Kisan Sabhas and Agrarian Revolt in the United Provinces 1920 to 1921

Abstract

The non-cooperation movement dominated Indian politics in 1920 and 1921, and any account of the Kisan Sabhas or Cultivators Associations during those years is likely to lay less stress on their importance than on that of the wider political campaign. Linked by the name of Gandhi, the peasant movement was caught up in the whole campaign of the nationalist leaders against the government. Yet the background to the upsurge of agrarian radicalism in the United Provinces and Bihar shows that it was strongest in districts with particular tenurial and agrarian problems. Moreover, in these localities the radical leadership was independent of outside agencies, its links with wider political movements were tenuous and ambivalent, and it was little subject to external influence and control.