BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 128 of 144

Correct — C, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. Bakasht — spelled bakhast in the official records, and defined in the Government of Bihar's own History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar as 'land in cultivation of landlord' — was land the zamindar held as his home farm. Much of it had passed into a tenant's hands, or had been sold out of a tenant's hands in execution of decrees for arrears of rent during the Depression, and the fight over who could plough it became the central agrarian conflict of Bihar in the late 1930s. Sahajanand Saraswati (22 February 1889 – 26 June 1950) built the organisation that fought it. He inaugurated a Kisan Sabha at his Bihta Ashram in Patna district on 4 March 1928; the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha followed in November 1929, at a meeting held during the Sonepur fair, with Sahajanand as its President and Sri Krishna Sinha as Secretary; and in April 1936 he became the first President of the All India Kisan Sabha, founded at Lucknow alongside the Congress session. The official Bihar history records that by 1937 'Bihar had become now the most important centre of Kisan struggle under the leadership of Swami Sahajanand', with the agitation concentrated in Patna, Gaya, Shahabad, Saran and Monghyr. Its scale is on record too: on 23 August 1937, when the new Assembly met for the first time, between eight and ten thousand kisans marched to the Assembly Chamber at Patna; on 27 October 1937 the Patna Commissioner reported the agitation to be 'becoming dangerous'; and on 4 December 1937 the Premier, at Bakhtiyarpur, publicly asked the kisans 'not to resort to force for possession of the bakhast lands'. The Congress ministry answered with legislation in 1938 — the Bihar Restoration of Bakast Lands and Reduction of Arrears of Rent Act, alongside amendments to the Bihar Tenancy Act and the Champaran Agrarian Act.

• (a)Swami Dayanand Saraswati — Chronologically impossible, and the trap is purely the shared monastic name 'Swami … Saraswati'. Dayanand Saraswati (12 February 1824 – 30 October 1883) founded the Arya Samaj in 1875 and wrote the Satyarth Prakash; he was a religious and social reformer of the nineteenth century who died fifty-four years before the Bakasht agitation began. Two different Swamis, two different centuries, two different causes — one a Vedic revivalist, the other a peasant organiser who ended up outside the Congress fold.
• (b)Jayaprakash Narayan — The most defensible wrong answer, and therefore the real distractor. Jayaprakash Narayan (11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), born at Sitabdiara on the Bihar–United Provinces border, was a founder of the Congress Socialist Party in 1934 and was active in Bihar in exactly these years, and the Congress Socialists were allies of the Kisan Sabha. But the Bakasht agitation was run by the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha, whose president and driving force was Sahajanand; JP's own theatre was party organisation and, later, the 1942 underground and the movement of 1974.
• (d)Peer Ali Khan — Eighty years too early. Peer Ali Khan was a bookseller of Patna and, in the words of Commissioner William Tayler's own report, 'proved to have been the principal in the riot' of 3 July 1857. His house was searched and arms and letters found; he escaped, was captured the next evening, was tried under commission on 7 July 1857 among thirty-six accused, and was among the fourteen hanged within three hours of sentence, his house razed and a post set on the site. He is one of Bihar's 1857 martyrs, not a leader of the 1930s.

In the zamindari areas of Bihar, land fell into two broad classes: the raiyat's holding, on which the tenant paid rent and could acquire occupancy right, and the zamindar's bakasht or home-farm land, which he was held to cultivate himself. In practice the boundary moved. Through the depression of the 1930s, when agricultural prices collapsed and rent arrears piled up, zamindars obtained decrees for arrears and had tenants' holdings sold — often buying them in themselves, so that land which had been a raiyat's occupancy holding was reclassified as the landlord's bakasht and the former tenant was left cultivating it as a tenant-at-will, or was evicted altogether. The Kisan Sabha's demand was the restoration of that land, and its method was direct: kisans went out and ploughed or harvested the disputed fields. The politics were sharpened by the fact that Congress had taken office in Bihar in July 1937 under Sri Krishna Sinha, so the ministry that had to keep order was the same party the Kisan Sabha had helped to elect. That tension broke the alliance — Congressmen were required to resign from the Kisan Sabha in 1937-38 — and pushed Sahajanand steadily leftwards, towards the red flag the All India Kisan Sabha adopted in October 1937 and eventually out of the Congress orbit altogether.

