Role Name Affiliation

National Coordinator
Subject Coordinator Prof Sujata Patel Department of Sociology,
University of Hyderabad
Paper Coordinator IIM Calcutta
Manish Thakur
Content Writer Dr. Shoma Choudhury Department of Sociology
Lahiri St. Xavier's College,
Kolkata

Content Reviewer Manish Thakur IIM Calcutta

Language Editor Manish Thakur IIM Calcutta
Technical Conversion

Module Structure

Typology of Peasant Movements Introduction, The need for a typology, The

basis of typologies, Typologies of Peasant
Movements, Limits of typologies.

Description of the Module

Items Description of the Module

Subject Name Sociology
Paper Name Agrarian Relations and Social Structure in
India
Module Name/Title Typology of peasant movements
Module Id 5.6
Pre Requisites Variety of forms of peasant movements, the
need for an order.
Objectives This module seeks to analyse the uses of
typology in sociology. It throws light on the
typology of peasant movements in India.
Key words Typology, Peasant, Movement, Limitations
 Typology of Peasant Movements

Key Words: typology, peasant, movement, limitations.

Introduction

Historically, a wide variety of peasant movements have characterised the Indian landscape.
Some of these movements have witnessed mass violence whereas some others have been part
of the general mobilisation characteristic of the Indian national movement. Moreover, there
has been differential participation of different agrarian classes in these movements. These
movements also differ in the scale of their mobilisation, the levels of political awareness,
strategies, and goals and objectives. True, most of these movements have been localised
phenomena. Yet, the resonance of peasant discontent and the general causes of their misery
have found articulation in the nationalist agenda and the development policies after
Independence. The plethora of legislative measures to achieve land reforms can very well be
seen as the political response to popular upsurge of the peasants exemplified in the various
movements. You have already studied some of these movements in considerable detail in the
previous modules.
You would have also realised that peasant movements have been studied extensively
by scholars belonging to different disciplines. Sociologists and historians have generally
taken the lead though they have been joined by other social scientists as well. Substantive
studies of particular peasant movements apart, some of the scholars have developed strategies
to make sense of the wide variety of peasant movements by developing typologies of
different kinds. This module intends to introduce you to some of these typologies. But before
you go into the various forms and bases of classification, we think it appropriate to tell you a
little bit about the functions of typology as such. You will find it perhaps useful and a
worthwhile exercise to dwell upon the nature and the need for a typology in social science.

The need for a typology

A typology is an attempt at a structuring social reality and perceiving it through categories in

order to achieve a clear and precise understanding. In fact grouping and classification of
objects into distinct sets or types is also inculcated as a basic human activity from childhood
and marks the growth of more complex behaviour patterns.

In an essay by Durkheim and Mauss published as early as in 1903 (cited in Tiryakin: 1968),
there is a suggestion that sociology needs to develop a branch of study called 'social
morphology' whose primary role would be to develop systematic classifications of social
types or species in relation to social structure. Presumably, this would allow sociology to
develop as a scientific discipline as well as avoid the problems that arise due to an
oversimplified understanding of social phenomena. According to these theorists, types are
more than just logical categories; they are affective, collective symbols of classification.
Sociology must also be concerned with 'natural typologies' i.e. the symbolic classifications of
entities into types, or 'folk classifications' that are found in various societies for they reflect
the conditions of the human subjects themselves.
Typologies, thus, occupy a very important place in conceptual understanding that they bring a
certain order within empirical science. 'Since science is grounded on the assumptions of
orderliness of natural phenomena and the rational apprehension of this order by man, the
systematic classificatory grouping of phenomena and the explication of the rationale for the
classification are indeed tantamount to the existing codification of the existing state of
knowledge in a discipline' (Tiryakin 1968: 183). Thus, disciplines resort to typologizing
because it encourages precision, and makes a body of knowledge scientific. According to the
International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, 'the methodological function and significance
of typological classification are basically two-fold, namely, codification and prediction. A
typology goes beyond sheer description by simplifying the ordering of the elements of a
population and the known relevant traits of that population into distinct groupings, in this
capacity a typological classification creates order out of the potential chaos of the discrete,
discontinuous or heterogeneous observation. But in so codifying phenomena, it also permits
the observer to seek and predict relationships between phenomena that do not seem to be
connected in any obvious way.' (p. 177). In other words, with the potential for codification,
prediction and precision, typology enables the making of a more scientific social science.

