PEASANT MOVEMENTS AND PEASANT POLITICAL PROTEST: A CASE STUDY OF THE PUNJAB KISAN COMMITTEE, 1937-1947 (INDIA, PAKISTAN)

The impact of modernity produces both beneficial and harmful effects on peasant societies. One scholarly tradition praises traditional rural institutions, arguing that the penetration of colonial governments and development of capitalist market economies ruin these institutions. A second tradition posits that modernization and the market economy provide peasants opportunities to raise their economic level and to decrease onerous feudal dependencies. The two traditions also dispute the causes behind peasants joining political or revolutionary movements. The first claims peasants join based on the desperation they feel when their minimal subsistence needs are threatened, and the second focuses on concrete benefits peasants calculate they can achieve to improve their condition.;Unprecedented economic prosperity from 1860 to 1929 benefitted all rural classes. However, the effects of worldwide economic depression after 1929 forced many peasant proprietors to become indebted or to sell their lands to meet inflexible government tax demands. Punjabi communists concentrated their organizational activities amongst the peasantry, and created a movement called the Punjab Kisan Committee (PKC). The PKC spread amongst prosperous Jat Sikh middle and rich peasant proprietors who felt their hard won economic gains threatened by the depression. Communist peasant organizers advocated popular measures which promised immediate relief from unjust government economic policies, and freedom from Bristish colonial rule.;Ultimately, the PKC's strengths were more than offset by serious weaknesses which lead to its collapse in 1947 during partition. Deep rooted religious and caste animosities limited the movement's appeal to rich and middle class Jat Sikh peasants. Factional differences split the PKC's leadership, while growing Communist Party political differences with nationalist political parties contributed to the PKC's isolation after 1945. Finally, renewed rural economic prosperity in the Punjab in the 1940s caused PKC economic goals to lose their saliency for much of the peasantry.;British colonial rule and the spread of a market economy from 1849 in India's Punjab province dramatically changed rural society. The shift from communal to private land ownership and the institution of fixed rural taxes provided peasant proprietors with incentives to maximize production for the market. The colonization of western Punjab following construction of a large canal irrigation system provided landowners and tenants from crowded central and eastern Punjab the chance to raise living standards.