Mukherjee, Mriluda, 2004, Peasants in India's Non-Violent Revolution, Sage Publications, New Delhi
Mridula Mukherjee's research focuses on the conditions in rural Bengal that led to rural protests against the landlords. In her book, Mukherjee explains how colonial policies and exploitative revenue systems worsened the plight of the peasants. She argues that the impact of the landlords on the peasants was much greater than the complex governance system, general discontent and rural revolts. Mukherjee's research emphasizes the role of landlords as representatives of the colonial government who were responsible for heavy taxation and exploitative policies on the peasants and highlights the deep resentment among the peasants against the landlords, which eventually led to a massive resistance movement.
Dutta, K.K., 1957, Unrest Against British Rule in Bihar 1831- 1859, Superintendent Secretariat Press, Bihar, Patna
K. K. Dutta's research highlights the peasants of rural Bihar, where the landlords exerted a significant influence on the lower classes and the peasants. In her works, she has discussed the economic exploitation of the peasants by the landlords and their role in exacerbating class differences. Her research provides a psychoanalysis of the socio-political conditions that led to rural upheaval, which led to various peasant revolts against the landlords.

Rai Trithankar, 2020, The Economic History of India 1857-2010, Oxford University Press, New Delhi

Trithankar Rai's book discusses the economic history of India in detail, with a special mention of the exploitation of peasants by the zamindars during the British period. He explains that the British government made zamindars a part of British policy by giving them the right to collect taxes from peasants. This led to excessive taxation and exploitation of peasants, which later led to peasant revolts. For example, peasants fought against zamindars and British rule in events like the Champaran Satyagraha (1917) and the Blue Rebellion (1859-60). Rai emphasizes that resistance movements against economic exploitation and the zamindari system contributed to the Indian freedom struggle.
Stock, Eric, 1978, The Peasant and the Raj, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Eric Stock, one of the most influential British historians in the study of colonial agrarian relations, elaborates the relationship between peasants and landlords in his influential work. Stock focuses on the dynamic contours of the various land revenue systems in force in rural areas during the British period. He claims that the land revenue policies of the colonial state were largely responsible for the exploitation of peasants and landlords as middlemen often made them pay fixed taxes to maximize profits and also to remain in the good books of the British government, thereby doubling the tax burden on peasants and forcing them to revolt.
Dube, Ishita Banerjee, 2014, A History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, New York
Ishita Banerjee Dube has written extensively on peasant movements in eastern India, particularly focusing on Bihar and Bengal. Her book shows the role of landlords in increasing rural poverty and increasing the tax burden on peasants, which led to peasants falling into the clutches of moneylenders and thus leading to indebtedness.  She highlights the role of women in these movements, which is often sidelined in traditional accounts of peasant revolts, as well as the ideological and cultural dimensions of peasant revolts against landlords. Dube's study enriches the account of gendered aspects of rural revolts and the specific community forms of resistance taken up against the landlord class.
Guptu Nandini & M. Pearce, Douglas, 2012, India and the British Empire, Oxford University Press, UK
His book describes the role of peasants in the colonial agrarian economy, particularly focusing on the tensions between landlords and peasants. In his research, he has explained how policies such as the Permanent Settlement of 1793 allowed the landlords to consolidate their effective hold over the peasants. The eventual resistance of peasants to these oppressive structures is described in detail in his research, where he discusses the strategic alliances between peasants and various political movements during the colonial period. He argues that the landlords were not merely exploitative landlords but often mediators of colonial state policies, which intensified peasant alienation and resistance.
Guha, Ranjit, 1999, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Emergency in Colonial India, Duke University Press, Durham and London
Ranjit Guha is one of the top scholars examining rural movements in India. Guha argues that peasant rebellions were rooted in oppressive economic policies imposed by both the British and the landlords. Guha has pointed out that the peasants' fight was not directly against the British but against elites, including landlords, who were responsible for their condition. His Marxist perspective depicts the peasant movement as a class struggle challenging both colonial and feudal agrarian structures.
