‘Fractured’ Peasantry in Colonial Bihar in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Reflections and Responses

Introduction

In the late nineteenth century, the Indian village became a major object of interest and intervention for the colonial state. B. H. Baden-Powell, a British Civil Servant, wrote in 1899 that ‘all Indian villages were regarded as having been originally constituted in a single (typical) form; this form being, consequently, spoken of as archaic date and of “Aryan” parentage.’ ¹ Since the village was seen among officials as a static, ahistorical entity, it followed that the knowledge of villagers was not seen as a resource that might be lost, and was not valued; it was thought to be easily recoverable at any time. Local histories and agrarian territories came under the homogenising gaze of imperial modernity and official data gathering that supported rather than undercut the universalised picture of the village and of village life. ² Across the same period, the village also took on new significance for Indian nationalists to instil an image of rural society that had to be regained. Nationalists like M. K. Gandhi too romanticised the idealist image of villages. Although Gandhi understood the everyday reality of the caste system and how it led to the exploitation of lower castes by the upper castes, he nonetheless promulgated an idealised image of village life, ignoring the ferment of village society and portraying it as a model of social order. ³

Colonisation brought about an enormous cultural and political collision, with implications for both the cognitive and material existence of the colonised. ⁴ The position of the peasantry and their history again gained importance in the immediate post-independence period, and peasant historiography gained through contributions from B. B. Chaudhuri, Ranajit Guha and Anand A. Yang, among others. The historiography of the Indian peasantry tracked closely the international academic trends, often taking cues from international thinkers. Simple polarities of nineteenth-century sociological thought, such as tradition vs. modernity, continuity vs. change, feudalism vs. capitalism and caste vs. class, were evident in the historical consciousness of contemporary historians. ⁵

The existence of a peasantry must be viewed not only as a repercussion of population and land pressure but also as rooted in the high social values that became attached to the ownership of land. These in turn should be viewed in terms of traditional privileges and obligations that define the context of their existence within the village, and which are the main focus of this article. While analysing the structures and pressures that determined much of the peasants’ life chances and trajectory, this piece will demonstrate that the peasants were not faceless, undifferentiated mass as has often been projected. This work recognises the agency peasants exercised in order to shape and structure their own lives, despite being the object of intense coercion from multiple parties.

Changing Times in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Bihar underwent a dramatic change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and many of these changes—the intensification of agriculture, the importation of Western science and technological innovations, the introduction of modern institutions and the change in agrarian laws—had a disastrous impact on the livelihoods and economies of Bihari peasants. ⁶ Colonial efforts at ‘modernisation’ superimposed Western ideas and structures over domestic, caste-based feudalism. The result was an extensive illegal sharecropping system through which local lords operating both as landowners and lenders, exploited small tenants to an unprecedented degree. Colonial ‘modernity’ could not replace pre-capitalist, caste-based land holding, land use and labour arrangements to complete the capitalist transformation. Therefore, the two systems merged to create an infirm or skewed modernity. ⁷ Scholars such as Ainslie T. Embree in Landholding in India and British Institutions have described how different aspects of peasant life, such as economy, polity and society, were interlinked, arguing, for instance, that if property laws were changed, such change would reverberate within the personal relations of the family too. ⁸

