FOR the landlords and the government, the rural poor are the real ‘trouble-makers’. That is why, despite all tall talks about the welfare and upliftment of the harijans and other weaker sections of the society, it is they who become the first and foremost victims of each and every punitive campaign let loose by the landlords and the government. Their houses are ransacked and set ablaze, their women raped and the men arrested, beaten and killed indiscriminately. Their leaders are put behind the bars under the NSA or Bihar Crime Control Act, or simply killed in fake en­counters (like the case of Dr. Gopal Prasad in Hilsa, Nalanda, or Jiut and Sahato, who were killed when asleep). In contrast, one never hears of raids on Bhoomi Sena dens, or of arrests of Bhoomi Sena chieftains. All police repression is directed almost exclusively against the rural poor, simply because they dare to aspire for a better life and have learnt to press for their rights.

As against this view of the establishment, those who are on the side of agrarian movements look upon the rural poor as the vanguards. Of course, they do not deny that the rural poor, too, have their share of drawbacks. The curse of casteism apart, there are various other corrupting influences of the semi-feudal society (like gambling, liquor addiction, theft etc.). But with the development of the movement and the organisation, the poor are fast ridding themselves of these vices.

Throughout these long years of struggle, it is the rural poor who have proved to be the most consistent force standing at the head of the movement — be it the period of only underground and illegal activities as in the past or of both legal and illegal activities as in the present, be it the period of severe repression or of widespread upsurge. It is they who have always borne the brunt of all barbarous repression, and have yet stood firmly in the forefront—whether in elections, in demonstrations and rallies on general demands, in resistance movements against police atrocities and landlords’ attacks, in struggles for democratic rights (the movement for the withdrawal of the Bihar Press Bill for instance), or in various other programmes of the Indian People’s Front. They are the real vanguards, they are the nucleus in all local organisations of the Kisan Sabha and the Party as well as in the armed units.