Sarkar, Samita, 1994-95, Agrarian Relations in Bengal 1765-92, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
Samita Sarkar focuses on the governmental and social dynamics of peasant movements. In her book, she highlights the multifaceted nature of peasant rebellions, where peasants fought against exploitation by big landlords, local landholders and colonial policies. She critiques conventional stories of rural rebellions, focusing on the interrelationship between caste, family and colonialism. She also looks at the ways in which landlord-peasant relations influenced the politics of peasant movements and the extent to which these movements were politicised.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, 1990, Economic History of Modern India 1850-1947, Rajkamal Publications Private Limited, Daryaganj, New Delhi
By studying Sabyasachi Bhattacharya's book, we find how the zamindari system played its role in British rule and how it fuelled peasant rebellions. He underlines the role of regional differences in shaping the nature of these rebellions and explains that opposition to landlords was not uniform across India and regional factors influenced the nature of the rebellion. He has written extensively about colonial economic exploitation. According to him, the zamindari system adopted by Cornwallis benefited neither the peasants nor the government.  The people who benefitted the most from this were the middlemen, which included the zamindars, the officials under them and the monopolists. In his book, he has highlighted the impact of the British economic exploitation in India, from the Diwani given to the British, which included moneylenders, usurers, land revenue, famine, etc.
Pandey, Shridhar, 2017, Economic History of Modern India, Motilal Banarasi Das Publication
Shridhar Pandey's research focuses on the farmer movements in northern India, especially in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, in which the focus is on the relationship between the landlords and the farmers. It is visible from his book that the way the British rule had kept its hegemony over the whole of India and implemented policies, it was only for the selfishness of the British and for their own selfishness they made the landlords the owners of the land so that they could get a loyal servant in the form of a landlord. The British rule also gave rise to many types of evils in the society, in which a big problem was indebtedness. Himself's income kept falling day by day. Behind this, Shriman has held the British rule and middlemen, profiteers and moneylenders responsible. It is also known from his book that the landlords kept looting not only the farmers and tenants but also the general public, due to which they were facing inflation, poverty and indebtedness.
Shukla, Ramlakhan, 2015, Aadhunik Bharat ka Itihas, Directorate of Hindi Medium, Delhi University, Gaziabad,UP
 Ramlakhan Shukla's research focuses on various farmer movements in India including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.  In this book, the gentleman has described in detail the land revenue settlement, laws, per capita income, rights given by the government to contractors and landlords, agricultural system, crop yield, etc. Through this book, we come to know that the way the British did many experiments related to the land system, the welfare of the people was not taken care of at all. These people implemented one land revenue system after another, so that they could get maximum benefit in any way. In this way, the burden of tax on the farmers kept increasing, due to which they had to leave their land due to not being able to pay the tax and finally they revolted.

Peasant revolts against the landlords in British India were primarily motivated by the British land revenue policy, economic exploitation, social injustice etc., which characterized the colonial era. One of the main causes of these revolts was the land revenue policies implemented by the British, which had an unbearable financial impact on the peasants. The Permanent Settlement implemented by Lord Cornwallis became a stifling policy for the peasants. Under this settlement, the landlords were made the owners of the land and the land revenue was made permanent, which resulted in the landlords levying arbitrary taxes from the peasants to earn maximum profits. Apart from this, the landlords played an important role in the agrarian structure. They acted both as landlords and tax collectors, which kept them in a powerful but often contentious relationship with the peasants. Apart from this system, the Ryotwari and Mahalwari settlement also did not prove successful in the interest of the peasants.  In this, such a high tax burden was put on the farmers, due to which they got trapped in the clutches of moneylenders, which led to indebtedness and the farmers revolted one after the other. Social and political factors also played an important role in these revolts. As the awareness of their rights increased among the farmers, they started maintaining these rights against the harsh practices of the landlords and moneylenders and revolted against the landlords and moneylenders. We will try to look at these revolts by dividing them into different parts.
Kathleen Gough's has classified the peasant revolts of British India into five parts- Restorative, Religious, Social Banditry, Terrorist Vengeance and Armed Insurrection. First of all I will mention the Indigo Revolt of Bengal of 1859-60. This revolt of the peasants of Bengal against the European owners of indigo plantations was very widespread and fierce. In this regard, Harischandra Mukherjee, editor of Hindu Patriot wrote in 1860 AD-
‘The ryots are not only fighting for their rights but are also asserting their dignity as human beings.’
