22nd Conference: Presidential Address

June 7, 1979
Conference Documents, XXII Conference

Presidential Address

By Z.A.AHMAD

Delegate Comrades,

I welcome you warmly to this Twenty Second Conference of the All India Kisan Sabha.

You are the representatives of millions of organized working peasants in our country. Most of you have come here directly from the field of action. You have worked tirelessly and fought and suffered for years in the cause of the disintegrated and toiling humanity that lives in the villages of India. Many of the delegates present here are heroes and veterans of the Kisan movement. And along with them there are many of the younger generation who lend fresh courage and the new hopes and strength to our movement.

I greet you with respect, love and affection and wish this Conference all success. I am sure your discussions and deliberations will lend greater maturity of though and action to the Kisan movement and will equip us better for launching mass actions in the near future.

Every living mass organization has to draw inspiration and learn lessons from its past. It has also to study the objective realities of life as they exist today for framing its guide lines for action, and on the basis of mature theoretical-practical understanding of the changing patterns of life, evolve its perspectives for the future.

Bearing this in mind I shall make my submissions to you.

The peasant movement of India today should take pride in the fact that it has an extremely glorious past.

We shall always carry in our minds and hearts the immortal memories and traditions of the innumerable struggles, revolts and uprisings of the Indian peasants against imperialist and feudal oppression during the past one and half centuries.

Many writers of the elite have characterized the Indian peasantry as a tradition bound, passive and conservative mass torn by caste divisions, which is unable to fight oppression and act as an effective social force. With this understanding they do not attribute to the Indian peasantry any major role in bringing about social transformations in the country.

This understanding is totally incorrect. For, the Indian peasants have played a very vital and decisive role in all a emancipatory movements in the country.

We assert from this platform that any understanding, from whatever quarter it comes, which denies or belittles the revolutionary role of the Indian peasantry in political and socio- economic mass movements , is historically unwarranted and politically incorrect.

I make it bold to state that the present generation of our Kisan Sabha workers is largely unaware of the great contribution that the Indian peasantry has made to the politico-economic emancipatory struggles of the Indian people.

Therefore I may be permitted to draw your attention to some of the historical landmarks of peasant struggles in India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The British rulers introduced in India a new land system and established a set of property relations which converted land into commodity and deprived the mass of cultivators of their traditional property rights in land. They foisted on the cultivators a parasitic class of landlords empowered to extort the utmost surplus value from the peasants in the form of land rents. They enforced their land revenue policy with a view to maximizing land revenue collections which was the main source of income of their colonial administration. The new land tenure system also deprived the tribal population of their communal fights over forests and agricultural land.

All these changes in land relations brought about, within a short period, after these Establishment of British power in India. The mass uprooting of the traditional cultivating peasantry from land, reducing them to the status of share-croppers, tenants, agricultural workers and bonded laborers. This coupled with unprecedented financial exactions in the form of rents and land revenue set into a motion a process of pauperation of the rural population, which in a few decades assumed huge dimensions.

These conditions found their brutal expression in the recurrence of large scale famines during which millions died of starvation. By 1865, there had occurred thirteen big famines including the terrible Bengal Famine of 1770. Many more devastating famines occurred between 1865 and 1899 the worst of them in 1896-97. It has been estimated by reliable sources that between 1866 and 1900 about 16 million persons died in major famines. The overwhelming majority of victims in all those famines were poor peasants , sharecroppers, landless labourers and uprooted artisans who were totally re-sourceless and had no reserves left.

If India became a classical land of famines under British rule during the 19th Century, it also became a classical land of big peasant revolts and uprising in that period.

The Tribal population of India had the honor of leading some of the earliest mass peasants revolts against the conditions of semi- slavery imposed on them by the colonial rulers and their agents.

Many revolts of the tribal people took place beginning with revolt of the Pahariyas of Bihar (1778) followed by revolt in Tmar of Chota Nagpur (1795 to 1800), Koya uprising in the East Godavari (1803), Chota Nagpur(1807), Bhil revolt in Gujrat (1809), the koli revolt in Maharashtra(1918), Munda revolts in Bihar(1820-1832), the Khond uprising(1846) and then the great Santhal rebellion of (1855) followed by Bhil revolts (1857-58).Many other tribal revolts and uprisings continued to occur in the latter part of the 19th century such as Phulguri uprising of tribal peasants (1861), the Juang revolt in Orissa (1861), Andhra Agency Koya tribal revolt against Muttadars(1862-1879), Naik’s revolt under Joria’s leadership in Gujarat(1868), Bastar tribal uprising (1911), Tana Bhagat’s rebellion in Bihar in (1920-21), Rampa rebellion of Koyas under Sree Ram Raju in(1922)etc.

These tribals revolts and uprisings were not accidental or isolated. The basic motivating urges behind them were the same as those of the mass uprising of non-tribal peasantry in that era.

The main edge of these struggles was directed against the political oppression of the tribal people and and their economic loot which developed with a cyclonic tempo under British colonial rule. Needles to state that most of these struggles were of a sporadic and spontaneous nature which, nonetheless, assumed in many cases big proportions and developed in due course elements of ad-hoc internal organization.

These struggles also threw up powerful local leadership and peasant heroes who are even today remembered and worshiped by their tribes. Needless to state that almost all these tribal peasant revolts were ruthlessly crushed and drowned in blood.

Popular peasant struggles and uprisings continued to mask Indian countryside among the non-tribal people as well throughout the19th century. Between 1765 and1857 no less than 30 revolts took place, which in some cases were led by petty chieftains, or landed military officers(poligars) as in the south, or by former revenue agents under the Mughals. The peasantry constituted the chief driving force behind these revolts because in most cases the main edge of the struggle was against the new land relations introduced by the British , replacement of old rent collectors and the establishment of a new oppressive bureaucratic state machinery.

Among the major uprisings of this period were the revolt of Raja Chet Singh of Oudh (1778-81) the mass uprisings of the Poligars and their peasants in Trinelvelly, north Arcot and the Ceded districts(1801-1805) the revolt of Chuar peasants of Midnapore(1799) the guerrilla peasant struggle of Malabar(1796) under the leadership of Pazassi Raja, peasant insurrection in Travancore and Cochin under Velu Tampi in (1806). One of the largest peasant uprisings before the Mutiny of 1855 in which a peasant army of 30 to 50 thousand peasants went into action. All these revolts were crushed with exemplary savagery. Over half of the Santhal army was murdered in cold blood.

Then came the big uprising of Indigo cultivators of Bihar and Bengal in 1860. who strucken mass against their colonial-capitalist exploitation through forced indigo cultivation. This great struggle was followed by the famous peasant revolts of Bogra and Palina(1872) and in various parts of Eastern and Central Bengal preceding the enactment of the famous Bengal Tenancy Act of 1855. The Maratha Peasant Uprising (1857) was an instance of a mass peasant struggle against the stranglehold of the moneylenders and traders in Tyotwai areas. Noteworthy in this period were the revolts of Moplah tenants of Malabar who were victims of rack renting, mass evictions and disruption of their stable tenancies. The Moplah revolts continued to recur over half a century from 1830 onwards.

