Ramaswami: KISAN SABHA: The activities of communists, particularly the ideas expounded through the All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and the General Statement of the accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case, contributed to the expansion of Left and exerted considerable influence among the peasants. They began to work with the perspective of forming an independent class organisation of their own and fight against British imperialism. Communists were in the forefront in taking up the issues of peasantry by organising them under Kisan Sabhas. Huge peasant struggles against the oppressive tax regime and exploitation took place during this period. The powerful kisan movements launched in the early and mid-thirties in various parts of the country, were mainly concerned about saving the peasants from attacks from the landlords, against forced labour and other forms of exploitation. The severe economic crisis of the 1930s further burdened the peasantry. Various state level organisations were formed, before the formation of the All India Kisan Sabha in 1936, with a clear cut programme not only for immediate relief, but also directed against the system of landlordism. Communist leaders joined hands with Congress socialists to organise peasants and lead them in various struggles. The founding conference of the Kisan Sabha in Lucknow (1936) coincided with the holding of the annual session of the Indian National Congress. The idea was to project the kisan movement as a part of the national movement, though maintaining its separate existence as a class organisation. Many later generation communist leaders like EMS Namboodiripad and Harkishan Singh Surjeet attended this founding conference. The founding conference of the Kisan Sabha set its objectives as ‘complete liberation of peasants from economic exploitation and achievement of economic and political power to peasants, workers and other exploited classes’. The conference also adopted two important resolutions. One, demanding the abolition of landlordism existing in all its different forms and conferring land ownership on the cultivating peasants. The second resolution demanded radical change in the land tax system in the ryotwari regions and the introduction of a graduated system of tax, exempting poor peasants from payment of land tax. Other issues covered by the resolutions included prices of inputs, prices of marketable agricultural products, indebtedness, forced labour and illegal extractions from the tenants by the landlords and the distribution of landlord’s land to the landless poor peasants as also investing of waste land and grazing land with the village level panchayats. The AIKS also demanded minimum wages for the agricultural labourers and a central legislation legalising and regulating their unionisation. Clearly the influence of communists and socialist ideas led to the adoption of these objectives and resolutions. Communists were guided by the tactics that the working class would rise as a class capable of strengthening the anti-imperialist movement only by leading the peasantry in this struggle.