Peasants and farmers movements ( Sociology Optional)

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Background

• A peasant movement is a social movement involved with the agricultural policy, which claims peasants’ rights.
• Peasant movements have a long history that can be traced to the numerous peasant uprisings.
• In Colonial India, the economic policies of European merchants and planters during the period Company rule adversely affected the peasant class, protecting the landlords and money lenders while they exploited the peasants.
• The peasants rose in revolt against economic on many occasions. The peasants in Bengal formed a trade union and revolted against the compulsion of cultivating indigo.
• Some of the important struggles of farmers or peasants during the British period were :
  • Bhil Revolt ( 1822,1823,1837-60)
  • Deccan Peasant Revolt (1875)
  • Mopilla Revolt (1921)
  • The Muslhi Satyagraha (1921-24)
  • Struggle of Warlis (1945)
  • Birsa Munda revolt
  • Nagar Peasant Uprising(1830-33).
  • In this context, three important struggles that Gandhi led require our special attention. They were: Champaran (1918-19); Bardoli (1925) and Kheda(1918) etc.
• More recent movements, fitting the definitions of social movements, are usually much less violent, and their demands are centered on better prices for agricultural produce, better wages and working conditions for the agricultural laborers, and increasing the agricultural production.

Thinkers Perspective

• Eric Wolf, an authority on peasant struggles defines Peasants as " population that are existentially involved in cultivation and make autonomous decisions regarding the process of cultivation ".
• Anthony Pereira, has defined a peasant movement as a "social movement made up of peasants, usually inspired by the goal of improving the situation of peasants in a nation or territory".
• SinghaRoy and Oommen said in Indian context there has been the processes of transformation of social movements from that of the intensive phase of radical action to institutionalization.
• Peasant movements are important variants of social movements according to Dhangare. These movement can be categorized in terms of their ideological orientation, forms of grassroots mobilization, and orientation towards change as ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ to analyze their dynamics.
  • A ‘Radical Peasant Movement’ is viewed as a non-institutionalized large-scale collective mobilization initiated and guided by radical ideology for rapid structural change in peasant society.
  • A ‘Revolutionary Peasant Movements, on the other hand, is one where institutionalized mass mobilization is initiated by recognized bodies for a gradual change in the selected institutional arrangement of society.
• It has been observed that peasant movements, however, are not discretely radical or reformative, rather one may be an extension of another through transition over a period of time (SinghaRoy), that the process of mobilization and institutionalization do coexist and that institutionalization provides the new possibilities of mobilization (Oommen) and that the process of transformation of these movements from ‘radical’ to ‘revolutionary’ directly affects the process of new collective identity formation of the peasantry.

Factors led of Peasants Movements Pre- Independence

• Several peasant movement in India arose during the colonial era, when economic policies by various British colonial administrations led to the decline of traditional handicraft
• British policies lead to change of ownership in lands, land overcrowding, increased debt among the peasant classes of India. British land revenue settlements, a heavy burden of new taxes, eviction of peasants from their lands, encroachment on tribal lands, growth of intermediary revenue collectors and tenants and
• The peasants suffered fromhigh rents, illegal levies, arbitrary evictions and unpaid labour in Zamindari areas. The Government levied heavy land revenue.
• The peasants rose in revolt against the injustice on occasions like economic policies of British government which protect the landlords and moneylenders and exploited the peasants.
• Unfavourable Policies also  led to peasant uprisings during the colonial period, and further development in the post-colonial period.
• Huge transfer of wealth from India to England (Drain of Wealth).
• Expansion of British revenue administration over tribal territories leading to the loss of tribal people's hold over agricultural and forest land.

