The Politics of Survival : Peasant Organi- Zations and the Left-Wing in India, 1925-46*

THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL : PEASANT ORGANI- ZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA, 1925-46*

D. N. DHANAGARE Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

The period between 1920 and 1946, the most significant in India's freedom struggle, witnessed emergence of several peasant organizations. Some of them became enduring political organizations but in the post- Independence era they either merged with national political parties or became their appendages. The political liberalism of the Indian National Congress and particularly Mahatma Gandhi's political ethic of passive resistance formed the ideological orientation of some of these peasant organizations. Other peasant organizations emerged out of the growing Indian Left-wing activities based on the theory and practice of Marxian socialism, particularly the Bolshevik model. From the mid-twenties almost until 1950 peasant organizations of the latter type more or less dominated the scene. The historical and political studies of the Communist and Socialist movements in India have only barely touched on the pea- sani organizations under their aegis. The Workers' and Peasants' Parties in the twenties and a variety of Kisan Sabhas (peasant organizations) in the thirties and forties were formed in different parts of India. Their character as 'peasant organizations', and their contribution to peasant movements in India, however, need to be examined systematically. This paper examines the process of their formation, growth and decline and their formal organizational features, leadership and class-character, programmes and ideology.

THE BEGINNING OF THE INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT

Although the exact starting point of the Communist Party in India (hereafter CPI) has been a polemical issue, it could be safely said that its foundation was laid at the Second Congress of the Communist International (Moscow : July-August 1920). M. N. Roy — then a leading Marxist and an émigré revolutionary (later one of the founding members of CPI)

SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN Vol. 24 No. 1 March 1975 30 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN envisaged 'the Indian revolution originating from the workers and peasants on the Russian model'. For that purpose, he pleaded, for the Co- mintern's exclusive assistance in the formation of CPI since that alone 'could organize the masses for the class struggle, end the British imperial- ism as well as destroy the European capitalism and thus accomplish the Indian revolution' (Roy 1964 : 411-18). Roy's disagreements with Lenin over the priorities in the formulation of strategies and tactics of the Indian revolution and Lenin's thesis on the colonial question which advocated a collaboration of the Indian communists with the bourgeois nationalist movement are too well-known to be repeated here (d'Encausee et al. 1969 : 149-70, 190-92). Significantly enough Roy felt that 'although the Indian proletariat was weak, the vast depressed peasantrry could always be used to build a strong revolutionary party' (Druhe 1959 : 20-7). Thus, the Leninist doctrine of 'alliance of workers with peasants' formed one of the fundamental postulates of Roy's thesis on the colonial question and on the problem of Indian revolution. The long-neglected agrarian question, existence of huge landed estates, acute land-hunger among the peasant masses and the appalling human misery in the Indian country-side, all of them reinforced Roy's position. The Comintern of course endorsed Lenin's thesis but at the same time it approved a programme for organizing workers and peasants to spread communism and thus to Bolshevize the East (Druhe 1959 : 29-30). In the first five years (1920-24) CPI functioned in different parts of the country but lacked coordination in its activities ; the Central Committee of CPI was not formed until December 1925 (Ahmad 1958 : 14). In con- formity with the Comintern's directive Roy and a few other Indian communists tried to spread their ideas in the Indian National Congress by taking full advantage of its built-in organized factionalism. After the first 'Non-cooperation' movement had been called off by Gandhi early in 1922, a faction led by C. R. Das felt disenchanted of Gandhi's leadership. Roy sought to 'cultivate a few outspoken Congressmen, including Das and through them to influence thinking and economic programme of the Congress. At the Gaya session of the Congress (1922) S. A. Dange and S. Chettiar, two of the pioneers of CPI, proclaimed themselves communists and boldly presented Roy's programme for progressive economic reforms (INC 1923 : 116-7). But, the Gaya session rejected the programme implying a clear defeat of the Communists and the Das faction they supported ; the Congress reaffirmed its faith in Gandhi's leadership PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 31 as well as in his programme of 'Non-cooperation' with the Government. Given the petit-bourgeois leadership and the liberal passivist methods of political agitation of the Congress, what happened in Gaya was only to be expected. Roy too knew fully well that a radical economic programme at that stage was bound to meet with hostility. Thus, the first Indian Communist attempt to capture the Congress and to move from the top to the bottom failed (Overstreet et al. 1959 : 44-58).

GROWTH AND DECLINE OF THE WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' PARTY