A noteworthy phenomenon of this period, when mass eviction of million of poor peasants were taking place, was the growth of movements of social banditry under various names, the most outstanding of which were the Pindari or Thuggee movements of the north and central India which continued upto 1850 or so, the movement of the Sanyasis or Fakirs of Bengal in the latter part of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the movement of Narsima Reddy and his followers in Kurnool in 1845-47, the Lodhas movement of Midnapore, the movement of the tribal Kallars of South India who operated as bandits for several decades from their mountain homes in Madurai.

These movements were manned largely by evicted landless peasants disbanded soldiers and ruined artisans and other impoverished sections of the rural population who had no other source of livelihood and who roamed the countryside indulging in full time or part time banditry.

Comrades,

What I have said above would give you a general idea of the tremendous ferment that prevailed in the rural India of the 19th century and the mass revolutionary struggles waged by the peasantry against the oppression of colonial rulers and their native parasitic agencies. The unforgettable story of the peasants revolts and uprisings of the 19th century shall be written in letters of gold in the annals of Indian people’s revolutionary struggle for political and economic emancipation. Glory to the immortal peasant leaders of those struggles who with unflinching heroism lit that torch of revolt of the agrarian masses which was passed on from hand to hand over the length and breadth of the country in subsequent decades.
National Movement and the Peasantry

Against the background of the peasant revolts described above came the great mass uprising of the first war to Independence of 1857 in which the peasantry constituted the man fighting force.

Alarmed by these developments some of the more far sighted elements in the British ruling circles realized the need of mobilizing the educated middle class Indians on a programme of political and social reforms to allay their discontent and enlist their cooperation and support against the militant anti-imperialist ideas and movement which were rapidly growing. Thus came into existence e Indian National Congress which was fathered by a Britisher a. O. Hume in 1885. Around the Congress at that time mustered the Indian English deucated elite, and liberal minded professional intelligentsia who found in the Congress a platform for raising their moderate demands relating to more representation to Indians in services , administrative and educational reforms , civil liberties and greater concessions to Indians in the field of Industry and commerce. It is significant that a good section of the leadership of the Indian National Congress , from its very inception, belonged to the land owning classes, who not only did not espouse the cause of the oppressed peasantry but who openly lent support to the landlord interests.

Even men like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore praised the prosperity which indigo cultivation had brought to the countryside and the role of the zamindars in promoting that prosperity.

Throughout the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries agricultural production continued to decline and disintegrate and famines and acute shortages continued to occur in the countryside. The economic condition of the peasantry kept on deteriorating and the rapacity of the landlords and moneylenders crossed all bounds.

Despite this the leadership of the Indian National Congress dominated by Indian Industrial and commercial interests kept scrupulously silent about the sufferings of millions of Zamindari Tenants of U.P, CP, Bihar, Orissa, Bengal, Assam and Madras. Preoccupied with their demands for protection to Indian industries and more representation to Indian’s in government services they kept on repeating in the name of the rural population certain inconsequential demands such as reduction of excise duties, abolition of tax on salt etc. Even the famous Ramesh Chandra Dutt, once a Congress President, who wrote volumes on the horrible conditions prevailing in the villages of Bengal and Bihar and the exactions from the cultivators by the zamindars under the Temporary Land Revenue Settlement, did not go beyond demanding the introduction of a system of Permanent Land Revenue Settlement all over the country. Lord Curzon could therefore openly ridicule Ramesh Chandra Dutt and the congress elite and claimed that the British government, through its Tenancy Reforms of 1885 had done more for the tenants than the congress leadership had ever demanded.

The fact of the matter is that the Indian National Congress had no programme of agrarian reforms for the first 45 years of its existence. It was in the Karachi congress, in 1931 that it formulated for the first time a charter of agrarian demands. It called for reform in the land tenure and the land revenue systems, for equitable distribution of the burdens on agricultural land, relief to small peasants through reduction in rents and the land revenue and in case of uneconomic holdings exemption from rent or land tax so long as necessary. The resolution also demanded security of tenure and relief of agricultural indebtedness. It, however, avoided any reference to the prevailing system of landlordism. The Lucknow Congress appointed a sub- committee to formulate an agrarian programme which, however, never saw the light of the day.

Mahatma Gandhi has been given the credit for being the first congress leader to lead a peasant struggle in a non- violent manner in Champaran (Bihar) in 1917-18, but just as the struggle against Temporary Settlement led by the Ramesh Chandra Dutt earlier did not take into account the basic causes of the extreme poverty of the rack rented peasantry of Bengal, Gandhiji while fighting against the forced cultivation of indigo never mentioned the real root cause of the pauperisation of the peasantry of Champaran, that is , the ravages of the Zamindari system. Both Gandhiji and Rajendra Prasad maintained absolute silence on that issue.

The non- cooperation movement of 1920 drew millions of peasants within its fold and the slogan for Swaraj in one year electrified the countryside. The call for direct action in the form of non-payment of taxes gave the rack rented peasantry the hope of redemptions from the oppressive burdens of feudal land rents.

The non- cooperation movement of 1920 drew millions of peasants within its fold and the slogan of Swarajin one year electrified the countryside. The call for direct action in the form of non-payment of taxes gave the rack rented peasantry the hope of redemption from the oppressive burdens of feudal land rents.

Peasant struggles assuming a mass character started burting out in various parts of the country. Mention may be made here of rebellion of Moplah peasants of pedanandipad area of Guntur district., the revolt of the Koyas of Andhra Pradesh against government oppression under the leadership of Alluri Sitaram Raju, the struggle of Kaira and the Bardoli peasants against land revenue exactions , the Eka movement of Hardoi Sitapur, Rae Bareli and Faridabad districts of UP in 1922-23 led by a Harizan Nadari Pasi.

Frightened by the tremendous mass response that the slogan of non- payment of taxes received in the rural areas and in the face of the unprecedented political upheaval that began to develop in all parts of the country Mahatma Gandhi suddenly withdraw the non-cooperation movement. His extreme insistence on non-violence was essentially meant to prevent such actions. Thus the Chauri-chaura incident was made the final justification for withdrawal of the movement. The Congress Working Committee Resolution passed at Bardoli (12th February , 1992) condemned in severe terms the independent mass actions of the peasantry seeking to development a No Rent Campaign in the country. The resolution said : “The Working Committee advises congress workers and organizations to inform the peasants that withholding of rent payment to the Zamindars is contrary to 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”.

Thereafter the congress as an organization set its face against any independent mobilization of the peasantry for the redresses of grievances against the landlords, although individual congressmen intervened here and there against the excesses of landlords and in support of the local demands of the peasants.

The world-wide economic depression of 1929-35 created an unprecedented crisis in Indian agriculture. Agricultural prices slumped in this period by 60 to 70 percent generally and even more in some cases the crash came abruptly. It was prolonged and universal and caused an acute intensification of the economic sufferings of the peasantry.

Against this background the congress tried to revive the Satyagraha movement in the early thirties. The response of the rural masses was, again, tremendous. But when the movement reached, a pitch of militancy in rural areas, it was withdrawn. Pandit Nehru’s attempt to continue the struggle on the basis of non-payment of rents in the districts of Rae-Bareli, Allahabad, Pratapgarh etc. could not last long in face of the stiff opposition from the rest of the top Congress leadership. Thus the powerful peasant upsurge that developed in Pratapgarh and Rae-Bareli under militant local Kisan leaders such as Baba Ram Chander got disintegrated and eventually fizzled out.

