongst the poor, there was the
maximum support and involvement. Of the poor families we also
see that 64.29% at Budhakhali and 100% at Haripur were bhag
chasis (share-croppers). The reason for the maximum involvement
of poor section was that since tebhaga movement was intended
to bring to the share-croppers an additional gain of one-fourths
of the total produce, it was the prospect of gain that led them (89%
at Budhakhali and 100%^ at Haripur) to be champions of the
movement.
Of the poor sections of Budhakhali peasants which remained
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 479

or sought to remain passive was 6.6%. Their passivity was attributed

to the fact of their being wage-labourers, and seeing no prospect
of economic gain in the Tebhaga movement, they did not join the
movement. Among the poor who opposed the movement was
4.45% and their attitude of opposition was due to the fact of their
being supporters of the Congress which was the rival to the Com¬
munist Party that led the movement.
The percentage of middle category families at Budhakhali and
Haripur was 27.1% and 54.8% respectively. Of this category,
66% at Budhakhali and 32.29% at Haripur actively supported
the movement.
The nature of attitude of this section was largely determined
by the prospect of gain from the lands they cultivated as share¬
croppers.
Among the peasants of middle section, 31.6% and 23.5% families
in the two aforesaid villages respectively remained passive and
were not involved in the movement. At Budhakhali some of the
‘middle’ families remained passive due to the fact of their having
modest dwellings very near to the Kutchery of the Manager. At
Haripur it was reported that since some families of this category
could support themselves through the customary rate, they did
not join the movement in order to avoid conflict with the landlords’
agent.
Among the middle category, peasants who opposed the movement
were 5% at Budhakhali and 29% at Haripur. The main cause
of their opposition was that they belonged to Congress.
The rich families formed 8.6% and 3.2% of the total families
investigated at Budhakhali and Haripur respectively. Of such
families of the first village only 33.3% took part in the movement.
This was because of the past grievances they had against the
Manager, Bejoy Banerjee led them to identify themselves with the
anti-lotdar movement. Half of the rest were passive as they did
not like the Communist movement and the other half were vocally
opponent because of their uncomfortable position they found them¬
selves in, because of the share-croppers’ demand for the two-
third of the produce in their rented land.
At Haripur, only 3.2% rich families were against the Communist
Party and opposed the movement.38
Now from analysis of relevant data we may make certain con-
480 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

elusions and generalizations regarding the attitude of different

sections of the peasantry to the tebhaga movement.
1 Apart from other considerations, a peasant movements that
incorporates in its ‘programme one main demand which can
assure maximum benefit to the largest number of a peasant society
can ensure the largest participation (the case of involvement of
the poor who formed the great bulk of Kakdwip population).
2 The rich peasants’ past grievances against the landlords can
be a factor to have an extra bit to their support for the movement.
3 Another contributory factor determining an attitude of support
was the sense of fellow-feeling or community- sentiment generated
by the boisterous course of the agitation.
4 Apart from economic motivation, political belief of one brand
or another is a factor that determines fhe attitude of a small section
(not large in number) to the movement.
The factors that account for an attitude of passivity and non¬
involvement are: (1) the remote possibility of any perceptible gain;
the non-involvement of a section of the poor (the case of poor
wage-labourers) is a case in point; (2) a state of self-sufficiency in
the statusquo (the case of some middle peasants); (3) the desire
to avoid conflict can lead a section of the peasantry to remain
passive and non-involved (the case of some peasants belonging to
the middle category); (4) fear from the landlord class may keep a
section inactive and passive.
In general, the fear of economic loss is the main cause of reaction
in the case of lotdars and chakdars.
With regard to the nature of leadership of this movement, we
could clearly distinguish them into two groups—the leaders who
came as members of the Communist Party to uphold the peasants’
cause without personal interest; and those local leaders who per¬
sonally suffered because of the extant socio-economic system.
At the initial stage of organization, the leaders of the first group was
less effective and had little direct contribution.39 It was the local
leadership that was most effective in the formative stage. The
leaders of the first group assumed bigger role when the organization
and movement developed to a certain extent.
Another fact regarding leadership was that it was the poor
section of the peasantry which constituted the leading cadre of
the movement. At Budhakhali, among the five initial leaders.
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 481

it was found that four belonged to the poor and one to the middle
section.40 The case was similar at Haripur. Here out of the thirteen
leaders who were associated with the movement from the very
start, the three including Gajen belonged to the category of middle
peasantry and the rest with the exception of one (whose actual
economic position could not be ascertained) belonged to the poor
category.41
The relationship between the leaders and the participants was
very cordial. The peasants followed what the leaders said them to
do. They were very simple. Unlike its middle class counterpart,
they followed their leaders without reservation. The simplicity of
the peasants might be illustrated by the fact that when the peasants
were told that the police did not possess the key to their rifles to
open fire, they took it to be true.42
The share-croppers in hundreds assembled in the harvesting
field of those land-owners who were unwilling to concede their
demand. The peasants armed themselves with traditional weapons,
namely, lathi, vali, arrows etc. while women depended on jhanta,
(brooms), boti (sharp cutters), sand and chillipowder. In the
harvesting session of 1946-7 the peasants could seize paddy and
stacked them to their own khamar or panchayat khamar. The
unity, militancy and organizational strength forced the land-lords
to concede the demand. One of the factors that helped the success
was the attitude of the then Suhrawardy Government which did
not take severe steps to suppress it nakedly. Instead, the Government
had conceded the tebhaga demand and the Bengal Bargadars
Temporary Bill was notified in Calcutta Gazette on 22.1.1947 and
the Bill was also introduced in the Assembly.
In February-March 1947 came the police party in the villages
of Kakdwip and they were housed at landlords kutcheries. The
landlords agents and Chakdars also bore the expenses for the
police since they got immense help from them.44 Apart from
police help, they gathered lathials (goondas). In the harvesting
session of 1947-8, the landlords’ agents immediately took the
help of Police who promulgated Section 144 Cr. P.C. in many
harvesting fields thus preventing the share-croppers from harvesting.
More cases—both Civil and Criminal—were instituted against the
militant cadres and leaders. In the latter part of the year 1947,
the Congress came to power, and many leaders and cadres including
482 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Jatin Maity were arrested on grounds of security. But the peasants

could not be subdued. Defying the prohibitory order they assembled
in the field with their traditional weapons for harvesting. Some
were deputed to watch on the police and they used conch to alarm
the peasants when police was found approaching. But as a result
of combined attack by landlords’ lathials and armed police, the
peasants could not protect their crops. The Government of West
Bengal on 1st January, 1948 declared the whole area under the
jurisdiction of Kakdwip and Sagar Police Station as disturbed
area.45 And police repression became so severe that the peasants
failed to harvest and crops of many share-croppers were destroyed
in the field. Ultimately the Kakdwip Tebhaga movement failed
to withstand the combined attack of police and landrolds’ lathials
and thus the Tebhaga movement ended.
In Kakdwip movement women had played a remarkable role.
Their courage and sacrifice are worth mentioning. It was found
that out of 70 families of Budhakhali, women of 25 families took
active part in the movement and developed leadership.46
The Tebhaga movement, the most significant event in the
Kakdwip area, had brought about immediate as well as far-reaching
changes.
i) In the harvesting session of 1946-47, the movement was
successful and in the next session, it was partly successful.
ii) It was the movement by which all illegal exactions were done
away with for ever.
iii) ‘Dera-bari’ and eviction ceased.
iv) All sorts of ill-treatments, ranging from physical torture to
the dishonouring of women came to be a story of the past.
v) The movement brought Kakdwip to the attention of the
Government. To take the edge out of the Communist move¬
ment, the B.C. Roy Ministry provided in its budget for the
financial year of 1952-3 a portion of Rs. 1,50,000 earmarked
for ‘the Communist affected area’, which seemed definitely
to be the Kakdwip area.47
vi) The tebhaga movement of Kakdwip had undeniably con¬
tributed towards the agrarian land-reform laws of the
subsequent years.
vii) Over and above all, what is more significant was that within
a few years the peasantry of Kakdwip underwent a revolu-
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 483

tionary change in their thinking and outlook in that they

were not only able to shake off their servile and submissive
mentality, but also elevated themselves from the ‘half-free’
status of a serf to the status of a Citizen.

References

1 Written statements by Smt Laksmipriya Sautia and Purna Chandra Samanta

of Budhakhali, 11.10.71.
2 Written statement by Krishna Binode Ray, president of Bengal Provincial
Kisan Sabha (1946), 30.6.72.
3 Tebhaga Sangram Rajat Jayanti Smarak Grantha (in Bengali), p. 64; also see
Diamond Harbour Hilaishee (a local fortnightly in Bengali), 15.4.58.
4 Speech by Patiram Roy, Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, Vol. LXIX,
No. 2, 12.3.45.
5 F.E. Pargiter, Revenue History of the Sunflarbans p. 93, Superintendent, Govern¬
ment Printing, Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1934.
6 Written statement by Sachindra Chandra Ghose, Chakdar of Layalganj,
24.10.73.
7 Written statement by Gunadhar Mah, brother of Gajen Mali of Layalganj,
30.1.74.
Written statement by Srinath Ranjit of Layalganj, 1.12.73; also see Kalantar
(Special issue), p. 46.
8 Suprakash Ray, Kakdwip Sonarpore Bhangorer Krishak Sangram (in Bengali),
p. 5 Radical Book Club, Calcutta, 1967.
9 Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal, Vol. 2, p. 234, 1940.
10 Interview with Charu Bhandari, an Ex-Minister of Congress Government,
22.6.72.
Written statement by Sachindra Chandra Ghose, 24.10.73.
11 Radhakamal Mukerjee, Land Problems of India, p. 361-62, 1933.
12 Karuna Mukherjee, Land Reforms, p. 189. Calcutta, H. Chatterjee & Co., 1952.
13 The Survey was made by the present writer.
14 Individual statements were given by Jatin Maity (local leader), Jagannath
Maity (local leader), Kumud Shau (local leader), Dhananjoy Das (a militant
cadre), Gunadhar Maity (local leader), Brahlad Samanta (an ordinary cadre),
Gagen Barik, Kanai Bera, Bhusan Jana (ordinary cadre), Satish Shau (local
leader), Banamali Mandal (ordinary cadre), Sahadeb Karan (ordinary cadre)
Smt Kaishalya Mandal, Nitya Jana, Kanan Das (women leaders) of Budha¬
khali; Katrick Chandra Mali (elder brother of the late Gajen Mali), Gunadhar
Mali, Jagatmohan Kauti, Bijoy Mandal (local leader), Kshirode Bera (local
leader) of Haripur, Jhatu Charan Rahul (cadre), Lakshmikanta Chatterjee
(amohurar oflotdar), Bhupati Mohan Biswas (NaibJ, Bhabaranjan Bhattachar-
jee (President of Budhakhali Union Board, 1942 to 1951) to name a few of them.
5 Act X of 1859, (B.T. Act) Section 10, West Bengal Code (as modified upto
13th June, 1951).
484 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

16 Statement of Laksmi Sautia (a peasant woman) of Budhakhali, 11.10.71. She

stated that her father was evicted on account of refusal to take ‘bari’. Also
statements of many local peasants of Budhakhali, Haripur and other villages.
17 Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, Vol. LXVII, No. 3, 29.3.44. T.N.
Mukherjea, Minister of Revenue Department admitted that due to negligence
of lotdars and jotedars, the embankments had occasionally remained in damag¬
ed condition as a result of which the peasants suffer from loss of crops.
18 Settlement Report, 24 Parganas para 30.
Also see Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, Session 1, Vol. 71, p. 28.
19 Mr Charu Bhandary has assessed their position as serfs.
20 Written statement by Manik Hazra, a leader of Kakdwip Movement. For
casteism, communalism etc. a personal letter (21.5.52) of the late Ananta Kuiti
of Haripur; also statements of Jatin Maity and Jagannath Maity of Budhakhali.
21 Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 1944 Vol. LXVIII No. 1.
In the area there was loss of 1390 human lives, cattle—23,743 and damage of
houses 25, 201. For an account of collection of funds of the people’s Relief
Committee which worked in the field, see Amrita Bazar Patrika 18.11.1942.
22 Interview with Jatin Maity of Budhakhali.
23 Written statement by Satish Shau, 13.10.73.
24 Interview with Jatin Maity.
25 Written statements by Gunadhar Maity of Budhakhali, (also by some other
peasants) 13.10.71.
26 Written statement by Manik Hazra (one of the leaders) 26.12.74.
27 Written statements by Gunadhar Mali (younger brother of the late Gajen
Mali) and Kshirode Bera. Also interview with Jatin Maity.
28 Written statement by Kshirode Bera (a local leader), 2.2.74.
29 Written statement by Kshirode Bera, 2.2.74.
30 The investigation was made by the present writer.
31 Interview with Jatin Maity.
32 Sunil Sen holds; “It was from this recommendation (the recommendation of the
Land Revenue Commission, 1940) that tebhaga, the battle cry of bargadars in
1946-7, originated”—Agrarian Struggle in Bengal, People’s Publishing House,
New Delhi, 1972, p. 15.
33 Tebhaga Sangram Rajat Jay anti Smarak Grantha (in Bengali), p. 10, Calcutta,
1973.
Also see Abdullah Rasul’s Krishak Sabhar Itihas (in Bengali) p. 103, National
Book Agency, Calcutta.
For the relevant portions of Land Revenue Commission’s Recommendation,
see Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal Vol. 1, p. 69. The relevant
portion of the recommendations is the following:
‘Our recommendatiori is that provision of Sir John Kerr’s Bill should be resorted
by which it was proposed to treat as tenants bargadars who supply the plough,
cattle and agricultural implements. ... We shall recommend that the share
of the crop legally recoverable from them should be one third instead of half
34 Statement by Manik Hazra, 26.12.74.
35 Written statement by Bhowani Sen (member of the Politbureau of the C.P.I.
in 1948-9, Secretary of Bengal Provincial Committee of the C.P.I. in 1943-8),
25.9.41.
Also written statements by Kangsari Haider, Manik Hazra and others.
Dhananjoy Das of Budhakhali has given manuscripts of some tebhaga geet,
tarja, etc.
36 Written statements by Jatin Maity, and also by some local peasants.
 KAKDWIP TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 485

37 Written statements by Bhowani Sen, Abdur Rajjak Khan, Jatin Maity and
Kangsari Haider.
38 The survey was conducted by the present writer.
39 Statement by Jatin Maity, 19.10.71
40 Investigation was made by the present writer.
41 Interview with Kshirode Bera of Haripur. He was one of those who formed the
Kisan Organization, 2.2.74.
42 Written statements by Smt. Kanan Bala Das, a woman leader of Budhakhali
and also by Dhananjoy Das of Budhakhali, 14.10.71.
43 Written statements by Bhowani Sen, Abdur Rajjak Khan, Kangsari Haider
and Jatin Maity; also West Bengal Assembly Proceedings, Official Report,
No. 2 Vol. 72, 10.3.47.
44 Interviews with Sachindra Chandra Ghose, a chakdar of Layalganj and Bhupati
Mohan Biswas, a naib of Budhakhali.
45 From the High Court Judgment Kangsari Halder-\s-the State.
46 Investigation was made by the present writer.
47 Government of West Bengal, West Bengal Budget 1952-3, p. 26.
 25 Social Origins of the Peasant
Insurrection in Telangana (1946-51)

D.N. Dhanagare

The revolt in Telangana and the adjoining districts of the Andhra

delta was one of the two post-war insurrectionary struggles of
peasants in India.1 It was launched by the Communist Party of
India (CPI) as a sequel to the shift in its earlier policy of
collaboration with the Congress giving way to a strategy of en¬
couraging or initiating insurrectionary partisan struggles. The
revolt began in the middle of 1946 and lasted over five years till
it was called off in October 1951. It resulted in land reform legislation
produced some perceptible changes in the agrarian social structure
of the region.
The Telangana peasant revolt is often considered as paradigmatic
and has attracted widespread attention.2 In this paper we shall
examine both its general and specific features. The focus will be
mainly on the structural setting and the class character of the
revolt and on the specific historical conditions that shaped its
character.
To very briefly outline the framework of the study, we define
as ‘peasant’ anyone who earns his livelihood from cultivation of
land; the class of absentee landlords and rentiers are, however,
excluded. Peasantry is not itself an internally homogeneous social
category. The contradictions existing within a peasant or agrarian
society and its internal differentiation and conflicting interests
have been viewed here from the Marxian angle of ‘class’ and ‘class
conflict’. The model of agrarian classes consisting of the ‘rich’,
‘middle’, and ‘poor’ peasants in addition to the landless labourers
is usually drawn from the works of Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. How¬
ever, its application to the Indian and specially to the Telangana

Reproduced from Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS) Delhi, Number 8, 1974.

 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 487

situation calls for caution. First, like all other social classifications,
this model is also regionally specific. Here the extent of property
owned in land becomes a crucial variable. We have considered
peasants owning 25 acres of land (or 10 acres of irrigated land),
or more, as rich, those having an average (in that region) holding
or below as poor and the rest as middle peasants. Secondly, we
also realize that in India a host of social cleavages other than class,
such as caste, kinship or ethnic ties (‘community type bonds’)
cut across the economic class situations. Our use of the term
‘agrarian class’ does not imply that these primordial loyalties
are either non-existent or play no part in class formation. In other
words, it implies Marx’s notion of ‘class in itself’ i.e., unity of
economic interests only and not his notion of ‘class for itself’.
We do not suggest that those who occupy the same class position
are necessarily aware or politically conscious of their collective
interests.

I
Land Control and Social Structure in Telangana under the Nizams
Hyderabad was one of the largest princely states in India before
independence. A political structure from medieval Muslim rule
had been preserved intact till the state merged into the Indian
Federation in 1948 (GOI (i). Smith 1950: 27-8). After the advent
of the British in India, the Nizams in Hyderabad simply retained
in form a semblance of sovereignty which they exercised with the
tacit consent of the representatives of the British Crown. Right
from the troubled days of the Mutiny (1857) through the two world
wars, the Nizams liberally contributed to and ardently supported
the British Empire.
The Hyderabad state covered a substantial part of the southern
plateau in the Indian peninsula. Its total area was some 82,000
square miles; its predominantly Hindu population totalled 18.6
million in 1951. There were three linguistic regions in the state:
(0 Telangana—nine districts of Telugu-speaking people;
(it) Marathwada—five districts of Marathi-speaking people; and
(iii) three Kannada-speaking districts. The first formed a majority of
47 per cent in the total population while the other two regions shared
the rest except the 12 per cent accounted for by Urdu-speaking
Muslim (Qureshi 1947: 30-1).
488 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The agrarian social structure in Hyderabad was like a page out

of feudal history. There were two main types of land tenure:
(0 Khalsa or diwani tenures implied what in some parts of India
is called raiyatwari, that is the peasant proprietary system. About
60 per cent of the total land was held under these tenures in 1941.
The landholders were not called owners per se but were treated
as pattadars (registered occupants). The actual occupants within
each patta were called shikmidars, who had full rights of occupancy
but were not registered. As the pressure on land grew, the
shikmidars, previously the cultivators, began to lease out lands
to subtenants (asami-shikmis) for actual cultivation. The latter
were tenants-at-will having neither legal rights in land nor any
protection against eviction (Narayan 1960: 58-9). As we shall
see later, the process of subinfeudation had steadily penetrated
deep into the system of raiyatwari tenures, particularly from 1920
to 1950.
(//) There were some special tenures called jagirs. Sarf-e-khas
was obviously the most important of them being assigned to the
Nizam himself as Crown lands. Scattered in several parts of the
state, these covered a total area of 8,109 square miles (1,961 villages),
and fetched revenues totalling about 20 million rupees, which met
the Nizam’s household, retinue and other expenses and also partly
met the cost of his army (Khusro 1958: 4-5; Roth 1947: 1-2).
There were various other types of jagirs, besides Sarf-e-khas
but their details are not relevant for our purpose. The jagirdari
system of land administration was the most important feature of
the political organization of Hyderabad. The Nizam created his
own noblemen and bestowed on them a distinguished rank and
order—each with a large grant of land. In return the trusted noble¬
men undertook to maintain an army for the Nizam to rely on in
time of need. These jagirs were thus typically feudal tenures scattered
in different parts of the State, including 6,500 villages and covering
some 25,000 square miles, about a third of the state’s total area
(Qureshi 1947: 112-18). Over the years the number of jagirdars
steadily multiplied. In 1922 there were 1,167 jagirdars in the
Nizam’s dominion; in 1949 their number had gone up to 1,500
(Khusro 1958:4).
The conditions were, however, far more oppressive on the jagir
lands than on the Sarf-e-khas. The civil courts had no jurisdiction
 SOCIAL ORIGIN —PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 489

over the former and therefor? the jagirdars and their agents were
free to extort from the actual cultivators a variety of illegal taxes
and thus to fleece them. The conditions remained practically
unchanged until the jagirdari system was abolished in 1949 (Khusro
1958: 5).
The khalsa land produced no better alternative. On such lands,
deshmukhs and deshpandes were the hereditary collectors of revenue
for groups of villages. As the system of direct collections was
introduced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these
intermediaries were granted vatans (annuities) based on a percentage
of the past collections. This only propped up their position in the
agrarian hierarchy. Very often the deshmukh landlord—a figure
roughly half-way between the bureaucratic official and the feudal
seigneur—himself became the newly appointed village revenue
official or had at least an access to land records. His influence thus
permitted him to grab lands by fraud which, in countless instances,
reduced the actual cultivator to the status of a tenant-at-will or
a landless labourer.
Nowhere in Hyderabad was the feudal exploitation of the
peasantry more intense than it was in the Telangana districts.3
Here some of the biggest landlords, whether jagirdars or deshmukhs,
owned thousands of acres of land each. Such concentration of land
ownership was more pronounced in Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar,
and Warangal districts than elsewhere (Sundarayya 1972a: 9-18).
Significantly, it was this region which was the locus of the peasant
insurrection in 1946-51.
In the local idiom these powerful jagirdars and deshmukhs
were called durra (also spelled as dora), meaning ‘sir’, ‘master’
or ‘lord of the village’. A durra, often a combination of landlord,
moneylender, and village official, traditionally enjoyed several
privileges including the services of occupational castes in return
for some payments either in cash or in kind. But he tended to
exact these services free owing to his power and position (Gray
1970: 119-20). Such exactions had become somewhat legitimized
by what was known as the vetti system under which a landlord could
force a familyNfrom among his customary retainers to cultivate
his land and to do one job or the other—whether domestic, agri¬
cultural or official—as an obligation to the master. The vetti
exactions were thus a symbol of the dominance of landlords in
490 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Telangana. Most of the agricultural labourers, on whom the vetti

obligations fell, were from the lower and untouchable castes of
Malas and Madigas (Sundarayya 1972a: 12-4).
Like the vetti, the system of bhagela serfdom was prevalent in
Warangal and Nalgonda districts. Similar to the Pannaiyals of
Tanjore or the Dublas of Gujarat, the bhagelas, drawn mostly
from aboriginal tribes, were customary retainers tied to their
masters by debt. Working as domestic or menial labourers, they
could never repay the debts and hence had to work for their masters
generation after generation on a pittance. Legislation passed in
1936 to limit and curb bhagela serfdom had remained largely
ineffective (Qureshi 1947: 72-3). It seems that the vetti and bhagela
arrangements were perversions of the traditional Hindu jajmani
system which was based on the principle of reciprocal exchanges.
Its Telangana variant was highly exploitative, being based on the
economic power wielded by those jajmans, like durras, who owned
land.
Among the substantial landowners and pattadars in Telangana
districts, Brahmins were once predominant. With the rise of the
Reddis and Kammas—the two notable castes of peasant proprietors
—the influence of Brahmins as a landowning caste declined, al¬
though in the field of politics they continued to be powerful.
Komtis, a caste of traders and moneylenders, had considerable
influence on the economic life in the countryside. From the turn
of the century, however, Marwadi sahukars gradually penetrated
rural Telangana and established their ascendancy as moneylenders
although the Komtis still remained on the scene as traders, shop¬
keepers, and merchants. The bulk of the rural masses—poor
peasants, unprotected tenants, share-croppers, and agricultural
labourers—came either from lower untouchable castes, such as
the Malas and Madigas,4 or from tribal groups like the Hill Reddis,
Chenchus, Koyas, Lambadis, and Banjaras.5 These tribal com¬
munities had longstanding grievances against the government
on account of its taxes and levies, against moneylenders and revenue
officials who usurped their lands, and also against private contrac¬
tors who exploited the tribal labourers in the forestworks, on
construction sites, or in mines and collieries (Furer-Haimendorf
1945:5-7,39-46, 66-75).
Two important aspects of the agrarian economy of an otherwise
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 491

backward region like Telangana must be noted here. First, the

development of irrigation facilities and cultivation of commercial
crop was taking place since the late nineteenth century. The main
commercial crops of Telangana—ground-nuts, tobacco, and castor-
seeds—were grown in Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Karimnagar,
and Warangal districts. Both the total acreage and the produce
of commercial crops increased steadily and after 1925 commercial
farming assumed an increasingly greater importance in the regional
economy (Narayan 1960: 27-41). Secondly, the development of
commercial farming was not, however, matched by any correspond¬
ing growth of towns, of industrial enterprise, and markets, nor
even of transport and communication facilities. Consequently,
the cultivators had to depend almost entirely on urban money¬
lenders, traders, merchants, and businessmen who controlled
the few and highly centralized markets in Telangana for the sale
of their produce. Local retailers, agents, and village sahukars
helped the urban commercial interests in securing the produce
from the cultivators and thus managed to have a share in the
profits of the marketing enterprise.
Land alienation increased considerably between 1910 and 1940,
particularly during the economic depression, when much land,
previously owned by tribal peasants, passed into the hands of non¬
cultivating urban interests, mostly Brahmins, Marwadis, Komtis,
and Muslims (Furer-Haimendorf, 1945: 41 -3).,Economic investiga¬
tions carried out in 1928-30 showed that in Warangal district
alone nine per cent of the total land and.25 per cent of the irrigated
land had changed hands. Most of the land, thus transferred went
either to big landlords and deshmukhs or to sahukars (from the
Marwadi and Maratha castes), traders and non-cultivating
pattadars who dominated the economic life of the district (Iyengar
1930: I, 34).
As a result of the growing land alienation many actual occupants
or cultivators were being reduced to the status of tenants-at-will,
sharecroppers or landless labourers. This trend dominated till
1930 or so. Thereafter, the proportion of non-cultivating occupants
and of cultivators of land, wholly or mainly unowned, began to
decline. Owner-cultivators and agricultural labourers, on the
contrary, steadily increased in number in Hyderabad state as a
whole. Their proportions in 1951 were 61 and 25 per cent respectively
492 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

(for details see Narayan 1960: 10). These shifts in the agrarian
class structure point to the gradual development of the rich peasant
sector of the agrarian economy.
Significantly, the decline of the number of non-cultivating
occupants and the increase in the number of cultivating owners
and landless labourers were more marked in the Telangana districts,
particularly in Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, and
Warangal (Iyengar 1951: 37).
The rise of the ‘rich-peasant’ sector, however, did not supplant
the ‘landlord-tenant’ sector of the rural economy completely.6
The absentee landlords were very much there though their number
was declining after 1930. Nor did it signify any fundamental change
in the modes and relations of production. In fact, where rich
pattadars held holdings too large to manage, they tended to keep
a certain amount of irrigated land to be cultivated with the help
of hired labourer and turned over most of their dry lands either
to bhagela serfs or to tenant cultivators on very high produce
rents. (Bedford 1967: 126-7, 150-52).
What was happening on the agrarian scene in Telangana from
the last quarter of the nineteenth century till 1930 or so could
be summed up thus: the system of subsistence agriculture had
undergone a gradual transformation giving way to the new market
or cash economy, without any corresponding change in the social
arrangements on land. The modes of production and exchange
remained pre-capitalist or semi-feudal and emerged as the major
source of discontent among the poor peasantry. During the eco¬
nomic depression (1929-34) even the well-to-do cultivators, sub¬
stantial pattadars or rich peasants, were badly affected owing
to the fall in whosesale prices. Although the prices recovered
slightly between 1936 and 1940, they were not even half as high
as the price level of 1922. Throughout the 1930s, therefore, the cash
incomes of all those cultivators who produced for the market
fell considerably. The price-trends strengthened the position of
moneylenders and traders who tightened their grip on indebted small
pattadars and tenants. A committee appointed in 1939 for investi¬
gating the status and conditions of tenants in the State recommended
a minimum tenurial security but without any results till 1945.
Fearing accrual of tenants’ occupancy rights on their lands, the
landlords had resorted to large-scale evictions of tenants. A Tenancy
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 493

Act, passed in 1945, remained practically a defunct piece of legisla¬

tion (R.V. Rao, 1950: 618) which only further aggravated the
agrarian discontent.
The number of landless labourers in Hyderabad increased
phenomenally in the first half of this century. The first Agricultural
Labour Enquiry (1951-2) estimated that over 42 per cent of the
rural population of Hyderabad was engaged in agricultural labour
(19.5 per cent with and 22.6 per cent of them without land) (GOI,
(vi): 56 and (vii), I-A: d-e). The proportion of agricultural labourers
was much lower in 1929-30 when the first rural economic enquiries
were conducted in some of the districts of Hyderabad state (Bedford
1967:123). The landless labourers did not constitute a homogeneous
class. Not only was their caste and ethnic composition complex,
but also several occupational categories such as rural artisans,
craftsmen, and tenants-at-will were swelling their ranks. Widespread
seasonal unemployment and acute competition for work kept the
agricultural wages low in Telangana. Towards the end of the Second
World War food prices, which increased faster than the wage rates,
affected the conditions of landless labourers adversely and augment-
.ed their distress further (Iyengar 1951: 216-17).

II

Political Development in Hyderabad and Mobilization of the Peasan¬

try in Telangana from 1936 to 1946
The despotic rule of the Nizam permitted neither political free¬
dom nor any representative institutions. Harassment of suspected
political activists, detention of leaders and potential agitators
were so common forms of repression that a straightforward
political movement was almost ruled out in the state till 1930 or
so. However, after 1920 several members of the intelligentsia and
liberal professional class in Hyderabad, inspired by the Indian
national movement, formed three different cultural-literary forums,
one each for the three linguistic regions of the State. The Andhra
Conference, which operated in the Telangana districts, was set up
in 1928 and began to mobilize public opinion on issues like adminis¬
trative and constitutional reforms, schools, civil liberties, recruit¬
ment to services, etc., reflecting partly the regional economic and
494 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

political aspirations and partly the urban middle class and elitist
charactar of the new political commotion (Sundarayya 1972a:
18-19).
Congressmen and their sympathizers operated chiefly through
the three ‘mask organizations’. Political developments in India in the
thirties prepared the background for a nascent movement for
constitutional reforms in Hyderabad also where the political
conditions were being slightly liberalized. The Hyderabad unit
of the Congress started a satyagraha in 1938 for political reforms.
But the agitation came to be dominated by the Arya Samaj and
the Hindu Mahasabha and the Congress, acting on Gandhi’s
advice, abandoned it to lessen political confusion (GOI, (iii) -a
and -b: 1-4; Tirth 1967: 93-107). The rise of the Hindu nationalist
opinion was clearly a reaction to the growing dominance of the
Majlis Ittehad-ul-Musalmin—a communal organization of Hydera¬
bad Muslims committed to the idea of Muslim supremacy—in
the State’s politics (Wright, Jr. 1963: 234-43).
During the Second World War, the Andhra Conference expanded
its network, in the Telangana villages by taking an active interest
in agrarian problems such as vetti labour. Just across the border,
in the Andhra delta districts of the Madras Presidency, a political
movement for unification of all Telugu-speaking regions into a
separate Vishalandhra was launched by the Andhra Mahasabha.
In the Telangana region the branches of Andhra Conference and
Andhra Mahasabha functioned in close collaboration (Bedford
1967: 196-97). Following the satyagraha the Congress was banned
in 1938, and so was the CPI, with the result that the Andhra Con¬
ference and the Andhra Mahasabha had the entire field of politics
wide open for their activities.
The communists arrived on the Telangana scene only during the
latter half of the war period. They had been active in the delta
districts since 1934 when the Andhra CP was established. The
party drew its strength from the famous caste of Kammas-well-
to-do peasant proprietors—for whom other political alternatives
did not exist as their archrivals—Brahmins and Reddys—dominat¬
ed the Congress. (Harrison 1956: 378-404). Between 1928 and
1933, Professor N.G. Ranga had laid down a framework of regional
level peasant organizations which, later in 1936, were affiliated
to the All India Kisan Sabha, CPI’s front organization. This,
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 495

for the CPI, was the period of the ‘United Front’ strategy which
made strange political alliances possible and helped it to infiltrate
the Congress and the Congress Socialist Party and to capture a
host of peasant organizations all over India, including those in the
Andhra delta. Consequently the Indian Peasant Institute, started
by Ranga at Nidubrolu, imperceptibly turned into a training centre
for CPI cadres (Ranga 1949: 76). By 1940 the communists were
firmly entrenched in the Andhra delta politics. During the ban
(1940-2) they operated through ‘front’ organizations like the
Kisan Sabha, Andhra Mahasabha, and so on. But the rich Kamma
Kulaks formed the class base of the Andhra CP and provided the
party with funds and workers (Harrison 1962: 204-10).
The growing influence of the communists in the delta naturally
had its spill-over in the adjoining Telangana region; this was visible
in the changing complexion of the leadership and of the workers
of the Andhra Conference. Some of the newly emerging leaders
had earlier participated in the civil disobedience movement (1930-
2) and later in the Hyderabad satyagraha (1938). But they could
no longer look to the Gandhian Congress for ideological orientation
and guidance as the Congress itself eschewed mass movements
and refrained from committing itself to a definite economic and
political programme. The young radical elements within the Andhra
Conference therefore turned to communism and converted the
cultural forum into a mass militant organization—a united front
of the youth, peasants, middle classes, and workers—against the
Nizam's government (Sundarayya 1972a: 19-20).
Economic conditions of the different strata of Telangana peasan¬
try had deteriorated, first due to the depression and later due to
the war. The peasant groaned under the tyranny of landlords,
deshmukhs, and sahukars, an unsympathetic police force and an
unfair revenue, judicial, administrative machinery that added misery
to his poverty. Any organization espousing his cause could have
won his gratitude and support. Through the Andhra Conference
young communists voiced the peasant’s grievances, paid more
and more attention to the agrarian problems in Telangana, and
mobilized opinion in favour of abolition of landlordism and the
oppressive vetti system.7 But before 1940 the Andhra Conference
had done practically no work to build a peasant organizaMon as
such. Students, leaving college, were being recruited to the party
-Mr Peasant 5TWGOB > >Ct '

meres rm re orgimzatioml ter* rev of me C reference ire tie

Afmisercu mil . —I **seomn&izec i- srere tiienii me tcccerite
rciicmms TTae immm ruetemsm mu: me rmnenrsts • octlxRd
re ne Cocrererce iimfrcn ~~eee retie rr reel re tie rural nesses
refere men Pet ifer me Go-ennecc of lien refer me rue oc
re CPI n -1. me cmHKts *ere iirie to ruse ne rmir-ariog
elements ne esmesi tier iroic on ne Aieliri Cooeerenct ne
tie NLiCasafeha. Tie process '•us cctnpiete wiem it tie Pcocgrr
«f Ae Avia M^bbUl no raag oommkes. Ram
Sirxaa Fete r~c Peeen f etu F.eee>. **ere electee is me Prex-
ten: ne Secretin tescemn Snem>-yi 1 -~Te Pl-I. c
Tie iinni secerns me eennes of me corr.numscs no_eee
• xcD.x ot’ -en_ rre’-men of’ rjot-reecmg me oc’ e'-erre of
:ermcx rrmoc m mex revenues me rents, rrcimiicc of
xcapiiK) pern ms of euimtxe tererex me so oil «tlx
:mn_ imictec me rccr peasmttx :rru-cx me meerers jo me
Aiemri Tecrerence. AT me srrre. ml -if e*en. me rrermuK.scs
me icc cccte ret teen iximsc me Vrii 1 mrrerme me. icc
me men rentes rreeee i rieteT xrmm.ie of’ mstrr'natcc of
me to me meless atato *i ■!■ i > ji ■ - Cm ” Per me
rrr-grsi err mere tie ‘Grow VIor FrceT me mms-
etroo of me '•(mm mosses m:o Term- me mem mstmnmec m
me Tmmmmu roumm-s.ee merer tee to re men: preeccuranons
Scesrecr. -r~ 35*-—f Between. —- me —- me Aiemri
mot—ri:r;sr> rcxnnsc mtm orcfererces of me AH. metu l<_xn
Serr.i t - mm — - ft. T.rm • r remit ;c Tmm
—: me Pm -I'.ner $ Fcdcrattoa f ilrii' ~ —* trimi
Aiemri me mmee of me CPI Lfaweteg. e mese nnrxascc
■tenures cone ict 50 .er* in n rtneni m i nem roCofctae m
me oourtm* see me m icc mti me peesnn- mo 1 mom : cm-
rrrmimmec-
Peneen -— me —: me motmtmst icnntes me sem-e
fit me •tee n Nalgocda irstmet- err-ex- re t menus -times
n me Eitoapr. Sen-men Immien Nmi'teem me Htzanjpr
tavern: Sccc ifer mmrmrmi me Aierni Mneseice me me
Amemm CoOdcar. me tcmmurmsci owed mem nenkrihp
fees so is m in-* trie :m ten «f ir.c_:xi e toners. poor
zmrmci itrd srml _mee : iters meser to mem idmoc< me trt-
trmttre Pie effort rme sme m -teeres Apart mtn: Nmptcem
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 497

the Andhra Conference gained considerable ground in Warangal

and Karimnagar districts. .All over Andhra and Telangana member¬
ship enrolment figures for all the CPI-led organizations showed
remarkable improvement (Harrison 1960: 222).
As in Andhra, the leading communists in Telangana were, by
and large, wealthy landholders, pattadars of substantial holdings,
and men of some hereditary standing in their villages and talukas.
Both Ravi Narayan Reddy and B. Vella Reddy, referred to earlier,
were prominent landlords. D. Venkateshwar Rao. leader of the
Suryapet taluka. could be cited as yet another example. Of course,
not all the Telangana communists were landholders. Some, like
Dr Raj Bahadur Gaur and Nlukaddam Mohiuddin, came from
the urban intelligentsia (Bedford 1967: 201-2). They had shown
some generosity toward poorer sections of the peasantry whom,
in fact, they hired either as tenants on temporary leases or as
agricultural labourers. Hence both in .Andhra and in Telangana
the class interests of the leading communists lay in promoting
a class alliance betw een the rich and small holders, tenant cultivators
and the landless labourers against those isolated landlords and
rich landholders who were either inconsiderate to their tenant-
cultivators or paid poor wages to their labourers. Such a class
alliance remained the central theme and concern of the Telangana
communists as was evident in their radical agrarian demands made
subsequently.
.Another issue concerning food scarcity had arisen in 1946.
The shortage of food w as partly the result of the growing cultivation
of commercial or cash crops. Until the war ended no measure
whatsoever w as taken to curb the extent of commercial crop pro¬
duction (Qureshi 1947: 284-94). This resulted in high consumer
prices and in an acute food shortage. The government's bid to resolve
the food crisis by rationing and by procuring foodgrains through
a compulsory levy only aggravated the general agrarian discontent
(Sundarayya 1972a : 304-5). Procurement, which affected mainly
the rich and middle peasants, was, in effect, an invitation to the
police and officials to resort to fraud, corruption, and favouritism.
In collusion with them, many landlords evaded the compulsory
levy, hoarded foodgrains. and profited from the rising prices (Bed¬
ford 1967: 210-11). The worst affected were the poor peasants and
landless labourers. Those rich and middle peasants who were
498 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

being subjected to harassment under the procurement Levy regula¬

tion had every reason to make common cause with the poor whose
wages did not increase at the same rate as prices. A stage was thus
set for a class alliance and spontaneous peasant upsurge in early
1946 in Telangana. The agrarian social structure was certainly
conducive to an insurrectionary movement, but the post-war
political developments and economic crisis provided an impetus
to a sustained peasant revolt that lasted nearly five years.

Ill

The Beginning and Growth of the Telangana Insurrection: July

1946 to September 1948
The communist effort to build strong party bases yielded good
results in Nalgonda and Warangal districts which were their strong¬
holds. Between 1942 and 1946 their influence among poor peasants,
tenant-cultivators, and landless labourers grew steadily. In certain
parts of these districts the Nizam’s writ had virtually ceased to run
at the beginning of 1946. The officials as well as the landlords who
did not pay ‘protection money’ were afraid of visiting those areas
of their jurisdictions or estates where the communists had establish¬
ed strongholds (Zinkin 1962: 62). The presence of a number of
landlords owning large estates extending over thousands of acres
of land had facilitated the expansion of communism in this area
(Sundarayya 1972a: 15).
In the post-war crisis, the local branches of the Andhra Con¬
ference, called sanghams, launched village level struggles for better
wages for labourers and against the vetti labour, illegal exactions,
evictions and also against the newly imposed grain levy. These
struggles were located mostly in the Nalgonda district on the estates
of some of the most notorious landlords and deshmukhs. Militant
action in this early insurgence included a few isolated instances of
forcible seizure of the lands of those landlords who had evicted
some Lambadi (tribal) tenant-cultivators and also involved non-
compliance of the demands of vetti labour, illegal taxes, and the
procurement levy. The extent of the peasants’ spontaneous action
did not always carry the approval of sangham leaders. The landlords
either fled to safety, resorted to litigation, or summoned their own
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 499

goondas and the police to deal with the rebellious peasants. Many
pitched battles occurred between the two sides (Sundarayya 1972a:
28-35).
One such major incident occurred in July 1946 when over a
thousand peasants, armed with lathis and slings, took out a pro¬
cession in a village that formed part of Vishnur Deshmukh’s estate.
The hired goondas of the landlord fired at the procession and killed
Doddi Komarayya, the village sangham leader and injured a few
others. The procession, now turned into an angry crowd, went to
the landlord’s house which was about to be set on fire when the
police arrived and dispersed it. Komarayya’s martyrdom sparked
off the conflagration and thus marked the beginning of the Telan-
gana insurrection (Sundarayya 1972b: 11-12).
It is significent that by the end of July 1946 peasant resistance
and militant action against landlords, deshmukhs, and village
officials spread to some 300 to 400 villages (in Nalgonda, Warangal,
and Khammam districts) which, the communists claimed, were
under their control (Sundarayya 1972a: 39). The CPI press launched
a massive propaganda campaign, voiced the demands of the
Telangana peasantry, and exposed the oppression and brutalities.8
The propaganda was further intensified after October 1946 when
the Andhra Conference was banned by the Nizam’s government.
Several hundred CPI workers were arrested and more police
reinforcements sent to the troubled areas. But so determined was
the resistance that the landlords and deshmukhs found it difficult
to get the villagers to perform vetti; small holders did not hand
over a part of their paddy crop as required under the procurement
levy regulation and foiled all the coercive attempts of village
officials; and landless labourers and evicted tenants sat tight on
the lands they seized (Bedford 1967: 213-22). In all, some 156 cases
of assault were registered by the police against peasants, and some
10 rebels in.four separate incidents of police-peasant battles were
killed by the end of 1946 (Sundarayya 1972a: 38).
The salient features of the insurrection in its initial phase could
be summed up thus: large masses of peasants spontaneously parti¬
cipated in the struggles directed against the government, landlords
and deshmukhs and their agents. The insurgents had neither firearms
nor the training required to use them. A few volunteer groups had
come into existence. They were not well-organized guerrilla squads
500 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

as such, but were rather extempore formations in response to the

situation. Initially, therefore, the revolt was spasmodic. The
communist or Andhra Conference sanghams and dalams (batches)
acted as morale boosters for the peasant action but beyond that,
there is little evidence to suggest that they had succeeded in channel¬
ling the spontaneous upsurge into systematically planned offensives.
The emphasis in the slogans being on a variety of agrarian matters,
already referred to, all the strata, whether rich and small pattadars,
cultivating tenants or landless labourers, were united. The peasant
militancy till the end of 1946 had not turned into a cataclysm but
whatever violence occurred in the process of resistance it was the
doing of poor peasants, including the tribal Lambadi elements.
(Sundarayya 1972a: passim). Although a few isolated areas of
Warangal, Karimnagar, and Khammam districts were under the
rebels’ influence, in general the stage on which the first scenes in
the insurrectionary drama were acted was undoubtedly Nalgonda
district, mainly the Suryapet and Jangaon talukas.
Mere agrarian slogans of purely local relevance were not enough
for the Telangana communists. Major events and constitutional
developments in 1946-7 were shaping the political future of
India, whereas the destiny and future status of Hyderabad, like
all other princely states of the subcontinent, hung in suspense.
As mentioned earlier, until 1946 or so the communists did not
come out openly against the Nizam’s autocracy and feudal political
structure, but any further silence on such vital issues would have
only alienated them from the masses. Inside Hyderabad the people
were being swept by the new tides of nationalism and political
freedom that gathered momentum with the announcement in
February 1947 regarding the transfer of power in India. But the
British gave the princely states an option between remaining
autonomous and joining either India or Pakistan. On the eve of
independence all the princely states, except Hyderabad, Jungadh,
and Kashmir, had exercised the option (Menon 1956).
In Hyderabad the Nizam, the Muslim nobility, and also the
Majlis-i-Ittehad, which rallied the bulk of the ruling minority,
wanted to preserve the state’s autonomy. The Hindu majority,
however, wanted its merger with India so that they could enjoy
political freedom and participate in the processes of self-govern¬
ment. The parleys that took place between the Nizam’s government
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 501

and the Indian government both before and after the transfer of
power reflected the conflicting aspirations of the powerless majority
and the ruling minority of the state. Communal propaganda and
the fanaticism of the Ittehad, and to a certain extent of the Arya
Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha, led to a sudden deterioration
of the communal situation which was at its lowest ebb when a
‘Standstill’ Agreement was signed in August 1947 by the Hydera¬
bad and Indian governments (Menon 1956: 319-29).
As the above political developments were taking place, the
communists aligned with the anti-Nizam and pro-merger forces
including the Congress, the only known, if not well-organized,
body of the nationalist opinion in the state. The Congress embarked
on a satyagraha to seek the merger of Hyderabad. The communists,
despite their inherent dislike for Gandhian agitational methods,
had to go along, but, perhaps, they never anticipated that the
state’s accession to India would ever become a reality.9 Their
involvement in the peaceful and non-violent satyagrah caused
them considerable embarrassment in view of the fact that they
had already launched the peasant insurrection on the Telangana
front. The setback to the communists due to the alliance with the
Congress was perhaps^ more 'than psychological. In course of
the satyagraha, the Congress and communist workers began to
cut down toddy trees partly as a symbolic defiance of the Nizam’s
government, for whom the trees were an important source of
excise revenue, and partly as propaganda against toddy drinking
which the Gandhian ethic prohibited.10 The communists, how¬
ever, later realized that by cutting down toddy trees they were
depriving a great many active members of their own dalams and
sanghams of their livelihood. Fearing a withdrawal of their support
to the insurrection the communists soon dissociated from the
satyagraha and the alliance with the Congress (Sundarayya 1972a:
57). A radical wing of the Congress led by Swami Tirth was, in
fact, drawing closer to the communists and their insurrectionary
tactics, but the political cross-pressures within the Congress pre¬
vented him from cultivating the relationship any further. Con¬
sequently, the alliance practically ceased to operate in January
1948 (Tirth 1967: 168, 196-7).
The growing militancy and power of the Majlis Ittehad were
evident in the activities of the Razakars, a para-military voluntary
502 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

force organized by Kasim Razvi, the leader of the Ittehad. In

January 1948 more than 30,000 Razakars were enrolled and by
August 1948 their number was about 100,000 (GOI, (iii), c: 1 and
d: 31). As the peasant insurrection was spreading in rural Telangana,
the Nizam’s government sent batches of Razakars, sometimes
with, but many a time without, any police or army, in order to deal
with the recalcitrants and to protect the frontier as well as the dis¬
tressed landlords and officials. But the Nizam’s authority was too
nominal to check the Razakar squads in action. They raided* and
plundered the troubled villages, arrested or killed suspected and
potential agitators, terrorized the innocent, and also abducted
women as part of the campaign of punitive measures aginst the
turbulent villages all over Hyderabad, but particularly in Telangana
where the rural mass of peasantry was coming under the communist
influence. (GOI, (iii), d: 60-77). Having neither will nor ability
to restrain the terroristst trio—Ittehad, Razakars, and the police—
that had come to govern the day-to-day affairs in the state, the
Nizam and his government had no course open but to endorse
their operations and to support them morally and materially
(Menon 1956: 319-29, 341-56). This epitomizes the conditions of
political instability and near-anarchy in Hyderbad throughout the
first eight months of 1948.
The authority crisis helped the communists in Telangana to
spread the insurrection and to set up village republics (‘soviets’)
which functioned as parallel governments in the areas under their
control. Groups of volunteers were organized to ensure the internal
security of a village, or group of villages, and to act as fighting
squads when the Razakars and/or the police raided. Tired of the
atrocities the villagers joined these groups (dalams) enthusiastically
in the communist stronghold districts of Nalgonda, Warangal,
and Khammam. By April 1948 the communists were able to
organize six ‘area-squads’ (each with 20 fighters), and 50 to 60
‘village squads’ (Sundarayya 1972a: 90). Consequently the insurrec¬
tion expanded territorially. Till the Government of India resorted
to the ‘Police Action’ in Hyderabad, the armed resistance of peasants
was carried to almost all the parts of Nalgonda, Warangal, and
Khammam districts. In about 4,000 villages a parallel administration
was established by the communists (C.R. Rao 1972: 14-5). Parts
of Adilabad, Karimnagar, and Medak districts, where the Tirth
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 503

group of the Congress had set up some bases during the alliance,
were captured by the Andhra Conference/communist dalams
(Bedford 1967:263). In the same period when the Razakar terrorism
was at its peak the Telangana armed insurrection also turned both
grimmer and more effective.
Besides the growing anarchy and political crisis, other factors
also contributed to the strength and spread of the insurrection.
First, in the months of February-March 1948 the Second Congress
of the CPI ratified a new ‘left’ policy while supplanting the ‘United
Front’ strategy that the party had followed for well over a decade.
The shift only conformed to the ‘Zhdanov line’, newly prescribed
by the International Communist movement, which decreed un¬
equivocal guerrilla offensives throughout Asia. Under the dis¬
pensations of the new radical left revolutionary policy, the CPI’s
attack was no longer concentrated on imperialism alone, but was
diffused to cover all the manifestations of the power of the
bourgeoisie and landed aristocracy. The new leader—B.T.
Ranadive, who replaced P.C. Joshi, the chief architect of the
‘United Front’ policy—now came out strongly in support of
every revolutionary upsurge and popular struggle (Kautsky 1956:
46-85). With the swing from the ‘right’ to the ‘left’ strategy also
came an ideological justification for and a legitimization of the
Telangana insurrection which had commenced a year and a half
earlier. Secondly, the deteriorating law and order situation was
conducive to undetected crossing of the borders. The Telangana
and Andhra communists seized the opportunity, set up revolu¬
tionary headquarters in Mungala estate, an enclave of the Hydera¬
bad State surrounded by the territory of the Krishna district
(Madras Presidency), and smuggled in and out arms, funds,
propaganda literature, and, above all, workers. Without this
activity the massive expansion of the insurrection might not have
been possible. Thus, the Andhra ‘delta’ had become the supply
base of the peasant struggle in Telangana (Harrison 1956: 390-91;
C.R. Rao 1972: 12). Thirdly, gram-rajyams (‘village soviets’) set
up by the rebels, functioned very efficiently; the lands, seized
forcibly, were distributed among the land-hungry agricultural
labourers and also among evicted tenants. Although the land
distribution work was not free from arbitrariness and practical
problems, it certainly helped to build the morale of the rebels
504 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and the popular image of the revolt itself. The guerrilla squads
protected the villages under their control whereas the village
samitis settled disputes and coordinated activities at the local
level. The sanghams also discouraged, and later even prohibited,
the primitive forms of torture and retribution. By the end of August
1948 about 10,000 peasants, students, and party workers actively
participated in the village squads and some 2,000 in the special
mobile guerrilla squads (Sundarayya 1972a: 60, 65, 91-3).11
Yet another factor in the growth of the insurrection till August
1948 was that in May the Hyderabad government lifted the ban
on the CP. The gesture aroused suspicion in the minds of many
that the CPI had secretely come to terms with the Nizam, revoking
its earlier policy to work for the liquidation of his autocratic rule
and for merger of the state with the Indian Union (GOI, (v): 2-3).
Perhaps a section of the Telangana CP, particularly the City
Committee of Hyderabad headed by Gaur, Mahendra and others,
did come to some understanding with the Nizam’s government
when it issued a press statement denouncing the Indian government
as 'pro-landlord and pro-bourgeoisie' and proclaimed its resolve
to fight against all those forces which were then working for Hydera¬
bad’s integration with India. But this reconciliation with the Nizam
by some communists had neither the concurrence of the Telangana
insurgents, nor of the Andhra CP under whom the Telangana
leaders were technically operating (Sundrayya 1972a: 179). It is
also significant in this context that the ban was not reimposed
(Bedford 1967: 277), a fact which has gone unnoticed in all the
accounts of the insurrection prepared recently by those communist
leaders who were directly or indirectly involved in conducting
the insurrection. Nevertheless, it seems reasonably clear that the
removal of the ban facilitated the work of securing arms and
ammunition, from whatever sources possible which the squads
and dalams needed badly if they were to hold on to their positions
in the face of a serious offensive by a well-trained superior army.

IV
The Decline of the Insurrection
On 13 September 1948 the Indian army marched into Hyderabad
and within less than a week the Nizam’s representatives surrendered.
The Nizam outlawed and banned the Razakars and lifted the ban
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 505

on the State Congress. On India’s part the ‘Police Action’ was

taken to put an end to the conditions of anarchy within the state
and to ensure the internal security of the neighbouring Indian
territory. The ‘Police Action’ was, therefore, unsavoury but
essential (Menon 1956: 341-82). However, it became apparent
later that the Indian government’s concern over the undemocratic
feudal regime of the Nizam and over the Razakars’ terrorism
was really secondary to their fears of the Telangana peasants’
insurrection and of the possibility of a communist capture of
power right in the heart of the Indian territory. The apprehension
was not expressed openly until February 1949 (GOI, (iv), 1-71),
but it is more than likely that it contributed to the Indian govern¬
ment’s intervention far more than any other consideration.12
As the Indian army was advancing and rounding up the Razakars,
the communist dalams on the Telangana front acquired a large
amount of arms and ammunition abandoned by the latter (Menon
1956: 384). This naturally strengthened the rebels’ position but
only for a while. Once the Razakars were overpowered, and a
military administration set up, the offensive was immediately
directed at the peasant rebels in the troubled districts of Telangana.
Describing the extent of the repression Sundarayya (1972a: 199)
writes: ‘In more than 2,000 villages of Nalgonda, Warangal,
Karimnagar, Khammam and Hyderabad districts ... 300,000
people were tortured, about 50,000 were arrested and kept in
[detention] camps for a few days to a few months. More than 5,000
were imprisoned for years’.
Fighting with the Indian army over 2,000 peasants, and party
workers, were killed. By July 1950 the number of communists
and active participants detained had reached 10,000 (Pritt 1950:
319-20). This should suffice as an index of the degree of intensity
of the insurrection.13
The army action had successfully liberated Hyderabad and,
at least apparently, fulfilled the political aspirations of the people
by ending the feudal and anachronistic reign of the Nizam and
by paving the way for the state’s integration in the Indian Union.
The people welcomed the troops enthusiastically and their attitude
to the Telangana insurrection changed drastically. The Telangana
revolt was no longer a liberation struggle but became mainly the
peasants’ partisan struggle (Sundarayya 1972a: 425). Similarly,
506 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

in less than a year after the Indian military took over the administra¬
tion of Hyderabad, it issued the Jagir Abolition Regulation (August,
1949) and appointed an Agrarian Enquiry Committee to recommend
a comprehensive land-reform legislation. These seemingly progres¬
sive measures were taken promptly but primarily with the intention
of neutralizing the communist influence among the rural masses
(Menon 1956: 385, Khusro 1958: 12-13).
September 1948 to October 1951 (when the insurrection was
called off) was essentially the phase of decline but somewhat
paradoxically it was also the most significant phase since it revealed
the strength and the weakness of the Telangana revolt.
Who were the principal participants in the Telangana insur¬
rection? What were the social origins of the squad leaders, party
workers, and the men who fought? Why did they resist at all?
Was it the question of their immediate grievances and privations
that stirred the peasantry into the violent resistance or was it the
broader and ultimate issue (of radically transforming the system)
that motivated the rebels? Finally, why is it that, after a sustained
fight for nearly five years, the withdrawal of the struggle became
indispensable? These are some of the questions which we shall
try to answer, although some of the answers that follow must
be treated as tentative in the absence of ampler and still more
authentic source material than has been available to us.
It seems reasonably certain that the Telangana revolt was not
staged by peasants of a single agrarian stratum. Its adherents had
a mixed class character (Harrison 1956: 390). As mentioned earlier,
the leading communists of the Andhra delta and Telangana were
well-to-do peasants and came from either the Kamma or the Reddy
caste of peasant proprietors.14 It was, therefore, basic to the
interests of rich peasants, who dominated the party, that all other
subordinate agrarian classes, such as the small holders (middle
peasants) and the tenants and sharecroppers (poor peasants),
quite as much as the landless labourers, formed an alliance and
launched a combined offensive against the handful of big absentee
landlords whose power and dominance could not be threatened
otherwise. The multiple grievances of all the sections of the peasantry
during the post-war economic crisis had opened up the possibility
of such an alliance.
From the beginning of 1946 the communists began a three-
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 507

pronged attack on the enemies of the peasants: first, they wanted

to put an end to the vetti and demanded wage increases. Second,
they condemned the large-scale eviction of tenants and demanded
both abolition of landlordism and a moratorium on all debts.
Third, the communists adopted a dual policy on the question of
‘the procurement of grain through compulsory levy’. On the one
hand, they deplored the landlords’ and deshmukhs’ evasion of
the levy regulation and their hoarding and profiteering. On the
other hand, rich peasants, well-to-do and small holders, who sup¬
ported the party, were encouraged to withhold the grain-levy
(Sundarayya 1972a: 54-59). Such a three-fold appeal alone could
hold the diverse agrarian class interests together. The alliance was
certainly not free from conflicting interests or cross-pressures.
For example, the demand for increased wages was bound to affect
the well-to-do peasants whose primary interests lay in keeping the
wage level down and avoiding the grain levy. But those rich peasants
who were with the party and had sympathetically met the demands
of their sharecroppers or labourers were treated as ‘neutralized’
and their lands and paddy stocks went unscathed (Harrison
1956: 391).
As the insurrection developed, the poor peasants (particularly
the tenants and sharecroppers) and the landless labourers began
to seize lands from the landlords and deshmukhs and to occupy
waste-lands which later they distributed among themselves. In
deciding which surplus land to seize, the sangham leaders made
liberal concessions to the rich peasants who sided with the rebels.
Ceilings on landholdings were also generously fixed. Initially the
ceiling was fixed at 500 acres; it was reduced later to 200 acres
and then to 100 dry acres and 10 wet acres. These revisions, which
were already effected by mid-1948, when the final phase had not
yet started, made two things abundantly clear. First, the spontane¬
ous seizure and distribution of land changed the course of the
insurrection and enlarged its scope considerably. A revolutionary
change, which the alliance did not contemplate while launching
the revolt, now seemed plausible. Secondly, it also brought to the
surface the conflicting interests within the alliance. That such a
class alliance was inherently weak seems reasonably clear. Initially
the communist leaders promptly promised adequate compensations
to the owners for the surplus lands seized although this could
508 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

not be pursued further. This shows that the land ceiling question
and the way it was settled finally in favour of the rich peasants
‘reflected a reformist understanding of the agrarian problems of
Telangana’ on the part of the communist leaders (Sundarayya
1972a: 58-9, 116-8).
It thus seems that the alliance of different agrarian strata was
made possible by their immediate grievances and demands, and
not by any grand ideas of total transformation of the system.
The alliance worked so long as more fundamental issues such as
land seizures, ceilings, and distribution did not threaten its solid¬
arity. Significantly enough, even these fundamental issues cropped
up only as a result of certain historical circumstances in which
the poor peasants’ spontaneous seizure of land, which was not
part of the original design, became possible. It can therefore be
surmised that cracks in the alliance began to show with such
seizures of land. It was only to the chagrin of the rich peasants,
and not without reluctance, that the central party bosses legitimiz¬
ed the seizure and distribution of lands as an ingredient .of the
revolutionary programme’ (Sundarayya 1972a: 118).
After the military action the rich peasants increasingly deserted
the alliance in which the agricultural labourers and tenants (poor
peasants) together with some smallholders (middle peasants)
were left to carry on the insurrection. The split occurred also among
the Telangana communist leaders. Revi Narayan Reddy, the most
popular of them, later dissociated himself from the revolutionary
struggle and joined the critics of the Telangana insurrection.
Being a defender of rich peasant interests within the party, Reddy
criticized the seizure of land as ill-conceived and advocated with¬
drawal of the struggle which, to him, became redundant after
the Indian Army took over Hyderabad (Basavapunniah 1972
(I): 6-7).
The principal participants in the sustained revolt were thus
unquestionably the poor peasants and the landless labourers.
Most of the recruits in the dalams came from the untouchable
castes (Malas and Madigas) and from among the tribals. The
caste Hindus treated them as socially inferior. The deprived and
peripheral groups had also lost all their rights in land owing to
the fact that for the past several decades the power and instruments
of justice were in the hands of the landlords and deshmukhs.
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 509

Lack of alternative avenues of work had rendered them weak in

bargaining for their rights. They were doubly exploited, culturally
as well as economically. By joining the communist dalams and
revolting against the oppressive system they had nothing to lose
and everything to gain.15
The role of the rich peasants was anything but revolutionary.
In the first two years of the insurrection, they gained a great deal
from the alliance. Thus, they were able to ward off the grain-levy.
But despite the gains, many of them were reluctant to increase
the wages of their own labourers in pursuance of the party directives.
After the army take-over, the grain-levy issue was no longer focal
anyway. Moreover, as the grip of the military administration
tightened, and the troops began to suppress the dalams ruthlessly,
some rich peasants, while continuing to be apparently loyal to
the party, providing food and shelter to the squad-leaders and
guerrillas, also acted as informers to the army and the police.
(Sundarayya 1972a: 125, 259).
The role of the middle peasants could not be researched into
adequately and therefore we shall be able to say little. Our sources,
however, do not suggest that the middle peasants played any
spectacular part. On the whole, they did not constitute a very
significant social category in Telangana either numerically or
politically. Thus, the poor peasants and the labourers were the
backbone of the resistance right from the beginning and till the
very end.
Some data on the local (village) level leaders (see Sundarayya
v1972a: 354-90) active either in actual squads or in samitis enable
us to examine the social character of the leadership. Sundarayya
has sketched life-histories of some 80 squad and party leaders
who were killed while fighting the army. Unfortunately, the details
of their social origin have not been recorded by him uniformly.
Occupation has been mentioned in 47 cases: of these 12 were
‘rich’ peasants, four ‘middle’ peasants, seven ‘poor’ or ‘small’
landholders (including tenant cultivators), 20 agricultural labourers
and allied groups, and four others, including a village patel.16
Most of these leaders were recent followers of the party. Only
five of them had come in contact with the CP or the Andhra Con-
ference/Mahasabha prior to 1946: nine joined the party in 1947
while a great majority joined the dalams and sanghams in course
510 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of the insurrection itself between 1948 and 1951. This confirms,

at least partially, the point made earlier that the Telangana revolu¬
tionary movement was not a product of a sustained political
organization of peasants, and that the participation of peasants
as well as of their leaders was spontaneous.
This brings us to the most important question as to why the
withdrawal of the insurrection became necessary. Disunity in the
class alliance and the military repression constitute only a part of
the story. The intra-party differences over the ideological issues
and over the broad objectives of the revolutionary struggle in
Telangana should provide us some clues. After the ‘Police Action’
in Hyderabad, a section of the CPI leadership, the Ranadive group,
which had earlier hailed the Telangana insurrection as ‘a big land¬
mark in the Communist movement’, openly disowned it. Their
objection was that the predominantly peasant upsurge did not
conform to the classical notion of the ‘leadership of the proletariat’.
Moreover, their naive hope that the working class in the cities all
over the country might rise simultaneously with the Telangana
peasants did not materialize (Kautsky 1956: 49, 57). At the
ideological level, the question whether the Telangana revolt was
‘antilandlord’, ‘anti-Nizam (and therefore pro-liberation)’, ‘anti¬
bourgeoisie, anti-imperialist and therefore anti-Indian Army’,
‘the agitation for Vishalandhra’ or whether it was uneasy mixture
of two or more of these, was never settled.
The Andhra Committee of the CP, which was responsible for
directing the upsurge in Telangana, defended strongly its reliance
on the peasantry in the revolutionary movement. This, is argued,
was in keeping with the Maoist theory of ‘new democracy’ which
propounded a multi-class alliance as the correct strategy for advanc¬
ing the socialist revolution in colonies and semicolonies.17 No
matter what the ideological polemics, the practical dilemma of
the Andhra and Telangana communists was whether or
not to continue the insurrection. The final split came on precisely
this issue; Ravi N. Reddy, B. Yella Reddy, and C. Rajeshwar Rao
favoured abandonment as they saw in the struggle symptoms of
degeneration into ‘left adventurism’, and ‘infantile disorder’ or
‘individual terrorism’ (C.R. Rao 1972: 24-25). On the other side
were P. Sundarayya and M. Basavapunniah who criticized the
former for their ‘right reformism’ and advocated continuation of
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 511

the struggle as a peasant partisan struggle. The latter thought that

without continuing the fight, the party might lose the ground gained
and the goodwill earned through the seizure and distrubution of
lands and through the ‘village soviets’. The Indian army’s presence
enabled the landlords and deshmukhs to recapture some of their
lands. An abandonment of the struggle would be tantamount to
political surrender and betrayal of those peasants who stood
resolutely behind the party fighting till the end (Sundarayya 1972a:
177-82, 391-400; Basavapunniah, 1972 (I): 6-7 and (II) 4,10).
These intra-party conflicts became endemic after 1950 and weakened
the insurrection considerably from within.
In the first two years of the insurrection rising expectations
provided the major inpulse to the revolutionary peasant masses
in Telangana, but from the time of the ‘Police Action’ till the end
it was essentially a revolt of desperation. The general political
instability and the rapidly developing crisis of authority and
legitimacy were the most immediate circumstances that facilitated
a revolutionary mobilization of peasant masses in Telangana but
organization, which plays a vital part in sustaining revolutionary
elan, such as land seizure and establishment of gram rajyams, and
in making the mass politically effective, did not exist.18 To cite
an example, the village committees, which ran the parallel govern¬
ments, were isolated from each other and lacked proper coordina¬
tion. Although they distributed land to the landless labourers and
to the evicted tenants for cultivation they had no access to the
market, not to speak of control over it. For trade and essential
supplies the rebels had to depend on the urban merchants and
traders whose agents at the village level had to be bribed by the
samitis for marketing the produce of the rebel villages (Sundarayya
1972a: 128-9).
When desperation faces a revolutionary mass, petty reprisals
become rife. The revolutionaries, who persist in the tactics of
desperation, intensification of violence being one of them, do not
realize how they damage their own cause. ‘An expression of diffuse
rage against peripheral targets often provides the forces of order
a widespread public support’ (Moore Jr. 1972: 176), and this seems
to have happened in Telangana. The communists were never able
to muster support from the urban middle class and the working
class whereas the rural masses who had so enthusiastically respond-
512 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ed initially began to withdraw their support. Consequently, only

isolated squads of peasant guerrillas and party workers remained
but they could not sustain the revolt long.
Early in 1951 the Congress government made several conciliatory
gestures towards the CPI as it knew well that any further repression
would not only add to the popularity of the communists in Telan-
gana, but would also cast doubts on its own credibility as a demo¬
cratic government. Except in the troubled areas of Telangana
the democratic processes and institutions then functioned normally.
Even the CPI Polit bureau had acknowledged this (see ‘Strategy
and tactics’, Communist (Bombay), 4, 1949 quoted in Chaudhuri
1950: 41).
In April 1951 Acharya Vinoba Bhave, the leader of the bhoodan
movement which began in Telangana villages about the same time,
met some CP leaders who were under detention (Ram 1962: 45-55).
Although very little is known as to what passed between him and
them, it is not without significance that soon a number of detainees
were released by the government. Within months (i.e. in October),
the CPI formally declared the struggle withdrawn. The preparations
for the first Indian elections, under the Constitution recently
adopted, were under way. The prospects of the ban being lifted
were in view, and the CPI hoped to participate in the elections,
test its political strength and try the constitutional alternative for
consolidating the gains of the five-year long insurrection.
Although the CPI in Andhra and Telangana won impressive
electoral victories (Gray 1968: 409-10: M. Rao 1973: 4-6), they
could do little in introducing any radical changes or modifications
in the land reform legislation which was then afoot in the Hyderabad
assembly. Jagirdari was abolished, but in anticipation of comprehen¬
sive land reform legislation, many substantial landowners had
resorted to subdivision and transfer of lands to avoid any losses
on account of the ceiling provisions. Very few of the tenants
actually registered themselves as tenants and claimed occupancy
rights; a majority of them were either evicted from lands before
the actual enforcement of the new statutes, or had surrendered
their lands voluntarily. They and the landless labourers now found
it increasingly difficult to secure land from landlords and rich
pattiadars on tenurial lease for cultivation (Nair 1961: 58-68).19
The judgment about the success or failure of a revolutionary
 SOCIAL ORIGINS—PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 513

movement is not easy to pass as it depends largely on the meaning

we give to the words. If seizure of power and sustaining it for a
considerable period of time is taken as the touchstone of success
then, perhaps, no other peasant revolt or movement in India
was more successful than the one in Telangana. If, however, a
lasting dent in the agrarian structure and change in the conditions
of its principal participants are viewed as the criterion then perhaps
the Telangana insurrection was not more successful than other
peasant resistance movements in India (Dhanagare, 1973: 406-26).
Like all other movements, though, the Telangana struggle too
has become the source of legends and inspiration for the radical
left in India. Recently there has been a renewed interest, academic
as well as political, in the study of the struggle. Its silver jubilee,
celebrated by all the shades of Communist parties in India, however,
became an occasion for mutual mud-slinging, but that must be
left out of this paper.

