Pioneer of peasant movement

Today, on February 22, we observe the birth anniversary of Sahajanand Saraswati. He was a noted freedom fighter who challenged the colonial state and the oppressive landlords to address the concerns of the farmers and agricultural labourers. As we celebrate his birth anniversary, a huge number of farmers in Buxar, Bihar are agitating for better compensation as their land was acquired for a power plant. They started their demand peacefully near the plant. The local police tried to strangulate their genuine demands while unleashing assaults at midnight. Forcefully, the police personnel entered their houses and brutally assaulted men and women indiscriminately that forced the farmers to oppose the authorities aggressively. The local authorities imposed several cases on the villagers.

Subsequently, farmers from different social identities mobilised themselves in the absence of an organised farmers’ union. Many villagers from the adjoining areas joined the movement in name of solidarity. The entire episode forced us to recall the contributions of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati who spearheaded a full-fledged peasant movement during tumultuous times in India. The movement forced the colonial state and the influential 'Zamindars' to negotiate on key issues related to the small farmers in Bihar such as aggressive collections of rent on their land. Buxar comes under the same region where Saraswati successfully guided the movement for many years and challenged the turf of the dominant forces. In what ways did Sahajanand Saraswati along with the Kisan Sabha articulate their rights and what went wrong in the recent context of the peasant rights in Bihar and its adjoining areas of Uttar Pradesh?

Swami Sahajanand was born in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh in 1889. However, he operated from Bihta, Bihar. Ghazipur district shares a political boundary with Buxar in Bihar. When Saraswati spearheaded the movement, Buxar was a part of the then Shahabad district in Bihar. As he relentlessly worked for peasants, the archival records reveal that he was well connected with his contemporaries like NG Ranga, Jaiprakash Narain, and EMS Namboodiripad. Political leaders like MK Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose met him personally. Scholars like Rahul Sankrityayan accompanied him on this journey. Against this backdrop, Walter Hauser, a scholar from the University of Chicago, produced a groundbreaking research in 1961 on the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha which was nurtured and shaped by Saraswati. Walter published his doctoral work in the form of a book which was titled 'The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha, 1929-1942: A Study of an Indian Peasant Movement'. Subsequently, his account became an important academic intervention for peasant studies. Walter articulated Swami’s contributions in a detailed manner.

As far as Swami’s political inclination is concerned, he was associated with different political parties such as the Indian National Congress, the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), Forward Block, and the Communist Party of India. Shedding light on how Swami was associated with different political parties in different periods, Walter Hauser noted in his book, “Sahajanand had entered Congress politics under the Gandhian influence and felt dedicated to Gandhi’s principles”. Hauser further added that he left the Congress party over ideological differences and was inclined towards the Communist parties. He was disassociated from political parties as his support was for a cause; he was not interested in personal benefits. As far as Swami’s contribution is concerned, he did not restrict himself to peasants. He aggressively opposed the practices of 'Begar' (forced labour) in Bihar as Hauser underlined in the context of the Patna region in 1928. It is noteworthy that 'Begar' was a prevalent practice in the village where a huge number of the disempowered communities were forced to engage themselves in domestic help. On the other hand, Swami articulated the problem of agricultural labourers, 'Agricultural problems could not be resolved until the problem of labourers could not be resolved'.

Another important aspect of his contribution is that he articulated many ambiguous terms such as 'Kisan', 'Majdur', 'Begar', and 'Kashtkar' from the agrarian society. He discussed many intricacies of agrarian society in his books and different addresses of the Kisan Sabha. He wrote many books on different aspects such as caste and religion, yet his autobiographical account, 'Mera Jeevan Sangharsh' (My Life's Struggle) is still an important text to understand the agrarian society in India.

Despite such leadership in the early 20th century, the farmers in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh lack their voices as they are not organised for their rights. Unlike, western Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, the farmers in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh lack their agency. The government machinery hardly consults them in the policy formulations related to agriculture. On the other hand, politics surrounding caste identities strangulated their prospects in a big way. As the practice of land acquisition is a harsh reality, the entire region is going to experience the arrival of massive infrastructure projects in the coming years. Land acquisition is going to intensify in such situations where many farmers are deserting agriculture with increasing input costs and dwindling agricultural profits. They are eager to sell their agricultural lands. People who are in power must be aware of it as the farmers are grappling with such agrarian distress despite the lofty claims. Such a precarious situation provides an opportunity to read and re-read his texts and monographs on the agrarian challenges in the 20th century. It would be a great tribute to Swami Sahajanand Saraswati.

The writer is pursuing PhD from TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi. View expressed here is personal