This penchant for typologising phenomena in an attempt to be 'scientific' does betray a

positivistic urge among sociologists. As the goals and frameworks of the discipline undergo
change, sociologists today have moved away from this imperative to typologise the
phenomena that they study. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, typologies, and typologies of
peasant movements in our case, have their uses and it is worthwhile to know about them.

Social Movements: The basis of a typology

Peasant movements are but social movements. A preliminary way of understanding peasant
movements is thus to look at them in terms of social movements. So, you will be given a
short introduction to typologies of social movements before you start looking at the
typologies of peasant movements in India.
Social scientists have used a variety of ways of creating typologies of social
movements. According to M.S.A Rao (1984, 2006), though social movements have been
classified according to various criterion, the classification poses definitional problems. Thus
classifying movements on the basis of their consequences constitutes one form of
classification. Therefore we have reformist movements aimed at bringing about change in
some area of life or the other, 'involving new relationships, activities, norms and values.' (p.
3). Other movements which are labelled as transformative are those which bring about
change in the relationship between super-ordinate and subordinate. Still other movements
work towards bringing about revolutionary changes in different spheres of life.

In general, movements may be classified according to their locus or the segments of

population, sector or setting in which they originate. Accordingly we have movements which
are classified as linguistic, religious, sectarian, caste, peasant, worker, tribal etc. This criterion
then enables us to understand the section of the society which is involved in the movement.
Movements may be classified on the basis of their scale and spread. Accordingly, some of
them may be all India, others may be regional or local. However, according to Rao, 'the
criteria of ideology and the nature of consequences are critical' in defining the nature and
scope of the movement While locus provides the substantive aspect, the criteria of
ideology and consequence provide the analytical foci of a movement' (2006: 3).

We come across another form of classification on the basis of the change-orientation of social
movements as suggested by Partha N Mukherji (1979, 2006) in his study of the Naxalbari
movement. He says that social changes can be understood as,
a) changes occuring within the given structure (s)
b) changes occurring from an emergence of additional structure (s)
c) changes occurring due to the elimination or loss of structure(s) ; and
d) changes occurring as a result of replacement of existing structure(s) by alternative
structure(s).
Following the above, changes of the first variety could be classified as accumulative; those of
the second and third variety are alternative, whilst changes of the fourth type are
transformative. (Mukherji 2006: 20)

Likewise, T K Oommen, on the basis of his study of the Bhoodan-Gramdan

movement puts forth a three-fold classification of movements: charismatic, organisational
and ideological. In his classificatory scheme, the emphasis is on the prime mover of a
movement, i.e., what propels and sustains a movement and mobilises the rank and file. For
example, given the charismatic role of Vinoba, the Bhoodan could well be regarded as a
charismatic movement. Naxal movement, on the other hand, will be an example of
ideological movements. And, peasant movements launched under All India Kisan Sabha
would be the case of organisational movements. Moreover, these are heuristic categories, and
the same movement can go through these phases in its life history. How this can be seen in
relation to the Bhoodan movement, please refer to Module 5.2 and the references cited
therein.

We should also remember that none of the typologies suggested here are beyond
criticisms. Of necessity, they stress on certain attributes of a movement that they consider to
be important. In the process, certain other attributes, which other scholars may treat as
equally important, if not more, may not find resonance in a given typology.

