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Module 6 Social Protests and Social Movements

Lecture 33
Social Movements in India Part II

The Congress, Communist and Peasant Movements in Colonial India

The peasants had been the worst sufferers of the British Raj in colonial India. Even before the
Congress decided to mobilise the peasants, the latter had already developed their
organisations and were in fact protesting against the local Zamindars who, to them, were the
main enemies. Thus there has been much peasant unrest and occasional uprisings in the pre
nationalist era. The two most important uprisings in the pre nationalist period were the
movement of the Indigo planters of 1860 and the Moplah uprising of 1921 in Malabar. In the
initial years the Congress ignored the urgency of improving the agrarian situation. It was only
in the 1920s that Gandhi sought to convert the Congress organisation into a mass organisation
and hence thought of bringing the peasants into the fold of the Congress. Two important
developments were in fact responsible for the establishment of contact between the peasants
and the Congress in the late 1920s. The first was the constant banging of the Congress doors
by the peasants on the one hand and second was the need by the Congress to enlist peasant
support for the national movement. Despite the fact that the Congress took a late initiative
in reaching the peasants in the countryside, it became a strong force to reckon with very soon.
Since the Congress wanted to become a political party of all the classes in the Indian society,
it attracted even the landed rich to enter the organisation and once the later entered, it is the
latter who in fact dominated the organization and decided the rural strategies of the party and
hence the Congress could not pursue any radical peasant agitation. The Congress was more
interested in enlisting the support of the bulk of the peasants for the purpose of national
agitation but never went for and encouraged class war with the upper strata in rural society.
In a nutshell, it can be said that because of Gandhis and Congress emphasis on class
harmony and because of its primary emphasis on sociocultural revival of the rural community
that the Congress could never launch serious agitations in the countryside, though it was able
to draw the support of a part of the rural community during its anti imperialist agitations.
Apart from the Congress, the Communists were the other major force that mobilised the
peasants. Though the CPI was formed in 1920, (to some in 1925), its serious engagement
with the peasantry started with the formation of the All India Kisan Congress later renamed
as the Kisan Sabha and the primary purpose of the Sabha was to mobilise the peasants. It is
after this pursuing broadly a tactics of United Front in cooperation with the national
movement the CPI increased its membership in the peasant front and set the stage for the
most revolutionary struggles in the countryside, though most of the struggles, as we shall see
later, were local in their spread. The tactics that the Communists adopted were to work at the
grass root level and this tactics paid them rich dividends. In the countryside they worked
through the Kisan Sabhas. In the beginning it was not a class based organisation, it
represented even the well to do peasants, though, in this period, the Communists ensured that
the Kisan Sabha would take up at least some of the issues of the rural poor. The rural rich
were well represented in the Sabha because of the Congress Socialists emphasis on a multi-
class organisation. It was only in the years 1941-43 that the AIKS passed into the hands of
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the Communists and it Swami Shajanand who tried to build the Kisan Sabha as an
organisation of the rural poor and this alienated the rich and the middle peasants. The control
of the CPI over the Kisan Sabha was complete by the year 1944-45. The membership of the
Kisan Sabha kept on increasing and by 1944 it increased to 553,427 (Dhanagare, 1980). After
completely capturing it the CPI and the Kisan Sabha could in fact make the Sabha an
organization of the poor peasants. It is with this base that it could, in the later years, launch
and lead agrarian struggles, in the pre-independence period.

The Telangana Peasant Uprising

The Telangana peasant movement started in mid-1946 and continued till the October of 1951.

The movement engulfed the whole of the Telangana region of the Hyderabad state and the
adjoining districts of the Andhra delta. It has been regarded as the most revolutionary of all
the movements in India, in its character and political objectives. The CPI through its peasant
wing, the Kisan Sabha, launched the movement. It appears that the CPI could launch the
movement after it eschewed the strategy of United Front and adopted a strategy of initiating
insurrectionary struggles. In the whole of Hyderabad state to which the Telangana region
belonged, there were two main types of land tenure. The first was the Khalsa or Diwani
tenure, which was similar to the raiyatwari system that is the peasant-proprietary system.
Under this system the landowners were not called actual owners but were called pattadars
(registered occupants) and under this system lay around 60 percent of the land of Hyderabad.
The actual occupants were the shikmidars, who had full rights of occupancy but were not
registered. When the pressure on land grew the shikmidars also leased out their land to the
tenants but the later were not the real owners, neither had they any protection against
eviction. The second kind of tenure, which existed, was under the jagirdari system. Sarf e-
khas was the special land assigned to the Nizam himself. These were the crown lands and the
Nizams noblemen, who were granted land in return of military services during emergency
administered these lands. The peasants, under the jagirdari system, were the most oppressed.
In the whole of Hyderabd state, the peasantry in the Telangana region suffered the most
oppressive system of exploitation.The movement led by the Communists began in Nalgonda
district in 1946 and then spread to the neighbouring Warangal and Bidar districts and finally
engulfed the whole of the Telangana region. The objective of the movement, from the very
beginning, was a broad one and was concerned with the whole of the peasantry against illegal
and excessive extraction by the rural feudal aristocracy. The most powerful demand was that
all peasant debt should be written off.