Following the Kanpur Conspiracy Case (1923-24), in which four prominent CPI leaders were accused of conspiring to overthrow the Govern- ment, the Indian communists realized that their activities had to be clan- destine. Communications between emigre leaders and Indian communists, as only among those operating in different parts of India, faced several odds and risks of interception1. Roy, therefore, advised his comrades to build up two parties : namely the Workers' and Peasants' Party (hereafter WPP) and the Communist Party ; the former as a legal body to disguise the latter which was banned (Overstreet et al. 1959 : 64-6). Thus, the first Left wing peasant organization in India was not conceived as an independent and an exclusively peasant body but was bracketed with 'workers' — the senior partner in WPP. The WPP's, set up by CPI without proclaiming its own identity and its policy of confiding in several like-minded Congressmen, worked well enough to make its existence felt in four provinces—Bombay, Bengal, the United Provinces and Punjab (Chaudhary 1971 : 234-5). Even while knowing that WPP was no more than a protective cover, the Com- munists saw to it that the classical Marxist-Leninist canons of the pro- letarian leadership of a revolutionary struggle were strictly adhered to. Therefore, within the framework of WPP the Communists worked primarily to build a "vanguard party". Consequently, more time and effort were invested in organizing urban-industrial workers by setting up trade unions ; little or no attention was paid to mobilizing the peasants in the countryside. The major centres of Communist activity throughout the 1920's were the big industrial cities such as Bombay, Calcutta and Kanpur. By March 1929, when the Meerut Conspiracy arrests began, the WPP (and CPI) influence among the industrial working class, particularly in Bom- 32 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN bay, was considerable. The Bombay workers were preparing for a massive general strike as a protest against a Public Safety Bill introduced in the Bombay Legislative Council by the Government when it arrested 31 CPI leaders who were later tried in the Meerut Conspiracy Case— 1929-32 (Hutchinson 1935 : 79-80). This however does not mean that the trade union activity under the auspices of WPP was confined to Bom- bay ; it was widespread as is evident from the fact that between 1924 and 1929 the number of workers involved and the number of working days lost in industrial strikes and disputes went up by nearly 100 per cent (Glading 1930 : 429-30) but any corresponding performance on the agrarian front was lacking during these years. The absence of any serious or extensive effort to organize the peasants did not mean that CPI lacked either ability or inclination in this direc- tion. Notwithstanding WPP's pre-occupation with the trade unionism, some agrarian questions did attract its attention. In a series of pamphlets and manifestoes that WPP brought out after 1926 on the occasion of its own annual conferences or those of the Congress, it promised a very radical programme of agrarian reforms including 'land to the peasant'2. Such promises and demands later became a rhetoric that appeared unfail- ingly in most of the party's documents, pamphlets etc. though with greater and greater clarity and elaboration. However, action failed to keep pace with words and WPP's activities evoked little response from the peasantry. In fact, the word 'peasant' in the party's vocabulary was only to make up a political stance that carried little conviction, or backing for action. This remained so at least during the first decade of the Communist movement in India. The failure of WPP on the agrarian front was partly due to the paucity of human and material resources and partly due to the severe forms of repression the Government adopted in stifling the movement. Despite these initial setbacks, whatever chance WPP (CPI) got to expand its sphere of influence, it utilized, consciously or unconsciously, primarily for mobilizing industrial workers and not the peasantry. For example, the first All India Workers' and Peasants' Party Conference, held at Bhatpara (Calcutta) in March 1928, was attended by over a thousand delegates representing some 44 trade unions from Bengal (such as the Jute Workers Union, Cotton Mill Workers Union, Scavangers Union of Bengal and so on). But the list of these unions did not contain a single union or Sabha of peasants although there were representatives of actual peasants, PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 33

10 each, from Mymensingh, Dacca and some other districts3. For WPP the Russian revolution was a model to emulate. Its propaganda literature, brought out between 1925 and 1929, often hailed the achievements of the workers' and peasants' government in Russia. In the party's training camps workers were told to build a strong revolutionary party just as the Bolsheviks did (MCCE II, p. 527-3 : 28-9). By and large WPP (and CPI) leaders, whether in exile or in India, acknowledged the leadership of the Soviet Communists in the international communist movement and looked to them for guidance in ideological as well as strategic matters. The WPP leaders saw the problems of organizing the working masses in India through the eyes of the Comintern. The Russian legacy thus became an object of reverence and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat an act of faith with the WPP. Therefore, in keeping with the doctrine, the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary movement was to be only ancillary (MCCE II, p. 1256 : 30-36). The major tasks for the party workers were :

...... to penetrate peasant organizations where ever they existed as genuinely mass organizations, to correctly formulate the agrarian questions in the ranks of the working class, to explain to them the importance of the decisive role of the agrarian revolution, and to acquaint them with the method of agitation, propaganda and organizational work among the peasantry" (MCCE IV, p. 334 : 74-5).

This suggests that the All India WPP framework encompassed peasants primarily for tactical and strategic considerations.4 It also provides us with some clues as to why CPI and its legal cover—WPP did so little to build a genuine peasant organization until 1929. Organizationally, there were three separate WPP's each in Bombay, Bengal and Punjab. They were integrated in 1928 when an All India WPP was formally set up. Of the three units, those in Bombay and Bengal were the most developed politically and acted independently. But none of these had any working class membership to speak of. The Bengal and Punjab units had some active peasant members but in Bombay it was exclusively petit-bourgeois though some of its members maintained close contacts with workers through trade unions already active in the field (MCCE VIII, p. 2102-c : 16). The leaders of CPI and WPP came mainly from urban middle class 34 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN families. If the 33 accused in the Meerut case are taken as a sample then it amply confirms the middle class origin of the left leadership in India.5 Barring the three British communists working in India (P. Spratt, Ben Bradley and L. Hutchinson) all the rest were Indian communists from Bombay, Bengal, Punjab and a few from the U.P. Most of them were actively associated with the trade union movement and were also committed to the idea of precedence of the working class over the peasantry in revolutionary movements. Among the notable leaders of WPP and CPI there was not a single peasant leader to merit our attention because the leadership potential at the grass-roots was never explored. However, 'it was not the petit-bourgeois and intellectual character of leadership that caused WPP an anxiety as much as the poor recruitment of members from the actual proletariat did' (MCCE VIII, p. 2323-1 : 1-8). The Meerut trial was a turning point in the Indian communist movement. The Government could axe the left-wing activity to a considerable extent and with relative ease. The trial injected fresh thinking over strategies and tactics CPI were to adopt in future. Even before the trial, a section of the Comintern had begun to question the rationale underlying the collaborationist line Lenin had prescribed for CPI. The WPP often operated on the one hand, as an appendage to the Congress and consequently failed to emerge as a truly revolutionary organization. On the other hand, the imperialist government in India proved far too powerful to be liquidated by its mere verbal radicalism and infantile revolutionary adventurism. At the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern (Moscow : July-August 1928) there was a clear split between the Russians and the CP of Great Britain over the question of the future status of WPP's in India. The former wanted WPP's to be disbanded while the latter pleaded for their continuation (Overstreet et al., 1959 : 104-17). The controversy reflected two things : first, that within the Comintern two camps were competing for establishing control over the Indian communist movement and secondly, that WPP's had succeeded neither in influencing the Congress from within, nor in laying the foundation of a revolutionary party in India. Ideologically, WPP drew heavily on classical Marxism and Leninism. The party ideology had to be related to programme of action but while doing so the WPP leaders seldom gave serious thought to the imponder- ables of the Indian situation. Consequently, consistency and clarity of issues could not be maintained. No two leaders or party units defined PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 35 their goals and priorities in a uniform fashion; frequently, resolutions of a WPP branch were at variance with and, sometimes contradictory to those of another branch. Party slogans and demands were not always in consonance with its constitution. Some examples could be cited to substantiate this point : Initially, WPP defined 'peasant' as : "One who does agricultural work with his own hands and whose acreage does not exceed 60 bighas (20 acres) of land. Field (farm) labourers, small artisans and menials in the villages and fishermen are also to be organized along with the peasants" (MCCE V, p. 669 : 81). The definition suggests that the WPP's conception of 'peasant' was in- clusive insofar as different lower strata of agrarian hierarchy were concer- ned. But it excluded rich peasants and commercial farmers from its ambit. Clearly, the WPP wanted a mixed class-base consisting of the cultivating owners, tenants of medium size holdings, poor peasants and agricultural labourers. All the same it could never resolve the dilemma of the relationship between class and party in India. This was evident when, on the question of support for the Bardoli satyagraha (1928) WPP was unable to decide its exact attitude. The agitating peasants of Bardoli being mostly the rich and prosperous Patidars, (Dhanagare 1973 : 197- 226), the WPP conference gave a very brief, vague and half-hearted statement of sympathy for them. The Bombay WPP unit went even a step further when R. S. Nimbkar, one of its front-rank leaders, criticized the Bardoli struggle on the grounds that 'it was not a typical peasant movement directed against landlord exploitation but was only an anti- imperialist agitation of a mixed class character, sponsored by many elements who were not at all sympathetic to the real interests of workers and peasants6. This attitude of ambivalence and hostility toward the Bardoli satyagraha was, however, disapproved by Clemens Dutt, one of the leading members of CP of Great Britain and a friend, philosopher and guide of the Indian left. He wrote :

