Peasant Movements in India
S. Manikandan
Peasant Movement
• Peasant movement is a social movement
involved with the agricultural policy. Peasants
movement have a long history that can be
traced to the numerous peasant uprisings that
occurred in various regions of the world
throughout human history.
Introduction
• Peasant movements are among one of the
most important social movements in India.
• The political behavior of the peasantry is
mostly based on the factions, which are the
integrated segments of the rural society.
• The rural society is dominated by the landlords
and the rich peasants at the top and the
landless or poor peasants at the bottom of the
social hierarchy.
Peasant: Meaning
•a farmer who owns and
rents a small piece of land
Movement: Meaning
• In Dictionary…
– a group of people who share the same
ideas or aims.
– a group of people working together to
advance their shared political, social,
or artistic ideas.
Definition
• According to Jan Breman, “a peasant is one who tills
the land”.
• People who depend on agriculture are differentiated
in terms of their relationship with the land such as
owners of the land, absentee landlords, supervisory
agriculturists, owner-cultivators, share-croppers,
tenants, and landless laborers.
• In general, and in local language, they are known as
“Kisans”. The word “kisan” is often translated as
“peasant” in the academic literature that is published
in English.
Types of Peasants
i. On the Basis of Land Ownership:
• Daniel Thorner has taken land ownership as the
basis for classifying the peasants. The peasants
who have the document of land ownership in
their name are the Maliks, those who do not
own the land ownership document (patta) but
cultivate the land are the Kisans and the tillers
of the land, i.e., the agricultural laborers, are
known as the Mazdoors.
ii. On the Basis of the Size of the Land
Holdings:
• Some State Governments have classified the types of peasants on the
basis of the size of their landholdings.
Accordingly, the classification is as follows:
a. Rich Peasants:
• Peasants who own more than 15 acres of land.
b. Small Peasants:
• Peasants who possess land between the size of 2.5 and 5 acres.
c. Marginal Farmers:
• Farmers who own land which is less than 2.5 acres.
d. Landless Peasants:
• These peasants earn their livelihood by working as manual laborers in
agricultural lands of others as they do not possess any land. They work as
sharecroppers and sub-tenants.
iii. Class-based Classification of Peasants
• According to Utsa Patnaik, class differentiation exists within
peasantry. Growth of capitalism in rural peasantry has resulted
in the exploitation of peasantry that has taken a class character.
• According to her, there are two categories of peasants:
– one the big landlords and
– the second the agricultural laborers, who also include the
sharecroppers. Many Marxist sociologists have criticized this
classification of Patnaik.
• Even the non-marxists have criticized the class approach to
peasant categorization. Their argument is that the essence of
the process of differentiation lies in the historical conversion of
the peasantry, which is not a class as such; into two differentiate
classes, which are at the opposite ends of a capitalist social
relation.
iv. Peasant Classification on the Basis of Resource Ownership
• Some sociologists have categorized the peasants on the
basis of several other resources such as utilization of
loans, tenancy, ownership of assets, credit from bank,
and repayment capacity of loans.
There are five types of peasant groups according to
K.L. Sharma:
• a. Owner-cultivator.
• b. Largely owner-cultivator.
• c. Largely tenant-cultivator.
• d. Tenant-cultivator.
• e. Totally poor peasant.
In addition to the classification of sociologists, there
are economists who have classified peasants into
(i) landlords,
(ii) rich peasants,
(iii)middle class peasants,
(iv)poor peasants and
(v) agricultural peasants.
However, in any classification of peasants, land tenancy and land
size play an important role. Thus, both these combined
together play an important role in determining the criteria
for peasant classification.
Classification of Peasant Movements
• According to Ghanshyam Shah, in India
peasant movements are generally classified
into
– pre-British,
– British or colonial and
– post-independence.
• According to Oommen there are certain
movements which continue despite the
changes in the political power.
• These are the movements which started
in the pre-independence era and are still
continued though with different goals.
