Swami Sahajanand Saraswati and the Kisan Sabha

Champaran in 1917 was a fight against foreign planters. The next great peasant struggle in Bihar was harder, because the opponent was Indian: the zamindar (ज़मींदार), often a Congress supporter and sometimes a Congress leader. The man who organised tenants against him was a saffron-clad sannyasi, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, and his Kisan Sabha (किसान सभा) changed what the national movement meant by "freedom".

For BPSC this gives easy Prelims marks (years, places, terms like bakasht) and a strong Mains theme in GS Paper I: nationalism and the agrarian question.

The problem: zamindari in Bihar

Under the Permanent Settlement of 1793, the zamindar paid a fixed revenue to the government and was free to squeeze the tenant, the raiyat (रैयत). By the 1920s the typical burdens were:

• High and rising rent (लगान / मालगुज़ारी);
• Illegal cesses (अबवाब, abwab) on weddings, festivals and the zamindar's own expenses;
• Forced labour (बेगारी, begari);
• Eviction (बेदख़ली, bedakhli) for arrears;
• Bakasht (बकाश्त): land the zamindar declared to be under his "own cultivation", often taken from tenants after eviction and then tilled by them on worse terms.

The Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885, which also covered Bihar, gave occupancy rights on paper only. The Great Depression from 1929 then made crop prices collapse while rents stayed fixed in cash. If prices halve, a tenant must sell twice the grain to pay the same rent. That is the economic trigger to mention in any answer.

Who was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati?

He was born Naurang Rai in 1889 in Ghazipur district, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, and took sannyas (संन्यास) as a young man. His early public work was social reform within his own caste association. During the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22) he joined the Congress and went to jail.

In 1927 he set up the Sitaram Ashram at Bihta, near Patna, which became his base, and began organising tenants in the west Patna area. He died in 1950. His autobiography is Mera Jivan Sangharsh (मेरा जीवन संघर्ष).

Timeline at a glance

From Sonepur to Lucknow

The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (बिहार प्रांतीय किसान सभा) was formed at Sonepur in 1929, with Sahajanand as its leading figure. At first it worked inside the Congress fold and asked for tenancy reform, not an end to zamindari.

The Depression changed that. By the mid-1930s the demand had become abolition of zamindari (ज़मींदारी उन्मूलन). A slogan often linked to the movement, "Jo ann-vastra upjayega, ab so kanoon banayega", says those who grow food and cloth will now make the law.

In April 1936, at Lucknow, where the Congress was also meeting, peasant leaders from several provinces formed the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS). Sahajanand was its first president and N. G. Ranga its general secretary. Its Kisan Manifesto (1936) demanded, among other things:

• abolition of zamindari;
• large cuts in rent and revenue;
• scaling down of rural debt;
• an end to begari and illegal cesses, and recognition of peasant unions.

The Congress's Faizpur session (December 1936), its first held in a village, adopted an agrarian programme that reflected some of this pressure, though it stopped short of abolition.

The bakasht struggles, 1937–39

The Congress ministry that took office in Bihar in 1937 passed tenancy amendments that cut some rents and allowed partial restoration of bakasht land. The Kisan Sabha thought the relief was small and the compromise with zamindars too comfortable.

So tenants acted directly. On disputed land they ploughed, sowed and harvested in defiance of the zamindar, courting arrest in satyagraha style. The best-known centres:

They won back land in several places and showed that tenants could organise without waiting for Congress leaders.

The rift with the Congress

The Congress needed zamindars' money and influence as well as peasants' numbers, and wanted class conflict postponed until independence. Sahajanand argued that freedom which left zamindari intact was no freedom for the raiyat. After 1937 he moved towards the Left and towards Subhas Chandra Bose, with whom he held the Anti-Compromise Conference at Ramgarh in 1940. Accounts of his relations with the AIKS and the Communists in the 1940s differ, so keep to this broad shift in exams.

Legacy

The Kisan Sabha did not win abolition before independence, but it made abolition unavoidable. The Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950 was among India's first zamindari abolition laws. When the Patna High Court struck it down in the Kameshwar Singh case, Parliament passed the First Amendment, 1951, adding Articles 31A and 31B and the Ninth Schedule. For how abolition worked in practice, read land reforms in Bihar.

The limits matter too. The Sabha spoke mainly for occupancy tenants. Landless labourers gained less, and recovered land often went to middle peasants rather than the poorest.

Mains answer framing

Question: "The Kisan Sabha turned the agrarian question into a national question." Discuss with reference to Bihar. (Check the latest BPSC paper for marks and word limits.)

Outline:

1. Introduction: Permanent Settlement, zamindari burdens, Depression.
2. Organisation: Sonepur 1929, AIKS 1936, Kisan Manifesto.
3. Action: bakasht struggles, 1937–39.
4. Impact on the Congress: Faizpur, 1937 tenancy laws, the rift.
5. Legacy and limits: 1950 Act, First Amendment, landless left out.

Model answer (short version):

Under the Permanent Settlement, Bihar's raiyats faced rising rent, abwabs, begari and loss of land as bakasht, and the Depression made these unbearable.

Swami Sahajanand Saraswati gave the anger a structure: the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha at Sonepur in 1929, and the All India Kisan Sabha at Lucknow in 1936, with himself as first president and zamindari abolition as its demand.

The pressure told at Faizpur and in the 1937 tenancy laws. When relief fell short, tenants reclaimed bakasht land at Barahiya, Reora and Amwari.

Land could no longer be a side issue, and the Bihar Land Reforms Act followed in 1950. Its limits for the landless show that the Sabha was mainly a tenants' movement.

Prelims practice (answers below)

1. The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha was formed in 1929 at: (a) Patna (b) Sonepur (c) Bihta (d) Gaya
2. The first president of the All India Kisan Sabha (1936) was: (a) N. G. Ranga (b) Jayaprakash Narayan (c) Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (d) Karyanand Sharma
3. Bakasht land meant: (a) land granted to temples (b) land a zamindar claimed as his own cultivation, often taken from tenants (c) land under indigo (d) forest land
4. Consider: (1) Rahul Sankrityayan took part in the Amwari struggle. (2) Barahiya Tal is associated with Karyanand Sharma. Which is correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) both (d) neither
5. Arrange in order: (1) All India Kisan Sabha (2) Champaran Agrarian Act (3) Bihar Land Reforms Act (4) Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha. (a) 2-4-1-3 (b) 4-2-1-3 (c) 2-1-4-3 (d) 4-1-2-3

Answers:

1. (b) Sonepur. Bihta was his ashram.
2. (c) Sahajanand. Ranga was general secretary.
3. (b) Option (c) describes tinkathia in Champaran.
4. (c) Both are correct.
5. (a) 1918, 1929, 1936, 1950.

What to do next

• Write the five burdens (rent, abwab, begari, bedakhli, bakasht) in one line each, in Hindi and English.
• Contrast this movement with the Champaran Satyagraha in two columns.
• Place both in Bihar in the national movement.
• Write the model answer in your own words in 15 minutes.