The Peasant Movements of the 1920s and 1930s

The Peasant Movements of the 1920s and 1930s

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Peasant unrest in colonial India did not begin in the twentieth century — it had deep roots in the agrarian protests of the nineteenth century, from the Indigo Revolt to the Deccan Riots. These early struggles shaped the methods and demands that later fed into the far larger, more organised peasant movements of the 1920s and 1930s, which in turn became closely interwoven with the national freedom struggle.

Early Peasant Movements

Indigo Revolt (1859–60) / Nil Bidroha

• Indigo cultivation in Bengal dated back to 1777. Indigo planters, nearly all Europeans, exploited local peasants by forcing them to grow indigo on their land instead of more profitable crops like rice, compelling them to take cash advances and enter into fraudulent contracts that were later used against them.
• Planters intimidated peasants through kidnappings, illegal confinement, flogging, attacks on women and children, seizure of cattle, and the burning or demolition of houses and crops.
• Peasant anger exploded in 1859, led by Digambar Biswas and Bishnu Biswas of Nadia district — peasants refused to grow indigo and resisted the physical pressure of the planters and their lathiyals (retainers), who were backed by the police and courts, organising a counter-force of their own against planter attacks.
  • When planters retaliated with evictions and enhanced rents, ryots responded with a rent strike, refusing to pay the enhanced rents and physically resisting eviction.
  • Over time, they also learned to use the legal machinery, initiating legal action supported by organised fund collection.
• The Bengali intelligentsia played a significant supporting role — through newspaper campaigns, mass meetings, memoranda on peasant grievances, and legal support.
  • Harish Chandra Mukhopadhyay documented the peasants’ plight in his newspaper, The Hindu Patriot.
  • Dinabandhu Mitra’s 1859 play Nil Darpan, based on the revolt, was translated into English by Michael Madhusudan Dutta and published by Rev. James Long; it drew considerable attention in England, where readers were shocked at the conduct of their countrymen. The British government responded by putting Rev. Long through a mock trial and sentencing him to imprisonment and a fine.
• The revolt is generally regarded as a non-violent movement — often cited as a forerunner of the passive resistance later adopted successfully by Gandhi — and is considered more successful in this respect than the Revolt of 1857.
  • The government’s response included appointing an Indigo Commission to examine the issue; based on its recommendations, a notification issued in November 1860 declared that ryots could not be compelled to grow indigo and that disputes would be settled through legal means.
  • By then, however, planters were already closing their factories, and indigo cultivation was virtually wiped out from Bengal by the end of 1860.

Pabna Agrarian Leagues

• Through the 1870s and 1880s, large parts of Eastern Bengal witnessed agrarian unrest caused by oppressive Zamindari practices — enhanced rents beyond legal limits, and the obstruction of tenants’ occupancy rights under Act X of 1859.
  • Zamindars pursued their ends through forcible evictions, seizure of cattle and crops, and prolonged, costly litigation that left the poor peasant at a severe disadvantage.
• Peasants of Yusufshahi Pargana in Pabna district, having had enough, formed an agrarian league to resist Zamindari demands, organising a rent strike and challenging the Zamindars in court, with funds raised by ryots themselves to fight the cases.
  • The struggle spread across Pabna and into other districts of East Bengal, remaining primarily a legal, largely non-violent form of resistance.
• Though peasant discontent lingered until 1885, most cases were resolved — partly through official persuasion and partly out of Zamindar apprehension — allowing many peasants to secure occupancy rights and resist enhanced rents.
  • The government’s promised legislative protection for tenants materialised as the Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885.
• Interestingly, the intelligentsia that had supported the Indigo Revolt did not extend the same support here, since this struggle was against Indian zamindars rather than European planters. A number of young Indian intellectuals nonetheless backed the peasants’ cause, including Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, R.C. Dutt, and the Indian Association under Surendranath Banerjee.

