‘HARIJANO ka man barh gaya hai (harijans have turned defiant)’, bemoans the landed gentry. This lamentation is shared by upper-caste peasants and a section of intermediate-caste well-off peasants as well. Some advocates of class struggle, too, complain, “It’s a harijan movement pure and simple. Class struggle has nothing to do with it”. Accordingly, some people portray the struggle as a purely harijan-Kurmi conflict, some others view it as a clash between the harijans and the Yadavas, yet others interpret it as a caste war against all upper-castes in general.

It is a fact that the harijans in general are very much in the movement. So far as the intermediate castes are concerned, the economically lower group actively takes part in the movement; the middle group extends its support and sympathy; and among the well-off, a small section does occasionally support the movement, a large section supports actions against upper-caste big bosses as well as actions which strike at upper-caste privileges, and only a tiny section of highly ambitious rich peasants shows hostility. Certain exceptions are, however, there among the Kurmis and Yadavas. In Poonpoon-Masaurhi area of Patna district where Kurmi landlords are dominant and where there has emerged a tiny section of highly ambitious Kurmi peasants, even the large majority of Kurmi middle peasants remain under the influence of the enemy. The Yadavas in Nalanda-Patna-Gaya border belt vacillate between the reactionary camp and the camp of agrarian movements. Our consistent struggle against the arch-reactionary sections of landlords and their armed gangs, our constant attempts to differentiate between various sections of the enemy and to adopt separate policies towards different sections, rectification of our old mistakes including the tendency to take instant revenge, and above all, our constant efforts to involve the middle peasants in a broad-based peasant movement — all these factors, coupled with the middle peasants’ very own nightmarish experience of fascist caste gangs, have accelerated the dilution of caste solidarity that was earlier so pronounced, particularly among the Kurmis and to some extent among the Yadavas.

It is but quite understandable that initially when a struggle is launched against a tiny section of upper-caste/intermediate-caste landlords, they would try to mobilise their fellow caste-men behind them and this gives caste form to an essentially class battle. The caste appearance is further strengthened by the fact that one single caste, viz., the harijans, constitutes the predominant segment of the fighting peasantry. And this is quite natural since the harijans form the bulk of agrarian labourers (nearly 30 to 40 per cent of the population of agrarian labourers in the areas of peasant struggle) and more so, since they are the worst sufferers of both class and caste oppression.

The militant awakening of this most oppressed commu­nity, a communtity that has been denied for centuries even the barest of freedom, and its increasing participation in local Kisan Sabha bodies or armed propaganda squads is one of the most significant features of the ongoing peasant struggle in Bihar, not only from the point of view of establishing agrarian labourers’ and poor peasants’ hegemony over the peasant movement, but from the point of view of cultural revolution as well. What we are witnessing in rural Bihar is nothing short of a great cultural revolution. A strong foundation is being laid through these struggles for a future society that will not pooh-pooh one of its toiling communities as ‘outcaste’ or ‘untouchable’.

Moreover, these peasant struggles also provide living examples of the vanguard role being played by the agrarian labourers and poor peasants in agrarian movements. In other words, they serve as stunning refutations of all those theories that refuse to accept agrarian labourers and poor peasants as the vanguard contingent on the plea that in a semi-feudal economy, these classes remain too burdened with numerous ties of bondage with the landlords to give the lead, ascribing that role to the middle peasants who are all supposed to be ‘independent proprietors’.

However, caste sentiments do exist among these classes, too, and at times, lumpen and casteist elements among them are indeed able to derail the movement by cashing in on these sentiments. Particularly, the reformist policies of the government have over the years given rise to some harijan elements in almost each and every village who serve as middlemen to the block officials, are associated with the Congress and are constantly trying to mobilise the harijans on caste basis. Hence, carrying on the peasant movement along anti-feudal lines on the basis of broad peasant unity is at the same time also a question of waging a relentless political struggle against all such tendencies. And herein again lies the role of the Party.

In contrast to the landlords' politics of caste-based mobilisation, mobilisation of broad peasant masses along class lines is a very complex process and cannot be achieved overnight. But the protracted peasant movement in Bihar has made it unmistakably clear that it is not caste, but class, that is the growing basis of the mobilisation of the peasantry.

The class interests behind the landlords’ politics of caste- based mobilisation are also becoming increasingly clear. For example, when Laddu Singh (whose family owns 100 acres of land and who once held an important position in the CPI) and Bipin Bihari Singh (secretary of the Poonpoon block committee of the CPI, he too owns 100 acres of land) led the infamous Pipra carnage, they certainly did that from a definite class position, even regarding it as a veritable ‘class struggle’. Same was the case with Divakar Sharma and Jayaprakash Singh of the Congress(I), Subhash Chandra Singh, vice-president of the Patna district Bharatiya Janata Party, and Sidheshwar Singh, secretary of the Bikram block committee of the CPI, when they all forgot their political differences to unitedly organise an armed procession of landlords at Bikram on 22 October, 1981, defying Section 144. And then there is the example of Ramashraya Singh, the CPI MP, who is the well-known ‘brain’ behind the Lorik Sena. The more the class interests of these caste leaders get exposed, the more rapidly will erode their ability of caste-based mobilisation. And that is precisely what is happening in the areas of peasant struggle in rural Bihar.