The collapse of the 1930-32 satyagraha movement as a result of the vacillating and compromising role of the Congress leadership brought in its wake widespread disillusionment among large sections of the rural based congress cadres. The offensive of the landlords and money lenders was mounting and the countryside was seething was discontent.

The congress leadership was obliged to take note of this serious situation. In the Lucknow All India Session of the Congress in 1936 a resolution was passed emphasizing the need of drawing up an Agrarian Programme, and the Provincial Congress Committee were asked to submit their suggestions and proposals in the matter.

In the Faizpur Congress held in 1936 December only a resolution on the agrarian situation was passed but no Programme was finalized since very few Provincial Congress Committee had submitted their proposals. However , the Congress Election Manifesto of August 1936 stated that pending the framing of an all India Agrarian Programme relief to the peasantry should be given by readjusting rent and revenue to present conditions, exempting uneconomic holdings from the rent, introducing agricultural income tax, lowering irrigation rates, banning all feudal levies and forced labour, giving fixity of tenure with heritable rights to tenants, reducing the burden of rural indebtedness, providing common pasture land and canceling arrears of rent.

It is noteworthy that in the Manifesto there was no mention of the oppressive and rapacious activities of the landlords and moneylenders who in that period were, even more greedily, sucking the life blood of the toiling peasantry. Far from demanding the abilities of the Zamindari system of statutory landlord-ism, which was at the root of devastation of the agrarian economy and the sufferings of the peasantry, the manifesto did not even refer to it.

In regard to indebtedness the Manifesto demanded the appointment of special tribunals to enquire into the whole situation with a view to cancelling such debts as we are unconscionable or belong the paying capacity of the peasantry.

Thus it would be no exaggeration to say that Congress leadership which in its class character represented the rising Indian commercial and industrial interests coupled with middle and middle and small landlords interests, utilized the peasantry to strengthen its own mass base in the villages, but, in a most conscious and determined manner, refused to accept and advocate throughout the period of the national movement such agrarian reforms as would seriously upset and alter the existing property relations in rural India.
Birth of Kisan Sabha and growth of Organized Kisan movement 1936- 1948

The All India Kisan Swami Sahajananda Saraswati, a well known political leader of Bihar who had earlier led big peasant struggles against landlords in Bihar. The Kisan Congress decided to form an All India Kisan Sabha The Kisan Congress also elected and All India Kisan Sabha Committee which in its composition included Congress Socialists, Communists and radical Kisan minded Congressmen.

This Kisan Congress adopted a resolution which laid down the aims and objects of the newly constituted All India Kisan Sabha and enunciated broadly its policy and programme. The resolution stated that: “The object of the Kisan movement is to secure complete freedom from economic exploitation and the achievement of full economic and political power for the peasants and workers and all other exploited classes.

The Kisan movement stands for the achievement of ultimate economic and political power for the producing masses, through their active participation in the national struggle for winning complete independence”.

The Resolution laid down certain fundamental demands such as the abolition of landlordism and vesting of land in the tillers. It said “This Congress of the Kisans is of the deliberate opinion that the present system of absentee landlord-ism which comprises nearly 70 percent of the Indian peasantry should be abolished. So long as it exists the real cultivators and toilers on land shall remain in reality the slaves and the serfs of big Zamindars or landowners”. It expressed its opposition to the prevailing system of land revenue under ryotwari tenure which it considered to be “completely at variance with any system of rational and human taxation in as much as it made on allowance for a minimum subsistence income before levying the revenue”.

The minimum demands formulated in the resolution of the Kisan Congress constituted an exhaustive list including moratorium on debts, reduction of land revenue and rents, exemption of uneconomic holdings from any kind of land tax, licensing of money lenders, fair prices for sugar cane and other commercial crops, more irrigation facilities, imposition of graduated income tax, death duties and inheritance tax on landlords, minimum wages for agricultural workers etc.

At the Niamatpur meeting of the All India Kisan Sabha Committee(AIKS) held in July 1937 the Red flag was accepted as the flag of the All India Kisan Sabha. The statement issued by the President and the Secretaries of the AIKC after the meeting said, “The Red Flag which has become to be recognized all the world over as the symbol of international solidarity and unity of the proletariat and the peasantry has now come to endear itself not only to the industrial workers but also to the growing number of class conscious oppressed peasantry of India.. We feel convinced that the adoption of the Red Flag by our peasants from weakening the national fight or confusing the masses on their national struggle, will succeeding awakening in them the essential class consciousness which is the bed rock of struggle for fighting all forces of reaction and building up a mighty sector of our national forces”. This statement on the Red Flag was reiterated at the Calcutta meeting of the AIKC which asked the “Kisans and Kisan Sabhas and Committees to adopt Red Flag as their own and hoist and march under the Red Flag.

It will thus be seen that the All India Kisan Sabha, from its very inception, began to develop as a militant and class conscious organization of the Indian peasantry. Its founding fathers gave it an Ideological and programmatic direction which was in keeping with the objective requirements of the situation and mood of the peasant masses. No wonder that the right wing leadership of the National Congress saw in it a potential rival which could seriously menace its prestige and position among the rural masses. A virulent campaign against the Kisan Sabha was started denouncing it as an anti-national organization which was started disruptive of national unity and which took its inspiration from foreign ideologies. It was held the National Congress itself was the biggest Kisan organization in the country. It was further argued that fundamental demands put forward by the Kisan Sabha such as the abolition of Zamindari system , redistribution of land, and that the projection of such demands earlier would create class conflict in the villages and break up national unity forged against the British rulers.

Swami Sahajanand while replying to this campaign of vilification against the Kisan Sabha said “ Those who promise that the abolition of landlordism and organization of the Kisans can only be achieved after winning Swaraj really mean to strengthen the forces of reaction in the Congress. Swaraj is not any patent and finished product. To us and to the toiling and starving millions it means a guarantee for the necessities of life free from anxieties and it can only be achieved if the real political power is vested in the producing masses. But it is a common historical fact that so long as feudalism and capitalism are not done away with, real substantive power cannot come in the hands of the masses. Hence their abolition is a necessity for and condition precedent to Swaraj”

Unable to stop the growth of the Kisan Sabha, rival peasant organizations were sought up to be set up under the guidance of such top Congress leaders as Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and Purushottam Das Tandon. Thus there came into existence an All India Kisan Sangh led by Sardar Patel and another called Samyukt Kisan Sangh led by Shri P.D.Tandon in UP. Needless to state, that they remained paper organizations and after some time disappeared even in name.

The Haripura All India Kisan Session of the National Congress passed a resolution on the Kisan Sabha which said: “ While recognizing the right of the Kisans to organize Kisan Sabhas, the congress cannot associate itself with any activities which are incompatible with the basic principles of the Congress and will not countenance activities of those Congressmen who as members of the Kisan Sabha help in creating an atmosphere hostile to congress principles and policy. The Congress therefore calls upon provincial Congress Committees to bear the above in mind and in pursuance of it take suitable action wherever called for”.

