Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
EVOLUTION OF PEASANTRY: A HISTORICAL
PRESPECTIVE:
Numerous studies in the past by anthropologists, sociologists,
economists and political scientists, have thrown light on various
aspects of peasants and peasants life. However, the literature is not
unifocal in defining the term peasant. The differences not only stem
from a variance in approach and perspectives, but also from the fact
that farm structure, patterns of inter relationships, and cultures, vary
spatially and temporarily because of the differences in natural
environment, i.e., the endowment in which a community (society)
grows, and also of the stages of development of different societies.
(For discussion of generic features of the peasantry in different
countries and periods, see for example in Redfield, R.(1953)
Primitive World And Its Transformation, Cornell University Press,
and Ibid (1956) I-Shanin, T., Peasantry As a Political Factor,
Sociological Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1966, pp. 5-27).
Historically speaking, peasantry first appeared in the tribal (mainly
nomadic) society. For them agriculture was only a part time
occupation. In course of time, with settled agriculture, a society of
small producers developed and became the gamut of all social,
economic and cultural activities of human associations. In the next
stage of evolution of the societies, peasantry became a sector within
the industrial society. The emergence of small scale producers can
be traced to a period prior to the emergence of feudal system of
cultivation. It created the basis for stable settlement, land division
and evolutionary rise in the productivity which brought with it the
possibility of comparatively stable surplus. (Mandel, 1967, Traite
and Economic Marxist, Jerusalem, pp. 33-6-41.)
As the society developed from the nomadic stage, two important
changes occurred within its structure. They were (a) the development
4 1
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
PREFACE
The role of peasantry as an agent of social transformation in the
third world countries is on account of the fact that the social structures
of these societies are predominantly agrarian and peasantry
constitutes the major chunk of the deprived sections.
The present Book is a study of the peasant movement in the State of
Orissa alter Independence. It is divided into Seven chapters,
Chapter one discusses the concepts used in the analysis, states the
objectives of the study and its methodology and presents a brief
profile of the study region, Who is a peasant? What are the
characteristics of peasant culture? What is meant by revolutionary
consciousness in the peasantry? What is meant by peasantry as a
class? What are the long-term and short-term issues of peasant
uprising etc. These are the type of questions which have been sought
to be answered, While discussing the concepts related to peasant
movements. The discussion is based on a survey of the main currents
of thought in this area.
Chapter two presents an analysis of the socio-economic environment
of the state from early times of British rule to the present in the
context of the problems faced by the peasants and their response to
the changing agro-economic conditions in the State.
In Chapter three, various measures of land reforms which were
enacted right from 1804 to the present day are described. The analysis
falls into two broad categories : the pre-independence and the post-
independence. The changes in the land tenure system during the
colonial rule were in the interest of the colonial rulers, Attempt,
therefore, has been made to describe their impact on the life and
living of the peasants of the State. The post- independence era, which
could be pre-dated from 1937 onwards, was different in the sense
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
that the changes in the economic structure were said to be linked
with the welfare of the people rather than the rulers. The chapter
analyses the post independence land legislations in order to see how
far they were enacted in response to the peasant movements in the
State of Orissa.
Chapter four analyses the peasant movements in the State during the
British rule. In the context of the changing complexion of these
movements, the colonial period may be divided into two parts : (a)
before the induction of the freedom movement ideology into the
peasant struggles, and (b) after this period till the attainment of
independence. The chapter describes the issues, nature and causes
of peasant uprisings in both these periods and compares and contrasts
the role of the peasant leadership and its impact on the strategy and
tactics of the peasant struggles.
Chapter five describes the scenario of present struggles in the context
of the land reforms, abolition of zamindarl and the changing structure
of agricultural economy which became increasingly market oriented
and made determined efforts to change itself from a way of living
for many to a way of life for a few after Independence. The chapter
describes the main events of peasant uprisings in the context of these
changes.
Chapter six analyses the impact, shortcomings and success of
Ghoodan, Gramdan and Landgrab Movements.
The last chapter entitled Retrospect and Prospects, summarizes the
main trends of peasant movements in the State in the past, and
examines the future prospects of Kisan Movements in the State in
the context of the socio political constraints of the present day
economy and the political system of the country.
At the outset I express my gratitude to my father Sri Banamali Das,
a well known peasant leader of Orissa who inspired me to write a
Book on Peasant Movement.
(Urmimala Das)
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHAPTER-1
PEASANTRY: CONCEPT, ROLE AND AREA
OF THE STUDY
The intellectual process of epitomizing the victory of man over nature
and forwarding a view of nature, individual and society in rational
terms started in the later part of the 19th century, particularly when
capitalism had stolen a march over all forms of development in
Europe. The genesis of the process may be traced to the hitherto
unknown forms of human misery not only in the colonial countries
but also in the colonizing countries where the proliferation of slums
and their concomitant social, cultural and psychological evils, came
out to be regarded necessary and wholly unavoidable by products of
the market forces.
The role of peasantry as an agent of social transformation in the
third world countries is largely on account of the fact that the social
structures of these societies are predominantly agrarian, and peasantry
forms the major part of the deprived sections of these societies.
The faith in the potentialities of peasants to bring about social
transformation for an equitable and just order, in recent times, gained
credence on account of the Maos resolution in China, and the political
philosophies enshrined in the writings of scholar-revolutionaries like,
Antonio Gramsci, Che GUE Vara, Franz Fanon, Eric Wolf and others.
In the context of the present Book, which seeks to analyze the peasant
movements in Orissa after Independence, a brief discussion on the
etiology of the terms, peasant and peasant movement, is necessary
to avoid confusion, and to present the analysis on scientific lines.
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and which impart in them their historical role as agents of social
change, are class issues or not the sectarian grievances of individuals.
Further the successful peasant struggles result in changing the class
relations of production management and not necessarily the relation
between individuals in isolation.
The interpretation of the concept class is not the same between the
Marxists and the academic sociologists. For the Marxists classes are
defined primarily by relations of production: Marx has said very
little in explicit terns about the concept class.
Elaborating on the conditions under which an assembly of people
partakes the character of class, Marx said : In so far as millions of
families live under economic conditions of existence that separate
their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the
other classes, put them in hostile position to the latter, they form a
class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these
small holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no
community, no National bond and no political organization among
them, they do not form a class.
(Marx stated, individual peasant family is almost self sufficient, it
itself directly produces the major part of its consumption and this
acquires its means of life more through exchange with nature than
in intercourse with society. A small holding, a peasant and his family;
along-side them another small holding, another peasant and another
family. A few score of these make up the village and a few score of
villages make up a department. In this addition of homologous
magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack of potatoes, 1951b).
(Marx, K. and Engles, F., (1951 b) Selected Works, Vol-I P-303,
Moscow).
The sociologists, on the other hand record the relative difference of
wealth as the dividing line between different social classes. For
8 5
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of property relations, and, (b) individual replacing social or
commercial groups as the unit of social activity and economic
interaction.
The concept of property relations hardly existed in the tribal
(nomadic) society, where everyone worked and shared in the common
pool of food items. The property relations developed in the small
producers society, in which the distinction between those who held
rights over the means of production and others was formalized, first
by tradition and, later by legal enactments. The property relations
were firmly formalized in legal enactments in a capitalist-industrial
society.
In the nomadic society kinship group was the basic unit of social
relationships. In the small producers society, on the other hand, the
family became the basic unit of social interaction. In the capitalist-
industrial society this intimate relation between the individual and
society broke. The individual become the basic nuclear unit of society
and his interaction with other individuals or institutions, came to be
based on in his single (personal) capacity. Prevalence of family
property is a characteristic feature of the predominantly small
producers society. The capitalistic (industrial) society recognized an
individual on the basis of his personal (private) property uncombined
by the joint rights of a family.
The existence of peasantry as a realistic (and not purely semantic)
concept in the modem literature may be traced to four major
conceptual traditions which have influenced contemporary
scholarship. They are the Marxist class theory, the specific
economic typology, the ethnographic cultural tradition, and
Durkheimian tradition.
The Marxian concept of peasantry is cast in the social framework of
class-struggle and is viewed in the context of power relationships in
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
the society. The power matrix in which the peasant is seen as an
essential relationship of domination (Marx, 1864), which
characterizes the peasant as the suppressed and exploited producers
of the pre-capitalist society (Marx and Engels).
Vasil Chakov (1881) followed by Chayanov (1925) propounded a
new concept of peasantry which looked upon the peasant social
structure as a typical economy, at the centre of which lies the family
farming units.
The European anthrography and traditional Western anthropology
has viewed, peasants at the representatives of an earlier National
tradition, preserved as a cultural lag by the inertia typical of the
peasant societies (Shanin, T. (ed.) Peasants in Peasant Societies,
Penguine Books, p. 14. Marxs Scatching criticium was directed
towards the peasant as a social structure and its economy because
of the absence of interval differentiation in its social structure and
circulating economy. Durkheims concept of peasantry is a part of
the whole gamout of sociological tradition with nostalgiac at its
basis. Modern society i.e., industrial society marked by mechanical
relationships was the birth place of anomie, a concept familiar to
Marxs concept of alienation but used indefence of something which
Marx wanted to demolish)
Durkheim, has characterized human society in terms of modern
and traditional societies, and has placed the peasant culture as a
part of the latter. Elaborating on the same theme American
Anthropologist, Redfield and others have opined that peasant culture
is a part culture and part society.
STATIC CONCEPT:
The concept of the peasantry in the literature may also be analyzed
in terms of static-dynamic dichotomy of the underlying assumption.
The anthropological characterization of peasant society, the concept
6 7
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of peasantry as social structure, peasantry as economic category by
Marx, and the traditional concept of Durkheim (et.al), are static
concepts in the sense that they assume the main characteristics of
the peasant societies as given, and unchanging*. They bound the
peasants within certain definite roles as unchanging parameters of
their destiny. Almost all the anthropological studies and the views of
the western scholars who have looked upon peasant societies as
homogenous village entitles, come under the static category. The
static definition implies that it is not possible for peasant to change
their condition through struggle or movements. The history of
mankind however, has falsified such a characterization. The static
concepts scholars seem to have overlooked the historical realities
of peasants political actions and the new world order, where peasants
have succeeded in creating the modem world. The static definitions,
besides being deterministic in approach, do also exhibit a deep sense
of apathy for the peasants and their culture.
DYNAMIC CONCEPT:
Under the dynamic concept peasantry is looked at as an agent of
Social Change. Social Change occurs through a change in the pattern
of ownership of means of production and relations of production.
These changes are brought through by peasants through their
organized struggles against the prevailing system of production
management. This all, however, seems to be entirely in the Marxist
tradition. However, Marx has looked upon peasantry as a left over
social formation of feudal mode of production in a society which
has shifted towards Capitalist mode of production relations.
PEASANTRY AS A CLASS:
Implicit in the dynamic view of the peasant societies is the concept
of class. The role of peasantry as a class is important to understand
because the issues around which peasant mobilization takes place,
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The official definition therefore includes all those who own land,
but excludes those cultivators who may be tilling the land but may
not be holding title to the land they are cultivating.
In the co-local language of Orissa a Peasant is referred as a Chasi,
Chasa means cultivation in Oriya language. To be a Chasi one
has to have some land of his own, and should be engaged in actual
tilling of the land. Others who work in land for wages or, do not
have a legal right over the produce of their fields are known as Mulia
or agricultural labourers, our operational definition is in harmony
with the local usage of the term peasant in the study area of this
Book. And one who works on the land for wages, having no other
rights what- so-ever either on the land or on the produce, either by
law or by custom, is not treated as Chasi (peasant) but is treated as
Mulla (i.e., agricultural labourer). Thus those who physically
participate.
On the basis of ownership of land and use of family labour of peasants
may further be divided into the following three categories. (We have
taken, landholding, means of production, hired labour and self-
employment as the basic criteria to classify peasantry of Orissa. We
have referred to Maos Zedoings How to distinguish the class in the
Rural areas, and V.I. Penins Preliminary Draft Theses on the
Agrarian Question, Presented to the 2nd Congress of the Comintern
in 1928.)
1. Middle Peasant
2. Poor Peasant
3. Agricultural Labourers.
1. A middle peasant is one who holds more than 4 acres and less than
10 acres of land under his ownership. Their family labour is fully
engaged in their own farms and to meet the surplus need of labour
they employ people from outside of their families. He is self sufficient
12
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Marshall - class is a force that units groups of people who differ
from the other, by over-riding the (personal) differences between
them, Mac Iver relates a social class to a portion of a community
which is marked off from the rest, not by limitations arising out of
language, locality, function or specialization, but primarily by social
status. For centres - class as distinguished from stratum, can well
be regarded as a psychological phenomenon in the fullest sense of
the term.
A neat classification of peasantry on the basis of a given set of class
interests, however, is not always possible as peasants interests,
especially among poor peasants, often crosscut class alignments, A
peasant may be at one and the same time owner, renter, share-cropper
and a labourer for his neighbor. Each of these different involvements
aligns him differently with his fellows and with the outside world.
The class concept is the case of peasant societies should, therefore,
be understood as something of a broad category, the precise nature
of which would be defined by the objective conditions prevailing at
a time and place.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION :
In view of the divergence existing in the literature on the meaning
and role of peasants and peasantry we have adopted an operational
definition of our own is as follows.
Peasant la a partial or total owner of a place of land that he fame
largely with the help of his family labour for his livelihood. The
ownership of the land can he both permanent or of a temporary nature,
In the latter case it say confine to a single cropping season or a few
seasons only,
A revolutionary peasant may be defined as one who does not share
in the surplus produce (this excludes the rich peasant from this
category); is aware of his underdog objective conditions at time
9
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
becomes subjectively conscious of his class position and is fired
with an urge to change the aggregative objective conditions of life
of his class.
In common parlance a peasant and a cultivator are synonymous terms.
This however, is not so in our definition. We have excluded a
managerial function of an agricultural farm from the set of agricultural
operations of a peasant. Thus those who live by agriculture but
participate in the managerial functions of their farms only are not to
be termed as peasant. A peasant is one who, other things remaining
the same, participates in all major agricultural operations of his firm.
The family provides the labour for his farming, and the farm provides
for the collective consumption needs of the family wholly or partially.
Self consumption, rather than profit, it the motive of his economic
activities and due to his weak economic standing he makes use of
outdated methods, machinery and technology of production.
In contrast to him a capitalist farmer uses cost-efficient Methods of
production. His aim is to maximize his profits and to this end, he in
general replaces men for machines in agricultural operations in the
capitalistic set up of the agrarian economy the peasant often works
for others as a hired labour to supplement his own farm earnings.
In the present day context of Indian agricultural economy, it is
important to outline the distinction between a gentleman farmer and
a peasant. A gentleman farmer is one who, other than the landlord
lives by agricultural income but soiling his hand in agricultural
operations. A gentleman farmer is a cultivator no doubt but his
relationship with the land and soil are culturally end emotionally not
so close and intimate through inherited traditions as those of a peasant.
To reiterate our position, we distinguish a peasant in the rural society
in the rural landscape by the following set of traits that (a) he should
own some land and (b) he should till his land largely with the help of
the family labour. Besides these it is immaterial if he works as a
10
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
share-cropper or an agricultural labourers during certain parts of the
year or, even engages himself in non- agricultural jobs to supplement
his family income,
Redfield, has linked a peasant family, culturally with the little
tradition, However the dividing line between the greater tradition
and the little tradition is very thin and, therefore, an analytical
distriction between the peasant and the practitioners of the greater
tradition can be made only imprecisely, that is in greater or lesser
terms, the peasant is wedded more to the latter while a non-peasant
is to the former culture.
Peasantry is also not a locational or spatial concept. It does not imply
that all country dwellers are peasants and all urban people are non-
peasants. It is not the dwellings or, culture of the people but their
economic standing, which determines their peasant-beingness.
The economic activities of a peasant bear an organic linkage with
his personal relationships within his own family and class relations
in his peasant society and in relation to outside world activities.
Economic activity is a way of life rather than a profession for a
peasant. A piece of lend for him is not merely a factor of production
but more so, an object of symbolic value as well (i). His attachment
to the soil is an important factor in the Indian Context, although it is
not the same in the case of America, England and Russia. (Facts
compiled from Kerning, C.D. (ed.) Marxism, Communism and
western Society Comparative (Encyclopedia; Publication - Herder
and Herder, 1973).
In the land records of Orissa the term peasant has been defined by
ownership category alone. All those who hold a title to some piece
of land are listed as cultivators or agriculturists. Actual tilling of the
land as we have stipulated in our operational definition, has not been
mentioned anywhere.
11
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Germany, Hegel, although an advocate of dialectic method of
development, condemned the French Revolution. Tolstoy in Russia
was perhaps the greatest champion of the peasant way of life and his
glorification of communes and peasantry are masterpieces in the
history of world literature. (Lenin in one of his comments went so far
as to say that prior to Tolstoy peasantry did not exist in the real
sense of the term in European Literature. See Luckac-Studies, in
European Realism, The Marlin Press, London (1978).
The radical school has to be considered with special relation to Marx
for two reasons. First, like the rationalists, he welcomed the
democratic and industrial revolution but at the same time he advanced
a devastating criticism of the dehumanizing aspect of these two
revolutions and thus occupied a unique position in the history of
peasant studies. Secondly, Marx gave an opinion about peasantry
which although initially conservative, under-went radical
transformations under later Marxists like Lenin and Mao (For
discussion see, Chatterjee, P., The Peasantry, Saminar,295, 1984,
Spl. Issue on Marxian Shandings, pp. 26-29.) However, regarding
the Russian Peasant Communes his opinions underwent a change
and they are reflected in his various letters to Victor Zasulich, the
populist leader. With him, Marx shared the view that in Russia the
transition was possible from these peasant communes to communism
without any violent upsurge.
This debate persisted till Lenins time and the scene was occupied
by populist and Bolsheviks. However, Lenin in his book The
development of Capitalism in Russia refuted such arguments. The
main points of argument between Lenin and the populists can be
summed up as follows:
First . for populists, the peasant economy was supposed to be an
independent economy lacking any system of exchange with the
national economic system.
16
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
in respect of the means of production that he makes use of primarily
they are self employed and use smaller employment of others
labour. Value of exploitation (E) , here is lesser in comparison to
landlords and rich peasant.
The poor peasant is one who holds 1 to 2 acres of land and in no case
more than 4 acres of land. He employs his full family labour. During
agricultural operation season when the demand of labour in the
community rises to a very high level, he sometimes finds his family
labour insufficient to his need at a particular time for a particular
operation. In situations like this he also employs labour from outside
the family but the terms of employment are generally based on mutual
reciprocity and no explicit wage payment for the labour takes place.
(We have here used Utsha Patnaiks Scale of the value of labour
Exploitation, to measure the extent of exploitation for each category
of peasant.
(Labour exploitation ratio (E)
E = Net Labour days employed or worked for others / Family labour
days in self employment
= {(Hi - Ho) + (Lo Li)} / F = X / F
Where
Hi = Labour days hired in
Ho = Labour days hired out by family.
Lo = Labour days worked in land leased out.
Li = Labour days worked in land leased in.
F = Family labour days in self employment
For a middle peasant Value of exploitation
1>E>0 Where F > 0
X<F
For Poor Peasant B 1 where F > 0, X< 0 and Where X F.
E X : Where F = 0, X< 0 and large.
This is highest value of exploitation for landless labourer.
13
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
He manages his farming activities entirely with the help of his family
labour. The amount of family labour available to him is more than
he can employ in his farm. The surplus family labour therefore, takes
up wage employment seat outside the family.
The value of labour exploitation is greater for middle peasant but
highest for landless labourer.
The agricultural labourer is in fact the rural proletarist. He owns no
means of production; except his own labour power, which he sells to
the landlords, big and small peasants. Utsha Patnaik has stratified
the overall agricultural population in India into 6 categories* in
accordance with some definite objective criteria. The value of labour
exploitation is highest. In case of landless labourer.
Their homogeneity in respect of identical class interest comes in
relation to their dealings with the landlord and to some extent the
big peasants.
The nature and form of the antagonism between the cultivating
peasants and the managerial-cum-rentier landed aristocracy in India,
has taken several forms in the course of history. In the colonial period
when the landlord had his total rights over the entire land all
cultivating peasants were tenants-at-will. They were exploited
through the mechanism of high rents, and forced labour formalized
in a set of social custom in an atmosphere of absolute insecurity of
tenancy.
After independence of and particularly after the abolition of
Zamindary, landlords in their classical form disappeared from the
scene. Their place was taken by capitalist farmers who began to
manage agriculture like industry with the sole aim of maximizing
the agricultural surplus. They employed hired labour and in order to
raise efficiency of agricultural operations substituted new technology
for human labour as far as possible. Their interest laid in depressing
14
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
the wage-rate of agricultural worker to the minimum, raising the
price of marketable agricultural produce to the maximum and securing
maximum subsidies for agricultural inputs which they use within
the matrix of their profit maximization function they at times found
allies among the middle and poor peasants. But by and large they
found the peasantry opposing them for depressing the wage rates
and creating unemployment for the surplus rural labour.
THEIR ROLE IN THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL CHANGE:
Peasantry started occupying pivotal position in the political
sociological literature in the later part of the 18th century and onwards
because of the conflict between feudalism and the emergence of
capitalism. It was the period marked by contradictions arising between
the decaying feudal mode of production and the emerging capitalist
mode of production. (Ideas from Nietzsche, F., Sociological Tradition,
Basic Book Pub., New York, 1966 and Sen, A., The Transition from
Feudalism to Capitalism, Economic and Political Weekly, July 1984,
pp. PE 50 to PE 63.) giving birth to a new social formation. The
controversy between various schools centered around the notion of
the congruence and reciprocity characterized by the feudal node of
production of which the peasantry was the quintessential aspect and
the problem of order.
The mode of peasant production and life style which became the
subject matter of anthropology and other disciplines later on was
seen to constitute a pattern of relationship in which man stood at the
centre of the theatre of social cohesion and solidarity. We find the
wide spread reaction against the disappearance of the peasant way
of life, in those countries where industrialization had gained
considerable momentum as In Britain, France and Germany or where
its emergence was imminent. In Britain, it was spurned by William
Morris, William Cobbett and many others. In France Victor Hugo
and Zola depicted the miseries unleashed by urbanization. In
15
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
industrial proletariat or the rural proletariat were to be reconsidered.
For this the aetiology of the strength of the existing system was to be
unraveled before a strategy could be devised and formulated. Central
to the political theory of Gramsci is the concept of hegemony which
is a conflation of various trends of historical thinking embodying
different strands of negative and positive dimensions end it is within
this framework that a Gramscian an philosophy of the subaltern class
is to be understood.
The term subaltern class is representative of two notions as defined
by Lenin. To Gramsci, the subalatern class is the class which is
subsequent to the capitalist class and also the class above the exploited
class which in the process of struggle sides with the proletariat class.
In his discussion of the subaltern class, Gramsci used it in the second
sense and his conception of hegemony to be established by the
subaltern class was a product of the typical historical circumstances
born out of the rapid development of capitalism and its overwhelming
influence over the masses through its various channels of
communication, manipulation.
Gramsci stated that the force of political society was based on the
proliferation of consent among the members of the civil society and
thus, creation of ideological hegemony was the task that the state
had undertaken during the modem times in order to nullify the
revolutionary consciousness of the working class.
The subaltern class, accordingly to Gramsci, was like an island,
immune from the hegemonic Influences and ideological domination
of the bourgeois, and consequently the leadership of communist party
would play pivotal role in its mobilization by slaking it aware of its
role and potentialities.
With reference to Gramcis concept of hegemony, it is interesting to
contract and compare his philosophy with the ideas of the members
20
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Second - The lack of internal differentiation was inimical to class
formation of any type.
Third - Peasants did not conform to the social and economic laws
characteristic of capitalist development. The basic theory was that
peasants still formed part of the feudal mode of production, which
was not an exploitative structure but rather wag based upon co-
operation, congruence and equilibrium. (For summary of the
discussion, A Dictionary of Marxist thought (eds.) T.B. Bottomote et
al. From an alliance was forwarded for Trotakey also)
As against the populist philosophy, Lenin was of the opinion that
peasants were undergoing a process of transformation that was taking
place in Russia, characterized by the phase known as pre-capitalist
development. Secondly, the process of land accumulation which was
taking place would lead to a form of ownership in which there would
be rich land owners, middle peasants and poor-peasantry who in the
process would be transformed into rural proletariats and will
constitute a major section of the revolutionary class.
Thus, the possibility of stratification among the peasantry in Russia
was first stated by Lenin which to him would proceed from the fact
of the penetration of capitalism in agriculture in the country-side.
Lenin anticipated the contradiction between landlords and kulaks ,
which would lead to specific formation of alliance between the
workers and the rural proletariat; although, the leadership would be
from the working class. Analytically thus, while for Lenin the
peasantry started occupying a secondary position within the overall
structure of the revolutionary class a position which was later on
given primary in the writings of Mao during the revolutionary struggle
in China.
In the gradual development of revolutionary struggle in the world,
we have to glance towards the contribution of Lenin who for the
17
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
first time gave importance to the role of peasantry. In this area Lenins
views become more open and wider than that of Marx, because the
latters study was basically confined to the theory of the peasantry
in France which was much more industrially developed. Marx was
unable to come out of the pigeonhole of French industrial society to
study the agrarian classes in Russia or other countries, but his letters
to populist leaders in the latter part of his life reflect a different
opinion regarding the peasantry with special reference to Russia
(Chatterji, P. Peasantry, Seminar 1984, ibid., also see Sen, A.
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, Economic and Political
Weekly, July 1981, pp. PE 50-Pe 65.) Marx could not be optimistic
for a social revolution in an agriculturally prominent country. In the
words of Zinov the enrichment of Marxism by Lenin is to be found
in the latters a attitude towards the peasantry. Lenins skill consisted
in mobilizing the millions of impoverished peasants as a revolutionary
force, and successfully subordinating them to the leadership of the
protelariat (Lichtheim, George Marxism: An Historical & Critical
Study, Routelege and Kegan Paul, London, 1974, p. 334.). Though
Lenin advocated the role of the peasantry in the process of social
revolution; he did not consider this class to be the sole repository of
revolutionary consciousness. In the framework of his philosophy the
leading role always lied with the working class.
Marxism as a philosophy of praxis provided for a perspective of
social change and not a dogmatic framework. Therefore, flexibility
is ingrained in the theoretical structure of Marxism to be modified
as per the requirement of society.
In the work of Mao Marxian underwent a great transformation and
hence forth, it became a weapon of social change in industrially
backward and agricultural countries also. This is what precisely Mao
did in China. He did not accept Marxs thesis of passive peasantry
and stated that to accept such characterization is to deny the rural
18
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
revolutionaries their proper place in the annals of peasant
to colonial and feudal exploitation
Mao was the first Marxist thinker to formulate and also to practice a
social revolution exclusively by the peasantry. The hard-core
limitation of classical Marxist thinking that a social revolution is
possible only in an industrially developed country was demolished
by Maos rural revolution with peasants as the vanguard of social
revolution and change in China.
Maos differentiation and classification of social classes were based
on the exploitative design and appropriation of surplus labour in the
rural areas, both latent and manifest in the prevailing mode of
production. He classified peasantry in China during the pre-
revolutionary periods into the five well defined categories. They were
the (i) landlords, (ii) rich peasants, (iii) middle peasants, (iv) poor
peasants and (v) agricultural workers (For Peasant Stratification facts
complied from 15 Obcit., pp. 137-139).
Another towering personality belonging to the Marxist school, during
the Inter-war period was Antnio Gramsci. By the time armed entered
the scene, Europe was undergoing political and economic upheavals.
It was a changing scenario arid a challenge to the old and orthodox
perspective. The end of the first world war, the great economic
depression, the rise of fascism and the revolution in an Industrially
backward country like Russia, and the emergence of new classes in
various parts of Europe, produced cataclysmic changes and posed
challenges of immense magnitude. The earthquake in the objective
world necessitated earthquakes in the philosophical realm also and
consequently we find the birth of Keynesianism in defense of the
mathiquo. Gramscis too in an attempt to dissect the emerging socio-
economic and political forces in order to comprehend and advance a
theory of revolution. The situation was no longer a simple and the
prospects for waging a revolutionary war either solely by the
19
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of its objective conditions under an exploitative mode of production,
and deprived socio-economic subjection. It was not one-hundred
per cent subjective awareness of their objective situations but a
starting to what Guha called elementary aspects of peasant insurgence
In India. And its manifestation were expressed spontaneously,
sporadically in primitive form of rebellious revolts.
Although, primitive peasant rebellions of the colonial regime were
short-lived yet were never devoid of local loci of caste and, class
group.
Guha has argued against Hobsbawm that those colonial Risings were
not at all spontaneous, giving the following arguments ,
i. firstly : Peasantry was very much aware of them objective of Its
rebellion, and to destroy the super-ordinate elites,
ii. secondly ; it was political as it aimed at replacement of power
authority,
iii. thirdly : it was political in character affirming its negative and
inverse procedure, i.e., aimed at substitution of dominating by
dominated.
But it was limited not universal in its aims and objectives Guha has
argued all these characteristics of colonial primitive peasant rising
can not be thought over outside the realm of politics.
These are of course in no way comparable to the peasant movements
of the 20th century which are demarcated with its well designed
network of programme, strategies, organisations national level
leadership and much developed political ideology. The movements
of the colonial period had their local leaders although there cannot
be compared with the controlled leadership of the present century of
which is full of maturity and sophistication. Almost all those
movements were raised from grass - root level and were short-lived.
24
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of the Frankfurt School. To the latter the modern system of education
communication and propaganda had robbed the modern man of its
negative content, and he had become an affirmative creature full of
technocratic tendencies and determined by them is against Gramsci
who had offered a revolutionary solution of the existing
contradictions, members of the Frankfurt School remained confined
to pure academic discussions and interpretative exercises.
Consequently a sound theory of praxis as found in Antonic Gramsci
was never the hallmark of the intellectual tendencies of the Frankfurt
Schools.
The success of peasant revolution in China and the lack of
industrialization in almost all the third world countries and also those
countries which were little colonies led many philosopher and
scholars to concentrate on peasantry. For example, Sartre in his
introduction to Franz Fanons book Wretched of the Earth finds in
peasants a negating power not only against the colonial masters but
also against the indigenous elites the product of the colonial masters
in whose hands the levers of power is to be transferred. Sartre
describes two functions to the peasantry. The first being the overthrow
of toe colonial masters and the second a long drawn struggle against
the indigenous ruling class which has imbibed the manipulative
mechanisms of the previous rulers. The second task according to
Sartre is more assiduous for it entails the entire restructuring of the
socio-economic structure and establishment of an equitable structure.
In other words, the second phase involves the overthrow of the entire
tradition and its hegemonic influences.
NATURE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MAJOR PEASANT
MOVEMENT IN INDIA:
An important debate characterizing the recent period has centered
upon the location of that class of peasantry which could be most
instrumental in war against the exploitative structure. But it has been
21
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
the tactics that have occupied the scholarly scene and not-so-much The very origin of peasant rising in India indicates an initial spur of
the strategy, although certain exception pertaining to this Statement the elementary consciousness. Guha has also attributed innate
cannot be ruled out. structure of consciousness to the peasantry. It was neither one hundred
percent consciousness, nor pure-spontaneity. Peasant consciousness
Theorizing from the study of the political behavior of the peasantry
started structuring by that time but till date it in the process of
during the revolutions in China and Russia, Hemza Alavi and Eric
structuring. It is still growing, whether it is a spontaneous or organised
Wolf are of the opinion that it is the middle peasantry which has
movement we have to recognise the trace of consciousness even in
played the most important role in the above two revolutions. On the
the unstructured movement of the masses. Because all peasant
other hand, Scott and Wolf, Joan, P. Rancher, Mancher, Dhanagare
uprisings in India contained some type of economic demands aiming
and Paige find the revolutionary potentialities in the landless
at structural change,
agricultural labourers, having no attachment to any class within the
overall peasant stratification system. Another important debate of peasant movement in India is whether
the consciousness of peasantry was imputed (i.e., innate formation
Peasant movements in India can be seen in three different phases
of objective conditions) or introduced from outside, Guha has
keeping in view the time and the nature of the leadership. Generally
attributed consciousness to the peasantry; acknowledging peasants
peasant uprisings prior to the advent of Gandhiji more indigenous
as the Baker of his own rebellion. For Hobsbawm, these primitive
peasant movements. After 1920s the movement were channelized
rebels were pre-political phenomenon. He has also gone a step
and were influenced by the Gandhian ideology and were mostly in
further to characterise banditry as a primitive form of organised social
the form of anti-imperialist movements. After the independence
protest (But he is contradictory at the same time while characterizing
mostly the lift parties have taken a keen interest in organizing the
social banditry is next to no organization and ideology, Guha,
peasantry bat with not much success. An exceptional case is that of
Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India,
the farmers movements led by Sharad Joshi in Maharashtra, but it
Oxford, p. 6.), Though these movements were spontaneous yet did
can be termed as a Kulaks Movement
not lack consciousness though varying in quality and degree.
Our concern here in to examine six pre-Independence peasant risings Spontaneity is in some way synonymous with temporariness of the
and two poet-independence peasant movements of Orissa between phenomenon.
1817 to 1951. To focus on the revolutionary role of the peasantry in
When there is a question of rising, whether organised or spontaneous
the colonial era it will be worth discussing one important aspect,
serious metamorphic phenomenon within the very socio-economic
i,e., the debate on peasant consciousness of Guha and Hobsbawm.
agrarian structure of peasantry takes place, which gives birth to the
An attempt is made here to assess the revolutionary role of the Indian
germination of consciousness. And from the very upsurge till date
peasantry since the colonial era (basing on Hobsbawm versus Guha
debate) till date, primarily focusing on the level of peasant structuring of peasant consciousness is in a continuous flux, of course
there are ups and downs in its course of development. This peasant
consciousness. Two peasants movements of after independence
upsurge of early colonial India, derived partial subjective awareness
have also been taken which neither Guha nor Hobsbawm touched.
22 23
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
influenced the people of Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and
other States, it was based on a paradigm quite foreign to the soil and
stereotyped application of the Maoist philosophy led to development
of contradictions within the movement and it was suppressed.
This movement which has still date not died and Is drawing into its
fold various social groups in Bihar and Tamil Nadu needs to be studied
in a more subtle and comprehensive way. Its existence as a social
force invites attention not only towards the existence of typical feudal
mode of exploitative model but reveals inner contradictions within
the leadership and its class composition. In Bihar for example, the
organisation shows a united opposition against feudal lords. But as
regards the status of harijans, discrimination against them has been
reported. Then in economic terms, in central Bihar which has gained
the fruits of various developmental measures, proliferation of Naxlite
groups is more common than in other parts of it which are
economically undeveloped, as it is marked by abundance of poor
agricultural labourers and poor peasants.
As regards the peasant movement in Orissa, it never aroused that
quantum of response which we find in other States nor the movements
that took place throw substantial challenge to the social system
especially in post-independence period. During the pre-independence
period the peasant movements were correlated with movements
against the British policies towards their native rulers. Although
Orissa was subjected to Permanent Settlement and revolts and counter
revolts took place yet the dearth of a cosmopolitan centre like Calcutta
in Bengal and isolated tribals constituting a substantial portion of
the population in the State did not produce a conductive medium of
the transmission of radical ideals. This factor also handicapped the
emergence of enlightened leadership in the state. Various enactments
in order to bring alteration in the agricultural relations of production
have been initiated by the government but they are mixtures of
28
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
It is very difficult to specify common characteristics of various
peasant movements in India both before and after independence in
terms of ideology, leadership and elate because all the important
movements exhibit varying and different overt and covert sociological
factors be it caste, or class composition in economic sense or in the
sense of consciousness generated by ideology and leadership. A
movement, unlike revolution, by its very definition and meaning is
limited in scope although it may assume forms of alarming
proportions. Secondly, a movement does not include majority of the
population of the entire territory but it reflects bidden contradictions
in the social structure and brings to surface the nature and
characteristics of the State, the class it serves and also the nature of
elites who dominate the decision making process.
