Land Reforms in UP and the Kulaks

Published a year before his passing in 1987, Charan Singh’s last work, Land Reforms in U.P and the Kulaks chronicles Singh’s relentless struggle over three decades (1936-66) in favour of small farms and his battles for the abolition of Zamindari in the face of bitter opposition from the landed aristocracy.

As Parliamentary Secretary in 1946 and later Revenue Minister in 1952 in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), he led the movement for abolishing the Zamindari system, supported fully by the Chief Minister Govind Ballabh Pant. Singh cites the Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms (ZALR) Act of 1951, researched, written and shepherded into law and implemented by him, as the proudest achievement of his political career. His unparalleled knowledge of the complex set of land tenure laws in U. P. was instrumental in warding off determined attacks from opponents across the political spectrum.

The ZALR Act provided small tenant cultivators with permanent and inalienable rights to the land they tilled; and in conjunction with the Consolidation of Holding Act (formulated and passed into law again by Singh in 1953) ensured they became a bulwark of democracy and of higher agricultural productivity. He demonstrates the lengths to which this legislation went on to protect rural and interests of the downtrodden against urban greed, corruption and legal sabotage instigated by the landlords and their rural collaborators.

His writing reveal a deep understanding of the tenant’s view of land reforms, as well as an intimate understanding of the psychology and ethos of the Indian countryside. Singh considered this empathy lacking in his political contemporaries, whether capitalist, socialist or communist, and to whom he returns the charge of being the real Kulaks.