A CPI(ML) Document
Many Scholars have done pioneering research work on the state of agrarian relations and the history of peasant movement in the State of Bihar. In preparing this report we have relied heavily on their books and articles in matters of historical facts, statistics, quotes etc. In some cases, where our point of view converges with theirs we have borrowed their well-expressed descriptions. In particular, F. Tomasson Jannuzi’s book, Agrarian Crisis in India : The Case of Bihar; Girish Mishra’s Agrarian Problems of Permanent Settlement: A Case Study of Champaran; articles by Nirmal Sengupta, Arvind N. Das, Manoshi Mitra and T. Vijayendra, Kalyan Mukherjee and Rajendra Singh Yadav, and Arun Sinha, compiled in the book, Agrarian Movements in India : Studies on 20th Century Bihar edited by Arvind N. Das ; and several other articles of these and other authors appearing in different issues of Social Scientist and Economic and Political Weekly) have been of considerable help to us. We express our sincere gratitude to all of them.
EXPERIENCE has unmistakably shown that for the Indian media the Emergency was rather a blessing in disguise. Cashing in on the immense credibility provided by the Emergency, various branches of the media have since then been experiencing an unprecedented growth, a virtual boom to be precise. Today the media men are really powerful people, greatly influencing the opinions of large segments of our intelligentsia, including the ones on the ‘left-of-the-centre’ and the ‘extreme left’.
How is the present day Indian reality portrayed in the media? There seems to be a general consensus in this regard among different branches of the official as well as unofficial media. India today is the centre of a grave conflict between two contrary pulls, they say, one piloting the country to the 21st century through national unity and computerization and the other dragging it down the way of religious fundamentalism and separatism fostered by unfriendly foreign forces. And Punjab is projected as the focus of this grim battle for the nation’s survival. To be sure, the unofficial media do also carry occasional reports of a struggle for ‘democracy’ being waged by the so called ‘regional forces with national outlook’ as well as the ‘Left’ under the common banner of ‘federalism’ and ‘parliamentary democracy’. Barring a few laudable exceptions, the media’s portrayal of the Indian reality does not go beyond this limit.
As far as the peasants are concerned, sizeable sections of them are considered to have already become ‘farmers’. And Chaudhuri Charan Singhs and Sharad Joshis are regarded as their only recognised representatives. The rest are dubbed as ‘people living below the poverty line’, ‘the weaker sections of the community’, ‘scheduled castes and tribes and other backward classes (OBCs) and so on and so forth. The plight of these official categories does also receive sensational coverage from time to time, but not so much as an object of interest in itself as propaganda-weapons used by bourgeois politicians in their bid to outsmart one another in the battle for entry into the corridors of power. And when these poor people are murdered in a cold-blooded manner, one comes across routine reports in the press attributing these deaths to police firing on ‘unruly mob’ or, simpler still, to encounters between ‘Naxalite extremists’ and the police, while the official media just do not care to report these ‘non-events’. Then there are the adivasis who are regarded in our country as some queer objects. While the media make a colourful affair of their poverty-prompted natural lifestyle and successive prime ministers find them a veritable source of amusement, leftists generally tend to forget that the adivasis are also flesh and blood peasantry and in their bid to arouse sympathy for the adivasis they often reduce their simplicity to sheer stupidity.
The disturbed liberal conscience suggests relief, reforms and civil liberties as the remedial recipe, but when it comes to politics the vision of all liberals stops at the bourgeois horizon. For them, all that matters is whether the Babu Jagjivan Rams are provided suitable berths.
This is how politics is understood by the dominant sections of our intelligentsia. Peasant struggles and their playing any significant political role are all considered things of remote past. Now, if this line of thinking was prompted by such government measures as the ‘zamindari abolition’ and other land reform acts, the green revolution and a host of schemes for the rural poor including the reforms from above initiated by the left front governments, it has been all the more reinforced by setbacks in the Naxalbari-inspiraed peasant struggles of the 70s. And the boom in studies on peasant revolts that one witnessed ‘in the wake of Naxalbari’ has finally got stuck up in the subaltern framework. The subaltern-studies, based on otherwise commendable researches, dilute the all important role of peasant rebellions as the locomotives of Indian society. And as a logical consequence of this framework, the role of the Communist Party in imparting consciousness to the ‘conscious’ peasant struggles is greeted with utter ridicule, while Naxalites are portrayed, if at all, as Robinhoods amidst the struggle of the peasants, by the peasants and for the peasants.
In such an environment a book by an M-L group? on the peasant struggle in the backward State of Bihar will perhaps be interpreted as an extension of ‘left adventurism’ to the academic field by many of our friends in the intelligentsia. Some may consider it simply irrelevant, some others may expect nothing more than jargons typical of the M-L groups and still others may apprehend exaggeration of the achievements of a particular group. In the prevailing atmosphere, all these fears cannot just be wished away and to an extent they are justified.
However, as far as we are concerned, we have wanted this book to analyse the ongoing peasant struggle in Bihar with a view to unfolding the classes standing on the foreground of this struggle, its underlying aims, the issues involved, and the policies and tactics adopted as well as to examine the chances of its survival and more specifically its role in the democratic revolution of the Indian people. The methodology followed has been, in the first place, to trace the changing course of the struggle of the Bihar peasantry in the context of conflicting strategies of freedom struggle, debates within the Indian communist movement and the government-sponsored agrarian reforms since 1947; secondly, to investigate the specific economic, social and political situation prevailing in Bihar which is responsible for the unique forms of struggle, and finally, to hint at general conclusions, to the extent possible, for the country as a whole. If anything the book highlights, it is the role of peasant struggles in shaping the destiny of our beloved motherland. Anyway, the success of our endeavour can only be judged by the extent we are able to allay the aforesaid apprehensions of our friends as well as critics.
A large number of comrades have been involved in the preparation of the book. To begin with, first-hand reports were sent by almost all the district Party organisations and these were then verified by the Central Committee members working in Bihar. Out of the mass of these scattered reports the book was then prepared by Comrade Raghu, one of the two Secretaries of the Party Central Committee and a member of the Polit Bureau, and given the final shape by the members of the Editorial Board of Liberation.
Central Propaganda Department,
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
28 July, 1986
IF a colossal miscarriage allowed social-democracy to blow in full bloom in the Indian Communist movement, to be sure, social-democrats too had to pay a heavy penalty for their victory : doomed as an essentially regional force, they could never really make any dent in the Hindi hear-land. What else can one infer from the CPI(M)’s total failure to make any headway in Bihar despite presiding over a full-fledged model of social-democracy in neighbouring West Bengal for no less than nine years in succession.
‘Bihar is one of the most backward of Indian States, beset with rigid caste polarisations and devoid of any history of bourgeois reforms worth the name’, argue Namboodiripad and Co. Well, these facts are as indisputable as the law : where social-democracy ends, revolutionary-democracy begins its journey. The same backward Bihar has proved to be a forward post of revolutionary-democracy, with the lowest rung of the society being drawn into the vortex of peasant struggles. From Pipra carnage to Arwal massacre, blood-thirsty landlord-armies to trigger-happy paramilitary forces, protagonists of ‘total revolution’ to ‘His Majesty’s Opposition’—none could enforce the ‘peace’ of the graveyard on the flaming fields of Bihar and none would be able to drive these unconventional actors to the backstage of historical action.
But, will the struggle of the Bihar peasantry really be able to blaze a new trail? Or, will it too go the way of all its predecessors, ending in a disaster or in a halfway compromise? Today this question is haunting all sincere Marxists as well as all who sympathise with the cause of revolutionary democracy. The present book is the first in a series of attempts to deal precisely with this question. But before we enter the main body of the book, let us have a glance at the crisscross pattern of the Indian communist movement and then examine the specific course of the struggle of the Bihar peasantry.
Relations with the peasantry and with the bourgeoisie are two fundamental questions of tactics to be solved by the Communist Parties in backward countries with preponderant peasant populations. Wayback in 1921, Lenin had advised the communists of the Eastern countries to work out their own strategy basing on the general lessons of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution. He had warned them that they might not get the answers to their problems in any communist book.
It was precisely this task that Mao Tse-tung undertook in right earnest while the Indian Communist Party leadership miserably failed to grasp, its significance. Thus while CPC succeeded in correctly solving the questions concerning the Communist Party’s relations with the peasantry and the bourgeoisie at various stages of China’s democratic revolution and went on to emerge as the leader of the national liberation struggle, thereby providing valuable guidelines for integrating Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions of backward countries, the Indian communists could not develop any consistent line to deal with the two aforesaid problems. As a result, the Indian National Congress stole the show in India’s struggle for national liberation while the communists came to be regarded as its appendage and even as traitors to the cause of freedom. True, there were various factors that did contribute to this failure, for instance, the colonial rule of the British bourgeoisie; the emergence and development of the Congress as a forum with the queer admixture of a highly developed democratic functioning on the surface (regular sessions, changing presidents, various crosscurrents coexisting and competing among themselves etc.) and the extra-organisational authority of Gandhi based on almost superstitious reverence at the core; the peculiar national, caste and communal issues; the conflicting pieces of advice from the Comintern and from certain Indian leaders guiding the Party from abroad etc. What was really strange, however, was that the dominant section of the leadership developed a line of thinking that put the Russian and Chinese experiences of revolution in general and Lenin and Mao in particular in contradistinction to each other, and concentrated all energy on pointing out differences in the Indian and Chinese conditions. What a great predicament! The Communist Party of India refused to learn anything from the great revolution in the biggest Asian country, which incidentally was our neighbour too, and from the thoughts of its undisputed leader Mao Tse-tung. It had nothing but ridicule for this great leader.
With the defeat of P C Joshi’s line and in the context of the rise and fall of Telangana (1946-51), there emerged three distinct lines in the Indian communist movement. The line peddled by Ranadive and Co. rejected the significance of the Chinese revolution, ferociously attacked Mao as another Tito and advocated the simultaneous accomplishment of the democratic and the socialist revolutions basing on city-based working-class insurrections. Drawing its sustenance from Stalin’s initial suspicion about the Chinese revolution and Mao Tse-tung, this left-adventurist line, however, ended in a great fiasco.
The line of the Andhra Secretariat drew heavily on the Chinese experiences and the teachings of Mao in building the heroic struggle of Telangana. But the Andhra leadership, while successfully spearheading the movement against the feudal autocracy of the Nizam in conjunction with the Andhra Mahasabha, failed to tackle the complex question of meeting the challenge of the Nehru government and its army. It could not have possibly done that in the prevailing situation and therefore the two line struggle within the Party could not be taken to its logical conclusion. Nevertheless, Telangana remains one of the glorious chapters in the history of peasant struggles led by the Communist Party till date and reminds us of the first serious efforts by sections of the Communist Party leadership to learn from the experiences of the Chinese revolution and to develop a comprehensive line for India’s democratic revolution, taking agrarian revolution as the axis.
The Nehru government embarked on the road to parliamentary democracy, paving it with populist reforms like the zamindari abolition. Telangana having already suffered setback, objective conditions facilitated the dominance of a centrist line put forward by Ajay Ghosh and Dange. This line made a very big issue of the differences between the Chinese and Indian conditions and pushed the Party along the parliamentary road.
In 1957 the communists succeeded in forming a government in Kerala, which however was soon overthrown while attempting radical agrarian reforms. That was a critical juncture in the evolution of the tactics of utilising parliamentary struggles. While experience reemphasized the need of developing peasant movements and subordinating all parliamentary struggles to extra-parliamentary ones, the Party refused to learn its lesson and continued to proceed along the beaten track. In subsequent years, following the emergence of Khruschovite revisionism and the India-China war, the Party split into two. The Dangeite leadership took a national chauvinist position and began to peddle the theory of the so called ‘peaceful road to non-capitalist development’. This line of national democratic revolution of the CPI transformed it ever the years into an appendage of the Congress. For it, feudal remnants either do not exist in India or can be well taken care of by the Congress government itself.
The CPI (M), the other faction, went ahead with the centrist line. In the old Ranadive tradition it continued to pit Stalin against Mao and therefore did not wholly subscribe to Khruschov either. It does speak of people’s democracy, but the people’s democracy of its conception is more akin to the people’s democracies of the East European variety. It goes on to denigrate the experiences of the Chinese revolution and has nothing but ridicule for Mao Tse-tung Thought. In recent years, Basavapunniah, the chief theoretical spokesman for the CPI (M), has further intensified attacks on Mao. He has virulently attacked Mao’s philosophical position on contradictions and his tactics regarding the national bourgeoisie. Pointing at the differences between the Indian and Chinese conditions, the CPI(M) continues to preach the impossibility of partisan war in India and has once again started highlighting the old CPI appraisal of the Chinese revolution, according to which base areas and red army had played not much of a significant role in China, rather the massing of the Soviet troops in Manchuria during the Second World War had been mainly responsible for the victory of the Chinese revolution.
In their struggle against the national chauvinist leadership of the CPI, revolutionary communists allied themselves with the CPI(M). The party went ahead with its parliamentary exercises and riding on the crest of mass movements formed a United Front government in West Bengal through an opportunist coalition. The role of this government in suppressing the Naxalbari struggle exposed the revisionist character of the leadership and by all standards, conditions were ripe for an all-out rebellion in the party. And rebellion it was—in West Bengal and Kerala the CPI(M) found its strength sufficiently eroded while in some States the entire State Committees walked out in support of Naxalbari.
The spirit behind Naxalbari was the same as in Telangana, viz., the spirit of highlighting the role of the peasant struggle in India’s democratic revolution, of drawing on the experiences of China and the teachings of Mao. However, the times had greatly changed. Naxalbari emerged against a new background : there was the great division in the international communist movement, land reforms and the democratic facade of the Congress had by then lost much of their earlier glamour, the country was facing a serious agrarian crisis that was being sought to be resolved through the imperialist strategy of green revolution, and to top it all, there was a grave political crisis as reflected in the first-ever defeat of the Congress in the elections to many State Assemblies. In other words, Naxalbari emerged in a fine revolutionary situation when the ruling classes could no longer rule in the old way. It was a direct assault on the discredited and declining ruling power. Moreover, this time the revisionist leadership of the party was also clearly on the other side of the fence, presiding over the police as it went on killing the peasants and the revolutionaries.
Different as the circumstances were, the impact was also different, Naxalbari did not stop at Naxalbari. With the building of, first, the AICCCR and then the CPI(ML), it spread like wildfire over many parts of India. The new revolutionary Party emphasized the scarlet thread that ran through Leninism and the entire course of its application in semi-colonial China by Mao Tse-tung. Making a clear break with the Indian variety of revisionism, it decided to incorporate, apart from Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung Thought too in its guiding ideology, and put greater emphasis on the similarities between the Indian and Chinese conditions. However, unlike some people who described themselves as Maoist communists, this new Party never declared itself as a Maoist party, but simply as the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party of India. To begin with, in its first steps on an entirely new course of Indian revolution, the new Party had no other option but to follow the Chinese model which at that time also provided the main form of struggles to the peoples of Vietnam as well as of other South-East Asian countries.
Telangana was resurrected in its spirit and colour. The air was charged with the slogans of guerilla war, red army and Yenan and the songs of long march. The struggle spread to many parts of the country with West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh emerging as the main bastions. Thousands of students and youth jumped into the fray and revolution seemed so close. Naxalism, as a new brand of communist movement, became a national phenomenon and a new word in the political dictionary.
However, the euphoria was soon over. What had seemed to be the final enactment of revolution proved to be no more than a dress rehearsal. With hundreds having shed their lives and thousands languishing in the jails, the gloom set in, and as it always happens, it was accompanied by confusion, splits and disintegration. No one could be sure of the stand of this or that Party leader. People changed their positions in an unbelievable speed. Yesterday’s friends and close comrades became today’s adversaries.
For many, the dreams of liberation turned into veritable nightmares. Appeals were issued by leaders in jail, efforts were made to reorganise the scattered forces, but nothing could check the drift. History rolled on in its due course. For many participants of the movement it was simply finished and finished for good, others continued to cherish the fond memories of the 70s with the vain hope that a forceful repetition of the old slogans might resurrect the old situation as well, while still others based themselves on the naive assumption that the situation could be saved if only all the old fragments could be united somehow or other.
In its dis-organised state, the movement gave rise to all possible trends and groupings and there ensued a protracted polemical war in the bitterest of fashions. All sorts of people, even those considered long dead or permanently silenced began to stage a comeback from oblivion. And with them came back the whole range of questions supposed to have been already resolved once and for all.
The point was how to revive the movement. Some felt it was enough to condemn the ‘line of annihilations’, boycott of elections and trade unions, and so on. Some even went so far as to condemn the CPI(ML) itself and thought that the answer lay in reviving the AICCCR.
In the period following the Emergency, Charu Mazumdar was made to appear as a discredited revolutionary in West Bengal itself as the scene came to be dominated by SN Singh and his PCC. And then came the final blow from Kanu Sanyal who informed the world that the very struggle in Naxalbari was his brainchild, it was he who had built it up resisting Charubabu’s left-adventurist forays while Charu Mazumdar only destroyed it by overriding Kanubabu’s proposal of coming to a tactical agreement with the United Front government (perhaps in the old fashion of ‘withdrawal’ of the Telangana struggle by the then Party leadership in 1951).
While all this went on under the reign of social-democracy in West Bengal and to a great extent in Andhra too (the residual leadership in Srikakulam as well as the CP Reddy faction having already joined hands with SN Singh), Bihar had an altogether different story to tell. And to be sure, from much earlier periods.
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As alternatives to the Gandhian strategy of freedom struggle and in contrast to it, if Bengal excelled in terrorism and in the ‘leftism’ of Subhas veriety and Bombay in the strikes of the working class, Bihar came up with a powerful Kisan Sabha movement right in the 30s.
It was at Champaran in Bihar where Gandhi began his experiments with the peasantry, gradually evolving the strategy of mobilising the peasants in a peaceful, non-violent Satyagraha against the British rule while discouraging any movement against the ‘swadeshi’ zamindars. The peasants of Bihar did respond zealously to every call of freedom struggle coming from the Congress leadership, but in each and every case they translated the restricted Congress call into an active, often violent, movement against the zamindars. The zamindars being the main social prop of the British rule in India, the peasants naturally interpreted these calls in the language they understood. This objective contradiction of real life forced the interim Congress ministry of Bihar, which assumed office in the wake of the 1937 elections to negotiate a written agreement with the zamindars, an event unparalleled in India’s freedom movement. By contrast, the Kisan Sabha movements, having begun as a wing of the Congresss gradually detached itself from the Congress and came under the fold of the revolutionary democrats, a sizeable section later joining the Communist Party. History clearly shows that during the Kisan Sabha movement caste-based polarisations had all receded into the background. Also the anti-Brahminical movements or Ambedkar-type dalit movements or the harijan cause of Jagjivan Ram could never find much favour in Bihar during the entire phase of freedom struggle even as the CPI and the Socialists successfully developed a strong base. If the CPI still retains a powerful base, it is more due to the legacy of the Kisan Sabha movement and certain positive achievements in the 50s during the period of Telangana.
In the post-independence period, to prevent the outbreak of Telangana-type struggles, once again Bihar was selected as the focal point for Vinoba Bhave’s Sarvodaya strategy. Erstwhile Socialist and an activist of the Kisan Sabha movement, Jaya Prakash became the chief exponent of Sarvodaya in Bihar. But the agrarian reality of Bihar prevailed over their high-sounding rhetorics, and with Bhoodan ending in a big fiasco Vinoba returned to Wardha and JP, too, temporarily retired from public life. The retreat of Vinoba and JP was followed by the advent of the political crisis of the mid 60s, and it was against this backdrop that Naxalbari immediately found its echo in the Musahari block of Muzaffarpur district in North Bihar. But soon the struggle there suffered a setback and once again JP jumped into the fray armed with his neo-Sarvodaya strategy, which later developed into his famous theory of ‘total revolution’.
While JP went ahead with his avowed aim of combating the ‘menace of Naxalism’, revolutionary communists, too, continued with their attempts to develop peasant struggles in different parts of Bihar, though with little success in the beginning. But just when things seemed to be going exactly the Bengal way by the end of 1971, quite unexpectedly the South Bihar districts of Bhojpur, and to a lesser extent, Patna started sending encouraging signals. Rooted deep in the prevailing social conditions, the struggle in Bhojpur and Patna began on a different note and there emerged a non-traditional indigenous core of leadership.
All the precious blood of our heroic martyrs spilled over the fields and factories, hamlets and lanes, torture chambers and prison cells all over the country rose high in the sky and there appeared a red glow over Bhojpur. And as subsequent years have proved, the glow was not that of a meteor, but of a star, a red star that has come here to stay and shine.
The independent course of the peasant struggle and the Party’s attempt to impart consciousness to it went through a peculiar phase of unity and struggle. The Party worked hard to develop communist elements from among the peasant vanguards, always trying to check the spontaneous negative tendencies of the movement and give it an organised shape. There were, however, also strong attempts on the part of the Party to super-impose its set of dogmatic ideas regarding forms of struggle and organisation on the movement and to be sure, these attempts proved counter-productive.
Finally, the Party-wide rectification movement in the changed political situation of the post-Emergency period helped restore the balance and provided new momentum to the fledgeling peasant struggle, and we arrived at the present phase of widespread peasant awakening. Paradoxically, the victim of this entire development was S N Singh, who hailed from Bihar and that too from Bhojpur itself. The ghost of Charu Mazumdar drove him away from Bihar and in communist revolutionary circles in the State he became the most discredited person.
Incidentally, the ‘credit’ for the first and so far the only fundamental division in the CPI(ML) goes to none other than the Bihar State Committee under the leadership of S N Singh. All other divisions are either artificial, temporary or of no great significance. Attempts have been made and are still being made to formulate a comprehensive ‘left’ line by certain groups, but no such line can be claimed to have been developed so far. Semi-anarchism is still at best a tendency debating over forms and methods of struggle and organisation, and a major section of those presently obsessed with this tendency will surely come back to the Marxist-Leninist fold as they gain more experience with the passage of time. In contrast, S N’s was a definite alternative tactical line advocating well-defined relations with well-defined social forces. That is why he was resurrected again and again and continues to assert even after his death at one pole of our movement. His essential difference with Charu Mazuomdar began on the question of the relation with rich peasants. He emphasized unity with the rich peasants in contrast to CM’s emphasis on neutralising them through struggle. Subsequently, this line developed into that of unity with sections of the class of landlords and with the bourgeois opposition. (Bhaskar Nandy temporarily outwitted SN by theorising this unity on the basis of a totally different premise. However, SN soon withdrew himself from Nandy’s erroneous theoretical exercise.)
Later on, on the question of united front SN and we both started from the same premise of developing a nationwide political alternative to the Congress rule. But the similarity ended here itself as SN chose to follow a totally different course, joining hands with JP, cultivating relations with the leaders of the Janata Party and a host of liberals, condemning the key role of agrarian revolution and even going so far as to coin the now famous formulation that the proletariat may or may not lead the democratic revolution. True, under various pressures and compulsions, subsequently SN did have to compromise on many of his pronouncements, but these were more in the nature of tactics and did not affect his essential position.
We, on the other hand, stood for boldly expanding the peasant struggles which no doubt hit substantial sections of the rich peasants, too, who in Bihar do indulge in serious feudal practices. And precisely on the basis of these struggles did we work for developing the revolutionary bloc of the workers, peasants and the petty bourgeoisie as an alternative to the Congress rule even as we left the door open for tactical manoeuvrings with the parties and factions of the bourgeois opposition.
It is in the context of this struggle between the two tactical lines that the peasant struggle in Bihar developed and expanded.
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Emerging as it did in a different setting of the international communist movement, the peasant struggle in Bihar did not get open support from the Chinese Communist Party, and in the face of sharp factional divisions, it even failed to receive a sympathetic hearing, let alone necessary support, from various communist revolutionary groups in India. Here was a situation that was really vastly different from what obtained during the struggles of Naxalbari and Srikakulam. However, the movement has indeed gained widespread solidarity from many quarters. In fact, it would have been impossible to sustain the movement for all these long years, had it not been for the valuable guidance provided by many veterans of the Indian communist movement and important leaders of the united CPI(M-L), the help and cooperation received from the communist revolutionary ranks belonging to different groups and from Marxist academicians, revolutionary-democrats, civil liberty organisations, truth-seeking journalists, noted cultural personalities and progressive Indian circles abroad, and the support extended by the Communist Parties of China, Nepal, Philippines, Peru and other foreign friends.
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The current struggle in Bihar is expanding in districts which have a fighting heritage dating back to the old Kisan Sabha days. These are the districts where the incidence of big landlordism is low, but where landlordism enjoys a wider base, encompassing not only the ex-intermediaries but also erstwhile powerful raiyats. Compared to many other parts of Bihar, agriculture in these districts is marked by a relatively greater use of modern means, better transport facilities and a more pronounced market-orientation of the rural economy. The various agrarian issues that have come to the fore in these districts are such as affect the rural poor all over India, viz., minimum wages, tenancy rights, occupation of vested, benami, communal and government lands, prevention of distress sale of crops, easy availability of various inputs at cheaper rates and so on and so forth. In short, the region to a great extent is a typical representative of the changing pattern of Indian agriculture.
Indian agriculture today is also facing a new type of crisis caused by the saturation of the strategy of green revolution and ‘overproduction’. And as a direct outcome of this crisis, there has emerged a new type of farmers’ movement in certain parts of India. In Maharashtra, in particular, it has found a fertile field as well as a powerful exponent in Mr. Sharad Joshi. The theoretical framework propounded by Mr. Joshi focuses on the contradiction
Despite his agitational mode of operation, it is this emphasis on rural development coupled with his insistence on non-party politics and persistent anti-communist bias that has endeared Mr. Joshi to the Sarvodayites, who are perhaps in search of a new messiah after the departure of both Vinoba and JP.
So, one now witnesses a battle for supremacy between the East and West winds within the peasant movement, blowing respectively from Bihar and Maharashtra. In sharp contrast to the farmers’ movement in Maharashtra, the peasant struggle in Bihar has in its forefront the agrarian labourers, who are quite numerous, as well as the poor and lower-middle peasants, while sizeable sections of the kulaks including, in certain pockets, elements from certain backward castes, find themselves on the other side of the fence, as a veritable target of attack, at least in the present phase of the movement. But even at the latter lays the highest stress on thoroughgoing land reforms, it does also strive to incorporate the issues arising out of the crisis of green revolution, issues that affect large segments of the middle and upper-middle peasants.
The outcome of this battle between the two winds has not yet been decided, and the final sequences of what may prove to be a most fascinating epic-drama in the history of India have not unfolded themselves either. Still, when the unceremonious death of the poorest among the peasants in the unknown, unheard of, dingy, mud-tracked, tiny country-town of Arwal begins to shape the political crisis of the powers that be in Bihar, one can safely proclaim that the heroes have finally arrived on the stage.
WITH a total area of 1,74,000 sq. kms. and a population of 6,99,14,734 Bihar accounts for 5.3 per cent of the total geographical area of India and 10.3 per cent of the total Indian population.
To consider population first, the ratio of urban population according to 1981 census is only 12.5 per cent in Bihar as against the all-India figure of 23.3 per cent. The literacy rate in Bihar is 26.20 per cent (38.11 per cent for men and 13.62 per cent for women) while that for the country as a whole is 36.23 per cent (46.89 per cent for men and 24.82 per cent for women). Then, in sharp contrast to the national average of 40 per cent, as much as 59 per cent of the population in Bihar live below the poverty line (defined in terms of a monthly per capita income of Rs. 60 and a daily intake of 2,000 calories).
Coming to the social structure in Bihar, both rural as well as urban, the first thing that strikes an observer is perhaps the age-old, rigid caste system. Among themselves the four upper castes (Brahmins, Bhumihars, Rajputs and Kayasthas) constitute about 15 per cent of Bihar’s population; backward castes, numbering about hundred (the Yadavas, Kurmis and Koiris being the most numerous), account for more than 50 per cent; while the scheduled castes (harijans) and adivasis (93 per cent of the adivasis are concentrated in the Chhotanagpur region with the remaining 3.5 lakh being scattered over the districts of Purnea, Bhagalpur, Munger and West Champaran) make up 14.51 and 8.31 per cents respectively. Nearly 12 per cent of the population are Muslims.
There is a significant correspondence between caste and class hierarchies. The upper-castes are generally to be found among the landlords and rich and upper-middle peasants, while the scheduled castes only swell the ranks of agricultural labourers as well as poor and lower-middle peasants. The backward or middle castes, who are all agriculturists by their caste occupation, are, however, subject to a considerable degree of internal differentiation. Contrary to the popular belief that the middle castes are all middle peasants, they have in their ranks elements from almost all the rural classes—in fact, they account for more than 50 per cent of total agricultural labourers in Bihar.
Geographically speaking, Bihar is half plain and half plateau. The plains are further classified into North Bihar and South Bihar, depending on whether one is on the northern or southern bank of the river Ganges. The land is very fertile in both North and South Bihar and the population density is also quite high, often exceeding 500 persons per sq. km. In fact, the plains of Bihar account for more than 75 per cent of the entire population of the State
The southernmost half of Bihar, known as the Chhotanagpur region, is covered with hills and forests and as such, this region is not quite suitable for agricultural purposes. But it occupies an extremely important position on the mining and industrial map of India.
South Bihar is a semi-arid region where rice cultivation is not possible without irrigation. In the pre-independence days the South Bihar districts of Patna, Gaya, Munger and Bhagalpur were the storm centres of peasant struggles.
North Bihar is full of big rivers and is rather flood-prone. Almost every year new stretches of fertile land-mass (diara) emerge on the river beds and naturally there are constant disputes concerning the ownership of such land. This geographical phenomenon was most common in the eastern parts of Bihar over which flow the river Kosi and its numerous tributaries. However, with the construction of dams on the river this phenomenon has now been considerably checked.
Let us now take a look at the agrarian scene of Bihar-First in enacting land reform acts but last in enforcing them, Bihar still has a good number of giant landlords, each controlling thousands of acres of land. The Katihar-Purnea-Bhagalpur belt is the meeting point of the enormous illegal estates of three of the notoriously largest landowners in today’s India. Similar estates are also to be found under the control of the Mahants in Bihar’s numerous religious maths.
Bihar has the distinction of having the highest proportion of agricultural population among all States of India. According to 1981 Census, cultivators (cultivation, for the purpose of Census, includes “supervision or direction of cultivation” as well) and agricultural labourers account for 79.07 per cent of main workers (including, apart from cultivators and agricultural labourers, workers/employees and, of course, employers engaged in household industries, plantations and all factories and offices) in Bihar as against 66.52 per cent for India as a whole (looked at separately, the figures are 43.57 and 35.50 per cent for Bihar and 41.58 and 24.94 per cent for India). Considered as proportions of total population we have the following pictures for Bihar and India respectively — Main Workers : 29.7 and 33.5 per cent; Cultivators : 12.9 and 13.9 per cent; Agricultural Labourers: 10.6 and 8.4 per cent. But the rate of female participation is much lower in Bihar compared to the national average. Following are the sex ratios (females per 1,000 males) among the above three categories of workers for Bihar and India respectively—Main Workers : 174 and 253; Cultivators : 95 and 192 ; Agricultural Labourers : 360 and 598.
Agriculturally, Bihar still figures among the backward States of India. 34.7 per cent of the net cropped area in Bihar is irrigated as against 78.1 per cent in Punjab, 52.5 per cent in Haryana and 50.9 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. Fertiliser consumption per hectare of cropped area is 18.5 kgs. in Bihar while the corresponding figures for Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and all-India are 127.8 kgs., 60.6 kgs., 58.6 kgs., 53.0 kgs. and 36.6 kgs. respectively. 43.2 per cent of Bihar villages are electrified as against 100 per cent in Punjab, Haryana and Kerala, 99.4 per cent in Tamil Nadu and 55.7 per cent in India as a whole. As far as production of foodgrains is concerend» Bihar accounts for 9.0 per cent of rice and 6.4 per cent of wheat produced in the whole of India
Coming to various political currents in Bihar, mention must be made of the movement that flares up occasionally in North Bihar on the demand of recognition of Maithili language and development of Mithila region and the movement for a separate Jharkhand State that has been going on in the Chhotanagpur region for years together. The official politics of Bihar, however, goes on along caste lines. Caste considerations dominate the minds of intellectuals and peasants alike.
However the caste matrix is not fixed once and for all—certain lower castes have fought their way to higher rungs of the social ladder. Wayback in the 1920s, the Yadavas and the Kurmis, the two castes most numerous and relatively more affluent among the backwards, raised the banner of protest against social oppression by upper-caste landlords. They were soon joined in by the Koiris and what began as a social movement quickly developed into an economic conflict between upper-caste landlords and lower-caste tenants. The Bhumihars, a caste with greater internal differentiation than the Kurmis or the Yadavas, had also to fight their way into the enclave of upper-castes.
However, unlike some other parts of the country, caste organisations in Bihar, whether of backward castes or untouchables, could never gain prominence on the political plane during the entire phase of freedom struggle. Much of this was due to the deeprooted class outlook of the Kisan Sabha.
Caste apart, another major feature of social as well as political life in Bihar is the prevalence of the language of force, arms in particular. Bihar is perhaps the State which can boast of the maximum number of licensed and unlicensed firearms, landlords of every village are armed to the teeth and control some private gang of lumpens or other. In fact, nowhere in India is the nexus between landlords, police and government officials as naked as in Bihar. In the face of extreme oppression, there have also emerged several roving rebel gangs of erstwhile peasants in different parts ot Bihar— particularly where there is suitable terrain, e.g., the diara area of Bhagalpur-Munger, hills and forests of Kaimur Range and the Himalayan terrain of West Champaran—often degenerating into criminals engaging in gang warfare. These apart, there are also numerous smaller gangs of dacoits operating throughout the State.
All these salient features of Bihar’s socio-economic and political life find concentrated expression in the village-level power structure of today’s Bihar, a brilliant demonstration of the Gandhian mode of decentralization of power :
… the big landlord …. is virtually the ‘raja’ of his area. He possesses one-fourth or more of the total land of his village. He lives like an aristocrat in a large brick house. He employs the largest number of both slave and free labourers for domestic and farm work. He maintains a small private army equipped with guns, spears, lathis and other weapons and himself owns a licensed gun ….
The big landlord-raja … (belongs) to the caste of the dominant section of landlords in the village. To the social, economic and military power of the raja, ‘democracy’—added political power. He has captured the instruments of local government. He now commands the panchayat and thus the various executive bodies at the block level. He has the services of an obsequious police force in the local thana.
(Class War, Not ‘Atrocities Against Harijans’, article by Arun Sinha in Agrarian Movements in India : Studies on 20th Century Bihar, hereafter mentioned as Agrarian Movements, p. 151).
THE plains and forests of Bihar are ablaze. From Purnea to Palamau and Bhojpur to Bhagalpur, agricultural labourers and poor peasants are up in arms throughout the State. Armed clashes between the private armies of landlords and the peasants often running for hours together, killings of notorious landlords and murders of peasant leaders, police firings on processions and mass meetings, cold-blooded murders of revolutionaries in police encounters, peasant guerilla squads overrunning police camps to seize rifles, strikes of agrarian labourers, and landlord gangs indulging in pogroms are all regular features in today’s Bihar. The latest massacre of over 60 people at Arwal in Gaya by the Bihar Police has surpassed all previous records of police brutality and has been rightly termed as the resurrection of Jallianwallabagh on the soil of Bihar.
The main arena of the battle is confined to the central districts of Bhojpur, Gaya, Patna, Nalanda and Aurangabad. The immediate impact of the struggle stretches to the neighbouring districts of Nawada, Hazaribagh, Palamau and Rohtas in Bihar and, to a certain extent, also to Varanasi, Ghazipur and Ballia, the bordering districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The principal organisations siding with the peasants are the CPI(ML) (Liberation), the CPI(ML) (Party Unity) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). In some pockets, actions of the PCC, CPI(ML) and certain pro-Lin Piao groups are also active. The Chhatra-Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, an organisation basing on JP’s ideas, has also developed struggles in a few pockets. While various peasant mass organisations—open, semi-open and secret—built up by different M-L groups stand in the forefront of the struggle; peasant guerilla squads, armed with the guns and rifles seized from the landlords and the police and popularly known as the Red Army or Red Guard, provide the backbone.
On the side of the landlords are ranged almost all the major political parties, the Congress(I) assuming the principal role. The CPI is most vociferous in opposing the revolutionary camp and openly colludes with the Congress(I), the landlords and the state in splitting and suppressing the movement. For the CPI as well as the CPI(M), the latter however is the weaker partner in Bihar, the Naxalites are pitting agrarian labourers against the peasants, providing, in the process, excuses to the state for unleashing severe repression on the masses—and all this at the behest of the CIA.
However, since different opposition parties and dissident Congress factions have contradictions with the ruling Congress as well as among themselves, they try to utilise the peasant struggle and particularly the instances of repression for their narrow political ends. The Lok Dal, the main opposition party in Bihar, alarmed as it is at its slipping hold over the harijans and backward castes, frantically opposes all class-based mobilisations of the peasantry, always striving to isolate and split the forces of revolutionary democracy. However, the same motive of protecting its own social base also makes it show concern over the repression let loose by the upper-caste landlords and the police on the agrarian labourers and poor peasants from among the harijans and backward castes.