On account of the strong elements of caste, and various other super
structural ingredients in India, the notion of class and ideology
becomes a complex issue. The Champaran Movement under Gandhiji
and his associates was directed solely against the British Indigo
planters. This movement was not permitted to develop against the
existing feudal structure in Bihar and consequently it was terminated
at a time when the process of mobilization of peasantry would have
been accelerated and directed towards broader issues. The peasant
movement in Kheda, too was against the British revenue policies
and its ideology was nationalist and anti-imperalist.
As has been pointed out by David Hardiman (Hardiman, David -
(1981) Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat Kheda district 1917-1934,
Oxford University Press), from the class- analysis point of view the
movement comprised of rich and middle peasants and the urge to
gain statue in the community was an important factor as regards the
participation of pattidars. The contradiction between rich and middle
peasants is not visible in the whole process of the movement and
thus we find a refusal of the Moist or Leninist arithmetic applicable
25
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
in its pure form. Moreover during the freedom movement the peasant
movements formed microcosm of the macrocosm and were not
independent. Dhanagare has pointed out, the more fundamental
questions of agrarian transformation were postponed rather
terminated in order to retain the harmony of Gandhian ideology in
the national movement.
Coming to the movements led and initiated by the left parties the
first is the Tebhaga Movement in Bengal. A study of socio- historical
transformation in Bengal is necessary for no other part of India was
more receptive of the liberal and modem ideas introduced by the
Britishers and the nature of nationalist movement and its leadership
in Bengal offered a different landscape for political operations as
well as operation of consciousness of the masses. The movement
was sparked by the introduction of Land revenue Commission Report
1946 and Bengal Bargadar Bill 1947. The leadership was in the hands
of Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha popularly known as BPKS. The
stipulations of the law were in the favour of small farmers and
peasants who were involved in share-cropping. The rich and middle
peasantry launched a counter-movement. However, it wee the ethnic
arid communal element that became the decisive factor in the latter
part of the movement. The tribal communities of Rajbansi, Santals,
Orans and Harijans participated in the movement.
Another movement which occurred in the period immediately
following the independence of the country led by the unified
Communist Party was the Telegana Movement which initially started
against the policies of the Nizam of Hyderabad, but was ultimately
directed against the Indian State. It started in-ether words between
the Muslim Rulers and the Hindu subjects. In other words it was
founded on a communal basis since its very beginning coupled with
feudal mode of exploitation (For a descriptive study see P.
Sundaraya: Hyderabad State its socio-political background in A.R.
26
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Desais Peasant. Struggle in India, Oxford University Press (Delhi),
1979.) . The leadership of the movement was in the hands of Kammas
and Reddys, who were rich peasants. A common front of middle and
poor peasants and agricultural labourers was formed. The intervention
by the Indian army and concessions given to poor peasants led to the
withdrawl of rich and middle peasants from the movement. It ended
without bringing any structural transformation. Although both the
Tebhaga and the Telegana were broad based peasant movements,
their objective went on getting attenuated with the advancement of
the movement due to withdrawal of rich and middle peasantry. Thus,
the inference drawn can be stated that an organic class formation
encapsulating middle peasantry, rich peasantry and the poor
agricultural labourers, where interests concide and go beyond what
Gramsci calls pure economies could never be attained during the
movements. Secondly, again to use Gramscian analysis, the attack
against the system was never proceeded by a true understanding of
the nature of the Indian State.
One of the most startling movements and in a way strongest also
from the leftist leadership point of view was the Naxalbari movement
which was led by C.P.I. (ML) formed on the basis of partition of
CPI(M) over the tactical issues in 1969. From a historical point of
view, it was the failure of the Tabhaga movements that paved the
way for making inroads into the region and propagate, consolidate
and organise the peasant in the Naxalbari area against the existing
agrarian structure in the State. From the ideological point of view
the inspiration came from the Maoist philosophy which had
succeeded in an agriculturally backward country like China. Taking
recourse to the annihilation of class enemies, the movement took a
violent but confused turn which led to the dubbing of Charu
Majumdar, its leader, as a communist, turned anarchist. Although
the movement engulfed a vast sector of not only Bengal but also
27
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The coverage of different categories of soils of Orissa indicate that a
large part of the State is node of laterite soil which in characterised
by poor productivity and, alluvial soil which it fertile covers only
15% of the area.
CLIMATE AND RAINFALL:
The State has a tropical climate with high humidity. Winter is short
and mild. The average temperature ranges between a minimum of
12C and maximum of 38C. The climate is suitable for rice
cultivation, how-over due to the short duration of the winter season,
the productivity of wheat is affected by the weather conditions,
Total rainfall received during 1989 was 1284 mm. In the state average
annual rainfall was around 1480, per annum. However, variations in
this regard, from year to year, have been considerable. There are
also inter-district variations in rainfall, ranging from 1300 mm. In
Ganjam district to about 1650 mm. In Sambalpur district*.
Over 75% of rainfall is received during June to September. The
distribution of rainfall is generally erratic. Insufficient moisture
during the beginning and end of the Monsoon Season even during
years of average rainfall often delay sowing of crops and, retards
plant growth in the fields. Lack of adequate level of moisture at the
tilling state else adversely affects farming operations. Uneven
distribution of rains even in the years of normal rainfall also causes
periods of long drought and affect paddy transplantation operations.
Which has come down to 30.3% for the state and 19.5% for the
country in 1990,
LAND UTILISATION PATTERN OF ORISSA:
Forest occupy about 42.726 of the total reporting area of the State as
against 21% in the country as a whole (Govt. of Orissa; Economic
Survey 1991-92 Orissa. P-73 collected from ORSAC in 1990.). The
distribution of forests in the State is highly uneven. Districts located
32
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
responses to the grievances of the peasants and agricultural labourers
and the States will to introduce certain populist policies in order to
gain favour of the agricultural masses, with potential desire to bring
changes in the agricultural relations. Moreover the traditional
Brahmin and Karana dominance in the ruling sphere continues till
date in the politics of Orissa and the emergence of a new middle
class elite on a large scale as it has been in Bihar and Bengal or like
the Bhadralok in Bengal is yet awaited. The description of the
topography and other characteristics of Orissa below will show the
overt backwardness of Orissa in terms of both agriculture and industry
and also present the existing sociological structure in the State
inhibiting a powerful peasant movement and the emergence of a
consolidated class with a sound ideology.
In Orissa caste conflicts have become articulite and political, and
are related to class conflicts. The Karan Brahmin dominances has
by end large gone unchallenged and therefore what actually is a
consequence of political under-development is mistaken to be the
absence of Caste politics. (Country to what F.G. Bailey, Politics
and Social Change in Orissa Berkeley, 1963, pp. 134-221 argues
we find that upper castes have built a network of political and
economic domination which is not interactional in Baileys Pluralist
sense but hegemonistic in presence of A. Gramsci).
Peasant movements in Orissa can not be casually related with the
backwardness of the State or the then and present existing pattern of
land distribution or availability of resources. A vast gamut of factors
as in other parts of the country, coagulated to peasant uprising in the
pre-independence period mainly in the inland districts and lesser
affect was felt in costal districts, Essentially, those were the hay
day of Indian nationalism and simple factors were sufficient to ignite
the existing or bring different strata of society on a common platform.
The exploitation of anti-British feeling was the fact essentially
29
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
responsible coupled with pauperisation of the masses as a
consequence of the ruler s politics. Thus, pure and simple
economism did not act as catalytic factor.
After independence the leadership is to a great extent responsible
for certain uprisings. However these could not make an inroad into
the tribal belts of Orissa, as has been the peculiar characteristic in
Indian politics. Peasant movements, those have taken place, have
also given an opportunity to the ruling elite to modify their policies
in order to project a mass base and thus create fragmentation. Lack
of consciousness permeated with ideology has always regained a
missing link in all the peasant movements. Creating new symbols
and their proliferation is dilative of the process of organisation which
also shows the lack of development of the consciousness of the class
which becomes negation in Hegelim terminology.
AREA OF STUDY:
The analysis of the peasant movements in this study relates the state
of Orissa. The choice of the particular State for the Study was
particularly for the following two reasons:
(i) The state has been the scene of several organised movements of
the peasantry under the banner of Kisan Sabhas and political parties,
both before and after independence.
(ii) That no systematic study of peasant movements in the State exists.
(iii) Peasantry constitute the majority of working population thus
catering to the overall development of the State. And to Play Politics
without them, will be costly.
PHYSICAL SETTING OF THE STATE:
Being placed between 17 49 and 22 34 North Latitude and 81
degree 27 and 27 29 East longitude, the State of Orissa accounts
for 5% of the countrys area and 4% of its population which has
30
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
come down to 3.3% in 1989-90. It covers a geographical area of
1.56 lakh sq. km. (Report of the Committee on Agricultural
Productivity in Eastern India; Reserve Bank of India, 1984, Vol. II,
p. 131)
Morphologically, the State is divided into five parts: the coastal plains,
the middle mountainous country, the rolling up lands, the river valleys,
and the subdued plateaus (Sinha, B.N. Geography of Orissa, NBI,
India, Delhi, 1981, p. 5). A large part of the surface is hilly and plain
lands account for only 40291 sq. km. forming 26% of the total
reported area (Report of the Committee on Agricultural Productivity,
Ibid,. p. 173). Agro-climatically the State is divided into four zones:
(i) Northern Plateau Districts including Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar,
Sundergarh; (ii) Central Table Land districts taking Balangir,
Sambalpur, Dhenkanal; (iii) Eastern Chat Districts containing
Koraput, Kalahandi, Phultoani; (iv) Coastal Plain districts having
Balasore, Cuttack, Puri and Ganjam under it.
Administratively it is divided into 13 districts, 314 Community
Development Blocks and, 51639 villages23.
SOIL:
The low levels of crop productivity in the state may be traced to the
quality of its soils. It has been estimated that Orissa has about 45
lakh hectare of acidic soils with varying ph value. Four lakh hectares
are exposed to saline inundation, 3.5 lakh hectare to flooding and
0.8 lakh hectare to water logging (Reserve Bank Report, Ibid., p.
133).
Out of the total surface of 60,126 sq. miles alluvial soil area covers
3,875 sq. miles, Red Laterite soil covers about 54,321 sq. miles,
whereas black cotton soil covert only 1940 sq. miles (Report on
Agricultural Census of Orissa, 1970-71, p. 11 issued by Agricultural
Census Commissioners; Board of Revenue, 0risen, Govt. of Orissa,
April 1, 1975).
31
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Another index of poverty may be found in per capita income. In
1977-78 the per capita income in Orissa was Rs 482/- as against Rs
799/- for the country as a whole. Over period the countrys economic
standing and that of the States seems to have increased. Thus whereas
in 1970-71 Orissas per capita income was it 317 below the national
average, it deep down further to Rs 548/- in 1977-78.
The economy of the State is predominantly agricultural as 79 percent
of the population la engaged in the primary sector (1981). It seems
that over period of time this dependence on Agriculture to 1981,
only 70 percent of the working force was classified as living by
agriculture in 1951.
IRRIGATION:
With only 16 per cent of the cultivated area having irrigational
facilities, the State ranks lowest in the irrigational sap of the country.
The only State which ranks below Orissa, in regards to percentage
irrigated area is Rajasthan. The identified irrigation potential of the
state is 59 lakh hectare comprising 36 lakh hectare under minor
irrigation projects, As against this, the actual irrigated area (gross)
in 1980-81 was only 16.8 lakh hectare, constituting about 28% of
potential and 20% of gross sown area . In 1980-81, gross irrigated
area as percentage of the known potential was around 30 in Orissa,
Bihar and Eastern U.P. and 40 in Vest 1 Bengal. The percentage of
gross area irrigated to gross cropped area wes also low, it being 20 in
C risen, 32 in west Bengal, Bihar and 42 in East U.P. (Reserve Bak
Report, Ibid., Vol. II, p. 135.)
Consumption of fertiliser in the State is as low, as 21.7 kg. Per hectare
while comparing it to other states position, it lags behind at the 17th
position by the year 1989-90. It has declined from 2.05 lakh Mts, in
1989-90 to 1.93 lakh Mts. In 1990-91 registering a fall of 5.9%.
These figures indicate a slow progress in the trend of Capitalist
36
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
in Eastern Ghat Region (Koraput, KaIahandi and Phulbani), Central
Table Land (Balangir, Sambalpur and Dhenkanal) and Northern
Plateau (Sundargarh, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar) are rich in forest wealth.
On the other hand the four districts located in the coastal belt
(Balasore, Cuttack, Puri and Ganjam Plains) have limited forest
resources*(i).
The land utilization data for 1980-81 of the State, shows that the
39.5% of the reporting area is used for cultivation, 2.9% is current
fallow; 1.2% other fallow; 42.7% is forests, 4.1% is the area put to
non-agricultural use; 1.7% barren and uncultivable land, and 7.9%
is the other area which includes land under permanent pastures and
erasing land, miscellaneous trees crops not included in net sown
area and cultivable waste land* (ii). A comparative picture (from
Tables) of land utilization pattern of 1960-61, 1970-71 and 1980-81
shows an increase in net sown area; that was 37.24% in 1960-61,
39.38% in 1970-71 and in 39.5% in 1980-81. The percentage of
current fallow land has decreased. It was 5.89% in 1960-61; which
came down to 4% in 1970-71 and 2.9% in 1980-81. Other fallow
land decreased in between 1960-61 and 1970-71 which again
increased in 1980-81. It was 1.18% in 1960-61, 0.61% in 1970-71
and 1.2% in 1980-81.
The land under forestry has increased steadily since 1960-61, to 1980-
81. In 1960-61 it was 22.94% and in 1970-71 it was 32% which
increased to 42.7% in 1980-81. In Orissa the area not available for
cultivation constitute roughly 11.6%.
Data, over 30 years since 1950-51 to 1980-81, there have been some
significant changes in the land utilization pattern in the State. There
has been a sharp reduction in the area of barron and uncultivable
land, which diminished from 1397000 hectare in 1960-61 to 265000
hectares in 1980-81. Similarly area under non-agricultural use has
come down 632000 hectare in 1990-81 from 3009000 hectares in
33
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
1950-51 culturable waste land also has followed the same pattern. It
has decreased to 249000 hectares in l980-81 for 3009000 hectare in
1950-51. The same is the case in respect of other fallow lands, is
against these falls, the net area sown has risen for 5650000 hectare
in 1950-51 to 6130000 ha. in 1980-81 and area own sore than once
has travails from 333000 ha. in 1950-51 the base year to 2616000
ha. in 1980-81.
The inter-district distribution of the agricultural lend is uneven. In
the year 1975-76 the net sown area was highest in Koraput i.e., 8.21
lakh hectare followed by Cuttack i.e., 7.37 lakh hectare; Sambalpur
6.3 lakh hectare. In between the year
1970-71 the ranking was highest in Koraput district i.e., 8.77 lakh
hectare followed by Sambalpur 7.28 lakh and Cuttack 6.88 lakh
hectare.
POPULATION:
As per 1991 provisional census, the State has a population of 315
lakh and the density of population is 202 per sq. km. Over 2 decade
though density of population in States of the eastern region of the
country Orissa is increasing , compared to other states of the eastern
region of the country, Orissa is less densely populated.(Population
density in Bengal was 621 SQ. km., 402 per sq. km in Bihar and
377 per sq. km. in East U.P).
As per the 1981 Census the current annual rate of population growth
in the State is + 20.17%. The Table depicts the population growth
rates during decades from 1951 to 1981; shows that there has been
an abnormal rite in population between 1951 to 1971. In the last
decade, i.e., 1971-81, however, the momentum of the population
growth trend seems to have a bit showed down and between 1981 to
1991 the same rate has shown a sharp fall in percentage I,e; from
30.17% to 19.50% respectively.
34
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
As against the all India population growth rate of 25.0% per annum
during 1971-81 the corresponding figure for 0rissa is 20.54% per
annum.
The social complexion of the State is predominantly rural. According
to 1981 census 88.20% of the States population liven in villages.
The corresponding figure for the country as a whole is 76.74%. Over
period of time, there has been a marginal decrease in the relative
size of the rural population in the State. Thus while in 1951 about
96% of the total population was rural, over period of time, this
percentage has decreased. This is apparent from the Statistical Data.
A significant proportion of the states population is constituted by
tribals and schedule castes. In the 1981 census their relative
proportion in the total population are 23.43% and 14.66%
respectively. Over periods of time since independence their relative
sire of the tribal plus schedule caste population in the State has
remained more or less constant.
In respect of the absolute number of the tribal population, the State
ranks next only to Madhya Pradesh. Thus whereas only 4% of Indias
total population lives in Orissa, the proportion of the countrys tribal
population finding shelter in the State comes around to 13% of the
countrys total tribal population.
The major concentration of the tribal and schedule caste population
is in the inland districts, where the agro-climatic condition for
agriculture are inferior compared to the coastal districts.
About the two third of the States population is classed below the
poverty line is more in the inland districts where 82% of the people
subsists below the subsistence level. In the coastal districts which
constitute the fertile area of the State slightly more than 53% of the
population live below the poverty line.
35
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and reached at 62.02% in the year 1980-81. Industry accounts for 15
percent of the State income of Orissa. The State has a share of 6.6%.
Orissas share of industrial production in India was only 1.5% as
against 10.7% in neighboring West Bengal, 5.8% in Bihar and 4.8%
in Andhra Pradesh, as of 1977-78. The gross per capita output was
Rs241.18 compared to Rs 612.84 for the whole country. The per
capita value added by manufacture for the same year was Rs 63.92
as against Rs 128.15 for all India.
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:
The present study of peasant movements in the State of Orissa, has
been designed with the following objectives in mind:
(i) To present a systematic account of peasant discontent and the
consequent revolts in the State before and after Independence.
(ii) To analyze the relationship between the types of grievances of
the peasants and the font of their struggles.
(iii) To compare end contrast the nature and types of peasant
discontent and their collective straggles in the pre and post
independence era.
(iv) To bring out the role of the political parties and their own
organised bodies in leading the peasant struggles to redress their
grievance both before and after Independence.
(v) To analyze the level and nature of revolutionary elements in the
organized peasant movement in the State.
HYPOTHESIS:
Basing our assumptions on the published accounts of the peasant
movements in the State, the empirical study also aimed at testing the
following hypothesis on the nature and outcomes of the peasant
movements in the State:
40
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
agriculture; as high rate of fertilizer consumption are pre-conditions
for it.
LANDHOLDING PATTERN:
Agriculture in the state is characterized by the preponderance of small
and marginal holdings. The average else of holdings is round 1.6 ha
put about 74 percent of the operational holding range between below
2 hac. The small and marginal holdings together constitute 38 percent
of the total cultivated land. The medium and large fans holdings,
with area above 2 hac. Constituting 26% of the remaining operational
holding account for 62 of the cultivated area.
Over period of time since 1970-81 there has been some changes in
the land holding else spectrum of the State. The sub-marginal holdings
is less than 1 hectare has grown from 44 .6% to nearly 46.8%. Another
group of cultivators who have registered a growth during the said
period are those who own land between 2 to 4 hectare. Their
proportion has increased from 13.7% to 18.4%. All other categories
of peasant holdings have decreased. The sharpest fall in proportion
was in the case of large holdings having more than 10 hectare of
land. It is indicated from the following table which shows the above
changer during the decade 1970-71 to 1980-81.
PRODUCTION FIGURES:
Foodgrains : Agriculture In Orissa is predominantly dominated by
foodgrains cultivation. In 1980-81 the State produced 59.83 lakh
tonnes, which was 79%3 to the total production. Over years the
production of foodgrains has grown steadily. However its weightage
in the overall yearly production has gone down since 1968-69. The
following table describes the growth trend of food- grains in the
State since the beginning of the planning era.
In respect of area coverage foodgrain production occupied 80% of
the cropped area in 1980-81. Among them, rice accounted for about
37
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
48% wheat and other cereals for about 12% and pulses about 20%
Area under non-foodcrops was around 20%. Over years the area
under the cereal crops has been increasing steadily though the rate
of increase has not been uniform throughout. The following table
depicts the increasing trend of the area under food crops in the state
since 1960-61:
Data shows that despite an increase in the area under food crops
over years, its relative size in the total cropped are has decreased.
Accent figures of rice production show that the production has
decreased in the last decades despite a corresponding increase in the
area under the crop. This point to the fact that the productivity of the
crop has sharply fallen in the previous decade, despite the planned
efforts to introduce new technology in agriculture of the State.
The major foodgrain crops of the State Are:
RICE: Among the food crops rice is the most important crop, which
constituted roughly 85.0% of all food grain in Orissa in 1980-81.
Production of Rice shows considerable fluctuation. As such in 1981
it was 3874,000 tonnes. And it shows an increasing tendency in its
production since 1961. It was 3213,000 tonnes in 1961, in 1971 it
was 4017,000 tonnes which decreased to 3874,000 tonnes in 1981.
The compound growth rate in rice production showed an increase of
about 2.o per annum during 1961-71; due to an expansion of both
in area and yield. During the period 1971-gl, however, the rising
trend was reversed production during this period declined by 0.46
per annum due to a shrinkage in area and all.
Trends in rice yields show that no major break through has been
achieved in improving yields. Even in good harvest years, the average
yield per ha. was only around tones. The States rice is not only low
but also show considerable year to year variation.
38
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
WHEAT: The State is not a major producer of wheat although the
area under this crop has been increasing. Area under wheat went up
flow 7000 ha. in 1960-61 to 64000 ha. in 1989-83. During the same
period production went up from 4000 tonnes to 1.2 lakh tonnes. Orissa
witnessed a negative growth rate whereas all other eastern region
States have shown declined over previous decade in 1981-81
The annual compared growth ratio of area under all crops has been
only 2.10% (i). The same for non-food crops has bean 3.94% as
against 1.98% in case of food-grains. The growth rate of 1.93% for
foodgraims production hat been possible because of a corresponding
growth rate in crop area but in case of non-food crops the higher
growth rate of production (10.75%) has been achieved as a result of
higher growth rates of crop areas as well at productivity.
FOODGRAINS:
The major non-food grains crops growth in the State are oilseeds,
jute and meats, potato and sugarcane. The Area covered by non-
foodgrains crops is small at about 18 lakh ha. During 1980-81 or
abour 20 percent of the gross sown area.
Area under cultivation of cash-crops has declined in some cases,
such as ground nuts, linseeds, Cotton and Tobacco and increased in
some other cases marginally. It indicates non-commercialization of
agriculture in Orissa.
As stated earlier, the economy of the State is predominantly centering
around agriculture. It lacks entrepreneurial growth and modern
industry showing negligible participation in household industry in
mining and other sector. Only about 7% of the working people are
engaged in manufacturing of which less than three percent are
employed in the non-household sector.
Contribution of primary sector i.e., agriculture and animal husbandry
to the State income was 65.26% in 1970-71, which decreased 3.24%
39
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHAPTER-2
SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND THE
CHANGING PATTERN OF AGRARIAN
STRUCTURE:
FEUDALISM TO SEMIFEDULISM ?
Any serious attempt to understand the problems of the peasantry in
Orissa and the struggles launched by them demand a clear
understanding of the socio-economic and psycho-cultural factors
acting as the causative mechanism. Man creates his own history; but
whatever he needs or wishes can notbe created then and there. It is
so because he has to work within certain constraints. Marx has said,
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they
please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by
themselves, but under given circumstances directly encountered and
inherited from the past(. Marx, K., Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparts, Foreign Language Press, Peking (1978), p. 9.).
If we study of Peasant Movements Orissa we find two major aspects
complementary to each other. First is the conflict of the agro-economy
and the forces connected with it against the existing and dominant
social and political order of the society of that period. The other is
clamor of the peasantry for a number of creative measures within
the given system. Orissa is no exception to this generally rule.
However, the details reveal a lot of variation, related not only to the
issues but also to forms of movements, moods and reactions of the
44
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
(i) That the peasant movements in the post-Independence era were
not spontaneous like those of the past on the contrary they were
nature shaped by the leaders professing definite political philosophies;
end (ii) that the benefits of the successful struggles were not pervasive
and want largely to some particular section of the struggling peasantry.
METHODOLOGY:
Accounts of the peasant movements in the colonial period and to
some extent of the post colonial period, were collected from
secondary sources - Journals, Reports, Books and Pamphlets. A
sample field study was also designed to fill in the gaps of the
secondary sources, and also to get a more personalized account of
the peasant movements from those who had been intimately
connected with the peasant uprisings in the state, or had a first hand
experience of the movements.
Before finalizing the actual list of the respondents, a comprehensive
list of all known leaders of peasant struggles as was available in the
secondary sources - police files, assembly debates, published and
unpublished accounts of peasant movements was prepared. The
selection of the respondents for the empirical study was done on a
random selection basis from this list. The respondents belonged to 4
districts of the State where peasant movements had secured in the
past*. The districts were: Ganjam, Puri, Balasore and Cuttack.
The data, which was both qualitative and quantitative, were collected
by interviewing the respondents with the aid of a structured
questionnaire. The detailed responses of the inter-views to the
questions were taped in order net to disturb the spontaneity of the
respondents.
The respondents were classed into two groups e.g., (i) leaders and
(ii) general participants. The study sample consisted of 30 State-
level leader respondents and 100 participants.
41
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
We have analyzed peasant rising of colonial era basing upon certain question schedule was containing 88 items. But while interviewing
historical facts have adopted some comparative method to roach at none narrative important questions were selected and we did take at
some empirical generalization. Basing on the above method we have least one to two hours to interview each leader individually.
attempted to test it applying the same in the perceptions of some
On the basis of the answers of the leaders participants we have
primary end secondary data.
categorized then under certain dimensions like their demands, year
SAMPLE: Randomly we have taken one hundred participants from and name of the movement, leading political party, and leadership
the important are of Peasant Movement belt i.e., Ganjam, Purl, place of movement, background, socio-economic categories etc.
Cuttack and Balasore district. Age range was 40 to 70 years. They Basing on these different dimensions we have tried to answer certain
were from both the sex. important questions of agrarian society.
Excluding the participants I have also taken interview from leaders
of peasant movement and filled the question schedules from the
basing on snowball sampling method. It is total sampling of all living
state-level leaders of the peasant movements of post-independence
era in Orissa.
ARRARATUS: We have used tape recorders for the recording of
interviews of leaders.
PROCEURE: The questionnaires and interview schedules were
administered individually. The instructions ware written on the first
page of the questionnaire indicates that the purpose of the research
was to study their experience. Participants ware asked to respond in
Oriya language. Finally they were asked to respond without any
hesitation. The average time taken for completing one interview was
about 1 hour and for completing the questionnaire it took nearly 40
minutes in average
MEASURES: The hypothesis of our study was based on four
important variables. Firstly, general participants, their caste and
economic status, Secondly, leadership, Thirdly, ideology and
Fourthly, demands. Participants were required to fill their answers
briefly within one or two sentences in a question schedule consisting
of 41 questions relating to above 4 variables. Whereas leaders

42 43
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
interesting specificities for historical reason (Mohanty, M. Social
Roots of Economic Backwardness in Orissa,ic Backwardness in
Orissa, Social Science Probing, No. 2, June 1984, Delhi, p. 187).
Orissa did not even attain its political unity till 1936, what to speak
of its economic development by that period. Again the great famine
of 1866 effected social structure through As well as its socio-
economic and administrative set up. It was the political economy of
the state which controlled the mode of production and was responsible
for its consequent social formations and economic re-generation.
Seventy years after Orissa was established at a separate Oriya-
speaking province giving rise to new political forces. Even the
formation of Orissa as a separate state in 1936 could not solve her
real economic and political problems because the 26 princely states
were kept separate from the British province of Orissa. Whether the
state was under the colonial ruler directly or indirectly under the
local chiefs was generating the same forces of backward economy.
The period in between 1960 to 1950 (nearly a century) in the
economic history of Orissa was a period of economic stagnation and
political struggle for its own existence. (Pradhan, N.B. Economic
Backwardness and Development of Orissa, (unpublished thesis)
submitted in P.G. Deptt. of Economics, Berhampur University, Orissa,
1979, p. 83.)
EVOLUTION OF LAND PRIVATE OWNERSHI OVER IN
ORISSA:
Colonial masters after establishing their rule, streamlined the revenue
administration retaining (by and large) the Mughal pattern. They
separated the coastal region from the inland areas. Temporary
settlements were introduced in the coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri
and Balasore fixing revenue on annual or triennial basis initially. In
1933 settlement this temporary nature of the settlement was stabilized.
Land was auctioned for a specific period to Zamindars under whom
a variety of intermediaries operated to collect rent (in Mughal Band
48
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
participants, the character and role of leadership and also the reaction
of the government and administration and the measures adopted either
to contain or combat various movements. when compared with the
features of peasant movements of the neighboring Bengal and Andhra
movements of Orissa exhibit different features. Therefore, it becomes
necessary that one should be carefully enough dealing while all the
factors determining the characteristics of the peasantry and its
problems in Orissa. Stratification, Because it is the construing
structural position of a class which gives to revolutionary conditions
of a Stratified society.
It needs a detail understanding of the whole process of the economic
transformation in the various stages which was brought about by the
Britishers heralding changes in the agrarian structure of Orissa and
at the same time providing a causal nexus to the peasant movements
of post-independent Orissa. Although land reforms were introduced
in Orissa, a final solution could not be achieved pertaining to the
agrarian distortions and consequently in order to understand the chain
of actions and reactions, events preceding and succeeding various
land reforms have to the considered in order to understand the
specificity of various movements. Because the reform measures did
not visualize any Structural change as such.
The Pre-Reform agrarian structure revealed the impact of colonial
mode of production super imposed on Asiatic mode of production.
The British created the pre-requisites for the capitalist development
of agriculture by introducing individual ownership of land (i.e.,
peasant proprietorship) and large scale landlord ownership. It invaded
and penetrated the self-sufficient village economy of India and
substituted it by the Commercial Market Economy.
The British impact on India not only led to the transformation of
the economic anatomy of Indian Society but also Its social
physiognomy. (Desai, A.R. Social Background of India Nationalism,
45
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Popular Prakasan, Bombay (1981), p. 35.) England has to fulfill a
double mission in India; one destructive and the other regenerating
the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and laying of the material
foundations of Western Society in Asia.. the Zamindari and
Ryotwari themselves, involve two distinct forms of private property
in land the great desideratum of Asiatic society (Marx, K. - .quoted
in ibid., p. 35.).
India as well as Orissa is a land of villages with a majority of its
population engaged in agriculture and land being the basic means of
production in the countryside. Further the level of production end
the way in which the products are distributed among the different
strata of a society determine the level of material prosperity of the
society as a whole and of the various socio- economic groups
comprising it. They also to a very large extent, mould the institutional
set-up of that society as well as the cultural life of the people (Desai,
A.R. (ed.) (1978) Rural Sociology of India, Popular Prakasen,
Bombay, p. 23).
So it is required both to know the technique of production which
determines the techno-economic life of the rural society based on
functional-division of labour and also the land relations. The latter
being dominant and decisive for the former one. Under the colonial
land tenure system, the state had no direct contact with the owner,
least was the contact with the producer. Implementation forming an
intermediary Settlement created a set of stable allies forming an
intermediary class between the tillers of land and foreign rulers.
Under the Zamindari system, transfer, sale or mortgage of land by
the tenants because more difficult mainly due to the absence
systematic land records and also due to its exploitative character.
Capitalist relationships were slow to develop in Zamindari areas for
the less incentive that agricultural labour was used to get. Illegal
exactions and rack-renting became a common feature with the high-
46
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
handedness of different layers of intermediaries or absentees
landlords.
Another feature is that there appeared to be a close inverse correlation
between the percentage of area under commercial crops and level of
living of agricultural labour class. Thus commercialization under
the Colonial mode of production did not contribute to improvement
of living standards of the masses (Parthasarathi, G. Ibid., p. 22).
Even the forces of production (i.e., the mode of or techniques of
production) were primitive, the structure of landholding and land-
use was highly inequitable leading to lack of potential for growth
and swelling the chunk of landless labourer and poor peasants as a
built-in-depressor. So both relations of production (i.e., equity) and
modes of production (i.e., growth) demanded changes in agrarian
structures. So it was no wonder the nationalist movement attracted
into its ranks the peasantry of the Zamindari areas on a wider scales
and the struggles of zamindari ryot were much wide-spread and
prominent in the period before independence.
IMPACT OF COLONIAL ECONOMY IN ORISSA: AROUND
THE YEAR 1950:
Prior to an analysis of the present economic condition of Orissa, we
are here interested in analyzing Orissa Socio-economic condition
around the year 1950; the period which prepared the basic ground
for the peasant movement of the state period. We have to see here.
The backward agrarian economy, gradually deteriorating position of
the cultivators, the trend of alienation of land from the hands of the
tillers, low dependency upon other sectors (excluding agrarian sector),
which increased pressure on the land, and created conditions for
revolutionary actions.
Colonial Orissa was more afflicted both economically and politically
than any other part of India as its political economy represents
47
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Orissa had shown no significant sign of development in other sectors
like industry, mining etc. It lacked basic Industries, modern industries
were only a few and far between. Only existing Industries were
cottage industries or Argo-based cottage industries. It is more difficult
to believe that a mineral rich crises did not have many mineral bated
industries. The contribution of mining to the State income in 1951-
52 was 6.8% only (State Income of Orissa, 1951-52 to 1962-63, Ibid.,
pp. 36-39). A comparative study of industrialization of different major
states of India indicates lowest level on every score for Orissa.
Average annual earning of factory workers was very low compared
to the corresponding figures in other Status. The value added by
manufacture in Orissa was about 1.2% of Bengal, 3.7% of Madras
and 4% of Bihar.*
Data show that Orissa was at a very low level of industrialization. It
was even such below the agrarian sector. This shows the lopsided
sectoral growth of economy of Orissa with the prominent and
dominant agriculture, ill-developed -industries unorganized and a
little utilized tertiary sector.
LEVEL OF LIVING ROUND 1950
The standard of living of a people it generally indicates by the amount
of wealth at its disposal and the manner in which it is distributed
among various sections of the community22. In other words it very
such depends on the technique of production and relations of
production. The level of living of a social aggregate primarily by the
income of its various classes. Statistics of 1951-52 show that per
capita income of India at current price was Rs 27423. In the safe
year per capita income of Orissa24 and Bihar per capita income were
Rs 188 and Rs 174 respectively.
This shows that Orissa and Bihar both had a per capita income such
below than the Indian average indicating a low living standard in
52
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Areas). In some areas rents and taxes were collected directly by
British officials, which were called Khas Mahals. The latter method
was adopted to take preventive measure against peasant discontents.
In the temporary settlement Zamindari areas, the land rent moved up
steadily since the zamindar had to deposit his quota of revenue and
maintain himself at the same time. (Chaudhury, B.B. Movement
of Rent in Eastern India, Indian Historical Review, July, 1977) Under
sunset law the zamindari was also transferred from the hands of Oriya
Landlords to Bengali landlords. South Orissa (Ganjam mainly and
Koraput) were in the Madras residency till 1936 with Ryotwari-
Settlement prevailing in practice there. Feudatory state of
Mayurbhanja was also governed by the permanent settlement.
But whomsoever and in whatsoever name the land-revenue collection
was delegated the aims and objective was maximum collection of
revenue. Though in order to manage their colonial economy more
effectively, they took many steps like digging canals, building
embankments schools and colleges, constructing roads and lying
railway lines, all these could contribute very little to improve the
deteriorations of political economy of Orissa. No doubt there was
commercial cropping in the irrigated area and villages were drawn
into the market and commodity economy expanded. (Rout, S.K.
Commercialisation of Agricultural Production and Response of
State Bureaucracy: Coastal Orissa. The M. phil. Dissertation centre
for Historical Studies; JNU, New Delhi, 1979, p. 272.) But this was
in the internet of meeting the demands of Britains expanding
capitalism. (Mahanty, Bidut Famine motality in Orissa Division,
1901-1911, Paper resented at the workshop on women and Poverty,
centre for Social Science Studies, Calcutta, 1983.) Under this colonial
policy the peasant economy of Orissa greatly suffered. Small and
poor peasants sold their land to landlords and in many areas they
were forcibly dispossessed of their land due to their inability to pay
land revenue or being unable to fulfill the zamindars excessive socio-
49
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
economic exactions. This resulted in creating a number of small
landlords on the one hand and a vast chunk of landless labourer on
the other. This policy also resulted in distress migration. Thus rack
resulting by zamindars usually by mainlanders and price manipulation
by traders.
