Swami Sahajanand Saraswati

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Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (1889-1950), was born in a Jijhoutia Bhumihar^[1] family of Gazipur of Uttar Pradesh state of India, was an ascetic Dandi sanyasi as well as a peasant leader of eastern India. Although he was born in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), his social and political activities centered mostly in Bihar. He had setup an ashram at Bihta,near patna and carried out most of his work, in the later part of his life from here. Government of India had issued a commemorative stamp ^[2]in the memory of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, and the stamp was officially released on 26th June 2000 by Ram Vilas Paswan, the-then Minister of Communications, Government of India.

The foremost of the leaders of the peasantry in Bihar was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. Sahajanand was born in Ghazipur district in eastern U.P. in the late nineteenth century (1889?) [Sahajanand, 1952] to a family of Bhumihar of Jujautia clan. He was the last of six sons and had no sisters. His mother died when he was a child and Naurang Rai (as he was known then) was raised by an aunt. His father, Beni Rai was primarily a cultivator, and was so divorced from priestly functions that he did not even know the gayatri mantras. The family held a small zamindari, income from which had sufficed in Sahajanand's grandfathers' time, but as the family grew and the land was partitioned, prosperity dwindled and (tenant) cultivation became the main occupation. However, the family was not so extremely poor that its condition would prevent Naurang from going to school, where he did very well both in the primary grades and in the German Mission high school where he studied English. Even at an early age, however, Naurang showed sings of brilliance and scepticism of conventional populist religious practices. He questioned the institution of people taking guru- mantra from fake religious personages and wanted to study religious texts deeply in order to be able to find real spiritual solace by renouncing the world. To prevent him from doing this, his family had him married to a child bride but, before the marriage could stablise, in 1905 or early 1906, his wife died. The last fetter in his way to sanyas (renunciation of the world) having been removed, in 1907 Naurang Rai was initiated into holy orders and took on the name of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. This adoption of sanyas prevented him from appearing for the matriculation examination but he spent the rest of his life, especially the first seven years after sanyas, in studying religion, politics and social affairs. In all these he became increasingly radicalised so that towards the end of his life, the world was presented with the incongruous sight of a saffron-clad swami who denounced organised religion [Sahajanand, 1948:96-123].

However, before Sahajanand came to this stage, he had to traverse a long road. His first involvement in public activity started from the very narrow casteist Bhumihar platform. Only gradually did Sahajanand become involved in nationalist Congress politics, and then in peasant movements, progressively in Patna, Bihar and, finally, all over India.

Even in order to get to the peasant question, however, Sahajanand went through political schooling in the Indian National Congress under Gandhi. In fact, the Swami and the Mahatma had a curious filial relationship. Sahajanand started off in Congress as a devoted Gandhian, admiring Gandhi's fusion of tradition, religion and politics and, by 1920, threw himself into the nationalist movement as directed by Gandhi. However, he first became disgusted with the petty, comfort-seeking hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed `Gandhians' especially in jail and, within 15 years, he was disillusioned with Gandhi's own ambiguity and devious pro-propertied attitudes. The final break came in 1934 after Bihar had been violently shaken by the great earthquake of that year. During the relief operations in which Sahajanand was deeply involved, he came across many cases where, in spite of the destruction perpetrated by the natural calamity, he found the suffering of the people to be less on account of the earthquake than as the result of the cruelty of the landlords in rent collection. When Sahajanand found no way of tackling this situation, he went to meet Gandhi, who was then camping at Patna, to ask for advice. Gandhi sanguinely told him, 'the zamindars will remove the difficulties of the peasants. Their managers are Congressmen. So they will definitely help the poor' [Sahajanand, 1952:426]. In spite of this, the oppression of the peasantry by the `zamindari machinery including Congressmen managers' continued. These platitudes of Gandhi disgusted Sahajanand and he broke off his 14 year association with the Mahatma. After that, he consistently saw the Mahatma as a wily politician who, in order to defend the propertied classes, took recourse in pseudo-spiritualism, professions of non-violence and religious hocus-pocus.