"... it (Bardoli) is a movement which should have our active support and ... the silence of the WPP about the movement does no good to the latter. The peasants, rich or poor, have a legitimate grievance, and 36 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN the WPP ..would have done well to have come out as their cham pions ...... from the very outset"7.

Apart from the confusion about the exact agrarian class base, WPP lacked clearly and uniformly defined objectives ; its charter of demands lacked consistency. For example, 'nationalization of land' and 'distri- bution of all cultivable land on leases directly to the actual cultivator' formed two of the important demands repeatedly made in the party pamphlets, although the WPP constitution was silent on these issues (MCCE II, p. 720 : 53-5 ; cf. MCCE V, p. 459 (8) : 10-11). Similarly, one of the 'immediate demands of peasants' voiced at the All India WPP Conference, referred to above, were : 'abolition of the permanent settle- ment (Zamindari) system of Bengal, of all intermediate tenures, ryotwari (peasant proprietary) system, Talukdari of Oudh and the like'. But in the same catalogue of demands WPP promised 'to establish peasant pro- prietorship in land' and demanded institution of graduated income tax on agricultural incomes above Rs. 2,000 per annum (MCCE V, p. 669: 81-2). Such inconsistencies were nowhere more pronounced than they were in the Bengal branch of WPP. For sometime, some prominent landlords, and landowners were not only actively associated with the Bengal WPP but were also its office bearers. The Bengal unit like the All India WPP, was committed to the 'abolition of landlordism' but its own president was a noted Zamindar and, when he resigned, was succeeded by another landlord (in 1927) who openly disowned the Party's declared agrarian policy (Chattopadhyay 1970 : 169-70). Thus, WPP's charters and manifestoes displayed not only ideological inconsistencies but also the cross-pressures at work (owing to the conflic- ting class interests) within the party. The demand for a graduated agricultural income tax, presumably, was intended to embarrass those in the party who favoured capitalist farmers and rich peasants, and thereby to protect the interests of the middle peasant.8 Evidently, the WPP leadership treated the intricate agrarian questions very casually, and made little effort either to understand the diverse agrarian social structures in India or to grasp the agrarian crisis and class contradictions developing in the countryside. Propaganda pamphlets and policy documents of WPP rarely reflected serious thinking of fundamental issues such as 'private property in land', 'land control and land use', 'class base of the party' and so on. Moreover, the ideological stances of WPP in the twenties were governed PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 37 by political expediency and the level of maturity of workers in different regions. For these weaknesses no one was to be blamed except the historical conditions in which the Workers' and Peasants' movement, as a disguise for CPI, developed and disappeared. The CPI and WPP, being under constant surveillance and repression, were compelled to resort to politics of survival in which ideological issues and consistency in programmes tended to be compromised, if not sacrificed, first. Although the Comintern had realised how dysfunctional WPP's had proved to be, it advised CPI leaders to promote and exploit factional conflicts within the Congress in order to expose its reactionary leadership and thereby to draw the revolutionary sections nearer WPP. Party workers were supposed to perform a purely critical function inside the Con- gress organization (WPP 1929 : 159-60). This line, adopted in 1929, finally culminated into the "United Front" strategy in the mid-thirties, Between 1929-1935 the Communist following in India shrank considerably. Roy was expelled from the Comintern owing to his divergence with the official policy, whereas most of the CPI leaders were languishing in Meerut jail and hence could not direct the movement. New leaders were no doubt, coming up, but the Indian political scene was dominated exclusively by Gandhi and the Congress. The Congress Left-wing under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, had its sympathies with the Meerut detainees. Some leading Congressmen, including the two Nehrus, were associated with their defence for sometime. But in general the Congress must have had a melancholy satisfaction in the fact that the CPI leaders' detention had left the field of industrial trade union activities wide open for itself without any competitor. The Congress could set up its own trade/ labour unions as a result of which the Communist influence and with that industrial strikes declined, particularly between 1930 and 1933 (Druhe 1959 : 132). For all practical purposes WPP's were given a quiet burial and consequently the Communists lost whatever little contact they had with the villages although they were becoming increasingly aware of the importance of mobilizing the agricultural proletariat—poor peasants and the landless labourers. Around 1931, the CPI workers placed greater emphasis on mobilizing peasantry without necessarily forsaking the concept of the hegemony of the industrial proletariat in a revolutionary movement (Overstreet et al. 1959 : 117-21, 150-54). But the political wilder- ness between 1929-33 permitted them little scope and the mounting 38 sociological bulletin repression rendered them helpless. The 'United Front' and Rises of the Kisan Sabha; 1935-47