Across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Sarkar (the colonial state) transformed the agrarian landscape through a series of dramatic interventions, and these interventions brought about changes in the lives of peasants. But the impact of these transformations on the lives of the peasantry and on rural economies in general was neither predicted nor hoped for. The Sarkar attempted to commercialise and capitalise the agricultural system and introduce free-market forces. But instead of receiving remuneration tied to their efforts and skills, farm labourers, both male and female, were exploited through an extensive, illegal sharecropping system developed by powerful intermediaries operating in the space between state and worker. ⁹ Free market principles, under which labourers were free to sell their labour to the malik (boss) who would pay the highest, were not available. Attempts to introduce the free labour market were undermined by a pre-existing relationship of dominance and subordination. Feudal or semi-feudal arrangements, which derived their sustenance from pre-capitalist conditions of production and owed their legitimacy to traditional culture and norms, still pervaded Indian society. ¹⁰ Instead of freedom to work where they wished and to set their own rates of pay, peasants had to work the piece of land they were allotted and would be paid a wage that the malik chose. Under the developing system, peasants of both genders found their identity and social status tied to property relations and, as a repercussion, found their social being attacked, if not completely negated. Before the era of high imperialism, which was evidently felt in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the pressure on the land and, in turn, the peasants was not as high as was felt in the concerned period. Irfan Habib maintains that the concept of agriculture was very different. During the Mughal times, land was not valued, but rather produce was. If the pressure on land increased, the peasants ran away and could bring into cultivation another stretch of ‘virgin’ land. The land-to-man ratio was low; thus, peasants and their labour were valued. ¹¹ However, this concept changed, and so did the relations of power when land started being valued, not the produce and peasants.

Since the late nineteenth century, the peasants have been coerced more. Tenants-at-will, occupancy tenants coming from the bottom of the caste hierarchy—Bhuinyas, Nunia and Dosadhs—suffered economic and extra-economic coercion, including begari—the customary right of landlords to demand free labour. They had little in the way of freedom and, for example, were often expected to ask permission from the landlord to have their children marry. ¹² However, within this world of coercion, exploitation and oppression, Bihari peasants often made efforts to determine their own fates. As Gyan Prakash has described in Becoming a Bhuinya, Bihari exercised significant agency to challenge the relations of power when their jullum (oppression) became unbearable. ¹³ Since their efforts were spasmodic, this tendency is more appropriately seen as reactive than revolutionary. Single issues were pursued, and as soon as some concession was granted, the peasantry would typically abandon their cause and return to their lives, leaving feudal relations of power essentially unchallenged. ¹⁴ Contrary to Ranajit Guha’s depiction, the peasantry was not an undifferentiated, insurgent mass—this image fails to capture different shades of peasant identities—rather, there was a vast multitude of peasant politics that ranged from reformist to radical. ¹⁵ It was fractured on the basis of caste, class, gender and other disintegrating features of the village communities, like intra-village factionalism and inter-caste struggles. These were contradictory to the portrait sketched of villages as ‘timeless’. Guha seldom comments on the complexities inherent across caste, class and gender in the agrarian milieu. This article will highlight these everyday negotiations, forgotten struggles and exclusions that were carried on against the background of the importation of western science and technology, changing laws and encroachment on common lands. This work will also examine how the hereditary principles of caste dominance reproduce social inequalities across caste, class and gender.

The Material Realities of Caste

This article disagrees with scholars like Robert Deliege who think that ‘poverty is an economic, not a caste, condition.’ ¹⁶ The understanding of ‘caste’ requires an extensive knowledge of the complex society, polity and economy of Bihar in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ¹⁷ Caste was hereditary and regulated every aspect of life, from the profession one could take to one’s spouse to dietary habits and, more often, the class of the person. Local customs were designed in such a manner as to constantly remind one of one’s position in the hierarchy—each caste was required to maintain its social prestige according to its caste status. It was mandatory to observe customary expenditure on marriages, funerals and other ceremonies with caste penalties, or hukkah pani band, for anyone who failed to observe the prescribed rules. Dipankar Gupta claims ‘The truth is that no caste, howsoever lowly placed it may be, accepts the reasons for its degradation’. ¹⁸ But this section on ‘Material Realities of Castes’ will demonstrate that caste was a more powerful category than belief. No doubt, these kinds of beliefs might have helped them to feel better, but the hukka-pani band or ostracising for not following the caste norm kept everybody in their fold, whether it was a brahmin or dalit. Hukka-pani band often implied that the person was barred from the community, which often led to people doing no business with them as caste was not just a social entity but also an economic category. ¹⁹ Undoubtedly, it was difficult on the part of low-caste people to accept their servile status, and therefore they came up with their own theories about how they were cheated in the past and thus doomed. In everyday lives, the tenants, usually men of low caste, did not always have the courage or knowledge to defend themselves or their rights. ²⁰ However, caste, which was predominantly translated into class, as this section will show, was an everyday reality that had a different story to tell than that proposed by Deliege or Gupta.