Deccan Riots

• Ryots of the Deccan region in western India suffered heavy taxation under the Ryotwari system, and were also trapped in a cycle of exploitation by moneylenders, who were mostly “outsiders” — Marwaris or Gujaratis.
  • Conditions worsened due to a crash in cotton prices following the end of the American Civil War (1864), a 50% hike in land revenue by the government in 1867, and a succession of bad harvests.
• In 1874, mounting tension between moneylenders and peasants erupted into a social boycott movement: ryots refused to buy from moneylenders’ shops or cultivate their fields, while barbers, washermen, and shoemakers refused them service.
  • The boycott spread rapidly to the villages of Poona, Ahmednagar, Sholapur, and Satara, before escalating into agrarian riots with systematic attacks on moneylenders’ houses and shops, in which debt bonds and deeds were seized and publicly burnt.
• The government succeeded in repressing the movement, and passed the Deccan Agriculturists Relief Act, 1879 as a conciliatory measure.
• Here too, some of the modern nationalist intelligentsia of Maharashtra lent support to the peasants’ cause.

Peasant Movements of the 1920s and 1930s

The peasant movements of the twentieth century were deeply shaped by, and in turn shaped, the national freedom struggle — a relationship visible across every major uprising of this period.

Peasant Movements in the 1920s

The Kisan Sabha Movement in Awadh

• Following the annexation of Awadh in 1856, and the restoration of Talukdar lands after the 1857 Revolt, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the taluqdars (big landlords) steadily tighten their hold over the region’s agrarian society.
  • The majority of cultivators faced high rents, summary evictions (bedakhali), illegal levies, and renewal fees (nazrana); the rising cost of food and other necessities during and after World War I made this oppression harder to bear.
• Largely through the efforts of Home Rule activists, kisan sabhas began organising in UP: the UP Kisan Sabha was formed in February 1918 by Gauri Shankar Mishra and Indra Narayan Dwivedi, with support from Madan Mohan Malaviya.
• The first signs of grassroots peasant activity appeared toward the end of 1919, with reports of nai-dhobi bandh — a form of social boycott depriving landlords of barber and washerman services — on an estate in Pratapgarh district, organised through panchayats under the leadership of Baba Ramchandra, a sanyasi who had earlier worked as an indentured labourer in Fiji.
  • By June 1919, the UP Kisan Sabha had 450 branches; other prominent leaders included Jhinguri Singh and Durgapal Singh. In June 1920, Baba Ramchandra invited Nehru to visit these villages, and Nehru developed close ties with the villagers during these visits.
  • The kisans also found an unexpected sympathiser in Mehta, the Deputy Commissioner of Pratapgarh, who promised to investigate their complaints — the Kisan Sabha at village Roor became a centre of activity, with around one lakh tenants registering complaints for a fee of one anna each. Gauri Shankar negotiated with Mehta over key issues like bedakhali and nazrana, and Mehta’s resulting concessions gave the movement new confidence.
• In October 1920, differences within nationalist ranks — between Congress’s newly adopted path of non-cooperation and Malaviya’s preference for constitutional agitation — led to the formation of the Awadh Kisan Sabha, which brought all the grassroots kisan sabhas of Awadh under one banner.
  • It called on kisans to refuse to till bedakhali land, refuse hali and begar (forms of unpaid labour), boycott those who did not comply, and resolve disputes through panchayats.
• From January 1921, the pattern of activity shifted rapidly from mass meetings to the looting of bazaars, houses, and granaries, along with clashes with the police — centred mainly in Rai Bareilly, Faizabad, and Sultanpur, where it became difficult to distinguish a Non-Cooperation meeting from a peasant rally.
• The movement declined soon after, owing partly to government repression and partly to the passage of the Awadh Rent (Amendment) Act.

Eka Movement

• Peasant discontent resurfaced toward the end of 1921 in the northern UP districts of Hardoi, Bahraich, and Sitapur, driven by rents 50% higher than recorded rates, oppression by revenue-collecting thikedars, and the practice of share-rents.
• Meetings of the Eka (Unity) Movement involved a symbolic religious ritual in which peasants vowed to: pay only the recorded rent, but on time; not vacate land upon eviction; refuse forced labour; give no assistance to criminals; and abide by panchayat decisions.
• Grassroots leadership came from Madari Pasi and other low-caste leaders, along with a number of small zamindars.
• Severe government repression brought the movement to an end by March 1922.