Three of the four options can be struck out on dates alone, which is how a well-prepared candidate should answer this in about ten seconds. Peer Ali Khan belongs to Patna in July 1857 — a Bihar name every BPSC aspirant knows, deliberately placed here because it is a Bihar name. Dayanand Saraswati died in 1883, and is here only because the answer shares the words 'Swami' and 'Saraswati' with him; that near-collision of names is the single most productive trap in Indian modern history, and BPSC uses it repeatedly. Once those two are gone the choice is between the two men who actually were active in Bihar in 1937-38, and this is where the discriminating fact matters: the Bakasht movement was a Kisan Sabha operation, and the Kisan Sabha in Bihar was Sahajanand's. Jayaprakash Narayan was a Congress Socialist, working inside the party structure; the two movements overlapped in sympathy but not in command. If you remember one anchor, make it this: Sahajanand founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha in 1929 and was the first president of the All India Kisan Sabha in 1936, so any question about an organised peasant agitation in Bihar between the wars points to him. Notice too that the stem's own date range does half the work. '1937–1938' is precisely the window of the first Congress ministries under the Government of India Act 1935, and any Bihar agitation dated to those two years is being asked against that backdrop — which immediately excludes a nineteenth-century reformer and an 1857 martyr without your having to know anything about bakasht land at all.

• 'Bakhast' is defined in the Government of Bihar's own History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar as 'land in cultivation of landlord'; the dispute was over holdings that had passed from tenants to zamindars through sales in execution of decrees for rent arrears during the Depression
• Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (22 February 1889 – 26 June 1950), born Naurang Rai at Deva near Dullahpur in Ghazipur district, inaugurated a Kisan Sabha at Bihta Ashram in Patna district on 4 March 1928, founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha in November 1929 at a meeting during the Sonepur fair, and became the first President of the All India Kisan Sabha at Lucknow in April 1936
• Scale and temperature of the agitation, from the official record: 8,000 to 10,000 kisans marched to the Assembly Chamber at Patna on 23 August 1937; the Patna Commissioner reported on 27 October 1937 that it was 'becoming dangerous'; the Premier asked kisans at Bakhtiyarpur on 4 December 1937 not to use force to take bakhast land
• The legislative answer came in 1938 — the Bihar Restoration of Bakast Lands and Reduction of Arrears of Rent Act, together with the Bihar Tenancy (Amendment) Act, the Champaran Agrarian (Amendment) Act and the Chotanagpur Tenancy (Amendment) Act, with abwabs or illegal cesses made a penal offence
• The agitation ran on into open satyagraha: Jadunandan Sharma cut the crop on disputed land at Reora in Gaya district on 23 December 1938 and was sentenced to six months on 13 February 1939, and Rahul Sankrityayan led a satyagraha at Amwari in Shahabad district, arrested with sixteen others on 24 February 1939

• Swami Dayanand Saraswati versus Swami Sahajanand Saraswati — near-identical names, a century apart, the first a religious reformer and the second a peasant leader
• Assuming that because the Congress Socialists supported the peasants, Jayaprakash Narayan led the movement; the Bakasht agitation was run through the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha
• Confusing the Bakasht agitation of 1937-38 with the earlier Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 — different decade, different grievance (indigo tinkathia versus home-farm land), different leadership

BPSC treats Bihar's peasant movements as core syllabus and asks them as one-line attribution questions — who organised the Bakasht movement, who led the Kisan Sabha in Bihar — with a look-alike name and a Bihar martyr from another century thrown in as distractors, so a candidate who knows only that 'a Swami led it' can still get it wrong. It has asked the Sahajanand attribution more than once. UPSC comes at the same material from outside Bihar: it pairs leaders with organisations across the country, asks the specific demand of a named agitation such as Tebhaga, or tests the founders of the UP Kisan Sabha of 1918.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the first President of the All India Kisan Sabha, formed in 1936?

  • (a)N. G. Ranga
  • (b)Swami Sahajanand Saraswati
  • (c)Baba Ramchandra
  • (d)Acharya Narendra Deva

  Answer(b) Swami Sahajanand Saraswati — the All India Kisan Sabha was founded at Lucknow in April 1936 alongside the Congress session, with Sahajanand as its first President and N. G. Ranga prominent among the organisers.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the agrarian vocabulary of Bihar, 'bakasht' land meant

  • (a)land held rent-free for religious or charitable purposes
  • (b)land in the personal cultivation of the landlord
  • (c)waste land reclaimed by tenants and exempt from rent for five years
  • (d)land held directly from the government under a ryotwari settlement

  Answer(b) land in the personal cultivation of the landlord — the Government of Bihar's own official history glosses 'bakhast' exactly so. The 1937-38 movement was fought over holdings reclassified as bakasht after being sold in execution of decrees for rent arrears.