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Abstract
Marxist theories of peasant revolt have identified different strata within the peasantry that adopt widely varying roles in rural conflict. However, a complex interplay of class and primordial factors has been identified in studies of Pakistani Punjab, where in a unique revolt beginning in 2000, peasants cultivating not private but public land have engaged in a widespread civil disobedience campaign against the state. This group of tenant farmers is sociologically distinct from the poor peasantry of most Marxist studies, and it is argued here that the revolt can be better understood as a grassroots mobilisation that was an effect of tenure relations combined with notions of community.
Notes
1 Alternatively, it might simply be that the debates themselves changed. This is certainly true of the way that the academic focus on studying the peasantry and peasant society (historical and actual) shifted during the 1980s, away from a concern with economic development and towards a near obsession with peasant culture. This shift – the ‘cultural turn – has itself been the subject of debate, much of it published in this journal.
2 See also Shanin [Citation1966] for a non-Marxist approach to the same question.
3 In many rural contexts, these same three categories – capitalist farmer, rich peasant and landlord – also combine trading and moneylending activities, advancing both commodities and loans to those they employ.
4 There is a non-Marxist concept of exploitation that was applied by the Russian neo-populist theoretician A.V. Chayanov [Citation1966] to the peasant family farm, according to which household members are said to be engaged in ‘self-exploitation’. This stems from the need of productive members of the peasant family to work hard in order to provide non-productive members (the very young, the very old) with subsistence provision.
5 Within the category of wage labourers, Ahmad [Citation1973] emphasises the need to consider the large number of non-agricultural workers including traditional artisans.
6 It is important to point out that most analyses have concluded this with a qualification – that the poor peasantry (sharecroppers, wage labourers) has also developed revolutionary tendencies but only after the initial break with the system was instigated by the middle peasantry.
7 This mobilising slogan deployed by tenants against the landlord is almost exactly the same as that deployed by tenants – tierra o muerte (‘land or death’) – on the large rural estates in the eastern lowlands of Peru some 40 years ago [Blanco, Citation1972].
8 Colonial discourse made an explicit link between the retention of the Indian Empire and the continued economic well-being of Britain itself, albeit presented in terms of a benign concern for its Indian subjects. Hence the forthright words written by a high-ranking British officer who lectured about fighting on the North West Frontier of India [Villiers-Stuart, Citation1925: 1]: ‘The first thing you want to grasp is that the defence of the Indian Frontier is an Imperial and not a local matter. There are … outstanding reasons for that. It is not a case of preserving the gentlemen of “India for the Indians” type from having his mouth shut and his jugular vein opened by a border knife. Firstly, there are several hundred millions of good honest and very pleasant simple people in India whom we are pledged to protect. Secondly, India, if not our best customer economically, is something very near it.’
9 On the perceived threat to India from the Bolsheviks, see Villiers-Stuart [1926: 1]. Under the rubric of ‘The Punjab peasantry and the Russian menace’, one noted colonial administrator [Trevaskis, Citation1928: 343] wrote: ‘Like the Roman Empire the British Empire in India was engaged in the forcible urbanisation of an unwilling peasantry. But in India the urban civilisation was not solely dependent on the peasant armies of the country for the maintenance of its supremacy, and the [1857] Mutiny had shown the helplessness of an Indian peasant army against British skill and military tradition. But a disloyal army might still be dangerous, were India invaded by a foreign foe, especially if the Frontier peasantry were also in a state of discontent. And the growl of the Russian bear now sounded ominously from beyond the Hindu Kush, arousing the British, if not the Indian, Government to a sense of the seriousness of the situation.’
10 This much is clear both from the Congress of the Peoples of the East, summoned by the Second Congress of the Communist International and held in Baku during 1920 [Pearce, Citation1977], and from ‘Theses on the Eastern Question’ drawn up in 1922 by its Fourth Congress (contained in Adler [Citation1980: 409ff.]), which highlight the fact that struggles in India (and other countries) were national struggles aimed at European imperialism.
11 The object of the 1900 Punjab Alienation of Land Act was to prevent holdings from being transferred by indebted proprietors to moneylenders in settlement of debts. According to Barrier [Citation1966] during the late nineteenth century the prevalence of laissez faire economic theory prevented either rural indebtedness or land transfers from being raised as a political issue by the British colonial authorities. The latter, however, were becoming increasingly concerned lest the acquisition by moneylenders of peasant holdings as a result of debt [Trevaskis, Citation1928: 279ff.; Citation1931: 24ff.; Citation1932: 59ff.] would generate agrarian unrest throughout India that would ultimately threaten British imperialism itself. This is evident, for example, from what Sir James Douie wrote about Montgomery district a short while after, where fear of rural unrest combines with a spelling out of its consequences. He notes [Douie, Citation1916: 263]: ‘The peasantry [in Montgomery district] belongs largely to various tribes described vaguely as Jats. The most important are Káthias, Wattús, and Kharrals. The last gave trouble in 1857 and were severely punished.’
12 The logic of this process is outlined by Trevaskis [Citation1931: 278]: ‘Colonization was well under weigh [sic: way] when the outbreak of the South African War in 1899 brought the needs of the army vividly to the fore. It was feared that, if ever India became involved in a great war, the supply of horse, mule and camel might fail. Accordingly it was proposed that land should be given to those who would undertake to maintain mares or camels for breeding. This object was dominant in the Lower Jhelum and Lower Bari Doab Canal Colonies, and in the former over 200,000 acres were given out on horse-breeding conditions.’ The shortcomings of this arrangement are noted by the same source [Trevaskis, Citation1931: 279]: ‘In the Lower Jhelum Canal Colony, which is based upon the horse-breeding grant, the grantees have been tied down to a system of primogeniture, which is entirely foreign to the Punjab …. This colony is seriously handicapped by the fact that the conditions imposed by the Government of India in the supposed interests of horse-breeding are detrimental not only to good agriculture but also to good administration, while at the same time inflicting a heavy tax on the resources of the Province. The increased value which the land would acquire if these burdensome conditions were removed would suffice to pay many times over for the establishment of a large Governmental estate devoted to horse-breeding alone. The definite refusal of the Government of India to release the occupants from these onerous conditions is typical of the Simla bureaucracy at its worst.’