The second stage of the movement began when in order to counter the oppression let loose by
the aristocracy the peasantry launched the armed struggle. Thus, with this, the movement
entered into its revolutionary phase. It entered the revolutionary phase when over 2,000
villages set up their own Peoples Committees; these Committees took over land,
maintained their own army and own administration (Mehta, 1979). This rule of the peasants
in a large part of the region and the armed resistance continued until 1950 and was finally
crushed by the Indian army. It was ultimately called off in 1951. It was an agrarian struggle
in which many peasants were killed
by the army of the landed gentry and later by the Indian army after the takeover of the
Hyderabad state by the Indian army. The demands raised were broad ones and the nature of
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the struggle itself makes this movement one of the most revolutionary agrarian struggles of
India unmatched so far in the Indian history.

The Naxalbari Peasant Uprising

The Naxalbari peasant uprising that occurred in the northern part of West Bengal is the last of
the major uprisings India has witnessed. It took place in post-colonial India and was led by a
faction of the CPI (M). The two most prominent leaders of the CPI (M) who disagreed with
the official position of the party and led the movement were Kanu Sanyal and Charu
Mazumdar. It erupted in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas in West Bengal, in a place
called Naxalbari falling within the subdivision of Siliguri in Darjeeling district. It is in
Naxalbari, Kharibari and Phansidewa, the three police station areas where the movement took
a militant turn. The region is different from that of the whole of West Bengal because within
it, there exists numerous tea plantations and a large proportion of tribal population. Tea
plantations have developed along the lines of a plantation economy whereas the tribal
population in thisregion include the Santhals, Rajbansis, Oraons, Mundas and a small
number of Terrai Gurkhas. It is because of the combination of these two factors that the
whole region has a history of land disputes in West Bengal. The landless peasants in this
region had since long claimed that their land were being encroached by the tea estates and
also by the rich peasants. Thus it is because of this peculiarity, the Naxalbari area had
witnessed a number of peasant disputes led mainly by an indigenous peasant leadership and
not by the outside middle class leaders. The agrarian revolt arose in the month of April 1967
after the formation of the new government in West Bengal in which the CPI (M) was a major
partner. The movement continued till June in full swing in the whole Siliguri subdivision.
Kanu Sanyal, the leader of the movement specified ten great tasks, which included inter alia,
land which was not owned and tilled by peasant themselves was to be redistributed, peasants
were to burn all legal deeds and documents, unequal agreements between the moneylenders
and the peasants were to be declared null and void, hoarded rice were to be confiscated by the
peasants and distributed among the peasants, all jotedars to be tried and sentenced to death
etc. He urged the peasants to arm themselves with traditional weapons.

The high point of the movement was reached in the month of May. Forcible occupations by
the peasants took place and according to government sources there were around 60 cases of
forcible occupations, looting of rice and paddy and intimidation and assaults. The leaders of
the movement claimed that around 90 percent of the peasants in the Siliguri subdivision
supported the movement. The movement came to a halt, when, under central government
pressure, the West Bengal police entered the region and swept the area. Cases of killing of
landlords were carried on later as a part of the annihilation strategy. The movement spread to
other areas of the state and elsewhere in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh later in the form of the
Naxalite movement .Thus, the Naxalbari peasant uprising had far reaching consequences in
the Independent India.






