Introduction

The area covered by the papers — the State of Bihar in the north-eastern part of India — is among the most backward in terms of both economic and social factors. Through the 1950s and early years of the 1960s, it seemed in India in general, and Bihar in particular, that peasants did not really matter. For long Bihar suffered from the exploitation and oppression which went along with the Raj and its Permanent Settlement, with intermediaries supplying the Raj with considerable revenue. Bihar had neither the development of patni-holding, the jotedar-type of prosperous raiyats, as a general feature, nor anything equivalent even to the ‘renaissance’ in Bengal as a movement. The paper on the ‘Bihar Kisan Sabha’ outlines the circumstances leading to the formation of the largest peasant organisation in colonial India and traces the ideological and programmatic premises, participation, leadership, organisational format and nature of its movements.