Notes

1 The other was the Tebhaga movement in Bengal, 1946-7 which has been discussed
by me elsewhere (Dhanagare 1973: 316-59).
2 Thus, Moore, Jr (1965: 380-5) discusses only the Telangana rebellion and ignores
all other instances of peasant struggle in contemporary India (1920-1950).
3 The nine districts of Telangana are: Adilabad, Hyderabad, Karimnagar,
Khammam, Mahbubnagar, Medak, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, and Warangal.
4 For the economic activities of the various caste groups in Telangana villages,
see Dube 1965: 57-73.
5 The 1951 tribal population in Hyderabad state as a whole accounts for 1.90 per
cent of the population, a higher proportion than in the past. The increase was more
striking in Nalgonda, Warangal, Adilabad, Khammam, and Mahbubnagar districts
than elsewhere and was notable in case of the Koyas and Hill Reddis. See GOI (ii) :249,
and also (vii), IX, Part II-A: 158-9.
6 Alavi (1965:245-55) has distinguished three different sectors of agrarian economy,
namely: (i) landlord-tenant, (ii) rich peasant-labourers, and (Hi) subsistence sector.
7 For details of the initial attempts of the Andhra Conference for mobilizing the
peasantry, see ’The Communists in Hyderabad’, Part III (in series). The statesman
(Calcutta), 11 May 1950, 8.
8 Numerous reports and despatches that appeared in The people's age (Bombay)
from 1 May to 31 December 1946 bear this out.
9 See ‘The Communists of Hyderabad’, Part III, The Statesman, 11 May 1950.
For details of the Congress satyagraha see Tirth 1967: 179-83; and also Laik
Ali 1962: 30-37.
10 Some 19,000 toddy trees were cut down during the satyagraha. See The
Statesman, 9 September 1947, 7.
11 The claims regarding the land distribution, etc. are now admitted even by an
extreme left-wing opinion in India. See M. Rao 1973: 6.
514 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

12 Evidently, ‘The immediate intention of India's forces in Hyderabad was (a) to

roundup the communists in the south-eastern districts: (b) to go round, taluk by taluk,
tracing out the Razakars and disarming the population so that the Nizam could be
retained as the head oj State' [GOI. (iii), e. No. 937: 2, emphasis added].
13 Sundarayya has produced a complete list of 2,517 ‘martyrs of the struggle'.
However, not all of them were killed by the Indian Army; some were killed by the
Razakars. See Sundarayya, 1972a: 447-506. M. Rao (1973: 6) claims that some
4,000 communists and peasant fighters were killed either in the encounters or in
prison-camps.
14 For example, G. Rajeshwar Rao, M. Basavapunniah, N. Prasad Rao, M.
Hanumant Rao, C. Vasudeo Rao were all Kammas, and P. Sundarayya, Ravi
Narayan Reddy, and B. Yella Reddy, who were directly involved in conducting
the insurrection, were all Reddies. They were either rich landowners themselves or
came from such families. See Harrison 1956: 381-2; Sheshadri 1967: 388.
15 Sundarayya’s account, almost in entirety, supports the contention that the
Telangana revolt was predominantly the poor peasant and landless labourer’s
affair. See Sundarayya 1972a: 90-91; Bedford 1967: 232.
16 Here we have relied on the occupational descriptions given by Sundarayya and
have grouped them into five categories, on the assumption that his subjective judg¬
ment about the ‘rich’, ‘middle’, and ‘poor’ peasants etc. at least broadly corresponds
with the objective meaning given to these concepts in this paper. The ‘allied groups’
in the fourth category include shepherds, toddy-tappers, hunters, ferry-driver, and
handloom weaver which normally form part of the rural proletariat.
17 For details of the differences between the Central Committee of the CPI and
the Andhra Committee see Kautsky 1956: 60-80. For the ‘Theory of new democracy’
see, Mao Tse-tung 1967, II: 339-80, and IV: 411-23.
18 Moore (1972: 176-8) had discussed in greater detail the role of the organization
in revolutionary movements in his recent work.
19 Khusro (1958: 24, 40-42), however, claims that the Telangana upsurge not only
speeded up the land reform but also helped create an awareness of their rights among
the tenants. Under the provisions of the land reforms the tenants of Telangana,
more than their counterparts in Marathwada region, asserted their rights.

References

The following abbreviations have been used in this paper (GOI stands for Govern¬
ment of India):

GOI (i). 1909. The Gazette of India —Hyderabad state.

GOI (ii). Census oj India— 1931, XXIII, Part I (Hyderabad state).
GOI (iii). Information Department—File No. 25/8 (1931-48), Hyderabad. The file is
available at the India Office Library and Records, London No. L/I/l/176. Its
contents cited in this paper are: (a) The Arya Samaj in Hyderabad (a pamphlet);
(b) Indian social reformer, 8 July 1939 (an old periodical); (c) India Today
(monthly magazine of the India League of America), July 1948; (d) White paper
on Hyderabad— 1948; (e) ‘Inward telegrams to Commonwealth Relations Office’.
GOI (iv). 1949. Communist violence in Hyderabad. New Delhi: Ministry of Home
Affairs.
GOI (v). 1950. Communist crimes in Hyderabad. Hyderabad.
GOI (vi). 1952. Agricultural labour enquiry report, 1950-1, Delhi.
GOI (vii). Census of India— 195! ( Hyderabad).
 SOCIAL ORIGINS— PEASANT INSURRECTION IN TELANGANA 51 5

Alavi, H. 1965. Peasants and revolution, in Miliband, R. and Saville, J„ eds. The
Socialist register 1965: pp. 245-75. London, Merlin Press.
Ali, M. Liak. 1962. Tragedy of Hyderabad, Karachi, Pakistan Cooperative Book
Society.
Basavapunniah, M. 1972, 'Are these lessons of Telangana struggle, or bankrupt
conclusions?’ People's Democracy 8(44): pp. 6-7 (Part 1); 8(45) : 4, 10 (Part II).
Bedford, I. 1967, The Telangana insurrection: a study in the causes and development
of a communist insurrection in rural India, 1946-51. Unpublished PhD. disserta¬
tion (history). Australian National University, Canberra.
Chaudhuri, T. 1950. A swing back—a critical survey of the devious zig-zags of C.P.I.
political line (1947-50), Calcutta: Revolutionary Socialist Party Publication.
Dhanagare, D.N. 1973. Peasant movements in India, c. 1920-50. Unpublished
D. Phil, dissertation (sociology). University of Sussex. Brighton.
Dube, S. C. 1965. Indian village. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Furer-Haimendorf, C. Von. 1945. Tribal Hyderabad. Hyderabad: Government of
H.E.M. Nizam.
Gray, H. 1968. Andhra Pradesh. In Weiner, M„ ed. State Politics in India. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, pp. 398-431.
-. 1970. The landed gentry of the Telangana, Andhra Pradesh. In Leach, E. and
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Harrison, S. S. 1956. Caste and the Andhra communists. The American political
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Press.
Iyengar, S. K. 1930. Economic investigations in the Hyderabad state, 1929-30.
Vols. I-III Hyderabad: Government of the H.E.M. Nizam.
--—1951. Rural economic enquiries in the Hyderabad state, 1949-54. Hyderabad:
Government Printing Press.
Kautsky, J. H. 1956. Moscow and the communist party of India—a study in the post-war
evolution of international communist strategy. New York: M.I.T. Press and
John Wiley.
Khusro, A. M. 1958. Economic and social effects of jagirdari abolition and land
reforms in Hyderabad. Delhi: Atmaram and Sons.
Menon. V. P. 1956. The story of the integration of the Indian states. London: Long¬
mans Green and Co.
Moore, Jr., B. 1969, Social origins of dictatorship and democracy—Lord and peasant
in the making of the modern world. London: Penguin.
-.1972. Reflections on the causes of human misery. London: Allen Lane.
The Penguin Press.
Nair, K. 1961. Blossoms in the dust—the human element in Indian development.
London: Gerald Duckworth.
Narayan, B. K. 1960. Agricultural development in Hyderabad state 1900-1956, a
study in economic history. Secunderabad: Keshava Prakashan.
Pritt, D. N. 1950. Oppression in India. The labour monthly 32 (7): 319-20.
Qureshi, A. 1.1949. The economic development of Hyderabad. Vol. 1 (rural economy).
Bombay: Orient.
Ram, S. 1962. Vinoba and his mission. Kashi: Akhil Bharat Sarva Sewa Sangh.
Revised edition.
Ranga, N. G. 1949. Revolutionary peasants. New Delhi: Amrit Book Co.
Rao, A. R. 1969. The Telangana movement: an investigative focus. Hyderabad:
Teachers’ Association Research Forum.
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Rao, C. R. 1972 The historic Telangana struggle: some useful lessons from its rich
experience. Delhi: C.P.I. Publication.
Rao, M. 1973. Telangana and the revisionists Frontier 5(52): 4-7.
Rao, R. V. 1950. A new deal for the farmer in Hyderabad. The Economic and Political
Weekly 24 June: 617-9.
Roth. A. 1947. Peasant revolt in Hyderabad. Modern Review 82(3): 1-2.
Sheshadri, K. 1967. The communist party in Andhra Pradesh. In Narain. I., ed.
State politics in India. Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan. pp. 388-96.
Smith, W. C. 1950. Hyderabad: Muslim tragedy. The Middle East Journal 4(1): 27-51.
Sundarayya, P. 1972. Telangana people's struggle and its lessons. Calcutta: C.P.I.
(M) Publication. .
_, 1972b. Telangana people’s struggle and the right communists. People s
democracy 8(43): 11-2. ,
Tirth, Swami R. 1967. Memoirs of Hyderabad freedom struggle. Bombay: Popular
Prakashan
Mao Tse-tung, 1967. Selected Works. Vols. I-IV. Peking: Foreign Languages Press.
Wright, J., T.P. 1963. Revival of the Majlis-Ittehad-ul-Musalmin of Hyderabad.
The Muslim world 3(3): 234-43.
Zinkin, T. 1962. Reporting India. London: Chatto and Windus.
 26 The Postwar Situation and
Beginning of Armed Struggle

C. Rajeshwar Rao

I
The cpi unit in Telangana, along with the party unit in
Marathwada, organised vigorously the workers under the leader¬
ship of Comrades Makhdoom Mohiuddin and Raj Bahadur Gour.
Later on, it succeeded in organising the All-Hyderabad Trade
Union Congress under whose flag the workers were organised
in the Karnataka region of the state also.
Along with this the students were also organised under the
flag of the All-Hyderabad Students’ Union. Women were organised
into their organisation in a few towns, apart from Hyderabad.
The communist movement thus became an important factor
in the political life of Hyderabad, specially in the Telangana area
by the end of the second world war and beginning of the postwar
political upsurge in India.
The end of the second world war brought about basic changes
in the international scene and the correlation of forces. The fascists
had been routed. The other sections of the imperialist powers who
were in the antifascist coalition were weakened. For the first time,
a socialist camp, as opposed to the camp of imperialism, came
into being, exercising profound influence on the international
scene. Anti-imperialist national-liberation movements and national-
liberation wars began raging in the enslaved countries of Asia,
Africa and Latin America.
In our country also, a powerful anti-imperialist wave swept
from one end to the other. Militant mass demonstrations on the
issue of the trial of the INA prisoners were the first shot. Then
followed the historic RIN mutiny and outburst of simmering

Reproduced from 'The Historic Telengana Struggle—Some Useful Lessons from

Its Rich Experience,' by C. Rajeswara Rao, Freedom Jubilee Series No. 3. Com¬
munist Party Publication, No. 29, October, 1972 pp. 5-17, pp. 25-9, pp. 30-32.
51 8 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

discontent in the Indian army and air force. The British imperialists
realised that they could no longer rely on the armed forces whom
they had so long carefully fostered to prop up their rule. The
strike of the post and telegraph workers and the proposed all-
India strike of the railway workers were the last straw.
The British imperialists were clever enough to see the writing,
on the wall and divided the country on a communal basis and
handed over power to the Congress and Muslim League in the
two parts. They declared the native states independent and helped
their stooges, the princes, to balkanise our country. Through these
vile manoeuvres, they sought to impose their neocolonialist domina¬
tion over our country. But they did not succeed, which is another
matter.
The mighty anti-British upsurge in the Indian subcontinent
had its own reflection on the people of Hyderabad state. The long
simmering discontent was bursting up in 1946. Different sections
of the people were coming into mass actions on their demands.
Workers came out on strikes in a number of places on their pressing
demands. Peasants and agricultural workers also resisted the
depredations of the landlords and government officials. The
notorious incidents of Machireddypalli and Akhnur took place,
where the Nizam’s armed police resorted to inhuman terror against
the people and the raping of women, because they dared resist
the looting of their paddy in the name of ‘levygalla’ .These incidents
shook the people in the whole state. Not only the Andhra
Mahasabha and the Communist Party but other mass organisations
and progressive-minded people also protested against these
atrocities and rallied to the support of the people of these villages.
Similarly, the peasants of Mundrai in Jangaon taluk also took
back their lands which had been occupied by the notorious land¬
lord Vishnur Ramchandra Reddy who had let loose his goondas.
These were only the portents of the coming storm.
The Nizam of Hyderabad understood this and started arresting
political workers and resorted to repression against the people. He
let loose gangs of his stooge organisation, the Ittehad-ul-Mussal-
meen, in order to nip in the bud the rising upsurge of the people.
In the context of the British quitting India, as explained earlier,
he was conspiring with the British imperialists to make his state
independent, which many other princes were also trying to do.
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 519

He refused to accede to the Indian union even when almost all

the princes were forced to do so. He declared his independence
and on 12 June, 1947 he issued a firman that after the lapse of British
paramountcy, he would become a sovereign monarch over his
state.
With that, the political scene inside Hyderabad state heated
up. It acted as the danger signal for all democratic and progressive
forces and people. They saw what was in store for them if they did
not act quickly to foil the conspiracy being hatched by the Nizam
and the British imperialists.
The Telangana and Andhra state units of the CPI did not take
any chances. They reviewed the situation, clearly understanding
the game of the Nizam, and came to the conclusion that the mass
upsurge, which had already started bursting against the Nizam’s
autocracy and the feudal lords, should be given a proper shape.
They decided to organise mass resistance and local volunteer
squads equipped with the traditional weapons of the peasants—
the lathi, spear, slings and a few muzzle-loaders—to beat back the
goonda gangs of the landlords.
In a number of places like Kadivendi, Devaruppula, Patasuryapet
in Jangaon and Suryapet taluks and a number of other places in
other districts the goonda gangs were beaten back. A number of
comrades laid down their lives in these resistance actions. The first
martyr in this struggle was Comrade Komarayya of Kadivendi
in the successful resistance against the goonda gangs of the notori¬
ous Vishnur deshmukh. As the goonda gangs of the feudal landlords
failed to suppress the peasant upsurge, the Nizam’s armed police
entered the scene and launched severe repression.
A mass upsurge burst out in the princely states. In some of them
armed actions also took place to force their rulers to accede to
the Indian union. Using this mass upsurge and armed actions of
the people and the state power they had acquired in their hands,
the Congress forced all the princely states—except Hyderabad—
to join the Indian union sooner or later. The Nizam was bent upon
remaining independent, which would have remained as a dangerous
ulcer in the body politic of India if he had succeeded.
Even before 15 August 1947, accession of Hyderabad state to
the Indian union had become the main issue before the people of
the state. The State Congress, instead of uniting with all other
520 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

democratic forces and canalising the mass upsurge for an all-out

struggle against Nizam’s autocracy and his henchmen, sought to
plough a lonely furrow. Further, it wanted to turn the mass upsurge
into a mere protest satyagraha, preventing it from developing into
militant mass actions. The liberal section inside the State Congress
was against even this type of mass action and they were putting
all sorts of obstacles in its way. The State Congress urged upon the
Nizam to join the Indian union and it issued a call for hoisting the
national flag everywhere as a form of struggle, which the ^Jizam
banned.
The CPI, the Andhra Mahasabha, the All-Hyderabad Trade
Union Congress, the All-Hyderabad Students’ Union, which had
been urging upon the State Congress to have united struggle all
these days, joined in this movement of hoisting the national flag.
It caught like wildfire because the people were restive and wanted
to go into action on any issue against the Nizam’s autocracy.
In many towns and villages, national flags were hoisted. In the
villages the movement took the form of cutting down toddy palm
trees in the fields over which the peasants had no legal right accord¬
ing to the law of those days and preventing forcible collection of
grain levy by the government. Workers, peasants, students and
the general mass of people, men and women, participated in this
struggle. A number of Muslims also joined, braving all the fury
of Muslim fanaticism fanned by the Majlis.
The Nizam government retaliated with its might. Shooting,
killing, raping of women, trampling down of the national flag,
largescale arrests, looting and burning of houses became the order
of the day. Hundreds of patriots laid down their lives, including
women. There was no safety of life, property and honour in those
days. The leadership of the Majlis not only fully supported this
carnage but its armed gangs actively participated in these actions
along with the armed police force of the Nizam.
While the people of Hyderabad were fighting their life and death
battle, the Congress central leadership, which wielded power in
Delhi, was negotiating with the Nizam for a settlement on the
basis of his joining the Indian union, conceding subjects like defence,
foreign affairs and communications to the Indian government and
retaining the rest of the powers in his hands. This virtually meant
that the Nizam was to be left free to suppress the people’s movement
in blood.
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 521

The Nizam did not agree even to this.

Finally in November 1947 the Indian government signed a
standstill agreement for one year with the Nizam. This was a stab
in the back of the people of Hyderabad. According to this agree¬
ment, the government of India would not interfere in the internal
affairs of Hyderabad state. That meant, he could do whatever he
liked with the lives of the people. The government of India, on
the other hand, would ‘wholeheartedly cooperate’ with the Nizam
‘to promote communal harmony and to maintain peace and secu¬
rity’ in the state. In return for this, the Nizam would condescend
not to set up embassies in foreign countries. But he could set up
offices of agent-general, which in effect would mean the same thing.
After one year, a permanent settlement was to be negotiated.
This standstill agreement gave a one-year breathing space to the
Nizam in which he could carry on his conspiracy for practically
achieving his evil design of an independent Hyderabad. He utilised
the opportunity to the fullest extent. While, on the one hand, he
was ruthlessly suppressing the freedom movement in the state,
on the other he was feverishly enlarging and modernising his armed
forces by importing arms from Pakistan, Britain and other countries.
He also helped Kasim Rizvi, the leader of the Majlis, to organise
and arm his Razakar forces as an auxiliary of the state’s armed
forces in suppressing the people’s movement.
Even after the betrayal by the Congress central leadership, the
State Congress leadership dared not come out boldly rejecting the
standstill agreement and build a united movement along with other
democratic parties and mass organizations to fight the Nizam’s
evil rule.
It was precisely in this critical situation that units of the Commu¬
nist Party played a historic role in properly assessing the fighting
mood of the people and coming out boldly for .armed resistance
against the depredations of the Nizam’s armed forces and Razakar
gangs of the Majlis in defence of the life, property and honour of
women and ending the Satanic rule of the Nizam once for all.
Comrades Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Ravi Narayan Reddy,
Baddam Yella Reddy, Devulapalli Venkateswara Rao, Chandra-
gupta Chowdhury and V.D. Deshpande (the last two communist
leaders of Marathwada) gave a call for armed resistance on behalf
of the Communist Party, the Andhra Mahasabha, the Marathwada
Kisan Sabha and the All-Hyderabad Trade Union Congress.
 522 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

On behalf of the All-Hyderabad Students’ Union, which was led

by communists, Comrade Onkar Prasad, general secretary, and
Rafi Ahmad, joint secretary, a call was given to the students to
take up the challenge thrown by the Nizam and organise and carry
on armed resistance. This inspiring call fell on fertile soil and it
galvanised the entire situation in the state.
Side by side with this call, a concrete programme of action was
chalked out for various sections of the people, which gave flesh
and blood to the movement. The programme consisted of abolition
of forced labour, reoccupation of lands of the peasants illegally
grabbed by the deshmukhs, jagirdars and other landlords, distribu¬
tion of government lands among the agricultural workers and
poor peasants, fair rent for tenants, fair wages for agricultural
workers, abolition of exorbitant interest on grain and cash loans
given by the landlords to the peasants and agricultural workers.
The minimum demands of the workers were also included in this
programme. It also included smashing up of the customs outposts
which were acting as instruments for harassment of people and
obstruction in the way of free trade between the people on both
sides of the border and acting as an artificial barrier, dividing the
people of the same nationality—the Andhras, the Maharashtrians
and the Kannadigas. A call was also given against the looting of
grains from the peasants in the name of levy.
In order to assist in the implementation of this programme, the
immediate organisation of people’s committees and armed guerilla
squads was started. In the Telangana region since the Andhra
Mahasabha (called by the people ‘Sangham’) had already become
a mass political organisation, committees of the Mahasabha were
organised as people’s committees to lead the armed guerilla move¬
ment.
People of Hyderabad state responded enthusiastically to the
ringing call of the CPI and other mass organisations led by it.
They rose like lions in Telangana and the armed guerilla movement
spread like wildfire, because the people had already gone through
<■ the first stage of mass resistance against the armed police and goonda
gangs of the feudal lords by taking up traditional weapons which
people use in their defence. The CPI and the Andhra Mahasabha
commanded the confidence of vast sections of the people in Telan¬
gana, especially the rural masses.
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 523

The Andhra Mahasabha spread to new areas and new sections

of people. Its committees were organised in most of the villages.
Some modern weapons were procured and permanent guerilla
squads were organised and trained along with local squads. Armed
resistance began. In several places the armed guerilla squads
retaliated effectively against the armed forces of the Nizam and
Razakar gangs of the Majlis when they were on their way to villages
for pillage. Sometimes their arms were also snatched away and
they were put on the run.
In a number of places the customs outposts were smashed. The
looting of grain from peasants in the name of levy collection was
also foiled to a large extent.
In thousands people helped the guerilla squads whenever it
was necessary. Guerilla squads were moving in the villages quite
openly. People gave them food, shelter, information about the
movements of the enemy, etc. The guerilla squads moved like
fish in water.
Thousands took part in sabotage work by digging up roads in
order to hamper the movement of the Nizam’s armed forces and
Razakars. They also accompanied the squads whenever the fortres¬
ses to the feudal lords had to be attacked and razed to the ground.
In this way the people played a very active part in the armed struggle
against the Nizam.
In the course of the armed struggle, a number of most oppressive
landlords and their agents who were actively aiding the Nizam's
forces to perpetrate inhuman atrocities on the people were also
punished and in some cases put to death. Some of them were tried
in people’s courts also. Consequently, many landlords ran away
to towns, leaving the areas where guerilla struggle was going on,
just to save their lives. They left behind their officials to run their
establishments and farms, and operated from the towns.
Thus the field was left free for the people in these areas. There
was government only when the armed forces were present. Other¬
wise, the Andhra Mahasabha committees were the rulers. People
used to say that there were two governments—one by day and the
other at night. Usually the Nizam's armed forces used to move
only in day time and before nightfall they would take shelter in
the camps. In far-off places where there were no communications,
they came but rarely. Hence the strategic roads were dug up by
524 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the people in order to prevent the armed forces of the Nizam from
moving.
This gave an opportunity to the people to throw away the op¬
pressive yoke of the jagirdars, deshmukhs and other feudal lords.
The agrarian programme was fully implemented in the areas
where armed resistance was successfully going on. Forced labour
was abolished. Illegally occupied land of the peasants was taken
back from the feudals. Government lands were distributed to the
agricultural workers and poor peasants. Rackrenting and usurious
grain loans were abolished. People were thus relieved of feudal
oppression in the areas of armed resistance.
The armed resistance was carried on in most parts of the famous
Nalgonda district, vast tracts of Warangal district (which at that
time included the present Khammam district), the present Hydera¬
bad district (which at that time was the personal jagir of the Nizam)
and some areas of Karimnagar, Medhak and Adilabad districts.
The armed struggle was going on within even a few miles of Hydera¬
bad city, the capital of the state. These areas comprised about
4,000 villages which were considered as liberated areas. In this
area, about ten lakh acres of land were distributed among the
people.
Armed resistance was fast spreading to the other areas of Telen-
gana. Of course, in Hyderabad and other towns the Nizam was
holding his sway and the people were at the mercy of the Razakar
gangs. Even there people organised selfdefence squads to defend
their life and honour.
In the same way, armed actions took place in Marathwada
and even in the Karnatak part of the state. The Nizam was getting
more and more isolated and his power was dwindling.
This was the situation before the 'police action’ of the Indian
army which entered the state in September, 1948.
Armed actions became possible mainly because the Nizam was
defending an autocratic feudal social order, hated by the general
mass of people. He and the other feudal lords were completely
isolated from the people. He had a very narrow social base with
only sections of Muslims poisoned by communal fanaticism
supporting him. Even sections of Hindu feudal landlords were
against him and they were in sympathy with the anti-Nizam move¬
ment in general because of the communal policy the Nizam had
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 525

been pursuing to get the support of the Muslim minority and the
atrocities committed by the Razakar hordes on the people.
A second factor to be taken into consideration was that adminis¬
trative set-up based on the outdated feudal autocratic social order
was inefficient. It could not stand the onslaught of the mass upsurge
and armed guerilla resistance. The armed forces of the Nizam
were mostly old-fashioned, not modernised. This could be seen
from the very fact that even a large number of tahsil offices and
even some district centres did not have even telegraphic facilities,
not to speak of telephone and wireless.
Alarmed at the growth of the armed resistance movement in
Telangana under the leadership of the CPI, they took anti-commu¬
nist positions and were pressing the State Congress leadership to
dissociate themselves from the resistance movement. Simultane¬
ously, they attacked the Andhra state unit of the CPI at the end of
January 1948, utilising the clashes between our party and the
RSS at Vijayawada following Gandhiji’s murder. They made
widespread searches of party offices and a number of leading
cadres of the Andhra state unit of the CPI were arrested. As a
result, delegates from Andhra to the Second Party Congress which
was held in Calcutta had to go there secretly. This repression was
launched in order to see that the Andhra area did not act as the
base for the Telangana armed struggle. It was not only the com¬
munists and people under their influence who were supporting the
armed struggle in Telangana. The general mass of people also
supported this struggle and liberally contributed funds. This
unnerved the Congress central leadership. Even communist guerilla
squads taking shelter on the border were arrested.
The Hyderabad State Congress leadership was a house divided.
The liberal section was dead-set against any sort of resistance,
they were for any compromise with the Nizam. They fell for the
overtures of the Nizam floated by his prime minister Laik Ali
and other Hindu stooges in the so-called interim government he
had set up. Confabulations were going on under the active guidance
of K.M. Munshi. They responded to the call for fighting the ‘com¬
munist danger’ issued by the Nizam and propagated that if no
compromise was arrived at soon, Telangana would go Red.
Despite the fact that the Congress central government in Delhi
offered full autonomy to the Nizam in internal matters, provided
526 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

he was prepared to concede subjects like defence, foreign affairs

and communications to the Indian union and agree to join it,
he was adamant. Cleverly utilising the weak-kneed policies of the
Congress central leadership and the standstill agreement which,
in fact, was a surrender to the Nizam, he was frantically trying to
assert his independence. He utilised the inactivity and timid beha¬
viour of the central and State Congress leaders to suppress people’s
upsurge and the armed resistance movement spreading under the
leadership of the Communist Party.

II

Armed Struggle Retreats to Forests

Taking up the thread of the narration of the Telangana struggle
again, it has to be stated that with the above understanding of the
path of the Indian revolution, the leadership of the Andhra unit
of the Communist Party decided to continue the armed struggle.
As stated earlier, the government of India made all preparations
to suppress the Telangana struggle. The armed forces attacked the
communist strongholds and the guerilla squads with all their might
at the end of 1948. A number of comrades and guerilla fighters
were killed in encounters with the Indian armed forces. Naturally,
the Telangana movement could not withstand such a political
and military offensive any longer. We were faced with the problem
of either withdrawing the armed struggle or finding a way out.
As the communist movement in both the regions of Telangana
and Andhra had reached a dead-end and it became impossible for
comrades and guerilla squads in the plains where they had been
operating till then to continue armed struggle, a call was given for
all the able-bodied comrades to go to the forests. Others were asked
to remain underground if they could in their place of work or
move from their own village to other areas where they were not
known and take up some job to survive. Many regional party
committees of the plains even moved to the border province.
This was done for sheer survival in the middle of 1949.
The comrades of Warangal, including the present Khammam
district, some taluks of Nalgonda district adjacent to Warangal
district and Krishna. West Godavari and East Godavari districts
of Andhra region were sent to the dense forests on the Godavari
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 527

river. Comrades from Medhak and Karimnagar went to the forests

in Karimnagar. The comrades of the major part of Nalgonda
district and Guntur, Nellore, Kurnool districts of Andhra region
went to the dense Nalgonda forests on both sides of river Krishna.
In these forests, the main mass of the people were tribals. In
the petty urban centres in the forests, the landlords, contractors
and merchants, who exploit and loot the tribal people utilising
their ignorance and backwardness, were living. Though the area
was vast, the population was very thin. The landlords grabbed
the best lands of the tribals mainly by giving loans at exorbitant
rates of interest. The merchants looted the people through the
exchange of the forest produce like tamarind, honey, etc. for salt,
cloth, etc. fully making use of the ignorance of the tribal people
of prices and calculation. The forest contractors exploited them
by paying low wages for plucking bidi leaves or cutting bamboos
and wood.
The government apparatus in these areas was also very weak.
It consisted of police outposts here and there and the forest rangers
and tahsil offices in the headquarters of these forest tahsils. Though
their effective control over the tribal people was not much, they
were also collecting illegal gratifications in the form of forest
produce and making them do forced labour.
When our guerilla squads went to the forest, at first the tribal
people would not repose their confidence in them. When they found
that the merchants, landlords, contractors and government officials
stopped coming to the tribal villages for fear of the guerilla squads,
they became our friends and began helping our squads with food
and shelter. But as their economy is primitive, they could not
support all our guerilla squads and political workers. Therefore,
our squads attacked the landlords’ houses in the villages on the
border of forests to get grain and other foodstuff. They hunted
forest animals also for food.
Our squads lived in this state of affairs till the end of 1949.
Then the Congress administration became wise and set up military
and armed police camps in the key centres of the forest regions.
Then they adopted the socalled Briggs plan, which the British
imperialists had used to suppress* guerilla movement in Malaysia,
in some of the dense forest regions, especially in the forests on the
Godavari river. They burnt down about 2,000 tribal hamlets and
528 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

herded the tribal people into concentration camps. They were

allowed to go outside the camps only during day time. But they
had to return to the camps long before sunset. Otherwise other
members of their family w'ho were held as hostages would be
taken to task. Many of these tribal people died in these camps
because of semistarvation and undernourishment.
The Congress administration adopted this tactic to physically
isolate our squads from the tribal people and eliminate our squads.
Our squads harassed the armed forces and kept them on tenter¬
hooks whenever they dared to come out of the camp even in day
time. In a number of such engagements, our squads fought bravely
and skilfully. The armed forces rarely dared enter the dense forests.
But the squads could not remain in the dense forests all the time.
They had to get food and water. In the engagements with the armed
forces, many a comrade lost his life. They enrolled some tribal
youth and girls into the squads and gave them training.
Some of the squads moved to newer forests. Thus our squads
went even to the vast and dense forests of Adilabad district. Some
crossed the Godavari river and went to the forests of Bastar. But
they had to return after suffering some losses because they did
not know the language of the tribes in the region.
Thus, by the middle of 1951, the situation again became critical
for the guerilla squads and political workers in the forests. Procure¬
ment of food, water and other absolute necessities of life for mere
physical survival became the sole daily job of the squads.
When comrades went to the forest, the idea was to keep contact
with the plain areas of Telangana armed struggle from these bases.
In the beginning this was tried. But it became impossible. In
Telangana area, the government organised local defence squads
to help the police to capture communists and suppress the com¬
munist movement. The landlords dared not come back to the
villages even after that. They only kept close contact and tried to
demoralise people, saying that the communist movement had
been suppressed and it would never rise again. Home Minister
Sardar Patel made a speech at Hyderabad in 1950, a few a ys
before his death, saying that he would not allow a single communist
to be alive in Telangana. This was utilised to the fullest extent.
Though the masses were still sympathetic to the communists,
they lost faith that the communists could ever return and help them.
So they came to a compromise with the landlords and bought th t
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 529

lands which they had occupied at very cheap rates. This became
possible because of the strength of the Telangana resistance move¬
ment which had shaken the very foundation of the feudal set-up
and the landlords did not think that they could ever get back the
lands so easily. Therefore, they sold them at cheap prices to the
occupiers.
Had we understood the situation properly, we would have
changed our tactic and withdrawn the armed struggle and utilised
the mass upsurge to force the Congress government to implement
the two important land legislations they had themselves issued—
for the abolition of the jagirs and protection to the tenants—under
pressure of the Telangana armed struggle and the general demo¬
cratic movement in the state. That would have not only helped the
strengthening of the communist movement, but also the unification
of all the progressive forces for democratic advance. The other
course of continuing the armed struggle helped the Congress
government and the reactionary forces to suppress and weaken it.
In Andhra area, there were no favourable conditions for any
sort of armed guerilla struggle. There were only some sporadic
actions, here and there, against the atrocities of the landlords,
and some famous raids on police stations on the borders of the
forests where arms were captured. In Andhra area, the govern¬
ment armed the landlords in the villages and organised all able-
bodied males into local defence squads for suppressing the com¬
munist movement. Many communists and sympathisers were
captured with the hrlp of the landlords and their gangs. They
were tortured in the armed police camps and some were killed in
cold blood. Thus the communist movement in Andhra area was
suppressed. But the guerilla squads maintained themselves and
continued to survive somehow in the forests.
Thousands of communists were arrested in Telangana and
Andhra area and they were put in jail. Jails were a hell, especially
in Telangana. They had to undergo inhuman sufferings. A number
of comrades were killed in firings inside jail.

Ill

Historic Significance of Telangana

In conclusion the following important aspects of the Telangana
struggle can be highlighted.
530 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Firstly, the significance of the historic struggle was that it was a

struggle for ending the autocratic rule of the Nizam and for the
establishment of democracy and for foiling the conspiracy of the
Nizam to make Hyderabad an independent state. The struggle
played a very significant role in ending the Nizam’s rule and for
unifying the country.
Secondly, it was a revolutionary agrarian armed struggle for
ending inhuman and outdated feudal order, presided over by the
Nizam, and for giving land to the agricultural workers, peasants
and adivasis. Though it was not able to fully realise this aim, it
greatly helped in eliminating forced labour, illegal taxes and op¬
pression of various types by feudal lords. It greatly helped in elimi¬
nating the jagiri system at one stroke and giving full ownership
rights to the jagiri peasants and occupancy rights to the tenants-
at-will of the deshmukhs.
Thirdly, it was a struggle for division of the state into linguistic
zones and formation of unified linguistic states of Andhra, Maha¬
rashtra and Karnataka with the people of adjoining areas speaking
the same language so as to facilitate all-round political, economic
and cultural development of these people.
This struggle greatly helped the subsequent struggle for the
formation of linguistic states in India. With the success of the
struggle not only the Hyderabad state but other provinces of
India were divided into unified linguistic states, along with Vishala-
andhra, Samyukta Maharashtra and Samyukta Karnataka states.
Fourthly, it was an armed struggle fought under the leadership
of the Communist Party over a vast area in which about 20 districts,
both of Telangana and Andhra area, were involved. In this struggle
4,000 Communist Party cadres and sympathisers laid down their
lives and millions of people participated and underwent terrible
sufferings. The armed struggle not only enhanced the prestige of
the Telangana and Andhra units of our party, but of the entire
party. The struggle made our party in Telangana and Andhra
areas a revolutionary party. The armed struggle set revolutionary
traditions amongthc Telugupeople—a great capital for our party.
Fifthly, the struggle had two phases—anti-Nizam and anti-
Congress-government. So far as the anti-Nizam struggle was
concerned, it was a struggle in which millions of people took
part and it was started on the crest of a mass upsurge.
 POSTWAR SITUATION AND BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE 531

The extension of this struggle to the second phase was done with
a wrong understanding of the situation obtaining in the state, our
country and the world at that time. Though our party extended to
the forest regions in this phase of struggle, yet because of this
wrong understanding, we were cut off from our main base both
in Telangana and Andhra area where we had been building our
movement for decades.
Extension of the armed struggle in desperation to Andhra u.stricts
was also wrong. In the Andhra area, there was no mass wave at
all as in Telangana.
If we had changed our political line after the police action in
Telangana and utilised the opportunities which came at that time,
our party’s position and movement would have been far stronger
than what it became by continuing the armed struggle.
Lastly, there was never any difference in the Telangana and
Andhra units of our party over the anti-Nizam phase of the struggle.
But when some leading comrades saw the bad effects on the second
phase, they differed and wanted the withdrawal of the struggle.
But the major section of the leadership thought otherwise and the
struggle continued up to the end of 1951.
The glorious traditions and achievements of this heroic struggle
are the common heritage of the entire united communist move¬
ment. Those who led and took part in this struggle are today inside
the Communist Party of India, Communist Party (Marxist) and
in the extremist movements.
 27 Telangana

P. Sundarayya

Introduction
It is now 20 years since the Telangana peasants’ armed struggle
was withdrawn on October 21, 1951. There is no authentic narra¬
tion, even in outline, of how this struggle developed in that Nizam-
governed feudal Hyderabad state into a peasants’ and people’s
armed revolt, the intervention by the Indian Army on September 13,
1948, and the heroic armed resistance put up by the peasant masses
for three years to defend the lands they gained earlier from being
seized by the landlords backed by the Nehru Government’s armed
forces. Avowed enemies and hostile critics of this great movement
have produced tons of literature denouncing the struggle as Com¬
munist ‘violence, banditry and anarchy’.
The Right Communists are vociferous in depicting it, parti¬
cularly the stage of the partisan resistance during the years 1949-
51, as sectarian, dogmatic and individual terrorism in the main.
The Naxalite leaders are busy carrying on the smear campaign that
the leadership of the Telangana struggle betrayed it in calling it
off in October, 1951.
To present, in brief, an overall balance-sheet of this heroic
peasant uprising: it exacted tremendous sacrifices from the fighting
peasantry of Telangana and the Visalandhra state unit of the Com¬
munist Party which was destined to lead this popular peasant
uprising. As many as 4,000 Communists and peasant militants
were killed; more than 10,000 Communist cadres and people’s
fighters were thrown into detention camps and jails for a period
of 3-4 years; no less than a minimum of 50,000 people were dragged
into police and military camps from time to time to be beaten,
tortured and terrorised for weeks and months together; several

Reproduced from Telangana People's Struggle and its Lessons by P. Sundarayya,

Published by Desraj Chadha, on behalf of the Communist Party of India (Marxist),
Calcutta, December, 1972, pp. 1-5.
 TELANGANA 533

lakhs of people in thousands of villages were subjected to police

and military raids and suffered cruel lathi-charges; the people in
the course of these military and police raids lost properties worth
millions of rupees which were either looted or destroyed; thousands
of women were molested and had to undergo all sorts of humilia¬
tions and indignities; in a word, the entire region was subjected
to a brutal police and military terror rule for full five years, initially
by the Nizam and his Razakar armed hordes, and subsequently
by the combined armed forces of the Union Government and the
State Government of Hyderabad. After the police action, a huge
50,000 strong force of armed personnel of different categories
was deployed to violently suppress the movement and restore the
shattered landlord rule. According to some unofficial estimates,
the Government of India had spent as much money and resources
in Hyderabad then as it had spent in its war with Pakistan over the
issue of Kashmir during the years 1947-8.
Of course, the picture is not complete without its second side,
the picture of an impressive record of achievements and gains to
the credit of the peasant uprising. During the course of the struggle,
the peasantry in about 3,000 villages, covering roughly a popula¬
tion of 3 million in an area of about 16,000 square miles, mostly in
the three districts of Nalgonda, Warangal and Khammam, had
succeeded in setting up gram raj, on the basis of fighting village
panchayats. In these villages, the hated landlords—the pillars of
Nizam’s autocracy in the rural areas—were driven away from their
fortress-like houses—gadis—and their lands were seized by the
peasantry. One million acres of land was redistributed among the
peasantry under the guidance of the people’s committees. All
evictions were stopped and the forced labour service was abolished.
The plunderous and exorbitant rates of usury were either drasti¬
cally cut down or altogether forbidden. The daily wages of agri¬
cultural labourers were increased and a minimum wage was en¬
forced. The oppressive forest officialdom was forced to abandon
the entire forest belt and the tribals and the people living in the
adjoining areas of these forests were able to enjoy the fruits of their
labour. For a period of 12 to 18 months the entire administration in
these areas was conducted by the village peasant committees.
During the course of this struggle against the Nizam’s autocracy,
the people could organise and build a powerful militia comprising
534 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

10.000 village squad members and about 2,000 regular guerilla

squads, in defence of the peasantry against the armed attacks of
the Razakars and the Nizam’s police. Lakhs of peasants, for the
first time in their life, could have their regular two meals a day.
In a word, this historic peasant rebellion shook the medieval
autocratic regime of the Asafjahi dynasty to its roots, delivering
death-blows against it.
To this heroic peasant resistance movement goes the credit of
pushing the question of the agrarian revolution into the forefront,
compelling the unwilling hands of the Congress leaders to embark
upon various agrarian reforms, however halting, half-hearted and
pitiful they were. It was during the course of this struggle that the
bhoodan utopia was conceived by Sri Vinobha Bhave, the sarvo-
daya leader, who was sent there by the Congress leaders for the
so-called pacification campaign and anti-Communist propaganda
among the peasantry. It was in the course of this bitter and prolonged
struggle that people came into grasp the truth that the land problems
can never be really resolved by the honeyed phrases and pompous
promises of the bourgeois-landlord rulers but a powerful organised
militant mass struggle alone can do it.
Let us also remember again that not a small share of credit
goes to the Telangana struggle for forcing the pace of states’
reorganisation on a linguistic basis, enabling the several disunited
and dismembered nationalities to realise their long-cherished
democratic demand for separate statehood. The powerful blows
that this struggle delivered to the biggest princely regime of Hydera¬
bad, inspired the struggle which won the Andhra state, after the
martyrdom of Potti Sreeramulu in 1952 and this, in turn, paved
the way for the formation of linguistic states throughout India
in 1956, forcing the ruling Congress leadership to demolish the
unprincipled and arbitrary division of the country made by the
former British rulers. The heroic Telangana peasant struggle thus
made its unique contribution to redrawing the political map of
India on a national, democratic, and sound linguistic basis.
In this connection, it is very necessary to realise that the Com¬
munist Party which had the proud role of leading this historic
Telangana revolt and had to bear the brunt of the repression with
tremendous sacrifices, the Communist Party which was at the head
of the Vayalar-Punnappra struggle in Kerala, which was at the
 TELANGANA 535

head of the postwar peasant struggles and the working class strug¬
gles in Bengal, emerged as a result, on the national political scene
as a widely recognised and effective political force to be seriously
reckoned with. From a small force of militant working class
trends that it used to be till then in shaping the destinies of India’s
multi-millions, the Communist Party earned the prestige and
honour of emerging as the single biggest opposition group in the
first Parliament, following the 1952 general elections.
Finally, the single biggest contribution made by the Telangana
peasant revolt to the Communist movement in India is of tremend¬
ous importance- that this struggle brought to the forefront of the
Indian Communist movement almost all the basic theoretical
and ideological questions concerning the strategy and tactics of
the Indian people’s democratic revolution for correct and scientific
answers and realistic and practical solutions. A series of issues
such as the role of the peasantry in the people’s democratic revolu¬
tion, the place and significance of partisan resistance and rural
revolutionary basis, the question of concretely analysing the classi¬
fication among the peasantry, and what role is played in the revolu¬
tion by the different strata of the peasantry, the perspective for the
Indian revolution, the specific place and role of the working class
and urban centres in our revolution, the precise meaning and
import of the concept of working class hegemony and the part
played by the Communist Party in realising it in an underdeveloped
and backward country like ours, where the modern working class
does not exceed one per cent of the population, etc., were thrown
up for serious inner-party debate and decision. Life and experience,
after a prolonged inner-party struggle, enabled the Party to arrive
at a fairly correct political line, with satisfactory answers to most
of the problems posed.
It is relevant to mention here that during the course of the struggle,
particularly during the phase of its last two years, the Communist
Party from top to bottom was sharply divided into two hostile
camps, one defending the struggle and its achievements and the
other denouncing and decrying it as terrorism, etc. Those who
opposed this struggle had even openly come out the press, providing
grist to the mill of the enemies in maligning the struggle and the
Communist Party that was leading it. This sharp political-ideologi¬
cal split though enveloping the entire Party in the country, was
536 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

particularly sharp and acute in the Party’s Visalandhra unit which

was directly and immediately involved in this valiant peasant
uprising. Subsequently, history demonstrated that the inner-party
unity achieved, following the withdrawal of the Telangana armed
resistance in October, 1951, was only formal, superficial and tempo¬
rary and the division, actually, got crystallised into two distinct
hostile political trends. It was not just accidental, and may be of
interest to note, that in the Party split that came about in the year
1962-3, the division in the state Party unit of Visalandhra remained,
more or less, of the same character and with the same composition
as was witnessed during the 1950-51 inner-party strife. With the
exception of a handful of individual Communist leaders and
cadres, who might have changed their loyalties and political
convictions, the bulk that stood opposed to the Telangana struggle,
on one count or the other, opted out to the side of the right reformist
and revisionist Right Communist Party; while the overwhelming
majority, that defended the struggle to the last, rallied firmly behind
the Communist Party of India (Marxist). No serious student of
the Indian Communist movement can succeed in getting to the
root cause and reason that inevitably paved the way for the split
in 1962-3 if he were to bypass the struggle of Telangana and the
various inner-party controversies that broke around the issue of
conducting this valiant peasant resistance movement.
 28 Hyderabad State—its
Socio-political Background

P. Sundarayya

Multi-lingual State
The Hyderabad state consisted of three linguistic areas, the eight
Telugu-speaking districts with Hyderabad city, the capital of the
state, constituting the Telangana area; five Marathi-speaking
districts, in the north-west of the state, constituting the Marathwada
region; and three Kannada-speaking districts in the south-western
part.
The Telangana region occupied 50 per cent of the area, as against
28 per cent of the Marathwada region, and the remaining 22 per cent
of the Kannada region. The Telugu-speaking population in
1951 was 9,000,000 (50 per cent), Marathi-speaking about 4,500,000
(25 per cent) and Kannada-speaking 2,000,000 (11 per cent) while
the Urdu-speaking population was 2,100,000 (12 per cent).

Conflict Between the Muslim Ruler and the Hindu Subjects

The Nizam of Hyderabad state, though a vassal of the British
imperialists, being a Muslim and the vast majority of the people
of Hyderabad belonging to the Hindu religion and its various
sects, got reflected in the administrative set-up. Though the Muslim
population was about 12 per cent, in the whole administrative set¬
up, especially in the higher echelons, the overwhelming majority,
more than 90 per cent, were Muslim bureaucratic officials. The
Nizam and mullas tried to instil a feeling that the Muslims were
the ruling class and they had a right to lord it over the rest of the
people of the state. Against this, the growing middle class
intellectuals, and the growing Hindu business and industrial
interests took up the cudgels, and the Arya Samajists became the
champions of the 'Hindu masses’ against the 'Muslim oppressors’.
Reproduced from Telangana People's Struggle and its Lessons by P. Sundarayya.
op. cit. pp. 7-13 and 16, 17. 21,22, 23.
538 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

There were large numbers of conflicts and clashes between these

sections.
In the early days, till the 1940s, the Indian National Congress
refused to take up the struggle of the people against the ‘princes
and nawabs’ of the native states. This also left the field free for the
Arya Samajists to come forward as the champions of the struggle
against autocracy and enabled them to divert the democratic
awakening of the people, to a considerable extent, on to communal
lines.
One of the aspects of this Muslim feudal rule was reflected in
the language policy of the state, making Urdu dominate, at the
cost of major languages, which were the mother-tongues of the
overwhelming majority of the people of the state.
Later, during the Telangana struggle of 1946-7, the Nizam and
his feudal administrators, his armed Razakars, tried to rally the
Muslim masses to support them as against the ‘Hindus’. But
thanks to the leadership of the Communist Party, large numbers of
the Muslim peasantry and rural artisans and the rural poor were
rallied behind the fighting Telangana peasantry, though it has to
be admitted that a vast section of Muslims in the towns and cities
supported the Nizam and the Razakars. It was again thanks to
the Party’s leadership, that the reprisals against Muslims, after
the ‘Police action’ were prevented in the Telangana area, whereas
in the Marathwada region, in many areas, where the democratic
movement was not so strong as in Telangana, they occurred on
quite a large scale.
The utter isolation of, the ‘Muslim ruler’ from the vast mass of
his ‘Hindu subjects’ was an important factor that enabled the
rallying of various sections against the hated ruler.

The Feudal Oppression

The basic feature that dominated the socio-economic life of the
people of Hyderabad and especially in Telangana was the unbridled
feudal exploitation that persisted well-nigh till the beginning of the
Telangana armed peasant struggle.
Out of the 53,000,000 acres in the whole of Hyderabad State,
about 30,000,000 acres, i.e., about 60 per cent, were under govern¬
mental land revenue system, (called ‘diwani’ or ‘khalsa area’);
about 15,000,000 acres, i.e., about 30 per cent, under the ‘jagirdari’
 HYDERABAD STATE—ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND 539

system, and about 10 per cent as the Nizam’s own direct estate,
i.e., sarf khas system. It was only after the police action that the
sarf khas and jagirdari systems were abolished, and these lands
were merged in diwani (brought under governmental land revenue
system).
The income or loot from the peasantry, from the sarf khas area,
amounting to Rs. 20,000,000 annually was entirely used to meet
the expenditure of the Nizam’s family and its retinue. The whole
area was treated as his private estate. He was not bound to spend
any amount for economic and social benefit or development of
people's livelihood in that area. If anything was spent, it used to
be from other general revenues of the state. In addition, the Nizam
Nawab used to be given Rs. 7,000,000 per annum from the state
treasury.
After the police action when the ‘sarf khas’ area was merged
in the ‘diwani’ area, the Nizam and his family offspring were to
be paid Rs. 5,000,000 per annum as compensation, apart from
another Rs. 5,000,000 as privy purse. The peasants in these areas
were nothing but bond-slaves, or total serfs under the Nizam.
Even whatever little rights existed in the.‘diwani’ area were denied
to them.
The ‘jagir’ areas constituted 30 per cent of the total state. In
these areas, paigas, samsthanam, jagirdars, ijardars, banjardars,
maktedars, inamdars, or agraharams, were the various kinds of
feudal oppressors. Some of these used to have their own revenue
officers to collect the taxes they used to impose. Some of them used
to pay a small portion to the state while some others were not requir¬
ed to. pay anything. In these areas, various kinds of illegal exac¬
tions and forced labour were the normal feature. Some of these
jagirs, paigas and samsthanams, especially the biggest ones, had
their own separate police, revenue, civil and criminal systems;
they were sub-feudatory states, under the Nizam’s state of Hydera¬
bad which was itself a stooge native state under the British auto¬
cracy in India. In jagir areas the land taxes on irrigated lands
used to be 10 times more than those collected in diwani (govern¬
ment) areas, amounting to Rs. 150 per acre of 20-30 maunds of
paddy per acre.
The paigas were estates granted to Muslim feudals, especially
the Nizam’s relatives, for recruiting and maintaining armed person-
540 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

nel to help the Nizam in his wars. The jagirs and samasthanams
were those given to reward officers, who distinguished themselves,
in serving the Nizam. Maktas, banjars, agraharamas and inams
were given for various services, and these owners were entitled
to fleece the peasantry and take as much as they could extract.
There used to be ‘deshmukhs’ and ‘deshpandes’ who were earlier
the tax collectors for the Government, but later on, under the Nizam
Government’s Salar Jung diwanship (Chief Ministership), when
direct tax collection by the state apparatus was introduced, these
‘deshmukhs’ and ‘deshpandes’ were granted vatans or mash
(annuities), based on percentage of the past collections, in per¬
petuity. These deshmukhs and deshpandes as collectors of taxes,
grabbed thousands of acres of the best fertile cultivated land, and
made it their own property. The peasants cultivating these lands
were reduced to the position of tenants-at-will.
How did they come to own these lands? These feudal landlords
had acquired them by all foul means from the ordinary people.
The major portion of the lands cultivated by the peasants came
to be occupied by the landlords, during the first survey settlement.
These people who had power in their hands got lands registered
in their names without the knowledge of the peasants who were
cultivating them and the peasants came to know of it only after¬
wards when it was too late to do anything. Thus, these feudal
lords got possession of unlimited vast lands and made them their
legal possession.
Even lands which were left out in possession of the peasants
in the survey settlement, were occupied by the landlords in the
years of the economic crisis of 1920-22 and 1930-33, when the
peasants either due to bad harvests or unfair prices for the crops
were unable to pay the taxes; these feudal landlords used to torture
the peasants who were unable to pay the taxes and get hold of
their lands. Many a time this acquisition used to take place even
without the knowledge of the peasants. They used to lend agri¬
cultural products like grain, chillies, etc., to the peasants at fantastic
usurious rates and later under the pretext of non-repayment of
these loans, used to confiscate the lands. This system was prevalent
at the time of the Telangana struggle.
These landlords are not only deshmukhs but also village chiefs,
patel, patwari, mali patel—with hereditary rights. Each one used
to get five to ten villages under him as vatan.
 HYDERABAD STATE—ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND 541

These vatan villages were controlled through clerks or agents

(seridars) appointed by the deshmukh. They enjoyed the rights of
an officer. These seridars used to collect the products from the
peasants by force, and do all other jobs including supplying all
information about the village. If there was any quarrel or friction
amongst the villagers, it could not be settled without the knowledge
of the landlord. Depending upon the nature of the quarrel, the
deshmukhs used to decide whether it should be settled in his house
(gadi) or outside in the village centre or elsewhere. If it was a small
matter, the deshmukh’s agent would be entrusted with it, but if
it was a big affair, then it was settled in the presence of the deshmukh
in his house. To this category of rich landlords belonged people
like the Babasahebpeta landlord, Visnoor Ramachandra Reddy,
etc.
Pingali Venkatrama Reddy (Waddepalli deshmukh) got excise
contracts for the whole of Telangana all for himself. In those days,
excise (abkari) contract meant full control over the villages.

Vetti System
The vetti system (forced labour and exactions) is generally taken
to be confined to tribal areas or some of the most backward social
communities in other areas. But in Telangana vetti system was an
all-pervasive social phenomenon affecting all classes of people,
in varying degrees. Each harijan family had to send one man from
the family to do vetti. In a small hamlet (palle) each house will
send one man. Their daily job consisted of household work in the
house of the patel, patwari mali-patel or deshmukh, to carry reports
to police stations, taluk office (tehsil); keep watch on the village
chavadi and the poundage. Besides these, there used to be more
work for them whenever an officer came to the village chavadi.
In village Chilukur, daily 16 harijans used to do vetti. They used
to collect wood for fuel from the forests and carry post also. For
carrying post or supplies they were supposed to get an anna for
two and a half miles, which was of course not even honoured in
practice. This system was known as ‘kosukuvisam’ in Telugu
(i.e., 1/16th of a rupee for a distance of 2^ miles).
Further the harijans, who carried on the work of cobblers,
tanning of leather and stitching shoes, or preparing leather acces¬
sories for agricultural operations, for drawing water from wells
or yoke belts for plough cattle, or for draught bullocks, were
542 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

forced to supply these to the landlords free of cost while the rest
of the peasantry used to pay them fixed annuities in grain and other
agricultural produce.

Wretched Conditions of workers and Middle Class Employees

In 1941, in the Telangana area, there were about 500 factories
employing about 28,000 workers. Many of the big factories like
textiles, mines, paper mills, engineering factories were heavily
subsidised and large amounts of loans granted by the Government
to these owners—Salarjung, Babu Khan, Lahoti, Alauddin,
Dorabji, Chenoy, Tayabji, Laik Ali, Pannalal Pitti, etc. They
made huge profits during the war, selling their goods in the black
market.
But the workers were miserably paid, the textile workers’ wage
being Rs. 10 to 15 per month. Eighty per cent of the wage earners
got Rs. 15 per month. In the Azamjahi Mills of Warangal, 4,000
workers’ wage bill was Rs. 13.63 lakhs in 1943, while the managing
agent’s commission amounted to Rs. 7.44 lakhs; in the Ramgopal
Mills of Hyderabad 1,500 workers’ wage bill was Rs. 4 lakhs while
the managing agents’ commission was Rs. 1.35 lakhs.
The higher government officials, numbering 1,500, were paid
Rs. 50 million per year, while the wages for many lower categories
varied between 12, 16, 30 and 60 rupees per month.

Second World War and People's Struggles in Hyderabad State

The second world war had broken out in 1939. It spread all over
the world, with Hitler attacking the Soviet Union in June 1941,
and the Japanese imperialists, in collaboration with the Hitlerites,
attacking the American naval base in Pearl Harbour, thus starting
its Pacific war against American, British and French positions.
The British rulers of India automatically declared India to be
at war, without even consulting the national leadership and elected
legislatures. The Indian National Congress decided not to cooperate
with the British war effort, till their demand for National Govern¬
ment at the Centre and the British Viceroy to act in accordance
with the national Ministry thus formed, was met, and the pledge
that after the war was over full transfer of power would take place.
It asked the Congress Ministries in the provinces to resign and
started individual satyagraha to bring pressure on the British
Government.
 HYDERABAD STATE—ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND 543

The British did not bother much about the ineffective individual
satyagraha movement. It went on with its war effort, intensified
its exploitation of Indian resources and manpower, and the Indian
army was sent abroad to fight for the British in many key sectors
in Europe, Africa, West Asia, and later on in Burma, Malaya, etc.
The militant section of the Indian National Congress led by Subhas
Chandra Bose was opposed to these mild steps of the Congress
leadership. They advocated a militant mass movement, Subhas
Bose left India in disguise and later organised the Indian National
Army with the aid of the Japanese and marched into Manipur
and Assam in 1942-4.
The Communist Party of India also advocated militant struggle
for complete overthrow of the British imperialist Government
in its Proletarian Path. It had to go underground and worki It
could only carry on propaganda in most of the states as it was
a small force; in Andhra it brought out secretly a magazine,
Swatantra Bharat, and circulated widely 2,000 copies in about the
same number of villages throughout the State. But the prestige
of the Party had tremendously grown because of this militant
line and the underground organisation and campaigns it carried
on against the British imperialist war effort.
But with the Hitlerite attack on the Soviet Union, and its rapid
and deep penetration into the Soviet Union, it became the duty
of every democratic force and especially the Communist movement
to chalk out a programme of how, while effectively fighting the
British imperialist domination in our country and other colonies,
to help the Soviet Union and its allies to defeat the Hitler-Mussolini-
Tojo fascist tri-combination, its onslaught on the bastion of Socia¬
lism and the world democratic camp.
Sri Jawaharlal Nehru and those who followed him in the Congress
were for support to the war effort and help to the Soviet side to
win, but to effectively do it, to rouse the Indian people, they felt
that effective power should be transferred to the Indian leadership,
with the definite proviso for full transfer of power after the war.
Certain other leaders of the Indian National Congress felt that
it was the opportune time, when the British were in a tight corner,
to bring maximum pressure, to get maximum concessions from
the British. Since the British imperialists were not prepared to
grant even the minimum which the Indian National Congress
' Urship demanded, the 1942 Quit India movement was launched
544 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The British imperialists launched full-scale repression to suppress

this movement violently.
It was in December 1941 that the Communist Party came out
with its assessment of the new situation, six months after Hitler’s
attack on the Soviet Union. It was not easy for the Communist
Party to come to a quick decision. It was clear to the Party that
the war was no more between two groups of imperialist powers
(one of the groups being fascist) as it had been from 1939 to 1941.
The attack on the Soviet Union, the only socialist power then in
the world, by the Hitler-Mussolini fascist combine, was the calcu¬
lated, though desperate act of these fascist powers to clear their
way for world domination by destroying the Soviet Union, which
was blocking it, determinedly.
 29 The Communist Movement in
Andhra: Terror Regime
1948-51

P. Sundarayya

Historical Background
Andhra is a contiguous area to Telangana. Now in 1971, it has
a three-crore population and 12 districts. The 12 districts in the
Andhra area can be divided again as follows: Circar or coastal
districts (8); Rayalaseema districts (4); with the nine Telangana
districts, now they constitute Andhra Pradesh. The boundaries
now are: east-sea coast: south-Tamil Nadu, West-Karnataka;
North-Maharashtra; North-east-Bastar area of Madhya Pradesh
and Orissa State.
Andhra had a predominantly peasant economy. While the Circar
districts were comparatively more developed economically, socially
and politically with a number of projects and other irrigation faci¬
lities, the Rayalaseema districts are backward in all respects, with
a backward agriculture, no big projects and more domination of
feudal relations and oppression. There were hardly any big in¬
dustries except in Vizagapatnam district, where the shipbuilding
yard owned by the Scindias and two jute mills owned by Europeans,
were situated, and railways in the whole of Andhra. The rest of
the working class was mostly dependent for its livelihood on petty
industries such as tobacco, mica mines, foundries, rice and oil
mills, etc. Ninety per cent of the whole population lived on agri¬
culture in villages.

The Communist Party

The Communist Party in Andhra was officially organised in
September 1934. The development of the Communist movement

Reproduced from Telangana People's Struggle and its Lessons by P. Sundarayya,

op. cit. pp. 154-5, 158-64, 168-71.
546 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

in India was a terror for the imperialists and they banned it in

1934, even before its branches could be organised in Andhra.
The Communists, while working in the Congress organisation,
conducted agitation on the demands of agricultural labour and
poor peasants in the villages and the working class in towns and
could build up their independent base among them, to a consi¬
derable extent.
Forced by the anti-fascist war situation, the imperialists lifted
the ban on the Communist Party in 1942. Communists came out
legally and directly plunged into the battle against fascism. While
ceaselessly campaigning for the release of Congress leaders and
formation of a National Government they took up the day-to-day
issues of the people: conducted agitations, led deputations, organis¬
ed demonstrations, and held meetings on such issues as supply
of agricultural implements, repairs of tanks, roads and canals,
against blackmarket and for strict price controls, against hoarding
and corruption. They led a number of agricultural labour struggles
and the ‘grow more food’ campaign. In the towns, wide support
was mobilised behind the working class demands and the Party
led some of their strike struggles successfully. Volunteers of the
Communist Party were able, in many towns, to successfully unearth
the hoards of blackmarketeers, and force the Government to
distribute them to the people.
Communists fought on the political, economic and social issues
of every section of the toiling people; on such peasant demands
fair price for his produce, for supply of agricultural implements
and fertilisers; on working class demands for supply of all neces¬
sities of life at controlled rates and increase in wages; on student
demands for supply of white paper, kerosene at controlled rates,
against detentions, for amenities such as tiffin sheds, rest rooms,
in the educational institutions; on such women’s demands as
provision of separate sanitary facilities in villages, for maternity
and welfare centres, for strict implementation of the anti-child-
marriages Act, for educational facilities and for equal rights;
on middle class issues against high house rentals, housing scarcity,
etc. In one word, wherever and whenever people were in difficulties
there you could see a Communist with a red flag on his shoulder.
That was a common phenomenon in those days.
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 547

All through these campaigns, the main political task of the

people—the struggle against fascism—was specially stressed and
achievements of the Soviet Union were widely popularised. For
carrying on a ceaseless campaign for the release of Congress
leaders, a large number of our leading cadre were kept in prison
all through the period.
It was this constant and ceaseless work on people’s issues,
close ties with the people through thick and thin, that enabled the
Communists to rally 100,000 people at the All-India Kisan Sabha
Conference, held in Bezwada in 1944 and the next year, 50,000
to the Provincial Kisan Sabha Conference in Tenali.
These ever-growing activities and increasing influence of the
Communists was a bitter pill to the Congress leaders, mainly
coming from liberal landlord sections, who had just come out of
jails. They realised that if the Communists were allowed to grow
at this rate, their sociai order of class exploitation would be at
an end. So, ‘under the open instigation of Dr Pattabhi Sitaramayya
and N.G. Ranga, all-India Congress leaders, raids were organised
on party offices, attacks were made on individual Party members
and important leaders, and Party rallies were disturbed. The
Communist Party scented the danger underlying these goonda
attacks, organised the PVB (People’s Volunteer Brigade) and gave
the slogan: ‘defend the people’, ‘beat back the goondas’, and ‘expose
the reactionary Congress’. Under the leadership of the anti-
Commumst tire-eater Ranga Party the mass rallies in Krishna
and Guntur districts were attacked. There was not a single meeting,
demonstration or cultural performance that was not attempted
to be disrupted by them. But, thanks to the timely sensing of this
menace and immediate mobilisation and defensive actions, they
were everywhere put on the run, the Party was saved and the
revolutionary movement was defended and extended.

Elections and After

World War II was terminated with the smashing of Nazi Germany
and fascist Japan. The working class in India began to rise. There
was a gigantic mass upsurge and a huge strike wave, highlighted
by INA demonstrations, the RIN Revolt, the all-India Postal
workers’ strike, etc. The British imperialists saw this as a challenge
548 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

to its colonial rule and in order to divert the attention of the people
from the revolutionary path, announced elections to provincial
legislatures.
In Andhra, the Communist Party put up 35 candidates (in half
of the total constituencies) and fought the elections with the two
main slogans of 'land to the tiller’ and ‘Vishalandhra in a people’s
India’. Goondas were freely employed against the Communist
election campaign and the Congress-Justice Party-zamindar al¬
liance littered money all over to buy votes. Unashamedly, they
sought police and goonda help to frighten the voters. But the
PVB volunteers were rallied and the Congress volunteers and
goondas were kept at bay.
The results of the elections showed that the Communist Party
was the biggest and the most influential party after the Congress
in Andhra. The party polled 2.5 lakh votes in all, and 22 per cent
of the total votes polled in the constituencies contested by Com¬
munists. In the strongholds of Krishna and Guntur districts,
the percentage was 35 and 25 respectively of the total votes polled.
And, at the time, franchise in India was limited to only 13 per cent,
the vast mass of toilers, who form the bulk of the supporters of
the Communists, were deprived of their voting right.
A wave of strikes swept Andhra, both in the villages and the
towns. Agricultural labour and farm servants in hundreds of
villages struck work demanding increase in their yearly and daily
wages, wages in kind to be given with correct measures, for holidays
and regular hours of work. The peasants in Munagala and Challa-
palli occupied zamindari lands and began to fight the repression
that ensued.
The strike of ten thousand tobacco workers (which broke out
the very next day after the Cbngress Ministries took office); one
thousand textile workers of Pandalapaka, the cart-pullers in
Rajahmundry, the cigar workers and a host of other workers
belonging to other trades came out on the streets on strike for
their minimum demands; of particular importance was the pro¬
vince-wide strike of 20,000 municipal workers, who were paid
a pittance of Rs. 4.72 per month.
As a result of its all-sided mass work, the Party was able to
draw over to its side the wide strata of urban poor and the rural
toilers, especially the agricultural labours and poor peasants.
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 549

for whose rights the Party was fighting ever since its inception in
1934. It could stand face to face with the Congress in the elections
and poll 2.5 lakh votes.
The Party came out as the stalwart defender of toilers’ rights
by leading their day-to-day struggles on urgent economic issues.
The Communist Party stood against all injustices, inequality,
and suppression of fundamental rights. Such was the influence
of the Party in the villages that not only on economic demands,
but for every trifling matter such as kerosene or rice ration cards,
or excess municipal taxes or some social injustice, etc., they used
to rush to the office of the Party and seek redress of their grievances.
In the social sector, it had fought the devil of untouchability.
Members of the Party shared food with untouchables, lived with
them and shared their sorrows and joys. Moreover, the very nature
of the class struggle was such that it had unified under one banner
the touchables and untouchables as well. Marriage ceremonies
were simplified, doing away with priests and mantrams; widow-
remarriage and inter-caste-marriages were widely popularised
and members of the Party were always in the forefront. Equality
between men and women was advocated.
A new culture was introduced. The youth of the towns and
villages were drawn into the new life of activity. They were mobilised
under the flag of the Andhra Youth Federation, the only organisa¬
tion of its kind. They participated in games, yearly sports on
the occasion of national festivals, joined volunteer squads, trained
themselves in the use of lathi, took part in drama and burra katha
squads, and were also imbued with the fighting consciousness
against imperialism. The Communist Party’s name had become so
synonymous with all good youth in the villages that even some of
the old folk in the houses used to prevail upon their sons or grand¬
sons to go and join the Youth Leagues so that they might be schooled
and disciplined as good citizens.
The Communist Party had revived languishing cultural forms
like burra katha, veedhi bhagavatham, etc., and through them
approached the masses. Hundreds of squads and drama groups
functioned all over Andhra. Through these cultural forms, stories
peasants’ lives, biographies of national heroes, militant struggles
of the Andhra people, heroic exploits of Soviet guerrillas, were
all popularised. The number of people that attended the cultural
550 .PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

performances ranged from 3,000 to 10,000. There were many

instances when the middle class people and intelligentsia preferred
to attend a burra katha performance to a cinema. This had changed
the tastes of the people so much that the professional dramatists
had to adapt themselves to this change, partly giving up their
religious and ‘ethical’ performances.
Through innumerable mass meetings, through Prajasakti, organ
of the Communist Party, the peasants had been politicalised;
they came to know much about the Soviet Union, the fortress
of socialism, and about the heroic struggle of the Chinese people.
Prajasakti Publishing House published a record number of nearly
300 books on various topics: politics, theory of Marxism, histories
of various countries, on literature, on science, on economics, short
stories, dramas, burra kathas, etc., which no other organisation
could do up till then. On every burning problem of the people
and the country, on every significant event in the international
field, PSPH came out with a pamphlet and constantly kept the
people abreast of events, and brought the general masses to a
higher political level.
The following figures of membership give an idea of the develop¬
ment of the Communist Party and various mass organisations
during 1945-6.
Communist Party 20,000 (in 2,000 villages)
Andhra Prov. Kisan Sabha 175,000
Andhra Prov. Agri. Labour LInion 60,000
„ Students’ Federation 12,000
” Youth Federation 50,000
” ” Mahila Sabha .. 20,000
” Trade Union Congress 30,000
Thus, in spite of certain reformist mistakes and politics, the
Communist Party in Andhra became a broad mass party, came
forth as the champion of the toiling masses, as the unquestioned
leader of the workers, as builder of the revolutionary peasant
movement, as a staunch fighter for social justice and as the beacon
light of a new culture in Andhra.