Typology of Peasant movements

Scholars who have studied peasant movements in India have classified the phenomenon
along several axes. According to Ghanshyam Shah (2004) so far as peasant movements are
concerned, classification on the basis of movements chronological emergence in different
periods of history has been quite popular. Therefore, we very often refer to peasant
movements by the rough historical period such as peasant movements in pre-British India,
peasant movements in the colonial period, and/or peasant movements in the post-
independence India. Peasant movements in the post independence period again, have been
classified as pre-Naxalbari and post-Naxalbari or pre-green revolution and post-green
revolution. Obviously, in this classification, there is an assumption that Naxalbari movement
or the green revolution is moments of great historical significance as gar as changes in the
agrarian social structure are concerned. The latter has been further subdivided into
movements occurring in the pre and post Emergency period.
Observers of the agrarian scene have termed movements occurring in the post green
revolution period as farmer's movements. This replacement of the peasant by the farmer,
however, is not an arbitrary choice on the part of the scholars. There is an abundance of
literature to justify this conceptual shift in terminology. The shift in the nomenclature is also
indicative of the differentiation in the nature of demands, ideological orientations, the
emergence of new actors in the Indian countryside and their changing social (class) character.
More importantly, it has been demonstrated by the researchers that the issues and demands of
the farmers movements primarily reflect the class interests of the rich farmers who emerged
more strongly in the post-Green revolution period in certain parts of the country. You can
read Dipankar Gupta (1997) to have a detailed account of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU)
movement in western Uttar Pradesh. In the characterisation of a movement as a farmers
movement, a set of larger theoretical issues are at stake: the nature of agrarian capitalism, the
place of free/unfree labour in Indian agriculture, the role of the Indian state and its disposition
towards the agrarian bourgeoisie depending on the changing character of the ruling coalition.
Tom Brass (1995) is a good source to understand some of the larger issues from an orthodox
Marxist point of view.
Interestingly, Gail Omvedt has classified the peasant struggles into 'old' and 'new',
whereby the former is known by the term peasant movements, and the latter as farmers
movements. To her, farmers movements exemplify new social movements in the Indian
case. For a distinction between, old and new social movements you can refer to relevant
modules in the paper on social movements. Gail Omvedts claim apart, there is no denying
that farmers movements have certain distinguishing features even when the addressee for
both the peasant and the farmers movement continues to be the state. Farmers
movements generally display utter indifference to the plight of the labouring classes. Issues
relating to the general well-being of the landless agricultural labourers hardly find any place
on their agenda. In fact, it is the ownership of the land that qualifies one to the status of a
farmer. Moreover, the sectional demands of the class of the owner-cultivators turn out to be
the general demands of the entire rural population. This gives the impression of farmers
constituting a homogenous class and thereby underplays the internal differentiation of the
class of farmers in terms of caste and/or their differential access to land. The focus is
generally on the access to resources provided by the state such as subsidies on power for
irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides, agricultural implements like tractors and
threshers, cold storages, minimum support prices, credit at cheaper interest rates etc.
Farmers movements generally take recourse to the essentialised distinction of Bharat
versus India the former referring to the countryside and the latter to the urban-metropolitan
India. They claim that the development policies of the state tend to develop India at the cost
of Bharat. They invoke in a popular language what economists call terms of trade arguing
that the latter is biased against the rural India. To put it differently, the farmers have to sell off
relatively more quantity of food grains to procure a given piece of agricultural implement, or
a given bag of fertilisers from the urban market. And, the farmers movements have been
demanding the rectification of the biased terms of trade through policies favouring farmers.
In India, the Shetkari Sangathana movement in Maharashtra led by Sharad Joshi and the
Bharatiya Kisan Union movement led by Mahinder Singh Tikait in western Uttar Pradesh are
seen as the textbook cases of farmers movements. Scholars have also looked at Karnataka
Rajya Raiyatha Sangha movement in Karnataka that was at its peak in the 1980s under the
leadership of Prof. M D. Nanjundaswami.
Most of these movements testify to the increasing country-town nexus and the
growing hold of capitalist relations in Indian agriculture. Farmers are the ones who produce
for the market (as against peasants who are generally seen to be producing for subsistence)
and thus are intimately involved with the processes of commercialisation of agriculture and
the vagaries of the global commodity production. On the one hand, this dependence on the
market makes them prosper as agriculture becomes a lucrative economic enterprise; on the
other hand, it also makes them extremely vulnerable by exposing them to the global
dynamics of agricultural commodity production, particularly cash crops. The incidence of
farmers suicide and/or the phenomenon of Bt. Cotton or Mansanto have to be understood in
relation to the increasing reach and depth of capitalism in Indian agriculture.