Mappila Revolt

• In August 1921, peasant discontent erupted among Mappila (Muslim) tenants in the Malabar district of Kerala, over the lack of security of tenure, renewal fees, high rents, and other oppressive landlord exactions — a grievance with nineteenth-century precedents, but erupting in 1921 on an unprecedented scale.
  • The impetus had first come from the Malabar District Congress Conference at Manjeri (April 1920), which — significantly, given earlier landlord success in keeping Congress uncommitted — backed the tenants’ cause and demanded regulatory legislation for landlord-tenant relations. Tenants’ associations soon followed, first at Kozhikode and then elsewhere in the district.
• The movement became closely intertwined with the Khilafat Movement, sharing the same leaders and audiences to the point of being virtually indistinguishable; its social base was primarily Mappila tenants, with Hindus largely absent, though a number of Hindu leaders were involved.
  • Leaders of the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement, including Gandhi, Shaukat Ali, and Maulana Azad, addressed Mappila meetings; after national leaders were arrested, leadership passed to local Mappila figures.
• The arrest of the priest-leader Ali Musaliar in August 1921 sparked large-scale riots. Initial targets were symbols of British authority — courts, police stations, treasuries, offices — along with unpopular landlords (jenmies, mostly Hindu).
  • Once martial law and repression intensified, the rebellion’s character shifted: Hindus were increasingly seen by Mappilas as aiding the authorities, and what began as an anti-government, anti-landlord movement acquired communal overtones, isolating the Mappilas from the wider Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement.
• All resistance had ceased by December 1921; the militant Mappilas were left demoralised, with almost no political participation until independence, though a Left-led peasant movement would later grow in Kerala.

UP and Malabar: Peasant Movements and National Politics

• The movements in UP and Malabar were both closely linked to national-level politics — the former drawing impetus first from the Home Rule Leagues and later from Non-Cooperation and Khilafat, the latter merging almost completely with the Khilafat Movement.
• In both cases, however, peasant recourse to violence created distance from the national movement, prompting national leaders — Gandhi in particular — to urge peasants against extreme measures such as withholding rent.
  • This advice was partly driven by a genuine desire to shield peasants from repression, a concern later borne out as the government launched heavy crackdowns in both regions.
  • It may also have reflected other considerations: peasants themselves were not demanding the abolition of rent or landlordism, only an end to ejectments, illegal levies, and exorbitant rents — demands the national leadership supported. Extreme measures like a rent boycott risked pushing even small landlords toward the government, undermining any chance of their remaining neutral in the wider conflict between the government and the national movement.

Bardoli Satyagraha

• The Bardoli taluqa in Surat district had become intensely politicised following Gandhi’s rise on the national stage. The movement was triggered in January 1926 when authorities decided to raise land revenue by 30%.
  • Congress leaders protested swiftly, and a Bardoli Inquiry Committee found the hike unjustified. In February 1926, Vallabhbhai Patel was called in to lead the movement — the women of Bardoli conferred on him the title “Sardar”.
• Under Patel, Bardoli peasants resolved to withhold payment of the revised assessment until the government either appointed an independent tribunal or accepted the existing amount as full payment.
  • To organise the struggle, Patel set up 13 chhavanis (workers’ camps) across the taluqa, launched the Bardoli Satyagraha Patrika to shape public opinion, and formed an intelligence wing to ensure compliance with the movement’s resolutions.
  • Opponents of the movement faced social boycott, and special emphasis was placed on mobilising women; K.M. Munshi and Lalji Naranji resigned from the Bombay Legislative Council in support.
• By August 1928, tension had built to a peak, with the added prospect of a railway strike in Bombay; Gandhi arrived in Bardoli to be on standby, while the government began looking for a graceful way to withdraw.
  • It was agreed that the enhanced rent would first be paid by all occupants, after which a committee reviewed the matter, found the revenue hike unjustified, and recommended a much smaller rise of just 6.03%.

Peasant Movements in the 1930s

Context: The Depression and Civil Disobedience

• Peasant awakening in the 1930s was shaped both by the Great Depression in industrialised countries and by the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), which in many areas took the form of no-rent or no-revenue campaigns.
  • Under the CDM, this included a no-revenue (later no-rent) campaign in UP; agitation against the Chowkidari Tax in Bihar and Bengal (under which villagers were made to pay for the upkeep of their own oppressors); no-tax campaigns in Surat and Kheda; a no-revenue campaign in Punjab; Forest Satyagraha (defiance of forest laws) in Maharashtra, Bihar, and the Central Provinces; and an anti-Zamindari struggle in Andhra.
• After the active phase of the CDM declined in 1932, many newly politicised individuals looked for fresh outlets for their energies and turned to organising the peasantry.

