ABSTRACT
Bihar is situated between Uttar Pradesh on the west and what is now West Bengal on the east; before 1912 it was the western appendage of Bengal. This chapter is concerned with the south Bihar districts where the conditions of the produce-rent system provided the most fertile ground for agrarian ferment. The tribal districts of the Chota Nagpur plateau, while administratively a part of the province, have an agrarian history that places them outside the main body of peasant agitation in Bihar. The population density in much of north and south Bihar is extreme. The emergence of a strong peasant movement in Bihar was not the result of the economic consequences of depression alone, for this was not a problem unique to Bihar. Rather the movement in Bihar was essentially a reaction to a harsh agrarian system which the ill-effects of economic depression served to aggravate.
