Tebhaga Movement

In September 1946, the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha gave a call to implement, through mass struggle, the Flood Commission recommendations of tebhaga—two-thirds’ share—to the bargardars, the share-croppers also known as bagchasi or adhyar, instead of the one-half share. The bargardars worked on lands rented from the jotedars. The communist cadres, including many urban student militias went to the countryside to organise the bargardars. The central slogan was “nij khamare dhan tolo”—i.e., sharecroppers taking the paddy to their own threshing floor and not to the jotedar’s house, as before, so as to enforce tebhaga.

The storm centre of the movement was north Bengal, principally among Rajbanshis—a low caste of tribal origin. Muslims also participated in large numbers. The movement dissipated soon, because of the League ministry’s sop of the Bargardari Bill, an intensified repression, the popularisation of the Hindu Mahasabha’s agitation for a separate Bengal and renewed riots in Calcutta which ended the prospects of sympathetic support from the urban sections.