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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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;
May 13, 1986
If a colossal miscarriage[1] allowed social-democracy to flourish in full bloom in the Indian communist movement, to be sure, social-democrats too had to pay a heavy price for their victory: doomed as an essentially regional force, they could never really make any dent in the Hindi heartland. 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.[2] 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 society being drawn into the vortex of peasant struggles. From the Pipra carnage to the 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 also go the way of all its predecessors, ending in a disaster or in a compromise halfway? 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 of a series of attempts to deal with precisely 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 Bihar peasantry.
The 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. Way back in 1919, 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 leadership of the Indian communist party 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 a 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 blind 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 energies at pointing at 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 based 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 from 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 effort 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 a setback, objective conditions facilitated the dominance of a centrist line put forward by Ajay Ghosh and Dange. This line made a big issue of the differences between 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 re-emphasised the need for 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 over 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[3]. He has virulently attacked Mao’s philosophical position on contradictions and his tactics regarding the national bourgeoisie. Pointing to 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 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 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 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 emphasised 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 the 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 sacrificed their lives and thousands languishing in the jails, 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 unbelievably fast. 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 simplify 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 disorganised 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 as though from oblivion. And with them came back the whole range of questions that were 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 Emergency, Charu Mazumdar was projected 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, that 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.
As alternatives to the Gandhian strategy of freedom struggle and in contrast to it, if Bengal excelled in terrorism and in the ‘leftism’ of the Subhas variety 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 that Gandhi began his experiments with the peasantry, gradually evolving the strategy of mobilising the peasants in a peaceful, non-violent Satyagraha against British rule, while discouraging any movement against the ‘swadeshi’ zamindars. The peasants of Bihar did respond zealously to every call of the 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 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 movement, having begun as a wing of the Congress, 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 the 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. An erstwhile Socialist and an activist of the Kisan Sabha movement, Jai Prakash became the chief exponent of Sarvodaya in Bihar. But the agrarian reality of Bihar prevailed over their high-sounding rhetoric, 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 Central 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 spilt over the fields and factories, hamlets and lanes, torture chambers and prison cells all over the country seemed to rise 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 that 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 to restore the balance and provided new momentum to the fledgling peasant struggle, and we arrived at the present phase of a widespread peasant awakening. Paradoxically, the victim of this entire development was S N. Singh[4], who hailed from Bihar, and, that too from Bhojpur itself. The ghost of Charu Mazumdar chased 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 one can claim, as yet, to have developed such a line. 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, SN’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 Mazumdar began on the question of the relation with rich peasants. He emphasised 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, end 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.
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(ML), 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.
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 similar to those which 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[5] between poor rural Bharat[6] and rich urban India, stresses economic upliftment of the peasants as the cure-all for all the ills being faced by the country today, and concentrates exclusively on the single-point-demand of remunerative prices for agricultural produce. He does not believe that any substantial ground exists for major conflicts among different sections of the rural population, and it goes without saying that the peasants of his conception are none other than the rich and middle farmers. As to why he is not laying any particular stress on the agricultural labourers, Mr.Joshi holds that, first, any economic gains achieved by the peasants will automatically percolate to the former by way of higher wages, and second, the lowest strata of the people have never played the vanguard role in history in bringing about social transformation.
Despite his agitational mode of operation, it is this emphasis on rural development coupled with his insistence on non-party politics and his 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 as the movement 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[7] 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.
Notes:
1. Setback in the first revolutionary upsurge following Naxalbari in the face of brutal repression.
2. This was the logic advanced by the CPI(M) General Secretary EMS Namboodiripad to explain its failure in Bihar.
3. See "On Contradictions – Antagonistic and Non-antagonistic" in the Social Scientist, September 1983
4. Quite interestingly, SN had at one time slandered the Bhojpur struggle as being guided and financed by Jagjivan Ram and later on, the dominant section of the PCC leadership also preferred to dismiss Bhojpur as a purely caste struggle. Late Comrade CP, during my [VM’s -- Ed.] talks with him, revealed how on persistent enquiries by the Chinese comrades about Bhojpur, Bhaskar Nandy had continued to repeat similar allegations. CP, however, differed with them and was even inclined to consider that annihilation, as practiced in Bhojpur, did have practical justification.
5. Interestingly, Mr.Joshi refers to Rosa Luxemburg in his support as against Lenin. He is also very much against Stalin’s tackling of the kulaks. However, his comments on Mao are not known.
6. To be fair to him, it must, however, be acknowledged that his rural Bharat does also include sections of the urban poor slumdwellers for instance, whom he considers as peasants driven away by poverty.
7. The infamous Arwal massacre of 1986 led to nationwide protests.