After his break with Gandhi, Sahajanand kept out of party politics (though he continued to be a member of the Congress) and turned his energies into mobilising the peasants [Hauser, 1961:109-133]. By the end of the decade, he emerged as the foremost kisan leader in India. In this task of organising the peasants, at different times his political impetuosity took him close to different individuals, parties and groups. He first joined hands with the Congress Socialists for the formation of the All-India Kisan Sabha; then with Subhas Chandra Bose organised the Anti-Compromise Conference against the British and the Congress [Sahajanand, 1940]; then worked with the CPI during the Second World War [Das, 1981]; and finally broke from them, too, to form an `independent' Kisan Sabha [Rai, 1946]. In spite of these political forays, however, Sahajanand remained essentially a non-party man and his loyalty was only to the peasants for whom he was the most articulate spokesman and forthright leader. As a peasant leader, `by standards of speech and action, he was unsurpassed' [Hauser, 1961:85]. He achieved that status by a remarkable ability to speak to and for the peasants of Bihar; he could communicate with them and articulate their feelings in terms whose meaning neither peasant nor politicians could mistake. `He was relentlessly determined to improve the peasants' condition and pursued that objective with such force and energy that he was almost universally loved by the peasants, and almost equally both respect and feared by the landlords, Congressmen and officials. The Swami was a militant agitator; he sought to expose the condition of agrarian society and to organise the peasants massively to achieve change. He did this through countless meetings and rallies which he organised and which he addressed in his own inimitable forthright manner. He was a powerful speaker speaking the language of the peasants. Sahajanand was a Dandi Sanyasi and always carried a long bamboo staff (danda). In the course of the movement, this staff became the symbol of peasant resistance. They cry of "Danda Mera Zindabad" (Long live my staff), was thus taken to mean "Long live the danda (lathi) of the Kisans" and it became the watchword of the Bihar peasant movement. The inevitable response by the masses of peasants was "Swamiji ki Jai" (Victory to Swamiji) [Hauser, op cit]. "Kaise Logey Malguzari, Latth Hamara Zindabad" (How will you collect rent as long as our sticks are powerful?) became the battle cry of the peasants.

This was the manner in which a common communication was achieved. And it was vastly enhanced by the fact that Sahajanand was a Swami, which gave him a tremendous charisma. In 1937, he was reported to have said that as religious robes had long exploited the peasants, now he would exploit those robes on behalf of the peasants' [Hauser, ibid]. When landlords raised the question as to how a sanyasi (mendicant) was taking part in temporal problems of the poor, Sahajanand quoted the scriptures at them:

Prayen deva munayah swavimukti kama

Maunam charanti vijane na pararthnsihthah

Naitan vihaya kripnan vimumuksha eko

Nanyattwadasya sharanam bhramato nupashye

(Mendicants are selfish, living away from society, they try for their own salvation without caring for others. I cannot do that, I do not want my own salvation apart from that of the many destitutes. I will stay with them, live with them and die with them)[Sahajanand, 1952:171].

Such was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the charismatic sanyasi rebel, who laid the foundations of kisan organisation in Bihar, built it up into a massive movement, spread it to other parts of India and radicalised it to such an extent that what had started off as a move to bring about reform in the zamindari system, ended up by destroying the system itself. Sahajanand could not, however,m witness the legal death of zamindari in BIhar. While the battle for this was still being fought in the legislature and the courts, on 26 June 1950, Sahajanand died [Sudhakar, 1973:14].

The Organisation

Swami Sahajanand Saraswati was, of course, a fascinating personality but what also added immense social significance to him was the fact that he was able to found a massive organisation. This took a great deal of both imagination and effort and the fact that it has had a turbulent history is evidence of the role of the individual as well as the relevance of the political-economic context.

Although the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha was formed in 1929 and a smaller Kisan Sabha had been formed even earlier in Patna district with a formal organisational structure, it really was institutionalised only after a few years. Actually, it is correct to say that the Kisan Sabha never really became an `organisation', but remained a movement [Hauser, 1961:87].