• The classification is also based on time
span as the structure of agrarian system
also differs from time to time so also the
peasant movements.
• A.R. Desai classified the colonial India into the
following:
– areas under the British rule as Ryotwari,
– the areas under the princely authority as Zamindari and
– tribal zones.
– A.R. Desai calls the movements as “peasant struggles”
in the colonial period and
– those of post-independence era as “agrarian struggles”.
– The phrase “agrarian struggles” according to A.R. Desai
refers not only to include peasants but also others.
• He further divides the post-independence
agrarian struggles into two categories
– the movements launched by the newly
emerging proprietary classes comprising rich
farmers, viable sections of the middle peasant
proprietors and the streamlined landlords; and
– The second, the movements launched by
various sections of the agrarian poor in which
the agrarian proletariat have been acquiring
central importance.
• There are various classifications given by
different scholars depending on the period
and issues involved.
• Neither in the pre-independent nor post-
independent India, there ever existed, a
unified pattern of agrarian structure.
• Though in post-independent India there was
a centralized political authority and a
capitalist mode of production acting as
driving forces, there has not yet evolved a
unified agrarian pattern.
• The capitalist mode of
agriculture has developed in a
few states such as Gujarat,
Maharashtra, and Punjab.
• The classification also varies in
accordance with the theoretical
framework.
Kathleen Gough classifies the peasant revolts
into five categories. They are:
1. Restorative rebellions to drive out the British and
restore earlier rulers and social relations.
2. Religious movements for the liberation of a region or
an ethnic group under a new form of government.
3. Social banditry.
4. Terrorist vengeance with the idea of meeting out
collective justice.
5. Mass insurrections for the redressal of particular
grievances.
• This classification is based on the apparent
goals of the revolts rather than on the classes
of the peasants involved and the strategies
that they adopted for attaining their goals.
• However, it ignores some of the important
peasant movements, which were linked to
the nationalist movement in some form or
the other.
• Pushpendra Surana classifies peasant movements into
different types, mainly based on issues such as the
movements against
– forced cultivation of a particular type of crop,
– exploitation by moneylenders,
– price rise,
– outside invaders, and
– dynasties.
The limitation of such a classification is obvious, as more than
one issue is often involved in many revolts.
• Ranajit Guha looks at the peasant
movements in a different way.
• He examines peasant insurgency from the
perspective of peasant consciousness for
revolt.
• He delineates the underlying structural
features of tribal consciousness of the
peasants, namely:
– negation,
– solidarity,
– transmission,
– territoriality, etc.
• This can help us understand how and why
the peasants rebel.
• Guha and others are not in favor of
classifying the struggles into categories
which have a greater element of
arbitrariness.
• Social realities are complex and it is
misleading to divide them artificially.
• They believe that paradigms are important
in analyzing the complexities.
• Reasons
Impoverishment
of
Indian peasantry
The impoverishment of the Indian peasantry was a
direct result of the transformation of the agrarian
structure due to:
1. Colonial economic policies,
2. Ruin of the handicrafts leading to
overcrowding of land,
3. The new land revenue system,
4. Colonial administrative and
judicial system.
• The peasants suffered from high rents,
illegal levies, arbitrary evictions and unpaid
labour in Zamindari areas.
• In Ryotwari areas, the Government itself
levied heavy land revenue.
• The overburdened farmer, fearing loss of
his only source of livelihood, often
approached the local moneylender who
made full use of the former’s difficulties by
extracting high rates of interests on the
money lent.
• Often, the farmer had to mortgage his hand and
cattle. Sometimes, the moneylender seized the
mortgaged belongings.
• Gradually, over large areas, the actual cultivators
were reduced to the status of tenants-at-will, share
croppers and landless labourers.
• The peasants often resisted the exploitation, and
soon they realised that their real enemy was the
colonial state.
• Sometimes, the desperate peasants took to crime to
come out of intolerable conditions. These crimes
included robbery, dacoity and what has been called
social banditry.
