How Did Peasants of Awadh Use Different Methods to Achieve Their Goal?

The Non-Cooperation Movement spread to the countryside where the peasants and the tribals were taking part in this. Baba Ramachandra was a sanyasi who worked as an indentured labourer in Fiji. A movement was led by him leading the peasants against the talukdars and landlords because they demanded very high rents and other cesses from the peasants. The peasants were bound to work at the landlord’s farm without any payment. Peasants had to do Begar, no security of tenure and also they were evicted regularly so that they could not acquire right over the leased land.

The various demands of the peasants in Awadh were – reduction of revenue, abolition of Begar and social boycott of oppressive landlords which was strengthened by the nai-dhobi bandhs organized by the Awadh panchayats to deprive the landlords from the services of the barbers and washermen.

In October 1920, Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up by Jawahar Lal Nehru, Baba Ramachandra and a few others. This is how the Awadh peasants were integrated in the process of upcoming wider Non- Cooperation Movement by the Congress. But the Awadh peasants invoked the name of Mahatma Gandhi to sanction all action and aspirations because during the movement they attacked the houses of the talukdars and merchants, looted the bazaars and took over the grain hoards. Some of the local leaders told the peasants that Gandhiji had declared not to pay taxes and also the land will be redistributed among the poor.