All India Kisan Sabha Explained

All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
Formation:	, Lucknow, United Province, British Raj
Headquarters:	Ajoy Bhavan, 15, Indrajit Gupta Marg, New Delhi, India-110002
Type:	Peasant Organisation
Leader Title:	National President
Leader Name:	Rajan Kshirsagar
Leader Title2:	General Secretary
Leader Name2:	R. Venkaiah
Location:	India
Affiliations:	Communist Party of India

All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS; lit. All India Farmers Union, also known as the Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha), is the peasant or farmers' wing of the Communist Party of India, an important peasant movement formed by Sahajanand Saraswati in 1936.^{[1] [2]}

History

The Kisan Sabha movement started in Bihar under the leadership of Sahajanand Saraswati who had formed in 1929 the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS) in order to mobilise peasant grievances against the zamindari attacks on their occupancy rights, and thus sparking the farmers' movements in India.^{[3] [4]}

Gradually the peasant movement intensified and spread across the rest of India. All these radical developments on the peasant front culminated in the formation of the All India Kisan Sabha at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in April 1936, with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati elected as its first president.^[5] The other prominent members of this Sabha were N.G. Ranga, Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev and Bankim Mukerji, and it involved prominent leaders like E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Indulal Yagnik, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Z.A. Ahmed, Pandit Karyanand Sharma, Pandit Yamuna Karjee, Pandit Yadunandan (Jadunandan) Sharma, Rahul Sankrityayan, P. Sundarayya, Yogendra Sharma and Bankim Mukherjee. The Kisan Manifesto, released in August 1936, demanded abolition of the zamindari system and cancellation of rural debts; in October 1937 it adopted the red flag as its banner.^[6] Soon, its leaders became increasingly distant with Congress and repeatedly came in confrontation with Congress governments, in Bihar and United Province.

In the subsequent years, the movement was increasingly dominated by Socialists and Communists as it moved away from the Congress. By the 1938 Haripura session of the Congress, under the presidency of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the rift became evident and by May 1942, the Communist Party of India, which was finally legalised by the government in July 1942,^[7] had taken over All India Kisan Sabha all across India, including Bengal where its membership grew considerably.^[8] It took on the Communist Party's line of People's War and stayed away from the Quit India Movement which started in August 1942, though this also meant losing its popular base. Many of its members defied party orders and joined the movement. Prominent members like N.G. Ranga, Indulal Yagnik and Swami Sahajananda soon left the organisation, which increasingly found it difficult to approach the peasants without the watered-down approach of pro-British and pro-war, and increasing its pro-nationalist agenda, much to the dismay of the British Raj.^[9]