Through the theory of ‘purity and pollution’, it was understood that the high castes were defiled if they touched the plough, an act unworthy of their birth status and deemed fit only for those of lower castes. In the late nineteenth century, J. A. Voelcker—an English chemist and a member of the Royal Agricultural Society—observed that ‘The Rajputs and Brahmans do not themselves, as a rule, cultivate, but they employ hired labour; in some parts, however, they are described as being “moderate cultivators”’. ²¹ Some high castes, though not directly involved in cultivation, did acquire land, including Brahmans, Rajputs, Bhumihar, Kayastha and Banias. Good-cultivating agricultural castes included Koeri, Ahir, Kurmi and Dhanuk, and agricultural castes of low social status included Bhar, Chamar and Pasi. ²² Dusadhs and Musahars were either enslaved or cultivated lands as tenants-at-will and were at the very bottom of the agricultural hierarchy. In regions such as Monhgyr, Dharmpur, zila (district) Birnagar and Terakharda, the whole of the tenantry were tenants-at-will, or Kulaitias, as they were known in Purniah. ²³ In an agrarian, feudal society such as Bihar, the desire for possession of land was universal; land ownership meant power and influence, and every peasant wanted to acquire as much land as possible for both the economic security and social prestige it offered. But while land ownership afforded certain privileges, it was caste that decided one’s position in the social hierarchy. A penniless Brahman (highest caste in the hierarchy) without an inch of land would still be regarded as socially superior to a rich zamindar (landlord) of Kayastha caste. ²⁴ See Table 1 for data on income and expenditure across different castes in Saran district.

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Table 1.

Caste-Wise Income and Expenditure of Residents of Saran District for the Year 1915–1916. ²⁵

Name, Caste	Items
Mahadev Pandey, Bhumihar Brahmin	Value of property = ₹2175 Debt = Nil Annual income = ₹630 Annual expenditure = ₹586
Juba Raut, Kurmi caste	Value of property = ₹280 Debt = ₹35 at (12.5% rate) Annual income = ₹156 and 12 annas Annual expenditure = 156 rupees 6 annas
Dhanukh Ram, Mali caste	Value of property = ₹542.4 Debt = Not given Annual income = ₹341 and 4 annas Annual expenditure = ₹245 7 annas
Sheodhari, Dusadh caste	Value of property = ₹236 Debt = ₹36 Annual income = ₹318 Annual expenditure = 301 rupees 8 annas
Hira, Teli caste	Value of property = ₹167 Debt = ₹6 Annual income = 256 rupees 12 annas Annual expenditure = ₹242

The table gives a picture of different castes in Saran and is indicative of the material reality of various castes, that is, the higher the caste, the higher the class.

These tenants-at-will were in a state of continuous, abject dependency—a landholder could simply and easily have himself recorded as a cultivator by simply dispossessing the actual tillers, robbing them of the benefits under the Tenancy Act of 1885 by which they were guaranteed permanency of tenancy. ²⁶ In 1912, John Reid—probably the Settlement Officer of Sahabad district—described ongoing disputes between landlords and tenants over the possession of lands, with the former claiming them as zirat (a landlord’s personal holdings) and the latter as their raiyati (land under the guardianship of tenants). The Settlement Officer observed that the failure of landlords to give proper rent receipts had the potential to create serious problems. ²⁷

