Peasant and Workers Movements
Peasant Movements & Nationalism
Causes. High revenue demand · Zamindari / Ryotwari / Mahalwari pressure · Indebtedness, moneylender · Forced cash crops · Famines, loss of land · Commercialisation, arbitrary rents — peasants came to see state, landlord & moneylender as one oppressor.
| Movement | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Indigo · Pabna · Deccan | 1859–75 | Early agrarian resistance (see §4). |
| Champaran · Kheda | 1917–18 | Gandhi’s entry into Indian Satyagraha. |
| Awadh (Baba Ramachandra) · Eka (Madari Pasi) | 1920–22 | Tenant militancy in the UP. |
| Mappila Rebellion | 1921 | Agrarian + communal in Malabar. |
| Bardoli Satyagraha (Vallabhbhai Patel) | 1928 | Against 22% revenue enhancement. |
| All India Kisan Sabha (Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, 1st Pres.) | 1936 | Demanded abolition of zamindari, tenancy rights. |
| Tebhaga · Telangana | 1946–51 | Anti-colonial politics fused with agrarian class struggle. |
Historiographical debate
| School | Argument |
|---|---|
| Marxist | R.P. Dutt, A.R. Desai: bourgeois Congress restrained peasants when property was threatened. D.N. Dhanagare: constructive work as “tension management”. Kapil Kumar: support used, economic Swaraj neglected. |
| Subaltern | Ranajit Guha: the peasant as maker of his own rebellion, with his own consciousness. Gyanendra Pandey: independent Awadh roots. Shahid Amin: peasants reinterpreted Gandhi in their own terms. |
| Congress-defence | Mridula Mukherjee: the national movement awakened peasant consciousness; nationalist cadres organised many struggles. |
“To acknowledge the peasant as the maker of his own rebellion is to attribute … a consciousness to him.”
Ranajit Guha
“The Indian cultivator is born in debt, lives in debt, and dies in debt.”
Malcolm Darling
Staffan Lindberg later marked the shift from “Land to the tiller!” to “Remunerative prices!”
Working Class & Trade Union Movements
A modern working class formed through plantations, coal, railways, cotton & jute mills, iron & steel — under 12–16 hour days, low wages, child labour & bondage. Dipesh Chakrabarty on Bengal working-class consciousness.
| Workforce by 1914 | Three phases |
|---|---|
| Cotton mills 264 → 2.6 lakh · Jute mills 60 → 2 lakh · Railways → 6 lakh · Plantations → 7 lakh · Mines → 1.5 lakh. | I. 1850s–1918 sporadic, philanthropic (Lokhande, S.S. Bengalee); Congress neglect — opposed Factory Acts 1881/1891. II. 1918–37 AITUC, 1920 (1st Pres. Lala Lajpat Rai); communist militancy — Bombay Textile (1928), Calcutta Jute (1929). III. 1937–47 Congress ministries, anti-war strikes, Quit India, INA & RIN-Mutiny solidarity (1945–46). |
Nationalist relationship. Congress was cautious — sought labour support but avoided class war; Gandhi favoured arbitration & trusteeship (Ahmedabad TLA stayed outside AITUC). E.M.S. Namboodiripad: Congress under-served workers. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar: workers were not pawns — they held nationalist and class identities at once. Chitra Joshi: Gandhi’s labour engagement had both reach & limits.
Labour & LGBTQ+ Movements
Labour movement
Origins: textile and jute factories (1850s), railway expansion, visible labour problems. First Labour Commission, Bombay (1875, led by Sorabjee Shapurji Bengalee); Factories Act, 1881; the Bombay Mill Workers Association founded by Narayan Meghaji Lokhande — India’s first organised labour body. Early character: welfare over rights, not all-India, issues of women and child workers.
Early trade-union era (1918–24): spurred by the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the ILO (India a founder member; Narayan Malhar Joshi at ILO). AITUC; Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association (Anasuyaben Sarabhai); Madras Labour Association (Bomanji Pestanji Wadia). 1925–34: AITUC split into the National Trade Union Federation and the All-India Red Trade Union Congress (led by S. V. Deshpande and Bhalchandra Trimbak Ranadive); Varahagiri Venkata Giri led the Congress-linked NTUF. Laws: Trade Union Act, 1926; Trade Disputes Act, 1929; Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946. The Great Bombay Textile Strike (1982) briefly reunited unions; after liberalisation, disorganised labour drew less support. Present central unions: AITUC, INTUC, BMS, CITU.
LGBTQ+ movement
A rights movement against prejudice, legal discrimination, stigma and denial of equal citizenship — a demand for justice, equality, dignity, autonomy and recognition; a democratic state must protect minorities. Issues: Section 377 IPC, religious opposition, the “elitist” charge, invisibility. Milestones: Naz Foundation judgment (2009), Navtej Johar judgment (2018), Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, and the same-sex marriage / Special Marriage Act debate — the intersection of civil liberties, identity politics and constitutional morality (“justice delayed is justice denied”).
What UPSC has asked
Ten years of PSIR Mains questions, each with the flow snapshot and the model answer.
Open the PYQ Finder →How this is taught
The same ground, taught in the order the subject holds together, with the answer written in class.
The first session of Foundation 2027 is published in full.
Six programmes across three levels.