These political parties apart, there are the caste-based private armies of the landlords, propped up in collaboration with the state.
Apart from the regular opposition parties there are also many splinter organisations and groups subscribing to the philosophies of Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and JP as well as various voluntary agencies undertaking so-called developmental activities. Majority of them rely on foreign funding and work with the avowed aim of disrupting the peasant movement. However, some sections among them comprising idealist students and youths do cooperate with the forces of revolutionary democracy.
Various streams of Jharkhand movement do not have any well-defined programme for the adivasi peasants. However, in some cases they do undertake struggles against eviction and exploitation by the merchants and moneylenders and for the right on forest land and forest produce and also for social progress. And at times they, too, cooperate with the forces of revolutionary democracy.
PEASANT struggles are by no means a twentieth century phenomenon in the history of Bihar. In the nineteenth century itself Bihar had witnessed scores of heroic struggles of the peasantry, the Santhal Insurrection of 1855-56, the Munda Uprising of 1899-1901 and the Indigo Revolts in the latter half of the nineteenth century being the most notable among them. However, these were all isolated instances of peasant uprising with the leadership being provided by the local peasant leaders themselves without any national perspective and modern ideas. In contrast, peasant struggles in the present century are marked by outside intervention right from the days of the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 when Gandhi first began his experiments with the peasantry.
THE Champaran Satyagraha marked the last phase of the protracted struggle against the indigo planters and with it the peasant struggle in Bihar entered the national arena.
The movement enjoyed a wide popular support as the entire population of the district was against the planters for one reason or the other. Agricultural labourers were dissatisfied because they did not get wages at prevailing rates and they were forced to do unpaid labour for them. Tenants were against the planters for Tinkathia obligation, very low price for indigo, unremunerative cart Sattas, the realisation of Abwab and Dastoori, besides harassment by planters and their amlas. Cobblers were hit hard because of an attack on their right to hides and small shopkeepers were aggrieved because they were restricted in their operations and subjected to illegal taxes. Moneylenders and traders also found the planters in the way of expansion of their business as indigo cultivation with its accompanying system of cash payment had lessened the peasants' dependence on them. The Marwaris and the Shahs were not directly concerned with indigo cultivation and as such they were not involved in any direct dispute with the planters, but aware as they were of the very well-judged possibility that the planters' departure would result in greatly increased power and profit for themselves, they offered all sorts of material help for carrying on the movement.
All these diverse elements joined hands in the Satyagraha. The leadership, however, was provided by the moneylenders, rich tenants, petty zamindars, ex-factory employees and teachers. Raj Kumar Shukla, the most prominent among local leaders and instrumental in bringing Gandhi to Champaran, was himself a moneylender. Other important local leaders like Khendhar Rai of Laukaria, the Shahs of Motihari and the Marwaris of Bettiah and Motihari who financed the movement and gave it all sorts of material support were all moneylender-cum-traders.
At the same time the country was seething with anti-British discontent and Gandhi was fast emerging as a popular leader. His rural image, pro-poperty and even pro-usury stand and the harmless form of Satyagraha agitation made him easily acceptable to the local leadership.
The movement did not last long and remained restricted in scope, never touching even the fringes of deeper agrarian issues. The cultivation of indigo did soon draw to a close, but that was due not so much to the Satyagraha as to the invention of a cheaper, artificial dye.
Gandhi’s whole experiment was in tune with the line of the collaborating Indian bourgeoisie who looked to the peasantry only to wring greater concessions from the British imperialists, and was mortally afraid of arousing the peasantry in any massive, militant movement. In the name of nationalism Gandhi always discouraged any peasant movement against ‘native’ landlords. Thus it was no wonder that when a massive anti-zamindari peasant agitation broke out in Darbhanga estate in 1920, the entire Bihar Congress leadership kept itself aloof from the movement.
However, in subsequent anti-British movements the peasants of Bihar did always raise the banner of anti-landlordism despite Gandhi’s express disapproval. Thus, while in the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921 Gandhi had only advocated stopping of tax payment to the government, the peasants extended it to a no-rent campaign as well.
WHILE the Congress refused to lead the peasantry in its struggle against the landlords there was no dearth of issues confronting the peasants of Bihar : Begar (forced labour), Abwab (illegal exactions), conversion of produce rent into cash rent, disputes over diara land, right to forest produce, grazing land, Bakasht land (land originally belonging to the raiyats, but 'resumed' by the landlords in lieu of rent arrears) and so on and so forth. There were also certain social issues, e.g., the Bhumihars and the Yadavas, together with some other ‘lower’ castes, were fighting for being accorded a higher social status. Gradually the Bakasht land issue overwhelmed all other issues to emerge as the focal point of agrarian disputes—while landlords were supposed to cultivate such lands themselves, in actual practice they had been engaging others, often the original owners themselves, as unrecognised sharecroppers.
The cumulative effect of all these issues was to create a very fertile ground for peasant struggles. And it was on this ground that the Kisan Sabha first sprang up in the western part of Patna district in 1927. Under the charismatic and dynamic leadership of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati the Sabha soon spread over entire Bihar. The ‘Permanent Settlement’ finally began to get unsettled.
The evolution of the ideas of Sahajanand provides a glimpse of the changing course of the peasant struggle in Bihar and of the process leading to the radicalisation of the Kisan Sabha. Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, alias Navrang Rai, of Ghazipur district of UP, had initially joined the Bhumihar Mahasabha in an apparent bid to buttress the Bhumihars’ claim to Brahminical status. But he did not stop there and was soon found encouraging the younger generation of Bhumihars to participate in the Non-Cooperation Movement in large numbers. By 1925-26 the two wings within the Mahasabha—the ‘moderates’ led by Sir Ganesh Dutt, a big landlord and a British puppet and the ‘extremists’ led by Sahajanand—parted ways. Soon Sahajanand's ashram at Bihta near Patna became the focal point of the peasant movement in Bihar, attracting not only Bhumihars but tenants of other castes as well. Sensing the gradual shift in Sahajanand’s direction, the Bhumihar rich landowners stopped subscriptions. But this only confirmed Sahajanand's suspicion that
caste associations and donations given for caste and religious purposes are essentially devices by the rich to control organisations and to (thereby) protect their landed and trading interests and generally continue their supremacy rather than for any altruistic purpose.
It is interesting to note that the original purpose behind the formation of the Kisan Sabha was not to promote peasant struggles, but to prevent the eruption of tension in the countryside. As Sahajanand himself later admitted :
My sole object in doing so (setting up the Kisan Sabha) was to get grievances of the kisans redressed by mere agitation and propaganda and thus to eliminate all chances of clashes between the kisans and the zamindars which seemed imminent and thus threatened to destroy the all-round national unity so necessary to achieve freedom. Thus I began the organised Kisan Sabha as a staunch class-collaborator.
While the Bakasht issue lay unresolved, in 1929 the .government proposed to introduce a bill to amend the Tenancy Act which, if passed, would have adversely affected the interests of the tenants. It was at this juncture that the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS) was formed at the annual gathering of the peasants during the Sonepur fair in 1929 with Sahajanand as the president. Among its numerous local activists were Jamuna Karjee, Jadunandan Sharma, Karyanand Sharma, Dhanraj Sharma, Kishori Prasanna Singh, Indradeep Sinha, Bhogendra Jha and Sheel Bhadra Yajee. They were later joined by famous intellectuals like Rahul Sankrityayana and Nagarjuna on the one hand and Congress Socialist leaders like Jaya Prakash Narayan, Rambriksha Benipuri, Ganga Saran Sinha, Awadheswar Prasad Singh and Ramnandan Mishra on the other. But the organisation remained basically centred round Sahajanand and his close associates like Jadunandan Sharma, Jamuna Karjee, Karyanand Sharma and Dhanraj Sharma.
The very foundation of the BPKS in 1929 was marked by the dropping of the proposed tenancy amendment. This was construed by the peasants as a significant victory and proved to be a tremendous morale-booster for them. And then came a series of stirring political and economic events—the Civil Disobedience Movement, the Great Depression, and Provincial Autonomy—and the Kisan Sabha grew from strength to strength on the crest of these waves. But if these events of national and international significance provided the right external atmosphere, the Sabha drew its strength basically from within, from the scores of struggles in which it led the peasants of Bihar. One can rightly say that the BPKS was more a movement than an organisation. Among the important struggles undertaken by the Kisan Sabha were the ones directed against the tenancy bill in 1933, the Rewara struggles in Gaya in 1933 and again in 1938, the Bakasht movements in Barahiya tal, Rewara, Majiawana and Amwari during 1936-38, the joint peasant-worker action against the Dalmia Sugar Factory at Bihta in 1938-39 etc. Serious struggles were also waged in Shahabad, Saran, Darbhanga, Patna, Champaran and Bhagalpur districts. Of these, the most legendary was the Bakasht movement in Barahiya tal which not only continued for several years but led to a great victory for the tenants and laid a strong foundation for the Communist Party in Bihar.
Meanwhile in 1934 Sahajanand broke away from Gandhi, having followed him for no less than 14 years. He was becoming increasingly disillusioned with Gandhi's devious pro-propertied attitudes, and after his break with Gandhi, Sahajanand consistently viewed him as a wily politician who, in order to defend the propertied classes, took recourse in pseudo-spiritualism, professions of non-violence and religious hocus-pocus. Following this, the Congress grew rather hostile to the Sabha and sought to obstruct its growth by all possible means. While the Kisan Sabha was leading the peasants in militant struggles defying several firings, countless lathi-charges and thousands of arrests and trials, the Congress government that assumed office in 1937 was busy negotiating an agreement with the zamindars who offered their 'help and cooperation in instituting tenancy laws to ameliorate the lot of the kisans'. The terms of this Congress-zamindar agreement based on negotiations carried out by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Rajendra Prasad were never made public. At the same time, cashing in on the Kisan Sabha's inability to pay adequate attention to the specific grievances of the agricultural labourers and to ensure their fullest involvement in the activities of the Sabha, the Congress sought to weaken it by pitting agricultural labourers against it and encouraging scheduled caste leaders like Jagjivan Ram to set up a Bihar Provincial Khet Mazdur Sabha in 1937. In some places the landlords too set up certain bogus organisations claiming to represent the agricultural labourers. But despite all these attempts on the part of the landlords and the Congress, the Kisan Sabha continued to grow from strength to strength. Estimated at 80,000 in 1935, the membership of the BPKS rose to 2,50,000 by 1938.
In April 1936 the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) came into existence and the BPKS became its foremost provincial unit. The initiative was taken primarily by the CSP leaders, N G Ranga being the prime mover. Sahajanand was named president of the first meeting of the AIKS held at Lucknow, but he had reservations regarding its formation as he felt that in the absence of well-developed provincial units the national organisation could not possibly play any effective role. Once involved, Sahajanand. however, extended total support to the AIKS and worked wholeheartedly for it, but his doubts were proved undoubtedly right. Afterwards, he also cooperated with Subhas Chandra Bose in organising the Anti-Compromise Conference against the British and the Congress, and subsequently during the Second World War he worked with the CPI. Though in the last few years before his death on 26 June, 1950, Sahajanand dissociated himself from the Communists, too, he remained a resolute representative of the rural poor, and his faith in ‘class struggle as the only method to liberate the oppressed masses from the many-folded slavery and subjugation’ that was prompted by his early encounters with the landlords remained unshaken.
Initially the BPKS took little note of the internal differentiation within the peasantry, relying more on rich and upper-middle peasants in the name of representing the entire peasantry. By 1941, however, the shift was slowly becoming evident. Said Sahajanand,
The Kisan Sabha belongs to those exploited and suffering masses whose lot is connected with cultivation and (who) live by it. The more they are oppressed and distressed the nearer they are to the Kisan Sabha and the nearer it is to them.
And in the 1944 session of the AIKS in Vijaywada he was still more forthright when he said,
They (middle and big cultivators) are using the Kisan Sabha for their benefit and gain, while we are using or rather trying to use them to strengthen the Sabha, till the lowest strata of the peasantry are awakened to their real economic and political interests and needs and have become class conscious .... It is they, the semi-proletariat or the agricultural labourers who have very little land or no land at all, and the petty cultivators, who anyhow squeeze a most meagre living out of the land they cultivate and eke out their existence, who are the kisans of our thinking .... and who make and must constitute the Kisan Sabha ultimately.
After independence, the Socialists set up splittist organisations like the Hind Kisan Panchayat and many Kisan Sabha activists also joined the Forward Bloc. At this juncture Sahajanand set up a separate All-India United Kisan Sabha whose fundamental demand was ‘the nationalisation of land and waterways and all sources of energy and wealth ... such nationalisation must also result in a planned system embracing not only agriculture and the land but also industries and social services’. And as for immediate demand, the newly formed organisation put it as ‘acquisition of land ... from those who possess vast domains (and) distributing them on reasonable basis among landless labourers or holders of very small plots’.
From class collaboration to class struggle, from the limited objective of extracting certain concessions from the zamindars to the demand of abolition of zamindari without any payment of compensation, Sahajanand had really traversed a long way. The one-time champion of the interests of middle peasants and well-to-do tenants finally came to pin all his hopes on the rural proletariat :
The rural proletariat ... is becoming aware of its rights, duties and responsibilities—When it becomes fully aware, there will be the final dance of destruction and then the present iniquitous agrarian system will start crumbling.
AFTER Sahajanand’s death, his close associate Karyanand Sharma sought to carry on the movement. Sharma had led the famous Barahiya Bakasht struggle of 1937-39 and disillusioned with the Congress, he later joined the CPI. It was under his leadership that the CPI waged some important agrarian struggles in the 50s, the most notable among them being the Sathi Farms struggle in Champaran. Attempts were also made to develop separate agricultural labourers' struggle on wage demands as well as struggles on the question of the bataidars’ rights and also on issues of homestead tenancy, famine relief measures, taqavi loans, canal rent in canal-irrigated areas, sugarcane prices etc. Till his death in 1960, Karyanand was a front ranking CPI leader in Bihar and also the leader of the party's legislative wing. During his last years, he came to lay increasing stress on organising the agricultural labourers and poor peasants, particularly on building the Khet Mazdoor Sabha.
The 1950s also witnessed intense struggles of the bataidars. In the Kosi belt the landlords were in the habit of getting vast tracts of diara land reclaimed by tenants brought in from various adjoining districts and then evicting these tenants to rent out the land to a new set of tenants at still higher rents. Since 1939 the bataidars, particularly the adivasis among them, began to actively resist the landlords' eviction bids. Soon non-adivasi bataidars were also on the move in a big way. In the 50s their struggle under the leadership of the legendary Nakshatra Malakar reached such a peak that the government was forced to undertake a fresh survey and settlement operation in Purnea in 1952. At least half of the total bataidar families came to be recorded as occupancy tenants. In a number of places bataidars were also successful in pushing the rent down to one-fourth or even stopped paying it altogether.
As far as the CPI(M) is concerned, it has never really been active in the arena of peasant struggle in Bihar. To start with, the party launched a parallel Kisan Sabha in Champaran which began to offer passive resistance to the local tyrants. But just when this resistance started assuming an active shape on issues of social oppression, minimum wages and security of tenancy, the CPI(M) leaders compromised and switched over almost exclusively to electoral politics. In early 70s the CPI and the Socialists gave a call for 'land grab' movement, but the whole exercise was simply a grand show and fizzled out with a whimper.
THE late 60s and early 70s witnessed the first serious attempts at integrating revolutionary Marxism with the concrete conditions of Bihar under the impulses of the newborn Naxalbari upsurge and under the leadership of the new-born Communist Party, the CPI(ML). The protracted struggle of the Bihar peasantry entered a new phase in its development.
The first breakthrough was made in the Musahari block of Muzaffarpur district in North Bihar. But the struggle there soon collapsed under strong pressures from the trinity of landlords, police and neo-Sarvodayites led by JP. The Party, having already undergone a split and the dominant section of the State Leadership itself being the forerunner of Menshevism, was no match for the massive onslaught of the enemy. On their part, the revolutionary ranks of the Party went ahead with their attempts to develop peasant struggles over a wide range of districts, both in northern (Purnea, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Munger) and southern (Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Palamau) parts of the State, but they could not achieve any notable success.
Quite unexpectedly the movement was then found to gather momentum in Bhojpur and to a lesser extent in Patna. Unexpected, because practically the entire district committee of the CPI(M) had already come over to the fold of Naxalbari, and yet the movement could not grow beyond the stage of propaganda. However, the entire complexion underwent a great change when a new brand of leadership sprang up. This leadership had its root in the prevailing agrarian and social conditions in the district and it sought to provide popular forms of outlet to the mounting yet pent-up grievances of the people, including a very big rally on the demand of Harijanistan. Leading elements among these indigenous forces were already influenced by Naxalbari and Mao, and had hazy ideas about revolutionary Marxism. Combined with ex-CPI(M) leaders and guided by the Party, this core of local leadership then went on to usher in a new phase of militant peasant movement.
Heroic guerilla actions of the vanguards against notorious landlords, combined with attempts at developing revolutionary committees to mobilise the masses for seizing land and crops provided a militant, mass character to the movement right from the beginning, and gradually Bhojpur created a niche for itself in the history of peasant movements in modern India. This was the phase of complete underground and illegal activities, with stress on armed struggle in the form of guerilla actions against individual landlords and enemy agents as well as police camps for seizure of modern arms, and on combined resistance of armed units and the people against landlords and the police. The movement went on despite heavy odds, but gradually lost much of its momentum by 1976; Patna too had already suffered serious setbacks. However, as we shall see, this was to prove but a temporary phase in what has come to be recognised as one of the most protracted and militant peasant movements in the history of modern India.
IF Bihar has such a prolonged history of peasant struggles, it has also been a witness to a sustained and concerted counter-insurgency move, right from the days of Gandhi, spearheaded as much by the dealers in state violence as by the champions of Gandhian non-violence. After Gandhi, it was first Vinoba's turn, who entered Bihar in September 1952 with his slogan of Bhoodan. The idea was to persuade the landlords to part with their excess land and share it with landless and poor peasants and Vinoba resolved to test the efficacy of his idea in Bihar. It was his declared strategy to concentrate the campaign in Bihar, and he vowed not to leave Bihar till he and his followers had collected and distributed the targeted amount of 32,00,000 acres of land. But when in June 1956 Bhave finally left Bihar, the figure of total collection was put at 21,47,842 acres only to get depleted to 21,32,787 acres by March 1966. Moreover, of this as much as 11,82,000 acres were found to be unfit for cultivation and of the rest, a considerable part consisted of legally contested land. As for distribution, the less said the better. The organisers themselves claimed to have distributed only 3,11,032 acres till March 1966 where after the campaign clearly fizzled out. Visualised as the most successful testing ground of Bhoodan by its protagonist, Bihar actually proved to be its graveyard.
Bhoodan later gave way to Gramdan, and with Vinoba beating a spiritual retreat to Wardha it was now JP’s turn. JP concentrated his activities in Musahari and later in Bhojpur. Interestingly enough, the entire Musahari block was claimed to have been gifted away in the Gramdan movement. Overtly or covertly, the Sarvodayites have all along collaborated with the government to stem the tide of agrarian conflicts. Right from Vinoba’s role in Telangana and Bihar to JP’s move at Musahari and Bhojpur, from the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini’s trips to Sahar in Bhojpur during 1977-78 to Kuldip Nayar's recent padayatra along with Sachchidanand under the auspices of PRAYAS — all their activities are nothing but part of a wider counter-insurgency move to stamp out armed peasant struggle from the face of Bihar. As Badri Narain Sinha, DIG (Naxalite), disclosed in his article “From Naxalbari to Ekwari” (The Searchlight, June 11-13, 1975), ‘putting in zealous and dedicated social reformers drawn from all shades to bring about transformation on the socio-cultural planes’ is as much a part of ‘the counter-insurgency measures as ‘concentrated police operations or operations by the special task forces, may be from the supreme armed formation, the army itself’.
BEFORE we conclude this brief historical survey let us have a quick glance at developments in the Chhotanagpur region. Wayback in 1939, the educated elite within the adivasis formed an Adivasi Mahasabha and subsequently there came into existence the Jharkhand Party (1950) centring on the demand of a separate Jharkhand State. Although the process of land alienation was somewhat slow in this region due to restrictions imposed by the Special Tenancy Acts, a land recovery struggle, similar in content to the anti-eviction struggle in the plains, did break out with great force in many parts of the region. This struggle took a militant turn in the early 70s with the formation of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in 1972. Originating in the Tundi block in Dhanbad district, the JMM-led movement soon spread across the length and breadth of Chhotanagpur.
Apart from spearheading the land recovery movement, the JMM also took up various constructive programmes among the adivasis such as introduction of a second crop in the region, construction of irrigation works, liquor boycott, spreading basic literacy and opening cooperative granaries. All these gave a tremendous fillip to the movement for a separate Jharkhand State. But in the process of this ‘constructive work’ and under the guidance of liberal labour leader A K Roy, the movement gradually lost its militant edge and as certain scholars put it, Shibu Soren was reduced to more or less an ‘agricultural extension agent’ of the government (K G lyer and R N Maharaj, 1977). Later on, Soren severed his links with A K Roy and entered into an open alliance with the Congress. Alienation due to industrial acquisition has also become a very important cause of tension in Chhotanagpur with extensive expansion of mining and industrial activities.
PRIOR to the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, the interests in land used to be governed in accordance with the Permanent Settlement introduced by the East India Company wayback in 1793, which had given rise to the following hierarchy of interests :
1. The Zamindar : legally a “proprietor”, but acting as an intermediary of the state in the collection of rent from tenants. The amount payable to the state was fixed in cash, in perpetuity, and was supposed to represent nine-tenths of what the zamindars received in rent from the tenants. The zamindars were, however, allowed the right to fix their own terms with tenants.
2. The Tenure-holder: “primarily a person who has acquired from a proprietor or from another tenure-holder a right to hold land for the purpose of collecting rents or bringing rents or bringing it under cultivation by establishing tenants on it, and includes also the successors-in-interest of persons who have acquired such a right” (vide Bihar Tenancy Act of 1885).
3. The Occupancy Raiyat : a rent-paying holder of land having the right of occupancy on the land held by him “for the purpose of cultivating it by himself, or by members of his family or by hired servants or with the aid of partners, and includes also the successors-in-interest of persons who have acquired such a right” (ibid.).
4. The Non-occupancy Raiyat: a rent-paying holder of land not having the right of occupancy on land temporarily in his possession.
5. The Under-raiyat: a rent-paying holder of land having temporary possession of a holding under a raiyat.
6. The Mazdur: a wage labourer having no right in land.
It was much later, only in 1936, that the Congress in its election manifesto advocated moderate reforms in the system of land tenure, revenue and rent. The Communists in 1930 and the Socialists in 1934 had already come up with radical reform proposals including the demand for abolition of zamindari. But when in the 1937 elections the Congress was voted to power, it did not pursue any meaningful agrarian reform, instead negotiating an agreement with the zamindars as we have already noted.
In 1947 the government of Bihar passed the Bihar Abolition of Zamindari Bill. It was then amended and published as the Bihar Abolition of Zamindari Act, 1948 only to be repeated and replaced by the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, the validity of which was finally upheld by the Supreme Court only in 1952. The zamindars opposed the Act tooth and nail, while some of them succeeded in acquiring tacit support from important Congress leaders like Rajendra Prasad, the largest and most conservative among them joined the Janata Party launched by the Maharaja of Ramgarh who, however, rejoined the Congress in subsequent years.
THROUGH this Act the government of Bihar legally abolished the interests (in land as well as in trees, forests, fisheries, bazaars, mines and minerals) of zamindars and tenure-holders and vested these interests in the state.
In the first phase of implementation of the Act (May-September 1952) only 155 zamindars were affected. Then in 1954 the Act was amended to facilitate ‘speedier implementation’. The amendment provided for serving a general notice to all intermediaries as opposed to the provision of individual notification in the original act. Also introduced were provisions of penalty on those intermediaries who failed to relinquish the documents relating to their estates to the appropriate authorities. District collectors were also given more power to deal with erring zamindars who had taken anticipatory action at any time after 1 January 1946 to circumvent the provisions of the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950 by transferring or fragmenting their interests as well as by reducing or remitting rents on their holdings. To eliminate loopholes the Act was again amended in 1959. But as far as the zamindars are concerned, the built-in safeguards in the Act were not altered in substance by either of these two amendments of 1954 and 1959.
Sections 5, 6 and 7 specifically provided for the retention by intermediaries of certain interests.
Section 5 entitled an intermediary to retain possession of all homesteads and to hold them as a tenant under the state either free of rent or, if the homesteads happen to be used by the intermediary for purposes of letting out, subject to the payment of a ‘fair and equitable ground-rent’ to be determined by the collector. Here “homestead” means “dwelling house used by the intermediary for the purposes of his own residence or for the purpose of letting out on rent together with any courtyard, compound ... and includes any out-buildings used for purposes connected with agriculture or horticulture and any tank, library, and place of worship appertaining to such dwelling house”.
Section 6 entitled an intermediary to hold all lands in his Khas possession, used for agricultural or horticultural purposes, as raiyats under the state having occupancy rights in respect of such lands subject to the payment of a ‘fair and equitable rent’ to be determined by the collector. Here, Khas possession refers to land cultivated personally by an intermediary or by his own stock or servants or by hired labour or with hired stock.
Section 7 entitled an intermediary to retain possession of such buildings or structures together with the lands on which they stand as are used as golas, factories or mills, for the purpose of trade, manufacture or commerce or used for storing grains or keeping cattle or implements for the purpose of agriculture, as a tenant under the state subject to the payment of a ‘fair and equitable ground-rent’ to be determined by the collector.
In 1957, the Revenue Department of Bihar estimated that, when the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, was passed, there were at least 2,05,977 revenue-paying, permanently settled estates in Bihar. Later, the Land Reforms Implementation Committee suggested that there were as many as 4,74,000 intermediaries affected by the Act. It reflects the rapid sub-division of estates by intermediaries as a means of adding to the lands they were permitted to hold within the terms of the amended 1950 act. Capitalising on the broad classification of ‘Khas possession’ ex-intermediaries also began to evict their tenants in a big way. And to the extent they had to really forego part of their earlier holdings, they received handsome compensation from the state, particularly the larger and more powerful sections among them. According to figures released by the Bihar government, out of an estimated total of Rs. 60 crore, payable as final compensation to 5,22,109 intermediaries throughout the State, till 1970-71 a total of Rs. 20,60,04,000 was either already paid or made ready for payment.
IT was not until 1955 that a ceiling bill, called the Bihar Agricultural Lands (Ceiling and Management) Bill, was framed and referred to a committee. However, in the face of strong opposition from the landed elite and failure to muster enough support within the Congress Legislature Party itself, the bill was eventually shelved. Subsequently, a new bill, much more diluted and with sufficient loopholes, was framed in the early 60s and in 1961, it was enacted into law as the Bihar Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling Area and Acquisition of Surplus Land) Act.
The 1961 Act stipulated that a “person” would be permitted to retain possession of no more than (a) twenty acres of Class I land (land irrigated by flow irrigation works constructed, maintained, improved or controlled by Central, State or local governmental institutions); (b) thirty acres of Class II land (land irrigated by “lift” irrigation works or tube wells constructed or maintained by Central, State or local governmental institutions); (c) forty acres of Class III land (land used for orchards or for other horticultural purposes); (d) fifty acres of Class IV land (diara land); or (e) sixty acres of Class V land (land considered hilly, sandy or incapable of yielding paddy, ravi or cash crops).
However, there were numerous supplementary provisions in the Act designed to permit a landholder to retain lands much in excess of the ceiling provisions. For example, a landholder could retain, in addition to his ceiling area, lands forming part of his “homestead” not exceeding ten acres in area. He could retain all established structures together with the lands on which they stood, and such other lands as might be considered by the collector necessary for the use and enjoyment of his homestead lands. He could retain any land in consolidated blocks (not exceeding fifteen acres in area) used for growing fodder. Moreover, a landholder with more than four dependents could retain lands in excess of his ceiling area — not exceeding one-fifth of his ceiling area for every dependent exceeding four — so long as he retained no more than twice the area of his ceiling holding, as otherwise specified.
Other provisions of the Act permitted a landholder to transfer (within one year following the commencement of the Act) any lands held by him as a raiyat to any person or persons who might have inherited the land or have been entitled to a share of it at his death. In other words, a landholder with lands in excess of the ceiling could transfer his excess lands to sons, daughters, children of his sons or daughters, or others within the terms and conditions of the act — the only limitation being that the aggregate of lands held by the recipients do not exceed, in each instance, the ceiling area specified by the Act.
Moreover, the Act was not applicable to (a) lands previously donated to the Bhoodan movement, (b) lands held by educational institutions, (c) the plantations, and (d) properly licensed sugarcane farms.
The Act of 1961 contained provisions that permitted landholders to resume for “personal cultivation” lands within their ceiling areas being cultivated at the commence ment of the Act by tenants or under-raiyats who were unable to establish that they were entitled to permanent occupancy of the lands they tilled. By “personal cultivation” was meant “cultivation by a raiyat himself or by members of his family or by servants or hired labourers on fixed wages payable in cash or kind but not in crop-share under his personal supervision or the supervision of any member of his family”.
The Act also permitted a landholder, under specified conditions, to sublet any land within his ceiling area for a period not to exceed seven years on any one occasion. The amount of rent in kind payable by the tenant to the landholder or raiyat was limited to no more than one-fourth of the produce and the landholder was denied any share in the straw or bhoosa (jute sticks after the jute has been extracted or maize stocks following the harvesting of maize) that might exist as a by-product of agricultural production on the leased lands. The Act also made explicit provision for the ejectment of the sublessee by a landholder (a) for failure to pay an arrear of rent, (b) for using the land in a manner that rendered it unfit for the purposes of the tenancy; or (c) on the ground that the term of a lease had expired.
The Act stipulated that every person whose lands in excess of the ceiling were acquired by the state would receive compensation, and regarding the distribution and management of the surplus land it held that (a) such surplus lands as were occupied by under-raiyats might be settled permanently with the under-raiyats on payment of a prescribed amount to the state, and that (b) the management of the remaining surplus land was to be left to village councils or Gram Panchayats who would also attempt to assure the actual cultivation of the land by means of co-operative farming societies of landless labourers. If they were unable to establish such co-operative farming societies within twelve months, the representative of the State government was empowered to settle the land either with individual households of landless agricultural labourers or with other persons of the village or of a neighbouring village.
In December 1971 by an ordinance the quantum of ceiling with respect to each category of land was halved and the exemptions were also made more rigid. By an amendment in June 1973, the ceiling was further reduced to 15, 18, 25, 30, 37.5 and 45 acres for land belonging to Classes I, II, III, IV, V and VI respectively, with family (a couple with three minor children) as the unit, and the exemptions were also drastically curtailed. The jurisdiction of the civil court was barred in respect of action taken under the Ceiling Act.
As regards implementation of the Act, whether in its original or amended version, one can get an idea from the following pieces of official information. The Ceiling Act had come into force on April 19, 1962, but it was only in 1970 that notices began to be served to persons owning lands in excess of the ceiling and that too, only one hundred and twenty-five landholders were notified.
In 1964 the Planning Commission had estimated that with the enforcement of the ceiling all over the State, between 1,00,000 and 1,50,000 acres would become available as “surplus” land. The reality was that between 1961-62 and 1974-75, no more than 9,700 acres were collected by the state. Even during the Emergency, when the government claimed to have acquired no less than 50,000 acres of surplus land, no more than 10,000 acres were distributed, to quote once again from the government's own sources.
APART from these two major acts, many other agrarian laws have been legislated over all these years : the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; the Bihar Bhoodan Yagna Act, 1954; the Bihar Consolidation of Holdings and Prevention of Fragmentation Act, 1956 and (Amendment) Bill, 1970; the Bihar Tenancy (Amendment) Act, 1970; the Bihar Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill, 1970; the Bihar Public Land Encroachment (Amendment) Ordinance, 1970; the Bihar Privileged Persons Homestead Tenancy (Amendment) Bill, 1970; the Bihar SC, ST, Backward Classes and Denotified Tribes Debt Relief Act, 1974 ; the Bihar Moneylenders Act, 1974; and the list is still lengthening. But given the loophole-ridden content of these laws, such procedural bottlenecks as inadequacy of land records and rent rolls, and above all, the naked nexus between the landed rich, government officials and the police, nobody dares expect these laws to have any significant influence on the agrarian reality of Bihar. And to be sure, this widespread suspicion is corroborated all the more by the findings of the scholars and at times, even by various committees and commissions appointed by the government itself. As the Working Group on Land Reforms (under the National Commission on Agriculture) put it,
By their abysmal failure to implement the laws, the authorities in Bihar have reduced the whole package of land reform measures to a sour joke. This has emboldened the landowning class to treat the entire issue of agrarian reform with utter contempt. Elsewhere in the country, the law evaders have a sneaking respect for the law enforcing authority. Their approach is furtive— their method clandestine. In Bihar, the landowners do not care a tuppence for the administration. They take it for granted. Their approach is defiant — their modus operandi open and insolent.
(A Field Study: Agrarian Relations in Two Bihar Districts, Mainstream, Vol. 11, No 40, 2 June).
IN Bihar the 1980-81 Agricultural Census was conducted on a complete enumeration basis by retabulation of data from land records. For the purpose of this Census, the operational holdings
As the figures in the accompanying table show, during 1980-81, marginal holdings accounted for 75.9 per cent of all holdings and 26.7 per cent of the total area under these holdings, while large holdings, accounting for a meagre 0.6 per cent of all holdings, occupied no less than 10.5 per cent of the total area. The corresponding figures for small, semi-medium and medium holdings are : 10.8 and 26.7; 8.5 and 23.4; and 4.2 and 24.5.
Compared to the 1976-77 figures, the share of marginal holdings has gone up by 3.3 and 3.4 percentage points in terms of number and area respectively, while that for large holdings has fallen by 0.2 and 2.7 percentage points. The number of small and semi-medium holdings fell by 1.2 and 0.9 percentage points while their shares in area went up by 0.5 and 0.9 percentage points respectively. And medium holdings found their share depleting by 1 per cent in terms of number and by 2.1 per cent in terms of area.
As a whole, the distribution is still highly skewed. Whatever slight variations in percentage are discernible are attributed by the government to its measures of land reforms, particularly the enforcement of ceiling laws.
Well, let us leave the Census report for a while and consider some unofficial informations. One need not sift through voluminous research works to gather these informations, even general newspapers frequently carry these reports. Take the case of Purnea district for example. The evolution and unabated predominance of big landlordism in this district is a topic that comes up in almost any discussion of the rural reality in Bihar. Consider the case-study of Purnea by Manoshi Mitra and T Vijayendra (Agrarian Movements, pp 88-118 ). Citing the reference of Francis Buchanan (An Account of the District of Purnea, 1928), the authors tell you how in the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, the one-time under-renters of the zamindars (officials appointed by them to supervise the rents as well as to deal with rent-farmers and disputes with the government) “emerged as considerable landlords themselves” and came to establish their notoriety as being “among the most oppressive”. “Among them are such people as Babu Moulchand, Raghubans Narayan Singh of Kursela and others, under-tenure holders of the Darbhanga Raj, who are reported to be among the largest landholders in India today according to the Government of Bihar”, inform the authors (Ibid, p 92).
Note : Figures in brackets indicate percentages on total of the corresponding column,
Source : Agriculural Situation in India, August, 1984
Now open The Telegraph of 25 January, 1986, and you will find that their successors have not only not lost their control over the enormous landed wealth handed down over generations, but have further entrenched themselves in various positions of power and privilege in the new state structure :
Dinesh Kumar Singh (of the erstwhile Kursela state), a proud thakur, and still as big a landlord as ever, is minister for food and supplies in the Congress government of Bindeswari Dubey currently ruling Bihar. Sarju Mishra, the health minister is confidently said to control nearly a thousand acres in Purnea. Sir Narayan Chand is perhaps the biggest of them all, controlling perhaps as much as 5,000 acres in Purnea. He is also the father of Madhuri Singh, an honourable member of Parliament elected on the Congress ticket. ( M. J. Akbar, Dateline ).
True, not all old zamindars could retain their land and power, but then their place has been occupied by new entrants from among the traders and contractors and even doctors and lawyers, who have purchased zamindari interests to emerge as medium to big landholders.
Sahu Parbatta is such a case in Purnea. He evicted tenants, engaged under-tenants, paid rent to the zamindars and still had a surplus. He used the capital to buy land and today he is supposed to have some 30,000 acres. (Mitra and Vijayendra, Agrarian Movements, p 98).
In all, there are believed to be 41 exceptionally big landlords each owning no less than 1,000 acres of land in Purnea.
West Cbamparan is another district notorious for big landlordism. Here are the foremost landlords in the district— Betia Raj : 20,000 acres, Faiz Alam : 15,000 acres, Baidya Nath Chauhan : 15,000 acres, Kapil Kumar : 10,000 acres, Raja of Ramnagar : 10,000 acres, D. K. Sikarpur : 9,000 acres, Islam Sheikh : 8,000 acres, Joy Narayan Marwari: 6,000 acres, Dumania estate : 6,000 acres. Many from these families are MPs or ministers and MLAs of Bihar. To have an idea of their overall wealth and power, take a close look at the Dumania estate, for instance. The family has a farm of 6,000 acres and rents out dwelling-houses and market-places. These apart, it owns 20 tractors and a tractor agency, a cinema hall, one hotel and a lodge, poultry farms, pig-breeding farms, dairy farms, mango and vegetable trade, and so on and so forth. In addition to daily workers they have 500 salaried employees. For different jobs they have different managements and the entire property is managed under a cooperative banner.