Black Act Promulgated Repression Begins

The Prakasam Ministry, which was then in office in Madras pro¬
vince, promulgated the ‘Public Safety (Prajarakshana) Ordinance’,
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA! TERROR REGIME 1948-51 551

popularly known as the ‘Public Disaster (Prajabhakshana) Ordi¬

nance’ on January 22, 1947, on the eve of Independence Day on
January 26. Hundreds were arrested and detained without cause,
without trial. Offices of the Communist Party, trade unions and
Kisan Sabha were raided and records were confiscated.
Here it is necessary to note that the Communist Party was
neither preparing for the overthrow of the Government by force,
nor was it indulging in violence of any sort, as was slandered by
the Congress Government. The Party was just championing the
day-today interests of the workers, of agricultural labour and
poor peasants; it was leading their struggles for their just demands,
the elementary right of the people even in a bourgeois parliamentary
democracy. And for this ‘crime’ the Congress Ministry replied
with this Black Act. Thus it was the Congress Government that
started the unwarranted offensive against the Communists and
the people and not the other way round, as the Government shame¬
lessly propagated in its lies later.
The democratic toiling masses could not tolerate this foul offen¬
sive on the fundamental rights of the people and parties. Ten
thousand workers in Rajahmundry came out on a one-day strike
demanding unconditional release of their leaders. The railway
workers of Bitragunta and other centres also stopped work. Workers
in Bezwada, Guntur, Pandalapaka, Vizag, Chittavalasa, the Kisan
Sabha, the Agricultural Labour Association sent strong protest
notes against this arbitrary action of the Government and demanded
its withdrawal.
Nor had they been cowed down with the detention of their leader¬
ship. The economic crisis, the pro-capitalist and pro-landlord
policies of the Congress Government and the intensifying repres¬
sion on the peaceful population, forced them into further bitter
struggles.
In Gajullanka of Divi taluka, Krishna district, the peasants
began to assert their right on the lanka lands (riverbed lands).
What did the Congress Government, which waxed eloquent pro¬
mises during the elections, do? It did not come to the rescue of
the poor peasants against the high-handedness of the Challapalli
zamindar, who after the elections had overnight turned into a
Congressman, but went to the assistance of the zamindar, with
its police force and opened fire on the unarmed peasants, killing
552 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

four, including a woman leader, Viyamma, and wounding scores

of others. And note again, it was not the Communist guerrillas
that started the shooting, it was the Congress Government that
fired the first shot on the unarmed people. It was not the Com¬
munists but the Congress Government that started the armed
offensive.
In Buchampet of West Godavari district, the tribal peasants
started a fight against the zamindar. The police came and shot
four of them dead.
In Kanur and Pandyala and other centres of West Godavari
district, the peasants stood against the oppression of the landlords
and zamindars. The peasants’ demands were so just that the Taluka
Congress Committee and some members of the District Congress
Committee came to their support and formed joint action commit¬
tees. The Congress Government promulgated orders under Section
144 and lathi-charged the peasants. The landlords and the Govern¬
ment let loose goondas throughout the district. As a result of this
free reign of the landlord-goondas, in ‘Pedapadu’ village in another
part of the district. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a militant peasant
youth and a member of the Party, was killed.
In ‘Munagala’, an enclave of Andhra in Hyderabad state, a
traditional militant agrarian base, the peasants, under the influence
of the sweeping land struggle of the Telangana peasants, seized
4,000 acres of zamindari lands. The police came and opened fire,
killing two and injuring several others.
In Divi taluka of Krishna district, the peasantry in Challapalli
estate occupied thousands of acres and the Congress police rushed
to the aid of the zamindar and let loose terror on the fighting
peasantry. In Munagala and Challapalli estates, over 50 were
kept as detenus besides the arrest of several hundreds of people.

Independence and After

It was constantly dinned into the people’s ears that India had
now achieved independence and the condition of the people
would be bettered. But the toiling masses found the real class
character of this independence. The Communist Party’s influence
went on increasing. Municipal elections were held all over Andhra
only three months after the Mountbatten Award. The Com¬
munist Party contested these elections. In such important towns
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 553

as Bezwada and Rajahmundry, Communists won 1/3 of the total

seats. Altogether the Communists won 36 seats all over Andhra,
in half a dozen municipalities.
These victories of the Communists, that, too, within 3 months
of independence, made the bourgeois-landlord Government
panicky. As it was, the sweep of the struggles of the agricultural
labourers, farm-servants, the working class and the peasantry
during the one year of the Congress regime in the provinces was
enough of an indication of the anti-people character of the regime
of the Congress.

Heroic Telangana—A Constant Terror to the Congress Government

Already in the ’40s, Communists in Krishna district of Madras
Andhra had come into contact with the disillusioned left-oriented
youth in the state (Hyderabad) and ever since then, had been tire¬
lessly working for the cause of the peasants, who were most feudally
exploited and oppressed under the Nizam-Deshmukh rule. They
took up such immediate issues of the people as vetti, illegal exactions,
bribery, etc., and fought against the local deshmukhs. When the
deshmukhs left loose goondas, people resisted and drove them
back. Then the Nizam’s police and military came on the scene.
They began to loot the property of the people, commit arson,
murder and rape on a mass scale. In order to save their hearths
and homes and their own lives from the murderous attacks, people
formed into guerrilla bands and began putting up militant resis¬
tance under the political, organisational and ideological leadership
of the Communist Party. The rule of the exploiters was coming
to an end. Thousands of acres of land were being confiscated and
distributed and people’s committees were being established. The
Razakar armies w;ere let loose on the people. People under the
leadership of the Andhra Mahasabha and Communist Party
began heroically resisting the Nizam regime.
The Communist Party in Andhra, especially in the four coastal
districts which were on the borders of Nalgonda and Warangal
districts, served as a rear base for the Telangana fight. The Party
in Andhra gave a call for all-out assistance to the struggle of the
Telangana people against the Nizam, to help them overthrow
the feudal regime and establish Vishalandhra. Thus, it sought to
implement the election slogans of 1945-6, unlike the Congress
554 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

whose promises evaporated into thin air. The call was responded
to on a mass scale.
The Communist Party, the Andhra Provincial TUC and the
Kisan Sabha welcomed and organised relief for the people from
Telangana who sought protection from torture, rape and loot.
The guerrilla fighters and leaders got the guidance and help they
wanted. The whole movement was under the ideological, political
and organisational leadership of the Communist Party. In the
whole of Andhra, a national fervour to fight and liquidate Nizam’s
rule and unify Andhra had been roused. With what eagerness
and readiness people came forward to help their fighting brethren
across the border can be understood from the single fact, that
in just three days, in Bezwada town alone, Rs. 20,000 were collected
for purchase of arms to the guerrillas. The Communist movement
and the Party had become the backbone of the Telangana people’s
armed struggle.
The play, ‘Ma Bhoomi’ (Our Land), depicting the life of
Telangana peasants, the exploitations of deshmukhs and Nizam,
police atrocities and the people’s resistance and fight for land,
which was written to popularise the agrarian revolt in Telangana,
played a particularly significant role in rallying the people to
the assistance of Telangana. Two hundred squads staged this play
all over Andhra, in villages as well as towns. Lakhs of people saw it:
lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, scientists. Congressmen, cinema
stars, writers, one and all acclaimed the play as most effective.
The funds collected through the staging of this play ran into a
lakh of rupees. The Ministers, prevailed upon by the Congress
MLAs, invited this drama squad and got the play staged in the
Rajaii Hall (Government House in Madras). They saw with their
own eyes what a powerful message it was giving to the people
and banned it afterwards, though praising it to the skies on the
spot.
In the course of a conversation in Bezwada town. Congress
leaders were being criticized by a person who desired strongly
the creation of the Andhra province. The Congress leaders ridiculed
him saying that he was talking like a Communist and joked, ‘wait,
the Communists will get you Vishalandhra.’ To this, he retorted,
‘It is the Communists that propagated the demand for Vishalandhra
in 1946, and they have taken up arms and have been fighting for
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 555

it during the last four years, while the Congress has been promising
the Andhra province for the last 40 years and refuses even that
much today’.
While on the one hand, the Nehru-Patel Government stabbed
in the back the fighting people of Telangana by entering into a
stand-still agreement with the Nizam and agreeing to supply arms
to this butcher of the people, the Communists were leading the
people fighting in the battle-fields and shedding their blood for
the cause of the people, for the cause of Vishalandhra. This placed
the Communist Party in Andhra not only as the workers’ and
peasants’ leader but also as the champion and unifier of the Andhra
people.

Two Years of Terror-Rule in Andhra

It was on January 31, 1948, that the Madras Congress Government
launched its long-prepared offensive against the militant people’s
movement in Andhra and its leader, the Communist Party. The
assassination of Gandhiji, and the consequent clashes between
the people and the RSS gang, were only an excuse to carry out its
fascist offensive. That night, the police swooped down on the
office of the Prajasakti, Communist daily in Bezwada, the Party’s
City Committee office and the offices of the Krishna District
Committee and the Andhra Provincial Committee of the Party
and on the houses of many prominent Communists and their
sympathisers and effected large-scale arrests. It hoped to bag
the whole of the Communist leadership of Andhra—an extended
meeting of the Provincial Committee was in session then just
after the Provincial Conference. But it failed in its objective in
spite of its sudden swoop.
The reason behind this swoop, the first of its kind in the whole
of India, was that the Communist Party in Andhra and the militant
mass movement that was led by it and especially, the powerful
people’s movement in Krishna district was the strong base of support
for the Telangana people’s struggle for liberation against the Nizam
and his Razakar gangs. So, when the Government of India entered
into the stand-still agreement with the Nizam, and when the
Telangana Communists and the Telangana Andhra Mahasabha
repudiated the stand-still agreement and continued to wage the
struggle with even arms in hand, the Congress got frightened.
556 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

It was determined to crush and extinguish the Telangana people’s

struggle, so that it might not become the beacon-light to the op¬
pressed masses of the rest of India. So, while on the one hand, it
was helping the Nizam by supplying arms, on the other hand,
it prepared to clean up the rear base of the Telangana people’s
struggle in Andhra, especially in the Krishna, Guntur and Godavari
districts.
After the first raid on the Communist and trade union offices
in Bezwada, the Madras Government arrested 79 persons on the
false charge of murdering one of the RSS men in the January 31
clashes. How false this charge was and how it was just no more
than a pretext to round up the militant leadership was proved
when in the above case, after two years of delaying the trial during
which time many of the accused were refused bail and kept in jail
or under detention, ultimately only 17 were convicted for forming
an unlawful assembly and sentenced to two to three months’
imprisonment in January 1950.
The Madras Government continued its preparations to liquidate
the people’s struggle in Krishna. It concentrated its armed police,
the Malabar Special Police, in Krishna District while the Govern¬
ment of India was massing Gurkha and Sikh battalions to intervene
against the Telangana people’s struggle under the proclaimed
cover of protecting the Hyderabad people against the Nizam and
his Razakar gangs.
In Krishna district, the people’s movement in support of
Telangana became intensified. The mass of agricultural labour,
in more than 400 villages, were preparing for strike struggles to
win their demands. Their demands were 30 bags of paddy, 8-hour
day and 30 paid holidays. The peasants in the zamindari tracts
refused to pay rent to zamindars and demanded that their rent
be scaled down and the zamindari system be abolished. The Madras
Government resorted to mass raids, mass beatings, arrests, destruc¬
tion of properties and utensils, burning and razing down of houses,
raping and murders. The Congress Seva Dal ‘volunteers’ were
pressed into service along with the Special Armed Police.
The usual technique in the raids was for a force of 200-300
policemen to surround a village during the night, not to allow
anybody to go out from the house even to answer the calls of
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 557

nature, gather men and women of the village in a cattle-shed and

beat them, while some other batches of police entered the houses
and began looting, breaking the furniture and utensils, tearing up
sarees, shirts and dhoties to pieces and mixing dal, rice and pickles
with kerosene and urine. They burnt and razed to the ground many
houses, prevented cultivation of the lands of Communist workers
and their relatives. Agricultural labour hamlets were the special
targets in these raids. These raids continued for full three months
from May to July. Though the main concentration was in Krishna
district, raids took place in Guntur, Godavari and even Kurnool
districts as they all bordered on Telangana.
And the people, in spite of the terror, began to fight for their
demands. Agricultural workers in Krishna district in about 90
villages went on strike or prepared themselves for strike and won
wage increases of 3 to 5 bags of paddy. In Guntur district, in about
70 villages, and in Nellore in about 20 villages, they went on strikes
and won their demands. In East Godavari district, in Razole and
Ramchandrapuram talukas, agricultural workers struck work
and won wage-increases. In Pithapuram taluka of East Godavari,
during the replanting season, agricultural labourers in a few villages
won from Rs. 2 to Rs. 3 per day. The movement for higher wages
and holidays spread to the Rayalaseema districts, Cuddapah and
Anantapur. In West Godavari, Nellore, Cuddapah and Anantapur
districts, banzar lands (waste lands) to the extent of hundreds of
acres were occupied by agricultural labourers and poor peasants.
The Congress bourgeois-landlord Government panicked and
banned the Communist Party in Madras province, the Provincial
Kisan Sabha, the Andhra Provincial Agricultural Labour Associa¬
tion, the Andhra Provincial Youth Federation and all strong
TUs in the province. The Government sent orders to all the heads
of high schools and colleges in the province to drive out all Com¬
munist minded students and their sympathisers from the educa¬
tional institutions.
Anything in the nature of civil liberty was totally absent in the
areas where the militant people’s movements existed. In a word,
these areas were declared disturbed areas with orders to the police
to shoot at sight anybody whom they suspected as Communists.
The couriers, pilots, contacts, shelter keepers, etc., who accidentally
558 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

fell into the hands of the police were subjected to sadistic torture
like thrusting pins under fingernails, hanging them upside down,
and all sorts of devilish brutalities....
Thus, the years 1949 and 1950 saw a new pitch of intensified
terror of mass raids, beatings, lootings, rapings and shootings of
important people’s leaders and Communist leaders after their
arrest, and these murders were announced to the press as ‘shot
dead in encounter with the police'.

People Fight Back

The Party during the whole of 1948 was calling upon the Party
ranks and the people to bravely face the police attacks, not to
leave the villages but assert their right to demonstrate and right
to hoist red flags and fight back the police brutalities with whatever
weapon they could lay their hands on. But the police came in
hundreds and this call of frontal resistance reduced itself to militant
satyagraha with backs and bones of our comrades broken and a
number of important cadres arrested.
The people and the party ranks were fed up with this form of
resistance. In Jupudi village in Guntur district, they organised
themselves into squads, retreated into neighbouring villages
when the police came in large numbers, but the moment they went
away, came back and attacked the landlords and their agents.
This dingdong battle continued for more than a year.
In Davajigudem, Krishna district, the local cadre adopted similar
tactics.
It was in November 1948, in Pedamuktavi village in Divi taluka,
Krishna district, which was the worst target of Congress police
brutalities, that the comrades mobilised themselves and entered
the village, dragged out of their beds the landlords and their agents
who were terrorising the whole neighbourhood, and gave them a
good thrashing.
People’s reaction was ‘how long could the Communists keep
mum in the face of the torture they were being subjected to: they
have decided to fight back’. This was the thought in everybody's
mind .... That meant that they could shoot any Communist
they could lay hands on. The Congress Seva Dal and the landlords
in villages were being armed and there was open talk in Congress
offices that the Communists would be taught a lesson.
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 559

It was under these conditions that in July 1949, the Party gave
the call 'a tooth for a tooth’ and ‘an eye for an eye’, to fight back
the landlord-police terror that had been going on for so long.
The Andhra State Committee of the Party was opposed during
the whole of 1948 to resort to arms in the Andhra area, as the people
there had not yet developed to the stage of waging a struggle
for land and defending it by arms as in Telangana. It also argued
that the political-economic situation in the Andhra area under
Congress regime was entirely ‘different’ from that prevailing in
Telangana under the Nizam. But it yielded to this demand from
the lower ranks and from the Telangana comrades to take up
arms, and develop guerrilla movement to help the Telangana
movement as well. But it was soon found that there was no mass
participation and fighting as in Telangana, only squad actions,
which were easily suppressed by brutal violence by the Congress
regime. The Party later came to the conclusion that these tactics
were wrong and caused the Party great loss and damage; though
by its brave fight against terror and immense sacrifices, it gained
the respect of the toiling people and middle classes.
The Party at the time was still thinking that it was possible for
the exposed leadership and ranks to function from neighbouring
areas by taking up some profession as cover and eking out a living.
It was a costly mistake to have entertained such ideas when the
people there were not participating and not ready to fight back
the armed forces of the Government actively and protect the
cadres. We should have withdrawn to our Telangana bases in the
forests and mountainous territory of a strong safe area, most of
the exposed cadres and squads and continued the work in the old
areas with entirely unexposed cadres. This bitter lesson the Party
learned only after a few months of severe losses of cadre and Party
leaders during March-June 1950.
The Government was ready with its plans to deal a heavy blow
to the Party and the mass movement in the coastal districts. It
was ready with increased police camps and with orders to shoot
and kill any Communist leader and guerrilla and squad member
who fell into their hands. During the year 1950, the coastal districts
of Andhra were the scene of heroic, struggles of the people, with
people’s resistance actions against the landlords and their agents
on the one hand, and the mass butchery of the Congress Govern¬
ment to drown in blood the people's fight on the other.
560 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

People's Actions in Andhra

In Krishna district, in Divi taluka, in the village Velivolu, goonda
leader Basavayya destroyed property worth Rs. 50,000, collected
a fine of Rs. 25,000 and stole hens and ducks. He enforced the
wage rate of 8 annas (50 paise) when the normal rate was Rs. 1.50.
His goonda camp was raided by the people and he was beaten
and crippled for ever and two of his lieutenants were killed.
In Katur village of Gannavaram taluka, Ramalingayya was a
Home Guard, a goonda, a landlord agent and an informer. His
name was associated with all the loot, arson, attempts at raping,
and other atrocities committed on the people during 1948-9. Tens
of villages were raided under his leadership. A special police
camp was opened in Katur village. Men and women who passed
that way were caught and belaboured. This scoundrel used to
jump over the compound walls into the homeyards when women
were taking their baths. He was presented with a revolver by the
Government. But he was killed right in the village’, with the armed
police camp in the vicinity. In buses, coffee houses, trains the talk
went round but not a word of sympathy for him was heard. People
who saw the corpse at Vuyyur bus stand on the way to Masula
Hospital for post-mortem were heard saying ‘he did such atrocious
things and has got the just punishment for it’.
In Gannavaram taluka, right on the main Bezwada-Masula
road, in the village Chinna Vogirala, two hated landlords were
killed, right in front of the police camp, and their guns were seized.
The police in Kankipadu station—just 10 miles away—locked
themselves up and did not dare move out, in spite of frantic knock¬
ing of the door by the local landlords to come out and give them
protection. Their reply was that they had to guard their station
and after all, ‘we too have our families and children and our lives
are dear to us’.
In Tiruvur taluka, Krishna district, in December 1949, and again,
in March 1950, people raided 20 villages and confiscated gold and
guns from the landlords and killed a few of. them, with the help
of Telangana guerrillas.
In East Godavari district, in Razolc taluka, Lingamurthy Raju,
a big landlord, who usurped 1200 acres of temple land, fertile
deltaic soil, along with a few other big landlords organised some
guards and instituted a reign of terror. These goonda landlords
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 561

tried to seize the crops on lanka lands. The Government forcibly

took over these lands that were being cultivated by agricultural
labourers for 20 to 30 years and auctioned them to these landlords.
Women and men led by the Party fought many a glorious struggle
and saved their crops on the fields. Again and again, agricultural
labourers went on strike struggles for higher wages. Women were
in the forefront. They too got training in self-defence. When the
husbands of some wanted to prevent them, the reply these brave
women gave was: 'You cannot save our’honour or life. Yet you
try to obstruct us from taking training to defend ourselves’. Women
acted as couriers, kept watch on police movements and conveyed
information to Party leaders and protected them from the police.
After months of undergoing regular torture, agricultural labour¬
ers and poor peasants began to retaliate. Twenty of Lingamurthy’s
goondas were beaten to pulp. Some of them were maimed for life.
One goonda who used to participate in raids all day, used to come
at night and boast before his wife, ‘I have kicked men all day and
my legs are aching. Come and wash my legs with hot water’. The
people broke his legs for good.
Telangana guerrilla squads helped the people to raid the Atcham-
pet police station. They shot dead two constables, took possession
of 70 guns. This was the first major action against a police station
by guerrillas in the coastal districts.
This action was followed by other actions in about 15 villages
where the hated landlords were killed by the guerrillas. Most of
these actions took place in the border talukas of Guntur-Palnad-
Sattenapalli; the Telangana guerrillas made the forests nearby
their base of operations.
Telangafia guerrilla squads aided their colleagues from Andhra
area to operate throughout the whole forest region of Nallamala
covering Kurnool and Guntur districts on the banks of the Krishna
River.
In the Whole of Andhra, in about 100 villages, people attacked
landlords or their agents, killed some of them, destroyed property
of some others and seized guns from them.
It had been the common practice in every raid to burn all the
debt and mortgage bonds of the hated landlords. This fact was
announced to the villagers by leaflets and they were asked not to
re-write the bonds or pay their debts. The landlords concerned
562 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

were threatened with direr consequences if they tried to collect the

debts with the help of the police.
In many villages, the agricultural labour and the poor raided
landlords’ granaries and distributed the grain. In a number of other
villages, the paddy crop was cut and taken away.
The people hated the landlords and police agents. They helped
to destroy the enemy properties. The villagers, especially agri¬
cultural labourers and poor peasants, gave shelter to party leaders
and cadres at great risk to their life and property. They guarded
and sheltered them as their own sons. In Antarvedipalem, East
Godavari district, when, a group of 20 villages was surrounded by
3,000 armed police and Congress Home Guards, not one single
party comrade was caught. The people saved them all, though for
one full week, the police went on arresting and beating every male
in that whole area. It was the agricultural labour women that came
forward to act as couriers. In spite of this white terror, hundreds
of party members and tens of organisers continued to live in the
villages. This was possible only because of the tremendous coopera¬
tion of the people and especially the agricultural labour and poor
peasants.
All the poorer classes considered that the Communist Party
was their party. They believed that only under a people’s Govern¬
ment headed by the Communist Party would their sufferings
come to an end. In the talukas bordering Telangana, they were
eagerly awaiting the Communist guerrillas to come and distribute
the land. Even in far-off Cuddapah, where in a few villages the
agricultural labourers and poor peasants occupied waste lands
under Communist Party leadership, the talk went round that
Nalgonda Communists had come and were distributing the land.
In Palnad taluka, Guntur district, when squads were going through
new areas where no movement had ever existed, poor peasants
approached the squads and asked them to drive away the land¬
lords and agraharamdars and rid them of this feudal pest. The
moment the guerrillas began to raid the hated landlords’ houses
and the police station and seize arms, the enemy became terror-
stricken. The hated landlords, the moneylenders began to leave
the villages and flee to the towns. This was a very common feature
in many villages of Krishna and Guntur and the two Godavari
districts. The remaining goondas in the village slept together at
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN ANDHRA: TERROR REGIME 1948-51 563

a place, guns by their side and with sentries posted all night, chang¬
ing their places frequently.
With the raid on the police station of Atchampeta, the confusion
and terror of the enemy increased by leaps and bounds. The
Communists captured 70 guns, how can we live now?’ This was
what Sri N.G. Ranga exclaimed! This same Congress leader who
had demanded that the Communists must be hunted down and
wiped out by declaring Martial Law, did not dare move out without
a police lorry to protect him on his tours in Guntur district.
Vallabhbhai Patel, the Congress leader of fascist terror in India,
had to admit in Parliament in Delhi 'that the people of Andhra
are not co-operating with them in suppressing the Communists’.

Some statements on repression in Andhra

Sri Vemula Kurmayya, former Congress Minister for Harijan
Uplift, member, Madras Legislative Assembly, issued a state¬
ment on the shameless police atrocities in the village of Yelamarru,
an extract from which is given hereunder:
'Before day-break on 14th July, 1949, 200 MSP raided the village
of Yelamarru. They surrounded the village and did not allow
anybody to leave. After daybreak, they gathered the villagers
in three batches in the local high school compound. They stripped
them naked and each was given ten stripes. Then, they forced the
villagers to parade throughout the village, in their nakedness.
When some tried to hide their shame with their hands, they were
beaten again. Some of them were made to lie prostrate before a
Gandhi statue and were given more blows. Even after this, the
clothes were not returned but they were asked to go home and
appear before their womenfolk naked and to come back attired
in new clothes. Both untouchables and touchables were among
the people who were subjected to this atrocious humiliation and
beating.
'All the women in the harijan colony were made to stand in the
maidan and were beaten. The menfolk in their nakedness were
asked to go to them and each to bring his wife. One was ordered
to strip naked his wife who was 16 years old. He refused. They
threatened the woman and asked her to strip herself naked. She
refused and replied, ‘You may kill me but I will never debase
myself. Thereupon a policeman was about to strip her naked.
564 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

when the village munsiff prevented him, warning that it would

lead to trouble. After this, the women were beaten again, and were
allowed to go home.
‘In all the villages of the district, the people are asking about
these village atrocities, which they say, are worse than Punjab
atrocities perpetrated by the British imperialists in 1919.
i want the Premier and the Telugu Ministers to tour these
villages in the district which are subjected to police raids and
vouchsafe peace and protection for the people. Otherwise, the
people may revolt in sheer exasperation’. (Andhra Prabha, July 23,
1946)....
Andhra Prabha, a leading Telugu daily of Andhra, in its editorial
dated July 26, 1949, wrote:
‘Uncivilized, atrocious, unspeakable—these may be very strong
words; but even these words are not sufficient to describe the
barbarous raids by police in Krishna district.
‘The same gruesome and sordid story from every village—gather
all people, indiscriminately beat them, strip some of them of their
clothes, parade those people in the streets in nakedness.
‘... By doing such things, it does not result in suppressing the
Communists; but only creates hatred against the Congress. Loyalty
towards the Congress does not increase but only makes the people
think that British raj is better.
‘In their efforts to suppress the Communists in Krishna district,
civil liberties are not only infringed but a situation is created when
people have to feel shame for being bom as people of India.
‘...Besides stopping such atrocities, the officials responsible
should be punished.
‘We came to know that Sri Madhava Menon (Minister of Law)
has brushed off these incidents as Communist propaganda. It
is not correct. Those who have written letters to our office are all
Congressmen and they wrote only after personally visiting the
villages and after enquiry’.
 30 Entry of Indian Army and
Immediately After

P. Sundarayya

On the eve of the Indian Army Intervention

By the middle of 1948, all the developments pointed to the pos¬
sibility of the Indian Government intervening in Hyderabad to
force the Nizam to accede to the Indian Union and to suppress
the spreading Telangana peasant movement. The question arose
as to what we should do with regard to this problem.
We were sure that after the Indian army intervention, Hyderabad
state would be forced to accede to India, and the Razakar terror
would end, but at the same time a terrific attack on our Party
and Sangham and on the Telangana movement would be made,
to liquidate it. We had a foretaste of it in the way the Congress
Government had been attacking and suppressing our Party in
the Andhra area. So, should we continue the armed struggle against
Nehru’s armies and its attack on the Telangana peasants to snatch
away all the gains? Or should we withdraw armed struggle and
try to adopt normal legal forms of agitation and struggles, to win
partial demands and retain partially the achievements of the
Telangana peasants, such as no evictions, no forced labour or
exactions; patta rights for waste lands that were being cultivated,
and confine ourselves to agitation and mass mobilisation for
agrarian legislation, for ceilings, rent-reduction, and for civil
liberties, elected local bodies, elected ministry for the state, etc?
But if we withdrew the struggle unconditionally, and immediately
after intervention, would the Indian Government declare amnesty
and not persecute thousands of guerrilla squads and cadre and
members of the Party and Sangham, who had carried on confisca¬
tion of land and properties of the big landlords, their agents, Nizam's
police and Razakars? Would it leave in the possession of the pea¬
sants the lands they had seized and cultivated? We were sure that
it would not and if that was so, would not the peasants resist such
Reproduced from 'Telangana People's Struggle and Its Lessons by P. Sundarayya,
op. cit. pp. 177-182.
566 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

attempts at seizure and if we did not stand by them and defend them
even with arms as we did in the past, would they not consider us
as betraying them?
But if we decided in favour of carrying on the armed struggle,
our squads would be no match to and could not stand at all in
the field before the well-trained, disciplined Indian army with its
high morale. Further, the rich peasants, small capitalists and
liberal landlords and quite a section of others who were with our
struggle against the Nizam would definitely go over to the side of
the Indian Government at that stage, as these sections had great
hopes that the Government of Independent India under Nehru
would fulfil their aspirations for economic betterment. With no
working class actions in the state, no possibility of a general strike
or armed uprising, would it not be disastrous to continue the armed
struggle?
If the armed struggle was to be continued, how could it be tor
anything less than liberation? (Then the concept of partial partisan
struggle for partial economic demands, as distinct from and not
to be confused with the armed struggle for liberation, was not there
at all in our understanding. Armed struggle meant liberation
struggle or revolutionary armed uprising.)
Could the Telangana struggle, then, be the beginning of the
liberation struggle? Was it the Yenan of India? Is our path of
revolution to proceed along the Chinese path or the Russian path?
What are the classes that will be in our revolution and against
which classes? That is, what is the class character of the state that
was ushered in in 1947 and the stage and strategy of the revolution?
Let me add here that though Sri Ravi Narayan Reddy and Ella
Reddy were for withdrawal of armed struggle, once the Party
decided to carry it on, they tried to obey it and carry it into practice.
Sri Ella Reddy was arrested within a few months of the police
action. Sri Ravi Narayan Reddy was underground till 1950 October
and then later left his den (centre) without informing the State
leadership and reached the Party Headquarters in Bombay and
started a campaign against the Telangana armed struggle being
continued through the Central Committee of the Party on December
13, 1950, had adopted the following resolution on the Telangana
struggle:
 ENTRY OF INDIAN ARMY AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER 567

‘The Telangana people are carrying on a revolutionary struggle,

arms in hand, against the oppressors, who have been exploiting
them for generations, for their land and freedom, under the leader¬
ship of the Communist Party. The C.C. deplores all those state¬
ments by some persons demanding the withdrawal of the struggle.
The C.C. warns all Party members that when the enemy is trying
to drown the Telangana struggle, which heralds the beginning of
the People’s Democratic Revolution, to make statements demand¬
ing its withdrawal will only go to help to disrupt this revolutionary
struggle.
‘The C.C. appeals to Party members and to all people that they
must do everything in their power to help and strengthen and
sustain the Telangana struggle. The Great Telangana stands as
the beacon call to all of us, blazes the way for us, to build the power¬
ful unity of the people under the leadership of the Communist
Party and to advance forward. It will continue to be so in future
as well’.
(Retranslated from Telugu).
Let it be also noted that both Sri Ravi Narayan Reddy and Ella
Reddy, when their brothers were killed, in the course of the partisan
struggle, justified and defended the action of the guerrillas publicly.

Decision to continue the armed struggle

The Andhra Provincial Committee of the Party decided to continue
the armed struggle even against Nehru’s armies. Apart from other
aspects, it had felt the immediate practical necessity of defending
the gains of the Telangana peasantry against the attempts of
deshmukhs and landlords who would be returning with the support
of the Indian army, to seize the lands from the peasantry. Not to
continue the armed struggle would have been betrayal of the fighting
peasantry and damaging the cause of the Telangana people’s
movement irreparably.
So, on the eve of the ‘police action’, the Party instructed all the
areas and guerrillas squads not to come into clash with the Indian
army as long as they were attacking the Razakars and Nizam’s
armed forces, but to launch independent attacks against Razakar
and Nizam's police camps, destroy them, seize weapons, re-equip
he squads with modern weapons and retain them; wait for a few
568 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

weeks, by which time the attacks on the Telangana peasantry by

the Indian armed forces and their landlord-deshmukh gangs would
shatter the illusions and hopes roused among the masses.
They would be ready and demand the squads to go to their
protection and fight with arms as well.
Actually, within a week after the entry of the Indian army,
the attacks began. There was a general and determined attack to
destroy all the guerrilla squads and the Party and Sangham organiza¬
tion. Unfortunately, many of the squads and political organisers
of the Party and Sangham were not in a position to meet the offen¬
sive, having developed illusions about the character of the inter¬
vention by the Indian Union.
Some of the area committees and their leaderships like Huzur-
nagar (led by Dodda Narasayya), Bhuvanagiri (led by Arutle
Ramachandra Reddy and Katkur Ramachandra Reddy), Palvancha
area (led by Nallamala Giriprasad and Pullanna), State leaders
like Ravi Narayan Reddy and Baddam Ella Reddy advocated
withdrawal of armed struggle and taking to legal and other forms
of agitation. Only the Suryapet-Khammam-Manukota area stood
firm for continuing the armed struggle and defending the gains
of the Telangana struggle. But all these comrades as well as most
of the others who held similar views, carried on the armed struggle
when the decision to continue was finally taken. Some were arrested
and imprisoned. Almost all of them are now with the Right
Communist Party.
 31 The Liberation Movement
Among Varlis

S. V. Parulekar

The basic cause of the mass upsurge of the Varlis lay in their
abominable condition of wretchedness and their suppression by
the tyrant landlords. They had rotted in these conditions for a
century unnoticed and uncared for. They were nursing in the inner¬
most corner of their hearts inextinguishable fire of hatred for
these conditions. But they dared not express it. Fear and helplessness
had suppressed the smoldering fire. They saw nowhere on the
horizon any ray of hope of their liberation. They lived in a mood
of bitter despair. They were anxious to end their slavery. But
they did not know how to do it. They needed somebody who would
extend to them his helping hand, show them the road to their
freedom, guide them, take their side against their oppressors and
stand by them and lead in their fight to be freemen.
This need was fulfilled by the Kisan Sabha. When it went to work
among them, they rose to resist their oppressor. Their movement
of liberation started in May, 1945, when they raised their Red
banner of revolt against serfdom.

An Abortive Attempt.
Crushed under the burden of the last world war, the economic
conditions of these serfs, who were living on the lowest conceivable
level of human existence, deteriorated. The prices of the meanest
necessaries of life had shot up by 400 p.c., while the daily rate of
their wages even in 1944 remained at the pre-war level of one anna
per day. Their conditions of life became so intolerable that they
were driven to resort to the weapon of strike for securing an increase
in their daily wages. About 3,000 Varlis in Umbergaon taluka
struck work in 1944 when the harvesting season began and demand-

Reproduced from Revolt of the Varlis, by S.V. Parulekar, People’s Publishing House,
Bombay., 1947, Chapter IV.
570 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ed a daily rate of wages of annas 12 for agricultural operation,

cutting grass and felling trees.
For the first time in the course of a century the Varlis had dared
raise their voice of protest against in-human exploitation and
wretched condition of life by refusing to slave for the landlords
and the timber merchants for daily wages which would not fetch
them even half a cup of tea. The strike was a spontaneous outburst.
But the source of inspiration for the strike was the propaganda of
Mr Save, the government-appointed Assistant Backward Class
Officer for Varlis. Quite fresh from the University, he was new
in government service. He was not then contaminated with the
spirit and practices of bureaucracy. He took the job of the welfare
of the Varlis for which he was appointed, seriously and literally.
He advised the Varlis not to do any forced labour and to demand
annas 12 as a daily rate of wages. He further promised to help them
in leading their struggle for securing the demand.
Encouraged by this promise, the Varlis raised their banner of
struggle. They struck work and the strike continued for nearly
two months. But the help promised by Mr Save was not forthcoming.
When he went amongst them again, he did not go to lead their
struggle but to betray it. Because, Mr Save had changed in the
meanwhile. He was chastised by the bureaucracy for giving a
wrong lead to the Varlis and was asked to settle the strike by
persuading them to accept a daily rate of annas 6. He was also
transferred from the area for having misunderstood his job as the
Welfare Officer of the Varlis. In obedience to instructions from
above, Mr Save advised the Varlis to call off the strike and accept
the daily rate of annas 6. The Varlis were rudely shocked by the
betrayal. It demoralised and disheartened them. But they were
in no mood to listen to the advice of Mr Save. They spurned it and
continued thetstrike. But in the end it fizzled out as they received
help from no other quarter in conducting it.
Though the strike failed, it helped them to have a glimpse of the
strength their unity possessed. Their sense of utter helplessness
decreased. They became conscious that if they were united their
unity did possess the strength to fight their oppressors successfully.
This consciousness was, however, vague. It expressed itself in their
courage to speak about their oppression to one who approached
them. For the first time the dumb had found a voice to speak.
 THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT AMONG VARLIS 571

frankly and without fear, of his agony and misery, his exploitation
and oppression.

Kisan Sabha Contacts the Varlis

The Maharashtra Kisan Sabha decided to hold its first provincial
conference at Titavala in Thana district on 12th January, 1945. In
persuance of this decision the Kisan Sabha workers in Thana
district had planned to mobilise at the conference the representatives
of the peasants from all the talukas in the district. While campaign¬
ing for the conference, the Kisan Sabha for the first time came in
contact with the aboriginal hill tribes of Umbergaon taluka in
December, 1944. Late Dr Sane visited some villages in Umbergaon
taluka and I addressed a meeting of about 300 Varlis at Zari some
time in the third week of December.
Their response to my invitation to attend the conference in the
beginning was so cold that it chilled my enthusiasm. Their strike
had just then fizzled out. They had been betrayed and they spoke
bitterly about it. They told us with their characteristic frankness
that they did not trust us. They distrusted all. They had become
sceptical and cynical in their attitude towards all outsiders....
After they had heard me for an hour, there was a distinct but
slight change in their attitude towards us. My speech had loosened
the barrier that stood between us. They started their narration and
narrated at great length and in great detail how wretched were
their conditions and how they were inhumanely tortured and
tyrannised by the sowkars.
In the end they told us that they would give us a chance. Of
their own accord they proceeded to tell us what had changed their
attitude. They told me that in my speech I had roused their feelings.
I had spoken what they felt deeply but could not express. What
had appealed to them most was the reason which I had given for
their poverty.
They promised to send a few representatives to attend the con¬
ference at Titavala. But they laid down a condition and demanded
from us its acceptance. The condition was that one of the Kisan
Sabha workers must stay in their midst to help them after the
conference. They were afraid and justifiably so that sowkars would
inflict most brutal punishments if they were to know that they had
572 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Titavala Conference
Fifteen Varlis, representatives from Umbergaon taluka attended
the Titavala conference. The mobilisation of 7,000 peasants at the
conference, which included representatives of peasants of all the
districts in Maharashtra, had a magical effect on the Varlis. It
inspired and transformed them. One of them. Com. Maya Dhangada
of Zari, who had never spoken more than a few words in all his
life, volunteered to speak on the resolution of abolition of forced
labour. He trembled while he spoke but he spoke with determina¬
tion. His pent up feelings had found an outlet and they burst out
in torrents. He held the conference spell bound by his pathetic
narration. In conclusion he solemnly declared that Varlis would
end serfdom and resist their oppressors.
The Varlis who returned home from the conference were not
the same as those who attended it. The conference had changed
them beyond recognition. They no longer trembled in the presence
of their oppressors but started defying them. They had returned
convinced that abolition of forced labour was an easy job and
started efforts in right earnest for achieving that end without waiting
for the Kisan Sabha workers to arrive in Umbergaon to help them.
They had carried with them a few Red Flags which had decorated
the pandal of the conference. They felt that they would serve as
their guide, friend and philosopher. They discarded their routine
mode of life and went as missionaries from village to village,
holding group meetings of Varli peasants and preaching the message
of the conference. The message stirred the whole mass of Varli
peasants and the whole jungle tract of Umbergaon vibrated with
the echo.

The Umbergaon Conference

The Varli Conference which met at Zari on 23rd May, 1945
under the auspices of the Kisan Sabha was a significant landmark
in the history of the liberation movement of the Varli serfs. Com.
Dalvi and Godavari Parulekar campaigned intensively in the
jungle tract for a month before the conference. Their identification
with the Varlis was so complete that the Varlis regarded them as
one of them. The campaign roused the entire mass of Varlis; but
it also awakened their oppressors. They started opposing bitterly
the Kisan Sabha and resorted to social persecution of the Kisan
 THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT AMONG VARLIS 573

Sabha workers. Their attitude of hostility which increased in

intensity with increasing volume of enthusiasm of the Varlis
confirmed the belief of the Varlis, as nothing else did, that at last
they had their real friends who would take up their side and help
them to break their chains of bondage. The landlords, then in
their own way, helped the Red Flag to win the loyalty of the Varlis.
While campaigning for the conference the Kisan Sabha workers
helped the Varlis to resist the demand of the sowkars for Veth
(forced labour) and to stop it. It helped them to realise vividly
how feeble were their oppressors who had appeared to them
omnipotent, in the face of their united strength. The stray victories
which were easily won in the first round of struggle roused their
spirit of resistance in all the stratas of the Varli population and
installed confidence in them that they could easily defeat their
enemy. A new awakening and consciousness was being born. The
Varlis were enthused and their enthusiasm knew no bounds.
The conference took momentous decisions. It adopted the
immediate programme of abolishing serf-tenure and forced labour.
It urged the Varlis to resist their oppressors with their united
strength and formulated the following four main and simple
slogans.
‘DO NOT CULTIVATE THE PRIVATE LAND OF THE
LANDLORD UNLESS HE PAYS IN CASH THE DAILY
WAGE OF ANNAS 12. DO NOT RENDER ANY FREE SER¬
VICE TO THE LANDLORD! RESISTS HIM IF HE ASSAULTS
YOU. YOU MUST ALL UNITE.’
The resistance of the Varlis to the demand of the landlords for
forced labour commenced on a mass scale the moment the con¬
ference had concluded. They returned home shouting along the
way that forced labour (Veth) was buried in the conference. The
slogan and the message of the conference reached all the nooks and
comers of the jungle tract within 24 hours of its conclusion. The
Varlis forged 100 per cent unity. The timid were persuaded. The
few recalcitrants were threatened with social boycott. Their resis¬
tance swept the jungle tract so swiftly and it gathered strength so
rapidly that within three weeks of it forced labour became an event
of the dead past. The system had become so rotten to the core and
the unity which the Varlis had forged was of such irresistible
strength that it collapsed. The Varlis did not have to exert for
ending it.
574 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Assaults and torture of Varlis which had been quite routine

and common occurrences in their life stopped automatically.
Their strength instilled such a dread in the hearts of the sowkars
that they dared not raise their finger against the Varlis. The sowkars
were convinced that the erstwhile tame and timid Varli would not
hesitate to defend himself and resist them if they persisted in their
inhuman practices.

Abolition of Serf Tenure

It was the month of June and the rainy season had set in. The
aboriginal serf had abolished forced labour. He proceeded to
abolish serf-tenure. The victory which he had easily won in the
first encounter against forced labour had made him fearless and
audacious. He launched a full blast offensive against the oldest
and strongest citadel of the enemy which crumbled as easily as
forced labour had collapsed. He bluntly refused to cultivate the
land of the sowkars free and demanded the rates of wages fixed
by the Kisan Sabha. His offensive gathered the strength of a whirl¬
wind in the whole of the jungle of Umbergaon taluka and the sowkar
was swept away. The sowkar found himself utterly at the mercy
of his serf and he retreated without even attempting to offer resis¬
tance. Serf-tenure was abolished. It was hardly two months since
the Varli serf had risen to break his chains of bondage. Abolition
of serf-tenure was a glorious victory. It regained him his freedom
which he had lost a century ago.

The Liberation Movement Spreads to Dahanu

The Kisan Sabha had planned to extend its sphere of activities
to Dahanu taluka in 1946 after it had consolidated and organised
its work in Umbergaon. But the Varlis of Dahanu upset its plan.
They did not allow the Kisan Sabha to take the initiative in launching
their liberation movement. They launched it themselves on their
own initiative in September, 1945.
The Umbergaon conference was their source of inspiration. A
few Varlis of Dahanu taluka from the adjoining villages of Umber¬
gaon taluka had attended the conference out of curiosity. It inspired
them. But the inspiration lacked the intensity which could impel
them to march simultaneously along with the Varlis of Umbergaon
in the common battle against their bondage. They did not share
 THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT AMONG VARLIS 575

the confidence of the Umbergaon Varlis which was born in the

course of the campaign and in the close contact with the Kisan
Sabha workers that they could easily win the struggle on the strength
of their unity. The conference enthused them but could not imbibe
them with confidence. They had doubts in their minds as to the
certainty of success. They had decided, therefore, to wait and watch
the progress and the result of the battle waged by the Umbergaon
Varlis.
When the news of the victorious march of the Umbergaon
Varlis crossed their borders, their hesitation ceased and they became
impatient. Without waiting for the Kisan Sabha, they moved on
the march. They launched their offensive against their oppressors
unaided. The Red Flag which they had carried from the Umbergaon
conference was their only guide and they felt that they could
achieve their liberation under its inspiration.
They launched their movement by the middle of September
by holding mass meetings daily. The reports from Umbergaon which
had percolated throughout the area had so roused the Varlis
that the meetings attracted large crowds. The audience varied
between 2 to 3 thousand. In the initial stages they did not feel the
need for inviting any one for addressing the meetings. They address¬
ed their own meetings. Those who had attended the Umbergaon
conference used to be the speakers. Their speeches were short.
They simply repeated the slogans formulated by the Umbergaon
conference and the audience was satisfied. But as the movement
gathered momentum the attendance swelled. It varied between
8 to 15 thousand. Mere slogans no longer satisfied the audience.
But the organisers did not know what else to speak. It was then
that they realised that they needed the Kisan Sabha workers for
addressing meetings. They sent their frantic invitations which
used to be in the form of commands. “A meeting is to be held on
such date. The meeting orders you to come and address it”. But
no Kisan Sabha worker was able to attend their meetings as the
invitations never reached the destination in time. The movement,
however, did not pause nor falter. It marched ahead and took
historical strides. When the Kisan Sabha workers went there for
the first time in the first week of October they found to their surprise
that the whole area was in the grip of a gigantic mass upheaval.
576 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Liberation of Debt-Slaves in Dahanu

Before the Kisan Sabha workers had arrived on the scene, the
Varlis of Dahanu had marched ahead of the Varlis of Umbergaon.
They had not only abolished forced labour but had liberated the
debt-slaves.
The problem of debt-slavery was very acute in Dahanu. The
decision to liberate debt-slaves was prompted by none. The Kisan
Sabha was not aware either of its existence or of its acute nature.
The Varlis had understood the movement of the Red Flag as the
movement of their liberation and liberation of debt-slaves was
its integral part.
In the mass meetings which were held at Akharmal and Narpud
and which were attended by 6,000 Varlis, they took the decision
to liberate the debt-slaves. They also decided not to return home
without implementing the decision. The plan which they chalked
out was simple, effective and characteristic of their boundless
enthusiasm.
Those who could not be away from their homes for urgent
reasons returned with the permission of the meeting. The rest
divided themselves into four batches. The batches marched in a
procession in different parts of Dahanu taluka with the Red Flag.
As they marched, they stopped at the door of the landlord’s build¬
ings and called out the debt-slaves. The slaves came out and the
landlord dared not stop them. The procession declared in the
name of the Red Flag that they were free men from that moment
and asked them to join the procession. The slaves walked out of
their prisons with their bag and baggage which consisted of a
couple of tattered clothes and accompanied by their wives. The
procession proceeded further. Thus they marched for three days
and returned home after liberating about a thousand debt-slaves.
The movement of liberation of debt-slaves had another important
aspect. It restored to the slave his freedom. But more important
than that it rescued his wife from the lust of the landlord.

The Strike
The liberation movement entered its second phase when the Varlis
went on strike in the first week of October, 1945. The season for
cutting grass had approached. The Kisan Sabha had demanded
the minimum rate of Rs. 2-8 for cutting 500 lbs. of grass. The
 THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT AMONG VARLIS 577

sowkars refused to concede the demands. The Varlis refused to

cut the grass. The strike in both the talukas of Umbergaon and
Dahanu was so complete that grass cutting would not commence.
The sowkars would not get a single Varli to cut their grass.
Landlords' Efforts to Crush the Strike and Movement
In the initial stages of the movement, the sowkars had used all the
weapons in their armoury for disrupting the solidarity of the Varlis.
They had tried in vain to check the surging torrent of the revolu¬
tionary upsurge and to regain the ground which had swept off
under their feet. They tried to frighten the Varlis by launching false,
frivolous and vexatious complaints in the criminal courts against
them. They starved them during the rainy season by refusing to
advance Khavati. But to their utter disappointment they found
that their measures had not the desired effect of compelling the
Varlis to retreat. On the contrary these measures made the Varlis
more bitter and march forward more doggedly and with redoubled
determination and energy.
The strike stunned the landlords. In their helplessness they
pleaded with bureaucracy to render them assistance in suppressing
the movement. They vilified and misrepresented the activities of
the Kisan Sabha. They harped on the prejudices against Com¬
munists. They falsely accused that the Kisan Sabha workers were
inciting Varlis to violence. They requested the District Magistrate
several times to ban the meetings but the District Magistrate
refused to believe the allegation, to ban meetings and to intervene
on the ground that the movement was peaceful.
The sowkars decided to utilise the situation created by the strike.
But the strike was exemplarily peaceful. They had to design a
plan which would provoke bureaucracy to intervene inspite of
the peaceful situation. Secondly the plan must be such as to provoke
maximum bureaucratic repression. Because the sowkars imagined
that the movement could not be suppressed unless bureaucracy
resorted to ruthless repression, to firing and to killing a few Varlis,
they felt that the movement needed to be drowned with blood of
the Varlis.
The sowkars did succeed in hatching a most wicked, treacherous
and heinous plot. And the plot did succeed. There was firing.
There were murders. There were mass arrests. There was torture.
There was inhuman repression.
578 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The Landlords' Plot

The landlords had correctly judged the intensity of the loyalty
of the Varlis to the Red Flag. They based their plot on this basic
fact. They knew that the Varlis could be easily misled in the name
of the Red Flag. And they decided to mislead them by treacherous
trick. On 10th October, 1945, at about 8 p.m. the sowkars through
their hirelings organised to raise a false cry simultaneously at
several places within an area of 1,500 sq. miles that ‘Com. Godavari
was coming to Talawada, a village near Bhilad in Umbergaon
taluka. She was to address a meeting at midnight. The sowkars
have brought goondas for breaking the meeting. The Red Flag
wants every Varli to attend the meeting and he should come armed
with lathis and sickles’.
The cry about the meeting was totally false and baseless. The
Kisan Sabha had not even thought of holding any meeting. Com.
Godavari was then lying ill at Kalyan. Com. Dalvi was at Kosbad
in Dahanu taluka. Com. Ranadive had arrived at Khattalwad on
the night of the 10th itself.
The naive and innocent Varlis believed the cry in the name of
the Red Flag to be true and was lured. They ran to Talawada for
reaching there in time for the meeting. At midnight more than ten
thousand Varlis had arrived. Many of them had walked a distance
of about 30 miles. They continued to pour in till 3 a.m. According
to the report of the District Superintendent of Police the attendance
had mounted up to 30 thousand.
Luring the Varlis for the meeting at Talawada was one part of
the plot of the sowkars. Its counterpart was to inform the police
that a violent and armed mob of Varlis had collected at Talawada
for killing the landlords and the lives of the landlords were in
danger.

Firing
Armed police arrived at the place of the meeting at about midnight
on 10th October and opened fire on the peaceful gathering of the
Varlis from the roof of a moving motor van. The gathering did not
disperse though one of them was killed and a few were wounded
in the firing. The police continued to open fire at intervals indiscri¬
minately and in all directions from a moving van till 3 p.m. on
 THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT AMONG VARLIS 579

11th October. They opened fire thrice during the interval of fifteen
hours on the same gathering at the same spot. Five Varlis were
killed in the firings. The number of the wounded was large. Among
the wounded there was a boy of twelve years of age. And still the
gathering refused to disperse.
This episode was a thrilling exhibition of the reckless defiance
of death by the Varli, his loyalty to the Red Flag and the birth of
rare courage in him. For fifteen hours he had defied bullets which
were showered on him from time to time. Firing failed to influence
him to move from the place and it was difficult to guess how long
he would have continued to remain there if the Kisan Sabha
worker had not arrived there at 3 p.m. on 11 th October and dispersed
the gathering.
For fifteen hours they had protected the Red Flag which they
had hoisted by shielding it with their bodies. As the police van
used to pass by the spot and the police opened fire, they crowded
round the Red Flag. They thought that the police were aiming to
shoot the Red Flag, and they felt it to be their sacred duty to protect
it at the cost of their lives.
Firing did not and could not have succeeded in dispersing the
meeting. A word from the Red Flag for dispersal was necessary
for the purpose. The gathering believed that the meeting was called
by the Red Flag. They felt that their loyalty to the Red Flag required
of them not to disperse till they were asked to disperse by the Red
Flag. They would rather pay any amount of price in life rather
than disperse without the permission of the Red Flag.
They waited for the Kisan Sabha worker to arrive for addressing
the meeting till morning broke out. But as none arrived they sent
a messenger to the office at Khatalwada which was at a distance
of about 12 miles from Talawada. Com. Kamalakar Ranadive
happened to be in the office. Fie hurried to Talawada where he
reached at 3 p.m. while he was addressing the gathering and advising
them to disperse peacefully, the police van passed by. The police
opened fire; one Varli was killed and several were wounded.
The gathering dispersed. The realisation that they had been
deceived by the treachery of the landlords dawned on them. Then
they returned home full of bitterness against the landlords and the
government who together had killed five innocent Varlis and
wounded several.
580 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The Reign of Bureaucratic Repression and Terror

The attitude of imperialist bureaucracy which was one of non¬
intervention in the initial stages suddenly changed as soon as the
significance of the liberation movement dawned on them. From
non-intervention it turned to ruthless repression. Firing signalled
the turning point. Under the mask of restoring law and order a
reign of police terror was let loose against the Varlis.
Meetings, processions and assemblies of five or more persons
in the area were banned on 13th October, 1945 for a period of two
months under the Defence of India Rules.
On the 14th October, the landlords requested the District
Magistrate to extern all the communists from the area. In obedience
to the sowkar’s request, the District Superintendent of police
externed on 15th October, Godavari Parulekar, Kamalakar
Ranadive, Jashwant Thakkar of the Indian People’s Theatre
Association, Sunil Janah, the photographer of the People’s War,
V.M. Bhave of the Lok Yudha and myself on the ground “that our
presence in Dahanu and Umbergaon talukas were prejudicial to
public safety, industry, machinery and buildings in the above
areas”.
Com. Dalvi was arrested for treason. But when it was realised
how absurd and ludicrous was the attempt to charge him with
treason, it was changed into dacoity. Comrades Phadke, Patki
and Pradhan were arrested in the Kisan Sabha office on 12th
October where they had arrived just a few hours before from Thana
for the first time for enlisting voters to the Legislative Assembly,
on a charge of alleged dacoity which had taken place in Umbergaon
on 9th October. A Varli who had gone to the office for complaining
that his son was missing was also arrested along with them.
The police repression in Dahanu taluka knew no bounds. Some
of the methods employed by them were as crude, brutal and match¬
less as those employed by the Nazis. Several Varlis were mercilessly
hammered. The Varli women were threatened to be raped. Kerosene
was poured on the buttocks of one of the Varlis and they were
set fire to.
The main object of the repression was to terrorise the rising
movement of the liberated Varlis and to drown it in blood.
 THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT AMONG VARLIS 581

The Movement Forges Ahead

Undaunted the Varlis marched ahead. Firing and repression had
failed in its object of crushing their movement. They had emerged
stronger, more united and with a better understanding as to who
were their real friends and who their enemies. The report of the
Adivasi Seva Mandal for 1945-6 describes the morale and mood of
the Varlis after the firing and the repression. It says, 'they are not
in a mood to tolerate any further oppression by the landlords and
the sowkars. They have realised that organisation is their only
strength. After a long dark and dreary night, the jungle seems to
have awakened and has given a call’.
The strike succeeded in spite of the firing and repression. The
Varlis secured the rate of Rs. 2-8 for cutting 500 lbs. of grass which
they had demanded. Some of the landlords had to pay over Rs. 3.
The landlords were jubilant over the success of their plot. But
their joy was very shortlived. Because, they soon realised to their
utter disappointment that the Varlis held their ground firmly.
Their disillusionment demoralised them.
A conference of the Varlis of Dahanu and Umbergaon talukas
was held at Mahalakshmi on 21st January, 1946. 15,000 Varlis
attended the conference. Many had walked a distance of 30 miles.
Consciousness of their strength born out of the victorious resistance
to the repression of the government and the landlords was widely
in evidence. The conference considered the problem of current
year’s rent and decided that they should pay only one year’s rent
and refuse to pay any arrears of rent which had accumulated. The
conference also took the decision that they should pay as rent only
the quantity of paddy which they had contracted to pay and refuse
all the other legal and illegal exactions.
The decisions of the conference marked a new step of advance
in the development of the movement. And the Varlis advanced with
a firm step in obedience to the decisions. All arrears of rent were
wiped out. All exactions other than the rent of paddy stopped.
The roaring success of the conference made the landlord feel so
helpless that he meekly submitted.
The Mahalakshmi conference furnished with yet another evidence
of the loyalty of the Varlis to the Red Flag. The Kisan Sabha workers
582 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

had appealed that they should contribute a rupee per family

towards the funds of the Communist Party for building up their
movement. The call could not reach all. Those to whom it had
reached had brought with them a rupee. The esteem in which they
held the Red Flag, their appreciation of what it had helped them
to achieve, their conviction that it would stand by them in their
struggle to the end, were to be seen in the enthusiasm, eagerness and
devotion with which they paid their contributions. They stood in
long queues for hours. Collection had to be discontinued when it
was time for the conference to meet in session. The disappointment
of those whose contribution could not be received was great. They
needed to be comforted with the assurance that the Kisan Sabha
worker would later go to their villages for collecting it. The total
collection on the day exceeded Rs 3,000.
 32 The Struggle of 1946

S.V. Parulekar

The struggle of the Varlis which brought them on the political

horizon of the province, secured recognition to the problem of the
aboriginal hill tribes which had been ignored, as one of the important
items in national reconstruction and became an epoch making event
in the history of the struggle for their emancipation started at the
end of September, 1946.

The Transformation of the Varlis

The experience of the bitter struggle through which the Varli had
to wade had rapidly transformed him. His transformation had been
so radical that he became a new being. He had been quite an in¬
nocent infant in understanding and consciousness. Straight from
infancy he stepped into maturity. He has advanced with a breathless
speed to overtake the peasants who had been far ahead of him by
omitting many an intermediary step.
He had developed a thirst for knowledge. He had become very
keen to know all about Soviet Russia. It was the landlords’ campaign
of slander against the Kisan Sabha workers which kindled in him
this desire. They had been circulating the news that Com. Godavari
Parulekar received huge sums of money from Soviet Russia and
that she was misappropriating it instead of distributing it among
them. They had never heard of Soviet Russia and they were, there¬
fore, very eager to know who was this philanthropic ‘person’.
The struggle had not only made him conscious of his rights in
the economic domain, but that it had also made him understand
and value civic and political rights. On the occasion of the election
to the Bombay Legislative Assembly in March, 1946, he showed
such enthusiasm and interest in them as none else in the district
did. The Red Flag had set up a candidate. Very few of the Varlis
had votes. But hundreds of them marched to the polling station
in procession, defying the ban imposed by government, and camped
there the night before the day of the election. When the polling
Reproduced from Revolt of the Varlis, by S.V. Parulekar, op. cit. Chapter V.
584 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

started, they could not understand why all of them had no votes
while all the rest had. They were indignant to see that all of them
were not voters while all their exploiters were.
One of the Varli youth could not control his indignation. He went
to vote for his ailing father who had not come. The Polling Officer
explained to him that he could not vote for his father. But the
explanation could not satisfy him. He insisted on voting and voted.
He was prosecuted and sentenced to one month’s regorous im¬
prisonment. But even the conviction could not convince him that
it was wrong to vote for his ailing father. When he was released
after the expiry of his sentence he remarked in disgust:
‘The laws are made by the landlords. They are intended to keep
their grip over us. The laws, the courts, everything belong to the
landlords’.
The Red Flag candidate was defeated and the landlords tried
to humiliate the Varlis, saying that the Congress Flag had defeated
the Red Flag. The Varlis, however, retorted: ‘All the members
of your family have votes, your women, children, old men, all
have votes, while even our grown-up men have no votes. Give
us all votes and let us see who defeats whom'.
Both the change in the political situation and the awakening
of the new consciousness among the Varlis constitute necessary
clues to understand the course of development of the historic
struggle of the Varlis.

The Nature of the Struggle

The dispute was purely a simple economic dispute in its origin.
But the popular ministry, in their Press communique, characteris¬
ed it as a political dispute instigated by those ‘who advocated
violence to bring about a political change, namely the ushering in
of a Communist state’.
This charge was most frivolous and fantastic. So long the bogey
of communist menace had been most unscrupulously utilised by
imperialism for crushing the legitimate and just struggle of the
oppressed. It was now adopted by the popular ministry without the
slightest compunction for suppressing the merits of the dispute
and for crushing the just cause of the most downtrodden section
of the population in the province.
The popular ministry was led to make the baseless charge for
various reasons. It placed blind faith in the false, distorted and
 THE STRUGGLE OF 1946 585

mischievous report of the bureaucracy. It allowed itself to be led

astray by its prejudices against the Kisan Sabha, its activities and
its workers. And lastly it was tempted to make the accusation as
it served as a very convenient devise for invoking to its rescue the
anti-Communist prejudices. Because, the communique quite in¬
advertently admits that it was an economic dispute. It says that
a dispute arose ‘ in October, 1946 in connection with the terms
offered by the communists for grass or paddy cutting, timber
cutting and other varieties of labour ’.

The Issue of the Dispute

The dispute which arose when the season for grass cutting and felling
trees in forest approached, was confined only to two issues. One of
these was between the Varlis and the landlords regarding the rate
for cutting grass. The other was between the timber merchants and
the Varlis regarding the rate for felling trees in the forest.
The Kisan Sabha had demanded a minimum rate of Rs 2/8
for cutting 500 lbs. of grass and a daily rate of Rs 1/4 for forest
work.
A number of landlords, even this year, readily conceded the
demand and grass cutting had started. Some of them had engaged
Varlis on a higher rate of Rs 3 per 500 lbs. The dispute was however
confined only to a small section of landlords who were most reactio¬
nary and were not willing to pay the minimum rate of Rs 2/8. They
too would not have resisted if they had not been encouraged by the
attitude of bureaucracy of stiffen their own attitude.
As regards the daily rate of Rs 1 /4 for forest work it was the mini¬
mum which the Kisan Sabha could demand. Because, what it had
demanded was quite inadequate to cover the cost of living of a
Varli family on the lowest economic level. Secondly, it was below the
level of wages which prevailed for similar kinds of very hard and
strenuous work. Lastly, the timber trade which had yielded fabulous
profits to the merchants could easily afTord it. The timber merchants
would not agree to pay more than a rupee as daily wage for forest
work. All work in the forest had therefore stopped.

Who was Responsible for the Dispute ?

Bureaucracy was more responsible for the origin, development and
the prolongation of the dispute than either the landlord or the timber
merchants. They played only a secondary and supporting role in
586 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the game. The dispute would never have assumed the serious pro¬
portion it did if bureaucracy had remained impartial, neutral or
even had assumed the same bureaucratic indifference which it had
in 1945 during the initial stages of the dispute. But it had changed
its policy. It was anxious to intervene. It was quite unconcerned
with the merits of the dispute but not with the fate of the dispute.
The intervention had a definite purpose behind it. To crush the
influence of the Kisan Sabha and its strength was what prompted
it to intervene. It did not intervene to settle the dispute but to create
a situation which would necessarily make settlement impossible and
to prolong it so that it may be utilised for the achievement of
its ulterior object.

The Landlords' Role

The most reactionary and the notorious landlords still clung to the
dream of smashing the solidarity of the Varlis and of reimposing on
them conditions of serfdom and bondage. They indulged in the same
devilish designs as those of the last year for achieving their object.
They employed the old methods which failed to yield any result,
because the Varlis had grown wiser. Their strength was irresistible
and their solidarity was unassailable.
With the approach of the grass cutting season the landlords
started intimidating and provoking the Varlis. They lodged false
and frivolous complaints in Criminal Courts against several active
Varlis, workers of the Kisan Sabha. The goonda agents of the
landlords who had been the mainstay of serfdom became active
once again and started assaulting the Varlis. There was a plan behind
these moves of the landlords. It was to provoke the Varlis and
create a situation in which government would be led to^resort to
firing and to adopt repressive measures for crushing the solidarity
of the Varlis and their organisation. In short, the landlords desired
the repetition of the history of October, 1945. But the Varlis refused
to be provoked. They foiled the game of the landlords by remaining
peaceful and by not losing their composure of mind. As a counter¬
move they started demonstrating their strength and solidarity by
assembling in large numbers and marching in processions in the
area, and thus had a temporary but salutory effect on the landlords.
The landlords took their next move in the first week of October.
It occurred to their fertile imagination to take advantage of 11th
 THE STRUGGLE OF 1946 587

October, which was the ‘martyrs day’. They gave currency to

a false and baseless rumour that the Kisan Sabha had organised to
commemorate the memory of the Varli martyrs who had fallen
victims to the firing on 11th October, 1945 by holding a meeting at
the place of firing and by wholesale acts of violence against the
landlords on the area. The Kisan Sabha had convened no meeting
on or about the 11th of October. But the prejudices of the bureau¬
cracy against the Kisan Sabha led it to believe the rumour. The
District Magistrate and the District Superintendent of Police
rushed to the area with 150 armed constables. The Kisan Sabha
took precautions to see that the Varlis would not be duped by false
cry about the meeting and assemble in large numbers in any place
on 10th and 11th of October. Nothing untoward happened. The
game of the landlords was foiled. Bureaucracy was disappointed.
Once again as a last resort the landlords resorted to acts of intimi¬
dation, provocation and violence. Between 15th October and 8th
November a number of Varlis were assaulted by the hired hooligans
of the landlords. One of them was so brutally hammered near Vana-
gaon that he died in the hospital on the fourth day. The Varlis,
however, behaved with admirable restraint. They would not walk
into the snare. In spite of provocation, they remained peaceful.

Peaceful Struggle of the Varlis

The unique character of the dispute was that it was conducted most
peacefully. The strike in the forest work began by the middle of
October. There were 120 coups in the forest. They were spread
over an area of 1000 square miles. The number of Varlis involved
in the strike were 15 thousand. The villages which were affected
by the strike were over 200 and the population over a lakh. The
message of the Kisan Sabha that the Varlis should not start forest
work unless the timber merchants conceded its demand was convey¬
ed by the Varlis to their villages. They used a stick to which toddy
leaves and the chit conveying the message were tied at the top.
The stick went from village to village and the Varlis stopped going
to work wherever it reached. Only in four out of 120 coups a few
Varlis, to whom the message of the Kisan Sabha had not reached
and who were weak to resist the pressure of the hooligan agents of the
timber merchants, had started work. To enable them to drive
away the fear from their minds, the Varlis took out processions to
588 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the coups. No sooner the procession reached the coup than they
stopped work and joined the procession in joy. Thus within 48
hours after the message was given by the Kisan Sabha, there was
complete stoppage of all forest work in the whole area. It is alleged
by the timber merchants that the Varlis in the procession assaulted
three of their agents. Since the subject matter of this allegation is
sub-judice, its merits cannot be discussed. But assuming the alle¬
gation to be true, an impartial observer will come to the only
conclusion that but for the remarkable sense of discipline among
the Varlis, their loyalty to their organisation and their willingness to
participate in the strike, it could not have been so complete and
successful in so short a period and in such a vast area.
The strike regarding cutting grass was equally complete and
peaceful. The landlords who refused to pay the minimum rate of
Rs 2/8 per 500 lbs. of grass and who had lodged false and frivolous
complaints against the Varlis, could not secure the services of a
single Varli in the whole area to work for them. They relied on the
efforts of the bureaucracy for securing the services of the Varlis.
But its efforts met with dismal failure. The District Magistrate
had instructed his subordinates to campaign among the Varlis by
holding meetings for acceptance of the rate fixed by him. But no
Varli attended the meeting. No Varli went to work. The grass as
well as the paddy of these landlords rotted in the fields.
The Varlis not only refused to work in the forest for the timber
merchants and cut grass for the landlords who refused to pay the
rate fixed by the Kisan Sabha, but that they also refused to ply
carts. The timber merchants and the landlords employ about
5000 carts during the season. The stoppage was so complete that
not a single cart moved on the road. When some of them argued
with the Varlis that they should not stop plying carts as cartage
was not an issue of the dispute, the Varlis replied, ‘ Bring the permit
from the Kisan Sabha allowing plying of carts The landlords in
Dahanu taluka rushed to the Kisan Sabha for securing permits.
The 4 permits ’ soon assumed such a general character that the
landlord had to secure the 4 permits ’ from the Kisan Sabha for
every little thing which they wanted to get done by the Varlis.
Nothing moved without permits. Everything stopped in its absence.
The spectacle of the solidarity and strength of the Varlis frightened
the landlords who had a guilty conscience. All of them who had
their place of abode in the Varli area came to live in the towns.
 THE STRUGGLE OF 1946 589

Kisan Sabha's Efforts.

About the 1st of November one of the landlords filed a complaint
of robbery against two Varlis. The Sub-Inspector of Police went to
the village with a police party for investigation. He proceeded to
make a panchanama which the resident Varlis of the village who
had assembled there believed to be false. They objected. They were
innocent and honest and were not yet used to all the dishonest
and false ways of the civilised world. They could not understand
how a false panchanama could be made of an offence, which
was never committed, when a popular ministry was in power.
The Sub-Inspector returned without completing his investigation.
On the third day of the alleged incident the Superintendent of Police
went to the village in the early hours of the morning with large
police force. He arrested the Varlis met on the road while proceeding
to the village. In the village he arrested some and thereafter arrested
a number of Varlis from the villages situated round about. In all
55 Varlis were arrested and they were brought to Dahanu.
The news of the arrest of innocent Varlis spread throughout the
area. And the Varlis decided to go to Dahanu for demanding their
release. Five thousand of them proceeded to Dahanu. The Kisan
Sabha workers met the Varlis on the outskirts of Dahanu. They
explained to them how bureaucracy was waiting only for an op¬
portunity to open fire on them and persuaded them to disperse
peacefully. The Varlis were agitated and excited. Still they responded
to the appeal.