But if that is so for the whole of the history of the Sabha, in its first years it was even more nebulous: an idea, a forum, a propaganda platform, a lobby. Almost immediately after the formation of the Sabha Bihar was plunged, with the rest of India, into the Civil Disobedience Movement, which, although it helped in arousing the general consciousness of the masses, did not give the leaders of the Sabha the time to formalise its structure [Williams, 1933:1- 30]. In fact, the experiences of the Civil Disobedience Movement both outside and inside jails created the beginnings of the rift between the Kisan Sabhaites and some of the Congress leaders [BSCRO:21/1933], and so disgusted the supreme leader of the Sabha, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, that for several years he cut himself off from politics altogether [Sahajanand, 1952:373-381].

But while, because of these problems, the Kisan Sabha remained disorganised, the landlords recognised its potentially dangerous character. In order to meet its challenge and to consolidate their position, they organised themselves and their supporters into three main bodies. The first was a clearcut Bihar Landholders' Association which included within it all the prominent zamindars. The second was a more clever attempt to hide the organisation's basic class character; it was called the United Party and was supposed to represent the interests of various sections of the population. It even included a few Congressmen though its leadership was composed of the leading landlords, including the Maharajadhiraj of Darbhanga and the Raja of Surajpura. Having failed in their first attempt in 1928-29 to get the Tenancy Act amended, the landlords tried to do so through this United Party. Rai Bahadur Shyamnandan Sahay, one of the richest zamindars of Bihar, accordingly drew up a new tenancy bill with the obvious intention of strengthening the zamindars' position by giving them more powers. However, in order to achieve a semblance of zamindar-tenant unity in presenting the new legislation, the United Party conspired to develop a compromise measure by forming a `Kisan Sabha' which held its meeting at Patna early in 1933 [Sankrityayana, 1943:112]. Ironically, it was this effort of the landholders which brought Sahajanand back into politics and vastly strengthened the Kisan Sabha [Sudhakar, 1973:9].

There was no unanimity among Congressmen about their approach to the United Party and its `Kisan Sabha'. While leaders like Rajendra Prasad felt that as an election trick the United Party was doomed to failure, they also thought it might actually gain some concessions for the peasantry. Hence they felt opposition to the United Party was `unnecessary'. Some other Congress leaders thought otherwise:

My colleagues were agitated thinking that (an amended tenancy law) would increase the new party's influence among the peasants. They wanted the move to be opposed, but most of the Congressmen were in prison and the organisation was banned and could not do anything. They thought, therefore, of reviving the dormant Kisan Sabha. Word was passed on to Swami Sahajanand to activise the Kisan Sabha and expose the United Party's move... I felt that all this was unnecessary but, as I could not oppose it, kept quiet. [Prasad, 1957:361].

Sahajanand was apprised of the `bogus Kisan Sabha' and its proposed session at Patna by Yadunandan Sharma and induced by him to attend the meeting. After much hesitation about re-entering politics, Sahajnand agreed and made a dramatic entry in the Patna meeting which was being conducted by such well-known zamindars and their henchmen as Dr Sachidanand Sinha (the `Founder Modern Bihar') and Guru Sahay Lal (later President of the Bihar Chamber of Commerce). The Swami's unexpected presence caused considerable embarrassment to the sponsors of the meeting and his forthright stand there condemning such devious manoeuverings marked the end of the effort by the zamindars to play politics through the use of the name of the Kisan Sabha. At the same time, this abortive attempt proved that even the zamindars had recognised the potential of an organisation like the Kisan Sabha even though until then it was no more than a name. Recognising that even the name spelled powerful magic for the Kisans, Sahajanand decided to organise the Sabha.

