Situating the Tebhaga Movement

The Tebhaga movement was a major upheaval of sharecroppers and their allies—the landless labourers, rural artisans and tribals in undivided Bengal. In keeping with the meaning of the word tebhaga (three parts), the movement aimed at securing a two-thirds share of the crop for the sharecroppers, thereby reducing the rent they paid to the jotedars—a class of rich farmers, who held superior rights on the land—from one-half to one-third.

As per the bargadari system of cultivation, which prevailed in Bengal at the time, the sharecroppers (who were called bargadars, or adhiars) held their tenancy on the basis of fifty-fifty sharing of the agricultural produce. The land-owning classes in the region (the zamindars, talukdars and jotedars) had reclaimed these lands, initially, by using the services of tribals such as the Santals and others. These tribals turned peasants, however, were soon forced to leave their land, which was subsequently leased out to jotedars, who paid high rents to the zamindars. The jotedars, in turn, gave out the land for cultivation to the original reclaimers, now turned bargadars, on a fifty-fifty crop-sharing basis. The fixed share of produce was called adhi, or bhag. As per the system, all the inputs (such as seed, cattle, agricultural implements and manure) were usually the bargadar’s responsibility. If the jotedar supplied any of these or made any cash advance to the sharecropper, a share larger than half the produce was taken by the former as adjustment.

After the harvest, the peasants had to stack the paddy at the jotedars’ khamar (threshing place) or any other place, as per the latter’s direction. This practice gave the jotedars ample scope for manipulating the quantum of harvest, which was eventually considered in crop-sharing. Further, it was to the disadvantage of the bargadars because the jotedars often manipulated weights to claim higher shares of the harvest. The bargadars had no statutory status and, hence, no security of holding. Whereas the jotedars retained more permanent and superior rights on the land, the sharecropping contracts for the bargadars were usually for a year; they had to, therefore, change the land they worked on every season.

The ruthless exploitation that prevailed under the bargadari system was questioned by the sharecroppers in the mid-1940s, with strong backing and direction from the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha (the peasants’ front of the Communist Party of India). By that time, the Kisan Sabha had some 77,000 members in nearly a thousand villages and about a thousand full-time organisers in Bengal districts. The Sabha derived its call for tebhaga essentially from the Report of the Bengal Land Revenue Enquiry Commission, 1940 (popularly known as the Floud Commission—for it was headed by Sir Francis Floud). In this report, the Commission recommended inter alia that the landlord’s share of the produce be reduced to one-third.Subsequently, in its Pajia Conference (1940), the Sabha adopted the recommendation of the Floud Commission as their demand, and gave a call to peasantry to organise themselves, in order to accomplish the benefits suggested by the Commission. However, at that juncture, the prevailing situation of war and the subsequent famine were not conducive to organise any direct collective action. Accordingly, the call for direct action came only a few years later, with the decision of the Bengal Kisan Council (in its September 1946 meeting) to start the struggle for tebhaga from the next harvest.

Outbreak and Expansion

The first outburst for tebhaga took place in Atwari village in northwest Dinajpur—where bargadar volunteers harvested their paddy fields and carried the grain to their own khamar, instead of taking it to jotedars’, as they used to do in the past. The landlords resisted the move with the help of ruffians and the police, leading to violent clashes. Several of the Kisan Sabha leaders and organisers of the struggle were arrested and many others went underground.

During that period, from September to December 1946, it is reported that the movement gathered momentum in 11 districts and more than 1,000 volunteers, or peasants, were arrested. Subsequently, it spread to at least 19 districts, engulfing almost the whole of undivided Bengal. The severest and most violent areas of the movement were the districts of Dinajpur, Rangpur, Jalpaiguri and Malda (in North Bengal); 24 Parganas and south East Midnapur; and Mymensing and Jessore-Khulna (in East Bengal). In some areas, the movement made remarkable headway, so much so that the peasants even declared their zones as tebhaga elaka or ‘liberated areas’, the local governance of which was entrusted with Tebhaga Committees.

Dynamics and Imprints of Tebhaga

Apart from a fair share of the produce, the movement also raised many other supplementary demands such as the permanency of sharecropping contracts (no eviction), right to stack harvested crop in the bargadars’ farmyard, reduction in exorbitant rates on advances and elimination of illegal exactions. The poor peasants also negated the custom of sharing straw and other by-products with the jotedars on a fifty-fifty basis. The movement achieved overwhelming participation from tribals, which made it unique, as compared to many other peasant struggles in the Indian subcontinent. The tribals were in the forefront of the struggle in the northern districts of Bengal. Wherever the tribals were involved, militancy increased, accompanied by a large degree of spontaneous action. This ethnic-class mix gave a sense of unity to the fighting sharecroppers.

Yet another important aspect of the movement was the visibly active involvement of women. There is ample recorded evidence that testifies to the overwhelming participation and specific roles of women in mobilisation.

Despite the swiftness of its expansion, the movement in its first phase was short-lived. By early 1947, after a few months from its initial outburst, the struggle died out. The unrest, however, forced the government to initiate a bill in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1947, which proposed drastic reforms in the barga system. However, the subsequent political developments prevented the government from having the bill enacted into law. Thus, ultimately, the Tebhaga struggle of 1946–7 was without any major achievements. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to conclude that the struggle left no imprint on the agrarian history of the Bengal region. It is estimated that, due to the struggle, about 40 per cent of the sharecropping peasants secured tebhaga rights, granted willingly by landlords. The struggle also led to the abolition or reduction of unjust and illegal exactions, which were traditionally practised in the region.

There was also recurrence of the movement in East Bengal during 1948–50. Later on, as a culmination of the movement, the post-independence Left government in West Bengal introduced Operation Barga, considered to be a prominent land reform intervention. Also, in East Bengal, the movement paved the way for the enactment of the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act in 1950. Even after half a century, the Tebhaga movement continues to have a special significance in the agrarian history of the Indian subcontinent because it was the most organised and ideologically driven peasant movement in twentieth century Bengal.

[Major Readings: Dhanagare, D.N. (1983), Peasant Movements in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi; Roy, Singha and Debal K. (1992), Women in Peasant Movements: Tebhaga, Naxalite and After, Manohar Publications, New Delhi; Majumdar, Asok (1993), Peasant Protests in Indian Politics, NIB Publishers, New Delhi]