Tribal Movements
- 1857 Uprising (Chotanagpur): Gonoo, a tribal cultivator of Singhbhum in Chotanagpur, emerged as a local leader and mobilized the Kol tribals to revolt during the 1857 uprising.
- Gudem Hills Guerrilla Movement (1920s, Andhra Pradesh):
- Causes: The colonial government closed off large forest areas, denying hill people their traditional rights to graze cattle and gather firewood or fruits, threatening their subsistence livelihoods. Discontent culminated when the government forced them into begar (unpaid labor) for road construction.
- Leadership of Alluri Sitaram Raju: Raju was perceived by rebels as an incarnation of God with special powers (such as making astrological predictions, healing people, and surviving bullet wounds). While he praised Mahatma Gandhi, drew inspiration from the Non-Cooperation Movement, and persuaded people to wear khadi and give up drinking, he maintained that India could be liberated only through force, not non-violence.
- Methods & Suppression: Rebels engaged in guerrilla warfare, stormed police stations, and attempted to kill British officials. The armed rebellion ended following Raju’s capture and execution in 1924, after which he became a folk hero.
- Forest Satyagrahas (1920s & 1930s):
- In the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, tribals and poor peasants conducted “forest satyagrahas,” defying regulations by sending cattle into forests without paying grazing fees and declaring that “Gandhi Raj” was arriving.
- Hill tribes in northern Andhra and peasants in Kumaun actively violated forest laws and refused to carry loads for colonial officials during the Non-Cooperation Movement.
- During the Civil Disobedience Movement, forest communities across India breached colonial forest restrictions to graze cattle and gather wood.
- Jharkhand Movement:
- Birsa Munda’s Legacy: Birsa Munda led a major adivasi uprising against the British, becoming a lasting cultural icon and focal point of regional identity through folklore, songs, and historical documentation by literate adivasis.
- Core Issues: Communities organized against land alienation to dikus (migrant traders and moneylenders), mining exploitation, land takeovers for large irrigation projects and firing ranges, revenue/loan collections, survey and settlement operations, and the nationalisation of forest produce.
- Koraput District Resistance (1942, Odisha): Under the regional leadership of Veer Lakhan Nayak, tribal communities defied the British during the Quit India era; on 25 August 1942, police firing at Paparandi in Nabarangpur killed 19 people, leading to mass arrests and Nayak’s eventual hanging.
- Other Tribal Struggles: Included the Warli tribal revolt against bonded labor in Maharashtra, alongside armed Girijan actions in 1968 in the Parvatipuram Agency area (Andhra Pradesh), where villagers raided moneylenders’ houses to seize food stocks and documents.
Peasant Movements
- Early & Localized Struggles:
- 1857 Revolts: In pargana Barout (Uttar Pradesh), Shah Mal organized Jat cultivators across 84 villages (chaurasee des) against high and inflexible British land revenue, attacking government buildings and targeting local moneylenders. In Awadh, peasants and dispossessed taluqdars revolted together against the heavy British overassessment of land revenue that followed the 1856 Summary Settlement.
- Late 19th Century: Major uprisings included the Bengal Indigo Revolt (1859–62) against coercive European planters and the Deccan Riots (1857/1875) directed against exploitative moneylenders.
- Champaran Satyagraha (1917, Bihar):
- Grievances: European planters forced sharecroppers under the tinkathia arrangement to cultivate indigo on 15% (three-twentieths) of their landholdings and surrender the whole yield as rent. When synthetic indigo made production unprofitable, planters demanded steep compensation to release them from contracts.
- Course & Outcome: Led by Mahatma Gandhi (after being brought to the region by peasant Rajkumar Shukla), thousands of peasants testified and organized non-violent defiance. An official commission of inquiry resolved the matter by refunding 25% of the extorted money to the peasants; planters eventually abandoned the estates, ending indigo sharecropping.
- Kheda Satyagraha (1918, Gujarat): Patidar peasants faced extreme hardship due to crop failure and a plague epidemic; supported by Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel, they initiated a non-violent non-revenue campaign demanding the remission of land taxes.
- Awadh Peasant Movement (1920–1922, United Provinces):
- Grievances: Led by Baba Ramchandra (a former indentured laborer in Fiji), the movement protested exorbitant rents, arbitrary cesses, insecure tenure, illegal evictions (bedakhli), and unpaid forced labor (begar).
- Organisation & Agitation: Organizers established nai-dhobi bandhs through panchayats. In October 1920, the Oudh Kisan Sabha was founded by Baba Ramchandra, Jawaharlal Nehru, and others, rapidly setting up hundreds of village branches.
- Forms of Protest: Peasants engaged in tax refusal, attacked merchants and taluqdars, looted bazaars, and redistributed grain stocks—actions often exceeding the boundaries intended by Congress leadership.
- Bardoli Satyagraha (1928, Gujarat): Led by Vallabhbhai Patel, this successful peasant movement in Surat district organized a widespread “no-tax” campaign against the government’s enhanced land revenue rates.
- Depression Era & Civil Disobedience Movement (1930s):
- Rich Peasantry: Communities like the Patidars (Gujarat) and Jats (Uttar Pradesh) joined the Civil Disobedience Movement to protest unyielding land revenue rates during the price collapse of the Great Depression.
- Poorer Tenants: Small tenant farmers, unable to pay rent due to falling crop prices, organized “no-rent” agitations and aligned with Socialist and Communist groups.
- Kisan Sabhas & Late Colonial Mobilization:
- The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha was founded in 1929, followed by the All India Kisan Sabha in 1936, both demanding structural liberation from landlordism and economic exploitation.
- Tebhaga Movement (1946–47, Bengal): A militant struggle by sharecroppers—backed by the Kisan Sabha and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—demanding a two-thirds share of the harvest instead of the customary half.
- Telangana Movement (1946–51, Hyderabad): An armed peasant revolt led by the CPI against feudal oppression under the Nizam’s rule.
Reference Ncert Documents
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/lesy208.pdf
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/hess208.pdf
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/jess302.pdf
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/lehs302.pdf
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/hess205.pdf
https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/lehs301.pdf