Coming to the district of Gaya, the notorious Mahant of Bodh Gaya controls 18,000 acres of land, of which nearly 5,000 acres are located in Bodh Gaya and the rest in other places of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Among the other major landowners in Gaya are Satyendra Narain Singh, an erstwhile leader of the Janata Party and now a Congress(I) MP, who owns 4,300 acres; Anjar Hussain with 3,650 acres; and Dr. Bijoy Singh, MLA and nephew of Satyendra Narain Singh. with 700 acres.
These three districts apart, the districts of Rohtas, Palamau and Bhagalpur are also notorious for big landlordism. But looked through the glasses of government census, this face of rural Bihar stands perpetually concealed.
So, unofficial consensus and official census seem to be at loggerheads. The trick lies essentially in the very mode of the census operation, in the very category of "operational holdings" as separated from the question of ownership and actual control.
Thus, when big holdings are rented out in small parcels to a huge number of tenants, or when large landowning families, splitting formally into several smaller units, resort to holding land in all sorts of fictitious names (cooperatives, farms, orchards and what not) so as to avoid the ceiling laws — all these are counted in census records as so many operational holdings belonging to this or that size-class. No wonder then, that the census data will show a continuing increase in the number of, and area under, small and marginal holdings at the expense of a corresponding decrease in the number of, and area under, medium and large holdings. And it goes without saying that a good majority of those who operate these small and marginal holdings are actually tenants-at-will, cultivating under onerous, semi-feudal conditions. The survivals of feudalism are thus glorified as the outcome of progressive land reforms!
QUITE unmistakably, it is the extension of the capitalist mode of production in agriculture that has been the single most dominant motive behind all land reforms and rural development measures adopted by the government in post-independence India. And to accomplish this aim, ‘betting on the strong’ has been the consistent approach of the government right from the days of the celebrated “zamindari abolition” to the ongoing application of the strategy of so-called “green revolution”. Consequently, under the cumulative impact of all these measures, the rural ‘society’ has been going through a process of growing internal differentiation.
To understand this process in the specific conditions of Bihar, let us start with the famous “zamindari abolition”. The declared aim, in this case, was to encourage the resumption of land by proprietors for the purpose of ‘personal cultivation’. The whole thing culminated in the consolidation of the position of the majority of erstwhile zamindars, moneylenders and other ex-intermediaries as well as ex-occupancy raiyats, a sizeable section of whom had already turned into de facto zamindars, while the vast majority of the working peasantry, who were non-occupancy raiyats or under-raiyats, suffered eviction on a gigantic scale or continued as tenants-at-will under still more onerous conditions. Detail informations regarding such evictions or ‘transfers’ are naturally not available. However, different organisations and scholars have tried to estimate the incidence of this well-known and widespread phenomenon. The Fourteenth State Conference of the All-India Kisan Sabha, held in Muzaffarpur in August 1954, reported that in the six years following the introduction of the Zamindari Abolition Bill, evictions occurred from no less than 1 million acres of land throughout the State, affecting 7 million people.
The following case-study of a Muzaffarpur village, made by F Tomasson Jannuzi in 1956, provides a typical illustration of how ‘zamindari abolition’ promoted the landlord path of capitalist development in Indian agriculture.
Prior to the act “abolishing” intermediary interests in Bihar, a single zamindar held an exclusive intermediary right over all land (six hundred acres approximately) in village A. This zamindar, though a nonresident, had exercised full authority through his agents over the people who lived in the village and tilled his lands. Apparently because he was numbered among the leading zamindars of Bihar (having gross annual income from his several estates, in this case his holdings in village A as well as elsewhere in North Bihar, in excess of Rs. 50,000), he was among those whose interests were first vested in the state in September 1952. … In December 1956, more than four years after the zamindar’s interests were said to have been vested in the state, the situation in village A was as follows.
First, the ex-intermediary had lost roughly 100 acres of his pre-abolition holding when some of his “tenants” were able to retain at least temporary possession (subject to the outcome of pending litigation) of lands they had tilled. These former tenants, representing sixty-one households, considered themselves to be “occupancy raiyats”, and had begun to pay rent directly to the state. Their self-classification as occupancy raiyats did not eliminate the harsh reality that few among them were in possession of viable holdings; the size of an average holding per household was 1.65 acres.
Second, in accordance with the “saving provisions” of the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, as amended, the ex-zamindar retained (either “rent-free” or under nominal rents not exceeding Rs. 7.00 per acre) 500 acres of land together with his “village residence” (in fact the home of his estate manager).
Third, whereas the villagers’ total holding of 100 acres was divided into 361 separate units for cultivation, the ex-zamindar’s homestead holding of 500 acres was unitary — comprised of contiguous plots.
Fourth, twelve households, formerly tenants of the zamindar, had been evicted from his “homestead lands” and had become landless labourers with no option but to till the zamindar’s lands for wages.
Fifth, neither the sixty-one landed nor the twelve landless households in the village had managed to achieve economic independence of the zamindar. It remained necessary for both groups to work for some portion of their incomes as wage labourers on the homestead lands of the ex-zamindar. Moreover, daily wages for men had been lowered from 1 rupee, 2 annas (the rate prior to zamindari abolition), to 10 annas since the enactment of the reform legislation. Where daily wages for wowan had been 12 annas in 1952, they were 8 annas in 1956, And wages for child labour had been reduced from 6 annas to 3 annas.
Sixth, whereas, prior to 1952, some portions of the zamindar’s holding had been used for the production of rice and wheat, in 1956 the ex-zamindar’s entire holding was cropped in tobacco and sugarcane —favoured cash crop in that period.
( Agrarian Crisis in India : The Case of Bihar, pp 51-2).
In majority of the cases, however, land continued to be leased out to tenants with the only difference that their status was universally degraded to that of “tenants-at-will”. Cashing in on the built-in safeguards, ex-intermediaries not only retained tight control over their holdings, but further consolidated them through large-scale eviction of tenants, including occupancy tenants, and then went on to acquire modern implements like tubewells, tractors etc. The whole process was greatly facilitated by the power of money, caste solidarity at government level, and of course, guns which were freely used.
The process of eviction was further stepped up in the wake of ceiling legislation in the early ’60s. According to G Ojha, in a single year, in 1962, the year in which the Ceiling Act was effected, over 0.7 million transfers of raiyatwari holdings were recorded all over the State.
Since early 1950s, the government also undertook many rural development projects, initiating development blocks, launching co-operative institutions, introducing village self-government and so on. Apparently, the idea was to foster decentralisation of administration and decision-making, but in real life all these steps only served to centralise more power in the hands of those who were already powerful in the countryside. In addition, the peasants also came to face the pressure of a huge army of thoroughly corrupt and bureaucratic government officials working hand in glove with the landlords and the kulaks. And finally there came the strategy of green revolution in the mid-60s. The government wanted everybody to believe that the results of this development would trickle down to the rural poor as well, but as government sources themselves had to admit later, landlords with a holding of 24 acres or more had turned out to be the major beneficiary of green revolution in Bihar while raiyats with holdings of five acres or less, raiyats with insecure rights in land, under-raiyats, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers could simply derive no benefits worth the name.
Urban ex-intermediaries in Bihar are increasingly engaging in commercial farming, though in comparison to their counterparts in Punjab, Haryana and Western UP they are still numerically insignificant. In the districts of Patna, Gaya, Bhojpur and Rohtas the rate of agricultural development has proved to be a little faster and production for the market appears somewhat widespread. In these areas junker-type capitalist landlords as well as kulak-type capitalist farmers have emerged as two powerful rural strata.
In short, the entire process of land reforms and rural development has culminated in the emergence of a new section of landlords comprising erstwhile zamindars, naibs, rent-receiving farmers, moneylenders, traders, and sections of better-off occupancy raiyats at one pole and huge expansion of bataidars—poor and lower-middle peasants—and agricultural labourers on the other. Sizeable sections of occupancy raiyats have consolidated themselves as middle and rich peasants, sections that once constituted the leading core of the old Kisan Sabha movements. However, in today’s Bihar a considerable number of these rich peasants are found to behave like a veritable kulak lobby in politics as well as in the structure of state-power.
In caste terms, landlords generally come from upper castes and in some pockets one also comes across landlords belonging to the upper layers of certain backward castes like the Kurmis and the Yadavas. Certain sections of Awadhia Kurmis, who have gone up on the social ladder, are a new entrant in the category of landlords. Rich peasants belong to both upper castes and upper layers of certain backward castes, while middle peasants are made up of upper castes, upper layers of backward castes and in some cases, scheduled castes and tribes as well. And as far as the poor and lower-middle peasants and agricultural labourers are concerned, they have in their ranks the great majority of the backward castes and almost the entire harijan and adivasi population.
THE landlords today comprise two sections. On the one hand, there are the feudal landlords who resort to old methods of cultivation through tenants and on the other hand, there are the junker-type capitalist landlords who generally divide their land into two parts with one part being leased out or cultivated by domestic farm servants and the other part being cultivated by hired labourers using modern means. The Mahants in Bihar are usually big landlords of the feudal-type, commanding armed private gangs of their own and often leading landlords of their respective areas in attacks on poor peasants. In place of the old administrative machinery of earliear zamindars, today’s landlords have at their disposal the well-knit administrative machinery of the modern state manned by thoroughly corrupt and bureaucratic government officials.
In the existing socio-economic conditions of Bihar, the new landlords and kulaks enjoy consolidated economic, social and political power at Panchayat and block levels, openly in league with corrupt government officials and darogas, and caste-based mobilisations have become their new watchword in their war against the rural poor as well as in their factional infightings. Under universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy the whole complexion of politics and political parties in Bihar has undergone a thorough change and assumed the worst casteist form. It is these classes which provide leadership to the recently emerging private gangs of landlords which operate as politico-military formations. Ironically, the very sections of the better-off backward caste tenants which once provided the backbone of the erstwhile Kisan Sabha movement, have now transformed themselves into kulaks and are often found to be more aggressive than others against agricultural labourers demanding increased wages. The two Senas, viz., the Bhoomi Sena and the Lorik Sena, which have shot into the limelight in Bihar in recent years are led by backward caste elements from the Kurmis and Yadavas respectively.
MIDDLE peasants, in the true sense of the term, are found mainly among the backward castes of Koiris, Yadavas and major sections of Kurmis. The lands operated by them are either fully owned or partly owned and partly leased in from upper-caste landholders. Only occasionally do they employ hired labour. It is rare for upper-caste middle peasants to lease in land, the overwhelming majority of them either lease out their land or get it cultivated through banihars or hired labourers. However, except operating the plough, considered to be a customary taboo, a good majority of them do put in self-labour in their fields. Particularly, Bhumihar middle peasants put in hard labour, in some cases nowadays they operate the plough as well. Among the backward castes, sections of Awadhia Kurmis, having moved up on the social ladder and encouraged by the abundant supply of cheap agrarian labour, have given up direct cultivation.
Middle peasants are linked with the landlords and kulaks through numerous economic ties such as trade, money-lending, land acquisition interests of the landlords, supply of credit and other input facilities from block offices and so on and so forth. And to top it all, there is the aspect of caste solidarity. Mobilised by the landlords on the basis of castes, middle peasants often serve as cannon-fodder in the former’s factional infightings as well as in their battle with agricultural labourers and poor peasants who are struggling for minimum wages and pieces of land.
However, as middle peasants mainly belong to the lower castes, they face the wrath of upper-caste landlords. There are also serious contradictions concerning the share of various facilities provided by government institutions, tenancy rates, control over communal and grazing lands etc.
The question of building solid unity with middle peasants, who make up nearly twenty per cent of the rural population, is a question of decisive importance in tilting the balance in favour of agrarian revolution. Recent changes in the agrarian scene and caste-baked rigid social divisions in the countryside of Bihar have rendered the task much more complicated.
Solid unity with middle and even rich peasants belonging to the Koiris and other backward castes down the social ladder develops rather easily due to the peculiar position of these castes. Hardworking by nature and oppressed by upper-caste landlords and harassed by widespread theft and dacoity, they quickly come over to the fold of revolutionary organisations. The most complicated is the question of unity with the Yadava middle peasantry, as they often obstruct the rural poor’s struggle against the zamindars by coming in between the two conflicting sides. For instance, often when a wage or land struggle against a zamindar reaches the verge of victory, he suddenly switches over from cultivation through hired labour to that through tenants, and in effecting this switch he finds readymade takers in the Yadavas. Thus the zamindar retreats into the background while the Yadavas come to the fore and the struggle naturally loses its edge. Then there are the questions of use of communal land, tanks etc. and struggle against theft and dacoity. All this leads to the contradiction with them taking a serious and sharp turn. But fortunately enough, such frictions prevail only in certain pockets and are not widespread. In fact, in many other cases they are quite good allies. Regarding relations with middle peasants belonging to the Awadhia Kurmis as well as various upper castes, the main questions are those of wages, vested land and social oppression.
TENANCY in Bihar is generally not of the type of “entrepreneur renting”. Big farmers leasing in land with a view to enlarging their operational holdings to undertake large-scale capitalist farming is a rare phenomenon in Bihar where land is primarily leased in by marginal and small farmers for sheer subsistence.
Various forms of tenancy are in vogue in Bihar, e.g.,
(a) Nagdi or Manibatai: Under this system the tenant has to pay a fixed amount of rent, whether in cash or grains, regardless of the total production. The landlord plays no role in the process of cultivation. In parts of Bhojpur, the prevailing rate is 16 maunds or Rs. 700 per bigha, going up to 22 maunds in case of better irrigation facilities.
(b) Tehai : Here the landlord and the tenant equally share the land revenue, irrigation charges as well as cost of fertilisers and seeds, but the latter gets only one-third of the produce.
(c) Chauthai : The landlord provides the total capital and the tenant gets one-fourth of the produce. In certain areas like south Gaya, the tenant gets only one-fourth of the produce even though he provides half of the capital.
In the irrigated areas of Bhojpur the yield of paddy reaches nearly 30 maunds per bigha, out of which 22 maunds have to be paid back as rent. The greater part of the 8 maunds left with the tenant is then spent on seeds and other investments for the next season. So in the kharif season the tenant is hardly able to save anything. However, in the ravi season the tenant is entitled to the entire produce.
A case-study of tenancy practices in Musahari block of Muzaffarpur district, conducted by B N Verma and B R Mishra of Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, Bihar (Social Scientist, No. 135, August 1984), is worth mentioning in this connection. The study covered three villages and had the following major findings to offer.
1. Share in produce : The entire cost of cultivation is borne by the tenant, but the produce, of both main as well as by-products and in both HYV and local varieties, is shared equally between the landlord and the tenant. Any sharing of cost by the landlord during a bad crop year or during some crisis is considered as a loan to be repaid immediately after the harvest. The cost of cultivation comes to 45 to 50 per cent of the total produce and the tenant, therefore, is left with as meagre a margin as 0 to 5 per cent which naturally keeps him in a perpetual bondage of debt.
2. Labour service associated with tenancy : 85.50 per cent of pure tenants and 71.43 per cent of combined tenants (those with some land of their own) have to perform compulsory labour service in the landlords’ fields for an average of 118 and 96 days a year respectively. True, they are paid wages for that, but the fact remains that to protect their tenancy they must render service in the lessors’ fields and in some cases also in their houses. To some extent, their status may be compared to that of attached or bonded labourers.
3. Security and duration of lease : Land was found to be leased out for short periods and tenants were reported to be changed frequently.
4. Status of terms and conditions : Oral.
The landlords were generally found to prefer leasing out land to tenants who belonged to the lower castes, had small pieces of land of their own and large families. Moreover, they were also found to prefer leasing out their land to as many tenants as possible. This, they felt, enabled them to exercise greater control over the tenants and made the latter put in extensive labour.
The case of Musahari is by no means an isolated one, rather it represents the typical phenomenon in tenancy in Bihar, which, in its turn, constitutes a major plank of the State’s agrarian structure.
As tenancy is generally oral and renewed annually, landlords try to raise the amount of rent every year. In the absence of solid organisational unity, this generates sharp competition among the bataidars themselves. Thousands of cases related to tenancy are pending in the courts of Bihar, but seldom does the judgement go in favour of the bataidars.
A great majority of bataidars have to resort to the sale of their labour-power as well, and as such, they fall in the category of poor peasants. Hardly one-third of the bataidars may be classified as lower-middle or middle peasants.
The Working Group on Land Reforms, set up by the Government of India, had the following advice to the bataidars of Bihar :
Landowners … are organised and aggressive … with an obliging administration on their side, they are definitely not going to give up an iota of their rights, privileges and economic dominance without a stiff fight… No law, however good it may be, in conferring, on paper, rights, title and interest to the bataidars will have the slightest chance of success unless the bataidars have a strong and militant mass organisation of their own, capable of not only defending their own rights given by the law but also capable of mounting counter-action to prevent and forestall any direct attack on them.
(Mainstream. Vol. 11, No. 40)
Well, when this advice is put into practice it results in Arwal-type massacres, and the Indian Parliament, the so-called representative body of the people, has no time to discuss such massacres.
THEIR number has greatly increased since the 60s, parti, cularly as a result of the large-scale eviction of erstwhile tenants in the wake of the ceiling act. In 1981, they accounted for 35.50 per cent of the total population of main of workers in Bihar while for India as a whole the corresponding share was only 24.94 per cent. Regionwise, the percentage share was highest in North Bihar, followed by South Bihar and Chhotanagpur in that order. Districtwise, the percentage was highest in West Champaran (51.53), followed by Purnea (51.35) and Katihar (49.47). In Chhotanagpur, the figure was highest in Palamau (36.71 per cent), nearly double the average for the region (See accompanying table )
Low figures for agricultural labourers in the Chhotanagpur region are due to the existence of hilly tracts, prevalence of adivasi population, and the consequent special tenurial systems. However, large numbers of adivasis have migrated to the tea gardens of Assam and to North Bihar as labourers. During the cultivating seasons, one also finds them migrating to West Bengal, and nowadays to Punjab, too, in search of work as agricultural labourers.
In caste terms, the agricultural labourers of Bihar have the following percentage distribution — Upper Castes : 0.3; Middle Castes : 34.2; Scheduled Castes : 39.1; Scheduled Tribes : 12.4; Muslims : 14.0 (S. R. Bose and P P Ghosh, Agro-Economic Survey of Bihar).
Source : Compiled from 1981 Census Abstract.
Agricultural labourers in Bihar can be broadly classified into the following three categories :
(a) Banihars or Charwahas : They are actually attached labourers, working in the landlords’ fields on an annual contract basis. They are allotted little pieces of land, varying in size from 5 kathas to 1 bigha
(b) Land-owning Labourers : Although they own small pieces of land, for their subsistence they are forced to rely mostly on their work as wage labourers.
(c) Landless Labourers : Their number is not quite high and they are heavily underemployed. Recent years have witnessed a tremendous increase in their migration to Punjab where the wages are quite high in comparison to Bihar. In Bihar, their daily wages range from 750 grams to 2 kgs. of wheat or rice, or Rs. 2 to Rs. 10 in cash. During harvesting season, they receive one out of every 10 bundles of crops harvested as wages. The wages differ greatly in different areas and in different operations depending upon a number of factors, the foremost of which is the state of their organised strength.
Full-time free wage labourers working in modern capitalist farms or in areas of cash crops are quite an exception in Bihar.
The struggles of agricultural labourers revolve around the issues of wages; dwelling land ; interest rates; communal, government, surplus and benami lands under the occupation of landlords and rich peasants; water resources; fishing; social oppression and so on and so forth. Moreover, in Bihar, unemployment, not to speak of underemployment, is widespread among agricultural labourers and they have no avenues open to them for moving to industrial centres. Apart from the struggle for rise in wages, one also finds agricultural labourers quite eagerly participating in struggles for land, both for the purpose of dwelling as well as self-cultivation. Even if sometimes they managed to get parchas from the government officials, the land remained under the illegal control of gun-totting landlords. Any protest on their part is met with immediate attacks by the landlords. With their hamlets surrounded and set ablaze, property looted, women raped, and dear and near ones killed by the merciless landlords and their merceuaries, dissenting agricultural labourers are either forced to surrender or made to flee the village.
It is this situation that is being challenged today by the agricultural labourers of Bihar, under the leadership of the communist revolutionaries and with the aid of their own armed squads. Not only the agricultural labourers, but the poor and lower-middle peasants and the half-labourer-half-tenants are also there in the forefront of the struggle, and in this they enjoy the support of sizeable sections of the middle peasants, too. And the targets are the landlords and those kulaks who have virtually declared a war on the rural poor.
The pages that follow will bring you the saga of this heroic struggle. Over, then, to the flaming fields of Bihar.
IF in the wake of the lifting of the black curtain of the Emergency the country witnessed a general awakening among various social classes and strata, Bihar saw a veritable upheaval of the peasantry.
The years 1977-80 were marked by various new types of initiatives on the part of our Party forces, culminating in the emergence of a host of local-level mass organisations— Kisan Sanghas (peasant associations), Sangharsha Samitis (action committees), Jan Kalyan Samitis (people’s welfare committees) and so on and so forth — in different parts of rural Bihar. Under the leadership of these organisations, peasants began to voice their long-standing yet immediate demands, holding meetings, taking out processions, and staging demonstrations before all sorts of government officials from the Block Development Officers to the District Magistrates. Though the issues and forms of protest varied from one place to another, on the whole, the following issues emerged as the major focal points—stopping all atrocities on the oppressed classes and castes and meting out punishment to the offenders; enforcement of the minimum wages act; distribution of surplus and vested land among landless and poor peasants; provision of adequate irrigation facilities; regular supply of electricity, seeds and fertilisers at cheaper rates; disbursement of drought relief and agricultural loans among deserving peasants; fair compensation and rehabilitation in case of displacement; weakening and liquidating landlords’ control over all communal properties; opposing various corruptions and malpractices of government officials and the police, and so on. Strikes were conducted to secure increases in wages, attempts were made to capture vested land, some notorious thieves and dacoits were punished at some places, and during the days of drought the rich landed gentry was asked, and at times forced, to contribute foodgrains for the sustenance of the rural poor.
This was the period of the Janata rule both in the Centre and at the State. At the helm of affairs in Bihar was the ‘Socialist’ Karpoori Thakur, the self-styled messiah of the backwards and harijans. Meanwhile, our Party had undergone a thoroughgoing rectification campaign, leading to drastic changes in the Party line in accordance with our appraisal of the post-Emergency situation. Undoubtedly, this played a profound part in ridding our work among the Bihar peasants of all the old rigidities and dogmatic notions, and consequently, in unleashing the unprecedented peasant upsurge that soon shook the plains of Central Bihar, with Patna standing in the forefront. And with the formation of the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha (BPKS, 23 February, 1981), the whole process got a new fillip. The BPKS came up with a comprehensive programme and started coordinating all local-level activities, gradually raising them to district-level and even to State-level. And finally, as an important constituent of the People’s Front, it began to rally the peasantry in general democratic movements as well.
The year 1981-82 witnessed a veritable storm of peasant struggle that brought to the fore miraculous potentialities inherent in the organised strength of the rural poor. Thousands of peasants rose in waves of mass movements, protests and resistance struggles with whatever arms they had in their possession. They assembled in mammoth mass meetings to voice their demands and to proclaim their determination for relentless struggle. Demonstrations and militant gheraos became a normal feature. The crudest among the landlords and their criminal gangs were taken as targets. The upsurge (concentrated in Patna and adjoining areas of Gaya and Nalanda districts) mainly centred on
Demonstrations, mass meetings, gheraos, strikes, masses in their hundreds and thousands encircling thanas (police stations) and forcing the authorities to release their arrested comrades, executions of notorious landlords and their muscle-men, snatching firearms from the landlords' armed gangs and from tyrant landlords themselves as well as from the police—these were the main forms of struggle through which the peasants vented their ire. The landed gentry were very much robbed of their habitual ‘special privileges’. Utmost care was taken not to hurt those who were not among the listed targets of struggle, even in the face of serious provocations on the part of many such persons who, because of caste prejudices or for some reasons or other, indulged in certain hostile acts against the downtrodden.
Village committees sprang up like mushrooms after the first rain, and peasants displayed exemplary solidarity, militancy and tenacity. Often, a single village or a cluster of 5 to 10 villages emerged as the leading centre for an entire area covering 50 to 60 villages. Braving severe repression, the people at these centres put up heroic resistance against constant enemy attacks. The movement went through a number of ups and downs, and in the process, there emerged in each centre (i) a small but strong leading group of Party elements (popularly known as agua, i.e., the vanguard), (ii) local armed squads, and (iii) powerful village committees, generally the village units of the peasant association. As a rule, these centres fall within the interior boundary of the areas of operation of the regular armed units. In such areas, mass participation in meetings and demonstrations has jumped from 100 to 10,000 or more, and armed resistance against landlords and their henchmen by a few has given way to armed mass resistance involving hundreds of peasants. If a village or tola (hamlet) is attacked, hundreds of peasants from neighbouring villages rush with arms and join forces with the resistance. Following are some such major storm centres where the peasant struggle has decidedly entered the phase of large-scale agitations embracing thousands of masses :
While retaining and consolidating its grip over the old areas of struggle, the upheaval has also spread to newer areas, covering 26 of the 38 districts of Bihar. In terms of the emergence of stable centres of struggle, and intensity and expansion of work, these twenty six districts can be divided into three categories.
In the first category fall those districts where work has spread to well over three-fourths of the district, the struggle is most intense and is marked by regular occurrence of armed clashes and guerilla operations. Rural areas of Patna and Gaya, the entire district of Bhojpur along with a few adjoining blocks of Rohtas district, and the districts of Nalanda and Aurangabad constitute this category.
The second category comprises districts where work has spread to several pockets, and where the struggle has reached the level of mass movements with occasional instances of mass resistance and armed clashes. The remaining blocks of Rohtas and the districts of Nawada, Hazaribagh, East Champaran, Madhubani, Vaishali, Begusarai, Muzaffar-pur, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Purnea, Giridih and Palamau fall in this category.
Work in the third category districts is confined to certain pockets and is still at the level of propaganda and organisation. In some of these districts mass movements did take place in the past, but the movement as well as the organisation could not be sustained, while in the others work has just begun. The districts of Siwan, Samastipur, West Champaran, Munger, Gopalganj, Khagaria, Madhepura and Ranchi belong to this category.
In all, our work has spread to nearly 140 blocks of these 26 districts (each district has on an average 14 to 16 blocks and each block, in its turn, covers some 100 villages). In the region under the first category, 60 blocks out of 90 are under the grip of peasant movement, and to be more specific, the struggle is highly intense in 26 blocks. The combined rural population of this region is over one crore.
1. ‘An Anti-Peasant, Anti-Social Extremist Menace’
2. ‘Peasants : Yes, Party: No, Arms : Never’
3. ‘Excitative Violence, Pure and Simple’
4. ‘Private Armies at War’
5. ‘Nothing but Caste Conflict’
6. ‘The Rural Poor ; The Worst Trouble-makers’
IF you happen to visit the flaming fields of Bihar, you will perhaps hear a landlord or a well-off peasant saying : ‘It’s horrible ! The harijans have gone astray. The lives and property of the peasants are at stake. It’s all Naxalite menace’. And if you are fortunate enough to meet a minister or a government official, he will tell you, ‘These are all extremist activities. The extremists are taking the law into their own hands.’ He will further add, ‘Yes, it’s also a socio-economic problem. The government is aware of that and measures are being taken. But Naxalites will be sternly dealt with.’ Many small and middle landowners, particularly those belonging to the upper castes who do not till their lands themselves, also get carried away by this sort of propaganda. Liberals, ‘Socialists’, and ‘Communists’ of the CPI-CPI(M) variety, too, echo more or less the sentiments of the rural gentry and the officials.
Now turn to the other side of the fence. You will find labouring women, ill-fed and ill-clad, sowing and singing with full vigour, ‘ab na sahab ham gulamiya tohar ...’ (no more shall your chains of slavery bind us), or your attention will be attracted to roaring voices ‘Jote boye kate dhan, khet ka malik wahi kisan’ (those who till and sow and harvest, only they are the owners of the land). And agricultural labourers and poor peasants will argue : ‘What’s wrong in it if we refuse to be oppressed and exploited, if we get organised for our rights and fight out the tyrants who have made the society a living hell ?’ They will further add, ‘Landlords and their musclemen threaten us with their guns, and the government and its police side with them and protect them. That has been our fate since ages. What alternative is left to us ? Of course, it is the Naxalites and the Kisan Sabhas who have taught us to get organised and fight out the oppressors. Don’t we have the right to self-defence and to manage and control our own affairs ?’
In fact, these two reactions reflect two diametrically opposite class positions, two diametrically opposite ideologies — one reflects the interests of the landed gentry and the ideology of status quo, the other mirrors the interests of the oppressed peasantry and the ideology of revolution.
THERE are certain other sections of people who complain, ‘It’s true that the rural poor, particularly the harijans, are extremely oppressed and exploited. Landlordism must be abolished, land must go to the tillers, and labourers must get fair wages. And for all these, they must struggle. But here they are going too far, they are committing excesses.’ Liberals sermonise the peasants: ‘Struggle, but with a decency, according to the rules of the game.’ And the name of this game is ‘politics without arms, politics without anything like the illegal and the underground, or, politics without any revolutionary party’.
Peasants in general and peasant struggles in particular never fit in the framework of decency as perceived by these liberals. Decency in rural areas is another name for the diabolical discipline imposed by the most indecent, most uncivilised sections of our society : the landlords. This, so-called decency is based on the acceptance of certain norms and taboos and privileges. Hence the first act of each and every peasant movement worth the name has always been to break these chains of decency. And the peasants in the struggling areas of Bihar are precisely doing that.
This does not imply that the peasants of Bihar are led by the dictum of ‘an eye for an eye’. Brutal oppression by the landlords, coupled with rigid caste polarisations, does sometimes provoke them into indulging in indiscriminate retaliation; but they readily understand that such an attitude will only harm their struggle. From the very experiences of life, peasants know who is bad and who is not, who can be reformed and who cannot, who should be punished heavily and who deserves somewhat softer treatment. And their own experiences apart, there is the network of the Party activists who rigorously explain to them the positions of various classes in the countryside and the necessity of forging a broad-based people’s front so as to isolate the chief enemy who acts as the pillar of this oppressive system. It is this combination of Marxist-Leninist politics with the peasants’ very own experiences of life that is working wonders in the age-old caste-ridden rural society of ‘backward’ Bihar, and by now, the tendency of blind retaliation on the part of the oppressed peasantry has been more or less transformed into organised mass resistance.
Just as the peasants have realised, in the course of their struggle, that blind retaliation will not take them anywhere, so have they learnt that without a Marxist-Leninist Party and without arms they cannot overpower their enemy. Any one who wants to analyse the ongoing peasant struggle in a narrow framework devoid of these two inalienable components, viz., the Party and the arms, is bound to fail miserably in his endeavour. All reformists and liberals try to separate the peasants from their Party and arms, but while they persist in their efforts, peasants stubbornly cling to their precious realisation regarding the indsipensability of these two weapons, a realisation that has taken them long years of experience and a lot of blood.
The path of so-called extremism is prompted by this reality and illumined by these lessons of history, and the peasants of Bihar have declared in no uncertain terms their determination to stick to this path, come what may.
DEEP influence of the Gandhian ideology leads many people to condemn violence as such and they make no distinction between the counter-revolutionary violence of the landlords and the state and the revolutionary violence of the oppressed peasantry and the revolutionaries. Some of them, who also wear the mask of ‘total revolution’ and maintain spurious links with imperialist-funded voluntary agencies, go so far as to suggest that mindless violence is a creed with the Naxalites. In a recently published piece of yellow journalism, Kuldip Nayar even attributed the terrorist theory of ‘excitative violence’ to a ‘mysterious’ Naxalite leader.
The experience of the ‘peaceful class struggle’ as undertaken by the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini against the Mahant of Bodh Gaya were greatly highlighted in the bourgeois press and by liberals of all hues as a living counter-model against the Naxalite tactics. Well, nobody talks of these experiences any more. The activists of the Vahini and the peasants were severely beaten up by the Mahant’s goons and the police. Strangely enough, few of the activists were even accused of being Naxalites and charged with attempts at seizing rifles from the police. Under persistent demands of the peasants for retaliation, some activists tried to formulate a line of defensive resistance. And this brought the split and the struggle simply petered out. We deliberately kept ourselves away from Bodh Gaya and decided to watch the ‘experiments’ of our friends, while actively opposing every instance of repression on them.
Some people are more clever and oppose revolutionary violence not on idealistic Gandhian pretexts, but on the plea that the modern state being heavily armed, the poor are simply no match and hence revolutionary violence is only suicidal. In practice, this theory leads to the Gandhian ‘tactics’ of abject surrender and ‘heart-transformation’ of class enemies as opposed to devising ways and means for arming the broad masses and dismantling the state.
Yet others, wearing the Marxist and even ‘Naxalite’ garb, oppose revolutionary violence under the pretext of opposing 'anarchism', 'individual assassination' etc.
First of all, we do not subscribe to any theory of ‘excitative violence’ or to the so-called creed of mindless violence, and still less, to ‘individual assassination’. Violence, always and everywhere, is perpetrated by the landlords and the police on the rural poor. Everywhere in Bihar, it is the landlords who are armed to the teeth, and derive a sadistic pleasure by beating and killing poor peasants, burning their houses and raping their women. If one wishes to trace the creed of senseless violence, various landlord-Senas and the Bihar Police are the best sources. Pipra carnage, Bhagalpur blinding, Banjhi killings and the latest Arwal massacre—are these not sufficient evidences ?
As for the allegation about our banking on ‘excitative violence’ to rouse the masses, is it not clear enough that they are already on the move ? The point is not to rouse the masses with artificial stimulants, but to prevent them from taking hasty steps and retaliatory actions, to guide them along the road of mass movements and mass resistance. The point will be clear from the following comparison. After the Parasbigha incident, where upper-caste landlords had indiscriminately killed many people of a lower caste, one witnessed lower-caste people from many a neighbouring village assemble together and launch a retaliatory attack on one Dohia village inhabited by upper-caste people in the same brutal fashion, killing a number of people and molesting their women. It is to be noted that no Party organisation was there at that time.
Similarly after the Pipra carnage, in which as many as 13 persons — old, women and children alike — were killed or simply burnt alive by upper-caste landlords, harijans from neighbouring villages came together and started chalking out plans to attack a Kurmi village in exactly the same fashion. But the Party decisively intervened and prevented them from carrying out their plans. Our cadres were taunted as cowards and abused by the masses, some fighters of the armed unit threw away their rifles and left the unit, but the cadres remained steadfast, and acting according to the firm instructions of the Party Central Committee that in no way should any harm be done to innocent Kurmi peasants and their women and children, they did not allow any repetition of the Dohia episode. In subsequent months, one by one many culprits of the Pipra carnage were executed by our squads. If in the given stage of mass movement, awarding death penalties on persistent demands from the people to these infamous killers, each one of whom had murdered scores of people in cold blood and had either not been arrested at all or left scot-free by the courts due to ‘lack of evidences’, is considered ‘excitative violence’ or 'individual assassination', we are helpless.
Secondly, by any human logic whatsoever, the rural poor cannot be denied their right to organise their own resistance forces and to acquire arms so as to counter the attacks of the landlord-armies and even to form their own armed forces, particularly when the police machinery is openly siding with the landlords. No constitution or supreme court has ever accorded the right to revolution to the people. Still revolutions have taken place in world history. The Bolsheviks in Russia were officially branded as terrorists and criminals, and the Communists in China were called 'red bandits'. No wonder that in contrast to the ‘gentlemen communists’, Naxalites are labelled as criminals and all that in our country. We do recognise that the enemy is quite powerful and hence any direct, frontal and immature attack will prove suicidal. And that is why we lay stress on political tactics to change the balance of class forces, on the broadest mobilisation of the masses, on disintegrating the enemy forces, and above all, on the tactics of guerilla warfare, raising the struggle step by step.
Thirdly, if peasant struggle takes violent forms in Bihar, the root must be sought in the forms of oppression. The more severe, violent and brutal the oppression, the sharper will be the edge of the retaliation, no matter what this or that individual may wish. In the past, peasant rebels used to hit back in similar fashion and end up as dacoit leaders indulging in destructive violence. The intervention of the Communist Party has simply channelised this violence along constructive lines, and peasant rebels have been moulded into revolutionary vanguards, and passive peasant masses into active participants in the struggle for progressive social transformation. Violence is forced upon the masses by the reactionaries and not superimposed on 'inherently peaceful' mass movements by the Naxalites as the Gandhians would like everybody to believe.
And finally, when forced to engage in revolutionary violence as the last resort, the communists, unlike the Gandhians, do not refuse to accept the historical responsibility on the pretext that violence breeds hate and destruction. On the contrary, they believe that force is the midwife of a new society, that revolutionary violence revolutionises the society, freeing the minds of the people from filth, inertia, staleness and all other vices of the old society.
