All India Kisan Sabha: Difference between revisions

 

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==History==

==History==

[[File:Borsul A.I.K.S. Conferance (15).jpg|thumb|left|250px|Kisan Sabha in Delhi (1970)]]

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.{{cite book

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.{{cite book

| first = Śekhara

| first = Śekhara

Farmers’ wing of Communist Pary of India

All India Kisan Sabha (abbr. 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[edit]

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^[6] 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[edit]

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…