Peasants had to carefully navigate a route for themselves and their families, avoiding the worst exploitations of gumashta and tehsildar (landlord’s agents) and of the sahukars (moneylenders) and the zamindars (landlords) themselves. The inequalities, the divisions between rich and poor, high and low caste, were dramatic and proverbial; by way of summary, in 1908, Sir Herbert Risley quoted a local saying: ‘The Brahman gets cakes to eat; the children of the house may lick the mill-stone’. ³⁰ The zamindars were upper caste and upper class, and by both legal and illegal collection of revenue and other fees and penalties, they were able to enrich themselves enormously at the expense of low-caste cultivators and landless labourers, who belonged primarily to the most depressed social groups. Many in these lower-caste groups were indebted to their employers and were obliged to work for them exclusively. ³¹ Wage labourers might come from castes other than the highest, and they were simply people who had either no land or insufficient land to provide for themselves and their families. Despite being the most numerous groups, making up in the region of 70%–80% of the population, peasants came almost entirely from the lowest castes, such as Shudra or Dalits. They were unable to gain any strength or representation as a group. It seemed that power did not lie in numbers. ³² The peasants’ ‘subalternity’ in the Bihari context was defined in part by class but primarily by their position in the caste hierarchy. James Mylne, a British planter of the Jugdespore estate in Bihar, described the place and functioning of caste in peasants’ lives:

The ryots, though individually small, weak, and insignificant, beyond their own households, are, from their numbers, in the concrete, huge and powerful in results; but the ryot does not realise his relation to the concrete, and hence his individual stagnation. His concrete is his caste, or section of caste, which dictates his habits, aims, and ends, in all the duties and relations of life. ³³

The caste system formed the functional structure of society; the system was perpetuated through kinship and also locality—often high castes like brahmins would have a separate tola or muhallah (colony) from other castes such as shudras. Castes did not mix or share communal areas such as temples, ponds or wells, and this kind of segregation provided fertile ground for casteism to thrive. The upper castes enjoyed a kind of everyday dominance that was continually renewed, recreated, defended and modified through repeated injustices enacted on the peasantry. ³⁴ One such example is cited in the Chanakya Society Annual Reports of 1913–1914. It described how, in the village Murar (situated at a distance of 4 miles from Twiningganj Station, in the District of Shahabad) when a raiyat (peasant) left the village, his house and lands passed directly to the Kayasthas or proprietor of the village. The Kayasthas or proprietor of the village, who would then have a right to settle his own subject upon the land. ³⁵ Caste dominance was seen as justification for social and economic inequality, and a large section of the raiyats was entirely under the control of zamindars, who treated them as they wished with no limits set on their exploitation. Social and economic ascension to their traditional status was deeply frowned upon.

Everyday life was arranged around clearly defined hierarchies, which regulated society in an enormous number of ways. Low castes would sit on the floor, while high castes would sit on an elevated platform. The poor were conditioned not to speak their minds to the upper castes. Socially, asymmetry became ingrained through repetition, and social change typically repackaged rather than overturned prevailing arrangements, serving to reinforce hierarchies even if the mode of their expression was new. ³⁶ Rehabilitation into village life following such ostracism was only possible after spending substantial money to feed the sarpanchs (village heads, often five in number) and brahmins as a way of showing remorse. ³⁷ In 1930, C. E. A. W. Oldham recorded a proverb that captured some essence of both the hierarchy and caste stereotypes that informed that hierarchy: ‘You can influence a Kayastha by bribery, a Brahman by feeding him well, a Rajput by flattering him, but the low castes only by thrashing’. ³⁸ Through such everyday sayings, social structures were circulated ³⁹ and etched deeply into the people’s minds. These structures were a central feature of their lives from the earliest days of their childhood.

People of higher castes enjoyed the generalised privilege and were protected from hardship in many ways, while the exploitation and abuse of lower castes were normalised. High-caste tolas, for example, would have better amenities, and higher-caste areas would be served by good roads, a prerequisite for rural betterment. ⁴⁰ A report was printed in The Searchlight (a tri-weekly newspaper based in Patna) deploring the conditions of Lakhauria Adapore Road in Champaran. The report noted that the road remained in terrible condition despite the fact that a road cess was collected from the villagers. All the income from cess was instead to be used to make improvements to the few roads on which the aristocracy and local officials used motorcars. ⁴¹ Neglect of rural roads in particular impacted poorer peasants in multiple ways. Travel was not only difficult but also poor access made it harder for low-caste peasants to transport their crops at harvest time. In turn, this created an opportunity for higher-caste dealers who had access to better roads to act as middlemen, exploiting caste-based inequalities for their own financial gain. As a result, the peasants who were responsible for the cultivation of produce were not able to fix the sale price in order to reflect production costs. ⁴² Rather, their produce was sold to the local beparis or Baniyas, whose interest it was to drive down the price. The same report included other examples of the exploitation of lower castes through taxes raised for infrastructure, which were by various means diverted.