Some Important Uprisings

• The Sanypi Rebellion, (1763-1800):
• Though the Sanyasis and Fakirs were religious mendicants, originally, they were peasants, including some who were evicted from land.
• However, the growing hardship of the peasantry, increasing revenue demand and the Bengal famine of 1770 brought a large member of dispossessed small Zamindars, disbanded soldiers and rural poor into the bands of Sanyasis and Fakirs.
• They moved around different parts of Bengal and Bihar in bands of 5 to 7 thousand and adopted the guerilla technique of attack.
• Their target of attack was the grain stocks of the rich and at later stage, government officials.
• They looted local government treasuries and distribute among poors.
• Peasant Uprisings of Rangpur, Bengal, (1783):
  • The establishment of British control over Bengal after 1757 and their various land revenue experiments in Bengal to extract as much as possible from peasants brought unbearable hardship for the common man.
  • Rangpur and Dinajpur were two of the districts of Bengal which faced all kinds of illegal demands by the East India Company and its revenue contractors.
  • Harsh attitude of the revenue contractors and their exactions became a regular feature of peasant life.
  • One such revenue contractor was Debi Singh of Rangpur and Dinajpur. He and his agents created a reign of terror in the two districts of northern Bengal. Peasants appealed to the company officials to redress their grievances. Their appeal however remained unheeded. Being deprived of justice the peasants took the law in their own hands.
• The Uprising of the Bhils, (1818-31):
• The Bhils were mostly concentrated in the hill ranges of Khandesh.
• The British occupation of Khandesh in 1818 enraged the Bhils because they were suspicious of outsiders' incursion into their territory.
• There was a general insurrection in 1819 and the Bhils in several small groups ravaged the plains.
• There were similar types of insurrection quite often by the Bhil chiefs against the British. But the British measures failed to bring the Bhils to their side.
• The Kol Uprising, (1831-32):
  • As a result or British occupation of Singhbhum and the neighbouring territories, a large number of people from outside began to settle in this area which resulted in transfer of tribal lands to the outsiders.
  • This transfer of tribal lands and coming of merchants, money-lenders and the British law in the tribal area posed a great threat to the hereditary independent power; of the tribal chiefs.
  • This created great resentment among the tribal people and led to popular uprisings against the outsiders.
• The Faraizi Disturbances, (1838-51):
  • Originally Faraizi movement was fuelled by the grievances of rack-rented and evicted peasants against landlords and British rulers.
  • The Faraizis under Dudu Miyan, the son of the founder of the sect, became united as a religious sect with an egalitarian ideology.
  • They protected cultivators from Zamindar's excesses and asked the peasants not to pay taxes to the Zamindars.
  • They raided the Zamindars' houses and cutcheries and burnt indigo factory at Panchchar.
  • The government and Zamindrs forces crushed the movement and Dudu Miyan was imprisoned.
• The Mappila Uprisings, (1836-54):
  • Mappilas are the descendants of the Arab settlers and converted Hindus.
  • Majority of them were cultivating tenants, landless labourers, petty traders and fishermen the British introduced in the land revenue administration of the area brought unbearable hardship in the life of the Mappilas.
  • Most important change was the transfer of 'Janmi' from that of traditional, partnership with the Mappila to that of an independent owner of land and the right of eviction of Mappila tenants which did not exist earlier.
  • Over-assessment, illegal taxes, eviction from land, hostile attitude of government officials were some of the many reasons that made the Mappilas rebel Peasant and against the British and the landlords.
• The Santhal Rebellion, (1855-56):
• The area of maximum concentration of Santhals was called Daman-i-koh or Santhal Pargana.
• When the Santhals cleared the forest and started cultivation in this area the neighbouring Rajas of Maheshpur and Pakur leased out the Santhal villages to Zarnindars and money-lenders.
• Gradual penetration by outsiders (called dikus by the Santhals) in the territory of the Santhals brought misery and oppression for the simple living Santhals.
• The oppression by money-lenders, merchants, Zamindars and government officials forced the Santhals to take up arms in order to protect themselves.
• The heroic struggle of the Santhals ultimately failed because of British superiority of arms.

Formation of All India Kisan Sabha

• The Communist Party was banned in 1934 but continued to exercise its influence on the working class and on the left in the Congress.
• The ideas of socialism was becoming very popular, coming to realize that the vast masses of the peasantry could be brought into the struggle for independence only by taking up the anti-feudal struggle and their immediate demands, they were also realizing the necessity of organizing the peasantry as a class.
• The Communists were already trying to develop class organizations and had popularized the idea of independent class organizations of the working class peasants and other sections .Thus, it was the left Congressmen, Congress socialists and Communists who took the initiative in organizing the All India Kisan Sabha.
• The first session was held in 1936, Lucknow to coincide with the hold of the session of the Indian National Congress. The idea was to project the kisan movement as a part of the national movement though maintaining its separate identity as a class organization.
• All India Kisan Sabha was a broad based organization which is revealed in the participating names in its first session.
• Some of the names are EMS Namboodiripad, Dinkar Mehta, Kamal Sarkar, Sohan Singh Josh, Lal Bahadur Shastri, K.D.Malviya, Mohan Lal Gautam, B.Sampoornanand, Jaiprakash Narain, Swami Sahjanand, Naba Krishna Choudhary, Harekrishna Mahatab, N.G.Ranga, Indulal Yagnik, R.Khadilkar, Bishnuram Medhi and Sarat Sinha.
• Many of them became prominent national and state-level personalities in subsequent years.