In Deenbandhu Mitra's play Neeldarpan, there is a very emotional expression of the exploitation and atrocities on the peasants cultivating indigo in Bengal.Where the farmers and labourers worked day and night to till the fields with their blood and sweat and when it was time to earn profit, the landlords as well as the cunning British, middlemen, moneylenders and money lenders took away all their share of the profit. As a result, the condition of the farmers, tenants and agricultural labourers kept on deteriorating under the burden of debt and the landlords started living a prosperous life but due to the cultivation of indigo, in the initial period, due to the greed of high profit, the landlords started growing indigo in their fields by listening to the British, due to which the fields gradually became barren, which became the reason for the rebellion. A peasant revolt of East Bengal is known as the Pabna Revolt. This revolt, which started in 1873 AD, started from Yusufshahi Pargana of Pabna district in Bangladesh. The Hindu Patriot, the mouthpiece of the British Indian Association, expressed the revolt as a communal revolt by Muslim peasants against Hindu landlords. A prominent leader of this revolt was Ishan Chandra Roy. In the Permanent Settlement of 1793, the landlords were given full rights and the tenants were deprived of their rights. As a result, the Bengal Tenancy Act was passed in 1885. This Act defined the rights of the landlords and their tenants and had provisions related to land ownership and transfer of holdings and the rent of the landlord. Through this Act, the farmers got a lot of relief against the landlords. In 1875, a major revolt of farmers took place in Pune and Ahmednagar districts of Maharashtra. Social boycott movement of the peasants of Deccan, which is known as Deccan Disturbances. Like the Pabna rebellion described earlier, this movement of farmers also lacked anti-British consciousness. The increase in land revenue after 1867 and the resulting large-scale indebtedness made the migrant Marwari moneylenders the cause of resentment of the farmers in Deccan. In 1879 AD, the Deccan Agriculturist Relief Act was introduced. It had the following provisions - If a farmer could not repay his debt, he could not be arrested and sent to jail and outsiders were prohibited from selling land in exchange for debt. Thus, through this Act, the princely states got some relief against the moneylenders. The purpose of this Act was to help the debt-ridden farmers in some parts of the Deccan. However, now states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have separate Farmers Relief Acts, so the purpose of this Act has now been included in another law. The then Bombay State had repealed this Act.
A movement was carried out by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1896-97, the No-Revenue Movement. A similar movement was carried out by the farmers of Assam in 1894, which was led by Pushparam Kanhar. It would not be irrelevant to mention the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 here. The Bardoli Satyagraha was a farmers' movement that took place in a place called Bardoli, located in Surat district of Gujarat, against the proposed revenue increase of the British government in Gujarat. It was led by Vallabhbhai Patel. It is worth mentioning that the residents of Bardoli gave Patel the title of Sardar during this Satyagraha. In the beginning of the 20th century, many revolts of farmers took place in a large estate called Bijolia in Rajasthan. In the initial years, they were led by Fateh Karan Charan, a revolutionary poet of Rajasthan and a saint Sitaram Das.  From 1916 AD, Bijolia movement was led by Vijay Singh Pathik and Maniklal Verma. Here I would also like to mention Neemuchana Movement. This was a farmers' movement, which took place in 1925 AD in Alwar state of Rajasthan during the rule of Maharaja Jai Singh. In this movement, so many farmers were killed that a newspaper named Riyasat compared it to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and called it the second Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Gandhiji called this massacre the second Dyershahi and mentioned it as 'Dyrism double distilled in India'.
One of the most important revolts was the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, in which Mahatma Gandhi organised the peasants of Bihar to protest against the harsh tax policy of the landlords. It was against the excessive tax collection by the British planters and their compulsion to grow indigo instead of food crops. This led to a severe economic crisis and the peasants faced extreme poverty. Rajkumar Shukla played a key role in convincing Mahatma Gandhi to organise peasants in Champaran to protest against the British policies. Gandhi's non-violent approach and emphasis on civil disobedience inspired the local population and eventually the British government had to agree to some of the peasants' demands. Champaran was followed by the Kheda Satyagraha in Gujarat in 1918. This movement began during a famine when peasants were unable to pay proper taxes to work. Gandhi was once again at the forefront, leading the peasants in a non-violent struggle against the British authorities, demanding relief. The Kheda movement demonstrated the power of satyagraha as a form of politics.  Both of these movements played an important role in shaping Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance and significantly contributed to the broader Indian independence struggle by empowering peasants and highlighting his policies against colonial rule.