IT is well-known that there exist a number of private armies in rural Bihar — Bhoomi Sena, Lorik Sena, Brahmarshi Sena, Shoshit Dalit Samajvadi Sena, Shoshit Mukti Sena and so on and so forth. But there are different interpretations of this Sena phenomenon. For some, all these Senas are caste-armies, and they brand the Lal Sena? too, as the harijans’ private army. The CPI and the CPI(M) do differentiate between the private armies of the landlords and the Lal Sena, but they hasten to add, ‘It is the so-called Lal Sena’s extremist activities that have given the landlords the excuse to form their own armies’. And if you meet a political spokesman of the Bhoomi Sena, he will perhaps say, ‘The kisans’ lives and property are in danger, and the government has failed miserably in protecting them; so the kisans must themselves protect their lives and property’. The ministers and government officials, you will find, always wax eloquent about their determination to wipe out all these Senas (though at times, they even refuse to admit the existence of private armies), but in actual practice they launch repressive and punitive campaigns only against the Lal Sena or the ‘extremists’. And some outspoken landlord would declare, ‘The labourers have turned defiant. They are all possessed by the evil spirit of Naxalism. We will teach them a good lesson and drive out the evil spirit once and for all’. The rural poor, however, react quite the other way, ‘All these Senas are nothing but hirelings of the landlords, and they have made life a hell for us. The Lal Sena is quite a different proposition. They are our boys, our kith and kin. They have given us a new strength, a new life’. So once again it is the difference in various class positions that explains the whole thing.
Armed gangs of the landlords are nothing new in a semi-feudal society, and more so in Bihar. However, since late seventies, there have been certain changes. As the rural poor started getting organised, they came to face the attacks of the landed nobility and its hired goons. Gradually some criminal-turned-politicians (having feudal background and engaging in all sorts of criminal activities including smuggling, dacoity, arson, rape, killing etc.) took the lead and began to organise armed gangs under popular names so as to mobilise, or at least, to attract their respective caste-men. Krishna Singh ( a Bhumihar and a one-time Congress(I) MLA ) with his Brahmarshi Sena and Anand Mohan Singh (a Rajput, and a leader of anti-reservation movement) with his Krantikari Samajvadi Sena are the two pioneers of the Sena culture in Bihar. Seemingly enjoying the support of their general caste-men, these ringleaders are in constant touch with the landed nobility, readily lending a ‘helping hand’ whenever such a ‘necessity’ arises.
Then comes the second category of Senas comprising Dinesh Yadav's Shoshit Dalit Samajvadi Sena, Sheonandan Paswan's Shoshit Mukti Sena, and Ram Vilas Paswan's Dalit Sena. All these three persons are Lok Dal leaders. Now, why should Lok Dal at all need a Sena, and that too, not one but three Senas ? Some consider it as the result of personal/factional feud within the Lok Dal, while some others see in it the Lok Dal’s policy of distributing its eggs in various baskets. Anyway, for all practical purposes, these Senas are all paper-Sends, and at the most they have attained the status of political formations without acquiring any military character so far.
In contrast to the Senas belonging to the first two categories, the Bhoomi Sena and the Lorik Sena, the two Senas comprising the third category, are quite often in the news, and of them, the Bhoomi Sena in particular has developed as a veritable politico-military formation. Readers may like to know the background, character and activities of these two Senas in detail, and as such we are discussing them separately. This will be followed by a comparative account of the Lal Sena as well.
‘HARIJANO ka man barh gaya hai (harijans have turned defiant)’, bemoans the landed gentry. This lamentation is shared by upper-caste peasants and a section of intermediate-caste well-off peasants as well. Some advocates of class struggle, too, complain, “It’s a harijan movement pure and simple. Class struggle has nothing to do with it”. Accordingly, some people portray the struggle as a purely harijan-Kurmi conflict, some others view it as a clash between the harijans and the Yadavas, yet others interpret it as a caste war against all upper-castes in general.
It is a fact that the harijans in general are very much in the movement. So far as the intermediate castes are concerned, the economically lower group actively takes part in the movement; the middle group extends its support and sympathy; and among the well-off, a small section does occasionally support the movement, a large section supports actions against upper-caste big bosses as well as actions which strike at upper-caste privileges, and only a tiny section of highly ambitious rich peasants shows hostility. Certain exceptions are, however, there among the Kurmis and Yadavas. In Poonpoon-Masaurhi area of Patna district where Kurmi landlords are dominant and where there has emerged a tiny section of highly ambitious Kurmi peasants, even the large majority of Kurmi middle peasants remain under the influence of the enemy. The Yadavas in Nalanda-Patna-Gaya border belt vacillate between the reactionary camp and the camp of agrarian movements. Our consistent struggle against the arch-reactionary sections of landlords and their armed gangs, our constant attempts to differentiate between various sections of the enemy and to adopt separate policies towards different sections, rectification of our old mistakes including the tendency to take instant revenge, and above all, our constant efforts to involve the middle peasants in a broad-based peasant movement — all these factors, coupled with the middle peasants’ very own nightmarish experience of fascist caste gangs, have accelerated the dilution of caste solidarity that was earlier so pronounced, particularly among the Kurmis and to some extent among the Yadavas.
It is but quite understandable that initially when a struggle is launched against a tiny section of upper-caste/intermediate-caste landlords, they would try to mobilise their fellow caste-men behind them and this gives caste form to an essentially class battle. The caste appearance is further strengthened by the fact that one single caste, viz., the harijans, constitutes the predominant segment of the fighting peasantry. And this is quite natural since the harijans form the bulk of agrarian labourers (nearly 30 to 40 per cent of the population of agrarian labourers in the areas of peasant struggle) and more so, since they are the worst sufferers of both class and caste oppression.
The militant awakening of this most oppressed community, a communtity that has been denied for centuries even the barest of freedom, and its increasing participation in local Kisan Sabha bodies or armed propaganda squads is one of the most significant features of the ongoing peasant struggle in Bihar, not only from the point of view of establishing agrarian labourers’ and poor peasants’ hegemony over the peasant movement, but from the point of view of cultural revolution as well. What we are witnessing in rural Bihar is nothing short of a great cultural revolution. A strong foundation is being laid through these struggles for a future society that will not pooh-pooh one of its toiling communities as ‘outcaste’ or ‘untouchable’.
Moreover, these peasant struggles also provide living examples of the vanguard role being played by the agrarian labourers and poor peasants in agrarian movements. In other words, they serve as stunning refutations of all those theories that refuse to accept agrarian labourers and poor peasants as the vanguard contingent on the plea that in a semi-feudal economy, these classes remain too burdened with numerous ties of bondage with the landlords to give the lead, ascribing that role to the middle peasants who are all supposed to be ‘independent proprietors’.
However, caste sentiments do exist among these classes, too, and at times, lumpen and casteist elements among them are indeed able to derail the movement by cashing in on these sentiments. Particularly, the reformist policies of the government have over the years given rise to some harijan elements in almost each and every village who serve as middlemen to the block officials, are associated with the Congress and are constantly trying to mobilise the harijans on caste basis. Hence, carrying on the peasant movement along anti-feudal lines on the basis of broad peasant unity is at the same time also a question of waging a relentless political struggle against all such tendencies. And herein again lies the role of the Party.
In contrast to the landlords' politics of caste-based mobilisation, mobilisation of broad peasant masses along class lines is a very complex process and cannot be achieved overnight. But the protracted peasant movement in Bihar has made it unmistakably clear that it is not caste, but class, that is the growing basis of the mobilisation of the peasantry.
The class interests behind the landlords’ politics of caste- based mobilisation are also becoming increasingly clear. For example, when Laddu Singh (whose family owns 100 acres of land and who once held an important position in the CPI) and Bipin Bihari Singh (secretary of the Poonpoon block committee of the CPI, he too owns 100 acres of land) led the infamous Pipra carnage, they certainly did that from a definite class position, even regarding it as a veritable ‘class struggle’. Same was the case with Divakar Sharma and Jayaprakash Singh of the Congress(I), Subhash Chandra Singh, vice-president of the Patna district Bharatiya Janata Party, and Sidheshwar Singh, secretary of the Bikram block committee of the CPI, when they all forgot their political differences to unitedly organise an armed procession of landlords at Bikram on 22 October, 1981, defying Section 144. And then there is the example of Ramashraya Singh, the CPI MP, who is the well-known ‘brain’ behind the Lorik Sena. The more the class interests of these caste leaders get exposed, the more rapidly will erode their ability of caste-based mobilisation. And that is precisely what is happening in the areas of peasant struggle in rural Bihar.
FOR the landlords and the government, the rural poor are the real ‘trouble-makers’. That is why, despite all tall talks about the welfare and upliftment of the harijans and other weaker sections of the society, it is they who become the first and foremost victims of each and every punitive campaign let loose by the landlords and the government. Their houses are ransacked and set ablaze, their women raped and the men arrested, beaten and killed indiscriminately. Their leaders are put behind the bars under the NSA or Bihar Crime Control Act, or simply killed in fake encounters (like the case of Dr. Gopal Prasad in Hilsa, Nalanda, or Jiut and Sahato, who were killed when asleep). In contrast, one never hears of raids on Bhoomi Sena dens, or of arrests of Bhoomi Sena chieftains. All police repression is directed almost exclusively against the rural poor, simply because they dare to aspire for a better life and have learnt to press for their rights.
As against this view of the establishment, those who are on the side of agrarian movements look upon the rural poor as the vanguards. Of course, they do not deny that the rural poor, too, have their share of drawbacks. The curse of casteism apart, there are various other corrupting influences of the semi-feudal society (like gambling, liquor addiction, theft etc.). But with the development of the movement and the organisation, the poor are fast ridding themselves of these vices.
Throughout these long years of struggle, it is the rural poor who have proved to be the most consistent force standing at the head of the movement — be it the period of only underground and illegal activities as in the past or of both legal and illegal activities as in the present, be it the period of severe repression or of widespread upsurge. It is they who have always borne the brunt of all barbarous repression, and have yet stood firmly in the forefront—whether in elections, in demonstrations and rallies on general demands, in resistance movements against police atrocities and landlords’ attacks, in struggles for democratic rights (the movement for the withdrawal of the Bihar Press Bill for instance), or in various other programmes of the Indian People’s Front. They are the real vanguards, they are the nucleus in all local organisations of the Kisan Sabha and the Party as well as in the armed units.
SOME critics of the movement like to interpret it merely in terms of violence and killings. Even some sympathisers, too, see only the fighting spirit of the masses, the heroism and all that, and are quite unaware of the great strides made by this unprecedented movement in transforming the rural society. Let us, therefore, have a look at the major achievements.
1. Organising the Peasants in the Kisan Sabha
2. Dealing Heavy Blows to the Feudal Hegemony
3. Economic Offensive against the Landed Gentry
4. Exercising All-round Control of the Peasantry through Village Committees
5. Maintaining and Developing Peasants' Armed Forces and Combating Reactionary Gangs
6. Drawing Peasants in the Forefront of the Struggle for Democracy
7. Drawing Peasants in United Movement against the Enemy
8. Conducting Widespread Political Propaganda
9. Helping Women Fight Shoulder to Shoulder with their Menfolk
10. Transforming Caste Conflicts into Class Struggle
11. Checking Communalism
12. Ushering in a Great Change in Socio-cultural Life
13. Developing Mutual Cooperation
THE Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha (BPKS) came into existence on 23 February 1981. Its formation was declared in Patna in a mammoth rally of 15,000 peasants coming from different districts of Bihar, where it resolved to carry on struggles on the basis of its 24-point charter of demands. Its core of leadership was composed of (a) peasant leaders and cadres already active in the ongoing peasant movement, (b) some freedom fighter-turned-communists, (c) a section of the forces that had spearheaded the 1974 Bihar movement, (d) dissidents from organisations and parties like the Marxist Coordination Committee, the CPI, the CPI(M), the Lok Dal, the Socialists and the Janata Party, and (e) certain leaders and cadres from various harijan organisations and the Shoshit Samaj Dal (an organisation of backward castes, mainly Koiris). These leaders hail from all classes of peasant families, and include rural intellectuals and youths from all castes.
In its initial years, the BPKS had to face great obstacles from within, too. Some opportunist elements managed to make their way into the organisation, even occupying some leading posts. They advocated the concept of ‘independent and self-sufficient village community’, preached the Utopian idea of avoiding the use of modern machinery and chemical fertilisers in agriculture and laid the greatest emphasis on the rural-urban contradiction. Instead of advancing the struggle of the peasantry towards revolutionary land reforms and towards building a modern, new-democratic society on the basis of worker-peasant alliance, this simply amounted to dragging the peasants along the path of retrogression. In the name of peasant unity, they refused to recognise class differentiation within the peasantry and rejected all wage struggles. They were opposed to resistance struggles — even going so far as to put the Lal Sena at par with the Bhoomi Sena — and to peasants becoming partners in a democratic political front. They even undermined the significance of anti-feudal mass economic struggles, and instead emphasised 'constructive work'. Even local-level struggles were ruled out on the plea that it would hamper the development of the organisation.
Fighting against these wrong tendencies throughout the organisation, the Kisan Sabha gained further political maturity, and was able to retain its leadership over the peasant movement. On March 10, 11 and 12, 1984, it held its first State Conference in Patna in which 130 delegates from 16 districts of Bihar participated and the BPKS adopted a comprehensive programme (see Appendix). After the Conference, reorganisation followed at various levels.
Below the State Council and executive body, the BPKS has district councils and district committees, area committees, panchayat or local committees, and lastly village committees. The lower-level bodies enjoy a fair amount of autonomy in taking diverse initiatives in keeping with their conditions. In areas where the contradiction with the enemy is quite sharp, the leaders and ranks all have to learn the art of quickly switching their mode of functioning from legal to illegal and from open to secret or semi-secret, and of changing the form of mass movement in conformity with its natural development. There should be no place for rigidity, for whenever rigidity creeps in, these peasant bodies either lose initiative or just get liquidated.
By now, the influence of the Kisan Sabha and its sister peasant organisations has spread over 26 districts of Bihar out of 38, with varying degrees of organisation and work. It has its district committees in 13 districts. And in terms of men, it exercises its influence over nearly 25 lakhs of rural population, the majority being agrarian labourers, and poor and lower-middle peasants. Presently, it is trying to bring a larger number of middle peasants and also upper-caste people under its fold, and is attaining some successes, too.
THE peasants have dealt heavy blows to the feudal hegemony in rural Bihar. In fact, in the areas of struggle certain forms of feudal oppression have already become a matter of the past. The rural poor have asserted as a parallel force in these areas and are throwing up strong challenges to the feudal hegemony through various measures of propaganda, agitation and resistance.
The most common forms of propaganda and agitation are mass meetings and processions, through which various crimes committed by the landlords are exposed and condemned, and warnings issued to the culprits. Then there are methods like deputations, dharnas, demonstrations, gheraos etc. which are aimed at putting pressure on the administration to take, action against the landlords’ atrocities.
Peasant resistance is also fast becoming a common feature in the areas of struggle. Peasants in hundreds and thousands come out, with or without arms, to fight back any offensive launched by the landed gentry and their musclemen. Where the organisation is strong, and certain armed strength is there, peasants go in for direct action. For instance, they take over village community properties and establish a new management with proper representation from different sections, keeping out the corrupt gentry and officials; they intervene in the distribution of rations and force the officials to carry out reforms under the supervision of the peasant committee. Finally, they themselves deal with different cases of landlords' offences against the people and award wide-ranging punishments depending upon the gravity of the crime. To get a proper idea about the working of this process, let us consider the following popular forms of punishment.
Gherao : Peasants gherao the house of the erring landlord, call him out and make him promise that neither will he himself commit any further offence nor will he ever side with the offenders.
Mass raid : Peasants en masse raid the house of the landlord, seize grains and distribute the same among themselves. Guns are also seized. In many cases, armed groups of people would appear all on a sudden and ask landlords to surrender their guns. In such cases they do not intend to kill anybody. Some landlords readily comply with these orders, while others make protests. In latter cases, the peasants/armed groups concerned conduct a thorough search and seize the things asked for. They do not touch anything else and do not misbehave with anybody either.
Levy : Peasants (numbering 50 to 1,000) approach landlords and ask them to pay levy. In case of drought or famine, the levy so obtained is distributed among the peasants. Otherwise, a portion of it is preserved for meeting future requirements (helping peasants in case of acute illness/death/marriage etc. in their families), another portion is spent on purchasing arms for self-defence, while yet another portion is earmarked for organisational expenditures. Levy can also be looked upon as a kind of penalty somewhat less harsh than fines.
Let us cite some examples. During the 1981 drought, 200 peasants assembled before the granary of ex-Chief Minister of Bihar, Sardar Harihar Singb, at Bagengola (Bhojpur district) and collected 400 maunds of grains as levy. But another landlord, Baijnath Pandey fired upon the peasants when approached for levy. The peasants retaliated with stones and bricks. He managed to flee away, but his son died in the melee. The peasants then seized his gun and confiscated 100 maunds of grains.
Fines : In some cases, peasants impose fines on the landlords for committing such offences as setting fire to peasants' houses and looting their property, defying the orders of the peasant committee, misbehaving with women, physically torturing some peasant, collaborating with the police to suppress the organisation and so on. According to the gravity of the offence, the amount of the fine is fixed anywhere between Rs. 100 to Rs. 10,000. Some landlords bow down and pray for mercy. In the case of others, peasants realise the same by seizing a part of their crops or by taking some other measures.
Banishment : It is a kind of self-imposed punishment for those landlords who flee to nearby district headquarters to save themselves from the wrath of the peasants, without being issued any decree to that effect by the peasant organisation.
Execution : It is the extreme and ultimate form of punishment awarded by the peasants to only those landlords who refuse to mend their ways, carry on unabated their criminal offences against the people, and try to unleash a veritable reign of terror in the entire region. Such killings serve as a warning to all such potential tyrants, put a check on all landlord-sponsored atrocities, rouse the peasants in general and generate confidence among the backward and vacillating elements in particular. However, this ultimate form of punishment is awarded rather sparingly, subject to the consideration of the development of people’s movement, and is generally carried out by armed squads.
Let us take the example of Mahendra Singh of village Amat (under Hilsa P. S. in Nalanda district). A landlord owning more than 100 bighas of land, he was a veritable terror in the entire region, beating labourers at will, forcing them to work and ransacking their houses. At times he even used to run his horse over these poor labourers, injuring and killing them. A ‘veteran hero’ of many an attack on the rural poor’s hamlets, he was ultimately punished by death.
MASS economic struggles of the peasants have mainly centred on questions like seizure of crops and land, control over irrigation and fishing facilities, and wages. There are also stray cases of movements for sharecropping rights and against usury and mortgage. Besides these, peasants have also raised demands for remunerative prices for their crops as well as for giving priority to middle and small holding peasants in matters of various agricultural facilities, though movements on such demands have not yet gained much of a momentum.
Mass economic struggles have been found to erupt generally at area level, whereupon the Kisan Sabha, acting from above, raises them to district/State level.
Land movement : Till date, such movements have been generally concentrated on the question of vested land, government land, ahars, tanks etc., all normally under the occupation of landlords and rich peasants.
To begin with, peasants petition concerned officials and stage demonstrations before their offices. But more often than not, such steps simply go unheeded, and then peasants, in their hundreds and thousands, gather on the concerned Plot of land and proclaim their possession by posting a red flag on it. Things, however, do not stop here, for, peasants have to face repeated attacks by landlords and their goons, and of course, intervention by the ‘custodians’ of the law. Such attacks are naturally met with active resistance by the peasants. Meanwhile, the land continues to change hands : often, if one side cultivates the land, crops are harvested by the other and vice versa. And this goes on till the land is finally brought under the peasants’ control. But even this does not mark the end, as government officials make a last ditch attempt to take away the gains — to divide the people they issue parchas (ownership documents) for such captured plots in the name of persons other than those who have already come to occupy them. Peasants resist such conspiracies and demand that parchas be issued in accordance with the list prepared by their committee. And thus the struggle never really ceases — acquired through struggle, the land has also to be constantly defended through struggle.
For distributing such captured plots of land, land distribution committees are formed and land is distributed according to certain pre-determined policies (see Appendix). In the absence of such land distribution committees, government officials often succeed in dividing the people over the issue of land distribution.
When ahars and tanks under the occupation of landlords are captured, they are made open to all concerned for their daily use and also for irrigation purposes. So far as fishing is concerned, peasants are allowed to fish for purposes of consumption only. In the event of fishing on a large scale, every family gets a share irrespective of its participation in the process of fishing. A part of the income derived from such fishing is reserved as struggle-fund, and the rest is deposited as levy to higher organisations.
There are also certain other types of cases involving land. For example, some landlords and rich peasants often forcibly occupy certain plots of land, originally belonging to others, under some pretext or another (mortgage etc.)—peasants are forced to cultivate their own land as sharecroppers. Through land movement, many such plots have been successfully restored to their original owners.
Crop-seizure movement : Movement for seizure of crops and confiscation of grains is waged against tyrant landlords and, in some cases, also against certain reactionary rich peasants (see Appendix). Such movements are definite expressions of the economic offensive against the status quo in the countryside, and apart from providing sustenance to the starving rural poor they also help in accumulating a reserve fund for future struggles.
Wage movement : In wage movements, generally the demand is that of enforcing minimum wages as fixed by the government. But in actual practice, a compromise is struck somewhere between the statutory minimum rate and the existing rate. But even this turns out to be a very complex process. Not only do the landlords and their musclemen try to suppress the movement with their guns, but they also try to wriggle themselves out through such tactical tricks as hiring labourers from outside and leasing out land to certain rich and middle peasants. Corrupt government officials also generally take the side of the landlords.
It has been found that wage movements tend to succeed in such places where
(a) the landlords and rich peasants are unorganised and labour is relatively scarce;
(b) wage labourers are well organised and enjoy a close contact with middle peasants/strata forged through various types of movement, and where there has already emerged a force capable of leading the movement and resisting the enemy’s onslaughts ;
(c) the people of neighbouring areas are ready to extend their active support and cooperation, or where the movement has begun simultaneously in a number of villages, and a proper leadership is there to coordinate this movement;
(d) alongside taking all legal steps, including exerting pressure on the administration from above, there has also emerged a fighting force from below;
(e) the struggle is concentrated against a few landlords who are, moreover, totally boycotted by all other sections of rural toilers like the blacksmiths, potters, carpenters, washermen, barbers, cobblers and so on, and the middle peasants/strata are dealt with through negotiations and compromises; and
(f) the landowners are not so organised and after the strike the peasant organisation itself seeks some kind of negotiation to be held in the presence of, say, the mukhiya or some government officials.
Ruling out all negotiations and compromises or trying to clinch the issue simply through guns proves harmful to the movement.
Due to widespread wage-movements, some increases in wages have been effected throughout the region. In place of the earlier wage rate of 1 seer (nearly 950 grams) of food-grains or Rs. 3 per day, the rate presently prevailing is 1'5 kgs to 4 kgs of foodgrains or Rs. 5 to Rs. 10 per day (varying from place to place).
IN the main areas of struggle, village committees of the Kisan Sabha have come to assume the role of a veritable ‘parallel government’, exercising all-round control on behalf of the broad masses of the peasantry. They perform the twin tasks of uniting the peasant masses and mobilising them against the enemy's onslaughts. In particular, the village committees
(i) exercise control over all public properties and public affairs;
(ii) fix wages for agricultural labourers and shares for sharecroppers (in some cases, even sharecroppers are also fixed by the committee);
(iii) impose fines and levies;
(iv) curb theft, and punish the culprits and their patrons;
(v) take up reform and developmental programmes;
(vi) resolve disputes among the peasantry (there has been a considerable decrease in the number of diwani and faujdari (criminal) cases in local and district courts in the main areas of peasant struggle);
(vii) exercise supervision over block officials, mukhiyas and sarpanches;
(viii) mobilise the masses in struggles against landlords and the police; and
(ix) implement all calls and programmes put forward by the Kisan Sabha.
To gain a better understanding of the development and functioning of the village committees, let us take the example of one village committee in Gaya.
The village comprises 40 households, mainly middle peasants and a few landless and poor peasants. Both Hindus and Muslims reside in this village. The Yadavas, Koiris and harijans form the bulk of the Hindu population, the Yadavas being in the majority. To start with, one Kisan Sabha cadre organised three rounds of village-level meetings at intervals of 8 to 10 days. He explained the role of the village committee to the village people, following which a seven-men committee was elected through a village-level meeting. Of these 7 members, 2 were landless peasants, 1 poor peasant, 2 lower-middle peasants, while the other 2 came from middle peasant families. Caste/communitywise. 4 of them were Yadavas, 1 Muslim and the rest harijans. The committee-members then elected their three office bearers — president, secretary and treasurer. The secretary is an educated youth. It was decided that
(a) the committee-members would meet once in a week;
(b) a village-level meeting would be organised every fortnight;
(c) a Gram Raksha Dal (village self-defence corps) would be set up, comprising mainly the village youth, which would organise regular night-watch; and
(d) a regular, two-pronged fund-system would be developed, which would require
(i) every household to daily set aside a handful of rice — the fund so accumulated would be used mainly for self-defence purposes and partly for advancing interest-free loans to the villagers in times of acute crisis — and,
(ii) middle peasants to give 1 per cent of their seasonal production and landless/poor peasants a fixed amount of five kgs of foodgrains per season as levy to the organisation, part of which would be deposited with the higher committee.
PEASANTS’ mass resistance against police repression and landlords’ attacks is one of the most important features of the peasant movement in Bihar, particularly in the districts of Patna, Gaya, Nalanda, Aurangabad and Bhojpur.
Gohar (armed gathering for confrontation ) has always been a common phenomenon in rural Bihar. But in recent years, its complexion has undergone a phenomenal change. In earlier gohars militants among the rural poor used to serve as cannon-fodder in the internal conflicts of the propertied classes. Initially when the revolutionary communists were rather weak, the rural rich tried the same weapon against them too. But in today's changed situation, they can no longer do that. The revolutionary communists today are much stronger, and above all, the poor now side with the poor. This peasant gohar is a new glorious phenomenon in the history of peasant movements in Bihar. It creates very favourable conditions for developing armed forces under the leadership of the Party, for creating ‘parallel government’ of the peasants and other sections of the people, and for transforming each and every peasant into a fighter. It has all the characteristics of a peasant insurrection-in-embryo. During these gohars a large number of peasants, sometimes whole villages — men, women and children alike — temporarily plunge into a heroic battle against armed police, spontaneously erecting barricades, lying down in face of firing, and counter-attacking with whatever arms available to them.
The mass resistance against the police at Kunai on 25 December, 1985, may be considered as a typical example. The village remained a veritable battle-field throughout the day, with over 5,000 people determined to enter the village to erect a column in memory of their beloved martyrs and armed police surrounding the village to prevent their entry. Batches of people like wave after wave tried to enter the village from several directions. The police charged lathis at close quarters, but the masses still encircled them; they threw teargas shells, but the youth lobbed the unexploded shells back on the policemen, finally, the police opened fire, only to find the masses lying down en masse. Many policemen got injured in this day-long encounter, and on our side two poor peasants lost their lives, a loss, which, considering the proportions of the encounter, must be regarded as remarkably moderate, thanks to the experienced tackling of the police on the part of the masses. In one of the largest First Information Reports ever recorded, the police wrote that these people were all ‘Naxalites’ for they seemed to be ‘so well trained’ to face police firing !
In the course of these unprecedented resistance struggles, there have emerged three broad types of peasants' armed forces. Though their types are different they play a well-defined complementary role as the backbone of this resistance.
(i) Village self-defence corps : In almost every village, or more precisely in every two out of three villages in the areas of struggle, there can be found 10 to 15 people who rush with arms, mainly traditional ones, whenever any attack is made by the local reactionaries. It is such people who constitute the village self-defence corps. They protect the leaders and activists of the movement from the goons of the enemy. In normal times they take part in production and conduct night-watch.
(ii) Local armed squads : Comprising 5 to 7 militant youths from the village self-defence corps of 2 to 3 villages, these squads conduct revolutionary propaganda in the surrounding villages and keep the militant youths of these villages active and alert. They are generally aimed with fire-arms, and while resisting police operations or combating armed gangs of the landlords it is they who play the vanguard role, coordinating all the self-defence corps of nearby villages. Often they take independent initiative to disarm a notorious tyrant or a gangster, seizing his arms. So far such squads have seized no less than 500 guns in the main areas of struggle. At times a few members of such squads would march like an armed propaganda squad, get necessary training and take part in propaganda campaigns as well as in armed actions. They generally engage in production, but give priority to the work of the organisation. In short, these squads form the core of self-defence corps and act as links between self-defence corps and regular armed units.
(iii) Regular armed units : Small, compact and mobile in nature, these units form the core of all the armed forces of the people and are the chief architects of the peasants’ resistance struggle and resistance forces. They are composed of fighters who have left their hearth and home to work permanently for revolution. They operate over definite areas which are divided into interior and exterior boundaries. The interior boundaries cover areas where they take up intensive political work, while areas within the exterior boundaries are used for purposes of shifting / retreating / moving in circles etc. so as to retain military manoeuvrability. Unit incharges are appointed to look after the military and political work in each unit. Displaying keen sense of discipline and loyalty to the Party, these units work in close cooperation with Party organisers of the concerned areas and under full command and planning of the district committees of the Party. Only rarely do they violate some Party decisions and disregard the instructions of the Party representative. Recently when a district committee of the Party ordered a unit to return the gun seized from a Bhumihar landlord as this gun had not been used against the people and the seizure was contrary to the Party's policies, the unit members protested this decision en masse and lodged a written complaint with the Party Central Committee against the decision, and the agitated unit incharge even deposited his rifle and resigned from the unit. They did all this, but only after implementing the Party decision. However, in subsequent discussions they realised the implications of the decision of the Party and the incharge, too, resumed his duties.
Often such units are split up into parts with each member being put at the head of what is called an Armed Propaganda Squad, formed with selected elements from the local armed squads. The armed propaganda squads are entrusted with the task of undertaking propaganda campaigns in definite areas for definite periods.
To carry on fierce struggle against class enemies who are armed to the teeth and to defend themselves from the operations of the police, these units need modern fire-arms. And the main mode of procuring such arms has been overrunning police camps and attacking mobile police patrols. Generally they do not kill policemen, except when it becomes absolutely necessary for the success of the operation or for their own security. Since 1977, in all 78 modern fire-arms have been snatched in 17 actions against police camps/patrols. However, a few of these arms have been seized back by the enemy.
Peasants’ armed forces adopt different tactics in combating and smashing different reactionary armed gangs. Here are a few examples of how the armed forces deal with various categories of reactionary armed gangs.
Armed groups belonging to individual landlords : To begin with, the masses are mobilised in struggles on socio-economic issues against the landlord, punitive measures are adopted against him and warnings are issued to his muscle-men, and through their own castemen and relatives they are even sought to be persuaded to mend their ways. If all these measures fail and the landlord still remains adamant, he is executed and his gang smashed, The killing of Keshari Sing and his gangmen in Kako area of Jehanabad is a case in point. This tyrant landlord (also a mukhiya) not only refused to mend his ways, but turned into a righthand man of notorious smuggler king and Congress (I) MP, Mahendra Singh, and even joined hands with Krishna Singh’s Brahmarshi Sena. So on 19 April 1985, his jeep was ambushed and he was killed alongwith his gangmen.
Individual criminal gangs : Take the example of Sheoji Singh of Sandesh P. S. (Bhojpur district). His landholding is not much, seven bighas, but he runs at least eight illegal country-liquor dens. And furthermore, this lumpen element has an armed gang of eight and there is no crime on earth that this gang has not committed. To counter it, initially we distributed leaflets, conducted mass meetings, staged demonstrations, and even a case was lodged with the court. The people were also mobilised in harvesting crops from his field. But the gang’s crimes continued unabated. Ultimately, our armed unit openly attacked him in the marketplace, but he managed to make a narrow escape, thanks to the intervention of the police.
Fascist gangs masquerading as peasant organisations : The Kshetriya Kisan Mahasabha is a case in point. Mahendra Singh of Amat was its founder-president. Standing parallel to this so-called Mahasabha, the BPKS continued to propagate its programme and launch struggles on diverse issues. Peasants’ armed resistance was also widely organised. Later on, Mahendra Singh was arrested and killed, and his lieutenant Umesh Singh and three others were attacked and their arms seized. Thereafter, nobody heard about the Kshetriya Kisan Mahasabha. Many peasants who were earlier deceived by that organisation are now under the influence of the BPKS.
Fascist gangs controlled by lumpen politicians : The case of ‘Kallu gang’ of Vaishali district can be cited as an instance. Kallu had managed to make his way into the Marxist-Leninist movement and sought to sabotage the movement from within. He even conducted secret killings within the organisation before being finally thrown out. But expelled, he quickly formed an armed gang of his own, recruiting some lumpen and criminal elements. Till date, this gang has killed at least half-a-dozen supporters and leaders of the peasant movement. Attempts are on to develop mass resistance against this gang.
Bhoomi Sena : “Hasten the process of disintegration of the Bhoomi Sena, win over the middle peasants/strata and bring rich peasants under control, isolate the gangsters from the Kurmi masses and smash them” — such is the policy adopted by the local Party organisation in combating the Bhoomi Sena. Widespread propaganda has been conducted among the Kurmi masses, appeals have been issued on behalf of enlightened Kurmi peasants, and intervention of various democratic organisations and enlightened personalities, particularly from within the Kurmi caste, has been sought.
The Kisan Sabha also took some reform measures. Meanwhile, the Kurmi peasants, too, got disenchanted with the activities of the Bhoomi Sena. At the same time, peasants under our leadership firmly kept up their socio-political and economic offensive against the ringleaders, resistance continued unabated, and at least 11 ringleaders were punished by death. All these factors have contributed in hastening the disintegration of this gang.
But instead of resting content with this development, the Patna District Committee of our Party has issued a fresh appeal to the Kurmi peasants, urging them to foil any attempt of reviving the Bhoomi Sena and to fight shoulder to shoulder with the rural poor (see Appendix).
Incidentally, in a village that was once a Bhoomi Sena den, the village committee of the Kisan Sabha has success. fully won over the middle section of the Kurmi peasants, established control over rich peasants, and made even landlords (barring one or two) submit before the committee. It stipulated the following conditions :
(i) Sever all connections with the Bhoomi Sena, in case of any complaint, lodge it with the village committee.
(ii) Stop forthwith all oppressive activities like beating or abusing the poor or lower-caste people,
(iii) Pay wages as fixed by the committee,
(iv) Deposit all your guns/rifles with the committee (in the case of landlords).
(v) Pay penalty for damages done to the people (applicable only to landlords and rich peasants).
Lorik Sena : Many progressive leading figures, intellectuals and mass leaders from among the Yadavas were mobilised to undertake padayatras etc. and the Party members explained the Party’s policies among the masses of Yadava peasants. Mass organisations, too, took various initiatives to diffuse the prevailing tension. They convened a meeting of some prominent Yadavas and gave a patient hearing to the grievances of the Yadava community, admitted mistakes committed during the implementation of certain policies and reiterated the principled stand of the organisation, and highlighted the achievements of united struggles, contrasting these against the harms done by the Lorik Sena. All of them arrived at a shared opinion and decided to work for restoring unity.
The lumpen armed gang did not receive enough support from the Yadava masses either, and in certain villages the masses even reprimanded them.
All these measures, coupled with certain favourable political developments, have hastened the disintegration of the Lorik Sena to a considerable extent.
PEASANTS are fighting not only against the feudal forces, the bureaucracy and the police, but also against the anti-people repressive acts and laws of the state.
They are partners of a revolutionary-democratic front, the IPF. They stand for the rights of the weaker and oppressed nationalities or national minorities and oppose state repression on them (as in Assam, Jharkhand etc.). They oppose persecution of and discrimination against various religious minorities (as in the case with the Sikhs and Muslims). They actively participate in all democratic movements (be it against the Bihar Press Bill or against price-rise). In turn, they enjoy the support of other revolutionary and democratic forces all over the country, with the revolutionary workers of Bihar standing in the forefront.
Upholding the great banner of worker-peasant alliance, the revolutionary workers of Bihar have extended their sincere support and solidarity to the struggle of the peasantry. Many industrial workers, while on leave, have done a good job in organising peasant associations in their villages, workers’ teams have visited the countryside to conduct revolutionary-democratic propaganda, and in industrial centres of Bihar peasant struggles have become the main agenda of discussion among the workers, the majority of whom are still organically linked with the countryside.
The 1985 Assembly elections proved to be a great test for the peasants’ commitment to the banner of revolutionary-democracy, and they came out of this test with flying colours. Defying severe police repression and attacks by the landlords’ armed gangs, the peasants in the areas of struggle cast the first ever vote in their life in favour of the IPF candidates. To take the example of Hilsa, the Front candidate there remained behind the bars throughout the period of electioneering, election meeting in his favour were all disrupted by the police (Mr. Raja Ram, a general secretary of the IPF was arrested from one such meeting after being severely beaten up), and to top it all, there was constant combing operation — but defying the shoot-at-sight order against the Naxalites, the peasants turned out in their thousands on the polling day to vote for the Front candidate. Throughout the counting the IPF candidate was leading over his Congress(I) rival, but through manipulations at the last moment he was placed second, with 21,000 votes, and the Congress candidate was declared elected, with 23,000 votes. (The upper-caste SDO who was in charge of the counting later confessed that he could not have possibly allowed the victory to the IPF candidate, and SP of Nalanda, Ramchhabila Singh, has been picked up for the President’s Medal this year !) In Sahar block of Bhojpur, where booth capturing could not take place, the IPF candidate led over his Congress rival by over 5,000 votes. But in the other part of the constituency, in Tarari block, all booths were captured to see the Congress candidate home. In the village of the notorious landlord Jwala Singh, the Congress candidate got 3,800 votes and only a single token vote was awarded to the IPF candidate.