Factors led of Peasants Movements Post Independence

• Increasing landlessness, poverty, under employment and various types of social and economic deprivation of lower castes and exploitation by the upper caste landowners and money lenders.
• All these movements were organised under the auspice of the organization and leadership of the Communists of different political establishments.
• All these movements were ideologically radical in nature and challenged the pre-existing institutional arrangements.
• Uninstitutionalised collective mobilization and action were sponsored in these movements.
• These movements were immediately directed against the traditional landlords, police administration and other apparatus of the state.
• These movements looked for a radical change in the pre-existing agrarian arrangements of the society.
• Though the leadership of these movements came mostly from the urban intellectuals and the higher caste groups, the poor peasant were the main driving forces in these collective mobilizations.
• All these movements experienced the phenomenal participation of women in all phases of progression of the collective mobilization due to their exploitation.

Anti Globalisation or New Peasant/ Farmer's Movements

The Post-independent India saw broadly two kinds of peasant or farmers’ struggles in the recent past.

• Peasant movements led by Marxist and Socialists- such as Telangana Movement (1946-51), Tebagha movement (1946-1949), Kagodu Satyagraha (1951), Naxalbari Movement (1967) and Lalgarh movement (2009).
• Farmers’ movement led by rich farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and Gujarat.

They are new for some specific reasons:

• They address the larger issues like development, deprivation, economy, terms of trade urban versus rural
• Their activism is not confined to rural area alone, rather they stand for the broader alliances cutting across the state and the nations; they address those issues which are common to all the categories of peasantry like remunerative prices, debts, loans, electricity supply and also the larger issues like the consequences of globalisation or liberalisation on the life of rural population in particular countries in general.
• These movements believe in unity among different categories, irrespective of social set ups or milieus.
• Unlike the previous peasant movements in India or elsewhere these movements eschew the notions of radicalism or violence as the core of their strategy, although in one or two instances they have resorted to violence to oppose the entry of multinationals or globalisation.

Major Struggles of New Farmers’ Movement

• The Uttar Pradesh movement under Mahendra Singh Tikait organised many rallies, agitations as well as struggles.
• Some of the major well known struggles are as follows : Struggle against Power Tariff (1986), Meerut Struggle (1988), Agitation for Payment of Arrears(2007), Sit-in Dharna at Jantar Mantar(2008) etc.
• On the contrary, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha also organised series of agitations over the years. Some of the major struggles were: Road Block agitation of 1981 and 1991, Rail and Rasta Roko of 1982, 1992 (remunerative prices), Jail Bharo Agitation of 1982, Long March of 1982,1983,1984, Agitation against Social Forestry, Rally of 1989 etc.
• Similarly, Shetkari Sanghathana of Maharashtra also carried couple of struggles. However, many of them centred on the single agenda of demanding remunerative prices. Some of the important struggles are as follows: Nasik Agitation of 1980, Nippani Agitation of 1981, Rail and Rasta Roko agitation of 1981,1986, Pandharpur Rally of 1983, Agitation against Rajiv Vastra, 1985-87.
• Except for the Maharashtra movement, in other movements, more than remunerative prices the other issues received focus. The list of demands would cover each and every issue of farmers. Many a time the demands of the farmers’ movement would include such issues as remunerative prices, writing off loans, anti-government policy of procurement, levy policy, liberalisation etc.

Features of Farmers’ movements in Modern India/ New Farmers’ Movement 

• These farmers’ movements do not believe in romanticising their life style or social life.
• These movements believe in the principle of going beyond locality. It is nothing but going beyond nation/nationality to internationalism
• They believe in united or undifferentiated struggle. They refuse to divide the social categories on the basis of economic This is the reason why they refuse to call their movement as rich peasant movement. For them, all the social categories are poor. This is argued on the basis that the successive governments have adopted biased policies against the farmers as well as agriculture. The net consequence is the increasing poverty in the countryside. This is the reason why the farmers’ movement argued that the “debt of the farmer” is nothing but artificial creation of the government. Hence they declared “Kharja Mukti”.
• The farmers’ movement believed in the single point agenda of analysing the backwardness from the perspective of remunerative prices. They believe that the remunerative prices to the agricultural commodities, if given, will have a filter-down effect. It would remove the rural poverty and backwardness.
• Gail Omvedt, that “the farmer’s movement believed in the new form of exploitation. Unlike the traditional movements these movements believed and argued that the exploitation is rooted in the larger market system. The market does not necessarily lie within its own locality rather might be outside the realm of rural areas- it might be global market or the national market”

