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Unit 8: Peasant Movements

But once the British declared martial law and repression began in earnest, the character of the Notes
rebellion underwent a definite change. Many Hindus were either pressurized into helping the
authorities or voluntarily gave assistance and this helped to strengthen the already existing anti-
Hindu sentiment among the poor illiterate Mappilas who in any case were motivated by a strong
religious ideology. Forced conversions, attacks on and murders of Hindus increased as the sense
of desperation mounted. What had been largely an anti-government and anti-landlord affair
acquired strong communal overtones.
The Mappilas’ recourse to violence had in any case driven a wedge between them and the Non-
Cooperation Movement which was based on the principle of non-violence. The communalization
of the rebellion completed the isolation of the Mappilas. British repression did the rest and by
December 1921 all resistance had come to a stop. The toll was heavy indeed: 2,337 Mappilas had
lost their lives. Unofficial estimates placed the number at above 10,000. A total of 45,404 rebels
were captured or had surrendered. But the toll was in fact even heavier, though in a very different
way. From then onwards, the militant Mappilas were so completely crushed and demoralized that
till independence their participation in any form of politics was almost nil. They neither joined the
national movement nor the peasant movement that was to grow in Kerala in later years under the
Left leadership.
The peasant movements in U.P. and Malabar were thus closely linked with the politics at the
national level. In U.P., the impetus had come from the Home Rule Leagues and, later, from the
Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement. In Avadh, in the early months of 1921 when peasant
activity was at its peak, it was difficult to distinguish between a Non-cooperation meeting and a
peasant rally. A similar situation arose in Malabar, where Khilafat and tenants’ meetings merged
into one. But in both places, the recourse to violence by the peasants created a distance between
them and the national movement and led to appeals by the nationalist leaders to the peasants that
they should not indulge in violence. Often, the national leaders, especially Gandhiji, also asked
the peasants to desist from taking extreme action like stopping the payment of rent to landlords.
This divergence between the actions and perceptions of peasants and local leaders and the
understanding of the national leaders had often been interpreted as a sign of the fear of the middle
class or bourgeois leadership that the movement would go out of its own ‘safe’ hands into that of
supposedly more radical and militant leaders of the people. The call for restraint, both in the
demands as well as in the methods used, is seen as proof of concern for the landlords and propertied
classes of Indian society. It is possible, however, that the advice of the national leadership was
prompted by the desire to protect the peasants from the consequences of violent revolt, consequences
which did not remain hidden for long as both in U.P. and Malabar the Government launched
heavy repression in order to crush the movements. Their advice that peasants should not push
things too far with the landlords by refusing to pay rent could also stem from other considerations.
The peasants themselves were not demanding abolition of rent or landlordism, they only wanted
an end to ejectments, illegal levies, and exorbitant rents — demands which the national leadership
supported. The recourse to extreme measures like refusal to pay rent was likely to push even the
small landlords further into the lap of the government and destroy any chances of their maintaining
a neutrality towards the on-going conflict between the government and the national movement.
Bardoli Satyagrah
The no tax movement that was launched in Bardoli taluq of Surat district in Gujarat in 1928 was
also in many ways a child of the Non-cooperation days. Bardoli taluq had been selected in 1922 as
the place from where Gandhiji would launch the civil disobedience campaign, but events in
Chauri Chaura had changed all that and the campaign never took off. However, a marked change
had taken place in the area because of the various preparations for the civil disobedience movement
and the end result was that Bardoli had undergone a process of intense politicization and awareness
of the political scene. The local leaders such as the brothers Kalyanji and Kunverji Mehta, and
Dayalji Desai, had worked hard to spread the message of the Non-Cooperation Movement. These
leaders, who had been working in the district as social reformers and political activists for at least

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