Sharecropping and Sharecroppers Struggles in Bengal 1930-1950

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It is heartening that research in agrarian movements that flared up in the last phase of the raj is now intense. Much good work has been done in the recent period. Twenty six years ago, when I published my book on the Tebhaga movement, the object was to focus on the revolutionary potential of the Indian peasant. It is now generally admitted that the working class is not the only revolutionary class, the peasants played the decisive role in China and Vietnam, the peasant struggles that grew in India in the wake of the nationalist movement in the Gandhi era point to the groundswell coming up from the peasants that played an important role in the anti-imperialist movement. Dr. Cooper's book which has grown out of a doctoral dissertation is a documented survey of the Tebhaga movement. Unlike some of our distinguished sociologists, Cooper does not fail to note the growing importance of the Jotedar in the countryside from 1929 onwards; the section on share-cropping throws much new light on the process of depeasantization between the two world wars. Cooper has drawn attention to the intermittent sharecroppers' struggles between 1930 and 1945. that apparently prepared the ground of the Tebhaga movement.

In the winter of 1946 the Tebhaga struggle erupted like a volcano the struggle which developed in 19 districts in undivided Bengal was intense in Dinajpur, Rangpur, Jalpai guri, Khulna, Mymensingh and 24 Parganas. All the evidence that has accumulated in recent years make it clear that the Tebhaga movement was a movement from below, which was sustained by the spontaneous support of the rural poor. The movement spread in some of the districts in east Bengal (now in Bangladesh) which were lacerated by communal riots: there was remarkable unity among Hindu, Muslim and tribal peasants, pointing to a horizontal solidarity of the oppressed communities. As Cooper tries to show, a striking feature of the struggle was the initiative shown by local peasant cadres, particularly after the publication of the Bargadars Bill. Faced with the stubborn opposition of the rich Jotedars who domi nated the Muslim League, the government beat a retreat and refused to introduce the Bill in the legislature. The struggle was suppressed by the Muslim League ministry. Cooper has brought the story upto 1950 to focus on the radicalization of the peasants who carried on a continuous movement for land reforms. Peasant radicalism, however, reached its peak in 1946-47-.

What has particularly impressed me is the intensive field work undertaken by Cooper. She moved in the villages, meeting peasant activists, many of whom lived in Bangladesh. The official reports hardly help us to understand the role of peasant activists. Cooper's story is largely based on the evidence collected from the interview with the peasant activists. It seems that this method has stood her in good stead to com-prehend the realities in rural life. The biographical sketches of numerous peasant activists as well as middle class leaders should be useful for students of agrarian history.

In his perceptive account of the Tebhaga movement. Mr. Sugata Bose writes that it "never assumed the massive proportions that current tebhaga mythology would have us believe", while admitting that it had "the most powerful lines of continuity" to the agrarian movements in the post-independence period. What seems to be Cooper's major contention is that the sweep and intensity of the movement had no parallel: it left an indelible impression on the minds of peasants; and it "changed people's lives and attitudes" in different ways. The present writer who took part in the Tebhaga struggle shares this view.

The bibliography has been carefully prepared. What needs to be noted is that few scholars have carried on such intensive fieldwork.

During a visit to Dhaka in 1984, a friend of mine told me about an L.L.O. project in Mymensingh. She was surprised to find men and women there working together, with relative ease and confidence. When she asked them why they felt that this was possible, they replied, "Because this is a tebhaga village." I had not visited this village during the original research, but felt compelled to make the journey there, where the legacy of the tebhaga struggle still lived in the day to day lives of the villagers, nearly forty years on. Their statement reminded me that, although the demands of the tebhaga movement had not been won in Bangladesh, in the long-term, the struggle had changed peoples' lives and attitudes in other ways. We reached the village, with the help of a network of committed and eager people. We all sat on the veranda, sheltered from the early monsoon rain, and listened to the story of the tebhaga struggle in this area, from two venerable.

old gentlemen, one a Hindu and one a Muslim. In this village during the harvesting season in 1946-7, share-croppers and peasants had gone into the fields in large groups to collectively cut down the crops and divide them into shares of two-thirds for the peasants and one-third for the landlords.

This challenged the traditional half and half shares. The land-lords had refused to take their shares, calling in the police and starting court cases against the sharecroppers. The peasant leaders were arrested, and the villagers were harassed, but the police weren't able to find the crops as they were well hidden.

Women had been actively involved in the movement, resisting the police when they came to make arrests. Although the main demand was to change the sharing of the crops, the peasants had also wanted abolition of the Zamindari (land revenue) system and land to the tiller. In this village a group of peasants in the village had run the movement, and every one had participated.

Two generations on, young unemployed grandchildren-both men and women of those active in the struggle were involved in a collective rearing poultry. They had heard stories of the tebhaga movement from their parents and grandparents, and were influenced by their achievements and experiences of this and other struggles. As well as the co-operative, there were other ways in which the experiences of peasant struggle had changed attitudes in the village. For example, during some of the worst phases of communal tension, Muslim families had sheltered the Hindus.

The tebhaga agitation of 1946-7 in undivided Bengal was an unprecedented movement of sharecroppers, aiming to reduce land rents from one-half to one-third shares of the crops. The demand to retain two-thirds of the crop was successfully implemented in many villages during that harvest-ing period. Sharecroppers were organised under the auspices of the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha, a communist-led organisation, committed to representing the interests of the peasantry and to working within the nationalist movement. That sharecroppers, as one of the most exploited groups in Bengal, mobilised so extensively and effectively, was the in-spiration for starting the work that developed into this book I was fortunate in being able to meet many people who had participated in the tebhaga movement, at different levels, both in West Bengal and in Bangladesh. I hope that this study does justice to their memories."