Changed Nature of Peasant Movements After
1857:
1. Peasants emerged as the main force in agrarian
movements, fighting directly for their own demands.
2. The demands were centred almost wholly on
economic issues.
3. The movements were directed against the
immediate enemies of the peasant—foreign
planters and indigenous zamindars and
moneylenders.
4. The struggles were directed towards specific and
limited objectives and redressal of particular
grievances.
5. Colonialism was not the target of these
movements.
6. It was not the objective of these movements
to end the system of subordination or
exploitation of the peasants.
7. Territorial reach was limited.
8. There was no continuity of struggle or long-
term organisation.
9. The peasants developed a strong awareness
of their legal rights and asserted them in and
outside the courts.
Important Peasant Movements
• Indigo Cultivators Strike (Revolt)
• Pabna Agrarian Leagues
• Deccan Riots
• Champaran Satyagraha
• Kheda Peasant Struggle
• The Bardoli Movement in Gujarat
• Moplah Rebellion in Malabar
• Peasant Revolt in Telangana
• Tebhaga Movement in Bengal
• The Kisan Sabha Movement
• Eka Movement
Indigo Cultivators’ Strike (1859 – 1860)
Historical Background
• Under the supremacy of the British in India, the economic
condition of the rural India was much affected.
• The peasants were ruthlessly crushed and they were forced
to cultivate indigo in their lands instead of foods crops.
• The peasants continuously crushed, gradually organized a
revolt against their oppression.
• However the Indigo Cultivators Revolt was primarily
directed against the British planters who behaved like the
feudal lords in their estates.
• The revolt enjoyed the supports of all categories of
rural population. The zamindars, moneylenders, rich
peasants and even the karmacharis of indigo concerns.
• Right from the beginnings of the 19th century many
retired officials of the East India Company and some
slave traders of England owned several lands from the
Indian zamindars in Bihar and Bengal.
• In these lands they began a large-scale cultivation of
indigo.
• First of all the price was too low in India. Hence the
Indigo planters could make enormous profits by
cultivations indigo in India.
Indigo
Causes of Indigo Revolt
• Indigo was identified as a major cash crop for the East India
Company’s investments in the 18th Century.
• Indigo had worldwide demand similar to cotton piece-goods, opium
and salt.
• Indigo planting in Bengal dated back to 1777.
• With expansion of British power in Bengal, indigo planting became
more and more commercially profitable due to the demand for
blue dye in Europe.
• It was introduced in large parts of Burdwan, Bankura, Birbhum,
Murshidabad, etc.
• European Indigo planters had a monopoly over Indigo farming.
• The foreigners used to force Indian farmers to harvest Neel and to
achieve their means they used to brutally suppress the farmer.
• The European indigo planters left no stones unturned to
make money.
• They mercilessly pursued the peasants to plant indigo
instead of food crops.
• They provided loans, called dadon at a very high interest.
Once a farmer took such loans he remained in debt for
whole of his life before passing it to his successors.
• The farmers were totally unprotected from the brutal
indigo planters, who resorted to mortgages or destruction
of their property if they were unwilling to obey them.
• Farmers were illegally beaten up, detained in order to force them to sell
Neel at non-profitable rates.
• If any farmer refused to grow Indigo and started growing rice, he was
kidnapped, women and children were attacked, and crop was looted,
burnt and destroyed.
• If farmer approached court, the European judge would rule in favour of
the European planter.
• The privileges and immunities enjoyed by the British planters placed them
above the law and beyond all judicial control.
• Government rules favoured the planters. By an act in 1833, the planters
were granted a free hand in oppression. Sometimes even the zamindars,
money lenders and other influential persons sided with the planters.
• Finally Indigo peasants launched revolt in Nadia district of Bengal
presidency. Refused to grow Indigo. If police tried to intervene, they were
attacked. European Planters responded by increasing the rent and evicting
farmers. Led to more agitations and confrontations.