In many other constituencies the IPF candidates were either jailed or warranted, and all possible means were employed to block their election propaganda. Still, in many constituencies of Central Bihar, the IPF candidates could poll votes in the range of 9,000 to 21,000. While all the champions of parliamentary democracy — Congress(I), Lok Dal and CPI alike — were busy capturing booths
THE peasants of Bihar are still under the influence of a number of political parties and organisations. In such a situation, the leaders of the peasant movement constantly strive for the unity of the peasants irrespective of their party affiliations, in the struggle against the common enemy. This does not mean that they gloss over the differences among these parties and organisations. To be sure, they do explain the political differences to the peasants, but they do not let these differences come in the way of extending support to, and standing by the side of, the peasants belonging to other organisations whenever they are attacked by the enemy or whenever they launch any movement against the enemy. The Kisan Sabha lays great stress on developing joint movements with various other revolutionary peasant organisations and till date, it has participated in many such joint protest rallies and demonstrations. Efforts are also on to develop united movement with the Lok Dal at local levels.
THE widespread political propaganda through the ongoing peasant movement is enlightening even the most backward sections of the peasantry with revolutionary politics. Members of the armed units, peasant activists, and even general peasant masses in the areas of struggle display keen political interest. Peasant cadres/activists keep themselves abreast of all latest national and international developments, and to constantly raise their ideological and political level, Party classes are held at regular intervals.
The children in these areas can be seen moving around in the lanes, shouting revolutionary slogans. In their games, too. they form two parties : the zamindars and the Lal Fauz (Red Army). Both sides arm themselves with toy guns made of tree-branches. The fight begins. The commander of the landlords' army falls down after a brief battle while the members of his army start running helter-skelter, with the Lal Fauz chasing them all around.
Simple slogans, speeches, anti-government demonstrations, celebrations, observance of memorable days, various programmes of the people’s front, elections, popular songs and dramas have all helped make such great strides in imparting political education to the broad masses of the peasantry within such a short span of time.
IN each and every case of struggle, particularly in resistance struggles, peasant women have played a very significant role. They have remained in the forefront of all militant struggles, despite having to bear the brunt of all repressive campaigns. They disarmed policemen at Kaither-kalan ( Bhojpur district) and actively participated in the raid on Bikram police station (1981) and in getting their arrested comrades released. Whether it is a mass meeting, demonstration, gherao of some official, or movement over land or wages, everywhere the women can be seen fighting shoulder to shoulder with their menfolk. And they, too, have shed their blood in these struggles — the martyrdom of Chandravati while resisting police repression in a village in Bikram PS (Patna, 1981) is a shining example of the women's death-defying spirit and persistence in the movement. In keeping watch on the enemy, safeguarding the underground and maintaining the secrecy of underground work, it is the women who play the frontal role.
The peasant struggle in Bihar has made a great difference to the conditions and status of women, particularly of poor women of lower castes. Only a few years back, their conditions were simply horrible. Gangs of upper-caste bad gentry would freely enter the harijan tolas at any hour of the day, and would molest the daughters, sisters and wives in the presence of their frightened parents, brothers and husbands. In some villages, young girls as a rule were not to be found in their houses after 10 at night, 'reserved' as they were for the regular enjoyment of upper-caste landlords. The toiling people of lower castes had also begun to get infected with this corrupting influence of these parasitic upper-caste bad gentry. The struggle has radically altered the situation. Landlords do not dare to enter the harijan tolas any more, particularly after sunset. The women have found back their dignity and any case of rape nowadays evokes immediate retaliation.
Not only against sexual oppression by upper-caste bad gentry, the poor women in today’s Bihar are equally vociferous against male domination in their own families. In the event of a woman being beaten by her husband, women in their hundreds intervene, condemn the husband and sometimes even take punitive measures. If in any family the women are not allowed to join the movement, women from other families would en masse approach the male members of that family and convince them.
The Kisan Sabha has organised a separate wing for women. This apart, there are certain women's associations, too. The rate of women’s participation in the movement is highest among agrarian labourers and poor peasants. This is somewhat natural since they have relatively more freedom within the family than the housewives in middle peasant families. The latter, too, need to be brought more and more in the fold of the movement, but this depends very much upon greater mobilisation of the middle peasants/strata in the peasant movement.
IF the agrarian scene in Bihar appears extraordinarily complex, to a great extent, that is due to the prevalence of the peculiar phenomenon of caste. In essence, this phenomenon is yet another reflection of the backward state of Bihar's agrarian economy, where peasants appear more as social estates than classes with caste being the social expression of specific roles in agriculture. And as social contradictions assumed the shape of armed caste conflicts, there emerged in almost all castes, powerful caste leaders, more often than not with a criminal background, with the general members of these castes looking to them as their saviours. Finally, with the introduction of parliamentary democracy in the form of elections at regular intervals, the whole thing came to get further institutionalised with different political parties trying to outmanoeuvre one another through caste-based political mobilisation.
To outside observers, this is indeed quite a puzzling phenomenon, particularly when they find even toiling masses rallying behind certain notorious criminals of their ‘own’ castes. Be that as it may, it is quite clear that mere denunciation of casteism, even in the strongest of terms, is going to make absolutely no difference to this situation. In fact, it is futile to look for any straightforward answer to this complex question. While sharpening of economic struggles would accelerate intra-caste class polarisation, simultaneously we have also got to work within various caste organisations so as to provide them with a progressive orientation, and last but not the least, we have got to assert ourselves as a force capable a guaranteeing security to the weaker castes.
Here are certain experiences. In the period 1976-77 there had emerged an organisation named Harijan Mahamukti Sangh in some parts of Bhojpur. To mobilise the harijan masses, the Sangh concentrated on the tenancy dispute over 350 bighas of land at Kathrai village in Charpokhari block. By 1979-80 it managed to draw a large number of people under its fold from whom it collected a huge amount of subscriptions. It was at this point that we decided to intervene, and gradually there surfaced a veritable polarisation within the organisation, with the opportunist leaders trying their best to submerge the struggle in the quagmire of legalism vis-a-vis our constant efforts to unleash a militant mass movement. Soon the Sangh got disintegrated, with many corrupted leaders who had by then amassed great fortunes joining the Congress(I), Lok Dal or Janata band-wagon, while the broad masses and a few honest leaders came over to the peasant association.
In another instance in Bhojpur, Rajput landlords had formed a Kunwar Sena after the name of Kunwar Singh, the legendary hero of the first war of independence, installed a statue of his, and demanded a university at Arrah after his name. Kunwar Singh for them was simply a Rajput king and his banner was glorified to organise the Rajputs as a caste. The Lok Dal, the so-called representative of the backward castes, opposed this move and its cadres even went on to demolish the statue of Kunwar Singh. We opposed this attitude of the Lok Dal, hailed Kunwar Singh’s patriotic role and stressed the necessity of continuing the struggle against imperialism. This brought the peasant association support from many progressive Rajputs, including the direct descendants of Kunwar Singh.
Emphasis has been laid on formulating specific policies for specific castes. Readers have already learnt about our policies concerning the Kurmis and the Yadavas. Below we narrate an experience of dealing with the Bhumihars who are coming closer to the peasant association in many parts of Bhojpur and Gaya. In Sahar block of Bhojpur, Bhumihar landlords’ gohar against harijans was a common phenomenon till 1979. But now this phenomenon has withered away, and nearly 35 per cent of the Bhumihar population, directly or indirectly, is under the influence of the movement. In fact, some enlightened and influential Bhumihars are always alert to nip any caste conflict in the bud. But this great change did not come of its own; it required the following conscious efforts on our part:
(i) Underground links were established with certain individuals among the Bhumihars, and they were gradually transformed, first into our sympathisers and then into active members.
(ii) Widespread propaganda was conducted through leaflets and propaganda teams, explaining the aims and objects of our movement and clarifying its targets and allies as well as our attitude to various castes.
(iii) Sometime during its night-marches, our armed unit would make a sudden appearance before some Bhumihar individuals/groups. Apprehending trouble, the latter would initially get panicky. But to their utter surprise, our armed unit would talk to them with respect and explain that they had no quarrel with any caste. They would put before them the programme and policies of the Party. Again, when some tyrant Bhumihar landlord is found in a group in the company of others, action would be carried out only against that tyrant, and the rest, even if they happen to be all landlords and rich peasants, would all be set free. These events received quick propaganda and helped a lot in removing false fears about us among the entire Bhumihar population,
(iv) Attacks were concentrated only against certain selected tyrants, particularly the ones with whom their own castemen had already got fed up.
(v) Certain mistakes committed by us were admitted and rectified, both in word and in deed.
(vi) In the event of any serious actions being taken against certain Bhumihars, particularly in case of executions, leaflets and appeals have always been issued explaining the rationale behind such steps.
(vii) Various initiatives taken by the Kisan Sabha, e.g., big mass meetings and rallies addressed by its leaders, created a positive impact on those among the Bhumihars who were so far viewing our struggles in a rather narrow framework.
(viii) Disputes among the people have all been settled amicably through people’s panchayats and thefts have been completely eradicated.
THERE has been no incident of communal riots in the main areas of struggle. Muslims, particularly the poor and lower-middle sections among them, also participate in the movement and they feel quite protected. However, from time to time some communal forces or certain persons with vested interests do try to foment communal clashes. To foil such attempts the following measures are generally adopted:
(i) presenting the actual facts before the people, exposing the vested interests behind such evil designs, and propagating all these things in a convincing way among both the communities;
(ii) separately approaching some enlightened and influential persons in both the communities and making them realise the necessity of taking active initiative to nip all such troubles in the bud ;
(iii) organising joint meetings involving prominent persons of both the communities;
(iv) holding joint mass meetings and peace rallies;
(v) quickly passing on informations about the design of the communalists to the people of neighbouring villages, emphasising the necessity and benefits of strong unity among the people of different communities and pointing out the disastrous consequences of such clashes ; and
(vi) issuing warnings to a few miscreants on both sides.
To be more specific, let us take two examples. In Barki Moap village in Bhojpur there are 90 harijan families, 80 Rajput families, 70 Muslim families and the rest belong to several other castes. Struggle was going on against a Rajput landlord. Muslims were initially rather hesitant in their support to this struggle, but gradually they began to actively involve themselves in the movement. At this stage, a few Rajput lumpens kidnapped a Muslim woman. This naturally evoked a sharp reaction from the Muslims against those criminals, but the Rajput landed gentry spared no time to give the whole thing a communal colour, and tensions began to rise.
The local peasant organisation and the people, however, took prompt initiative. They investigated the matter and found out the truth. They assured the Muslim family of their full cooperation in locating and recovering the woman and in punishing the culprits. They also contacted some enlightened Rajputs. Harijans and Hindus of other castes, numbering at least 150, took out an armed procession, and shouting slogans of Hindu-Muslim unity and against the landlord behind this kidnapping episode, they marched on from one village to another. In every village the procession would culminate in a mass meeting and subsequently more people would join in it. The Hindu poor declared that if anybody in their villages were to try to attack the Muslims, he would have to confront them first of all. But certain Rajput trouble-mongers would not give up so easily, they threatened that they would not allow the Muslims to take out the Tajia procession. The harijans and other people of the village, however, asked the Muslims to go ahead with their preparations, and in fact, the residents of the harijan tola themselves prepared a Tajia as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity. The evil design of the trouble-mongers was finally frustrated.
By this time, activists of the peasant organisation had recovered the woman. And it goes without saying that the culprits were also punished.
In a more recent incident at Garhani in Bhojpur, a Rajput landlord gang had killed two poor Muslim cycle repairers in connection with a petty quarrel over a meagre 10 paise. The agitated masses chased the gang and killed two of its members in retaliation. Rajput landlords then tried to give the whole thing a communal colour with a view to mobilising the entire Hindu population of the locality. But their design was foiled by the prompt intervention of the Kisan Sabha, Hindu and Muslim toiling masses displaying a militant solidarity.
THEFT, gambling, abusing women, etc. have been very much eradicated in Sahar, Hilsa, Poonpoon, Jehanabad and certain other blocks in the areas of struggle. In many other areas, the incidence of such social evils has come down by 75 per cent. However, the big thieves have managed to shift their areas of operation, while socio-economic rehabilitation of the petty thieves is yet to be achieved.
A large number of peasants in such areas, particularly the new generation of peasant youth, are more or less free from all sorts of superstitious beliefs. Addiction to liquor and untouchability have been considerably reduced.
Few years back, the drama staged locally in the villages was based either on mythological themes (e.g., Bir Abhimanyu, Satya Harishchandra etc.) or on the exploits of dacoits kings (e.g., Sultana Dakoo, Chambalka Lutera etc.). A perceptible change is noticeable nowadays — while the youths of upper-caste and landlord families continue to stage the same old types of plays, with the addition of chauvinistic themes like Tiranga Jhanda, poor peasant youths have switched over to plays of an altogether new variety, like Inquilab (Revolution), Khoon ka Badla Khoon (Blood for Blood), Roti aur Insaf (Bread and Justice), Karwan Dilli Jayega (The Caravan Shall March to Delhi), Janjirein Tod Do (Smash the Chains), Derh Bigha Jamin (One Acre of Land), Sava Ser Geinhu (One and a Quarter Seer of Wheat) and so on and so forth. While some of these plays are their original creations, many are in the old tradition of what are called ‘Bhagalpuria plays’ with the modification that whereas the traditional Bhagalpuria plays use to end in defeat for the rebel peasant fighters despite many a heroic deed, the present plays conclude on an optimistic note and many revolutionary songs are interspersed in between. Staging such plays has become a very common and widespread phenomenon in the areas of struggle and often engenders serious conflicts with the landlords as the latter try to stop such plays at all costs. Often these plays are also banned by the police.
Obscene songs and dances that earlier formed an important component of rural culture have now been greatly replaced by revolutionary songs, many of which proved to be quite popular with the masses. In fact, many poets have sprung up from illiterate poor peasants themselves. Revolutionary songs are also an important medium of the propaganda conducted by armed units and many poor peasant fighters are good composers and singers. Here are the first few lines from some of the most popular songs.
Master Jagdishji rachalan Bhojpur ke rachanava/Roye zalim zamindar/Jiya banchi na hamar/Bharat nagari mein (Jagdish Master was the architect of the great saga of Bhojpur. ‘Nothing can save me in this land’, weeps the tyrant landlord.). Lakhanji Surdas roams all around Bhojpur, singing such inspiring songs, composed by none other than himself, amidst the masses. The police have tried all means to silence this blind singer, but in vain.
Goli kahe moral bekasur ho/Nayanwa se dur bhaila babua (Why did you shoot my innocent son? Oh, my eyes will not see him any more). This song composed by a fighter of an armed unit depicts the agony of a mother whose son has been shot dead by the police. The song ends with the mother urging his thousands of sons to take revenge for their lost brother.
Kahat Akari, Bihari mazdoor par/Sahat ada bhaiya, kauna kasur par. This song composed by Akari, an illiterate poor peasant, calls upon the workers of Bihar to refuse to submit to exploitation and oppression.
The Birha (a popular folktune ) team of Bansiji of Aurangabad is quite popular among the masses. He has composed a song on the Kaithibigha incident.
Many revolutionary intellectuals have also come up with their songs, stories, plays and novels on the theme of the peasant struggle in Bihar. Most notable among them are Gorakh Pande of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and Brijendra Anil, a teacher of a village school in Bhojpur, whose hands were broken by a gang of landlords led by Birbahadur Singh, an ex-MLA, so as to prevent him from wielding his pen.
Many revolutionary teams like the Yuva Niti of Arrah, Hiraval of Patna, and Lalkar of Rohtas, to name only three, often visit the countryside to sing their songs and stage their plays before the masses. These organisations have had to face severe repression in the hands of the landlords and the police. Dr. Bindheswari, who heads a cultural organisation in Rohtas, was mercilessly thrashed by the police and was subsequently falsely implicated in a case of rifle-snatching. Members of the Hiraval cultural team from Patna were severely beaten and arrested by the police so as to prevent them from campaigning in favour of the IPF candidate at Masaurhi. Cultural teams of Bhojpur and Nalanda have also been arrested many a time. This repression has, however, only strengthened their resolve all the more and they cling to the countryside as the testing field for their cultural creations, for they believe in ‘art for the people’s sake’ and in ‘raising the standard’ of their cultural creations through constant interaction with the masses.
This cultural awakening has also had a positive impact on the social conditions and status of the rural poor. The people of the lower castes now enjoy some dignity in the society and upper-caste men are forced to address them in a different tone.
AGRICULTURE : In agriculture, mutual cooperation at present takes the following major forms.
(i) Collective ownership : Such plots are cultivated through collective labour and crops are also shared collectively.
(ii) Collective funds : Out of such funds loans in the form of cash and seeds, repayable after the harvest, are made available to the members of the fund. Machineries are also made available to the members at a nominal rent.
(iii) Collective granary : Grains collected as levy, subscription etc., are stored in a collective granary, erected, through collective free labour, on a plot of land under the occupation of the committee of concerned peasants. In times of crisis, grain-loans are advanced from the granary to needy peasants. Such loans are usually to be repaid after the harvest, but under certain special circumstances, they are also transformed into grants.
(iv) Collective free labour : Peasants offer free labour for repairing ahars, tanks etc, for digging wells as well as for constructing dams. Several such dams have been erected within an amazingly short span of time, which are presently irrigating a sizeable stretch of land. Naturally, landowners benefit most from such dams, while the landless labourers do not get any benefit at all simply because they do not have any land to irrigate. Some measures need to be devised to compensate the latter, perhaps by levying some suitable tax on the recipients of these irrigation facilities.
Apart from such collective endeavours, which are all managed by concerned committees of the peasants, one also witnesses such forms of mutual cooperation as peasants helping one another with free labour, or exchanging ploughs, oxen and other materials.
Housing : Here mutual cooperation takes the following two major forms :
(i) construction of houses through collective free labour ; and
(ii) settlement of new colonies through collective labour under the supervision of concerned committees. Sonatola (in Sahar PS of Bhojpur), Madhuban (in Masaurhi PS of Patna), Srabannagar (in Kako PS of Gaya) are three such colonies settled through collective labour.
WITH all its achievements, the movement also has its share of problems and weaknesses. Let us now take a close look at some of the major lacunae, indicating at the same time the measures being taken to remedy them.
1. The Problem of Consolidating the Gains
2. The Problem of Developing a Well-planned Consistent Movement
3. The Problem of Unity with the Middle Peasants
4. The Problem of Developing Resistance Struggles on the Basis of Broad Peasant Unity
5. The Problem of Developing Counter-strategy against Combing and Suppression Campaigns
6. The Problem of Forming Separate Class and Sectional Organisations
7. The Problem of Developing a Strong Civil Liberties Movement
8. The Problem of Developing a Strong Socio-cultural Movement
THIS problem is most acute in case of land struggle. True, the immediate conditions do not permit any thoroughgoing land reform, but there does exist plenty of scope for partial land reforms. Struggles on questions of land disputed on account of tenancy, math land, land illegally occupied by landlords (benami or gair mazarua land, i.e., vested land being held by landlords despite the fact that parchas for such lands have been issued against landless and poor peasants), government land, forest land, land used for storing water, garden land, etc. have been an important component of the peasant struggle in Bihar. In the process, peasants have laid their claim to thousands of acres of land, and have indeed been able to occupy hundreds of acres in the main arena of struggle. However, the distribution and management of this land, and ultimately its retention, are the most complex problems the movement faces today.
In the first place, a great majority of disputes found their way to the courts, with even minor cases lingering indefinitely for years together. But the judicial system has managed to keep alive the illusion of a favourable judgement among a large section of the peasants, drawing them away from the path of struggle. And this has also considerably damaged the peasants’ collective will as they face the state as individuals. In the typical instance of Kathrai village in Bhojpur (where 350 bighas of land lie locked in bataidari disputes), the case has been going on for 7 years, being moved from lower courts to higher ones, and there too, from one bench to another. Meanwhile the whole stretch of land lies uncultivated and the bataidars keep on hoping that after another five years, the land would automatically become theirs.
Secondly, distribution itself generates new contradictions among different sections of the people, particularly if it is not done according to appropriate policies, giving in the process opportunist elements a scope to create all sorts of troubles in connivance with landlords.
Let us consider the typical example of Deora Math in Ghosi block of Gaya. Here the peasants had succeeded in occupying a good amount of land through what must be reckoned as one of the bloodiest struggles in the early 80s. According to the distribution policy formulated by the Party, the poorest people of neighbouring villages who had extended active help in the struggle and suffered a lot, were also to get a share for the purpose of dwelling, apart from the cultivators who were originally tilling the land under the Mahant. This was essential for maintaining unity among the broad peasant masses. But at the instigation of the landlords, certain opportunist elements of the village declined to part with any share of the seized land and they managed to dupe the masses as well. Subsequently, the Mahant regrouped his forces, launched a series of bloody assaults on the people and drove them out of the village. And as was only to be expected, this time there was no support from any of the neighbouring villages, whereas earlier thousands would have come rushing to the spot. While those opportunist elements are still languishing in the jail, the Mahant has reestablished his control over the land.
Thirdly, the administration is always there to disrupt the militant unity of the peasants and to spread illusions. In a typical instance at Mathila village in Dumraon block of Bhojpur, government officials refused to give parchas for the gair mazarua land seized by the peasants from landlords of their own village and served encroachment notices on 40 peasants, while simultaneously allotting land to those very peasants in a neighbouring village, clearly with a view to causing conflicts among the people of these two villages, for the people in the other village were also preparing to seize the same land. This example typically reveals the essence of the oft-repeated government proclamation of ‘speeding up land reforms to tackle the Naxalite problem on the political plane’.
Fourthly, even where the land is ultimately distributed by the revolutionary peasant organisation, many recipients who get better off in the process, often become the least interested in struggle, instead concentrating on securing government parchas in order to legalise their hold over the land. Often some cunning elements begin to prosper at the cost of others, particularly in case of common properties like water reservoirs for irrigation and fishing and gardens. People’s control becomes a hollow phrase with all major benefits being grabbed by only a handful of persons.
In the final analysis, this problem reflects a serious gap in the thinking of many cadres of the Party and the peasant association. Basing on an ultra-left premise, they negate the importance of taking up economic work in real earnest, for they consider it to be a wastage of time and energy in the period of sharp class war when guns are roaring all around. This ideological gap prevents the Party and the peasant organisation from formulating a well-defined land policy and consistently implementing the same, from taking up deep-going political work to raise the people’s consciousness and organising a strong leading core of revolutionary vanguards in the villages. However, following a comprehensive political education campaign in recent months, comrades have begun laying greater emphasis on this score.
ALTHOUGH there have been hundreds of events of mass protest and resistance, the problem of developing a consistent movement still remains. Often, mass movements are looked upon simply as means to recruiting some forces for the underground, losing sight of their independent role in leading towards insurrection and people’s war. Some-times, the main issue gets lost mid-way. For example, suppose the police has intervened in a land movement. To protest against this police action demonstrations are staged, mass meetings are held, deputations are sent, and gradually the leaders get entangled in court cases. The land movement disappears and the masses become passive. Again, at times the cadres get almost obsessed with the desire of taking revenge. Suppose, the masses have risen in their thousands against police atrocities in general or against some specific incident of police-firing on a mass demonstration. People from different walks of life condemn this incident and demand action against the guilty officials. In such a situation, if our armed squads kill these officials out of revenge, the mass movement suffers a sudden end. Such premature killings halt the advance of the people’s movement. Often, in the name of drawing a line of demarcation with others and of placing advanced demands, vague demands are raised without caring about their practicability and acceptability. In certain cases, the leaders want to carry forward a movement in a pre-determined framework, forgetting that the forms of a movement are to be determined through proper evaluation of the development of the movement from various angles, through close contact with the masses and through regular investigations. Moreover, without a well-knit organisational structure, no consistent movement can ever be developed ; only a well-knit, even if small, organisation can lead a broad mass movement, drawing vast sections of the masses in its fold.
To overcome these problems, the Kisan Sabha is taking the following set of fresh measures :
(a) Concretising demands and slogans : In its massive rally on 23 February this year (marking the fifth anniversary of its foundation), the BPKS resolved to launch a new phase of movement on the following demands—
(i) judicial enquiry into killings in the areas of peasant struggle;
(ii) withdrawal of all false and fabricated cases against peasant cadres and immediate release of all of them;
(iii) disbanding of feudal private armies, provision of arms to the harijans and other weaker sections of the people for purposes of self-defence;
(iv) distribution of vested, surplus and Bhoodan land;
(v) conducting fresh survey and settlement of land and making revisions in the existing ceiling acts (the BPKS intends to put forth concrete proposals in this regard);
(vi) annulment of all uncleared bank loans of poor and middle peasants; and
(vii) payment of wages as fixed by the Kisan Sabha.
(b) Introducing a pocket guide book for local cadres activists : This guide book will dwell on
(i) informations about various laws and acts concerning agriculture as well as civil rights;
(ii) informations about the over-all land/class/caste structure in Bihar, e.g., about land concentration, surplus land above ceiling and its actual distribution, proportions of various classes and castes, characteristics of different castes etc.;
(iii) analysis of different classes in the rural society (with typical examples of several families belonging to different classes);
(iv) experiences of various movements (to help peasant cadres/activists organise a movement); and
(v) the structure of the organisation (citing model examples).
(c) Regularisation of membership : 1986 has been declared as the year of membership campaign for the Kisan Sabha. This campaign is intended to generate a sense of organisation and commitment among the broad masses of the peasantry.
(d) Restructuring the organisation : The organisation will be restructured with a view to
(i) consolidating the local units, so that they become competent enough to take independent and instant decisions and to adapt themselves to working under illegal conditions; and
(ii) treating each struggling pocket as a single unit, making one single leader responsible for each such unit.
The leadership will undertake a concrete programme for educating and training 10 to 15 activists in each of these struggling pockets. This will include, among other things, (1) explaining the guidebook to the activists, (2) clarifying the interrelation between peasant movement and national level democratic movement, and (3) helping them formulate concrete demands/slogans through lively mutual consultations.
Regarding local-level structures of the Kisan Sabha, the idea is : “solidity rather than formality”. The emphasis should be on developing a solid body of leadership, and formal declarations of the names of committee members (barring one or two) below district committees should rather be avoided.
SO far as the middle peasants / strata are concerned, the landlords and rich peasants of their castes influence them not only on caste lines, but on economic, political and cultural lines as well. And this makes the problem of forging unity with them all the more complex. The failure of the leaders of the movement to ease this complex-turned-tense situation by taking timely steps has, on many occasions, brought great losses to the movement. At times the movement has even got deviated from its original object, tending to degenerate into a veritable war of attrition.
The experience of Lahsuna is a case in point. One lower-caste rich peasant of this village had some dispute over land with a Kurmi rich peasant, which gradually took an antagonistic turn. The former then joined the peasant organisation and was soon found occupying, for all practical purposes, the leading position in the village, thanks to his display of great initiative and zeal. As the struggle got intensified, many Kurmi peasants expressed their desire to follow the organisation, if only to safeguard themselves. But that opportunist man would not allow the organisation to initiate any dialogue with the Kurmi peasants, displaying, as he did, always an extra zeal in fighting the Kurmis. During the crop-seizure movement, there took place several cases of indiscriminate crop-seizure in clear violation of the decision of the area organisation. Here the Bhoomi Sena had earlier indulged in indiscriminate killings, and the harijan masses were naturally dying for revenge. Some local squad members, too, got influenced by this sentiment of revenge and consequently, there took place certain unnecessary killings from our end too — the Dularpur incident being the worst instance.
However, since then the organisation has taken earnest measures to set things to rights, and the situation is getting normalised. Still the problem of forging firm unity with the middle peasants/strata, particularly of upper and certain backward castes, and mobilising them in agrarian struggles remains a major problem in the movement.
THE problem is, in essence, a problem of developing united front work at lower levels. This work is quite weak in rural areas. Some persons would even say, ‘United front? It’s a fine idea, no doubt; but it is applicable only in urban areas. Here in the countryside we have to develop peasant struggles.’ In theory, everybody is for ‘combination of armed activities and mass movements’, and for ‘combination of peasant struggles and united front work’. But in practice, often it amounts to transplantation of one in place of the other. So long as the Kisan Sabha functions, armed squads are sought to be kept idle and vice versa; and similarly, while peasant struggles are on, the perspective of the united front is lost, and when united front work is really taken up, peasant struggles are diluted or abandoned. To combine these two aspects in a single organic whole still remains a problem. To overcome this problem,
(i) Consolidation and expansion of the organisation’s mass base among agrarian labourers, and poor and lower, middle peasants should be taken as the keylink.
(ii) All-out efforts should be made to unleash the initiative of the middle peasants/strata. This includes
(a) establishing wide contacts and conducting widespread propaganda among them through leaflets, propaganda teams, etc.;
(b) deputing some cadres to work exclusively among them;
(c) rectifying certain mistakes of the past and guaranteeing that their interests will not be hurt by any means;
(d) raising with all seriousness certain burning issues concerning them directly and to pursue these issues till some success is achieved;
(e) taking care of their caste sentiments and taking them into confidence in all matters concerning village affairs; and
(f) non-interference of armed forces in disputes among the people.
(iii) Caste problems need to be handled carefully. It is a very complicated task. No doubt, any peasant comes under a definite economic category — a class-in-itself. But that is not all. Particularly in Bihar, he displays a strong allegiance to his caste. Again, every caste has its own characteristics. One cannot undermine these factors. Take the case of the Yadavas for example. They constitute the single largest community in Bihar. The vast majority of them are middle, lower-middle and poor peasants. Now, suppose a person is punished for theft or some other misdeeds, and by chance, he happens to be a Yadava by caste, Some people of his caste will come and say, 'What tamasha? Are Yadavas dead ? How dare harijans undertake the trial of a Yadava ?’ And thus tensions would rise high and the whole thing would tend to degenerate into a caste conflict. Now, one may say, ‘What’s wrong in punishing a thief ?’ Generally speaking, there is nothing wrong in it. But in concrete conditions, this process of punishing a Yadava thief may prove unwise. In such cases, it is better to place the matter before the Yadavas themselves, or at least, to take them into confidence before taking any action, Similarly, to expose any opportunist caste leader, instead of conducting any abstract exposure campaign, it is necessary to raise such economic and political issues which concern the majority of the peasants of that caste, and only by so mobilising the majority, can we proceed towards exposing that leader.
Moreover, attempts should be made to develop at least a few leaders who enjoy the confidence and recognition of broad sections of the people belonging to different castes.
(iv) There should be absolutely no going back from, our consistent policy of repulsing armed onslaughts of the enemy by armed means. But a strict vigilance should always be maintained so that the activities of the armed units do not go against the policy of building broad peasant unity.
(v) Armed units and local Kisan Sabha bodies should function as two legs of the same person.
(vi) Armed actions should be taken in direct and immediate relation to mass movements, thereby developing a proper combination of armed actions and mass movements.
(vii) The Kisan Sabha should make it a point not to concentrate too much on questions of social oppression, or for that matter, not to carry struggles against theft and robbery too far.
(viii) Legal scopes should be utilised tactfully. Some people completely undermine legal scopes, while there are certain others who fail to utilise these scopes tactfully. Naturally, legalistic illusions and dependence on this or that official develop in the latter case.
Peasant organisations will have to learn the art of negotiation and develop through practice their own tactics of dealing with officials. But the basic aim of involving and educating the broad masses should never be lost sight of.
Moreover, the administration deliberately adopts the tactics of utilising the contradictions among different parties/organisations working in the same area. Sometimes they allow certain concessions to one organisation and praise it while concentrating repression on other organisations. They even try to involve one organisation in repressing others. We must remember that our struggle against the administration or the enemy, and our political struggle with other political organisations are two altogether different things. It is our consistent policy to firmly oppose any repression on democratic organisations/people by the enemy.
THE movement continuously faces ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaigns launched by the government. Such operations conducted by armed policemen and paramilitary forces constitute an integral part of the enemy's strategy to crush the morale of the people and their resistance struggles.
To combat such operations, the following measures are presently being adopted :
(i) The people are being prepared in advance for protesting and resisting such repressive campaigns in various ways.
(ii) The underground network of the organisation is being strengthened so that it can carry on work even under such complex conditions, maintain close contact with the peasant masses and lead them in struggles at opportune moments.
(iii) Armed units may have to beat a temporary retreat, letting the heat of the operation cool off. Meanwhile, they can carry out some actions in certain far away areas so as to divert the attention of the enemy. To accomplish this, the areas of operation of the armed units are being made flexible so that the main forces may continue their operation from outside the enemy’s encirclement. A mechanism is being developed so as to maintain a living contact between forces within the areas encircled and those outside.
(iv) Well-knit arrangements are being made to hide arms under the possession of the people.
(v) A system of counter-intelligence is also being developed.
(vi) The Kisan Sabha is developing a mechanism to retain its initiative, both from above as well as from below, even under conditions of encirclement and suppression.
However, given the poor success-record so far of all the general campaigns of 'encirclement and suppression' which require the mobilisation of a very large number of forces and cause a lot of resentment among large sections of the people due to harassment by the police and para-military forces, the enemy seems to be contemplating new strategy of strengthening its intelligence network to find out the exact locations of the people’s armed forces and organising sudden ‘commando’ raids. The latest pattern of raids bear testimony to this new-found strategy, ostensibly supplied by the Central advisers, and the enemy has indeed been successful in a few cases.
To counter this new strategy of the enemy, the armed units are also heightening their vigilance, they are dealing mercilessly with the agents of the police and are frequently shifting their locations so as to deny the ‘commandoes’ of the enemy any specific target.
THE basic organisation in rural areas is, no doubt, the peasant organisation. Yet different other rural classes and sections of people have their specific problems and they should be organised in separate organisations. This comprises an essential part of united front work from below and helps in forging broad peasant unity as well. Our achievements on this score are as yet quite marginal. However, in certain rural bazars, businessmen and shopkeepers have been organised by the Kisan Sabha.
CIVIL liberties movement is very weak in Bihar. We badly need to develop a strong civil liberties movement as well as a legal aid system. This would also help peasant leaders to concentrate on their own jobs. Moreover, broad sections of democratic opinion in the State can and should be mobilised through such movements against the complete denial of civil liberties to vast sections of the peasantry and against the worst type of state repression that is going on in Bihar.
A strong cultural movement against illiteracy, superstitions, lack of civic sense, various addictions, obscenity, etc., and in favour of progressive reforms is one of the vital needs of the hour. The continuing strong peasant movement provides a very fertile ground for developing such a cultural movement which will, in its turn, strengthen the peasant movement all the more.
Patna
Bhojpur
Gaya
Nalanda
Aurangabad
Rohtas
Muzaffarpur
East Champaran
Bhagalpur
Madhubani
Purnea
Hazaribagh
Giridih
Palamau
Ranchi
PARTY work was reorganised in Sikandarpur village in 1979 with the harijans (mainly Musahars and Beldars) offering a strong base. A village committee was formed by some vanguard elements including two progressive-minded individuals from the Kurmi caste. At that time the committee used to conduct all its activities in legal form. It used to maintain its register and inform the block administration about all its programmes and plannings. Solving disputes among the peasants, repairing ahars and ponds for irrigation purposes, making arrangements for night-watch against theft and dacoity, seizing vested and waste land and distributing such plots of land among the poor, opposing all acts of social discrimination and oppression committed by the landlords — such were the main functions of the village committee. It used to hold its meetings openly in the presence of the majority of the villagers. Armed with traditional weapons, village defence squads used to guard these meetings. These activities made the village committee very popular not only in Sikandarpur but also in a number of nearby villages like Lahsuna, Gurpatichak, Sukthia, Bansidih etc. where too it helped the rural poor get organised. It stood as a great hurdle in the way of the hitherto unquestioned arbitrary rule of the landlords in all these areas. The first confrontation took place with a landlord named Jeolal Singh who had a large plot of vested land under his illegal occupation and was in the habit of beating and abusing the poor. The broad masses of peasants rose against him, and ultimately his uncle surrendered before the people, and expressed his readiness to hand over the plot in question to the agrarian labourers.
Soon the peasants of Lahsuna also formed a village committee, and it began to assert itself much in the same fashion as its counterpart in Sikandarpur. Here, one progressive individual from the Kurmis joined the movement as a cadre.
The landlords were, however, not sitting idle. Instigated by Mahendra Singh, a notorious landlord of village Amat, the Kurmi landlords started ganging up against the ‘Naxalites’. In April 1980 they set fire to the Musahar tola of Sikandarpur village. And just as the peasants of Lahsuna had earlier taken the cue from their brethren in Sikandarpur, now the landlords of Lahsuna also sought to follow the footsteps of their Sikandarpur counterparts. But here in Lahsuna the harijan masses opened fire on the attackers and successfully checked their advance. The next day agrarian labourers went on strike which lasted for 20 days. During this hartal, many incidents of crop-seizure took place, levies were collected and some firearms were purchased. In 1981, 300 people jointly captured an ahar and a pond in the village (which were so far under the occupation of two major landlords, Chhotan Singh and Bandhu Singh) and proclaimed the village committee's control over them. By this time, the Party organisation had asserted itself as the main force in the village. Certain Kurmi peasants had also expressed their desire to join the Party, but they were refused admission.
