Peasant Movements 1857-1947

Colonial land policy crushed the Indian peasant under high rents, evictions and debt. The peasant fought back. Across ninety years, the character of these struggles changed. Early revolts were local and defensive. By the 20th century, peasants had become an organised, conscious force tied to the national movement. Learn the movements as three waves: early revolts, Gandhian-era sabhas, and the radical post-war struggles. Each wave has its named leaders and regions.

A parallel strand ran through the same decades. Modern industry created a modern working class. It was exploited by both foreign rulers and capitalists, so its movement was tied to the freedom struggle from the start. Its story closes this topic: early labour bodies, the great trade-union federation, the laws used to control it, and its political strikes.

The first wave (after 1857) was led by peasants fighting their immediate enemies: planters, zamindars and moneylenders. They were not yet targeting colonialism itself.

• Indigo Revolt (1859-60). In Bengal, European indigo planters forced peasants to grow indigo on their best land through fraudulent contracts and brutal coercion. In 1859, led by Digambar Biswas and Bishnu Biswas of Nadia, the ryots refused to grow indigo and resisted the planters' lathiyals. The Bengali intelligentsia backed them through newspapers, notably Harish Chandra Mukherjee's Hindoo Patriot and later Dinabandhu Mitra's play Nil Darpan. An Indigo Commission was appointed. By 1860, indigo cultivation was virtually wiped out in Bengal.
• Pabna Agrarian Leagues (1870s-80s). In Eastern Bengal, zamindars charged illegal enhanced rents and blocked tenants from gaining occupancy rights under Act X of 1859. The peasants of Yusufshahi Pargana in Pabna formed an agrarian league. They waged a largely legal struggle of rent strikes and court cases. Young intellectuals supported them: Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, R.C. Dutt and the Indian Association under Surendranath Banerjea. The movement contributed to the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885.
• Deccan Riots (1875). In western India, ryots under the Ryotwari system were trapped in debt to "outsider" Marwari and Gujarati moneylenders. The situation worsened after a crash in cotton prices after 1864 and a 50% revenue hike in 1867. A social boycott of the moneylenders in 1874 grew into riots. Peasants seized and burned debt bonds and deeds. The government repressed the riots but passed the conciliatory Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act, 1879.

The changed nature after 1857: peasants now fought directly for their own economic demands against their immediate enemies. Their goals were limited and specific. But colonialism itself was not yet the target. The struggles also lacked continuity and any vision of an alternative society.

The 20th-century movements were larger and better organised. They were woven into the national struggle. (Gandhi's own Champaran and Kheda satyagrahas belong to this wave.)

• Kisan Sabha Movement. After the First World War hiked prices, kisan sabhas arose in UP. The UP Kisan Sabha (1918) was set up by Gauri Shankar Mishra and Indra Narayan Dwivedi, with Madan Mohan Malaviya's support. The Awadh Kisan Sabha (1920) was led by Baba Ramchandra. It drew in Nehru, who began building close contact with the villages.
• Eka (Unity) Movement (1921-22). In northern UP districts, peasants protesting high rents and the oppression of thikadars gathered in a symbolic religious ritual, vowing to pay only the recorded rent. Its grassroots leadership came from Madari Pasi and other low-caste leaders.
• Mappila Revolt (1921). The Muslim Mappila tenants of Malabar rose against their (mostly Hindu) landlords. The movement merged with the Khilafat-Non- Cooperation agitation. But martial law was imposed and national leaders were arrested. After that, the movement took on communal overtones, isolating the Mappilas from the wider movement.
• Bardoli Satyagraha (1928). When the authorities raised the land revenue by 30% in Bardoli (Surat), Vallabhbhai Patel led the peasants in refusing to pay. The women of Bardoli gave him the title "Sardar". The no-tax struggle was backed by Bardoli Satyagraha Patrika and the mobilisation of women. It forced an inquiry that cut the hike to about 6%.
• All India Kisan Sabha (1936). Founded at Lucknow with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as president and N.G. Ranga as general secretary, it issued a kisan manifesto. This manifesto strongly influenced the Congress's agrarian programme for the 1937 elections. The period 1937-39, under the Congress ministries, was the high watermark of peasant activity.

The final wave, after the Second World War, was the most radical, led increasingly by communists.

