Pabna Agrarian Leagues

• During the 1870s and 1880s, large parts of Eastern Bengal witnessed agrarian unrest caused by oppressive practices of the zamindars. 
• The zamindars resorted to enhanced rents beyond legal limits and prevented the tenants from acquiring occupancy rights under Act X of 1859. 
• To achieve their ends, the zamindars resorted to forcible evictions, seizure of cattle and crops and prolonged, costly litigation in courts where the poor peasant found himself at a disadvantage.
• Having had enough of the oppressive regime, the peasants of Yusuf Shah Pargana in Pabna district formed an agrarian league or combination to resist the demands of the zamindars. 
• The league organized mass meetings of peasants. 
• The league organised a rent strike- the ryots refused to pay the enhanced rents and challenged the zamindars in the courts. Funds were raised by ryots to fight the court cases. 
• The struggles spread throughout Pabna and to other districts of East Bengal. 
• The main form of struggle was that of legal resistance and there was very little violence.
• In the course of the movement, the ryots developed a strong awareness of the law and their legal rights and the ability to combine and form associations for peaceful agitation.
• Though the peasant discontent continued to linger on till 1885, most of the cases had been solved, partially through official persuasion and partially because of zamindars’ fears. 
• Many peasants were able to acquire occupancy rights and resist enhanced rents.
• The Government also promised to undertake legislation to protect the tenants from the worst aspects of zamindari oppression. 
• In 1885, the Bengal Tenancy Act was passed.
• Once again the Bengal peasants showed complete Hindu-Muslim solidarity, even though the majority of the ryots were Muslim and the majority of zamindars were  Hindu. There was also no effort to create peasant solidarity on the grounds of religion or caste. 
• Again, a number of young Indian intellectuals supported the peasants cause. 
• These included Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, R.C. Dutt and the Indian Association under Surendranath Banerjea and Anand Mohan Bose. 
• They campaigned for the rights of tenants, helped for ryots union, and organized huge meetings of  up to 20,000 peasants in the districts in support of the Rent Bill. 
• The Indian Association and many of the nationalist newspapers went further with the Bill. They asked for permanent fixation of the tenant’s rent. 
• They warned that since the Bill would confer occupancy rights even on non-cultivators it would lead to the growth of middlemen – the jotedars – who would be as oppressive as the zamindars so far as the actual cultivators were concerned. 
• They, therefore, demanded that is rights of occupancy should go with actual cultivation of the soil, that is, in most cases to the under-ryots and the tenants-at-will.