Conferences and office bearers

National Conference	Year	Place	President	General Secretary
1 (founder conference)	11 April 1936	Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh	Sahajanand Saraswati	N. G. Ranga
2	25–26 December 1936	Faijpur	N. G. Ranga	Sahajanand Saraswati
3	11–14 May 1938	Comilla (now in Bangladesh)	Sahajanand Saraswati	N. G. Ranga
4	9–10 April 1939	Gaya, Bihar	Narendra Deo	Sahajanand Saraswati
5	26–27 March 1940	Palasa, Andhra Pradesh	Rahul Sankrityayan	Indulal Yagnik
6	29–31 May 1942	Patna	Indulal Yagnik	Sahajanand Saraswati
7	1–4 April 1943	Bhakhna, Punjab	Bankim Mukherjee
8	14–15 March 1944	Vijayawada Andhra Pradesh	Sahajanand Saraswati	Bankim Mukherjee
9	5–9 April 1945	Netrakona (now in Bangladesh)	Muzaffar Ahmad
10	22–26 May 1947	Secunderabad, Aligarh	Karyanand Sharma	M.A. Rasul
11	22–23 April 1953	Kannur, Kerala	Indulal Yagnik	N. Prasad Rao
12	13–19 September 1954	Moga, Punjab
13	17–22 May 1955	Talasari, Dahanu, Maharashtra	Nana Patil
14	28–30 September 1956	Amritsar	A. K. Gopalan
15	28 October – 3 November 1957	Bangaon, West Bengal
16	29 April – 3 May 1959	Mayuram, Tanjaur, Tamil Nadu		Bhabani Sen
17	17–19 May 1960	Gazipur, Uttar Pradesh
18	30 March – 2 April 1961	Thrissur, Kerala		Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri
19	10–12 January 1968	Amravati	Teja Singh Sutantar	Z.A. Ahmed
20	1–5 April 1970	Barasat, West Bengal
21	19–23 September 1973	Bhatinda	Z.A. Ahmed	Indradeep Sinha
22	7–10 June 1979	Vijayawada Andhra Pradesh
23	28–31 December 1986	Barabanki Uttar Pradesh		Y. V. Krishna Rao
24	16–19 June 1993	Madhubani, Bihar	Y. V. Krishna Rao	Bhogendra Jha
25		Bihar		Y. V. Krishna Rao
26	1997	Thrissur		Atul Kumar Anjan
27	2001	Kauntai, West Bengal	C. K. Chandrappan
28	9–12 December 2010	Aurangabad, Maharashtra	Prabodh Panda
29	27–29 March 2015	Hyderabad, Telangana
	16 November 2021	In CC meeting	R. Venkaiah

Activities

Protest against three Agri-bills

AIKS led nationwide protests against Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

• 2 October 2018: AIKS organized march of farmers at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border.^[10]
• 26 January 2021: AIKS organized tractor rally in national capital.^{[11] [12]}
• 26 February 2022: AIKS led Thousands of farmers started marching to Dhule District (Maharashtra) Collector's Office demanding forest land certificate.^{[13] [14]}

Further reading

• Swami Sahajanand and the Peasants of Jharkhand: A View from 1941 translated and edited by Walter Hauser along with the unedited Hindi original (Manohar Publishers, paperback, 2005).
• Sahajanand on Agricultural Labour and the Rural Poor translated and edited by Walter Hauser Manohar Publishers, paperback, 2005).
• Religion, Politics, and the Peasants: A Memoir of India's Freedom Movement translated and edited by Walter Hauser Manohar Publishers, hardbound, 2003).
• Swami And Friends: Sahajanand Saraswati And Those Who Refuse To Let The Past of Bihar's Peasant Movements Become History By Arvind Narayan Das, Paper for the Peasant Symposium, May 1997 University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
• Bagchi, A.K., 1976, "Deindustrialisation in Gangetic Bihar, 1809- 1901" in Essays in Honour of Prof. S.C. Sarkar, New Delhi.
• Banaji, Jairus, 1976, "The Peasantry in the Feudal Mode of Production: Towards an Economic Model", Journal of Peasant Studies, April.
• Bandopadhyay, D., 1973, "Agrarian Relations in Two Bihar Districts", Mainstream, 2 June, New Delhi.
• Judith M. Brown, 1972, Gandhi's Rise to Power: Indian Politics, 1915–1922, London.
• Chaudhuri, B.B., 1971, "Agrarian Movements in Bengal and Bihar, 1919-1939" in B.R. Nanda, ed., Socialism in India, New Delhi.
• Chaudhuri, B.B., 1975, "The Process of Depeasantisation in Bengal and Bihar, 1885-1947", Indian Historical Review, 2(1), July, New Delhi.
• Chaudhuri, B.B., 1975a, "Land Market in Eastern India, 1793-1940", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 13 (1 & 2), New Delhi.
• Arvind Narayan Das, 1981, Agrarian Unrest and Socio-economic Change in Bihar, 1900-1980, Delhi : Manohar.
• Arvind Narayan Das (ed.),1982, Agrarian Movements in India : Studies on 20th Century Bihar, London : Frank Cass.
• Arvind Narayan Das, 1992, The Republic of Bihar, New Delhi : Penguin.
• Arvind Narayan Das, 1996, Changel : The Biography of a Village, New Delhi : Penguin.
• Datta, K.K., 1957, History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, Patna.
• Diwakar, R.R., ed., 1957, Bihar Through the Ages, Patna.
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1921, "The Zamindar and the Ryots", Young India, Vol. III (New Series) No. 153, 18 May.
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1940, An Autobiography or The Story of My experiments in Truth, Ahmedabad.
• Mishra, G., 1968. "The Socio-economic Background of Gandhi's Champaran Movement", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 5(3), New Delhi.
• Mishra, G., 1978, Agrarian Problems of Permanent Settlement: A Case Study of Champaran, New Delhi.
• Mitra, Manoshi, 1983, Agrarian Social Structure in Bihar: Continuity and Change, 1786–1820, Delhi : Manohar.
• Pouchepadass, J., 1974, "Local Leaders and the Intelligentsia in the Champaran Satyagraha", Contributions to Indian Sociology, New Series, No.8, November, New Delhi.
• Prasad, P.H., 1979, "Semi-Feudalism: Basic Constraint in Indian Agriculture" in Arvind N. Das & V. Nilakant, eds., Agrarian Relations in India, New Delhi.
• Shanin, Teodor, 1978, Defining Peasants: Conceptualisations and Deconceptualisations: Old and New in a Marxist Debate, Manchester University.
• Solomon, S., 1937, Bihar and Orissa in 1934-35, Patna.
• Socialism in India, by Bal Ram Nanda, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Published by Vikas Publications, 1972.Page 205.
• A History of the All India Kisan Sabha, by Md. Abdullah Rasul. Published by National Book Agency, 1974.
• Peasants in History: Essays in Honour of Daniel Thorner, by Eric J. Hobsbawm, Daniel Thorner, Witold Kula, Sameeksha Trust.Published by Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Bihar Peasantry and the Kisan Sabha, 1936-1947, by Rakesh Gupta. Published by People's Pub. House, 1982.
• "The Constitution of All India Kisan Sabha" Encyclopaedia of Political Parties, by O. P. Ralhan, Published by Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2002. . Page 1-10.