As a result of the British policy favoring the textile interests of Britain,
cotton industry and other cottage industries as well of Orissa
disappeared during this period. As land-holding groups Brahmins
and Karanas emerged more powerful than Khandayata because of
their social status. But this upper stratum could hardly generate
enough surplus and develop the economy. Marwari and Gujrati capital
which had entered into Orissa by the late part of 19th century and had
acquired a dominating position by the early 20th century, became a
long-term handicap for the growth of local entrepreneurship.
The regenerative role of colonial economy was hardly felt in Orissa
and its economic condition did not show any improvement. The
Enquiry Committee established by Government of India (1888) stated
in Bengal Presidency the struggle for existence was very severe in
the case of people of Bihar and orissa. In Orissa they barely subsist
on coarse rice and spinach curry without oil. (Quated in Bhatia, B.M.
Indias Food Problem and Policy since Independence, Somaiya
Publication Pvt. Ltd., Bombay, 1970, p. 18.) Even after decades there
was no marked improvement. The Royal Commission on Agriculture
(1926) reported about the poverty, low standard of living,
indebtedness of cultivators, increasing population of agricultural
labour, poor economic condition of the common man in Orissa. The
agrarian economy of Orissa regained quite under-developed till the
starting of the first five year plan. Further the following statistics
will strengthen the above proposition. 90% of Orissa population
depended on agriculture around the year 1950. In 1951 about 70%
of the working-force of Orissa was engaged in agriculture. (State
50
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Income of Orissa, 1951-52 to 1962-63, Bureau of Statostics and
Economics, Government of Orissa, pp. 36-39.) Contribution of
agricultural sector including forest and fisheries to state income was
75.7%. (State Income of Orissa, 1951-52 to 1962-63, Bureau of
Statistics and Economics, Government of Orissa, pp. 36-39.) The
net sown area, about 11,920 thousand acres, constituted 31% of the
total area of the State (Census of India, 1951, Vol. I, XI Orissa, p.
250.). Only foodgrains were cultivated in 92% of the total cultivated
area. There was no significant diversification of agriculture from
the food crop to commercial crops even as late as 1949-50. In ranked
a low position if compared to other states.
Rice was used not only as a food crop but also a money crop. People
exchanged it to procure other necessities of life even at the risk of
malnutrition19. The price of rice was also very low in comparison to
other protective foods. Orissa was always a deficit region in spite of
its expert of rice to other states from time to time. Figures available
for six years show that always exceeded export; except in the year
1946-47.
Overall analysis of Orissa economy around the year 1950 show major
dependent of the State on the agrarian sector, which was in a state of
stagnation, if not actually declining.
Absentee landlordism had appeared in its fullness by this time. It
also had an adverse effect on agriculture. The peasantry of Orissa
was divided into four main categories. These were landlords, non-
cultivating owners, middle peasants (cultivating owners), poor
peasants (no-owner cultivators, owner cultivators) and agricultural
labour. A sizable segment of peasant proprietorship was under the
Royatwari System, but on the whole the zamindari system was the
pre-dominant one, reflecting the feudal and seal-feudal characteristics
of the agrarian structure in Orissa till 1950. Agricultural backwardness
and low productivity was a by-product of colonial land policy.
51
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The magnitude of the problem of poverty in Orissa so could be shown
by using some of the data of the contemporary Orissa. In free India
agriculture regains the largest sector of economy, contributing more
than 40% of its GNP. And in Orissa the working population in agrarian
sector was 70.33% in 1951, 73.83% in 1961 and 79% in 1976 (Census
of India 1961, Paper I of 1962, p. 406 and p. 412 and Economic
Survey of Orissa, 1971). This indicates an increasing dependence of
more and more population on the agrarian sector. And the population
depending upon non-agricultural sectors was 29.7% in 1951, 30.5%
in 1961, 31.37% in 1971 but in recent years it has come down from
26.17% to 23.70% (. Economic Survey of Orissa, 1977, Bureau of
Statistics & Economics, Orissa)
By the end of 1977, the area under cultivation was 42.82% (Quated
in Patnaik, S.C. Monograph, Ibid., p. 1.) of the total area of the
State. According to 1982 Census Orissas population was 26.3
millions constituting only 3.84% of the total population of the country.
In orisan out of the total population 88.18% (1982 Census of India
(Orissa Series) lives in 50,000 villages and 71% of those villages
have lose than 500 people. Agriculture regained the most dominating
factor engaging as much as 74.65% (Census of India, 1981 Series
16, Orissa) & of the total main work force.
The population engaged in non-agricultural rector in different years
was as follows: in 1951 29.7%, in 1961 30.5%, and in 1971 31.37%,
coming down to 23.70% in recent years (Census of India , 1981,
Series 16, Orissa). The work force engaged in mine and buildings
remains at 12% against national share of 17%.
QUALITY OF LAND UNDER CULTIVATION:
Topographically the cultivated land belongs to three categories,
namely high land, medium land and low lands. The high lands
constitute 41%, medium lands 33% and the low or plain lands 36%
of the total cultivated area. The averages produce of paddy in high
56
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
these states*. But as per capita income alone can not fully indicate
the level of living and we have to take per capita consumption and
nutritional consumption standards which again is determined by
economic position. In a picture drawn before I950 rural population
in Orissa was 96% and in some districts it was more than 99 %( i)
this vast rural population had a low consumption standard. Its diet
was much below the level of the Indian average*(ii) nutritional
standard. Again, while looking at the monthly per capita consumption,
we notice that (iii) Orissa had the lowest per capita monthly
consumption i.e., Rs 15.02 se against all India level of is 27.81.
In assessing the extent of economic development of Orissa and Dr.
N.B. Pradhan in his comparative analysis found that Orissa and
M.P. had negative scores almost in respect of all the indicators26.
Orissa ranked 8th in the study. In the 20s, 40s of present century,
while Bengal, Madras, Maharastra were developing in the modem
sense, Orissa remained unaffected and experienced no remarkable
sign of modem economic transition due to primitive agricultural
technique, insufficient irrigation system (less than 11%); land
fragmentation, uneconomic holdings, over pressure on agriculture,
alarming rural indebtedness and above all the existing land relations.
In spite of the economic growth in the 30s end the 40s Orissa
remained a poverty stricken State in comparison to all other states of
the country.
Primarily this economic backwardness was the result of the land
relation of the colonial period in Orissa. It is ultimately the nature of
land relations that determines the share of various socio-economic
groups associated with agriculture in total agricultural wealth. Hence
we do fined a general trend of accentrated economic contrast in the
zamindari zone as a low and tendency of economic development
having its own logic and rule. Again the type of colonial land relations
determined the degree of enthusiasm and interest for production,
53
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
homogeneity or heterogeneity of rural population, the share of
material wealth of various working sections, their stability and social
harmony etc. Usha Patnaik in her striving to find out whether and in
what respect certain types of production relations act to inhibit
productive investment in technical change i.e., act as fetters upon
the development of productive forces has pointed out the two streams
of the growing and decaying features of agro- economy. Orissa comes
under the latter group and has been involved historically in process
of agricultural stagnation and even in the half-century before
independence, agricultural deterioration. (Utsa Patnaik, Land
Reform and Chnging Agrarian Structure, in Gupta, A.K. (eds.)
Agrarian Structure, Peasant Revolt in India, New Delhi, p. 38.). It
was the parasitic zamindari system which felled to benefit the
majority of growers. Around the year 1950, agrarian structure was
feudalistic and semi-feudalistic in nature. Though there was a vast
difference between Indian feudalism and European feudalism, British
Conquest of India brought about an agrarian revolution. It created
the pre-requisites for the capitalist development of agriculture by
introducing individual ownership of land, namely, peasant ownership
and large scale landlord ownership. This together with the commercial
and other new economic forces which invaded and penetrated the
village, undetermined both the agrarian economy and the autarchic
village of India( Desai, A.R. Social Background of Indian
Nationalism, Ibid., p. 41). The agrarian field of India gives varied
pictures of its economic structure, somewhere (e.g., in North Western
Region) showing the agricultural growth region of peasant capitalist
and elsewhere (North-Eastern Region) agricultural stagnation
reflecting the transformation of semi-feudal production relations.
This was the impact of colonial economic structure in India which
not only left the mass of the peasantry in its old situation of poverty,
hut even lead to their absolute immiserisation31.
54
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
This tendency continued till the introduction of land reforms took
place in the post 1950 period, which brought about changes in the
mode of production and subsequent class formations, but with a very
slow speed.
Colonial brief did also experience the impact which the rest of India
felt by that period. The agrarian structure in Orissa was feudal and
semi-feudal, although peasant proprietorship also constituted a sizable
segment of the agrarian economy. Rural economic differentiation
was largely determined by else of holdings, tenancy statue and caste
composition. However, they had a common Identity based on land-
use, mostly tied with each other in a complex sort of exploitative
tenancy relationship, constraining efficiency in land-use practices,
perpetuating low productivity and agricultural backwardness
(Patnaik, S.C. Land Reforme Measures and Expansion of
Production Opportunities for Weaker Sections in Orissa, Monograph
No. 9/83, Department of Analytical and Applied Economics, Utkal
University, Bhubaneswar, 1983, p. 3). Thus, the severe impact of
British economy very rapidly transformed the old social structure
adversely affecting various strata of rural population till the enactment
of progressive land legislation in 1951 in Orissa. This transition period
in Orissa did not pass smoothly. Rural Indian scene was never inert;
rather was seething with discontents and conflicts of agrarian unrest;
with the government taking strict coercive law and order measures
to overcome that unrests.
Analysis of socio-economic structure of Orissa from the colonial
impact will be partial as port land reforms economic condition of
Orissa is being left out. In the post 1950 period its village economy
or peasant economy continued to be backward in spite of some
development. As Mohanty has stated, Though significant
development hat taken place in some spheres since independence
access to opportunities for minimum standards of living in Orissa is
one of the lowest in the country (Mohanty, m., Ibid., p. 187).
55
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
declined teens 935 Kg per hectare to 847 Kg during these years
(Quated in Mohanty, M., Ibid., p. 180). For about a decade now rice
production has regained stagnant at about 4.5 million tonnes.
Production of other foodgrains has increased modestly but rice is
still the major produce of Orissa. There has been only a marginal
diversification of agricultural production over the years*.
Census report of 1970-71 indicates decline in per capita agricultural
income. It wes Rs 151 in 1964-65 and declined to Rs 136 in 1970-71
(Agricultural Census Orissa, 1970-71, Ibid., . 33) .To ascribe this
decline to growth of population does not hold good in this case, as
there only a 2.5% growth of population during this period whereas
the decline of income was above 9%.
LAND-HOLDING:
Orissa has a very few big farms as compared to Andhra, Maharastra
and Punjab. 66.3% of the total number of holdings is less than 5
acres and only 1.32% are more than 30 acres. Due to lack of irrigation
facilities and of agriculture based industries agriculture has remained
stunted for decades together.
The total area of the land holdings is 57.31 lakh hectares. Net
cultivated area is 54.80 lakhs hectares. Those who have lest than
one hectare i.e., marginal farmers have 46.59% of the number of
total holdings but own only 14.85% of the total area. Those who
have lands between 1 to 2 hectares i.e.. small farmers own 29.11%
of the total holding with an ownership of 24.51% of the land area.
Only 16.79% of the households have lands between 2 to 4 hectares,
owning 87.84% of the total area. Medium farmers having 4 to 10
hectares constitute only 6.51% of the total agricultural households.
But they own 22.80% of the total area. Big farmers constitute only
1.99% of the households. They own 9.09% of the total cultivated
area*.
60
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
lands in approximately 3 quintals per acre. Only 16% of the total
cultivated area it under irrigations. Lack of irrigation inhibits use of
fertiliser. Poverty is also an inhibiting factor. Hence it is no wonder
that per hectare consumption of fertilisers in 1981 was only 9 Kg
(Plain Information, Vol. III, Fact book on Agricultural Production,
State Planning Mechinery, lanning and Co-ordination Department,
1982, p. 48.). In Orissa as against 95 Kg is 612.84 for the whole
country. The per capita value added by manufacture for the same
year was is 63.92 as against is 128.15 for all India. Only about 7% of
the working people are engaged in manufacturing of which lose
than 3% are employed in the non-household sector42. However, the
number of registered factories has increased since 1851 and so also
the number of persons employed in them (which was only 10,272 in
1951 rose to 1,158,44 in 1978)*. But a large number of workers are
engaged in unorganized sector. The percentage of hired workers la
46.97% and these self-employed workers 53.03% account enterprises
constitute 76.19% of the total enterprises in the State, and for every
urban enterprise there are 3.64 rural enterprises. All there shows
wide spread petty production which does not generate much surplus.
The co-existence of a high magnitude of self-employment with
poverty indicates the uneconomic character of the own account
enterprises.
Mineral and forest resources of Orissa attracted public and private
sector heavy industries. Rourkela Steel Plant in 1956 and NALCO
in 1981 are such grand ventures. But even though exploitation of
minerals continued to increase the conditions of the people of the
region, remain miserable (Report on the Seminar on Wage, Living
and Working conditions of Mining Workers, Asian Workers
Development Institute, Rourkela, November, 1984, pp. 19-20.).
INDUSTRY:
Orissas industries are based mainly on mineral like Iron, Chromites,
Bauxite, Soapstone and forest produce like bamboo and timber, etc.
57
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Agriculture based industries like sugar, oil, jute and rice are rare
phenomena. Even forest produce like resin, lac, mahua and so many
other inedible oil seeds nave not led to indigenous industries. Orissa
has carved like a hinter-land for industries of Bengal, Andhra,
Tamilnadu and Madhya Pradesh. Therefore, the impetus provided
by industries to agriculture is very week in the case of Orissa.
Except the Rourkela Steel Plant, which belongs to the public sectors
all the major industries, like paper, textile, jute are under private
sector and owned by non-Oriya capitalists. The wholesale business
is also controlled by non-Oriya merchants. This is so because of
very late emergence of Oriya Capital in the field of business, transport
and small industries. As discussed earlier agriculture does not help
capital formation due to low productivity, adverse marketing and
unbalanced distribution of land. Trade and industry owned by Oriya
create favorable conditions for capital formation and capital base
but are still in an infantile stage.
Industry accounts for 15% of the State income of Orissa. Its share of
countrys industrial production was only 1.6% as against 10.7% in
neighboring West-Bengal; 5.8% in Bihar and 4.8% in Andhra Pradesh
in 1977-78 (Mohanty, M., Ibid., p. 189.). Per capita income of Orissa
was is 241.18 compared to Rs 612.84 for the whole country. The per
capita value added by manufacture for the same year was Rs 63.92
as against Rs 128.15 for all India. Only about 7% of the working
people are engaged in manufacturing of which less than 3% are
employed in the non-household Sector (Census of India, 1981).
However, the number of registered factories has increased since 1951
and so also the number of persons employed in thee (which was only
10,272 in 1951 rose to 1,158,44 in 1978)*. But a large number of
workers are engaged in unorganized sector. The percentage of hired
workers is 46.97% and these self-employed workers 53.03% account
enterprises constitute 76.19% of the total enterprises in the State,
58
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and for every urban enterprise there are 3.64 rural enterprises. All
these shows wide spread petty production which does nut generate
much surplus. The co-existence of a high magnitude of self-
employment with poverty indicates the uneconomic character of the
own account enterprises.
Mineral and forest resources of Orissa attracted public and private
sector heavy industries. Rourkela Steel Plant in 1956 and NALCO
in 1981 are such grand ventures. But even though exploitation of
minerals continued to increase the conditions of the people of the
region, remain miserable (Report on the Seminar on Wage, Living
and Working conditions of Mining Workers, Asian Workers
Development Institute, Rourkela, November, 1984, pp. 19-20.).
Due to lack of industrial expansion overwhelming majority look to
agriculture for their subsistence. But this agrarian sector, main
constituent of rural economy regain backward after is indicated by
production figures. Of the total sown area and irrigated area was
11.08% in 1965-66, in 1973-74 14.69% and in 1975-76 it was 16.52%.
So only 16% of area to the total cultivated areas is now under
irrigation against 75% in Punjab and 25% in the country as a whole
(Quated in Mohanty, M., Ibid., p. 188 from Census of India, 1981) .
Fertiliser consumption per hecter in Orissa was 1.46 Kg in 1960-
61, 1.99 Kg in 1965-66; in 1968-69 it was 3.69 Kg, in 1973-74 it
was 8.65 Kg, in 1075-76 it was 6.85 Kg, in 1978-79 it wan 8.70 Kg
and in 1079-80 it was 8.20 Kg and in 1980-81 it was 8.80 (Plan
Information, Vol. VIII, Fact book on agricultural Production, State
planning & Coordination Deptt. 1982.). This shows a slight increase
in fertiliser consumption pattern bat it in still very such less than in
a developed state like Punjab. Agricultural output has increased
during the first two plans but thereafter it has fluctuated.
According to one study, the total output declined in 10 districts out
of 13 during 1962-65 and 1970-73. In food grains, productivity
59
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
negotiate for fixed cash rent. Smaller tenants have to work hard having
no alternative means of subsistence but being tied to a fixed share,
they were such more exploited although gross productivity per acre
was higher in their case there is the case of large share croppers.
Another feature noticeable is that large scale tenancy is found more
in the irrigated areas than in non-irrigated and less technologically
developed areas. It has been observed that the new technology is
being absorbed, the exploitative hold is retained through appropriate
changes in the tenurial systems.
So in spite of a growing trend of modernization of agriculture through
different scientific means in some small pockets of Orissa, the system
has become incapable to sustain the outgrowing population of
marginal and landless labourer. The tardy land reforms and rural
development have also failed to lead to capitalistic farming in Orissa.
Semi-feudal land relations and practices still prevail at some levels.
LEVEL OF LIVING IN POST 1950 OF ORISSA:
It is admitted that 2/3 of Orissas population live below the poverty
line, although by the year 1971-81 the relative growth rate of
population was only 19.7% as against Indias 24.8%. But this may
have been actually caused by factors related to poverty (Ashis Bose,
Mystry of Orissas Low Growth Rate of Population Tribal
Development or Tribal Stagnation in S.N. Mishra and Bhuinder
Singh, Eds., Tribal Area Development, New Delhi, 1983, p. 116.).
During the period of 1970-71, per capita incase in Orissa increased
from Rs 482 to Rs 799 at current prices. But it was far below the all-
India average of Rs 632 and is 1210 respectively, and remained one
of the lowest in the country (Mohanty, M., Ibid., p. 187).
POVERTY LINE AS AN INDICATOR OF LEVEL OF LIVING:
The principle of fixing the poverty line on the basis of minimum-
in-take of calories of food only is not a sound one me it ignores the
nutritional standard requited for a balanced prescription of intake of
64
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Data indicate that the number of large holding is small in Orissa. In
1961 only l.6% of cultivable land was of the else of 30 acres or
above, and 4.2% was between 15-30 acres (Economic Survey of
Orissa, Ibid., 1977). And in 1976-77 out is had above 10 acres and
only 0.03% possessed above 50 acres (NSS Data 1976-77). As much
as 94.2% had below 15 acres in 1961. This shows that land
distribution structure in Orissa has regained skewed. Agricultural
labour who work on fields for wage constitute 27.65% of the total
workers (main) in the State. They constitute about 9% of the total
population of the State (S.C. Patnaik, Ibid., p. 5.)
According to a survey analysis Big farmers in the State owning
31.80% of the total agricultural land engaged hired labour or cultivate
through teanants. The area held by big landowners seems to be the
order of 18.22 lakh hectares which can engage 9.11 lakh persons, if
personal cultivation is resumed (Patnaik, S.C., Ibid., p. 6.)
Irrigation problem also is responsible for large scale backwardness
of agriculture in the State. Only 16% of the area under cultivation is
assured of some irrigation, whereas the countrys percentage as a
whole on this score is 25%. Punjab and Haryana have more than
75% of land served by irrigation projects. Agriculture in Orissa has
lost its lure for the well-to-do. Fixed deposits or time bound deposits
assume more return for capital of any sire than agriculture on one
crop non-irrigated lands. Land transfers reflect the trend very clearly.
Landless families were 10.81% of the total number of families
residing in villages in 1564-55. By 1971-78 this figure had gone up
to 27.38%. The poor peasants (owning below 2 acres) were 45.25%
in 1954-55 but there number dwindled down to 32.88% in 1971-72.
The figures for email and middle peasants (with mixed economy)
remain static at 29.84 to 29.50%. The number of rich peasants (with
more than 10 acres) has also declined from 14.10% in 1954-55 to
10.24% in 1971-72 (Report of Agricultural census in Orissa
Undertaken in 1976-77. Quoted in Patnaik, S.C., Ibid., pp. 4-6.)
61
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Of the total operated area 11% is operated by persons having no
ownership over the land. Apart from this open tenancy there is also
concealed tenancy. Though legally banned the share of the owners
remains at 50% of the gross produce of non-commercial crops. This
high rent leads to excessive poverty of the tenants and consequent
negligence of cultivation (Reort on Agricultural Census of Orissa,
1970-71, p. 49. Issued by Agricultural Census Commissioner, Board
of Revenue, Orissa, Govt. of Orissa, April, 1975)
After independence land-reforms measures were mostly motivated
to set right the land ownership pattern and production relationship,
which used to constrain improvement in agricultural production, by
inviting greater investment on land and assuring a fair reward to
tillers of the soil. There was an egalitarian consideration as well.
Fair distribution of land as an asset among cultivating households
was considered important from the standpoint of distributive justice
and for providing asset base for production. Orissa Estate Abolition
Act 1951 was the first step in this direction.
Tenancy regulation has served limited purpose only. Attempts were
made in 1960 by legislation to put a ceiling on landholdings. But the
provisions of the Act were challenged in the courts. In 1973 another
Act was passed which set the ceiling at 10, 15, 30 and 45 acres per
family of five members for various categories of land respectively.
A 1.95 lakh acre of surplus land has been distributed among 2.76
lakhs of beneficiaries by August 1977 (Basudev. S., Arts and Artisans
of Orissa, not dated, p. 74.). But these small pieces of land without
having good productivity quality could be of little help to the
beneficiaries, according to one estimate 1.73 million cultivators of
Orissa own less than 0.5 hectares each and the number of landless
agricultural labourers is estimated to be 1.9 million (Basudev, S.,
Ibid).
This reflects the abject poverty of poor peasants of Orissa. Neither
land reforms nor any rural development progresses like IRD or ERRP
62
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
could solve their problems. In order to cultivate a piece of land of
more than 4 hectares it is necessary to engage a tenant or hire labour.
On this basis, it could be estimated that big farmers in the state owning
31.80% of total agricultural land engaged hired labour or cultivate
through tenants. The area held by big land owners seems to be of the
order of 18.22 lakh hectares which can engage 9.11 lakh persons, If
personal cultivation were resumed.
TENANCY:
According to the law the land owner is retired to cultivate land
personally. According to the definition of personal cultivation, a land
owner can cultivate on hit own or with the help of family labour or
by servants or hired labour on wages. The very definition allows
land owner to cultivate land through others. In other words, It allows
absentee ownership which is detrimental to agricultural expansion
on commercial lines (Patnaik, S.C., Ibid., p. 5.).
However in Orissa a built-in-tendency of concealed tenancy is found
on the plea of hired-labour, thus proliferating absentee landlordism.
According to Economic Survey of Orissa, I960, 70% of total families
in rural areas constituted land owning families and only 9.7% of
them rented out some land to others for cultivation. The area leased
out to tenants constituted only 6.9% of the total land owned by rural
families. In quantitative terms the problems for the State was not
serious enough, however, it was sore serious for coastal districts of
Balasore, Cuttack, Ganjam and Puri where 14% of land leased out.
In inland Orissa it was hardly 3.6% (Mishra, S., Economic Survey of
Orissa, Govt. of Orissa, p. 154.). The wide prevalence of land-leasing
in the coastal belt created discontent and led to peasant movement
between the years 1946-1950*.
Tenancy study of Orissa shows some interacting trends. For example,
smaller tenants pay higher rents whereas large chare croppers
63
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
exploitation 50: 50 share) is again returning to agriculture in Orissa. calories. The prescribed level of 2250 to 2700 is not adequately
No doubt the land holdings thus let out are email in sixes but big in available even for most of the people above the poverty line. But the
numbers compared to the position of 50s and 60s of this century. major percentage of Orissas population remained below the poverty
line. It was 62.04% in 1964-65, 64% in 1967-68, 64.7% in 1969, and
Since 1975 due to migration from villages the work force ratio has
66.40% in 1977-7861. The official report also estimated for the
gone up. In 1978 it was 51.61. Out of it the rural work force was
population below poverty line to be 88% in between 1978-83, and
43.3% (plan information - 1971 to 1981). The share of income from
its percentage varied between 83 to 80 during the year 1980-84 period.
Agriculture and animal Husbandry however, remained almost
(Report of the Committee on Agricultural Production in the Eastern
constant at 65% of toe total State income between 1971 to 1981.
India. 1984. Vol. II, pp. 138-229.) Poverty norms of rural Orissa can
There are also regional variations in the position of employment in be pictured more clearly if seen on the basis of current prices (at the
the state. Coastal districts employ 45 to 52% of rural working rate of 1983 prices). These are:
population in cultivation, whereas inland districts employ 55 to 57%
Year Poverty norm at Percentage of the rural
in the line. Balasore though a coastal district is however an exception.
current prices(in Rs) people below poverty
Its cultivators constitute 59% of the rural working people. Similarly
line in Orissa
Dhenkanal, Sambalpur and Mayurbhanj employ 53% and 52% and
1960-61 15.00 68.19
47% respectively in cultivation though they are inland districts. These
figures includes both owner cultivators and the agricultural labourers. 1964-65 21.45 62.04
1968-69 32.70 71.29
As per the census figures the total number of working population
was 86 lakhs in 1981. Of them the number of agricultural labourers, 1970-71 31.80 68.15
mainly landless, was 34 lakhs. It is to be noted that their number in 1972-73 37.20 70.79
1971 was only 19 lakhs. Among the working women 50% are 1973-74 42.30 60.93
agricultural labourers.
Further the percentage under poverty line also varies in the different
Compared to all India ratio of the agricultural labourer to the total zones of the State. As for example the 1972-73 figures were 53.71%
working population Orissa has a higher percentage. The all India in coastal areas, 83.95% in south Orissa and 80% in farther Orissa
figure is only 22% and while in Orissa it is 28%. (Bardhan, P., Regional Variations in the rural economy, Economic
Wages of agricultural labourers have been traditionally miserable and Political Weekly, Vol. XVII, No. 30, July 1983, pp. 1324-1331).
throughout the country and it is more so in Orissa. As for example in The tribal bolts in Koraput, Kalahandi, Keonjhar (except the mining
1950-51 the all India wage rate was 109 paisa per diem and that of areas) and Mayurbhanj districts have a different story to tell. Service
Orissa was 72 paisa, in 1956-57 96 paisa and 80 paisa respectively and other reserved benefits help individuals but not the community
(Quoted from Rural Labour Enquiry Committee Report in Kranti as a whole. Random survey of any tribal village, away from mines
Patha, Jan-March 1983, p. 45). The present position is no better. or industries, reveals this reality beyond question.

68 65
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The real monthly consumption expenditure per head is also another
important indicator to assess the living condition of the people.
Monthly average of real consumption expenditure which was Rs 14
.76 in 1960-61 come down to Rs 12.22 in 1970-71. It was Rs 15/- in
1973-74. (Panda, N.K., Agricultural Growth and Rural Poverty in
Orissa, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 23, Vision, Journal of the Institute of
Economics & Social Study.) This average its decline and rise show a
very rickety livelihood of the people of Orissa as it is far below the
standard fixed for a minimum standard of living. This standard was
fixed at Rs 28/- for rural people and Rs 30/- for urban people on the
basis of 1964-65 prices.
WORKING POPULATION IN VARIOUS SECTORS:
As much as 74.65% of the work force of the state was engaged in
agriculture in 1981. In 1951 it was 70.33% and in 1961 73.93% of
the total population. Percentage of the agricultural workers to the
total population was 7.43 in 1961, 8.83 in 1971 and 9.08 in 1981
(Census of India, 1981, Series, Orissa.). This indicates the rice of
percentage of agricultural workers showing on agrarian sector.
In 1961 the total work force were 43.66% of the population of the
states. It case down to 31.33% in 1971, and 32.82% in 1981 (Census
of India, 1981, Series-16. Orissa.). There has been a slight decline
in the percentage of cultivators from 49.l6% to 47.00/- and
agricultural labourers from 28.28% to 27.65% in between 1971
and 1981. The split up percentage of this work-forces were as
follows:
Year Cultivators Asstt. Workers Other Workers Total
1961 24.80 7.43 11.43 43.66
1971 15.35 8.8. 7.04 31.22
1981 15.42 9.08 8.32 32.82
66
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
These figures have their limitations. The decline of the percentage
of the work force to the total population is certainly not due to affluent
economy which permits larger number of dependent upon smaller
number of working people. It is primarily due to lack of growth of
employment opportunities proportionate to the growth of population;
secondly the educated unemployed by and large become average to
any type of productive labour. There inclination is towards safe,
secure government services of a non-productive character. Thirdly,
the average mentioned above does not hold good for the tribals and
harijans. Among them percentage of working people to their total
population is about 60 to 70 children and women and even people
above 70 years of age go out daily in search of work.
Another disturbing feature of Orissas agro-economy is that smaller
land holders are getting pauperised very rapidly. According to one
survey the percentage of agricultural labour to the total number of
people working in agriculture was 23.20 in 1961 and 42.62 in 1971
(Panda, N.K., Ibid., Vision, April 1983, p. 27). This does not include
the increasing number of marginal labour. Every day people uprooted
from their native employment throng in the towns and near about
industrial centers, creating ever growing slums on government lands
end desperately roaming about in search of jobs on any terms. This
provides the expanding base for all contract labour in almost all the
construction program as unskilled work in industry.
This process has dual affect; distress shifts from the villages to the
towns and come earning going from the towns to the villages. Also
the number of families totally uprooted from the villages and
becoming permanent settlers in towns and cities without any lawful
hearth and home of their own are increasing. The process is
developing so rapidly that agr iculture in the traditionally
underdeveloped areas is facing serious labour crisis and is leading
to letting out of lands to share croppers. Thus, feudal-form of
67
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Some economists like Bhaduri have termed this transitional phase The statutory minimum is Rs 7.50 per diem (June - July 1985) but
as semi-feudal mode of production. Usha Patnaik and other the actual average is in 5.10 only. In neighboring west, Bengal it is
economists (As also claimed by other Orissas Economists like S.C. almost double of this.
Petneik and Political Scientists like M. Mohanty.) think that it is the
In the above pages an attempt was made to examine the mode of
capitalistic mode of production. But existing patterns of tenancy,
production prevailing in the colonial era and its changing pattern in
usury, non-free and attached labourers, in Orissan agriculture are
the post-independence period. It will be helpful to understand what
signs of semi-feudal agrarian mode of production. But differentiation
is the link between different kinds of social structures and historical
among the peasantry, secular stagnation, labour an commodity and a
situations on the one hand and types of movements and classes
free wage labour system show partial development of capitalistic
involved in them on the other.
features in Orissan agriculture in a few pockets.
To understand a revolutionary condition and its social locus it is
In the colonial period feudalism, prevailed all over India; as well an
essential to understand the economic factors as the basic factors,
in Orissa, with tenancy, money-lending, attached labour etc., as
although epiphenomenal factors can not be ignored. Because every
expressions of feudal relations of production . One of the common
revolution is both phenomenon and epiphenomenon; it is both
denominators to recognize feudalism is the extra- economic coercion
concentrated reaction to yesterdays reality and a mere construct to
which it involved in tne system. The Landlord who possessed the
live by until history turns another page and delivers us from the
legal power (i.e., a11 the rights as zamindars. derived from the
necessity of breathing yesterdays air, that air both fragrant and
Permanent Settlement Act); compelled the peasant to work for his in
pestilential. (Kirchherimer, Otto, The conditions of Revolutionary
many ways, thus appropriating the surplus labour from the present
Power From Krieger, L. and Stern, F. (eds.) The Responsibility of
producers. In Orissa during the British period the subjects were bound
Power, p. 438.) According to the Marxian understanding classes
to pay more than sixty-four types of economic end extra-economics
are located within modes of production as dynamic components,
taxes to the feudal lord, the second feature of semi-feudalism was
which are antagonistic, derived from the contradictions of material
that the direct producer retained possession of the means of
life, and from the existing conflict between the social forces of
production (i.e., mainly the land plough and bullocks) And therefore,
production and the relations of production.
under such conditions the surplus labour for the nominal owner of
the land can only be extorted from them by other than economic In predominantly agricultural country like India; rural class relations
pressure,, whatever the form assumed may be (Rudra, Ashok Class and land inequality must be given great importance as explanatory
Relations in Indian Agriculture II Economic and Political Weekly, variables. Hypothetically it can be claimed this inequality is directly
June 10, 1978, pp. 963-969). related to the polarization of social classes and there may exist a
vertical negative co-relation between the deeper class cleavages and
Petty production and technological backwardness made agriculture common manifest interests and objectives. These create overt conflict
uneconomic and allowing the producers to go beyond their
between classes de catalyzing the speed of multi-class-alliances.
subsistence. Thus the petty mode of production with the independent

72 69
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
When this land Inequality becomes greater; the probability of sharp
class con- traditions increases between large landowners and poor
peasants.
In general two theoretical positions can be made. Firstly high land
scarcity leads to high inequality and to acute class polarization
generating distributive class based revolutionary movements and
second low land scarcity leads to low inequality and thus to leas
acute class polarization creating multi-class non-distributive
revolutionary coalitions. Any successful social revolution always
needs a base of either a single class or a multi-class alliance, which
is again determined by the nature of peasant stratification of the
society concerned. The nature of the alliance depends upon the nature
of the struggle. It depends further upon the issues involved in the
struggle; as it is the Issues involved which determine whether a
vertical or horizontal class alliance is needed for the struggle.
A comparative picture between 1931 to 1951 indicates that owners
holding land in between 1-2 acres were decreasing in number whereas
owners having 6-10 acres were increasing. Again the trend of the
1931 census (As discussed in Assembly Debate at Orissa, Vol. III,
No. II, Orissa dated 4th March 1955) indicated three important facts
about the peasantry in the pre-revolutionary situation of Orissa.
Firstly, many peasants left the land and went for services in other
sectors. Secondly, prices of agricultural produce want up during the
war years. And thirdly, large scale transfers and evictions of poor
peasants from their holdings (by owners holding more than 33 acres
of land) took place even after the enactment of crises Tenants
protection Act in 1948.
In the colonial period between 1930s to 1947 and after independence
between 1947 to 1955 land-concentration and inequality generated
revolutionary sentiments. For this we must examine the feudal node
70
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of production of colonial writers and the semi-feudal mode of
production of poet. Independent Orissa which is still continuing with
alight variation in some areas of western Orissa where a little
inclination to capitalist is witnessed.
Because classes are defined by class contradiction, class- relations
are relations of production, (but) not all relations of production are
defined as classes; only social groups are subject to contradictions
of interests arising from the way they are related to the means of
production(Marx Preface to Critique of Political Economy Classes
in Capital Volume 3). The ownership over the property holdings
has been taken here to understand class contradictions. This relation
of production (i.e., the amount of land ownership, inequality and
concentration) is determined very each by the node of production in
operation. The question of node of production in India is still being
debated by various groups of scholars including both Marxist and
non-Marxists. In a vast country like ours having extreme diversities
from the capitalist farming in Punjab to semi-feudalistic in Orissa, it
is better to depend on the facts and describe the eye tea of production
as such rather than try to name an Indian agricultural mode of
production as such. There are certain traits like the nature of
consumption, distribution and exchange which reproduce social
locations, one phase being different from the other. Marx could
foresees different phases at different modes of production which Dobb
and Sweezy think was an impossible procedure. Because the time
interval between two phases say take centuries (as in the Indian case)
giving birth to a transitional phase.
A large body of scholars holds the view that the present state of
Indian agriculture can neither be satisfactorily regarded as pertaining
to the capitalist mode of production nor to the feudal mode of
production (Rudra, Ashok Class Relations in Indian Agriculture.