Under Stalin's directives the Comintern had prescribed the Left-anti- capitalist strategy (at variance with Lenin's Right-anti-imperialist one) from 1928 to 1933, and consequently CPI had suffered not only self- isolation but also the severe repression (Meerut trial etc.) as discussed above. In the face of the new threats to Russia in the international politics, a new strategy was being laid down. In August 1932 the plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern exhorted the Indian communists : "to strengthen the party politically as well as organizationally, to stage strikes, to give the greatest support to the peasant movement for the non- payment of taxes, rents etc. and to popularize the basic slogans and tasks of the agrarian revolution in India"9

The new policy adopted at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (July- August 1935) now expected the Indian communists to give up their radical protestations and to organize an anti-imperialist broad-based mass movement, comprising the working class, peasantry and the middle class, through consolidation of all the leftist elements whether in or outside the Congress. This new dispensation, known as the "United Front" strategy, required them to work under the reformist leadership of the nationalist movement. A growing emphasis on mobilization of the peasantry, accele- ration of the agrarian crisis and a change of attitude toward the Congress were the most important ingredients of the new strategy. Now the Con- gress was no longer the 'bourgeois reformist political organization' but the 'revolutionary party of the Indian people' and the leaders like Gandhi and Nehru were no longer to be regarded as reactionary but as the popular leaders of the mass movement ! (Dutt et al. 1936 : 297-300). In 1934 some socialists and the Congress Left-wingers established the Congress Socialist Party (hereafter CSP). Their departure with the Con- gress seemed imminent several times but actually they never left the Congress. CSP had considerable following in North India, especially in Bihar and the United Provinces (the present day Uttar Pradesh) where its leaders established contacts with peasantry either by organizing new PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 39 Kisan Sabhas or by infiltrating those that were already functioning under the Congress banner. The CSP's conflict with the Congress conservations and Rightist elements was primarily over the extent of radicalism of economic programme, the degree of agrarian change and its method in parti- cular. Although ideologically the CSP leaders were nearer Marxism and Fabian socialism, they were equally influenced by Gandhism.10 Ini- tially, therefore, the Communists criticized CSP as 'reactionary' and an 'appendage of the bourgeoisie, but the "United Front" strategy converted it into a 'sister Marxist party' (Pollitt et al. 1936 : 1343-4). On agrarian questions the CSP's policies and programmes were certainly more radical than those of the Congress and reflected better under- standing and clarity than CPI-WPP's did. CSP's agrarian resolutions, particularly those on 'abolition of Zamindari'', 'recognition of occupancy rights of tenants in all the landlord-tenant areas', 'debt freeze' and 'agricultural wages' were framed in unequivocal terms (GOI1934 : 3-4). Right from the beginning there was a basic difference between CSP and CPI agrarian policies ; the former limited themselves to economism while the latter took a primarily political stand—and perhaps overdid it by not emphasizing economic aspects well enough. At any rate, close contacts with CSP severed the interests of CPI in view of the latter's "United Front" strategy and the new emphasis on mobilization of the peasantry. In response to CPI's conciliatory gestures both the Congress and the CSP, opened their doors for the Communists in 1935. Consequently, by 1937 several Communists had joined either Congress or CSP. Some had even managed to secure key positions in their provincial and national executive committees. One of the motives underlying this infiltration may have been to utilize the widespread organizational network of the two parties. The Communists suffering as they were from several handicaps, had no better option at that time than to capture the existing organization apparatus such as the Kisan Sabhas of the Congress and the CSP. Once they got access to the party machinery, they preferred to work at the grass root level, leaving the Congress, Kisan and CSP leaders isola- ted at the top (Karnik 1957 : 36-45). The tactics of infiltration paid them rich dividends. The CPI workers utilized the period (mid-thirties) to lay the foundation of their own peasant organization, the All-India Kisan Sabha (hereafter AIKS). Diverse political forces converted and led to the setting up, in April 40 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 1936, of AIKS, the first peasant organization on an all-India scale. The CSP, CPI, some "Kisan-minded" Congressmen and peasant organizations already working at the provincial or regional level (particularly in Bihar and Andhra), all wanted that the desperate elements working for the mobilization of the peasants should be unified into an all-India party of peasants. Hence the establishment of AIKS (Ranga 1936 : 280-84). Ideo- logically or in terms of class base of the party, these elements had little in common. What they all shared was perhaps a sense of disillusionment with the agrarian policies of Gandhi, Nehru and the Congress within the framework of the Indian national movement. The most significant regional peasant organization, with the emergence of AIKS, was the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (hereafter BPKS). It started work in 1928-29 when the economy was heading toward the depression and the political ferment, that finally led to the nationwide Civil Disobedience movement, had just begun. Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, one of the most distinguished peasant leaders India produced in the first half of this century, was the main architect of BPKS. Leading a life of renunciation (of a Sanyasi) right from his early youth, the Swami plunged into the freedom struggle when Gandhi gave a call for "Non- cooperation". He took keen interest in ameliorating the conditions of peasants in the Zamindari estates of Bihar but being a devout Gandhian initially he sought solutions to agrarian problems within a reformist frame of reference (Hauser 1961 : 35-43). He remained so throughout the 1920's. The peasants' sufferings during the depression years (1929-33) offered an opportunity for launching a political agitation in Bihar. But the Bihar Congress leaders were politically reluctant to start a "non-rent" campaign during the Second Civil Disobedience movement (1930-32), nor did they demand rent-remissions for tenants as the Congress under Nehru's leadership did in the United Provinces (Dhanagare 1973 : 255-78). The general features of the agrarian social structure, in Bihar and Oudh (U.P.) were similar. But the Congress in Bihar unlike in U.P. worked always for compromises between the landlords and tenants (Hauser 1961 : 48-50, 54-5). Consequently, Swami Sahajanand and his BPKS parted company with the Bihar Congress in 1932 and got engaged in a fervent campaign against landlordism, against landlord tenant comprises and in defence of the occupancy rights of tenants. In 1934, many Congress Socialists joined Swami Sahajanand, which gave the BPKS organization a new impetus PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 41 and stability and provided it with not only new cadres of leadership but also an ideological justification it hitherto lacked (Hauser 1961 : 66). The BPKS leadership comprised of the middle class professionals, such as lawyers, and western-educated intellectuals who were moderate landholders and held political ambitions too. Most of the leaders of the Kisan Sabha including Jai Prakash Narayan11 ( who was then a leading Congress Socialist) belonged to this category of "smaller landed gentry and political adventurers" (Hauser 1961: 76-7). Castewise most of them were Bhumihars, others, Rajputs, Brahmins and Kayasthas—all from upper or dominantwise castes. Notwithstanding this, casteism certainly was not the major vital impulse of the peasant movement and organization in Bihar. If most of the BPKS leaders were Bhumihars so were most of the Zamindars in Bihar. Moreover, 90 per cent of the tenantry in Bihar consisting of the Kurmi and Keori castes, traditionally cultivators, formed the bulkward of the BPKS. Although caste element was not totally absent in the mobilization-of the peasantry in Bihar, under the Swami's leadership, the Sabha emerged gradually as a class-oriented organization (Hauser 1961 : 77-8). The ideology of the Kisan Sabha in Bihar underwent a slow evolution. In the beginning it was no more than a forum to ventilate peasant grievances (over high rents, interest rates, illegal exactions etc.); its leaders had no idea of what 'revolution' was. Even later when the Swami began to lead BPKS toward the Left he had only a vague notion of a 'revolutionary struggle'. The Sabha never contemplated an overthrow either of the Government or of the landlords and worked on the principle of conciliation (Saraswati 1952 : 293, 322-3). But as the Kisan Sabha crossed its "bamboo hedges" and came in contact first with the CSP workers and later with CPI, its leaders, particularly Swami Sahaja- nand, became more radical. During this transition which took place in the thirties BPKS (and AIKS) drifted away from the Congress and came nearer the CPI ideologically (Hauser 1961 : 95-101). The BPKS in the process of its ideological evolution, continually rede- fined its concept of the peasant and priorities in agrarian programme. An important phase was over in 1941, when the Swami came in close contact with the Communists while in prison. He changed his position after coming out. Back in 1936 BPKS had resolved in favour of the abolition of Zamindaris (landlord estates) and this had upset members who were themselves substantial tenants, petty landholders or small 42 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN Zamindars. Swami Sahajanand, had then clarified that when BPKS talked of 'landlords' it referred to 'big landed estate holders, feudal chiefs and princes' and not to 'grihasthas' who earned their livelihood by cultivation, whether as petty landlord ryot or labourer (Saraswati 1936 : 1-2). After 1942, the Swami thought that since the distinction between poor peasant and landless labourer was fast vanishing, the problems of rural proletariat were becoming more urgent than those of the middle peasants and more prosperous farmers. He even complained that the rich peasants (particularly commercial farmers such as the cane- growers in Bihar) benefited most by taking leading part in the Kisan Sabha struggles and that they often used the Sabha for their own ends (Saraswati 1944 : 17)12. In early forties the Swamy wanted the agricultural proletariat (poor peasants and agricultural labourers) almost exclusively to constitute the class base of the BPKS and AIKS. He also now found the Gandhian notion of "non-violent resistance" to be too inadequate to attain radical changes in the agrarian structure13. Like the BPKS, other provincial units of the AIKS had considerable influence in Bengal and Andhra. In Bengal, from 1926-28 the WPP activities were widespread. It was the only provincial WPP which had succeeded in mobilizing peasantry to a certain extent. Two of the communist leaders, Muzaffar Ahmad and Bankim Mukherjee from Bengal took special interest in peasants' problems. Both