When did the Tebhaga Movement begin in Bengal?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, September 1946. In September 1946 the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha, led by the Communists, called on sharecroppers to enforce the tebhaga demand — that the bargadar (adhiar, bhagchasi) keep two of the three shares of the crop, that is two-thirds instead of the customary half. The demand was not invented on the spot: the Floud Commission (the Land Revenue Commission of Bengal, which reported in 1940) had itself recommended a two-thirds share for the sharecropper. The action was carried out on the winter (aman) harvest of 1946-47, when sharecroppers cut the paddy and carried it to their own threshing floor instead of the jotedar's, and it was strongest in the north Bengal districts. It faded through 1947 amid communal violence, the failed Bargadari Bill and Partition.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) August 1945 is the end of the Second World War and the eve of the INA trials — the political churn that preceded the peasant upsurge, but the Kisan Sabha's tebhaga call came a year later.  (c) The Floud Commission, whose recommendation the movement demanded be implemented, was only appointed in 1938 and reported in 1940 — so a movement to enforce it could not have started in January 1938.  (d) 1935 is remembered for the Government of India Act; the tebhaga agitation is a post-war, pre-Partition movement, more than a decade later.

Concept: Under colonial Bengal's agrarian structure, land had passed into the hands of jotedars (rich, land-controlling peasants) who had it cultivated by bargadars — sharecroppers with no occupancy right, who handed over half the crop as rent. 'Tebhaga' literally means three shares: the sharecropper keeps two, the owner one. The movement of 1946-47 was an attempt by the Kisan Sabha to enforce this share directly in the field rather than wait for legislation, and it belongs with Telangana and Punnapra-Vayalar in the cluster of post-war peasant upsurges that immediately preceded independence.

State PCS 2026 Q52 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q52 — History PYQ with Answer