13 The BCGA was a commercial organisation that had a presence in most of the British colonies in the aftermath of the American civil war and the so-called ‘cotton famine’ that it gave rise to. During the mid-1920s research conducted into the food consumption patterns of tenants on a farm owned by the BCGA [Lal, Citation1935] revealed a number of significant findings. First, that the Association farm, held on a 60-year lease from the State, covered 7,289 acres on a third of which cotton and wheat were grown on rotation. Second, that BCGA and tenants shared the cost of picking the cotton, which the latter were then required to sell to the former [Lal, Citation1935: 1]. Second, that at this period tenants also paid half of the grain produced to the Association as rent, plus a further ten per cent for seed [Lal, Citation1935: 15ff.]. Third, that cultivating tenants ‘appear to be in debt, since the farm books show that they often have to sell produce to the Farm in payment of debts. From May to October they usually have wheat in stock, or borrow from the Farm, and thus their consumption is normal, but for the remainder of the year they may have to omit a meal, or even two meals, and some of the family have to go short at such meals as there are’[Lal, Citation1935: 14, 112ff.]. And fourth, that even after rental deductions, better-off tenants retained a marketable surplus, sold by them locally. During the colonial era Okara was an important wheat market, particularly for improved varieties. In the decade 1925 – 35, for example, wheat covered some 468, 220 acres, or one third of the crop area in that location [Mahendru, Citation1937: 13 – 14].
14 Or the Indian Mutiny, as the British termed this event.
15 Family budget data about tenant-cultivators in Lyallpur District during the mid-1930s on the gender division of labour plus on-farm and off-farm employment [Singh and Singh, Citation1937: 33] indicates that at that conjuncture around 60 per cent of the annual workload for males in the household was allocated internally, to cultivation of the tenant holding. No female household member spent time on this kind of work, but a relatively large quantity of time (fluctuating between 16 and 49 per cent of annual workload) was taken up by off-farm paid work, compared with a much lower figure (between 1 and 3 per cent) for males.
16 It is important to note that policy on land tenures in the canal colonies evolved over time. Initially, property rights were not guaranteed. It was only after recommendations submitted by the Colonies Committee in 1908 that rights started to be awarded to the majority of tenants.
17 Grants in this category were made up to 50 acres. There were also yeoman grants (50 – 150 acres) and capitalist grants (150 – 600 acres)
18 Where the state did not bestow property rights upon the grantee, the latter was prohibited by law from sub-letting land to a third party.
19 Quom is being used here in the sense indicated by Ahmad [Citation1977], who asserts the complex nature of social hierarchy in a Punjabi village, emphasising the conjunction of concrete relations of production and occupational caste or biraderi (patrilineal lineage) in the evolution of social structure.
20 For example, Machis who used to fetch water for the village no longer do so as there is now a comprehensive water supply system in the village complete with taps in each household.
21 The administration needed chowkidars (guards), village headmen drivers and cleaners.
22 The information in this and the following section is drawn in large part from Kariapper [Citation2004].
23 In many respects, this contractual change on the Okara Military farms is in keeping with the way employment generally is being transformed throughout the global economy. Under neoliberal capitalist conditions, those previously in secure jobs are now increasingly having to apply for their own posts, demonstrating to their employer that they are able to do the same work more efficiently and for less cost than other potential applicants.
24 Some of the other government departments administering these state farms include the Punjab Seed Corporation (in Pirowal, Khanewal), the Maize and Cotton Research Departments (in Sahiwal), the Rice Research Department (in Lahore and Faisalabad) and the Livestock Department (in Sargodha and Sahiwal).
25 This memorandum was dated 4 October 2001.
26 These are small, blunt wooden sticks used to wash clothes. They have quickly evolved into the symbol of the movement.
27 Six people have been killed by the authorities over the course of five years since the movement began, and only two were actually tenants, while the rest were wage labourers. These deaths have taken place in direct confrontations with paramilitary forces. On at least three occasions, the Okara farms have been besieged and phone and electricity lines severed. The Pirowal farms have also suffered similar treatment. There have also been hundreds of criminal cases lodged against the tenants, some on trumped-up charges of anti-state sedition and terrorism. Dozens of activists and their supporters have been jailed and many still suffer the ignominy of regular court appearances.
28 In many respects, the same tactics deployed by the Zapatistas in Chiapas after the peasant uprising of 1994 ensured their survival when confronted by the Mexican state and its army [Washbrook, Citation2007].
29 A prominent New York based group Human Rights Watch has condemned the state repression against the tenants in a damning report [HRW, Citation2004].
30 Individual or small groups of tenants may have approached the courts, but this practice too has virtually stopped following the movement's successes.
31 It is worth noting again here that the relationship between the centre and the province also suggests that the state operates very much like its centralised predecessor. It is also important to emphasise that the state is dominated by the army, this being both the cause and effect of a complete absence of bourgeois democratic practice.
32 The army is the nation's most powerful land mafia, grabbing prime agricultural and residential lands all over the country, often under the guise of ‘national interest’.
33 This has been less the case on the smaller state farms where the tenant populations are considerably less.
34 These could include small mechanic shops for which there is now a demand, as more tenants are buying machinery – including tractors and motorcycles.