Revolt
• In April 1860 all the cultivators of the Barasat subdivision and in
the districts of Pabna and Nadia resorted to strike. They
refused to sow any indigo. The strike spread to other places in
Bengal.
• The Biswas brothers of Nadia, Kader Molla of Pabna, Rafique
Mondal of Malda were popular leaders. Even some of the
zamindars supported the revolt, the most important of whom
was Ramratan Mullick of Narail.
• The revolt was ruthlessly suppressed. Large forces of police and
military, backed by the British Government and some of the
zamindars, mercilessly slaughtered a number of peasants.
• In spite of this, the revolt was fairly popular, involving almost
the whole of Bengal.
Cont…
• The Bengali intelligentsia played a significant role by
supporting the peasants’ cause through newspaper
campaigns, organisation of mass meetings, preparing
memoranda on peasants’ grievances and supporting them in
legal battles.
• The Government appointed an indigo commission to inquire
into the problem of indigo cultivation.
• Based on its recommendations, the Government issued a
notification in November 1860 that the ryots could not be
compelled to grow indigo and that it would ensure that all
disputes were settled by legal means.
• But, the planters were already closing down factories and
indigo cultivation was virtually wiped out from Bengal by the
end of 1860.
Support for Revolt
• The revolt enjoyed the support of all categories of the
rural population, missionaries, the Bengal
intelligentsia and Muslims.
• The Bengal intelligentsia played an important role by
organizing a powerful campaign in support by using
Press as the tool. It had a deep impact on the
emerging nationalist intellectuals.
• Harish Chandra Mukherjee thoroughly described the
plight of the poor peasants in his newspaper The
Hindu Patriot. The Hindu Patriot, first published as a
weekly in January 1853, from the very beginning took
a hostile tone toward the indigo planters.
• Sisir Kumar Ghosh, who later found Amrita Bazar Patrika, was
one of the important muffasal correspondents of the Patriot.
He reported from Nadia and Jessore.
• His brave fight for justice for the ryots became invaluable in a
situation where there was no political organisation to support
the people’s cause.
• Dinabandhu Mitra’s play Nil Darpan (The Mirror of Indigo)
reflected the peasants’ feelings toward the indigo planters. It
effectively brought out the fact that indigo planters forced the
ryots to cultivate without remuneration, confined, beat and
compelled the villagers as well as corrupted their own
servants.
• With such powerful expression Nil Darpan became an example
of an awakening of intelligentsia, to gain their sympathy
towards the peasantry.
Nature and Impact of the Revolt
• The revolt as a non-violent revolution (except in few instances)
and gives this as a reason why the indigo revolt was a success
compared to the Sepoy Revolt.
• Historically, the Indigo Rebellion can be termed the first form
resistance of the countryside against the British in economic and
social terms. Unlike the spontaneous revolt of the soldiers in the
Sepoy Mutiny, this countryside revolt evolved over the years
and, in the process, rallied different strata of society against the
British – a thread of dissent that lasted many decades thereafter.
• Many consider this revolt as a forerunner of the non-violent
passive resistance later successfully adopted by Gandhi.
• Indigo Rebellion not only forewarned agrarian uprisings, but also
showed the shape of things to come.
• Indigo Rebellion was not a class struggle in anyway as there was no struggle
between the Zamindars and the peasantry; rather the real objective of the
Zamindars was to oppose the encroachment of Europeans on principle and to
fight for their own vested interests, though they espoused the cause of
peasantry and cultivators against the planters.”
• The revolt had a strong effect on the government, which immediately appoint
the “Indigo Commission” in 1860. In the commission report, E. W. L. Tower
noted that “not a chest of Indigo reached England without being stained with
human blood“.
• Government issued a notification that the Indian farmers cannot be compelled
to grow indigo and that it would ensure that all disputes were settled by legal
means. By the end of 1860, Indigo planters shut down their factories and
cultivation of indigo was virtually wiped out from Bengal.