were among the accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. After their release from prison in early thirties they again started work among peasants under the auspices of AIKS. In Bengal, the Communists controlled the organizational committees of the Kisan Sabha; from 1920 onward the peasant movement here was always ultra-Left ideologically and the Congress leaders never seemed to have effective control of these organizations as in U.P. or Bihar (MCCE VIII, p. 2510 : 9-10, VI, p. 1327 : 59-62). In terms of social origins and the dominant concerns, the Andhra unit of the AIKS had almost similar life history as the BPKS. The mobilization of peasantry in Andhra districts began in 1928-29 and gathered momentum during the years of economic depression and nationwide campaign for the Civil Disobedience. The Andhra Provin- cial Ryots' Association was first founded by N. G. Ranga and M. B. Naidu in 1928 at Guntur, but it came into limelight only after 1934. Initially, it aimed at preventing revenue enhancement in resettlement process, revenue remissions, famine relief and agricultural credit on PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 43 liberal terms. These were the typical concerns of peasant proprietors, landholders and tenants of medium-size (between 5 and 15 acres in Andhra) landholdings in districts such as Guntur, Kurnool, East Goda- vari and so on (Ranga 1936 : 385-93). The Andhra peasant leaders had not made clearcut ideological choice and they professed doctrines of classical Marxism, socialism and Gandhism simultaneously. In 1931, when the depression was at its peak, deepening the crisis in the countryside, the Andhra peasant movement mobilized opinion in favour of tenants' grievances and revenue remissions; later it engaged in a zealous campaign against the atrocities of Zamindari administration. Between 1931 and 1934 a series of peasant meetings and conferences were held to voice demands of tenants and landholders (Ranga 1949 : 58-65). N. G. Ranga was the most notable among the leaders of the Andhra unit of AIKS. He came from a well-off family of the Kamma caste, who have been peasent-cultivators by tradition. The Kamma peasantry always competed with Reddys, the other dominant cultivating caste of the region, for economic and political power (Harrisan 1956 : 378-404). The peasant movement, and a well-knit organization of AIKS in Andhra represented this power tussle. Ranga, like Sahajanand, was initially a left-reformist leader in the national movement. But, unlike the Swami, he was a western-educated intellectual. His leadership potential and political entrepreneurship could not be confined to Andhra alone. He kept links with various pressure groups, parties and platforms outside. From 1934 to 1937 he collaborated with CSP and also CPI utilizing the Andhra Ryots' Association as his power-base. So solid was his organizational work among the Andhra peasants, particularly among the Kamma rich and middle peasantry, that for some time both CSP and CPI virtually competed to get Ranga into their folds. The CPI leaders tried to cultivate him by designating him as the President of the All- India Peasants and Workers Conference they organized in Madras in October 1935. This aroused a sharp reaction from the CSP which then 'directed its workers not to extend any cooperation to Ranga' (Ranga 1949 : 68-9). These rivalries ended, though temporarily, when efforts for 'left consolidation', following the CPI's "United Front" strategy, culminated in the formation of AIKS in 1936. Ranga was one of the builders of this first all-India peasant organization. All the same he never allowed the identity of his Andhra Provincial Ryots' Association to merge complete- 44 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN ly with the AIKS, and particularly with the communists—the most dominant partners in the AIKS from the beginning. Although Ranga continued to be active in AIKS from 1936 to 1939, the period in which Swami Sahajanand's ideological metamorphosis had been completed, unlike the Swami, he did not change his convictions. He remained what he was—a rich and middle-peasant leader. Ranga's programme of agrarian reforms and rural reconstruction also continued to reflect the aspirations of the status seeking 'ryot' of Andhra (Ranga 1939 : 267 73). Only occasionally Ranga turned to the problems of the poor peasantry. In 1929, and again in 1933, he did attempt to mobilize the landless agricultural labourers but with little success. These efforts, however, were prompted by the fact that a conflict between the ryots (rich and middle peasants, either proprietors or tenants) and the landless labourers was developing in the Andhra countryside. In 1935 in Nellore dist- rict, agricultural labourers had already succeeded in obliging their employers—the rich and middle-peasants—to use proper and authorized measures in paying their wages. Being primarily the leader of the ryots, Ranga was anxious to aviod confrontation or extensive conflicts between the ryots and agricultural labourers. It is, therefore, more than a coin- cidence that in that very year the South Indian Federation of Peasants and Workers was established, with Ranga as its General Secretary; it worked out a compromise whereby the ryots conceded the minimum demands of the labourers (on wages, working conditions etc.) whereas the latter agreed to cooperate with former (Ranga 1936 : 287-8). As mentioned above, during 1941-43 the years of "People's War" AIKS passed into the hands of Communists under whose ideological influence Swami Sahajanand began to build AIKS as a purely poor peasants' organization. It was at this stage that Ranga broke off from the AIKS and set up the All-India Kisan Congress 'with a view to shake the Kisan Congressites off the Marxists who were more loyal to the Euro- pean antipeasant dogma of the dictatorship of the proletariat than to the dynamics of the Indian peasant world' (Ranga 1949 : 71). What exactly was this dynamics and what was his conception of the 'peasant'? Ranga never cared to state his position on these questions unambi- guously. The AIKS though basically comprising of disgruntled ex-Congressmen, did not abandon efforts toward a "functional alliance" with the Con- gress in order to mould the latter's agrarian policies. At the Lucknow PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 45 Session (April 1936) the Congress only half-heartedly agreed to direct the provincial committees to conduct enquiries into the agrarian situation in their respective provinces and to formulate provincial agrarian programmes. A resolution to this effect was passed at Lucknow only after Ranga and Sahajanand Saraswati (the President and the General Secretary of AIKS which held its first conference at Lucknow coinciding with the Congress session) gave a stiff fight and pressurized the Congress leaders, particularly Nehru, to commit the Congress to a definite agrarian programme (Ranga 1936 : 283-4; Nehru 1948 : 408-9). Subse- quently at its 50th session at Faizpur (December 1936) the Congress adopted an agrarian programme, but much to the chagrin of AIKS, it was not sufficiently radical as it did not include the item of 'Zamindari abolition' (Malaviya 1956 : 62-5). Despite this, AIKS overwhelmingly supported the Congress in the 1937 Elections in which the latter achieved handsome majorities in six provinces. Thus, the so called "functional alliance" benefited the Congress alone whereas AIKS was totally disillusioned not only by the Congress agrarian programme but also by the performance of Congress ministries during their office from 1937-3914. Organizationally, AIKS as an all-India body could not be stronger than its constituent Provincial units. Its Constitution provided for primary members, local units from province to village and a decision- making committee at each of these levels (AIKS 1939 : 1-2). Apart from a nucleus of office bearers, elaborate party network probably did not exist except in a few stronghold districts. Meetings, sessions and conferences, held from time to time, were organized on adhoc arrangements; no serious attention was ever given to the need for building a strong party apparatus. The financial support was derived from personal friends or wealthy well-wishers of some AIKS leaders, particularly Swami Sahaja- nand; in decision-making AIKS tended to be monolithic (Hauser 1961 : 90-91). Membership of the Kisan Sabha was quite impressive; it went up steadily in Bihar from 80,000 in 1935 to 250,000 in 1938 (an increase of over 300%). This was, of course, at the height of agrarian agitation and popularity of the Swami (Hauser 1961 : 92). Its peasant rallies were largely attended; but this 'mass support' could hardly be a good substitute for a 'disciplined mass party'. The membership figure dropped during 1939-41 when AIKS itself was undergoing a radical change in its ideological position and its class base. The Communists by 1942 had more or less completely established their hold on AIKS. During the 46 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN Second World War, CPI was forced to take an unequivocal stand on the War. At first, its policy was identical with that of the Congress and CSP who opposed the imperialist war. With the Russian entry into the war on the side of the Allies, following the German invasion of Russia, the CPI (and therefore AIKS) supported the War effort; it now became the "People's War" for them. For this sudden change in policy CPI had to pay dearly in the sense that it alienated several left-wing elements, created more enemies than before and put its own political integrity in jeopardy (Druhe 1959 : 199-240). Notwithstanding this apparent loss, the war was a blessing in disguise both for CPI and AIKS. Because of their support for the war effort the Government liberalized its attitude toward the two organizations. The Left leaders under detention were released. The party work improved considerably after the initial setbacks. Between 1941 and 1945 the Communist domination of AIKS further intensified and the two tended to become identical. The CPI membership increased phenomenally in these years; in Bengal alone the total membership which in April 1943 was of 3,000 rose by January 1945 to over 9,000. Punjab was another stronghold of the Kisan Sabha activity. The AIKS claimed an organized membership of 30,000 in April 1943 in Punjab and hoped to double it in a year's time (Joshi 1943 : 159). A similarly ascending trend was visible in the membership figures for all the provincial units of AIKS from 1941-1944 as given in Table 1. The enrolment of members showed considerable growth even after February 1944; the respective quotas and targets for different provincial units of AIKS were being fixed very ambitiously (AIKS 1944 :111-10). The increase was more pronounced in Andhra, Bengal and Punjab where the Communist influence in the Kisan Sabha network was more widespread. However, the Bihar unit of AIKS experienced a sharp decrease in its membership from 80,000 in 1938 to 54,200 in 1942 and 27,168 in 1943; it, of course, recovered in the following year (see Table 1). The rise and fall in BPKS probably reflected the shifting class base of the party as a result of the changing ideological positions and political alignments of its leaders. As we mentioned, the process of Swami Sahajanand's ideological conversion, which began around 1938, was almost complete in early 1942. Then, in pursuance of the CPI line on the War issue, the AIKS passed a resolution supporting the Govern- ment's War effort (Saraswati 19426 : 11-16). It was at this point that PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 47

