Allies, Rivals & a VerdictPeasant Movements in Bihar III

Views on the Kisan Sabha

• ▹Some historians have argued that ‘the whole history of peasant movement in Bihar has been strongly nationalist in outlook’ and both the Congress and peasant leaders have ‘frequently worked together’.
• ▹The formation of the Kisan Sabha was questioned by Congress leaders Rambriksha Benipuri and Braj Kishore Prasad as it was perceived to be a threat to the Congress, which was crucial for the fight against the British.
• ▹Initially, Sardar Patel welcomed the Kisan Sabha while announcing that the zamindari system was not required to exist anywhere in India. However, later he opposed the Kisan Sabha.
• ▹It was further regarded as a danger to the position of the Congress and was blamed by the Zamindar Sabha of Muzaffarpur for ‘inciting violence and creating an anarchic situation’.

Formal structure

The formal organizational structure of the Kisan Sabha was expressed through the rules of 1929 and the constitution formed in 1936.

• ▹The objective of the organisation stated in both the documents was the same, namely, ‘the peasants organising themselves (….through Kisan Sabha) should win their fundamental rights through peaceful means.’
• ▹The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha was organised more or less on the pattern of the Bihar Provincial Congress. The branches of the Kisan Sabha consisted of District Kisan Sabhas and Thana Kisan Councils at district and thana levels respectively.

Two factors to be noted

• ▹Firstly, the Kisan Sabha was a conglomeration of members owing their allegiance to different political parties such as INC, CSP, CPI. Thus it had become a common platform for the members of these parties having some similarities in their ideological beliefs for launching agrarian agitation or for mobilising the support of peasantry for their political ends. In such a situation, it was obvious that the character of the organisation had to essentially remain fluid.
• ▹Secondly, the concept of party as an organisation had evolved only in recent times. Thus, it was the ‘informal ties existing in the countryside’ that contributed to the functional effectiveness of the Kisan Sabha.

Social base

One of the most important aspects of any movement is its social base.

• ▹The Bihar Kisan Movement, despite its overtures to patronise poor peasants and landless labourers, remained a middle/ rich peasant movement in terms of its programmes, achievements and, to some extent, its ideology.
• ▹Its leadership came only from the affluent and middle peasantry, while lower peasants and labourers remained in the periphery of the peasant movement. Its leaders belonged to landholding families ‘who sought to defend themselves against zamindari pressure’. ‘Such people held themselves distinct from the low caste Harijan and Adivasi peasants whom they often themselves oppressed.’
• ▹It is significant though, that the two prominent leaders, Jadunandan Sharma and Karyanand Sharma, belonged almost to the rank of poor peasants. Swami Sahajanand came from a middle peasant family.
• ▹Unlike the poor peasantry, the middle peasants, however, had some amount of literacy and some acquaintance with the legal procedures, survey settlements and the recent history of land-arrangements. Therefore, they could argue out the case for the restoration of the lands seized from them and regarding the occupancy rights of the tenants. The benefits of the Bakasht struggle also accrued mostly to the middle peasants.

A united front of all who live by cultivation

The Kisan Sabha movement had started with reformist themes and an attempt was made to reconcile divergent interests to form a united front against the British colonialism. Its character in the earlier phase, at least up to 1936, was not influenced by the heterogeneous nature of the peasantry.

• ▹The earliest constitutional document of the Bihar Kisan Sabha had defined a ‘peasant as anyone whose primary source of livelihood was agriculture.’ The Kisan Sabha manifesto of 1936 also emphasised the unity of peasants. It declared that ‘the Sabha stands not only for the raiyats but also for petty zamindars and agricultural labourers—in other words for all who live by cultivation’.
• ▹Vinita Damodaran claimed that Kisan Sabha in Bihar was ‘moderate’ in nature which limited its aggression only to big landlords and did not come up with any radical socio-economic programme distinct from the Congress.