• Evidently it was a major triumph of the peasants to incite such emotion in the
European’s minds. Thus the revolt was a success.
Deccan Riot
(1875)
Causes
• The ryots of Deccan region of western India suffered
heavy taxation under the Ryotwari system.
• Here again the peasants found themselves trapped
in a vicious network with the moneylender as the
exploiter and the main beneficiary.
• These moneylenders were mostly outsiders—
Marwaris or Gujaratis.
• The conditions had worsened due to a crash in
cotton prices after the end of the American civil war
in 1864, the Government’s decision to raise the land
revenue by 50% in 1867, and a succession of bad
harvests.
Course of the Riot
• In 1874, the growing tension between the moneylenders
and the peasants resulted in a social boycott movement
organised by the ryots against the “outsider” moneylenders.
• The ryots refused to buy from their shops. No peasant
would cultivate their fields.
• The barbers, washermen, shoemakers would not serve
them.
• This social boycott spread rapidly to the villages of Poona,
Ahmednagar, Sholapur and Satara.
• Soon the social boycott was transformed into agrarian riots
with systematic attacks on the moneylenders’ houses and
shops.
• The debt bonds and deeds were seized and publicly burnt.
Result
• The Government succeeded in repressing the
movement.
• As a conciliatory measure, the Deccan
Agriculturists Relief Act was passed in 1879.
• This time also, the modern nationalist
intelligentsia of Maharashtra supported the
peasants’ cause.
Punjab Riot
(1890 – 1900)
Punjab Riot (1890 – 1900)
• The earlier peasant mobilisation here had
been organised by the Punjab Naujawan
Bharat Sabha, the Kirti Kisan Party, the
Congress and the Akalis.
• A new direction to the movement was
given by the Punjab Kisan Committee in
1937.
• The main targets of the movement were
the landlords of western Punjab who
dominated the unionist ministry.
• The immediate issues taken up were resettlement of land
revenue in Amritsar and Lahore and increase in water rates
in canal colonies of Multan and Montgomery where feudal
levies were being demanded by the private contractors.
• Here the peasants went on a strike and were finally able to
win concessions.
• The peasant activity in Punjab was mainly concentrated in
Jullundur, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Lyallpur and Shekhupura.
• The Muslim tenants-at-will of west Punjab and the Hindu
peasants of south-eastern Punjab (today’s Haryana)
remained largely unaffected.
Champaran Satyagraha
(1917)
Champaran Satyagraha (1917)
• The peasantry on the Indigo plantations in the
Champaran district of Bihar was excessively oppresed by
the European planters.
• They were compelled to grow indigo on at least 3/20th of
their land and to sell it at prices fixed by the planters.
• Accompanied by Babu Rajendra prasad, Mazhar-ul-Huq,
J.B. Kripalani, Narhari Parekhand Mahadev Desai, Gandhi
reached Champaran in 1917 and began to conduct a
detailed inquiry into the condition of the peasantry.
• The infuriated district officials ordered him to
leave Champaran, but he defied the order and
was willing to face trial and imprisonment.
• Later the government developed cold feet and
appointed and Enquiry Committee (June 1917)
with Gandhi as one of the members.
• The ameliorative enactment, the Champaran
Agrarian Act free the tenants from the speical
imposts levied by the indigo planters.
Kheda Satyagraha
(1918)
Kheda Satyagraha (1918)
• The Kheda campaign took place in Kheda district of
Gujarat directed against the Government.
• In 1918, the crops failed in the Kheda district in
Gujarat due to low rains but the government refused
to let go of the land revenue and insisted on its full
collection of revenue.
• Gandhi along with Vallabhai Patel came in support of
the peasants and led them to withhold all revenue
payment till their demand for remission was fulfilled.
• By June 1918, Government had to concede the
demands of the satygrahi peasants.