I, economic and Political Weekly, June 3, 1978, p. 916.).
71
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHAPTER-3
AGRARIAN REFORMS IN ORISSA: A
REVOLUTION FROM ABOVE
Agrarian reforms is an outcome of a protracted struggle between
different clashes on political, economic, ideological and other planer
and on the organization of the peasantry (G. Parthasarathi, Poverty
and Agrarian Reforms, Review Article In Economic and Political
weekly (RPW), July 30, 1983, p. 1355.). In India whose black cloth
is studded with poverty (King, R., Land Reforms; A World Survey,
G. Bell and Sons, 1977, London, p. 279.); it has become impossible
for the country to achieve the twin goals of alleviating rural poverty
and of ensuring rapid agricultural growth without a change in the
land relation pattern. Land was end still is the main source of
livelihood in India at majority of the population depends on it. It has
been said that land relations in a country are integrally related to the
basic characteristics of its national economy, social structure and
political system (Joshl, P.C., Land Reforms in India in Desai, A.R.
(ed.) So Land legislation is a basic need for social equity, and for the
overall economic development of the country. Land legislation is
essential to eliminate disparities in wealth among people of different
classes in an agrarian society. So land legislation is sine-cua-non of
socio-economic development for providing some measures of social
justice, and to move barriers from the path of economic
development4. Agrarian reform in India has a history of not less
than a century. Its objective was the protection of tenants right over
land. It stressed that the reform of the Indian tenurial system see one
of the elements that inhibit agricultural productivity.
76
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
unit formed the basic of feudal mode of production, but the British
penetration alienated the important means of production (i.e., land)
from the hands of the tiller. This transference of the rights of the
producers shows a deflection from feudalism to pre-capitalist or semi-
feudal mode of production.
The rent system prevailing then, allowed for payment in cash or in
kind; which is claimed to be a feature indicating the emergence of
capitalist in agriculture. Even after Independence although the feudal
payment-exaction relations were contractually fixed; they were not
of the type that exists in modem bourgeois society, where free
commodity owners mutually bind themselves as independent
personalities. In the pre-independence period tenants had to give rent
both to the landlords and the government and as there were no
scheduled rules for these payments, illegal exactions also existed.
Indebted and victims of usurious landlords having no alternative but
to submit both to the feudal commitment of their ancestors and to
fulfill the subsistence needs of their families so feudalism as a system
of production for use was substituted by a system of production for
others.
The Indian tenant has a personal dependency on the land-owners
(for means of production), thus, facilitating the relation of domination
and subordination through an extra-economic bond, pervading the
totality of his whole life, as well as of the whole village. In this sense
treating tenancy and village society as an essential part of feudalism
is quite correct. Unpaid or underpaid labour services that the tenant
might have to provide for the landlord are the features of feudalism,
although there are some capitalistic features in tenancy relations
claimed by Usha Patnaik, Ashok Sen and Thorner, which are present
in some states like Punjab and all of which are totally absent in
Orissan tenancy relations. In this state tenants are effectively tied to
agriculture as a principal source of livelihood, though under law he
73
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
is a tenant-at-will or a peasant - proprietor, the existence of monopoly 16, 1986, pp. 1445-1446.). Even after the land-reforms program in
in land with all its feudalistic features has compelled the peasant to the poet-independence and period agrarian structure has not changed
remain tied to the land; having practically freedom for which such, the new opportunities which appeared as a result of land reforms
institutional impediments like usury are responsible for a great extent. have mainly been exploited by the upper class landed elite.
Usury (i.e., primitive money-lending practices, still existing in Orissa) As the events of the 1940s and 1960s in Orissa show the state
has become an obstacle for the emergence of capitalistic relations performed an instrumentalist role, that is serving as an agent, or
and forces of production. Firstly, it has diverted capital form instrument, for the interest of a cohesive dominant class. Thus the
productive investment and secondly, has preserved a power structure state and the dominant class tried together to suppress revolutionary
where a few rural rich maintain a dominating control over the lives pressures, resorting to firing and arresting. Takarada firing is an
of the numerous rural poor. This fact which was so masked earlier in example of this type of state suppression of revolutionary forces.
Orissa has lost such of its prominence in recent decades.
The above analysis reflects an intricate agrarian social structure of
But increasing indebtedness of the peasantry and the predominance India as a whole as well as of Orissa. This transitional phase of
of non-free labour indicated a continued prevalence of feudalistic political and economic contradictions is responsible for weak intra-
relations. Legal freedom to enter freely in wage relations granted by class alliances, making the peasant movements of the state very much
legislative interference from the top has only provided the labourer regional and local in nature. This incomplete economic development
personal or social freedom thus asking his free from the personal has not been able to provide a sharp class-polarization and thus acts
land-lord concerned but economically he has remained most un free. as a hindrance for a successful peasant movement.
In other way round most of our agricultural relation in production
can be treated as bonded though not existing legally having being
abolished decades back.
Turing the early colonial period the agrarian node of production was
feudalistic. But the enactment of a peculiar colonial exploitative land-
relation and revenue collection policy was followed by zamindari
ownership over the means of production depriving the direct
producers of their rights over land. This led to the penetration of
semi-feudalistic agrarian node of production in Orissa. In the village
there were large scale land transfers. This proceed eventually
produced in Orissa an essentially small peasant economy, though
big-zamindars and goanties also continued to exit (Mohanty, M.
Adrifmiddle Class: Orissa, Economic and Political Weekly, August

74 75
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
thought that. Indias land relations after the British impact were
neither feudal nor capitalist but belonged to a third category i.e., the
colonial category,( Joshi, P.C., Ibid., p. 15). In its view, the solution
of the land problem lay in the annihilation of the colonial system
and attainment of freedom by the country.
Out of this growing anti-colonial consciousness, two radical views
emerged. One was that of the radical nationalists which identified
the land problem as an economic problem whereas the second, that
of Marxist intellectuals viewed this as a class contradiction within
the rural-economy. These two views may be called those of harmony
of class-interest. And conflict of class-interest respectively.
The earlier nationalists considered economic development to be
inseparable from the capitalist path of development, (Chandra, Bipin,
Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India, pp. 1-4, Delhi,
1966.) the path on which even according to Marx, the underdeveloped
Asian Countries would have to traverse (Marx, K., Caital, Vol. I,
Preface.). In addition to it, the anti-peasant and pro-upper class bias
became dominant among the nationalist thinkers. But the pro-peasant
perspective for agricultural development Came out at a challenge to
the earlier model after 1920. In that post-1920 period, the view of
radical nationalists and Marxists converged together on that point of
nature of agrarian structure of India. But there was divergence of
views in regard to the agrarian class-structure. Radical nationalist
view was, based on the two class model, landlords, money-lenders
and the traders formed one class and the peasantry the other classes.
It need the general term peasantry and tended to overlook the class
distinction within the broad peasant category., whereas Marxists
showed sons awareness of the latent or emerging class at ratification
within the peasantry.
Both the national-radicals and the Marxists advocated pro-peasant
oriented land reforms, the former giving greater weight age to the
80
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The present agrarian structure of India is a reproduction of Indias
agrarian history under British rule. So the study of colonial economic
policies in retrospect is essential to understand the present agrarian
development. The colonial land tenure system for India was adopted
and codified to suit the economic and political requirements of the
British economy Joshi, P.C., Ibid., p. 444.). In the pre-colonial India
there was never any notion of the ownership of the soil vesting to
anybody except the peasantry (Wadia and Merchant, p. 161; quoted
in Desai, A.R., Social Background of Indian Nationalism, Popular
Prakashan, Bombay, 1981, p. 37.) . With the introduction of the
British economic policy old Indian village structure disappeared and
was substituted by the modern peasant proprietor or the zamindars,
both becoming private owners of land and with this change old land
relations come to an end and new classes emerged. The British
impact on India not only led to the transformation of the economic
but also its social physiognomy (Desai, A.R., Ibid., p. 35.) Indias
present land tenure problems origins to in the so-called permanent
settlement superimposed on the traditional peasant ownership system
by the East India Company in 1793. The settlement thus created a
new class of landlords, the zamindars, who were placed over the
small owners and actual tillers of the soil to collect rest from them. It
led to the disintegration of the village economy, permitted the
parasitic class of absentee-owners to appropriate a Large portion of
returns to the soil, reduced all cultivation to subsistence farming and
impoverished the actual tillers (Dantwala, M.L., Land Reforms in
India, International Labour Review 66(4), 1952, pp. 419-43).
DEMAND FOR LAND REFORMS : IDEOLOGICAL
UNDERPINNINGS
A search to find out the ceases of land reforms in India reveals three
important factors: the ideology of the national movement,
commitments of the elites and lastly, the factor of social mobilization
77
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and peasant movement. These three factors are so intricately
intertwined that it is difficult to find out which factor proceeds which
one and which one was the dominant factor behind the enactment of
major progressive land legislations in India.
The National Congress began to formulate a more general land-reform
policy. Thanks, largely to Gandhi, the peasants were integrated into
the national independence movement. Commitments to land-reforms,
however, varied enormously among the disparate groups comprising
the Congress party. The proponents of radical land-reform were
largely of urban origin, exposed to Western liberal thought. Others
sympathized with the Chinese experiments. Conservative elements
represented the traditional elites, generally rural in origin, created or
maintained by British System, with values rooted in sacred texts,
and Inherited rural mores (King, R., Ibid., p. 283).
On the whole, causes of land reforms in India can be looked at from
two points of view. It may be viewed are for example by P.C. Joshi
as the result of the commitment of all elites to a more equitable
system, or, it can be interpreted on the basis of the Gramscian Theory,
placing emphasis on the consciousness of the subaltern class. From
the stand point of the latter, root cause of land reforms lies in the
very structure of the process of formation of consciousness of
peasantry. This structure again, is comprised of two different
processes of inversion and negation. Consciousness of peasantry is
created through inversion by attacking the super structural element,
l.e., cultural aspects of landlords. And it comes through negation by
attacking the sub-structural elements of landlords. In both the ways
subaltern class play a negative and a positive role. First of all a peasant
looks upon himself through a negative concept, i.e., not being, in the
position of a landlords. That means he, fights against the landlord to
uplift his position to that level. In that way he limits his goal and
thus negates that concept of peasantry as a universal class. Secondly,
78
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
through his positive action due to big backward inert class position
he is store susceptible to be hegemonies by the upper class and thus
in congruity with them he functions and his reciprocity of role lead
to equilibrium and maintaining the status-quo of the societal structure.
On the other head the colonial theory tried to explain Indias poverty
and backwardness without reference to the economic and social
frameworks created under British (Joshi, P.C., Land reforms in India,
Allied Publishers, 1976, Bombay, p. 4.) This colonial view influenced
the work of British officials, administrators, and to some extent it
also shows a subtle intrusion into the works of social scientists. Vera
Aneste was the first among the letters who found out two ways for
the peasants emancipation. One is by agricultural revolution, and
the other was by scientific agriculture. But she was unaware of the
fact that both of these were impossible to bring shout a radical land
reform so long as India was under a foreign and colonial power.
Indian nationalists had a different stand-point. The earlier nationalists
like Remade and others advocated an institutional approach for the
analysis of land-problem and land-policy. They considered the
progress of institutionalism to be the key factor for the development
of Indian Political Economy. These institutionalisms, however, were
not able to provide a proper analysis of the hard core of the
institutional structure, viz., the land relations which had a direct
bearing on economic backwardness and whose restructuring required
drastic state intervention. Land problem instead of receiving any
solution was open to the ideological conflicts between the colonial
and nationalist thinkers in a micro field. And it gradually required a
growing importance among the radical-nationalist and Marxist
thinkers.
Again there was found a vast difference between the thought of earlier
nationalists and latter nationalists. The formers were not so much
antithetical to the colonial system as the latter. The nationalist school
79
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
These earlier settlement did not work well and could net yield the
desired results because (i) the revenue demands were very high,
asking the cultivators unable to pay the revenue and ultimately leading
to land transfers, (ii) the fraud end foul methods of land proprietors
and revenue officials, and (iii) above all the political and civil
disturbances
The cultivators could not pay exorbitantly high rent. On default, land
was auctioned and given to the highest bidderns. Many unscruious
elements took the advantage of such transfers and got the lands
transferred in their nerves. As Many Oriya landholders failed to pay
rent in time, most of their land passed into the hands of Bengali
laud-owners.
As a result of this faulty settlement system the obnoxious features of
absentee landlordism appeared prominently. Most of the landlords
were Bengalees staying in Calcutta. They did not take any interest in
1 and as their chief aim was to extract revenue. No investment was
made on land. Thus agriculture, which had become the only source
of income for the bulk of the people of Orissa deteriorated miserably
during the early British rule. As in this period rural manufacture and
handicrafts also declined pressure on land naturally increased.
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN SOUTHERN ORISSA:
The southern part of Orissa had come under the Government of the
Company almost fifty years before it conquered the northern part of
the province, the introduction of permanent settlement was
simultaneous. It was on the report of a special commission that
permanent settlement was introduced in Southern Orissa during 1802-
05. Nearly with 22 Rajas the settlement was made. There was neither
any uniformity in collection nor in Jamma to the Government.
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN NORTH ORISSA:
There were many hereditary Rajas who wished to enter permanent
Settlement with the Company Government. They were anxious to
84
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
pro-rich and middle peasant interests, whereas the latter supported
the interests of poor-peasants and the landless class. On two other
points also there was divergence of views between these two groups:
on the question of basic and super-structure of society and secondly,
on the question of methods of mobilization and the form of peasant
struggle.
As far as the first question is concerned Marxists only believed in
the economies of peasantry, leaving aside the super, structural
elements like caste cleavages, un touch ability, etc. But the radical
nationalists had a more open view and were concerned, with the
super-structural questions of peasantry as well. On the second
question relating to forms of struggle and methods of mobilization
the radical nationalists did not believe in an Independent class struggle
to which the Marxists were committed.
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN ORISSA :
British Officers were quiet alien to the rules and regulations relating
to land both in India, as well as in Orissa. They were not even closer
to the social-set-up, practice and psychology of the people. There
were no written records, and therefore
they had to depend on certain Oriya Officers, who were complicating
the matters more than solving any problem regarding settlements of
revenue or rising the rights of the actual possessor of the land. The
officers of East India Company were not prepared to make any
substantial change in the land system, last it would create any
suspicion among the cultivators and they were not prepared to loose
any revenue (Ibid., quoted from Report of the Circuit Committee
on the Revenue and Resources of Ganjam, dated 24.4.1780 to the
H.A.R. Arichi based campell, Vol. 17A, B.R.T.N.A.M).
Prior to the British interference, Kings of Orissa were used to give
revenue to the Invaders without any concern of the latter to land and
81
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
land-relations. Though in the first phase, Britishers also adopted the
same attitude, but later on their greedy policy led them to interfere
with the rules and regulations operating in the agrarian field. In the
first phase of British rule land tax was very high and not fixed
(Pradhan, B.N., Economic Backwardness and development of
Orissa (Unpublished thesis), Submitted at Berhampur University,
Economics Department, Orissa, 1979, pp. 64 and 65.).
But subsequently Britishers created two types of property rights over
lead. Landlordism, in some parts of the country through enactment
of the Permanent settlement and individual proprietorship through
the Royatwari system Tax-famers of the pre-colonial era were made
various types of landlords by this Permanent settlement enactment.
All these settlements were implemented in accordance with the
British conception of feudal landlordism. And they also thought that
collection of land
revenue from a few land-lords, would be far easier than to collect it
from each individual peasant. So they warn ted to keep those newly
created landlords to support the foreign rulers. Thus land became a
private property a commodity in the market, which could be
mortgaged, purchased or sold. It has rightly been said that, All the
three types of colonial systems (i.e., Zamindar, Royatwari, end
Nahalwari) despite their apparent dissimilarities led to the
disintegration of the village economy, permitted the parasitic absentee
owners to appropriate a large portion to substitute laming and
impoverished the actual tillers. Regarding land and revenue
settlement chiefs of the estates had a secondary position and primary
power lay with the British authorities. The right of the British
Government was supreme in so far as it was free to determine the
amount of revenue assessment on the land that was payable to the
State (Joshi, P.C., Land Reforms in India in Desai, A.R. (ed.), Rural
Siciology, Ibid., p. 441.).
82
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The system of intermediaries was not new and existed since long
from the times of both the Moghuls and Marathas. However, when
the East India Company took charge of this (South Orissa) tract,
they brought about Major changes in the officials of the land revenue
collection. By abolishing the office of the Gomasta the Company
Government committed a mistake. He was the channel between the
government and the cultivator and he was the man who had all
information about the land, nature of production and collection of
revenue. The mistake was heavy. The Government could not make
proper assessment of the land revenue and usually their calculations
went wrong (Jena, K.C., The Ascendancy of the British Raj in
Orissa,Punthi Pustak, Calcutta, 1982, p. 178).
The primary objective of early settlement was governed by the desire
of the East India Company to realize a large amount of stable revenue
and to create a landed aristocracy, which was of considerable help to
the company in the consolidation of its power and expansion of its
influence. That is why in the early settlements, no attempt was made
to recognize and protect the sub-proprietary and tenants right. This
situation led to acute distress and agrarian discontent among the
various classes of the peasantry.
As much as eleven short-term settlements were passed in Orissa in
between 1804 and 1337 (Jena, K.C., Ibid., pp. 194-195).
Dr. Srimali has observed that during the early settlement the revenue
administration, on account of lack of adequate information and
knowledge on the part of the companys servants, panned through
several experimental stages including the revenue farming system and
on application of law of sale for arrears of revenue. This profoundly
affected the land system and land tenure of these provinces (Srimati,
P.D., Agrarian Change, Agrarian tension, Peasant Movements and
Organisation in J.P. (Unpublished Thesis), Submitted in Lucknow
University, Economics Department, 1981, p. 80.)
83
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
A COMPARATIVE PICTURE OF BOTH LONG TERM AND retain their estates and on the other hand, the Company Government
SHORT TERM SETTLEMENTS wanted their support to sustain themselves in the province. The Rajas
had supported the Company Government and in return they without
The short term settlements were made during the period 1804 to
care or disquiet, continue to enjoy the estates and maintain a friendly
1837 A.D.
spirit in subordination and obedience to this Government. (Autchinsm,
The period of short term settlement caused distress to all sections. V.V., Engagement with the Raja of Boud on 3.3.1804: Treates and
Most of the local Oriya landholders had to cult their land, as they Engagements and Sanands related to India and Neighbouring
could net collect the huge amount from their fellow countrymen. As Countries; Vol. I, pp. 130.131)
a result they were in default and were replaced by the people who
These Rajas with whom permanent settlement was concluded were
case from Bengal. This made a great change in the social and
known as Tributary Chiefs. They had agreed to pay a stipulated
communal life in Orissa. The main interest of new landlords was
amount in perpetuity and without demur or excuse, the Tributary
collection of maximum rent (Statement of W. Trower, 1817, ACC,
Chiefs who were placed beyond the ordinary Civil and Criminal laws
No. 40, O.S.A. quoted in Jena, K.C., Ibid., p. 197.)
of the British, were from the following Estates :-
THE PLACE OF TENANTS :
Sl.No Name Sl.No Name
In the first phase of short terms settlements (1804-1837); the tenants
1 Mayurbhanj 9 Narasingpur
were utterly neglected. The Britishers justification was that the
2 Nilgiri 10 Rampur
tenants could fight their way and protect their own interest; which
was based on the principle of laissez-fair34. Land holders pleaded 3 Anugul 11 Talcher
that due to short-term settlement they could not improve their land. 4 Athagar 12 Tigiria
On the other hand, there were bitter feeling between the landholders 5 Dhenkanal 13 Hindol
and the tenants.
6 Banki 14 Sukinda
Subsequently some refome were made in the field of land assessment 7 Dasapalla 15 Keonjhar
and revenue collection.
8 Nayagar 16 Kandarur
The company had started issuing the Potta to the cultivators. The
There were 13 other Estates which did not enjoy such special
Potta was a written authority given to the tenants, Lord Cornwallis
laid great importance on the Potta as through it the interests of the There was no definite principle or reasonable ground on which this
tenants could be safeguarded and there would be no difference division among pertinently settled Estates was made. It had no
whether the settlement was permanent or temporary or even roywari. connection with the income of the estates. Following Table will show
But, in real practices, the Potta revolution was not successful and it the difference between the rates of land taxes and Jamma paid to
was only in 1837 when it was felt that more possible steps should be Government.
taken to safeguard the interests of the tenants. Even then, sufficient
88 85
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
There was no effort either by land-lords or by the Government to
bring any uniformity between Jumma and income collection and also
the land tax. The following Table will show it clearly:
Name of the permanently settled Estates Rate of Rent per acre
Tigiria Rs 2-11-5
Keonjhar Rs 3-00-0
Ranpur Rs 4-11-0
Mayurbhanj Rs 4-5-7
Nayagar Rs 3-4-1
Athamallik Rs 2-11-0
Dhenkanal Rs 2-11-9
Prior to 1936 when Orissa was not recognosed as a separate province
there were different systems of land legislation prevalent in different
parts of Orissa. Large areas in the districts od Cuttack, Puri, Balasore
were under the Bengal system of land revenue as they originally
formed part of the Bengal Province. For the major part they used to
consist of permanently or temporarily settled zamindar Estates and
the tenures were governed by the provisions of the Orissa Tenuary
Act, 1931 (Mohanty, B., Introducing Orissa. Konarka Prakashni,
Bhubneswar).
The small areas that remained were directly managed by the
Government called Khasmahal but the principles of rent settlement
were not different from those of zamindari area. There were 305
permanently settled Estates and 12,706 temporarily settled in the
coastal districts. Besides, there were more than one lakh revenue
free Estates in there three coastal districts.
The Sadara and Eargarh sub-divisions of the Sambalpur districts,
Nawapara areas of Kalahandi district came to Orissa in two
instalments with revenue and tenancy laws elailar in nature but
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
different in certain aspects. The Central Provinces Land revenue and
Tenancy Acts were applied to those areas. Ganjam and Koraput
districts had brought with them the Madras System. In a portion of
Ganjam district Rayatwari System was in vogue. Mutha Hoads in
the Agency areas of the Ganjam district were paying some Nazarana
to Government and collecting manuals from the people. Although
the state Government decided to abolish Mutha Hoads it was not
possible to give effect to this decision for sometime due to legal
difficulties. The system prevailing in Baliguda sub-division of
Phulbani district was similar to that of the Ganjam district while
Khandmal sub-division was under the law called the Khondmal laws
regulation.
In Sambalpur district the total number of Zamindary Villages were
1668. The areas of Khalsa consisted of 11,920 malgujars, 870 gaunti
and 16 Rayatwari villages. There were 54 main in Estates in Ganjam
district. 547 Inam Estates of the district were taken over by the
Government.
System in vogue in the State may be classified into three categories:
First, the Zamindary system in which the State had to do direct dealing
with the tiller of the land but only claimed a lump sum from the
zamindars or rotate holders fixed in perpetuity for a period; Secondly,
the village system or the Mahalwarl System; under which a collector
of revenue celled in different names in different areas as Goantia,
Pradhan, Sarbarakar etc., was authorized to collect the amounts of
revenue due from each of the tenants; and Thirdly, the Royatwari
system in which the amount payable by each tenant was settled
with him by the Government at periodical intervals on the basis of
detailed assessment. The Ex-state added to the diversity in a large
measure as different system prevailed in States under their own
laws and customs.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
adopted some of their major demands In the form of agrarian reforms
program, as a part of their national political programs.
The history of post-independence land legislations in Orissa as well
at in India can be divided into three parts on the basis of the nature
of these reforms. Firstly, the abolition of feudal institutions including
all intermediaries, secondly, the acts and reforms for tenants and
tenural rights, and thirdly, implementation of ceiling and
consolidation of holdings and non-government activities like
Bhoodan and Gramdan programs of Vinoba Bhave; which was helped
by the Government sanctions.
Thus in Orissa land reforms measures after independence was
cantered around four aspects of land: (a) tenure, (b) celling, (c)
distribution of surplus land among landless and (d) consolidation of
holdings39. After independence all these land reform measures were
mostly motivated to accomplish the removal of the deficiencies of
land ownership pattern and production relationship which used to
constrain improvement in agricultural production.
The land reform measures in Orissa were undertaken with a view to
bring about an uniform pattern of land tenure system, abolishing all
kinds of intermediaries and for providing proprietary rights to the
tillers. Imposition of ceiling on land holdings and distributing the
surplus among landless for bringing about an egalitarian
landownership structure was considered to be essential for inducing
farm investment and agricultural expansion.
TENANCY REFORMS:
Even in the colonial era there were few attempts to give some legal
and liberal rights to the tenants by the enactment of rent act of
1859, Bengal Tenancy Act 1885, Orissa Tenancy Act 1913, Orissa
Tenancy Reforms Act 1935-36, and Amendment of Orissa tenancy
Act 1937.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
steps could not be taken till 1858. It was in 1858 that the Court of
directors admitted that the right of the tenants in Offices had pasted
away in silence and the tenants had become more tenants - at - will.
It was with this realization that the Rent Act of 1859 was applied to
Orissa. This aimed to protect the tenants against enhancement of
rent without justification and from eviction. However, land-holders
had various other ways to penalize tenants as they collected not only
the lend rent but many other taxes also from the tenants. Taxes like
Dowalis, Najaya, Palataka and many such others were almost penalty
taxes. If the cultivators could not pay these large number of taxes he
could be ousted from the land (Moral and Material Progress in India,
1913, p. 176, Orissa Records.). Agrarian legislation of colonial period
in orissa on the whole contained many experimental phases and
policies like various short term settlements (in between 1804 - to
1837). Long term settlement (1937 - 67 - 97) and Permanent
Settlement (starting since 1803 till the end).
In general colonial set up of land-holding in Orissa was based on
triple hierarchy following the supreme British authority. Zamindars
Were holding the lands immediately after the local chief. And there
were a number of intermediately of maintenance holders (named
differently as Gaonties, Ganjhas, Sarborakaras, Thilkadars and
Pradhans) below the zamindars. Tenures carried no power of
alienation. Under the Zamindari tenure, the rights of property in land
were bestowed upon native tax-collector, who used to take no interest
in the actual cultivation of the soil. As a consequence of this the
owner cultivators were turned into the tenants at will on their
own field. Under royatwari system the cultivator was conferred with
heritable and transferable rights; however there was absence of a
property codified tenancy law.
Besides local chiefs or zamindars, there were also intermediaries.
Generally they were village chiefs. A village chief was entitled to
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
collect the rents and awards payable by the ryots holding lands within
the area leased to him and in return he was getting either completions
or grant of bhogra land with the grant of bethi from the cultivators.
He had, however, no right to transfer, sale or gift or mortgage the
land. In feet the village headman was the real authority in connection
with the land revenue administration at but he was rarely granted a
protected status (Pradhan, B.N., Ibid., p. 56.).
Thus an intermediary proprietorship was developed in between
zamindars and tenants. This class though a process of sub-infatuation
grew into a hierarchy of non-cultivating landed interest, pushing the
agriculturist towards a subsistence level.
British policy of settlement, revenue collection and tenure regulation
characterizes feudal (or semi-feudal?) economy of colonial India. In
addition to the degeneration effect of feudalism de-industrialization
(of Indian Indigenous small scale industries) added weight to the
already heavy pressure over land. This heavy pressure over land
stratified the Indian peasantry broadly into two groups. Firstly, Land-
owners, secondly, tenants-at-will and the share croppers. The creation
of zamindari system was aimed at maintaining an appendage to help
the colonial economic policy to flourish at the cost of Indian revenue
resources. Its land revenue policy was exploitative and rapacious. It
resulted in the transfer of lend from the hands of tillers to this hands
of absentee landlords, money-lenders, traders and commercial class.
The tenured legislation translated the owner of the land into tenants
at will and share croppers.
Thus the State, instead of actively encouraging the growth of rigorous
and free peasantry, acted as a barrier between the Indian peasant and
agrarian revolution (Desai, A.R., Rural Sociology, Ibid., p. 447).
And slow growth of agricultural development in between 1890-1947
led to either starvation or decline to problematic relations between
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
landlord and the tenants which caused discontentment among the
latter; and sporadically is spread out in the shape of peasant
movement.
POST-INDEPENDENCE PERIOD:
Soon after independence both the Central and state Governments
became interested in Indians rapid economic development;
undertaking the land problem as the key issue. For this purpose an
appropriate land-policy for the country was sought to be adopted
through the legislature by the initiative of congress party, which was
in power. But today nearly after four decade of independence, land
reforms has not produced desired results. Moreover there has been
an increase of landless labourers and below subsistence peasants.
The gap between the promise and the practice has led some to
conclude that land distribution was not conceived as part of an
economic development programs, but as a key tool in the
consolidation of the political power. It became basically linked with
a need for placating political demands and avoiding, when possible,
any major transformation in the agrarian structure (Parthasarathi,
G., in Economic and Political Weekly, 1983, Ibid., p. 13560).
The partial success of the earlier land reforms of free India are
accounted for the prolonged struggle of peasantry against zamindari
as part of the nationalist struggle, the alienation of Zamindar from
rural areas, and the struggle between the upper class and the zamindars
for political power in rural areas, over and above such reforms little
affected the rich peasants interest. Thus, partly activated by the desire
to mobilize the peasant masses for the national liberation struggle
and partly impressed and inspired by the independently emerging
and often spontaneous peasant struggles against the feudal oppressors
and British authority which sought to protect them, the Indian
National Congress aligned itself with the caste of the peasantry and
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
rights. The act provided that no tenant holding any land on the first
day of July 1954 or at any time there after shall be liable to be evicted
from such land by landlord. The payment was limited to 1/4th of the
gross produce of the land. No tenant holding permanent or hereditary
rights or terms of produce rent liable to pay rent which was not to
exceed 1/6 th of the produce. The operation of the Act had varied
effects in different areas. The provisions of the Act created enthusiasm
among the small cultivators particularly in the coastal district but
the cultivators could not take as much advantage as was expected of
this Act at they had to prove their rights in the courts, according to
the Administration Enquiry Committee Report, a number of cases
instituted in different districts from 1955 to 1957 was 4612. The
analysis of the cases filed suggested that about 70 per cent of these
cases were settled without contest or were dismissed for default of
appearance. The cultivators received very little guidance or assistance
either from the project officers in the community development area,
or political parties. But there was some saturating effect of this Act
in the sense that landlords began to sell their lands apprehending
that they would not be able to retain all of their land.
O.L.R. ACT 1960 :
Ultimately, the Orissa Tenants belief Act, 1955 was replaced by a
more comprehensive legislation for land reforms, known as the Orissa
Land Reforms Act, 1960. The land reforms Act not only provides
security of tenure to tenants and their protection against rack-renting
and arbitrary eviction; but also enables them to acquire better right
in their land, bringing them in direct relationship with Government.
Latter provisions marks the culmination of a long process of
legislative action taken by the state for basic reforms in agrarian
economy.
Its main objects were introduction of uniformity in landrights of
raiyats; provision of bettor rights in favour of temporary lessees,
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
In the post-colonial era first land reform in most of the States of
India, was the abolition of Zamindari and other (such as Imandari
and Jagirdari) Intermediary tenures . But in Orissa even before
abolishing the zamindari system one Orissa Tenants Protection Act
was enacted in 1945.
It was the result of peasant Struggles which was launched in 1946 to
protect the interests of the share croppers.
The State Government had taken steps to bring about tenancy refers
in revenue administration in the state ever since the formation of
Orissa as a separate province. The let popular ministry in Orissa
amended the Orissa Tenancy Act in 1937 to confer certain rights on
the tenants over his land, tank and trees. Then after independence
when the proposal for legislation for doing away with the intermediate
was in the air, landlords holding varying rights in the land began to
exist the share croppers. In coastal districts there were large scale
eviction. It was, therefore, necessary for the State Government to
pass the Crises Tenants Protection Act in 1948 to protect such
cultivating tenants. The act was not extended to Sambalpur district
where this problem was not acute. According to this Act landholders
having 33 acres or more of lands were debarred from evicting tenants
from the land they cultivated. The tenants having occupancy rights
were not bound to pay acre than 1/3 rd of the gross produce as rent to
the superior royate or landlords. The royate who had no security of
tenure were not bound to pay more than 2/5th of the gross produce
as rent (Mohanty, B., Introducing Orissa, Konark Orakashan,
Bhubaneswar, 1979, pp. 109-118.).
Prior to the introduction of OTP Bill on the floor of Orissa legislative
Assembly, a Government Press note was published on 29.11.1947 in
favor of tenants interest. The OTP Bill was passed in O.L. Assembly
after ten days from the publication of this Press note i.e., on the
9.12.47. There ware some changes in the Press note, when introduced
as OTP Bill.
93
In fact OTP Act of 1948 could not help the tenants much to protect
their interest. Because, the lone years of proceeding gave zamindars
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
enough time to manipulate and evict their tenants before enactment
of the Act. Secondly, even after the enactment of OTP Act the
landowners could defeat the purpose of enactment by changing their
tenants every year. The Grises Tenants Protection Act and Orissa
Tenants Relief Act could not protect the tenants as desired (Patnaik,
S.C., Land Reform Measures and Extansion of Production
Opportunities for Weaker Sections in Orissa. Monograph to. 9/83.
Department of Analytical and Applied Economics, Utkal University,
Vani-Vlhar, Bhubaneswar, p. 10.) One of the important causes was
the ignorance of tenants about the laws.
ABOLITION OF INTERMEDIARIES :
Enforcement of Orissa Estate Abolition Act 1961 has resulted in the
abolition of intermediaries between the cultivators and the State.
Secondly, cultivators were granted permanent and hereditary rights
in land for the first time and thirdly burden of feudal illegal exaction
were eliminated. The bethi begari, nazarana, veti and all other sixty
four types of feudal taxes were abolished with the elimination of the
feudal landlordism by the enactment of 1951: Orissa Estate Abolition
Act.
Cultivators were now free from the fear of ejectment from their land
except on grounds of arrears of land revenue. Letting and sub-letting
of land was prohibited so that the system of tenancy and sub-tenancy
could be eliminated.
Even the tenants who were cultivating the land of landlords for more
than last three years, got the possession over the land, got security of
tenure and were protected from ejectment.
Landlords ware denied the right of resumption of land already leased
out to tenants under any pretext including that of self cultivation;
their rights ware confined to only such land which they could prove
to be under their self-cultivation, the multiplicity of tenures was also
done away with.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Restriction was placed on future acquisition of land, either through
purchase or through gifts, so that the total holding of a landlord would
not exceed the limit of 33 acres.
But there were also many loopholes both in OTP Act and in the
Zamindary abolition Act 1951. The Zamindars were maintaining
their previous position taking the benefit of the shortcomings of those
acts.
Therefore, in order to further protect the rights of small cultivators,
the Orissa Government passed the Orissa Tenants Relief Act of 1935,
and finally enacted Orissa Land Reforms Act 1960 and 1955.
The enactment and enforcement of the above acts created
consciousness among the peasants about their rights. It was also able
to create a successful environment to some extent in changing the
land relations. The economic scenario also changed due to these land
legislations.
There enactment also stratified the peasantry of Orissa into various
groups. A class of rich peasantry including the looser landlords has
come up. Another class of middle peasantry has come up among the
erstwhile tenants who have become peasant Proprietors and also from
such feudal landlords who had descended to the lower ladder as a
result of enactment of acts and whose position had weakened due to
absentee Landlordism.
The biggest shortcoming of the zamindari Abolition Act, 1951 was
that it did not pay attention to the question of lane redistribution and
made no provision for imposition of ceiling of landholdings,
determination and taking over of surplus land and its redistribution,
such a law was enacted only a decade later.
ORISSA TENANTS RELIEF ACT, 1955 :
The main purpose of this legislation was to prevent eviction and to
arouse consciousness among the small cultivators in regard to their
95
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
by the landlords) was piecemeal and too half-hearted produce any
spectacular results. The enactment of O.E.A. Act 1952 has resulted
in abolition of Zamindary System with the abolition of intermediaries
in between cultivators and the State. Though cultivators were granted
right over the land by the enactment of OTP Act 1951; but by OEA
Act, 1951; they were grafted the permanent hereditary lights over
the land. All the feudal exactions like bethi, Veti, begari,
Nazrana, etc., were abolished Tenants were given right over
homestead, fruits and tanks and over and above over their homestead
land. Thus they were free from the fear of exactions and ejectment.
