ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that there is in India a vital and dynamic agrarian activism which is happening at many levels of social and economic interest. It presents activism of the 1980s and 1990s that is a social and political phenomenon which can best be understood in Indian terms rather than in terms of Western experience, theory, or ideology. The chapter aims to develop the ideas around the experience of the Indian People's Front (IPF), widely designated in English and Hindi usage as the IPF. It shows the language of dissent conveyed in the actions of Virendra Kumar Vidrohi in blackening the face of the chief minister and the language and meaning of violence as an expression of resistance and dissent in the career of Karpoori Thakur. The chapter concludes with an attempt to understand what the activism means, and how that understanding relates, at least by inference, to other interpretations of agrarian politics in Bihar.