In spite of the efforts of Swami Sahajanand in the direction of giving the Kisan Sabha a live but formal organisational structure, it remained more a movement than an organisation. However, after 1934, the movement was, in a way, institutionalised though its primary instruments of operation continued to by numerous meetings, rallies, `struggles' and annual conventions rather than paper-work. This was a reflection of the impatient leadership of Sahajanand which, in spite of resolutions to the contrary, was not basically concerned with the formal niceties of organisation. While the agitational character marked the movement as necessarily transitory in nature, it also provided it with an element of spontaneous strength. While the Congress relied on its organisational character for mobilising the people for its movements, the Kisan Sabha drew its organisational vitality from the different movements and struggles. And, for the time being at least, the Kisan Sabha's mode of working was more effective. Even the officials remarked that the `Kisan Sabha touches the ryot more directly and its meetings are larger than the Congress' [BSCRO:16/1935].

But Sahajanand also recognised and emphasised the need for organisation of the peasants, except that organisation to him meant organisation of mass action rather than a fossilised hierarchy of constitutional formalities:

You must speak in great numbers. Government officials are here and when you come in tens of thousands they will listen, otherwise they will think you need nothing because you are silent. In Gaya there were 50,000 kisans and it caused a furore... We do not teach you to assault zamindars, only to get what is your right. We do not seek to create trouble between zamindars and tenants. The Government, zamindars and capitalists are strong. I want you to be strong too and the way to do it is to hold meetings. If you do not organise and hold Kisan Sabhas, troubles will not end [BSCRO:16/1935/I)].

The formal organisational structure of the movement was expressed through the Rules of 1929 and the Constitution framed in 1936. The 1936 Constitution served as the official statement of organisation form and objectives which included the winning of the `fundamental rights' of the peasants [BPKS, 1936]. It also outlined the rules and procedures for membership and other organisational details. All peasants were admitted as members of the Kisan Sabha with a membership fee reduced from two annas (Rs.0.12) to one price (Rs.0.015) in 1936. The basis of organisation was the village, or gram Kisan Sabha, electing representatives to thana Kisan Sabhas, which similarly elected members to the district body which in turn elected members of the Provincial Kisan Sabha. The executive organ of each of these bodies was the Kisan Council, elected by respective memberships. In the case of the Provincial Kisan Sabha, the Kisan Council comprised 15 members including officer-bearers who were specifically designated as a president, secretary and two joint secretaries. However, in practice there was considerable variation, with an increase in the number of joint secretaries normally to cover regional areas and often there were also some vice-presidents. These offices were all held for an annual term but a treasurer was elected to serve `until it was thought necessary to change him'. Income was derived from membership fees and from small levies on the members of various councils, with funds divided between local and provincial bodies. Provision was made for annual sammelans, or conventions of the several bodies of the Kisan Sabha with a president elected for such conferences. it was indicated that reports of the provincial sammelans were to be printed.

In practice, the formal organisation of the movement was confined to the activities of the Provincial Kisan Council and the annual provincial sammelan, though, on an irregular basis, sammelans at other levels were also held. In addition, a secretary was active for the period of 1935 to 1940 and an office was maintained at the Bihta ashram of Swami Sahajanand. In very large measure, the Swami himself co-ordinated much of the work of the Provincial Kisan Sabha when it was formed.

The membership of the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha was estimated at 80,000 in 1935 and the figure for 1938 was placed at upwards of 250,000, which made it by far the largest such provincial body in India. However, these and all other membership figures can be taken as no more than approxzimations. Verification is extremely difficult in the absence of any other data as a basis of comparison. The one possible measure of activity and an indication of participation, if not of membership, is to be derived from the press and official estimates of local meetings and provincial rallies. At the height of the agitation, Sahajanand consistently addressed local village meetings of up to 5000 peasants, and the estimates of peasant rallies in Patna were commonly as high as or even higher than 100,000.

With the formation of the All-India Kisan Sabha at LUcknow in April 1936, the Bihar Kisan Sabha became one of the provincial units of that national body. The Congress Socialist Party pressed for the organisation of an all-India peasant association, and N.G. Ranga [1949:69; 1968:216] became a prime mover in the effort. While Sahajanand was named president of the first meeting at Lucknow, he had come to support the idea reluctantly, holding that a national organisation could function effectively only on the basis of a network of well-developed provincial bodies, which did not in fact exist [Sahajanand, 1952:449-453]. While Sahajanand, once involved, extended total support, and to a large extent created and maintained the organisational framework by his own efforts, the A.I.K.S. suffered from the very shortcomings he had indicated: there was insufficient local depth to sustain a national movement [Mitra, 1938:387-389].