Strike broke out again during the season of paddy-sowing in 1981. Barring two landlords, Sahdeo Singh and Bandhu Singh, all others agreed to pay higher wages. Consequently, for two years, nobody went to work in the fields of these two persons.
It was in these circumstances that the Kishori Singh incident took place. This landlord, Raj Kishori Singh, had raped a village woman. In a villagers’ meeting it was then decided that he should be punished publicly. Accordingly, the village committee instructed the chowkidar to summon him and a public meeting was also convened. But somehow Kishori Singh had already come to know about this decision and had fled his house. Meanwhile Bandhu Singh had informed the police and soon a police party arrived in the village. And in an obvious attempt to save Kishori Singh from the wrath of the people, they arrested both him and the woman. Hearing this news, some 500 people immediately gheraoed the police party and snatched Kishori Singh away from their custody. It was decided that he should be executed and the decision was carried out forthwith. The next day a group of 150 armed policemen came to the village, beat up the villagers, ransacked their houses and arrested 21 villagers. But soon a mass of five to six thousand people gathered there and chased the police. But by the time they reached the railway station the police party had already left for Patna. Unable to get hold of the policemen, the furious mob attacked the station, ransacked it and pelted stones at the nearby police camp. Peasant leaders had a tough time pacifying the angry masses and bringing them back to the village.
After this incident, all the landlords of that village and of surrounding villages fled to Patna. In villages like Ghorahuan, Tandpar, Barah, Bela, Bagichapar, Sukthia, Sikandarpur, Niyamatpur and others, the crops and grains of Kurmi landowners were seized at random. A virtual “people’s raj” had been proclaimed, and this situation continued for about 5 months.
Afterwards police camps were set up in each and every village and with the active connivance of the police, the Bhoomi Sena entered the scene. The later years, often marked by armed clashes between the Bhoomi Sena and the people’s armed forces, are also full of instances of heroic struggles of the peasantry, but details are beyond the scope of the present collection.
Land movement : During 1981-85, struggles for capturing vested land, ahars, river banks, ponds, orchards etc. were launched in a number of villages in this area like Narma, Pirahi, G. I. Dih, Jamui, Bharatpura, Lala Bhatsara, Rakasia, Kalyanpur, Narahi, Sabajpur, Soriama, Gorkhari, Arap and others.
In Narma village, some 1,000 peasants belonging to different castes (except the Bhumihars), under the leadership of the Party organisation, captured 60 bighas of vested land, including two ponds (of 12 bighas each) and an orchard,, that were under the illegal occupation of Bhumihar landlords. But the matter is not settled as yet as the landlords continue to put up a united resistance, and the struggle is still on.
In G. I. Dih and Bharatpura, peasants captured two ponds (one of 22 bighas and the other 20 bighas) which were hither-to under the control of the block office. Yet another pond (of 12 bighas) was captured in Pirahi village, and in Narahi, peasants established their control over a one-mile stretch of river bank in addition to five bighas of vested land and one ahar. Similar actions took place in other villages, too.
Wage movement : There are 32 panchayats and 128 villages in Bikram block. Of these, almost all the panchayats and more than half of the villages (72, to be specific) were affected by wage movement. In 38 villages, the movement was launched under the direct leadership of the Kisan Sabha, in another 11 villages it broke out spontaneously, in yet another 5 villages some other organisations led the movement while in the remaining 18 villages landlords increased wages without any direct movement. The increases in wages have been as follows :
* 1 kachchi seer = l/2 pakki (standard) seer
Resistance movement: The first mass organisation built up by our Party in this area was a youth organisation (formed in January 1980). And this very first effort evoked an atrocious response from the landlords, particularly from one Chalitar Yadav of Narahi village who had an illegal holding of 105 bighas. Later these village youths took initiative in forming a broad-based mass organisation, Jan Kalyan Samiti, and a few other organisations, which attracted the ranks of other political parties like the CPI, CPI(M), Janata Party and the Shoshit Samaj Dal. The Jan Kalyan Samiti staged its first demonstration at Bikram block on 30 September, 1980, demanding mainly the seizure of licensed guns and rifles of the landlords. And by January 1981, it had already grown strong enough to take out a 5,000 strong procession.
With the formation of the Kisan Sabha, all these earlier mass organisations merged with it. The branch organisation of the Kisan Sabha undertook extensive propaganda through village-to-village campaigns, panchayat level meetings, group meetings etc. In course of this propaganda and organisational work, it had to face many an attack from the landlords and the police. On September 24, 1981, the Kisan Sabha organised a militant demonstration and mass meeting against the repressive raj of the landlord-police-goonda combine. While the meeting was in progress, the police arrested two persons. Soon thousands of masses were on their way to the police station. Panicked, the policemen fled away and the infuriated masses then entered the police station, broke open the hajat (lock-up) and freed the two arrested persons. Women played a frontal role in this struggle.
After this incident the police arrested the secretary of the block committee of the Kisan Sabha, Rajeswar Ram, on 12 October, 1981. But again a mass of 4,000 peasants gheraoed the police station and got him released.
Soon after these incidents, in an obvious attempt to create terror in the area, landlords, led by the Congress (I), BJP, CPI, and some notorious Bhoomi Sena men, took out an armed procession with provocative slogans. Side by side, the police too intensified its attack. On 30 October, 1981, more than 100 armed police-men raided Narahi village, ran-sacked many houses, injured many villagers and arrested one student. The same police party then enacted a repeat performance of this brutal drama in Pirahi village. Here they shot dead Surendra Mahato, and while returning they killed Chandravati, a newly married girl of 15, when she was resisting the arrest of her cousin.
But these brutal repressive measures could not crush the revolutionary morale of the masses. In April 1982, hearing the news of the arrest of a person, thousands of peasants ran up to the police station, ransacked it, smashed the jeep and successfully freed the arrested person.
THIS block is dominated and virtually ruled by the Rajput landlords. Though individual landlords do not possess more than 125 bighas of land in this area, they are, nevertheless, quite prosperous (and, of course, arrogant), thanks to adequate irrigation facilities and a high degree of fertility of land. On the other side are the harijans (mainly Dusadhs and Chamars) — many of them are still bonded labourers facing medieval atrocities and oppression in the hands of the landlords. In between these two camps, there are middle peasants and other middle strata (mainly Yadavas and Muslims).
After the All-India Party Conference in 1979, efforts began to organise mass movements in this block. At first in the village of Khewali, a village committee was formed and it started functioning in a semi-underground manner. The overwhelming majority of the members of the committee came from poor and middle peasants. Uniting and organising the people against landlords, resolving contradictions among the people, and organising them against theft and dacoity — such were the main functions of this village committee. The committee used to conduct political propaganda over 10 to 12 neighbouring villages. Soon village committees were formed in other nearby villages, too, and Mathila was one of them.
But like all other places, village committees in this area, too, did not find the going smooth. Particularly the police started creating all sorts of obstacles in the name of maintaining ‘law and order’. In response, the people of many villages rose in militant resistance against police interference. This resistance was so militant that the police did not dare enter the villages in small numbers. Once a police party headed by a sub-inspector tried to enter a house in Khewali village. The village womenfolk immediately encircled the police party, bashed them up and forced them to retreat.
At this juncture it was realised that the mass upsurge must be combined with movements on economic issues. Members of the Khewali village committee and cadres of other villages jointly issued a leaflet in which the following demands were placed on five specified landlords :
(i) withdraw the illegal and unauthorised occupation of a middle peasant’s land (this applied to one particular landlord),
(ii) withdraw all pending cases against peasants, and
(iii) increase wages. It was announced that whoever would not concede the demands would be socially boycotted. The land under the said illegal occupation was seized by the committee and restored to the concerned middle peasant. Side by side, agrarian labourers stopped working on the fields of those five landlords. Ultimately, four landlords conceded the demands, but the other, Jitendra Tiwari of Koran Saraiyan refused to compromise, and instead sought help from the police.
But just as the police unleashed a reign of repression, the struggle, too, turned against police repression. In one instance, armed policemen were taking away in a tractor the goods they had confiscated by raiding the house of a peasant cadre. But although they could break through the resistance put up by the people of that very village, soon on their way they were encircled by thousands of masses rushing out from neighbouring villages. With women lying down in front of the tractor and the swelling mob continuing to get more and more furious, the police could not proceed an inch. The gherao continued from morning till evening, when at last the DSP arrived on the scene and a peasant leader, too, reached the spot. The gherao was then lifted and the policemen allowed to leave, but only without the goods they had confiscated.
After this heroic resistance, the police further intensified their repression. Three of our comrades — Jeevan (Mukhtar Ahmed, member of Bhojpur Regional Party Committee), Vikas (Jai Govind, ex-worker in Rohtas Industries, Dalmianagar, and Party organiser in that area), and Narsingh (poor peasant, member of armed squad) — embraced martyrdom. Members of the village committee were all arrested. In face of such a heavy loss and repression, the mass upsurge temporarily subsided.
But the impact of the upsurge was widespread. And in its wake there developed a solid base over 30-40 villages in the area. Village committees were formed in almost all these villages. The poor and middle peasants as well as a section of rich peasants closely associated themselves with the movement. Soon after the Khewali struggle, Mathila came to the fore. New cadres emerged in the process of the movement and they embarked on an intensive propaganda. To ensure that the propaganda soon took on an agitational shape, the issue of 1,400 bighas of vested land was made its focal point. The village committee organised the landless and poor peasants and a memorandum was submitted to the administrative officials. In the mean time, two big ponds (of 52 bighas each) that were so far under the occupation of the landlords, were captured by the peasants. With their armed goons, landlords then attacked some peasants while the latter were fishing in the ponds. But they were soon chased away by a mass of 250 peasants. The masses also managed to catch hold of one of those goons, who was released only after 15 days after being issued a stern warning.
One of the landlords, Jagdish Singh, tried to mobilise the Rajput peasants against the struggling poor and prepared a blueprint for murdering peasant cadres. But thanks to correct and timely initiative on the part of the committee, middle peasants as well as a section of rich peasants of the Rajput caste came over to the side of the committee and Brahmin peasants were neutralised. Next the village committee mobilised poor and lower-middle peasants to capture a plot of vested land. The first bid was successful and as a mark of their control the peasants posted a red flag on the land. But the flag was soon uprooted by landlords and their armed goons and the peasants were threatened with dire consequences. The peasants were however not to be cowed down, and the very next day, accompanied by their armed squad, they made a bid to recapture the land. Fire was exchanged between the two sides, but ultimately the landlords were forced to beat a retreat. Peasants caught hold of four goons and gave them a thorough bashing. Out of panick, some landlords fled the village while others began to talk in terms of a compromise. This incident generated a renewed upsurge. A meeting of about 2,500 peasants was organised on the question of land, and a procession was taken out. Social boycott was enforced against two landlords. Peasant cadres widely propagated the agrarian programme of the Kisan Sabha and enlisted the support of middle peasants as well as a section of rich peasants of all castes. But as far as the landlords were concerned, they again fell back on the police and the administration. Many times cadres were sought to be arrested, but all the arrest bids were foiled by militant resistance on the part of the organised peasantry.
However, certain anarchist elements also managed to penetrate into the peasant organisation. One of them, an aggressive youth, even came to exercise a strong influence on the organisation, including the local peasant leader, thanks to his display of great militancy. While the land struggle was getting intensified, these elements arrested a person, a suspected police agent, who was allegedly responsible for the murder of our three comrades, and demanded that the armed unit execute him. The unit did not oblige them and instead advised them to free that person and concentrate on the land struggle, promising full assistance as would be demanded by the struggle. These elements, however, condemned the commander of the unit as a coward and with the tacit approval of the local peasant leader, they went on to annihilate that person.
As apprehended by the unit, this anihilation brought a temporary setback to the cause of the land struggle. However, the peasant organisation gradually regained the initiative and formed an eleven-member land committee comprising mainly lower-middle and poor peasants from different castes and communities. Certain women members were also there in the committee. Prior to distribution, the committee conducted widespread propaganda about the seizure of the plot of vested land and about the mode of distribution to be followed. The police again intervened and the officials sought to divide the people through a parallel allotment of parchas. But under the leadership of the Kisan Sabha, peasants rejected the officials’ orders and demanded that parchas be issued according to the decisions of the land committee. This enraged the officials and they filed cases against many peasants accusing them of taking the law into their own hands. To defeat this conspiracy of dividing the peasants, a massive demonstration was staged in front of the SDO Court and the officials were forced to withdraw the cases.
After conducting extensive discussion, it was decided that land (amounting to a total of 150 bighas) would be equally distributed on individual basis among all those who had participated in the struggle. Subsequently, it was decided that care would be taken to accommodate also those persons who, for some reason or other, were not in a position to physically take part in the struggle. The distribution took place under two heads — house sites and cultivation. Nearly 20 bighas of land were distributed for the purpose of cultivation, and the rest for housing. The land policy stipulated that
(i) land would be distributed mainly among poor peasants, and middle peasants would get land only for building houses or barn;
(ii) if the official allotment were to go against the allotment made by the committee, peasants would abide by the latter;
(iii) no allottee would be allowed to sell the allotted plot of land, and if an allottee dies without an heir, the concerned plot of land would return to the possession of the committee;
(iv) a portion of land would be earmarked for collective cultivation and its produce would go to the fund of the peasant organisation; and
(v) a cooperative system would be developed which would deal with marketing as well, so as to prevent distress sale by the peasants, and the income from the two tanks under the possession of the peasant organisation would be utilised for the development of agriculture.
The trouble within the organisation was, however, far from over. Instead of changing his ways, that youth had only intensified his anarchist activities. It was also revealed that he had clandestine links with the Rajput gentry. At this stage he was expelled from the organisation. Following this, he unleashed a slander campaign against the local peasant leader, and raising the bogey of ‘undemocratic expulsion’, he virtually formed a parallel group in the village. The masses seem to be more or less equally divided between these two parallel forces. In the final analysis, this rather unexpected division in the ranks of the people seems to reflect the dissatisfaction of a large number of people with the land policy and its implementation. Particularly, the pronounced pro-participant bias in the distribution of land does not seem to have gone down well with the masses. And with the masses thus divided, none of the recipients of the distributed land has so far dared to start cultivation on the distributed land. The administration has taken the fullest advantage of this impasse, once again it has intervened in a big way to spread fresh illusions. On the one hand, encroachment notices have been served on the peasants who are currently occupying the vested land, and on the other hand, these very peasants have been allotted vested land in a neighbouring village.
The struggle in Mathila is thus clearly at the crossroads. The Party is reviewing the situation and efforts are on to break through the present impasse.
The wave, of this organised movement for land seizure has already spread to six nearby villages and advanced cadres from Mathila are fanning out to spread the message of their struggle and to organise the peasants
In its second phase, the movement in this block began in 1978. The Party forces started fresh efforts to rejuvenate the movement by waging mass struggles and developing mass organisations. An important development in this regard was the demonstration of 3,000 people at Arrah demanding the release of Girija Ram, an advanced peasant cadre as well as a member of an armed unit. This was the first ever mass demonstration led by us in Bhojpur district. Some middle peasants and PCC men, too, participated in it. By the end of 1979, a Jan Kalyan Samiti was formed, and during the 1980 famine, the Samiti organised a demonstration of at least 7,000 people at Sahar block office demanding declaration of Sahar as a drought-affected area and proper distribution of adequate relief. The activities of the Samiti frightened the landlords and they planned to set fire to one harijan tola. The Samiti immediately rose in action, exposed this conspiracy through mass meetings in several villages and staged a 5,000-strong demonstration before the block office on this and other economic issues.
In the face of landlords’ armed attacks and the police letting loose a veritable reign of terror, peasants’ armed forces felt that they badly needed more modern arms. With this end in view, our armed unit in the area attacked Fatehpur police camp and in a successful guerilla operation, snatched 7 rifles and 280 cartridges.
Meanwhile, the Korodihri village committee was striving to mobilise the agrarian labourers and poor peasants of some 5 to 10 neighbouring villages in a wage struggle against the landlords of Kharaon. (Sahar is dominated by Bhumihar and Rajput landlords possessing on an average 100 to 150 bighas of land.) A struggle committee was formed and demands raised. The landlords reacted by mobilising the entire Bhumihar community against hiring agricultural labourers. Instead they were encouraged to lease out land to the middle peasants. The committee then launched a counter-campaign to dissuade the middle peasants from taking land in lease, and the campaign proved quite successful. Enraged, the landlords decided to plough all their land by themselves. But they failed miserably in this venture and out of desperation, the ringleaders of their camp then planned to finish off the leaders of the movement. To start with they burnt down several houses. Initially, the masses got somewhat frightened. But the peasant cadres made all efforts to keep up the morale of the masses. They informed the police about the atrocities of the landlords. The Korodihri village committee imposed fines on, and collected grains and levy in kind from, rich peasants to support agrarian labourer/poor peasant families on strike. One mukhiya was punished by death for implicating peasant cadres in false cases. At this all landlords got panicky and expressed their desire to work out a compromise. Accordingly, negotiations were conducted in the presence of the officer-in-charge of Sahar police station and the BDO of Sahar leading to an increase in wages. This successful strike inspired the labourers of some 30 nearby villages. They too started planning a wage movement, but the plan did not have to be implemented, for, seeing no way out, landlords increased wages of their own accord. The following table shows the extent of wage-rise achieved through this struggle :
These achievements greatly boosted up the morale of labouring peasants in the entire area and gave a tremendous fillip to their struggles. At some places, the peasants also captured plots of land ranging from 30 to 125 bighas which are being collectively used for housing and cultivation purposes.
On the other hand, landlords and the police also mounted fresh attacks on this fresh eruption of peasant unrest. Raids were conducted in almost all the villages, but in most of the cases they did not go without resistance. Consider the case of Bahuara for example. The police had come to arrest one peasant cadre without any warrant. No sooner had this news spread than thousands of peasants from neighbouring villages rushed to Bahuara and encircled the police party. The latter began to tremble in fear, begged for mercy and finally took to their heels.
Apart from such direct resistance, the Kisan Sabha (the Jan Kalyan Samiti had later merged with the Kisan Sabha) also organised protests on the plane of political propaganda. On the day on which the first demonstration was to be staged, the administration suspended all traffic and closed all the ways. But defying all these odds, a total of 250 people turned up in the demonstration, and the police resorted to lathicharge to disrupt it. The Kisan Sabha replied with another demonstration just after two months. This time despite heavy police bandobast no less than 7,000 demonstrators turned up and gheraoed the police station. Seeing the militant mood of the masses, the SP was forced to beg for mercy, but while the demonstrators were returning the police unashamedly lathicharged them.
Police atrocities are going on, so is the movement of the peasants. In village Kharaon, peasants have captured 30 bighas of vested land on the bank of the river and the same has been distributed among them through a committee. Efforts are going on to capture vested land in some other places as well.
Jehanabad is a subdivision in Gaya district and the peasant movement here has spread to all the seven blocks in this subdivision, viz., Arwal, Kurtha, Karpi, Jehanabad, Kako, Ghosi and Makhdumpur. A small part of this subdivision (areas adjacent to Patna district) is dominated by Kurmi landlords but in other parts, it is mainly the Bhumihar and partly Rajput landlords who rule the roost. Here, too, land and wage struggles are going on in a number of villages.
Under the leadership of the peasant association, peasants have captured several plots of vested land in villages like Barki Murahari, Saida, Salempur, Shahpur, Nighma and others. These plots have been used mainly for the purpose of housing. In Barki Murahari, 8 bighas of vested land were captured and some 50 to 60 erstwhile houseless ‘households’ were accommodated in huts built on this land. Now they are demanding parchas for these land plots. Here two decimals of land have been allotted to each adult in a family. Each household has been asked to plant one tree (preferably mango). This hamlet, Sravannagar, has been named after a martyr comrade who was killed in a clash with landlords and their goons in Firoji village.
In Nighma village of Kurtha block, the peasant organisation is waging struggles for capturing vested land and land above ceiling. About 15 bighas of land have already been captured.
In Ghosi block, the peasant organisation launched a militant movement for capturing the land of the self-styled Mahant of Deora Math who possesses no less than 200 bighas. Here many clashes took place between peasants and the combined forces of the Mahant’s goons, Bhoomi Sena gangsters and armed policemen. The armed squad of the peasants killed a notorious landlord, Ram Sagar Singh, and some Bhoomi Sena lieutenants. The peasants even captured 175 bighas of math land. But the final battle on this question is yet to be won.
In Jehanabad area, the peasant organisation took certain successful concrete steps to combat the menace of caste-based mobilisation. In Bhawanichak village, the Bhoomi Sena had killed three poor peasants including an activist. Tension rose so high that hundreds of bighas of land (belonging to landlords and to middle and rich peasants of Kurmi and other castes) remained uncultivated for two full years. Earlier a people’s committee had been formed in the area. This committee held a meeting of poor, middle and rich peasants of at least 12 villages and explained to them how landlords were trying to break the peasants’ unity through leasing out or selling their land. Since the landlords were also trying to mobilise those middle peasants whose lands, too, were lying uncultivated, the meeting decided that the land of poor, middle and rich peasants would henceforth be cultivated. A separate committee was formed and certain policies were adopted. It was decided that landowning peasants would cultivate their land all by themselves, and would hand over that part of their land which they could not cultivate themselves to the committee. The committee would then lease out that land to poor and lower-middle peasants for cultivation. Accordingly, cultivation was resumed and the tension was somewhat eased. Unity in practice was thus achieved among harijan agrarian labourers/ poor peasants and Kurmi middle peasants.
Another communist revolutionary group, COC (Party Unity) also has its mass following in this subdivision. They have a mass organisation, Mazdoor Kisan Sangram Samtti, and also some armed squads. Our peasant organisation always tries to maintain warm relations with them. Joint movements are also sought to be developed. Against Dubey government’s Operation Task Force strategy to curb the peasant movement, the two peasant organisations jointly organised a huge rally and mass meeting on 4 October, 1985, in which more than 20,000 people participated.
Arwal, a block under the Jehanabad subdivision of Gaya, stands face to face with Sahar, the stormcentre of the Bhojpur peasant struggle in the 70s, and the borders of the two districts of Patna and Aurangabad are only a few kilometres away. The river Sone separates Arwal and Sahar, but the message did frequently cross the river from much earlier periods.
Considered as a stroghold of the CPI and the Brahmarshi Sena led by the notorious criminal-cum-MLA and Bhumihar landlord, Sardar Krishna Singh, Arwal joined the map of revolutionary struggles in the early 80s when a section of forces of the CPI came over to our Party and apart from other struggles, an armed action to snatch rifles was successfully carried out at Badrabad police outpost. Subsequently. there arose serious complications. leading to a setback, but in recent months the mass movement in the area was again picking up. On April 15 of this year, the BPKS convened a mass meeting at Arwal as a part of its programme to observe a protest day throughout the State in memory of Comrade Brajesh (Assistant Secretary of IPF who was hacked to death by landlords in Purnea on 15. 3. 86). The police tried to disrupt the meeting under the pretext of Section 144 and serious altercations ensued. However, sensing the mood of the enemy, the organisers, determined to hold the meeting, finally decided to shift the venue. In the last three to four months, there had taken place a spate of armed actions on police camps in the districts of Bhojpur, Rohtas, Gaya and Patna resulting in the death of 7 policemen and the loss of 19 rifles, and everywhere people’s militancy was on the rise. In retaliation the enemy was planning a pogrom to be perpetrated at the first opportunity. And Arwal provided the ideal place from where the message could be sent to four districts at a time.
On 19 April, exactly a year after the Banjhi killings in which 15 adivasis, including Father Murmu, an ex-Rajya Sabha MP, were killed by the police, the massacre at Arwal took place taking a toll of over 60 lives. The entire plan was designed and executed on the pattern of the Jallianwallabagh firing of 13 April, 1919.
The mass meeting at Arwal was convened by the Mazdur Kisan Sangram Samiti (MKSS), a mass organisation owing allegiance to COC, CPI (ML) (Party Unity) and headed by Dr. Vinayan, a grass-rooter theoretician and an ex-activist of the JP movement, as part of a struggle for a plot of land. Dispute on the plot was going on for years between 9 landless families on the one hand and the landowner, belonging to the backward caste of Rajakas (washermen), on the other. As a superintending engineer in the irrigation department in the secretariat, the landowner has good rapport with the administration and police officials and it is with their help that he has been illegally occupying the land for years. In the month of January he demolished the huts of the 9 above-mentioned families and erected a cemented wall on the plot, all with the help of the police.
Prior to the mass meeting, the masses led by the MKSS demolished the wall. The meeting began at 2.45 pm Participants, numbering well over thousand, came from Karpi, Jehanabad, Arwal (all in Gaya) and Paliganj (Patna). Nearly 40 per cent of them were women, many carrying their children, too. The police led by the Superintendent C.R. Kaswan (once again of a backward caste) opened fire on the unarmed people with the clear intent of killing as many as possible. The meeting place was surrounded from all sides and the people had no way to escape other than scaling the boundary wall. The ground became filled with dead bodies. Even those fleeing on the roads and lanes were not spared, the police chased them for a long distance and shot whoever came within the firing range. No distinction was made between men and women, between old, young and children, or between participants and passers-by. The Indian police were acting in the best traditions of the British dogs, with C R Kaswan stepping into the shoes of the notorious General Dyer. Throughout the night the police were busy removing the dead bodies and killing the injured. The government was determined to send its message and make it clear that henceforth pogroms like Arwal would be on its agenda to quell the growing militancy of the masses, and therefore, it has refused to retreat a single step even in face of nationwide protests. Krishna Singh, the leader of the Brahmarshi Sena, has openly come out in support of the massacre; the Bharat Sevak Samaj; a body of feudal landlords, has justified the killings in its so-called citizens’ enquiry report; the DIG of the police has blatantly threatened the ‘extremists’ with more Arwals in the days to come; and Bindeshwari Dubey, the Chief Minister, has expressed satisfaction in the fact that Arwal has finally succeeded in enforcing ‘peace’ in troubletorn Bihar.
Well, the reactionaries cannot behave otherwise. Arwal has, however, triggered off a nationwide protest movement, it has widened the cracks in the administration and intensified the crisis of the ruling classes in general and the ruling party in particular. The big business press has, as usual, sensationalised the whole affair, reporting in detail the activities of the dissident Congressmen regarding Arwal, the so-called plans of Zail Singh to visit Arwal, statements of scheduled castes and tribes commissioners, and so on and so forth. Numerous protest rallies at Arwal by revolutionary democratic organisations, bandh in Patna and Jehanabad at their call, powerful women’s rally at Jehanabad by democratic women's organisations, and above all, the solidarity visit to Arwal by two truckloads of activists of the Bihar Colliery Kamgar Union find no place in the press.
History shows that the Jallianwallabagh Massacre had only resulted in the ouster of the British government and General Dyer; to be sure, the same fate awaits C. R. Kaswan, Bindeshwari Dubey and their masters. Far from sounding the death-knell of the peasant struggle in Bihar, Arwal has only revealed its intensity.
Peasant movement under our leadership started in this area with a crop-seizure campaign in 1979. There took place a few armed clashes with the landlords during this campaign and the whole experience generated a new confidence among poor peasants in the area. By the end of 1979, the agrarian labourers were on strike demanding an increase in their wages. The strike continued for one full year despite a number of attacks by the landlord-police combine. Hundreds of peasants rose in resistance, and Ravindra Singh, one of the chieftains of the attackers, was executed by the armed unit. At last wages were increased. This success gave a new fillip to the peasant movement in the area. In the process, there emerged many new cadres, the struggle against social oppression also intensified, and one by one, a number of villages were engulfed by the fire of wage struggle. And what is most important, in almost all these villages, the movement has scored an initial victory.
In Bairiganj village, a struggle was launched for capturing vested land. The landlords sought to suppress the struggle by unleashing armed attacks, but this only resulted in the struggle spreading to more and more villages in the area. In the face of a peasant upsurge, landlords turned desperate. They prohibited the labourers from going out of the village and also from cattle-grazing and grass-cutting on their fields. And, of course, many poor peasants were also physically assaulted by the landlords’ armed gangs and the police. Armed policemen raided many villages, many peasants were arrested and police camps were set up in a number of villages. At the same time, the landlords began to fan caste sentiments and to organise thieves and robbers. They even went so far as to form an armed organisation called the Kshetriya Kisan Mahasangh. Under the banner of this Mahasangh, they conducted armed attacks on several villages and killed a number of peasants. To be sure, these attacks did not go without resistance. The Party organisation also decided to execute certain ringleaders of the Mahasangh. Accordingly, the armed unit executed Mahendra Singh in February 1982 and Bhattu Singh in July 1982. Land-seizure and resistance apart, the peasant organisation also undertook certain constructive measures, like laying a canal, constructing a dam on river Lokayan, and so on. Negotiations were also initiated to resolve contradictions with middle peasants and a section of rich peasants. As a result of these multifarious efforts, the Mahasangh gradually fizzled out.
This area served as a fountainhead of inspiration for many nearby villages. The peasant organisation soon spread to 55-60 villages of this block and the work expanded to other blocks, too. In the south-eastern part of Hilsa, many peasants left the CPI to join the Kisan Sabha. They launched a strike in 15 villages demanding an increase in wages. The strike was successful in 10 villages (wages increased from 1 seer to 2.5 kgs of rice) and the organisation expanded to 30 more villages.
In this and nearby blocks numerous struggles took place for seizing vested land and establishing peasants’ control over water reservoirs, tanks etc. And to be sure, many such struggles have been successful. Many militant demonstrations have also been staged against police repression in which hundreds and thousands of peasants have participated. The 1985 Assembly election also provided a good opportunity for conducting widespread political propaganda and for consolidating and expanding our work in these areas. Contesting from the prison, the People’s Front candidate in Hilsa polled more than 20,000 votes despite heavy police repression. Thus, combining all forms of struggle, the peasants of Hilsa are striking heavy blows to the hegemony of the landlords.
Land movement : The first incident of land seizure in this district under our leadership took place in village Alpa in Haspura block. The Bhumihar landlords of Itwan village had grabbed 52 bighas of land from Koiri middle peasants of Alpa village. But the landlords were divided into two groups and taking advantage of this rift among the landlords, our Party led the Alpa peasants in a successful seizure of those 52 bighas of land in December 1976.
Again in July 1977, 60 bighas of vested land were captured by landless poor peasants and lower-middle peasants of Alpa and Itwan villages. This land was distributed among 65 families, each family getting nearly 18 kathas of land. The landlords could not tolerate this loss. Twice (January and March 1979 ), they launched attacks with the help of armed goons, but in face of the united resistance of the armed peasantry, they could not do anything. Rather one landlord, Krishna Singh, and two hired goons lost their lives. October 1980 witnessed another incident of land-seizure, when peasants captured and cultivated a stretch of 20 bighas of riverside vested land.
All these captured plots are still under the possession of the peasants. These successful land-seizure struggles acted as a model for the whole of the area, inspiring landless and poor peasants of several other villages.
In 1979, braving severe police repression, agrarian labourers and poor peasants of Sansa village (Daudnagar PS) captured 2 bighas of land belonging to a very cruel landlord, Hiralal Singh. The same year, they also captured a pond under the possession of the same landlord.
In February 1983, 40 bighas of vested land were captured by peasants in Nauner village of Obra block. Here, too, the police and goondas launched an intense repression campaign, but the peasants put up a militant resistance, injuring several policemen and officials. Peasants of nearby villages extended active cooperation.
In Hichchhanbigha area of Daudnagar block, the people captured an orchard covering nearly 200 bighas of land.
All these instances of land-seizure movement were found to generate tremendous enthusiasm, and also to forge immediate unity, among agrarian labourers, poor peasants and even middle peasants.
The village Kaithibigha under Obra block is one of the most advanced centres of the peasant movement in the district. The village is virtually ruled by Bhumihar landlords. Earlier, the CPI had a considerable following in this village, but with the Kisan Sabba mobilising the agrarian labourers and poor peasants in struggles on questions of wages and land, and the CPI always siding with the landlords, the latter gradually lost its old base. A veritable polarisation took place — agrarian labourers, poor peasants and a sizeable section of middle peasants led by the Kisan Sabha and supported by the peasants’ armed squad on one pole, and the landlord-CPI-administration combine on the other. Contradictions sharpened during the parliamentary elections of December 1984 when the IPF decided to extend support to the Janata Party candidate as opposed to his CPI counterpart and declared that it would resist any move to capture booths.
It was in this background that the Kaithi incident took place. An armed unit of ours had taken shelter in the harijan tola of the village. Tipped off about the presence of the unit by one CPI man, Sita Ram, the police launched a massive attack, murdering 12 persons including 2 boys and 2 women. Fighting a losing yet brave battle against this massive police encirclement, two members of our armed unit finally embraced martyrdom, but not before they had killed four policemen and injured several others. This massacre was by no means an isolated incident. A few days before the incident, the then Bihar Minister of State for Home, Bhola Singh, had visited Kaithi, and while distributing more gun-licenses to the landlords he had told them that guns were not meant to be kept in the almirah (PUDR report, March, 1985). One need not comment further on the government-landlord nexus.
Exactly one year after this incident, on 1 January, 1986, the people of Bihar observed Kaithi Day in response to the call of the Kisan Sabha. And in Kaithi, a martyrs’ column was erected in the presence of more than 10,000 peasants. They vowed to carry the peasant struggle through to the end, come what may.
KEER is a village of about 360 households in Bhabhua PS of Rohtas. It used to be just like any other village of the district, but today it stands apart as the peasants of Keer have resolved not to allow the Kurmi landlords to turn it into another Samhauta, Bishrampur or Shahar Bakasara (villages of Rohtas where the poor peasants’ attempts to raise their heads were crushed by Kurmi landlords in the past who went on a killing and burning spree).
There are eight kutcheries (rent collectorates, popularly known as chhawanis) of absentee landlords in the village. The chieftain of these landlords is Krishna Singh, one of the biggest landlords of Rohtas. He owns three tractors and about 900 acres of land, 300 acres in Keer itself. In contrast to some other landlords who lease out their land, he resorts to self-cultivation with the help of his managers and even leases in land. His brother Bhanu Singh is the president of the Kurmi caste organisation and he grows cash crops. All the eight absentee landlord families have family ties among themselves.
Our work here began two years ago among peasants of various castes, the Rajputs, Kurmis, Yadavas, Kahars and Chamars being the main caste groups in the village. To start with, a struggle was launched on the question of wages. It assumed the shape of a struggle of primarily harijans against well-to-do peasants and landlords of all castes. Later, agrarian labourers and poor peasants came to an agreement with the middle and rich peasants. But no agreement was possible with the eight landlord families led by Krishna Singh, who arrogantly declared that he would pay his hired labourers one pau (233 grammes) less than the amount paid by all other landlords or peasants of the village. In face of strike by the agrarian labourers, he hired labourers from outside. Thanks to timely intervention by the Party, a clash with these labourers could be averted, but the strike went on.
During this year’s harvesting season of wheat, landlords threatened the agitating labourers with dire consequences. Alongwith a Sub-Inspector (SI) of the police and hired goondas, Krishna Singh encircled the harijan hamlet and opened fire. The labourers were also prepared and replied with counter-attacks. In face of resistance the goondas took to their heels. Soon peasants of almost all castes gathered there and the women encircled the SI. He was then bashed up by the masses and let off without his revolver. After two days, the police and the goondas came back alongwith an Inspector and demanded the revolver. The people refused and asked them to bring the Magistrate. When the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) came, the masses asked him to file a case against the SI and raised the question of wages, too. On getting an assurance from the DSP, they finally returned the revolver. This mass resistance has had a widespread impact and our work has expanded in 60 to 70 villages.
Presently a police camp has been set up near the harijan. hamlet. Krishna Singh is resorting to caste-based mobilisation and is threatening the Rajputs, too, for many of them sympathised with the movement. With the help of some 70 armed goondas, he has hired labourers from outside for the purpose of harvesting. The CPI MLA, Ramlal Yadav is actively helping the landlords. The peasant organisation has issued an open letter to Bindeswari Dubey and called upon the peasants to carry on their resistance struggle.
THE spring thunder of Naxalbari had found its first echo in Bihar at Musahari ('68-’69), till then an obscure block of Muzaffarpur district. But the anti-feudal mass struggles that had broken out at that time could not be carried forward as the then State Party leadership followed a Menshevik class line, emphasising unity with rich peasants and consequently failing to strike deep roots among agrarian labourers and poor peasants. Hence class struggle could not be sustained in face of severe police repression and Jaya Prakash Narayan made Musahari his experimental ground for curbing the ‘menace of Naxalism’.