Demoralisation Among the Landlords

The landlords were completely demoralised. They saw the futility
of continuing the dispute. Some of them approached the Kisan
Sabha for the settlement of the dispute, realising that it was no
longer possible to fight the solidarity of the Varlis and that
continuation of the dispute would ruin them economically. They
suggested that they would withdraw the cases they had lodged
against the Varlis. The Varlis were, however, in no mood to settle
the dispute on such terms. They agreed to permit the landlords to
withdraw the cases and settle the disputes on fulfilment of two
conditions. One of them was that the landlords must pay Rs. 3
for cutting 500 lbs. of grass. And the second one was that they must
pay compensation to the village and each of the Varlis against
whom complaint was lodged. They agreed to these terms and the
590 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

dispute was settled. Only those landlords who were still conspiring
with the bureaucracy to find out adequate repressive measures for
suppressing the struggle continued to resist the demand of the
Kisan Sabha. But the number of such landlords was reduced
.considerably.

The Offensive of the Bureaucracy

The bureaucracy was taking the side of the landlords and the vested
interests from the beginning of the dispute. In its initial stages it
used measures of indirect pressure for disrupting the solidarity of
the Varlis, for assailing the influence of the Kisan Sabha and for
settling the disputes on the terms of the landlords and the timber
merchants. The Special Officer appointed for the welfare of the
Varlis who would not enthusiastically support its policy was got
transferred to another province. The whole state machinery in
the district was set in motion for campaigning against the Red Flag.
But it failed dismally and had to be abandoned.
When indirect pressure failed to yield the desired results, bureau¬
cracy launched measures of direct intervention and repression.
The district Magistrate started interfering in dispensation of
justice and procedure of courts and using his discretionary powers
for suppressing the legitimate struggle of the Varlis. He issued
directives to the Criminal Courts which are subservient to the
executive, to hear the cases in which the Varlis were alleged to
have committed offences of violence and intimidation from day to
day. The discretion was intended in effect to put the Varli at a great
disadvantage in defending himself and send him to jail undefended.
It is the general practice of bureaucracy to use such directives for
causing to its subordinate courts to convict the accused irrespective
of the merits of the case. The District Magistrate issued another
directive to the courts which was more repressive in character.
It was to the effect that the courts should demand heavy bail from
the Varlis. In effect the directive meant that the release of the
Varlis on bail was to be denied. It was intended to make the Varli
rot in jail before his guilt was formally proved against him. There
was a third directive. The courts were asked not to release the
Varlis on bail unless they agreed not to attend any meeting and to
participate in any communist activities. This directive was intended
to penalise the Varlis for participating in legitimate activities and
 THE STRUGGLE OF 1946 591

movements without declaring them illegal and constituted a

grave encroachment on the civic rights of the citizen and a menace
to legitimate democratic movements. There were other directives
of minor character. The object of all of them was to terrorise and
frighten the Varlis.
But the repression failed to make any impression on the Varlis.
The jail no longer held any terror for them. They continued the
struggle with unabated enthusiasm, vigour and courage. Bureau¬
cracy was utilising the prolongation of the disputes for fabricating
a case against the activities of the Kisan Sabha and presenting to
the popular ministry a false, distorted, mischievous and misleading
picture of the situation.

The End of the Dispute

The strike which had lasted for about a month and showed no
signs of weakening spread among the timber merchants. They were
anxious for a settlement of the dispute, since its continuation would
involve them in irreparable financial loss. The Special Officer for
the welfare of the Varlis who had not yet handed over his charge
to his successor intervened to bring about the settlement. The
strike was settled on 10th Novemeber 1946 on terms which secured
to the Varlis earnings much higher than what the Kisan Sabha
had demanded and concessions which it had not demanded. The
agreement was first signed by the representatives of the Kisan
Sabha. The Special Officer took it to the representatives of the
timber merchants who also signed it. It was also signed by Mr. V.B.
Karnik, B.A., the principal of the high school, Dahanu as an
independent witness. The Welfare Officer immediately left Dahanu
in a hurry with the agreement bearing the signatures of all the
parties for acquainting the District Magistrate and the popular
ministry that the dispute had been settled. He had promised to
furnish the Kisan Sabha with the copy of the agreement, later. He
could not, however, fulfil his promise for reasons which up to this
day have remained mysterious.
The Timber Merchants’ Association ratified the agreement in
its general meeting held on 14th November, 1946. The Kisan Sabha
called off the strike on 11th November and advised the Varlis to
resume work. The Kisan Sabha workers were busy till the 20th
November in informing the Varlis of the settlement of the dispute
592 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and explaining to them the terms of agreement. Varlis started

resuming work. Normal conditions of work were being restored.
Thus the dispute ended on 10th November. 1946. It was a great
victory for the Varlis. They had successfully fought and met the
offensive of the landlords, the timber merchants and the repression
of the bureaucracy and had conducted their struggle most peace¬
fully to a successful end.

/
 part VI

An Overview
Some Centres of Peasant Revolts
 Introduction

(i)

Our selections have dealt with peasant struggles in different parts

of the country during different periods. The first two selections
reproduced here provide a picture of successive peasant struggles
in the same district or province throughout the entire British
period. They thus highlight the need to construct a history of
districts, regions and provinces. Such detailed studies of various
areas will generate an appropriate basis and material for a compre¬
hensive social history of India.

(2)

Essays by Hamza Alavi. Kathleen Gough and Uday Mehta, high¬

light some of the crucial theoretical debates emerging among
the scholars and activists of peasant struggles. These discussions
deal with the role of the peasantry in the anti-colonial nationalist
movements and also in the class battles of the exploited strata.
The end of the first world war, the historic proletarian-socialist
revolution in Russia, the large number of national liberation
movements in colonial and semi-colonial countries, the intense
struggles of these colonial and semi-colonial countries during the
Second World War, including struggles against the changing
imperialist masters, and the post-war emergence of anti-imperialist
struggles in Asia, Africa, Latin America, have posed the problem
of the role of the rural classes in bourgeois nationalist and prole¬
tarian socialist revolutions that are erupting in many parts of the
world. In fact an animated controversy is underway with regard
to the role of the national bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the
various categories of rural classes in shaping the Third World
countries which have emerged after the Second World War. In
these countries the newly emerged states are pursuing a policy of
development based on a 'mixed economy’. The questions of the
nature and the stages of revolution in these countries, the position
598 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of various classes and the class character of the state in these,

the problem of the relation between the newly emerged states
with the imperialist 'First World,’ non-capitalist 'Second World’
and the 'Third World’ countries, have acquired crucial importance.
Similarly the problems of the role of proletariat, landlords, kulaks
and rich farmers, middle peasants, the vast bulk of poor peasants,
comprized of sub-marginal cultivators, tenants, sharecroppers
and agricultural labourers and ruined pettie bourgeoisie in the
form of artisans and workers connected with informal sections
in rural and urban areas have also become a subject of controversy.
These controversies shape the programmes, policies, strategies
and tactics of various forces engaged in the struggle to transform
societies. It is indisputable that in the third world, the agrarian
population plays a crucial part in shaping the future of these
countries. However there is a powerful debate going on with
regard to the exact role of the various strata in rural areas in different
periods, different phases and different stages of Revolution.
The three articles reproduced here examine this problem in the
context of the Indian development by analysing the role of peasant
struggles in the context of the British and post-independence
period. It is unfortunate that neither Alavi nor Gough clearly state
what they mean by revolution in the context of which they are
evaluating the role of the peasantry. Do they evaluate the role
of peasantry in the context of a national democratic, people’s
democratic, new democratic or socialist revolution? Further,
they do not distinguish between revolution, created by people
of the colonial countries, particularly India, in the context of
their struggles against the British and other foreign rule, and the
Revolution created by the same people in the context of their strug¬
gles against the newly emerged state after the withdrawal of foreign
rule.
Further there is no clear analysis of even the two paths of anti-
imperialist struggles viz. the path of bargain and pressure adopted
by the political party representing the indigenous bourgeoisie in
India, and the path of militant anti-imperialist, national freedom
movements based on class struggles under the influence of Marxist
parties. The post-war developments, the policies pursued by the
Indian National Congress in securing a transfer of power, the
vascillations of the Communist Party of India during the entire
 INTRODUCTION 599

period following 1928 to 1951, and their impact upon the nature
of participation by different classes in rural areas are not analysed
with the care and precision that is necessary to define the nature
of the anti-British and the post-independence phase of revolution.
However, Hamza Alavi and Kathleen Gough have posed the
question which has profound theoretical and tactical importance.
They have also stressed the problem of viewing the role of various
categories of rural classes, particularly the relative role of the
middle peasantry, the poor peasantry and the agricultural labour.
The differences in the assessment of the role of the middle peasant
between Hamza Alavi and Kathleen Gough also deserves* careful
understanding. Uday Mehta’s work, though not directly focussed
on theoretical issues of the role of specific classes in the context
of revolution, indirectly contributes to the same discussion through
a survey of the phases of the peasant struggles in India.
A proper understanding of the role of the proletariat, the class
which is to lead the revolution, the role of various rural classes and
their function in either providing leadership or following two
different phases of revolution, is immensely important for a clear
understanding of the nature of revolution viz. national democratic,
people’s democratic, new democratic or socialist Revolutions.

(3)

The last two selections are presented to round up the theoretical

problems involved in appraising the role of peasantry in the context
of the nature of social transformation and the conception of the
stages of revolution as discussed by different groups of Marxists.
The article The Two-Stages Theory of Revolution in the Third
World’ reflects the views held by the editor with regard to the dis¬
cussion going on about stages of revolution today.
The selection ‘Unconventional Anthropology of the “Tradi¬
tional” (?) Peasantry’ is a review of the findings of six peasant wars in
20th century by E.R. Wolf. It is a critique of the established social-
anthropological study of the peasantry on the basis of an ahistorical
structural-functional approach. It also points out how a systematic
study of peasant struggles has become necessary to appraise the
nature of leadership under which the poor peasants and the agrarian
labourers can really abolish a historically dwarfed capitalist order
600 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

which utilizes feudal and semi-feudal institutions and culture and

usher in a healthy socialist order which alone can lead to their
emancipation. Findings of Wolf, based on the case studies of six
major peasant wars, provides an illuminating perspective on this
crucial issue.
33 Peasant Revolts in Malabar in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

K.IW. Panikkar

The nature and extent of peasant revolts in India during the

British colonial rule have not yet received adequate attention in
historical writings on India. The early colonial historians and their
modern disciples have drawn the picture of a docile and contented
peasantry living under the shelter and comfort of Pax Britanica
Apart from the security to life and property provided by British
rule, it was argued that the peasants were the beneficiaries of a
more benevolent revenue system compared to the surplus extracted
by the ‘Indian despotic rulers’ like the Sultan of Mysore, the
Nawab of Oudh and the Nizam of Hyderabad. Even the nationalist
historians, who have recognized the severity of the colonial and
feudal exploitation of the primary producers, have generally
ignored the struggle of the peasantry against this exploitation.
The peasantry bore the burden either with stoic indifference or
with fatalistic resignation. In spite of occasional outbursts against
moneylenders and landlords, it is argued that religious influences
and caste loyalties had ensured social harmony in rural India.
This, however, is a misleading picture. Kathleen Gough has
recently identified 77 peasant revolts in various parts of India,
‘the smallest of which probably engaged several thousand peasants
in active support or combat’.1 Gough’s estimate is perhaps very
modest. A more detailed survey would show a substantially larger
number. The details of many of these revolts lay shrouded in the
official records of the British government, entered under rather
misleading titles like religious disturbances, communal riots,
fanatical outbreaks etc. Some of these revolts, though basically
agrarian in character, assumed communal dimensions due to land

This article was especially written for this volume.

602 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

being controlled by a dominant religious group. In such a situation,

in the absence of class consciousness and proper leadership, ideo¬
logical influences of religion provided the necessary moral force
and justification for struggle against exploitation and oppression.
The revolt of the Mappila peasantry of Malabar during the 19th
and 20th centuries is a good example of such a phenomenon.2

Malabar was ceded to the East India Company in 1792 by Tipu

Sultan after his defeat in the third Anglo-Mysore war. After a
brief spell of administration under the Bombay Government it
formed a district of the Madras Presidency. Covering an area of
5795 square miles and stretching over a distance of 150 miles along
the Arabian Sea. It was bound in the north by the South Canara
District of the Madras Presidency, in the south by the former
Cochin State and in the east by the Western Ghats.3 According to
the Census of 1921 the total population of the District was 3,098,891
with a density of 535 per square mile—2,039,333 Hindus and
1,004,327 Mappilas. The religion-wise distribution of the population
in the ten taluks of the district was as follows: —

Taluk Hindus Mappilas

Calicut 1,96,435 88,393

Chirakkal 25,498 87,337
Cochin 7,318 4,999
Eranad 1,63,328 2,37,402
Kottayam 1,75,048 55,146
Kurumbranad 2,59,799 96,463
Palghat 3,15,432 47,946
Ponnani 2,81,155 2,29,016
Walluvanad 2,59,979 1,33,919
Wynad 67,845 14,252

The above table shows that roughly 60% (600,337) of the Mappila
population was concentrated in Eranad, Walluvanad and Ponnani
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 603

taluks where the rebellion was most intense in 1921 and the remain¬
ing 40 per cent was distributed over the remaining seven taluks.
The number of the literate in Malabar in. 1921 was 393,020
amounting to about 13% of the total population. Out of this
Mappilas were 62,344 or about 16% of the total literate population.
In other words, while the Mappila Hindu population ratio was
1 : 2, the ratio of literacy was 1 : 6. Generally speaking, education
was comparatively backward in the internal taluks like Eranad
and Walluvanad. The data relating to religion-wise distribution
of literacy is not available and therefore it is not possible to find
out the number of literate Mappilas in these two taluks. But the
literacy level of the population as a whole was as follows:5

Literate in Malayalam

Taluk Male Female Literate in Total Per-

English centage

Eranad 25,072 5,099 960 31,131 7.5

Wallu-
vanad 35,019 9,825 2,249 47,093 12

The literacy level of these two taluks was below the district
average. Literacy, however, should not be confused with English
education leading to job opportunities both inside the district
as well as the metropolitan cities outside. The literate in English
as evident from the above table were negligible in number and
it is reasonable to assume that they came mostly from the Hindu
land owning class. The Christian missionary educational activities
were not extended to the predominently Mappila taluks like
Eranad and Walluvanad and the Mappilas generally attended
madrasas attached to the mosques, where education was primarily
religious in nature.
A study of the occupational structure reveals that the Mappilas
were mainly engaged in cultivation in the inland regions and fishing
in the coastal belt. The following table shows the occupations of
the Mappilas in 1921.6
604 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Male Female
Agriculture 1,41,617 58,843
Special Products and Market Gardening 5,677 1,521
Forestry 2,375 30
Raising of Farm stock 1,542 19
Fishing and Hunting 9,617 297
Mines & Quarries 57 —

Textile 1,442 3,714

Hides, skins etc. 20 —

Wood Industries 1,702 2,174

Metal Industries 269 8
Post and Telegraph etc. 40 —
Banks 55 33
Army 20 —
Police 292 —
Public Administration 600 —

Trade 63,929 8,252

In the internal taluks where the Rebellion became intense the

Mappilas depended solely on land for their subsistence, whereas
in the coastal taluks, where they had other occupational possibilities
like fishing, the rebellion was either weak or non-existent.

Tenurial System and Agrarian Relations

The traditional structure of agricultural society in Malabar was
based on fragmented feudalism’ hierarchically ordained reaching
down to the lowest stratum. The jenmi (landlord), Kanakkaran
(protector)7 and the peasant shared the produce equally, working
out a social equation, on the basis of mutual dependence and reci¬
procal interests, within the confines of a feudal system of exploita¬
tion. The introduction of British administrative institutions led to
the dissolution of this system by the substitution of a strong central
power for the divided authority of feudal chieftains. The British
land revenue policy and land settlement further helped this process
by recognizing the jenmies as freehold proprietors, a position
which they had never enjoyed before. The Kanakkaran was consi¬
dered a mortgagee or a lessee and was treated as such. On the basis
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 605

of this erroneous assumption the principles which guided the

early revenue settlements recognized the interests of the jenmi
and the cultivator, but the traditional share of the Kanakkaran
in the produce was overlooked.8 Though this did not have any
immediate repercussions, in the long run it created considerable
pressure on land and also deprived the c\i\i\v‘&iox-cuvc\-Kanakkaran
of a part of his income.
The land revenue system introduced in Malabar was basically
different from the pattern in other parts of the Madras Presidency.
In the ideal system envisaged by Munro, the classes of labourer,
farmers and landlords were combined in the ryot with whom the
settlement was made. In Malabar they were distinct and separate.
Because the absolute ownership of land, including waste, was
vested in the jenmi, he was left free to exact as much as he could
from the tenants and under-tenants. The most common features
of exploitation were through the enhancement of rent, eviction and
imposition of renewal fees. Those who held land directly from the
jenmi under a variety of tenures like Kanam, Kuzhikanam and
otti and sub-tenants and tenants-at-will like pattakkar and verum-
pattakkar were all subjected to the rapacity of the landlord.
The Kanam tenure, for instance, which was considered by the
British as a mortgage or lease against a pecuniary payment, came
in for particularly harsh treatment. In the traditional tenurial
system the Kunakkaran's relation with his superior was liable to
be reconsidered or readjusted only on succession. On the basis of
the erroneous assumption regarding the jenmam title which inform¬
ed the British land revenue policy, the judicial courts decreed the
renewal of Kanam tenure at the end of every twelve years. The
automatic terminability of the contract implied in this decision
was not in conformity with past practice. It therefore introduced
fundamental changes in the structure of land relationship. The
traditional notions of reciprocity and interdependence received the
final jolt.
The second quarter of the century recorded a steep rise of prices
amounting to about 27% during a period of two years.9 There
was a further increase in the fifties. The following table gives an
idea of the spurt in prices.
606 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Years Paddy Gingly Coco- Pepper Coffee Green

per per nut per per per • Ginger
grace grace 1000 Candy Candy per
(560 lb) Candy
Rs. Rs. Rs. Rs. Rs. Rs.

1851-2 78 266 12 51 75 11
1856-7 108 311 16 85 98 21
1857-8 149 392 21 100 130 23
1858-9 166 407 22 95 121 25

Over a period of nine years the price of almost every produce

increased by more than hundred per cent.10 Naturally the value of
land and its demand suddenly increased. It was then that the land
owning class realized the significance of their newly acquired status
and power. The British revenue policy had bestowed upon the
jenmi the absolute ownership of land and the British courts had
recognized his right to expel the tenant at the end of every twelve
years. Armed with these powers the landlords not only demanded
exhorbitant rents and renewal fees but also introduced several
provisions which facilitated eviction earlier than the stipulated
period. There were also several other easements like presents
during the time of marriages, births and festivals which the landlords
exacted from the tenants. The failure to give rent or even to provide
a present to the satisfaction of the landlord were considered suf¬
ficient reasons for eviction. The rent receipts were not generally
given and to demand them was taken as a hostile action. The
tenants were clearly at the mercy of the landlords. The proceedings
of the British courts and the elaborate rules and regulations which
guided their decisions only added discomfiture to the disadvantages
of the peasantry. The land owning class freely resorted to the means
of litigation for the exercise of their rights. The country, as William
Logan, the Collector of Malabar, remarked, ‘teemed with false
deeds and the courts were crowded with litigants.' During a period
of four years, 1862-6, there were as many as 10,196 suits regarding
land registered in the various courts in the district. This, however,
does not bring out the full extent of the evictions or other related
harassments. Ejections without resorting to the judicial procedure
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 607

were even more numerous. Due to financial incapacity and the

lack of judicial evidence the tenants found it impossible to defend
their rights in the courts. Moreover, the tenants, especially the
Mappilas, had no faith in the justice of the courts, since most of
the munsiffs were Nairs, who were in some way or the other related
to or under the influence of the landlords. A Mappila tenant told
Logan that he did not expect the Hindu munsiff to give a verdict
against his landlord, Azhuvancherry Nambudiripad, 'who was
worshipped by Hindus as a God'.11 A large number of cases were,
therefore, decided ex-parte.
In these circumstances the tenants had no other alternative
but to submit to the exactions of the landlords or to be deprived
of their land, their only means of subsistence. The choice was
between total deprivation and a possible survival. Even when the
exactions were directed against the kanakkar who in most cases
were intermediaries the financial burden was in the end borne by
the peasantry. The kanakkar passed on their exactions to their
under-tenants and rack-rented them for satisfying the demands
of their superiors. The under-tenants could meet these demands
only by taking recourse to the money-lender. This resulted in large
scale agrarian indebtedness in Malabar. Out of 7994 cultivators
interviewed by Logan in 1881,4401 were in debt. The total amount
of debt was about 10 lakhs at an interest ranging from 12 to 36%
per annum. The reasons for indebtedness were:11

Number percent
Agriculture, House and Land
improvement 736 12
Loss and Purchase of stock 396 6.9
Excessive Rent 221 3.9
Excessive fines etc. on renewal of leases 644 11.3
Bad season 1,222 21.4
Accidents 7 0.1
Family trade, wedding and other
ceremonies 671 11.8
Sickness 114 2.0
Family maintenance 1,498 26.2
Trade losses 108 1.9
Misc. 92 1.6
608 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

In view of the oppressions and exactions of landlords it was indeed

strange that only 15.1% of the tenants should have attributed their
indebtedness to excessive rents and excessive renewal fees. Logan
felt that the number of cultivators whose indebtedness was due to
the exactions of the landlords was much higher than actually
recorded. But since they gave their evidence in the presence of the
agents of the landlords, most of them preferred to blame the weather
or the expenses of maintaining their families rather than their
landlords.13 In a sense, the reason for indebtedness was immaterial.
What was relevant was that the large bulk of the peasantry was
not getting enough even for bare subsistence.

Agrarian Uprisings in The 19th Century

The tenants and under-tenants thus oppressed and harassed rose
up in revolt against their landlords. There were as many as 45
uprisings during the course of the 19th century. Most of them were
in the Eranad and Walluvanad taluks of South Malabar. The
peasantry in these two inland taluks were mostly Mappilas holding
land either directly from a Hindu jenmi or from an intermediary.
The land was almost exclusively held by the Hindus. The following
table gives the number of principal jenmies holding more than
100 pieces of land in 1881.14

Taluks Rajas Brahmins Nayars Mappilas Total

Eranad 6 62 43 2 113
Walluvanad 14 111 54 — 179
Ponnani 9 142 54 10 219
Palghat 11 30 52 — 96

The number o{jenmies in Chirakkal, Kottayam, Kurumbranad,

Wynad and Calicut taluks were only 42, 32, 66, 26 and 56 respect¬
ively. In Eranad, Walluvanad and Ponnani taluks the number of
principal jenmies, most of them Hindus, was very high. In Eranad
there were only two Mappila jenmies and none in Walluvanad.
Phis indicates that in these taluks land was concentrated in fewer
hands compared to the other parts of the district.
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 609

The Mappilas were at the bottom of the tenurial structure and

all the higher steps of the ladder were occupied by the Hindus either
as intermediaries or as jenmies. Hence the conflicts between the
Mappila peasantry and the Hindu land owning class superficially
appeared to be the result of communal tensions. The Madras
Government described them as ‘Mappila Outrages'.
In 1851 a Special Commissioner, T.L. Strange, was appointed
‘to trace out the causes which have produced or influenced the
unhappy state of feeling between the Moplahs and the Hindu
population' and to suggest remedial measures to prevent similar
outbreaks in future.15 The Commission was specifically asked
‘to consider whether with reference to the position of Hindus
and Moplahs in their relation of landlord and tenant, mortgager
and mortgagee, any measure seemed to be necessary for defining
the landed terms of the country and placing them on a better
footing.’16 During his enquiry the Commissioner was told by the
Mappilas that ‘destitution, oppression and exactions of the Hindu
landlords have been the causes of these outbreaks.’17 Yet the
conclusion arrived at by Mr Strange was that ‘the general character
of the dealings of the Hindu landlords towards their tenantry,
whether Moplah or Hindu, is mild, equitable and forbearing.’18
He, therefore, attributed the ‘Outrages’ to Mappila fanaticism
fanned by Muslim priests who glorified the murder of Kafirs
for the sake of religion. He also saw the hand of some land-hungry
rich Mappilas who exploited the religious sentiments of their
illiterate and poor brethren for their selfish ends.
The mass of evidence collected and incorporated by Mr Strange
in his report, however, does not warrant these conclusions. Let
us, for instance, have a look at the Kolathur uprising of 1851.
On the 22nd of August 1851 six Mappilas murdered Kottuparam-
path Komu Menon, the karyasthan ofWalluvanad Raja and himself
a landlord of substantial wealth. The Mappilas then went to Ittunni
Ramu Menon's house, about two miles away, and murdered him
and Kadakkatil Nambudiri, a Brahmin landlord, who happened
to be present in Ramu Menon’s house. The insurgents, whose
number had by now swelled to 19, marched to Kolathur, a distance
of about 13 miles. There Kolathur Warrier, the most important
landlord of that locality, was attacked and murdered. There are
two features discernible in the proceedings of the rebels whom the
610 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Special Commissioner described as “fanatics’. First, they killed

only the head of the family; no other member was murdered or
even injured. In fact, at Kolathur Warrier's house women and
children were asked to leave the premises. Secondly and—more
importantly—the account books were invariably burnt.20 It is
also significant that these nineteen ‘fanatics’ allegedly looking for
salvation by killing Hindus travelled about fifteen miles through
a region well populated by Hindus and in the process murdered
only four wealthy landlords. Evidently, religious fanaticism was
not the motive force.
A closer look at the character and economic status of the victims
and their relationship with the insurgents is extremely instructive.
Koipu Menon, Ramu Menon, Kodakkatil Nambudiri and Kolathur
Warrier were the biggest landlords of that region. Komu Menon
was addicted to intoxication, and “in both his drunken and sober
hours, his behaviour to those about him was generally overbearing
and abusive’ especially towards the Mappila tenants.21 With all
his wealth and power as the karyasthan of Walluvanad Raja and
the former adhikari (village official) of Mangada amsom he did
not lose any opportunity of increasing his property by eviction,
over-mortgaging or acquisition of land against loans advanced
to his tenants. This was true of Ramu Menon also. He was an
“extremely avaricious man and lent money and grain to a large
extent and often on most usurious interest.’22 Kolathur Warrier
was the richest of all. He received nearly 20,000 rupees per annum
as rental and considering the value of grain at that time it was a
very substantial amount.23 He had started from scratch in the
beginning of the century. He was one of those who had left for
Travancore during the Mysorean invasion and had returned after
Tipu Sultan’s defeat to regain their land from the Mappilas who
had occupied it during their absence. He had even acquired lands
which were granted to mosques by Tipu Sultan. He also became the
parvathikar (Government Accountant) during the early period
of British rule, a position which he later passed on to his nephew.
With the aid of the influence he had thus acquired with the Govern¬
ment officers he ejected Mappila tenants rather indiscriminately
by means which were not always honourable.24 Moreover, a good
number of suits instituted by these four for eviction and acquisition
of property were pending in the courts at the time of the uprisings.
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 611

Most of the insurgents were the discontented Mappila tenants

and debtors of these four jenmies. Some of them had lost their
lands during their life time. Some others had become landless by
the ejection of their parents. The rest were burdened with out¬
standing debts at extremely high usurious rates and hence the
transfer of their land into other hands was only a matter of time.
Faced with this bleak prospect and finding no alternative employ¬
ment they rose up against their oppressors. These poor, persecuted
and frustrated peasants were further exploited by their materially
better placed co-religionists. The comparatively rich Mappilas,
who saw the advancement of their personal and class interest in
the annihilation of the wealthy Hindu landlords, instigated them
to take to violent action. The instances of Melu Mamil Emalukutty
in Kolathur case and Kallatil family in Mattannur case are ins¬
tances in point.25 These interested parties very cleverly used
religion to provide justification for their action against the landlords.
The Assistant Magistrate in his report on the Kolathur uprising
observed:
The late enquiries have shown that there is a notion prevalent
among the lower orders that according to Mussalman religion,
the fact of a Jenmi or landlord having in course of law ejected
from his lands a mortgagee or other substantial tenants, is a
sufficient pretext to murder him, become Shahid (Saint) and
so ensure the pleasures of Muhammadan paradise. This opinion
has been openly stated before me by Moplahs, some indeed
making a distinction as to whether the ejection was accompanied
by fraud or otherwise, but others believing that the fact of the
tenant being thus reduced to poverty, was sufficient.26
The religious belief thus aided the peasantry and gave them
the necessary moral strength to act against their immediate exploi¬
ters. It is pertinent that religion in this case only helped to
accentuate the existing economic antagonism rather than that
economic antagonism deepened the communal cleavage. In the
absence of proper leadership, class organization and class consci¬
ousness, it is not surprising that religious sentiments of the peasantry
were exploited and that religion also became a factor, though contri¬
butory and secondary, in a struggle which was essentially agrarian.
The remedial measures, recommended by the special Commis¬
sioner on the basis of his conclusion that fanaticism was the main
612 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

driving force behind these uprisings, were repressive in nature.27

Accordingly ‘Moplah Outrages Act’ and ‘Moplah War Knives
Act' were passed in 1854. These enactments sanctioned repressive
steps such as mass scale fines and confiscation of property of the
activists. The possession of vettukathy, a longish knife used in
Malabar for domestic purposes, was banned. The most vital
problem, namely, the tenurial relationship was left untouched and
unsolved. Needless to say, these measures only accentuated the
economic deprivation of the Mappila peasantry and thus sharpened
their economic antagonism, with the Hindu landlords.

II

Relief Acts and Their Results

The legislation, naturally, did not achieve the desired objective.
The outrages not only continued to occur, but their extent and
intensity slowly but steadily increased. The Madras Government,
therefore, instituted another enquiry and William Logan, a former
Collector of Malabar and the famous author of Malabar Manual,
was entrusted the task of conducting it. Logan undertook a meti¬
culous enquiry and in his report running into three volumes explod¬
ed the myth of Mappila fanaticism and pointed out that agrarian
discontent was the basic cause of these uprisings. He observed:
The Moplah outrages was an organization designed, in my
opinion, to counteract the overwhelming influence, when
backed by the British courts, of the Jenmies in the exercise of
the novel powers of ouster and of rent raising conferred upon
them. A Jenmi who through the courts, evicted, whether fraudu¬
lently or otherwise, a substantial tenant was deemed to have
merited death, and it was considered a religious virtue, not a
fault, to have killed such a man, and to have afterwards died in
arms fighting against the infidel Government which sanctioned
such injustice.28
Logan, therefore, suggested a number of measures for improving
the condition of the cultivators, including permanency of tenure,
a free hand to exploit the soil for agricultural purposes and a right
to sell or transfer his interest in the soil. These were considered
by many in the Government as being too harsh on the landlord.
An acrimonious debate ranging over a period of five years followed.
Ultimately, though the recommendations of Logan were the
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 613

“Malabar Compensation for Tenants’ Improvement Act' was

passed in 1887. The Madras Government followed the maxim
that ‘the best solution of the agrarian question was that which
involved least interference’. The Act, therefore, simply provided
that ‘every tenant who is ejected from his holding shall notwith¬
standing any custom to the contrary, be entitled to be compensated
for improvements to be made by him or his predecessors.' The
amount of compensation was left to be determined by the court
ordering the eviction.20

Working of The A cl of 1887

The assumption behind the Act was that by ensuring the tenants
the full market value of their improvements the growing practice
of eviction would be effectively checked. But the working of the
Act belied this hope. It neither ensured the tenants the full market
value of the improvements nor succeeded in minimising evictions.
The interpretation by the civil courts of the provisions regarding
the value of compensation considerably differed from the original
intentions of the Government. Some of them determined the
compensation on the basis of the capital and labour actually
expended in effecting the improvement. Others totally dismissed
the idea of the market value, but held that the improvement to be
paid for was the ‘work’ of planting, protecting and maintaining
the tree and not the tree w'hich was the result of that ‘work’.30
It was also contended that the jenmi too as entitled to a share of
the increased produce as a result of the improvement since there
could not be any improvement without the land of which the
jenmi was the sole proprietor.31 Apart from this, the jenmies
invented two very subtle devices to circumvent the provisions of
the Act. First, at the time of the renewal of a lease, a considerably
enhanced rent was fixed and then a clause was inserted remitting
a portion of the rent for improvements to be effected in future.
Secondly, the tenants were allowed to retain the land for a few
years beyond the period of contract. A new lease was then executed
in which all or nearly all the trees were entered as landlord's im¬
provements.32
The procedure adopted by the courts to ascertain the value of
improvement was extremely defective. The clerks and amins of
the courts, appointed Commissioners for valuation, were notori¬
ously corrupt. They changed their evaluation according to the
614 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

gratification received. For instance, in one particular case the first

Commissioner valued the improvements at Rs. 2900/-, the second
at Rs. 800 and the third at Rs. 700. The discrepancy was not only
in the fixation of value, but also in the number of trees each one of
them noticed in the garden. The tenants complained that 'owing
to the corruption of the Commissioners on whose reports the
courts rely, the decree goes in favour of the longest purse, is there¬
fore ruinously expensive, and very often leads to the transfer of
the kanakkar's improvement to the jenmi.'33 The Commissioners
only added another brick to the tenants’ oppressive burden.
A reference to the incidence of eviction will help to highlight
the inadequacy of the Act both to provide compensation as well
as to prevent evictions. The total number of evictions in the district
during 1890, 91 and 92 were 4227, 4132 and 4620 respectively out
of which 3268 (77%), 3112 (75%) and 3524 (76.4%) were without
compensation. The following table gives the details for the munsiff
courts of Shernad, Eranad, Bettutanad and Kuttanad which roughly
comprise the Eranad and Walluvanad taluks.34

Name of the Year Total Eviction Percentage

Court evictions without
compensation

Shernad 1890 343 263 76

**
Eranad 246 205 83.3
Bettutanand . 401 348 86.7
Kuttanad 278 237 85

Shernad 1891 319 264 82

Eranad 218 183 83.9
Bettutanad 331 249 75.2
Kuttanad 328 279 85

Shernad 1892 387 346 89

Eranad 296 253 85.4
Bettutanad 355 289 81.4
**
Kuttanad 310 273 88
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 615

The evictions, as evident from the above table, were mostly

without any compensation. Even in those cases in which compensa¬
tion was awarded the amount granted was very negligible. The
average amount granted in 1887 there were 2819 evictions whereas
in 1892 the number rose to 4620.35
The amendment to the Compensation Act passed in 1900 failed
to mitigate these evils. In view of the mounting tension among the
agrarian classes, the Government of India had desired immediate
steps to be taken ‘to secure permanency from arbitrary ejectment
to all.'36 But the Madras Government did not undertake a compre¬
hensive legislation for safeguarding the interests of the peasantry.
The amendment only sought to rectify the ambiguous and confusing
language of the Act of 1887 and to lay down principles for the award
of compensation. The champions of the landowning interests
indulged in so much quibbling about the nature of the tenurial
rights and relations, the clarification really went against the interests
of the tenants.353 The Act did not recognize the payment of com¬
pensation to the extent of full market value of improvements.
Instead, it was held that a fruit tree grown by the tenant could
have no value apart from the soil on which it grew and that the
tenant had no claim to be compensated for the value contributed
by the soil. It was therefore decided to give the landlord 25% of
the surplus over the cost of improvements.37 Thus, in effect, the
Government, in the name of precision, transferred a further share
of the cultivators' labour to the landlord.
The Relief Acts, therefore, did not register any improvement
in the condition of the tenants. All the malpractices and oppressions
of the landlords noticed in the mid-nineteenth century continued
unabated. Charles Innes, the Collector of Malabar, during his
enquiry in 1915, noticed the deplorable condition of the peasants
due to rack-renting, inadequate compensation, insecurity of tenure,
exhorbitant renewal fees and above all the social tyranny of the
jenmies. In fact, capricious and arbitrary evictions considerably
increased during the post-1900 period. The number of eviction
suits instituted in the various courts in the district in 1919, 1920
and 1921 were 5074, 5142 and 4490 respectively.373 There were
several factors which contributed to this spurt. The most important
of them were the emergence of a tenant movement, demands and
discussion regarding the permanency of tenure, scarcity of grain
616 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and the increase of prices during the First World War. In other
parts of the country, occupancy rights of some sort had already
been conferred upon the tenants. In Bengal, Punjab and the North-
Western Province Tenancy Acts were passed in 1885, 1889 and
1901 respectively. The Travancore State had conferred occupancy
rights on kanam tenure as early as 1867 and Cochin State in 1914.
The zamindari tenants of the Madras Presidency also got occupancy
rights in 1908. The landlords in Malabar naturally knew the way
the wind was blowing.
The Mappila peasantry of the inland taluks of South Malabar
were the worst hit by these trends. To them even the marginal
benefits of the Compensation Acts were not available. About
70% of the grain crop cultivation of the district was in these taluks
and in grain crop lands no improvement could be effected. Hence
the ejected tenants in this region could claim no compensation.
The incidence of eviction without compensation was naturally
higher in these taluks compared to other parts of the district.38
Thus, by the end of the second decade of the century the condition
of the cultivators in South Malabar had become extremely miser¬
able. Therefore, there were signs of mounting tension among the
agricultural classes. The local British officers apprised the Govern¬
ment of the grave agrarian situation. The newspapers repeatedly
wrote about the necessity of immediate and decisive remedial
measures. Kerala Sanchari and Mitavadi warned that if the Govern¬
ment continued to be ‘hesitating, halting and debating’ on the
tenant question and ‘pursued a policy of neglect, indifference
and drift’, a storm might break out any day.38
It did. At Pukottur on the 1st of August 1921.

Ill
Beginning of The Rebellion
Pukottur, a thickly populated village, about five miles north
west of Manjeri in the Eranad taluk of South Malabar, was in¬
habited predominantly by the Mappilas. There were 2170 Mappilas
and 993 Hindus.3Q The major part of the land in the village was
held by Nilambur Raja, one of the richest landlords in South
Malabar. He maintained a Kovilakam (Palace) at Pukottur and
a member of his family, Thirumulpad. the Sixth, lived there to collect
rent. Most of the Mappilas in Pukottur were tenants, under-tenants
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 617

or wage labourers of Nilambur Raja. In the last week of July

1921 Kalathingal Mammad, a tenant and erstwhile rent collector
of Nilambur Raja, accompanied by a good number of Mappila
peasants, approached Thirumulpad for the realisation of a sum of
Rs. 350/- due to him. Thirumulpad who at that moment had no
money with him escaped their fury by borrowing money from a
rich Mapilla neighbour. But immediately after, Thirumulpad. in
collusion with the village official, registered a case'of house-breaking
and theft of a rifle against Mammad, whose house was consequently
searched. Mammad and about two hundred Mappilas remonstrated
with the Police Inspector who had gone to Pukottur on the 1st of
August to investigate the case and had called him to the kovilakam
for interrogation. Mammad, being the local leader of the Khiiafat
movement, considered it an act of reprisal on the part of the land¬
lord—Government combine and therefore decided to resist his
arrest. The Police Inspector sensing the mood of the Mappilas
quietly withdrew from the scene giving an assurance that no action
will be taken against them.40
The Inspector of Police, in his report to the District Magistrate,
drew an alarming picture of the communal situation in south
Malabar. The Mappilas, according to him, were busy organizing
volunteer corps and were manufacturing and collecting arms and
weapons. He indicated the possibility of a ‘Mapilla Uprising’ in
Eranad taluk, if quick and decisive action was not taken. The
District Magistrate, E.F. Thomas, concurred with the assessment
of the Police. To him the situation appeared so serious that he
requested the Madras Governor for military assistance for the
maintenance of peace in the district. His assumption was that a
large number of potential Mappila insurgents will have to be
disarmed and arrested by combing village after village in South
Malabar 41 Though in response to this request the First Lienster
Regiment was despatched to Kozhikode, the Governor forbade
the District Magistrate from taking general action against the
Mappilas. He only authorised him to arrest the leaders in order
to obviate any further trouble. The anxiety and impatience of the
District Magistrate was evidently not shared by the Government.
A.R. Nap, a member of the Governor’s Executive Council, who
visited Kozhikode to make an on the spot enquiry, did not consider
the Eranad situation to be really alarming. But Thomas was one
618 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

of those British officers who could not be accused of pacific inclina¬

tions in their public dealings. What distressed him most was perhaps
not the communal tension in Eranad but the progress of Khilafat
and Non-Cooperation movements and the slight and disregard
with which the public and the leaders treated him.42 He soon un¬
leashed a reign of terror and, as K.V. Pillai wrote in the Muslim,
’out-Dyered Dyer’ in his oppressive measures against the Khilafat
and Non-Cooperation workers.43

Tirurangadi Incident
On the 19th of August 1921 Thomas proceeded to Tirurangadi
with a contingent of Army and Police to arrest the Mappila
leaders, including Ali Musaliar, a highly respected and popular
priest of Mambrath mosque. He also carried with him warrants
to search mosques and houses and confiscate war knives. On
the 20th morning Thomas and his party reached Tirurangadi and
searched the Kizhakkepalli mosque and arrested three comparative¬
ly unknown Khilafat volunteers. Ali Musaliar was not in the mosque
at that time and hence could not be arrested. Meanwhile the news
about the arrest of the Khilafat volunteers and the entry of the
police into the mosque spread with amazing rapidity into the
adjoining regions and was embroidered all the way. What the
Mappilas of Tanur, Parappanangadi, and Kottakkal heard was
that Mambrath mosque, one of the oldest and perhaps the most
important religious centre in Malabar, had been fired at and
destroyed by the British army. It was the day of weekly fair at
Kottakkal and the Mappilas who had assembled there marched
towards Tirurangadi in utter amazement to discover the truth.
Similarly, people from Tanur, Parappanagadi and, in fact, from
all the adjoining regions, who came to know about the incident,
proceeded to Tirurangadi. The illiterate Mappilas who had already
heard that the British were desecrating the Muslim religious
shrines in Turkish territory readily believed the rumour about the
destruction of the Mambrath mosque.44 Their action was spont¬
aneous and \oluntary. There was no leadership, no organization.
A large crowd of Mappilas thus assembled at Tirurangadi.
They were all unarmed except for sticks in their hands.45 Their
representatives met the British officers for the release of the arrested
volunteers. The mob also followed them. They were peaceful and
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 619

committed no violence. They even agreed to squat on the ground

when so ordered by the Police. But the moment they sat down the
army opened fire and a good number of unarmed Mappilas were
killed.46 An already excited crowd now broke into violence and
attacked the army and the Police. The Government offices were
destroyed, treasury looted and records burnt. The District Magis¬
trate and his party withdrew to Kozhikode in panic. Thus began
the Malabar Rebellion at Tirurangadi which soon spread to the
Eranad, Walluvanad and Ponnani taluks. The District Magistrate
in his communique characterized the Rebellion as ‘an outburst of
religious fanaticism directed first against European officials and
non-officials and laterly against Hindu jenmies and others. Public
offices have been looted everywhere, manas47 and kovilakams
pillaged, Hindus murdered and forcibly converted’.48
The fury of the Rebellion during its early phase was indeed
directed against the Hindu landlords and the symbols of British
authority, namely, treasuries, katcheries and police stations. Let
us return to Pukottur for elucidation. On the 21st of August the
Mappilas of Pukottur marched to Nilambur, about twenty three
miles away, where the Raja of Nilambur, the landlord of the
Pukottur Mappilas, resided. No outrage was committed against any
Hindu either at Pukottur or on their way to Nilambur. In fact,
at Pukottur, they gave a patient hearing to K. Madhavan Nair,
a Congress leader, who advised them against violence. On their
way to Nilambur they attacked a police station. When they ap¬
proached the kovilakam, one of the guards fired at them. A skirmish
followed in which seventeen were killed. After overcoming this
initial resistance they entered the kovilakam and went straight to
the record room and burnt all the records.49 No harm was done to
any member of the Nilambur family, even though they had met
the heir-apparent in the house. On their return journey to Pukottur
also they did not murder any one nor plunder any Hindu house.50
It is indeed significant that the ‘fanatic’ Mappilas of Pukottur
chose to go to Nilambur about twenty three miles away and burn
their landlords records and not to march to Tirurangadi, only a
distance of twelve miles, for the help of their religious brethren.
This was the pattern of rebel activity during the initial stages
throughout South Malabar. At Tirur, Perinthalmanna, Manjeri,
Malappuram, Mannarkad and all other places, the rebels attacked,
620 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

demolished and plundered the British treasuries and offices.51

The jenmies who were notorious for usurious and oppressive
measures were not spared. Generally no injury was done to the
poor Hindus and lenient landlords.52 The rubber estates owned
by the British planters also became the targets of attack. The
labourers of Kalikav and Chembrasseri attacked the Pullengad
and Kerala Rubber estates. While beating Mr Eatten, the proprie¬
tor, the rebels recounted the atrocities committed by him on the
workers.53 At Mannarked. there were a good number of Hindus
among the rebel ranks who were active in attacking the police
stations and demolishing road bridges.54

Rebel Leaders and Their Attitude

The most important leaders of the Rebellion were Variam Kunnath
Kunhammad Haji, Kalathingal Mammad and Ali Musaliar in
Eranad and Sithi Koya Thangal and Embichi Koya Thangal in
Walluvanad. In Eranad region 'Republics’ were established and
Kunhammad Haji and Mammad proclaimed themselves as
'Presidents’. They recruited armies, organized police and instituted
courts for trying criminals. Kunhammad Haji proclaimed the
liberation of the country from the British. A moratorium on all
taxes for one year was granted. Passports were issued for those
wanting to travel outside his 'republic'. A fee was charged for the
passport which was determined by the financial ability of the
applicant. The peasants were ordered to harvest the paddy crops
of the landlords.55
Sithi Koya Thangal installed himself as the Governor of the
Khilafat Province in Walluvanad. He issued fathwas proclaiming
that the country now belonged to the people and that nobody should
indulge in any criminal activities. So did Imbichi Koya Thangal
who held courts in various places in Walluvanad for trying crimi¬
nals.56 In short, Eranad and Walluvanad taluks by and large came
under the control of these leaders. The Chief Secretary to the
Government of Madras observed:
the whole interior of South Malabar except Palghat taluk is in
the hands of the rebels.situation from the point of view
of civil administration is that local machinery of Government
has broken down. Throughout the affected area the Government
offices have been recked and looted and records destroyed.
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 621

Communications have been obstructed.... All Government

offices and courts have ceased to function and ordinary business
is at stand still.57
Kunhammed Haji proclaimed himself as the Raja of the Hindus,
the Amir of the Muslims and the Colonel of the Khilafat army.58
He treated all his ‘subjects’ alike and no discrimination was allowed
to be practised. Those who took advantage of the unsettled condi¬
tions for indulging in plunder and harassment of the innocent
population were publicly flogged and plundered articles were
returned to their owners.59 The punishment for molestation of
women was chopping of hands.60 When Madhavan Nair complain¬
ed that Mappilas were plundering and killing innocent Hindus,
Haji told him that he would cut off the hands of all such criminals.61
In fact, he went around Eranad taluk to prevent atrocities and
assured the Hindus that nothing will be done against them.62
The statements recorded by a good number of Hindus of Eranad
taluk show conclusively that Kunhammad Haji was free from any
communal hatred. To cite one of them, C. Gopala Panikkar of
Chathankot village, observed in his statement:
Variam Kunnath Kunhammad Haji ordered the Mappilas who
had indulged in plunder to be produced before him. Except one,
named Kunjali, all others returned the plundered articles to
their owners. Kunjali refused to do that. He was flogged 125
times and it was only then that he confessed his crimes...
Plundered articles were recovered. They were shown to Marath
Nambudiri and Kavungal Nambudiri and enquired whether
they belonged to them. Kunhammad Haji did not do any harm
to the Hindus.63
The activities of other rebel leaders also fell into the same pattern.
In Pukottur, Mammad punished all those who exhorted money
from Hindus or removed their cattle and he arranged the money
so taken to be returned.64 So was;the case of Ali Musaliar, Sithi
Koya Thangal and imbichi Koya Thangal.
This, however, is not to suggest that there were no murders or
conversions of Hindus or plundering of their property during the
Rebellion as a whole. The very fact that the leaders had to punish
the Mappilas point to their incidence. According to Pandit Hrishi
Ram, an Arya Samaj worker, who went *lo Malabar for Suclhi
and relief work, there were about 2500 forced conversions. No
622 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

official figures are available for the death of civilians but it is

estimated to be about 600.00 It is indeed significant, as E.M.S.
Namboodiripad has pointed out. that in a region inhabited by
about four lakh Hindus only 600 were killed and 2500 converted.67
Considering the fact that the rebels had complete control over the
region for a period of six months, it will not be wrong to say that
the number of killed and converted was remarkably small, if the
Rebellion were to be considered a communal conflict. Even in
case of these murders and conversions the timing of their occurrence
is extremely significant.
During the early phase of the Rebellion the fury of the rebels,
as is evident from the Nilambur incident described above, was
primarily directed against the jenmies, and the British Government.
All contemporary observers, including British officials, agree that
among the Indians ‘the victims chiefly were the Hindu propertied
class’.68 Except for the wanton crimes committed by certain
undersirable elements, whom the leaders promptly punished, the
general Hindu population was not affected at all. But a change
did take place during the latter part of the Rebellion. The proclama¬
tion of the Martial law and the arrival of the British army thrust a
wedge in the communal relationship. Some Hindus were coerced
to help the army and give information about the rebels whereas a
few did so voluntarily. Understandably, the Mappilas now grew
suspicious of even the innocent Hindus, and some of the rebels
began to take revenge on them. For instance, Imbichi Koya Thangal
tried forty Hindus who were accused of helping the army by giving
them milk and tender cocoanuts. Thirty eight of them were awarded
capital punishment. The Hindus thus suspected and harassed
wreaked vengence on the Mappilas with the assistance of the
British army and the police. The rebels in turn retaliated in greater
fury. Madhavan Nair in his reminiscences remarked: ‘For the
attack of the Mappilas the revenge of the Hindus and the Police;
for that revenge a counter revenge by the Mappilas; followed by a
stronger retaliation by the Police and the Army—this in short was
the history of the Malabar Rebellion'.69 A similar observation
was made by Mahmood Schamnad Sahib Bahadur during his
speech in the Legislative Council; ‘The rebellion was started as a
joint concern of some Moplahs, Nayars and others of the non¬
cooperation party, and in the beginning all were arrested and
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 623

punished indiscriminately.... Laterly, however a change came

on. These Nayars and others were somehow or other made to feel
the safer course for them would be to desert the Moplahs and
show themselves as their foes.. .they went along with the police
and military and joined them in looting Moplah houses and
outraging their women. When the Moplahs saw their co-workers
turning against them, they considered it a treachery. Therefore,
when the military retired in the evenings, they took revenge by
killing them or confiscating their properties.’70
It was thus that a rebellion which was initially directed against
landlordism and imperialism assumed a communal colour. In
la feudal-Colonial multi-religious society such a transformation
was not in the least surprising.
It is not true, however, that only the Hindus were punished
for pro-British leanings. Kunhammed Haji started his rebel career
with the murder of Khan Bahadur Chekutty, a retired Police
Inspector. He ordered the execution of Iythru Haji, a popular
physician of Eranad, who was reported to have helped the police.
He also punished a good number of other pro-British Mappilas.71
That a total communal cleavage ever existed during the Rebellion
cannot be accepted. In many villages the Mappilas protected the
Hindus from the rebels coming from outside. Individual cases of
the Hindus being saved by unknown Mappilas were numerous.72
In Ponnani the Hindus and the Mappilas jointly persuaded the
rebels from Tanur to depart. Even in Eranad, during the thick of
the rebellion, Hindus and Muslims lived together in peace.
Madhavan Nair could even reprimand the rebels for indulging in
violence and they departed without even a note of protest.

IV
The foregoing analysis suggests that the Rebellion of 1921
cannot really be interpreted in communal terms. On the contrary,
in the background of the economic condition of the peasantry,
the pattern of rebel activity and the classes to which the participants
belonged, it is reasonable to suggest that the Rebellion was a
continuation of the agrarian conflicts of the 19th century. Rao
Bahadur C.S. Subramanyam speaking in the Legislative Council
observed:
There is one peculiarity of this rebellion: the better classes of
624 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

men, men who own property, are not in it.I wish to draw
particular attention to the fact that the men who are now; in
jail, the men who have died, the men who have been arrested,
the men in exile, are men with little property.73
Even Lord Reading, the Viceroy, recognized the influence of the
agrarian conditions on the Rebellion. In a letter to Lord Wellingdon
he wrote:
It is possible to argue that agrarian grievances were at least
a predisposing factor, and a perusal of certain reports prepared
some years ago on the subject suggests that even if there is no
substratum of truth in the argument, some revision of the
existing land tenure system may be desirable in the interests
of future peace of Malabar.... We have in regard to Malabar
to aim not merely at the restoration of order but also at the
conversion of the Moplahs into peaceful and loyal citizens, and
it may be that agrarian reform would be a powerful influence
in this direction.74
The step taken by the Government to obviate the recurrence of
rebellion was indeed not the enactment of another ‘Moplah Out¬
rages Act' but of a comprehensive tenancy legislation in 1930.
There was, however, a remarkable difference between the
agrarian conflicts of the 19th century and the Rebellion of 1921.
While the earlier uprisings were localized in extent and limited
in scope the Rebellion of 1921 was more intense and widespread.
It embraced almost the whole of the Mappila peasant population
of Eranad and Walluvanad taluks. The official estimate of Mappila
casualties was 2337 killed and 1652 wounded.75 The unofficial
sources, however, put this number above 10,000.76 The number of
Mappila rebels captured and surrendered was 45404.77 Needless
to say, the actual participants must not have been few'er than
double this number.

Kliilafat Agitation and Tenant Movement

An explanation for this transformation lay in the interaction
between the political and economic forces in Malabar in the second
decade of the 20th century. The nationalist agitation gathered
momentum during this period and the Congress activities slowly
penetrated into the rural regions.78 Mahatma Gandhi and Shaukat
Ali visited Malabar in August 1920 and addressed a public meeting
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 625

at Kozhikode. Though their call for non-cooperation did not

arouse much enthusiasm among the middle and upper urban
strata the Khilafat movement received immediate response from
the Mappilas, especially in South Malabar. The Malabar District
Congress Conference held in Manjeri in April 1920 was attended
by a large number of Mappilas. Though Mrs Annie Besant wanted
a resolution on the Reforms Act to be discussed first, the majority
of the delegates pressed for a resolution on Khilafat which was
hence taken up for consideration. Mrs Beasant, Manjeri Rama
Iyer and a host of others denounced the British attitude towards
Turkey and dilated upon the great injustice done to the Muslim
community as a whole. The Manjeri conference marked the begin¬
ning of extensive Khilafat agitation and movement in Malabar.
Soon after, Khilafat committees were established and meetings
were convened at Kozhikode, Kondotti, Tanur, Vengara, Pulikkal,
Tirur. Tirurangadi, Kottakkal, Kodur, Ponnani, Malapuram,
Manjeri, and Mampad which were attended by thousands of
people. The Hindu participation in these meetings was either
meagre or non-existent.79 In all these meetings—the Khilafat
resolutions demanding the integrity of holy places and proclaiming
that ‘the Indian Muslims will not rest and will not allow the enemies
of Islam to rest’ were read out.80 At Cannanore E. Moidu, one of
the prominent leaders of the Khilafat, reminded the audience that
‘the Indian Muslims ought to have fought a war in revenge for the
wrongs done to Islam' and he ‘deplored the want of arms' to
undertake such a venture.81
Though the Mappilas were thus aroused to action against
British imperialism, the general character of the movement controll¬
ed by the urban based middle class continued to be non-violent
non-cooperation. But the District authorities disturbed by the
increasing popularity of the movement and the consequent solida¬
rity among the Mappilas imposed prohibitory orders on all Khilafat
meetings. The prohibitory notice issued by the District Magistrate
on the 5th of February 1921 stated that the Khilafat meetings
would not only arouse the ire of the Mappilas against the British
Government but also against the Hindu jenmies of Eranad taluk.82
On the 16th of February all important Congress and Khilafat
leaders including Yakub Hassan, U. Gopala Menon, P. Moideen
Koya and K. Madhavan Nair were arrested. The arrest of the
626 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

prominent leaders and the prohibition of meetings transferred

the leadership into the hands of the local Mappila leaders as well
as alienated them from the general milieu of the Congress non¬
violent non-cooperation influence and politics. When the leaders
returned from jail after three months they found to their dismay
that the militant Mappilas had slipped out of their influence.
Though the British officials in Malabar described the revolt as
'the fruit of the seed Annie sowed and Gandhi watered’.si by
July 1921 the Mappilas had become sceptical about the effectiveness
of non-violent non-cooperation. To the Mappilas the Swaraj which
Gandhi had promised within a year seemed a possibility though
not through 'Gandhism’ but through an armed struggle.
The choice of this alternative was influenced by several factors.
The illiterate Mappilas readily lent their ear to the rumours current
in the countryside. It was common talk that the British Army
was crippled by the First World War and was no more in a position
to take serious military action. The transfer of the British regiment
from Malappuram gave credence to this belief. While moving out,
the property of the Regiment was auctioned which created an
impression that the British were in dire financial crisis. The re¬
trenched Mappila soldiers also contributed to the anti-British
feeling in the countryside as well as to the general economic
discontent and frustration.
The tenant movement in South Malabar was closely connected
with the Khilafat agitation. The tenant question was first raised
in the District Congress Conference in 1916. But the landed interests
in the Congress did not allow its discussion till 1920.84 It was
only in the Manjeri conference attended by a large number of
Mappilas that a resolution demanding legislation for regulating
the tenant-landlord relations was passed.85 Immediately after that
a tenants’ association was formed at Kozhikode. Similar associa¬
tions soon started functioning in other parts of Malabar. The
most important activity of these associations was the organisation
of public meetings in which the grievances of the tenants were
graphically described. A meeting convened at Kottakkal in
September 1920 was attended by about five thousand tenants.86
Similar meetings were held throughout Eranad and Walluvanad
taluks, including a mammoth public meeting at Pukkottur in
January 1921. In these taluks the bulk of the peasants being Map-
 PEASANT REVOLTS IN MALABAR 627

pilas, those meetings assumed the character of tenant-cum-Khilafat

agitation. Most of the Khilafat leaders, namely, Kalathingal
Mammad, Kunhikadar. Kattlasseri Muhammad Musaliar, Chem-
brasseri Thangal and so on were active workers of the tenant
movement also. The political developments in 1921, as discussed
earlier, led to the merger of Khilafat and tenant interests represent¬
ing anti-imperialism and anti-landlordism.
This coalition created a sense of cohesion and solidarity among
the peasantry. It also provided them an effective organization.
The peasantry having thus acquired solidarity and organisation,
the conflict arising out of economic antagonism developed into
a wide spread rebellion against the landlords and the British
imperial power.

References

1 Kathleen Gough. ‘Indian Peasant Uprisings,’ Economic and Political Weekly,

Special Number. August 1974. (Reproduced in this volume)
2 An earlier version of this paper was presented in a seminar organised by Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library in March 1972.
3 The Cannanore, Kozhikode, Palghat and Malappuram districts of the present
state of Kerala roughly comprise the former Malabar District.
4 Madras Census Report, 1921, Part II, p. 350.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 254.
7 Jenmam means birth. Jenmi is one who possesses a birthright. Kanakkaran is
derived from the word Kanuka (see). For an excellent study of the evolution of
Jenmi system, see Elemkulam P.N. Kunjan Pillai, JENMI Sampradayam
Keralathil (Malayalam), (Kottayam, 1959). For a description of the develop¬
ment of different types of tenures see Baden Powell, Land System of British
India, iii, pp. 162-77
8 For a brief survey of the land revenue policy, settlement and assessment see
William Logan, Malabar Manual, pp. 625-89. Also see T.A. Varghese, Agrarian
Change and Economic Consequences, pp. 20-32 (Bombay, 1970), pp. 20-32 and
Thomas W. Shea (Jr), The Land Tenure Structure of Malabar and its Influence
upon Capital Formation in Agriculture, pp. 94-166, Unpublished Ph. D. Disser¬
tation of the University of Pennsylvanya.
9 Report of the Malabar Special Commission, pp. 1881-2, i, para 257.
10 Ibid., ii, Appx. ii, p. 194.
11 Ibid., para 263.
12 Ibid., pp. XXII-XXVI.
13 Ibid., para 92.
628 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

14 Ibid., page lvi. Logan does not give the measurement of holdings. He has
used numbers for purposes of comparison. Though inadequate it is mentioned
here to indicate the nature of land holdings. ,
15 Madras Government Minutes of Consultation, 17th February 1852; Corres¬
pondence on Moplah Outrages in Malabar for the Year 1849-53, (Madras 1863),
pp. 268-73.
16 Ibid., p. 509
17 Ibid., p. 408.
18 Ibid., p. 441.
19 The principal servant of a landlord who looked after his landed interests and
collected rent from the tenants. He was not only the instrument of landlords’
oppression but an oppressor himself. Well versed in judicial matters he was
dreaded by the tenants for his dubious ways.
20 Report by C. Collet, Assistant Magistrate to H.V. Connally, Magistrate, 20
September 1851, Correspondence on Moplah Outrages, i, pp. 177-80
21 Ibid., p. 187.
22 Ibid., p. 188.
23 See the table of prices given above.
24 Correspondence on Moplah Outrages, i., p. 191.
25 Robinson to Connally, 13 February 1852, Ibid., p. 285.
26 Collet to Connally, 20 September 1851, Ibid., p. 195.
27 Report of T.L. Strange, para 42-72, Correspondence on Moplah Outrages,
pp. 454-74.
28 Malabar Special Commission Report, 1881-2, i, para 280.
29 Clause No. 4 & 5 of the Act of 1889.
30 Legislative Department Proceedings, Jan. 1900, Nos. 1-4 National Archives of
India, New Delhi.
31 Opinion of Justice Parker of the Madras High Court, Ibid.
32 Madras Govt. Revenue Dept. G.O. No. 4114 (Conf) dated 25.10.1894.
33 Legislative Dept. Proceedings, n. 30.
34 Ibid.
35 Rev. Dept. n. 32.
36 Denzil Ibbetson to Secretary, Madras Government, 29th Aug. 1895; Legislative
Department, Part B, Sept. 1895, No. 25.
36a See the debate on the Bill in the Madras Legislative Council on 24 Jan. 1899,
especially the speeches of S. Sankara Subbayar, Ratna Sabhapati Pillai and
Vijya Raghavachariar.
37 Legislative Dept., Jan. 1900, Nos. 1-4.
37a Report of the Malabar Tenancy Committee, 1928, i. Chapter II
38 Rev. Dept. n. 32.
38a Native News Paper Reports, Madras 1921, pp. 394, 584 and
39 Madras Census Report 19?I Village Statistics for Malabar District.
40 K. Madhavan Nair, Malabar Kalapam (Malayalam) (Kozhikode 1971) pp. 94-7.
41 The Madras Mail, 8 August 1921.
42 On the 17th August 1921 three important leaders of Non-Cooperation and
Khilafat movements—Gopala Menon, K. Madhavan Nair and Moideen Koya .
were released from Jail after a six months’ term. They were accorded a rand
reception at Kozhikode. The processionists clapped in derison when they
saw the Collector while passing through the Collectorate. K. Madhavan Nair,
n 40. p. 101
43 Muslim, 8 Sept. 1921, Madras Native News Paper Reports, 1921, p. 1111.
 PEASAN1 REVOLTS IN MAL ABAR 629

44 Kunhi Kadar, the local leader of the Khilafat at Tanur, told Brahmadattan
Nambudiripad that he and his followers went to Tirurangadi on hearing about
the destruction of the Mambrath mosque. Mo/hikunnatha Brahmadattan
Nambudiripad, Khilafat Smaranakal (Malayalam) (Kozhikode, 1965), pp. 43-4.
Kanjirappali Ali Musaliar, a participant in the Rebellion of 1921, whom the
authors interviewed on 30.6.43 mentioned the same.
45 The Madras Govt, in its communique issued on 24 August said: ‘Police charged,
with fixed bayonets and were met with sticks in self defence’. Home Poll., 1921
F. No. 241, Part I, A., p. 123. Also see K. Madhavan Nair, no. 40, pp. 110-26.
46 Ibid.,
47 House of a Nambudiri Brahmin.
48 Home Poll, 1921, F. No. 241, Pt. I-A. Appx. III.
49 Home Poll, 1922, F. No. 23.
50 K. Madhavan Nair, No. 40.
51 Ibid., p. 129-52.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 164.
55 C. Gopalan Nair, Moplah Rebellion, pp. 76-80.
56 Ibid.
57 Chief Secy., Madras Govt, to Secy, Govt, of India, 30th August 1921, Home
Poll. 1921, File No. 241, Part 1-A. p. 146.
58 Ibid.
59 Statement of Puliyali Krishnan Nair recorded at the Malabar Congress Office
quoted by K. Madhavan Nair, n.40, p. 260.
60 Kerala Patrika, 24 Oct. 1921. Quoted by K. Madhavan Nair, n.40, p. 260.
61 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40. p. 171. Also see Mozhikunnatha Brahmadattan
Nambudiripad. n. 44, p. 54-5.
62 E. Moidu Maulavi is an important Congress leader and had visited Eranad and
Walluvanad taluks in the beginning of the Rebellion. In an interview with the
author on 26.6.73 further detailed the efforts made by the rebel leaders for
maintaining communal harmony.
63 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 261.
64 Message of a correspondent, a Hindu Resident, of Kozhikode, Leader, 14 Sept.
1921 see Home Poll. 1922, f. No. 232.
65 Quoted by E.M.S. Nambudiripad: Keralathile Deshiya Prasuam (Malayalam)
pp. 232-3 (Ernakulam 1951)
66 C. Gopalan Nair, n. 55, p. 58.
67 Quoted by E.M.S. Nambudiripad n. 65 p. 232.
68 Account given by a Judicial officer belonging to an aristocratic family for publi¬
cation in Hindu, Home Poll, 1922, F. No. 23. For the opinion of British officers
see Home Poll, 1921, F. No. 241, Part I-A.
69 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 216. Kanjirapalli Ali Musaliar told Madhavan
Nair that in his region, i.e. Manjeri, also the Hindus who were attacked by the
rebles were mainly those who had helped the British army.
70 Mahmood Schammad Sahib Bahadur's speech in the Legislative Council,
8 February 1922.
71 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 169.
72 Reading Papers, Microfilm, R. No. 1, Nehru Memorial Museum, New Delhi,
p. 236.
73 Legislative Council Debates, 8 February 1922.
630 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

74 Lord Reading to Lord Wellington, 26 May 1922, Home Poll, 1922 F. No. 23.
75 Home Poll, 1923, F. No. 129, IV.
76 The Statesman, 2 September 1922. In contrast to this, the number of Hindus
killed during the Rebellion was estimated to be around six hundred only.
77 Home Poll, 1923, F. No. 1929-IV.
78 For a brief survey of the history of the National Movement in Kerala. See
Perunna K.N. Nair, Keralathile Congress Prasthanam (Malayalam) (Tri 1967>.
79 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 65.
80 Home Poll, 1921, F. No. 241, Part I-A.
81 Ibid.
82 Quoted by K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 68.
83 H.B. Jackson to C.A. Innes, 4 September 1921, Home Poll, 1921, F. No. 241,
Part I.A.
84 V.R. Menon: Mathrubhumiyude Charitram, Vol. i, (Malayalam) p. 34.
(Kozhikode, 1973)
85 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 88.
86 K. Madhavan Nair, n. 40, p. 83.
 34 Peasants of the Parganas

A shim Milk hopadhyay

I
The present struggles of the peasantry in the Parganas can be
understood well if the past is known. Like other parts of undivided
Bengal this region also saw, from time to time, severe conflicts
between the peasantry on the one side and the zamindars, mahajans
(moneylenders) and their paid agents on the other Knowledge of
this background is essential for a correct assessment of the present
happenings.
Before the advent of the British, the Mughals were the real
masters of this land, and before them the Hindus and the Turko-
Afghans. Even at that time the peasantry revolted against oppres¬
sion. Sincere and serious students of history will never forget the
'Kaibarta revolt' during the reign of King Rampal. They will not
label Dibbak and Bhim, the leaders of that revolution, as mere
rebels. On the contrary they will adore these two leaders as cham¬
pions of the cause of the poor peasantry.1
In lower Bengal which comprized the Parganas, Howrah, Midna-
pore, Khulna, Dacca, Bakhargunge, several leaders arose from the
lowest rung of the social ladder at different times to oppose the
tyrants. The peasants and artisans formed the rank and file of
their army, fought for them and helped them to seize power. In
almost all cases a new monarchical set-up came into existence and
the gains were short-lived, but in that extreme feudal structure of
society nothing better could have been obtained. In the Parganas
and Howrah there were many such local leaders of humble origin.
They are now mere legendary figures.2
Even the folk gods were once such leaders. If the religious side
of the history of their origin is rejected, the things to consider are
economic and political factors. Dakshin Roy, Panchanan, Panchu
Banbibi, all these folk gods were once connected with the economic

Reproduced from frontier Vol. 2 No. 37 to 42, (Calcutta), Dec. 1969-Jan. 1970.
632 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

and political struggles of the common people. But as days went on,
people began to worship them as gods. The upper classes, who used
to exploit them, constantly encouraged this process, because they
knew that by putting a religious coating on the real facts they would
be able to hoodwink the next generations of their victims. Thus
what was an economic struggle was turned into a religious feat.
However, these folk gods and ‘Kaibarta’ or ‘Bagdi’ leaders were
the first peasant agitators in Bengal. This is an untold story of our
social history.
In the Turko-Afghan period there were many possiblities of
peasant movements on a large scale in the Parganas and also in other
parts of the province, but things happened otherwise. Stories of
conversion of the Hindus have been always misunderstood by
our pundits. Behind this countrywide conversion were the age-old
economic grievances of'the common people. Most of them were
peasants. They were ready for revolt. But they were disorganized.
The newcomers understood the situation very well. They planned
not to organize those peasants against the existing feudal system
which they themselves had decided to run. But they thought of
setting them upon the Hindu feudal lords. To serve both these
purposes they urged the ignorant and oppressed peasants to embrace
Islam, by doing which they would be placed in ‘behest’ (heaven).
But in reality this call for conversion was a sound strategy of the
Muslims. In this way they isolated the militant Hindu peasants
and artisans from their community; feeling helpiess, isolated they
submitted to their new' masters and with every passing day began
to lose their militancy. In Harao-Balanda (northern part of 24-
Parganas) and in Baruipur, Khari etc. (the southern part) peasant
revolts could have been staged in the early period of the Turko-
Afghan rule. Pir Gorachand of Haroa, Mubarak Ghazi of Ghutiar-
i-Sharif, Bara Khan Gazi of Khari were nothing but local Muslim
leaders who cleverly canalized the grievances of the local peasantry
into campaigns against the ruling Hindu lords. But they never
tried to organize the people for a struggle through which they
could have improved their own lot. However, these pirs and ghazis
are now worshipped as folk gods.3

Nothing to choose
During the Mughal rule, the peasantry in the Province (including
 PEASANTS OE THE PARGANAS 633

its lower portions) occasionally rose in rebellion against the local

fauzdars and talukdars. Those rebellions were ruthlessly suppressed.
Men of the upper stratum of society always deceived those brave
but simple peasants and exploited them to serve their own interests.
The ‘Bara-Bhuians’ of Bengal had many peasants soldiers in their
army to fight Akbar and Jehangir. They ignited a spirit of nationa¬
lism in the minds of the ignorant peasants, made them communal
and then set them upon the Mughals but they themselves were no
less tyrants. Pratapaditya, one of the ‘Bara-Bhuian’ who ruled
over the present Jessore, Khulna and a large part of the Parganas,
was a tireless oppressor of his subjects. After the battle of Plassey,
Robert Clive wrote to the authorities of the East India Company
that when the small Company-infantry was moving to the Nawab’s
palace at Murshidabad, several thousand natives gathered on the
highway. They could have easily crushed Clive and his followers if
they had so wished, but they remained silent spectators.4 Clive
could not understand the reason for their remaining silent. Actually
to the toiling masses of Bengal replacement of the 'Nawab' by
the 'Sahib' was nothing but replacement of one oppressor by
another. Neither did the Nawab approach them, nor did they extend
their help to him. From their past lessons they realized that they
were the exploited. It was only when they organized themselves to
struggle against their oppressors and exploiters that they succeeded
in securing some concessions.
On December 20, 1757, Mir Jafar, the new Nawab of Bengal,
surrendered to the Company the zamindari or landholder’s rights
over the Parganas.5 Clive, who was then master of Bengal, had
his eyes on this fertile tract. He had already written to the Court
of Directors that 'the annual income in this area 1 w.ll venture to
estimate at ten lacs per annum.’6 He got his chance when in June
1765 Mir Jafar conferred on him the 'Jagir' or zamindari of the
Parganas.7 From that time began the real story of the Parganas,
an ugly story of unlimited exploitation of its people by the English
and their native agents.
The southern section of the district was wild and uncultivated.
It was an ideal habitat of ferocious animals, reptiles and pirates.
The first attempt to reclaim it by granting leases to individuals was
made between 1770 and 1773. The next attempt at reclamation was
carried on by Mr. Tilman Henckle, the judge and magistrate of
634 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Jessore. Between 1811 and 1823, this region of the Parganas,

together with the lower part of Jessore and Bakhargunge or the
Sunderbans in short, was surveyed by several English officers.
Their object was the same, i.e., reclamation and cultivation of
the Sunderbans.8 But that was hampered by flaws in the system
of land distribution and the ill-defined character of the lands dis¬
tributed on lease. These again encouraged the opportunist zamin-
dars to start boundary disputes. The Company felt the need of
a correct survey, and in 1830 for the first time the Sunderbans came
to exist as a clearly defined area. Since then many rules have been
passed at regular intervals up to the end of the 19th century (1853,
1863, 1879, 1897) to reclaim and cuitivate this wild but fertile
tract.9 But the mission proved a grand failure. The entire region
turned into hell.
The system of land distribution and collection of revenue in the
northern part of the Parganas was completely different. To that
part were extended the rules of the Permanent Settlement (1793).
From that time onwards, the northern portion of the Parganas
along with other districts was repeatedly subjected to revisions of
the land and land revenue system, for instance the Act of 1799,
the Act of 1812, the Act of 1845, the Act of 1859, the Act of 1885 etc.
However none of these Acts could solve the basic problem. ‘Who is
the real owner of the soil’?—remained an unsettled question. The
zamindars and mahajans prospered at the expense of the ryots,
the latter gradually became paupers.