Swamiji established an ashram at Neyamatpur, Gaya (Bihar) which later became the centre of freedom struggle in bihar. All the prominent leaders of congress visited there frequently to meet Pundit Yadunandan Sharma, the leader of Kisaan Aandolan.

Few will know that it was Yadav peasants who, in 1927, pleaded with Sahajanand to aid them in their struggles against the Bhumihar Brahmin zamindars of Masaurhi, and that it was from that beginning that the most powerful peas-ant movement in India, the Bihar provincial Kisan Sabha, emerged.^[3] And among the many beneficiaries of that movement were precisely those productive and upwardly mobile middle caste groups now courted so assiduously by the Janata Dal, the Samata Party the Congress, and indeed, the BJP.

Contents 1 Works by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati 1.1 Well Researched Books 1.2 Autobiographical Works 1.3 Ideological Works 1.4 Works related to Peasantry and Zamindars 2 References 3 Further reading

[edit] Works by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati

[edit] Well Researched Books

1. Bhumihar Brahmin Parichay (Introduction to Bhumihar Brahmins), in Hindi.

2. Jhootha Bhay Mithya Abhiman (False Fear False Pride), in Hindi.

3. Brahman Kaun?

4. Brahman Samaj ki Sthiti (Situation of the Brahmin Society) in Hindi.

5. Brahmarshi Vansha Vistar in Sanskrit, Hindi and English.

6. Karmakalap, in Sanskrit and Hindi.

[edit] Autobiographical Works

1. Mera Jeewan Sangharsha (My LIfe Struggle), in Hindi.

2. Kisan Sabha ke Sansmaran (Recollections of the Kisan Sabha), in Hindi.

3. Maharudra ka Mahatandav, in Hindi.

4. Jang aur Rashtriya Azadi

5. Ab Kya ho?

6. Gaya jile mein sava maas

7. Samyukta Kisan Sabha, Samyukta Samajvadi Sabha ke Dastavez.

8. Kisanon ke Dave

9. Dhakaich ka bhashan

[edit] Ideological Works

1. Kranti aur Samyukta Morcha

2. Gita Hridaya (Heart of the Gita)

3. Kisanon ke Dave

4. Maharudra ka Mahatandav

5. Kalyan mein chapein lekh

[edit] Works related to Peasantry and Zamindars

1. Kisan kaise ladten hain?

2. Kisan kya karen?

3. Zamindaron ka khatma kaise ho?

4. Kisan ke dost aur dushman

5. Bihar prantiya kisansabha ka ghoshna patra

6. Kisanon ki phasane ki taiyariyan

7. On the other side

8. Rent reduction in Bihar, How it Works?

9. Zamindari kyon utha di jaye?

10.Khet Mazdoor (Agricultural Labourer), in Hindi, written in Hazaribagh Central Jail.

11.Jharkhand ke kisan

12.Bhumi vyavastha kaisi ho?

13.Kisan andolan kyun aur kya?

14.Gaya ke Kisanon ki Karun Kahani

15.Ab kya ho?

16.Congress tab aur ab

17.Congress ne kisanon ke liye kya kiya?

18.Maharudra ka Mahatandav

19.Swamiji ki Diary

20.Kisan sabha ke dastavez

21.Swamiji ke patrachar

22.Lok sangraha mein chapen lekh

23.Janta mein chapein lekh

24.Hunkar mein chapein lekh

25.Vishal Bharat mein chapein lekh

26.Bagi mein chapein lekh

27.Bhumihar Brahmin mein chapein lekh

28.Swamiji ki Bhashan Mala

29.Krishak mein chapein lekh

30.Yogi mein chapein lekh

31.Kisan sevak

32.Anya lekh

33.Address of the Chairman, Reception Committee, The All India Anti-Compromise Conference, First Session, Kisan Nagar, Ramgarh, Hazaribagh, 19 & 20 March, 1940, Ramgarh, 1940.