However, despite stiff opposition from the Congress leadership the Kisan Sabha organization expanded rapidly and within a few years time acquired considerable mass influence in various parts of the country. The formation of the All India Kisan Sabha infact opened a new chapter in the history of the peasants movement in India.

For the first two years of its existence the Kisan Sabha concentrated on organizing peasant Marches, mass meeting, and rallies and observing Kisan days. The main task at that time was to propagate its demands among the rural masses, justify the formation of the organization and counteract the hostile propaganda of the Congress. By 1940 it had entered the arena of the local mass struggles in several provinces. This can be seen from Reports of some of the earlier All India Kisan Conferences.

By the time of the fourth All India Kisan conference was held in Gaya in1939 under the president ship of Acharya Narendra Deva, Provincial Kisan Sabha units had been formed in several states and the peasantry was resorting to organized mass actions on various issues. In that conference it was noted that the Bihar provincial Kisan Sabha was leading a grim battle against the Zamindars for the restoration of Bakasht lands to the tillers and had won many victories. Satyagraha by tenants and share croppers was going on in places like Bahariyatal, Lagr Muriar, Raghopur and Dekuli and Anwari in Saran. A battle for Baksht land was fought and won by the Kisans of Rewara. Peasant women played a big part in those struggles. In UP widespread agitation led by local Kisan Sabha units was developing on the demand for increase in sugar cane prices, Zamindars, reduction in canal rates and stoppage of evictions.

In Andhra, where the Ryot Sangham was better organized, the peasant marched for nearly two thousand miles in 130 days on foot and buses to reach Madras to present their immediate economic demands to the congress ministry. They were also fighting against the tyrannical Zamindari systems of Mungala, Maktyala and Mazwid and the forest administration of Vizagapatam, Chitoor, and Karnool districts, the inamdars of Guntur, Godavari, and Vizagapatam districts and the Zamindars of Bobili and Pithapuram. An Intensive fight was afoot against the governments imposition of certain fees on the newly irrigated lands of Krishna and Guntur.

In Punjab, the Kisan Sabha was conducting big Kisan Strikes and Satyagraha. In Nilibar (Montegometry) 40,000 tenants went on strike against the increasing exploitation and high handedness of the tender holders. The peasants of Amritsar organized a huge demonstration to protest against the Punjab governments’ orders regarding Canal Settlement Operations. Since Demonstrations were banned by the government, peasants had to resort to Satyagraha and 600 peasants were arrested.

In several provinces, the peasants under Kisan Sabha leadership were carrying on mass agitations and demonstrations before Assembly Chambers or at district head quarters demanding amendments in Tenancy Laws , reduction in canal rates, flood relief etc. In Utkal, the Nilgiri and Dehenkanal struggles were notable and created a big stir in the rural population. In Malabar the anti-jenmi (landlord) struggles were taking shape. In Assam the provincial Kisan Sabha had organized some no rent campaigns and achieved some success. In Surma valley in Assam the Kisan Sabha work was started with a mass campaign against the Black Tenancy Bill.

The Fifth conference of the All India Kisan Sabha held at Palasa (North Vizag) under the president ship of Rahul Sankrityayan (then in jail) in March 1940 noted the widespread repression against Kisan Sabha workers, in Bihar, Punjab, Kerala, Andhra,and elsewhere. By the time the Reora Bakasht struggle had ended successfully but Bakasht struggles of Barahital and hundreds of other places were in full swing. More than 2000 peasants were jailed with heavy fines in the course of Bakasht struggles in Gaya, Saran, Patna, Monghyr, Darbhanga, Shadabad, Bhagalpur and other districts. In Andhra the fighting peasants of Kalipattam and Tsadum had been subjected to severe repression for recovering their lands. The Hallis and Dublas of Gujarat were waging a desperate struggle against Sahukars and the government. The Damodar Canal agitation in Budwan (Bengal) was in full swing and the peasants of Port Canning (24- Parganas) were fighting their battles.

In Punjab, a demonstration in Lahore against enhancement land revenue under Settlement of 1939 turned into a prolonged Lahore Morcha which lasted for six months and was extended to many other districts. During that Satyagraha struggle nearly 5000 Kisan including a large number of women were arrested and jailed. Other noteworthy struggles were the struggle of the Nilibar Colony tenants against the wanton confiscation of peasants’ property by the Kalsia Durbar.

The Kisan movement in Bengal continued to register rapid advance. Despite large scale arrests a big share croppers movement developed in parts of Dinajpur and Jalpaiguri against the practice of gathering and dividing the harvest at the Jotedars place. A big mass campaign was also organized for the abolition of that taxes.

In Andhra the influence of Kisan Sabha spread to several new areas such as Jeypore and Povalam agencies, Madgole and Gunupur area. It also spread to the Koyas of Vizag and Lambadis of Kurnool. The Venkatagiri peasants launched a movement refusing to pay rents in the face of total failure of rains and the heroic Perimidi peasants mounted a successful mass campaign against extra legal and coercive exactions by the estate authorities. The Hospet sugarcane growers compelled the government to give them the minimum price for their cane. In Vizagapatnam district there were many struggles against realization by Zamindars of arrears of rents, coercive attachments and sale of peasants holdings, against enhanced forest due, etc. In Kurnool and the Kisans, through satyagraha actions, forced the forest department to accept some of their demands. The Munagala Kisans fought for the recovery of their lands forcibly captured by the Zamindars.

In C.P a forest satyagraha was organized in Dondi-Lohara (district Drug) and in Umrer Tehsil of Nagpur a big Kisan campaign was organized for the suspension of Taqavi dues.

In Bombay presidency, noteworthy was the agitation of the peasants of waterlogged areas in Ahmednagar. In Gujarat the no rent campaign launched by the tenants of Mandavi (Surat district) was followed by a similar struggle in Kalol Taluk (Panch Mahal district) which ended successfully as a result of the landlords agreeing to a sharp scaling down of rents.

The above report would indicate the rapidity with which organization of Kisan Sabha and its influence expanded within first few years of its formation.

The out break of the second world war created a difficult situation for the Kisan movement. Police repression directed against mass movements and the political complications that grew during the war period coupled with the arrest of leading Kisan functionaries under the Defence of India rules in 1939-40 hit the normal functioning of the organization seriously. Nonetheless the continuity of the movement was somehow maintained and the Kisan Sabha units stood by the peasants to defend them not only from the onslaughts of their traditional exploiters but also from the hardships inflicted on them by the economic burdens of war time.

In the complicated political situation created by the war the Kisan Conference held in Bihta in May 1942 put forward a positive programme for National unity, National Government and National Defence.

In view of the rapidly growing food crisis in the country, the Bihta session put forward the “Grow More Food” campaign as the main mass campaign.

The seventh All India Conference held at Bhakna Kalan in April 1943, Presided over by Bankim Mukerjee, endorsed the urgency of the “Grow More Food” campaign in view of the mass starvation facing the people and the uncontrolled activities of profiteers and black marketeers. The Conference demanded that all waste lands should be disturbed immediately among poor peasants and landless labourers for being brought under plough with governmental help in regard to seeds, fertilizers, cattle, credit etc.

During the Bengal famine of 1943-44 the All India Kisan Sabha, and particularly its Bengal provincial committee, mobilized all its resources and plunged into famine relief work and did highly creditable work.