• Tebhaga Movement (1946). In Bengal, the Provincial Kisan Sabha called on sharecroppers (bargadars) to enforce the Flood Commission's recommendation of tebhaga. Tebhaga meant a two-thirds share of the crop for the cultivator instead of one-half. The slogan was "nij khamare dhan tolo" (take the paddy to your own threshing floor). The movement was strongest in north Bengal. It dissipated amid the Bargardari Bill, repression and communal riots.
• Telangana Movement (1946-51). This was the biggest peasant guerrilla war of modern Indian history. It affected 3,000 villages and 3 million people in the princely state of Hyderabad. Peasants under communist leadership rose against forced labour (vethi) and the exactions of the deshmukhs and jagirdars. They organised village sanghams. At its peak (1947-48), the movement routed the Nizam's Razakars. It fizzled out only after Indian security forces took over Hyderabad. Its gains were real: abolition of forced labour, higher wages, restored lands, and land ceilings.

Balance-sheet: these movements eroded the power of the landed class. They were grounded in the ideology of nationalism. They created the atmosphere for post- independence agrarian reforms, above all the abolition of zamindari.

The Indian working class faced the same harsh conditions as Europe's: low wages, long hours, child labour, no safety. But colonialism gave it a double enemy: an imperialist state and capitalist exploitation.

Early efforts were scattered and philanthropic:

• Moderate indifference: the early nationalists feared that labour laws would hurt Indian-owned industry and did not want the movement split on class lines. So they did not support the Factory Acts of 1881 and 1891, the first laws regulating factory conditions.
• Sasipada Banerjea (1870): started a workingmen's club and the paper Bharat Shramjeevi.
• Narayan Meghajee Lokhande (1880): started the paper Deenbandhu and set up the Bombay Mill and Millhands Association, often called the first labour body.
• 1899: the first strike by the Great Indian Peninsular Railway drew wide support. Tilak's Kesari had campaigned for it.

During the Swadeshi upsurge, workers joined wider political strikes in the government press, railways and jute industry. The biggest came after Tilak's arrest (1908), when Bombay textile workers struck for days. Lenin hailed it as the entry of the Indian working class onto the political stage.

The turning point came after the First World War. Prices were soaring, and workers were inspired by the Russian Revolution and the new International Labour Organisation (ILO). The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was founded on 31 October 1920, with Lala Lajpat Rai as its first president and Dewan Chaman Lal as general secretary. Lajpat Rai was the first to link capitalism with imperialism: "imperialism and militarism are the twin children of capitalism".

The 1920s saw both legal recognition and rising militancy.

• Trade Union Act, 1926: recognised trade unions as legal associations, laid down rules for their registration and regulation, and gave them immunity from civil and criminal prosecution for legitimate activity (with some restrictions on political action).
• Communist-led militancy (late 1920s): a strong communist influence gave the movement a militant edge. The whole of 1928 saw unprecedented industrial unrest, including a six-month strike in the Bombay textile mills led by the Girni Kamgar Union.
• The government struck back: alarmed, it passed the Public Safety Ordinance (1929) and the Trade Disputes Act (TDA), 1929. The TDA made conciliation machinery compulsory, banned strikes in public-utility services without notice, and forbade purely political or sympathetic strikes.
• Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929): the government arrested 31 labour leaders (including Muzaffar Ahmed, S.A. Dange, Philip Spratt and Ben Bradley). The long trial drew worldwide publicity but weakened the movement.

Through the 1930s and 40s the working-class movement and the freedom struggle moved together.

• Civil Disobedience (1930): workers joined Gandhi's mass campaign against colonial laws. A split in 1931, when N.M. Joshi's group broke away, weakened the AITUC. The communists rejoined in 1935, forming a left front with the Congress Socialists and leaders like Nehru and Subhas Bose.
• Congress ministries (1937–39): trade-union activity got a fillip and many pro-worker laws were passed.
• Second World War: after Russia joined the Allies in 1941, the communists called it a "people's war". They dissociated from the Quit India Movement, the 1942 mass call for immediate British withdrawal, and advocated industrial peace.
• Post-war upsurge (1945–47): workers were active again. Dock workers of Bombay and Calcutta refused to load ships for the war in Indonesia. There were also strikes in support of the Naval Ratings (RIN) revolt of 1946, the uprising of Royal Indian Navy sailors.