‘ The Baboo s'

Introduction of the Permanent Settlement permanently unsettled
the future of the poor peasantry. It smashed the village community
system, created a class of landlords and middlemen and established
the concept of private property on a solid footing. In introducing
this Settlement the Company had two definite objectives. One was
economic and the other political. The Company, which was a typical
colonial power, sought to create some staunch supporters of its
activities. Lord Cornwallis, the inventor of this Settlement, wrote
in his letter to the Court of Directors that for its own interests the
Company should make the native zamindars its'allies. Lord William
Bentinck, for whom the pundits have great respect, said that the
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 635

Permanent Settlement had created a large number of rich zamindars

who would preserve the rule of the Company in India and if nece¬
ssary would exert their influence over the countrymen10. All these
expectations were fulfilled. Whenever there was a rising in any part
of the country, the ‘Bengalee Zamindar baboos’ served their masters
like faithful dogs.11
The increasing demands of the shareholders of the Company and
the huge expenses of wars against the militant peasantry of Bihar
and Bengal were a constant headache of the Court of Directors.
The propertyless revenue farmers could not quench the Company’s
thirst for money. Hence the Directors planned to replace these
persons by a new class of collectors. Thus the Permanent Settlement
came into existence. ‘The total collections from 1794 to 1798
amounted to sicca Rs 2,65,00,000’.12
The subsequent regulations were of the same vicious nature.
‘Section XV of Regulation VII of 1799 or the ‘Haptam’ gave the
zamindars the power of arrest before decree, which they had used
to serve the worst purposes. ‘It greatly helped the ruthless landlords
to squeeze the last penny out of rackrented peasants in order to meet
the revenue demands of the British as well as to make their own
money’.13
Regulation V of 1812 gave unlimited power to the zamindar to
enhance rent provided he gave a formal written notice to the culti¬
vator or tenant at the beginning of the Bengali year of the rent he
was to pay for that year.
Act No. 1 of 1845 or the ‘Sunset Law’ gave ample authority to
the purchaser of an estate to enhance at discretion the rents of all
under-tenures in the said estate and to eject all tenants thereof.
The provisions of Act X of 1859 raised great expectations, but
could give no practical relief. Even the Europeans themselves
admitted these failures.14
The Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 was also a failure. The zamindars
continued to wallow in wealth and the peasants, in poverty.15
The systems in the Sunderbans were no less injurious, creating
several dozens of big landowners. Those zamindars were more
interested in profiteering than in reclamation or cultivation. Their
peasants and labourers had to lead a miserable life in the jungles.16
Not only that, the defects of the land distribution systems led to
636 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the growth of an undesirable class of speculators and middlemen

and to the grinding down of the actual cultivators by excessive
rent.17
Thus with the advent of the Company, an era of heinous op¬
pression ensued. The ‘Diarchy’ or the dual rule of Clive descended
on the poor Bengal peasant as a curse. In the famine of 1770-1
when about one third of the population perished, the Company
collected sicca Rs 1,40,06,030. During 1771-2 the collection was
sicca Rs 1,57,26,576. From Warren Hastings’ letter to the Directors
we know that the loss of revenue due to the death of one third
of the population was made up by severe exactions from the re¬
maining two-thirds.18
As has been stated earlier, in the pre-British period land in Bengal
was jointly possessed by the entire village community. At that time
‘the revenue farmers were not actually proprietors of land’. So
there was very little scope for the development of landholder-cum-
sharecropper and supervisory farmer-cum-agricultural labourer
relationships. There were two economic classes connected with
land and cultivation, one was the revenue farmers or Class I and
the other, the self-sufficient, self-cultivating peasantry working
within the periphery of the village community or Class II.
But due to the defects of the Permanent Settlement and the sub¬
sequent Settlement regulations following it a great change came
ov ,r the prevalent land system and its connective class structure.
The revenue farmers gave way before the zamindars and middle-men
and thus Class I lost its previous character. The disorderly situation
also effected a speedy dissolution of Class II and emergence of
Class III or a propertyless class of cultivators. By severe exaction
and gradual enhancement of rent the zamindars evicted the peasants
from their land and reduced them to the position of mere share¬
croppers. This distressing condition of Class II also brought the
moneylenders or mahajans to the forefront. Although they were
not unknown in Hindu or Muslim India, their social role underwent
a great change in the Company-regime.
As the systems of land transfer and mortgage were prevalent,
the rackrer.ted peasants frequently approached them for loans,
the mahajans thus got a good opportunity to enrich themselves.
Firstly, as suppliers of loans at excessively high interest they
accumulated huge wealth. Secondly, they forced the peasants to
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 637

sell their crops at a very cheap rate and then started a monopoly
business. Thirdly, they deprived many peasants of their ‘Vastoo-
bhita' and in course of time became owners of huge landed property.
Thus one great achievement of the Company Raj was the desti¬
tution of the once self-supporting peasantry and mushroom growth
of loyal landholders ‘brought up in the women’s apartment and
sunk in sloth and debauchery’. In the words of Marx it was an
'unsuccessful and really absurd (and in practice infamous) experi¬
ment in economics’.183
The zamindars, talukdars, gautidars, jotedars and other middle¬
men seemed to have the least respect for law and order. Besides the
rent, they used to collect forcibly a number of illegal cesses. For
instance: (a) Road cess—usually realised by the big landlords
(Roy Chowdhurys of Baruipur, Das Mandals of Bawali—south
24 Parganas); (b) Tahari or collector’s fee; (c) Agaman or Nazar
(collected whenever a new naib or superior officer visited the
cutchery); (d) Malik basha kharcha (fee for the zamindar’s chair);
(e) Hishab kharcha (fee for the accountant); (f) Mela kharcha
(free for the fair); (g) Maricha (fee for marriage in the zamindar's
family); (h) Parbi or bhet (fee for puja expenses collected everywhere
in the Parganas); (i) Mamooly (fee for puja and other festivals);
(j) Batta or exchange for sikka coin, (k) Dak kharcha (fee for the
expenses of the Zamindar’s mail); (1) Proja kharcha or tol kharcha
(fee realised from the peasants for permitting them to sit in the
cutchery); (m) Dakhila kharcha (fee for rent receipt).19
No excuse of natural calamities or poverty or ill health could
soften the heart of the zamindar or his agent. Oppression and
forcible exaction continued. The lives and properties of the peasants
were left at their mercy. In their private life these zamindars,
talukdars, jotedars and other middle men were addicted to all sorts
of crimes. The contemporary literature gives a very good exposure
of their private life.20 Among the various means of torturing the
subject population was violating the honour of their womenfolk.
Once a notorious zamindar of the Sunderbans said that he had
made the entire village his ‘harem’ and every newly married girl
before she entered her husband’s house had to lie with him repeated¬
ly until she conceived.21
Thus day by day the Bengal village stumbled from one crisis to
another. But it will be wrong to think that the peasantry silently
638 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

submitted before these misdeeds. On the contrary, they never

intended to remain under the black veil which was drawn over
them by their oppressors and exploiters. From the very beginning
of the Company's rule they revolted against its oppressive nature.

II
Within thirty years ofthe Battle of Plassey (1757)millions of peasants
in the Sunderbans region rose to challenge the misrule of the East
India Company.
Together with the agony of the famine of 1770, which was an
artificial creation of notorious ‘Writers’, the repression by the
Company of the weavers, saltmakers, silk growers and other
classes of artisans made life unbearable for the peasants. Towards
the end of the 18th century the peasants of the Parganas, Khulna
and Jessore defied the authority of the English.1 They attacked the
“Khuthis” (warehouses) and plundered carts and boats carrying
the merchandise of the Company and distributed the booty among
the poor people. Although this movement was sporadic and dis¬
organized, those who led it were very sincere and serious in their
actions. Realising their limitations they followed the tactics of
guerilla warfare. Whenever the enemy overpowered them, they
hurriedly retreated to the dense jungles of the Sunderbans. A
sectioaof them reclaimed the jungles and settled there permanently.
After the Permanent Settlement (1793) the struggle between the
Company and the peasantry intensified. The newly created zamin-
dars and middlemen came forward to help the Company, their
masters. On the other hand, the disgruntled revenue collectors
whom the Company replaced by the zamindars sided with the
fighting peasants. At a time it seemed as if the English would have
to pack up and quit lower Bengal. This state of affairs continued
till the end of the 18th century. However the movement failed and
its failure was almost certain for one obvious reason: the combina¬
tion of propertyless cultivators and wealthy revenue farmers was
a great obstacle in the way of success. A parallel instance can be
given from the revolt of 1857. On several occasions the sepoys and
peasants who challenged the Company’s authority were betrayed
and deserted by their feudal leaders. The revenue farmers and
petty landlords who joined the peasants of the Parganas and
Jessore stopped fighting as soon as they lost patience. The ignorant
and helpless peasants either submitted or fled to the jungles.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 639

The next movement in the Parganas was that of the salt makers.
As has been stated earlier, the Company had been running a
monopoly business in tobacco, paddy, textiles, silk and salt and
making huge profits out of it.2 According to William Bolts, during
the reign of Alivardi, the price of salt per 100 maunds was between
40 and 60 sicca rupees. But in 1773 it went up to 170 sicca rupees
and in 1798 to 380. To the poor peasants salt became something
as precious and scarce as gold and they used to consider themselves
lucky enough if they could ever collect a handful of it to feed their
cattle. Paradoxically enough, it was the Bengal peasants who
used to manufacture this salt but could not taste even a grain of
it.3 During 1781-6, the price of salt was twelve times higher than
that of rice. The chief salt-manufacturing centres in Bengal were
Midnapore, the Parganas (south-east parts), Khulna, Bakhargunge
and the sea-coast of Cittagong. Everywhere at these places the
Company practised various cruel methods to collect workers for
its factories.
The plan followed in salt manufacture in the Parganas and
Khulna was that the government Salt Agent contracted with the
Malangis or middlemen (in Midnapore the middle were called
Huddadar') for the engagement of people as salt boilers or
Mahindars. In most cases the Mahindars were forced to take
advances and the Malangis were vested with certain powers to
enable them to drive the Mahindars cruelly to work. These powers
the Malangis cruelly abused and gross oppression was perpetrated
by the officials. They insisted on receiving back Rs 20 for every
Rs 4 which they had advanced.4 The most notorious among those
salt officers was Mr Euart, head of the Raimangal division salt
agency. The Mahindars in the Sunderbans were actually landless
peasants. It was only for their survival that they used to take
advance from the contractors. Otherwise they had no attraction
for the profession (salt manufacturing). The entire Raimangal
belt was full of tigers and venomous snakes and above all there
was the jungle fever. So it was quite natural that the Mahindars
were reluctant to stay there. But it was Mr Euart who forced them
to stay and kept a constant watch on their movements.5 At last
the Mahindars revolted, stopped work and within a few months
the situation became so critical that the Malangis and Sahibs
hurriedly retreated to the town areas for safety. Mr Tilmen Henckell,
the then judge-magistrate of Jessore, intervened and a compromise
 640 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

, was arrived at. The main points were: (a) Salt manufacturing
areas must be fixed and definitely located, (b) No one should be
forced to accept advance against his will, (c) If it was seen that the
people were reluctant to manufacture salt, then the business should
be stopped, etc.0
Meanwhile the salt manufacturers of Midnapore had started
similar movements. At Derduman, Birkul, Balasay, Mirgodha
and many other areas salt factories had to be closed. Strikes,
processions and hand-to-hand fight between the workers and the
sepoys annoyed the Company. Ultimately it set its entire coercive
machinery upon the Malangis. It is really interesting to note that
during those fateful years the peasants of the Parganas extended
their helping hand to the salt manufacturers of Midnapore. In
1793 several hundred Malangis of Derduman came to Murgachha
(south 24 Parganas). The peasants of Murgachha gave them shelter,
led them for a long time and also gave assurance of such friendly
treatment in future. Next year (1794) another batch of the Malangis
of Ajura crossed the River Hooghly and entered Tentulberia. This
time also they were treated kindly by the local peasants.7
Thus the movements of the salt makers show the sowing of the
seed of class consciousness, an essential pre-requisite for class
struggle. The salt makers of Midnapore were actually landless
peasants and the people of the Parganas from whom they received
help were also the same. As this class consciousness hardened day
by day, the peasants wars in Bengal also intensified. The indigo
movements of the 19th century reflected this noticeable feature.

Blue Mutiny
The indigo planter of Bengal extracted blood from the body of the
helpless peasant and transformed its glowing red into the deep
blue of indigo through a process unbelievably hellish and un¬
thinkable even in the animal world.
The indigo industry was transported to India from the West
Indies in the last quarter of the 18th century. In 1778, one Carel
Blume (English) built a factory somewhere in Bengal and submitted
a memorandum to the Governor General pleading for the extension
ot indigo cultivation.8 At that time, England was passing through
ihe phase of the Industrial Revolution and her textile industries
needed indigo. The Company, which was exploiting India, both
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 641

as a supplier of raw materials needed for British Industries and as

an ideal market for the finished produce, availed itself of this
opportunity and started financing individual planters to extend
cultivation. Thus like other articles of trade, indigo also became
a monopoly of the Company.9
In 1819, the Company, as it had done in the past, once again
misused its ‘prerogative’. By regulation VIII it gave the zamindars
the right to lease their lands and thus encouraged further subin¬
feudation of cultivable areas. The zamindars, who had been growing
like mushrooms since the Permanent Settlement and living like
parasites on the body of the peasantry, welcomed the Regulation.
They leased their lands to the indigo planters and with plenty of
money settled in the cities to enjoy an easy-going life.10
From the very beginning, the planters started a very repressive
regime. In a journal printed and published from Mazilpur (south
24-Parganas) they were described as ‘Kings and killers of the
natives.'11
Very soon the zamindars themselves felt the weight of repression.
The planters began to press them for further transfers of land
and even demanded their ‘khas possessions', This led the zamindars
to submit a memorandum to the British Parliament pleading for
the Crown’s help. But it went unheeded, because ‘some most
faithful servants’12 of the English had by this time started a
movement demanding settlement of the ‘Sahibs’ in India. Among
them were Rammohun Roy and Dwarkanath Thakur. Their
activities greatly encouraged their bosses, i.e., Charles Metcalfe
and William Bentinck, who wrote to England that a section of
educated and wealthy natives would be helpful for the settlement
of the English in India, and therefore the Government should
consider the matter seriously.13 Ultimately, it was due to the earnest
efforts of the Roys and Thakurs that in 1833 the Crown allowed the
planters of the West Indies to settle in India.‘An international
entente was thus formed between two groups of feudal exploiters
against the toiling masses of a chained country.
As days rolled on the crisis deepened. The seasoned planters of
the West Indies, backed by the Company, continued their land¬
grabbing practice and extended indigo cultivation over a vast
area of the province. The Bengal Indigo Company, the largest—in
the country, became the owner of a huge landed property, (594
642 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

villages)14 which it used to control by its various ‘concerns’.

Of these, the Mollahati Concern (now in Bongaon PS, 24-Parganas)
had factories and several thousand bighas of land. R.T. Larmour,
the notorious manager of the Company, had his residence here.15
In his evidence before the Indigo Commission in 1860, Mr Ashley
Eden, the Magistrate of Barasat (24 Parganas), admitted that ‘till
then 20,40,000 bighas of fertile land had been used for indigo
cultivation and thus to a country, regularly visited by famine,
a great wrong had been done.’16
Regarding cultivation, the planters generally followed two
systems: Nij Avadi and Ryoti Avadi or Dadani Avadi (also known
as the Khatai jami system). In the former, the planter had to cultivate
his Khas possessions and bear all expenses including labour
charge and therefore the profit never came up to his expectations.
But in the ‘Avadi’ or ‘Khatai’ system it was the ryot who had to
supply all means of production including labour, ‘the Shahib had
no other responsibility except that two rupees of advance.'17
According to the Indigo Commission in the ‘Nij Avadi system’
a planter had to spend Rs 2,50,000 for every 10,000 bighas, whereas
in the Ryoti Avadi or Khatai jami system has expenditure never
exceeded Rs 20,000.18 Quite naturally, the planters preferred the
‘Ryoti’. The guiding principle of their business was ‘maximum gain
at minimum pain’.19 It was one of the important factors which
formed the back-drop of the indigo tragedy.
The planters who had been running a serfdom in the West
Indies started the same sort of business in Bengal with renewed
vigour. The government and the zamindars threw the peasantry
at their mercy. To a peasant ‘the Khatai jami system was as harmful
as poison and he who submitted to it, drank poison with his own
hands’.20 In this system a ryot had to spend ncar-about Rs 11 for
every 2 bighas. But the outturn could not be more than Rs 4.
However, this sordid tale did not end here. After the deduction of
the ‘Dadan’ (advance) and 'Dasturi (bribe) this little amount of
Rs 4 was reduced to a few annas and the helpless ryot had to crawl
back to his broken hut only to beat a starving and accusing wife.
There was none to protect him. The agony of the Bengali peasants
was aptly echoed by a native (Harish Chandra Mukherjee?) who
wrote, ‘How shall I describe the atrocities committed especially
by certain zamindars—native and European—who stand high in
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 643

the esteem of the English community and who contain only rotten¬
ness and bones beneath the external polish of specious philanthropy
and pretended enlightenment.’21 But much more interesting was
the confession of Mr Forde, Magistrate of Faridpur, who said,
'The expression: 'not a chest of indigo reached England without
being stained with human blood’ is mine and I adopt it in the fullest
and broadest sense of its meaning, as the result of my experience
as a Magistrate in Faridpur.’22
The nilkars (planters) became a living curse in the everyday
life of the peasants. Those who refused to obey their orders were
subjected to inhuman tortures and even their wives and daughters
had to lose honour. The situation was depicted in Nildarpan.

Peasants hit hack

The peasants could not allow this tyranny to go on. From the very
beginning of the 19th century they offered the indigo planters
stiff resistance. In 1810, they compelled the government to send
back four notorious planters to England and the then Governor
General himself admitted that the atrocities committed by the
planters had undoubtedly lowered the prestige of the Crown. A
British observer of those earlier events wrote in 1848 that even in
the first decade of the 19th century hundreds of clashes took place
between the planters and the peasants. On several occasions the
latter gave the former a good beating and destroyed the factories.
In 1810. Biswanath Sardar, a peasant leader of Nadia, organized
a large number of oppressed ryots against the local planters and
punished many of them. It is a shame indeed that the bourgeois
historians describe Biswanath as a 'mere dacoit’. In 1838 the Faraji
leader of Faridpur—Dudu Mian revolted against the local zamin-
dars and planters and continued struggles till his death in 1860.
In 1843, the ryots of Kagmari (Mymensingh, now in East Pakistan)
attacked the local factories and kidnapped King who had earned
notoriety as a planter. In 1840, the ryots of Hogla (Khulna, East
Pakistan) had a serious clash with Renny, a local planter. The
situation worsened so quickly that the government intervened
and effected some administrative divisions of the district.23 In the
Parganas, the most interesting of the earlier movements was that
of the Wahabis.24 Here one thing must be admitted—that the
movement was waged not only against the planters but also against
644 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the local zamindars and mahajans and the question of religion

was never raised. It was definitely a commendable feature of the
movement, because the Wahibs, themselves being ardent Muslims,
championed the cause of the fellow Hindu peasants. This unique
development of class consciousness among the backward sections
prepared the ground for future class struggles.
To the Wahabis, a zamindar or a mahajan, (he might be a Hindu
or Muslim) was an oppressor of the peasants and therefore a
class-enemy. Although they were men of humble origin, they
were united and well disciplined and became a terror to the rich.
It was Titu Mian or Titu Mir (his original name was Mir Nishan
Ali) who organised this movement in the Parganas. From his
boyhood he had a definite idea about the mission of his life. He
wanted to be the oppressor of the oppressors and began to build
up a good physique. William Hunter who had not done enough
justice to Titu said that he (Titu) ‘earned an ignominious livelihood
as a boxer in Calcutta’ and also joined a band of dacoits. But what
better could be expected from a member of the ruling class when
nis own countrymen misunderstood him?25
From 1830 Titu and his followers were engaged in serious clashes
with the local zamindars and planters. In November 300 armed
Wahabis attacked the residence of Krishnadev Ray, a notorious
zamindar of Purra (Baduria Ps., 24 Parganas). This incident terrified
other zamindars. They now approached the planters. Babu Kali-
prasanna Mukherjee of Gobardanga (Bongaon subdivision) joined
hands with Davice, the manager of the Mollahati factory (Bongaon
Ps.). However, the combined force of Davice and Kali suffered a
humiliating defeat at the hands of the peasant warriors. Several
planters, deserted their factories, cultivation of indigo came to a
halt, peasants recovered their lands and refused to pay rent. Titu
declared the entire area a free zone and assumed the title of "Badshah’
(Emperor). At Narikelbaria he built a fort with bamboo and mud
and mobilised more than 1,000 peasants for its defence. Here on
November 14, 1831 a battle took piace between Titu and the
English. He suffered defeat and died on the spot. His lieutenants
were hanged and others jailed.26 Thus ended the Wahabi movement,
a brilliant attempt by the Pargana peasants to retaliate against
their oppressors. In spite of its religious origin, it was one of the
earliest challenges to English rule in India and at the same time a
class struggle of the peasents against the feudal lords.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 645

By the middle of the 19th century the indigo movement reached

its climax. Although everywhere the peasants were up in arms, their
struggles intensified mainly in three districts; i.e., the Parganas,
Nadia and Jessore. In the Parganas, the peasants attacked and
destroyed the factories at Mollahati, Barasat. Baruipur and Boral.
The managers of Mollahati and Boral were severely beaten. The
important leaders during this period were Vishnu Charan Biswas,
Digambar Biswas, Mir Ali etc. A contemporary missionary who
witnessed the clashes gave an idea of the indigo fighters in action:
'They had divided themselves into about six different companies.
One company consisted merely of bowmen, another of slingsmen,
another of brickwallas, another of balewallas (their business was
to send unripe bale fruit to the heads of the lathials). Another
division consisted of thalwallas (who fling their brass rice plates
in a horizontal way at the enemy) and another of rolawallas who
received the enemies with whole or broken well burned earthern
pots.'27
The movements raised a great controversy among the rulers
regarding further continuation of indigo cultivation, and although
the majority of the educated natives remained indifferent onlookers,
a few daring Bengalis started an agitation in support of the suffering
peasants. The Patriot of Harish Chandra Mukherjee became the
mouthpiece of the ryots and Nil Darpan, Dinabandhu Mitra’s
work, became a magic mirror reflecting at a time two faces, the
face of the tyrant and the face of his victim. Ultimately the govern¬
ment yielded to public opinion, and on March 31, 1860 set up the
historic Indigo Commission. From May 18 to August 14 (1860)
136 persons gave evidence before the Commission. Among them
were 15 government servants, 21 planters, 8 missionaries, 13
zamindars and 77 ryots. Hearing the statements the Commission
came to this conclusion: ‘The whole system is vicious in theory,
injurious in practice and radically unsound." The then Lieutenant
Governor of Bengal declared that the peasant of Bengal was not
a mere serf but a real owner of land. In spite of these vocal senti¬
ments no new regulation was issued for the restriction of indigo
cultivation; the government simply shelved the problem and new
troubles broke out in north Jessore. However, the planters whose
powers had been considerably curtailed by the peasant wars could
not regain their former position and by 1895 their activities came
to be restricted within the small periphery of 17 factories. Finally,
646 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

after the preparation of synthetic blue by the Germans, cultivation

of indigo gradually came to an end.28

Link with Mutiny

It is very often asked whether the Bengal peasantry had ever
participated in the Great Revolt of 1857. The so-called pundits,
both here and abroad, have tried hard to prove that during 1857
peasants in Bengal were as mute as corpses and what happened
at that time was merely a sepoy mutiny. Surely, a better analysis
of a mass movement cannot be expected from people whose fathers
and forefathers belong either to the ruling class or to its most
faithful servants. The peasants were definitely fighting against the
English during 1857. This they were doing in the villages through
their anti-indigo movements. Striking the planters they wanted
to weaken the economic base of the ruling power. Therefore, in
their struggles there was a unique combination of diplomacy and
strategy. Not only that, during the Great Revolt, the situation was
really very tense all over Bengal and in the districts adjacent to
Calcutta, including the Parganas, thousands of peasants assembled
to join the sepoys. In 1858. a large number of peasants assembled
at Baruipur (the Parganas), submitted a memorandum to the
Magistrate demanding immediate release of all the prisoners.
Even the rulers themselves admitted this countrywide unrest and
said: "the districts immediately in the neighbourhood of Calcutta
and even the Presidency itself, have been subject to periodical
panics during the whole progress of rebellion.’
'Hardly a single district under the government of Bengal has
escaped either actual danger or the serious apprehension of
danger.’29
The rapidly increasing strength of the peasants and the intensi¬
fication of their struggles against vested interests became a constant
headache to the government. In order to counteract 'this
great evil', the then Governor General and his advisers dis¬
covered a unique formula, which came to be known as the 'Indian
National Congress’. From the statement of Allan Octovian Hume,
the so-called father of the Congress, we know the real motive of
the government. He said that thousands of reports warning the
government about a serious mass upsurge poured into the capital
from every corner of the country. Therefore he thought that some-
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 647

thing must be done without any delay and the starving people
should not be given any chance to organize themselves.30 Thus
the reactionary rulers and their reactionary. Indian supporters
joined hands to set up the Congress. But the millions of starving
peasants and artisans could not forgive this entente. A spirit of
revenge continued to burn in their hearts.
Throughout the 19th century, the educated and westernised
Bengali ‘baboos’ played a role which was both loathsome and
ignoble. They supported and encouraged all the misdoings of the
English. It was they and not the English who really betrayed their
countrymen, and hampered the progress of the peasant movements.
Yet our pundits appreciate their activities and describe them as
messengers of the ‘Indian renaissance’. The term renaissance means
reawakening or rebirth—reawakening of the sense of humanity,
fellow feeling, patriotism and sacrifice. Paradoxically, these
qualities were not present in those so-called great men. Although
they w'ere well acquainted with the revolutionary ideas of the
West, they carefully avoided their inner meaning and what they
sincerely imported from Europe was Western feudalism. Previously
they had been ‘babu’ feudals, now they wanted to become sahib
feudals. The net result of this so-called renaissance was the replace¬
ment of the Indian feudal way of life by its European counterpart.
Rammohun, Dwarkanath, Bankim Chandra, Vivekananda, all
those ‘heroes’ of the 19th century served the British. It is a tragedy
that Rammohun and Dwarkanath supported the indigo planters,
encouraged their settlement in India, it is an ugly truth that ‘Rishi’
Bankim Chandra opposed the peasant wars and Vivekanda identi¬
fied socialism with Hindu advaitabad. Although there were a few
exceptions—(Harish Chandra Mukherjee, Dwarkanath Ganguly
etc.), it was the real picture of the day.31

HI
As the nineteenth century lapsed into the twentieth the number of
landless people increased at an unusual pace. It happened mainly
because of the destitution of the share-croppers or bargadars and
their demotion to the position of paid-labourers or khet majurs.1
In 1902, in ‘A Memorandum on the Land Revenue Policy of the
Indian Government’, the existing tenancy Acts were severely
condemned for placing the tenants unreservedly at the mercy of
648 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the landlords. In 1905. a member of the Bengal Provincial Civil

Service, referring to the vindictive nature of the land settlement,
said. To leave the rights of property of the vast majority of the
people at the pleasure and will of a miscroscopic minority is only a
retrograde step and tends to check the development and prosperity
of the country. Therefore, I appeal to the government which is
ever ready to protect the weak, to look up for the amelioration of
the condition of the peasantry’.2 Although there was enough truth
in the speech of that civil servant, he intentionally described the
government as the saviour of the peasants. Being a member of the
judicial branch, he was well acquainted with the abounding hypo¬
crisy of the alien rulers who, as a typical colonial power allowed
their native agents to prey upon the poor people and thus secured
their help to strengthen their own position in the country. Actually,
the government was unwilling to redress the grievances of the
peasants. Apart from routine recitals of its failures, as in the Report
of the Land Revenue Commission of 1940, it cleverly sidetracked
the problems originating from its land settlements.3
As days passed the landless labourers gradually went down to
the lowest rung of the social ladder. By the twenties of this century
their number went up to 30 per cent of the entire agricultural popu¬
lation. They became, quite literally, slaves of their masters. Still
they could not save themselves. Their humble earnings could not
keep pace with the rocketing cost of living. Up to 1922 their wages
increased four to sixfold but the price of their staple diet increased
eightfold.4
As a logical corollary to the destitution of the peasantry, their
indebtedness also shot up. Land transfers by mortage or sale
became very common. The number pf transfers effected by registered
deeds rose from 43,000 in 1844 to million in 1913 and the number
of unregistered transfers was even greater. According to the Report
of the Bengal Banking Enquiry Committee, by 1929 the total rural
debt of Bengal amounted to Rs 100 crores; per capita it amounted
to Rs 160. According to this report, in Jessore and north 24-Par-
ganas, 80 per cent of the population were in debt, the average debt
ranging between Rs 150 to Rs 175. The report further said that
the per capita income of the then Bengal cultivator was only Rs 84
and therefore less than enough to meet his daily expenses, which
meant that he always lived a hand-to-mouth existence.5
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 649

In order to shelve these grave problems or to hoodwink the

millions of ignorant peasants, the government decided to amend
certain clauses of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. But in doing
so, it did not forget the interests of the landed aristocracy whom it
considered one of the pillars of its strength. Thus the Amending
Act of 1928 outwardly strengthened the rights of under-ryots but
in reality gave the zamindars enough power to evict them from
land. In the report of the land Revenue Commission of 1940,
government officials themselves admitted the defects of the Act
of 1928.6 Janab Abdul Kashem Fazlul Haq, the then Chief Minister
of Bengal, who was mainly responsible for the passing of that Act,
himself served the interests of the zamindars. However, he was
not entirely responsible for the failure of the Act. Most of the native
members of the Legislative Council were landlords or had direct
interests in land and it was due to their pressure that the under¬
ryots received no definite right over land.7 Those reactionary persons
openly declared that they would never allow the government to
give occupancy rights to the propertyless peasants. One of them
unhesitatingly said, ‘if occupancy rights are given to bargadars,
it would be giving them something for which they have not paid,
and it would encourage dishonesty and indolence. They might
not make any effort to cultivate the land, thereby making their
landlords suffer. They might also try to deprive the landlords of
the proper share of the crops.’8 The zamindar baboos advised the
British Government to beware of agrarian socialism, and described
the Permanent Settlement as a lasting barrier between the state and
Bolshevism.9 The government in its turn never frustrated those
zamindars, because to it also the unending series of agrarian revolts,
if not Bolshevism itself, posed a great threat. Quite naturally, it
kept enough loopholes in its land legislation. In 1936 it set up a
board of arbitration on rural indebtness. The board gave the
peasants some privileges but no right to prevent the auction of
their lands and thus the government neglected one of their vital
problems. In November 1938, Janab Fazlul Huq appointed a
commission under Francis Floud, a Civil Servant, to examine the
existing land problems. The commission submitted certain proposals
regarding the improvement of the condition of landless peasants,
in practice, it looked for an effective solution to the evils of the
Permanent Settlement which had by that time dragged the land-
650 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

owners to the brink of extinction thanks to absentee landlordism,

excessive sub-infeudation and accumultion of arrear rents.10 This
pro-zamindar policy was also revealed in the Act of 1938 which
amended certain sections of the Act of 1928. The Act of 1938
contained nothing in favour of millions of bargadars, khet majurs
and ‘Uthbandi prajas’ (Jessore).11 This indifferent attitude of the
government towards the subject population and its patronage of
a class of bloody leeches, were the main factors which formed the
backdrop to the peasant revolts of the twentieth century.

Peasant Revolts
In the early thirties nothing significant took place. From the
second phase of the indigo movement (1889) till 1938, there was
more or less a lull in the rural areas of Bengal. It is not true, however,
that in this period the peasants silently yielded to the relentless
oppression. Even at that time in the remote villages of the Sunder-
bans the bargadars and khet-majurs were engaged in armed clashes
with the lotdars, jotedars and their agents.12 Unfortunately, very
little is known about this phase of the peasant movement, but
whatever cumulative evidence can be gathered, reveals an interesting
story of the bravery of the Pargana peasantry. The late Mr Kalidas
Dutta who conducted several archaeological expeditions in the
dense forests of the Sunderbans and frequently visited lower Bengal,
recorded some such clashes between the peasants and the jotedars.13
According to him trouble often broke out at Satkhira, Raimangal,
Pathar, Basanti and Kakdwip. Significantly enough, it was Kakdwip
which in 1946 came to the forefront of the famous Tebhaga move¬
ment. However the peasant movements of this period had many
limitations and were isolated, taking place in certain corners of
the country. But those which began in the late thirties were of a
completely different nature. Unlike the earlieT movements, these
were spontaneous, widespread and in spite of the presence of many
geographical barriers separating one place of agitation from
another, they bore a semblance of unity. This difference in character
between the two phases of the peasant movements was mainly
due to the efforts of the Bangiya Pradeshik Kishan Sabha, formed
in August 1939. Although in different periods of the last century
there was a close understanding among the peasants of distant
districts and the men they fought were often their common enemies.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 651

still the spirit of discipline so vitally needed in such cases, was absent
in them. Also, the peasant warriors of the last century had no proper
political training and therefore their class consciousness could
not get sharper in time. During the indigo agitations, they allowed
many petty zamindars, their class enemies, to join them simply
because they turned for the time being anti-planter or anti-British.
To be frank, it was the synthetic blue invented by the Germans and
not the opportunist zamindars, which actually helped the peasants
to win the long-drawn battle.
The birth of the Bangiya Kishan Sabha and its activities inspite
of their many setbacks marked a new chapter in the history of the
peasant movement.
As has been stated earlier, the National Congress was a feudal-
bourgeois organization. Its leaders, both the moderates and ex¬
tremists, played the role of impotent constitutional agitators and
howled at the top of their voices for the grace of their masters. 'At
dawn they drew up a plan for a mass rally, at noon their oratory
pushed the mercury of the thermo-meter to a point of no return,
at dusk they set out for the Governor's House to join his cocktail
party and finally at bed prayed for His Majesty’s grace.'14
Naturally, the peasants did not benefit from the emergence of
such an organization. On the contrary they began to doubt its
mission. They had enough grounds to do so. From 1917 onwards
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi tried to canalise the militancy
of the peasants into satyagraha or non-violent movements. The
pact Gandhiji signed with Lord Irwin in 1931 did not include even
a single demand of the country’s worker and peasant population!
This moral bankruptcy of the 'National' Congress led the Congress
socialists, communists and other leftist leaders to think about the
formation of an effective organization to champion the cause
of the peasantry. In January 1936 they formed an All India Peasant
Committee at Meerut and called an open conference at Lucknow in
April. The Bengali delegates, Chhunnu Mian, Kamal Sarkar,
Ananta Mukherjee, Niharendu Dutta Majumder, who joined the
conference, decided on their way back to set up in Bengal a pro¬
vincial peasant committee. In August peasant representatives
from 20 districts gathered at the Albert Hall at Calcutta and in their
presence the Bangiya Pradeshik Kishan Sabha, the parent body
of the present Krishak Sabha (CPI-M) and the Krishak Samity
652 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

(CPI) came into existence. Soon after its birth the BPKS tried to
extend its activities to every remote comer of Bengal. Sister com¬
mittees at district level were formed at the Parganas, Howrah,
Murshidabad, Faridpur, Chattagram and Khulna. The local peasant
organizations of Tripura and Noakhali also joined them. In March,
1937, the BPKS held its first annual conference at Patrasayar
(Bankura) and demanded abolition of the zamindari system without
any compensation, speedy end of colonial exploitation, establish¬
ment of a democratic State in which real power would rest in the
hands of the people, improvement of the condition of the rural
population and unconditional transfer of land to the landless
peasants. The conference also declared itself against imperialism
and identified the British Government as the enemy of the nation.15
Prior to Tebhaga (1946) the important movement led by the
BPKS were those for khas land in the Parganas, against a canal
in Burdwan, the agitation of the adhiars in North Bengal and those
against ‘hat tola’ or ‘Mela tola’ which began simultaneously in
Rangpur, Dinajpur, Jessore, the Parganas, Malda and Mymensingh.
It has already been stated that at the outset of the present century,
the peasants of the Parganas occasionally fought pitched battles
with the lotdars and jotedars. The issues were forcible eviction of
bargadars and quick transformation of their lands into khas pos¬
sessions of the zamindars, illegal exactions and violation of the
honour of peasant women. Even before the birth of the BPKS,
they set up local krishak samitis (peasant committees) in their areas
and used them against the oppressive landlords and moneylenders.
On February 14, 1932, the peasants of Hasnabad (Basirhat Sub¬
division) assembled at the local bazaar and observed a Peasants
Day. Their activities terrified the local jotedars and they summoned
the police. Dozens of armed constables rushed to the bazaar and
fired upon unarmed peasants and killed five on the spot.16 Many
such incidents took place in other villages.
After 1936 the movements against eviction and khas lands
received further impetus from the emergence of the BPKS. In that
year the peasants of Daudpur (Sandeshkhali Police Station) attack¬
ed the cutchery of the local zamindar, killed the Naib (Manager)
and burned all documents. The government quickly interfered and
Umasankar Maity, the local peasant leader, died in an encounter
with the police.17 But neither the BPKS nor the peasants lost hope.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 653

The Port Canning Zamindary Company evicted thousands of poor

peasants from their lands and home-steads and became owner
of vast fisheries and cultivable fields. At Minakha, Uchila-Haroa
and some other places it carried on inhuman repression on the
peasantry. Quite naturally the Company, for its misdeeds, became
a target of attack. The men of the BPKS who led the movement
against the Company were Bankim Mukherjee, Mansur Habibullah,
Naliniprabha Devi and Siris Ghosal. In April 1938 a large number
of peasants who had been evicted by the Company came to Calcutta
and demonstrated before the Legislative Council for immediate
redress of their grievances. Their movement continued until 1942-3
but could not gain anything significant.

Leadership
The leadership of the BPKS was responsible for the failure.
While the movement was in full swing, the local BPKS leaders
allowed certain rich peasants to join their camps. One of them,
is still alive and, strangely enough, possesses 5,000 bighas of benami
land.18 It was mainly because of their personal interest that they
joined the BPKS. Otherwise they themselves were no less oppressors
of the poor peasantry. The Port Canning Company effectively
used them as their agents. It returned their land and even offered
them substantial amounts of money and they in their turn served it
well by sabotaging the peasant movement. The entire episode
proved the unsoundness of the tactics of the BPKS and its lack
of effective political training.
The next important movements in which the Pargana peasants
took part were those against hat tola or mela tola. In several
districts of Bengal, the local zamindars, talukdars, ijaradars and
their paid servants amassed vast wealth by illegal exactions from
the local periodical markets or ‘haats’. The poor peasants who
used to sell their paddy, vegetables and cattle in those markets
had to pay various kinds of fees both in cash and kind. Not only the
landlords, their servants also indulged in illegal exactions. Although
this practice had started much earlier, the peasants could not check
it and their sporadic clashes with the paiks and peadas (paid
servants) of the zamindars led to further oppression. But from
1936, after the birth of BPKS, their movement against such illegal
exactions received a fresh tempo. In the Parganas the movement
654 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

intensified at Falta, Bongaon, Gopalnagore, Khatura, Diamond

Harbour, Burul and Bishnupur and those who led the local peasants
were Naliniprabha Ghose, Jyotish Roy, Pravash Roy, Ajit Ganguly
and Hemanta Ghosal.19 In North Bengal, Malda, Murshidabad and
Jessore, wherever the people were affected by the system, a move¬
ment flared up with equal vigour. In 1939 at a fair in Dinajpur,
the BPKS men encircled the paiks of a local zamindar and gave
them a severe beating, as a result of which some of the paiks died
on the spot.20 At Diamond Harbour the situation became so tense
that government officials interfered and settled the dispute in
favour of the local peasants. Ultimately the zamindars submitted to
the organized movement of the people and today though the system
still continues it has lost it’s previous repressive nature.
With the beginning of the Tebhaga movement (for a three-
fourth share of the crop) in 1946, the militancy of the Pargana
peasants reached further heights. The main factors responsible for
the new outburst were the continuous oppression of the peasant
population by the landlords, and ineffective and injurious land
system, outbreak of the Second World War, the famine of 1943
and the rapid deterioration of the condition of the common people.
At Kakdwip, during this period, Dwarik Samanta, Aditya
Samanta, Pulin Das, Paresh Das, Srinath Das, Haren
Raychoudhury, Naren Dalai, Sanat Choudhury and many other
lotdars were carrying on jungle rule. The lotdars evicted many
peasants from their land and reduced them to the position of humble
labourers, raped every pretty woman of the locality and if necessary
tortured both the children and the old in cold blood.21 Devi
Raychoudhury of Gurguria (Jainagar Police Station) invented
a unique method of repression. He used to offer his victims a drink
called ‘Sakhi Rakshitar Prasad' (Sakhi was the mistress of Devi
Raychoudhury). The main ingredients of the 'prasad' were the
urine of the woman and cowdung. The reluctant victims were
forced to swallow it. Another equally notorious zamindar was
Ayub Peanda of Kulpi (Diamond Harbour Subdivision). A
tireless raper of women, he became a nightmare in the everyday
life of the local peasantry.22 The same was the character of the
landlords in other districts.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, hoarding and
blackmarketing of foodgrains received special patronage of the
British Government. Many unscrupulous Indians availed them-
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 655

selves of the opportunity and started a very lucrative business of

supply of foodgrains to the British army. Thus they threw millions of
men and women into starvation and became owners of palatial
buildings and cars. In its memorandum to the Land Revenue Com¬
mission, the BPKS made a very witty remark. It said: ‘It is a joke in
Bengal that the Government has by executive order abolished
“famine” and substituted for it when occasion arises “shortage”.’23
It was this ‘shortage’ which finally brought about the famine of 1943.

The Famine
In course of a single year 3^ million hungry people perished;
1^ million men, women and children turned into beggars. The
following data collected by BPKS relief workers reveal a dangerous
increase in the number of beggars.

Percentage of beggars among the total

number of the families

1939 — 1943 — 1944

1.72 — 3.69 6.78
4.00 — 7.33 8.33
2.1 — 2.1 2.924
One contemporary observer of the famine has given a very
touching account of the destitution of the poor peasants: ‘It is the
good earth which is the very life of the kisans—nothing is more
sacred, nothing more attractive than it ... in 15 areas alone 5 lakhs
of kisans have sold off Rs 10 crores worth of land in the course of
a single year’.25 The following table gives an idea of land sales in
the Parganas during 1943.
Holding valued at not more than Rs 250

Tenancy land with occupancy

Tenancy land right

Number Price of Number Number Price of Number

of sellers sale of holding of sale of
Area sellers holdings
24
Parganas
19,438 46,68,132 14,848 48.558 9.05,595 39,09126
656 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The observer again says: ‘The scarcity of cattle is so acute and

the desire to live on the part of the kisan is so strong that at places
the spectacle of the kisan yoking his own son or brother to the
plough has been witnessed’.27
Yet during those dark days the Congress, the Muslim League
and the Hindu Mahasabha were engaged in fratricidal bickerings,
most of the 'patriots’ thinking that they had no part to play in the
relief work. And so the famine spread like pestilence all over Bengal.
At least 6 million people were directly affected by its evils. Of them
2.7 million were agricultural labourers, 1.5 million poor peasants,
1.5 million village artisans and 25,000 school teachers.
At Chandanpiri, Loilgunge, Budakhali, Burul, Hasnabad,
Sandeshkhali and other parts of the Parganas the jotedars and
lotdars prepared false sale deeds and handnotes and deprived the
peasants of their last belongings. Finding no other way out, they
sacrificed the honour of their women-folk to the carnal pleasure
of their oppressors.28
At last their accumulated grievances burst into open conflicts
with their oppressors, leading to the Tebhaga movement.

IV

In the Parganas. the storm centre of the Tebhaga movement

(movement for three-fourths share of the crops) was its southern
part. The oppressed peasants of Kakdwip, Haroa, Sandeshkhali,
Canning, Bhangor, Sonarpur and other Sunderban areas displayed
during that movement a militancy, a vigour, a grim determination
the like of which the people of Bengal had never seen before. Not
only that, their call for “Tebhaga” greatly inspired the peasants
of North Bengal who were equally oppressed and exploited by the
local landlords and moneylenders and had an equally brilliant
tradition of struggle against all sorts of oppression and injustice.
Ultimately, the North Bengal peasants, following the foot steps
of their comrades of the Parganas, started agitation for ‘Tebhaga’,
and other demands. From 1946 to 1950, these two distant regions
remained hotbeds of a violent mass upsurge.
In the Parganas, it was the Kakdwip peasantry who suffered most
and sacrificed most during the movement. There, many villagers of
Loilgunge, Chandanpiri and Budakhali died, bathing the good
earth with their blood.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 657

From the very beginning of the harvesting season of 1946, the

British Government mobilised a strong police force at Kakdwip.
To the people of Kakdwip, who were still suffering from the de¬
vastating floods of 1942 and amongst whom the BPKS volunteers
had done enough ‘brain-washing’, it was the last straw on the
camel’s over-burdened back.1 Within a short time bloody en¬
counters started between the peasants on one side and the lotdars
and jotedars backed by the hired goondas of the ‘Congress Seva
Dal’ and the police on the other. At Loilgunge, the police fired
on unarmed peasants and killed 16 on the spot. At Chandanpiri
36 Gurkhas attacked 15 peasant women. The entire Gurkha com¬
munity, well known for their bravery, will be ashamed to learn
that at Chandanpiri their men, armed with rifles and grenades,
killed some unarmed and helpless village girls and did not spare
even the pregnant!
Soon the movement spread to other districts. In North Bengal,
including East Dinajpur, Rangpur and Mymensingh (which are
now in East Pakistan) thousands of peasants who had been suffering
from the vicious Tanka, Nankar and Bhawal systems, raised the
slogan of ‘Tebhaga’ and revolted against the landlords. Pitched
battles started between them and the police. Several hundred
peasants died in encounters and nearly 10,000 were injured.2
Finding the situation going out of control the Muslim League
Ministry issued a Press note and acknowledged the legality of the
Tebhaga demand. After a few days a Bill was published in the
Government gazette regarding abolition of the zamindari system
and evictions. The Bill also gave assurances about distribution of
land among the landless. But it did not get the sanction of law and
therefore the movement continued.3
On August 15, 1947, the Indians achieved ‘independence,’ but
in reality power shifted from the hands of the British to their
native agents, the Congress. Nothing therefore changed. On the
contrary, the Indian leaders, following the proverb, ‘servants
always try to supersede their masters’, set in a more oppressive
regime. As soon as the harvesting season of 1947 began, the notori¬
ous lotdars and jotedars of Kakdwip sought police help from the
West Bengal Government and in doing so were earnestly backed
by the locai Congress leaders—Charu Bhandari, Paresh Das and
Bhusanpati. Charu Bhandari, who was well known for his double¬
dealing, advised the peasants to make peace with the jotedars.
658 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

He used to say, ‘Zamindars and mahajans are your guardians,

don’t quarrel with them.’ But at the very bottom of his heart,
he was a tout of the local landlords and moneylenders.
In the month of December, with the connivance of Bhusanpati,
a local leader of the Congress Seva Dal and a seasoned raper of
women, a large number of armed police spread over the Budakhali
Mauja to help the jotedars to carry away the paddy from the fields.
On the night of December 15, 50 armed police and 4 inspectors
launched a sudden attack on the peasants, mercilessly beat their
leaders—Sibu Mandal, Harish Mandal, Gabua Nandapati and
others—raped dozens of girls, burned several huts and threatened
further torture in the near future. But the peasants of Budakhali
did not lose heart. On the midnight of December 30 they assembled
in the field and began to harvest the paddy. The police and the
goondas of the ‘Seva Dal’ rushed to the spot and a bloody encounter
followed. Many peasants died, many received injuries, but the ene¬
mies were not allowed to snatch away the golden crop.4
At Loilgunge, Chandanpiri and other parts of the province, the
situation was equally tense and everywhere the peasants were
fighting with equal vigour and seriousness. The Prafulla Ghose
Ministry sharply reacted. Most of the members of the Bidhan Sabha
(Legislative Assembly) were pro-Congress and had interest in land
and it was mainly due to their hue and cry that the Ghose Ministry
passed the Security Bill and planned to use it against the Tebhaga
agitators. Immediately the peasants hit back. On December 10
they came to Calcutta and demonstrated before the Assembly.
The police opened fire and killed Sisir Mandal. But the incident
could not frighten them. Within a few days, they again came to the
city and this time in far greater numbers (6,000). On their way to the
Assembly they were beaten and tear-gassed by the police. They
dispersed but the bitter experience they gathered made them more
aggressive and violent. The repercussions of that incident were soon
felt in fresh fighting at fCakdWip and other regions.5
Early in November, 1948, Dwarik Samanta, Srish Nandy,
Kunja Ganta, Kangal Haidar, Gopi Giri and some other notorious
jotedars of Loilgunge imported hundreds of lathials from different
places and set them upon the peasants. Meanwhile 500 armed police
and many hired goondas of the ‘Seva Dal’ had encircled the entire
area. Yet, nothing could stop the peasants. They drove the enemy
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 659

back, cut away the paddy from almost all fields and finally on
August, 15,1949 declared Loilgunge a ‘free land’. At an open meet¬
ing, called on that day, several important resolutions were adopted:
the lands recovered from the jotedars would be distributed among
the local peasants; everybody would have his own home-stead
where he would live without any interference from outside, he
would also till his own plot of land and its entire produce would be
his own; no action would be taken against the petty jotedars and
middle peasants if they agreed to assist the fighting peasants,
but if they conspired with the enemies, ‘they would be sent to hell’
the people of Loilgunge would always be ready to help the aggrieved
peasants of other places; they would henceforth boycott the
Congress Government and start their own rule. Life almost along
the lines of a commune began at Loilgunge and continued till
the end of the Tebhaga movement.
At Chandanpiri, in spite of the presence of the District Magis¬
trate, the Police Commissioner and 500 Gurkha soldiers, the
peasants continued their struggle and killed two local Congress
leaders— Basanta and Paresh Das.
At Sandeshkhali hundreds of khet majurs attacked the cutcheries
of Ramanath, a jotedar, destroyed all documents and seized 500
maunds of paddy. Their next victim was Dwarik Sharma of Suko-
doani. Within a few days of the first incident, peasants from Durga
mandap, Gabberia, Daudpur, Sukodoani and other villages
attacked the residence of Dwarik. His men were beaten black and
blue and his granaries were looted. In that 24-hour operation the
peasants distributed amongst themselves 1,000 maunds of
paddy, 800 pairs of ‘dhotis’ and a huge quantity of kerosene,
sugar and salt. After two or three days a strong police force went
to Sandeshkhali and started a counter-attack. Even now the humble
peasants of Sandeshkhali spit with utter indignation when they
recall the ghastly incidents of police operations in those days.

Story of Burnt
The story of Burul is more, interesting, because, here, what
started as a mere students’ affair, soon flared up as a peasant move¬
ment. Most of the local students were from the bargadar or khet
majur communities and had no good relationship with Chandi
Ghose, the founder-president of the school and a Congressite
660 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

jotedar. As time passed Chandi’s position in the village became

very weak and he rushed to Writers’ Building to seek the help of
Dr Bidhan Roy, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal. He got
a favourable response, because Burul was one of the oldest strong¬
holds of the Congress in the Parganas and most probably its
birth place. For about 70 days the people of Burul passed through
a nightmare. On August 13, 1948 Bijoy Singh Nahar, the ‘Veteran’
Congress leader, entered the village to organize the celebration of
Independence Day. In reality, he had been sent by Dr Roy to
restore the influence of the Congress there. This fact was well
proved by the sight of military convoys plying along the village
roads of Burul. However, the peasants, who had by that time sided
with the students, came out to oppose. Mr Nahar and the latter
who was then addressing his local followers had to jump down from
the dais with the ease and vigour of a champion sportsman and
fled through the backdoor. On August 15, the police showered
bullets on the villagers, killed and wounded many on the spot
yet the demonstration did not stop. At last the killers retreated,
Chandi Ghose and his follower Murari Saran left Burul. ‘In the
evening, under the red-sky and in the presence of a red sun the
people of Burul hoisted their dear Red Flag at the local bazaar.’
At Sonarpur and Bhangar the landless peasants organized
themselves against Bhupati Naskar, Hemchandra Naskar, Sricharan
Napte and other jotedars. Fierce pitched battles continued for
several weeks.
At Tiuri, Nayabad, Kheada, Shaheber Abad peasants occupied
fisheries, attacked cutheries, seized and distributed paddy among
themselves. Everywhere peasant volunteers, armed with spears,
bows and arrows fought with the police who were well equipped
with rifles, grenades and other weapons and in spite of heavy casua¬
lties, in almost all cases came out victorious.
Ultimately the State Government felt the gravity of the problem.
In 1949 it passed an ordinance extending some concessions to the
bargadars. The ordinance later became known as the Bargadar
Act. This Act, however, did not provide the peasants with the
tebhaga or three-fourths of the crop for which they had borne so
much hardship. It only arranged a 60-40 division which soon proved
vague and the Board of Arbitration for sharecropping, which was
bom out of this Act, did not do away with the possibilities of
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 661

eviction of the peasants from their lands. Their many other

grievances remained unredressed.6
Along with the granting of these small concessions the Bidhan
Roy Ministry also resorted to repressive measures. Every day it
arrested a large number of peasants in different parts of the state
and threw them into jail. Dozens of police camps were set up in
strategic areas and murder, arson, loot and rape continued in the
name of restoration of peace. Only a few leaders succeeded in
remaining outside the prison. Day by day the peasants lost their
militancy and morale and finally yielded in utter frustration.7
The failure of the Tebhaga movement was due to several factors.
The landlords and moneylenders against whom the movement was
directed had enough resources at their disposal which they utilised
against the poor peasants who had neither money nor any modern
arms and fought with simple spears, arrows and lathis. The Congress
government itself patronized the landlords during the movement
and its participation changed the character of the agitation; pre¬
viously it was anti-landlord, but later it became purely anti-govern¬
ment. The resolution of the Loilgunge peasants to boycott the
Congress Government was a proof of this. Not only that, the role
of the Government in the movement caused so much indignation
amongst the people that ever since they have been suspicious
about its every action. However, it was the support of the ruling
party which strengthened the hands of the landlords against the
peasants.
The movement itself suffered from some internal weaknesses.
In its earlier period many middle peasants joined the bargadars and
khet majurs. The BPKS leaders who were well aware of the oppor¬
tunism of such people thought otherwise. They decided to use the
middle peasants and their resources against the jotedars and for
the time being succeeded in doing so, because up to that time their
only target of attack were the big landlords. But as the movement
intensified and the bargadars raised many fresh demands including
the requisition of 'Khas lands’, the middle peasants sought
to change their side. In the Parganas Chandra Patra, Gadadhar
Singh, Nagendranath Jagulia and many other middle peasants
joined the Congress and became good friends of the big landlords.
The same thing happened in other areas. The strategy of the BPKS
thus failed.
 662 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The peasants who participated in the movement were no doubt

brave and good fighters but instead of resorting to guerilla tactics
they followed the usual practice of face-to-face fighting and that
was a big blunder. Their bravery and fighting skill proved fruitless
before rifles and machine-guns.
Although in many cases the students co-operated with the
peasants and shared their sufferings, no serious attempt was made
to influence the working classes in the cities. In the Parganas, Khulna
and some other districts were not very far away from the busy
towns, an alliance between the two classes could have been easily
formed. But the BPKS leaders did not avail themselves of that
chance, and therefore instances of such co-operation are very
rare. Had there been a good understanding between the workers
and peasants the result of the movement would have been quite
different.
In spite of these defects the Tebhaga movement opened a new
horizon in the history of the peasant movement in Bengal. It revealed
the real nature of the Congress Government and threw a challenge
to all vested interests. Moreover during 1946-1947, when the entire
Bengal was passing through a devastating communal riot, the
humble Tebhaga agitators, both Hindus and Muslims, fought
together and died for the same cause and thus proved that though
they were at the lowest rung of the social ladder, they were much
better than the 'educated beasts of the high society’.

The lessons of the countrywide Tebhaga movement proved

fruitful. The tension and unrest among the peasant population
heightened every day. They became more aggressive and assertive.
So far as the Congress Government was concerned, the movement
also influenced its policies. Even the over-zealous Congressites,
who had so long believed in bullets and batons as good remedies
for all problems, realized the futility of further repression. They
deicded to hoodwink the people in a way which would not involve
them in further trouble. Other Congressites, who were rather peace-
loving but equally unscrupulous, expressed the same views. So
in April 1953, the people of West Bengal came to learn that Dr B.C.
Roy’s Ministry had adopted a ‘revolutionary resolution’. It would
I
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 663

pass the Estate Acquisition Act and thereby abolish permanently

the age-old zamindari system. The emotional Bengalis were quick
to hail the Congress as a true lover of the peasantry, and the prestige
of the Roy Ministry rose. The pro-Congress newspapers worked
very hard during this period and it was mainly due to their propa¬
ganda that the people did not doubt the sincerity of the Government.
They failed to see the inner truth of the resolution, that it was nothing
but a farce, pre-arranged by the Government in collaboration with
the landlords.
In reality it turned out to be so. The Congress, as has already
been said, emerged as a party of the rich, controlled by the rich for
the rich and therefore, apart from occasional loud-sounding
resolutions, it could not go far. Dr Roy and his cabinet had no
intention of losing the patronage of the big landowners and the
latter also knew it well that the puppet Roy Ministry would never
injure their interests. So when the Bill for Estate Acquisition was
still under preparation, its contents did not remain secret to the
zamindars or perhaps the Ministry itself informed them of what
was going to happen. Within a short time illegal transfers of land
properties shot up in every district. The zamindars and their
revenue officers invented numerous techniques of illegal transfer
False documents were prepared and lands were shown even in the
names of distant relatives, servants and pets. In North Bengal, a
zamindar kept several acres of land in the name of his favourite
animal.1 In the Parganas a khet majur made a very biting comment
on such transfers. He said: ‘Although my master has raped my
wife and kept us in starvation, in his document I am now an owner
of ten acres of land, good heavens!’2
Throughout these years, the Government intentionally remained
silent and when the zamindars gave the all-clear signal, it started
a mock fight against the wind. Thus by 1955, when the Estate
Acquisition Act was actually put into operation, most of the land-
owners had succeeded in dispersing their land through fake transfers.
Although the Act fixed the ceiling of cultivable land and home¬
steads no limitation was placed on orchards, tanks and fisheries
and this encourageed the landowners to evict unwanted bargadars.
In every district evictions went on unabated. Knowing that the
government would never reacts the zamindars or jotedars forced
their rack-rented bargadars or neighbouring small peasants to
664 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

sign labour contracts or ‘majur kabuliat’. Those who refused to

yield to such pressures were either killed or driven out. In the Par-
ganas, the Naskars, the Baghs, the Rays and other notorius jotedar
families evicted many small peasants and bargadars and flooded
thousands of acres of land with the saline water of the Vidyadhari
and thus became owners of vast fisheries.3 The peasants of the
scheduled castes and tribes suffered most. According to the Tenancy
Act of 1885 none could purchase their land without the consent
of the district magistrate or subdivisional officer. But in both parts
of the Parganas, the jotedars and rich peasants deprived them of
their land in a very inhuman way.
In almost all cases those people, commonly known as the
Adibasis, were offered liquor, drinking which they temporarily
lost their mental balance and signed sale deeds of their land. In
such documents they were always shown with the titles of higher
castes. This ugly exploitation still continues in the Bongaon sub¬
division and there the peasant organizations of the CPI (M) and
ihe CPI are trying to fight it out.4
Apart from evictions, the miseries of the landless peasants
increased manifold. In October 1952, the Government imposed a
levy on the peasants for collection of foodgrains. Outwardly
there was nothing sinister in the proposal but when the actual
operation began, almost all big jotedars and rich peasants hoarded
their paddy and escaped the levy. Only the small peasants and poor
bargadars were victimised by the collectors. Everywhere they were
tortured by the police. The words, ‘levy’ and ‘seize' created a
stir in rural Bengal and the Congress became more unpopular.
Thus eviction and levy or the landowners and their puppet Congress
Government became the peasants' targets of attack. On July 17,
1952, the entire West Bengal observed a 24-hour hartal. Movements
against eviction and hoarding continued. In the Parganas, skir¬
mishes went on between the peasants and jotedars at Haroa,
Sandeshkhali, Gosaba, Canning, Bhangar, Sonarpur, Mathurapur
and other Sunderban areas. In some cases the jotedars were forced
to surrender. For instance, Debi Roychoudhury of Gurguria,5
who had so long oppressed his peasants, this time tried to appease
them by throwing some concessions. The latter forced him to
leave his estate. He then came to Calcutta and in utter frustration
committed suicide.h As the situation was taking an awkward turn.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 665

the Government hurriedly passed an ordinance against evictions

in June 1954. Next year it passed another Bill on land reform. In
both cases the peasants were granted certain privileges but they
were not given any guarantee against eviction and the declaration
regarding sixty-forty division of the food-crops also proved to be
a bluff, because the Government gave no assurance that during the
harvesting season it would help the bargadars to get their legitimate
share (60 per cent of the paddy). So the situation tended to det¬
eriorate. In the Parganas the jotedars carried on evictions in a
subtle way. They did not drive out the bargadars but forced them
to enter into labour contracts whereby the latter would have no
claim over crops and henceforth would work as ordinary day-
labourers.7
One typical characteristic of the Congress Government was
that its sense of duty was reawakened only on the eve of the general
elections. The same thing happened in 1957. As the general elections
neared, the number of ‘promises’ also increased. At a meeting
Dr Roy, the Chief Minister, said: ‘We the Congressites believe
in socialism. But we do not want to hit the rich. We however expect
that they will give up a major portion of their wealth in the interests
of the poor. This is the eternal preaching of India’.8 At Delhi, the
then Congress President, Mr U.N. Dhebar, said: ‘The Congress
is serving the Indians with the devotion and sincerity of a devoted
wife.’9
However, the devotion of the devoted wife disappeared after
the elections, and she again turned into a prostitute.
In 1959, the Communist Party of West Bengal sent a memoran¬
dum to the President of India and warned him about the ill-fate
of the Congress in the State. The memorandum also contained
charges against some Ministers. It said: ‘Among those who have
resorted to benami transfers are Sri Hemchandra Naskar, Sri
Ardhendu Naskar, Sri Hrishikesh Tripati, a near relation of the
Cabinet Minister, Sri Ajoy Mukherjee, a near relation of Sri
Jadabendra Panja, the President of the West Bengal PCC, Sri
Khagen Das, Congress MLA and Srimati Ila Palchoudhury,
Congress MP.’... ‘They have effected fake transfers of thousands
of acres of land in the names of their friends and relations.’10
From August onwards fresh trouble broke out all over the
province. Upto September 2. at least 7,776 persons were imprisoned
666 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

in different districts. On September 3, the city of Howrah was

placed in the hands of the army and there 17 people died of bullet
injuries. The people of Calcutta also experienced some ghastly
incidents.11
As a result of Dr Roy’s misrule the number of dependents oi
test relief increased from \\ lakhs to 5 lakhs and the deficit of foot
grains showed a sharp rise.12 Nothing concrete was done for the
common people. On the contrary they were left to suffer and starve.
During the following years jotedars, hoarders, black-marketeers and
other anti-social elements turned the State into a paradise of their
own choice. Mr Prafulla Sen, who had meanwhile succeeded
Dr B.C. Roy, pursued the same old policy of "see and sleep'. As
a result, fresh movements broke out in February, 1966. On February
16 about 2,000 students and peasants demonstrated at the Bashirhat
court and demanded supply of food rations and kerosene. They
also condemned police raids on hats and bazaars. The police
chased the demonstrators and injured six by firing and causing
the death of Nurul Islam. Within two days trouble spread over the
entire Parganas. At Bongaon, Gobardanga, Chandpara. Naihati.
Baduria and Garia, violent crowds consisting mostly of students"
and peasants clashed with the police, attacked the thanas and set
fire to the "black vans’. From March 5, the people of Nadia also
started a similar movement. On that day a serious clash took place
at Krishnagar and the local DM sent an SOS to Calcutta. As a
result, the city was placed under the army. The Government arrested
30 opposition leaders, including Jyoti Basu, Somnath Lahiri and
Jatin Chakravarty. On March 9 the people observed hartal in
every district. On that day tension reached its climax. Fierce
fighting between the police and people caused many deaths. In
industrial areas, hundreds of factory workers joined the demons¬
trators and a large number of them sacrificed their lives.13 The
movement continued up to the middle of March. The Prime
Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, instructed Mr Sen to appoint a high
power commission to enquire into the causes of the ‘disturbances'.14
The fourth general election was approaching. In order to influence
the ignorant voters of rual areas, the Sen Ministry withdrew levy,
cordoning and other restrictions on foodgrains. But the villagers
did not benefit from the measures. The jotedars, rice mill owners,
hoarders and blackmarketeers had lucrative business in paddy.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARCiANAS 667

Naturally the food problem became more acute and the deficit
in the government's collection increased.
The following table will make the point clear

Year Month Amount of collec

1966 January 87,000
February 1,76,000
1967 January 17,300
**
February 25.100
March 12,50015
In spite of their best efforts the Congress leaders failed to win
the election and gave way to the United Front, a composition of
different opposition parties, including the CPI (M), CPI, RSP, SUC,
Bangla Congress, Forward Bloc etc.