The Eighth All India Kisan Conference held at Bezwada in March 1944 presided over by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, reiterated the urgency of a “Grow More Food” drive in the countryside in face of the growing menace of famine in the country. At the same time it emphasized the need of a self help movement among the peasants for producing more and saving themselves from acute shortages and effects of famine conditions. The conference demanded that government must guarantee immediate supply of essential commodities to the rural population . It called upon the Kisans as well as the people to unite in food committees to demand the scaling down of prices and effective control of stocks and elimination of hoarders. It is called for the stoppage of all evictions and restoration of lands to the evicted peasants. It demanded fair prices for the producers of all commercial crops.

The Report of Kisan Sabha activities in the provinces revealed that the Food campaign had been very successfully developed in Andhra Pradesh and Bengal. In the case of the former, 12000 acres of dry land had been brought under cultivation , and silt removal from Bandar and East Bank canals in Kistna districts for over seven miles was done through voluntary work by thousands of peasants under the direct and personnel guidance of Ryot Sangham leaders. Another seven miles stretch of canal was repaired in Divi Taluq. Similarly in West Godavari district silted canals supplying water to thousands of acres had been cleared up. In Bengal, mass work was organized for getting food for the people, fighting the hoarders and dehoarding stocks and for getting transferred land restored to the Kisans. In 22 out of the 26 districts of Bengal the grow more food campaign was going on with varying degrees of success.

The self help movement was also developing and the Bengal Kisan Sabha had succeeded in increasing food crops on as much as 70,000 acres of land.

The Ninth All India conference of the Kisan Sabha held at Netrakona in April 1945 under the president ship of Muzaffar Ahmad was a big milestone in the history of the pre-independence mass movements led by Kisan Sabha. The report of that conference revealed the multifarious struggles that were being organized by the Kisan Sabha in all parts of the country. The conference noted the success of the Kisan Sabha in all parts of the country. The conference noted the success of the Kisan Sabha units in protecting the peasantry from the ravages of food shortages, famines, epidemics, high prices of food and other essential commodities. Along with this it noted in its Report that “Province after province reports that a campaign of evictions and enhancement of rents has been started by the landlords. Even lands newly brought under cultivation or reclaimed from marshes by Kisans, inspired by the Grow More Food slogans, are today being claimed by the Landlords. It has become a serious problem for every PKC to meet this offensive and save the Grow More Food campaign”.

The delegate to the Netrakona Conference of 1945 expressed in no uncertain terms the seething discontent prevailing among the mass of peasantry and called for a more militant line of action. In fact the Netrakona conference was being held at a time when the cumulative effects of the economic crisis of the war period had assumed an extremely oppressive character for the peasantry. The rumblings of the storm that subsequently broke out in the great Tebhaga movement of Bengal in 1946 and the peasant uprising in Telangana in 1947 could be heard in Netrakona.

In September 1946, at a time when Bengal was in a state of acute political ferment, the Bengal provincial Kisan Sabha gave the call for Tebhaga, which meant two thirds of share of the crop for the ‘Bargadars’, or share croppers, and one third for the Zamindars. This was a long standing demand of the Bengal peasantry which had been accepted by the Land Revenue Commission in 1940. The slogan was “Tebhaga Chai” and the peasants were called upon to stack their paddy not in the Jotedars’ or Zamindars place but in their own harvesting “Khanars”. The movement started with the enrolling of peasant volunteers and with other necessary preparations for the inevitable clashes with other necessary preparations for the inevitable clashes with the Jotedars and the police. The first clash occurred in Atwari police station in Dinajpur district.

Thereafter the Tebhaga movement spread like wild fire. The initial leadership came from the Kisan Sabha but the spontaneous support of the share croppers was so overwhelming that the movement for outstripped its initial organizational set up. Within a couple of weeks it spread to almost all police stations in the district with Thakurgaon sub division as its main base. Thousands of peasants enrolled themselves as volunteers and mass demonstrations and marches from village to village with peasants carrying ‘Lathis’ and Red Flags became the main form of mass mobilization. Women played an outstanding role in the struggle. The movement soon spread to other district of Bengal as Dinajpur and Jalparguri and many other areas of North Bengal. Simultaneously it spread to Mymensingh and Midnapur districts. Innumerable clashes between the share croppers and the jotedars and police took place. The Kisan Sabha, however stood its ground and “section of its leadership continued to operate and guide the movement from underground. Simultaneously the famous peasant struggle of the Kakdwip forest area against the ‘Lotedars’ and ‘Chakdars’, the absentee lease holders of forest lands and their ‘naibs’ and managers began to develop as part of an all Bengal Tebhaga movement. The majority of Kakdweep, peasants who originally came to the forest area in search of land had to become share croppers or tenants of the lotdars and chakdars. The Kakdweep poor peasants and share croppers were virtually reduced to a position of semi-slavery. The Tebhaga movement created a new consciousness and stir amongst them. Led by eminent Kisan leaders like Kangsari Haldar and Abdul Razzak Khan they rose in virtual revolt against their traditional exploiters. Kisan samitis began to be formed at various important union centers such as Budhakhali, Haripur etc. and below them thousands on the harvesting fields of landlords and men armed with lathis and arrows and women with sharp cutters and and chili power seized paddy and stacked them in their own “Khamar” or panchayat ‘Khamars’. Severe repression followed but the peasants withstood it boldly for several months.

Close on the heels of the Kakdweep movement came the struggle of the Hojongs (Mymensingh district) in December 1946 demanding reduction of tanka rent and its conversion into money rent. This struggle , led by Moni Singh acquired a big sweep and assumed mass militant forms. It spread throughout a 50 mile long and to 10 mile wide belt south of Garho hills. The peasants took the crop to their houses and refused to pay ‘tanka’ until their demands were fulfilled. The Hojong struggle became closely linked with the Tebhaga struggle in the rest of Bengal.

The Tebhaga movement, despite the tremendous mass upsurge that it brought about, began to fizzle out after a few months. Under the pressure of the movement the Suharwardy government proposed in January 1947 to bring before the Bengal Assembly a Tebhaga Bill which provided for some reasonable concessions to the share croppers. But when the decline in the movement set in, the Bill was kept in cold storage and eventually scuttled Com. Bhawani Sen in his speech on the Tebhaga movement at the Sikandra Rao All India Kisan Conference pointed out certain mistakes committed during the struggle which threw it into a state of crisis., it was mainly due to a mistake that we failed to discriminate between different categories of landlords and gave no concession to any one of them. So the big landlords or Jotedars got an opportunity to rally the small ones behind themselves.

This mistake was proved in practice in many cases. In the Tebhaga committees themselves which were set up in the villages, the fighting kisans on their own gave concessions to small landlords who supported them in the struggle or were actually their co-fighters. These landlords, of course, never went against the interest of the struggle which they considered in their own interest too.

The second mistake was that we underestimated the need of middle class support and failed to campaign for it. The reason was that we overestimated the strength of the Kisans in isolation and depended only on the justness of their demands.

Our third mistake was our complacence regarding the legislative side of the movement. It was wrong to expect that mass action by itself would secure Tebhaga and incorrect to think that no campaign for legislation was necessary. Wide propaganda was necessary to press for passing the Tebhaga Bill. But the propaganda was not undertaken.