Darbhanga estate was the largest zamindari in the Indian Empire. However, this status and visibility did nothing to curtail the rampant exploitation of the already disadvantaged peasantry. During the reign of Rameshwar Singh—from 1898 to 1929—the total rent realised from the raiyats was estimated at approximately ₹4 million. From this figure, revenue payments to the British provincial government were deducted at a rate of 10%, amounting to ₹400,000, and an additional 15%–20%, or ₹600,000–800,000, was spent on administration. This left the maharaja with an average net income of roughly ₹2.8 million to 3 million, just from the operation of his estates. ⁴⁴ Despite a huge surplus, very little was reinvested in improving the productiveness of the maharaja’s lands and the vast majority of the maharaja’s enormous income was spent on portraying himself as befitti a monarch, as a philanthropist and as a patron of an ancient line of orthodox, Maithil Hindus. ⁴⁵ In addition to income from rentals of lands from big estates such as Darbhanga Maharaj, Banaili Raj or Bettiah Raj, owners also collected taxes from the rental of houses, orchards and fisheries, ⁴⁶ among other assets. And yet they were unwilling to invest in the betterment of their subjects or even in improving the agriculture upon which their own wealth fundamentally rested.

Confrontation Amidst Confirmation

In a whole range of ways, the lower castes were both lesser than and subservient to the higher castes: economically, socially, psychologically and even in terms of the essential goodness and purity of their beings. The proverb, Jiski lathi uski bhains, holds that ‘who has the cudgel has the buffalo’. ⁴⁷ In Bihari society, the cudgel was firmly in the hands of the upper castes, who were born with the right, within broad limits, to do as they pleased. The peasant dharma taught the raiyats (peasants) to obey their masters, for it was their destiny to be subservient to the higher castes. This destiny had been earned through their having sinned (paap) in previous lives, and to atone, they were required to conform to the jativayavastha, or caste-based hierarchy. According to jativayavastha, the only route to improving one’s socio-economic position was to do his duty in relation to the caste system, to aspire to no one else’s status, and to relate by proper ritual and behaviour to all other castes. ⁴⁸ Low castes, as well as high castes, were ruled by a sense of ritual appropriateness; the notion of limited aspirations made unerring respect for the structures of caste the only ‘rational’ choice and one that was acknowledged by society as a whole by both the lower and higher castes. Everyday life was controlled and the status quo was maintained through various layers of economic and social control, restriction and privilege. Historian Morris D. Morris describes this phenomenon as a combination of theology and socio-economic organisation that froze people into an occupation or narrow cluster of occupations traditional to their respective castes. They restricted fellow caste members by custom, through relations with other castes and by pressures applied through ritual and magic. ⁴⁹ A peasant’s livelihood was embedded in a system of legal and extra-legal coercion (like abwabs), and he was hardly free to function. Labour was frequently coerced, and this was reflected in common parlance as well. In North Bihar, the term uttha existed and was used to identify someone who worked without payment. ⁵⁰