References

I
1 Dacca History of Bengal, Vol. 1.
2 Census Handbook—Howrah (1961) (see the history portion).
3 Bangla laukik Devata by Gopendra Krishna Basu.
Bengal District Gazetteers (24-Parganas, Khulna, Jessore) by L.S.S. O’Malley;
Pashim Banger Sanskrit by Benoy Ghosh (In these books the religious side of the
history of the Ghazis is described).
4 Clive’s Letters to the Court of Directors.
5 Bengal District Gazetteer (24 Parganas), by L.S.S. O’Malley (See history portion)
6 Clive’s Letters, op. cit
7 Papers of the ‘Select Committee of the House of Commons on the affairs of the
East India Company, Vol. 1, pp. cxi-cxii.
8 The Calcutta Review, 1858, vol. xxxi, pp. 384-411.
9 District Census Handbook (24 Parganas) 1951, appendix II p cxi, appendix IV,
pp. cxlii-clix. The Calcutta Review, 1858, Vol. xxxi.
10 Bharater Krishak Vidroha O Ganatantrik Sangram, by Suprakash Roy, pp. 134-5.
11 Ibid, pp. 135.
12 The Dynamics of a Rural Society by Ramkrishna Mukherjee, p. 33.
13 Ibid.
14 Report of the Field Commission, 1879, Quoted in Florence Nightingale's
Indian Letters, edited by Priya Ranjan Sen, p. xv.
15 ‘ What does the Bengal Peasant want T by a member of the Bengal Provincial
Civil Service—Judicial Branch (1905), p. 46.
16 See note 8.
17 See'notes 8 and 9.
18 Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj, by Shivnath Sastri, pp. 92-3.
668 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

18a Karl Marx, (Capital) — quoted in the Report of the Land Revenue Commission,
Vol.—vi, p. 8.
19 Some Social and Economic Aspects of the Land System of Bengal by Nalini
Ranjan Pal, p. 134.
20 Nava Babu Bilas and Nava Bibi Bilas by Bhabani Charan Banerjee.
Hutom Penchar Naksa by Kapliprasanna Sinha.
Nil Darpan etc. (Almost all books and journals of the day revealed the real
story of the private life of the then wealthy section of society).
21 Interview: Late Kalidas Dutta, a pioneer in the study of local history of Bengal.
II
1 Bharater Krishak—Vidroha O Ganatantrik Sangram by Suprakash Roy—
pp. 112-5
2 See note 1, pp. 91-4.
3 Joshar. Kliulnar 1 alias by Satish Chandra Mitra, Vol. 2, pp. 697-9.
4 Bengal District Gazetteers by L.S.S. O’Malley (Khulna), pp. 43-4.
5 See note 3. pp. 697-9.
6 Ibid.
7 See note 1. pp. 98-9.
8 Ibid. p. 86.
9 Ibid. p. 87.
10 See note 3, p. 761.
11 Mazilpur Patrika, March 1865.
12 See note 1, pp. 24-5.
13 Nil Vidroha by Promod Sengupta.
14 See note 3, pp. 769-71.
15 Ibid, p.771.
16 See note 1, p. 250.
17 See note 13. p. 45.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 See note I, p. 255.
21 ‘A speech delivered at Midnapore by a Native’—printed from the Patriot
Press, Bhowanipore, 1856—p. 9.
22 Mr Forde’s statement quoted in Nil Darpan by Dinabandhu Mitra p. vi.
23 See note 1, pp. 256-60
24 Ibid, p. 260.
25 The Indian Musalmans by W.W. Hunter, p. 37.
26 See note 1, pp. 280-81.
27 Letter of Rev. C. Bomwetsch, Indian Field, January 1860.
28 Reports of the Indigo Commission (1860), p. 5. in Ichhamati by Bighutibusan
Banerjee.
29 Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors by C.E. Buckland, Vol. 1, pp. 67-8.
30 See note 1, pp. 378-9.
31 Ibid, pp. 204-15.
Ill

1 They have different names in different districts.

2 What does the Bengal Peasant want?’ by a member of the Bengal Provincial
Civil Service, Judicial Branch 1905, p. 46.
3 Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal, Vol. 1, pp. 30-43.
 PEASANTS OF THE PARGANAS 669

4 Ibid, Vol. VI, p. 49, Banglar Chashi by Santipriya Basu, p. 30.

3 Report of the Bengal Banking Enquiry Commitee (1929) quoted from The
Problem oj Agricultural Indebtedness by N.R. Sarkar, pp. 8-9; and also Report
of the Land Revenue Commission, Vol. VI, p. 52.
6 See note 3.
7 Ibid, p. 30.
8 Oral evidence of the 24-Parganas Bar Association, Report of the Land Revenue
Commission, Vol. VI, p. 311.
9 The Statesman, 26-1-1929.
10 See note 3, pp. 33-9.
Krishak Sabhar Itihas by Md Abdullah Rasul, pp. 71, 99 and also Statistical
Account of Bengal by W.W. Hunter, Vol. 1, pp. 162-3, Vol. 3, p. 368, Vol. 2,
p. 278, Vol. 8, p. 81, Vol. 6, p. 319.
11 Krishak Sabhar Itihas, op. cit. p. 84.
12 Interview: Kshudiram Bhattacharya (CPI-M).
13 Interview: the late Mr Kalidas Dutta of Jainagar-Mazilpur.
14 ‘The So-called Renaissance’, quoted from Now, Vol. 4, Nos. 3-5, 6-10-1967,
p. 57.
15 See note 12, pp. 52-62.
16 Ibid, p. 153.
17 See note 13.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Interview: Muzaffar Ahmed (CPI-M).
21 Ibid, and also Kakdwip, Sonarpur Bhangarer Sangramer Itihas by Suprakash
Roy, pp. 1-6.
22 Interview: Yaqub Pailan (SUC).
23 ‘Memorandum of the BPKS’, Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Vol. VI,
p. 39.
24 Rural Bengal Ruins by Bhawani Sen, p. 18.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 See note 21.
IV

1 Krishak Sabhar Itihas by Abdullah Rasul, p. 112.

2 Ibid., pp. 156-8.
Gram Banglar Pathe Pathe by Satyen Sen—1965, Muktadhara Publications,
Dacca, pp. 3-14.
Mukti Yuddhe Adibasi by Pramatha Gupta, pp. 35-6.
3 See note (1), pp. 155-6.
4 Kakdwip,Sonarpur Bhungarer Krishaker Sangram by Suprakash Roy, pp. 27-32.
5 See note (1), p. 177.
6 See note 4, pp. 18-41.
7 Interviews: Kshudiram Bhattacharya (CPM) and some villagers of Sandesh-
khali.
V

1 Interview: Muzaffar Ahmed (CPI-M).

2 Interview: Villagers of Dattapukur (24-Parganas).
670 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

3 Interviews: Kshudiram Battacharya (CPI-M), Hemanta Ghosal (CPI-M),

Sibdas Bhattacharya (CPI-M), Yaqub Pailan (SUC), Deshhitaishi, July 11,
1969.
4 Interview: Ajit Ganguly and Gobinda Dev (CPI).
5 See Part 3 of this series. Frontier, January 3.
6 Interview: Yaqub Pailan (SUC).
7 Krishak Sabhar Itihas by Md. Abdulla Rasul, p. 192.
8 Jugantar, February 11, 1957.
9 Ibid., February 18, 1957.
10 Memorandum of the Communist Party of India. 1959, p. 78.
11 Jugantar, September 2-4, 1959.
12 Ibid, August 25, 1959.
13 Dainik Basumati, February 16 to March 15, 1966.
14 The Statesman, March 9, 11, 12, 1966.
15 Pasehimbanger Gramin Arthaniti by Ranen Nag, p. 13.
 35 Peasants and Revolution

Hamza Alavi

In colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to
lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the
first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no
compromise, no possible coming to terms.
—Frantz Fanon1

The above view of the revolutionary potentiality of the peasantry

was expressed by Frantz Fanon. ideologue of the Algerian revolu¬
tion. From time to time, throughout the centuries, the peasant has
indeed risen in rebellion against his oppressors. But history is also
replete with examples of peasants who have borne silently, and for
long periods, extremes of exploitation and oppression. At the same
time occasional outbreaks of peasant revolt do raise the question of
the conditions in which the peasant becomes revolutionary.
We cannot speak of the peasantry in this context as a homogene¬
ous and undifferentiated mass. Its different sections have different
aims and social perspectives, for each of them is confronted with a
different set of problems. The constellation of peasant forces that
participate in a revolutionary movement depends upon the charac¬
ter of the revolution, or, as Marxists would see it, the ‘historical
stage’ which it represents. Thus, when a revolutionary movement
progresses from ’bourgeois-democratic revolution' to ‘socialist revo¬
lution,’ the roles of the different sections of the peasantry no longer
remain the same.
As a generalization about the revolutionary potential of the
peasantry, Fanon's statement thus begs many questions. Equally
question-begging are those generalizations which dismiss the
peasantry as a backward, servile, and reactionary class, incapable
of joining hands with forces of social revolution. The peasants
Reproduced from Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia, fed) Kathleen Gough
and Hari P. Sharma. Monthly Review Press, New York, pp. 291-337.
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Socialist Register 1965, Monthly
Review Press.
672 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

have in fact played a role, sometimes a crucial and decisive role,

in revolutions. The Chinese Revolution is a case in point.
The question that needs to be asked, therefore, is not whether
the peasants are or are not revolutionary but, rather, under what
circumstances they become revolutionary or what roles different
sections of the peasantry play in revolutionary situations. These
are questions which greatly interest socialist movements in countries
with predominantly peasant populations. The main tradition of
Marxist theory, until the turn of the century, took its stand firmly
on the dominant, or even exclusive, revolutionary role of the
industrial proletariat. But Marx and Engels were painfully aware of
the fact that if the industrial proletariat was to fulfill its historic
tasks by leading the forces of revolution, it would have to mobilize
peasant support, especially in countries with predominantly peasant
populations. For socialists, moreover, the question is not merely
that of mobilizing peasant support as a means to achieve success
in their struggle. The question is not just that of utilizing the forces
of the peasantry. The free and active participation of the peasantry
in transforming their mode of existence and giving shape to the
new society must be an essential part of the socialist goal itself.
We propose in this essay to consider the roles played by different
sections of the peasantry in the cases of Russia, China, and India.
We shall examine the preconditions that seem necessary to bring
about a revolutionary mobilization of the peasantry in the struggle
for socialism, whether it be peaceful and constitutional or insurrec¬
tionary. We shall put forward hypotheses which, in our view,
throw fresh light on certain aspects of the problem. These hypotheses
require further consideration, especially in the light of the ex¬
periences of other countries.2 We would like to emphasize at the
outset that these propositions are being advanced tentatively and
in order to open up a discussion on certain aspects of the problem
that have so far been obscured.
Our hypotheses concern the respective roles of the so-called
middle peasants and poor peasants and the preconditions that we find
are necessary for a revolutionary mobilization of poor peasants.
These terms have been defined in Marxist'literature to refer to
various classes of the peasantry. But they are fraught with ambiguity
and, as we shall see later, they have sometimes been reinterpreted
to alter their denotation to suit ideological exigencies of political
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 673

tactics or the personal predilections of particular writers.3 For a

meaningful and scientific discussion of the subject, it is essential
that the terminology used should be unambiguous. I have continued
to use the above-mentioned terminology only because it is in
common use. But, before we proceed further, the precise meaning
of these terms should be clarified. This terminology appears to
focus attention on relative differences in the wealth (or poverty)
of various strata of the peasantry without any indication of the
criteria by which the strata may be distinguished from each other
as classes. Stratification on the basis of simple difference in wealth,
on a single linear scale, is often the basis of differentiation of ‘classes'
in academic sociology. But that is not the basis on which Marxists
distinguish classes. The Marxist concept/of class is a structural
concept; classes are defined by relations of production. Where
several modes of production coexist, classes cannot be arranged
in a single linear hierarchical order because they must be structurally
differentiated. The division of the peasantry into rich peasants,
middle peasants, and poor peasants suggests an array of the peasantry
with the different strata arranged one over the other, in a single
order. This is misleading: middle peasants (i.e., independent
peasant proprietors), for instance, do not stand between rich
peasants and their employees, the poor peasants; they belong to
a different sector of the rural economy.
In the transitional historical situations we shall deal with, a broad
distinction may be made between three ‘sectors’ of the rural eco¬
nomy, or three modes of production. In the first place, we have the
sector whose essential distinguishing feature is that the land is
owned by landlords who do not undertake cultivation on their
own account. Their land is cultivated by landless tenants, mostly
sharecroppers who are classed as poor peasants. The second sector
is that of independent smalholders who own no more land than
they cultivate themselves and enough of it to make them self-
sufficient. They do not exploit the labor of others; nor is their
labor exploited by others. They are the middle peasants. A special
case of middle peasants was that of the allotment-holding peasants
in Russia who were obliged to work for landlords because of
various disabilities imposed upon them, as discussed below. A third
sector is that of capitalist farmers, also described as rich farmers,
who own substantial amounts of land and whose farming is
674 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

primarily based on the exploitation of wage labor, although they

may participate in farm work themselves. Unlike landlords, they
undertake the business of farming and employ capital in it.
Farm laborers who are paid wages are referred to as the agri¬
cultural proletariat, but they are usually included with that other
exploited section of the peasantry—the sharecroppers—in the term
poor peasant. The use of the terminology makes it quite clear that
the essential distinctions are those of relations of production and
not simply those of relative differences in wealth or property.
This is exemplified by the inclusion in the term middle peasant of
an independent smallholder whose income may be very small but
who does not work for others; whereas a sharecropper with a large
holding, who may earn more than he does, is classified as a poor
peasant. The terminology is clearly unsatisfactory. It would avoid
a great deal of unnecessary confusion if we were instead to adopt
structurally descriptive terms, such as capitalist farmers, independent
smallholders, sharecroppers, and farm laborers. But in the statements
and writings that we must discuss in this essay, the terms rich
peasants, middle peasants, and poor peasants are widely used and
for that reason we cannot avoid using them ourselves.
While using that terminology, we would like to emphasize the
critical distinction between the class situation of the independent
peasant smallholders, the middle peasants, on the one hand, and the
exploiting and exploited sections of the rural population, namely, the
landlords and capitalist farmers or rich peasants, and their sharecrop¬
pers and laborers, the poor peasants, on the other. The sector of
middle peasants is characterized by their economic independence
(from landlords and rich peasants), whereas in the other two sectors
—sharecropping and capitalist farming—the mode of production
is characterized by the exploitation of the poor peasants and their
economic dependence on their masters. This distinction between the
economic dependence and subordination of the poor peasants and
the economic independence of the middle peasants is critical for
our analysis.
We should qualify this threefold classification of the different
sectors of the agrarian economy (or the different modes of produc¬
tion) by pointing out that there is a great deal of overlapping
between these categories and the actual demarcation between them
is by no means sharp and clear. In practice it is often the case that a
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 675

person may enter into more than one relation of production.

Ownership of his own patch of land does not by itself suffice to
classify a peasant as a middle peasant if he also works as a sharecrop¬
per or a laborer to supplement his livelihood. The difficulty
in classification is met (by Mao, for example) by attempting to
determine the principal relation of production from which a person
draws his livelihood. Thus a peasant who owns a tiny patch of land,
but depends for his livelihood mainly on sharecropping for a
landlord or on working as a laborer, is classed as a poor peasant, he is
not classed as a middle peasant even though he owns some land.
Again, a middle peasant who employs casual labor occasionally to
cope with peak operations is classified as a middle peasant, for
his livelihood does not depend principally on the exploitation of
the labor of others. A similar problem arises in the case of a landlord
who employs sharecroppers on part of his land and undertakes
cultivation on his own account on another part of his land, say,
by mechanized farming and wage labor. He engages in two modes
of production at once. Lenin described such situations as ‘transi¬
tional.’ In Pakistan and India one finds that the two modes of
production are not separate and simply coexistent; the two are
structurally integrated because landlords who engage in mechanized
farming retain sharecroppers on diminished holdings, insufficient
for their livelihood, in order to have a tied source of the seasonal
labor they require in the mechanized farm sector. The two modes
of production are thus structurally integrated.4 But we do not
propose to pursue the question of transition from the one mode of
production to the other. The relation that is essential to the analysis
which follows is that of the economic exploitation and dependence
of the poor peasantry, and this exists in either case. The crucial
distinction we wish to reiterate is that of the economic independence
of the middle peasant and the economic dependence of the poor
peasant. We propose to examine their respective roles in the Russian
and Chinese revolutions and in the peasant movements in India.

I
The peasants were given a definite place in the Bolshevik revolu¬
tionary strategy under Lenin’s slogan of ‘Alliance of the Working
Class and the Peasantry.’ However, the role of the peasantry in the
676 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Russian Revolution is sometimes exaggerated out of all proportion.

Thus, Lichtheim writes: The uniqueness of Lenin—and the
Bolshevik organization which he founded and held together—lay
in the decision to make the agrarian upheaval do the work of the
proletarian revolution.’5 Neither the facts of the Russian Revolution
nor Lenin’s theoretical formulations support such a judgement.
It was in the towns and the cities that the Bolsheviks first seized
power, for the class struggle in the countryside had not yet deve¬
loped.6 That was the conclusion Lenin reached after the October
Revolution. His attitude toward the peasantry evolved continuously,
in response to the developments taking place in the Russian
countryside. From the point of view of the role assigned to the
peasantry in Bolshevik revolutionary strategy, one can broadly
distinguish three periods, in each of which we find a distinct theor¬
etical stand. The first period was that up to the 1905 Revolution,
although we can see the change in Lenin’s views already beginning
to take place after the peasant upsurge of 1902. The second period
was between 1905 and 1917. The third period, one of reassessment,
was after the October Revolution.
The central feature determining the perspective of the first
period was Lenin’s view of the dynamic growth of agrarian capita¬
lism in Russia and the decay of the feudal economy. As early as
1893, young Lenin had begun to see the new economic develop¬
ments in peasant life, which became the subject of the earliest of
his writings to be preserved. In 1899 he published his first major
work. The Development of Capitalism in Russia, two-thirds of
which is devoted to a brilliant and thoroughly documented analysis
of the capitalist revolution in the Russian countryside, the decay
of the feudal economy, and the complex variety of transitional
forms that had emerged. Without going into details of the rural
economy of Russia at the turn of the century, we must, for our
purposes, point out some of its salient features.7
A crucial factor that inflamed the Russian countryside, in
1905-7 and again in 1917, was the peculiar problem, a legacy of the
emancipation of 1861, of the allotment landholder, the Russian
middle peasant. By the edict of emancipation the serf had received
as ‘allotment’ the land he had cultivated before, but with a portion
of it withheld by the landlord; such withheld portions were called
‘cutoff lands.’ For Russia as a whole the proportion of ‘cutoff
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 677

land is estimated to have been about a fifth of the peasants’ original

holdings. The crucial fact, however, about the ‘cutoff lands’ was not
their relative size but the type of land that was taken away from the
peasant and its role in the peasant economy. The peasant was de¬
prived of meadows and pastures, water courses, and access to
woods—all essential to the peasant economy. Moreover, the peasant
was required to pay for the allotment land. He could do so by
giving labor to the landlord or he could opt to make money pay¬
ments, which considerably exceeded the rental value of the allotment
lands. He could terminate his ‘temporary obligation’ by making a
‘redemption payment,’ which again was in excess of the market
value of the land; moreover, he had to borrow to make such a
payment. The need to work off these obligations to the landlord,
together with such surviving feudal laws and institutions as the
commune, tied the peasant to the village and his land, and forced
him to work for his landlord on unfavorable terms. This relation¬
ship between the middle peasant and landlord, a source of deep
and direct conflict, was a feature peculiar to Russia.
Much of the landlords’ land was, however, cultivated by share¬
croppers—poor peasants—who had little or no land but who
possessed some farm implements and horses. A distinction between
the situation of such poor peasants and that of the middle peasants,
as described above, is important. The middle peasant had a sub¬
stantial allotment as well as access to communal grazing and
woodland. His livelihood did not depend totally on the landlord,
but his obligations to the landlord were an insufferable burden.
In the case of the poor peasant, the sharecropper, his livelihood
depended on his being able to get the land from the landlord for
cultivation. Although he was exploited, he was too dependent
on the landlord to be able to oppose him as the middle peasant
could.
Some landlords’ lands were cultivated by hired farm laborers—
already a transition to capitalist farming. But it was the industrious
kulaks, the rural bourgeoisie, who conducted farming as a business
and employed the rural proletariat as wage labor. In the growth of
agrarian capitalism in Russia, Lenin saw a powerful force for the
bourgeois-democratic revolution which would open the door for
the socialist revolution.8 Plekhanov, and even more so some of the
extreme Mensheviks, had looked exclusively to the growth of
678 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

industrial capitalism for the maturation of the forces of revolution.

This offered socialists the rather dismal prospect of an interminably
long interlude of capitalist development before Russia could be
ripe for the socialist revolution. The Mensheviks looked upon the
peasantry as a conservative and reactionary force. Seen against the
background of such ideas, the Narodnik view—that the peasant
commune provided Russia with a unique opportunity for a direct
transition to a socialist order—was not altogether without its
attractions; even Marx and Engels were not altogether without
sympathy for it.9 Lenin rejected this idea as utopian. He saw the
commune as a survival of the old feudal order which was to be
swept away. The middle peasant, the mainstay of the commune,
was disintegrating as a class. With the inexorable advance of
capitalism, the middle peasant was being pauperized and the
peasantry as a whole was being polarized into two classes, capitalist
farmers and the rural proletariat. The immediate task, in Lenin’s
view, was to assist and speed up this process by fighting for the
removal of those survivals of feudalism which tended to slow down
the advance of agrarian capitalism.
Lenin thus looked to the classes in the capitalist sector of the
agrarian economy, rather than to the disintegrating class of middle
peasants, to provide the forces for the struggle against feudal
survival and the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
However, in 1901 he tended to discount even the rural laborer as
an effective revolutionary force. In his Iskra article of April 1901,
which set out the agrarian program of the Iskra-ists, he wrote:
‘Our rural laborers are still too closely connected with the peasantry,
they are still too heavily burdened with the misfortunes of the
peasantry generally, to enable the movement of rural workers to
assume national significance either now or in the immediate
future.’10 Thus, he argued, ‘The whole essence of our agrarian
program is that the rural proletariat must fight together with the
rich peasantry for the abolition of the remnants of serfdom, for
the cutoff lands.’11 It was for the industrial proletariat to provide
revolutionary leadership, while in the agrarian field it was the rural
bourgeoisie who would provide the main force for the bourgeois-
democratic revolution.
The central issue of the agrarian program was the demand for the
restitution of the cutoff lands and the abolition of the remnants of
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 679

serfdom. But Lenin overestimated the role of the rural bourgeoisie

in this struggle and curiously ignored the role of the middle peasant,
who was most directly concerned with it. The challenge of the
kulak to the feudal system was economic—it lay in his greater
efficiency, his ability to pay higher wages to the farm laborers, and
his competitive strength in bidding for land available for buying
or leasing. But he was outside the feudal sector and was not directly
involved in conflict with the landowners. Although he resented
being accorded an inferior social status by the nobility, this was not
cause enough for him to engage in battle.
When the great peasant upheaval began in 1905, it was the middle
peasant who provided its main force in the fight for cutoff lands.
In February, soon after Bloody Sunday, January 9, 1905, the
peasants rose in revolt. Peasant jacqueries flared up all over Russia
and continued to inflame the countryside in 1905 and for two
succeeding years, long after the revolution in the towns had been
extinguished. The respective roles of the different sections of
the peasantry in this revolutionary upsurge are described by
G.T. Robinson:
‘Such revolutionary leanings as existed in rural Russia had
chiefly come out of the relations of small, lan^-short, farmers
with large land-holders rather than the relations of proletarians
and “half-proletarian” laborers with capitalist cultivators....
Sometimes the better-off peasants joined with the rest in depreda¬
tions upon the estates, and particularly in the cutting and carting-
off of timber and in the illicit pasturing of cattle. However, there
were at least a few cases in which the attacks of the peasants were
directed against the richer members of their own class rather
than against the landlords; and no doubt because of a fear of
loss to themselves, the richer peasants.. .were often indifferent
or openly hostile to the agrarian movement.... On the other
hand the agricuJtural wage workers who had no land...were
not usually the leaders of the agrarian movement in general or
even of the labor strikes on the estates.... Indeed there developed
in certain instances a definite hostility between the agricultural
proletariat and those peasants who divided their time between
the landlords’ fields and their own.'12
The kulak's role in the peasant uprising was ambivalent. He did
not lead the attack on the landlords for the restitution of cutoff
680 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

lands, for that was a matter which concerned the middle peasants.
Indeed, as Robinson has pointed out, he was himself sometimes
the target of attack and was often indifferent or openly hostile to the
peasant uprising. On the other hand, he often found the tide too
strong not to go along with it, and he participated in the attacks on
landlords' manors and the looting that followed.
Until 1905 the Bolsheviks had looked upon the rural bourgeoisie,
the kulaks, to provide the forces for the bourgeois-democratic
revolution in the countryside. They had not paid much attention to
organizing the broad mass of the peasantry themselves. In the
fskra article he had written in 1901, Lenin had virtually written
off the rural proletariat as a force which was ‘still wholly in the
future.’ He added that ‘we must include peasant demands in our
program, not in order to transfer convinced Social-democrats from
the towns to the countryside, not in order to chain them to the
village, but to guide the activity of those forces which cannot find
an outlet anywhere except in the rural localities... .'l3 After the
peasant upsurge of 1902, however, Lenin's outlook changed. He
wrote: ‘The purely practical requirements of the movement have
of late lent special urgency to the task of propaganda and agitation
in the countryside.’ The basic strategy of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution still was that ‘the rural proletariat must fight together
with the rich peasantry for the abolition of the remnants of serf¬
dom.' Only the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution
would lead to the ‘final separation of the rural proletariat from the
landholding peasantry.’14
By 1905 the bourgeois-democratic revolution was still far from
being completed. But with the peasant uprisings of that year, the
Bolshevik attitude changed fundamentally. Writing in March 1905,
Lenin issued a call to organize the rural proletariat in the same
manner as the urban proletariat had been organized. He added:
‘We must explain to it that its interests are antagonistic to those of
the bourgeois peasantry; we must call upon it to fight for the socialist
revolution.’15 Lenin subsequently repeatedly exhorted the Bolshe¬
viks to organize the poor peasantry, but they had little success in
doing so.
The basic unit of peasant organization was the traditional village
assembly. Ordinarily, rich peasants—the kulaks—controlled collec-
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 681

tive decisions made by the assemblies. In revolutionary situations,

in times of violent action, however, it was the middle peasants
whose militant views prevailed in the assemblies; the poor peasant
remained in the background. The peasants’ organization at the
national level was the All-Russian Peasants’ Union, which was also
largely under kulak influence. At its first congress in the summer of
1905, 'the delegates themselves indicated that in most places the
work of organizing the peasants had hardly begun as yet.’16 The
political leadership of the peasantry was in the hands of the Social
Revolutionaries, who primarily represented the rich peasants. The
Bolsheviks never quite managed to get a firm foothold among the
peasantry.
By 1917 we find Lenin more cautious and less certain about the
possibility of organizing the poor peasantry independently. In his
historic ‘April Thesis’ he stated;
Without necessarily splitting the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies
at once, the party of the proletariat must make clear the necessity
of organizing separate Soviets of Poor (semi-proletarian)
Peasants, or, at least, of holding constant separate conferences
of peasant deputies of this class status in the shape of separate
fractions or parties within the general Soviets of Peasants’
Deputies.
He was, however, by no means confident that this task would be
accomplished; in the 'April Thesis’ he continues:
At the present moment we cannot say for certain whether a
powerful agrarian revolution will develop in the Russian country¬
side in the near future. We cannot say exactly how profound is
the class cleavage within the peasantry.... Such questions will
be. and can be, decided only by actual experience.17
The pattern of peasant upheaval which did develop in 1917 is
rather complex. There were two sets of struggles—between peasants
and landlords and among the peasants themselves—where the
alignments cut across each other. The main peasant struggle in
1917, as in 1905-7, was that of middle peasants against land-
owners for the cutoff lands and for the abolition of the surviving
feudal restrictions. The intervening years had been relatively quiet.
Now, once more, peasant struggle was precipitated by the decay
of agriculture, the depletion of stocks and food shortages, and the
 682 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

high prices of goods. This time the struggle was more intense and
violent than in the earlier period; in some respects, but only oc¬
casionally, it was more advanced in character.
A factor which possibly contributed to the greater militancy of
the middle peasant in the second period was the fact that Stolypin’s
agrarian policy, in the intervening years, had loosened many of the
feudal bonds which had tied down the middle peasant, thus giving
him the taste of more freedom. Also, Bolshevik ideas had had a big
impact on the soldier, the peasant in uniform, who participated with
the industrial worker in making the socialist revolution. Deserters
returning to the countryside from the front carried with them the
ferment of new ideas and an attitude of militancy.
Now, as before, the struggle was concentrated on the meadows
and forests; the most frequent forms of action consisted of seizures
of hay and wood, More manors were looted and burned than before.
An advance on the previous situation, however, was that in some
cases village land committees (set up by the provisional government
to mediate disputes between peasants and landlords) became
vehicles for the seizure and distrubution of land. Maynard suggests
that ‘there was, paradoxically, a certain system, even a certain
order, in the proceedings. Peasants did not seize the land which had
not been cultivated by them or their forebears.’18 It is more likely
that in actual practice the proceedings were not quite so orderly
as Maynard imagines; there was little to stop the peasants from
taking an optimistic view of their claims, except the competing
claims of their fellows. However, the fact that the peasant, even in
revolution, invoked only his claim to what was rightfully his, refleets
his conservative respect for private property and the fact that, in the
main, the seizures of land were confined to the cutoff lands. Once
again the middle peasant was in the forefront of the struggle. The
attitude of the kulak remained, as before, a contradictory one:
fear and even hostility combined with not-too-reluctant partici-
- pation in sharing the loot. The rural proletarians similarly joined
with the others in the looting, but did not emerge as an independent
force and did not rise against their masters, the kulaks.
There was another, quite distinct, struggle in the rural districts,
in which the middle peasant found himself mostly in conflict with
the other two sections of the peasantry. This was the struggle of
those who wished to preserve the communes against the ‘separators.’
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 683

During the inter-revolutionary years legislation had been promul¬

gated providing for the dissolution of repartitional tenure in com¬
munes and for the establishment of hereditary holdings, which
would make possible the establishment of individual farms free
from communal restrictions. The pressure to break up the com¬
munes came from the enterprising ‘communal kulaks’ (the other
kulaks held their land outside the communes) who wished to be
free from communal restrictions. It also came from the poor
peasants whose tiny holdings served only to tie them to the village
but gave them no livelihood. The middle peasant, however, had
little to gain and much to lose by a breakdown of the commune.
He staunchly opposed the ‘separators,’ and passions ran high. The
middle peasants often resisted successfully the attempts to ‘separate,’
and in many cases peasants who had left were forced to return and
pool their land again. Thus in these cases the middle peasants were
once again the effective force in the village.
These divisions and conflicts among the peasantry evidently did
not allow the formation of ‘revolutionary peasant committees,’
as Lenin had urged. The peasant Soviets, where they existed at all,
existed at the county and provincial level and were mostly dominat¬
ed by right-wing Social Revolutionaries, the spokesmen of the
kulaks. The role of the peasantry in the revolution was an indirect
one, though by no means an unimportant one. The Bolshevik
formula was that they seized power in alliance with the peasantry
as a whole. If the role of the peasantry must be called an ‘alliance,’
it was, from the side of the peasantry, undeclared, unorganized,
and without a clear direction. Moreover, it could hardly be called
an alliance with ‘the peasantry as a whole,’ for the peasantry was
deeply divided. In a later controversy Stalin argued that the prole¬
tarian revolution was carried out by the proletariat ‘together with
the poor peasantry.’ He supports this by quoting Lenin’s repeated
post-1905 calls for mobilizing the poor peasantry. As we have seen,
this does not mean that the Bolsheviks actually succeeded in
achieving that objective. Lenin's own postrevolutionary assessments
make it quite clear that this was not so.
In October 1918, looking back on the experience of the Revolu¬
tion, Lenin explained the Bolshevik failure to mobilize the poor
peasants:
Owing to the immaturity, the backwardness, the ignorance,
684 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

precisely of the poor peasants, the leadership [in the Soviets]

passed into the hands of the kulaks.... A year after the pro¬
letarian revolution in the capitals, and under its influence and
with its assistance, the proletarian revolution began in the
remote rural districts.19
But why did the Bolsheviks fail to break down the backwardness
and ignorance of the peasantry, despite at least a decade of commit¬
ment to just that task? Lenin perceived that the true explanation lay
beyond the subjective factor. He became aware of the existence of
what we have referred to as the necessary preconditions for the
mobilization of the poor peasantry—although he expressed it in a
form which refers only to the Russian experience. Thus, in 1920,
he referred to such preconditions as:
a truth which has been fully proved by Marxist theory and fully
corroborated by the experience of the proletarian revolution in
Russia, viz. although all the three above enumerated categories
of the rural population (i.e. the rural proletariat, semi-proletarians
and small peasants).. .are economically, socially and culturally
interested in the victory of socialism, they are capable of giving
resolute support to the revolutionary proletariat only after the
latter has won political power, only after it has resolutely dealt
with the big landowners and capitalists, only after these down¬
trodden people see in practice that they have an organized leader
and champion, strong and firm enough to assist and lead them
and show them the right path.20
Lenin was generalizing here from the Russian experience; he was
not elaborating a Marxist text. The Chinese experience, as well as
examples from India, show us, however, that the prior seizure of
state power by the proletariat is only one of several alternative forms
in which the necessary preconditions for the mobilization of the
poor peasantry may be realized.

II
The Chinese Communist Party set out on its revolutionary course
in the Leninist tradition. But in the first few years of its life its work
was concentrated largely on the urban proletariat and on students
and intellectuals; very little was done among the peasantry. Jane
Degras quotes a report of the Executive Committee of the Comintern
according to which, in 1926, the working class membership of the
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 685

CCP was 66 percent of the total and peasant membership no more

than 5 percent.21
It was also among the industrial proletariat that Mao Tse-tung
began his work, to use his own words, as a ‘practical Marxist.’ As
secretary of the Hunan party he organized miners, railway workers,
municipal workers, etc. He did very little work among the peasantry
at the time, and it was not until 1925 that he became aware of their
revolutionary potential. ‘Formerly,’ he told Edgar Snow, ‘I had
not fully realized the degree of class struggle among the peasantry.
But after the May 30 (1925) incident, and during the great wave of
political activity which followed it, the Hunanese peasantry became
very militant. I.. .began a rural organization campaign,’22 A new
chapter had opened in the history of Chinese communism.
Peasant riots and uprisings were endemic in China at the time.
Several factors had precipitated such a situation. Perhaps the
most important was the constant civil war among warlords and
the excessive taxes and levies extracted by them as well as by
government tax collectors. Another factor of some importance was
that in those ‘troubled times’ many of the old ‘gentry’ had moved
to urban centers and were no longer present in the village to exercise
their direct personal authority, which they had enjoyed by virtue
of their wealth as well as traditional social status. The removal of
the men who had exercised on-the-spot power loosened social
control in the villages, enabled the peasants to gain more confidence,
and allowed peasant militancy to develop. However, perhaps the
most decisive factor lay in the operations of the Revolutionary
Army, which had been established in 1923 by the Kuomintang
government of Dr Sun Yat-sen, with the support of the Chinese
Communists and with help from the Soviet Union. In February
1925 the Revolutionary Army launched its First Eastern Expedi¬
tion, the first of several against the warlords. This was followed by
the Southern Expedition and, in the summer of 1926, by the famous
Northern Expedition. It is significant that on the eve of the Northern
Expedition nearly two-thirds of the nearly one million members
of the peasant associations were in Kwangtung province,23 one
of the principal areas of operation of the Revolutionary Army
during the Eastern and Southern expeditions.
The pleasant movement was not created by the Communist Party
or by the genius of one man. Mao was drawn into the peasant
686 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

movement only after it had already begun. But Mao’s organizing

genius enabled it to reach new heights. In 1925 he began to train
cadres for the peasant movement at the Institute of the Peasant
Movement. At the end of the year he took his students to Hunan,
established contacts with active elements among the peasantry,
and set up peasant associations in the townships. A solid foundation
was laid to provide leadership and organization for the peasant
movement so that when it arose again in the following year, it
arose with full force.
Mao summed up his experience of the peasant movement in two
essays that are regarded as classics of Maoism. The first was an arti¬
cle entitled ‘An Analysis of the Various Classes of the Chinese Peas¬
antry and Their Attitudes Toward Revolution,’24 published in Jan¬
uary 1926. The other was the celebrated ‘Report of an Investigation
into the Peasant Movement in Hunan,’ written a year later. Stuart
Schram has pointed out what at first sight appears to be a rather
curious ‘deviation’ from the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy in the
original versions of these two texts. In the original versions the
leading revolutionary role of the industrial proletariat is not speci¬
fically mentioned; appropriate references to that effect were not
added until 1951. Does this mean that at this stage Mao had
abandoned the basic principle of Marxism-Leninism, the principle
of proletarian revolutionary leadership? In hrs analysis of Maoism,
Isaac Deutscher has referred to the fact that ‘Mao... recognized
more and more explicitly the peasantry as the sole active force
of the revolution, until to all intents and purposes he turned his
back on the urban working class.’25 But this, as Deutscher has
shown, came later. It came after the defeat of the revolution when,
following the autumn-harvest uprising of 1927, Mao and his com¬
rades, with the core of what later became the Red Army, marched
to the Chingkang Mountains and established a revolutionary base
there. At first, as Deutscher has argued, the ‘withdrawal into the
countryside' was thought to be only a temporary strategy, a marking
of time until conditions for an urban insurrection revived. It was
only ‘gradually [that Mao] became aware of the implications of
his move.’ In 1926, thus, the point of departure of Maoism had not
yet arrived. And it came two years later, not as a premeditated
change of strategy but as one that was imposed by the logic of the
situation.
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 687

To return to Schram’s point, what explanation can we find of

Mao s omission, in 1926 and 1927, of references to the leadership
of the proletariat? Schram’s explanation is that ‘Mao’s position
at this time constitutes neither orthodox Leninism nor a heresy
beyond Leninism, but rather the gropings of a young man who has
not yet thoroughly understood Lenin.’ He continues: The Hunan
Report is neither “orthodox” nor “heretical” Leninism; it is essen¬
tially a-marxist.’26 Such a contention is quite untenable. It was his
understanding of Marxism that led Mao, son of a peasant, to spend
his early years of revolutionary work among the urban proletariat.
Moreover, the issue of proletarian leadership in the revolution was
a central issue in the CCP at the time. One cannot presume that the
question was simply not in Mao’s mind. However, two facts may
suggest an explanation. First, if Mao had brought up the issue of
the leadership of the revolution, he could hardly have avoided a
frontal attack on the view then being put forward by the Comintern;
evidently, young Mao did not wish to take that course. Second, the
two documents were written in the heat of a controversy in which
Mao wanted to establish ‘the agrarian revolution as constituting
the main content of the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution
and the peasants as its basic force.’27 He did no more in these
documents than portray the revolutionary potentialities of the
different sections of the peasantry. He did not engage in a theoretical
analysis of overall revolutionary strategy. Moreover, it should be
added that there is nothing in these documents to compare with
the careful and detailed analysis Lenin made of the processes which
were transforming Russian rural society. Mao learned his lessons
in the field; the essence of his thought must be sought in his revolu¬
tionary practice rather than in writings which do not always reflect
accurately his own practice in so far as he had to pay lip service to
Comintern orthodoxy in order to gain the freedom to follow the
demands of the Chinese situation. Mao the ‘theoretical Marxist’
had a role which did not always coincide with that of Mao the
‘practical Marxist.’
The paradox of Mao is exemplified particularly by his attempt to
make the facts of the Hunan Movement fit Comintern orthodoxy by
the simple device of redefining categories, as we shall see below.
In his Report Mao was at pains to demonstrate that both leadership
and the main force of the peasant movement came from the poor
688 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

peasantry, which, in theory at least, made the facts of the Hunan

Movement fit Stalin’s conception of what was to be expected. But
to appreciate the true character of the Hunan Movement, we must
briefly consider the pattern of China’s rural society and the main
problems of the peasantry.
Capitalist farming had not yet developed in China, as it had in
Russia. According to figures given by Mao, the size of the agricul¬
tural proletariat in China was less than 2 percent of the total
number of peasants.78 There were thus two main sectors of the
rural economy. One was dominated by landlords, who controlled
a large proportion of the land (Mao says 60-70 percent) that was
cultivated by the poor peasants, i.e., sharecroppers, who had no
land or very little land. Big landlords, those who owned more than
500 mow (i.e., 83 acres), were less than 0.1 percent of the rural
population. Small landlords made up 0.6 percent of the rural
population. The ’semi-proletariat,’ who worked for them, consisted,
according to Mao’s classification of (1) semi-landholders (16
percent), who owned too little land for their subsistence; (2) share¬
croppers (19 percent), who owned no land but owned the imple¬
ments, etc., with which they worked the landlords’ lands; and
(3) the poor peasants (19 percent), who owned neither land nor
implements. The other sector was that of the independent peasant
landholders, i.e., the middle peasants (38 percent), whom Mao
further classifies into three subclasses: (1) those with an annual
surplus (3.7 percent of the total peasantry); (2) those who were
just self-sufficient (19 percent); and (3) those who had an annual
deficit (15 percent).
Three problems dominated the Chinese countryside. The first
was that of putting an end to the exploitation of the landlords, or at
least of easing its burden by reducing the share of the crop taken
by them. Then there was the problem of rectifying the very uneven
distribution of land among cultivators, providing secondary
employment in order to relieve pressure of population on land, and
improving the level of technique so that all cultivators could enjoy
a reasonable livelihood. The solution to that- problem would have
to await the socialist revolution. Finally there was an immediate
problem, one that in fact gave rise to the peasant movement and
determined its character: the problem of the excessive demands
made by warlords and tax officials on the peasantry. The aftermath
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 689

of Yuan Shih-kai’s unsuccessful attempt to restore the monarchy

in 1916, the revolt of the generals which had thwarted it, and the
constant imperialist intervention and intrigue resulted in a collapse
of governmental authority. The warlords became a power in the
countryside and began to dominate it. Before that time, prudence
had restrained the landlords and the government from raising their
demands on the peasantry beyond the limits of endurance, but
there were no limits on the warlords. Everyone in the village was
affected by their excessive demands, except for those big landlords
who were in league with them.
Despite the continued extortions of the warlords, no major
peasant movement arose to resist them until the various expeditions
smashed the power of the warlords and their allies in the villages
and the peasant uprisings began. The aims of the peasant movement
that arose in 1926 went little beyond putting an end to the extortions
by the warlords and their local allies. ‘The peasants attack as their
main targets the local bullies, bad gentry and lawless landlords,
hitting in passing against patriarchal ideologies and institutions,
corrupt officials in the cities and evil customs in the rural areas.’29
In those words Mao gave the gist of the achievements of the Hunan
Movement of 1926-7, which he describes in some detail in his
Report.
Of all the actions of the peasantry described by Mao in his Report,
the weakest are dealt with under the heading of ‘Dealing Economic
Blows Against Landlords.’ The central-issue here, as we pointed
out, was that of reducing, or indeed abolishing, the landlords’
rent. Mao claims that the peasants’ associations succeeded in
preventing an increase in rent! Surely, in a revolutionary situation,
there should have been no question of the landlords even thinking
of increasing the rents further. Mao then adds that after November
the peasants went a step further and began to agitate for a reduction
in rent. But this was after the autumn harvest and the year’s rent
had already been collected. At that late stage, even if a demand for
rent reduction was voiced by a few peasant organizers, it had
no immediate practical value. The fact that the peasants’ associa¬
tions had not yet begun to challenge the fundamental class positions
of the landlords is also indicated by Mao’s reference to the fact
that many landlords were trying to join the peasants’ associations!
Again, there is a suggestion made by Mao in his original essay,
690 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

‘Analysis of the Various Classes of the Chinese Peasantry,’ that

some of the small landowners could be ‘led toward the path of
revolution.’30 What kind of ‘revolution’ could that be? It is clear
that the movement aimed at little more than smashing the power
of the warlords and their local allies, whose victims included, of
course, the smaller landlords.
Landlords preserved not only their economic positions but also
their armed forces. One of the achievements Mao claimed for the
peasant movement in his Report is the ‘overthrowing of the land¬
lords' armed forces.’ But what we actually find under this head is a
tacit admission that, by and large, the landlords’ militias continued
to exist. What is said here is only that their armed forces had largely
‘capitulated’ to the peasant associations and were ‘now upholding
the interests of the peasants’! It is only with respect to ‘a small
number of reactionary landlords’ that the Report says that such
forces would be taken over from them and ‘reorganized into the
house-to-house regular militia and placed under the new organs
of local self-government under the political power of the peasantry.’
It is evident that the continued existence of the armed power of
the landlords, as well as their hold over the sections of the peasantry
directly dependent on them economically—the sharecroppers,
etc.—prevented the peasant movement from becoming a peasant
revolution and brought about its subsequent collapse.
In the Hunan Report, Mao emphasizes repeatedly that both the
leadership and the main force of the movement came from the poor
peasantry. If the poor peasants had in fact provided both the leader¬
ship and the main force of the movement, it is inconceivable that
such demands as the reduction and the abolition of rent would not
have come to the forefront of the struggle. After all, that would not
have antagonized the middle peasantry; indeed, it would have found
support among them. And the landlords were only 0.7 percent of the
rural population: in fact, it was their economic power and their
hold over the poor peasantry which gave them power in the country¬
side. The demands put forward in the peasants’ movement were
those which affected the middle peasants far more than the poor
peasants. The landlords, while exploiting the tenants to the limit,
adopted a paternal attitude toward them and even afforded them
some protection against extortions by such third parties as warlords
and tax men. On the other hand, the independent smallholders.
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 691

the middle peasants, stood exposed and weak, and were the principal
victims of the warlords and tax men. More than the poor peasants,
the middle peasants could squeeze out a surplus of income, and this
marked them as the more likely victims of extortion.
In fact, when Mao uses the term ‘poor peasant’ in the Hunan
Report, he redefines it in such a way as to include some middle peas¬
ants. The original eleven categories of the rural population, as des¬
cribed in his January 1926 article, were, in the Hunan Report
compressed into three categories. In doing so, he included under the
term “poor peasants” not only the peasantry directly exploited
by the landlords, but also a section of the independent smallholders,
the middle peasants. He says in the Hunan Report that the poor
peasants were about 70 percent of the peasantry. This figure could
be arrived at only by totalling the following categories, as described
by Mao earlier: (a) farm laborers, 2 percent; (b) poor peasants,
19 percent; (c) sharecroppers, 19 percent; (d) semi-landholders,
16 percent; and (e) the poorer section of the independent peasant
small-holders, 15 percent. But only the first three categories can be
properly called poor peasants. The category of semi-landholders
is an intermediate category, for their landholdings were too small
for an independent livelihood and they had to depend on other
sources to supplement their income. Peasants in the last category
are middle peasants and not poor peasants.
Mao’s redefinition of the term ‘poor peasants’ is only implicit
in his altered statistics; he does not describe his new categories
in any detail. But by including a section of the middle peasants under
the label of poor peasants, he gave at least a formal validity to his
statement that the leadership and the main force of the movement
came from the poor peasants. This only confused the issue. It is a
spurious confirmation of his earlier prediction that peasants were the
most revolutionary, and is understandable only if we consider the
fact that such a characterization of the movement made inaccept-
able in terms of Comintern (Stalinist) orthodoxy, which called for
an alliance of the proletariat and the poor peasantry. The Report
was written in the heat of party controversy, and evidently Mao was
more preoccupied with the task of swinging party opinion on the
subject than with formal niceties. Unfortunately, the supposed
militancy and the leadership said to have been shown by the poor
peasantry in the Hunan Movement have been made into a myth
692 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

which glosses over the actual practice of the Chinese Communists

and, indeed, Mao’s own many statements in later years which
contradict it. If anything is to be learned from the Chinese Revolu¬
tion, we must turn away from this myth.
The poor peasantry were mobilized only after a new phase of the
Chinese Revolution opened with the establishment of a new base
in the Chingkang mountains, after the successful counter revolution
led by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 forced the Communists to take
refuge there. Under the umbrella of Red power, albeit in a very
small area, the peasant revolution went a step forward. In the light
of his new experience Mao came to the conclusion that ‘positive
action is taken in the village against the intermediate class (i.e.,
small landowners) only at a time of real revolutionary upsurge,
when, for instance, political power has been seized in one or several
countries, the reactionary army has been defeated a number of times,
and the prowess of the Red Army has been repeatedly demonstrated,’31
Echoes of Lenin, 1920!
The creation of the Red Army was a decisive factor in the new
situation. The Red Army did not, however, arise spontaneously
out of the peasant movement, although its intimate relationship
with the peasantry gave it its special character. The nucleus of the
Red Army came from sections of the Kuomintang Revolutionary
Army that had come over to the Communist side after the counter¬
revolution. Thus relatively well-trained, experienced, politically
educated fighting units provided an essential cor.e. One might
contrast their situation with that of the armed forces of the Telan-
gana Communists in India who were suppressed, after some brave
fighting no doubt, by the Indian forces (who took three years to
do it though). The Chinese Red Army was able to fight back against
the far greater forces deployed against them.
Another factor which made possible the creation and the building
up of the Red Army in China was that armed conflict had been
endemic in China for at least a decade. In most villages there were
armed units, although they were controlled by the landlords. Their
importance and character are indicated by Martin C. Yang, a social
anthropologist, in his description of a prerevolutionary village in
Shantung province: ‘The first village-wide organisation [was]
the village defence programme ... Wealthy families [were] expected
to equip themselves with rifles ... etc .... The very poor [were]
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 693

asked for nothing except that they behave themselves and obey
the defence regulations.’32 Although the village self-defense
units were controlled by landlords, they had accustomed the
peasants to the idea of arming themselves. Many of the village
militias could also be taken out of the power of the landlords and
absorbed in the Red Army. Moreover, the Red Army fitted easily
into the rural setup. The people were accustomed to bear the burden
of maintaining armies, and the burden of the Red Army fell lightly
on their shoulders. It created conditions for the emancipation of the
peasantry from extreme exploitation, and it drew its tribute from
the exploiters rather than the exploited.
Finally, a factor of no mean importance was the collapse of central
authority, which could not act immediately and swiftly to destroy
the nucleus of the Red Army. When the blows finally came, backed
with all the might and the resources of imperialism, the Red Army
not only survived but was eventually victorious largely because of
the existence of mass movements and the active support of the
people. The actions of the proletariat in areas under Chiang Kai-
shek, actions that impeded and sometimes disorganized his machi¬
nery of repression, were also no doubt of great value.
From the nucleus of the red base in the Chingkang Mountains the
revolution developed. With all its vicissitudes, it extended and
deepened until it had transformed the whole of China. The progress
of the revolution and the precise content of the agrarian changes at
its different stages is a long and complex story that we can hardly at¬
tempt to survey in these pages.33 But one crucial aspect needs to be
noted: land reform was implemented by peasant committees and not
by a Communist bureaucracy. Thus the implementation of the land
reform varied at different times and at different places; it reflected
the unevenness in the growth of revolutionary consciousness and
in the organization of the peasantry in different areas of the country,
as well as changes in the overall strategy of the Communist Party that
were determined by a number of factors, one of which was the rate
at which the revolutionary movement was going forward. But more
than the changing scope of the land reform at different stages, what
interests us particularly is the actual process by which it was carried
out.
The success of Mao and the Chinese Communists in bringing
about a revolutionary mobilization of the peasantry lay in their
694 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

subtle dialectical understanding of the respective roles of the middle

peasants and the poor peasants. The task confronting them was to
raise the level of revolutionary consciousness of the poor peasantry,
a task that called for skill as well as much devoted effort. This was
necessary precisely because the poor peasants were initially the more
backward section but were, at the same time, potentially the more
revolutionary section of the peasantry. On the other hand, Mao and
his comrades had to take full account of the fact that it was the mid¬
dle peasant who was initially the more militant and his energies had
to be mobilized fully in carrying forward the intial thrust of the
agrarian revolution. Precisely because the middle peasants were not
a revolutionary class, the revolutionary initiative had to be main¬
tained independently of them by the revolutionary leadership, while
fully utilizing their energies, and without antagonizing them. This
initiative was then to be carried forward to a second stage of the
agrarian revolution by the newly aroused poor peasants. Mao and
his comrades showed, in practice, a masterly understanding of this
dialectic. Yet in some of Mao’s formal texts it seems to be missing
altogether. The poor peasant is depicted as spontaneously and
unconditionally playing a revolutionary role, a picture that obscures
the crucial role of the Communist Party as a party with a proletarian
revolutionary perspective, and of the Red Army which broke the
existing structure of power in the village and prevented the Chinese
revolution from degenerating into an ineffective peasant uprising.
It was during the period 1950-3, with the consolidation of
Communist rule, that a major wave of land reform set in motion a
new dynamic in the rural society of China and transformed the face
of the countryside. Embodying the lessons learned in the struggle, on
the eve of this final phase the Agrarian Reform Law and related
regulations were promulgated; these were explained in a report
made by Liu Shao-chi.34 While correctly emphasizing the need to
mobilize the poor peasants, we see here a concern that the party
cadres should appreciate the role of the middle peasants, especially
at an early stage of the proceedings. The importance that was at¬
tached to the middle peasant was made even more clear in the
speech of Teng Tse-hui, Director of Rural Work of the CCP, at the
Eighth Congress of the CCP in 1956. He said:
If we had confined our attention to relying on the poor peasants
and neglected to unite with the middle peasants, if we had not
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 695

firmly protected the interests of the middle peasants during the

land reform ... or, if we had not made efforts to draw the
representative figures among the middle peasants into the leader¬
ship of the peasants’ associations and cooperatives, then our
Party as well as the poor peasants would have been isolated ...35
A mere recognition of the role of the middle peasants, drawing
them initially into the leadership of the peasants’ associations and
fulfilling some of their immediate demands, might not in itself have
enabled the agrarian movement to develop further and enter the
next stage, the stage of proletarian revolution. The success of
Chinese agrarian policy lay precisely in following a dialectical
strategy, ensuring at each stage that conditions were created for
a further advance to the next stage.
The actual process by which this was achieved is described very
vividly in two studies by social anthropologists, whose findings
corroborate each other and are in turn corroborated by the general
conclusions drawn by Teng Tse-hui in his above-quoted speech.
One of the two studies is by David and Isabel Crook, pro-Commu-
nist Anglo-Saxons who work in China. The other is by an anti-
Communist Chinese, C.K. Yang, who works in the United States.36
Yang gives a picture of a village newly liberated by the Red Army.
'Their first task was to "set the masses in motion” in order to develop
a situation of “class struggle,” the basic step being to select ‘active
elements' amongst the peasants to serve as a core for the organiza¬
tion of the peasants’ association and the new “people's militia”.’
Yang shows that middle peasants were initially selected to head the
peasants’ association and the militia ‘primarily because they had
been active in village affairs.’ He argues, however, that ‘the selection
of these [middle peasants] to lead the vital new peasants’ association
primarily on the basis of their active part in village affairs appeared
to deviate from the official Communist policy of using only elements
from the poor peasants and agricultural laborers as the core of the
new village leadership.’37 This is precisely where Yang betrays his
lack of understanding of Communist policy. It would have been all
too easy for local party officials to nominate individual poor pea¬
sants to these posts and to issue directives in their name. But that
would not have brought into being a vigorous peasant movement in
which the poor peasants as a class could play an active role. Precisely
for this reason, the regional and local authorities in China were
696 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

under orders not to carry out land distribution by force or by mere

orders, but only in accordance with the decisions of the peasants
in each village and in conformity with local conditions. After
peasant associations were established, initially under middle peasant
leadership, Communist Party cadres encouraged poor peasants
to press their demands, both through their representatives on the
peasant associations as well as collectively through demonstrations,
such as one descri bed by Yang, when ‘noisy angry peasants appeared
at the door’ of the middle peasant head of the association with their
demands. It was by means of this process that the level of conscious¬
ness of the poor peasants was raised to a point where they could take
the initiative in local government. Otherwise the peasants’ associa¬
tions might have degenerated into merely an extension of the bureau¬
cratic apparatus.
This sequence reveals a crucial underlying condition. The energies
of the poor peasants were released only after the landlords and the
rich peasants were isolated (which happened as a result of the com¬
ing of the Red Army and the Communist leadership) and finally
eliminated as a class as a result of land reform. Only then was a new
stage in the local struggle opened up; only then did the poor peasant
leadership acquire a new perspective and a new confidence and
begin to come forward to displace the middle peasants. This process
is the vital process which transformed the agrarian upheaval in
China into a proletarian revolution. It would not have grown as it
did from its agrarian base but for the crucial role played by the Red
Army and the Chinese Communist Party in releasing the revolution¬
ary energies of the peasantry. Unfortunately, the mythology about
the revolutionary leadership the poor peasant is supposed to have
shown right from the beginning obscures this most important feature
of the Chinese Revolution, one made possible by its special condi¬
tions.
In India, to which we turn next, we find that even those peasant
uprisings in which, for a variety of reasons, the poor peasant had
played an important part could not develop into a proletarian re¬
volution.

Ill
The situation in India at the turn of the century was different
from that of China. In India, inter-imperialist rivalry had long ended
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 697

with the supremacy of the British. No warlords or private armies

roamed the Indian countryside. The rising nationalist movement,
with its modest constitutional aims, did not seek to arm itself as
Sun Yatsen’s Kuomintang had done. Until the 1920s the nationalist
movement stood isolated from the potent forces of the peasantry,
although there had been much peasant unrest and occasional
uprisings. Nor was there that crucial contact between the Indian
nationalists and the Soviet Union which played such an important
role in China, although the Russian Revolution had had a big
intellectual impact on the minds of many young nationalists such
as Nehru.
The radicalization of the nationalist movement in India just
before and especially after World War I increasingly began to draw
the masses into the movement. Gandhi, above all, who emulated
the simple life of the peasants, spoke their language, and engaged
in symbolic activities which captivated their imagination, played a
vital role in mobilizing peasant support for the Indian National
Congress. But if he made the peasant speak for the Congress, he did
little to make the Congress speak for the peasant. When in 1921,
during the first Civil Disobedience Movement, the peasant began to
extend the struggle against British imperialism to a struggle against
the landlord and the moneylender, Gandhi invoked the principle
of nonviolence to call an abrupt halt to the movement. He was not
prepared to do more than to back, at certain times, a call to the
peasantry to refuse to pay taxes, a slogan which evaded the issue
of class exploitation in the village but was strong enough to rouse
the pleasantry. But his most powerful appeal to the peasantry was
through the millennial concept of‘Ram Rajya’ (God’s Kingdom),
which would be established in India after the expulsion of the British.
Gandhi’s accent on the peasantry in his political language did,
however, lead many middle class intellectuals to ‘go to the people,’
very much in the spirit of Russian populism. The effect of this is
described by Nehru:
He sent us to the villages and the countryside hummed with
the activity of innumerable messengers of a new gospel of action.
The pleasant was shaken up and he began to emerge from his
quiescent shell. The effect on us was different, but equally far
reaching, for we saw for the first time, as it were, the villager ...
We learnt.38
698 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The growth of an urban working class movement, the new in¬

volvement with the peasantry, the ferment of new ideas—especially
the impact of the Russian Revolution—and the disillusionment with
the Congress after Gandhi's decision to halt the Civil Disobedience
Movements of 1921 and of 1930, each time precisely when the move¬
ment was gathering momentum, caused many middle class intellec¬
tuals to shift leftward in their outlook. In 1934 the Congress Socialist
Party was constituted within the parent organization. Several
streams of ideas had influenced the young Socialists, but in its
early stages the influence of Marxist thinking was strong. Although
the Socialists had begun to take an interest in the problems of the
peasantry, they concentrated on fighting within the Congress for
recognition of peasant demands rather than on mobilizing the
peasants themselves to fight for their demands. Isolated peasant
struggles did, however, develop from their local roots, and some
assumed major importance. But little progress had yet been made
to build up a class organization of the peasantry.
The Communist Party of India (a unified Communist Party
bagan to take shape only in the thirties) had, in the twenties, con¬
centrated mainly on organizing the industrial working class.
The peasant upheavals of the 1920s did not produce a fresh orienta¬
tion, as in China. During the Civil Disobedience Movement of the
thirties, when it could have developed peasant struggles, the Com¬
munist Party found itself crippled and isolated both because its main
leadership was in prison, following the Meerut conspiracy case, and
because the Comintern line at the time did not permit its participa¬
tion in a movement led by the Indian bourgeoisie. Thus the
Communist Party did very little work among the peasantry precisely
at a time of ferment because of the economic crisis of the thirties and
the impact of the Civil Disobedience Movement throughout the
country.
In 1936 the Congress Socialist Party decided to admit Commu¬
nists to membership. The coming together of the Left forces was
the background to the setting up in 1936 of the All-India Kisan
Congress, later renamed the All-Indian Kisan Sabha (Peasant
Congress). Two other groups of peasant leadership also joined
(and later contended along with the Socialists and the Communists
in the AIKS). These two groups, along with the Socialists, spoke
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 699

tor the rich peasant and the middle peasant and eschewed struggle
tor the special demands ol the poor peasants. Thus Professor Ranga,
one of their leaders, spoke of a ‘common front to be put up by both
the landed and landless kisans' and of the “common suffering of
all classes of the rural public.’39 The Socialist Acharya Narendra
Deva made this even more explicit in his presidential address to the
AIKS Conference in 1938:
Our task today is to carry the whole peasantry with us ....
If romantic conceptions were to shape our resolves and prompt
our actions, we would aspire to organise first the agricultural
laborer and the semi-proletariat of the villages, the most op¬
pressed and exploited rural class ... but if we do so ... the
peasant in the mass would, in that case, remain aloof from the
anti-imperialist struggle.40
If, for the Socialists in the 1930s, the postponement of the struggle
for the poor peasants was a matter of political expediency because of
the primacy, as they understood it, of the anti-imperialist struggle,
after independence the ideologues of Indian socialism abandoned
the struggle for the poor peasant altogether. Thus Ashoka Mehta,
who was Chairman of the Praja Socialist Party (heir to the Congress
Socialist Party) and its most influential ideologue, wrote:
Should the Socialists, as the Communists are wont to do
wherever they are in power, foment class conflict in villages even
after landlordism is removed and use the wide array of tactics
developed from Lenin to Mao Tse-tung to use one section against
the other? ... If that is the line chosen, democratic rights and
socialist values cannot survive. Then must come the whole
complex of communist paraphernalia: people's courts, liquida¬
tion of kulaks,-forced levies and the attendant violence. The
other alternative is to help the village to recover its community
solidarity and foster autonomy of the village community ....
The organic needs of village community cannot be met by
sharpening class conflicts or party rivalries.41
Such an outlook acquiesces in and perpetuates the exploitation of
the poor peasant by the rich peasant.
The Communists, on the other hand, did speak of setting up a
a separate organization of agricultural laborers, and in the Kisan
Sabha they put a special emphasis on the organization of the poor
peasantry. But in practice several factors stood in their way. First,
700 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

after the mid-1930s they were guided by the ‘popular front’ line
of the Comintern and were not inclined to force the issue with their
colleagues in the AIKS. Secondly, Indian Communists took an
essentially ‘Menshevik’ view of the revolutionary perspective in
India. In the ‘Joint Statement’ of eighteen Communist leaders
issued at the time of the Meerut trial, an important statement of
Communist policy, it was argued that because of an insufficiently
developed industrial base, an indefinite period would elapse between
a ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution,’ which was the immediate
objective, and an eventual ‘socialist revolution’ in India. In effect
this meant that the task of organizing the rural proletariat and the
poor peasants did not have any special urgency. Finally, the Com¬
munists, like the others, had to face the fact that the poor peasants,
desperately exploited and literally starving, were nevertheless too
strongly dominated by their masters to be able to emerge, in the
political context of the time, as an independent force.
Thus the main direction of Communist practice was similar to
that of the Socialists and their other colleagues in the Kisan
Sabha. They concentrated on agitation for broad peasant
demands, especially for security of tenure, debt relief, and cheaper
credit facilities, etc., and sought to influence government policy
rather than to bring about direct peasant action. This tradition
largely continues to this day. But the Communists did lead many
local struggles, some of which assumed proportions of major up¬
risings. We shall examine very briefly two major peasant uprisings,
particularly with a view to throwing light on the respective roles
of middle peasants and poor peasants.
The two major peasant uprisings occurred toward the end of
World War II and the early postwar years, with the Communist
Party providing the leadership in both. Apparently, they were both
movements of poor peasants and therefore could be cited as
examples that contradict the thesis advanced in this essay about the
role of middle peasants. However, a closer examination of the two
movements shows the crucial role played by middle peasants in each
case, both in providing their initial thrust and in their eventual
collapse. We must point out, however, that the published material
available on these movements at the moment of writing is rather
limited and insufficient for an adequate historical account. But their
salient features are clear enough to provide a basis for an interpre¬
tative essay such as this.
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 701

The first of these two movements was the Tebhaga movement,

which arose in North Bengal, including the districts of Dinajpur
and Rangpur in East Bengal and Jalpaiguri and Maldah in India;
it was concentrated mainly in the region which became East Pakistan.
The slogan of the movement was the demand for reduction of the
proprietors’ share of the crop from one-half to one-third. The
‘proprietors' of the land, the jotedars, were ‘occupancy tenants’
who possessed transferable and heritable rights to the land, and
paid a fixed money-rent to the zamindars, the great landlords.
Over the years, the fixed money-rent had become a relatively small
part of the value of the crop so that, in course of time, the jotedars
appropriated the largest share of the crop which they extracted from
the cultivators of the land, the sharecroppers. The latter were called
adhiars or bargadars', the number of landless in Bengal has been
variously estimated at between a fifth and a quarter of the rural
population. But the Tebhaga movement enveloped the bulk of the
peasantry in the areas in which it arose. The vast majority of the
Bengali peasantry consists of small peasant proprietors with tiny
holdings, many of whom supplement their incomes by share-
cropping. The bulk of them are under a heavy burden of debt,
the lenders generally being the rich jotedars; and any analysis of
class conflict in the Bengal countryside must especially take into
account the effects of usury on the situation of the middle peasants.
The situation of most of them is precarious, for they live from
hand to mouth and a crop failure or the death of a farm animal
may easily overwhelm them. Jotedars are only too eager to seize
their lands when they are unable to meet their liabilities. As Bhowani
Sen, a Communist theoretician and leader of the Tebhaga move¬
ment, expressed it: ‘The middle peasant of today is the share¬
cropper of tomorrow.’ And the peasant is painfully aware of this
prospect. The situation of the middle peasant in Bengal is far more
precarious than in many other regions. He was, therefore, only
too willing to throw in his lot with the sharecroppers in the struggle
against jotedars.
In fact, the movement did not begin as a movement of share¬
croppers: initially it was a movement of middle peasants in their
own behalf, and later drew in the sharecroppers. According to
Bhowani Sen, the origins of the peasant unrest which eventually
led to the Tebhaga movement can be traced back to 1939. The first
movement began in Dinajpur district and it was not about sharing
702 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the crop. It arose on the issue of the illegal imposts levied by the
jotedars and their manipulation of produce markets to the detri¬
ment of the small peasants. According to Bhowani Sen:
In this movement the jotedar's share of fifty-fifty was not
challenged. Only illegal exactions were challenged; and by their
successful struggle they put an end to them. A big victory. That
happened in 1939, against the background of the War and a
spontaneous rumor that the Government was going to collapse,
which gave confidence to the peasants. Prices had also begun
to rise. The movement was very big but did not develop further;
it subsided after winning some concessions. Things were then
quiet until 1943.42
In 1943, 3.5 million peasants perished in the great Bengal famine.
Bhowani Sen points out that because the rich jotedars were also the
principal hoarders of food grains, hatred against them was intense
and universal. He writes how he was struck by the contrast between
the acquiescence and resignation of the starving peasantry during
the famine, when millions died without a struggle, and the later mili¬
tancy of the same peasantry during the Tebhaga movement. But
he does not attempt to analyze the reasons for that difference,
merely ending with the comment that “the intolerable condition of
the adhiars (sharecroppers) awakened them to a new sense of solida¬
rity.’’43 Their condition could not have been more intolerable than
in 1943 during the famine, but the Tebhaga movement started later.
According to the CP it did not start (officially) until 1946, although
in fact the movement had been gathering momentum since 1945.44
Local Communist and Kisan Sabha cadres participated in these
early actions; but the Communist Party did not put its full weight
into the movement until the end of the war with Japan. When they
did so in 1946, the movement went forward with overwhelming
force.
Although the great famine found the peasantry unprepared and
unable to rise up against profiteers and food hoarders, and much
food had already vanished into the cities or military stocks, many of
the unique features of subsequent years which helped the rise of the
Tebhaga movement arose as a consequence of the famine. First, the
weak peasant organizations were disrupted and disorganized by the
overwhelming calamity of the famine. The Bengal peasant, used to
semi-starvation, was helpless in the face of the disaster and evidently
 PEASANTS >lND REVOLUTION 703

proved too weak to fight back. When the Kisan Sabha units recover¬
ed from the initial blow, they were quickly drawn into famine relief
work. It was only in the following years that a new determination
gave impetus to their organization. Secondly, large numbers of
students and people from the educated middle classes were drawn
into the voluntary relief work during the famine and into large-
scale medical relief in the following year. This brought about a new
contact between the peasantry and educated youth, provided social
education for both, and was a very important factor in creating new
cadres for the Communist Party and the Kisan Sabha. Third, a
factor of vital importance, was that, following the famine, the Kisan
Sabha renewed its drive against hoarders and black marketeers of
food with fresh vigor. Now its hands were stronger inasmuch as the
authorities also began to view the activities of the hoarders with a
fresh concern because of the magnitude of the famine as well as the
fact that in the spring and summer of 1944 the Japanese had in¬
vaded Assam and parts of East Bengal. The jotedar, who had the
food to hoard and sell on the black market, could no longer count
on the connivance of the authorities. The power of the jotedar
was thus seen by the peasant to crumble in the face of the Kisan
Sabha leadership, which gave the peasant a new confidence in that
leadership and in the possibility of fighting back against the jotedars.
An additional factor was that some tribal people, such as the
Hajangs of North Mymensingh, who have a long tradition of
militant struggle, participated in the movement. A further signi¬
ficant factor was that there developed a change in the bargaining
power of sharecroppers. During the famine more sharecroppers
had died than peasants of any other class, because they had the
least reserves with which to get through the famine. Apart from the
millions who died, large numbers had drifted to towns and cities
in search of work and food and did not come back. The reduction
in their numbers created a relative shortage of labor. The invasion
of Assam and parts of East Bengal by the Japanese and the conse¬
quent large-scale military operations in the region also opened up
alternative avenues of employment for sharecroppers. Their bar¬
gaining position vis-a-vis the jotedars was strengthened.
In the end, however, it was the role of middle peasants that was
crucial, according to the account given by Bhowani Sen. The move¬
ment had begun in Thakurgaon subdivision of Dinajpur district as
704 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

a middle peasant movement against the oppression of jotedars.