Formation of the All India Kisan Sabha

• The CDM brought leftist leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose to greater prominence, and in 1934 the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) was formed, giving a significant push to the consolidation of Left forces; Communists, too, used CSP membership to work openly and legally.
  • This consolidation spurred the drive — already under way through the efforts of N.G. Ranga and other kisan leaders — to form an all-India body to coordinate the kisan movement.
• The Kisan Sabha movement itself had begun earlier in Bihar, where Sahajanand Saraswati formed the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS) in 1929 to mobilise peasant grievances against Zamindari attacks on occupancy rights, before gradually spreading across the country.
  • In April 1935, N.G. Ranga and E.M.S. Namboodiripad — then secretary and joint secretary of the South Indian Federation of Peasants and Agricultural Labour — proposed the formation of an all-India farmers’ body.
• These developments culminated in the establishment of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress on 11 April 1936, with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as president and N.G. Ranga as general secretary.
  • Its ranks included figures such as Namboodiripad, Karyanand Sharma, Yamuna Karjee, Yadunandan Sharma, Rahul Sankrityayan, P. Sundarayya, Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev, and Bankim Mukerji.
• A Kisan Manifesto was finalised at the All-India Kisan Committee session in Bombay and formally presented to the Congress Working Committee for incorporation into its 1937 election manifesto; released in August 1936, it demanded the abolition of the zamindari system and the cancellation of rural debts.
  • At the second AIKS session, held alongside the Congress session at Faizpur, Maharashtra, and presided over by N.G. Ranga, the Kisan Manifesto strongly influenced the agrarian programme the Congress adopted there — including a 50% reduction in land revenue and rent, a debt moratorium, abolition of feudal levies, security of tenure for tenants, a living wage for agricultural labourers, and recognition of peasant unions.

Peasant Movement Under Congress Ministries, 1937–39

• The formation of Congress ministries in most provinces in early 1937 marked the beginning of a new phase for the peasant movement — the years 1937–39 are generally regarded as its high-water mark.
  • The political climate changed markedly: greater civil liberties, a new sense of confidence born of the feeling that “our own people are in power,” and rising expectations that the ministries would deliver pro-people measures. Varying kinds of agrarian legislation — for debt relief, restoration of Depression-era lost lands, and tenant security — gave fresh impetus to peasant mobilisation, whether in support of proposed laws or in pursuit of stronger provisions. The chief vehicle for this mobilisation was the kisan conference, held at the thana, taluqa, district, and provincial levels.
• In October 1937, the AIKS adopted the red flag as its banner, and its leadership grew steadily more distant from Congress, repeatedly clashing with Congress governments in Bihar and the United Provinces.
  • Though socialists and right-wing Congress leaders had acted together to secure a large Congress victory in the 1937 elections, right-wingers regained the upper hand after ministry formation and worked to stall zamindari reform.
• In Bihar, the bakasht land issue — where permanent tenancies had been converted into short-term ones — saw conservative Congress leaders realign with landlords through a formal agreement; when the resulting tenancy legislation was diluted under landlord pressure, peasants launched a militant Kisan Sabha-led movement in 1938–39 demanding the restoration of bakasht lands.
  • At its 1938 annual conference, the AIKS denounced the Gandhian principle of class collaboration and declared agrarian revolution its ultimate goal, prompting alarmed Zamindars to press the Congress government into using its coercive power, and the Bihar Congress to distance itself from the Kisan Sabha.
• In UP, the Kisan Sabha grew disillusioned as the Congress ministry blunted the 1938 tenancy legislation — originally expected to halve rents — prompting leaders like Narendra Dev and Mohanlal Gautam to organise peasant demonstrations.
• In Orissa, Kisan leaders were similarly frustrated by pro-landlord amendments to proposed tenancy legislation; even the diluted bill was held up by the governor until a massive Kisan Day Rally on 1 September 1938 forced action.
• A resolution at the Haripura session of Congress in February 1938 barred Congressmen from Kisan Sabha membership, though its enforcement was left to provincial bodies.
• By May 1942, the Communist Party of India — legalised that July — had effectively taken over the AIKS across India, including in Bengal, where its membership grew considerably.
  • The CPI’s pro-War “People’s War” line kept the AIKS officially away from the Quit India Movement (August 1942), though many local-level workers defied the party line and joined it regardless. This cost the AIKS its popular base, and leaders such as Ranga, Yagnik, and Saraswati soon left the organisation, which found it increasingly difficult to reconcile its pro-British, pro-War posture with the loyalties of the peasantry it sought to represent.