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The Movements of the Rural Rich: Farmers Movements in Contemporary India

In this part of the section, we shall focus on two of the prominent movements of the rural
rich, one led by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) in western Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana
and the Shetkari Sangathan (SS) which represents primarily the interests of the sugarcane,
cotton, tobacco, grape and onion growers in south-west Maharashtra though it also has its
base in Gujarat. There are other organisations and movements in the country as well like the
Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha movement led by Nanjundaswamy in Karnataka and
Vivasayigal Sangam movement led by Narayanswamy Naidu in Tamil Nadu, the Khedut
movement in south of Gujarat; but in recent years, the BKU movement led by Mahendra
Singh Tikait and the movement by the SS led by Sharad Joshi has drawn more national
attention because of their militancy and spread. We would begin with the BKU and then
come to a discussion of the SS and end up with a comparison of the two movements. Before
we look at the BKU, let us look at the nature of the rural economy in the west Uttar Pradesh
and in the states of Punjab and Haryana that forms the backbone of the movement.

This region is highly prosperous because of the massive capitalist investment in agriculture.
Apart from food grains, sugarcane is the principal crop that is produced. A section of the
peasantry having land in these states has been transformed into a class of capitalist farmers
who produce much more than what their family consumes and hence the surplus is sold in the
market. They own capital assets like tractors, thrashers, pump sets etc. and hire agricultural
labourers for the purpose of cultivation since their family labour is not sufficient. The BKU
was originally formed on August 13, 1978 in Haryana under the guidance of Charan Singh,
the undisputed peasant leader of North India. The death of Charan Singh in 1987 created a
political vacuum among the peasants in North India and this was filled up by Mahendra
Singh Tikait. After the death of Charan Singh, Tikait attempted to convert the organisation
into a militant one after the Shamli agitation in April, 1987 in Muzzafarnagar district. In this
agitation the BKU raised demands against rise in power tariff and erratic supply of electricity
that was so crucial for the farmers of western Uttar Pradesh. The concession which the BKU
was able to secure (a reduction in the power tariff by one sixth) increased the prestige of the
BKU and its leader, Mahendra Singh Tikait and soon after that a large number of rich
peasants from several districts joined the organisation. After the Shamli agitation, two more
agitations solidified the support base of the BKU and brought the BKU into national
prominence. The two agitations were the Dharna in Meerut and Delhi in 1988. The agitations
were long and militant in nature and received widespread support. The Meerut dharna
continued for 25 days and was impressive and peaceful. The main demands of the
movements were similar to the demands of the other agitations of the prosperous farmers in
the country. The demands centred around, electricity, remunerative prices, low import costs
and the inclusion of BKU representatives on various committess appointed by the
government for fixation of prices. Since then the BKU has successfully spearheaded the
farmers movement in north India under the leadership of Mahendra Singh Tikait. A few
important points regarding the BKU should be noted at this juncture. It began as an
organisation of all the rich farmers of western Uttar Pradesh but today it has essentially
become the organisations of the well to do Jat peasant. The membership is primarily made up
of the Jatis. The Rajputs, the Gujars, the Tyagis and the Muslims (the other farmers) after
participating enthusiastically in the BKU led movements in its early years had deserted the
organisation. Thus the BKU has lost its multi-caste peasant alliance character. The second
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fundamental point regarding the BKU is its apolitical character. The constitution of the BKU
states very clearly that it is an apolitical organisation. The leadership of the BKU has
zealously guarded the apolitical character of the organisation. Mahendra Singh Tikait detests
politics and argues that all parties are parties of India and not of Bharat.Sharad Joshis
Shetkari Sangathana have its origin in the late 1970s when, in October 1979, it opened an
office in Chakan, Maharashtra. It primarily represents the interests of the farmers who
cultivate cotton, onions, tobacco, grapes and sugarcane in rural Maharashtra. The SS and
Sharad Joshi rose to national prominence with the rasta roko (block roads) agitation in 1980
when tens and thousands of farmers in the state of Maharashtra blocked important roads
connecting Bombay and other cities and the most important issue, which the SS raised, was
the issue of low prices of sugarcane and cotton and demanded that the prices of these
products be raised. The movement was successful because it was able to secure some rise in
the prices of the commodities and also because it was able to bring the farmers movement in
the state to prominence. Sharad Joshi again sought to address the plight of the Farmers with
the Nipani agitation in April 1981. The movements support, however, started declining till
the mid, 1980s due to the fact that though the leadership announced a number of agitations, it
did not launch any serious one. In the early 1980s, Sharad Joshi entered the Gujarat scene.
Since then the SS is associated with the farmers movement in Gujarat. His novel
contribution in Gujarat lay in his emphasis that the Farmers movement cannot succeed
unless and until the agricultural labours and poor peasants are associated with the movement.
With this emphasis, he was able to entice the rural poor within the Kheduts movement or
farmers movement. In 1985 the SS took a very pragmatic decision in Maharashtra of
supporting opposition political parties and started closely working with the other
organisations and people who were associated with the rural sector. This paid some dividends
and it is due to this its support base broadened. The next agitation that it organised was of
January 1987 over cotton prices. Since then the farmersmovement in Maharashtra has
matured and gained prominence; but in recent years, there has been a considerable decline in
the support base of the SS largely due to the fact that it has failed to launch any serious
agitation in the 1990s and also because of Joshis blatant support to the liberalisation of the
economy.

