Bengal’s Reawakening: 192 Years After the Fall of Plassey

Hasan Murshed

The Neo Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami have a narrative that Pakistan abolished zamindari and established land rights for farmers. This narrative is spreading to make ’47 seem bigger than ’71. What is the real story? What was their own role? For those who are interested in reading:

June 23, 1757. Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula fell in the wilderness of Plassey. British imperial rule in Bengal began. Along with it, a long history of erosion of peasant rights over land began.

In the system prevailing from the Sultanate period to the Mughal period, the Sultan or Emperor was the owner of all the land. The farmer was not the owner of the land. However, in exchange for paying direct taxes to the state, he received the right to hereditary cultivation. In between were the intermediaries in collecting taxes – from the subadar to the zamindars. At that time, the zamindars did not mean the owner of the land, but the responsible. The employee appointed by the state to collect taxes from the farmer. This class included both Hindus and Muslims.

After the British took power, this relationship was broken. Through the permanent settlement, the landlord, who was the middleman, was made the permanent owner of the land. He would continue to pay taxes to the state (East India Company) at a fixed rate, but the state did not care who collected the taxes from, how much they collected, or how they spent the surplus taxes. Till now, the farmer had been the subject of the Sultan or Emperor, directly connected to the state. Now he became the subject of the landlord, the state no longer recognized him. The right to hereditary cultivation was gone. The landlord would let him cultivate the land if he wanted, or not. The British no longer had any headache about the extent to which the farmer was being exploited. As a result, the number of landless people in Bengal continued to increase alarmingly.

In Bengal, the new landlord class was mostly Hindu, with some Muslims. And their peasant subjects were mostly Muslims, with a significant number of lower-caste Hindus. This class conflict over land and economy took on a religious form in the early 20th century. The Congress, the Muslim League, and the Hindu Mahasabha were born. The landlord class was at the helm of all three parties.

The communists were the first to speak about the rights of farmers according to their party agenda. But in Bengal, Fazlul Haque was the first to take a specific and effective role in this regard. His Krishak Praja Party won the 1937 elections by promising to abolish zamindari. But it did not get a single majority and sought the support of the Congress to form a government. Congress did not support Fazlul Haque, fearing that he would abolish zamindari if he formed the government. He was forced to form an alliance with the Muslim League to form the government. The Muslim League used him for other purposes. In 1940, the Pakistan resolution was tabled through him at the Lahore session. That resolution did not mention the abolition of zamindari or the land rights of farmers. (It should be noted)

Pakistan was created in 1947. The feudal leaders of the Muslim League came to power in the center and East Bengal. They were the owners of huge landholdings themselves. The middle class was cornered. In this situation, a new political party was born two years later. Their manifesto stated: The zamindari system must be abolished immediately without compensation; land must be distributed among the landless farmers; cooperative and collective farms must be established under the supervision of the state.

In 1950, the Pakistani government enacted the Zamindari Abolition Act in East Bengal. But it also included a compensation system for the zamindars. The purpose was clear. Even if the land was lost, the zamindars should remain the owners of capital, and the class should not change. Farmers who had been cultivating on the zamindari land for a long time became landowners, but the acquired land was not distributed among the large number of landless people. The farmers who owned the land became another powerful class, with a large number of landless people below them. Criticism began about compensation for the zamindars.

At this time, Maulana Maududi of Jamaat-e-Islami entered the fray. The big landowners of West Pakistan brought him forward. They feared that the experience of East Bengal would spread to the West as well. Maududi held public meetings, gave speeches, wrote a whole book along with newspaper columns – Masala-e-Milkiyat-e-Zamin. His position stood out with two points:

1. Acquiring the property of a landlord without compensation is against Islam, because Islam gives the right to private property.

2. The state cannot set a ceiling on private property, it is against Islam.

Islam certainly grants the right to private property, but the process by which landlords came to own land is unjust – Maududi ignored that. He also ignored the question raised by Hazrat Abu Zar al-Ghifari in the 7th century. Based on the verses of the Quran, he questioned Governor Muawiyah: How much property does Islam allow for? Maududi also ignored the land policy of Caliph Umar (RA).

In the 1954 election, the United Front’s manifesto again brought up old demands: eviction of landlords without compensation, nationalization of jute, land distribution, and cooperative agriculture.

Then came the year 1956.

The constitution of Pakistan is being drafted. In the debate of the Constituent Assembly in Karachi, a young member from East Bengal strongly criticized Maududi’s fatwa. He said: It is not difficult to buy a fatwa. If you have money, you can get a fatwa. Then he asked the main question: Fifty thousand acres of land in the hands of one man, while people are dying of hunger next to him. What kind of Islam is this? Islam talks about equality, about brotherhood. There is no legitimacy in Islam to accumulate unlimited wealth. Those who give that legitimacy are not talking about Islam. They are talking about the interests of a class.

But throughout the Pakistan period, the landless were not provided for. In some places, some private land may have been distributed by local administrative decisions, but overall, no state policy was adopted regarding the landless.

Finally, it was 1971. The young leader of the Constituent Assembly in 1956 was the undisputed leader of Bengal at that time. Under his leadership, a new state – Bangladesh – was born. A new issue emerged clearly in the political philosophy of independent Bangladesh – the rights of the landless people. The basic principles of the governance of the Bangladesh Constitution included the reduction of economic inequality, fair distribution of wealth and the commitment to the development of the backward communities. Articles 13, 14, 15 and 19 of the Constitution reflected the concept of fair distribution of wealth, emancipation of farmers and workers and social justice. Before August 1975, a program was also taken to establish cooperatives and collective farms under the supervision of the state, which was in the founding manifesto of 1949.

The date in 1949 was June 23.

Exactly 192 years after the fall of Plassey.