Mouvement paysan et mouvement national : le cas du champaran, 1917

Conventional writing on the history of Indian nationalism often implicitly explains the mobilization of mass participation in the freedom movement as a process of "politicization from the top", the peasantry being stirred up to action by nationalist leaders recruited in the urban intelligentsia. Closer analysis seems to show that the mass movements of the nationalist period, such as the Champaran satyāgraha of 1917, are first of all traditional, non-political peasant movements, the main leaders of which are well-off peasants, money-lenders and rural traders (all of whom generally have their own axes to grind), and a certain number of "half-educated" mukhtars and teachers. Gandhi and his intellectuel associates only controlled part of the Champaran movement, and had to rely on the mediation of those local leaders to secure the participation of the peasant mass. The specific role of the nationalist intellectuals was to change the traditional resistance of the indigo raiyats, which consisted mainly of sporadic flare-ups of hostility against individual planters or factories, into a "modern", global contestation of the Champaran indigo system. Gandhi’s "charismatic" leadership added considerable weight to the efficiency of the local leaders. It tended in the long run to strengthen the hold of the rural oligarchy on the lower strata of the peasantry.