Caste Movement

They were subjected to extreme form of exploitation. The colonial power accentuated the
disparities in the distribution of economic power. The atrocities united the lower castes
people against the higher castes. Dalits are the suppressed people at the last run of the caste-
based hierarchy. Their inferior occupations and low levels of ascriptive ststus make them
vulnerable for attacks at the hands of upper caste people. The organization effort made by the
Dalit leadership for uplifting their status is known as Dalit Movements. It is a protest against
untouchability, casteism and discrimination faced by the dalits. Dalit movements indicate
some trends of protest ideologies which entail the following- withdrawal and self-
organization, high varna status and extolling of non-Aryan cultures virtues, abandoning of
Hinduism and embracing other religion like Buddhism and Islam. Mahatma Gandhi in 1923
founded the All India Harijan Sewak Sangh to start education and schools for Dalits.



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Womens Movement

The womens movement, in India, is a rich movement which has taken different forms in
different parts of the country. Women participated in the nationalist movement. Sarojini
Naidu went into become the first woman president of the India National Congress in 1925.
Her presence was a signal for hundreds of other women to join the nationalist movement. But
it is important to recognize that for a countrys of Indias magnitude, change in male-female
relations and the kinds of issues women activists are focusing will not come easily. Foe every
step, movements take forward, there will be a backlash backlash, a possible regression. And it
is this that makes for the contradiction, this that makes it possible for them to be woman who
can aspire to, and attain the highest political office in the country, and for women to continue
to have to confront patriarchy within the home, in the work place, throughout their lives.
Womens reservation in the legislature is being sought, though it has been made compulsory
at the local-government levels. The National Commission for Women (1992) and the
National Policy for the Empowerment of Women (2001) are steps towards the betterment of
women in the country but its acess is limited to few.