the new policy as regards the class base of the party was implemented to bring AIKS nearer the mass of poor peasantry, particularly m Andhra, Bengal, Bihar, Punjab15, and U P. At the same time it alienated support of the rich and middle peasants. This explains why in 1944 both CSP and Ranga's Kisan Congress group dissociated themselves from AIKS and the Swami (Ranga 1949 . 71-3) While CPI captured AIKS organization completely by 1944-45, it could not hold Swami in its net for long. Swami Sahajanand's collaboration with CPI came to an end in mid-1945 owing to differences on several matters. Now, Swami politically identified himself again with the Congress Left-wingers and Con- tSouce: All India Kisan Sabha— Organizational Reportage, 1, (1942-43), Appendix A, p 27, 3, (1942-43), pp 11-12, and 3, (1943-44), p 8 (All the Numbers were published by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, General Secretary, either from Patna or Bombay) *This figure has been given as 830,000 in R Palme Dutt, 'India and Pakistan', The Labour Monthly, XXVIII, 3 (March 1946), p 91 but it refers to the year 1945 However, in yet another source the enrolment figure for 1945 (April) is given as 825,000 See, People's War, 15 April, 1945, p 3 48 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN gress Socialists thereafter. For sometime he cooperated in yet another effort for the Left consolidation which led to the formation of a new All India United Kisan Sabha (Saraswati 1945 : 6-7; 1946 : 1-8 and 1947 : 30- 34). The organizational character and the fundamental objectives of the new all India peasant body were similar to those of AIKS. The All- India United Kisan Sabha did have a few strongholds in U.P. and Bihar, but otherwise its activities were not widespread. The new party stressed an 'abolition of landlordism, like all the political parties at that time; it also aimed at curbing the growing power of the rich peasants and moneylenders in rural areas (Saraswati 1948 : 1-10 ; 1949 : 15-25). The differences, however, lay in nomenclature, political affiliations of the leaders (AIKS with CPI and AIUKS with CSP and sometimes with the Congress) and above all in their emphasis on the agrarian class base of the party. But the new United Kisan Sabha, as an all India peasant organization, was just a collection of splinter groups, and was hardly a force to reckon with. The picture that emerges from the developments during the early and mid-thirties then suggests that the peasants politics in India mirrored more the power tussles among some leading personalities than aspirations of the agrarian classes they either came from or spoke for. However, from the late thirties through the forties it began to reflect increasingly the shifts in the class outlook of the leaderships, class contents of the programmes and perhaps class compositions of the organizations themselves16. Despite the process of fission in the peasant parties in the forties, the take-over of the AIKS by CPI was very largely successful, it was an achievement of the 'United Front' strategy. The AIKS remained the principal peasant organization in India ; its influence was spreading fast in Andhra, Bengal and Punjab, particularly among the poor peasants, tenants—at will, sharecroppers and landless agricultural labourers. It was only when an attempt to change the class basis of the party succeeded that AIKS and CPI could stage the first two left-wing peasant insur- rections in India—the Tebhaga struggle in Bengal (1946-47) and the revolt in Telengana (1946-51) (Dhanagare 1973 : 316-403).

