Which of the following statements regarding the Freedom Struggle from 1920 to 1935 is/are correct ? 1. In Bihar and Bengal, the Non-Cooperation Movement owed its effectiveness to the participation of peasants. 2. In Bihar they were organised against the planters under the banner of Kisan Sabha. 3. In Midnapore in Bengal, Mahishya peasants rallied against the taxes of the Union Board under the leadership of Birendranath Sasmal. Select the answer using the codes given below :

Correct — A, (a) 1, 2 and 3.

All three statements reproduce the standard account of how the Non-Cooperation Movement worked in the eastern provinces, and the three are in fact a single argument broken into parts.

Statement 1 states the argument. In Bihar and Bengal the movement drew its strength from the countryside. The Congress programme of 1920 - boycott of schools, courts, councils and foreign cloth - was framed for towns and for the professional classes, and where it went beyond them it did so by attaching itself to agrarian grievances that already existed. In both provinces those grievances were live, and the movement's effectiveness there is conventionally explained by peasant participation rather than by the boycott programme on its own.

Statement 2 gives the Bihar half of the illustration. In Bihar the peasants were organised against the planters under the banner of the Kisan Sabha. North Bihar had a history of agitation against European planters going back to the indigo grievances that brought Gandhi to Champaran in 1917, and the districts in which the Congress movement of 1920-22 was strongest were those that had seen such agitation and Kisan Sabha activity before it.

Statement 3 gives the Bengal half. In the Midnapore district the Mahishya cultivators had been organised in 1919 against the taxes of the Union Boards created under the Bengal Village Self-Government Act of that year, and their leader was Birendranath Sasmal, who ran the campaign in the Contai and Tamluk subdivisions. That movement then merged into non-cooperation, and it was effective: by 17 December 1921, 226 of the district's 227 Union Boards had been abolished, and the last of them went the following year.

All three being sound, the answer is the option that names all three.

One reading note. Statement 2 begins 'In Bihar they were organised', and the pronoun has no antecedent inside that statement; it refers to the peasants named in statement 1. The three statements are meant to be read as a continuous passage, which is how the item is constructed and how it should be judged.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)2 and 3 only — This option drops the general proposition and keeps the two illustrations, which inverts the structure of the item: statements 2 and 3 are the evidence, and statement 1 is what they are evidence for. It is not possible to accept that peasants in Bihar were organised against planters under the Kisan Sabha and that Mahishya cultivators in Midnapore rallied against Union Board taxes, and to deny that peasant participation is what made the movement effective in those two provinces - the second and third statements name precisely the participation the first asserts.
• (c)1 only — This option accepts the general claim and rejects both illustrations of it. The Midnapore case in particular is among the best-documented episodes of the whole movement: Birendranath Sasmal led the Mahishya cultivators of Contai and Tamluk against the Union Boards set up under the Bengal Village Self-Government Act of 1919, the campaign merged into non-cooperation, and almost every one of the district's 227 Union Boards was abolished by the end of 1921. An option that treats that as incorrect discards the movement's most successful local action in Bengal.
• (d)3 only — This option keeps the Midnapore illustration alone. It is the most defensible of the three wrong answers, because statement 3 is the most concrete and the easiest to verify, and a cautious candidate may accept it while doubting the others. What it misses is that Bihar's half of the picture rests on the same kind of evidence: peasant organisation there ran under the Kisan Sabha banner and was directed at the planters, in a province where anti-planter agitation had been the pattern since the indigo grievances of Champaran. Rejecting statement 2 usually comes from dating the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha to its formal foundation later in the period covered by the stem, which is 1920 to 1935, rather than reading the statement as a description of how peasants in the province were organised within those years.

The Non-Cooperation Movement is usually taught through its national programme, and the interesting historical question is why it took hold so unevenly. The general answer is that it spread where it could attach itself to a local grievance that was already organised.

That produced four broad patterns. In Awadh it fused with the tenant agitation of the kisan sabhas against rack-renting and eviction. In Andhra it drew on forest grievances in the hill tracts. In Bengal, and above all in Midnapore, it merged with a no-tax campaign against the newly created Union Boards. In Bihar it ran along the older channel of agitation against the European planters.

Midnapore is the clearest case because it is bounded in time. The Bengal Village Self-Government Act of 1919 created 227 Union Boards in the district, with power to levy a rate. Birendranath Sasmal, a lawyer of Mahishya background from Contai, led the refusal to pay; the Mahishyas, the dominant cultivating community of the district, supplied the numbers; and when non-cooperation was declared the campaign became part of it. The boards were abolished almost to the last one by the end of 1921, which is a rare instance of a local civil-disobedience campaign achieving its stated object outright.

The general lesson for the period is that the effectiveness of a national programme in any province is a question about local organisation, not about the programme. That is the proposition statement 1 makes, and statements 2 and 3 are the two examples the standard account offers for it.

Key facts

• The Non-Cooperation Movement's programme of boycott was framed for towns and professions; where it went further, it did so by attaching itself to existing agrarian grievances, which is why its strength varied so much by province.
• In Bihar the peasants were organised against the planters under the banner of the Kisan Sabha, in a province whose pattern of anti-planter agitation went back to the indigo grievances that brought Gandhi to Champaran in 1917.
• The Bengal Village Self-Government Act, 1919 created 227 Union Boards in Midnapore district with power to levy a rate, and the refusal to pay that rate became the district's contribution to non-cooperation.
• Birendranath Sasmal, a lawyer of Mahishya background from Contai, led the anti-Union Board agitation in the Contai and Tamluk subdivisions; by 17 December 1921, 226 of the 227 Union Boards had been abolished and the last went the following year.
• Statement 2's pronoun 'they' has no antecedent within that statement and refers to the peasants of statement 1 - the three statements form a continuous passage rather than three independent claims.

Common traps

• Judging statement 2 by the date on which a provincial Kisan Sabha was formally constituted rather than by what the statement says about how peasants were organised across 1920 to 1935.
• Reading the three statements as independent, which leaves statement 2 with a pronoun that refers to nothing and statement 1 looking unsupported.
• Assuming the Non-Cooperation Movement was uniformly urban and rejecting any statement about peasant participation.
• Confusing the Union Board rate of Midnapore with the chaukidari tax or with the land revenue; the campaign was directed at a specific rate levied by a new statutory local body.
• Attributing the Midnapore campaign to a later phase of the struggle; the Mahishya organisation dates from 1919 and merged into non-cooperation from 1921.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The anti-Union Board agitation of Midnapore, which merged into the Non-Cooperation Movement, was directed against a rate levied under which enactment ?

  • (a)The Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885
  • (b)The Bengal Village Self-Government Act, 1919
  • (c)The Bengal Municipal Act, 1932
  • (d)The Chaukidari Act, 1870

  Answer(b) The Bengal Village Self-Government Act, 1919 - it created the Union Boards, 227 of them in Midnapore district, whose rate the Mahishya cultivators refused to pay under Birendranath Sasmal's leadership.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following statements about the Non-Cooperation Movement : 1. Its programme of boycotting schools, courts and councils was framed principally for towns and the professional classes. 2. Its strength in a province depended largely on whether it could attach itself to an existing agrarian grievance. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

  • (a)1 only
  • (b)2 only
  • (c)Both 1 and 2
  • (d)Neither 1 nor 2

  Answer(c) Both 1 and 2 - the boycott programme addressed urban and professional life, and the movement spread furthest where it fused with local agrarian grievances, as in Awadh, Midnapore, Malabar and the Andhra hill tracts.