Despite these enactments, their implementation was not satisfactory
and their impact on the agrarian structure of Orissa is quite debatable.
The findings of a survey in Orissa, conducted by S.C. Patnaik showed
that the Estate Abolition Act was enacted in 1952 and its full
implementation is yet to be completed. There are still some Estates
in some from or other like Math lands.
No doubt these reforms have been able to create a conductive
atmosphere better production within a limited section. But the level
of capital accumulation and the rate of growth in agricultural sector,
had been below the targeted aim.
Land reforms in Orissa has been able to bring about a re stratification
in the peasantry; creating certain new classes. For example a class
of the now rich peasants has emerged after abolition of Zamindars.
After receiving the right over the land a section of tenants has been
transformed into peasant proprietors. This is one of the major impacts
of Various Land Reforms carried out after independence.
There are also some disturbing features. Middle peasants turned into
marginal peasants, and landless labourers, and upper middle peasants
into middle and poor peasants.
Abolition of zamindari has changed the system of revenue collection.
Ultimate authority of revenue collection has been transferred to
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
share-croppers and tenants; conferment of occupancy right in
homestead lands; settlement of disputes between landlords and
tenants; regulation of rent, protection of S.T. and E.C. raiyats from
illegal alienation of land; resumption of land for personal cultivation
by landlords; determination of non-resemble area of tenants; and
ceiling fixation on landholding.
ORISSA LAND REFORMS (AMENTMENT ) ACT 13 OF 1965 :
The State Government appointed a committee to consider the
legislative measures that would be necessary for introducing
comprehensive land reforms on the lines suggested by the Planning
Commission in the Second Five Year Plan. The subjects on which
they have submitted specific recommendations were: (i) grant of
voluntary right of purpose of ownership to cultivating tenants from
the owners of the land of non-reusable areas; (ii) ceiling on holdings;
(iii) administrative implementation of the necessary land reforms,
and (iv) Land records.
The recommendations of the Committee were specific except in
regard to the question of ceilings on the existing holdings and the
members of the committee were of opinion that a legislation based
on these recommendations should be sponsored at an early date. It
was also felt that without imposing a ceiling on existing holding the
purpose of the land reform will not be fully achieved, the bill thus
provided for imposition of ceilings on existing holdings, gave effect
to all the specific recommendations of the committee and provided
for a few other incidental matters.
Besides the above mentioned objectives, certain other amendments
of a formal and consequential nature were also made through this
Act. Chapter II of the Act which deals with raiyats and tenants were
brought into force with effect from the 1st October 1965, and
subsequently Chapter III of the Act was enforced vide Notification
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
No. 78619-Re, 78/65 R D/8-12-1965, land for personal cultivation
and determination of non-reusable lands of tenants, Chapter IV,
contained the land ceiling law, which was initially declared
unconstitutional, was delayed for a long time and then it was in
January 1972 that it was brought into force by a judgment of Supreme
Court. In 1973 the above three acts were revised amended and
enforced with effect from as the 2nd October 1973*, Sec 3 of the
Act gave overriding effect on other lands. Section IVth- (i) stipulates
an important provision, specifying the persons, who may be deemed
as raiyats, having permanent and heritable rights in land.
These provisions had far-reaching aims to achieve. While they have
enabled the persons in occupation of private lands of Ex-Rulers and
Personal Service tenure holders under such Rulers and the members
of their families who were entitled to occupancy right under Clauses
(g) and (h) of the D.M.S. (Laws) Act, 1950 to perfect their right
under the present legislation, they have also provided opportunity to
the weaker sections of the tenant, like temporary lessees and under
tenants to acquire better rights in their land, Statutory provisions of
this nature were hitherto
CEILING :
Ceiling was a part of Land reforms Act, 1965; but each after in 1975
ceiling laws were actually implemented in Orissa. The delay in
enactment ever though it was mooted in1970 helped the big laud
owners to indulge in benami transfers. In Orissa 76 lakh hectares of
surplus agricultural land was available but only 45.70 lakh hectares
of ceiling surplus land could be made available for distribution among
89, 161 people. It shows that hardly a little over one acre was
distributed per beneficiary.
CONSOLIDATION OF HOLDINGS :
Orissa Agricultural Act, 1951 was enacted to provide, among other
things, for consolidation of holdings. But no step was taken to attempt
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
consolidation under this Act. When in 1970 Government decided to
take up the new scheme, this Act was scrutinized and was found to
be inadequate. A new legislation drafted mostly on the lines of the
Punjab and U.P. Laws, was therefore drawn up and pasted at the
Orissa consolidation of holdings and Prevention of fragmentation of
Land Act, 1972.
After conducting pre-consolidation work in the pilot areas for about
two years, the ground work was completed for taking up actual
operation under the statute. Accordingly OCH Act, 1972 was put
into operation. Statutory operation under this law has been taken up
in selected areas in the districts of Cuttack, Purl, Balasore, Ganjam,
Dhankanal and Mayurbhanj during the year 1973-74.
In spite of the above enactment of land legislations; It was not
implemented properly in the state due to non-availability of land-
records, and maps. In order to remove these difficulties, the Orissa
Survey and settlement Act was passed in 1958 for uniform application
throughout the state. This Act provides for Survey, preparation of
record-of-rights, and settlement of rent on a uniform pattern. The
maintenance of records has been made the responsibility of the
Tahsildar. This law has thus met a long standing need for Survey and
Settlement operations and maintenance of record-of-rights.
IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS OF NEW LEGISLATIONS:
Post-independence period is marked by a planned effort to build up
a new institutional frame-work and a new type of land tenure system
in which the worst and most anarchistic forms of feudal exploitation
were eliminated and scope and incentive was Provided to the
cultivator to put in his effort and resources to improve his land and
improve the agriculture. But the earliest land reform measures like
OTP Act of 1948, OTP Act of 1951 (which were aimed to protect the
interests of the tenants against the arbitrary eviction and exploitation
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
important legislations; viz., Orissa Tenants Protection Act 1948 and
Orissa Estate Abolition Act 1951, were preceded by serious peasant
rising in the countryside of Orissa But the Orissa Land reforms Act
of 1860 and most of the subsequent amendment acts witnessed simple
legislation and judicial decisions.
Lane legislation up to 1950s were in a way the fulfillment of the
commitment or national elites. But these were never so smooth a
process. It witnessed massive peasant initiative and their vigorous
u-rising. All these prepared a situated and completed the ruling elites
to pass certain bills in favor of peasantry. But the dilatory produces
and loopholes in the laws defeated the very purpose of these
commitments.
Moreover, because oft the lack of initiative on the part of peasants in
the implementation of above land legislations in Orissa. Peasants
failed to consolidate even the limited gains which could have accrued
to them through these legislations. This reveals a basic weakness in
the strategy of peasant movements in Orissa. The Inference could be
safely drawn that an average peasant gets frustrated if he finds that
he is not able to reap the benefits of his struggle which had culminated
in the legislation of the land reform bill. Therefore peasants
movements will have to pay attention to this aspect also and find out
a strategy for effective implementation of the land reforms. Only
then leadership would be able to induce a common peasants to
participate in their future program.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
collector assisted by S.D.O. and tehsildars; which was previously
vested with the heads of zamindars by the help of Tehsilder and
Tahsil staffs.
Even after nearly four decades of independence and three decades
of agrarian reforms; the agrarian structure and land relationship in
Orissa is not very satisfactory. Intermediaries abolition left
inequalities of land ownership and the position of the share-croppers
and labourers regained unchanged, though it has helped to confer
permanent, heritable and transferable rights on occupant peasants,
to limited extent. However, abolition of landlordism has not been
able in Orissa to skin off the top-layer of great absentee landlordism.
Apart from riding society of the parasitic Zamindars the zaaindari
Abolition had few positive impacts. There was no noticeable increase
in agricultural productivity which could be attributed to zamindari
abolition, and also there was no change in peasants - land relations45.
The Orissa Estate Abolition Act was exacted in 1952and its fall
implementation was delayed till October 1973. Its implementation
was delayed by creating several impediments such as legal, political
and administrative. Moreover powerful landed interests had their
allies in the decision making machineries at various levels.
Zamindari Abolition did not wipe out the middle-mans problen from
the agrarian scenario. Middle men continued to be separated by
tenants in ex-zamindari and raiyatwari arise where owner-
proprietorship had long been pre-dominated. In pre-independence
period some effort was made to better their conditions by providing
them the occupancy rights. But the actual impact was found to be in
favour of landowners. Even after the enactment of Act in 1981, a
great majority of the tenants were found to be in insecure position.
ROLE OF DEFFERENT PRESSURE GROUPS :
The period of the whole fifth and mirth decade if twentieth century
in Orissa witnessed many peasants movements. Peasants were
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
involved in such movements to bring about change in agrarian
structure. Peasant movements had been led by at least two
ideologically different forces. One was led by the Socialist Party
and other was led by Communist Party of India.
There was another movement - The Bhoodan Movement led by
Vinoba Bhave, pursed not on the principles of clean struggle but
which preached mutual compromise. Instead of nationalization of
property they believed in trusteeship of property and wanted the
distribution of some land by landlords through change of heart of
landlords. Its appeal was to the propertied class and wanted re
distribution of land without bringing about any fundamental change
in land ownership pattern. In this group the main constituents were
representing the upper class interest.
The other section of peasant organizers under Kisan Sabha
represented the communist ideology which believed the elimination
of landed upper-class by a well-organized class-struggle.
Zamindari Abolition in Indin did not abolish the class conflict among
the peasantry, though the Community in Orissa had demanded its
abolition without paying any compensation, but the dominant
zamindari lobby in the legislature and Gandhian principle of
compromise and live together did not allow the formers stand to be
translated into reality. Seen after the congress had assumed power in
Orissa and had promised progressive and radical agrarian reforms
its move was too slow in legislating land reforms. At the same time
peasant movements were serious on the different parts of the State.
Those movement serious questions of there and right over land. Orissa
Tenants Protection Act of 1948 was not able to satisfy peasants.
By this time Orissa Government moved a bill for Zamindari abolition.
But it took nearly six years for its enactment. There was long debate
in the Orissa Legislative Assembly on the question of compensation,
102
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
chares and rights. The peasant movements had its echo in the
legislative Assembly also. But on the other side, all the zamindars
big or small also protested in one voice against this bill. They did
their best in various ways to obstruct the passage of bill and its
implementation through file blustering in the assembly and adopting
dialatory tactics in the court. Besides this zamindars also wanted to
demoralies the tenants by attacking their leaders and workers
physically. In the course of struggle many peasants were killed, and
a lot more were wounded . Situation became so chaotic, that state
functionaries were ordered to protect the law and order; which also
followed into a number of killing and atrocities by police.
The ruling circles depended primarily on legislation as the instrument
of agrarian reforms and seriously neglected its implementation. They
believed that once legislation has been enacted the required Socio-
economic results would follow automatically. But they were either
ignorant or were deliberately ignoring the need of creating political
will among the deprived actions which could have ensured effective
implementation. Because implementation is a major function of
degree of consciousness and organization of the potential
beneficiaries. Any way, the paper rights of Zamindari abolition act
would not have the change of slightest success unless Communist
Party of Orissa had not led a strong and militant peasants movement
both in protecting their rights over land and attacking landlords direct
interference in the course of implementation of the Act.
Any way intervention from the top for the implementation of such a
defective legislation could only be able to provide ease paper rights
to tenants and bring about a quasi-transition in the agrarian structure,
These the power-balance again tilted against the rural poor.
LAND LEGLISATION AND PEASANT MOVEMENT:
Land legislations of Orissa can be broadly categorized under two
groups taking into consideration causative criteria. Thus the two
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Despite this calm and harmony at the grass root level of the society
the feudal political structure was withering away under the stress of
the new forces. Embracing all these and at the top of these utilitarian
forces the feudal form of society bearing all the wounds and bruises,
CHAPTER-4
the injuries and mutilations of the transition continued. The Rajas,
Maharajas lording over an army of intermediaries continued their PEASANT RISINGS IN ORISSA: COLONIAL
economic exploitation and political domination. The Mughals, the
PERIOD 1803-1946
Marhattas and the British used to settle terns of loyalty with them
and in return used to defend then from external and internal dangers. The more we go deeper and broader into the socio-economic relations
It seems the storms in the upper strata of this period did not stir the and trends of Orissa the greater becomes ones anxiety to know how
peasantry very deeply. men of different categories and people in general of Orissa have
POLITICALLY MINOMER MASSES: reacted to them. Particularly in this area of fast moving times it
becomes quite incomprehensible that men could accept such gaps
The social tranquility at the base of the society was born out of the
between the possibilities and the actual social realities lying down
helplessness of the masses and their utter demoralization. The ever
without challenging the hurdles from different directions.
changing political overlords were the elements of the same
exploitative set, which did not provide an alternative to the people. This aspect has to be studied from another and a more practical point
of view also, No society can be lifted from one level to another
The main reason for such indifference was the semi-slavery
without involvement of the people. How far this involvement is
conditions of life for the labouring people. Economically high rate
conscious and how far unconscious depends upon the state of
of rent (in kind) for the land, low wages and serfdom for the
consciousness of the masses and their economic and political
agricultural labour, high rate of interest, forced unpaid labour for
formations or alignments. Men come and go from time to time but
the landlords, moneylenders and the Rajas, were the major types of
they do leave back something for their progeny not only in terms of
exploitation which bent the economic backbone of the peasantry and
material achievements but also in terms of spiritual and
the rural labour. Socially, un-touch ability, the convention of
temperamental heritage. They are of course not static but all the same
surrendering to the will of the village head, arbitrary degradation by
they are there to be reckoned with when we contemplate any action
the revenue, collecting agencies and other intermediaries, and burden
of the people.
of the extravagance of the top classes drove the general masses into
demoralization, despair resulting in non-involvement in the social Again the mood and activities of the masses we find varying From
and political managements. region to region and state to state in our country. Why so? And with
what political and socio-economic consequences? How are these
The tribals when pushed out of the lands upturned by them used to
reflected in the case of Orissa? All these are of vital significance not
generally retreat towards more remote and deeper forests. They
only from an academic point of view but also from a practical point

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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of view if we are really serious about any qualitative development of
this part of the country and its people, pitied for generations as poor
and backward.
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND:
Coming to the topic we have to divide the study into two phases,
namely, the peasant movement of pre-independence period and that
of the post-independence period. No doubt there is a continuity of
certain basic problems and certain features of life in both the periods.
But inspite of the continuity the breaks and changes in the life and
activities of the people from one period to the other are also quite
clear and significant.
ADVENT OF THE BRITISHERS:
The rule of the East India Company was established in Orissa in
1803 and it was completed in 1804 after subjugation of Sambalur.
Till then and for sometime even after that Orissa was is chaos in all
matters. British from the north and Maharastra from the south were
trying to play with the Rajas and the people of Orissa against each
other. The Rajas had varying loyalties. The Paikas (soldiers) mainly
coming from the Khandayat Caste and their commanders from
Khyatriya caste were the main instruments of the Rajas for their
political ends. But the passions roused in the name of Oriya patriotism
or heroism did not last long in face of the arbitrariness, cliques and
conspiracies and ultimately superior armed forces of the outsiders.
Prolonged strife, warfare end political instability led to neglect of
agriculture, small scale village industries and also the export trade.
The export trade of Orissa had by then become a part of Orissas
economic tradition. It gave impetus to a chain of growing and
developing economic activities inside the Kingdom. Cottage
industries for pilgree works from silver, for commodities from safe
stone, Ivory and horn, village industries making cloth from cotton
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and silk worm fibres celled tasar etc., were developing and
expanding. They were all very seriously affected and damaged by
strifes in this transitional period.
Act, architecture, culture, and sculpture, patronized by the local Rajas
and created by death defying talents of the land, received blows after
blows from this intruding chaos. The conflict between the trading
cum manufacturing community and the local Kings had not then
developed. They were at the stage of mutual help and co-operation.
Hence the external factors which sought to interfere with the social
process at this juncture of Orissas history did not affect the intra-
class conflict of the existing social order.
THE VILLAGE LIFE:
The economic structure of the society continued at before with the
agricultural workers and peasants working on lands and the artisans
working in cottage and village industries. They constituted the
productive forces on whose products the society was living, trading
or warring or whatever else it was doing.
The business community. Tells (oilmen), Saluns, Pataras, Kaudieas,
Kumutis etc., were rowing the boat of trade through ups and downs
of the political tides and ebbs. Some among them and the big land
holders also practiced usury to provide finance to the peasants. The
washer men, barbers, carpenters; Mansons rendered various types
of services. Brahmins as per the tradition were the custodians of
religious discipline of the old society and performed rites and
worships for others. Educational and administrative servicer were
managed by the people of upper castes like Brahmins , Khytrias,
Karnas and Khandayats, who also recognized the exceptional talents
of men of other castes. Cultural activities like Gitavinova (Song
drama), Pala Gaan (group lyrics with popular explanation), Gotina
dance, Chadheyya and Chhavu dances etc., continued more of
less uninterrupted, with the royal patronages and popularity.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of holdings and destruction of the cottage industry that the progress avoided confrontation except in a very few exceptional cases. They
of insipid stagnation set in. built up their own villages without any intermingling of the non-
tribals. So did the harijans (untouchables). Their villages were like
Hence the suffocating stagnation of Orissas economy in the 19th
Ghetos habitations demarcated for the black people in white ruled
century, thus caused by the new economic order which the coming
South Africa and America. The harijans being unable to put up with
of the Britishers ushered in the province and not due to the physical
the discomfort of fresh living like the tribals continued to live in
and cultural factors of the land. The demonitism of Kowri. and its
near proximity with the higher caste despite continued humiliation
replacement by the new legal tender in silver coins brought ruin and
and fortune,
bankruptcy to many. A new system of revenue management was
defining the place of the productive forces in land along different BRITISHER BEGIN: TO RE-ARRANGE:
parameters. The old Jagirdars of Moghul period were withering away.
After the assumption of the overall authority in Orissa in 1804 the
The new landlords were taking their place not always peacefully but
East India Company introduced certain changes in revenue
through acute fiscal and social battles in the field and the law courts.
administration, which were formalized through regulation of 1805.
The feudatory states called Esrad took shape. The Rajas had varying
The collection of land revenue was entrusted to Zamindars. The
political powers under the canopy of British rule. Very few area were
British subdued the then Rajas and Maharajas and as a price of peace
left out of this system for direct collection of revenues by the general
secured the right to partake in the produce of the land through land
administrative authorities.
revenue receipts. They were called Karad rajas (rent paying
The Rajas were hereditary, but the landlords were not so by law. In kingdom).
fact, however, the institution of zamindari by heredity was
The British influence began to touch the social life at various contact
established. For their political reliability British had a preference
points, Christian Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant
for feudal tradition in spite of fact that they had to vanquish the
Churches, followed the British Political Power, They penetrated quite
feudal rulers to convert the country into their colony. During the
deep into the interiors and concentrated their missionary work among
Moghul period the land did not belong to revenue collecting
the tribals and harijans. Recruits from upper castes and classes were
administration. Land was owned by the peasants without any
very few.
interference by the revenue collecting agencies.
The middle and upper else see were taught English education, special
At the outset Orissa was a Division under the British rule. It was a
statue and honors for English knowing people, government executive
part of the Bengal province. The agents of Marhatta and Moghul
jobs of lower ranks, creation of a bureau crazy on the basis of English
revenue collection were brought under one institution. The Bengal
education and the British prerogatives and initiation of a spirit of
revenue laws were applied to Orissa. The revenue collecting agents
competition to win favour and awards of the British rulers. This King
were termed as Zamindars. This was according to 1805 regulation.
of the privileged became the spokes-men of British rule, spreading
They appointed one Revenue Commissioner for Orissa in 1918. He
praises for the Superior British discipline, justice, education, culture,
was given powers of general administration also. Below him there
customs and costumes etc.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Administratively, in the later period, Orissa (Cuttack, Balasore, Puri,
Sambalpur and Anugul) were tagged to Bengal and Bihar. This
arrangement continued till 1912, when Bihar and Orissa together
forced a separate province. In 1935 Orissa became a separate
province, and Ganjam and Koraput districts were detached from
Madras to be integrated to Orissa.
Though it is not our purpose to write the history of Orissa of this
specific period yet without reference to the historical background no
specific feature of the life of people can be correctly understood and
portrayed. Hence while we deal with the problems and movements
of the peasantry of Orissa in the given period we have to keep in
mind the total picture of life in that period and its continuous affects
and impacts on the peasantry and his economy and politics.
EARLY BRITISH TACTICS:
The British rulers buttressed the class of feudal landlords and the
Rajas to operate their exploitative and coercive policies and measures.
Their drive to extract ever increasing amount of land revenue to see
the local administration and manipulation of trade and commerce to
the advantage of British capital, continued to aggravate the distress
of the tolling peasantry. The age old hierarchical social structure,
the caste system and the religion come handy to legitimatise and
patronize this process of exploitation. They also helped to keep the
exploited divided and subdued. We have to remember that in spite of
all these frequency and militancy of the peasant agitations grew and
spread.
The Britishers introduced Mahalwari system in the areas where there
were no Rajas. The system produced absentee landlordism. They
acted as an alien rent collecting agency. For rent, both the ryots and
Zamindars depended increasingly on money-lenders. These money-
lenders need to be financed by urban usurers and indigenous banking
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
houses. Also the wholesale merchants were a source of money supply
to the rural money-lenders. Thus the rural credit net work developed.
It did not bring about any development of the rural economy. It only
helped the maintenance but at the cost of basic solvency.
In the second half of the 19th century the crisis of the agrarian
economy depend. The British policy failed to bring about economic
growth through Industrialization or other programmes of public
utility.
The peasant struggles were a by-product of the stagnant economy of
the state during this period. The stagnation of the economic of the
State during this period is sought to be explained by some historians
in terms of agro-climatic factors. The appologia of certain historian
of the period about the British rule that Orissas stagnant economy
of the 19th century was due to reasons other than economic policy
of the Britishes does not hold good in face of facts. However, the
climate of the coastal districts does not differ much from that of
Calcutta or Madras and the geography does not provide leas
opportunity for industry or trade including naval trade in Orissa.
There were also attempts to explain away the stagnation with reasons
like failure to respond to the warming influences of the industrial
revolution, to the societys other worldliness, its lack of enterprise
and the caste exclusiveness of groups etc.
Strictly speaking there was no industrial revolution in India during
the period. On the other hand even the indigenous cottage and village
industries were struggling against heavy odds for their survival. The
textile cottage industry faced serious physical and economic attacks
from the British traders and Manchester industries and the sea trade
by Orissas merchants faced death during this period. Thus it was
not due to caste or philosophical Carriers, but an account of the
collapse of agro-economy rising rural indebtedness and instability
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHARACTER OF THE RISING:
Though grievances on several issues like salt monopoly and currency
manipulation etc., got piled up yet the Paik Rising of Khurda was
mainly agrarian in nature. Their economic and agrarian grievances
were simply ignored till Khurda rising of 1817. It was primarily an
agrarian rising and took the Vehement Shape of anti-British
Movement. (Mishra, P.K., Ibid., p. 104) The British Officers also
admitted this and described it as a complete revolution which
gradually acquired political complexion.
Historian P.K. Mishra says that the Paik revolts from 1817 to 1824
were the first political upheaval which was popular and anti-British
is character, having far reaching consequences for the British
administration in Orissa. It was not rarely a Paik rebellion but a
popular arid most scale rising of the people splint the alien rulers.
Whatever sights the justifications of thsee uprising the fact remains
that they were unorganized and spontaneous. This very characters
of their puts certain limitations on the scope and consequences of
the rising. The uprising intensified anti-British feelings and sharpened
the aspirations to have a any in matters of economy, hut they could
not bring about any reversal of British policies. Yet the British rulers
became cautious and careful and took a few palliative measures to
meet the grievances.
RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN PARLAKHEMUNDI:
Another revolt of consequence was the resistance in Parlakhemundi.
Parlakheaundl was on the boarders of Oriya speaking area adjacent
to Telgu speaking area. To the north, west and south there are hills
were covered by dense Ghats. During the 19th Century the hills wore
covered by dense and deep forests, The State had an area of 369
square miles. River Banshadhara maintains good stream all the year
round.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
were collectors to discharge the same responsibilities at the district
level. The collectors were wested with some judicial powers as well.
These high administrative offices used to be controlled by the
Britishers generally.
The net effect of the British way of administration was to concentrate
vast powers in the hands of the bureaucracy arid the Zamindars.
Compared to earlier way of life this change meant more interference
in the social life of the people, which so far had remained at a distance
from the direct contact with the State officials, and in times made
them hostile towards them. Even the Zamindars were very fearful of
the all powerful collectors and the Commissioners. The Rajas were
fearful of the political Agents and the Residents who came later on
to look after the feudatory States.
The assessment of land revenue was indiscriminate. Payment was to
be made in cash, not in traditional Cowrie, punctuality in payment
war strictly adhered to. Failure entailed loss of holding.
From 1830 onwards new sections of landed aristocracy, who made
fortune in trade and money-lending, emerged and purchased estates.
The settlement officer of Balasore writes: About one third of them
are persons who in addition of being proprietors have come money
lending business and the balance are professional Mahajans (Jena,
B.B., Orissa - People, Culture and Polity, Kalyani Publishers, New
Delhi, p. 266)
In Balasore district the principal purchasers were Teli mahajana
and the Tamuli merchant, in Puri district religious foundations, the
priestly class and big mahajans of Cuttack. According to the then
settlement officers one half of Zamindari interests had passed to
the religious and usuring classes. In south Cuttack the Small estates;
passed to the mahaJana families, the Chaudhuries of Bhingarpur
etc., and the Mahanta. In north Cuttack and Balsore, purchasers of
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
land sometimes came from cultivating classes, probably representing peasants and the tenants-at-will, due to the general socio-economic
rich landholding. During this period a considerable section of peasants causes, were forced into the traps of usury and once they got into it
lost their land and worked as non-occupancy tenants and share they had no escape, but to part away their land. This process continued
croppers. throughout the nineteenth century in Orissa.
The two concepts of the new administration which brought about KHURDA PAIK RISING:
radical transformations in the structure were :- (1) the right of land
This oppression of the new economic order bent the back of the poor
was vested in Zamindars and Princes; and (ii) land was considered
tiller to the limit. And once it was reached the proverbial worm began
as private property in the British sense so that it could be sold and
to turn back. The first revolt that erupted as early as in 1817 was
purchased and the Government acquired the authority to auction it
known as Paik rebellion of Khurda. (Facts compiled from Mishra,
in cases of non-payment of revenues.
P.K., Political Unrest in Orissa inin 19th Century, Punthipustak Pub.
Once the concept of property (a sellable commodity) was introduced 1983, Calcutta, pp. 1-45) It was under the leadership of Oriya rajas
in regard to land, the institutions of old mobility and old land relations (kings), The people was indignant due to high handedness of the
started to crumble. The marked forcer case into operation. Land white conquerors. The paikas rose in a body against the Britishers.
transfers began to take place on a large scale. Not only Zamindies
The direct cause of the revolt was resumption of jagir lands enjoyed
were affected by it but even gariats (princely states) were put to
by the Paikas. Major Fletcher use to manage the estates of Khurda
disgrace. The States like Daspala Keonjhar, Nayagarh, Narsingpur,
after British occupation. Not only resumption of the lands but also
Tigiria and Hindol were put to public auction on account of repeated
planned oppression on the Paikas to break their militancy aggravated
failures on part of ruler to pay the tributes to the British overlord. As
the situation. The corrupt police and the revenue collecting agents
there were no bidders available, the government itself purchased there
were the instruments of oppression and exploitation.
States. But later on political considerations, these states were restored
back to the rulers. The lands of the Paikas passed into the control of Zamindars and
Talukdars. They expropriated bulk of the produce. No law was there
The impact of this concept of treating land as a commodity in the
at that time to control or regulate the share. The Zamindar used to
market sense and practices was far reaching. The new and old
collect Nazarana for themselves. Forced unpaid labour was also
Zamindars and the princes who survived this phase acquired new
being exacted by these elements from the peasants. The new system
characteristics. Rent racketeering and eviction of tenants of decides
introduced increasing pauperization. The age-old way of living and
on failure to bid for and pay the higher rent, became the order of the
the caste structure kept this peasantry divided and unorganized. In
day. It resulted in the growth of a class of non- production rent
general passivity ruled supreme among them and therefore organized
receivers accompanied by the dispossession of impoverished peasants
movement could not be thought of, yet there were several spontaneous
with small holdings. The letter became known as tenants-at-will
and scattered upsurges. The time, place and leadership in each case
when lands were let out to them on share after dispossession. Usury
was also different.
played a very great role in this process of land alienation. The poor
114 115
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
was a no rent campaign. This movement continued upto 1930s with
many tides and ebbs. After the First World War a Rayat moves
started in Ganjam district which continued till the 1930s (Dash, H.,
History of Royat Movement in Ganjam, 1947, p. 2.)
These movements were sporadic no doubt but were not entirely
unorganised. The leadership was thrown up by the locality. These
movements used to be called as Melis. The protests was mainly
against the oppressive practices of the Zamindars and the rulers.
Subsequently, however, they turned into anti-imperialist agitations.
The immediate issues of the movements differed from area to area.
In Puri district the peasants rose against the Mahanta (the priests)
of the monasteries for their exorbitant demands on the produces of
Math lands. In the princely states, the major defends were for the
abolition of forced and unpaid work for royal families and arbitrary
taxes which were of64 main types and the system of Veti or
Nazarana to every new generations of the princely states appearing
on the scene, system required the subjects to make compulsory gifts
to the ruler.
In such a background the melis of Daspalla and Nilgri in 1929 took
place. In the former state the tribal people physically resisted
compulsory recruitment of labour for Africa. Repression was quit
terrible, people who out of fear hided on the trees were reported to
be shot down by the combining operations of the armed forces. In
Nilgri, the revolting people followed the method of Hizarat. They
left their homes in large numbers and camped near Balasore railway
station outside the State. This attracted the attention of leaders like
C.F. Andrews etc. Through their intervention the nail came to an
end. But repression continued in a selected manner against the ring
leaders of the movement.
They were jailed on false charges and were subjected to inhuman
indignities inside the jail.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Thus topographically the estate was encouraging to the rebels and
discouraging to the invaders. The area came under the Eest India
Company formally in 1766. The Gajapatis (rajas) ruled the Estate.
The Savaras, Doratnams and Bisoyees were his faithful fighters.
They used to enjoy rent free Jagir lands for their services. A full-
scale feudal set up prevailed in the estate till British Rule. (Russell,
G.E., Reort on the disturbances in Parlakhemundi, Vizayanagaras
Ghumsar, Vol. 1 and 2, Madras, 1856, p. 2.)
The treaty of Hyderabad which brought Parla (the short-form by
which the estate is generally spoken of) under the East India Company
was not accepted by the then Raja Gajapati Narayan. He defied the
authority of the Company and carried on anti-British Campaign with
the help of his faithfuls. Mustering good military force the Britishers
Confronted him in May 1768. The Raja was defeated but did not
surrender. He fled to the forest. His followers made G.G. Deo, the
Gajapati.
In spite of all these hot and cold methods the Britishers could not
queen Parla up to 1834. After that of course the spirit of revolt got
suppressed by and large though localized troubles by the Paikas
continued up to 1856-57.
The Britishers appointed a number of managers to administer Parla
estate but as Mr. Russel reported, most of them only looked after
revenue collection and failed to take care of the law and order
position. The protracted character of Parla unrest is attributed to this
failure of the administrator.
GHUMSUR RESISTANCE:
Ghuaeur was one of the oldest zamindaries of southern Orissa.
Sreekar was its previous raja. He could rally his loyal subjects to
rise against the British Government. This rising continued up to 1818.
According to Sri K.C. Jena, the economic condition of the people,
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
particularly that of the Kondhs was responsible for restlessness of
Ghumsur from time to time. So the special Commissioner Mr. Russel
advised two fold tactics to meet the situation first, to settle the Rajas
and their high officials with some concessions and the second, to
grant a few economic privileges to the down trodden tribals. Bisoyee
of Ghumusar became the link between the Government and the
Kondhs. (Jena, K.C., The Ascendancy of the British Raj in Orissa,
Punthi Pustak, Calcutta, 1982, p. 40-44)
However each movements of the first phase in the 19th century were
more or less sporadic and unorganized. They took place both in
zamindary areas and the princely states. The rising in the princely
states in the subsequent periods were also anti-British, anti-feudal
and agrarian risings.
The Ghumsur rising of 1835-37, the Kondh rising of 1637-56 and
Sambalur rising of 1837-64 were mainly anti-colonial in nature. The
Keonjhar rising of 1867-68 and 1891-93 were against their feudal
chiefs. But the Nayagarh rising of 1849-52 was an agrarian rising in
true sense of the term. It was against the burden of taxation by their
feudal lord. All sections of people Paikas, Dalabeheras, and
sarbarakas took the form of a no-rent Campaign. Later on it spread
to a few other princely states like Kanpur and Daspalla.
All these primary upsurges of the 19th century brought a national
awareness among the people particularly of garjat (princely States)
arena. Thin subjective development helped the national movement
of 1920s and 1930s including anti-imperialist and anti-feudal spirit
among the participants.
It must be admitted that the then leadership of these risings had no
committed ideology nor had they any long range objective before
them. Therefore the tactics of the colonial government to appease
them through rewards, allowances, compensations and relaxations
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of dues etc., worked quite well with them. The loyalty and regards
of the subjects for their native rulers helped in the anti-British
alignment on the one hand and gave sufficient scope to the liberal
feudal leadership to manipulate the popular movements as they lived
on the other. The land policy of the British rulers to divide and rule
the land owners was not fully understood by them. This policy
weakened the feudal solidarity which used to help the anti-British
risings.
THE SECOND PHASE OF THE REVOLTS (1900 TO 1920)
The impact of the National struggle for freedom had their echo in
Orissa. Some royal families and the liberal feudal aristocrats seconded
some patronage to the movements. This impact of the national scene
brought the era of spontaneity in peasant struggle almost to a close
in writes. The Utkal Sava, an organization composed of eminent
personalities like Gouri Shankar, Madhu Babu, Gokulananda
Chaudhurey and Pandit Govinda Ratha pioneered the national Cause
in the state before the foundation of the Indian National Congress.
In 1886 the Sava turned into The Orissa Provincial Congress
Committee the Provincial Unit of the Indian National Congress. Their
main drive was to integrate all the Oriya speaking areas into province.
Besides the cross currents of national discontent against the British
rule and the frequent boundary adjustments of the State, there were
some more influence which travelled into the life of the province
during this period. Among them noteworthy are the peasant revolt in
Mysore in 1830, the revolt of Blue-Indigo Planters in Bengal in 1860
and of the general peasantry of Bengal in 1870, victory of Russian
Revolution in 1817 and radicalization in Indian politics etc.
In 1903 there was a peasant in Khurda against increase of rent by
one paisa (Patra, S., Orissa Ra Krushak Andolan, Nuadunia ap.
Issue, 1983, p. 27). In 1911 in the feudatory State of Talcher there
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
their strategy and made a representation to Bihar-Orissa Government
for remission of rents. With printed leaflets the League workers
moved from village to village and collected the signatures of the
cultivators after a great deal of persuasion.
With great difficulty the League made a dent into the villages and
built up unite of Kisan Save which in due course and ultimately
became the bedrock of a Kisan Movement throughout Orissa. Leader
like H.K. Mahatab Joined the Kisan Sava but soon come out as being
a Zamindar because he had no stomach for such food. In the
meanwhile at the All India level, the Congress socialist Party (CSP)
was formed under the leadership of Archery a Harendra Dev,
Jayaprakesh Narain and others. The Orissa League merged with
this All India body.
As already pointed out Utkal Samilani had the seeds of economic
and political contradiction within itself. The conflicts manifested on
the issue of landlord-tenant relations and sharing of political power.
As the freedom struggle intensified the conflicts grew.