CONCLUSIONS Some tentative generalizations about the peasant organizations that developed and declined in India between 1925 and 1946 can be attempt- ed as the following : PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 49 (i) The way peasant organizations emerged in different parts of India strongly points to their agitational character. They were basically agrarian agitations rather than 'party' or 'organization' in the strict structural- functional sense. Their activities gathered or lost momentum as the pressure of genuine peasant grievances increased or decreased. There- fore, the peasant parties were essentially transitory in character. (ii) The peasant organizations almost always suffered from an identity crisis. They searched for recognition from or affiliations to one or the other national political party—whether the Congress, Socialist or Com- munist. The inability of the peasants' parties to sustain themselves as independent and genuinely peasant political organizations was fully exploited by the all-India political parties. The latter either set up their own satellite Kisan Sabhas or captured the existing ones in order to utilize them for their own political ends. {Hi) Caste identity and solidarity did play some part in the peasant organizations particularly in their "take-off" stage, but it was not very significant in the formulations of policy programme or demands which tended to represent specific agrarian class interest. (iv) Despite the fact that the peasant parties made a genuine effort to organize a class-oriented peasant movement, their success was only a regional rather than an all-India phenomenon. Above all none of them ever succeeded in building up a strong, disciplined revolutionary organization. (v) Leadership of the peasant organizations came from either well-to- do, middle peasant or the urban middle class professionals, intelligentsia and politicians. The peasant, the actual cultivator, seldom demonstrated any potential for leadership. Initially the leaders personalities played a domineering role and eclipsed the aspirations of peasants, although later the class outlook of leaders began to manifest in the programme and, consequently perhaps, to change the class compositions of the parties. Element of 'millennium' or 'charisma' was only an exception rather than the rule as one might expect of the peasant leaders in a traditional society. Such elements were found only in the initial stages of the Kisan Sabha activity in Bihar (Hauser 1961 : 85-7). (vi) From 1925 till 1938 or so, the class base of the peasant parties comprised predominantly of the middle peasants, rich and well-to-do- farmers and substantial tenants who took the leading part in organizing the parties. It was only after 1940 when the most influential peasant 50 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN body of that period—AIKS, turned to the problems of poor peasants,and the landless labourers and it ceased to be an exclusively rich and middle peasant party. Thereafter, the response of poor peasantry was over- whelming. (vii) Ideologies of the peasant organizations vascillated between the pola- rities of Gandhism on the one hand and Marxism-Leninism on the other. Varying emphases on ends and means and curious mixtures of the two with Fabian socialism often characterized their ideas, concepts programmes, demands, and overall agrarian policies. But during the period under review the peasant parties moved gradually away from Gandhian approach and came nearer Marxism. (viii) The most outstanding feature of the peasant organizations of this period was their failure to grasp the diversity and complexities of agrarian social structures in India and also to understand the developing agrarian crisis and class contradictions in the rural society. Confusion about defining the basic agrarian problems, and priorities and the ideological pitfalls were the outcome of that failure. Party manifestoes or charters of demands were influenced by political expediencies and internal pressures and were sometimes mutually contradictory. Some constructive thinking and clarity on issues began to emerge after 1940 when CPI established control over AIKS. But even then, the intractable problems of denning agrarian classes and priorities in different regions of India continued to be the major source of ideological confusion among CPI and CPI-led peasant parties. These failures, however, must be attri- buted to the conditions of constant repressions and to the dynamics of political alliances within the nationalist movement which compelled the Indian Left to resort to the politics of survival.