Notes and References

1. Book: Bandyopādhyāya, Śekhara . From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India . . 2004 . 978-81-250-2596-2 . 523 (at p 406).
2. News: 75 Years of AIKS: A Saga of Glory . newageweekly.in . en.
3. Book: Bandyopādhyāya , Śekhara . From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India . . 2004 . 978-81-250-2596-2 . 523 (at p 406) .
4. Peasant Struggles in India, by Akshayakumar Ramanlal Desai. Published by Oxford University Press, 1979. Page 349.
5. Book: Bandyopādhyāya , Śekhara . From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India . . 2004 . 978-81-250-2596-2 . 523 (at p 407).
6. Mahatma Gandhi, by Sankar Ghose. Published by Allied Publishers, 1991. . Page 262.
7. Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872-1947, by Shekhar Bandyopadhyaya. Routledge, 1997. . Page 233.
8. States, Parties, and Social Movements, by Jack A. Goldstone. Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Page 192.
9. Peasants in India's Non-violent Revolution: Practice and Theory, by Mridula Mukherjee. Published by SAGE, 2004. . Page 347.
10. Web site: Kisan Krant March: AIKS terms police action as 'barbaric'; says Centre's acceptance of demands 'hoax'.
11. Web site: Farmers, Delhi Police gear up for Republic Day tractor rally; unions announce Parliament march on 1 Feb. First Post. 2021-01-26. 2021-01-26.
12. News: Delhi Police flags threat to farmers' tractor rally on January 26. Business Standard, India. Agencies. 2021-01-24. 2021-01-26.
13. Web site: वनपट्ट्यांसाठी रणरणत्या उन्हात शिरपूर ते धुळे लाँग मार्चला सुरवात. 26 February 2022 .
14. Web site: राज्यपाल कोशियारी यांनी आदिवासींच्या वनहक्क कायद्याची मोडतोड केली?. March 2022 .