All India Kisan Sabha and Peasant Activity in the 1930s and 1940s

At a Glance

• AIKS Founded Lucknow, April 1936
• Leaders Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (president); N.G. Ranga (general secretary)
• Tebhaga September 1946; two-thirds share for sharecroppers
• Telangana Biggest peasant guerrilla war; 3,000 villages
• Exam link UPSC Prelims, Modern History: Press, Education, Peasants and Workers

Where Does It Fit?

This is the ninth topic of the category on the press, education, peasants and workers. The previous topic covered the later peasant movements to 1928. This topic covers the All India Kisan Sabha and peasant activity in the 1930s and 1940s. The next topic covers the working-class movement. Previous topic: Later Peasant Movements: Kisan Sabha, Eka, Mappila Revolt and Bardoli Satyagraha.

How Did the All India Kisan Sabha Arise?

In the 1930s the peasant awakening was influenced by the Great Depression in the industrialised countries and by the Civil Disobedience Movement, which took the form of no-rent and no-revenue campaigns in many areas. After the active phase of the movement declined in 1932, many new entrants to politics looked for outlets for their energies and began organising peasants. The Civil Disobedience Movement is in Dandi March and the Spread of Salt Law Disobedience.

The All India Kisan Congress, or Sabha, was founded at Lucknow in April 1936 with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as president and N.G. Ranga as general secretary. A kisan manifesto was issued and a periodical started under Indulal Yagnik. The AIKS and the Congress held their sessions at Faizpur in 1936, and the Congress manifesto for the 1937 provincial elections, especially its agrarian policy, was strongly influenced by the AIKS agenda, as described in Congress in the 1937 Elections.

What Happened Under the Congress Ministries?

The years 1937-39 were the high watermark of peasant movements and activity under Congress provincial rule. The chief form of mobilisation was through kisan conferences and meetings where demands were aired and resolutions passed, together with mobilisation campaigns in the villages. The ministries’ agrarian record is in Congress Ministries: Civil Liberties and Agrarian Reforms.

In Punjab, activity was concentrated in Jullundur, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Lyallpur and Sheikhupura, while the Muslim tenants-at-will of west Punjab and the Hindu peasants of south-eastern Punjab were largely unaffected.

What Happened During the War?

The communists took a pro-war line, and the AIKS split along communist and non-communist lines; many veteran leaders, Sahajanand, Indulal Yagnik and N.G. Ranga among them, left the Sabha. The Kisan Sabha continued to work among the people and did notable work during the famine of 1943, described in Gandhi’s Fast and the Famine of 1943.

What Was the Tebhaga Movement?

In September 1946 the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha called for implementing, by mass struggle, the Flood Commission’s recommendation of tebhaga, a two-thirds share, for the bargardars, the sharecroppers also called bagchasi or adhyar, instead of the one-half share. The bargardars worked on land rented from the jotedars. Communist cadres, including many urban student militias, went to the countryside to organise them. The central slogan was nij khamare dhan tolo, meaning that sharecroppers should take the paddy to their own threshing floor and not to the jotedar’s house, to enforce tebhaga.

The storm centre was north Bengal, mainly among the Rajbanshis, a low caste of tribal origin, with Muslims also participating in large numbers. The movement faded because of the League ministry’s sop of the Bargardari Bill, intensified repression, the spread of the Hindu Mahasabha’s agitation for a separate Bengal, and renewed riots in Calcutta that ended the chance of sympathetic support from urban groups. The riots are in Interim Government and the Communal Violence of 1946.

What Was the Telangana Movement?

This was the biggest peasant guerrilla war in modern Indian history, affecting 3,000 villages and 3 million people. The princely state of Hyderabad under the Asaf Jahi Nizams combined religious-linguistic domination by a small Urdu-speaking Muslim elite over a predominantly Hindu population speaking Telugu, Marathi and Kannada, a total lack of political and civil liberties, and the grossest forced exploitation by deshmukhs, jagirdars and doras (landlords) through forced labour (vethi) and illegal exactions. During the war communist-led guerrillas built a strong base in Telangana villages through the Andhra Mahasabha and led local struggles on wartime exactions, abuse of rationing, high rents and vethi.

The uprising began in July 1946 when a deshmukh’s thug murdered a village militant in Jangaon taluq of Nalgonda, and it spread to Warangal and Khammam. Peasants organised village sanghams and fought with lathis, stone slings and chilli powder against brutal repression. It was at its greatest from August 1947 to September 1948, when peasants routed the Razakars, the Nizam’s storm-troopers. When Indian security forces took over Hyderabad, the movement fizzled out. The integration of Hyderabad is covered in Integration of the Indian States, 1947-49.

What Is the Balance Sheet of the Peasant Movements?

The movements created an atmosphere for post-independence agrarian reforms such as the abolition of zamindari. They eroded the power of the landed class and so helped transform the agrarian structure. They were based on the ideology of nationalism, and their nature was similar across different areas. As an analytical point, the movements of the 1930s and 1940s were more organised than those of the nineteenth century, with provincial and all-India bodies and links with political parties, but they were still divided by region, by the position of the peasant, and, in the war, by political lines, which limited what they could do together. The earlier phases are in Early Peasant Movements: Indigo Revolt, Pabna Leagues and Deccan Riots.

Why Is This Topic Important?

• AIKS Founders and the year are Prelims facts
• Tebhaga and Telangana Aims, regions and results are frequently asked
• Balance sheet Contribution to agrarian reform

What Came Next?

The next topic covers the working-class movement: the AITUC, the Trade Union Act of 1926 and the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Next topic: Working Class Movement: AITUC, Trade Union Act 1926 and Meerut Conspiracy Case.

Key People and Terms

• All India Kisan Sabha The 1936 peasant organisation
• Tebhaga Two-thirds share of the crop for sharecroppers
• Bargardars Sharecroppers in Bengal
• Jotedars Landholders who rented land to sharecroppers
• Vethi Forced labour in Hyderabad
• Razakars The Nizam’s armed volunteers

Exam Corner

Mains Angle

Questions ask about peasant activity in the later phase. These points add depth.

• Organisation The AIKS and Congress
• Regional activity Kerala, Andhra, Bihar, Punjab
• Struggles Tebhaga and Telangana