Orissa became a separate province in 1936 by virtue of Government
of India Act, 1935. It did not cover all the Oriye speaking areas. The
new province remained under the Government rule for sometime.
After 1937, the first election, Orissa came under Congress Ministry.
The first Prize Minister (as named then) was Biswanath Das he came
of a rich family This Minister and election in Moghubund area,
that is, the regular province, brought about a situation congenial to
popular movements in the Province as well as Garjats (Princely
States).
The All India Kisan Sava was formed in 1936 at Faizpur Orissa unit
of the Sava was formed in 1936 at Faizpur. Orissa unit of the Sava
was formed in the same year. The response to the sava was tremendous
of an organised movement of the Kisan in Orissa. H.K. Mahahtab
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Kanlka Meli in Cuttack district also took place during this period
in 1886 and again more powerfully in 1916, The first was against
the general oppression of landlords, and the immediate cause of the
second uprising was enhancement of the land rent by 2 annas per
acre.
This Kanika Meli reflected quite sharply the peculiar character of
Orissas political situation at that time. The Congress was the only
organized political party in Orissa at that time, but it did not take the
formal responsibility of organizing and conducting the Kanika Meli,
despite the fact that many Congress workers of the area and the
province were very such with the movement. The leaders of Orissa,
however, at that time were too much engrossed with more important
issue of a separate utkal province comprising all the Oriya speaking
areas. This self contradictory behavior of the congress party was
due to the fact that many landlords and rajas, who were related to
each other, were supporting the, Swatantra Utkal Movements, but
did not share the overall ideology of Congress movement. They were
still more allergic towards peasant movements.
The Raja of Kanika took the help of the government to suppress the
movement. Police let loose the sad orgy of violence, look and torture
to break the morals of the people. Property worth 20 lakh rupees at
that time was said to be looted. Women were captivated. Chakradhar
Behra became hero of the sell. At last the government was compelled
to settle rent directly with the landowners.
The Provincial Congress Committee withdrew from the movement
in later years and Gandhijl also did not appreciate the Meli. Even
then the masses went forward led by their local leaders.
DEVELOPMENT OF CONGRESS ATTITUDE:
Towards 1920 Pandit Gopabandhu Dash, the most outstanding leader
of Orissa of that period was too much busy with Utkal Samilan
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working with the aim of forming a separate, province of Orissa. He
tried to get the Samilani to the line of Indian National Congress, to
the current of nationalism and freedom struggle overflowing the
country at the time. But he failed; the leadership of the Samilani
did not agree. He had to organize P.C.C. separately. He and
Madhasudan Das provided the leadership to the newly formed
Provincial Congress, with their effort an integration of the peasant
movement into the congress program was accomplished in the State.
Lalmohan Patnaik, one time speaker of Orissa Assembly, describes
the development in the following words: Orissa which for years
stood outside the orbit of the Congress could not continue as such
after what took place in India. She (orissa) caught the spirit of
nationalism, rather the spirit caught her (Ghosh, S., Orissa in
Turmoli: A Study in Political Developments, Bhubaneswar, Bookland
International, 1979 pp. 23-28) The deepening of the economic crisis
fanned the discontent among the peasants to the extent that the INC
was compelled to take certain immediate steps though hesitating to
fight for the cause of the peasantry. The importance of the peasant-
movements was gradually accepted by the Congress leadership and
Pandit Nehru took up the agrarian question and pointed out its
relevance for the Congress. During non-cooperation movement a
Congress Journal The Independent wrote on 13 Jan. 1921 that the
peasants must form. The bulwark of the nationalist movement
(Pandey, G., Ascendency of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh 1926-
34: A Study in imperfect mobilization, Delhi, Oxford University Press,
1978, pp. 152-154).
The landlords were generally hostile to Congress and friendly with
the British. Therefore at the grass root level Congressmen used to
come into conflict with the landlords. In this conflict the Congressmen
used to seek and receive the help from the peasants. They took up
specific issues of the peasants at different locations and relate them
to the general causes of freedom.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Despite Gandhijis constructive program, congress did not come very
near to the struggling peasants till 1930. It was at this time that it
was fully realized that without mass participation of the peasantry
the notional movement was bound to be weak and slender. This
awareness probably helped to shift the centre of gravity of congress
campaign from urban to the rural areas
Salt Campaign (Labana Satyagraha) of 1930 attracted good number
of rural poor of the Coastal districts into the fold of the movement.
Orissa occupied the second position in the country in this campaign,
At INCHUDI in Balasore district the campaign was started on the
13th April 1930. Leaders like Gopabandhu Chaudhury and Acharya
Harihar Das led the movement here. At Kujang in Cuttack district
leaders like Rama Devi and Malati Chaudhury led the struggle. About
3 thousand Satyagrahis were arrested and fine of about rupees 2
lakh cash imposed. No Chowkidari Tax (a levy imposed on the
villagers) campaign at Inchudi under the leadership of the Congress
socialist leader Nabakrishna Chaudhury was started at the same time.
It involved about 13 villages. The Government in the name of
collecting the tax looted property worth 60 thousand rupees.
SOCIALIST TREND IN NATIONAL MOVEMENT:
Towards 1930a band of young men who were inspired by Marxist
philosophy who sought to Channelize the Congress movement along
the lines of class struggle16. In 1933 about half a dozen Congress
Socialists net secretly and forced Utkal Congress Workers
Communist League. They vowed they would own no private
property and whatever private property they possess would be given
over to League.
They dreamt of starting a powerful Risen Movement immediately
throughout Orissa. But the political outlook of the people soon made
them realize that their plans were non-practical. So they changed
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Famine occurred in Bengal in 1943. Though with less rigor, similar
situation also developed in Balasore district. The leaders were inside
the Jails. The people, particularly the peasantry rose spontaneously
to prevent smuggling of food-grains, to dehoard the hoarded stock
of the big landowners and to prevent black-market of controlled
commodities.
After 1942 movement the political differences in ideologies between
the communists on one hand and the congress; between Congress
socialists and forward Blockiest came to the surface. It is no less
important to note that congress leaders like Govind Peadhan, veteran
Kisan leader of Ganjam district, Gobind Singh, a stubborn tribal
leader of Nilgiri, and hundreds of Congress workers working in the
rural areas of Orissa left Congress and joined the Communist Party
in spite political errors on the national policy. These people played a
very prominent part in the peasant movement of Orissa after the war
period.
The decade of Kisan Sabhas life (1936-46) closed its first chapter
of its history with the following achievements to its credit:-
(a) Creation of a approach and outlook to peasants problems among
the political workers and tha peasantry of Cuttack, Puri Balasore,
Ganjam and Bakibalpur districts also.
(b) Creating a framework of organization to mobilizes the peasantry
independently.
(c) Publication of a weekly organ of the Kisan movement Krushak
and making it widely popular by associating it with states
peoples movements and other progressive spontaneous
agitations.
(d) Achieving a number of reforms in the existing tenancy revenue
law from the congress ministry of 1937-40.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
(Raja of Agarpada) became Orissas representative in AIKE. (Dey,
S.C., Diary of Political Events in Orissa from let April, 1936 to
15th August, 1947)
An era of peasant struggle started and continued right up to 1942.
The movements in the regular districts were directed against the
landlords and the British Government. The movement in the princely
states was directed against the Rajas and the British. The leadership
and character of these struggles varied from place to place and time
to time. Particularly during 1937 to 1940, the peasant movements
inside the princely states had greater political significance as they
seem to challenge the state-power directly. And terrible and
thunderous was the explosion which shook not only Orissa but also
Delhi.
The people in Talcher rose in revolt in 1911, 1922 and 1932. Baud
people protests against higher rents case on in 1930. It did not lead
to any as cult on feudal houses. Attacks on police stations (as Madhi
in Dhenkanal) were there in which the local people took part. Even
in the feudatory states the 1942 movement did not hit the royal edifice
anywhere. Rather the political Department took charge of
administration from the Rulers who were asked to remain outside
their states. Perhaps the political Department suspected the loyalty
of the Rajas. Thus the 1942 upsurge was almost totally devoid of
any anti-feudal edge so far as Orissa was concerned.
The 1942 movement broke the organizational demarcation existing
so far between the congress of regular districts and the Prajamandals
and their state level organisation State Peoples conference of
feudatory States. Barring the communists all other political parties
in the State (were in the same political parties in the state) were in
the same political line. The Government however spared none. From
the very beginning of the movement they rounded up all prominent
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and active elements of all the political parties including the
communists. That united in beheading of the peasant movement in
Orissa till the war was over. The Congress Socialists played a very
prominent and militant part in 1942 movement. But they also desisted
from giving the situation art anti-feudal turn. They thought like
congress leaders that the cross firing among different classes of Indian
people would weaken the national movement.
FROM 1936 TO 1947:
The Kisan Sava was born in 1936. It was organized on the initiative
of the socialist and the communists (who could not openly do my
thing in the name of their party as it was under ban till 1942). For the
areas of feudatory States no Kisan Sava was organized till merger of
the states with Orissa Province in I948. State level organization was
famed for those arese in the name of states people conference. The
provincial organization was the State unit of the All India States
Peoples Conference of which Pattavi Sitaramya and afterwards
Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru were the Presidents. The unite which
worked in each State were named as Prajamandals. Barring very
few out of 26 almost all the states had their Prajasandals. Pattavi
came to Orissa (Cuttack) and addressed the States peoples workers
on the 23rd June 1937 and laid down the general strategy of the
movements that followed.
Similarly Mohan Lal Gautam All India Kisan Leader, addressed the
Kisan workers of the State on the 30th March 1936 and gave
inspiration to fight against the Zamindars and the monks of Maths
(Monasteries).
In 1937 there was a big conference of the peasants at Balanga in Puri
district. It was decided that the K.S. would work independent of
congress and Zamindaries should be abolished without compensation.
In 1939 the first conference of the K.S. was held at Sergarh of Ganjam
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
district. The Congress ministry took office on 19th June 1937 and
the Kisan Sava intensified agitation demanding certain immediate
reform in the existing Tenancy laws. The agitation created pressure
on the ministry both from inside and outside. Consequently the returns
were introduced through legislation.
From 1942 to 1945 there wee a lull in the movements as almost the
entire leadership of the K.S. and the State people conference were
put behind the bars. After release the leaders started the share croppers
agitation under the banner of K.S. The Tebhaga (landlords there 1/
3 and cultivators share 2/3 of the produce) had already started in
Bengal. A movement for these demands started at Khurda in Puri
district and was followed by similar agitations at other places.
There was a marked difference between the Kisan agitations of 1937
and those proceeding this years. The previous movements were
largely against feudal oppressions. On the other hand the later
movements had radical demands like confiscation of the properties
belonging to Mathas, abolition of Zamindaries without compensation,
giving the land to the tiller and banning eviction of the tenant at will
by the land-lords.
with the release of leaders from Jail led to revival of Prajamandal
agitation in the feudatory States. The new agitations were directed
against political and administrative power of the rulers. The
Prajamandals however never the issue of land reforms, as there were
big land holders in the leadership of the Prajamandals. The congress
leaders who used to exercise their influence on these Prajamandals
had also some landed interests. Surprisingly the socialist and
communist leadership which had a good deal of influence over these
Prajamandals, also failed to raise these issues except in the case of
the Nilgiri State.
During war and immediately after the 1942 movements there was a
devastating cyclone affecting Balasore district along with Bengal.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
a result of which it was saving towards freedom struggle and thereby
weakening the British authority. However, such spontaneous
movements were always short lived as they lacked organization, long,
term perspective and were generally confined to snail localities.
The organized movements on the other hand rooted wider sections
of the peasant community in all the regions of the provinces, with
varying degree of intercity and specially in the districts of Ganjam,
Puri, Cuttak and Balasore. And the peasant movements emphasis
shifted from immediate resistance against some injustice of
Zamindars to a demand for structural changes and at times for the
abolition of the system itself. With the formation of Kisan Sabha the
demand of land reforms, facilities for irrigation and credit and for
prohibition of usury and other exploitative systems came to the
forefront. They also brought about radical changer in the objective
and direction of peasant movement by linking it to the colonial and
imperialist exploitative system. Agitations for reforms during
Congress Ministry under British rule exposed the hollowness of
provincial autonomy which was incapable of solving basic agrarian
problems and feudalistic exploitations.
Because of the change in perspectives the Kisan movements after
formation of the Kisan Sabha and Prajamandals took up many general
issues like scarcity of essential commodities and rise in their prices,
distribution of fallow government lands, atrocities by officials and
oppression by landlords. Forcible and organized occupation of tanks
and fallow lands belonging to the estates of the landlords and the
government became a new feature. Attempts at eviction were set
with fierce resistance.
Period of Transition:
The period of transition from colonial India to free but dismembered
India covered roughly three critical years from 1946 to 1948.
In this period of transition we find that peasant mobilization took
place at an unprecedented scale. The issues involved were mainly
twofold : one, to resist the large scale eviction and the other to
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
(e) Recruiting a large number of cadres from the fold of Congress
and for future activities and further extension of its base, and
(f) Lastly, replacement of the vacillating landlord dominated
leadership by a determined and dedicated left leadership of
congress socialist party and Communist Party over the peasant
movements.
Its major failing was its inability to mobilize the peasantry against
the feudal Class through the current of freedom struggle.
Its second failure was its indifference towards educating and
promoting the rural proletariat for leadership of the peasant
movements. Its third failure was to confine the mass organization
and mobilization to the following of the C.S.P. and C.P. up the peasant
movements in Orissa before 1920 could be separated into two distinct
periods exhibiting divergent nature of the peasant struggles.
The peasants uprising in the 19th Century, under the British Raj
were almost entirely unorganized revolts of peasants at different
points of time and at different locations. The issues were mainly a
protect against the excessive rents and its begar labour practices of
the feudal Zamindar s. The protest movements were born
instantaneously and remained confined to a vary small area. And
these protest movements were also confined largely to the tribal
population in the 19th century; the rest of the peasantry though
suffering the safe degree of tortures exploitation and humiliation
wars a silent spectator of the scene so to say. This may primarily
because while the tribals had no alternatives available to them to go
into the forest and settle there, such an option was not available to
the non-tribal agents for cultural and social reasons.
With the advent of the national movement the focus and strategy of
the peasants revolt underwent a significant change. The issues as far
as the peasants were concerned were the same before, i.e., high routs,
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
share of the peasant in the share cropping model of cultivation and
exploitation of labour through begari. However, the focus of the act
shifted frost the Zamindars as such to the British rule in general. The
leaders of the national movement while organized the peasantry on
the specific issues of their interest did also utilize their energy for a
broader goal of national Independence from, the British power. The
peasants wore told that their specific troubles of land relationship
would automatically be solved once the country acquires
independence.
This line of conducting the peasant movement was necessarily for
amalgamating all sections of the society to sake a united force against
the British Raj. The inter-class conflicts of the agrarian society were,
therefore, relegated to a hack seat in the peasants protest uprising
that followed under the banner of the national movement. In terms
of their coverage these movements had a wider spatial spread and
unlike the peasant struggles of the earlier period did not rm&aln
localized.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHAPTER-5
PEASANT MOVEMENTS OF POST
INDEPENDENCE PERIOD IN ORISSA:
A PRESSURE TOWARDS POLITICAL AND
SOCIAL CHANGE
We had seen that movements. in the 20th century were of two types:
one which were local, spontaneous, unorganized and which lacked
long term perspectives and the other type of movements organized
by Kisan Sabhas, Prajamandals, Congress and other parties which
had long tam perspectives and were an integral part of the national
freedom struggle. The spontaneous movements were usually launched
against physical oppressions, enhancement of rent, eviction and usury
etc. Besides these some local and sporadic movements were launched
against commutation of kind rent into money rent and for recognition
of occupancy rights. Peasants wanted to weaken the prevailing feudal
system that caused exploitation and oppression. Since this
exploitation and oppression affected both the middle and the poor
peasants they unitedly launched struggles against it in the beginnings.
But as time passed, the unity of there two strata of the peasantry got
weakened and finally led to break up of united struggles.
The peasant uprisings drew the attention of authorities to the crucial
importance of growing agrarian unrest. Various tenancy legislations
were pasted to diffuse agrarian crisis. Certain protections were also
granted to the peasantry. But the dilemma with the British rulers was
that how to appear both the peasantry and the landlords at the same
time on issues like rent redaction etc. The landlords were loyally of
the British rule wile the peasantry was harassed by the landlords, as
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
movement of grand alliance, i.e., peasants, workers and bourgeoisie
was changed to the struggle of class-allies of the agrarian sector.
But the forms of struggles were not uniform throughout the State.
They varied according to the decisions of the local leadership of the
Kisan Sabha and the Communist Party, Organization and spontaneity
both were combined in the Risen Movements of this period. Very
often the clashes between the landlords men and the occupying
peasants took place spontaneously. The leaders would rush to the
spot subsequently and would give the resistance a shape and plan.
Also, in general, the Kisan Sabha and the C.P.I, took certain broad
decisions and tried to implement them in the affected areas. Broadly,
the movement at this phase was led by the C.P.I, in a regular and
organized manner and by the socialists in s casual manner. Though
the call for resistance to evictions was given to the peasantry of the
whole province, yet the response was limited to pockets of left
influence and their peripheries.
New local leaders sprang up from among the fighting peasantry. The
main burden of the work was born by them. The fighting peasantry
was more attached to these new local leaders rather than to the district
level or provincial level leaders.
FACTOR GIVING FILLING TO THE MOVEMENTS:
The Orissa Tenants Relief Act pasted in 1946 gave some impetus to
the movement also. It also gave an inkling to the landlords about the
shape of things to coasted motivated then to take quick steps to keep
or to dispose off their holdings as per their legal and local
convenience. The Act provided little benefit to the organized
peasantry and practically nothing to the unorganized. It kept the doors
open for the landlords to rearrange their holdings and complete
evictions for the purpose.
The demands of the fighting peasantry were as follows along with a
few local additions and alternations:
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
check manipulation in records by the intense- diaries and landlords.
Landlords offensive had started much before the peasantry and the
Krushak Sabha became aware of it. Landlords became conscious
that the end of British rule was in sight and therefore they wanted to
manipulate records to make tenants claims weak before the enactment
of land reforms promised by the Congress Party.
Political Mobilization:
Though .share Croppers movement was started in 1946, the efforts
to organist the peasants of organize the peasants of Orissa dates back
to mid 1930s when in India leftwing groups were trying to channelize
mass enthusiasm into organized actions. The Central Committee of
the Communist Party of India declared in a Statement of policy that
our real freedom today means taking the land from the feudal lords
and handing it over without payment to the peasant.
The Communists initiated the shore croppers movement in 1946.
The major demands were 2/3rd share in the produce for tenants,
blanket ban on eviction of all types of tenants till land reforms and
abolition of the Zamindari system and confiscation of Zamindari
properties to the state without compensation. These interim measures,
they demanded, should be taken through interim legislation. The
socialists in their areas also followed this line of the movements in
order not to alienate the small and middle landlords in the election
both the communists and socialists had to revise their slogan of land
to the tillers and modified the demand to 2/3rds share only.
Role of Urban Class Interest Group: Congress Constituents:
In the transitional period H.K. Mahatab was the chief Minister of
Orissa. He was known as Raja of Agarpada. Agarpada was a
permanently settled Zamindari estate. Many other prominent leaders
of the Congress Party had also Zamindari or sarbarakari or more
other sort of intermediary estates. Apart from the statutory estates
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
big sired landholdings ranging up to thousands of acres belonged to
many congress leaders. They were the first to anticipate that under
the growing pressure, the Congress Government would bring land
reform legislation, and the reform, lost no time in disposing off lands
which they could not possibly bad-kept under their direct possession.
Once the process started in Balasore and Ganjam districts under the
initiative of Mahatab and Biswanath Dash (the Prime Minister of
Orissa in 1936), it spread like wildfire, big medium and small
landholders took part in this eviction campaign (According to one
peasant and freedom fighter Bhagirathi Das of Agarpada estate,
attacks started on his properties between 1942-45 when he was inside
the jail as a freedon fighter. Of course he seems to have exaggerated
the high handedness of Mahatab, but the fact remains tat he had
become landless by the time he came out of the jail in 1945.).
Absence of any strong party or mass organization proved helpful to
landlords to steamroller the tenants and share croppers of many
generations and to smoothly throw them out of their lands (There
were no such organizations in Lakhmannath Mahasavas estate and
in the estateu of Raja Manmath Nath Dey, Radha Prasanna Das,
Agarpada in Balasore district. So hardly any resistance was there in
those estates.)
Organization of Protests:
In Soro, remuna, Chandbali and Bhadrak areas there were some Kisan
Organisations under the leadership of the Communists, and socialists.
Adjacent to the area was Nilgiri, the feudatory state where the
Communist party had a sizeable mass following. So struggles for
land and share etc., first broke out in there areas of Balasore district.
Similar was the position at Jajpur and Bhingarpur areas of Cuttack
District, Sergarh and Aska arena of Khurda, Nimapara areas of Puri
district. The eviction by the land-lords was first act with a stiff
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
resistance in these arenas. Gradually the never of resistance spread
to bother areas where there were no peasants organization leading to
emergence of peasant organizations and resistance on their part in
new areas.
An attempt was made by the C.P.I. to give an organizational hope to
the spontaneous movements of Kisan of the State on the demand of
two-thirds share for them. It spread too many villages in Cuttack,
Puri, Balasore and Ganjam districts (Quoted from the Provincial
Committees Report to the Central Committee of CPIs Kisan Sabha.).
Cultivators on their own harvested and shared the paddy in keeping
with their own demand. The movement for rent-reduction in Ganjam
district and for the distribution of rent in proportion to the lane help
forced government to pass bill providing for rent reduction. Kisans,
however, did not wait for this till to come into force and started
enforcing their demands against the zamindars of sheragada,
Dharakota, Sanakhemidi and Takarada.
Main Characteristics:
These movements organized during the transition period were quite
different from the earlier movements both quantitative and
qualitatively. The following characteristics mark the importance of
peasant struggle of this phase. Firstly, the share cropper movement
had the general characteristic of spontaneity in thee. Secondly it was
unprecedented in intensity and sweep.
Thirdly, behind this struggle there was greater unity and solidarity
of all sections of Kisan including poor peasant, share croppers and
agricultural labourers, and also women and children. Fourthly, it also
enjoyed support of non-kisan sections such as workers, students,
women. Fifthly, the struggle was more vital to the Interests of Kisans
who were therefore more militant, resolute, self-confident and
prepared to undergo suffering and hardships, Sixthly, it was more
political and revolutionary. Thus, on the whole the pre-war peasant
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
issue of receipts. Tenants under the leadership of the Communists
and the Socialists refused to give the share without receipts. This
issue was widely fought out in Balasore district, particularly in
Bahanaga area, which also brought out a few Communist workers
into prominence (like Nityananda Deb Goswami and Sailesh
Moharana). Tenants also demanded wages if they were to carry the
produce-share to the landlords house as there was no provision in
the Act as to the place where the division of share would take place
at the actual field or the tenants threshing floor, or at the landlords
premises. The presumption was that the sharing would take place on
the land cultivated and there the duty of the tenant was over.
Peasants in spite of various odds took local initiative. They tried to
defend their possession and control over the produce and regulate
its distribution. Landlords resisted peasants. By and large officials
took the side of the landlords. The police was let loose on the militant
peasants and their leaders. The role of the Congress leaders had also
changed. They had joined hands with the rising peasantry before the
independence of the country, but after Independence they utilized
the police and military force against peasant militants.
Wherever the landlords musclemen retreated the police appeared in
defense of the landlords. That was the general feature of the period.
Charges of illegal assemblage, criminal trespasser, theft and dacoity
and many other false and fabricated criminal charges were brought
forward against the leaders and workers of the fighting peasantry.
Thousands of such original cases were lodged in different law courts
of the State with a strategic purpose of dragging the movement into
court-rooms and breaking its backbone there.
To counter the confirmed oppressive of the landlords and officials
the C.P.I. organized wide spread propaganda campaign through
meetings and conferences. The peasants objectives, issues, demands
and actions were popularized in those conferences. Peasants issues
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
(a) Blanket Ban on evictions till full-fledged lead reform was
introduced;
(b) Mobile courts to determine the landlord tenant relations on
disputed lands;
(c) Limiting the share of the landlord to one third of the yield sinus
strew;
(d) Paddy sheaves to be divided of the field and receipt to be granted
then and there;
(e) Penalty to landlords against illegal eviction;
(f) Return of the land to the dispossessed tenants.
The following amendments to the then existing OTR Act were
demanded:
(a) to delete the provision to give 1/6 of the produce to the landlord
and 1/3 to the insider as provided for Jaipur and Koraput
districts;
(b) to delete the provision to deliver the paddy sheaves at the
landlords place within one mile without payment;
(c) improvement expenditure on land to be borne by the landlord;
(d) no share of the landlord in the second crop or in any additional
crop if the landlord did not share the cost of inputs;
(e) on fallow lands cultivated for Rabi crops the landlord to take
4 annas per rupee of the values of the products as Padar Kara
(fallow land rent) and not acre than that after recognition of the
cultivator as the tenant on the land;
(f) the landlords share in straw. chaff, etc., to be abolished;
(g) the temporary law to be so amended as to make It simple,
effective enough to give full protection to the cultivating tenant
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and rules to be accordingly framed.( Facts complied from
Mukti Yudhya Weekly dated 18.8.48, p. 6.)
Along with the above demands, the Kisan Sabba gave call for unity
of agricultural labour, Biddle peasants and the share croppers to flight
for comprehensive land reforms and to render help to each other in
case of attack on possessing tenants.
Such confrontations used to take place mainly at the time of
cultivation, if the landlord came to evict and at the time of sharing
the produce if the landlord demanded more or refused to give receipt
against delivery of the share.
There were also a few other general issues on which the peasantry
was agitating at that time. These were (a) reduction of water tax, (b)
fixation of the purchase price of paddy and rice, (c) abolition of
Bayashi (taking two seers of paddy unpaid for every share of paddy
sold), (d) abolition of Sukti (an arbitrary reduction of the weight
from the paddy sold on account of moisture content) and (e) right of
the tenants on their homestead area belonging to the landlord or the
Government. A is generally in such, cases police used to take the
side of the landlords it led to the demand that the police and the
Government, should be impartial and help the peasantry In securing
the gains accrued under the law.
When such conflicts between peasants and landlords began to spread
the State Government came out with an ordinance fixing the share
of the landlord at two-filth and the tenants at the three- fifth of the
gross produce in June 1948. Also a blanket ban was laid down on
eviction of share croppers for two years, But this ban did not give
any right over the land to the share cropper. Further this ban did not
apply to landowners having leas than 33 acres as family holding.
Married sons were to be treated as a separate unit of the family and
they could each claim 33 acres as family holding. There was also
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
another loophole which could enable the landlords to avoid the ban.
If they could prove that they had shared the inputs of cultivation
with the share-cropper they could evict the tenant.
Within ten days of it issue the Ordinance was placed before the Orissa
legislative Assembly in the shape of a Bill. There was tremendous
opposition from the members with big feudal tails. Mainly the
representatives from Ganjam district under the lendership of
Biswanath Das, the Ex-Prime Minister of Orissa gave a pitched battle
on the floor of the assembly and succeeded in reducing the period of
ban from two years to one, that is upto the 15 January 1949.
Critical Issues:
The share of the landlords as fixed in the Bill was not uniform for
the whole State. It was l/6th for the Zamindars of Ganjam, 1/3 rd for
the inamdars and 2/3 rd for the landowners of Royatwari areas. The
Madras land Act was in vogue in Ganjam and Koraput districts. This
act already specified lesser share for the landlords of the share-
croppers. In North Orissa there were systems like Sikim, Sanja
and Dhulibhag etc. the dhuli-bhag tenant was cost helpless as he
was to share the paddy and straw etc., with the landlord in equal
halves. The Sikim had his rent in cash kind, fired and his possession
was more or laws secure. Sanja tenants entered into contracts with
the landlords to pay a mutually settled amount for the lands they
used to cultivate. There was no provision in the new stop gap act for
issue of any receipt to the tenants for the share they gave to the
landlords. That loophole gave opportunity to the landlords to deny
that a landlord tenant relationship existed in case of lands under
dispute.
After passing of this so called Relief Act Receipt for share became
a very vital issue. The Political Leaders defending landlords interests,
including prominent Congressmen, amply campaigned against the
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
communist activists mobilized the Ganjam Royats to resist eviction
fight, for two thirds share to tenants, and also against the zamindari
system, they also formed a peasants government in the area, tried to
frame their own rules and incited peasants to disobey rules and laws
of the Government. In order to maintain and expend their activities,
they took resort to guerrilla activities and agitation, for which the
hills and jungles of Ganjam district provided them the best hide-
outs, the Communist Party of West Bengal sent its guerrilla loaders
and training masters to train them. But it was not a well-equipped
force, neither in terms of its war-tactics nor in terms of its political
revolutionary ideology. However, these para-military lines of the
communist activities led to the eruption of peasant violence in
Takarada in June 1948, causing death of 12 persons and injury to
about a hundred. The face to face confrontation started throughout
the district following clashes between the peasants and police, and
peasant and musclemen of zamindari. Peasants of Tekarada, thus,
precipitated the struggle and inspired the share croppers of the whole
of Orissa to fight for their interests, Puri and Cuttack districts were
the other places of share croppers movement in between 1946-48.
Peasant protest was almost similar in character with the scattered
eruption of rural violence here and there. Most of the state-committee
leaders were from, these two districts. In these two districts peasant
actions were expressed in a store sophisticated manner in the form
of dharana, demonstration etc. In these two districts state leadership
was more alert and consciously formulated the plan of the movement.
Balasore district was another centre of peasant struggle during the
same period. Near Soro police-peasant confrontation resulted in death
and injuries. Other districts like Sambalpur and Mayurbhanj also
witnessed clashes of similar type, but these ware few, so in these
areas peasant uprising was at a very small scale. Due to weak peasant
organization, and slack mobilization, impact of the vibrations from
peasant outburst of coastal Orissa was marginal only, communication
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
were mixed with a few other general issue also, for example the
Conference at Chandaka in Puri district depend ad change of Forest
laws construction of embarkments and irrigation channel along with
share croppers right on land and produce. The Athagarh
demonstration (22nd January 1948) demanded confliction of Rajas
and Debottara distribution of the same among the cultivators and
replacement of the land revenue system by one single graduated
income tax with a free floor of 5 acres. They also demand subsidy of
100/- to a poor peasant as seed money for his cultivation work.
Everywhere a few general demands were added to the share croppers
demands in order to rally wider support for the movement.
The merger of feudatory States in Orissa province in January 1948
and abolition of statutory landlordism in the regular province in 1950
added new dimensions to the movement for cultivating rights and
there in produce of the lands. The tenants who cultivated State lands
were not protected by the existing Tenants Protection Act of 1948.
The rent collecting officers put such state lands for open auction for
annual cultivation. This was done with a view to earn more revenue
from the State lands. But this was against the spirit of Tenants
Protection Act, because the auction, in the first instances, blew up
the idea of a ceiling on landowners share in the produce and,
secondly, invited the highest bidder to oust the existing tenant.
These issues came up forcefully in village Paikpara of Brahmagirl
Police Station (P.S.), Village Goindala of Puri Sadar P.S., in Nilgirl
and Soro P.S. of Balasore district. While the struggles were on for
cultivating right and increased share in produce for the cultivating
tenant, problems relating to basic land reforms came up to the
forefront. Along with their demands for share croppers right the
slogan for unconditional zamindari abolition land to the tiller were
also raised.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Not only the administrative machinery but also many landlords openly
began to violate the law, which banned further lease out or transfer
of lands of any category after the prescribed date by the old owners
of the estates and statutory landlords. Some of them, such as the
zamindar of Rayagara Dharanidhar Das of Soro P.S. in Balasore
district, zamindar of Sergarh in Ganjam district, landowners of Aska
of Ganjam district leased out various types of lands with retrospective
dates.
They resorted to large scale evictions with the help of police. These
cases came to light due to the resistance of the tenants affected.
Though Kisan Sabha drew its main support from share-croppers but
it also represented interests of tenants and middle peasants; and its
program laid emphasis on the abolition of intermediary landlordism
and on the establishment of peasant proprietorship in land. The Kisan
Sabha became singularly committed to fight for the interest of poor
peasants, agricultural labourers and share croppers, upholding the
principles of equity, justice and dignity of labour.
Sociological composition of the agricultural population inside the
Kisan Sabha was a conglomeration of people frost different castes
and classes. Though the leaders were mostly from higher castes and
upper classes, the ordinary members were mostly from lower castes
and lower classes. Most of the tribal population belonged to the
lower class peasantry. Landers were mostly from the non-cultivating
class. Initially when the communist and socialist elements were
inside the National Congress Party, the Kisan Sabha was dominated
by a strong pro-rich peasant lobby. But the separate establishment
of Kisan Sabha by Communist after 1936 led it gradually to take
up the cause of poor peasants and share croppers. As a result of
this the share croppers movement alternated rich and middle
peasants.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Intensity of Share Croppers Movement:
Despite the clear-cut understanding of the agrarian classes and their
varied conflicting interests the leadership of share cropper movement
was not able to bring about a radical polarization in the Matrix of
agrarian relationship. Their unplanned strategy for the struggle and
lack of phased programme prompted them to raise a conflicting slogan
simultaneously. For example, demand for equitable distribution of
land on the basis of land to the tiller, and economic demand like 2/
3rds share to the tiller were raised simultaneously it the same time
they also gave the slogan for abolition of the zamindari system.
These un sequential demands at a time also baffled different classes
of the peasantry on the question of their commitment to the peasant
Movement of post-independence Orissa. The demands reflected fixed
class-character in general but a pro-poor peasant and anti-Zamindari
bias was noticeable in particular. Unlike the unspecified demand on
the issue of tebhaga; (in the first phase of its struggle), in Orissa
share croppers Movement, the Kisan Sabha was very specific on
the 2/3rds there to the tiller. This reflects a sharpened understanding
on the part of the communist leaders of the agrarian crisis and the
nature of class conflict in rural Orissa.
Ganjam district was the centre of intense agitation of the share
croppers from the period of said 1930s. The immediate cause of the
insurgency was disapproval of the zamindar to recognize a big tenant
named Gobinda Pradhan in Takarda, who had a number of sub-tenants
under him and Managed cultivation of more than 500 acres of land.
But being an influential person, as the President of Ganjam Royat
Sabha and enjoying much of economic power as being in possession
of vast chunk of the lands of the zamindar, he was able to mobilize
the tenants and poor-peasants of the areas against the zamindar.
In the meanwhile, when the Kisan Sabha was formed, its leaders
joined this movement and finally acquired Its leadership, then, the
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
homogeneous class organization. Secondly, many zamindars in the
districts where agitations were launched, were able to use the rural
lumpen-proletariet at their personal musclemen who acted as the
instrument of their anti-peasant drive. Thus, the already emerged
melting conditions demanded full fledged peasant straggles but the
very nature of the issue limited peasants rebelling action. The number
of those who lost their lives did not exceed thirty. But arrests, police
raiding and looting was at a much bigger scale. In Ganjam district an
effort was made to set up a parallel government, but it could not be
sustained for a long period. The seizure of land wide spread and
cases were filed by both the sides in the courts. This reflect their
level of political consciousness.
The leaders of the share croppers movement of Orissa costly came
from upper and middle class familiar. The participants strength
consisted in the Joint front of poor peasants, share croppers and
agricultural labourers. Unlike frequent stagnation in the Tebhaga
movement (in 1946) the share croppers movement of Orissa shows a
sustained acceleration and further precipitation of revolutionary
actions. On the basic of available evidences of share croppers
movement of Orissa we may reject Hamza Alavis middle pageant
thesis as a generalized social locus for any peasant struggle. Because
Gobinda Pradhan, Mohan Das, Banamali Das most noted leaders of
the Kisan Sabha had the upper and middle class status. After the
share croppers, movement was over these leaders led another Kisan
Sabha agitation which was against the zamindary system itself. The
seriousness of the share cropper movement compelled the
Government to pass Orissa tenants Protection Bill. In the legislative
Assembly Baidyanath Rather, who belonged to the upper class,
opposed the zamindar lobby and advocated the cause of tenants during
the debates on the Orissa Tenants Protection Bill. One of the genuine
defects of the communist party was that where as their strategy was
for joint struggle, they raised issues which touched only the share
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
facilities and remoteness were also the causes due to which inland
districts could not be integrated with the insurgency of other areas,
Peasants fought very heroically in some place and achieved their
aims also but such instances were not many in comparison to the
position of the share-croppers in the agro-economy of Orissa.
