Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh, 1919–22

In January 1921 the peasants of Awadh burst onto the national stage in India. Huge peasant demonstrations at Fursatganj and Munshiganj bazars in Rae Bareli district led to police firing on 6 and 7 January. At other places in Rae Bareli, Faizabad and Sultanpur districts, peasant violence—the looting of bazars (as at Fursatganj), attacks on landlords, and battles with the police—broke out around this time. For some weeks, indeed, many a landlord was too scared to appear anywhere on his estate. ‘You have seen in three districts in southern Oudh [Awadh] the beginnings of something like revolution’, Harcourt Butler, the Governor of UP (the United Provinces of Agra and Awadh, modern Uttar Pradesh), observed in March 1921. ¹ The peasants’ actions received wide publicity in the nationalist press, too, especially after Jawaharlal Nehru had been drawn into the Munshiganj events of 7 January,