AGRARIAN STRUCTURE AND PEASANT MOBILISATION : THE BATAIDARI STRUGGLE IN MADHUBANI, 1967-75 * M. N. KARNA North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Of late the thickly populated North Indian district of Madhu- bani in the State of Bihar has experienced ferments in the life of peasants. The seeds of political awakening among small peasants, sharecroppers and landless agricultural workers were sown by the communist Party of India (CPI) in the late 'forties and have now burgeoned into a vociferous section resisting the exploitative char- acter of the landowning class. Even the former Zamindars, influen- tial Mahanths and powerful landowners admit that there is a fast growing consciousness among their erstwhile dependents who had once been mute and inarticulate and who meekly bore with repres- sion. The Madhubani peasant agitation is primarily a struggle of sharecroppers for their rightful claim. A close scrutiny of the back- ground and nature of the struggle of bataidars between 1967-75 launched by the CPI is intended here. The emphasis will be chiefly on the agrarian setting of the region, the programmes and objectives of the struggle, the organisation aimed at the realisation of these goals and the shaping influences of the movement. The analysis will be concluded with some general observations on theoretical and methodological issues. Agrarian Structure in Madhubani According to the census of 1971, Madhubani district has a population of 1,892,039 and land area of 3477.3 sq. kms. The man land ratio is significantly high with 536 persons per sq. km. as against only 324 in the case of the State as a whole. The region is pre-eminently agricultural with 97 7 per cent of the population living in rural areas. In this region 90.6 percent of the agricultur- * The author is grateful to Professors D. N. Dhanagare and Sachchidananda for their comments, on earlier drafts of this paper SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN Vol. 30, No. 2, September, 1981 AGRARIAN STRUCTURE AND PEASANT MOBILISATION 185 ists, rural working population is engaged in agriculture, and of these 51.8 per cent work as farm labourers, although the all India per- centage of this category of farm labourers is only 26.3 per cent. Historically, new social arrangements on land were made in Bihar by the Permanent Settlement of 1793 when several new classes of intermediaries emerged. However, on account of the non- acceptance of the terms of the settlement by the then Darbhanga estate, the new arrangement did not initially affect the large part of the old Darbhanga district, of which Madhubani was a sub-division till recently. The Maharaja of Darbhanga who was the biggest zamindar of the region owned lands over 2400 square miles, covering several districts of Bihar. That the rampant feudal exploitation of the peasantry existed under the Raj Darbhanga was obvious from the extreme poverty and distress faced by the raiyats of the Raj. The Raj being the most powerful Zamindar of the area had no difficulty in imposing several abwabs on the poor and disgruntled peasants. Besides the Raj Darbhanga, there were other estates in the region which almost followed the path shown by the richest fellow zamindar. The Cadastral Survey of 1896-1903 recorded 13,400 estates in the then Darbhanga district with the total revenue de- mand of Rs. 788,301 (Roy Choudhary, 1964: 451). The conse- quences of such agrarian structure on the tenantry were not difficult to imagine even during that period. While assessing the impact of decennial settlement prior to the Permanent Settlement, the then Collcctor of Tirhut had observed: ... in making the zamindars, in act as well as in name, lords paramount of the soil, their abject and helpless vassals, the raiyats, trained up to hereditary submission, will bear in silence and secret dread whatever their imposing tyranny may inflict. (Roy Choudhary, 1964: 482). The patterns that developed later proved this apprehension, and the raiyats were deprived of even minimum rights and privileges. They could not plant trees, mould bricks, dig tanks or construct houses on their land without prior approval of the landlords. The enhancement of jama, and the practice of abwab like hari and begari were the most frequent forms of oppression of the tenantry. 