Structural Analysis of the Share Croppers Movement:
Here we have taken some reliable social indicators for the structural
analytic of share croppers movement in Orissa. Firstly the Social
Locus of the movement was confined to the poor peasants
agricultural labourer and share-croppers; identified its class interest
(in a limited sense) for an accumulative quasi-structural change;
which resulted with the changes occurring within given structure of
a system (Model based on Partha Natha Mukharjees Peasant
Mobilisation, Mainstream, February 18, 1984, p. 22.) But we should
not forget the role of some classes in the context of national liberation
struggle in different countries. In Indias national liberation struggle
upper classes among the peasantry supported the optional
bourgeoisie. And if we take a world view; we find that they have
acted differently in Russia and China. Their political behavior had
been different depending upon two factors: (i) the nature and
characteristic of ideology and (ii) the degree of vulnerability of this
section visa-vis the political system.
If we wish to examine the close character, we find that the
determination of the social status of a peasant movement depends
upon three independent variables. Firstly, the modes of production;
secondly, the politically conscious collective entitles and, thirdly,
the nature of state-power. A simple categorization of peasantry into
poor peasants or middle-peasants would not suffice in characterizing
a social movement. As they derive their strength from varying struggle
in a given social context; for homogeneity of structures in a society
does hardly exist.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Our Second Social Indicator i.e., the extent of participation does not
qualify share croppers movement as a successful social movement
only on the basic of its dead and wounded persons. The ideological
factor counts, much for determining the nature of participation. In
colonial era the movements based on Gandhian ideology ware based
on satyagraha and peaceful civil disobedience. Due to their ambiguous
compromising ideology and call for non-violence the extent of
participation was quite limited in move, aunts led by the Gandhians.
In contrast to this, the share croppers movement in Orissa on the
eve of Independence had put forth its radical aims. In this process
violent methods were adopted by those participating is the movement
as well as the State apparatus. But the quantum of violence alone not
be taken as a reliable indicator of the seriousness of a movement. It
is rather the out-come, than has the primary importance in determining
the character of a movement.
Thirdly, the goals of share croppers movement in Orissa were limited
within the prevailing agrarian structure. Hence the peasant did not
represent the class in its universal form. Because after the sanction
of 3/8ths of the share in the produce to the shore croppers, their
militant program of action ended; only the judicial struggles in the
courts continued. It did not aim to alter or trans-From the system
within which it worked. The enactment of laws created further
cohesion within classes and class contradiction between tenants and
landlords sharpened each section trying its best for the preservation
of its class-interest. Landlords indulged in benami-transfers of land.
The outcome of the struggle did result in some qualitative changes,
but was unable to bring about any qualitative change in the social
structure itself. The change of the share-croppers share from 1/2 to
3/5ths brought changes within the prevailing exploitative zamindari
system, which enables us to characterize it as a quasi-movement.
Share croppers movement of Orissa expresses some categorical
phenomena within the conflict model of Marxian dialectical school.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The limited change within the structure with a slight shift of the
balance towards lower order and facilitating the middle class to
emerge as dominant one does not speak such about the radical change
of the structures. This movement was unlike the prevent revolution
of Russia and China. But we can neither refute nor neglect the
incremental change which thus movement has brought about within
the system.
A critical analysis reveals the inability and failure of the movement
in respect of some of its goals, e.g., land to the tiller; which was
identified as one of the basic tenants of the dignity of labour. It was
the weakness of the then left leadership not to foresee the capability
of the force and the strength of the movement on which the party
had relief much. But its doctrinaire rigidities, lack of a proper sense
of strategy and tactics inability to study the mass psychology, incorrect
class analysis, and inadequate political mobilization wore the
weaknesses due to which share croppers movement in Orissa could
not mice its militant voice against the structure of the authority or
against the system of which they were also an unwilling part, This
task was taken further in a subsequent period with added revolutionary
enthusiasm for the abolition of the zamindari system. They (the
leaders of the share croppers) also failed to identify the root causes
in terms of the caste-class structure. Most of the participants
constituting poor peasants and landless labourers were from the lower
castes, social custom was against cultivation by the higher castes
like the Brahmins and themselves. The real tillers of land Khandayats
or Adivasis and Harijans. Mostly zamindars and landowners were f
mm upper castes, However, class and caste were not identical because
not all upper caste people were landlords and some of them also
belonged to the category of poor peasants. Like the leaders of the
movement the leaders of the shore croppers movement in Orissa
were confronted with same type of problems in building a
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
there case a change in his attitude and he no longer mentioned his
association with the movement. The OTP Act was passed in 1948
when Dr. Mahatab was the Chief Minister. This Act of 1946 United
the rights and powers of zamindars at the social level, and also shrunk
their economic domination. Because deprivation of their economic
rights over the share and land; also deprived them from some extra
economic process (which previously made them socially dominant).
The zamindari Abolition Movement gathered movements in 1948
after the OTP Act was passed. Demands of the Peasants were: 1.
Abolition of the Zamindari system, 2. Rent reduction without
compensation; 3. Uneconomic and unprofitable holdings to be made
rent free; 4. A single tenancy protection act be enacted for the whole
state, 5. Tabhaga act should be implemented and share croppers
should get possession over their cultivated lands (leased in lands), 6.
Nobody should keep more than 30 acre of land and surplus lands
should be distributed to the agricultural laborers and the peasant
farmers.
Legislative Delay:
It was the declared policy of the Congress to abolish the Zamindari
system in the country. Even in the election manifesto of December
1946, for the first time, it referred to the question officially. It stated:
The reform of the land system which is so urgently needed in India,
involved the removal of intermediaries between the peasant and the
State. The right of such intermediaries should therefore be acquired
on payment of a equitable compensation. (A.I.C.C. Congress,
Election Manifesto, 1946 (delhi, n.d.)
However, after the victory of the Congress party in the election, the
process of enacting the Zamindari Abolition Bill took about six years.
The Government of Orissa by their resolution No. 7353-R dated 15th
November, 1946, appointed a committee to report on the land revenue
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
croppers and the poor cultivating peasants. But in the later period
tney corrected their strategy. They organized peasants against
zamindars. This evoked large-scale mass participation even after the
enactment of the O.T.P Act in 1948. They also triad to see that the
Act was properly implemented as a part of their strategy.
PEASANT MOVEMENT IN ORISSA FOR THE ABOLITION
OF THE ZAMINDARI SYSTEM:
Before we proceed to deal with the question of abolition of the
zamindari system, we should keep in mind that it was not only an
economic issue but was also linked with the political aspirations of
the peasantry during the freedom movement. The economic factors
such as land and capital ware predominantly under the control of the
zamindars. Hence, when we talk of zamindars we must comprehend
their legal power along with their self-acquired economic power and
consequential political influence wrilded by them.
The zamindari system was introduced and perfected by the British
rule. Both the Pakki Mahal (permanently settled zamindaries) and
the Kuchi Mahal (periodically settled zamindaries) were closely
related to not only revenue collection but also to socio-political
control of rural India. The princely states were born out of the same
colonial policy but with some more administrative power entrusted
to their rulers. The zamindars used to collect revenue and receive
Commissions. They used to maintain land-records effect mutations.
Petty disputes regarding possession and mutation of lands were also
being adjudged by the landlord. They had power to initiate
proceedings against defaults in payment of land-revenue. These were
broadly their legal powers were also quite vast. In practice they could
award any type of punishment to their subjects and the exercise of
these extra-legal powers was abetted by the colonial masters.
By this system the British created a very powerful ring of privileged
people around its rule. This system in return defended British
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
authority over the people in each and every village of this vast country.
The struggle for freedom was therefore partly directed against this
system. During the British period struggle for abolition of Bethi
(forced unpaid labour), and money other types of illegal exactions
were launched against the landlords. The campaign for abolition of
the system was a part of the freedom struggle of India.
By 1936 when the Congress Ministry was installed it become clear
that the abolition of the zamindary system had to be followed by
abolition of all intermediaries and establishment of new land relations.
The Kisan Sabha which organized these campaigns on these issues
faced a crisis by 1940. Most of the old leaders of the organisation
pleaded for its winding up and left it. Sri H.K. Mahatab, Sri N.K.
Chaudhury, Smt. Nalati Choudhury and Sri S.N. Dwivedi left the
organization one after the other. Socialists tried to build a new Kisan
organisation in 1948. They did not join the Kisan Sabha.
Organized Movements Against Zamindari:
Abolition of Zamindari had been pressed by the Kisan Sabha since
its formation under the leadership of Communist workers of Orissa
in 19366. Members of other political parties, like the Congress
socialist party, had also emphasized its importance in their resolutions.
Peasants of Orissa had expressed their opposition to the zamindari
system throughout the State at some places in an organized from and
at some other pieces in an unorganized manner . The Congress party
which came to power after Independence was divided on this
Question. A group of members of the legislative Assembly belonging
to the Congress had argued that the abolition of zamindari would be
like stealing somebodys property8, in spite of this divergence of
views within the party, it was forced to keep the issue of zamindari
abolition with adequate compensation as an item on the agenda of
its election manifesto after independence.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The peasants of Orissa were not satisfied with the provisions of the
Tenancy Act of 1937. Even the Orissa Tenants protection Act of 1948
could not save the share-croppers from being evicted from land due
to many loopholes in that act and helpful attitude of Government
officer at the local level and dilatory process of judiciary in favour
of zamindars. There was a systematic campaign conducted by the
zamindars in 1947-49 to demoralize the tenancy by physical attacks
on peasants and their leaders. Moreover this Act expired in 1949. So
there was total chaos in between 1949 and 1952 when the Estate
Abolition Act was passed.
But there was inordinate delay in the materialization of this laud
legislation. Various methods were adopted to delay its passage. The
opponents of the bill tried to win over the Congress members of the
Assembly. They resorted to filibustering to obstruct its postage and
later on tried to delay its implementation by going to the comments.
The Class Character of the Power Holders and Attitude of the
Government:
As a general statement it will not be incorrect that those belonging
to upper sections of society were not opposed to the zamindari system.
But a section if leaders belonging to the Congress party had favoured
zamindari- abolition. For example, N.K. Chaudhury, who belonged
to the upper class but was progressive in his ideas, took up the cause
of the poor-peasantry. Tenancy Act of 1937 had been passed under
his guidance and an enquiry committee under his Chairmanship had
recommended to abolish zamindari system as early as possible. Later
on he became an active leader of the Bhoodan Movement and thus
retired from the field of active power politics.
Another figure of great importance Dr. H.K. Mahatab was interested
in peasant movements before 1930, but later on when case to power,
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Kisan Movement, to look with extreme suspicion on the middle
peasant, who, after all, was nearest to the rich peasant and to organize
an uncompromising struggle against capitalist elements in the rural
society.
It is true that the Central Committee Meeting of the CPI held in May,
1950 corrected this crude leftism of the 1948-50 period. It rejected
the slogan that rich peasant was the main enemy in the villages and
restored the concept of anti-feudal struggle as its key task. It however,
did not wipe out all remnants of leftism, many of which persisted,
for example, the exclusion of the rich peasant with feudal tails. It
was also remarkable that, in course of discussion in the Central Coats
it tee meeting regarding the degree of development of Capitalist in
agriculture, there was no unanimity of views. It was assumed that, if
it was actually growing it should be taught along with the struggle
against feudalism.
The Communist Party relied mainly on the proletarian and semi-
proletarian elements in the country-side but wished to firmly unite
them with the middle peasantry and rally all the anti-feudal elements
including the rich peasant. But at it is well known that, despite the
long and intense debate carried out by theoreticians of these
movements there has never emerged an unambiguous end widely
accepted theoretical position. This resulted in sectarian divisions and
has also often led to the shifting of theoretical positions and the
consequent change in strategies and tactics.
As the peasant movement in Orissa for the abolition of zamindari
system was a continuous struggle since 1936, we cannot discuss its
demands in isolation leaving aside the issues raised by the share-
croppers movement.
Peasants were not unaware of their economic deprivation but with
the help of the Kisan Sabha there could be channelized into mass
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and the land tenure system of the State. One of the terms of reference
was to eliminate all intermediary interests. The report of the
Committee was published on the 7th July, 1949, suggesting inter-
alia the said provisions of the intending legislation dealing with the
abolition of zamindaries. The State Abolition Bill was accordingly
introduced in the State Legislature on the 17th January, 1950 which
after amendment in the light of the provisions of the constitution
was passed into an let of the Legislature on the 20th September,
1951, and it was enforced with effect from 19th of February, 1952.(
O.E.A Act 1951, Pub. G.K. Samal Legal Kiscellany H.C. Road,
Cuttack-753 002 (Orissa) 3rd ed. June 1981, p. 2.)
Abolition of Zamindari had been urged by different mass
organisations and parties. Among them were the Kisan Sabha, which
had initiated this programme since its formation in 1936 in Orissa
Parties like the Socialist Party, a section of the Congress and the
Communittee were adding to the momentum of this movement. But
a section of the Congress Party was against the zamindari abolition.
There was a zamindars lobby inside the Congress which had trial to
delay the process of this legislation.
Nature of Struggles:
Zamindari Abolition Movement in Orissa was a continuous process
since 1830 till 1951. There was gradual development in the nature
of this struggle and a broadening of its aims. While in the beginning
it was directed against certain oppressive practices like forced unpaid
labour etc., gradually it care to be directed against the continuance
of the Zamindari System itself.
The Zamindars and local rulers wanted to divert the thrust of peasant
movement and to create confusion forming parallel organizations
like the Praja Mangal in pre-Independence days.
After 1936 the united peasants of Orissa from both Mughal- bandi
and Gujrat areas under Krushak Sabha had held a number of
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
conferences and had launched agitations at many places throughout
the coastal belt:
These conferences, meetings and mobilizations by the Kisan Sabha
politicized the backward peasantry of Orissa and also made them
conscious of their deprived rights. The main task before the Kisan
Sabha by that time was to fight against feudal exploitations. For this
they received much popular support.
After 1948 the struggle mainly concentrated on the issue of the
abolition of the zamindari system itself rather than trying to eliminate
souse of its exploitative features. The O.T.P. Act was not able to
provide land to the tillers. In the aftermath of the share croppers
Movement serious attempt was made by the leadership of time
communist party to get the O.T.P. implemented by building pressure
of the movement from below for the benefit of the real cultivators.
But the zamindars were all to multiply the force of landed aristocracy,
their power war contained on account of their material power and
political influence. They were even able to secure support in the
legislature and as a matter of fact even the judiciary, was sympathetic
towards them.
There were disturbances all over the State as a result of these
movements. The C.P.I. leadership was initially hesitant, but the
combined oppression of zamindars and police and apathy on the part
of those who controlled the government compelled it to adopt a radical
posture. The newspapers in general tensed this agrarian movement
as anarchic which shows their class character. It will be necessary to
emphasize that the aim of the movement was to force the Government
to make changes of a progressive character in the agrarian structure
and ultimately the State Government had to undertake certain
ameliorative steps
There were two important issues involved in the peasant movements
of post 1948 period. Efforts were made to stop the benami transfers
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of land by the zamindars and to give land to the real cultivators. This
paved the way for the elimination of absentee landlordism.
The O.T.P Act had certain loopholes and their bligging were the
immediate objective of the movement of the party1948 period. These
were: no receipt was given by the landlords after receipt of their
chare of the produce from the tenants. The leaders of the Congress
Party were supporting the owners in their stand not to give receipt.
It was not made clear that for carrying the share of the landlord from
the field to this place of residence the wages for this labour will be
paid to the tenant.
In this Zamindari Abolition Movement there were serious protests
against the oppression of zamindars, and these became severe when
the tenants tried to protect their right to through the O.T.P. Act.
Shift in Kisan Sabhas Role:
The 1948 document of the political Bureau of the C.P.I. on the
Agrarian Question is the fullest and clearest elucidation of the view
that the various agrarian reforms of the Congress Governments
represent a capitalist solution to the agrarian question and these are
aimed to (strengthen the capitalist elements in the villages against
feudalism as well at against the toiling peasantry. The Party failed in
the last few years (between 1945 to 1948) to maintain the unity of
the peasants at expressed in the All-India Kisan Sabha and its
provincial, district and local units. Far from rousing the entire
peasantry against the Congress Government and its deceitful
demagogy of working out land reforms, the Communist Party
actually handed over the rich peasant to the Congress by suggesting
that it stood to gain by these reforms. Having thus drawn a picture
of landlord-big-bourgeoisies (the big bourgeoisie in the cities and
the rich peasant in the villages) alliance, the Party considered it to
be its sacred duty to expel the rich peasants from, the organized
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Central Committee of continuing the sectarianism of 1948-50 in new
forms, i.e., excluding rich peasants with feudal tails from the anti-
feudal front. Ignoring the task of building open Kisan Sabha units
on the theory that underground organizations alone could lead
struggles, virtually ignoring the need of any sustained work on the
plea that partisans unite are crucial units which will lead struggle,
etc., (ii) that of Com. Joshi and other who advocated a policy of
going back to the positions taken up at Sikandra Rao denouncing all
militant struggle (including Telengana) at adventurist; interpreting
the unity of all the peasantry in such a way as to deny the special
revolutionary role of agricultural labour and poor peasants; denying
the fact that on sons issues and on some occasions, toe rich peasants
will go over to the enemy; developing the necessity for any illegal
mass organizations sad partisan units etc.
There are two features that are common to all the five stages
enumerated above: (i) on the issue of the objective of agrarian reform,
they do not make the strict distinction that is necessary to make
between the parasitical feudal system of production and the capitalist
system and hence, instead of the objective of ending the former and
of restricting the latter, they advocate the policy of treating that alike;
(ii) on the issue of leading Kisan struggles, they do not advance the
basic tasks of leading every struggle to unless the revolutionary
initiative of the Kisans to the maximum and help them to set up their
own fighting organizations. It was within the framework of this
incorrect understand log that the Party shifted its policy from time to
time. Hence the corrections in policy that were made repeatedly by
the Party turned out to be not real corrections but swings from, one
incorrect policy to another.
It would however be wrong to look upon the Partys activities on the
peasant front in the post-war period as nothing but a series of
mistakes. The Party had on the contrary, very solid achievements to
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
actions. So the most important demand of the share croppers, poor
peasants and agricultural labourers in between 1946-48 was a
segmental issue of zamindari abolition.
The responses of the interviews of the leaders and participants
indicate that the demands ranged from the narrow economic issues
of rent reduction, increase in the share of croppers, to such radical
political issues as abolition of the exploitative agrarian structure,
i.e., the zamindari system.
Kiasn Sabba was particular in its formulation of demands phase-
wise keeping rapport with the situation according to the needs of the
time and assessing the strength and maturity of peasant consciousness
and revolutionary attitude.
Ideological Shifts in the Approach of the C.P.I.
The Communist Party changed its collaborationist strategy in the
post-war history of India. In the first stage ( i .e., in between the end
of the war in August, 1945 to August, 1946 it merely called upon the
Kisan Sabha units to popularize their views among the people, to
rally together as wide a support as possible and to get all candidates
in the elections to pledge themselves to their cause.
In the second stags, i.e., from August, 1946 to March-April 1947,
the Communist Party adopted the policy giving of lead to Kisan
struggles. The party however had no plan of developing these
struggles, in such a way as to for a revolutionary peasant Committee.
Even the share croppers movement in Orissa was neither epoch
making nor had any noteworthy well planned programmatic
organization and leadership behind it to lead to revolutionary change.
Main weakness inside the party was its failure to release the
tremendous initiative of the Kisan and help them to set up their own
fighting organizations and motivate them for a structural change.
Other weaknesses in the matter of these struggles were a wrong
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
approach and an overlapping of questions of how to abolish land- the general democratic movement was thus made almost a substitute
lordism. For example, the 1946 (November) resolution of the Central for the organization of the Kisan themselves.
Kisan Council on how to abolish landlordism, fixed up 25 acre limit
As for the basic slogans of agrarian reform, the Sikandra Rao Session
for landholding by cultivators while it also allowed the existing
continued the same old wrong approach regarding the maximum limit
landholders, both in the zamindari and royoteary areas, to possess
of holding with nose insignificant modifications only.
laud for self cultivation up to the maximum limit of 25 acres per
landholder. This, on the one hand, allowed evictions on a large scale In the fourth stage, i.e., from December, 1947 to March, I950, there
as each landholder could evict as many tenants as required for his was a swing to the other and from the policy of discouraging struggles
own landholding to become 25 acres and on the other hand, it put adopted in the previous stage to active participation and organisation
the same restriction the landholdings of the feudal landlord, capitalist of movement. However the principal mistake contained in the
landlord and rich peasant without my distinction. Sikandra Rao appraisal was continued in another form; need for
forging unity with the general democratic movement, the importance
In the third stage (March - April, 1947 to December 1947) there was
of utilizing legislatures to advance the revolutionary movement, the
a retreat from the policy of launching struggles. The tendency in all
possibility and necessity of discriminating between landholders of
the reports mode and the resolutions adopter at the Sikandra Rao
different categories, etc., were all ridiculed as a reformist approach,
session of the All India Kisan Sabha (May, 1947) was one of
secondly, far from helping the kisans to set up their own fighting
discouraging struggles unless and until full and complete unity of
organizations, the existing organizational of the kisans - the Kisan
Kisan among themselves as well as with other sections of the
Sabha unite - were disrupted and dissolved. Instead of imperialism
democratic movement was not ensured. Comrade Bhowani Sen, for
and feudalism, the rich peasant was declared as the enemy against
instance, in his report on Tabhaga correctly analyzed the basic mistake
whom fire was to be concentrated. Though this policy led to the
as the failure to organize and coordinate the activities of the peasants
organization and militant struggles of agricultural labour and poor
own fighting organizations in such a way as to lead to the formation
peasants in several places, and though these struggles of the poorest
of revolutionary peasant committees. Out of this appraisal of the
sections of the rural people brought tens of thousands of people into
mistakes flows his conclusion; thus the principal character of the
action for the first time in history, they reunited in setting these poorest
mistakes can be put in one word - left sectarianism. Similarly, the
of the rural poor not against their real eneny feudalism but against
General Secretarys report correctly drew three lessons from the
some of the enemy of feudalism. It was this extremely sectarian
countrywide Kisan struggle the intensity of repression, the consequent
approach to the peasant question in general that led to the virtual
need for relief and legal defense, and the importance of raising public
dissolution of the All-India in Kisan Sabha and it became defunct
sympathy for struggles. But it failed to mention a fourth lesson that
for the practical purposes.
no Kisan struggle could be victorious unless the revolutionary
initiative of the kisan was unleashed and kisan were helped to set up In the fifth and final stage (from March - April 1950 to April May,
their own fighting organizations. The campaign for the support of 1951) there appeared two trends in the Party: (i) that of the June

158 159
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
hundred and twenty. It was but natural that villages with a
homogenous population of peasants of labourer and artisans
habituated to physical labour should have been the first to offer them-
selves in Gramdan. The larger villages with high-caste families of
subletting land-owners, money-lenders, etc., did not show such
enthusiasm. Kharka in Korput district was the largest Gramdan village
with a population of 900 while the smallest hamlet had a population
of eight members only. The total population of all the villages was
estimated about two lakhs. The total area exceeded three lakh acres.
Most of the villages in the Koraput district and elsewhere are Adivasi
in character, each village being generally inhabited by a single trice.
This circumstance was doubtless one of the major predisposing
factors, but there were a considerable number of villages with non-
Adivasi and mixed population also. The number of such village in
Koraput exceeded 150 and 80 in the Balasore district. All the villages
in Sambalpur happened to be non-Adivasi in character.
The movement of Gramdan spread quite fast. The following table
which gives the number of Gramdans in each State by the end of
August 1957, shows that Orissa had been the most successful State
in this respect:
The success of the Gramdan Movement on such a vast scale in Orissa
gave birth to the optimistic belief that it contained possibilities of
social reconstruction and economic upliftment of building up a new
social order based on equality and co-operation. It was the firm view
of its protagonists that the voluntary renunciation of private property
and eager acceptance of the way of life of getting along together,
would unleash undreamt of reservoirs of constructive social energy,
hitherto repressed under the dead-weight of an outmoded, exploitive
and competitive social system.
Adherents of the democratic proceed for achieving land redistribution
set their faces strongly against the fundamentally violent methods
164
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
its credit. The fact that Party members played a heroic and self-
sacrificing part in all the struggles that took place in all the provinces
and States of India; that, in spite of all the weaknesses in their
understanding of the theory, strategy and tactics of agrarian
revolution, Party Members stood with the peasants and fought
shoulder to shoulder with them; that the Party led the Kisans in many
partial struggles through which they secured their demands, us well
as in each glorious struggles as those of share cropper movement
and peasant movement for zamindari abolition in orissa that, as a
result of all this, tens of thousands of Kisans were roused and
organized. This had made the party the sort effective organ of the
organized peasant movement, It is an indisputable fact that in spite
of the right opportunist perspective of the party leadership in some
stages (the first and third Stages referred to above), Party Members
stood with the peasants and gave expression to their sentiments and
demands. Similarly, in spite of the sectarianism of the party leadership
in certain other States, Second, Fourth and Fifth stages, party
members provided militant leadership to struggles and finally in spite
of the fact that the Kisan Sabha as an organization stood disrupted
because of the Partys sectarian policy in certain other stages (Fourth
and Fifth). Party Units all over the country drew tens of thousands
of new militants from among the Kisan towards a program of struggle
and educated and organized them. To forget there achievements of
the party and to see only its mistakes and short-comings is to forget
the very fact of the revolutionary upsurge among the Kisans in the
Post-war period to forget the very rapid disillusionment of the mass
of peasantry regarding the Congress and its Government, to forget
the rapid growth of the feeling among the Kisans that this Government
has to be replaced by one which will satisfy their demands.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHAPTER-6
BHOODAN AND GRAMDAM MOVEMENTS
The Two Liquidating instruments in the History
of Kisan Movements of Orissa.
The Bhoodan Movement was started in Orissa in 19531 which was
converted to Gramdan Movement in 1955. The frequent threatening
situations crested by share croppers and poor peasants (Chaudhuri,
M., Gramdan Movement, Cuttack, 1957, p. 1.) movements, were
described as the communist plot and great menace to order and peace.
In fact such before starting this movement of gentle persuasion;
repressive measures against peasant activists had started with raids
on the offices of the CPI and arrest of their leaders. The State
Government had taken steps to stop mass movements of peasantry
on the plea of checking social disorder.
The slogan of this movement was renunciation of private property
in land on a mass scale through voluntary surrender of land by its
owner. It was only during Vinobajis maarch through Orissa that the
movement assumed mass proportions. By the end of 1955 about 600
villages in Koraput district alone had been declared as Gramdan
villages.
Aim of the Bhoodan Movement was limited to the solution of the
land problem. Vinoba was more concerned for a non-violent, peaceful
transformation by changing the heart of the propertied class. For
him Gramdan opened up new possibilities of social reconstruction
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and economic upliftment and of building up a new social order based
on equality and co-operation. The voluntary renunciation of private
property and eager acceptance of a new way of life of sharing, unfolds
the vision of a constructive social system.
Instead of taking radical mass actions these Bhoodan activists aimed
to help the lowest stratus of society with an emphasis on a
psychological change, a change in the mentality of the landed class.
Through this they wanted to rise popular enthusiasm and to divert
the energies of the rural population to constructive developmental
activities.
Vinobas Movement had its ideological basis in Gandhis theory of
trusteeship and total rejection of the Marxist idea of class-struggle.
He emphasized instead a principle of class co-operation for mutual
benefit.
The first Gramdan in Orissa was obtained in Manpur, in the Cuttack
district on 30th January, 1953 and shortly afterwards the movement
caught on in Koraput district where 26 Gramdans occured by the
time Vinobaji entered Orissa on the 26th January, 1955. A few
Gramdans had also taken place in the districts of Balasore,
Mayurbhanj, Ganjam and Sambalpur, but with Vinobajls progress
to southewards, more attention was centred on Gen jam and Koraput,
where Bhoodan workers from all over the province concentrated their
efforts with the result that by the time Vinobaji left Orissa, the total
number of Gramdanes for the province reached 812 out of which
606 were to tha credit of Koraput alone. The movement continued to
progress and the number of Gramdans almost double. The movement
spread to ten out of tha thirteen districts in the State by the year
1957. A district-wise break-up of the villages gifted it given in last.
The average population of a village in orissa was estimated a little
more than three hundred. The villager received in Gramdan was
generally the smaller ones, with an average population of about one
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
redistribution the main plank of their program. But while
redistributing land they have bestowed full legal ownership with the
right to dispose of by sale or otherwise, thus emphasizing and
strengthening the sense of private ownership. Now they are organic
co-operative faming. Undoubtedly the people will have to face an
extremely violent ideological jolt if they ever decide to abolish private
ownership.
Here in India, Vinoba with a courageous and masterly stroke of genius
is said to have cut through the knot. He made a distinction between
the right of ownership and the right to the means of livelihood. While
guaranteeing land to whoever say claim it as a means of livelihood
he denounced the possessive instinct and private property in the
strongest terms. Thus individual initiative was allowed a certain
amount of free play but at the same time the lives and habits of the
people were being gradually molded into a co-operative pattern.
Moreover, the India peasant in Koraput or elsewhere was not well
equipped to handle the organizational and technical problems
involved in collectivization. So it was thought best to lay stress on
equalitarian distribution, coupled with non-ownership and to
encourage villagers to experiment with collective or community
faming on a small scale, to gather experience. Very few of the villages
took up their collective lands in right earnest, but a few results did
stand out.
Vinobaji felt the need of making start with the reconstruction work
so that the popular enthusiasm was caught and channelized while at
its highest peak. Accordingly the Sarba Seva Sangh shouldered the
task of guiding the reconstruction programme, helped by the Navjivan
Mandal, a constructive organization working mainly among the
Adivasi in Orissa. Shri Annasaheb Sahasrabudhe, Secretary of the
Sangh was at the helm of affairs in 1957 with his head-quarters in
Koraput.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
adopted in China and elsewhere, and it had assumed that planned
progress in a democracy was bound to be a allow process and could
not hope to show spectacular results as achieved in the communist
countries. Thus, it was admitted undoubtedly posed a problem for
the underdeveloped and newly independent countries of the world.
For them rapid economic progress being an sine-qua-non of their
continued existence, how far they could avoid totalitarian
regimentation, was a moot question. The proponents of the gramdan
movement claimed that they had tried to provide an alternative in
this respect.
It is a fact that the movement acquired greeter success, among the
Adivasi, who had a strong tradition of social cohesiveness. But this
merely underlined the fact, it was claimed that oven the backward
classes in India harnessed some valuable social traits highly useful
for a new servodaya or socialist order and the Gramdan Movement
helped to preserve and channelize them, is a matter of fact, as noted
earlier, quite a large number of villages with mixed and non-adivasi
populations had also opted for Gramdan.
Another predisposing factor in Koraput was the awakened
consciousness of the people due to their participation in the national
freedom struggle since the early thirties and the subsequent intensive
constructive activities carried out there by a band of devoted and
selfless workers. Thus the psycho logical ground had been prepared
for more than two decades. In a way the psychological preparation
say be said to have been going on in India for centuries, where
numerous saints and social reformers had preached against
untrammeled individualism and Vinobajis Movement, claimed its
admirers, was not only a continuation of that age-old sentiment but
actually its culmination.
The volunteers working for the Gramdan .Movement adopted several
methods, like land distribution, collective farming, reformative and
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
reconstruction work etc., for bringing a psychological change, a
change of heart of the people.
Redistribution of land was carried out during the winter and summer
of 1955-56 with much speed. The work in 602 out of 850 villages
received in donation by then was completed. The villagers themselves
fixed the principles of redistribution, such as, which family was to
get how such land etc., and the Bhoodan workers helped them with
advice and in technical matters. The ideal, of course, was a thoroughly
egalitarian distribution with shares in all types of land to each family
according to the number of its members. But the majority of them
preferred to give cone extra land to the bigger land owners, amounting
to one and a half to three times the per capita average in the village.
In a minority of villages they agreed to give even more than this to
persuade a few recalcitrant big owners to join them. But as mentioned
earlier, there were about 20 to 30 villages which went back on their
pledge an refused to have any redistribution. There were at the sane
time many cases where the former big owners refused to accept the
bigger than the average shares so graciously offered to them by their
fellow villagers.
These cases illustrate the change brought in the ownership pattern
and the individual sacrifices node in the process of redistribution.
Though the land was redistributed with full rights of cultivating yet
its ownership did not pass to the grantee, but continued to rest with
the village community. The individual farmer was not entitled to sell
or mortgage his holdings and the village community had the right
and was expected to exercise it, to have periodical reconsiderations
and re-allotment, say every five or ten years. The Orissa Bhoodan
act, as ascended in the year 1956 recognizes communal ownership
of land in Gramdan villages. Its amended sec. 15-A lays down that:
Provided that where the land has been granted to a number of persons
jointly or to the village community, all the parsons to whom the land
166
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
it granted or all the members of the village community, as the case
may be, shall be jointly and severally liable for payment of the rent,
case or other dues payable to State Government in respect of the
said land.
Provided further when all the members of the village community
are made liable for payment of rents, cess mud other dues under the
foregoing provision and they make such payment towards all such
dues to the state Government in due time they shall be entitled to a
rebate equal to ten per cent of the said payment.
A certain percentage of land was generally set apart for collective
facing. The average for the 472 villager in Koraput came to just over
3% of the total cultivated land. The actual amount varied from village
to village. For instance, Akili in Ganjam, had 38 areas, 15% of its
total land and Manpur in Cuttack had 35 acres (6%), while several
villages set apart none at all.
It may he asked, why no effort was being made to start collective
farming, instead of redistributing land. The protagonists of radical
social reconstruction have all along been on the horns of a dilemma
in respect of the problem of land reforms. As practical revolutionaries,
they have recognized the eighty revolutionary potentialities of the
peasants hunger for land while as social theorists they perceived the
seeds of incipient capital in his stubborn individualism and
possessiveness. The call laud to the tiller say energize the masses,
but will it not also help to perpetuate the sense of private property. In
Russia Lenin allowed peasants to seize land without any direct
guidance or interference. At a late stage, Stalin forced through the
collectivization program with the help of terror and violence on a
scale unprecedented in human history. Private property in land was
abolished, but at what cost?
In China the dynamics of the situation demanded a more active
participation of the peasantry and the communists had to make land
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
CHAPTER-7
PEASANT MOVEMENT IN ORISSA:
RETROSPECT AND PROSECTS
In any study of peasant movements the problem that an author
encounters at the very outset, is regarding the definitions of the
concepts he/she uses in his/her analysis. Who is a peasant? Is peasant
society a natural or a historical category? What is sent by peasant
class.? How homogenous or heterogeneous that class is? What gives
rise to peasant revolts? What are the immediate and the ultimate
goals of peasant movements? What is meant by the class-character
of peasant movement? And, how the class character of peasant
leadership affects the basis, and the purpose of the peasant
movements? These, and many such Questions, need to be answered
in the specific context of the study area, and the society under
consideration, before one can present his analysis of the problem at
hand, or state and explain it, in an unambiguous and a meaningful
way.
Definitions:
Steering clear of the maze of concepts and definitions of a peasant;
peasant culture; and peasant society, in the sociological and the
anthropological literature, we have defined a peasant in Orissa as
one who is a total or partial owner of a piece of land which he tills
primarily with the help of his family labour for the sake of his
livelihood. Ownership of land may be permanent or of a temporary
172
Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
They wanted to guarantee a minimum income of 3600 rupees per
annum for an average family. But the Indian people were at their
time very far from the ideal with 20% of its families earning less
than 600 rupees per annum and another 31% managing with less
than twelve hundred.