During the 1939-40 movement, these middle peasants had been
politicized and the CP had recruited many of them. The intervening
years had forged them into an effective political cadre. The sons of
middle peasants had little difficulty in persuading their people that
their fight against the jotedars could succeed only if they rallied the
entire rural poor. They espoused the cause of sharecroppers, which
was also their own cause, for many of them supplemented their
incomes by sharecropping. According to Bhowani Sen, most leading
members of Tebhaga committees were middle peasants and not
poor peasants, but all participated in the movement. It was difficult,
he said, to hold meetings of cadres because ‘everyone turned up.
Meetings were held in somebody’s house and everyone in the village
came to know, with the result that every meeting tended to become
a mass meeting.’
The crucial battles of the Tebhaga movement were fought at
harvest time, when the crop was shared out. But the fight did not
always end then because the sharecroppers had to resist attempts
by jotedars, with the support of the police, to deprive them of their
gains. This continuing struggle was led by peasant committees,
which became a power in the villages. They legitimized their autho¬
rity in the name of a ‘new Raj.’ As Bhowani Sen put it;
Peasants are not happy about doing anything illegal. When
they were told that a new authority existed, namely that of the
Kisan Sabha, they came to the Kisan Sabha and applied for a
Red Flag to be given to them so that they too could proclaim
the authority of the Kisan Sabha in their village and enforce
the demands of the Tebhaga movement. They even ‘arrested’
police parties in the name of the Kisan Sabha. They understood
that there was now a new Raj and no longer the old one.45
The peasant committees began to administer the affairs of the
village and to administer justice. The Muslim League government
of Bengal, with the connivance and support of the Congress, tried
to repress the movement and eventually succeeded. On the other
hand, the League was also compelled to make the gesture of intro¬
ducing a bill in the Provincial Legislature in January 1947 to legalize
the two-thirds share for the sharecroppers. The bill did not become
law; the jotedars, through both the Congress and the Muslim
League, fought back.
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 705

By the summer of 1947 the movement collapsed. Bhowani Sen

called to the peasants not to launch direct action that year, pleading
that after independence the new governments of India and Pakistan
were to be given an opportunity to fulfil their pledges to the people.
It was clear to all that those promises would not be fulfiled. Bhowani
Sen’s call merely formalized the fact that the Tebhaga movement,
which he described as ‘one of the biggest mass movements of our
time,’ had come to an end.
In his article, Bhowani Sen, with much candor and political cou¬
rage, lists the ‘Main Failings of the Leadership’ in the movement.
In his self-criticism he argues that the failure of the movement was
due to its inability to win the support of the ‘middle class’ and the
working class. Working class ‘support’ could have been little more
than a gesture of solidarity, for its practical contribution under the
circumstances of the time could not have amounted to much. His
remarks about antagonizing the ‘middle class’ are significant,
for both in the beginnings of the movement, as well as in its ultimate
collapse, the role of the middle peasants proved to be crucial.
Concerning the role of middle peasants, Bhowani Sen wrote:
Many of them are poor and petty jotedars who, while they
recognise that the system is bad, feel that they would be done for
if the system is liquidated without at the same time opening
other avenues for their employment ... We should have advised
the adhiars (sharecroppers) to exempt petty jotedars from the
operation of Tebhaga and concentrated against the richest and
the biggest.46
As it stands, this argument is somewhat unrealistic. What Sen
says about the plight-of the small jotedar is only too true. But if
the movement had been strong enough to force the biggest jotedars
to accept a one-third share of the crop, it would have been very
difficult indeed to dissuade the sharecroppers who tilled the lands
of small jotedars from demanding the same. However, Bhowani
Sen’s argument does point to the narrow base of the movement;
it failed to generate slogans that could have sustained the active
participation of middle peasants who had not been unsympathetic
to the movement insofar as it had challenged the power of the land¬
lords and rich peasants.
Two major changes in the situation also made it no longer possible
for the Tebhaga movement to continue. First, with the end of the
706 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

war with Japan, the authorities were no longer interested in support¬

ing the anti-hoarding drives which had weakened and demoralized
the jotedars, The full force of the government’s machinery of re¬
pression was turned on the peasantry; and the movement, with its
limited class base in the village, was not able to fight back effectively.
Second, a deciding factor in the situation was that whereas the pea¬
santry in the area in which the Tebhaga movement arose, both
jotedars as well as sharecroppers, were mostly Muslim, the cadres
of the Communist Party and of the Tebhaga movement were mostly
Hindu. With the approach of independence, the full force of Muslim
nationalism was sweeping through Bengal, as through other areas
with a Muslim majority in India. This tended to isolate the Hindu
cadres. With the establishment of Pakistan, most of the Hindu
cadres went over to India and the movement was virtually decapi¬
tated.
The other great peasant uprising in India since the war was the
Telangana movement. In character and political objectives, it was
the most revolutionary peasant movement that has yet arisen in
India. The movement began rather modestly in 1946 in the Nal-
gonda district of Hyderabad state, which was ruled by the Nizam
under British suzerainty. The movement then spread to the Warran-
gal and Bidar districts of the state. The Hyderabad state was
dominated by a backward, oppressive, and ruthless aristocracy. The
initial modest aims of the Telangana movement reflected the broad
demands of the whole of the peasantry against illegal and excessive
exactions of the feudal lords, the Deshmukhs and the Nawabs. One
of the most powerful slogans of the movement was the demand that
all peasant debts be written off.
The repression let loose by the feudal lords and their government
was met by armed resistance by the peasantry. The movement then
entered a new revolutionary stage. Local Communists had parti¬
cipated in it vigorously, although it did not receive the official
sanction of the Communist leadership until later. By the time of the
Second Congress of the CPI in March 1948, the Telangana move¬
ment had already entered its revolutionary phase and was one of
the factors that influenced the leftward swing in the Communist
Party line at the Congress.
By 1947, the Telangana movement had a guerrilla army of about
5,000. The peasants killed or drove out the landlords and the local
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 707

bureaucrats, and seized and redistributed the land. They established

a government of peasant ‘Soviets’ which were regionally integrated
into a central organization. Peasant rule was established in an
area of 15,000 square miles with a population of four million. The
movement of the armed peasantry continued until 1950; it was not
finally crushed until the following year. Today the area remains one
of the political strongholds of the Communist Party.
There are several special factors in the Telangana situation which
at the time favored the rise of a militant peasant movement and its
subsequent transformation into a revolutionary movement. The
political situation in Telangana in 1946 provided the right political
climate for such a movement. With the independence of India in
sight, the future of the Hyderabad state and its place in the Indian
Union became a dominant political issue in the state. The nationalist
movements in the subcontinent of India had looked to the eventual
absorption of the ‘princely states’ in free India or Pakistan, as the
case may be. Hyderabad was the largest and the richest of them all.
The majority of the population, which was Hindu, as well as its
geography, favored Hyderabad’s union with India. The feudal
aristocracy, both Hindu as well as Muslim, favored the idea of an
independent Hyderabad. So did the small Muslim riiiddle class,
which had enjoyed a favored position and had fears about its
future in the Indian Union. They organized armed bands, called
Razakars, to fight for an independent Hyderabad under the Nizam.
Kasim Rizvi, leader of the Razakars, was looked down upon by the
feudal lords, who considered him to be an upstart, but they used the
Razakars against the peasants when the movement arose. The
leadership of the Telangana movement, in its first stages, had sup¬
ported the idea of Hyderabad’s union with India; the Nizam’s
rule and the idea of an independent Hyderabad were identified
with the feudal aristocracy of the state. The peasant movement at
that stage thus drew great strength from the Indian nationalist
upsurge in the state. But later, when union with India seemed to be
inevitable and it became clear that the government of India would
deploy far larger and more effective forces against them, the Telan¬
gana leadership, in panic, switched their political allegiance to the
support of the Nizam and the demand for an independent Hydera¬
bad. The Communist Party in Hyderabad was legalized for the
first time, and Communists and Razakars fought together against
708 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Indian troops. Now the movement was aligned with the forces which
it had fought in the past, and it was running counter to the nationa¬
list sentiment. This created a great deal of political confusion and
split the Communist leadership of the movement. Nationalist
sentiment, a powerful factor in the rise of the Telangana movement,
thus became an important factor leading to its eventual downfall.
Another factor which contributed to the initial success of the
movement was that the feudal aristocracy was demoralized by the
fact that union with India seemed inevitable, despite its desperate
bid for autonomy. The state apparatus was corrupt and inefficient.
On the other hand, there was general political unrest. The peasant
movement, directed against the ruling aristocracy, drew much popu¬
lar support and was able to withstand repression. But later, con¬
fronted with a more powerful army of India, it also lost popular
support.
The movement developed its initial momentum from the fact that
its demands were broad-based and it drew in the middle peasant as
well as the poor peasant. Later, when the peasant ‘Soviets’ were
established and land was redistributed, conflicts of interest between
different sections of the peasantry came to the surface. Some Com¬
munists argue that this was a hasty and ill-thought-out policy which
the Telangana leadership sought to impose from above, instead of
preparing the ground carefully and helping the peasantry to ad¬
vance the movement from below. The disruption of their peasant
base proved disastrous when they were under heavy military attack.
Among the special factors which favored the rise of the Telangana
movement are those which favored the guerrilla struggle. Telangana
is a very poor area, much of it covered by thorny scrub and jungle,
interspersed with relatively more prosperous settlements in a
few favored basins with tank irrigation. It also has a substantial
tribal population, among whom there is a greater sense of solidarity
and fighting spirit than there is among the stratified peasant
societies in frontier areas. Thus when an attempt was made in 1948
to extend the movement to the neighboring rich delta region of
Andhra, it failed. However it should be added that this failure
was due also to the fact that by that time the movement had moved
away from its broad slogans, had become sectarian, and thus lost
the support of the middle peasant. By that time the movement was
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 709

also running counter to the nationalist sentiment on the Hyderabad

issue.
The Tebhaga and the Telangana movements had both risen from
local roots rather than from any initiatives by the Communist
Party, although the Communists provided the leadership and played
vital role in both. After the Communist Party Congress of 1948,
the party was committed to launching insurrectionary forms of
struggle but was not able to organize any movement on the scale
of the Tebhaga or Telangana movements. Between 1948 and 1952
the Communist Party was banned in many states. On the peasant
front, as on other fronts, party workers were subjected to severe
repression. Most AIKS workers were either in jail or underground
during this period, and the organization virtually ceased to function.
Despite that, local peasant unrest continued to manifest itself
throughout India; but it remained localized and limited in scope.
It was clear that peasant insurrections could not be launched merely
by party decisions, but required certain preconditions before they
could develop.
In the period that followed 1952, the Kisan Sabha and the Com¬
munist Party moved away from the idea of direct peasant action
except for demonstrations and agitation. Instead, they put the em¬
phasis on exerting pressure on the Congress government for imple¬
menting effective land reforms and on parliamentary political
struggle for the Communist Party, which, if brought to power,
would itself reform. At the Congress of the Communist Party
in 1958 at Amritsar, the party adopted a program of‘peaceful road to
socialism’; at the Congress in 1961 at Vijaywada it proposed the
concept of ‘national democracy as the most suitable form to solve
the problems of national regeneration and social progress along the
noncapitalist path of development.’ Thus the CPI cow seeks to
replace the present government of'bourgeois democracy in which the
leadership of the national bourgeoisie is decisive’ by a government
of national democracy. The latter is to be distinguished also from
‘people's democracy in which the leadership of the working class
is decisive, that leadership having won the support of the over¬
whelming majority of the people.’ National democracy is distin¬
guished from these two other concepts by the fact that in it ‘the
proletariat shares power with the national bourgeoisie.’47 This
conception does not appear to be very different from that of the
710 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Praja Socialist Party, which is also prepared to share power with the
Congress in the hope of consolidating the Congress’s 'left wing.'
The fundamental differences between the Praja Socialist Party
and the Communists now seem to lie almost entirely in the field
of international relations rather than in domestic policy. The
effect of this realignment of political forces has been to limit the
peasant movement to agitation about government policies instead
of undertaking any direct action.
Both the Communists and the Socialists are largely in agreement
with the principles of land reform adopted by the Congress. Their
main criticism is directed at the manner of its implementation,
which defeats its objectives. The Report of the Congress Land
Reform Committee, published in 1949, is a radiFal document. It
took as its guiding principles the elimination of exploitation and
giving the land back to the tiller. It sought to establish independent
peasant landholdings and, on that basis, to develop a cooperative
system of agriculture. That document, however, reflected the views
of the Congress’s ‘left wing’ rather than those of the main body,
much less the views of the various state governments which were
to undertake the land reforms. The character of the land reforms,
as implemented rather unevenly in the various states over the last
decade, is very different indeed from the recommendations of the
Agrarian Reforms Committee. The actual result of the land reform
is the subject of some controversy. The Chinese view48 is that it
has ‘abolished only the political privileges of some of the local
feudal princes and zamindari (tax farming) privileges of some
landlords,’ but that ‘the Indian feudal land system as a whole
was preserved.’ Such a view underestimates the profound changes
which have in fact taken place in the Indian agrarian economy over
the last decade. Land reform in the different states of India has,
in varying degrees, eliminated or limited exploitation by noncultivat¬
ing landlords and has encouraged the growth of capitalist farming.
The changes in the different states are too numerous and complex
to permit an attempt to present them here even in outline. Moreover,
although numerous studies have examined the changes in detail,
an overall statistical picture of the present situation is still not
available. Sulekh Gupta points to the fact that, in 1953-4, 75 percent
of the peasant households operated holdings of less than 5 acres.
On the other hand, 65 percent of the land was farmed by 13 percent
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 71 1

of the households; of the latter, at the top, 3.6 percent of the

households possessed 36 percent of the land.49 Gupta points to
the increasing disparity between the growing prosperity of capitalist
agriculture and the stagnation and bankruptcy of the small peasant
economy, in which the vast mass of the peasantry live in increasing
poverty. Gupta perhaps overestimates the extent of the capitalist
sector. This picture is qualified by Bhowani Sen, who, while re¬
cognizing the trend toward the growth of the capitalist sector, also
points out that ‘the upper limit of employment in India’s capitalist
cultivation is 16 percent of the rural labor force (40 percent of the
agricultural workers—the rural proletariat).’50 The many survivals
of the old system are pointed out by Sen, as well as by Kotovsky and
Daniel Thorner, whose works provide a very useful survey of the
land reforms.51 The existence of survivals of the old system is also
indicated by the continued emphasis in official documents, such
as the Mid-Term Appraisal Report on the Third Five-Year Plan,
on such questions as the problems of tenancy reform, security of
tenure, regulation of rents, etc.52
Two aspects of land reform have a direct bearing on the question
of political mobilization of the peasantry. First, an upper stratum
of tenants was able to acquire ownership of land and have become
employers of labor. Kotovsky argues: ‘Before the reforms, this
stratum of tenants energetically advocated abolition of the zamindari
system; it played an important role in the peasant movement....
After the reforms were put through it withdrew from active peasant
movement.’53 Second, one of the principal results of the land reform
has been the mass eviction of tenants, on an unprecedented scale,
by landowners taking over land for ‘self-cultivation.’ These peasants,
deprived of their land and livelihood, might have been expected to
have become an explosive force in the countryside. The issue did
greatly agitate some local Kisan Sabhas and provoke some local
demonstrations, but it did not develop into a militant movement.
The peasants did not launch direct action to resist eviction. Indeed,
from 1955 to 1958, when the land reforms were in progress, ‘there
was a temporary decline of the organized peasant movement.’54
In criticizing the Congress land reform, the Communist Party has
criticized its bureaucratic method of implementation, which resulted
in widespread evasion. The party advocated instead the implementa¬
tion of the land reform through peasant committees. But their
712 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

appeal was evidently directed only toward the Congress govern¬

ment, for they took no steps to organize direct action by the peasants
for this purpose.
The prospect that is being held out to the Indian peasantry today
by the Communist Party of India is one of ‘revolution from above’
rather than ‘revolution from below.’ Although the CPI distinguishes
between the ‘peaceful realization of the socialist revolution’ and
‘the parliamentary way of the reformist conception,’ it is clear
that its commitment to a constitutional struggle leaves it with
few alternatives of struggle beyond agitation against the existing
Congress government to mobilize electoral support. On the question
of the ruling classes relinquishing power, the CPI takes this view:
‘Everything will depend on whether the force of peaceful mass
struggle, isolating the ruling classes, compels them to surrender
or whether they hit back with their armed might.... The class
aspect (of the struggle) consists in exposure of capitalism.. .show¬
ing how the class aspirations of the national bourgeoisie conflict
with the national aspirations.’55
As far as the peasant masses are concerned, however, the policy
of agitation and ‘exposure’ of the Congress government has met
with little success and has failed to mobilize a majority of peasant
votes for the Left in the several elections that have been held in the
decade and a half since independence. Nor has the agitational
struggle generated a force which may isolate the ruling classes and
compel them to surrender. This has been the situation, notwith¬
standing the fact that the Communist Party has, from time to time,
launched massive demonstrations in towns and in the countryside
on such issues as rising prices and tax relief. Thus, one of the most
successful mass demonstrations launched by the Kisan Sabhas in
recent years was the 1959 struggle in the Punjab against the ‘Better¬
ment Levy,’ a tax that was levied on the enchanced value of land
which has benefited from new irrigation. But if the Kisan Sabhas
have had some success in launching such ‘mass struggles,’ they
have had little success in launching any class struggles of the ex¬
ploited peasantry. Moreover, success in such struggle, involving
the entire peasantry, has not brought in its wake any substantial
increase in electoral support. The reasons for this lie in the power
relationships which operate in the rural society and in the structural
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 713

conditions governing the political behavior of the peasantry; these

cannot be changed merely by an ‘exposure’ of the ruling Congress
Party.
The pattern of political behavior of the peasantry is based on
factions that are vertically integrated segments of the rural society,
dominated by landlords and rich peasants at the top, and with poor
peasants and landless laborers, who are economically dependent on
them, at the bottom. Among the exploited sections of the peasantry
there is little or no class solidarity. They stand divided among them¬
selves by their allegiance to their factions, led by their masters.
Political initiative thus rests with faction leaders, who are owners of
land and have power and prestige in the village society. They are
often engaged in political competition (even conflict) among them¬
selves in pursuit of power and prestige in the society. The dominating
factions, who by virtue of their wealth have the largest following,
back the party in power and in turn receive many reciprocal bene¬
fits. The opposition generally finds allies in factions of middle
peasants who are relatively independent of the landlords but often
find themselves in conflict with them. Many factors enter into the
factional picture; kinship, neighborhood ties (or conflicts), and
caste alignments affect the allegiance of particular peasants to one
faction or another.56 But broadly speaking, it does appear that in
one group of factions the predominant characteristic is that of the
relationship between masters and their dependents, while other
factions are those of independent smallholders. The number of
votes that the Left can hope to mobilize depends primarily not
on the amount of agitation it conducts (although this must affect
the situation partly), but on the relative balance of the factions.
Above all, the decisive question here is that of winning over the
votes of the large number of poor peasants and landless laborers
who are still dominated by their masters. This cannot be done unless
the factional structure is broken, for the allegiance of the poor
peasants and the farm laborers to their masters is not merely due
to subjective factors such as their ‘backward mentality,’ etc. It is
based on the objective fact of their dependence on their masters
for their continued livelihood. Thus it seems hardly likely, in
the absence of any direct action by the peasantry or any action by a
government which might break the economic power of the land-
714 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

lords and rich peasants, that effective electoral support can be

won by the Left. This is.a paradox of the parliamentary way, and
a dilemma for a party which renounces direct action.
We have raised a number of questions in the above analysis.
There is, however, one theme which runs through our discussion:
the respective roles of the middle peasants, the independent peasant
smallholders, on the one hand, and the various categories of poor
peasants on the other.
We have found that the poor peasants are initially the least
militant class of the peasantry. Their initial backwardness is
sometirpes explained in purely subjective terms, such as. servile
habits ingrained in the peasant mind over centuries or the backward
mentality of the peasant, etc. But in fact we find that when certain
conditions appear, the peasants are very quickly liberated from
such a servile mentality. Clearly, the subjective backwardness of
the peasantry is rooted in objective factors. There is a fundamental
difference between the situation of the poor peasant and that of the
industrial worker. The latter enjoys a relative anonymity in his
employment and a job mobility which gives him much strength
in conducting the class struggle. (Where the industrial worker’s
relative independence is reduced by such devices as tied housing,
etc., his militancy is also undermined.) In the case of the poor
peasant, the situation is much more difficult. He finds himself
and his- family totally dependent upon his master for their liveli¬
hood. When the pressure of population is great, as in India and
China, no machinery of coercion is needed by the landlords to
keep him down. Economic competition suffices. The poor peasant
is thankful to his master, a benefactor who gives him land to
cultivate as a tenant or gives him a job as laborer.' He looks to his
master for help in times of crisis. The master responds paternalisti-
cally; he must keep alive the animal on whose labor he thrives.
When, in extreme and exceptional cases, the exploitation and
oppression are carried beyond the point of human endurance, the
peasant may be goaded into killing his master for this departure
from the paternalistic norm, but he is unable to rise, by himself,
against the system. His dependence on his master thus undergoes
a paternalistic mystification and he identifies with his master.
This backwardness of the poor peasant, rooted as it is in objective
dependence, is only a relative and not an absolute condition. In
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 71 5

a revolutionary situation, when anti-landlord and anti-rich peasant

sentiment is built up by, say, the militancy of middle peasants, his
morale is raised and he is more ready to respond to calls to action.
His revolutionary energy is set in motion. When the objective
preconditions are realized, the poor peasant is a potentially revolu¬
tionary force. But the inherent weakness in his situation renders
him more open to intimidation, and setbacks can easily demoralize
him. He finally and irrevocably takes the road to revolution only
when he is shown in practice that the power of his master can be
irrevocably broken; then the possibility of an alternative mode
of existence becomes real to him.
The middle peasants, on the other hand, are initially the most
militant element of the peasantry, and they can be a powerful
ally of the proletarian movement in the countryside, especially in
generating the initial impetus of the peasant revolution. But this
social perspective is limited by their class position. When the
movement in the countryside advances to a revolutionary stage,
they may move away from the revolutionary movement unless their
fears are allayed and they are drawn into a process of cooperative
endeavor.
Our hypothesis thus reverses the sequence suggested in Maoist
texts—although it is in accord with Maoist practice! It is not the
poor peasant who is initially the leading and main force of the
peasant revolution, with the middle peasant coming in only later
when the success of the movement is guaranteed, but precisely the
nature of the conditions required to mobilize the poor peasants
must be vital to the formulation of a correct strategy vis-a-vis the
peasantry.
Finally, we would like to conclude by emphasizing again that
our conclusions are purely tentative and are intended to open up a
discussion of the problems by raising several questions rather than
suggesting cut-and-dried answers. The answers will no doubt be
forthcoming from a fresh spirit of inquiry and, above all, from
actual experience; and they will be proved by the success of those
who lead the peasant struggle.
71 6 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

References

1 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1963), p. 48.
2 Since the initial publication of this article, these hypotheses have been corrobora¬
ted by the findings of various writers. They have been reaffirmed, in particular,
by Eric Wolf in his article, ‘On Peasant Rebellions,' in UNESCO’s International
Social Science Journal, Vol. XXI, No. 2, 1969, and reprinted in T. Shanin (ed.).
Peasants and Peasant Societies (London, 1971). Wolf has corroborated the
theses in the light of the experiences of a number of other countries in his
Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, 1969.
3 In the present version of this article, I have slightly elaborated, in this and the
two following paragraphs, on my original statement so as to clarify this
important issue which has been misunderstood by some—for example by
Saghir Ahmad, whose article appears elsewhere in this volume. It is essential
to emphasize that, in defining social classes, Marxists do not participate in the
apparent consensus among ‘social scientists' which Saghir Ahmad assumes;
for the Marxist concept, unlike that of academic sociology, is a ‘structural’
concept. Secondly, Saghir Ahmad’s redefinition of the terms ‘rich peasants’
and ‘poor peasants,’ which departs, for example, from the usage adopted by
Lenin or Mao, illustrates the looseness of the terminology, which lends itself
to such arbitrary and idiosyncratic redefinitions. If everyone were to choose
his own definition, meaningful debate would become impossible and we would
have semantic chaos.
4 See Hamza Alavi, ‘Elite Farmer Strategy and Regional Disparities in West
Pakistan,’ in R.D. Stevens. H.A. Alavi, and P. Bertocci (eds.), Rural Development
in Pakistan (to be published).
5 George Lichtheim, Marxism, a Historical and Critical Study (London, 1961),
p. 333.
6 V.I. Lenin, Selected Works. Vol. II (Moscow, 1947). pp. 456-7.
7 For a fuller picture readers should consult the following works: Lenin, The
Development of Capitalism in Russia (Moscow. 1956); G.T. Robinson, Rural
Russia Under the Old Regime (New York, 1949); and Sir John Maynard,
The Russian Peasant (New York, 1962).
8 See J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Moscow, 1953), pp. 213-36.
9 Marx and Engels, Preface to the Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto,
in Selected Works (London, 1950), Vol. I, p. 24.
10 Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1961), Vol. IV, p. 424.
11 Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 444.
12 Robinson, op. cit., pp. 206-7.
13 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 427.
14 See ‘The Agrarian Program of Russian Social Democracy’ and ‘Reply to
Criticism of Our Draft Program,’ ibid., Vol. VI, pp. 109-50, 438-53.
15 Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 231.
16 Robinson, op. cit., p. 161.
17 Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 37.
18 Sir John Maynard, Russia in Flux (New York, 1962), p. 332.
19 Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 414-7.
20 Ibid., p. 647.
21 Jan Degras, The Communist International—Documents (London, 1960), Vol.
II, p. 336.
 PEASANTS AND REVOLUTION 71 7

22 Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (London, 1963), p. 157.

23 Ho Kan-chih, A History of the Modern Chinese Revolution (Peking 1959)
p.100.
24 The article included in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (London, 1955),
as ‘Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society,’ and dated March 1926, is a revised
and consolidated version of two articles which appeared in Chung-Kuo Nung-
min in January and February 1926. Much of value in the original article has
been lost in the revised version. Our references are to the translation of the
original article, as given by Stuart Schram in The Political Thought of Mao
Tse-tung (New York, 1963), pp. 172-7.
25 Ralph Miliband and John Saville (eds.),- The Socialist Register 1964 (Monthly
Review Press, New York, 1964), p. 19.
26 Schram, op. cit., pp. 28 and 33.
27 Ho Kan-chih, op. cit., p. 139.
28 The percentage figures of the various classes of the Chinese peasantry are
derived from the data given by Mao Tse-tung in the original article referred
to in note 25.
29 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works (London, 1955), p. 23.
30 Schram, op. cit., p. 173.
31 Ibid., p. 88. (Emphasis added).
32 Martin C. Yang, A Chinese Village (London, 1947), p. 143.
33 See Chao Kuo-chun, Agrarian Policy of the Chinese Communist Party (London,
1960).
34 The Agrarian Reform Law of the People's Republic of China (Peking, 1950).
35 Eighth National Congress of the CCP. Vol. Ill (Peking, 1956), pp. 182-3.
(Emphasis added).
36 David and Isabel Crook, Revolution in a Chinese Village (London, 1959); C.
K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge, Mass ,
1959).
37 C.K. Yang, op. cit., pp. 143-5.
38 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (London, 1956), p. 365.
39 N.G. Ranga, Revolutionary Peasants (New Delhi, 1949), p. 89.
40 Acharya Narendra Deva, Socialism and the National Revolution (Bombay,
1946). pp. 46-7.
41 Asoka Mehta, Studies in Asian Socialism (Bombay,, 1959), pp. 213-5.
42 Bhowani Sen, “The Tebhaga Movement in Bengal,” Communist, September
1947, p. 130.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., pp. 124 ff.; also All India Kisan Sabha. Draft Report for 1944-5 (Bombay,
1945), pp. 9-13.
45 Bhowani Sen, op. cit., p. 130.
46 Ibid.
47 G. Adhikari, ‘The Problem of the Non-Capitalist Path of Development of
India and the State of National Democracy,' World Marxist Review, November
1964.
48 ‘More on the Philosophy of Pandit Nehru,’ People's Daily, October 27, 1962.
49 Sulekh Gupta, ‘New Trends of Growth in Indian Agriculture,’ Seminar (New
Delhi), No. 38, October 1962.
50 Bhowani Sen, Evolution of Agrarian Relations in India (New Delhi, 1962).
51 G. Kotovsky, Agrarian Reforms in India (New Delhi, 1964); Daniel Thomer,
The Agrarian Prospect in India (Delhi, 1956) and Land and Labour in India
(London, 1962).
71 8 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

52 Government of India, Planning Commission, The Third Plan, Mid-term Ap¬

praisal (Delhi, 1963).
53 Kotovsky, opv cit., p. 80.
54 Ibid., p. 82.
55 Adhikari, op. cit., p. 39. (Emphasis added).
56 For reasons of space we are unable to enlarge on this question, which deserves
more attention than it has received so far from the Left. The following works
provide a useful introduction to this subject: Ralph Nicholas, ’Village Factions
and Political Parties in Rural West Bengal,’ Journal of Commonwealth Political
Studies, November 1963; Oscar Lewis, Village Life in Northern India-(Crbana,
III, 1958), Chapter IV; T.O. Beidelman, A Comparative Analysis of the Hindu
Jajmani System (New York, 1959); and Frederick Barth, Political Leadership
Among Swat Pathans (London, 1959). Since the original publication of this
article, we have analyzed this question further. See Hamza Alavi, ‘Politics
of Dependence: A Village in West Punjab,’ South Asian Review, January 1971,
in which we commented on Nicholas’ ‘pluralist’ thesis.

V
 36 Peasant Resistance and Revolt in
South India

Kathleen Gough

With a third of the world socialist, and guerrilla movements

active in more than a dozen countries, some social scientists in
the West have turned their attention to the role of peasants in
revolution.1 This article stems from work by Hamza Alavi, Eric
Wolf, and A.G. Frank.2 It tries to supplement Alavi’s analysis of
peasant revolts in two areas of India—Telengana and Bengal—
with an account of some peasant actions in the northern part of
the state of Kerala, with references for purposes of comparison
to Tanjore, a district in southeast Madras.
The questions of principal concern are, first: is rural class struggle
endemic in these South Indian regions, or is it engendered by self-
interested political parties, especially the communists? Second:
in modem peasant insurrections, what have been the respective
roles of landlords, rich peasants, middle and poor peasants, and
landless labourers? Third: what is the potential for future peasant
revolt?
Kerala has a large number of types of land tenure, which vary,
moreover, as between Malabar, Cochin, and Travancore. The
most common traditional tenure has been ‘kanam’, in which the
tenant surrenders a fixed rent, often about a third of the crop, to
the landlord, in addition to a cash renewal fee every twelve years.
In pre-British times this ‘superior’ tenure was confined to Nayars
and other high caste Hindus of similar rank and to relatively high
ranking Muslims and Christians. The most common 'inferior’
tenure is ‘veoimpattam’, in which the tenant pays a fixed rent,
usually amounting to about two-thirds of the net produce, to the
landlord or the ‘kanam’ tenant, whichever is immediately above

Reproduced from ‘Pacific Affairs', Vol. XLI. No. 1, 1968-9. (University of British
Columbia), pp. 526-44.
720 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

him. ‘Verumpattam’ and similar tenures have traditionally been

accorded mainly to members of the large, relatively low ranking
cultivating caste of Tiyyars or Iravas; very seldom to the lowest,
‘Untouchable’ castes such as Pulayas and Parayas, almost all of
whom are landless labourers.
In Tanjore the most common types of tenure have been ‘kuthakai’,
in which the tenant traditionally paid a fixed rent usually amounting
to about three to four-fifths of his net produce, and ‘varam’, an
older, share-cropping tenure in which the tenant retained one-
fifth of his net produce each year, regardless of the size of his
crop.3
This analysis cuts somewhat cavalierly through the details of
land tenure to apply Mao Tse-tung’s categories, which are useful
for the sake of comparison with other areas. Thus, in 1933 Mao
analyzed the classes in rural Chinese society as follows:
A landlord is a person who possesses land, who does not engage
in labour himself or merely takes part in labour as a supple¬
mentary source of income, and who lives by exploiting the
. peasants. The landlord’s exploitation chiefly assumes the form
of collecting land rent; besides that, he may also lend money,
hire labour, or engage in industrial or commercial enterprise.
(2) The rich peasant as a rule possesses land. But there are some
who possess part of the land they farm and rent the remainder....
The rich peasant as a rule possesses comparatively abundant
means of production and liquid capital, engages in labour him¬
self, but regularly relies on exploitation for a part or the major
part of his income. The exploitation the rich peasant practises
is chiefly that of hired labour. In addition, he may also let a
part of his land for rent, lend money, or engage in industrial
or commercial enterprise. (3) In many cases the middle peasant
possesses land. In some cases he possesses no land at all and
rents all the land he farms.... The middle peasant relies wholly
or mainly on his own labour as the source of his income. As
a rule he does not exploit other people; in many cases he is
even exploited by other people and has to pay a small amount
of land rent and interest on loans.... The middle peasant as
a rule does not sell his labour power. (4) In some cases the poor
peasant possesses a part of the land he farms.. .in other cases
he possesses no land at all, but only an incomplete set of instru-
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 721

ments. As a rule the poor peasant has to rent land for cultiva¬
tion ... While the middle peasant need not sell his labour power,
the poor peasant has to sell a small part of his—this is the principal
criterion for distinguishing the middle peasant from the poor
peasant. (5) The worker (including the farm labourer) as a rule
does not possess any land or implements.... A worker makes
his living wholly or mainly by selling his labour power.4
Alavi distinguishes three sectors of the rural economy in India.
In the first sector, land is owned by landlords who do not themselves
undertake cultivation. They rent land to poor peasants, mainly
sharecroppers. In the second sector are independent small-holders
or middle peasants, who own the land they cultivate and do not
exploit the labour of others. In the third sector, land is owned by
capitalist farmers or rich peasants, who manage the land themselves
and employ hired labour. Alavi’s argument is that it was the in¬
dependent middle peasant who, in Russia and China, played the
most active role in the early stages of revolution; the poor peasants,
both more backward and potentially more militant, were drawn
in along with the middle peasants in later stages. In India, he sees
the poor peasants as having been most active in the Bengal and
Telengana movements of 1946-8; he attributes their failure in
part to a failure to draw the middle peasant into the struggle.
This analysis differs from Alavi’s on two counts, First, the situa¬
tion in Kerala and Tanjore do not allow a clear distinction between
the ‘landlord’ and the ‘capitalist’ sectors, nor can either of them
be separated from the sector of the middle peasant. In both regions
there has been, over the past hundred years, a gradual increase in
the proportions of landlords and rich peasants who employ hired
labour, and in the proportions of hired labourers to poor and middle
peasants. This tendency has not declined, and may even have been
stepped up. with the land reforms of the past decade. At least since
the late nineteenth century, however, it has been common for
both landlords ^nd rich peasants to lease out portions of their
lands to poor peasants and to have other portions cultivated by
labourers. U is, moreover, common in these regions for both rich
and middle peasants to lease at least part of their land from land¬
lords, a fact which makes it virtually impossible to separate Alavi s
three ‘sectors’. The attempt to do so probably stems from a ‘dual
economy’ (in this case ‘triple economy’) thesis which sees the
722 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

capitalist and precapitalist (sometimes called ‘feudal’) sectors of

the economy as existing side by side, with the former gradually
overtaking the latter. But while some ‘features’ of pre-capitalisl
relations (payments in kind, debt-labour, special levies, etc.),
may undoubtedly continue to exist here and there in rural India the
system as a whole has been a colonial capitalist system, incorporat¬
ed into, and affected by, the fluctuations of world markets, since
at least the last third of the nineteenth century.
The distinction between landlords and rich peasants rests, there¬
fore, not on whether tenants or hired labourers are engaged, al¬
though it is true that rich peasants tend to have most of their land
cultivated by labourers, and that big landlords rent out substantial
amounts of land. Instead, the distinction is made in terms of whether
or not the owner or holder actively engages in management of his
lands and contributes some of his own manual labour to their
cultivation.
In Kerala and Tanjore, a landlord is thus a land owner (‘janmi’
in Kerala, ‘mirasdar’ in Tanjore) who himself does no cultivation,
who almost always rents out part of his land, but who in addition
often employs hired labourers; the latter are usually managed by
overseers. A landlord may own anything from about eight to
several thousand acres; if he own less than eight acres, he is likely
to have clerical, professional, or mercantile work in addition, and
will thus not be primarily a landlord. A rich peasant is likely to
own or to lease from about eight to thirty acres of land. He manages
most of it himself, usually does some manual labour, and regularly
hires a number of labourers; he may also rent out small plots to
tenants. Rich peasants in Kerala are likely to be either ‘kanam’
tenants or to own some acres and to lease more on ‘kanam’. In
Tanjore they are usually small ‘mirasdars’ who may in addition
lease land on ‘kuthakai’. Middle peasants in Kerala and Tanjore
may own a little land of their own, but almost all lease some from
landlords, on ‘kanam’ or ‘verumpattanT in Kerala and on ‘kuthakai’
in Tanjore. ‘Pure’ middle peasants who hire no landless labourers
are actually almost non-existent in these regions. Most have one
or two regular workers and engage more at peak seasons. They
are thus somewhat hard to separate from the rich peasants and
are involved in both of Alavi’s first and third sectors—as tenants
and as hirers of labour. Poor peasants in Kerala lease all their
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 723

lands, usually on ‘verumpattam’ or one of the less favourable

variants of ‘kanam’; in Tanjore they may be ‘kuthakai’ or ‘varam’
tenants. They are too poor to survive on these lands and work
either half-time or seasonally for landlords, or for rich or even
middle peasants. Most poor peasants come from relatively low or
‘backward’ castes (in Kerala, Iravas or low-ranking Muslims or
Christians; in Tanjore, Konar, Nadar or relatively low-ranking
subcastes of Kallar or Vanniyar) whose ancestors have traditionally
served as tied labourers or semiserfs of landlords. Substantial
numbers of high caste people such as Vellalas and Naidus in
Tanjore, or Nayars and Syrian Christians in Kerala, have, however,
become middle or poor peasants in recent decades. Landless
labourers, finally, include almost all members of the Harijan or
‘Untouchable’ castes of former agricultural slaves: Pallas and
Parayas in Tanjore; Pulayas, Cherumas, and Parayas in Kerala.
Many Muslims and Christians in Kerala, and many ‘clean’ caste
Hindus in both Kerala and Tanjore, have, however, become land¬
less labourers during this century. Landless labourers possess no
land, and lease at best only a minute plot as a house-site. They work
full time for wages, either in cash or kind, and either for long periods
or casually by the day.
A second difference from Alavi’s analysis derives from the
different course taken by the revolts in Bengal and Andhra as
described by Alavi, and those in Kerala and Tanjore. In the latter,
while poor peasants and also landless labourers were drawn into
the struggle, there was still a tendency on the part of the communists
to rely on the middle peasants for local leadership. It is true that
it has always been difficult to combine middle and poor peasants
and landless labourers in a united struggle. Nevertheless, in these
regions, the failure of the revolts of the late 1940s was due more
to vacillations of policy on the part of the communist leadership,
and to the fact that only isolated sectors of India were at that time
ripe for agrarian revolt, than to a ‘sectarian’ preference for poor
peasants and landless labourers on the part of the communists.
If anything, it would seem that the communists have so far failed
fully to utilize the militancy of poor peasants and landless labourers
in Southern India. Today, the increasing proportions and restless¬
ness of these agrarian classes are causing some communist groups
and leaders to reconsider their policies in this regard.
724 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Collective acts of violence or non-violent resistance by Indian

peasants against landlords and higher authorities were common
during British rule. They included spontaneous killings of land¬
lords or officials by small groups of peasants; organized non¬
violent strikes; and prolonged armed attempts to seize the land
and establish peasant self-government. The largest revolts were
the Mappilla (Moplah) or Muslim rebellions of Malabar District
in North Kerala of 1836-98. Muslim tenants revolted twenty-five
times, killing many Hindu landlords, British officials, and soldiers.
Before 1920, such actions emerged from the peasants themselves,
with some of them focusing around local charismatic leaders. After
1920 peasant revolts tendered to come under the guidance of
regional, national, or urban-based pplitical movements.
Peasant revolts during British rule appear.to have stemmed from
the increasing exactions of the colonial economy. During the
first two-thirds of the nineteenth century the British instituted
capitalist agrarian relations throughout most of India. These
relations involved private ownership of land by its former managers,
the right of the landlord to sell his land in the market, the right to
evict unwanted tenants and freely to undertake contractual leases,
the freeing of serfs and slaves, and their conversion into landless
wage labourers.5 The sale of cash crops, whether for foreign or
local markets, developed in both Tanjore and Kerala in response
to the government’s extraction of a heavy revenue from the land¬
lords. In Tanjore’s deltaic rice area, landlords began to sell grain
to other regions, retaining enough to feed their families and
labourers. In Kerala the second half of the nineteenth century
saw a great increase in the agricultural population and a
vast expansion of export crops such as coconuts, spices, lumber,
and later tea, rubber and cashewnuts. Much of this expansion
took place in former forest lands but long-settled villages were also
affected. Pulled by the rising prices of export crops and pushed
by the need to pay high revenues, landlords extracted more and
more produce from their too-numerous tenants and labourers and
evicted them when they were unable to pay their rents. Many of
those evicted starved. Others eventually found work in the towns,
in the new lumber industry in the forests, or on the export crop
plantations developed in the last third of the century by British
firms. Tenancy Acts passed after 1887 gave increasing security
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 725

to those holding superior tenures—often themselves non-cultivating

middlemen—but did little to stay the insecurity of the poorest
tenants and landless labourers.6
The first modem politically-sponsored revolt took shape under
the Congress-Khilafat movement of 1920-1. Guided by the Indian
National Congress and the Muslim League, Kerala’s new middle
class of students, rich peasants, middle ranking merchants, and
professionals encouraged cultivators and hand-mill workers to
engage in non-violent strikes and boycott of British goods. The
goals were Home Rule for India and for Turkey, at that time struggl¬
ing against European hegemony. The British responded with
violent repression. At this, poor Muslim tenants, heirs of the
nineteenth century rebels, organized in village assemblies round
their religious leaders and with knives, spears, clubs, and home¬
made firearms drove out or killed both Hindu and Muslim land¬
lords, government servants, and police. Muslim leaders of middle
peasant rank took over the government of 220 villages for several
months. They killed five to six hundred landlords, police, and others
who had aided the British military. Once violent revolt occurred,
Congress leaders under Gandhi withdrew their support. The
British defeated the movement and deported or executed many
rebels. About 10,000 died in this rebellion.7
In the 1920s and 1930s, a gulf widened between rightwing Cong¬
ressmen who wanted Home Rule with a minimum of internal
changes, and left-wingers, often of Marxist persuasion. The latters’
bases lay in the modern labour unions they had formed among
handmill, industrial, and transport workers in the coast towns,
among peasants in villages of the midlands, and among wage-
earning plantation workers on the large British-owned tea and
rubber estates in the highlands. In 1934 leftwing Congressmen
formed the Congress Socialist Party within the Congress Party.
The socialists dominated the Kerala Provincial Congress Committee
until 1940. when they were expelled by the national leadership
and openly declared their affiliation to the Communist Party.
This period of the late 1930s, together with the postwar period
of 1947-50, saw the most intense politically sponsored activity
among middle and poor peasants that has occurred in South India.
Most of it was organized by communists, although socialist.
Congress and independent peasant unions sponsored some peasant
726 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

boycotts and strikes. Communist peasant actions were inspired not

only by immediate economic goals but also by a belief in revolu¬
tionary class struggle. Peasants came to hope and expect that it
would eventually culminate in seizure of the land by its cultivators
and of the country by the Communists.
Communist influence strongly affected the Kerala branch of
the Socialist Party by 1940. In that year the communists tried to
precipitate Indian independence by paralyzing the British wartime
administration. The national bourgeoisie within the Congress was
now seen not as allies but as ‘cowards’ to be ‘isolated’,8 and the
urban proletariat was expected to lead the struggle. There were
urban strikes and sabotage throughout India, and supporting
actions by peasants. On September 15, 1940, during widespread
demonstrations, a number of police, socialist leaders, and peasants
died in armed clashes in several towns and villages of Malabar.
Responding to these events, the national Congress leadership
expelled the Kerala socialists from the party. All of them thereupon
joined the Communist Party. Those communists who escaped
imprisonment went underground, and the ‘proletarian struggle’
petered out in early 1941.
Shortly after the Soviet Union entered the war in mid-1941,
Indian communists opted to support the war effort and entered
into limited collaboration with the British. Until the end of the
war, they refrained from militant struggles. At the same time, with
the Congress leadership in jail for non-cooperation, the communists
expanded their leadership in labor and peasant unions in Kerala,
and at war’s end they emerged in control of most of these bodies.
In 1946-7, revolts broke out in the Indian Navy, among the
urban classes in many cities, and among the peasants in large
regions of Bengal, Telengana, Tanjore, and Kerala.9 The CPI
national office did not support these revolts, for its leadership
was divided and its official policy was now one of cooperation with
the Congress in the transition to independence. Rural communist
leaders were, however, active in the revolts. In Telengana in the
princely state of Hyderabad (now part of Andhra State) guerrilla
warfare led to the seizure of some 3000 villages in two whole
districts, and to their administration for six months by peasant
soviets. These revolutionary institutions were crushed by the Indian
Army, which under orders from the new Congress government,
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 727

invaded Hyderabad and annexed it to the Indian union in 1948.

The Communist leaders in Telengana were influenced by the
Chinese theory and practice of peasant guerrilla warfare. This
differed both from the path of proletarian uprising and from that
of United Front constitutional opposition which the Indian
communists had hitherto alternately pursued. Chinese influence
also affected the leadership of Tanjore and Kerala. In these regions
the struggle never attained the proportions seen in Bengal and
Telengana. Nevertheless, communist-organized groups of middle
and poor peasants did drive out the landlords and take over a
block of villages in eastern Tanjore for several weeks early in 1948.10
In many other villages, unions of tenants and labourers struck
during the harvest season until they had compelled the landlords
to halve rents and double wages. The Tanjore revolt was put down
by armed police in the course of 1949. In Kerala, too, there were
strikes of tenants and labourers for lower rents and higher wages,
large demonstrations, and organized seizures of blackmarket
grain-stocks from rich landlords and merchants. Both in Tanjore
and Kerala, landless labourers as well as poor peasants were now
drawn into the struggles and played a militant role. Many of them
came from the lowest castes of Harijans, hitherto ostracized and
exploited by the somewhat higher Hindu castes of middle and poor
tenants. In Tanjore, Harijans (called Adi Dravidas) form about
one-third of the population and live in segregated streets on the
outskirts of villages. The communists organized these streets into
unions on the basis of their existing caste-assemblies. The Adi
Dravidas acted separately, although in alliance, with the unions
of higher ranking middle and poor peasants, thus raising the
struggle to new heights of militancy. In Kerala, thousands of
Harijan and Backward Caste landless labourers struck for the
first time on the cash crop farming estates of big village landlords
in 1947. Both men and women came out. Their discipline and
militancy were remarkable. In one North Malabar village sprawling
over four square miles of mountains and valleys only one labourer
went to work on the first day of the strike. He had heard of it but
did not really think the people would be united. His caste members
approached him before the second day and he stayed away there¬
after.
The peasant revolts of 1947 took place without support from
728 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the central leadership of the Communist Party. In 1948, however,

as in 1940, the CPI line changed to one of revolutionary upsurge
led by the urban proletariat. In theory, the peasants were still
neglected. B.T. Ranadive, the Party’s general secretary, in fact
described Mao’s theories as ‘horrifying’, ‘reactionary’, and ‘counter¬
revolutionary’.11 In practice, however, communist revolutionary
action in this period was more successful in the countryside than
in the cities, and South Indian rural leaders clung to the Chinese
line. Finally, in mid-1950, a reconstituted central committee
briefly adopted the Maoist approach of armed revolution based
primarily on guerrilla warfare. By this time, however, the main
revolts had been crushed. The Congress government was firmly
in control and most villagers appear to have been made hopeful
by the prospect of universal franchise under the new constitution.
In 1951 the communists changed their approach to one of parlia¬
mentary opposition. They renewed their attempts to unite the
workers, all classes of peasants, and the “patriotic” bourgeoisie
to bring about a mixed economy under government regulation,
with a democratic parliamentary structure. Beginning with the
Indian elections of 1952, the communists have followed the parlia¬
mentary road up to the present time, in spite of the party-split
of 1964 and a variety of fundamental disagreements on international
and national problems.
During the period of parliamentary democracy, many communist
peasant unions have been allowed to lapse. In 1964 I found that
local communist leaders in Kerala absorbed in electioneering,
legal work, and ideological meetings and conflicts, often had little
time for day-to-day organization in their villages. Union meetings
were infrequent and in many villages peasants had ceased to pay
their dues. Some militant struggles had been waged by the com¬
munists, however, and also by a new Christian Peasants and
Workers’ Party which has since joined a United Front with the
communists. These struggles were especially prominent among
some 30,000 peasants in hill areas, who had occupied government
and private forest lands and whom the Congress government of
1960-64 had tried to evict.
It is important to notice that even in the absence of their com¬
munist leaders, peasants often revert to their traditional forms of
joint action and resistance in crises. Two examples illustrate this
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 729

point. In eastern Tanjore in late 1948, after the peasant revolt had
been crushed, police arrived one day in a village to see that every¬
thing was under control. The Village Headman, a high caste
landlord, summoned the elected headman of the Untouchable
landless laborers’ community. He intended to impress on the low
caste headman the fact that the revolt was over and that the laborers
should peacefully resume their tasks. On hearing the summons
all the landless laborers of the village downed tools and marched
to the landlords’ street with the communist flag, fearing that their
leader might be intimidated or beaten. When they saw the police
trucks they angrily climbed into them, shouting that their lives
were wretched and that they wished all to be taken to prison.
In the ensuing melee the police drove off with thirty of them. They
were sent to jail in Trichinopoly, some hundred miles away, and
held without trial for four months. A deputation of local landlords
eventually went to plead for their release so that the harvest work
could go on. Laborers in this region continued with periodic
strikes, stackburning, and even attacks on the homes of landlords
until 1952, when their communist leaders were released from jail
and the peasant unions were formally reconstituted. Under com¬
munist leadership the unions then pressed, through strikes and
legal channels, for implementation of a newly enacted land regula¬
tion.12
In Kerala my Irava cook, who hailed from a British tea planta¬
tion, told of an incident in 1962. A woman in a nearby house in
the plantation coolies’ barracks began to give birth to a child
and was taken to the plantation hospital. The surgeon refused
to leave a movie he was attending and the nurses gave the woman
injections to try to delay the birth and to ease her pain. She became
unconscious and seemed at the point of death. The cook summoned
one hundred of his street fellows and they marched to the cinema,
dragged out the doctor, and forced him to return to the hospital,
where he safely delivered the child. 'If you act thus again we shall
kill you next time’, they told him. This pattern of 'encirclement’
or 'gherao’ by groups of laborers of an official or landlord until
he submits to their demands has recently spread throughout India
and is currently a potent form of direct action.
In Kerala, as is well known, the Communist Party came to
power in the state government in 1957 with 41 percent of the vote.
730 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

It was ousted by the Central government in 1959 on grounds of

inability to maintain law and order. Through its policies of land
ceilings, minimum wages, rural debt cancellations, and welfare
provisions, the Party increased its support among the poor tenants
and the propertyless classes. Even while pursuing the parliamentary
road, the communists deepened the class struggle, by encouraging
the poor to put forward their claims. In the sixteen years of parlia¬
mentary struggle the communists have continued to help tenants
and landless labourers by filing suits on their behalf, leading
strikes and boycotts within the constitutional framework, and
counselling them on their rights under the various land reform
laws.
In 1964, Left and Right communists split on the fundamental
question of approaches to the Congress Party. These were in turn,
of course, linked with Rightist support of the Soviet Union, which
gives aid to the Congress government and hopes for a peaceful
transition to socialism. The Left communists (CPI-M) oppose
Soviet revisionism and any compromise with the Congress Party,
and give critical support to China. They foresee the possibility
of armed revolution if the Indian government succumbs to American
penetration and closes all avenues to constitutional and parlia¬
mentary struggle. At the same time, the CPI-M continues to
participate in elections. In Kerala, the Right communists have
rather weak support from the urban lower middle classes and
the industrial unions; the Left communists have much stronger
support from middle and poor peasants and from landless laborers
in villages and export crop plantations. While bitterly opposing
each others’ ideology, the two parties have forced electoral or
post-electoral alliances in a number of states.
Communist-led United Front governments came to power in
Kerala and Bengal in the Indian elections of early 1967. The Bengal
government was ousted by the Center in the autumn of 1967
after defection from the Front of some individual non-communist
legislators. In Kerala the Front remains in power but in deepening
trouble because of food shortages. With over 40 percent of its
land under export crops, Kerala must import half its food. In the
general food crisis in India the Central Government has failed
to maintain supplies. Adults in Kerala consider twelve to seventeen
ounces of rice per day an adequate diet. Under the present informal
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 73 1

rationing scheme they receive only three ounces in ration shops

and must obtain the remainder at prices which exceed the wages
of landless laborers.
Meanwhile, further serious divisions of policy have appeared
among Left communists. In May 1967 a revolt broke out among
sharecroppers and landless laborers in the mountainous district
of Naxalbari in West Bengal. It arose because landlords refused
to cede land taken from them by the government under the land¬
ceiling laws, and sent police and armed bands against the cultivators
when they tried to occupy the lands. Many of the cultivators were
Santal tribespeople who countered the landlords’ attacks with
bows and arrows. Plantation workers on nearby foreign tea planta¬
tions struck in sympathy. The revolt was led, or at least supported,
by local Left communists. It appears to have followed traditional
patterns: expropriation of the land, driving out of the landlords,
attempts to set up peasant soviets and to immobilize local govern¬
ment officials. One policeman and ten peasants were killed. The
West Bengal Minister of Land and Land Revenue, a Left com¬
munist, tried to bring about a compromise but it was foiled by
police who continued to attack and by local Left communists
and peasants who continued to defend themselves. The revolt
at one point affected some 42,000 people in 70 villages over an
area of 80 square miles. It appears to have been temporarily put
down by the police, although rebel Left communists claim that a
revolutionary framework has been maintained. The United Front
government condemned the revolt as adventurist, and the Left
Communist Party expelled the rebels.13 The United Front Govern¬
ment was, however, ousted by the Central Government in
November, 1967.
The rebel policy has since triumphed in the Left Communist
Party-plenum in Delhi, and spread to a number of Left communist
district and village committees in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Punjab,
Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra, Mysore, Madras, and
Kerala.14
The rebel approach includes the following: the organization of
peasant-based guerrilla warfare as the main path to revolution
in India, with the assistance of the urban working class; rejection
of parliamentary participation as revisionist; and an analysis of
Indian society which sees the Congress Central Government as
732 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the captive of American imperalism, and India as already a neo¬

colonial state. This last contrasts with the orthodox Left communist
view of India as under the class-rule of the landlords and the
bourgeoisie, led by the big bourgeoisie which, so far, is only ‘in¬
creasingly collaborating’ with imperialism.15
The rebels accept the Left communist distinction between a
‘fedual’ sector of the economy dominated by the landlords, an
‘imperial’ sector dominated by foreign monopoly capital with the
assistance of an Indian comprador bourgeoisie, and a ‘national
capitalist’ sector led by an independent national bourgeoisie, at
least part of which is seen as a potential revolutionary ally. I
would question such distinctions, arguing instead that the various
sectors of the economy are fully integrated with one another in
a colonial-style capitalism which is itself part of world capitalism
and whose main features of underdevelopment derive from its
satellite relationships with the metropolitan powers.16 Correspond¬
ingly, it is questionable whether there is, or is any longer, a sizable
independent national bourgeoisie in India, for the increasing
penetration of the economy by American and European capital
since the second world war has co-opted to the imperialists’ side
virtually the whole Indian bourgeoisie, whether mercantile, farming,
or industrial. This means that while private industry and trade
would, as in China, probably need to be retained for some time
after a revolution, no substantial section of the Indian bourgeoisie
can realistically be relied upon as potential revolutionary allies
at the present time.
The rebel analysis does, however, give greater weight to foreign
penetration of the Indian economy than does the orthodox Left
communist analysis. Thus the rebels, like the Chinese Communist
Party, argue that substantial elements of the Indian industrial
bourgeoisie are part of the comprador bourgeoisie as a result of
American, British, and other foreign penetration of Indian
industry.17
It seems probable that much of the rebel Left communist ana¬
lysis will appeal to poor peasants and landless laborers in Kerala.
In 1964 I found on the one hand that support for the communists,
especially the Left communists, had become virtually universal
among landless laborers and had increased among poor and middle
peasants. This resulted from the deterioration of food supplies and
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 733

real wages in these classes in the 1960s and from the communists’
record of 1957-9. On the other hand, there was a growing impatience
and a wish to return to the militant actions o-f the late 1930s and
1947. My fieldnotes abound in statements by poor peasants and
laborers that nothing will solve Kerala’s problems except armed
revolt against the landlords and sharing of land among those who
cultivate it. Similarly, workers on the foreign export crop estates
insisted that programmes for improved wages and benefits were
at best temporary. Eventually, they held, a communist government
must expropriate the planters and either divide the land among the
plantation workers or run it cooperatively for their benefit. These
and similar sentiments were shared by many of the village level
communists whom I interviewed. A number of them complained
about what one communist called ‘this confusing, treacherous period
of bourgeoisdemocracy’. Many admitted uneasiness over opportu¬
nistic electoral alliances and though that eventually the Left
communists would be forced by repression to abandon the consti¬
tutional road and to arm and organize the peasantry. With this
background, 1 was not surprised to read that a majority in four
out of nine district committees in Kerala tend to favour the ‘rebel’
path.18 The party-plenums in Kerala in January 1968 re-endorsed
E.M.S. Namboodiripad’s communist-led United Front govern¬
ment, but this unity is apparently precarious. The All-India Peasant
Union President, A.K. Gopalan of North Kerala, has since called
for intensive organization among peasants, especially landless
labourers, recruitment of peasant and worker volunteer forces,
and psychological preparation of the peasantry for a prolonged
struggle against the landlords and the imperialists.
What conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? In Kerala and
Tanjore, peasant revolts occurred frequently during British rule.
These revolts appear to have been responses to increased exactions
from poor and middle peasant brought about by colonial capitalist
relations. When they achieved scope and intensity the revolts
aimed at throwing off the authority of the state and of landlords,
and at setting up a local government drawn from the peasantry.
When modern reform or radical parties have coordinated the
peasants without constricting them, peasants have tended to
follow the same pattern of overthrow of landlords, seizure of the
land, and removal or neutralization of officials of the existing state.
734 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The difference has been that radical parties, especially the com¬
munists, have been able sometimes to link these revolts over wider
areas and to infuse them with a revolutionary ideology and a new
conception of the state.
In relatively traditional villages, peasants have readymade bases
of organization in their caste assemblies, composed of the heads of
households of one caste within each village or group of villages.
These assemblies were traditionally organized for the settlement of
internal disputes; in addition, the assembly of the dominant high
ranking caste usually governed the village as a whole. During British
rule, the assemblies of middle or low castes of tenants or laborers
often provided a framework for revolt or resistance. The communists
have appreciated the value of caste assemblies and, especially in
Tanjore, have managed to unite the assemblies of several middle
and low ranking castes in groups of villages to form labor unions
capable of either organized revolt or constitutional agitation. Caste
assemblies have their greatest strength and unity on large village
estates where a majority of poor tenants or landless labourers fill
the sapie role and are exposed to the same forms of oppression.
Such assemblies are especially strong, egalitarian, internally
democratic, and militant among Untouchable landless labourers.
On foreign export crop plantations, in spite of caste, linguistic,
religious, and kinship diversity, workers of the same street or
barracks tend to form assemblies to settle their internal disputes
along lines similar to their old caste assemblies. Such multi-caste,
local assemblies also provide a ready basis for union organizing by
leftwing parties.
Communist Party cadres operating in villages have come mainly
from families of less successful landlords and rich peasants, from
the children of priests and literati whose authority had been chal¬
lenged by new bureaucratic and market-oriented institutions, and
from such local and low-paid intellectual workers as school teachers
and village clerks.
The communists were first able to recruit tenant cultivators of
middle peasant rank into their peasant unions, and have hitherto
tended to rely on the village leadership of this class. In Kerala and
Tanjore, middle peasants come mainly from the middle to high
castes of Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. Their early responsive¬
ness to socialist ideas can probably be attributed to various factors
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 735

mentioned by Eric R. Wolf.19 These include their comparative

literacy and knowledge of the wider society, their enjoyment of
relatively greater security and autonomy than the poorest share-
cropping tenants or landless laborers, yet their experience of
uncertainty and of new kinds of exploitation in the market economy.
In the agitations of the 1930s, as apparently during Malabar’s
19th century peasant revolts, Kerala’s middle peasants were able
to organize large numbers of poor peasants to throw off some of the
more traditional exactions of landlords. From about 1947, landless
laborers were also, apparently for the first time, drawn into political
struggles and organized into unions on a large scale. Difficulties
exist because middle peasants themselves often exploit landless
laborers. In many contexts, the interests of the two classes are
opposed, and landlords have used every opportunity to keep them
at enmity. In South India the extremely deep social and ritual
barriers between middle or poor peasants of middle to low Hindu
caste on the one hand, and those landless laborers who are of the
lowest. Untouchable castes on the other, made the rapproache-
ment between tenant and landless laborer peculiarly difficult. By
the late 1950s, however, both in Kerala and Tanjore, the two were
beginning to amalgamate within the same peasant unions and thus
to reinforce each others’ demands.
It is noteworthy, moreover, that the communists (and since
1964, the Left communists) have drawn their greatest support from
states and districts where landless laborers are numerically most
prominent, for example Bengal, Kerala, Andhra, and Tanjore.
In Tanjore and Kerala, further, it is to my knowledge the landless
laborers who, once they are aroused, most completely and con¬
sistently vote for the communists. In Tanjore, landless laborers,
chiefly Untouchables, formed about one third of the total popu¬
lation in 1952; their proportion has certainly increased since then
In Kerala, landless labourers and their families increased from
12.5 percent of the total population in 1931 to 21.6 percent in
1951.20 This figure is much higher today, even excluding the
hundreds of thousands of workers on foreign export-crop planta¬
tions. In Mplabar (North Kerala), the proportion of landless
laborers to the total agriculturally dependent population increased
from 38 percent in 1931 to 44 percent in 1951 and 47 percent in
1961. In contrast to Alavi, I would argue that the Indian communists
736 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

have never accorded sufficient weight to the poor peasants and

landless laborers in their organizational and revolutionary efforts.
A change may, however, be underway among both rebel and ortho¬
dox Left communists. In a recent speech to the All-India Left
Communist Kisan Sabha (Peasant Association), A.K. Gopalan
stated that agricultural laborers now form 25-40 per cent of the
population in most of the states of India. Gopalan's conclusion
seems warranted, namely, ‘We have to make them (the landless
laborers) the hub of our activity. Reluctance to take up their specific
demands, fearing that this will drive the rich and middle peasant
away from us, will have to be given up.’21
Over the past sixteen years, the communists’ pursuit of the parlia¬
mentary path has allowed them to increase the numbers of their
supporters in several states. At the same time, it has placed serious
difficulties in the way of organizing peasants and workers ‘from
below’. Concern with canvassing for national, state, and village
elections takes village communist workers away from day-to-day
organizational work among the propertyless. It causes even village
communists, let alone national leaders, to focus on budgetary
problems, short-term reforms; and the arithmetic of seats and
votes. As a result, they tend to neglect socialist education and the
deeper political and ethical problems of class struggle. In one
North Kerala village, for example, a Left Communist Party
member and panchayat president admitted to me that his task had
become difficult because of electioneering. Between elections he
tried to persuade Muslim poor peasants that the Communist Party
had more to offer them than the non-socialist Muslim League.
In the 1963 panchayat elections, however, the communists supported
a number of League candidates, as the Left communists did later
in the state elections of 1965 and 1967. In such ways the policy of
“unity from above” through electoral alliances and adjustments
with nonrevolutionary social democratic or non-socialist ethnic
parties seriously damages the potential for class unity, with clear
ideological direction, from below. It makes many peasants cynical
about the sincerity of communist analyses of class struggle and
suspicious that the communists, after all, are interested less in
revolution than in power. When communists have actually attained
power at the state level, as in Kerala in 1957-9 and, in 1967, their
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 737

efforts to protect and to redistribute benefits to the poorest classes

have brought them the gratitude of poor and middle peasants,
landless laborers, and urban workers. These efforts are, however,
too meagre to make a substantial difference. Confined within the
provisions of the Indian constitution, it is impossible for the
communists to transform property relations, allocate resources,
and plan production. This means that they can compensate the
propertyless only at the expense of the petty bourgeoisie, the rich
peasants, and even some of the middle peasants, without increasing
production. Further, their welfare-state efforts foster dependency
and helplessness rather than active self-organization among the
common people.
Meanwhile, during the last sixteen years, India’s socio-economy
has changed so that its problems are not the same as those of 1952.
Although they have not given land to the tiller, the Congress
Party’s land reforms have changed relations in the countryside.
As A.G. Frank suggests for Brazil, there seems to be some likeli¬
hood that social democratic land reforms can actually help to
polarize property relations with regard to land. The upgrading of
superior tenures and the guarantee of security of tenure mean that
a small proportion of middle and rich peasants imporve then-
position. With inflation such as has occurred in Kerala in recent
years, however, many more peasants have to sell out to usurers,
landlords, merchants, or bureaucrats to keep their families aljve.
Again, landlords manage to evict large numbers of poor peasants
and turn them into wage labourers before land reform laws come
into effect, in order not to lose control of their land to their tenants.
Similarly, measures to get rid of non-cultivating middle-tenants
and rent-collecting landlords both produce a higher proportion of
landlords and rich peasants farming with hired labor. The fact
that most export crops are exempt from land-ceiling means, finally,
that in an export-crop producing region like Kerala, an increasing
proportion of the land is turned over to cashewnuts, rubber etc.
The swelling numbers of poor tenants and landless laborers are
thus left stranded, are crowded on to ever smaller plots, or are
forced into squatting on forest lands, where they must fight an
uneven battle against landlords, plantation managers, and govern¬
ment. Finally, the failure to industrialize with sufficient rapidity
738 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

means that an increasing proportion of the population becomes

dependent on agriculture and that landless laborers become the
largest section of these.22
These conclusions are amply borne out in the North Malabar
village that I surveyed in 1948 and 1964.23 In spite of all the land-
reform acts that have been passed in Kerala, the biggest landowning
Nayar matrilineage has increased its share of the ownership of the
total village lands from 31.5 percent in 1948 to 44.6 percent in
1964. Its holdings in this village now form part of a total estate of
about 30 square miles. In the same village, 21.9 percent of the land
has remained in the ownership of a Hindu temple located some
ten miles away and managed by a small number of wealthy high
caste Hindu families. The remaining 33.5 percent of the village
land was, by 1964, divided between 206 other owners of middle
and poor peasant rank. The total acreage of the village was 1,351
acres, and the population had increased from 1,176 in 1949 to
1,478 in 1964.
Among the villagers, the percentage of landlords and rich
peasants had dropped from 4.3 percent in 1948 to 2.6 percent in
1964. The proportion of middle peasants, together with persons
of middle peasant rank who retained a little land and ran some other
occupation, had fallen from 23.6 percent to 9.2 percent of the total.
This meant that in 1964 only 11.8 percent of the villagers owned or
leased enough land to maintain themselves and their families,
while 27.9 percent could maintain themselves from their lands in
1948.
Coming to the poor peasants and landless laborers, we find in
this village that poor peasants, that is, persons who lease or own
one substantial garden for their own use but hire themselves out
as laborers for at least half of each day when they can. formed 36 7
percent of the villagers in 1964. as against 41.7 percent in 1948.
This does not mean that some poor peasants have risen in wealth
since 1948. It means, rather, that while the poor peasants category
has received some new people from the former middle peasant
rank, a larger number of poor peasants have completely lost their
land since 1948 and have become landless laborers. Such people
lease no land and own only a small shack together with the
use-right ol one-tenth of an acre of garden on their landlord's
property. Even this latter privilege they owe to the communist
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 739

government of 1957-9 and they are not always accorded it in practice.

In all, 29.3 percent of villagers were landless laborers in 1948;
51 percent were landless laborers in 1964.
A further significant fact is that in 1964, a high proportion of the
landless laborers were no longer even farm workers, for there was
no room for them on the land. Instead, they had dropped into the
poorest category of casual laborers who pick up jobs when they
can, usually cutting timber in the forests, or cutting out and trans¬
porting blocks of laterite for urban building programmes. In 1948,
5.5 percent of the villagers were in such casual manner work,
but in 1964,25 percent were either in such work or were unemployed.
This North Kerala village thus demonstrates conclusively an in¬
creasing polarization in land-relations, and thus in incomes, bet¬
ween 1948 and 1964.
Increasing polarization between agricultural classes knocks out
the middle peasants as a significant social category. It breaks down
the barriers between poor peasants and landless laborers, and,
among these classes, between “clean” castes, ‘backward’ castes,
and Harijans. There are definite signs that increasing polarization
of agrarian relations also breaks down religious barriers between
Hindus, Muslims, and Christians among the propertyless in
villages. The prolonged food shortage and the ever growing inflation
in Kerala of the last five years have brought these rural classes,
and their urban counterparts, to a pitch of anger and militancy
in which they take action independently along traditional lines
or along lines laid down by their Marxist leaders of the 1930s and
1940s. Strikes, ‘encirclements’ of cabinet ministers and government
officials, attacks on transport and food stores, and threats or
assaults against landlords and plantation managers have become
common, and a fairly large revolt occurred ,on the Munnar
tea plantation in Travancore in January and February, 1968.
Incipient revolt among the peasants in turn produces counter¬
attacks by the landlords, usurers, and big merchants, poses problems
of “law and order” for the United Front Government, and brings
on the threat of intervention from the Central Government.
The precise details of ideological and policy crises within the
Left Communist Party and between the Party and its expelled
rebels cannot be fully assessed by observers from the outside.
In the past few months, however, communist leaders in Kerala,
740 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

while officially endorsing the United Front Government, have

formed volunteer corps among the peasants and urban workers
to carry out public works projects and to fend off violent attacks.
With Indonesia, 1966, as an object lesson, it is possible that these
measures are being taken none too soon.