Two facts show its class-character remained obscure up to 1936

• ▹Firstly, its rent reduction and debt moratorium campaigns (1933-36) were clearly meant to provide relief to the rich and middle peasants within the existing legal framework. The Bihar Kisan Sabha had demanded only a 50 per cent rent reduction and moratorium on debt for one year. This could hardly solve the problems of the poor peasantry, who even during ‘depression’ had to pay rents as high as Rs 24 per bigha.
• ▹The second fact which can be highlighted was the silence of the Kisan Sabha up to 1936 on the question of landless labourers—a class which it could never integrate or mobilise within its movement. It was in the introduction of the Hindi edition of the Kisan Sabha manifesto (1936) that Swami Sahajanand considered an agricultural labourer as a peasant.
  • Sahajanand felt that there was no need for a separate organisation of agricultural labourers. He did nothing in practice to project their class-interests. He was in favour of ‘united front’ to avoid strife between heterogeneous peasant class.

A reluctant convert to zamindari abolition

• ▹This also explains why he was initially reluctant to adopt anti-zamindari resolution and it was only at the instance of some Congress Socialist Party leaders that he eventually did so in 1936.
  • He himself had opposed the anti-zamindari resolution proposed by Purushottam Das Tandon at the Provincial Kisan Conference at Gaya in 1935.
• ▹Walter Hauser considered Sahajanand as basically ‘a practical observer of the peasant problem’ not as ‘ideologue’.

What it achieved, and what it did not

• ▹The Kisan Sabha was successful in getting the grievances of tenants partly redressed only in some areas in the Gaya, Monghyr and Darbhanga districts. Elsewhere, its immediate achievements remained insignificant.
• ▹The movement remained a ‘middle’ and ‘rich’ peasant movement, despite some participation of lower caste poor peasants in it.
• ▹The Kisan Sabha could launch agitations and mobilise the peasantry only around its ‘immediate demands’.
• ▹The basic demands included the ‘abolition of zamindari’ but it was never able to secure and maintain a popular movement on this vital issue in this period, though it succeeded in placing this demand on the agenda for struggle and in popularising it among the peasantry.

Demands that never reached the peasant's consciousness

Neither the abolition of land revenue and other taxes nor the abolition of zamindari or landlordism was ever part of the immediate demands or actual programme of struggle of the Kisan Sabha.

• ▹No section of the Bihar peasants demanded in their struggles the complete extinction of the right of the state to a share in the agricultural surplus, nor did any section of the peasantry organise a struggle around the demand for the abolition of zamindari or landlordism.
• ▹These demands were raised at the annual conferences of the Kisan Sabha, were enshrined in the manifestoes, were repeated at Kisan Conferences and were part of the consciousness of the leaders but did not reach down and become part of the consciousness of the peasantry.
• ▹At least, they did not become so integral a part of the peasant's consciousness of their legitimate rights that they were willing to launch struggles on that basis or incorporated them in their actual politics.
• ▹The role of tradition, history and custom was clearly very important in determining the peasants' existing level of consciousness of fair and legitimate rights. The Kisan Sabha took up issues like rent reduction, debt moratorium, struggle over Bakasht land etc. These were considered as legitimate rights of the Bihar peasantry.
• ▹Thus the Kisan Sabha led peasant struggles were not characterised by organised attempts to physically confront either the government or the landlords or the money lenders nor did they attempt forcible seizures of land.

Yet its pressure counted

• ▹However, it should not be forgotten that the Congress ministry brought zamindari abolition due to the heavy pressure by peasant movements led by the Kisan Sabha.
• ▹Peasants unitedly struggled under the banner of the Kisan Sabha. Their main rivals were landlords. However, the Kisan Sabha had to struggle against the Congress, the socialists, the communists, and even with its members. It perceived ‘the political struggle as a means to the economic ends of agrarian change’.
• ▹Despite the crucial role played by the Kisan Sabha it could not fundamentally alter the feudal agrarian structure.