*This article is a revised draft of a chapter of the author's doctoral dissertation : "Peasant Movement in India, C. 1920-50", University of Sussex (England), 1973. The author is indebted to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the U.K. and PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 51

the Government of India—Ministry of Education for an award of Commonwealth Scholarship (1970) which enabled him to undertake the research work at the Sussex University. Thanks are due to Hamza Alavi, T. Bottomore, Z. Barbu, R. Guha and P D. Reeves who read an earlier version of this article and made very useful com- ments and suggestions.

NOTES 1. This is evident in GOI 1927 : 127-28. Following the Second Comintern, special intelligence was put into operation by the Government for this purpose. See, Ahmad 1958 : 7. 2. See, "Manifesto of the Workers' and Peasants' party to the INC—Madras December 1927" in MCCE, IV, p. 23. 3. "The first all India W.P.P. Conference March 1928-Bhatpara" in MCCE, V, p. 467(4) : 58-9 ; also "List of Trade Unions of Bengal", MCCE, V, p. 526 : 54-5. 4. Leaders of the first generation of Indian communists have made no secret of this. See, for example, Ahmad 1958 : 24 ; Hutchinson 1935 : 36-44; Spratt 1955 : 29. 5. Initially only 31 leaders were arrested. Later L. Hutchinson and Amir Hyder were added to the list thus making the total 33. MCCE, VIII, p. 2485 : 72-3 and p. 2436 : 78-9. 6. See, The Bombay Chronicle, June 4, 1928, 4. Some WPP pamphlets of that period even deplored 'the pious leaders of Bardoli' for 'their betrayal of the movement'. MCCE, IV, p. 415(13) : 66-8 and p. 416(5) : 77-8. 7. See, C. P. Dutt to S. V. Ghate (Letter d. 28 June, 1928) MCCE, VI, p. 1348-34 : 39-40. Emphasis has been added. Ghate later wrote a reply to Dutt clarifying that Nimbkar's speeeh was misreported and that his criticism of the Bardoli leaders was on account of their apathy to the workers' strike in Bombay. Ghate to Dutt (Letter d. 20 July, 1928) MCCE, VIII, p. 2408 : 64-5. 8. These terms have been used in the broad sense in which they are defined in classi cal Marxian literature. See, Lenin 1946 : 57-9 and Tse tung 1967 : 137-9. 9. As cited in Sinha 1968 : 80. Emphasis has been added.

10. For these divergent influences on the CSP leaders see, Limaye 1952 : 1-5 ; Masani 1954 : 63-5 ; Narayan 1964 : 138-78 and Sampoornanand 1961 : 1-53. 11. J. P. Narayan is one of the pioneers of the socialist movement in India. Later, however, he turned to Gandhism and after the Independence adopted a neo- Gandhian approach to social reconstruction—called Sarvodaya. See, his 1964 : 138-78. 12. In fact the growing dominance of the rich peasants in the activities of the Bihar Kisan Sabha was felt back in 1935 or so. See, Saraswati 1935 : 70. 13. This gradual shift in Swami Sahajanand's ideological position and leanings can be seen in : Saraswati 1938a : 7-8, 13-16 ; 1940 : 12-14 ; 1942a : 30-32 and also by him 1943 : 70-112. 14. Swami Sahajanand voiced the disappointment of the AIKS leaders over the Faizpur programme and also on the failures of the Congress ministries. See, his 19386: 1-18. 52 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN

15 In terms of the peasant mobilization Punjab presents a fascinating case but, for want of adequate source material, it has not been possible to examine it in greater detail in this paper 16 Of these the first two have been amply demonstrated in this paper The third point, namely 'the shift in the class composition of the peasant organizations' is somewhat inferential It can be surmised that the initial decline in the AIKS membership from 1936 to 1940 was perhaps caused by the fact that the rich and middle peasants withdrew their support because the changing contents of the AIKS programme were prejudicial to their interest But the phenomenal rise in the membership later in the forties could only be due to the mobilization of the masses of poor peasants and the landless However, such an assertion would require more micro-level data on membership of the local and regional level units of AIKS The observation must therefore be treated as tentative

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