33.Presidential Address, 8th Annual Session of the Kisan Sabha, Bezwada, 1944.

33.The Origin and Growth of the Kisan Movement in India (Unpublished)

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Sahajanand on Agricultural Labour and the Rural Poor, edited by Walter Hauser, ISBN 81-7304-600-X)

• Swami And Friends

Sahajanand Saraswati And Those Who Refuse To Let The Past of Bihar's Peasant Movements Become History By Arvind N. Das Paper for the Peasant Symposium, May 1997 University Of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

• AIKS (All-India Kisan Sabha), Proceedings and Resolutions, 1954- 1959, New Delhi.

• AIUKS (All-India United Kisan Sabha), 1949, The Programme and Charter of Kisan Demands, Patna.

• 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.

• Banerjee, N., 1978, `All the Bakcwards', Sunday, 9 April, Calcutta. Bihar, 1938, Board of Revenue, Average Prices of Staple Food Crops from 1888, Patna.

• Bihar, 1939, Legislative Assembly Proceedings, Vol. 4 Part 1, 16 January -- 15 March, Patna.

• Bihar, 1972, Legislative Assembly, Report of the Committee to Inquire into Atrocities at Gahlaur, Patna.

• Bihar & Orissa, Rev(enue) Pro(ceedin)gs, 1923, Progs. No.3, Enclosure 1, Letter from Settlement Officer, Santal Parganas, 12 October 1923, para 2.

• Bihar & Orissa 1924, Bihar and Orissa in 1923, Patna.

• Bihar & Orissa, 1926, Bihar and Orissa in 1924-25, Patna.

• Bihar & Orissa, 1929, Bihar and Orissa in 1927-28, Patna.

• Bihar & Orissa, 1930, BIhar and Orissa in 1928-29, Patna.

• Bihar & Orissa, 1934, Report on the Administration of Civil Justice in the Province of Bihar and Orissa, 1933, Patna.

• BPKS (Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha), 1936, Bihar Prantiya Kisan Sabha ka Vidhan -- (Constitution of the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha), in Hindi, Patna.

• BPKS, -- a, Bihar Prantiya Kisan Sabha ka Ghoshna Patra aur Kisanon ki Maangen (Manifesto of the BPKS and Peasants' Demands), in Hindi, Bihta, n.d.

• Brahmanand, 1971, Rahul Sankrityayana, in Hindi, Delhi.

• Brown, Judith, 1972, Gandhi's Rise to Power: Indian Politics, 1915-1922, London.

• BSCRO (Bihar State Central Records Office) File 281/1929, Political (Special) Department, Sonepur Mela Kisan Sabha Meeting.

• BSCRO, File 34/1931, Letter of N.F. Peck, Shahabad District Magistrate dated 15 December 1931.

• BSCRO, File 21/1933, Agrarian Affairs, Kisan Sabhas.

BSCRO, File 163/1934, Notes and Orders on Swami Sahajanand's Gaya Report, 12 November 1934.

• BSCRO, File 16/1935, Extract from Fortnightly Report of the Commissioner of Bhagalpur, 4 April 1935.

• BSCRO, File 16/1935, Fortnighly Report from J.R. Dain, Commissioner of Bhagalpur, 2 December 1935.

• BSCRO, File 16/1935(I), report on Swami Sahajanand, Nasirganj, Shahabad district, 18 January 1935.

• 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.

• Chaudhuri, B.B., 1976, `Struggle for Produce Rent in Bihar, 1793- 1930', Paper presented to Seminar at A.N.S. Institute of Social Studies, Patna, Cyclostyled.

• Collins, A., 1927, Bihar and Orissa in 1925-26, Patna.

• Das, Arvind N., 1976, `Promises to Keep', National Labour Institute Bulletin, December, New Delhi.

