Radicalizing Peasants, Envisioning New order: Revisiting Swami as state Falters

Abstract

As specters of agrarian extrermism, called euphemistically variously in party of India, continue to torment the Indian State, a massive failure to build a credible political vision/action to reconstruct a new agrarian social order in post-colonial times becomes hugely conspicuous. Barring a few exceptions, they too being half hearted, the question of reordering of rural power matrix was conveniently put aside by a coalition of regressive social forces commandeering state power in provinces and at the centre. In the initial decades following independence, land reforms, many aver, if implemented thoroughly, had the real potential to release social energies which could have brought about a repositioning of rural power structures empowering rural have-nots. Even today to hoodwink depressed rural segments to derive crucial electoral mileage, political formations/leaders do talk about protecting sharecroppers' rights to again ultimately capitulate to a neo feudal-capitalist combine. The recent example being the nice burial given to the recommendations of Bandyopadhyaya commission set up by NDA led government in Bihar. And as a consequence asymmetries in social relations in rural hinterland not only remain a huge social fact, despite mandalization of politics since 1990s, but engenders much of unrest and amdable blood-letting. It is in this context that thoughts and positions taken by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati 11889-1950), though placed in a different temporal frame, on question of how to organize peasants and formulate a vision to reorder agrarian society becomes insightful and deserves critical revisitations.