Mappila (Mopillah) Rebellion
(1921-22)
Mappila Rebellion (1921-22)
• The Mappilas were the Muslim tenants inhabiting the Malabar
region where most of the landlords were Hindus.
• The Mappilas had expressed their resentment against the
oppression of the landlords during the nineteenth century also.
• Their grievances centred around lack of security of tenure, high
rents, renewal fees and other oppressive exactions.
• The Mappila tenants were particularly encouraged by the demand of
the local Congress body for a government legislation regulating
tenant-landlord relations.
• Soon, the Mappila movement merged with the ongoing Khilafat
agitation.
• The leaders of the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement like Gandhi,
Shaukat Ali and Maulana Azad addressed Mappila meetings. After
the arrest of national leaders, the leadership passed into the hands
of local Mappila leaders.
Cont…
• Things took a turn for the worse in August 1921 when the arrest
of a respected priest leader, Ali Musaliar, sparked off large scale
riots.
• Initially, the symbols of British authority— courts, police stations,
treasuries and offices and unpopular landlords (jenmies who were
mostly Hindus) were the targets.
• But once the British declared martial law and repression began in
earnest, the character of the rebellion underwent a definite
change. Many Hindus were seen by the Mappilas to be helping
the authorities.
• What began as an anti-government and anti- landlord affair
acquired communal overtones.
• The communalisation of the rebellion completed the isolation of
the Mappilas from the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement. By
December 1921, all resistance had come to a stop.
Telengana Movement
(1946)
Telengana Movement (1946)
• This was the biggest peasant guerrilla war of modern Indian
history affecting 3000 villages and 3 million populations.
• The princely state of Hyderabad under Asajahi Nizams was
marked by a combination of religious linguistic domination (by a
mall Urdu speaking Muslim elite ruling over predominantly
Hindu-Telugu, Marathi, Kannada speaking groups), total lack of
political and civil liberties, grossest forms of forced exploitation
by deshmukhs, jagirdars, doras (landlords) in forms of forced
labour (vethi) and illegal exactions.
• During the uprising, the communist led guerrillas had built a
strong base in Telangana villages through Andhra Mahasabha
and had been leading local struggles on issues such as wartime
exactions, abuse of rationing, excessive rent and vethi.
• The uprising began in July 1946 when a deshmukh’s thug
murdered a village militant in Jangaon taluq of Nalgonda.
• Soon, the uprising spread to Warrangal and Khammam.
• The peasants organised themselves into village sanghams,
and attacked using lathis, stone slings and chilli powder.
• They had to face brutal repression. The movement was at
its greatest intensity between August 1947 and
September 1948.
• The peasants brought about a rout of the Razaqars—the
Nizam’s storm troopers.
• Once the Indian security forces took over Hyderabad, the
movement fizzled out.
Achievement of the Telangana Movement
1. In the villages controlled by guerrillas, vethi and forced
labour disappeared.
2. Agricultural wages were raised.
3. Illegally seized lands were restored.
4. Steps were taken to fix ceilings and redistribute lands.
5. Measures were taken to improve irrigation and fight
cholera.
6. An improvement in the condition of women was
witnessed.
7. The autocratic feudal regime of India’s biggest princely
state was shaken up, clearing the way for the formation
of Andhra Pradesh on linguistic lines and realising
another aim of the national movement in this region.
Impact
• The Peasant Movements created an atmosphere for
post independence agrarian reforms, for instance,
abolition of Zamindari.
• They eroded the power of the landed class, thus
adding to the transformation of the agrarian structure.
• These movements were based on the ideology of
regionalism in everywhere and nationalism in
somewhere.
• The nature of these movements was similar in diverse
areas.
Reasons for the failure of a few Movements
1. There was a lack of an adequate
understanding of colonialism.
2. The 19th century peasants did not possess
a new ideology and a new social,
economic and political programme.
3. These struggles, however militant,
occurred within the framework of the old
societal order lacking a positive
conception of an alternative society.