References

1 This paper was first read at a meeting of the South Asia Colloquium of the
Pacific North-west held at the University of Washington on April 23, 1968.
The research is based on field-work in Kerala and Madras in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, and in Kerala in 1964. Fieldwork in Kerala was made
possible by grants of William Wyse and Anthony Wilkin Studentships from
the University of Cambridge in 1947-9, and by an Auxiliary Research Award
from the Social Science Research Council and a gift from my mother-in-law,
Mrs. David W. Aberle, in 1964. The Tanjore research was financed by a British
Treasury Studentship. My thanks go to all of these bodies and persons.
2 Hamza Alavi, ‘Peasants and Revolution’ reproduced above, Eric R. Wolf,
‘Peasants and Revolution’, a paper read at the Socialist Scholars’ conference.
New York, September, 1967; and Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Under¬
development in Latin America; Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil, New
York, Monthly Review Press, 1967.
3 For Studies of agrarian relations in the two areas, see Adrian C. Mayer, Land
and Society in Malabar, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1952; Thomas W.
Shea, ‘The Land Tenure Structure in Malabar and its Influence on Capital
Formation in Agriculture’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of California
Press, 1965; Dagfinn Sivertsen, When Caste Barriers Fall, London, Allen
and Unwin, 1963; Kathleen Gough, ‘Caste in a Tanjore Village’, in Edmund
R. Leach (ed.). Aspects of Caste in Souih India, Ceylon and Pakistan, Cambridge,
the University Press, 1962. E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Kerala Yesterday, Today
and Tomorrow, Calcutta, National Book Agency, 1967, and A.K. Gopalan,
Kerala, Past and Present, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1959, provide especially
valuable ‘inside’ views.
4 Mao Tse-tung, ‘How to Analyse the Classes in the Rural Areas’, Selected Works,
New York, International Publishers, 1954,1, pp. 138-40.
5 See Daniel and Alice Thomer, Land and Labour in India.New York, Asia Publish¬
ing House, 1962, pp. 51-70. The free sale of land and labor came about at
different dates in different regions. Kerala had had some wage labor and con¬
siderable sale of land before the British conquest of 1972, but they had been
restricted by law to particular castes. Land sales appear to have been rare in
Tanjore before British rule began in 1799. Under British law, land seems to
have been freely marketable in Kerala by about 1830; in Tanjore by 1865.
(W. Logan, Malabar, Madras, the Government Press, 1951, Vol. I, p. 582;
F.R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers, Tanjore, Madras, the Govern¬
ment Press, 1906, p. 184.) The various kinds of slaves and agricultural serfs were
gradually freed between 1812 and 1854.
 PEASANT RESISTANCE AND REVOLT IN SOUTH INDIA 741

6 Unfortunately we lack comparative data since we do not know much about

revolts or famines among peasants in Tanjore and Kerala before British rule,
nor do we know the precise amounts of their real incomes before the nineteenth
century. We do know, however, that the population of Malabar District increas¬
ed from an estimated 465,594 in 1802 to 2,261,000 in 1891 and 4,758,300 in
1951, and that there were severe famines almost every year between 1836
and 1896, especially in the years of the worst revolts. Since I have not found
accounts of large-scale evictions and unemployment, of prolonged famines,
or of revolts of peasants against their landlords (rather than on their behalf,
against other authorities) for pre-British Kerala, I conclude that the upheavals
and disasters of the nineteenth century did spring primarily from the introduction
of colonial capitalism. It is true, of course, that productivity must have increased
in order to support such a rapidly expanding population, but that fact does not
bear on the rate of exploitation of the peasantry. It is also equally true that the
eighteenth century saw other kinds of disasters, particularly massive reductions
of the population through wars. These wars were themselves, however, largely
a result of competition between the European mercantile' powers and between
them and the indigenous rulers.
7 A.S. Memon, Kerala District Gazeteers, Trivandrum, Government Press,
1962, p. 180.
8 P.C. Joshi, ‘Unmasked Parties and Politics’, March, 1940, quoted by Gene
D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India, Berkeley and
Los Angels, University of California Press, 1959, p. 181.
9 For accounts of these revolts, see Overstreet and Windmiller, op. cit., pp. 276-312
and Alavi, op. cit.,
10 John F. Muehl was an eye-witness of this revolt, which he describes in Interview
With India, New York, John Day, 1950.
11 B.T. Ranadive, 'Struggle for People’s Democracy and Socialism—Some
Questions of Strategy and Tactics’, Communist, II, June-July, 1949, p. 71,
quoted in Overstreet and Windmiller, op. cit., p. 287.
12 The Tanjore Tenants and Pannayals Protection Ordinance, 1952, which raised
the wages of tied laborers and raised the tenant’s share of the crop from one-
fifth to two-fifths. The Ordinance did not, however, affect the wages of the
increasingly large number of day-laborers, nor did it strengthen the claims of
tenants who had no written leases.
13 For articles relevant to the Naxalbari revolt and the official Left communist
attitude towards it, see People's Democracy, Calcutta, Vol. 3, Nos. 23, 24,
25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30.
14 See 'Notes’, Liberation, Calcutta, No. 3, January 1968, pp. 95-6; ‘Revolutionary
Comrades on the March’, Liberation, No. 4, February 1968, pp. 77-82; 'Rebel¬
lion is Right!’ Liberation. No. 5, March, 1968, pp. 92-6; and 'Rebellion is
RightT Liberation, No. 6, April 1968, pp. 96-109.
15 Programme of the Communist Party of India, Calcutta, 1964, p. 23.
16 This view is partly influenced by AG. Frank’s analysis of the Brazilian economy
(op. cit.) and by his argument that the character of the capitalist metropolitan
countries' monopoly of the world capitalist economy is changing from a mono¬
poly ownership of most branches of industry itself to a monopoly of the techno¬
logy of industry. This gives the metropolitan powers, especially the United States,
increasing control over the new industries recently established in underdeveloped
regions. My view is also based partly on the observation that in 1964 I found a
marked sense of economic, military, and psychological dependence on the United
742 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

States among almost all members of the Indian bourgeoisie whom I met, in
contrast to the views I heard expressed in 1947-53.
17 See Bowani Pathak, ‘Character of the Indian Bourgeoisie’, Liberation, No. 2,
December 1967, pp. 76-82. An official Left communist argument against this
position is made in ‘Is the Indian Big Bourgeoisie Comprador?’ People's
Democracy, Vol. IV, No. 17, April 28, 1968, pp. 6-8.
18 Link, New Delhi, January 14, 1968, p. 13.
19 Op. cit., see note 2.
20 Techno-Economic Survey of Kerala, Trivandrum, the Government Press,
1962, p. 211.
21 People's Democracy, Vol. IV, No. 6, February 11, 1968, p. 5.
22 Between the Census of 1931 and the Census of 1951 the percentage of Kerala’s
population dependent on agriculture is reported to have increased from 34.2
percent to 53.84 per cent. Techno-Economic Survey of Kerala, p. 211.
23 The village, which I have called Parambur, lies sixteen miles inland from the
coast in Cannanore District in the foothills of the Western Ghats. For further
references to the village see my articles, ‘Village Politics in Kerala’, Economic
and Political Weekly, February 20, 1965, pp. 363-72, and February 27, 1965,
pp. 413-9.
 37 Peasant Movement in India

Uday Mehta

A proper appraisal of the peasant movement in India becomes

difficult on account of the paucity of comprehensive data on the
subject. With this basic limitation, an attempt is made here to
analyse it in terms of its historical evolution in India. This article
is written in the hope that it will provoke further discussions on the
subject by more competent persons.

Evolution
Historically the peasant movements in India can broadly be grouped
in the following three distinct phases:
1. The Initial Phase (1857-1921): This phase was characterized
by the sporadic growth of peasant movements in the absence of
proper leadership.
2. The Second Phase (1923-1946): This phase was marked by
the emergence of the class conscious peasant organisations. Its
distinct feature was that during this period peasant movements were
led by people who gave priority to kisan problems in the struggle
for national liberation.
3. Post-Independence Phase: This era witnessed the uninterrupted
continuity of the agrarian movements due to the failure of the ruling
party to resolve any of the basic -problems of the toiling masses
in rural India. The peasant struggles in this period were led pre¬
dominantly by left political parties like the CPI, the PSP and the
SP through their kisan organizations.

The Initial Phase

The tyranny of zamindars along with the exhorbitant rates of
British land revenue led to a series of spontaneous peasant uprisings
in different parts of the country during this period. The periodic re¬
currence of famines coupled with the economic depression during
the last decades of the 19th century further aggravated the situation
in the rural areas and consequently led to numerous peasant revolts.
Reproduced from The Call, Delhi, May, 1965, Vol. XVI 12, pp. 14-6.
744 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

The following were the notable agrarian movements of this phase:

1. The Santal Rebellion of 1855 against the oppression by the
British Government; 2. The Deccan riots of 1875 against the
moneylenders; 3. The Bengal tenants struggles against zamindari
tyranny during 1870-85; 4. The Oudh Insurrection; and 5. The
Punjab kisan struggles against the moneylenders in the last decade
of the nineteenth century.
In 1917-18, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian
National Congress led two significant peasant struggles. It organized
the struggle of the peasants of Champaran in Bihar against the indigo
planters, most of whom were Europeans. Thereafter, it launched
the satyagraha movement of peasants in Kaira against the col¬
lection of land revenue which they were unable to pay due to failure
of crops.

The Role of the Indian National Congress in Peasant Movements

Despite the fact that the Indian National Congress came into
existence in the late 19th century, it took cognizance of the peasant
problems only in the second decade of the 20th century. In the
initial years, the Congress laid exclusive stress on the needs of the
Indian industrialist class, ignoring the urgency of agrarian problems.
Its manifesto just reiterated some of the superflous demands
such as permanent settlement of land revenue and the abolition
of salt tax etc. But the Congress leaders remained scrupulously silent,
about the problems of the vast bulk of tenants in zamindari areas
during the earlier phase of the movement. With the appearance of
Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene, the Indian National
Congress experienced a metamorphosis. Its sphere of influence
was extended and it assumed a mass character. The Congress formed
peasant committees in rural areas and took note of peasants’
grievances. However, the peasant movements initiated by the
Congress were invariably restricted to seeking relief against the
excessive rates of land revenue, and were in no case directed against
the zamindars.

The Second Phase: Emergence of Class Conscious Organizations

The Congress policy of safeguarding the interests of zamindars
and landlords led to the emergence of independent class organiza¬
tions of kisans in rural India. Radical sections in the peasant move-
 PEASANT MOVEMENT IN INDIA 745

ments increasingly realised that the Congress was solicitous of the

interest of the capitalists and land magnates. They felt that to
protect the interests of the kisans, their own class organizations
and leadership must be evolved. Consequently, the kisan organiza¬
tions came into existence in different parts of the country.
The first Kisan Congress held at Lucknow in 1935 led to the
formation of the All India Kisan Sabha. The programme of the
Sabha reflected the aspirations and needs of the entire peasantry
in agrarian India. The All India Kisan Sabha was composed of
radical petty bourgeois individuals, within and outside the Indian
National Congress. It was also supported and strengthened by the
Congress Socialist Party and later on by the Communist Party
of India. We shall now refer to some of the significant struggles
launched by the Kisan Sabha in different parts of the country during
the initial period of their inception.
In Andhra Pradesh it launched an anti-settlement agitation
against zamindari ‘zulum’ in 1927. Swami Sahajanand, one of the
eminent leaders and pioneers of the All India Kisan Sabha led a
heroic movement for the abolition of zamindari in Bihar. A power¬
ful struggle was initiated against the oppressive forest laws in
South India in 1927. Similarly, in UP and other parts of India
agitations were launched against the tyranny of zamindars.
The growth of peasant movements exercised considerable pressure
on the Indian National Congress. Despite this, the Karachi
Congress charter did not touch even the fringe of the peasant pro¬
blem. But the political pressure of the Kisan Sabha succeeded in
the Faizpur Congress and paved the way for the formulation of the
Congress agrarian programme. However, the Congress could not,
under the pressure of the native bourgeoisie grant any radical
consessions to the peasant demands, at the cost of jeoparadizing
the interests of zamindars. This was amply demonstrated by the
performance of the Congress ministries during the short period
that they were in office before independence.

The Provincial Ministries and Peasant Struggles

In Bihar, the Congress-zamindar agreement prevented the Ministry
from adopting any radical measures in the interest of the peasants.
Similarly, in Central Provinces and Bombay, the Congress Minis¬
tries refused to entertain any such proposals. The enactment of the
746 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

ambiguous land legislations by the Bengal Ministry resulted in

widespread eviction of the tenants. Thus the miserable performance
of the Congress Ministries worsened the plight of the peasants
and the resultant growing unrest led to a series of uprisings in
different parts of the country. The massive agitation launched by
Bihar kisans against the betrayal by the Congress Ministry, anti¬
settlement campaign in UP, debt relief struggle in Bengal, the Koya
revolt, the Bhil disturbances in Mayurbhanj are instances of heroic
peasant struggles. This in turn led to a chain of Kisan revolts in
Indian States against feudal brutalities during 1937-46. The Mysore
and Travancore struggles for responsible government, the Orissa
agitation against princes, the Jaipur, Udaipur, and Gwalior revolts
against local Thakurs are some of the glorious events in the history
of the Indian peasant movement. However, it should be noted that
during this phase too the All India Kisan Sabha with its roots in
the upper section of the peasantry could not develop any effective
struggle for the problems of the submarginal farmers and agricul¬
tural labourers. Secondly, in the absence of a clear Marxist pers¬
pective the Kisan Sabha movements at times took even communal
turns.
In 1942, Indian kisans responded to the Congress call of Civil
Disobedience movement most heroically. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,
Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamilnad, they formed parallel govern¬
ments. Nevertheless, the outstanding achievement was in Midnapore
in Bengal where for years the British rulers were unable to regain
their control. It may not be an exaggeration to say that if the peasant
movements had received proper guidance from a mature Marxist
leadership, Indian history would perhaps have taken a different
course.

Post-Independence Era
The failure of governmental measures in resolving agrarian pro¬
blems has been widely recognized and admitted today. The land
reforms and community programmes meant for promoting capita¬
list farming in India have only succeeded in intensifying the agrarian
crisis. The Congress Government has not only failed in providing
relief to the vast bulk of deficit farmers and agricultural proletariat,
but its agrarian policy has aggravated their miseries. This fact
has been sufficiently demonstrated by the various Government
 PEASANT MOVEMENT IN INDIA 747

Evaluation Reports and non-official enquiries on the impact of

welfare measures on rural society. Consequently, Indian agrarian
society is seething with discontent even after independence. This
has led to a series of peasant struggles in different parts of the
country. We shall briefly refer to the principal movements organized
by major left parties through their kisan organizations in recent
years.

Agrarian Movement of Kisan Sabha

The All India Kisan Sabha under the influence of the CPI led
numerous struggles. The following are some of the more significant
amongst them.
On the eve of independence, the All India Kisan Sabha led a very
heroic battle of the peasants in the Telangana district of the erstwhile
Hyderabad State. Over 2,000 villages set up their own people’s
committees, took over the land and maintained their own adminis¬
tration and armed defence over an area of 15,000 sq. miles and
resisted the onslaughts of the notorious bands of Nizam for a
considerable period. It is hardly necessary to point out that in the
absence of preparation on All India basis and poor response of the
toiling masses, this isolated and adventurous action resulted in
massive massacre of innocent tillers who responded to the call
of the Kisan Sabha. Tebhaga movement of crop-shares for reduction
of landlord’s share in Bengal, Warli revolt against forest contractors
and moneylenders in Maharashtra anti-betterment levy against
excessive rates of irrigation in Punjab, agitation against food-
hoarders and rise in food-grain prices in Bihar, struggles for proper
implementation of land ceilings in Bengal, and agitation for fixing
higher prices of sugarcane are some of the instances of significant
movements initiated by the Kisan Sabha since independence.
Besides this, the Sabha led an agitation for higher wages for agri¬
cultural labourers in Tamilnad and Maharashtra. In Kerala, it
led numerous struggles for land reforms. In Andhra, it launched
a movement for rehabilitation of landless labourers on waste
lands in recent years.

Peasant Struggles under the PSP and the SP

Now we shall briefly enumerate the principal struggles under the
leadership of the Praja Socialist Party in rural India.
748 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

In 1958, the PSP launched a satyagraha for relief measures in the

famine-stricken areas of UP and further organized protest move¬
ments against irrigation cess levies from UP peasants. A struggle
for proper implementation of land ceilings in Bihar, an agitation
against heavy water tax in Rajasthan, a movement against food
scarcity and for rehabilitation of landless labourers in Madhya
Pradesh, and the Bhil agitation against oppressive forest lands in
Rajasthan are some of the significant peasant movements organized
by the PSP in recent years. Besides this, the PSP organised a massive
satyagraha for the settlement of the landless labourers on grassland
in the Paradi taluka of Gujarat State.
In contrast to the CPI and the PSP the Socialist Party prepared
a comprehensive plan for launching civil disobedience movements
simultaneously in different parts of the country. ‘Ghera Dalo’
movement, started in Uttar Pradesh during 1956 was a part of this
broad programme. These struggles were mainly directed against
high prices of food grains and for relief measures in the famine-
stricken areas in Uttar Pradesh. The demands of the SP included
(a) free kitchen and cheap foodgrain (b) fixation of reasonable
prices by the Government and legal action against the hoarders
and profiteers (c) remission of taxes, levies, rents etc., in famine-
stricken areas (d) fixation of ceiling and completion of land redistri¬
bution programme within the prescribed time, and scaling down
of irrigation rates and (e) abolition of taxes on profitless agriculture,
etc. •
According to the Socialist Party, the movements led by the
CPI andthePSP aremeresymbolic protests againstthegovemment’s
agrarian policy while the ‘Ghera Dalo’ and other struggles launched
by the SP involved direct action by hungry peasants themselves.

The Supra-class Approach of the CPI and the PSP

It can be seen from the peasant movements led by the CPI and
PSP that there is no basic difference between them. Not only
are the forms and demands of the struggles the same but even
the approaches of both remain essentially identical. Both the parties
suffer from illusions of ‘progressive aspects’ of the Congress Govt.
Both have betrayed their faith in the consolidation or strengthening
of the national economy as a result of the state policy of the public
sector. This illusion restricts the scope of the movements initiated
 PEASANT MOVEMENT IN INDIA 749

by them. It also explains their arbitrary suspension and sudden

withdrawal of the movements for appeasing the so-called progres¬
sive bourgeoisie in the Congress government. It can be also observed
that most of the struggles initiated by these parties were limited to the
effective and speedy implementation of agricultural legislations.
The supra-class approach of the CPI at the national level also
prevents it from organizing any genuine tillers’ movement which
would jeopardise the interests of the rich peasantry. Its sole object
seems to be the preservation of a mythological village unity even
if it involves the persistence of the sufferings of the vast bulk of
deficit farmers and agricultural labourers. In consonance with its
policy to woo the rich peasantry none of the Communist-led
agrarian movements was launched for the specific problems of the
large bulk of the submarginal farmers, like abolition of taxes in
uneconomic farms. Even the CPI enthusiasm for land ceilings
seems to be notivated from its desire to assist or accelerate the
development of small-scale capitalist farming in rural India.
From the point of view of the CPI, the only obstacle to development
of productive forces in Indian agriculture is survival of feudal mode
of cultivation, as if the elimination of feudal remnants from Indian
agriculture would usher in a new era of progressive peasant pro- j
prietorship as in European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries
during the hey-day of capitalism. Nothing seems to be more un-
historical and arbitrary than this borrowed belief in the possibility
of a healthy growth of small-scale capitalist farming within the
matrix of underdeveloped Indian economy. It is no wonder that
with its reformist approach the peasant movements led by the CPI
today remain ill-organized and sporadic in nature without even
assuming a national level.
In this connection it is interesting to note that even a non-Marxist
American scholar, Myron Weiner has distinctly pointed out the
supra-class approach of the Communist kisan organisations in his
recent work. Politics of Scarcity. He observes: The Fifteenth
Provincial Conference, meeting in 1957, announced that the Kisan
Sabha favoured compensation for those small intermediaries
whose holdings were confiscated by the Government. It further
declared that the organization would launch agitation for agricul¬
tural loans, improved irrigation facilities, manure, education, health
and drinking water, and would continue agitation against excessive
750 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

irrigation taxes and other taxes, including a proposed development

tax. The Sabha also announced that it would work within the
existing legislative framework, would take the initiative in forming
panchayats (local govt, councils) under the new Panchayat Act,
and would support credit co-operatives, marketing societies, handi¬
craft co-operatives, and even the government’s community develop¬
ment programme and National Extension Service. In short, the
Kisan Sabha proposed to minimise agitations and maximise the
benefits, peasant (and the Kisan Sabha) might receive by working
within existing legislation, while at the same time putting pressure on
the State government for greater rural expenditures. Rural harmony
rather than class conflicts was the new theme of the West Bengal
Kisan Sabha”. (P. 159). Further, ‘a similar position now guides the
national All India Kisan Sabha. The groups in Kerala, Bihar,
Assam and Tripura all want a moderate Kisan position.’
It must be said to the credit of the Socialist Party that its approach
towards peasant movement appears to be more dynamic than that
of the CPI and the PSP. Nevertheless, the absence of a clear pers¬
pective and resultant inconsistent and contradictory policy prevents
its leadership from developing any effective agrarian movement on
a national plane.
The paradox of the Indian situation is that non-Marxist organi¬
zations like the Republican Party today champion the cause of the
agrarian proletariat and even lead their struggle at an all India
level, while the so-called vanguards of the toiling strata in the rural
society vie with each other in subserving the interest of richer
peasantry.
Under the circumstance it becomes all the more imperative for the
Revolutionary Socialist Party to build up class organizations of the
rural poor and agricultural labourers and champion their cause.
 38 The ‘Two-Stages’ Theory of
Revolution in the Third World:
Need for its Evaluation

A.R. Desai
Lenin on Stages of Revolution
Lenin made a profound statement in his famous work. Proletarian
Revolution and Renegade Kautsky :
\... beginning April 1917, long before the October Revolution,
that is, long before we assumed power, we publicly declared and
explained to the people: the revolution cannot now stop at this
stage, for the country has marched forward, capitalism has
advanced, ruin has reached unprecedented dimensions, which
(whether one likes it or not) will demand steps forward, to Socia¬
lism. For there is no other way of advancing, of saving the country
which is exhausted by war, and of alleviating the sufferings of the
toilers and exploited.
'Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course
taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our
reasoning. First, with the 'whole’ of the peasantry against the
monarchy, against the landlords, against the mediaeval regime
(and to that extent, the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-
democratic). Then, with the poorest peasants, with the semi¬
proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including
the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the
revolution becomes a Socialist one. To attempt to raise an artificial
Chinese Wall between the first and second stage (Ed), to separate
them by anything else than the degree of preparedness of the
proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants,
means monstrously to distort Marxism, to vulgarise it to substitute
liberalism in its place. It means smuggling in a reactionary defence
of the bourgeoisie as compared with the Socialist proletariat by

Reproduced from A Positive Programme of Indian Revolution, C. G. Shah Memorial

Trust Publication, No. 2.
752 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

means of quasi-scientific references to the progressive character

of the bourgeoisie as compared with mediaevalism.' (Italics in
the original).
Since Lenin made this epoch-making generalization, about
the character of revolution, stages of revolution and the driving
force of revolution, in Russia in 1917, history has vindicated
without exception the validity of this crucial Marxist theoretical
observation, with regard to the bourgeoisie, not merely of advanced
capitalist countries but also with regard to the bourgeoisie of all
underdeveloped countries.
Whenever the proletarian vanguard in the form of a Marxist
party has followed this path—either consciously or pragmatically by
empirically correcting the errors in the process of struggle—ruin
of unprecedented dimension caused by capitalism has been stopped
and a path of advancement taken. Tne history of all the countries,
where the capitalist system has been abolished and a transitional
economy based on a non-capitalist socialist path has been launched,
has borne out the truth of Lenin’s generalization. The section of
the world comprised of the USSR, the People’s Republic of China,
Yugoslavia, East European countries, North Korea, North Viet
Nam and Cuba etc. has convincingly established that the path of
economic advance beneficial to the people, and unstrangled by the
imperialist-capitalist shackles, can start only after making a Socialist
Revolution. The experience of these countries had proved that even
the elementary bourgeois-democratic tasks, like the agrarian pro¬
blem, education and others which were resolved by the bourgeoisie
in advanced capitalist countries through the democratic revolution
can be resolved in colonial and semi-colonial countries only through
Socialist Revolution and only when the society has taken to non¬
capitalist socialist path after the overthrow of capitalism.
Further, the experiences of the countries of Latin America,
Africa and Asia which are characterized as Third World and which
have taken to a ‘path of mixed economy’ capitalist development
led by the bourgeoisie have also proved by their failure either to
charter a path of independent economic development or to relieve
the burdens on the people, the validity of Lenin’s path-breaking
generalization about the entire epoch. The experiences of the last
twenty-five years after World War II, wherein the overwhelming
majority of ex-colonial and semi-colonial countries have secured
 'two-stages’ theory of revolution in the third world 753

formal political freedom, wherein an effort to reshape the economy

and society on the mixed economy capitalist path have been adopted,
have increasingly established that even the elementary bourgeois
democratic tasks cannot be fulfilled by the bourgeoisie, what¬
ever be the category of the bourgeoisie that wields power. Even
in countries where the economy exhibits some growth in terms of
production compared to that when they were under direct or
indirect rule of the imperialist masters, the rate of growth is very
slow, and that also on the basis of a massive and extensive exploita¬
tion and oppression of the local producers. Even this develop¬
ment is either coming to a dead end or is losing its initial limited
momentum, even though propped up by outside assistance. In
these countries, the economy is being transformed into a neo¬
colony of the aiding powers.
This truth has to be restated firmly and with clarity today for a
number of reasons.
(1) Communist parties claiming to follow a Stalinist line before
his death, but claiming after Krushchev’s exposures to follow the
‘Marxist-Leninist’ line are not acknowledging (in a large number
of countries) the profound truth formulated by Lenin, and are
really elaborating a massive sophistry by means of what Lenin
characterized as ‘quasi-scientific references to the progressive
character of the bourgeoisie’ as compared with mediaevalism and
are thus ‘smuggling in a reactionary defence of the bourgeoisie
against the socialist proletariat.’
These parties are elaborating a complex group of arguments,
are also weaving out a labyrinth of data and subtle defences to
build up a Chinese Wall between two stages of revolution. They
have even gone to the extent of proclaiming that a peaceful transi¬
tion to socialism via pressurizing the progressive, national, anti-
feudal, anti-imperialist, anti-comprador bourgeoisie to complete
the National Democratic Revolution or People’s Democratic
Revolution is not only possible, but is the immediate task of the
Communist parties. According to these parties, the stage of develop¬
ment in the Third World is that of a National Democratic, or
People’s Democratic Revolution and not of Socialist Revolution.
According to them the advance now is not to be towards the goal
of socialism or the overthrow of capitalism. In their view the
stage of revolution does not depend only upon the preparation of
754 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the proletariat and the degree of its unity with poor peasants.
These parties though sometimes refusing verbally, do in effect,
therefore, erect a Chinese Wall between the first and the second
stage of revolution i.e. between the Democratic and the Socialist
stages. They, therefore, come to the conclusion that the proletarian
parties have to concentrate today on completing the first phase
of the revolution by pressurizing the progressive bourgeoisie or
by allying with them under the hegemony of the proletariat and
on completing the National Democratic or People’s Democratic
by strenghtening the progressive national bourgeoisie, and thereby
assist the process of generating an independent economic develop¬
ment on bourgeois lines, free from the trammels of imperialist
and feudal forces.
(2) There is a second reason for restating this truth formulated
by Lenin. Communist parties in various countries of the Third
World have elaborated their strategy and tactic of struggles on the
assumption of their theory of two stages of revolution and have
shaped their parliamentary and non-parliamentary movements
on the basis of this fundamental postulate. These parties are
elaborating their programmes of action, organizational manoeuvres,
types of united fronts, and slogans for agitation on the assumption
that the immediate tasks for the next stage of the revolution is to
push the bourgeoisie—the progressive national bourgeoisie—
towards completing the independent capitalist development, by
elaborating the public sector, by coming in closer association with
socialist countries, and by freeing economy, polity and social
structure from the imperialist and feudal domination. The dis¬
astrous consequences of such a line for the exploited and toiling
masses based on ‘dualeconomy’ postulates and its significance
in strengthening the bourgeoisie and thereby intensifying the
capitalist exploitation and oppression of the toiling masses, are
becoming more and more glaring. The strategy based on the thesis
of two-stages revolution in weakening and disorganizing the
fighting will of the exploited masses and channelizing the struggles
of the masses into disastrous economism or unplanned anarchic
outbursts have not been properly appraised.
(3) There is a third reason for restating the truth propounded by
Lenin.
'two-stages’ theory OF REVOLUTION IN r.IE THIRD WORLD 755

The experiences in all the countries of the Third World of Latin

America, Africa and Asia where the bourgeoisie have secured
formal political freedom from imperialism, and have organized
the state machinery for developing their economy and social
structure on the mixed-economy capitalist path, that is the path
of economic development on the basis of 'relying on the rich’ i.e.,
on strengthening the propertied classes, is worth noting. The
bourgeoisie—whatever the hue—have invariably intensified the
economic exploitation of the masses, and have astutely evolved
the strategy of depending on foreign capital. If the resistance of
the masses against their growing burden becomes more powerful,
the ruling bourgeois class whether 'progressive-national or reac¬
tionary-comprador’ or their henchmen, have let loose a reign
of terror. The ruling classes of the Third World have not hesitated
to seek assistance from imperialist powers or even secure military-
political aid from the 'socialist’ countries to suppress the militant
class and mass movements in their own countries. The bourgeois
ruling groups of a few of these countries have even openly embraced
the imperialist powers, have invited them to protect them and have
practically surrendered their political sovereignty to imperialist
powers. They, have, in fact, left the governance of the country to
the military-diplomatic arm of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
(4) There is a fourth reason for explicitly remembering the vital
truth of Lenin's generalization.
During the last 25 years after the second World War, all efforts
to reconstruct the economy and culture by the bourgeois national
states in the Third World have proved that in the epoch of the
declining phase of world capitalism, the weak, colonial bourgeoisie,
even with the active help of their own national state, or even with
assistance from 'socialist’ or imperialist countries, cannot carry
out even the elementary bourgeois-democratic tasks. They cannot
industrialize their countries at a rate which would relieve the burden
on the agrarian sector; they cannot develop at a tempo which would
create conditions for a 'take-off. They have neither the internal
market, nor the external market to expand the economy at a
buoyant rate even by the yard-stick of capitalism. Under the present
circumstances, they cannot simultaneously exploit their own labour¬
ing masses and generate purchasing power among them. They
756 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

cannot undertake major industrialization projects even by resorting

to large doses of foreign aid in a manner that would not increase
the growing burdens on the people. They cannot resolve elementary
problems like freeing the masses from semi-feudal forms of exploita¬
tion or solve the agrarian problem. The bourgeoisie of the Third
World, product of belated, distorted colonial development have
developed so ‘slothfully’ and ‘cravenly’ that while they felt the
cramping effect of foreign capital and its direct and indirect political
domination, ‘they were menacingly’ faced by the proletariat and
agrarian poor of their own countries on whose plunder they thrived.
The colonial bourgeoisie were not capable of becoming heroic
and truly revolutionary leaders like the bourgeoisie of France or
Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, who really formed the
vanguard leaders of the anti-feudal democratic revolution. They
always played a vacillating role, they wanted change, but basically
by bargain and compromise. The colonial bourgeoisies, when they
led the national independence movement against foreign imperialist
rule, headed the mass and class movement only in order to divert
this movement from the path of a thoroughgoing revolutionary
struggle to the path of reformist oppositional pressure for bargaining
with the foreign rulers. The bourgeoisie in the colonial countries,
in the epoch of world capitalist decline, do not symbolise the victory
of a new social order, but represent a system which has become
old and superannuated. It trembles before and is haunted by the
spectre of the Socialist Revolution and communism. As Paul
Baran has rightly pointed out and David Horovitz, Gunder Frank
and others have ably expounded, propertied calsses of all types,
including the most progressive national bourgeoisie in under¬
developed countries are instilled with ‘a mortal fear of expropriation
and extinction.’ This fear has been driving all more or less privileged,
more or less well-to-do elements in the newly independent Third
World society in one ‘counter-revolutionary coalition’. ‘In brief
whatever differences and antagonism exists between various
sections of domestic and foreign interests, they are generally
subordinated and submerged on all crucial occasions by the over¬
whelmingly common interests of staving off socialism and of
preventing and curbing socialist revolution. All of them, including
the national bourgeoisie in underdeveloped areas unite against
the growing menace of communism and, therefore, generate a
‘TWO-STAGES’ theory of revolution in the third world 757

hybrid conservatism, which degenerates liberalism into anti¬

communism’. The bourgeoisie of these countries are, therefore,
denied the power of ‘solving the economic and political deadlock
prevailing in the underdeveloped countries on the lines of a pro¬
gressive capitalism’.
Ernest Mandel, Hansen, Novack, Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy,
David Horovitz, Gunder Frank and a large number of eminent
Marxists have pointed out that the countries comprising the
Third World cannot be regarded as underdeveloped in the orthodox
sense, that is in the sense of being at an earlier stage of the develop¬
ment passed through advanced capitalism. On the contrary, their
typical characteristic are not the characteristics of the immature
stages of the newly developed capitalist societies, but of the combina¬
tion of advanced and backward stages produced by partial penetra¬
tion of capitalism in a backward semi-feudal colonial society.
‘These economies are not dual (part capitalist, part feudal), as it
sometimes suggested but ‘hybrid’ or ‘mutant’. Their problems
stem not from failure to develop, but from a distorted development,
one that leads not along a path to eventual self-sustained growth
but to an economic cul-de-sac. Real growth, in these mutant
economies cannot be achieved by organic, evolutionary processes
within the basic existing structures (least of all by an influx of
foreign capital), but only through a revolutionary transformation
of the structures themselves and cutting of dependent and depend¬
ency-generating ties.’
The findings of the UNO, the 4th International led by followers
of Trotsky, and Baran, Sweezy, Gunder Frank and a host of
Marxists, and even some of the critical bourgeois and petty bour¬
geois thinkers like Myrdal and others, have revealed the failure of
the bourgeoisie of the ex-colonial countries to develop during
the last 25 years to solve the economic and social-cultural problems.
These studies have also proved that they cannot generate a self-
sustained economic advance. They have further established that
the national bourgeoisies of the Third World countries, because
of the peculiarities as a result of their belated arrival on the historic
scene, are not in a position to undertake the revolutionary tasks
necessary to solve the urgent problems of national development
within the confines of a capitalist social framework.
Imperialist subjugation of these colonial countries has skewed
758 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

the internal socio-economic formations of these weakened, in¬

dustrially backward countries. It has altered the class structures
in such a manner, that even after securing politcal freedom from
imperialism formally and securing the political reins of their
countries, the national bourgeoisie (or any section of it) cannot
lead the countries to the self-sustaining development and growth.
Self-sustained growth, economic and social advance, unfettered
development of productive forces, and the rise in the standard
of living of the masses would now become possible only when
capitalism has been destroyed and a Marxist party of the proletariat
backed by poor peasants, seizes power and launches the economy
on the non-capitalist socialist path.
(5) There is a fifth reason for clearly grasping the profound
implication of Lenin’s formulation. The Communist parties which
propagate the theory of two-state revolution are themselves unclear
about the nature of the two stages of revolution. As rightly pointed
out by Kathleen Gough in her article, imperialism and Revolu¬
tionary Potential in South Asia’, all the communist groups including
the CPI, the CPM and the various Maoist groups in India, who
postulate a ‘two-stage’ revolution differ over the precise character
of the stages, over which classes will bring the two stages to comple¬
tion, and above all, about how the stages are to be realized. As
she emphatically asserts, the analyses formulated by these groups
‘seem imperfect, partly because there is no dual economy and
partly because the separation into two revolutionary stages is
unnecessary and mechanical’. She rightly points out ‘the time for
an independent capitalist or even a ‘non-capitalist’ (but non¬
socialist), stage is past—that bus has been missed’.

Conclusion
The lesson of twenty-five years of bourgeois rule in the Third
World has also vindicated the truth of Lenin’s statement, which
was formulated even earlier by Trotsky in his famous thesis of
Permanent Revolution. Neither National Democratic Revolution,
nor People’s Democratic Revolution, but Socialist Revolution
is the task on the agenda of-history, and that strategy and tactic
derived on the basis of pseudoscientific evaluation of colonial
bourgeoisie as comprised of a section of progressive bourgeoisie
and mortally in combat with feudal and imperialist forces are
‘two-stages’ theory of revolution in the third world 759

nothing but a monstrous distortion of Marxism and are leading

to disastrous consequences for the exploited and toiling masses.
A methodical discussion on the theory of two-stages of revolution
has, therefore, become urgent. I wish this discussion is started in
India as it has profound implications for evolving a correct startegy
and tactic for developing class and mass struggles in a country
which envelops nearly one-fifth of world humanity.
 39 Unconventional Anthropology of
‘Traditional’ Peasantry

A.R. Desai

(1)

Eric wolf in his Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (Faber)

focusses attention on the role of peasantry from a new angle. As
an anthropologist, Wolf attempts in his book to ‘review the evidence
of six cases of rebellion and revolution in our time in which peasants
have been the principal actors’. He seeks a more sophisticated
understanding of the political involvement of peasant groups, a
subject hitherto ignored or viewed as incidental to the major focus
of anthropology.

(2)

In the preface. Wolf reasons as to why anthropologists have

to change their focus of studies, their objects of study and also
ruthlessly break through biases that have imprisoned anthropolo¬
gists in the West. As Wolf points out, anthropology, ‘once conceived
as the study of the primitive, of that radically “other” beyond the
pale of civilization, this comparative science of savages and bar¬
barians is now experiencing a major change in its subject matter:
the far and distant populations “out there” have become partici¬
pants in a drama set upon our stage. They are no longer exotic and
hence capable of being admired or despised at a safe distance.
They wear our own robes, address us in our own idiom, affect
in tangible and immediate ways the outcome of a play we so wil¬
lingly began with a sense of our own enduring superiority.’
Wolf also distinguishes himself from the entire group of social
and cultural anthropologists who adopt an ahistorical approach
to the study of peasants in the Third World, and who have adopted
an ‘ideal typical index’ approach, or psychological approach to
 UNCONVENTIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY 761

study the peasantry as ‘little communities’ which are treated as pas¬

sive, unchanging, superstitious and traditional and further consider¬
ed as major obstacles to the modernization of the Third World.
Scholars adopt an attitude of superiority, and examine the peasantry
as objects to be changed from outside by larger forces of capitalist
modernization. Wolf urges anthropologists to return to history:
‘we need a new kind of history, as an account of our growing existen¬
tial involvement with one another. There is need for a history which
will draw upon several specialized disciplines and yet transcend
them, a history capable of telling us how the modem world was
made in the systematic interaction of bush and town, of city dweller
and peasant, of metropolis and satellite, of colonizer and colonized’.
Wolf then enumerates how anthropology can contribute to the
reconstruction of such a unified account of contemporary mankind.
According to him, anthropology offers (a) ‘a history of populations
long thought to be people without a past, but whose past is now
very much a part of our present’; (b) ‘a holistic perspective...
without falling prey to the tendency to apportion human reality
among several sets of rival specialists’, (c) ‘a lively sense of the
importance of life as lived in small groups and ordered in narrow
social networks and a recognition that life in such social micro¬
cosms persists in a powerful dialectic with the engulfing social
macrocosm. In this recognition it not only draws attention to the
many layered character of a complex society, but also emphasizes
its sense that these layers and segments affect each other in a
continuous process of the ‘interpenetration of the opposites’.

(3)

The detailed account of Wolfs postulates as an anthropologist

are given here with a view to highlight one significant development
in the USA.
A section of the anthropologists have been shocked into a new
sensitivity after the heroic struggles of the peasantry of Vietnam.
This heroic peasantry which was described by the US Military as
‘ragged little bastards in black pyjamas’, confronted and defied
in an unparallel manner the mightiest military machine in history.
This peasantry, which was assumed to be the bearer of tradition
and obstacle to modernization, was becoming a force which was
762 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA .

shattering not merely the socio-cultural and politico-economic

structure of Vietnam itself, but triggered some of the most
profound movements in the very heart of the bastion of imperialism.
Wolf, belongs to a section of concerned anthropologists, who
though still not avowedly Marxist, have been increasingly accept¬
ing, consciously or unconsciously some of the major elements of
a Marxist approach to contemporary social reality. Wolf under¬
takes this study no longer in the tradition of ‘pure scholarship’
but adopts an approach and a methodology which comes closest
to a Marxist approach, though Wolf himself is still not aware of it.
He attempts to understand the role and activities of the peasantry
under the impact of the world-wide spread of capitalism with its
emphasis on production for profit and market, and producing its
shattering impact in an uneven manner for various segments of feudal
and pre-feudal social structures both in metropolitan countries
and colonial and semi-colonial hinterlands. He focusses on the
impact of capitalism on the peasantry in various parts of the world,
and the reactions including participation in rebellions and revolu¬
tions that have taken place during this phase of human history.
Wolf considers this as a global phenomenon. However he attempts
to examine the problem through a few case studies of mighty
upheavals in the twentieth century in which the peasantry took a
very active part.
The six case studies examined by Wolf are (1) Mexico; (2) Russia;
(3) China; (4) Vietnam; (5) Algeria; (6) Cuba.
After undertaking the review of the six case studies. Wolf in a
very thought provoking chapter entitled ‘Conclusion’ highlights
certain common and unique features of these six great upheavals.
He also draws certain tentative generalizations which are fruitful
for those who want to extend the studies to other countries or go
deeper into the studies of the same cases taken by Wolf.
Wolf realizes the value of secondary sources, and need for
properly utilizing such sources for understanding such events in
which one cannot always proceed as participant or non-participant
observer. His account of the case studies are based on secondary
sources.
The case studies are carefully documented. They provide an
exciting account of rebellions and revolutions in six countries. The
accounts are lively, provide insightful details, endeavour to high-
 UNCONVENTIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY 763

light the relative importance of various objective and subjective

forces operating in each country. Each case reads like a poignant,
heroic, and still authentic saga of a great event.
The Chapter on ‘Conclusion’ is most thought provoking and has
raised issues which have very significant implications.
(a) The revolutions and rebellions described in the six case
studies, though belonging to the twentieth century, were the product
of tensions which had their roots in the past.
(b) This concrete historical experience ‘bears the stigma of
trauma and strife, of interference, rupture with a great past as well
as the boon of continuity of successful adaptation and adjustment
of events not easily erased and often only latent in the cultural
memory until some greater event serves to draw them forth again.’
(c) ‘In all our six cases this historical experience constitutes in
lurn. the precipitate in the present of a great overriding cultural
phenomenon, the worldwide spread and dillusion of a particular
cultural system—that of North Atlantic Capitalism’.
(d) The impact of capitalism as a world-wide system based on
production for the market and operation on the principle of profit,
meant that everywhere ‘land, labour and wealth’ have to be slowly
transformed into commodities.
(e) This implied that land ‘which was not regarded as a com¬
modity in most of the other kinds of societies, but where rights to
land are aspects of specific groups and its utilization, the ingredient
of specific social relationship, ‘if it had to become a commodity
in the capitalist market.. .it has first to be stripped of these social
obligations’. This was achieved either by force, through coloniza¬
tion of new lands or indirectly accomplished by furthering the rise
of ‘the strong and sober entrepreneurs within the peasant communi¬
ties, who could abandon their ties to neighbours and kin, and use
their surpluses in culturally novel ways to further their own stand
in the market’. ‘The spread of capitalism necessarily produces a
revolution of its own’.
(f) ‘This revolution from the beginning takes the form of an
unequal encounter between the societies which first incubated it
and societies which were engulfed by it, in the course of its spread.
The contact between the capitalist centre, the metropolis, and the
pre-capitalist or non-capitalist periphery is a large-scale cultural
encounter, not merely an economic one’.
764 PEASANT STRUGGLES IN INDIA

(g) Historically unique factors which gave rise to metropolitan

advanced capitalist societies, were not to be repeated in other parts
of the world. The contact between North Atlantic Capitalist
Countries and the colonial and semi-colonial countries subjected
to the forces generated by the former, created a situation in the latter
countries wherein the old social structure and cultural systems
were shattered, without being replaced by the more advanced
capitalist system. The West disintegrated the old fabric but initiated
distorted new subordinated ones shaped by its own requirements.
This was a new experience uprooting the entire past and necessitat¬
ing the creation of a new social order, which will eliminate the
combined ravages of distintegrated old societies and destroy new
forms of exploitation and oppression.
Wolf sums up this change in a very apt manner when he says:
‘Where previously market behaviour had been subsidiary to the
existential problems of subsistence, now existence and its problems
became subsidiary to market behaviour’.
The impact of colonization created stratification, produced
economic, political and socio-cultural situations, wherein the toil¬
ing strata, particularly middle peasants, poor peasant, agricultural
labourers, tenants, city proletariat and lower middle classes could
not attain security or improve their conditions by going back to the
past, nor could they better their positions in the emerging new
belated capitalist formations, which in the context of the historically
declining phase of the capitalist system as a whole, had lost the
ability to even fulfil the bourgeois-democratic tasks. Wolf
emphasizes this point vividly in his own technical language and
draws significant conclusions.
(a) Peasantry by itself would be rebellious, would launch-
gigantic upheavals, even wars, but if it is lead by parties or groups
wedded to the capitalist path of development, would be a part of a
capitalist order wherein its problems would only be aggravated as the
Mexican and the Algerian cases reveal. If the peasants arc guided by
a party or a group firmly committed to destroying capitalism
and take the social order to a non-capitalist path, the powerful re¬
bellions launched by the peasantry, culminating in peasant wars can
usher in conditions for the liberation of the peasantry and make it a
part of the larger social order where the exploited strata would usher
in a new epoch of non-capitalist socialist development, whatever the
 UNCONVENTIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY 765

super-structural deformities arising out of faulty policies of the

leaderships.
Wolf draws this conclusion from two cases of Mexico and Algeria
where th^ leadership of the mighty peasant wars did not transcend
the capitalist framework in their conception of a new order and from
four cases where the leadership, was consciously Marxists, was
disciplined, and inspite of numerous errors, pragmatically, pushing
the movement from bourgeois-democratic limitations to a socialist
revolutionary stage.
Wolf comes to this conclusions without recognizing that these
conclusions were drawn theoretically by Trotsky in 1905 and
explicitly stated as a guiding principle by Lenin in his April Thesis
in 1917. Wolf also pragmatically states a profound truth which
history after October Revolution has proved a number of times.
This truth is stamped on our life vividly viz. wherever the colonial
or semi-colonial countries have carried the anti-imperialist or anti¬
colonial battles to their successful socialist stage, and ushered in a
non-capitalist path of development, the cycle of underdevelopment
and distorted capitalist development have ceased and the societies
have been launched to a historically higher stage. The leap from
colonial backwardness to non-capitalist socialist development is us¬
hered in, skipping over the period of the bourgeois stage. Wherever
the peasant wars have been led by the forces wedded to the capitalist
path of development and so channelled even by communists, these
wars have ushered in an era of capitalist development which
intensifies the exploitation of the peasantry, and leaves the tasks
of the toiling strata unresolved. The story of Mexico and Algeria
are evidence of this fact. One can multiply evidence from countries
of the Third World, where the leadership has taken to a capitalist
path of development.
 INDEX

Abdul Gafar Khan 305 Cannal Tax movement (with others)

Acharya Narendra Deva, on pea¬ 375-412
santry 699 Charu Mazumdar and A.J.K.S. 438;
A.K. Gopalan 120, 733 and Tebhaga 446; death of 116
All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) 4, 7, Chatterjee Bankim Chandra 53
63, 238, 286, 289, 349-50, 428-41, Chaudhary Sukhbir 221, 237 Desai
444; and Congress 428; and Con¬ A.R. on 211-22; on alliance of
gress Socialist party 428; and Com¬ peasantry and nationalist intelli¬
munist 429-33,436-8 and Kshatriya gentsia 234; on Champaran struggle
Sabha 433-4; and land reforms 223-34; on Chaurichaura episode
after Independence 709-13; and 262-8; on Gandhiji 237, 263-8;
local leaders 433; and Muslim league on peasant struggles in 1905-18,
433-4; and Peasant’s Struggles in 221-36; 1919-21, 237-374; Bengal
Bengal 354-62; in Bihar 363-7; 260- 1; Gantur (Karnataka)
in Tebhaga 443-52, 461-8, 701-06; 261- 2; Moplah revolt 259-60; the
and revolutionaries 354-5; and Se¬ United Provinces 238-59
cond World War 438-9; collective Chaudhury, Binay Bhusan 282—7; on
affiliation with I.N.C. 436-39; de¬ agrarian movement in Bengal and
mands of 238, 430; Gaya Session Bihar (1919-39) 337-74; on agra¬
436-37; Hamza Alavi on 698-713; rian programmes of Congress 339-
Memorandum to Floud Com¬ 41; on aims of Peasant Movement
mission 434-36 352-3; on depression and peasantry
Alluri Sitaram Raju 59, 60, 62, 74. 346-8, 357; on hetrogeneity of pea¬
77, 277-8, 291-302 santry 361-2; on impact of money
Andhra Mahasabha, demands Visal rent 347; on importance of Peasant
Andhra 494 and Worker’s Party 343-45; on
Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Com¬ land relations after amendment of
mittee 113-15, 126 Bengal Tenancy Act—1855, 343-5;
Anti-Partition Movement (Bengal) on limitation of earlier struggles
212 339; on limitation of peasant stru¬
Anti-Rawlatt Act agitation 213, 217 ggles 367-70; on new features of
18 peasant movement in 1919-39, 338-
Arya Samaj 421, 494 39; on Swami Sahajanand Sara-
Bangiya Pradeshik Kisan Sabha 650 swathi 348-50
51; and Tebhaga in Pargana 656- Civil Disobedience Movement 1930s 8,
662 64, 213, 217, 218, 219, 263-8, 279,
Bannerjee, Tarun Kumar, Desai A.R. 285, 286, 292, 303-36, 353, 363,
on 288-90; on Damodar Canal Tax 417, 697, 698, 746; (1940-41) 439,
movement (with others) 375-412 441
Basu, Jyoti 453 Communist Party of India (unified)
Beasant, Annie 64, 214, 222 8, 11, 113, 116, 125, 133, 285, 289,
Bhave, Vinoba 423, 438, 512 429, 441, 453, 582, 598-9, 651-2,
Bhoodan 423, 438, 512 665, 667; and Commintern 285,
Bose, Subhash Chandra 543 417, 418, 421, 422, 429, 503, 724;
Brij Kishore Prasad 225-6 and Electoral Game 712-13; and
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya 287 Desai Kisan Sabhas 418, 428-39, 443-52;
A.R. on 288-90; on Damodar and Naval Revolt (1946) 442; and
768 INDEX

Quit India Movement 422; and 152, 157-58, 235-37, 281-82, 335-
Peasant struggles in Kerala 723-30; 36,371,415,494,501; and Civil.Dis¬
in Tebhaga 418-20; 443-52, 463-6, obedience movement 279, 305-12,
701 -06; in Tebhaga (Kakwdip) 469- 438; and Dandi March 285; and
70, 474-8, 480-4; in Telangana Kheda-Satyagraha 55-56, 72-73,
421-4, 486, 494-513, 517-31, 706- 230-34; and Khilafat Movement
09; Impact of split in International 110-12, 259, 624; and Indigo-culti¬
Communist Movement 730; Inner vator’s struggle (Champaran) 20,
party struggle 510-11, 728-30; 54-55, 72, 223-30, 237, 340; and
Kathleen Gough on 723-30; non-cooperation movement 56, 237,
Randive line 510, 728; United Front 263-68, 342, 349; and peasant stru¬
Govt, in Kerala 728-30; ggle in U.P. 246, 247, 250; betrayed
Communist Party of India (Marxist) peasant 214, 219-20, 262-68;
11, 85, 113-16, 125, 126, 426, 531, Chaudhuri Sukhbir on 237, 263-68;
552, 536, 651,664, 667; and Krishak death of 525; Hamza Alavi on 697-
Sabha 651; and left adventurists in 98; Marxist estimates of 280-1;
Bengal 731; and struggles of Kerala method of Satyagraha 54, 72-3,
peasants 730-9 213-14,218; Mukhopadhyay Ashim
Communist Party of India (Marxist- on 651; on Adivasis 16-17; stratag-
Leninist) 113-116, 118, 124, 125, ist of ruling class 213-16, 219-20,
126, 175, 426, 532 279-82, 439
Congress Socialist Party 428, 495, 725, Gokhale 54
745 Gough Kathleen 85, 119, 120, 122,
Dange S.A. 266, 273; on Gandhism 125, 627, 719; Desai A.R. on 9-11,
266 597-9; on agricultural labourers
Das C.R. 62 91, 121, 737-39; on caste and pea^
Das Dipak Kumar 275, 288-90; on sant struggles 113-14, on Kerala
Damodar Canal Tax Movement 723-39; on Kerala (unified) 723-30;
375-412 in Kerala (CPIM) 730-39; on com¬
Deutscher Issac on Mao’s relation pulsion to cultivate for export 90,
with peasantry 686 120; on ‘de-industrialization’ 90;
Dhanagare D.N. 486 Desai A.R. on 119-120; on ill-treatment of re¬
422; on definition of peasantry volutionaries 126; on impact of
486-7; on Marxism 486-7; on re¬ British-Rule 88-94; on Kerala land-
sults of Telangana movement 512- relation 719-23; on messianic move¬
13; on role of peasants in the Telan¬ ments 123; on messianic movements
gana movement 506-10; on Te¬ and cultural minorities 100-01; on
langana struggle 586 limitation of peasant revolt 87-8;
Dutt R.C. 52-5, 120 in pre-1920 period 112; in post
Dutt R.P. 429-30, 440, 452 1920 period 112-13; on Naxalbari
Forced recruitment in Army and movement 731-3; on peasant re¬
Collection of funds (World War I) volution and socialism 118-19; on
212, 214-15, 221-3 peasant struggles, 96; in 1765-1857
Forward Block Party 667 period 122; in pre-British period
Frank A.G. 719, 737; on changing 88; in Kerala 719-42; lessons of
pattern of World Economy 741-2 116-18; types of 94-6; Statistics of
Frantz Fanon 671 on revolutionary 86, 94, 96. 100, 103, 108-9; on
potentiality and peasantry 671 pattern of world economy 741-2;
Hamza Alavi on 671-2 on similarity between religious pea¬
Gandhi M.K. 4, 5, 6, 7, 59,61,84, 111. sant struggles and social banditry
 INDEX 769

105-07; on social background of 283-5, 289, 292, 335, 342, 415, 441,
Kerala Communists 734-5; Pani- 518, 598-9; agrarian programme of
kkar K.N. on 601-02 339-41; and Kisan Leaders 362-3;
Gunnar Myrdal 374 impact of caste and civil disobedience movement
system 368 279, 303-14, 329; and non-coopera¬
Gupta Sulekh on capitalist farming tion movement 56, 237, 263-8,
710-11 342, 349; and peasant struggle in
Hamza Alavi 122, 125, 126, 671, 719; Champaran 20, 54-5, 72, 223-30,
on role of middle and poor peasants 237, 340; Damodar Canal Tax
672-75; Kathleen Gough on 721 — Movement 381, 386, 392, 397, 400-
25; on agrarian relations in China 09, 412; in Kheda 55-56, 72-73,
688-91; in Russia 676-78; on Bho- 230-34; in Pargana 657-67; in»
wani Sen’s evaluation of middle Tebhaga 419, 449, 421, 494, 501,
peasants 701, 705; on condition of 505, 519-21; in U.P. 246, 247, 250;
success of Chinese Communists 692- in Warli 425; betrayed the masses
3; on definition of peasantry in 62-8, 214, 219-20, 284, 342, 356,
Marxist literature 673-5, 716; on 415-18, 542-6; Chaudhury Binoy
difference between Chinese and Bhushan on 339-41; Desai A.R. on
Indian situation 696-7; on Frantz 213-20, 279-82, 415-18, 426; dis¬
Fanon’s view of revolutionary illusionment with 220, 262-68,
potentiality of peasantry 671-2; 268-69; Hamza Alavi on 697-98;
on impact of Gandhi on Indian initiated land-reform 710-12;
Nationalist movement 697; on land Ministry of 73-5, 356, 362, 363-.,
reforms 711; on Marx-Engels views 415, 434, 453; Mukhopadhyay,
on peasantry 672; on Mao 685-9; Ashim on 647-48, 651; national
on pattern of political behaviour of government of 542, 546; on affilia¬
peasantry 713-16; on peasant and tion with AIKS 436-39; Ranga on
revolution 671-718; on peasant up¬ 6-7, 54, 61-2; rural strategy of
heaval in China 685; in Russia 679- 215,284, 327-8, 428
83; on place of peasantry in Leninist Indian Wars of Independence (1857)
revolutionary strategy 675-84; on 5, 8, 12, 20, 22, 61, 86, 87, 98, 100,
process of agrarian revolution and 123, 153; and peasantry 66-9
role of Communist bureaucracy Jallianwallah Bag massacre 213, 217;
693-6; on- Red Army (China) 692- Jayakar M R. 265, 273 Jayaprakash
6; on role of Mao and Maoists in Narayan 428 Joshi N.M. 231, 329,
agrarian revolution in China 693- 336 Joshi P C. 436, 441, 503 on
6; on Tebhaga and role of Com¬ United Front with I.N.C. 437;
munists 701-06; on Telangana and Justice Party 58, 59, 548;
role of Communists 706-09 Kanpur and Meerut Conspiracy Cases
Hindu Mahasabha 494 285;
Hobsbawn 99, .103, 106, 122-4 Khusro 488, 489, 506, 514-15;
Home Rule agitation 212, 214-15, Krishak Proja Party 351-2;
221-3 Krishak Smiti (Communists 385,
Home Rule League 215, 221 403-10, 433
Hume A.O. 171-2 Lenin 675, 683, 684, 699; on Agrarian
Hutton J.H. on reasons of Tribal Programme of Iskra-ist 678-80;
struggles 17 on Bolshevik failure to mobilize
Indian National Congress 5, 53-54, Poor Peasantry 683-84; on Method
61, 71-4, 84, 158, 167, 171-2, 212, of organising Peasantry 681; on
238, 254-55, 260, 263, 265, 272, Perspective of Development of
770 INDEX

Capitalism in Rural Russia 676; 305, 341, 371, 415, 543, 555, 567;
on Pre-condition of Mobilizing Poor and peasant movements 240, 245,
Peasantry 684; on Slogan of 254-6, 262-3, 341; on I.N.C. with
‘Alliance of the Working Class and A.I.K.S. 436; on nature of his
the Peasantry’ 675; on Stage of politics 341; on pauperization of
Revolution 751-2; peasantry 239
Liakat Hussain 214, 222 Nehru Motilal 62, 64, 255
Malavia, Madan Mohan 234, 265, Non-Cooperation Movement 56-7,
273 61, 75, 157-8, 167, 213, 217, 218,
Mao, Tse Tung 510, 514, 516, 675, 219, 237, 277, 292, 341-2, 349,
685, 689, 699; activity in Peasantry 417, 618; and No-Tax agitation in
of 685-86; and Hunan Movement Guntur 261-62; and peasant
(Report) 687-88, 690-92; and struggle in U.P. 246-61; Chaudhury
Lenin’s view on peasantry 684-5, Binoy Bhushan on 341-2; Swami
692; former view on peasantry of Sahajanan Sarswathi and N.G.
685; ideological development of Ranga on 6
685-6; on class differentiation in Panikkar K.N. 601 on Peasant Revolts
rural China 688, 691, 720-1 in Malabar 601-30
Mass Emigration 47, 80; to avoid Parulekar Godavri 592, 578, 583
forcible recruitment in Army 214 Parulekar S.V. 569, 583; Desai A.R.
Mass insurrections 108 on 424-5; on Warli Revolt 569-82,
Mehta Ashok on strategy of com¬ 583-92';
munists 699; Patel Vallabhbhai 65, 73, 81, 231,
Mehta Ferozshah 54 305,309, 366,415,422, 555
Mehta Uday 743; Desai A.R. on Patel Vithalbhai 231
597-99; on characterization of Pattabhi Sitaramayya 157, 158, 169,
phases of Indian peasant move¬ 547
ments 743-4 on C.P.I. and P.S.P. Peasants and Workers Party (1926-28)
747-50; 284-6, 343-5 Programme of 285,
Menon M.S.N. 22, 58, 60, 124 344
Menon Sreedhara 111 Peasant Struggles; before Indian War
Moore Barrington 86, 118, 374, 511, of Independence (1857) 122-3; in
513 compares Chinese and Indian Bengal (19th Century) 189-207,744;
Revolts 86; on the effects of caste in Bengal (20th Century) 75, 217,
system on peasant movement 118, 260-61; in Bengal (Pabna-1873) 19,
367-8 Mukherjee Ramkrishna 119, 20, 117, 179-88, 189, 337, 453; in
120,471,483 Mukhopadhyay Ashim Bengal (Parganas) 631 -62; in Bengal
on I.N.C. 647-8, 651 Munshi K..M. (Tax-Movement of Damodar-
525 Muslim League 350-1, 372, Canal) 75, 375-412; in Bengal
415,418, 426, 468, 518, 657 Ministry (Tebhaga 1930’s) 114, 115; in Bengal
of 453, 464 Muzharul Haq 225 (Tebhaga 1946) 113, 114, 117, 125,
Nair M. Krishnan 58, 59 418- 20, 434, 438, 439, 442-68;
Namboodripad E.M.S. 119, 125, 230, in Bengal (Tebhaga-Kakdwip)
235,266-7,272-3,629,733 419- 20, 469-85; in Bihar
Natrajan L 19, 123; an overview of {Champaran 1916-18) 20, 54, 72,
peasant struggles in India 170-3; 152, 157, 215, 223-30, 237, 238,
on Deccan Riots 159-69; Indigo 283; in Bihar (Indigo Cultivator's
Cultivators’ Strike (1860) 148-58; Strike-1860) 19-20, 110, 132-3,
Santhal Insurrection 136-47 147, 148-58, 170, 171, 172, 453;
Nehru Jawaharlal 268, 270-3, 283, in Bihar (land satyagraha 1939) 75;
 INDEX 771

in Gujarat (Kheda 1919-21) 55-6, Rao C. Rajeshwar 502, 503, 510,

60, 65, *70, 77, 73, 75, 152, 223, 514, 516; Desai A.R. on 422-23;
230-4, 238, 283; in Karnataka on Telangana 517-31
(against forest law) 75; (No Tax Report of India League Delegation
campain and civil disobedience) 57, (1932) 278,303-36
58, 71, 75, 217, 261-2; 719-43; Ryots Association 62-4, 260, 380-6,
21-22,97, 100-01,123,170, 608-16, 391-2,402-07
724; in Kerala (Mopla 20th Century) Russel Bertrand 278, 303 Presided
58-59, 62, 72, 102, 110-18, 217, India League Delegation (1932) 278,
259-60. 284, 616-27, 719-43; in 303-36
Kerala (Mopla-Khilafat) 110-12, Sanyal Kanu 125
125, 217, 238, 259-60, 618, 623-7; Sarkar Krishnakant 469; Desai A.R.
in Maharashtra (Deccan Riots 1875) cut 419-20; on condition of
19, 20, 21, 51, 57, 70-71, 109-10, Kakdwip 470-4; on structural
125, 147, 159-69, 170, 171, 172, aspects of Peasant Movement
744; in Pre-British India 88; in 476-80; on Tebhaga in Kakdwip
Princely States (1937-46) 78-81, 469-85
87, 519; in Telangana (1946-51) Schram 687, on Mao and Leninism 687
113, 114, 115, 117, 125, 420-25, Sen Bhawani 122, 270; Hamza Alavi
486-516; in United Provinces 57, on 701, 705, on class nature of
237, 238-59, 744; sponsered by peasantry 701, 704, 705; on'growing
Communists 113-16 capitalist farming in India 711
Police action 142-6, 165-7, 178, 233, Sen Sunil 428; Desai A.R. on 418-19;
241-6, 249-50, 295-9, 303-04, on condition of duars area 457-60;
314-34, 461-2, 563-4, 578-80, on Kisan Sabha 428-51; demands
590-1 433; nature 430; political orienta¬
Praja Socialist Party (P.S.P) 699, 710 tion 436; on relation of peasantry
Prasad Rajendra 54, 55, 225, 228-9, and revolutionaries 428; on the
230-5 Bargadars Bill 453-60;
Quit India Movement 8, 82-3,415-17, Sengupta Kalyankumar 179, 189;
422 Desai A.R. on 135; on agrarian
Qureshi 487, 488, 490, 515 disturbance in 19th century Bengal
Raghavaiah V.R. 3, 4, 12, 174; 189-207; on Pabna struggle
Chronology of Tribal revolts 23-7; 179-188;
Tribal revolts, background of 12- Simon Commission 305
22; in Andhra Pradesh 174-8; in Social Banditry 10, 103-08, 115
Andhra Pradesh (Alluri Sree Ram 117, 119-24
Raju) 291-302 Stalin 683 on alliance with peasantry
Rajagopalachari 54 683
Ranade 54 Stephen Fuchs 4, 28, 100, 105, 119,
Randive B.T. 503, 510, 728 122-5; on nature of Messianic
Ranga N.G. 47, 66, 428, 439, 440, movements 28-43;
494-5, 515, 547, 563; and A.I.K.S. Sun Yat-Sen 685
428; and kulaks 8; on co-operatives Sundarayya P. 490, 495-6,498-9, 502,
8; on Gandhi (with S.S. Swami) 4; 504-5, 507-11, 514; Desai A.R.
on I.N.C. (with S.S. Swami) 54, on 423-4; on Telangana 532-68;
61-2; on method of organizing Swami Sahjanand Saraswathi 47, 286,
peasantry 699; on type, nature, 439; and peasant movement 348-50,
strategy and 66, 68, 83; limitations 370-1,745; on Gandhi (with Ranga)
of peasant movements 4-5; on Government of India Act
772 INDEX

(1936) 363; on l.N.C. (with Ranga) Koraput (Orissa) revolt 27, 78;
54 K.oya (Andhra Pradesh) revolts 175-6;
Swaraj Party 62-3 Rampa (1802-03) 23,87,97,175-6;
Thakkar Bapa 329 led by Tammandora (1879-80) 26,
The All-India Adibasis and Excluded 176-8; led by Sree Ram Raju
Areas Association 75- 6 (1922-24) 27, 61, 75, 291-302;
Thomas Munro 48 Lushai (Assam) revolts 13, 24-6;
Tilak 214, 221 Mai Paharia revolt 13, 23;
Tribal population statistics 12-13, Manipur revolt 27, 77;
174-5 Mayurabhang revolt 75;
Tribal struggles Andaman revolt 27; Mishmis (Assam) revolt 24-5;
Assamese revolts 23-4; Bihar Mizo revolt 27, 132;
revolts 23; Bhil (Gujarat) revolts Munda (Bihar) revolt 24, 27, 101,
23, 25, 27, 43, 45, 75, 301-02; 102,123,301-02;
Khandesh 1808-09 revolt 122; Mymenisingh revolts 75, 103, 117,
Malva 1846 revolt 122; 189,447;
Chaudhri (Bihar) movement 23 Naga revolts 19, 26, 27, 132
Chota Nagpur revolt 23; Naikdas (Gujarat) revolts 24, 25, 26,
Chronology of 23-27; 101, 102, 132;
Chuar (Midnapore 1799) 97, 122 Naxalbari revolt 27, 85, 113-16;
Daflas (NEFA) Revolt 24, 26; Oraons (Jarkhand movement) 113,
Dhalbhum (1769-74) revolt 122; 458-60;
Gonds (Bastar) revolt 25, 27, 132, Panchet revolt 23;
301-02; Phulaguri revolt 26;
Gonds (Adilabad, A.P.) revolt 27; reasons of 13,14-19;
Hos (Singbhum 1831—32) revolt 13, Santhal revolts 12, 13, 14, 26, 51, 75,
17, 123; 76, 85, 113, 117, 119, 744; of 1811,
Jaintia Hills (Assam 1860-62) revolt 1820, 1831, 138; insurrection
13, 24, 26, 123; (1855-56) 20, 21, 25, 69-70, 97, 98,
Jharkhand movement 11,113; 112,131-2,136-47,150,162,170-2;
Juang revolt 26; Jarkhand movement 458-60
Kallar (Madura 1710-84) revolt 122; Sentinal island revolt 26-7;
Khampti (Assam) revolt 24; Singphos (Assam) revolts 24, 25;
Khasi (Assam 1829-58) revolt 13, 24, Tamar Rebellions 17, 23;
123; Varli revolt 27,45,132,424-5,569-82,
Khewar (Bihar) revolt 24; 583-92;
Khondh (Orissa) revolt 13, 25, 122, Verrier Elwin 14, 17; on reasons of
123; tribal struggle 17;
Kolam (Adilabad, A.P.) revolt 27; Wolf E.R. 599, 719, 735 on peasantry
Koli (Maharashtra) revolt 23-4; 599-600
Kols revolt 17, 123; Yagnik Indulal 55,231,430
 Date Due

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