Tribal Movement

The tribal movements in colonial India, it must be understood, were born out of deep
dissatisfaction and often discontent against socio-economic policies of the British
Government, which adversely affected their lives. Whether it be the question of
encroachment of tribal lands by money-lenders backed by the Govt., the acquisition of tribal
forest, high taxation or enhancement of rent, everyone of these policies created among the
tribes and nomadic communities extreme distrust of the authorities and turned them against
the rulers - often against outsiders (Sudsldikus) in general, since that was how the tribal mind
perceived the situation to be. The situation was further worsened by the fact that famines in
the latter half of the 19th century forced the tribals into destitution. Dr. Verrier Elwin remarks
that the chief cause of the decline of tribal communities' '....was the loss of land and forests"
which according to him, "had the effect of enervating tribal organism that it had no interior
resistance against infection by a score of other evils ..." If we look back over the long series
of tribal rebellions against authority in other parts of tribal India, we see that the majority of
them arose over this one point. Thus, the Kol insurrection of 1833 was caused by
encroachment on tribal land. The Tamar rebellions repeated seven times between 1789 and
1832 were primarily due to the illegal deprivation of their rights in land, which the Hos,
Mundas and Oraons suffered. The Santhal Rebellion (1855) was primarily a revolt against
oppression of landlords, village money-lenders etc. The Birsa Munda Revolt (1895-1901) too
was directed against the 'outsider7-namely landlords, traders and government officers. As
evident, the movements were spread over large part of the country. A noteworthy feature of
these tribal movements, separated in space and time from one another, was that they occurred
not in one or two pockets but were spread out across the country and had at the root, common
or similar issues. Significant tribal movements took place in the beginning of the twentieth
century. Most important among these was in the present Andhra Pradesh, where the tribals'
forest agitation merged with Gandhi's non-cooperation movement and subsequent to its
withdrawal was carried further under the leadership of Sitarama Raju. According to Prof.
Summit Sarkar the spread of the movement was far beyond Andhra. "On 10 July 1921,
Reading reported to the Secretary of State that 2,50,000 out of 4,00,000 acres of forest in
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Kumaon Division of U.P. had been burnt down. Cavalry had to be sent to Muzaffarpur in
North Bihar in Dec. 1921 to tackle an agitation over grazing rights. From Bengal, too, came
reports of Santhals reasserting their lost forest rights in the Jhargram region of Midnapur and
widespread looting of woodlands in Banskhali land Cox's Bazar areas of Chittagong." A
study of these innumerable tribal movements reveals interesting characteristics which have
parallels in similar agrarian movements elsewhere in the world. Most of these have been
characterized by what has been called a negative consciousness by Ranajit Guha wherein,
more than their own consciousness as a class or social group, a consciousness based on an
identification of the enemy has played a vital role. Often enemies of the people have been
identified as enemies of the faithful, oppressed and disenfranchised and have been mingled
with religious calls for struggle against such enemies. Teachings of Judaism, Christianity and
Shia'ite Islam often had, as integral part of their teachings the promise of a paradise on earth
for a thousand years through divine intervention. This has been variously described as
Messianism, Millenarianism or Mahdism. Such millenarian elements can be seen in the
different Mahdist movements in the Babism of mid 19th century Iran or in the vision of a
Heavenly Kingdom in the Taiping Rebellion in China or in the many variants of Brasilian
Cultic protest movements. Kathleen Gough, on the basis of a study of 77 agrarian revolts has
roughly classified them into five types in terms of their goals, ideology and methods of
organization: 1) Restorative rebellions to drive out the British and to restore earlier rulers and
social relations, 2) religious movements for the liberation of a region or an ethnic group under
a new form of govt., 3) what had been referred to as 'Social banditry' by E. J. Hobsbawm, 4)
Terrorist vengeance, with ideas of meeting out collective justice and 5) Mass insurrections for
the redress of particular grievances. Though Eric Hobsbawm, Norman Cohn and Peter
Worsely have suggested thatmillenarian movements were rare or absent in India, as the
widespread opinion is that they stem from Indacocuristian influences, Gough holds a
different opinion. According to her, it is probably true in the 'strict sense of a belief in a
thousand year period in which the evil one will be chained, in a wider sense it is not true. The
belief and expectation that the present evil world will be transformed by divine intervention
and bliss shall reign on earth, has permeated many a tribal movement in India. "Birsa Munda
received teaching both from Lutheran missionaries and Hindu ascetics but then reverted to
his Munda religion, bringing with him beliefs and images from both majdr faiths. He taught
the Mundas first that he was divinity - appointed messenger come to deliver them from
foreign rule, and later that he was an incarnation of God himself. His mission was to save the
faithful from destruction in imminent flood, fire and brimstone, by leading them to the top of
a mountain. Beneath them, "all the British, Hindus and Muslims would perish, after which a
Munda Kingdom would be ushered in." Some of the movements subsequently got integrated
with the natiqnal movement. Particularly during the non-cooperation movement the 'forest
Satyagrahas' played an important role. Gradually, they also got imbued with anti-imperialist
ideology. Sumit Sarkar notes in the case of Sitarama Raju's movement that certain striking
new features were visible. Sitarama Raju was not a local village muttadar unlike previous
leaders but "a man without family or interest, an outsider coming from a group which claimed
Kshatriya status and often some proficiency in Telugu and Sanskrit scholarship". Anti-
imperialist ideology was still rudimentary. Raju's anti-imperialist feeling were reflected, for
instance in his statement that he was unable to shoot Europeans as they were always
surrounded by Indians whom he did not want to kill. This ideology was accompanied by
primitive messianic elements. He had been wandering among the tribals since 1915 as a
Sanyasi claiming astrological and qnedicinal powers and coming under Non-Cooperation
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influence in 1921. "Raju hints he is bullet-proof" reported the Malkangiri Deputy Tehsildar,
while a rebel proclamation in April 1924 claimed that "God Sri Jagannadhaswami would
incarnate very shortly as kalkiavatar and appear before us." Essentially all these tribal
movements were the outcome of deep resentment and discontent against the policies of
British imperialists that affected them adversely, as you have seen in the beginning of this
unit.

References

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Kornhauser, William. 1959. The Politics of Mass Society. New York: Free Press.

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Questions

1. Discuss various peasant movements in India.
2. Explain the factors leading to caste movements in India.
3. Elucidate various womens movements in India.