• Das, Arvind N., 1981, Agrarian Unrest and Socio-economic Change in Bihar, 1900-1980, Delhi : Manohar.

• Das, Arvind N. (ed.),1982, Agrarian Movements in India : Studies on 20th Century Bihar, London : Frank Cass.

• Das, Arvind N., 1992, The Republic of Bihar, New Delhi : Penguin.

• Das, Arvind N., 1996, Changel : The Biography of a Village, New Delhi : Penguin.

• Datta, K.K., 1957, History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, Patna.

• Devanand, Swami, 1958, Virat Kisan Samaroh (Massive Peasant Convention), in Hindi, Bihar Kisan Sangh, Bihta.

• Diwakar, R.R., ed., 1957, Bihar Through the Ages, Patna.

• Engels, Frederick, 1969, "Preface to the Second Edition of The Peasant War in Germany" in Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow.

• Gandhi, M.K., 1921, `The Zamindar and the Ryots', Young India, Vol. III (New Series) No. 153, 18 May.

• Gandhi, M.K., 1940, An Autobiography or The Story of My experiments in Truth, Ahmedabad.

• Gupta, R.L., 1934, Bihar and Orissa in 1932-33, Patna.

• Hauser, Walter, 1961, `Peasant Organisation in India: A Case Study of the Bihar Kisan Sabha, 1929-1942'. Ph.D. Thesis, Chicago University, (Forthcoming publication)

• Hauser, Walter, 1994, Sahajanand on Agricultural Labour and the Rural Poor, New Delhi : Manohar

• Hauser, Walter, 1995, Swami Sahajanand and the Peasants of Jharkhand, New Delhi : Manohar

• India, 1976, Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, New Delhi. JSES (Journal of Social and Economics Studies), 1976, `Sarvodaya and Development', Vol. IV No.1, Patna.

• Lacey, G. 1928, Bihar and Orissa in 1926-27, Patna

• Maharaj, R.N., 1976, `Freed Bonded Labour Camp at Palamau', National Labour Institute Bulletin, October, New Delhi.

• Mansfield, P.T., 1932, Bihar and Orissa in 1930-31, Patna.

• Marx, Karl, 1973 Grundrisse, Harmondsworth.

• 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.

• Misra, R.N., 1952, Kisan ki Samasyayen (Problems of Peasants), in HIndi, Darbhanga.

• Mitra, Manoshi, 1983, Agrarian Social Structure in Bihar: Continuity and Change, 1786-1820, Delhi : Manohar.

• Mitra, N., ed, 1938, Indian Annual Register, July-December 1937, Vol. II, Calcutta.

• Narayan, K. , 1938, Bihar and Orissa in 1935-36, Patna.

• Nehru, Jawaharlal, 1936, An Autobiography, London.

• O'Malley, L.S.S., 1913, District Gazetters, Calcutta.

• Owen, G.E., 1922, Bihar and Orissa in 1921, Patna.

• 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.

• Prasad, R., 1949, Satyagraha in Champaran, Ahmedabad.

• Prasad, R., 1957, Autobiography, Bombay.

• Prior, H.C., 1923, Bihar and Orissa in 1922, Patna.

• Rai, Algu, 1946, A Move for the Formation of an All-Indian Organisation for the Kisans, Azamgrah.

• Ranga, N.G., 1949, Revolutionary Peasants, New Delhi.

• Ranga, N.G., 1968, Fight For Freedom, New Delhi.

• Sahajanand, Swami, 1916, Bhumihar Brahman Parichay (Introduction to Bhumihar Brahmins), in Hindi, Benaras(?)

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• Sahajanand, Swami, 1944, Presidential Address, 8th Annual Session of the Kisan Sabha, Bezwada.

• Sahajanand, Swami, 1947, Kisan Sabha ke Sansmaran (Recollections of the Kisan Sabha), in Hindi, Bihta.

• Sahajanand, Swami, 1948, Gita Hridaya (Heart of the Gita), Allahabad.

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