Thus the principle character of the mistakes can be put in one word – Left sectarianism. This attitude of Left sectarianism on the part of the leadership retarded the full success and further progress of the Tebhaga struggle. The Tebhaga demand and similar Kisan demands can and shall be won by winning the support of the democratic allies on the side of the Kisan and by carrying forward the fight in a new manner. (Quoted from the printed proceedings of the Sikandra Rao Conference).

At the time when the Tebhaga movement was developing in Bengal, the Peasant and agricultural workers of Punnapra and Vayalar in the Alleppey district of Kerala rose in an armed revolt against the medieval oppression of landlords. The peasants in this case stood united with the workers of the coir industry who were fighting against their oppressive employers. The movement was started in 1946.

This movement was the direct outcome of the acute economic crisis that engulfed Kerala, as other parts of the country, after the end of world war, accentuating enormously the sufferings of the peasantry and the working class. In the situation the peasants and workers began to organize themselves more or less spontaneously. Committees of agricultural workers began to be formed all over Shertalai Taluk in 1944-45. In July-August 1945 the coir workers of Alleppey, Shertalai and Muhamma called a general strike demanding the supply of necessities of life at fair prices.

The Travancore government while promising to set up a machinery for proper distribution of food and other commodities started taking steps to crush the agitation. The Regulation of 1946 for emergency powers were declared. All demonstration and strikes were banned and the state army and Reserve police were kept standing to go into action at Quilon, Alleppey, Kottayam and other place. The police and the landlord’s agents started resorting to provocative acts by arresting leaders and active workers raiding and burning union offices etc. The Communist party which was leading the movement decided at that time to resist police terror. The All Travancore Trade Union Congress gave a call for general strike which began on 22 October 1946. Workers and peasants in large numbers assembled on 26th Oct to demonstrate and marched to the Reserve Police camp at Punappra. The officer in charge clash between the police and the Demonstration followed in which many persons were killed.

This armed clash was followed by a police terror campaign all over this area. On 27th October 1946 the resistance camp at Vayalar was surrounded by the police and indiscriminate firing on the inmates was started, killing all those inside with bullets and bayonets. So ruthless was this shouting that nobody was left alive from inside the camp to tell the full story and give the names of all the martyars. The movement was thus crushed by the Travancore movement with an iron first.

Another outstanding peasant struggle of this period was the struggle of the Varlis of the Thanna district of Bombay. The struggle started on two issues, one of these was between the Varlis and the landlords regarding the rates of cutting grass and the other between the Varlis and the timber merchants regarding the rates of cutting trees. The struggle which remains absolutely peaceful during the early stages and assumed the form of a general strike eventually developed into a mass revolt of the Varli peasantry against the oppression of landlords and the police. The general strike was peacefully settled on the 10 November 1946 on terms favorable for the Varlis through the intervention of local officials. But this settlement was not accepted by the Congress Ministry which was declared a state of emergency in the Varli area in November 1946 and unleashed a campaign of terror against the Peaceful Varlis. The Goonda Act was freely used. The Varlis spontaneously reacted by intensifying their struggle and resorting to an unprecedented strike that brought everything to a dead end in the Dahanu and Umbergaon talukas and parts of Palghar taluka. For seven months they put up a heroic resistance. Inspite of police firing, in which several Varli peasants were killed they stood their ground firm and made it impossible for the black legs imported by landlords to work there. In face of atrocities and lawlessness of the landlords and the police they resorted to guerrilla tactics and in desperation damaged some of the farm houses of the landlords.

After months of bitter struggle that Varli movement under the leadership of the Bombay provincial Kisan Sabha was able to win the support of broad democratic sections of the people and the Congress government had to climb down. The Varlis won their battle and withdrew their resistance after the Prime Minister announced his policy reconciliation.

Another very important peasant struggle of Bihar of 1946-47. That struggle had a very broad sweep and drew within its fold lakhs of tenants and share croppers on Bakasht lands in a number of districts. The land grabbing that had been started by big landlords immediately after the war gave rise to powerful mass resistance directed against evictions and resumption of land by landlords in the name of self cultivation. Bitter class battles were fought. The landlords got united and with the help of the police and administration let loose their gangsters to create terror in the countryside. The Kisan Sabha leaders and workers were arrested in large numbers. Nonetheless the movement registered singular successes and saved lakhs of tenants and share croppers from being evicted from Bakasht lands.

The Tebhaga and Bakasht movements and Ponnapra Vayalar struggle represented the crest of the wave of mass peasant struggles of the period 1936-37. The salient features of the struggles of that period were:

Almost all of them were directed against prevailing feudal and semi-feudal multiform exploitation of the peasantry.
Their sweep covered all sections of the landless, poor and middle peasantry who were the main victims of the feudal and semi-feudal order.
Wherever the struggles were directed against big landlords, the rich peasants and big tenants and even smaller landlords lent their support to them directly or indirectly.
In most of these anti-feudal struggles the all in unity of the peasantry was realised.
The spontaneous struggles generally tended to develop elementary organizational forms, such as village or area action committees, groups of volunteers, peasant squads and organized marches under the leadership of the Kisan Sabha.
These struggles threw up a considerable number of active whole time or part time kisan workers drawn from rural educated youth belonging mainly to the middle and rich peasant households. These workers led and guided the struggles at various levels and built the Kisan Sabha organization. It is from amongst them that in subsequent years the All India Kisan Sabha developed its leadership.
Though many of these struggles did not yield immediate gains yet in their totality they left behind a great heritage in terms of enhanced class consciousness of the working peasantry and militant traditions, and brought into being a minimum organizational infrastructure for the further growth of the peasant movement.

Struggle for land and Radical Land Reforms – 1947- 1960

This period was marked by a gradual evolution of the Land Policy or Congress Government and its implementation in the states in the form of Zamindari Abolition Legalization, Tenancy Laws, and Land Ceiling enactments. Correspondingly, it was marked by peasant struggles for radical Land Reforms, with a twofold direction, one for improving the positive content of the Land Reforms and the other toiling peasantry. This period opens with the mighty armed uprising of the Telangana peasantry, which started in 1946 as a normal peaceful peasant movement against the oppression of big landlords, Jagirdars and Deshmukhs, but which developed within two years time into a regular armed partisan struggle of peasants and agricultural labourers fighting for liberation from the aristocratic rule of the Nizam and the oppression of big feudal vested interests.

It is not possible to deal here at length with the various aspects of this historical armed peasant revolt. We shall only note some of its salient features.