Peasant Activity Across the Provinces

Kerala

• In Malabar, peasants were mobilised chiefly by Congress Socialist Party activists, and numerous Karshak Sanghams (peasant organisations) sprang up.
  • Core demands included the abolition of feudal levies (akramapirivukal) and renewal fees (policceluthu), an end to advance rent and to evictions justified by “personal cultivation,” reduced tax, rent, and debt burdens, fair measurement of grain rent, and an end to corrupt practices by landlords’ managers.
• Mobilisation took the form of village Karshaka Sangham units, conferences, and meetings, but the most popular and effective tactic was the jatha — large peasant marches to the homes of big landlords (jenmies) to present demands and secure immediate redressal, particularly for the abolition of feudal levies such as vasi and nuri.
• A notable 1938 campaign pushed for amendment of the Malabar Tenancy Act, 1929; 6 November 1938 was observed as Malabar Tenancy Act Amendment Day, with uniform resolutions passed at meetings across the district.

Andhra

• Zamindar prestige had already declined here after their electoral defeats by Congressmen in 1937; anti-zamindar activity continued in several places, sustained by long-established bodies like the Andhra Provincial Ryots Association and the Andhra Zamin Ryot Association.
  • N.G. Ranga, a CSP activist, had set up the India Peasants’ Institute in his home village in Guntur district in 1933, organising peasant marches through 1933–34 and raising the demand for zamindari abolition at the Ellore Zamindari Ryots Conference (1933).
• In 1935, Ranga and Namboodiripad extended the movement into other linguistic regions of the Madras Presidency through the South Indian Federation of Peasants and Agricultural Labour, initiating discussions on an all-India peasant body; after 1936, Congress Socialists intensified organising efforts, holding summer schools of economics and politics addressed by leaders such as P.C. Joshi, Ajoy Ghosh, and R.D. Bhardwaj.
• In 1938, the Provincial Kisan Conference organised a massive long march — over 2,000 kisans covering more than 1,500 miles across nine districts over 130 days, holding hundreds of meetings and collecting over 1,100 petitions, presented to the Madras provincial legislature on 27 March 1938.
  • Their central demand for debt relief was incorporated into legislation passed by the Congress Ministry and was widely welcomed in Andhra; the Ministry also set up a Zamindari Enquiry Committee, though legislation based on its recommendations could not be passed before the Congress Ministries resigned.
• Other forms of mobilisation included Summer Schools of Economics and Politics and the popularisation of peasant songs and commemorative “kisan days.”

Bihar

• The Kisan Sabha movement began here under Sahajanand Saraswati, who formed the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS) in 1929, joined by figures including Karyanand Sharma, Yadunandan Sharma, Rahul Sankrityayan, and Panchanan Sharma.
  • The BPKS mobilised through meetings, conferences, rallies, and mass demonstrations — including one of one lakh peasants at Patna in 1938 — drawing its core leadership and support from rich occupancy tenants, while also attracting middle and poor peasants.
• Initially intended to promote landlord-tenant class harmony so as not to jeopardise the national movement, the BPKS came under Socialist influence by 1933 and had adopted the abolition of zamindari as a formal programme by 1935, alongside demands to end illegal levies, prevent tenant eviction, and restore bakasht lands.
• A rift developed with Congress over the bakasht land issue — land that occupancy tenants had lost to zamindars, mostly during the Depression — after an unfavourable Congress Ministry resolution. The movement died out by August 1939 amid a mix of concessions, legislation, and the arrest of roughly 600 activists, before resuming in certain pockets from 1945 and continuing in some form until zamindari abolition.