In his study of peasant struggles, A. R Desai (1978) classified colonial India into
ryotwari areas under British territory, zamindari areas under princely authority and tribal
areas. He felt that the struggle in these areas had a different character, different goals and
involved different strata of the peasantry. Desai called the struggles in the colonial period
'peasant struggles' and those in the post independent period 'agrarian struggles'. The usage of
the term agrarian struggles is to indicate a broad category consisting of the peasants and other
classes in these struggles. Desai further sub- divides struggles in the post independence
period into two categories- 'the movements launched by the newly emerged proprietary
classes comprising of rich farmers, viable sections of the middle peasant proprietors and the
landlords and the movements launched by various sections of the agrarian poor in which
agrarian proletariat have been acquiring central importance' (cited in Shah: 2004)

Kathleen Gough (1979) records 77 uprisings and cites massive historical data regarding
tribal revolts during British rule. These revolts were primarily launched by tribals who
cultivated land, and were already peasants in terms of their occupation. Gough classifies such
peasant movements on the basis of their goal, ideology, and the method of organisation.
According to her, there are five types of revolts:

1. Restorative rebellions to drive out the British and restore earlier ruler and social
relations.
2. Religious movements for liberation of a region or an ethnic group under a new form
of government.
3. Social banditry
4. Terrorist vengeance with the idea of meting out collective justice
5. Mass insurrections for the redressal of a particular grievance. (Singh 2001, Shah
2004)

Ghanshyam Shah is critical of the above classification because he feels it places undue focus
on the goals rather than upon the nature of the peasant actors involved or the strategies that
they adopt in attaining their goals.

Inspired by the framework of class analysis, D. N. Dhanagare (1983) believes that the
peasant movement in India can be understood through the model of agrarian classes. He
draws upon and extends the Marxist tradition of the study of peasantry in terms of agrarian
classes. As you already know this tradition of understanding peasant stratification goes back
to Lenins classic work titled Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899). This was further
enriched by the contributions of the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Later, an
entire subfield of peasant studies emerged along the lines of Marxist class analysis.
D N Dhanagares classic work on peasant movements in India belongs to this
tradition. According to him, the studies of peasantry need to be both historical and
comparative in nature. Employing the historical and comparative framework, Dhanagare
(1983) analyses a range of peasant movements in India between 1920-1950 such as the
Moplah Rebellion in Malabar, the Tebhaga movement in Bengal, the Bardoli Satyagraha in
Gujarat, and the peasant struggles of Telengana and Oudh to establish two broad patterns of
interdependence between the type of movement and the strata of peasantry. According to him,
the poor peasantry generally participates in the insurrectionary and millenarian movements,
and the rich and middle peasants, on the other hand, generally involves itself, in the
nationalist non-violent resistance movements. Even now, Dhanagares typology of peasant
movements remains the most comprehensive and useful tool for understanding peasant
movements in India. More importantly, Dhanagare advances a major revision of the middle
peasant thesis in the Indian case. For the middle peasant thesis, you can refer to the other
relevant module in this paper.

Privileging goals, ideology and methods of organisation in his classification of

peasant movements, Dhanagare (1983) talks of the following six types:

1. Nativistic movements or rebellions: they were primarily aimed at driving out the
British and maintaining earlier ruler and social relations. Such movements are
essentially revivalist and their ideology is generally backward looking. These
movements did take place in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The
process of British annexation of Indian territory and the imposition of alien land
revenue administration in different parts of the country saw the emergence of such
movements.

2. Religious or Millenarian movements: these movements are meant for the

liberation of a region or an ethnic group under a new pattern of authority. Their
collective orientation is towards a futuristic religious ideology, totalistic goals or
messianic leadership. For example, the Santhal rebellion in the Chhota Nagpur
plateau led by the tribal leader Birsa Munda falls under this category.