The Telangana struggle was born out of the great anti-imperialist upsurge that had enveloped the country by 1946, and which found reflection in the Hyderabad state in the form of mass resistance of peasants against the depredations and trynny of big landlords and government officials. This resistance began to develop initially as a movement for the reoccupation of lands from which the peasants had been evicted and in opposition to forced levies and oppressive rents etc. Alarmed by such developments the Nizams government came down with a heavy hand on every form of resistance by the peasantry. Mass repression was started , political workers were arrested in large numbers and gangs of loyal stooges belonging to Ittehadul Muselemeer were let loose against the people. In the political atmosphere of the state at that time, this offensive of the Nizams government recoiled in a big way created within a short time conditions of a mass revolt among the peasants and peoples of Telangana. The Communist Party and the Andhra Maha Sabha and the Kisan Sabha of Marathwada area took the land and decided to organize mass resistance. Volunteer corps were organized and in many places the gangsters of the landlords and the officials were beaten back. The leadership at that stage had no alternative but to take to arms. Led by comrades Ravi Narain Reddy, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Baddam Yella Reddy, Chandra Gupta Choudary, V. D Deshpande and Venkateshwar Rao, well known personalities of the peasants movement, armed resistance began to be organized. A concrete programme was formulated which included reoccupation of lands of peasants illegally occupied by the Deshmukhs, distribution of government lands among agricultural workers and poor peasants, abolition of forced labour, fair rents for tenants and fair wages for agricultural workers, abolition of exorbitant interest on grain and cash loans given by the landlords to peasants and agricultural workers, etc.

The programme through peoples committees and armed guerrilla squads which began to be formed in the Telangana area under the leadership of Andhra Mahasabha which by that time acquired mass influence in rural areas.

Thus there developed a big armed guerrilla movement within one year over an area which comprised 4000 villages, mainly in the districts of Nalgonda, Wagangal and some area of Hyderabad, Karimnagar, Medhak and Adilabad districts.

Such was the prestige and power of the movement that landlords and other oppressors migrated in a big way from this area which began to be treated by the peasantry and the people as a liberated area. The inefficient Nizam government could not cope with the movement despite its maximum efforts to suppress it.

The Police Action in 1948 and the taking over of the Hyderabad state by the Congress Government at the Centre, brought about an acute intensifications of repression. The Indian Army was put into the field and given the task of crushing the armed peasant resistance. The large scale operations of the army it necessary for the guerrilla squads to migrate to the forests in self defense. From there they continued to operate for more than two years but the situation became more and more difficult. The Indian armed forces continued their mopping up operations in the plains and simultaneously unleashed a terror campaign amongst the tribals in forest areas who were helping the guerillas. Barbaric repression coupled with acute shortage of food and other absolute necessities in forest areas brought the movement in a state of crisis by the middle of 1950. And yet with unprecedented heroism they carried on till the beginning of 1952 when the struggle was formally called off.

An overall balance sheet of the sacrifices and sufferings of the fighting peasantry and its heroic leadership in the Telangana movement, would show that as many as 4000 communists and peasant militants were killed, more than 10,000 were imprisoned in jails and detention camps for 3 to 4 years, over 50,000 persons were held and tortured in military and police camps and lakhs were subjected to various other types of police and army representation while thousands of women were molested.

This tells the heroic story of the great partisan struggle of Telangana which lasted for nearly five years and had a tremendous impact both on the agrarian popular movements in the country and the evolution of the agrarian policies of the Congress government. In the period under review Land Reforms came to be accepted as a part of the national economic policy of the Congress government and a number of legislative enactments relating to Land Reforms were enforced by state governments which brought about a considerable change in the traditional semi- feudal structure of Indian economy.

In 1948, Dr Rajendra Prasad appointed an Agrarian Reforms Committee called the Kumarappa Committee which made a detailed survey of the agrarian relations that obtained in the country and in its Report submitted in 1949 made comprehensive recommendations. Its main recommendations were:

all intermediaries between the state and the tillers should be eliminated,
land must belong to the tiller,
Subletting of land should be prohibited except in the case of widows, minors, and disabled persons, and
Ceiling should be imposed on land holdings and the size of optimum or biggest landholding should be three times the size of an ‘economic holding’ – the latter being defined as a holding which affords a reasonable standard of living to the cultivator and provides full employment to a family of normal size and at least a pair of bullocks.

The recommendations of the Kumarappa committee though not fully accepted by the government , exercised a considerable influence on the evolution of Land Reforms policy of the government in subsequent years.

That policy gradually took shape under the recommendations of Five Year Plans from the First to The Fifth, each one of which enunciated the major principles on which the Land Reforms policy of the Government should be based. In addition to that the Central and State governments appointed from time to time special bodies, Panels, Commissions etc to probe into the problem and make recommendations. Mention may be made here of the panel on Land Reforms set up by the Planning Commission in May 1955 under the chairmanship of Gulzarilal Nanda which made a number of important recommendations. Subsequently a Central Land Reforms Committee was formed in 1971 under the chairmanship of the Central Agriculture Minister Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad to examine the whole question of Ceiling on land holdings.

Similarly in the states various commission and committees continued to operate on the legislative measures relating to Land Reforms. The result of all this was the enactment of a number of legislative measures relating to Land Reforms in the states. Primacy was given in these enactment to the abolition of ‘Intermediaries’. Amendments in existing Tenancy Laws were also made in due course. The last to be enacted were laws relating to ceilings. The question may be asked as to why the congress leadership which refused to accept or advocate, in the pre- independence period Land Reforms that would in any significant measure hit the semi- feudal vested interests, started enforcing such Reforms after it came to power. There are various reasons for this phenomenon. Firstly, the Congress, which represented the new ruling capitalist class was faced with an explosive situation in the countryside and a powerful peasant movement which found its expression in mass peasants revolts as in Tebhaga, Telangana, Ponappara Vayalat and the Bakasht struggle of Bihar. The terrific pressure of this movement was a big factor in the situation. The new rulers who had mobilized the peasants in the anti-British struggle promising them a more just social order, could not possibly restrain them from going into more militant actions without in some measure curbing the feudal and semi-feudal system which was root cause of their exploitation and sufferings. Even for securing some stability for their newly established state they had to take steps to lessen the acute social and economic conflicts and tensions that obtained in the rural areas.

Secondly, the ruling capitalist class was interested in curbing semi-feudal interests and bringing about such changes in the agrarian economy as would enhance the purchasing power of at least a section of the rural population and thus strengthen the internal market of the country for the expansion of trade and commerce and sale of industrial goods. This could not be achieved of the crude loot of the peasantry by the landlords was allowed to continue. Thirdly the new ruling class wanted a social and political base for itself in the countryside which the big semi- feudal landlords could not provide. The Congress could secure that base for itself by so changing the Agrarian relations as to create a class of rich peasants and capitalist farmers who could replace the old landlords in respect of social and economic position and political influence. The Congress has always had a good section of middle and small landlord and rich peasant in its leadership and these elements who, in the past, stood in conflict with big semi-feudal landowners were seeking to come into their own after independence. Their interests also coincided with measures aimed at curbing the semi-feudal landlordism.