Punjab

• Earlier peasant mobilisation here had been carried out by the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the Kirti Kisan Party, the Congress, and the Akalis; the Punjab Kisan Committee, formed in 1937, gave Congress and Akali activists a sharper sense of direction.
  • The pattern of mobilisation was familiar — village tours enrolling members, meetings, and tehsil, district, and provincial conferences — with demands centred on tax reduction and a debt moratorium, aimed chiefly at the western Punjab landlords who dominated the ruling Unionist ministry.
  • Immediate flashpoints included the resettlement of land revenue in Amritsar and Lahore, and increased water rates in the canal colonies of Multan and Montgomery, where feudal levies were being demanded by private contractors; a peasant strike here won concessions.
• Activity was concentrated in Jullundur, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Lyallpur, and Shekhupura; Muslim tenants-at-will in west Punjab and Hindu peasants in south-eastern Punjab (present-day Haryana) remained largely untouched.
• Punjab’s princely states also saw significant unrest, most notably in Patiala, where muzaras (tenants) refused to pay batai (share rent) to their biswedars (landlords) in protest against land illegally seized through a landlord-official combine.
  • Led first by Bhagwan Singh Longowalia and Jagir Singh Joga, and later by Teja Singh Swatantar, the struggle continued until 1953, when legislation was passed enabling tenants to become owners of their land.

Other Parts of India

• Peasant activity also developed in Bengal (Burdwan and 24 Parganas), Assam (Surma Valley), Orissa, the Central Provinces, and the NWFP.
  • In Bengal, peasants of Burdwan, led by Bankim Mukherjee, agitated against an enhanced canal tax on the Damodar Canal and secured major concessions, while kisans of 24-Parganas marched to Calcutta in 1938 to press their demands.
  • In Assam’s Surma Valley, a no-rent struggle against zamindari oppression continued for six months, with Karuna Sindhu leading a major campaign for amendment of the tenancy law.
  • In Orissa, the Utkal Provincial Kisan Sabha, organised by Malati Chowdhary and others in 1935, succeeded in getting its kisan manifesto adopted into the Provincial Congress election manifesto, leading to significant agrarian reform under the resulting ministry; its very first conference passed a resolution demanding zamindari abolition.
  • In the NWFP, kisans of the Ghalla Dhir state protested evictions and feudal exactions by their Nawab.
  • In Gujarat, the main demand was the abolition of Hali (bonded labour), where a significant success was registered.
  • The Central Provinces Kisan Sabha led a march to Nagpur demanding abolition of the malguzari system, tax concessions, and a debt moratorium.

Peasant Movement During World War II

• The rising tide of peasant activism was checked by the outbreak of World War II, which brought about the resignation of the Congress ministries and severe government repression against left-wing and Kisan Sabha leaders and workers over their anti-War stance.
• Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union created deep dissension between Communist and non-Communist members of the Kisan Sabha, coming to a head with the Quit India Movement, in which Congress Socialist members played a leading role.
  • The CPI’s pro-War “People’s War” line kept its cadres officially away, though local workers often defied party orders and joined the movement anyway — a rift that culminated in a formal split in 1943, with three major AIKS leaders, N.G. Ranga, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, and Indulal Yagnik, leaving the organisation.
• Even so, the Kisan Sabha continued important relief work during the war years — including during the Bengal Famine of 1943 — helping ease shortages and the burdens of rationing, though its organisational work remained hampered by the unpopularity of its pro-War stance among the peasantry.

Post-War Peasant Movements

• Many struggles left unresolved in 1939 were renewed after the war, with the demand for zamindari abolition pressed with greater urgency; peasants of Punnapra-Vayalar in Travancore fought pitched battles with the administration.