1 The bhoulidars who paid rent in kind were not issued any rent 186 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN receipts and the tenants cultivating the bakast lands of the landlords were solely at the mercy of their zamindars. At the village level among asamis, the local officials and petty amlas were more influ- ential than the zamindar himself. The growing wealth and power of this feudal class could further be gauged from their ostentatious places and buildings which they had constructed in various cities and towns. Another class of dominant landowners which has rarely been studied by social scientists in India deserves special mention here. The granting of lands for religious and charitable purposes had been very common under both the Hindu and the Muslim rulers. In most of the cases these lands were granted on very liberal terms. In Madhubani region no public revenue was paid for these lands, which were known locally as lakhraj lands. In 1802, according to one account, 118,149 acres of revenue-free land were scattered over 1171 villages of old Darbhanga district.2 These religious and charitable institutions known popularly as Mahantha Asthan became personal properties of individual Mahanths and exploitation of poor tenants became their sole objective which continues till today. The Survey and Settlement operations of 1896 recorded that 86 per cent area of the old district of Darbhanga was under the occupation of landlords and tenants. Of this area, 14 per cent was under the control of proprietors and tenure holders and 83 per cent under occupancy and settled raiyats. Raiyats at fixed rates and rent- free tenants constituted 2 per cent of this total while only 1 per cent area was under the occupation of non-occupancy raiyats. The small section of the population had thus larger control over land while the major bulk worked as agricultural labour and sharecroppers. In between the Survey of 1896 and the revisional survey oper- ations which is at present on hand in various stages in the district, no accurate land records are available. Hence a proper assessment of the patterns of landownership and land control is difficult to make except with the help of census data. The 1951 census data reveal that as many as 89.11 per cent people belonged to agricultural classes in the old Darbhanga dis- trict. While 39.73 per cent of this total were cultivating their own land, 10.19 per cent came under the category of bataidars as they were cultivators of mainly unowned land. Between 1951 and 1961 AGRARIAN STRUCTURE AND PEASANT MOBILISATION 187 the proportion of bataidtars among all the cultivators has almost been static. In 1961, 61 per cent of the cultivating households culti - vated their own land while only 10 per cent were working on un - owned lands, which evidently included sharecroppers. The agricultural census of 1970-71, on the other hand, indicates that all land holdings in Madhubani district (separate figures for Madhubani were col - lected in this census) were self owned and self operated. 3 These figures, however, are puzzling, because if they were accurate, then all sharecroppers would have become owners and no sharecropper would be found in the district. This, however, is not correct. A possibility of concealment in furnishing information about share - cropping cannot be ruled out as both landowners and sharecroppers usually suppress facts, the former due to fear of legal measures and the latter due to anxiety of eviction from lands, and so one will have to use these data with some caution because they may prove to be illusory. Thus no accurate and authentic conclusion could be derived from census data on the extent of sharecropping. However, data on the size of landholdings presented in Table 1 may give some TABLE 1 SIZE OF LANDHOLDINGS IN MADHUBANI, 1970-71 188 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN broad idea of the agrarian structure of Madhubani. It suggests that 87.96 per cent landholdings in Madhubani district are of 2 hectares or less. It further points out that while 96.03 per cent of the hold- ings of 4 hectares and less occupy only 68.81 per cent of the area, 31.14 per cent area is covered only by 3.97 per cent of operational holdings of 4 hectares and above. Madhubani is thus overwhelming- ly a district of marginal and small farmers and the pattern of landholding is characterised by extreme inequity. The growth of class of bataidars in the region has primarily been due to the process of subinfeudation during the days of Zamindari which perpetrated excesses on raiyats without encounter- ing much protests.4 Being mainly a wet paddy cultivation area, the ecological condition has further contributed in popularising the crop- sharing cultivation, and the exploitation of sharecroppers and their ejection from land on one pretext or the other has been an intermittent practice.5 Having realised the importance of sharecropping, an attempt was recently made by the author to collect data with regard to its role in the agrarian economy of Madhubani. It can be ascertained from Table II that bataidars constitute a significant proportion of the agricultural population in the region. AGRARIAN STRUCTURE AND PEASANT MOBILISATION 189 The system of sharecropping involves a set of rights, duties and obligations on the part of both sharecroppers and landowners. But in practice the sharecroppers are kept consistently under sub- ordination, and numerous exactions are imposed on them which make their life extremely miserable and wretched.