It was only after 1978 that we could start reorganising our work in this area, and mass movements began to pick up, slowly but steadily. Village committees were formed and after a few initial rounds of struggle against a particular lumpen element, agrarian labourers and poor peasants were organised against a tyrannical landlord. Agrarian labourers went on strike demanding higher wages and in some cases wages were increased, too; but on the whole we could not achieve much of a success, and landlords began to harass advanced labourers. The ringleader of the landlords stopped paying wages to his labourers even as they worked full hours on his land. After a few days, one labourer, out of sheer hunger, picked up a jackfruit from the landlord's garden. At this the landlord's son mercilessly thrashed him and he had to be immediately hospitalised. But the police refused to register any case against the landlord and the hospital authorities also released the labourer half way through the treatment even as his conditions remained quite serious. Hearing this, peasants became furious. Group meetings were held in the village and it was decided that the landlord should be taught a good lesson.
Accordingly, one morning some 200 peasants gheraoed the landlord’s house. Hearing the slogans, more people joined in and the gherao of 200 peasants was soon transformed into a raid by a thousand people. Meanwhile, all members of the landlord's family, barring an old man, had taken to their heels. But the old man was also a cruel oppressor and the masses, therefore, gave him a good thrashing. Efforts were made once again to lodge a case against the landlord with the police, but the SP and the DM would never accept any case against him. Meanwhile the old man died in the hospital and the police unleashed a series of raids on the houses of peasant cadres and activists. But faced with a determined resistance from the masses, the police were ultimately forced to retreat.
This struggle has dealt a heavy blow to feudal highhandedness and had a good impact on several other villages in the neighbourhood, culminating in the emergence of a network of village committees in the area.
The peasants of Musahari have begun to assert as a political force and are actively participating in various movements on democratic issues. 500 peasants participated in the anti-Press Bill rally convened by the IPF in Patna, 300 peasants took out a militant torchlight procession in protest against the murder of a PCC, CPI (ML) cadre, 400 peasants joined in a procession against Operation Task Force and about 350 peasants attended the Kaithi Day memorial meeting on 1 January, 1986.
THE murder of Comrade Gambhira Sah, Party leader in this area, in police lock-up on 3 July, 1977, gave rise to a widespread protest movement. His funeral procession was attended by 7,000 people of 25 villages, all armed with traditional weapons, and they vowed to avenge the murder of their beloved leader by further broadening and intensifying the peasant struggle. Every year the people of this area observe July 3 as martyrs' day and renew their pledge.
In September 1978, the landlord of Tinkoni village, who bad collaborated with the police in murdering Comrade Gambhira was punished by death.
A local mass organisation was formed in 1979 and under the leadership of this organisation 200 acres of land were captured and distributed among sharecroppers. In 1981, a successful wage movement was conducted simultaneously in 4 villages. Some struggles on sharecropping rights also took place in some villages. This organisation later merged with the BPKS. Subsequently, a massive demonstration was staged against police repression in Baithuhia village.
Peasants of all castes have rallied here under the banner of our peasant organisation. A good number of Muslims, too, support our organisation. And from the very beginning, broad sections of middle peasants are also involved in our movement and organisation. With caste-mobilisation thus rendered ineffective, the landlords in this area, find themselves deprived of one of their traditional safeguards against militant peasant struggle.
THE Naugachhia subdivision in Bhagalpur district can be divided into two parts — the diara area inhabited by mainly backward castes (Yadavas, Gangotas, Koiris, Baniyas, etc.) and the area by the side of the railway track and the national highway where landlords reside. The landlords are mainly Bhumihars and the majority of their holdings are in the diara area and are cultivated by Gangota labourers. Land is mainly concentrated in the hands of Bhumihar big landlords, each possessing hundreds of acres of land, though landlords and rich peasants are there among the Yadavas and Koirts, too. But the biggest of all landlords is Ram Ghulam Sahu of Parbatta (commonly known as Sahu Par-Iratta), a banlya, who possesses more than 30,000 acres of land. The entire area is infested with dacoits, dacoit gangs are formed along caste lines and they are often utilised and protected by the landlords of their respective castes.
Tenancy and surplus land (land over and above the ceiling) are the two major issues of peasant movement in this area. In contrast, wages have always been a minor issue.
This part of Bhagalpur has always been known for the activities of certain armed groups of peasant rebels. These groups, particularly the one led by Kailash Mondal, waged militant struggles on the two aforesaid issues. But ultimately they all degenerated into lumpen and dacoit gangs.
The beginning of our Party’s work in this area dates back to 1970. In the initial years, certain notorious landlords were killed no doubt, but the organisation remained quite weak.
The beginning of the second phase in 1976-77 was marked by a crop-seizure movement. Hundreds of peasants forcibly harvested the crop on 25 bighas of a landlord’s land. Thousands of peasants participated in the seizure of maize from 125 bighas of Sahu Parbatta’s land. In the absence of any mass organisation or peasant committee, the crops were distributed among the peasants under the direct supervision of the Party cadres. It was only in the late 70s, towards the end of the rectification movement that a village committee was formed here for the first time.
In one area, it was declared that no landlord or rich peasant would be allowed to sell his land without the concurrence of his tenants. As for seizing land, it was decided that (i) only that part of a landlord's holding would be seized which is cultivated through hired labourers, and the land thus seized would be leased out among agrarian labourers and poor peasants, and (ii) in case of vested/government land, such land should be seized and distributed among agrarian labourers and poor peasants. It was further decided that struggles should also be conducted against moneylenders.
Soon the people from surrounding villages also started coming to the village committee with their problems. Subsequently, broad masses of agrarian labourers and poor peasants of the entire area were mobilised, and 30 bighas of uncultivated land were seized from the possession of one landlord. Through a land distribution committee, the land was then distributed among 26 landless peasants.
Regarding sharecropping it was decided that
(i) the landowner would not be allowed to send his musclemen for inspection of the land leased out;
(ii) he would not have any right to enquire about the produce; and
(iii) the sharecroppers would themselves hand over a fixed amount of produce to the landowner.
One landlord had grabbed 6 bighas of vested land which were previously under the occupation of a poor peasant. The village committee organised a public meeting and forced the landlord to return the land.
By the end of 1979, such types of movements became a common occurrence. Consequently, massive repressive measures were let loose by the administration and a permanent police camp was set up in the area. During 1980-82, another area witnessed incessant struggles of the sharecroppers. In one instance of anti-eviction struggle, 8 bighas of land were captured in 1983. But while the peasants were ploughing the land, the goons of the landlords opened fire, killing one peasant. After this incident, processions, mass meetings, protest demonstrations were organised in several villages in the area. Thousands of peasants participated in these programmes. Presently, about 15,000 peasants are associated with the Kisan Sabha.
RAJNAGAR has been the centre of mass struggles in this district. During 1979-85, this area witnessed several struggles on questions of wages and land as well as against social oppression and police repression.
In Bhatsimar village, a struggle was launched against a landlord (who also happens to be the mukhiya of the panchayat), opposing eviction and demanding wage-hike. Ultimately the mukhiya bowed down and in a panchayat meeting attended by nearly 1,000 people, a compromise was worked out—wages were increased by 1.5 kg. and the landlord also agreed to increase the quantity of breakfast by 150 grams.
In Rampatti village, sharecroppers under the leadership of the peasant organisation captured 60 acres of land belonging to a Mahant.
In Simri village, 45 acres of vested land were captured and distributed among 45 peasants.
Two musclemen of the landlord-cum-mukhiya had molested a woman. The villagers protested against this and gave a thorough bashing to the musclemen. The latter then returned with the police, took away one peasant to the police camp and beat him black and blue. Hearing this news, peasants gathered there and raised their voice against police highhandedness. The BPKS decided to organise a demonstration against police highhandedness and the arrest of the peasant. Accordingly, on 3 April, 1982, some 300 peasants marched to the Baluaha police camp, demanding, among other things, the release of the arrested peasant, withdrawal of the police camp, and enforcement of minimum wages.
While returning, the demonstrators were pelted with stones by the musclemen of the landlord. And when they started chasing the musclemen the police opened fire. Two persons, including one woman, died on the spot. Later on, four injured peasants were dragged out of their houses and they were then shot dead in the police camp. And the main leaders and cadres were all put behind the bars.
The massacre of these six peasants, no doubt, caused a temporary setback to the developing peasant movement, but it has not been able to silence the oppressed peasantry for ever. Last year, when a group of armed policemen, headed by a sub-inspector, tried to arrest one Kishan Sabha activist from Raiyam village of Jhanjharpur block (constituency of the former chief minister, Jagannath Mishra), peasants immediately encircled the police party and gave all of them a good bashing. And later, when the policemen took one peasant to the police station, hundreds of peasants gheraoed it and forced the police officials to release the arrested peasant.
TILL date, Purnea is the strongest bastion of the feudal forces in Bihar. It is perhaps here in Purnea that all the obnoxious features of feudal remnants appear in their crudest expressions. The district of big landlords (controlling thousands of acres in many cases) with their octopus-like grip over the lives of the peasants, Purnea was regarded as Kalapani (forbidden land) till few years back. The incidence of sharecropping is highest in Purnea — 534 out of every 1,000 cultivators as against the corresponding figures of 184, 139 and 86 for Bhojpur-Rohtas, Patna and Gaya respectively. In the 1950s Purnea had witnessed militant movements of the peasantry, particularly of the sharecroppers, under the leadership of the CPI and the Socialists. The rugged countryside of Purnea, often haunted by the fury of the dreaded river Kosi, produced the prose of peasant ‘disturbances’ in the legend of Nakshatra Malakar. By the 60s, however, the legend was lost as all movements were locked up in the labyrinth of legalism by the CPI leadership. The Naxalbari movement in the 70s made little headway in Purnea, except sporadic struggles and ferocious attacks by the landlords (like the one at Chandwa-Rupaspur where 35 Santhals were burnt alive) nothing much was heard about the district.
It was again in the early 80s that we began to make fresh inroads in Purnea. At a very preliminary stage of our work we shed our first blood in the martyrdom of Comrade Brajesh Mohan Thakur on 15 March, 1986. Similar has been the fate of all his predecessors who had dared to rouse and organise the peasantry in Purnea. But the aftermath of Brajesh’s martyrdom has turned out to be entirely different: a new chapter of peasant movement seems to have been ushered in in this accursed district.
The initial shock following his murder soon gave way to militant protests. Hundreds of Santhal peasants armed with bows and arrows gheraoed the police station demanding immediate punishment to the culprit landlords and their goons. In another incident, the masses chased and thrashed one of the goons who was a party to this ghastly murder. The notorious landlord and the main culprit, Sitaram Singh was also encircled and he was let off only after he begged mercy. (Subsequently, on 7 June, he has been done to death.) Such militant protests in the wake of the martyrdom of Com. Brajesh were unique in the history of peasant movement in Purnea and even surpassed our own expectations. On May 30, 1986, nearly 10,000 peasants gathered at Kakkarbigha village in Dhamdaha P.S. to erect a memorial in the memory of Com. Brajesh defying Section 144 declared by the district administration. Undaunted by the threats of landlords and their goons, dozens of activists had put in tremendous efforts to make this mobilisation a success. Instead of getting panicked, the peasants are clearly in a militant mood and seem to be preparing for a showdown.
PEASANT struggles in our areas of work in this district have mainly revolved round the issues of (i) rehabilitation of, and compensation and employment for, displaced persons, (ii) minimum wages, (iii) social oppression, (iv) police repression, and in some cases, (v) land and crop. The targets of such struggles have been a varied lot : management of the Central Coalfields Limited, Cantonment Board, contractors and their goondas, landlords and rich peasants, and police officials. And as for forms of struggle, demonstrations, armed militant gheraos, strikes, etc. have been the major ones.
In 1982, in one area there took place a militant peasant movement against displacement. The Cantonment Board wanted to take over a large part of peasants’ agricultural land — hundreds of peasant families were thus threatened with displacement. Peasants were mobilised to resist this move, they dismantled the tent and also ploughed a sports ground which had been illegally captured by the Cantonment Board. Later, a militant demonstration was also staged against the proposed take-over bid. Alongwith these agitational programmes, legal possibilities were also explored and necessary measures adopted. Ultimately, the Board officials were forced to withdraw the displacement notice.
In one area, a rich peasant had been controlling a plot of adivasi land for more than 10 years. Our mass organisation mobilised 300 peasants and seized the crop of that rich peasant. His bullock cart was also seized. The landlords in the area summoned the police, but the village women prevented them from entering the village. Subsequently a compromise was worked out and the bullock cart was returned to the rich peasant.
STRUGGLES have taken place in this district on the following issues : (i) corruption of block officials and officials of the Konar dam project, (ii) police highhandedness, (iii) minimum wages, (iv) fair compensation for land taken over for the purpose of constructing canals, (v) jobs for local people, (vi) encroachments by the Forest Department on the peasants’ rights, and (vii) land and crops.
Such struggles have been launched against block and dam project officials, the police, contractors, forest department, Sahukars and landlords. Demonstration, gherao, strike and beating have been the main forms of struggle.
OUR peasant organisation here has been baptised amidst fierce attacks by the landlords. The awakening began with peasant youths rising against social oppression. In face of landlords' attacks, the mass organisation forged an anti-repression front with some other likeminded democratic organisation. The front staged a massive 3,000-strong demonstration against feudal highhandedness.
The landlords retaliated in an extremely barbarous fashion. They forcibly entered the house of a teacher (of middle-peasant status) at the dead of night with the avowed aim to finish him off. But as he was not there, they cruelly raped his wife and daughter. The mass organisation organised a demonstration in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office in protest against this ghastly crime.
STRUGGLES in this district have been centred on the following major issues : (i) vested and communal land, and tanks under the occupation of landlords, (ii) famine relief, (iii) irrigation facilities, (iv) police repression and anti-social activities of the goondas, and (v) the menace of mushrooming liquor shops. Landlords, goondas, block officials and the police have been the usual targets. The form and intensity of struggles have ranged from demonstrations to seizure of land and crop and even to primary resistance.
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In this districtwise survey of certain major milestones, so far we have restricted ourselves to only a narration of events. Before concluding this chapter, let us have a micro-level view of the underlying process of ideological struggle without which the protracted peasant movement in Bihar could have never become a reality.
An experience of ideological remoulding of a poor peasant fighter
Comrade A, a poor peasant fighter, has always been known for his militancy and bravery; but at the same time, he was also well known as an anarchist with characteristic indiscipline and arrogance.
In 1979-80 his area witnessed a wave of mass movements. As this upsurge encompassed a very wide area and the Party lacked in capable cadres, the movement could not be kept under control. There took place several anarchist acts and unnecessary annihilations. In fact, out of the 15 annihilations that took place during this period, only 3 or 4 can be considered as really essential. These acts limited the scope of mass movements, and with the formation of the Bhoomi Sena in 1982, there ensued a veritable war of attrition. All these annihilations were carried out under the personal leadership and initiative of Comrade A. Armed struggle was rendered the principal form of struggle and Comrade A became famous as the individual hero of this struggle.
In view of the fighting capabilities of Comrade A, the local Party organisation preferred to keep mum about his shortcomings, and even the unnecessary annihilations were also not opposed. All this exacerbated the ideological problems in him. He became quite arrogant and started considering himself as above organisation. Cashing in on the enormous prestige that he enjoyed among the masses, he started indulging in whimsical acts and adopted the roving rebel style of work. Around him gathered many militant cadres whose political consciousness was quite low. He did not consider himself answerable to the Party organisation. He would spend levy-money in an irresponsible way and would never submit any accounts. He was then shifted to another area, but there again he assembled many militant youths around him and continued with his old style of functioning. The Party began to consider him as a hopeless case.
At this juncture a programme was undertaken to remould him ideologically. Care was taken to ensure that we did not lose sight of the fact that Comrade A has been with the Party for a very long period, has come from the poor peasant class, is resolute and militant, and has sacrificed a lot in struggle (his father having been murdered by the Bhoomi Sena). His problems had cropped up in a particular situation. And for all his problems, generally no personal interest was involved in his activities. Whatever he did, he did in the name of the Party, and he always regarded his group of 10 to 15 youths as a Party group.
Basing on the policy of ‘curing the sickness to save the patient’, he was patiently explained the new conditions in his area. It was then pointed out how the problems got compounded due to mistakes on his part as well as on the part of others. Accordingly he was urged to rectify these mistakes in order to protect the gains of the struggle. A Party committee was organised in his area and he was brought under its control. He was subjected to organisational discipline and a persistent struggle was conducted against his wrong ideas. On many an occasion, he got irritated, but the responsible Party organiser always kept his cool and took care to integrate with him.
Simultaneously, the youth belonging to his group were also educated in communist conduct and character as well as in the Party’s line, so that they did not blindly follow Comrade A. Gradually their understanding improved and they came to understand some of the shortcomings of Comrade A. But we had to go about this whole thing very carefully so that Comrade A did not misinterpret it as instigating his ‘followers’ against him.
At last, this relentless, painstaking campaign proved to be a success. Comrade A began to realise his mistakes and gradually started identifying himself with the new trend. Now he is quite disciplined and has been promoted to the position of a member of the local Party team.
THE ongoing peasant struggle in Bihar represents a new phase in the development of the Naxalbari movement. In what follows we have tried to enumerate the salient features which distinguish this present phase from the earlier ones of our movement.
1. The present phase is marked by solid unity in the principal Party faction spearheading the movement. Since the break with Sharma and Mahadev groups in the first half of the 70s, the reorganised Party leadership did not undergo a single split, either at the central or State levels, in all these years. In the beginning of 1975, the Patna district committee did present an alternative document, and afterwards, too, serious differences have often come to the fore in the State Party organisation on various questions of tactics regarding peasant struggle, but they were all resolved through intensive discussions within the Party forum. Moreover, the two Party Congresses in 1976 and 1982, and the All- India Party Conference in 1979 have greatly facilitated the emergence and development of a collective leadership in the Party, and the spirit of democratic centralism has been further strengthened. And this unity, in its turn, has ensured the continuation of the struggle with a regular and systematic review of the policies.
In the initial years of the movement, if certain other groups were also working in Bihar, their areas of operation were different and faraway from ours, and naturally complications did not crop up. But in the post-Emergency period, either due to expansion of our own work or due to intervention by other groups in our areas, different groups are working in bordering areas or even in the same areas. This has certainly created complications and at times tensions have indeed run high. The provocations are grave and the enemy is bent upon splitting the revolutionary unity from within and destroying the revolutionary groups one by one. However, so far comrades in Bihar have been able to avoid a repetition of the Andhra tragedy and have succeeded in developing joint activities at higher levels.
2. Continuity is another hallmark of the peasant struggle in Bihar. True, there have been setbacks, sometimes quite severe, but they have all proved to be of a temporary and partial nature. The intensity of the struggle has undergone constant variation, so have the areas, but on the whole, the continuity has never been lost. Bhojpur and Patna in particular have been on the map right from the early 70s.
Another revolutionary group, the MCC, has also been working in Bihar for a long period, and despite several splits, it has been able to keep the struggles going in its areas, particularly in the southern part of Gaya.
3. The struggle enjoys a powerful mass base, with 'agrarian labourers and poor and lower-middle peasants of lower castes spontaneously identifying themselves with the Party. Moreover, the fact that the members of the armed units are all drawn from the local stock and that the majority of Party leaders and cadres also hail from the countryside has greatly facilitated the Party’s integration with the masses. The number of urban intellectual cadres and ‘outsiders’, so to say, is relatively much less. A good number of Party leaders and cadres as well as leaders of mass organisations do come from upper castes, but this has never created any adverse impact on the masses, the essential reason being the high prestige which the Party enjoys among the masses.
4. The transition from caste to class struggle is another notable feature of the movement. True, the movement has had to face its share of caste-based complications and has often got trapped in a veritable caste imbroglio, but gradually, step by step, it has succeeded in mobilising the peasantry along class lines, and in some cases, has also been able to penetrate among the upper castes. While not denying the specific features of casteist oppression, the movement has all along fought the numerous caste prejudices among the people, opposed all caste-based electoral manoeuvres, and refuted the so-called ‘Marxist’ theories of ‘dalit revolution’ peddled by A K Roy and more recently by the Nandy-Rana group.
5. Through all its ups and downs, the movement has been able to retain its armed character, which goes to the extent of snatching firearms from the police and paramilitary forces and organising armed guerilla units. In their number, level and tenacity, the armed actions conducted by the pasant guerillas of Bihar definitely surpass the records of all earlier peasant struggles led by the Communist Party in Indian history. With growing maturity, the armed units have also been able to reduce their losses. Particularly since 1977, they have managed to keep the losses at a minimum, thanks to the policy of avoiding direct battles and operating over bigger areas. However, they have been instrumental in organising immediate counter-attacks, paying the enemy back in their own coins. This has been an important feature of the movement and has gone a long way in keeping up and further bolstering the people's morale in face of severe repression by the enemy.
The retention of the armed character, however, has not been at the expense of other forms of struggle, including the parliamentary form. Valuable experiences are being accumulated in Bihar in combining various forms of struggle.
6. The movement has taken care to avoid killing persons belonging to other political parties. This has deprived these parties, to a great extent, of the opportunity to stir up party-to-party clashes. Efforts have always been made to distinguish, and, of course, to utilise the contradictions, among various political parties, to develop ties with the rank and file of these parties and to issue regular propaganda materials to them as well as to the masses who, out of caste sentiment, tend to follow various Senas of the landlords, and also to make open self-criticisms of our mistakes. All this has helped the movement in winning over village after village from the influence of the CPI and the Lok Dal, in disintegrating the numerous gangs and Senas of the landlords, and in preventing the political parties from putting up a united front against the movement.
Just as the labouring people in our society are considered ‘outcastes’ by the upper echelons, the political party representing them is also considered outcaste in our politics. Thus, there are always attempts by the opposition parties, including the revisionists, to isolate us at every turn from all political affairs of importance. On our part, we have always made efforts to break through this isolation in collaboration with other revolutionary and democratic groups and parties as well as the democratic ranks of different parliamentary parties, and we have attained some successes, too.
7. The movement has attracted a large section of the veterans of freedom struggle and communist movement. This has helped it in forging historical links with the past struggles and in learning from their valuable experiences.
It has also attracted a large number of youths who formed the backbone of the 1974 student-and-youth movement. Many of them are today important functionaries of the Party and the mass organisations. Their association with the movement has been of immense help for it in taking the leap to this new phase and also in becoming a veritable launching pad for a nationwide revolutionary-democratic political organisation.
8. In contrast to the old perception of concentrating the struggle against few big landlords, the peasant struggle in Bihar is advancing in areas where the base of landlordism is quite wide. A considerable section of the kulaks has also turned out to be targets of this struggle and, moreover, various complex economic and social factors allow them to mobilise many a segment of the various intermediate strata, particularly under caste banners. Consequently, the rural population gets sharply divided. Such conditions render wage-struggle very difficult and land-seizure seemingly impossible. There is also the constant danger of the interests of the intermediate strata getting hard-hit by the movement. It is precisely in the face of such a complex constellation of forces that the old Communist Parties had lost their bearings. No wonder then that the CPI, CPI(M) as well as the ‘Socialists’ go on accusing us of splitting the broad peasant unity through fanning conflicts between agrarian labourers and poor peasants on the one hand, and middle and rich peasants on the other. The same fear, or prejudice if you will, also propels various communist revolutionary groups to shift to areas of classical feudalism.
Well, if the so-called broad peasant unity at all existed in practice, it was based totally on the leadership of rich peasants. If one wants to reverse this situation, if one wants to build a new peasant unity under the leadership of agrarian labourers and poor peasants, a great upheaval is inevitable. And the tremendous mobilisation of the rural poor in the struggling areas of Bihar is indeed indicative of such a great upheaval, an upheaval that may well serve as a typical case for the greater part of the Indian countryside. Learning from practice, the Party intends to further perfect its policies concerning various intermediate strata as well as to make changes in its agrarian programme. We do also want to extend our work to the old type of areas, areas of classical feudalism, but certainly not at the cost of giving up work in these ‘new’ areas and cutting ourselves off from the agrarian reality of present-day India, despite all attempts of the CPI and the CPI(M) to provoke us into struggle against the so-called big feudal landlords.
9. If the areas of peasant struggle in Bihar do not conform to the ‘standard’ specifications of anti-feudal struggle in terms of class configuration, they do not conform to the ‘standard’ military specifications of people’s war either. But then, giving up these areas, which are topographically plain and well-developed in terms of communication
Concerted efforts are also there on our part to take up hilly, forest and plain areas as a single zone for the purpose of developing base area. And in this connection, another important feature of the present struggle that deserves our special attention is the occurrence of peasant guerilla operations in the vicinity of industrial areas, particularly mining areas.
MASSIVE intervention of the state, the financial institutions, both native and foreign, and of scores of nongovernmental voluntary agencies has rendered the agrarian scene in Bihar very complex. New agrarian strategies coupled with parliamentary democracy have given rise to new classes out of the womb of old society, and has added a new political dimension to the old rigid social formation. A host of new problems cry for urgent solution on the theoretical plane. Through developing a network of study, investigation-analysis-solution at different levels, the Party is trying its utmost to perfect its programme, policies and tactics. For a careful observer, the present book will reveal that our successes are still at a very primary level.
Only a few red patches have appeared on the fields of ‘Green Revolution’ in Bihar. Through their exemplary tenacity, heroism and sacrifice, inexhaustible urge to learn and transform themselves, and unflinching loyalty to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the activists have achieved this much. To transform the whole of this ‘Green Revolution’ into a ‘Red Revolution’ is a world-historic task confronting the communists and revolutionary intelligentsia of India. If only our present endeavour, its successes and shortcomings, can encourage, or should we say provoke them to address themselves to the burning questions of Indian revolution with still greater seriousness, our purpose would be served.
Just as at the microlevel, warring factions of landlords, in their bid to achieve supremacy in the rural power-structure, strive to utilise the sufferings and grievances of the broad masses of the people, often with the help of agents among the people themselves, so at the macrolevel, too, various political parties and factions of the ruling classes try to use the people's movements in their scrambling for power and authority. And recent history is replete with instances where this has provided the first impetus to the awakening of the people; however, from this point onwards it must march on independently, otherwise it has nothing to gain but everything to lose.
The peasant struggle in Bihar is also facing a similar predicament. Forging a strong unity among the communist revolutionaries, winning over the middle strata of the peasantry and the democratic ranks of parties like the CPI and the Lok Dal, and skillfully utilising the contradictions among different political parties and factions so as to isolate the principal political adversary, the ruling Congress — these are the foremost political tasks that the movement must accomplish if it is to make any real advance. The survival of the movement depends much on a proper hand, ling of these aspects of practical politics, and no amount of rhetoric is going to stop the drenching of the movement in blood-bath. The latest massacre in Arwal is a stark reminder of this grim reality.
Strong prejudices, based on factional, group, caste, communal, political and individual loyalties, which have crystallised into a veritable ‘mountain stronghold mentality’ among various political forces, render every step in the arena of practical politics extremely difficult. But the mountains can be removed, what one needs is the tenacity of that ‘foolish old man’.
Meanwhile, blood continues to spill over the vast tracts of green fields in Bihar. ‘No civilised government can tolerate a parallel administration’, declare the state functionaries, giving a clear hint at many more Arwals to come. ‘No massacre can deter the peasants from building a civilised society’, retort the revolutionaries. Battle lines are clearly drawn and the war goes on.
(Excerpts from the Programme adopted in the first Conference of the BPKS held in Patna, 10-12 March, 1984)
1. To struggle for the seizure of land belonging to big landlords, and to distribute it among landless, poor and lower-middle peasants.
2. To struggle for equal wages for equal work, and for wage parity between male and female labourers.
3. To struggle for equal rights for women, and against rape and other immoral practices.
4. To struggle for the establishment of the traditional rights of forest-dweller and fishermen over forest wealth and rivers respectively.
5. To organise mass resistance against the police, landlords and goondas.
6. To struggle for the establishment of the equal social rights of harijans, adivasis, and various religious minorities, particularly the Muslims.
7. To struggle for the abolition of child labour.
8. To struggle for the scrapping of all anti-people acts, including the NSA, ESMA and the Disturbed Areas Act.
9. To struggle for the establishment of a proper balance between the prices of industrial and agricultural commodities.
10. To struggle for the abolition of all indirect taxes and reduction of direct taxes, and for instituting a tax system based on income.
11. To struggle for the abolition of various old, obscurantist legacies such as untouchability, caste discriminations, illiteracy, superstitions, old systems of marriage and sradh (post-funeral ceremony), and dowry.
12. To struggle against feudal culture and for developing a genuine democratic culture based on the positive traditions of the peasantry.
13. To struggle for free education with free hostel and other facilities for poor students of peasant origin, and also for free and proper treatment in village hospitals based on people’s cooperation.
14. To struggle for the cancellation of all uncleared debts of the peasants (advanced by the landlords, usurers, and the government), including the interests accumulated thereon.
15. To struggle for adequate compensation (not only in terms of cash, but mainly in terms of land and employment) for peasants displaced due to mines, factories, dams, colonies and cantonments, etc.
16. To struggle for changing the pro-big bourgeois industrial policy, for the establishment of agro-based small and medium-sized industries and for bringing industrial development in harmony with the development of agriculture.
1. To struggle for the enforcement of minimum wages, fixation of working hours and provision of other facilities.
2. To struggle for guaranteeing round-the-year employment for all agricultural labourers.
3. To struggle for the declaration of areas affected by drought or flood as famine-stricken areas with the provision of sufficient and corruption-free relief, and also for waiving the rent in such areas.
4. To struggle for the establishment of the right of the homeless to homestead lands.
5. To struggle for the seizure of vested land as well as land above ceiling and to distribute the land so seized among landless, poor and lower-middle peasants.
6. To struggle for the reduction of the ceiling to 5 acres (in irrigated areas) and to 8 acres (in non-irrigated areas) per family.
7. To struggle for the enforcement of the tenancy act.
8. To struggle for the abolition of the landlords' control over all public properties (ponds, ahars, schools, maths, etc.) and for bringing them under the control of peasants' committees.
9. To struggle for the cancellation of all uncleared loans (governmental or non-governmental) of peasants belonging to the lower-income group, including the interests accumulated thereon;
10. To struggle for the provision of crop insurance.
11. To struggle against the landlords’ practice of hoarding and to distribute the grains seized among the peasants.
12. To struggle for the abolition of bonded labour.
13. To struggle against police repression, for withdrawing false cases against peasants, and for scrapping Sections 107 and 109.
14. To organise peasants’ self-defence corps and to train them in wielding traditional weapons so as to defend against attacks of the police and landlord-gangs;
15. To struggle for seizing the guns of tyrannical landlords and to distribute such guns among landless and poor peasants for the purpose of self-defence.
16. To organise strong resistance against casteist oppression.
17. To struggle against medieval oppressoin of the women, harijans, adivasis, various minorities and other weaker sections of the society.
18. To struggle against cultural degeneration, superstition, casteism, untouchability, liquor addiction, gambling, child marriage, dowry, and oppression of widows.
19. To struggle for removing illiteracy.
20. To support the Jharkhand movement.
21. To unite with other democratic organisations and to strengthen the anti-autocratic movement.
22. To oppose imperialist and capitalist exploitation and to unite with all other struggling classes, particularly the working class.
(Policies numbered I, II and III have been formulated by the Bihar State Committee of the Party and the rest by the Central Bihar Regional Party Committee.)
A. Under what circumstances land should be seized
i) We should have a concrete analysis of the area where land is to be seized. We should see to it that the seizure does not retard, rather accelerates and broadens, mass movements and anti-feudal struggles. In fact, our struggle for land seizure is directed towards the seizure of state power. Hence, this economic struggle should serve the cause of political struggles.
ii) Prior to embarking on land seizure or, for that matter, any other economic struggle of this sort, the broad masses should be politically mobilised and it should be ensured that the landlords are not able to bring the middle and poor peasants under their fold. Broader class unity is a must in the struggle for land seizure.
iii) Of late, one notices a rather widespread desire for land seizure. But land seizure can be encouraged and given a consistent shape only where there are conscious Party cadres and developed people’s committees. For it is only in such places that the people’s zeal can be sustained and anarchism avoided. However, in case the broad masses have already spontaneously started confiscating the land, our comrades should not oppose it or remain isolated from it, even if developed people’s committees are not there, rather they should strive hard to systematise this process of seizure.
iv) Before embarking on land seizure, proper care should be taken of all necessary legal formalities, so that the administration can be put in a tight corner. This also help strengthen the fighting spirit of the masses and increase their mobilisation.
B. Ownership and other criteria for land seizure
i) Generally speaking, at present struggles should be conducted for seizing vested land, laud over and above the ceiling, Bhoodan land, government land, hilly and forest land, and diara land.
ii) The part of a landlord's holding, which is valid under the existing ceiling act, should not be seized in the present phase.
iii) Surplus land over and above the ceiling should first be ascertained and identified before struggle is launched for its seizure.
iv) In the present situation, generally, the lands of only big, cruel and resistant landlords should be seized.
v) Barring few exceptional cases (e.g., vested land under the occupation of some arch-reactionary rich peasant), land seizure movement should not be conducted against rich and middle peasants.
vi) Land owned by absentee landlords should be seized.
vii) If, under pressure of mass movements, a landlord wants to sell out his land, the prospective purchaser should first be warned. And if repeated warnings go unheeded, the land should be seized, but of course, only after isolating the purchaser through broad mass mobilisation.
viii) Land, illegally grabbed by landlords, should be seized and restored to the owner.
ix) Cultivable forest land, too, should be seized.
x) Graveyards, grazing fields and land under common use should not be seized.
xi) In case of math lands, to start with, struggle should be waged on the demand of common management; but if the situation permits, such lands can be seized as well.
C. Who should get the land and how
i) Land should be distributed through land distribution committees comprising representatives from middle peasants, too.
ii) Generally, land should be distributed on the basis of participation in struggle. Side by side, the conditions and needs of the participants should also be taken into account.
iii) In terms of quantity, the recipients, in declining order of magnitude, should be : agricultural labourers, poor peasants, lower-middle peasants.
iv) The landless, poor and lower-middle peasants who were neutral to the struggle should also be given a share with a view to activising them in subsequent struggles and establishing a broader peasant unity. The interests of the handicapped, old and widows should also be taken into consideration.
v) Special attention should be paid to the families of martyr comrades and peasant cadres, keeping in mind their actual conditions.
vi) In case of active cooperation by peasants of other nearby villages, a portion, not exceeding one-fourth, of the land seized should be distributed among them.
vii) Trees, orchards, ponds etc. should remain under the management of peasants’ committees.
viii) Peasants should be encouraged to embark on cooperative farming on the distributed land.
ix) Levy on the distributed plots of land should be fixed on the basis of their fertility and if necessary, a portion, not exceeding one-fifth, of the land may be retained for the people’s committee.
i) Only landlords’ crops should be seized, and that too, from such landlords who are taking the main role in suppressing the peasant struggle and accordingly, figure at the top of the hit-list of the peasants.
ii) Crops on such plots of vested land or land over and above the ceiling as are owned by landlords and are due for seizure may also be seized. If such lands happen to have been rented out by the landlords, the share-croppers must be given their due share from the crops seized.
iii) The crop on land held in conformity with the ceiling act and leased out to peasants should not be seized.
iv) If the crop is seized prior to the payment of wages to the labourers the same should be paid out from the crop seized.
v) Crop seizure should be accomplished under the leadership of village committees or people’s committees of the area.
vi) It should be ensured that the seizure has the consent of the broad masses of landless and poor peasants and that it is carried out with their participation.
vii) Middle peasants should also be included in people’s committees or crop distribution committees.
viii) A portion, not exceeding one-fifth, of the crops seized should be set aside for the organisation and the rest should be distributed among the peasants on the basis of their participation in the seizure. During distribution, the families of peasant cadres should not be lost sight of.
ix) Crop seizure should be carried out in such a way that it serves to broaden the resistance struggle.
i) Economic and political struggles comprise the mainstream of class struggle, and the struggle for confiscation should be viewed as being complementary to this mainstream. Hence, political mobilisation of broad peasants is an essential precondition for confiscation.
ii) Where class struggle has reached an advanced stage, all properties of those big and cruel landlords, who happen to be the key targets, can be confiscated. But it should be done through the people’s committees and by mobilising the broad masses. Armed units and squads may only lend a helping hand.
iii) In drought-affected areas, movements may be organised for confiscating grains from the government’s godowns and the landlords’ granaries. But other properties should not be confiscated.
iv) Generally speaking, confiscation struggle should be concentrated against big and cruel landlords only. As a punishment, such struggle may also be waged against arch-reactionary rich peasants, but in such cases, prior approval of the district Party organisation or of a higher Party committee is a must.
v) Confiscation should be effected only at such places where there are conscious Party cadres and developed people's committees, so that the property confiscated can be held under control and distributed systematically.
vi) However, if mass discontent against a class enemy takes the shape of a spontaneous upsurge, and confiscation takes place as an inalienable part of this upsurge, our Party cadres should not remain isolated from the process (even if there happens to be no people's committee), rather they should strive to control and systematise it by forming an ad-hoc distribution committee.
vii) Ornaments and other articles on the persons of female members should not be touched under any circumstances.
viii) All confiscated properties should be surrendered to the people’s committee.
ix) The property confiscated should be distributed by the committee among the people according to their needs. The families of peasant cadres should also be taken into account.
x) If some movable property happens to be mortgaged, it should be returned to the actual owner after proper investigation.
xi) If necessary, a portion of the property confiscated would be retained by the committee. Agricultural apparatus or machinery would remain with the committee and would be used for collective cultivation. The general policy regarding distribution is : “Arms to the squad, cash and ornaments to the higher Party committee, and grains to the people”.
i) While remaining firm on achieving our demands, we should foil the design of the landlords to pit middle peasants against us.
ii) The movement should be launched over a relatively bigger area in a conscious and organised manner, and must not be left to spontaneity.
iii) While fixing the demand, instead of basing on the minimum wage rate as stipulated by the government, we should take into account the productivity of land, the present wage rate and other incidental privileges as are traditionally applicable to the area concerned.
iv) Instead of going to direct action at one stroke, care should be taken to conduct wide propaganda and advance step by step.
v) If it is found really necessary to go on strike, it should first be launched in some selected villages.
vi) Options should always be kept open for arriving at a negotiated settlement with the middle peasants.
i) In no condition, and on no excuse whatsoever, should middle peasants be subjected to any economic loss.
ii) We should recognise and respect the equal right of middle peasants on communal properties.
iii) With regard to social and other crimes, middle peasants should be differentiated from the landlords, and their case should be considered as one among the people themselves.
iv) In case of gohar, if broad majority of middle peasants are mobilised by the landlords on caste basis, we should avoid counter-gohar or offensive actions, limiting ourselves to defensive resistance only.
v) Individual agents or hired criminals in the ranks of middle peasants will, however, be treated as class enemies and not as middle peasants.
vi) Special emphasis should be laid on settling wage disputes with middle peasants through negotiations.
