Editorial Note, Jan-Feb, 2021

As lead article for this issue, we carry the text of the annual S.C. Mishra Memorial Lecture delivered by Mridula Mukherjee, which examines the historical antecedent of peasant protests in the Punjab, over four decades prior to India’s Independence. Strongly secular in spirit and including sections imbued with revolutionary ideology, this tradition of peasant protest that began with the Swadeshi movement or Pagri Sambhal o Jatta movement of 1907, was visible in the Ghadar movement of 1914–15; the Akali movement of 1920–25; the activities of the Kirti Kisan Party and the Nau Jawan Bharat Sabha founded by Bhagat Singh in the late 1920s; major nationalist struggles such as the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930–32; the Kisan Sabha movements of peasants against high land revenue and water rates, of sharecroppers against the exorbitant rent demands of private companies and landlords in 1938–39; in the Uche Pul da Morcha and Lahore Kisan Morcha against attempts to enhance revenue in new land settlements; in the Muzara or tenants’ movement from 1937 to 1953; the anti-war and Individual Civil Disobedience movement of 1939–41; the Quit India movement in 1942; and the movement in support of the INA soldiers in the post-war years. As is happening today, Punjab’s peasants in the first half of the twentieth century fought against government legislation that they did not like; were supported by their family members  who had gone abroad; set examples of non-violent heroism; and organised  themselves from the village upwards.