Few Important Peasants uprisings

• Tebhaga Movement:
  • The Tebhaga movement was manifested in the undivided Bengal in mid 1940s centering around a demand for tebhaga (two-third shares) by sharecroppers of their produce for themselves, instead of one-half traditionally given to them by the jotedars—a class of intermediary landowners.
  • This movement grew against the backdrop of the flourishing interest of the intermediary class of landowners on the one hand and that of the deterioration of the economic status of the agricultural labourers, sharecroppers and poor peasants.
  • The deteriorating economic condition of the lowest strata was reflected in the rapid expansion in the number of the sharecroppers and agricultural labourers in the Bengal agrarian society of the time.
  • The episode of Khanpur triggered off the Tebhaga movement very quickly in most part of Bengal.
  • Poor peasants ignoring their conventional ties with the landowners declined to share half of their produce with the landowners. Protest, firing, killing became part of this agrarian society in 1940s.
  • However the colonial rulers used all possible repressive measures to crash this movement by introducing a reign of terror in the rural areas.
• Telangana Movement:
  • In rural Telangana’s political economy, the jagirdars and deshmukhs, locally known as dora, played a dominant role.
  • They were the intermediary landowners with higher titles cum moneylenderscum-village officials and were mostly from the upper caste or influential Muslim community background.
  • Because of their privileged economic and political status they could easily subject the poor peasantry to extra-economic coercion through the vetti (force labour) system.
  • At the bottom of the agrarian hierarchy were the untouchable castes and tribal groups, such as the Konda, Reddy, Koyas, Chenchus, Lambodis and Banjaras.
  • The Indian National Congress, Andhra Jana Sangam and Andhra Maha Sabha (AMS) raised the issue of poor condition of the peasantry of Telengana since late 1920s.
  • The processes of mobilisation of the peasantry increased tensions in the rural areas of Telengana, which ultimately culminated into the political consciousness of the peasants, and gradually there was a new awakening.
  • The CPI openly called for a guerrilla struggle against the razakars (state paramilitary wing) and the government forces by forming village defence committees and by providing arms training to the dalams (armed squads).
  • However, it was very difficult for the communist cadres in Telangana to withstand the Indian Army. Several hundred peasant rebels were killed.Many died for lack of shelter and support.
  • With the Nizam already overthrown by the Indian Army, the logic of the movement was re-thought by the leaders and the common peasantry of Telangana. In 1951 the politbureau of the CPI called off the struggle.
• Naxalite Movement:
  • The agrarian society of independent India experienced a new epoch in the history of peasant movements with the peasant uprising of May 1967 under the Naxalbari thana of Darjeeling district of West Bengal.
  • Immediately after the country’s independence, the Govt. of West Bengal enacted the West Bengal Estate Acquisition Act (1953) to abolish the zamindari and other intermediary systems and the West Bengal Land Reform Act (1955) to put a ceiling on landholdings, to reserve for the sharecroppers 60 per cent of the produced share, and to put a restriction on the eviction of sharecroppers.
  • However due to the lack of the political will the progressive provisions of these acts remained in the statute book only.
  • In this backdrop while the economic condition of the poor peasantry was deteriorating, the political happenings in West Bengal took a new turn in form of this movement.
  • The Naxalite movement spread rapidly in may parts of the country, protracted arm resistance, declaration of liberated area, killing and arrest became a regular phenomena in the agrarian society of West Bengal.
  • By the end of June 1967 the CPI-M leadership came out against the Naxalbari leaders, calling them ‘an organized anti-party group advocating an adventuristic line of action’.
  • The rift was complete. Moving through the stages of the Naxalbari Peasant’s Struggle Aid Committee and a Coordination Committee, the CPI-ML was finally formed in May 1969 by the organized militant groups