3. Social Banditry: This is a category drawn from the works of the historian Eric
Hobsbawm. It refers to the rebellious activities of the peasant outlaws whom the
lord and the state regard as criminals. Social bandits remain within the bounds of
peasant society and are considered their heroes leaders of liberation. They
emerge in times of general peasant pauperisation and economic crises such as
famines, drought, floods, and civil wars. Social bandits inhabit remote and
inaccessible areas. Their goals are narrow and they exemplify Robin Hood
syndrome. They would loot the granaries and wealth of the rich peasants and
distribute them among the poor. Even the Chinese revolution led by Mao has had
its share of social bandits. In India, the fictional works of Phaneeshwarnath Renu
contain references to some of the social bandits like Nakshatra Malakar in the
Purnea region of Bihar.

4. Mass Insurrections: Peasants go for mass insurrections for the redressal of specific
secular grievances. Such insurrections do not have a single charismatic leader.
They may be initially reformative involving peaceful demonstrations but may end
up with mass violence. Tebhaga and Telengana movements in India are seen as
mass insurrections.

5. Terrorism: This involves actual use and threat of violence coupled with vengeance
and ideas of meting out collective justice to the chosen few. Terrorists acts by
their very nature are sporadic, diffused and spontaneous. Naxalbari movement in
its phase of decline saw such terrorist acts though such acts also accompanied
peasant rebellions in Oudh and Moplah revolt.
 6. Liberal-Reformist movements: They involve violation of specific law through
symbolic protests. They do not question the very structure of legitimate authority.
Likewise, they do not aspire for or aim at fundamental transformations in social
relations. Peasant movements in Kheda, Bardoli, Champaran and Oudh fall under
this category. In general, liberal-reformist peasant movements emerged as part of
the nationalist mass mobilisation. They employed strategies such as no tax
campaigns. Or they would protest against particular piece of legislation that they
would consider exploitative such as compulsory indigo farming.

The first two types of the above-mentioned classification are transformative in the sense that
they aim at total change while the last four basically refer to reformative partial changes,
intra-systemic changes and modifications in the existing social relations.

You should also realise that none of the peasant movements in India seem to conform to a
single ideal type in concrete reality. In fact, in their actual unfolding, some of these
movements may have had elements of more than one particular type. Yet, heuristically, these
types help us understand the phenomena of peasant protest. Complex social forces and
peculiar historical conditions shape the form and substance of peasant resistance. In fact,
most of the peasant movements never assumed an all-India character. They were fragmented,
either regional or local and were generally oriented towards local-regional demands.

In class terms, in millenarian and insurrectionary movements, the principal participants are
poor peasants, insecure tenants with small holdings and share-croppers. Mass insurrections
may have the participation of landless labourers as well. Terrorism as a type witnesses the
mobilisation of the same agrarian classes as mass insurrections. What distinguish these two
types are their ideological differences. Some of the peasant movements like the Moplah
rebellion and the Oudh revolt in Uttar Pradesh (1920-21) have been regarded as pre-political
in nature given the dominant religious overtones of these movements. What make peasant
rebellion a mass movement are levels of political mobilisation and the degree of political
consciousness. In this reading, Tebhaga and Telengana turn out to be overtly political peasant
movements as they involved revolutionary mobilisation by the Communist Party of India
(CPI).

Dhanagares analysis clearly demonstrates that rich and middle peasants generally act either
against the government or landlord. These categories also responded to Gandhis call for
political agitations for national independence. They also adopted his ethics of non-violence
and peaceful satyagraha. Hamza Alavi relates the failure of Tebhagha and Telengana
movements to the presence of the poor peasants as the peripheral actors. These movements
also saw the alienation of the middle peasants in the later stages of the struggle. Dhanagare is
of the view that middle peasants are too vulnerable and marginal to be considered as
revolutionary vanguard in revolutionary peasant movements. They display withdrawal
symptoms in a movement. Moreover, they are deeply attached to land, and too dependent on
rich peasants for credit and other types of support to carry on with any revolutionary zeal. In
fact, they did not make any outstanding contribution to Moplah or Telengana insurrections.
They are much closer to rich peasants in terms of economic interests and political aspirations
than has been supposed by the proponents of middle peasant thesis.