Although the dominance of the higher castes was rarely challenged, and for the most part, all were complicit in the maintenance of the status quo, nevertheless, there were also confrontations. David Arnold has argued that domination and hegemony, however strong, were never absolute. Despite their subordination, peasants retained some cultural and political power through which they refused to become wholly integrated into the structures defined by the dominance of the ruling classes. ⁵¹ The raiyats were not always meek spectators to the oppression (zullum) of the upper castes. Confrontations came in the form of abject rejection of technological change or as phases of negotiation on social, economic or political issues through everyday behaviour and action. When the situation worsened, the raiyats also found ways to defy their higher-caste oppressors. ⁵² It was the Ahirs’—low-caste tenants—long-running fight against the Babhans and Rajputs—high-caste landholders—for the possession or control of land that provided the background for most of these confrontations. ⁵³ Physical confrontation was not a daily occurrence. However, there were regular verbal disagreements, and proverbs became one of the weapons by which the weak and subservient classes sought, or at least prepared for, and stayed alert to caste exploitation. One Bihari proverb ran, ‘The bowels of a Babhan are fifty-two cubits in length’; another, common in Sahabad district, cautioned the peasantry on the quarrelsome, greedy and untrustworthy nature of the Babhans. ⁵⁴ Another proverb that described the misery that the behaviour of upper castes such as babhans bought to lower castes in Tirhut district held was that ‘If Hararias, Kodarias and Bhusbharats (sections of the Babhan caste) would die, Tirhut would be purged of its sin.’ ⁵⁵

The principal land-owning group occupied an important social position; their control over the means of production afforded them the capacity to exploit a labouring class recruited from among the low, usually shudra and dalit castes. ⁵⁶ A well-known proverb in the Shahabad region reminded the peasantry that even ‘the bhut (evil spirit) has to plough for the powerful man’. ⁵⁷ By a range of means—the threat of violence, legal actions, administrative replacement, cajoling and the exercise of kin and caste linkages—the landed and wealthy gentry maintained its control over its lands, tenants and raiyats. The moment when oppression reached its apogee, the oppressed revolted against their zamindars, which in the long run did not bring any permanent change (as this section will demonstrate).

Focussing on the 1920s and 1930s, Vinita Damodaran has found rural agitation not simply as a product of divisions between the haves and the have-nots, but as a manifestation of complex social tensions and dynamics in which ‘sections of the better-off peasantry joined hands with the more deprived sections of the poor peasantry to challenge together the overweening power of landlords over resources, especially at those times when their traditional rights were under threat’. ⁵⁸ Beyond these moments of agitation, exploitative social relations appeared as an unproblematic replication of established dominance and hierarchies. Everyday routines, religious rituals, cultural practices and ‘traditions’ functioned to reinforce these imbalances of power. ⁵⁹ An example of such agitation can be found in the records of an incident that took place in Champaran in which poor raiyats had long been treated badly by their landlords and planters, who levied high fines. ⁶⁰ The Searchlight commented that ‘ryots in the district have suffered miserably and long under an oppressive system of illegal exactions and an equally illegal and oppressive system of planter’s rule.’ ⁶¹

High-handedness amongst planters was well known to M. K. Gandhi and led to his attempt to redress the injustices suffered by tenants in Champaran district in 1917. Since the enactment of the Champaran Agrarian Act and under the influence of Gandhi during his long stay among the region’s peasantry, many of the abwabs, or illegal taxes, were eventually stopped. ⁶² Gandhi’s impact on the lives of the peasantry through his time in Champaran cannot be underestimated. As a later article in The Searchlight described, ‘Now, everyone will admit that the only way to fight oppression is the one in which Mahatama Gandhiji taught the Royats during his Champaran campaign, that is, to unite and refuse to be oppressed.’ ⁶³ Gandhi’s arrival in Champaran raised the raiyats’ hopes, gave them confidence and made them fearless. In some places, peasants stopped paying rent, cattle were allowed to graze indigo lands, and trees were cut down and sold in defiance of the proprietary rights of planters. ⁶⁴ Gandhi’s call had been heard in other parts of Bihar as well, and in some cases, protests threatened to develop into violence. In one instance in Purnea, a Satyagrahi follower of Gandhi had been working among the poor tenants of Parganah Dharampur, the zamindari of Maharaja of Darbhanga. The presence of this follower of Gandhi sent a spark through the tenants who flocked around him, leading to riots, and a sum of approximately ₹400 was stolen from the patwaris (village accountants) of the Raj. ⁶⁵ Though Gandhi’s satyagraha emphatically propounded ahinsa, or non-violence, and therefore forbade such actions, local peasants sometimes exercised their own agency in deciding by which means their oppressors might be taken to task. There were, for example, cases in which local markets, or haat, were looted in Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur. Ranajit Guha has described the peasantry’s ‘resorting to militancy’ as a collective action, the beginnings of a group-level self-consciousness and recognition of their identity as a class for itself. This new sense of group identity was defined not only by common grievances but also by the possibility of obtaining redress through collective militant action. ⁶⁶