In 1919-20, a big peasant revolt took place against Darbhanga Raj, the biggest zamindari of Bihar. It was led by Swami Vidyanand. It is noteworthy that Darbhanga Raj was one of the biggest princely states of British India. With the establishment of UP Kisan Sabha in 1918, the Kisan Sabha movement started in many areas of Awadh including Pratapgarh and Raebareli. This was the result of the efforts of Gaurishankar Mishra and Indra Narayan Dwivedi, who also got the support of Madan Mohan Malviya. Initially, the peasant revolt against the landlords and talukdars of Awadh was led by Jhingar Singh and Durga Prasad Singh. The leadership of the peasant movement in Awadh came into the hands of a sanyasi named Baba Ramchandra. Baba Ramchandra was deeply influenced by communist ideas. In 1925 AD, he mentioned Lenin as the favorite leader of the farmers. A place named Roor was an important center of UP Kisan Sabha movement. One of the features of this movement was the social boycott of the barbers and washermen or the landlords.  After the end of the Kisan Sabha movement, another farmers' movement, Eka or Ekta movement, started in Avadh in 1921. Apart from others, a person named Madari Pasi led it. In August 1921, the discontent of the farmers in the Malabar district of Kerala took the form of a riot. It is known as the Moplah Rebellion or Moplah Riot. Because according to a statistic, 28 Moplah rebellions took place in South Malabar between 1836 and 1919. In these rebellions, the Moplah i.e. Muslim farmers revolted violently against Hindu landlords. Although the Moplah rebellion had agricultural reasons at its core, but during the rebellion, this rebellion took a fierce communal form. Anti-Hindu sentiment was expressed in a very strong form in the rebellion. Muslim farmers targeted Hindus and launched deadly attacks on them. Hindus were forcibly converted. The Moplah rebellion is a living example of how the anti-government and anti-landlordism farmers' movement took a communal colour.
A prominent peasant leader of South India was N.G. Ranga. He worked to organize peasants in coastal Andhra Pradesh. He is credited with establishing the first peasant association in Guntur in 1923. He is also called the father of the Indian peasant movement. N.G. Ranga established the Indian Peasant's Institute in his village Nidobrolu located in Guntur district. Here farmers were trained to become active workers of the peasant movement. Another peasant leader from Andhra Pradesh was P. Sundarayya. Bihar has been an important center of the peasant movement. Here the Kisan Sabha movement was started under the leadership of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, who established his ashram in Bihta near Patna. In 1929, he established the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha and tried to organize the peasants against the landlords. Another peasant leader from Bihar was Yadunanand Sharma, who led the peasant movement in a place called Reora in Gaya district.  In 1936, All India Kisan Sabha was formally established with the first session of All India Kisan Sabha held in Lucknow. Swami Sahajanand Saraswati was introduced as the President of this session and N.G. Ranga as the General Secretary. In 1937, the second session of All India Kisan Sabha was held in a place called Faizpur in Maharashtra, which was presided over by N.G. Ranga.In 1937, the Indian National Congress session was also held in Faizpur. This was the first rural session of the Indian National Congress, which was presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru. This session is considered important because for the first time in this session, the INC addressed the problems of farmers in a comprehensive way. An important farmer movement of Bihar was the Barahia Tal Movement. This movement took place in Barahia Tal of Munger between 1936 and 1939 under the leadership of Karyanand Sharma for the return of Bakasht land. It is also called Bakasht movement. Bakasht land was the land which was originally in the possession of farmers, but due to non-payment of rent, that land went out of the possession of farmers and into the possession of landlords. Finally, I will conclude my talk with  two Peasant movements - Tebhaga Movement and Telangana Movement. Tebhaga movement took place in Bengal in 1946-47.  The sharecroppers of Bengal, who are called bargadars, refused to give half of the grain to the jotedars or the prosperous farmers. They were willing to give only one-third of the grain to the jotedars. The Land Revenue Commission, known as the Flood Commission, established by the Bengal government in 1938, also recommended in favour of the sharecroppers. The prominent leaders of this movement were Charu Majumdar, Kansari Halder and Ganesh Das. A woman named Bimla Maji also led the Tebhaga movement. In fact, women participated in this movement in large numbers. The Telangana rebellion also started in 1946. This rebellion of anti-zamindar farmers is seen as a struggle against the native state of Hyderabad against the Nizam. The name of a local farmer leader Doddi Komarayya is noteworthy in this context, who led the farmers in this struggle. The peasant movements during the British period contributed to the development and growth of nationalism in India.  The peasant movements created an environment in which the foundation could be laid for future reforms related to agriculture and land after independence.
So, looking at these revolts, we can say that their effects were deep and far-reaching. The unity of the peasants as a result of these policies laid the ground for future movements against colonial rule, which contributed to the wider struggle for independence. The British government, in view of the peasants' resentment, took several measures aimed at pacifying the affected areas. For example, the creation of separate administrative districts like Santhal Pargana, the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act (1949), the Bengal Tenancy Act (1885), the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act (1879) etc. Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and other leaders played a vital role in organising the peasants and fighting for their rights. The peasant movements ensured that change is possible only through mass movements. These movements gave new energy to the Indian freedom struggle and made it clear that not only political independence but also social and economic justice is required. The peasant movements were not limited only to the agricultural problems arising from the land revenue policy established by the British but were also significant against family, caste, class and social inequality.  These movements gave rise to new ideas and ideologies in Indian politics, which became important during the independence struggle.