T K. Oommen (1985) observes that there are peasant movements that have continued till
today irrespective of the change in political power. These movements started during the pre-
independence period but they continue till today, though their goals have undergone change.
Ghanshyam Shah (2004) feels that peasant movements differ according to the variability of
agrarian regimes or structures and as the latter undergo changes, the nature of the peasant
movement also varies. For example, a contrast can be drawn between the actors and the goals
of the peasant movements under the British and those during post-independent India where
the nature of the peasantry and their demands/goals became more differentiated.

In recent times, scholars also include the struggles of the agricultural labour under the general
rubric of peasant movements. After all, agrarian labour as a category is intimately linked with
the general framework of the ownership, control and the use of land. Thus, K. P Kannan
divides the rural labour struggles according to the development of class consciousness among
them. Therefore, there are,
a) protest movements based on caste or religious identity and consciousness but those which
are basically a response generated by the emerging capitalist mode of production
b) secular movements arising from category (a) that reject caste identity and consciousness
but appealing to the 'rationality' and 'brotherhood' of man.
c) the nationalist movement culminating in radical political consciousness, the seeds of which
were in category (b) culminating in 'class consciousness' and class based movements (cited in
Shah 2004: 42-43)

Another way of looking at the peasant movements is the way Ranajit Guha does in his book
Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983), where he examines
peasant insurgency from the perspective of peasant consciousness for revolt. Guha delineates
the underlying structural features of tribal consciousness of peasants, namely negation,
solidarity, transmission, territoriality etc. These features can enable us to understand why and
how peasants have rebelled in the past. However, Guha represents a more recent trend where
scholars are moving away from typologies. He believes that peasant struggles cannot be
categorised because they have an element of arbitrariness. Social reality is complex and it is
misleading to divide them artificially. However, Guhas study is confined to tribal rebels and
to the rebellions that had occurred during the colonial period. Some of Guhas collaborators,
namely, Gynendra Pandey and Shahid Amin, though have worked on other peasant
movements in considerable detail. Collectively, these works get designated as subaltern
historiography. The essential thesis of subaltern historiography posits the autonomy of
peasant consciousness in terms of their political action.

The limits of typology

Although sociologists have devoted a lot of time to the creation of typologies there are
several limits that typologizing imposes on our understanding of social reality. Firstly, as
mentioned earlier, the urge to create typologies that would enable generalisation and
prediction is a little farfetched, because social reality appears to be more dynamic to be
encapsulated within such typologies. Secondly, some movements have participants from
different stratas of society. For example, if the issue of conservation of forests is raised by
tribals, should the movement be treated as a tribal movement or ecological movement? They
can be regarded as both, as sustenance of forests is important for the livelihood of tribals.
Issues like ecology or civil liberties are not class based movements, though they might affect
some class of people more than the others. This tells us about the limitation of typologies to
comprehend the complex social reality.

In fact M.S.A Rao (1984, 2006) provides a balanced understanding of the act and purpose of
classification when he rightly emphasises that classification helps to identify the main
features of the movement; it does not fully explain its origin, growth, dynamics and
consequences. Any classification is bound to remain inadequate, for a movement tends to
acquire new features during its course and any classification can only be relative to a
particular phase in its development.

In Brief

This module has, hopefully, offered you a preliminary understanding of the different types of
peasant movements in India. It has also sensitised you to the larger issues of development of
capitalism in agriculture, the role of the state and the differentiated interests of the peasantry.
At the same time, it has introduced you to some of the scholars who have worked on these
issues. It will be better if you complement this module by going through some of the works
listed under references and other essays which are available online. You would realise that
there is no dearth of literature on the theme of peasant movements in India. Rather, we have
an abundance of them. Typologies are a good way of making sense of voluminous literature
that exists on varied peasant movements by equipping us with conceptual distinctions along
different axes.