Village committees will develop in future as the lowest units of peasant hegemony. At present, they are the basic organisations around which the peasants mobilise in their struggle and in resistance.
Structure : A village committee should be formed only after at least 40 per cent of the people of that village have rallied around us. It should comprise 5 to 7 persons and agricultural labourers and poor peasants should form the predominant segment. However, care should be taken to ensure proper representation for different classes, castes, communities and, of course, for women. A part of the village committee must remain secret. Every year the committee should be reelected by the people on the basis of full democracy. It should accept the supervision of the masses in all its activities.
Persons from exploiting classes as well as thieves, lumpens, vagabonds etc. should not be given any berth in the committee. Only those who are struggling, honest, dedicated, self-sacrificing and modest can find a place in the committee.
Tasks : Every village committee should perform the following major tasks.
i) It should arrange meetings of the villagers to discuss all important village affairs. Care should be taken to ensure that women as well as those who are outside the organisation are also present in these meetings.
ii) It should develop united people’s struggles against landlords and the administration on various social, economic and political matters of importance.
ii) It should bring all common properties of the village under the people’s control and manage such properties on behalf of the people,
iv) It should take care of the educational, health, cultural and other requirements of the people with a view to improving their standard of life.
v) It should look after the families of the martyrs and of professional cadres.
vi) With regard to various contradictions, disputes and troubles, it should adopt different attitudes towards the landlords and the people. As far as the class enemies are concerned, the attitude should be one of resistance, of hitting and smashing their power and prestige. But in case of the people, the attitude should be basically one of persuasion. If need be, some pressure can also be brought to bear upon them and in case of absolute necessity, even certain nominal punishments can also be awarded, but only with a view to remoulding and unifying them.
vii) If it seems essential to mete out some major punishment to anybody, the village committees of neighbouring villages should also be consulted about it.
viii) It should submit its periodic reports before the masses and inspire them to come up with their opinions and criticisms.
ix) It should conduct its affairs under the political guidance and leadership of higher organisations.
x) It must maintain proper accounts of its collections from the masses as well as of all other incomes derived from various common properties and fines.
i) A difference should be made between every two powerful castes according as the number of landlords is greater or less. This should be done in view of their respective positions in the entire rural society of the State as well as in the specific area concerned.
ii) Our aim is to mobilise the vast masses of peasants belonging to all castes, but considering the prevailing social conditions, our priority list should be : lower castes first, middle castes second, and upper castes last.
iii) If an upper or middle caste happens to be in the majority in an area, work within that upper of middle caste should be given equal importance right from the beginning.
iv) In areas dominated by landlords of a particular caste, we should utilise the contradictions of other castes with that caste in the interest of the broadest possible mobilisation of the peasantry. However, before carrying the struggle to higher levels, enough political work should be done to isolate the landlords from their own caste.
v) To mobilise the lower castes, caste organisations may also be developed or joint activities may be undertaken with such lower-caste organisations as are already there. Such caste organisations, however, should not restrict themselves to questions of social discrimination against lower castes, rather they should raise their voice against all sorts of oppression and exploitation.
i) Next to mobilising landless and poor peasants of lower castes, our first emphasis in the areas of peasant struggle should be on uniting peasants of the Yadava caste. This should be accomplished through developing cadres from among the Yadavas.
ii) Before taking any action against landlords/oppressors/ dacoits/thieves of this caste, we should enlist the participation or at least support of the majority of the Yadava peasants.
iii) Vested land held by small landlords and rich peasants among the Yadavas should not be forcibly occupied. We have to take over such land through persuasion or social pressure.
iv) All help should be extended to the Yadavas for getting themselves organised in struggles for grazing land, and for government help for animal husbandry and milk cooperatives.
Dear Peasants,
THE Kurmi caste is well known as an honest, hard-working and brave caste. It has produced quite a considerable number of progressive individuals and revolutionaries. Many whole-time cadres of our Party hail from your caste. Many leaders and cadres, like Mahendra Singh, Sachchidanand Singh and Shyamnarayan Patel, of democratic organisations, like the IPF or the Kisan Sabha, also belong to your caste. Altogether, your caste is held in high esteem in the whole society.
Our Party is leading the people towards a revolutionary transformation of the entire society, and you are an integral part of the people. But some persons are out to drive a wedge between us by giving you a false impression about our Party. We admit that we had made certain mistakes in the past, but we have already rectified them. Undoubtedly, some shortcomings may still be there and you are absolutely welcome to point them out, but please know us closely and don’t misunderstand us. We are consistently fighting for your all-round development.
Now, some arch-reactionaries and their goons, who also happen to come mainly from the Kurmi caste, have formed a gang like the Bhoomi Sena that is out to perpetuate your deprivation and backwardness and to make life hell for you. And some persons are associating your entire caste with this notorious gang to tarnish your great image. You must be knowing it very well what a tremendous hatred the people have for this Bhoomi Sena. Do you not want to preserve the respect the people have always shown towards your caste? Do you not want to prosper economically, socially, politically and culturally? Do you not want to break out of this bondage of backwardness? Surely you do, and we, therefore, appeal to you to isolate and smash this notorious gang and to march forward to a better tomorrow. And in this forward march towards the fulfilment of your just aspirations, you can always count on our fullest help and cooperation.
Just think how many progressive individuals and revolutionaries have been murdered by this gang and what a great loss it has inflicted on the people. They have snatched away from you such beloved mass leaders as Premchand Sinha, Lalbabu Singh and Sharda Singh. This gang is indeed a disgrace to the entire society and as such it is imperative to wipe it out completely from the face of this earth.
As far as we are concerned, we associate only Girish Singh, Lallu Singh, Beni Singh, Jeevlal Singh and Vijay Singh with the Bhoomi Sena. They are the main enemy in this area and we will not spare them. If anyone else has, by mistake, aligned himself with these elements, he should dissociate himself immediately. We bear no enmity towards anybody else. However, in the interest of the masses, particularly of the Kurmi caste, we are prepared to work out a compromise with these elements and avoid bloodshed if possible. We will not take any action against them till 31 March and wait for their response. But if we do not get any response from them by 30 March, we will assume that they do not want any compromise, they do not have any sympathy for the Kurmi peasants and want to play with their lives. After that we will be free to mobilise the masses in any action against this gang of five.
Peasants of the Kurmi caste, unite with the peasants of all other castes. No caste can prosper in isolation. Landlords of all castes are getting united. You, too, must take immediate steps. You must make your choice between light and darkness. Our Party is also your Party, and it will remain yours for ever.
Patna District Committee of your own party,
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation)
15 February, 1986
Dear Brothers of the Yadava Community,
THANKS to years of relentless, painstaking efforts by the CPI(ML), the Party of us all, a militant unity was developing among the people of all castes, the reflection of which could be seen in the growing tide of people’s struggle in this area against the exploitation and oppression by tyrant landlords, their goons and the Congress government. Smelling immediate danger, the enemies of the people—the Congress government, landlords and casteist leaders,—began to hatch a conspiracy of pitting the Yadava peasants against the harijans, particularly against our Party. To put this design into practice they required the services of a few Yadava individuals, and unfortunately in the adjacent areas of Ekangarsarai-Ghosi, such individuals did not prove hard to come by.
Theft and dacoity had been completely curbed in this area, thanks to our Party’s relentless campaign against these social evils. And consequently, all thieves and dacoits have a score to settle with us. By establishing their control over, the Radil chhilka the masses have deprived certain Bhumihar contractors of the gains that so far accrued to them on account of their control over this chhilka. To regain their control these contractors need the help of some Yadavas. In order that the CPI MP, Ramashray Singh, is able to retain his seat in the parliament, the Yadava peasants must be prevented from joining our Party. In order that the Congres(I) MP, ‘King’ Mahendra, is able to retain his parliamentary seat, it is necessary that the Yadavas are locked in a permanent quarrel with all other castes so that he could mobilise the votes of the latter. And to stem the tide of the anti-government agitation, the Congress government can only bank upon inter-caste conflicts. All these vested interests have mobilised certain thieves and lumpens from the Yadavas, given them money and guns and linked them with a group of Bhumihar goondas to tailor the outfit named Lorik Sena.
Has this Lorik Sena been formed for the good of the Yadavas, or does it have some evil intentions? If it were formed for the development of the Yadavas, it would have surely fought for relief to the Yadavas in times of drought and flood, for the promotion of agriculture and irrigation, it would have striven for the abolition of the dowry system and for the promotion of education, it would have protected the Yadavas from the atrocities of the landlords and the police. And if the Lorik Sena really works for the development of the Yadavas we have nothing against it. But what has been the record of its activities so far? Looting the rural poor in league with the police and certain Bhumihar goons, setting their houses on fire and killing them, molesting and.raping their women, abusing and terrorising the people of all castes and extorting ‘levy’ from them.
These activities have obviously caused a lot of damage to the people of other castes, but the greatest sufferers have been none other than the Yadavas. Already some six to eight Yadavas have lost their lives in clashes and several have suffered serious injuries, many have criminal cases against their names and their houses and properties have been seized by the government, houses after houses have been demolished by the police, a lot of people are behind the bars and a good many are absconding, several villages wear a deserted look, and lakhs of rupees have been lost in the process. Not only that, the entire Yadava community runs the risk of getting branded as dacoits and murderers, and consequently of getting isolated from all other castes. Lorik was the name of the legendary hero who had upheld the banner of dignity for Yadava raiyats through a glorious struggle against the atrocities of the then kings and landlords. And Lorik Sena is the name of those thugs and lumpens who rob and murder poor peasants at the instigation of the government and the landlords, who bring disgrace to the great name of Lorik and to the entire Yadava community. To be sure, the Lorik Sena will ultimately prove to be a Frankenstein for the Yadavas. Just as the Kurmis had to suffer the most on account of the Bhoomi Sena, the Lorik Sena, too, will bring the greatest of losses to none but the Yadavas. We urge upon you, peasants of the Yadava community, to ponder whether this foolish and fruitless battle by the Lorik Sena against the Party and poor peasants of all other castes can bring you any benefit at all ? What progress are you going to achieve through this? You can take it from us that while the thieves and lumpens stand to gain partially, the greatest beneficiary will be those who are conspiring to foment conflict among ourselves, and for you peasants it is going to be losses all the way.
It is quite natural for people of different castes and strata living in the same village or area to have certain differences and quarrels among themselves, but such differences are to be resolved through discussions and panchayats, not through battles. Otherwise we will get into the trap of the ruling classes’ politics of 'divide and rule', of disrupting the united struggle of the people against the landlords and the government by pitting one caste against another. It is through such traps that the tiny minority of rulers and exploiters manage to perpetuate their rule over the great majority of the people and we are condemned to lead a wretched life. Ninety five per cent of you Yadavas are either landless or own some five to twenty bighas of land. And you are faced with a hundred and one losses and difficulties—on account of flood and drought, costly inputs like diesel, manure etc., non-remunerative prices of agricultural produce, corruption among the government officials, lack of provision for health-care and education for your children, lack of employment, various social evils and caste conflicts. All these problems of yours are products of the anti-peasant policies of the Congress government. And to solve them, therefore, you have got to unite with all other castes, including the harijans, in a resolute struggle against the government. There is no other alternative. Presently, our Party is in the process of launching a united peasant movement on all these issues. It is true that to begin with, we had taken up the problems of the agricultural labourers (harijans), for in today’s Indian society they are the poorest and most oppressed of the whole lot. But that does not mean that ours is only a party of the agricultural labourers (harijans), our Party is dedicated to the progress of the broad masses of Indian people—workers, peasants and middle classes alike. In fact, many among the first batch of functionaries to uphold the great red banner of our Party in this area had come from Yadava families— Gyaneswar Yadav (Nagendra), Ram Babu Yadav (Kailash), Ramdas Yadav (Lalan), they all laid down their lives at the altar of the people’s liberation and progress. Today’s Yadava youth should follow the footsteps of these immortal martyrs. Even today the Yadavas figure quite prominently among the cadres of our Party.
Peasants of the Yadava community, please convey this message of ours to all those misguided elements of the Lorik Sena who are still thinking of wiping out our party. Please tell them that no such force has ever been born, nor will ever be, for we are dedicated to the service of the people. On the contrary there is no such power in the earth, nor will ever be, that can save the Lorik Sena from certain disintegration, for it is engaged in plundering and murdering the people. Our victory is as inevitable as its defeat. Under no circumstances are we going to loot any village for looting is against our principle. But tell them that if they dare enter any village to plunder the people, not a single one of them shall return alive. We can begin to consider their case in a different light only if and when they give up looting, terrorising and killing the masses and stop their anti-Party activities.
At this critical juncture when the landlords, the Congress government and certain vested interests among the Yadavas are conspiring to generate caste frenzy and to trap the Yadava peasants in a suicidal internecine war, we appeal to the wisdom and conscience of all wise and conscientious Yadavas to try their level best to stop this suicidal frenzy and to wage a militant people’s movement on all their burning issues together with the peasants of all other castes. Our Party certainly fights against the cruel landlords, goondas, thieves and dacoits of all castes but never do we and never will we fight against the broad masses of any caste, not even if they are instigated to fight against us.
Come, let our slogans be :
Long live the broad unity of peasants of all castes !
Down with the despicable design of pitting us against one anoyher !
With revolutionary greetings,
Central Bihar Regional Committee
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
5 December, 1985
Many of our comrades have laid down their lives, so will many others in the days to come. For the revolution in India won’t be accomplished without a price. Out of this sacrifice will emerge those death-defying mortals who will smash imperialism to the ground, who through their selfless labour, will build up a new India, the India that holds aloft great hope and inspiration for the people of the world.
-- Charu Mazumdar
Scores of organisers and activists have so far laid down their lives in the course of the nearly two-decade-long revolutionary peasant struggle in Bihar. This is the first attempt on our part to record the names and other available particulars of these martyr comrades. The names have been arranged, first, districtwise and then in chronological order. Unless otherwise specified all of them belonged either to the undivided CPI(ML) or subsequently to our Party organisation. Note on abbreviations used in the list are given at the end.
Names in brackets are the ones by which the comrades concerned were known in Party circles. Abbreviations used : LLP = Landless Peasant, PP = Poor Peasant, LMP = Lower-middle Peasant, MP = Middle Peasant, RP = Rich Peasant ACM=Member of an Area Committee, RCM = Member of a Regional Committee, SCM—Member of a State Committee, CCM=-Member of the Central Committee, GS—General Secretary of the Party.
If sympathisers and general peasant masses are also taken into account, the martyrs’ list will become more than twice as long. We have been able to collect minimum informations about 168 such martyrs. Districtwise, the figures are—Patna : 78, Bhojpur : 22, Gaya : 33, Nalanda : 5, Aurangabad : 21, Madhubani : 6, Vaishali : 2, Begusarai : 1;
Comrade Subrata Dutt was born in a middle class family of Calcutta. His father was a founder-leader of the Students’ Federation in Bengal. In 1953 he joined the Hindustan Times as a journalist and the Dutt, with their four sons and two daughters, moved to Delhi. It was in Delhi that Jouhar spent his early student-life, passing with distinction the School Leaving Certificate examination in 1961 from the Raisina Bengali High School. After that he returned to Calcutta and joined the Guest Keen Williams as an apprentice.
In Calcutta Jouhar came to identify himself with the growing tide of anti-imperialist, anty Congress awakening in its diverse expressions, and joined the communist movement. During the 1962 India-China war he resolutely stood against the wave of chauvinism. He also took keen interest in the film society movement and other progressive cultural activities and was a founder-member of the South Calcutta Cine Club. After the 1964 split in the CPI, Jouhar rejected the old revisionist leadership to join the CPI(M). But this fight against revisionism continued in this new party, and following the Naxalbari peasant uprising as the struggle against neo-revisionism mounted within the CPI(M) Jouhar revolted and left the party. After a short stint with the MMG group, he joined the CPI(ML) and soon left his job to become a professional revolutionary. His first responsibility was to organise the peasantry in the Bengal-Bihar border region of Chhotanagpur.
While working under the Bengal-Bihar Border Regional Committee, Com Jouhar firmly defended the revolutionary essence of the Party line against all sorts of attacks both from within and without. Soon he became a member of the Bihar State Committee of the Party. Following the martyrdom of Com. Charu Mazumdar and the arrest of almost the entire leadership of the Bihar State Committee, when the Party in Bihar found itself in dire straits, Com. Jouhar came forward to resuscitate the Party. Through a relentless two-pronged struggle against both left and right diviations, Com. Jouhar led the reorganisation of the Party in Bihar (Interestingly, for him this struggle also had a personal implication as his father preferred to remain with the left-adventurist camp led by Mahadev Mukherjee). Subsequently, following the reorganisation of the Central Committee on 28 July, 1974, he was elected its secretary. It was under the leadership of the reorganised Central Committee headed by Com. Jouhar that the peasant struggle in Bihar entered the new revolutionary phase.
While making all possible efforts to reorganise the Party and to give it an all-India shape, simultaneously Com. Jouhar worked hand in hand with the rank and file for developing the struggle in Bhojpur. And it was on the soil of Bhojpur (Babubandh, Sahar) that he finally embraced martyrdom on 29 November, 1975, in a surprise attack by the reactionary armed police force. In an all-out bid to safeguard their leader, his comrades-in-arms also laid down their lives, but in vain.
Born in a rich family of Dhanagaon (Gaya), Com. Sudhir Ranjan was attracted towards revolutionary politics in the early 70s while he was a student of B N College, Patna. At the call of the Party, he soon left his college-career to devote himself completely to the task of rousing and organising the peasant masses in Bikram and Phoolwarisharif blocks of Patna. Through arduous work and relentless struggle he attained the fine qualities of a revolutionary intellectual, combining, with equal sincerity, theoretical work with wide-ranging practical work. Always first in shouldering harder responsibilities and last in claiming comfort and privileges, Com. Rabi earned the confidence of the Party within a short span of time. In quick succession, he was appointed first as the secretary of an area organisation and then as the editor of Lokyudh (State Party organ) and member of the State Committee of the Party. Following the martyrdom of almost all the leading cadres and armed fighters in the Ghorahuan incident, be came forward to take the charge of the Patna-Gaya region and devoted himself to reorganising the Party organisation, armed forces and the peasant movement. Just two months after the Second Party Congress which had elected him as a member of the Central Committee, he was arrested and brutally killed by the police in Basuarh (Poonpoon PS ) on 9 April, 1976.
Born in a Koiri middle peasant family of Ekwari (Sahar, Bhojpur). Com. Jagdish Prasad always worked for the welfare of the downtrodden. Frustrated with the CPI(M)’s collaboration with feudal oppressors, he and his friends had initially started dreaming of building a harijanistan where harijans would at least be able to live with dignity. At this juncture, Naxalbari peasant uprising showed the way, and leaving his job of a science teacher in the Town School of Arrah, Mastersahab returned to his village to prepare the ground for a new India where power would belong to the people. A founder-leader of the Party in Bhojpur and an architect of the Bhojpur peasant uprising, Mastersahab was a beloved leader of the people and a veritable terror to the tyrant feudal forces and their henchmen. The reactionaries finally managed to get rid of him by killing him in a brutal fashion in a surprise attack in Behea Bazar. His close comrade-in-arms and a harijan-turned-proletarian vanguard, Com. Ramayan Ram, also embraced martyrdom while trying to save his leader from the cultches of the goons. At the time of his martyrdom, Mastersahab was a member of the Bihar State Committee of the Party.
A legendary figure of the Bhojpur peasant struggle, Com. Rameshwar was born in a middle peasant family of Ekwari. Dropping out of school after the seventh standard he had first drifted into a dance troupe. But out of hatred for upper-caste landlords, militant Rameshwar subsequently turned a rebel, joined a dacoit gang, and had to suffer imprisonment for a considerable length of time. The surging peasant movement of the late 60s, however, ushered in a great change in Rameshwar’s course of life. He came in touch with Mastersahab and became a foremost figure of the peasant struggle in Bhojpur. Popularly known as Sadhuji, Com. Rameshwar died a martyr in an encounter with the police at Sonatola in Sahar on 14 January, 1975.
Born in a rich peasant family of Ekrashi (Bhojpur), Com. Gyaneshwar began his political life as a ‘Red Guard’ among the lower sections of peasants and other rural poor around Patna. At that time he was a student of B. N. College, Patna. Soon he left his studies and joined the movement as a professional revolutionary. A sathi (companion) in their sorrows and sufferings, and an organiser of their struggles, Com. Nagendra boldly roused and mobilised the peasant masses in anti-feudal struggles and developed peasants, armed guerrilla squads and revolutionary village committees. Till the final moment of his martyrdom in the heroic resistance against the police in the famous Ghorahuan incident, Com. Nagendra, a founder-member of the Party organisation as well as of the revolutionary peasant movement in rural Patna, worked as a disciplined soldier of the Party, who boldly asserted his own ideas and understandings but always submitted himself to the majority. He died a martyr as the secretary of the Patna-Gaya Regional Committee and a member of the Bihar State Committee of the Party.
Born in a renowned intellectual family of Bihar, Com. Prasant was a brilliant student of the Patna Medical College. Deeply influenced by the Naxalbari peasant uprising, he gave up all illusions of bourgeois careerism and by 1970 he devoted himself completely to the task of developing revolutionary peasant struggles in Bihar. Soon he was arrested and kept in the Bankipur Central Jail, Patna, but by 1974 he was again in the midst of the class struggle in the countryside, thanks to a successful jail-break. He became the secretary of the Nawada-Bihar Regional Committee and a member of the Bihar State Committee of the Party, But in 1975 he again got arrested and embraced martyrdom alongwith a number of comrades while attempting to break the Bhagalpur Central Jail on 4 May, 1976.
Com. Rajendra came of a middle-class family of Samastipur district. He left his studies in 1968 and joined the movement as a professional revolutionary. He died a martyr on 21 November, 1976, succumbing to a chronic heart disease. At that time he was in charge of Party work in North Bihar and was a member of the Bihar State Committee of the Party.
Com. Rajendra Prasad (Ratan) (1950—29.11.75)
Born in a progressive middle-class family of Keshat, the CPI's ‘Moscow’, Com. Rajendra grew up watching ‘communists’ collaborate with the hated landed gentry and ask the oppressed rural poor to rally behind the oppressors. The riddle was finally solved as he came to be acquainted with the path of Naxalbari. A science graduate from the Maharaja College of Arrah, young Rajendra took up the challenge of transforming the CPI’s ‘Moscow’ into a foreground of revolutionary peasant struggle. By January 1972, he was fully engaged in the task of mobilising the peasants in a militant movement. Unhesitant in criticising any mistake, whether comrnitted by himself or others, Com. Ratan earned the deep confidence, love and affection of all his comrades and the people within the short span of his revolutionary life. He sacrificed his life in Babubandh (Sahar) trying to safeguard Com. Jouhar. At that time he was a member of the Bhojpur Regional Committee and courier of Com. Jouhar.
Com. Nirmal was born in a Koiri middle peasant family of Barora village in Sandesh block. He was a very brilliant student. In 1965 he matriculated from Garbani, Piro in the first division. After completing his B. Sc. from the H. D. Jain College, Arrah, Nirmal moved to the Patna Science College, to do his master’s degree in 1968. It was here in Patna that he got attracted towards communism. Subsequently he secured admission in a medical college at Lahe-riasarai, Darbhanga. Here he organised a group of fellow leftist students and came in touch with Naxalism. Since then Dr. Nirmal, as he came to be popularly known among his comrades and the people, devoted himself to rousing and organising the peasant masses. After breaking through the police encirclement at Bahuara in the beginning of July ’75, Com. Nirmal finally embraced martyrdom at Babubandh on 29 November, 1975,
A mechanic in Patna, Com. Prakash left his job in 1968 to fully devote himself to the work of spreading the message of Naxalbari among the peasants of rural Patna. Within a year he got arrested, but by 1974 he came out of the jail, playing a leading role in the successful revolt and jail-break in Bankipur Central Jail, Patna. Once again he took up the task of organising revolutionary peasant struggle in Patna and it was in the countryside of Patna that he finally died a martyr in May ’75 putting up a heroic resistance against police encirclement at Ghorahuan (Poonpoon),
Born and brought up in a worker family of Jamalluddin-chak, Khagul (Patna), Com. Ramdas, himself a railway worker, always stood in the forefront of working-class movement. He played an active role in organising the 1969 general railway strike. He joined the Party in 1970 and gradually developed himself as a working-class Party cadre. At the call of the Party, he left his job in April 1973 to engage himself completely in the task of organising agrarian revolution in the countryside of Bihar. He was arrested of 25 August 1973, and subsequently he took a leading part in the revolt at Bankipur Central Jail, Patna, on 4 November, 1974. The jail-break was successful, but he got re-arrested. He again played a leading role in the revolt at Bhagalpur Central Jail on 4 May, 1976, but this time he died a martyr.
Born in a landless peasant family of Dumra (Arrah Mufassil), Com. Jai Govind Paswan had joined the Rohtas Industries (Dalmianagar) as a worker. Soon he came to be established as a popular, militant leader of the trade union. Simultaneously he also developed a workers' Party unit. In 1974 he left the job and moved to the countryside of Bhojpur to organise the peasants. Thanks to his hard-working nature, art of simple propaganda and agitational speeches, he succeeded in mobilising a great number of people within a short span of time. Gradually he became the political commissar of an armed guerrilla unit. Later he was entrusted with the task of organising peasant struggle in Dumraon area. The ground for today’s Mathila land movement was prepared by none other than Com. Vikas. He was arrested and killed by the police during a night-march near Mathila on 17 November, 1981.
An intelligent youth from a middle-class Muslim family of Saihar (Bhojpur) and an energetic participant in student movements of his time, Com. Jivan joined the ranks of organisers of the Bhojpur peasant struggle in January, 1974. Driven by his youthful zeal, soon he was found taking part in rifle-snatching from a police camp in Dumraon. However, he promptly shifted attention to deep-going political work, organising the youth in communist study circles while working among the peasantry. Gradually he turned into a good organiser—he built up a propoganda network to conduct political propaganda among the people, including the middle strata among upper castes, of 25 to 30 villages of Dumraon and developed local activists, people's armed forces as well as revolutionary village committees. He paid serious attention to investigation and study and derived many a creative idea from practice. In exposing and isolating the CPI in his area—ideologically, politically as well as organisationally—he played an important role. Alongwith Com. Vikas and Com. Narsing, he was also encircled, arrested and killed by the police during a night-march near Mathila on 17 November, 1981. He died a martyr as a member of the Bhojpur-Rohtas Regional Committee.
Born in a lower-middle class family of Basdevpur (Begusarai), Com. Kamaleshwari Rai had joined the communist movement wayback in 1954. During the Naxalbari-inspired struggle against revisionism he finally broke away from the revisionist leadership and joined the revolutionary camp. No hardship or hurdle could deter him for a moment from the task of organising the people and standing by them. He was jailed in 1971 and underwent severe torture. But that could not weaken his high communist morale a bit: with his release in 1977 he once again resumed his work on the peasant front, and remained a staunch communist fighter till he breathed his last. With the profound wisdom of a veteran, spirit of a youth and simplicity of a child, Com. Sushil was really worthy of the name by which his beloved comrades-in-arms addressed him. At the time of his demise he was a member of the East Bihar Regional Committee of the Party.
Com. Sanat came of a small jotedar family of Bainchi-gram of Burdwan district in the West Bengal He was attracted towards Naxalism while he was a student. By 1970 he left his studies to join the movement as a professional revolutionary. After working for a few months in an industrial area of West Bengal, he started working among the Bihar peasantry since 1971. And he continued this painstaking work for seven long years till he breathed his last in January 1978.
Born in a middle peasant family in a village in Choura-dano PS of East Champaran district, Com. Gombhira emerged as a militant mass leader and a popular Party organiser in his area. Initially he was with another communist revolutionary group, and by 1975-76 be came in contact with our Party. In 1977 he organised a militant peasant movement in Chouradano which soon assumed the proportions of an upsurge. Alarmed at this growth of peasant militancy, the local landlords and their henchmen decided to finish him off. Finally on 3 July, 1977 Com, Gombhira was done to death in Chouradano police custody. As the news of his martyrdom spread, peasants came out from nearby villages with whatever traditional weapons they could get hold of, and seeing this 7,000-strong funeral procession the policemen in the Darpa police camp all fled to the Chouradano police station. The broad peasant masses vowed to complete the unfulfilled tasks of Com. Gombhira and 20 peasant cadres became full-time cadres. Since then every year July 3 is observed as the martyrs’ day in this area.
A village doctor in Makrauta village of Nalanda and a popular peasant mass leader, Com, Gopal successfully led the peasants of the area to many a victory against tyrant landlords. He was president of the Hilsa Block Committee and vice-president of the Nalanda District Committee of the BPKS. During 'Operation Task Force' he was brutally killed by the police in broad day-light in the morning of 25 June, 1985.
Born in a middle peasant family of Meghol village (Khodabanpur PS) of Begusarai district, Com, Brajesh came in contact with the Party in 1981 while he was a student. Soon he became active in student movement as well as in anti-autocratic movement and began to work as a professional revolutionary. He was a member of the East Bihar Regional Committee of our Party since 1982 and since 1985 he was working on the peasant front. He was a member of the National Council of the IPF and an Assistant Secretary of its Bihar unit. At a very young age he shouldered so many responsibilities with great seriousness, and through his simplicity, hard work, warm behaviour, daring initiative and firm faith on the Party, he earned for himself a special place in the hearts of numerous Party activists and the masses. Great potentials promised by Com. Brajesh got buried as he met an extremely premature end, being hacked to death by blood-thirsty landlords of Purnea district, a declining bastion of age-old feudal survivals.
(Comrades Keshu, Sahato and Jiut)
A landless peasant youth of Bhadwar village of Bhojpur, Com. Premchand led the people of his village in scores of struggle against feudal forces. In 1975 he joined an armed guerrilla unit of our Party and since then he participated in several successful armed actions against landlords and their goons as well as the police and paramilitary forces. Gradually, Com. Kesho achieved a significant development in his theoretical, political and organisational abilities to emerge as a fine Party organiser. He was a delegate to the Third Party Congress. He was a model for his proletarian firmness, creative thinking and comradely behaviour. Com. Kesho sacrificed his life while performing an arduous task specially entrusted on him by the Party. He was then in charge of the Party’s work in Rohtas district.
Com. Jiut was born in a poor peasant family of Baruha village in Brahmpur PS of Bhojpur district. Militant and brave, Jiut was a fighter per excellence. He had tremendous patience and initiative which enabled him to effectively tackle any situation, however difficult and adverse. He was also a successful organiser of peasants’ mass resistance against armed attacks of the enemy. Like Com. Kesho, he, too, had greatly developed his theoretical and political level over the years. A veritable terror to the enemy, Com. Jiut was shot dead by the coward police of the reactionary government while he was asleep in a shelter. At that time he was a member of the Bhojpur-Rohtas District Leading Team of the Party and in charge of the armed units of the two districts.
A landless peasant of Dehri village in Poonpoon PS of Patna district, Com. Birda was a militant fighter and a popular leader of the landless and poor peasants of his village. He died a martyr during the Ghorahuan encounter with the police in May 1975. The landless and poor peasants of Dehri and nearby villages still do not believe that Com. Birda could have possibly been killed by the police.
Com. Butan came of a landless peasant family of Baruna village in Sahar P.S. of Bhojpur district. He was probably the first Musahar to complete his matriculation in the entire district. After working for some time in a biscuit factory, Butan came to Calcutta in search of a job. But he returned to his village armed with the ideology of Naxalism. In 1973 he became a whole-time cadre of the Party. Soon Butan ‘Master’, as he was affectionately called by the people whom he taught to read and write, became a frontranking commander of the ‘Red Army’ of his time. He embraced martyrdom on 2 July, 1975, in the famous battle of Bahuara (Sahar, Bhojpur) after holding out against a massive contingent of CRP and Jat Regiment forces for no less than 65 hours.
Born in a poor peasant family of Semraon village in Charpokhri PS of Bhojpur Com. Narayan received formal education only upto the seventh standard, but he grew up to be a rhymester, a gifted 'kavi' of the people. Deeply influenced by the Naxalbari peasant uprising, Narayan Kavi joined the Party in the early 70s. With his songs serving as a fountainhead of inspiration and courage for the struggling masses, Kaviji became a target of the government and its police. On many an occasion he was able to give the police the slip, notable among them being the Bahuara encirclement on 2 July, 1975, and the police cordon in Baruhi village on 17 August, 1974. But finally on 31 March, 1976, in the early hours of the morning he got trapped in the police cordon while walking from Gurpa village to Hanuman-Chapra, a village close to Ekwari, in Sahar. Kaviji died a martyr bequeathing a bouquet of songs and courage to his people.
Martyred at the age of 13, Com. Suresh is the youngest of the martyrs of the Bihar peasant struggle. Son of martyr Comrade Narayan Kavi, Suresh started working as a regular Party activist at the age of ten. Once the police beat him for hours but could not extract a single piece of information regarding the whereabouts of his revolutionary father. On 2, June, 1975 he was hacked to pieces by the notorious landlords of Hadiabad village in Jagdishpur PS as they went on a rampage in the Harijantola.
Com. Agni belonged to a shopkeeper family of Sandesh village of Bhojpur. Wife of martyr Comrade Anant Lal Gupta, she left her two children back at home to devote herself exclusively to the work of the Party. She was appointed political commissar of the Second Armed Unit of Women. Despite acute ulcer, she participated in hard manual labour as well, e.g, carrying soil in baskets to help others carry on digging a tunnel. She developed a revolutionary committee in Pinjrohi village and assisted Com. Lahari in forming a guerrilla squad there. She embraced martyrdom alongwith Com. Lahari, fighting against the police encirclement in Pinjrohi on 31 December, 1975.
A Landless peasant woman of Ramasaar village in Sandesh block of Bhojpur, Com. Lahari experienced severe economic exploitation as well as social oppression throughout her life: whether at home or in her father-in-law’s house. Once, when she came home after marriage, she came in contact with the Party. She was so attracted by the Party’s aims and objectives that she immediately decided to join it. In the face of strong opposition from elders against her unique decision, one night she secretly walked out of the house to join the armed unit. While in the unit, she vigorously aroused the peasant masses in the struggle for liberation from all exploitation and oppression. Within a short period, she became the commander of the Second Armed Unit of Women then operating in Sandesh block. She concentrated her work in Pinjrohi village where she led the peasants in many a struggle against the landlords. In the early hours of the morning of 31 December, 1975, a posse of 300 armed policemen acting on a tip-off, encircled the Harijantola of Pinjrohi. Com. Lahari immediately mobilised the villagers in a heroic resistance against the police, and as many as four times she was able to temporarily push the enemy back. But as she ran out of ammunitions she was cowardly shot dead by the police.
Com. Sheila came of an intellectual family. She was a student when she joined the Party as a whole-time cadre. Through a hard struggle she integrated herself with the landless and poor peasants of Bhojpur. Loyal, sincere and resolute, Com. Sheila embraced martyrdom during a resistance struggle against police encirclement in Ekwari (Sahar) on 10 October, 1976.
A landless peasant woman of Gandharmath in Ghosi block of Gaya, Com. Jeerwa Devi led the woman of her village in struggle for wages and land as well as against sexual oppression and social discrimination. In June '82, when she was marching in the forefront of a BPKS procession towards Ghosi alongwith her fellow village-women to protest against the murder of martyr comrade Sankar Choudhary, a peasant cadre of Sahobigha village, the police and landlords jointly opened fire on the procession near Gorhsar village. With the BPKS banner in her hand, Jeerwa Devi dropped dead while many others suffered injuries.
(Comrade Devendra Nath Sharma)
(Comrade Krishna Singh)
(Comrade Manoj)
(Comrade Pannu Paswan)
(Comrade Ram Babu Ram / Mahendra)
(Comrade Sadhu Saran Das / Surendra)
(Comrade Siddheshwar Sharma /Suresh)
(Comrade Shriram Ramesh)
(Comrade Sukhdeo Roy /Bimal)