While we do not underestimate the positive role that Land Reforms played in changing class relations in the countryside, we have to be very clear that those Land Reforms had such inbuilt negative peasantry was left out of their preview but the latter far from getting any direct benefits were subjected to various forms of harassment and oppression arising from the implementation of the reforms. Legislation for the abolition of inter mediaries as it was structured in states where statutory landlordism was predominant, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa, left large areas of land, variously called as ‘Sir’ or ‘Khas’ land, were left intact in possession of the intermediaries and exempted from the application of the abolition laws, and treated as personal property of the intermediaries under self-cultivation. The National Commission on Agriculture opined in this matter and observed, “It is true that these provisions constituted a major loophole in the law, which are utilized with deadly effect by the intermediaries. Infact, these provisions negated in a considerable measures the beneficent effects of the legislation and helped to keep alive albeit in restricted dimensions, the social and economic base of feudal vested interests in the countryside. In effect the bigger landowners through these provisions got the opportunity to carve out their own Sir Khandkasht lands, both in respect of land and area. They also got the freedom to resort to large scale evictions of tenants and share croppers for this purpose. The spate of land grabbing and mass evictions resorted to by the landlords in that period exercised a baneful effect both material and moral on village life and foiled largely the new hopes and aspirations, generated among the rural poor by land reforms legislation” (Vol.15, page 52)

In regard to Tenancy legislation, the provisions for a larger measure of protection to tenants of benefit a section of the tenants, particularly those belonging to the upper and middle strata, but they simultaneously set into motion a social process in the opposite direction, that is, of mass evictions of tenants, subtenants and share croppers through various legal and illegal means. The landlords exercised social and economic pressures to out as many tenants as possible and even secured voluntary resignations from them.

In Uttar Pradesh certain provisions of the Tenancy Act were extensively used to eject the maximum number of tenants from Sir and Khudkasht Lands. Many official documents recognized the fact that the tenancy provisions of the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950 remained ineffective in practice. In Andhra Pradesh not only were tenants ejected but it also became very difficult for them to procure land on lease after the introduction of Land Reforms. The same happened in Gujarat and Maharashtra. In Orissa where statutory landlordism was dominant, tenancy legislation remained on paper. These are a few illustrative legislation remained on paper. These are a few illustrative examples of a universal phenomenon of mass eviction of tenants resulting in a virtual breakdown of the tenancy arrangements that prevailed before the introduction of new land reform measures. It may be noted here that the brunt of these evictions was borne by the poorer and weaker sections of tenants and share croppers who constituted the great bulk of tenants and who were till then largely unprotected by law. The upper and middle sections of tenants who had already secured a measure of protection under the pre-independence Tenancy Acts, not only saved themselves from evictions, but were also able to take advantage of the provisions of the new Tenancy Reforms.

The Ceiling legislation which remained infructous and in practice belied its declared objective of reducing disparities in land holdings had a negative effect on the life of mass of toiling peasantry that struggles of the post independence period began to take shape.

The Eleventh All India Kisan Conference was held at Cannanore (North Malabar) in 1953, six years after the Sikandra Rao Conference of 1947, years which were full of turmoil and repression and big peasant struggles in Andhra, Malabar, Bengal, UP, Bihar etc. By the time normalcy had been restored and the ban on the Kisan Sabha had been lifted. Congress Land Reforms were well on their way. The Cannanore Conference passed a resolution which viewed “with grave concern the concerted offensive being made by landlords throughout the country and in all the states to evict tenants and grab their lands and the help being given to the landlords in these attempts buy the state governments and their administrative machinery. Already large scale eviction has taken place in all states. A ll India Kisan Sabha calls upon the entire peasantry, the kisan Sabha units and all other democratic organizations to resist with all their might this offensive of landlords against tenants and fight for defending their lands, their homes and other properties” (Resolution on Tenancy Reforms).

A wave of struggles of tenants and share croppers, mainly against evictions, swept the countryside in this period. Mass eviction of tenants and sharecroppers in their hundreds of thousands were being carried out in UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra, Maharashtra etc. both in the so called Zamindari and Ryotwari areas.

In the next All India Kisan Conference held at Moga (Punjab) 1954 Indulal Yagnik, the president of the Conference observed in his presidential address “How was it that this series of professedly anti-zamindaris and tenancy laws, resulting all these years in the eviction of lakhs of tenants were adopted by the congress rulers. On close consideration of the vicious cycle of tenancy laws and mass evictions, I have no hesitation in asserting with all the emphasis perity which indigo cultivation had brought to the countryside and the role of the zamindars in promoting that prosperity.

Subsequently, no attempt was made up an Agrarian Programme either in the Haripura (1938) or in the Tripuri (1939) All India Sessions of the Congress. Thus the mild agrarian reforms demanded in the Election Manifesto of 1936 remained the high water mark of the position taken by the congress on this question until 1947 when the transfer of political power took place. Thus it would be no exaggeration to say that Congress leadership which in its class character represented the rising Indian commercial and industrial interests coupled with middle and middle and small landlords interests, utilized the peasantry to strengthen its own mass base in the villages, but, in a most conscious and determined manner, refused to accept and advocate throughout the period of the national movement such agrarian reforms as would seriously upset and alter the existing property relations in rural India.
Birth of Kisan Sabha and growth of Organized Kisan movement 1936- 1948

The wave of radicalization that swept the ranks of the freedom movement from the beginning of the thirties and the widespread disillusionment of the cadres of the Congress with their own leadership created a situation in which there developed a general urge among the left oriented political workers to form independent Kisan organizations. The initiative in this matter was taken mainly by Congress Socialists, Communists and some non-party individuals like Professor Ranga, Swami Sahajananda and others. Spontaneously small independent Kisan organizations came into existence in some of the provinces, as in Andhra, Madras, UP, Bihar etc. After mutual consultation amongst their leaders it was decided to hold an All India Kisan Congress at Lucknow in April 1936 at the time of the annual session of the Indian National Congress. The All India Kisan Swami Sahajananda Saraswati, a well known political leader of Bihar who had earlier led big peasant struggles against landlords in Bihar. The Kisan Congress decided to form an All India Kisan Sabha The Kisan Congress also elected and All India Kisan Sabha Committee which in its composition included Congress Socialists, Communists and radical Kisan minded Congressmen.

“The main task of the Kisan movement shall be the organization of peasants to fight for their immediate political and economic demands in order to fight for their immediate political and economic demands in order to prepare them for their emancipation from every form of exploitation. The Kisan movement stands for the achievement of ultimate economic and political power for the producing masses, through their active participation in the national struggle for winning complete independence”.

Swami Sahajanand while replying to this campaign of vilification against the Kisan Sabha said “ Those who promise that the abolition of landlordism and organization of the Kisans can on;y be achieved after winning Swaraj really mean to strengthen the forces of reaction in the Congress. Swaraj is not any patent and finished product. To us and to the toiling and starving millions it means a guarantee for the necessities of life free from anxieties and it can only be achieved if the real political power is vested in the producing masses. But it is a common historical fact that so long as feudalism and capitalism are not done away with, real substantive power cannot come in the hands of the masses. Hence their abolition is a necessity for and condition precedent to Swaraj”

In C.P a forest satyagraha was organized in Dondi-Lohara (district Drug) and in Umrer Tehsil of Nagpur a big Kisan campaign was organized for the suspension of Taqavi dues.

In the complicated political situation created by the war the Kisan Conference held in Bihta in May 1942 put forward a positive programme for National unity, National Government and National Defence.

In view of the rapidly growing food crisis in the country, the Bihta session put forward the “Grow More Food” campaign as the main mass campaign.

Date: 7-10 June, 1979

Author: Z.A. AHMAD

Presidential Address

By Z.A.AHMAD

28th Conference: Proceedings, Inaugural Speech, General Secretary’s Report and Resolutions

24th Conference: Proceedings and Resolutions

19th Conference: Documents