By 1919, the development of a protest movement involving large numbers of people was well underway across wide areas of North Bihar, with campaigners working to raise awareness of problems faced by the common raiyats. Swami Vidyanand, a campaigner of the Kayastha caste, who self-identified as a follower of Gandhi, was one of many who made a career of political activism among the villagers of north Bihar. ⁶⁷ His life as a political figure began in June 1919, when he participated in a meeting held at the village of Narar in Madhubani, the northernmost of the three subdivisions of the district of Darbhanga. He raised the issue of cultivators’ rights and the need to establish schools in order to spread education among the people. ⁶⁸ Late in January 1920, he attended the Bihar Provincial Peasants’ Conference, held in Muzaffarpur. On 5 February 1920, a meeting was held at the Supaul subdivision of the Bhagalpur district, attended by some 15,000–20,000 people. Demands were made, including that the levels of rent determined in the Permanent Settlement should remain set, and that common grazing lands should be provided in all villages. The Tenancy Act of 1885 had significantly reduced the zamindars’ claim to exclusive ownership of trees, but despite the legal changes, common raiyats found it extremely difficult to exercise their reinstated rights to gather wood. ⁶⁹ The emergence of Swami Vidyanand caused great excitement and increased confidence among the raiyats. On many occasions, during the course of the campaign, peasants cut down trees and used wood in defiance of landlords. In the second half of the 1920s, with the economic situation somewhat improved, with the Darbhanga Raj concessions serving to reduce tensions and with Vidyanand directing his energies towards ensuring success in the forthcoming elections, the movement declined.

While the campaign had not succeeded in bringing about the complete redress of the tenants’ grievances, campaigners had, for instance, failed to slow the administrative drive towards the importation of Western scientific techniques. They had at least earned some concessions. Less tangibly, but perhaps of greater long-term significance, was the emergence of the peasantry as a self-conscious political group, which the movement had helped to foster and which was illustrated by the campaign initiated in Pandoul circle in December 1921. ⁷⁰ In an article published in April 1920, The Searchlight sought to extend the campaign beyond legal reform and rights and introduce issues of everyday abuse and the extra-legal exploitation of the zamindars.

Local people were keen to lead their own campaigns, and by the 1920s, a number of Kisan Sabhas were formed at multiple mufussils (a semi-urban area). In 1922–1923, a Kisan Sabha was organised at Monghyr under the leadership of Shah Muhammed Zubir and Sri Krishna Sinha—who would eventually, on the formation of the first Congress Ministry, become representatives of Bihar. In the late 1920s, the Kisan Sabhas made significant progress when Swami Sahajanand Saraswati organised the Kisan Sabha on a wider scale, and by 1935, the Bihar Kisan Sabha had developed into the most powerful branch in all of India. An important development in this period was the gradual estrangement of the Congress leadership in Bihar from the Kisan Sabha, whose programme and activities were increasingly directed against the interests of landlords and large landowning groups. ⁷²

Discussing the issues raised by the Kisan Sabha in Bettiah, Bishnu Prasad and Hirde Narayan Roy wrote in their report of 1920 that the District Kisan Conference sent its members to every corner of the district to preach to the people and to address them on issues, which they organised around the following set of points:

(a) what rights have they gained by the new India bill and what should be their present duty towards it. (b) the method of election and voting (c) to be fearless and selfless, (d) horror caused by zamindar-plantar alliance and (e) the strength of union. They should also teach them not to have the least fear of zamindars or planters and not to fall within their trap of being allured by the offer of money, land or anything. ⁷³

The people were earnestly working for the Muthia (fist) system, dedicating one handful of grain every morning and evening for the Sabha purpose, and in general, private differences were settled by arbitration. ⁷⁴

In 1920, B. Kashinath Sahay, the Chairman of the Reception Committee at Bettiah, gave a speech touching on various subjects, including (a) education, (b) sanitation, (c) the need for improvement of reciprocal relations between zamindars and raiyats and (d) the aristocratic idea prevailing among the managers. ⁷⁵ As previously described, from the 1920s onwards, there was a significant expansion of the Kisan Sabhas; however, again, their focus was on addressing issues of caste, class and taxation. They failed to critique in any sustained manner the importation of hybrid seeds, modern technologies and techniques.