Farmers Movement in Contemporary India by Dipankar Gupta

• In India there are primarily two types of agrarian mobilizations. One is of the poor agricultural labourers and marginal farmers. The other is of the more prosperous and independent owner-cultivators who produce a considerable marketed surplus.
• The ‘capitalist’ farmers are generally with the richer farmers and are looked upon as exploiters by the agricultural labourers who work on their fields eater as wage labourers or as share-croppers.
• The percentage share of agricultural income to national income has declined significantly from 49.6 per cent in 1961 to 36.4 per cent in 1981. But the workforce has declined only marginally. This should be appreciate further the difference between the picture of Adam Smith's England and contemporary India.
• The relative income for agricultural workers via-a-vis industrial workers declined This was further compounded when in the 1970s the agricultural sector came out worse off in terms of prices meantime, the expenditure on fertilizers kept going up even though India's use of fertilizers is sit among the lowest in the world.
• The increase in mechanization also brought about a decrease in demand for wage labor in some sectors of the rural economy.
• Most of the peasant movements in twentieth-century India were influenced by the commercialization of agriculture. But this commercialization was not accompanied by a modernization of agricultural inputs-whether chemical or mechanical.
• This is probably why these movements could afford to be single pronged and remedial in character.
• In contrast rural unionism in India today is remedial, no doubt, but multi-pronged and prospective One need only look at the shekari sangathan (SS) led by Sharad Joshi, or the Bharatiya Kissan Union (BKU) led by Mehender Singh Tikait, to be convinced of this.
• These movements look to the future by trying to influence national policies on prices, taxation structure, as also the basic approaches to economic planning and development.

D.N. Dhanagare’s view on agrarian movements in India

• N Dhanagre analysed agrarian movement from Marxist perspective. According to him the reasons for Moplah rebellion were due to economic exploitation.
• Dhanagre showed the causative factors for agrarian movements were economic in nature.
• The policies of colonial rule brought about structural changes in Indian Agriculture. For example with decline of Jajamni , emerged the markets which further increased the hardships of various argraian class.
• Hence due to issues and hardship like  price rise of essential commodities , famines  the Indian peasants emerge in revolutionary upsurge.
• Dhanagre also analyse the Gandhi’s Peasants Movements . According to him these movements were against the Europian Planters or Colonial Stakes . These did not challenged the actual reasons behind the hardships of peasants. For example In Gujarat Gandhi never asked for hike in wages of peasants or labourers and never demanded a redistribution of land.

 Success of Indian peasant movements

• The peasant movements created an atmosphere for post- independence agrarian reforms, for instance,’ the abolition of Zamindari system. They eroded the power of the landed class, thus adding to the transformation of the agrarian structure.
• Since the 1960s, agricultural production has increasingly become market oriented. Non-farm economic activities have expanded in the rural areas. In the process, not only has the rural-urban divide become blurred, but the nature of peasant society in terms of composition, classes/strata and consciousness has undergone considerable changes.
• An agricultural labourer in contemporary India, in general, is no longer attached to the same master, as was the case during the colonial and pre-colonial periods in pre-capitalist agriculture.
• Since the green revolution there is penetration of market economy and globalization and the peasant struggles also have undergone changes.
• New Farmers’ organisations such as the Shetkari Sangathana in Maharashtra, Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) in Uttar Pradesh, Khedut Samaj in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Punjab have come into existence that have a lot of political clout and influence. They demand ‘remunerative prices’ of their produce, concessions and subsidies in the prices for agricultural inputs, electricity charges, irrigation charges and betterment levies, etc.
• They assert for a change in the development paradigm from industrial development to agricultural development. With the rural urban divide blurring in many places, rich peasants have begun to invest their agricultural surplus in industries and other urban sectors.
• The post economic reform period in India saw a number of peasant protests and movements against acquisition of cultivable fertile land for industrial units and developmental projects. A few examples are – movements at Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal in 2006, Mann in Maharastra in 2005, and Sompeta in Andhra Pradesh in 2010. In these movements support from several NGOs and wide publicity due to advancing IT sector is also seen

Conclusion

• An analysis of the peasants and farmers' movements in the contemporary India reveals that although both forms of mobilisation and movements are prevalent, the first is mainly led by the mass organisations of the Left and other political parties and the second is being led by the well to do prosperous peasant organisations though it attract, even the marginal and poor peasants in different regions.
• The movements of the rich, however, have acquired more prominence because of its militancy and prolonged agitations in recent years whereas the first one suffers from the lack of militancy.
• Nonetheless they have not been effective in bringing radical transformation in the countryside.
• This is because of the fact that the movements, from the very beginning, were unable to overcome the internal conflicts as well as contradictions.
• Secondly, they did not carry any radical agenda from within- for example they never bothered to demand radical land reforms, nor were they concerned about the atrocities perpetrated on marginal classes including the Dalits in the country side.