Tebhaga Movement

• The Tebhaga Movement was a campaign initiated in Bengal by the Kisan Sabha (the Communist Party’s peasant front) in 1946–47, seeking to reduce the landlord’s share of the harvest from sharecropping peasants (bargardars) from one-half to one-third.
  • In September 1946, the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha called for mass struggle to implement the Floud Commission’s recommendation of a one-third share for bargardars, who worked land rented from jotedars.
  • Communist cadres, including urban student volunteers, organised the bargardars around the central slogan “nij khamare dhan tolo” — sharecroppers taking the paddy to their own threshing floor rather than the jotedar’s, to enforce tebhaga in practice.
• The movement’s storm-centre was north Bengal, principally among the Rajbanshis (a low caste of tribal origin), with significant Muslim participation as well.
  • In response, the Muslim League ministry under Suhrawardy introduced the Bargadari Bill, limiting the landlords’ share to one-third, though the law was never fully implemented.
• The movement dissipated due to a combination of factors: the concession represented by the Bargadari Bill, intensified repression, the Hindu Mahasabha’s agitation for a separate Bengal, and renewed rioting in Calcutta, which cut off potential sympathetic support from urban areas.
  • The Muslim League ministry failed to carry the bill through the Assembly, and it was only in 1950 that the Congress ministry passed a Bargadari Bill incorporating, in substance, the movement’s core demands.

Telangana Movement

• The Telangana Movement was the largest peasant guerrilla war in modern Indian history, arising in the princely state of Hyderabad under the Asaf Jahi Nizams — marked by religious-linguistic domination by a small Urdu-speaking Muslim elite over a predominantly Hindu, Telugu/Marathi/Kannada-speaking population, a total absence of political and civil liberties, and severe exploitation by deshmukhs, jagirdars, and doras (landlords) through forced labour (vethi) and illegal exactions.
• During the war years, communist-led guerrillas, working through the Andhra Mahasabha, had already built a strong village base by leading local struggles against wartime exactions, rationing abuse, excessive rent, and vethi.
• The uprising began in July 1946, when a deshmukh’s thug murdered a village militant in Jangaon taluq, Nalgonda district; it soon spread to Warangal and Khammam.
  • Peasants organised themselves into village sanghams, fighting with lathis, stone slings, and chilli powder despite facing brutal repression. The movement peaked between August 1947 and September 1948, during which peasants routed the Razakars — the Nizam’s paramilitary force — before winding down once Indian security forces took control of Hyderabad.
• Positive achievements of the movement included the disappearance of vethi and forced labour in guerrilla-controlled villages, higher agricultural wages, the restoration of illegally seized lands, steps toward land ceilings and redistribution, improvements in irrigation and cholera control, an improvement in the condition of women, and the shaking of the autocratic-feudal Hyderabad regime — clearing the way for the linguistic formation of Andhra Pradesh and realising another long-standing aim of the national movement in the region.

Assessment of the Peasant Movements

• These struggles were not clearly aimed at overthrowing the existing agrarian structure, but at alleviating its most oppressive aspects; nevertheless, they eroded the power of the landed classes in significant ways and helped prepare the ground for its eventual transformation.
• Even where a movement did not register immediate success, it helped create the climate that necessitated post-Independence agrarian reform — zamindari abolition, for instance, was not the direct culmination of any single struggle, but the sustained popularisation of the demand by the Kisan Sabha certainly contributed to its eventual achievement.
• Forms of struggle and mobilisation, as well as underlying demands, remained broadly similar across diverse regions, and violent clashes were the exception rather than the rule.
• The relationship between the peasant movement and the wider national movement was vital and mutually reinforcing: the kisan movement was itself grounded in the ideology of nationalism, and its cadres carried forward both the message of class organisation and that of national freedom, with many activists holding dual membership in Congress and the Kisan Sabha — though confrontation did emerge at times.
  • In regions like Bihar, real differences arose between sections of Congressmen and the Kisan Sabha, occasionally pushing the kisan movement toward confrontation with Congress — but this tended to happen only when both left-wing activists and conservative Congressmen took extreme, uncompromising positions.
  • Before 1942, such differences were usually contained, and the two movements largely occupied common ground; the experience of the 1942 split taught the kisan movement that diverging too far from the national movement risked both its mass base and the unity of its own leadership. Its growth thus remained closely bound to the freedom struggle.
• Common demands across the peasant movements included: reduction in taxes; abolition of illegal cesses, feudal levies, and forced labour (begar/vethi); an end to Zamindari oppression; reduction of debts; restoration of illegally seized lands; and security of tenure for tenants.
  • Except in a few pockets, such as Andhra and Gujarat, the demands of agricultural labourers did not really become part of the wider movement.