In the final analysis the Bhoodan and the Gramdan Movements which
depended for their success on persuasion and moral appeal created
hopes which were not fulfilled. For the backward people of Orissa,
the concept of Ramarajya created the nostalgia for their mythological
past and they relied on the Bhoodan leaders. The response to the
appeal came mainly from the poorer section of the peasantry and the
Adivasi rather than from the upper classes. In the words of G.G.
Saha it was not the change of heart which supplied the motive to
Capitalist charity and philanthropy. It was mostly craze for fame
or conscious or unconscious class interest.( Saha, G.G.,
Sampatidan Bhoodan Movement in Desai, A.R. (ed) Rural
Sociology of India, Popular Prakasan, Bombay, 1981, p. 638).
T he Movement on of Vinoba have demanded t he class
consciousness of the backward classes, and diverted them away
from the road of class struggle.
Though Bhoodan and Gramdan Movements were started with great
initiative for manifold benefits of the poorer sections but these did
not succeed due to the wrong mediating factors they adopted to
translate their ideals into reality.
The Movement collapsed due to its inability to realize its Gandhian
socialistic ideal through its peaceful method of change of heart.
In spite of the institutionalization of this behavioral Movement;
actions did not touch the fringe of their socialistic ideas like co-
operative society and abolition of private property.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
LAND GRAB MOVEMENT
Orissa Estates Abolition Act of 1951 gave a set-back to the organised
peasant movement of the pant two decades which was led by the
CPI. Leaving aside the minor countrywide peasant discontent to major
peasant movement took place after the zamindari abolition Act.
However, neither the progressive land legislations nor the voluntary
programmes of Bhoodan Movement was able to bring any solution
to the hunger of the poor. No doubt it did change the agrarian equation
of Orissa countrywide in as far as it converted open feudalism into
veiled feudalism. To provide a boost to land reform acts the land
Ceiling Act was introduced and implementation a started in the year
1974. The Orissa Land reform Act was passed in 1960 and took
more than ten years (i.e., in 1973) to get implemented (with the
provision of fixation of ceiling area and accusation of surplus land).
The fear of non implementation of the Ceiling Act and the delay in
distribution of surplus land made the landless people and evicted
tenants panicky. This culminated in an outburst of peasant action in
1970 in the form of the Land Grab Movement. This movement took
place throughout India under Combined Lead cramp of the popular
parties like the CPI, the socialist Party and also the Jharkhanda Party.
The movement was launched under the central direction of the All
India Kisan Sabha and the All India Agricultural Labourer
Organization. It aimed at forcible acquisition of land, and specially
land from which earlier cultivators had been evicted. Though this
movement was supported ay various left political parties and groups
it did not spread in an organized manner and resulted in cone sporadic
eruptions here and there.
In Orissa it was started on the let July 1970. Its actions were divided
into two phases. In first phase, the task of participants was to occupy
the cultivable government land, jungles and fields. The completion
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of this phase was to be achieved by 15th July, 1970. The land grab
movement was launched under the leadership of the Communist party
in Orissa, it failed to grow into a State-wise Movement. It was
confined mainly to Cuttack and Puri districts and to some extent in
Balangir district also.
The State Government opposed the land grab movement and
condemned it as distinctive of law and order was peace in rural areas.
As the movement launched by the political parties involved acts of
forcible occupation, the State Government moved to suppress these
violation of law by mobilizing its coercive machinery.
But these repressive measures were not able to check the peasants
actions. The then President of Krushak Sabha Sri Braja Kisore Patnaik
gave the call for a massive land acquisition movement in spite of
Governmental resistance and threat.
They started to occupy vacant government lands and vast chunk of
lends belonging to big zamindars. Nearly 20,000 landless agricultural
labourers took part in this struggle for land grab. More than 815
were arrested and two persons died. In all more than 20,800 acres of
land were occupied.
If Vinobas Movement failed because it did not take into account
human nature in its actuality, Use land grab movement failed for its
inability to have taken into account the facts of socio-political reality.
For want of a proper organizational base and wide support from the
rural poor and unable to resist the might of the State which was
determined the existing land relations, the movement was an
adventurous act foredoomed to failure.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
the colonial rulers and, the increasingly repressive arrangement of
feudal exploitation by the native rulers of the princely States. The
leadership of their movements cannot be said to be politically
conscious of their broad class roles and, the spontaneous leadership
came largely from the ranks of the community leaders and chieftains
of the tribal society. The movements as was natural were net
committed to any particular ideology, or long terms goals; therefore,
their impact remained highly localized. In most of these cases the
tempers of the revolting peasants were cooled down through a policy
of appeasements, concessions, rewards and relaxations doled out by
the rulers and landowners against which the tribal were protesting.
The struggle at this stage of historical development of agriculture in
the State could possibly not go for long enough as, despite the
inequality of the social system and the oppressions to which the
peasant community were subjected, there existed a sense of regard
and reverence for the Royal Houses in the minds of the people.
The peasant resistance movement of Talacher of 1911 and the Kanika
Meliof an earlier period were instantaneous peasant outbursts
against the growing oppression of landlords and feudal princes, who
not only appropriated a very large share of the produce of the land,
but also subjected their peasant to a system of virtual slavery through
a system of begar.
With the induction of the Indian National Congress in the peasant
struggles of Orissa, the direction and the thrust of the peasant
movement changed despite the continuation of high rate of
exploitation and tyrany of forced labour. The focus of the attack of
the movements was shifted from the immediate oppressors, to the
operating-hand behind, that is, the British Raj. The peasants were
told by their leaders that their struggle against the landlords and the
princely states could not succeed so long the British Raj regained.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
nature. In the latter case it may confine to a single cropping season
or a few seasons only.
Participation of the family labour in cultivation excludes association
by managerial work done. In specific terms, it involves physical
participation by the cultivators family in all the major operations of
agriculture.
The peasant society is a historical category. It has emerged in the
course of evolution of human society when, at the end of the pastoral
age, human communities began to settle down to harvest fields after
sowing seeds, an enduring way of making a livelihood.
As a class society the peasant groups surfaced into the social order
when land became a private property and, because of this a dichotomy
between those who claimed a share in the land produce by virtue of
their landownership lights and those who actually tilled the land to
produce the harvest, created and sanctified by custom and/or law.
The alienation of the means of production that is land from the actual
tillers i.e., the peasants necessitated contractual arrangements
between the owners of the land and the tillers for the production
process to go on. Thin production arrangement, which defined the
rights and privileges of the workers, and the landowners in respect
of the from and the level of participation in the production process
and, sharing in the agricultural produce, is known as the production
relations. The actual nature of these production relations have
undergone numerous changes as the social order marched forward
from the realm, of feudalism towards the current social order of
industrial capitalism this alienation of the workers from their principal
means of production (Land), and the contractual production relations
between the owners and the workers of the land, rest the seeds of
class antagonism between the former and the latter. The conflict arise
at each side tries to better its share in the produce of the land, a
perpetual conflict of interest bedevils the production relations in a
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
class society. Within the agriculture sector the conflict of class interest
arises between those who own land and those who work on others
land on wage labour or share cropping terms.
The short term cause of such conflicts is the immediate issues which
for some objective reasons acquire primacy over other arson of
disagreements and antagonism.
The final solution of the agrarian problems lies in the long run only,
when the basis of the class antagonism in land relation is eliminated.
This is possible only when the peasant class itself assumed the
political power to effect the necessary alternation in the process and
management of social production in land. The long run goal of peasant
movement is, therefore, undoubtedly the seizure of state power by
working people. The immediate or the short term goals are usually
in the nature of demands for amelioration of some specific grievance
of immediate relevance.
The leadership of the peasant movements in events of conflicts any
or may not be from within its own class. Whenever outside leadership
leads a peasant movement the main issues of the peasant class get
sidetracked and compromised for the sake of broader unity of all the
sections of the people having a common immediate issue and, the
movement fails short of its full-goal achieves as seen from the point
of view of the peasants. Divergence the class interest of the leaders
and the peasants at any stage of the movement causes a setback, and
results half-way house agreement or rapprochement udder a
compromise formula with the adversary.
As has bean stated earlier all cultivators are not peasants. The
necessary conditions for being classed as a peasant are two:
ownership, and actual participation. This definition excludes land-
lords, she live by the rent on their land, and also the capitalist Turners,
who contribute only managerial services to agriculture from the set
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
of peasants. The proper set of peasants, therefore, consists of two
categories of cultivator: (a) the middle peasants and (b) marginal
(lower) peasants. The latter manage their fields almost entirely with
the help of their family labour, while the former take recourse to
hired labour to supplement their internal labour input. The agricultural
labourers, technically speaking, are no peasants. However, their class
interests converge with those of marginal peasants to a very large
extent and, because of this, they are always found as the front line
allies of the lower peasants in times of peasant up risings and conflicts.
The organizers of peasant movements, from among their own ranks,
are those members who are subjectively conscious of their underdog
situation in the production bargain, and are objectively prepared to
change the iniquitous parameters of the existing statue of their
community. This consciousness, which may better be termed as
political consciousness, is not something which course in a natural
course to the peasant society and to peasant culture, was the contrary
this has to be fostered through political education of the peasant
messes by their politically conscious leaders.
PEASANT STRUGGLE IN ORISSA:
The peasant movements in Orissa fall under three district periods.
They are before 1920; from 1920-1946 and, the poet, independence
period.
Peasant uprisings of the first phase of the 19th century were largely
sporadic and unorganized in nature. They took place in the princely
states and, in those areas which had been brought under the Zamindary
system under the British Raj. Geographically they encompass the
territory which today comprises the districts of Dhenkanal,
Mayurbhanj, Sundargarh, Phulbani, Keonjhar and Sambalpur.
Most of these uprisings were led by the tribals, whose way of life
and living has been hit hard by the new land management system of
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
the peasantry, Different parties and political organizations played
different roles in this respect, and all of them had their impact in
shaping the peasants role in the post-independence era, Thus, broadly
speaking, the four factors which shaped the peasants role in the post-
independence era could be described as follows;
I. Structural changes within the agrarian structure,
II. Change in the relationship with the non-agrarian sector,
III. Change in the role of peasants in relation to power structure, and
IV. Role of parties, peasant organizations and lenders.
I. Structural Changes Within the Agrarian Structure:
As mentioned earlier, the Congress Party which case in power when
India achieved Independence was obliged to carry out rose structural
changes in the land relationship. Secondly, the process of
development which gathered momentum because of Five Year Plans
also changed the agrarian structure to none extent.
The three basic changes which were made by the government were
(a) abolition of Zamindari, (b) Ceiling on the size of land-holdings,
and (c) consolidation of holdings.
The basic aim was to cake the peasants owners of their land, cheek
the concentration as well as the fragmentation of holdings and provide
better claim, for tenants. As a result of such steps old types of peasant
struggles were diffused to large extent. But in the new situation
peasant struggles with new fame and contents emerged. Though
Government abolished the institution of Zamindari, the structure of
control did not change. Those peasants, whose tenancies were secure,
were converted into owners. However large scale evictions took place
to alienate tenants which were not protected by law. Secondly, through
clandestine deals the Zamindars could manage to keep in control
almost all their lands. This led to a situation in which pattern of land
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
This was because the oppressors derived their strength and legitimacy
fares the colonial rule.
The national struggle needed a broad base comprising all classes of
people to fight against the British rule. The political strategy therefore
very often sought to seek compromises between the lauded aristocracy
and the peasants whenever conflicts of interest areas. The purpose
of the peasant movements now was not to defeat the adversary in a
direct-confrontation as would have been legitimate from the point
of view of the oppressed peasant, but to contrive a compromise
formula whereby the feuding sections of Indian population, not
withstanding their issues of conflict, could be harnessed together to
fight for a bigger cause, that is and of the colonial rule.
Under the influence of the Gandhian philosophy the peasant struggles
also lost much of their past militancy. Passive resistance and non-
co-operation, rather than direct confrontation, began to be gradually
accepted as some effective way of attaining the political goal even
in extra. classes issues in the rural areas.
The period between 1920 to 1946 could be termed as a period of co-
operative capitalist in which, despite the lingering divergence of
interests among the main partners in agriculture, their struggle could
be co-ordinated and converged to a single common goal that is
achievement of Independence for the country from the British rules.
So long as this objective remained paramount, the hegemony of extra-
peasant classes over the peasant leadership remained. Find peasant
uprisings were staged within the very limited parameters and, with
immediate intervention by mediators who, invariably prevailed on
both the aides to agree to a give, and-take formula for the solution of
immediate problems.
The impact of the left party ideology on the peasant movement in
the State became evident in a much later period. Till 1936 the left
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parties did not have had their separate existence outride the Indian
National Congress. The Community Party, of course, was a separate
political entity, but its influence in Orissa had not yet surfaced. More
over in who an illegal Party till 1942.
The Congress, which was the major political party fighting for
national Independence, came to power after the country attained
independence. The party was a form of diverse class interests. And,
as was natural, all those who had considered it as their political party
in the pre-independence era, did now look forward for their specific
interests being gathered by the Congress Party after assuming the
political power.
The Freedom Movement had been conducted on the rich note of
abolition of all forms, of social oppressions that characterized the
foreign rule. Inside the agricultural sector this implied abolition of
the intermediaries whom the Britishers had created to collect land
revenue for the State. It also implied the restoration of the land to the
actual tillers and an equitable distribution of land among those who
laboured on it. The commitment of the Congress Party to bring about
such changes in agriculture as soon as the country attained self rule
and the political power to change the statuesque, was too great to be
by passed even when the interact of the dominant classes inside the
Congress did not favour such changes. In the early years of
independence a number of legislations were enacted to abolish
Zamindari. Cealing laws were passed to minimize the gap between
the highest and the lowest individual land holdings. The erstwhile
tenants-at-will who were in actual possessions of the Zamindari land,
were given the legal title of their possession. On the paper it was
made impossible for the non- re cultivating persons to live by the
rent of the land alone, in actual practice however the regal enactments
left so many loopholes for the erstwhile Zamindars to retain their
control over substantial part of their Jagirdari. The terms, Zamindar
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
and Jagirdari were de-recognize in the legal documents, but the case
persons were (giver, right over their land under & new legal title of
sell-cultivating peasants. The post Independence era, thereby
declassed the division on the agricultural society into four categories,
that is, (i) the rich peasants, (ii) the middle peasants, (iii) the poor
pedants and (iv) the land fate agricultural labour. This four-fold
division of the rural society which lived by the produce of the land,
replaced the two tier division of Zamindars and the tenants, of the
erstwhile period.
The acute scarcity of primary wage in the country at the time of
attainment of Independence called for an immediate alteration to
steeping up of agricultural production and mopping up the marketable
surplus wherever it existed. To meet these ends huge public
investments were made in expanding the irrigational system in the
state and packages of new agricultural technology was popularized
and offered at highly subsidized prices to the cultivators. The benefit
of such investments accrued to all sections of the cultivating
population in proportion to their lead holding size. The growing
productivity of the land under the changed technological conditions
made it a more attractive possession.
The modernization process not only changed the agrarian structure,
but it also changed its modus-operandi with the industrial urban
sector. This generated a new type of conflict a structure. Not only
the nature and content of conflict within the agrarian sector changed,
but agriculture, viz, industry also cropped up at a major is issue.
Articulation of this type of interest was further re-info reed by the
new political role that the peasantry acquired, prior to it the peasants
were more subjects and their agitations were aimed to gain noise
benefits only but now they were citizens and could share in and
influence power. Therefore, greater the power the state assumes,
larger the share sought by the largest group of the population nearly
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Secondly, as the market forces come in operation a large owner would
go for more mechanization if wages go up. Tenants would also be in
was process robbed of many entrepreneurial functions, and will
gradually become more sad an re dependent of the land owner and
eventually get converted into agricultural labourers. This would
further hasten the process of polarization in which two classes would
emerge-one which owns and manages property and the other of wage
labourers. The intensity of conflict between these two groups would
depend on the feet whether wages rise, remain constant or decline in
this process.
If the wages do not rise and inequality increase then it could lead to
confrontation and struggles. This could force land owners to adopt
further mechanization leading to further displace, sent of labour,
aggravation of further inequality and more violent confrontations.
This model pre-supposes alienation of small farmers based on the
cumulative interaction between mechanization, falling real wages
and rural violence. This model also assumes that no large scale
absorption of rural unemployed is possible in non-agricultural sectors.
This model overlooks three factors. One, as mentioned earlier though
the number of agricultural labourers is increasing, the trend
established that much of land has come under the ownership of
marginal farmers than before. There sight have been trend of
concentration till mid-sixteen, but the period of commercialization
(mainly post-rests revolution) also has shown the trend in which
more and more land is coming under the control of small and marginal
features, Secondly, with the spread of education and village people
getting jobs in towns, different land owning groups have respectively
differently. Some of the large land-owners after having education
and jobs in towns have leaned out their land. This is more true is
relatively less developed regions. On the other hand when members
of small or marginal farmers class get jobs outside, they do not take
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
distribution became greatly skewed. It also changed the mode of
production in the agricultural sector, which led to the emergence of
broadly three class relationships:
i. Landlord-tenants.
ii. Landlord-hired labour
iii. Owner-cultivators
The role of peasants in all the categories naturally varied. The interest
of tenants was to achieve security whereas the landlords who leased
out lead were interested in keeping then away from say legal security
for tenancy. Agricultural labourers on the other hand would always
strive for higher wages.
The owner cultivator would neither be interested in security of
tenancy nor in the rise in wages. Their main demands were to get
credit, subsidized inputs, irrigation facilities and other such
infrastructural facilities.
All these landlord who produce surplus could also be interested in
remunerative prices.
The peasant struggles would, therefore, very for different categories.
What issue would dominate would depend on the relative strength
of these groups and their relative bargaining power.
The pattern of distribution of holdings in Orissa is changing. On the
basis of the trend during the period 1970-71 to 1980-81, it is found
that downward movement in the tire of land holdings is continuing.
As a result of this large farm holders are becoming medium sized.
As a semi-medium, semi-medium small, small marginal and marginal
farmers finally are swelling the rank of agricultural labourers. This
could partly be because of population growth and partly because of
land transfers. It is in this respect that the question of land transfer
becomes important. Large farm holders night transfers land to save
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
their land frost ceilings. If this be so then it does not show the real
trend. The cause of transfer of land from small and marginal farmers
could unfold the process of depeasantisation. Secondly, which classes
are acquiring land is also important, because only this could establish
whether the process of concentration still continues or not. If the
purchasers belong to the small and marginal fair, groups then the
whole process would lead to a situation in which most of the land
would be distributed among small and marginal farmers. Then
agrarian structure would comprise a large number of small and
marginal farms owning most of the land and the ever increasing
master of landless workers. His crucial point from the view of peasant
movements then would be that the slogan of re-distribution of land
would loose force in the long run. And as the differentiation within
peasantry narrows down the chances of conflict within the agrarian
sector would decline.
The conflict within agrarian sector would largely depend on the fact
that which classes are actually poised in antagonistic positions in
the process of development. Merely the fact that some have large
farms cannot be taken as a pointer for conflict between large farmers
on the one head and landless labourers supported by small and
marginal farmers on the other.
In Orissa large farmers constituted 1.4 per cent of total land-holdings
and owned 12.52 per cent of total land in 1970-71, decreased further
in 1880-81*.
This number was reduced to 1 per cent and area under their control
to 9.09 per cent in 1976-77. If this tread continues the main
contradiction cannot he assumed to develop between large farmers
and the landless labourers, between the latter and small and marginal
farmers.
In fact it is also questionable to assume that in the process of
development interests of email and marginal farmers will be in
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
contradiction with those of large landowners. If large landowners
are not responsible for their alienation from land, then it seems
incredible to believe that they would have a direct conflict with each
other. The only point which could make then competitive could be
in respect to credit and other facilities provided by the Government.
The role of medium farm owners becomes the most crucial in shaping
the actors of conflict in agrarian areas. Moreover, members of the
ex-Zamindar class it coming forward to provide leadership in the
rural areas. This class is not only trying to protect its own interest,
but is also interested to project itself as the class which represents
the rural interacts i.e., interests of all classes in the rural areas.
It is however difficult to understand the role of the peasantry in terms
of its land ownership only, It is more important to understand in
what type of production-relationship, it is interlocked. We have
already mentioned about three kinds of production relations: (i)
Landlord-tenant, (ii) landlord-hired labour and (iii) Owners-
Cultivators. For the time being we do not include co-operative faming
or community farming is not included in own analytical framework.
Before discussing the production relations vis-a-vis size of
landholding, another point which needs to be taken care of its the
impact of economic development on each relationship. Because the
production relations, technical change and conflict processes affect
each other.
The first impact of commercialization that it breaks traditional
customary relations. The services are now exchanged on the basic of
more formal contracts. Once the customary obligations cases to be
the basis of relations, tenancy or wages are determined on the basis
of operation of market forces. The conflict in interests becomes more
obvious and sharpened and leads to polarization in the agrarian
relations.
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
prices do not encourage him to sell more as he has little surplus left
after his consumption. Not only that, if rising food grain prices lead
to arise in the prices of other essential consumption goods, he might
be forced to indulge in distress sale and latter on to distress purchase
of food grains. This would result in lower consumption of both food
grains and other consumption goods by his. It rising food prices raise
the prices of capital inputs, he would to constrained in adopting new
technology. These small producers who produce cash crops (partly
or wholly) may switch back from cash to food crops if food groin
prices rise, unless cash crop prices also rise in the same properties.
Thus, increase in food grain prices may not fee of equal interest for
all groups of agricultural producers. However if prices of cash crops
rise, all groups of farmers benefit from it. That is why, all sections of
peasantry join hands when the question of raising of prices of cash
crop is raised.
CHANGES IN RELATION TO POWER STRUCTURE:
Independence has brought qualitative changes in the attitude and
role of peasants in regard to power stricture. Before independence
they were subjects and issues of their struggle related to such aspects
as security of tenancy, reasonable rent determination, prevention from
various kinds of exploitation, and abolition of intermediate
institutions of zamindari which was considered to be the source of
manifold exploitation of peasants. There issues were to deeply inter-
twined with the national movement for freedom that, at times peasant
movements were considered to be a part of the freedom movement.
This situation, however, changed alter independence. Firstly, peasants
became citizen rather than subjects in the new situation. They were
no more a social group which would rest content by asking base
depends only. They also wanted to have their share in the power
structure and therefore peasantry gradually has been emerging as a
power-block also. Though there have been fissiparous tendencies
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
their family to the place of their jobs. Remittances made by them to
their families enable them to purchase new small plots also. Thus
large farmers are leasing out land to share-cropping, and a section
(though small) of and marginal farmers are able to resist
fragmentation because of spread of education and jobs in town.
Thirdly, profitability in transport, trade and contractor ship etc., is
higher than in agriculture, therefore, after providing infrastructural
facilities to their tenants, large farm owners are concentrating on
these activities. Though tenants at much farms are no better than
attached agricultural labourers however, commercialization in itself
is not a sufficient to finish the system of such tenancy. These all
factors may not develop as distinctly as pretexted in the above model.
Moreover Government efforts to provide productive assets as well
as gainful employment (through IRDP and NREP etc.) to vulnerable
sections of rural areas may check the trend of alienation of marginal
farmers from land.
Therefore the type of conflict that will emerge would largely depend
on the specific issues. Conflict of interest may arise not only between
the landed elite and cultivator peasantry but also within the peasantry.
For example, agricultural labourers and marginal famers would prefer
an increase in farm wages because they depend on wage employment
for all or part of their livelihood. They would, therefore, also have
an interest in policies which create additional work opportunities in
the rural areas. However, since middle peasants hire labourers,
therefore they would be interested in low wages. Similarly public
work programs would not only provide agricultural labourers
employment but would also give them opportunities to organize, But
middle and large farmers would loose their control over labourers
because of such policies therefore these are against their interest.
Thus each policies agricultural labourers and marginal farmers on
the one hand and middle and large farmers on the other hand would
have conflicting into rests. His middle peasantry and other lower
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
strata peasantry may have a common interest in acquiring more lend
from large land owners. Besides the issues of wages, land and
employment, the issue of agricultural prices also would polarize
peasantry in a different fashion. Landless labourers, agricultural
labourers and marginal peasants being buyers of food grains, would
have interest in remunerative prices. Similarly, on the issues of
credit network and mechanization different groups would align
differently. The interest of agricultural labourers and tenants will
also clash on many of such issues. Similarly the interest of absentee
landlords and capitalist farmers would also clash on the issues of
wages depending on the stage of development of mechanization.
Therefore, the differentiations within peasantry will necessarily lead
to polarization. The nature of conflict will depend on the issues which
dominate the particular situation.
RELATIONSHIP WITH NON-AGRICULTURAL SECTOR:
We have mentioned above that the prices, different responses in
different categories. non-agricultural sector has , some other aspects
also. The first relates to the transfer of resources from agricultural
sector to urban/industrial sector. Such policy is often adopted in order
to provide capital for rapid industrial development. However, greater
surplus could be squeezed from agriculture only when there was
skewed distribution of land ownerships because the snail farmer
would have little surplus, he might prefer to reinvest it in agriculture
or could more likely increase his consumption. The large land owner
on the other hand would have greater surplus to invest in
manufacturing or trade. This could however be made feasible only
by reducing profitability in agriculture as compared to manufacturing
and trade. This would result in turning the term of trade against
agriculture and reduce the income of peasantry once the landed elite
also developed interest in manufacturing and trade, as they would
wish to keep low wages and lower labour productivity in agricultural
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
sector. Low wages in agriculture would provide them cheaper labour
in manufacturing sector. In such a situation the whole of peasantry
excepting the landed elite could get arrayed against the industrial
sector.
However, if the landed elite did not invest in non-agricultural sector
and was content with the extraction of surplus through the inter-
locking of land (lease) labour and credit markets in rural areas, then
it could also have an interest in low wages with high profitability in
agriculture. In such a situation the landed elite could lead the interest
of middle farmers along with them. This would, however, depend on
two other factors. If they raised an issue of input prices, the interest
of all the sections of peasantry would converge as all will be benefitted
by lower input prices. Any rise in prices hits the farmers in general,
but smaller the farmers, higher would be the injury. As input prices
would rise, the smaller farmers would become less innovative. This
would prevent them from adopting, new technology. Since it would
reduce the expected net return from the new technology in new areas.
Therefore, in backward areas even large farmers prefer to lapse out
land (mostly in the form of share-cropping). Thus, where as large
farmers in green revolution go for more mechanization, if prices
rise in the backward areas the tread activates the large farmers to
revert back to semi feudal (if we say call it by this name) arrangements
the nature of conflict that could develop would be, therefore, different
in green revolution belt and backward region belt if input prices
rise.
The other factor which affects the interest of peasantry is output
prices
When food grain prices rite, the large producers gain the most as
they sell surplus in the market, and this induces tries for modernization
and mechanization of their farms. A small producer on the other
hand gains little as he produces mostly for self consumptions firing
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The pace of the peasant movements slackened considerably after
independence compared to the earlier periods. Despite the structural
changes in the agricultural sector and its increasing commercialization
and closer inter linking with other developing sectors of the economy,
the problems of the small and marginal peasants together with the
landless labourers remained as before. However, in the national
perspective their relative importance decreased. The movements that
took place after 1950 were basically for the age old demands of better
deal to the share croppers and a higher return to the labourers for
their toil.
In 1950s under the influence of Vinoba Bhave, the Bhudan
Movement was experimented upon. The incongruity of the trusteeship
concept of the rich in a class ridden society made this attempt a dull
squib. 1970s the pendulum swung to the other end. A land grab
movement and Naxalite type of peasant insurgencies were erupted
in same places. But for the lack of organized strength and a well
defined political strategy the attempts died being brutally suppressed
by the State machineries.
Despite a growing tendency of marginalization of the middle and
the small peasant, and availing in the ranks of agricultural labourers
in recent decades it is quite curious to find the pace of the peasant
movements slowing down in Orissa after 1950s except for a few
sporadic outbursts of peasantry in Land grab Movement and Naxalite
struggles. It because all the more baffling to understand when it is
noted that the peasant leadership in the post-Independence period
has come over-whelming from the left wing parties whose a-vowed
aim is to fight social oppression, and, lead the workers and peasants
to wrest the means of production from the control of those who do
not toil.
The answer to this riddle may be seen not in the philosophies of the
left-wing political parties but the strategy and tactics which they
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
also in this power-block, however, it has been able to site a
considerable impact. This is mainly because this power-block is
functioning within a framework. The power- structure itself it
undergoing a radical change under the conflicting pulls of various
power-blocks. The character of parliament at and state legislatures
has changed in the four decades years. Peasants; are now acre
conscious voters when they were forty years ago. Similarly even at
the village level the middle-class peasant has emerged at strong
contender in the local power structure. Andre Beteille has observed
in his study of a Tanjor village that ownership of land has shifted
only in a set all way from the old rentier class to the emerging class
of farmers and owner cultivators, tower on the other hand has shifted
much more decisively from the traditional elite of the village into
the hands of new popular leaders. (* Beteille, A., Catse, Class and
Power, London, University of California Press, 1971, p. 199)
However political articulation and organization among small/
marginal farmers or agricultural lead owners has been quite weak.
This has resulted in their inadequate representation in the power
structure. Recent experience has been that the middle peasants have
claimed to represent the interest of major class of peasantry.
It is here that the role of parties, peasant organizations and their
leadership becomes important. It is, at times, considered that in the
initial phase of peasant movements , the role of charismatic leadership
is more important. The argument states that since peasants had a
conflicting interest with landlords (Zamindars or so) and at the same
time maintained a Patron-Client like social relationship, it was
socially and psychologically difficult to adopt new role and revolt
against the landlord. However, when a new Charismatic leader could
emerge with whom their relationship would also develop on the lines
of patron-client relationship, then they could break away from the
landlord. The new Charismatic leadership however, could inculcate
the new value system among peasantry in due course. In the initial
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 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
phase of peasant movements, many great national leaders provided
Charismatic leadership and at the same time tried to infuse the values
of equality, democracy and nationalism among them. The situation
in India has entered the second phase in which the ideas of new
value of equality, democracy and nationalism etc., carry more force
and movement tries to project itself as a part of the broader
movements aimed to accomplish these objectives.
Thus while the pre-independence peasant-movements were inter-
twined with the struggle for independence, the post-independence
movements are inter-Woven with the objectives of equality
democracy, nationalism etc. The urge to accomplish these ideals with
the accomplishment of the interests of the peasant masses has
acquired greater strength because of the vast spread of modem
communications and mass media.
The concept of equality is the greatest revolutionary motive for which
is shaping the course of peasant movements. Indias social structure
was based on hierarchical order which, accepted the principle of
inequality. The concept of equality interest in the demands of peasant
movements is slowly and imperceptibility- changing the power
structure from the village level to the national level, and demolishing
traditional social hierarchy. No party can stand if it propagation
against equality. Now propagation of equality also does not work for
long. Because if conditions for equality is not created, then the social
base of ruling elite would get eroded. Therefore, every party, whether
in power or opposition tries to broaden its base through articulating
the interest of the largest social group on the basis of equality,
Therefore ruling party could continue in power only through a series
of land reform and rural development measures as a concessional
mechanism to establish the elite hegemony under the best suitable
mark of democracy.
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Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
The urge for equality stimulates peasants to act. And in a democratic
framework this action leads then to secure greater representation in
legislatures. Besides, more share in power, right to protest and
organize gives them the opportunity to articulate and crystals their
interests. The concept of democracy that the ultimate source of power
are people-changes their role radically. They not only aspire to achieve
economic interests and greater share in power, but also tend to change
the form of power structure itself. The demand for grass-root
democracy and greater power to grass-root institutions emanate from
such a concept of democracy. It is, at times, argued that the interest
of rural masses could be served only when political power is vested
in grass-root Institutions of democracy which would also enable the
rural masses and greater participation.
All these forces however, operate within a broader concept and
framework of nationalism. The term nationalism may mean different
things for different peoples. But each of people try to achieve the
ideas within their ideas of nationalism. This unifies them with other
sections of society and allows the adjustments. Then the interest of
each group including the peasants is to sub-serve the goals of national
advancement and national pride (or glory). It is from this force of
nationalism that each group despite its interest, agrees to sacrifice
for the overall advancement of national cause. Therefore, every
movement, especially so the peasant movements claim to preserve
and advance the national cause. All these forces through a complex
interaction among themselves shape and determine the course of
peasant movements.
The post independence period thus not only substituted new issues
to the peasant movement but also, by aggravating inter-class
antagonism between the different categories of land-owning
cultivators and between peasant proprietors and landless labourers
enfeebled the fighting potential of the peasant.
191
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
have accepted as means for staking their claim to the political power
of the state. Unlike in China and some Latin American countries
ABBREVIATIONS where the show-down between the haves and have-nots was sought
in terms of direct confrontation through are insurgency, in India the
OCH Orissa Consolidation Holdings
left wing parties have accepted the rule of parliamentary democracy
OTP Orissa Tenants Protection Act to play their political part in the power game. The logic of the ballet
box rejoins upon three to broaden their voting base beyond the narrow
SDO Subdivisional Development Officer rank of the fighting peasant groups, and for this accept occasional
collaborations between various classed of divergent interests even
ZAM Zamindari Abolition Movement
when such opportunistic alliances hurt the immediate cause of their
SCM Share Croppers Movement main allies, that is the peasants. It if unfortunate for the peasant
organizations that they have not been able to throw up their own
PRS Permanent Settlement leaders from their own ranks who could lead thee in their political
struggles. The political weakness of the peasant class has made them
OEA Orissa Estate Abolition
accept the hegemony of outside leaders who have only a United
PC Percentage identity with their goals.
Given the state of political education among the peasants in Orissa:
PKS Povincial Krushak Sabha
the shrinking of their fighting base and the commitment of the
leftwing political parties to the rules of a parliamentary democracy,
the peasant struggles in the State in the near future would scarcely
be different from what they have been in the past decades after
Independence. The lingering discontent among the peasant may go
on as ever with peasant movement rallying round short-terms and
temporary issuer rather than the long-run goal of seizer of the State-
power through a state or country-wise movement.

196 193
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
Kapudias: People from business community.
EXPLANATORY NOTES Karada Rajyas: Rent paying Kingdoms.
Kowri: Sea shells used as Coins in re-British period
Abwab: Cess imposed by the State land revenue. of Orissa.
Bethi & Begari: Forced unpaid labour of subjects for Kumutis: People from business community.
Zamindars or Kings. Mahalwari: A land regulation introduced by the British
Bhogra: Land in lease given to the subject for life long where there was no king. This law was
services of Zamindar or king. encompassing the whole village (mahal).
Bisoyee: Faithful fighter of the King. Mahantas: Priest of Monasteries.
Chaudheyya Dance: A type of Fold dance by tribes men of Orissa- Mathas: Monasteries.
Chhau: Dance reflecting Bire-rasa patronized by Mulia: Cultivator.
royal houses. Melis: (Mutha floads) Sporadic uprisings with
Chasa: Cultivation. local leadership.
Chasi: Cultivators. Nazarana: Gift of subjects at the very first meeting.
Dewalia: Bankrut. Paika: Reserve soldiers (at Khordha area) of Orissa
Dalabehera: A title given to the subjects by the Keys of King.
Orissa. Palagoan: Group lyrics with popular explanation.
Doratnams: Faithful fighter of the King. Patara: Bangles hauker.
Ganjapatti: Kings having huge troops of etc. Pradhan: Village headman.
Garjat: Princely States. Salun: People from business assumption.
Ghettos: The place demarcated for the black people in Sanander: A treaty relation to landlaws.
the white ruled South Africa. Sarbarakara: Intermediary in the Zamindari System.
Gitavinaya: Song drama. Savara: (Huntsmen) Faithful fighter of the King.
Gotipa dance: A type of folk dance of Orissa. Sunset Law: Law which was compelling the Zamindars to
Hizarat: A dharana by campus infront of Government pay off their jummas near the Government on
Office. the fixed date before sunset failing which they
Jagir: Rent free lanf donated to the family of kings used to loose their zamindari.
soldiers for their life long service (Inherited Talikdars: Rent collecting authority of Talukas.
service). Tamuli: Merchants of betle leaves.
Jamma: Fixed deposit (per annum) near the Telis: Oilman.
Government.
Thikadar: Contractor.
Jurmana: Penalty.
Veti: A conventional gift for the kings of zamindars.
194 195
 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947 Peasant Movements in Orissa after 1947
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