Though the Bihar Landholders Association maintained that the interests of the landlords and of the tenants were identical, they also articulated that the landlords were the ‘natural guardians’ of their tenants and were their ‘best’ protectors, ⁷⁶ but the reality was very different. When a Kisan Sabha was held in Bettiah on 4 August 1920, the officers of the Darbhanga Raj declared their animosity by refusing to allow the meeting to be held on the Raj lands and by refusing to lend any furniture. The Sabha’s declared aim was not to cheat the landlords of their dues, but simply to ensure that all parties received their allotted share, which was insufficient to allay their fears of subversive activities among the peasantry. Of course, the Kisan Sabha opposed the landlords in resolving strongly against the levying or payment of any kind of illegal charge or abwab, but the ever-ingenious landlords soon found other means of oppressing the raiyats and soon set the police against the sabhas. ⁷⁷ No sooner did the raiyats escape one difficulty than they encountered another, and among other measures, landlords would also, from time to time, close grazing lands in response to some minor infringement or other small issues. The relationship between agricultural labourers and the landowners who employed them had changed significantly and developed in a number of complex ways. These changes had arisen not out of a thoroughgoing transformation of production relations or the collapse of the dominant caste-based ideology, but from a perceived shift in the balance of forces generated by developments, both within and beyond the agrarian economy. A strong network of organisations, such as peasant sabhas, panchayats and volunteer organisations, provided momentum to the movement. ⁷⁸ Peasant movements in Bihar passed through a number of phases, finally emerging in the 1920s as a class of organisations of peasants and tenants campaigning against definite economic inequalities and biases that marked Bihari society and issues that national parties such as the Congress and the Provincial Muslim League in Bihar failed to address. ⁷⁹ However, the sabhas also failed, in their own way, to address important issues, most significantly the top-down agrarian changes imposed by the Raj in the name of ‘modernisation’ and ‘development’. ⁸⁰

Conclusion

This article has attempted to argue that during the colonial period, caste played a central role in determining class relations and social relations, despite efforts to introduce modern capitalist relations of production. By a whole range of means—threats of violence, legal actions, cajoling or the exercise of kin and caste linkages—the zamindars maintained their control over land, tenants and raiyats. Bihar’s semi-feudal society rested firmly on customary and tacit agreements between the rulers and the ruled—a mutually accepted code of dominance and subordination. It demonstrated the inability of colonial rule to change the traditional socio-economic structure of Bihar, demonstrating a parallel system of hierarchy. This article attempted to critically engage with categories of peasantry and feudal society, and their relevance in the given context. Caste, as an institution, proved resilient, resisting eradication or even significant change and continuing to provide both coercive power and justification for oppression on a daily basis. Within the local and regional caste hierarchy, dominance was based on multiple criteria and ensured by a set of advantages, both material and cultural, including land ownership, the strength of numbers, political influence and ritual purity. Competing claims were not unusual in a society whose members were constantly pushing and jostling in an attempt to gain an advantage. The pull of primordial ties of kinship, community and co-residence, the power of prowess and the compulsion of custom and religion combined to create an informal machinery of power that dictated the material and social realities of peasants’ lives. However, at times, caste and class were leveraged to oppress the peasantry in ways, or to an extent that became unbearable, and in these moments, confrontations developed into physical violence. From time to time, Kisan Sabhas were formed to address the unrestrained exploitation of the peasantry by the zamindars and their agents. However, the archival records show that by the late 1920s, commitment to the cause was declining, and the political energy of both the masses and of individual campaigners was diverted in the direction of a more popular cause: the struggle for national freedom.