Peasant Movements in Independent India
The peasant movements for agrarian reforms in India have always been centred on the issue of land ownership and land distribution. The term ‘peasant’ includes tenant, sharecropper, small farmer not regularly employed, hired labour, and landless labourers. Several peasant movements rose over economic questions all through the British period but with limited results. The 20th century saw some of the most violent and widespread peasant movements with far-reaching consequences. The main demands of these movements centred on reduction of excessive rent or revenue on produce and land redistribution from the rich to the poor. Many of these movements have provided the stimulus necessary for land legislation in India.
Some of the major movements of 20th century are discussed below:
Peasant Movements in Bihar
After the Champaran Satyagraha in 1917, Bihar became an important centre for peasant movements. These activities had addressed the problems of share croppers such as abolition of customary non-rent payments, regulation of eviction, and fixation of fair rent. The main centre of the movements was north Bihar. The Bihar Kisan Sabha, started in 1927, developed as an extensive organization under the leadership of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. It was the strongest section of the All-India Kisan Sabha. With passage of Zamindari Abolition Act,1949, the movements disappeared. In 1978, the peasants in Bihar, under the leadership of the Yuva Chhatra Sangharsh Samity, organized a long drawn out struggle in Bodhgaya to secure land rights from the Shankar Math. The mahants (religious heads) of the Buddhist monasteries in the area had amassed huge tracts of land under the exemption given to religious and charitable institutions in the ceiling laws of the state. The situation erupted in violence. After the Supreme Court’s directive to the effect that the land is handed over to the tillers, the struggle was considered to be successful.
Kisan Sabha and Khet Mazdoor Sabha in Uttar Pradesh
Kisan sabhas were started in U.P. in 1926-27. Their main demands centred on problems of tenants, such as giving tenants occupancy rights, abolishing non-rent extraction and forced labour, cancelling all rent arrears, reducing rent and water rates. These movements did not show much interest in problems of agricultural labourers. This led to the establishment of the Khet Mazdoor Sabha in 1959.
Tebhaga Movement in Bengal
Despite repeated famines in the Bengal region, the tenants were forced to surrender half of their produce to the landlords. The famine was worsened when the jotedar (landlord) class were indulged in hoarding and black marketing of food grains. In 1946, the All India Kisan Sabha started the Tebhaga movement, demanding that tenants be allowed to keep two-thirds of the produce. The movement received the massive support from agricultural labourers. The movement declined in 1947 due to crackdowns by the police, and the divisions that developed within the movement along religious lines.
Telangana Movement
One of the most politically effective peasant movements was seen in the erstwhile State of Hyderabad. In Telangana region, the land ownership was in the hands of very few ruling class people. The actual cultivators of the land were subjected to high rent, increasing indebtedness and a system of free labour (also known as the vetti system). The Communist Party of India took up these issues as the basis for a peasant’s struggle against feudalism in the period 1946-48. The objectives of this armed struggle were land grabbing and redistribution, abolition of compulsory levy to the government, and stopping eviction of tenants under any pretext. The struggle turned in to violent with police retaliation against the Gram Raj Committees that were set up by the peasant groups to work as defence squads and institutions for self-governance. Laterthe A.P. (Telangana Area) Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1950, was passed when the Indian Government took over from the Nizam’s rule.
Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal
In 1967, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) had started a liberation movement by imitating Chinese Model, in the village of Naxalbari, Darjeeling district in north Bengal. The main issue of the movement was to secure rights for the marginalized sections of the agricultural community. In the course of the movement, several peasant committees were set up and land was redistributed. Several landlords were put on trial and executed. Village defence squads were established with agricultural labourers as its leaders. Later the revolution was quickly liquidated. The Naxalbari movement is one of the most widespread movements of the present times. Now, it no longer confines its issues to land reforms, but also on larger issues of corruption, exploitation, maladministration.
