Decoding the Ideology of India’s Farmers’ Movements

India’s farmers’ movements that emerged after Gandhi’s era present a fascinating puzzle for scholars and activists alike. Unlike political parties with rigid ideologies, these movements drew from multiple intellectual traditions, adapting ideas to suit regional contexts, local leadership, and the specific grievances of rural communities. Understanding this ideological diversity is key to appreciating how farmers across different states mobilized millions to demand better prices, resist globalization, and assert their rights in post-colonial India.

A mosaic of ideological influences 🔗

The farmers’ movements of the 1980s and 1990s did not follow a single ideological blueprint. Instead, they represented a creative synthesis of Gandhian principles, Marxist analysis, dependency theory, and economic liberalism. What distinguished these movements from earlier peasant struggles was their capacity to articulate new frameworks for understanding rural exploitation in independent India. Leaders drew selectively from different schools of thought, using whatever ideas best explained the farmers’ condition and justified their demands.

This ideological flexibility was both a strength and a source of internal debate. While it allowed movements to connect with diverse constituencies and respond to changing political circumstances, it also created tensions between those advocating for state intervention and those demanding market freedom. The result was a rich tapestry of agrarian thought that defies simple categorization.

Karnataka’s Gandhian-socialist blend 🔗

The Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), founded in 1980, represents one of the most distinctive ideological experiments in India’s farmers’ movement. Led by M. D. Nanjundaswamy, a Gandhian leader, scholar and prominent activist who advocated for farmers’ rights, KRRS became a major anti-globalization campaign force.

The ideological foundations of KRRS were based on Gandhian ideologies of self-reliance, self-respect, satyagraha and non-violence, combined with Ram Manohar Lohia’s socialist thought. This fusion of Gandhism and socialism gave the movement its distinctive character. KRRS strongly advocated for the creation of a “village republic,” envisioning a form of social, political and economic organization based on direct democracy where communities would make decisions through consultation affecting all members.

The critique of western capitalism 🔗

Despite its Gandhian identity, the Karnataka movement incorporated arguments from dependency theory and critiques of global capitalism. The movement employed the concept of internal colonialism to analyze how Western economic systems exploited the Third World. Interestingly, while advocating for alternatives, the Karnataka farmers’ movement proposed establishing what they called a “Khadi Curtain” to replace the unequal forms of exploitation with more balanced relationships between India and Western capitalism.

As Chukki Nanjundaswamy, who continued her father’s legacy, explained: “Making a farmer self-reliant is part of the Gandhian principle of Swaraj which means autonomy. Agroecology is also a fight for such agrarian autonomy.” This connection between self-reliance and resistance to corporate agriculture remains central to the movement’s ideology even today.

Maharashtra’s “Bharat versus India” thesis 🔗

While Karnataka’s movement drew heavily from Gandhian socialism, Maharashtra’s Shetkari Sanghathana, led by Sharad Joshi, developed an entirely different ideological framework. Joshi, an economic liberal who demanded reduction of state control in the agriculture sector, was credited with coining the term “Bharat vs India” to highlight the neglect of rural farmers by urban elites.

The “Bharat versus India” thesis proposed a powerful interpretation of post-colonial exploitation. According to this framework, “India” represents the entity that inherited from the British the systems of economic, social, and cultural exploitation, while “Bharat” represents the rural population being exploited for a second time even after the end of colonial rule. In Joshi’s memorable phrase, the “black rulers” had simply replaced the “white rulers” in continuing the exploitation of the countryside.

Neither Marxist nor Gandhian 🔗

Joshi positioned himself as neither Marxist nor Gandhian, though he drew selectively from both traditions. He accepted certain Marxist arguments like the materialist approach, capitalist accumulation, and internal colonialism for his theoretical formulations. However, he rejected Marx’s theory of surplus value and revolution. Similarly, while he appreciated the Gandhian method of non-violence for its practical value, he did not embrace it as an absolute principle.

As one analysis explained: “Just as the British expropriated the surplus from agriculture to finance the industrialization of Britain, Joshi argues, once the British left, the Indian elite continued the policy in order to finance the industrialization of India.” This argument resonated with farmers who felt systematically marginalized by policies favoring urban industrial development.

The pragmatism of economic liberalism 🔗

One of the most surprising ideological positions within the farmers’ movements was the embrace of economic liberalization by some groups, particularly the Shetkari Sanghathana in Maharashtra. While many expected farmers to oppose globalization, the Maharashtra movement consistently supported opening up the economy to global markets.

Joshi supported the WTO because he believed that Indian farming could be profitable if farmers had access to the global market. This position stemmed from a critique of state intervention, which the movement labeled “Statism.” According to this view, government controls over agricultural prices, marketing, and trade were the primary barriers preventing farmers from accumulating capital and achieving prosperity.

The anti-statism argument 🔗

The Maharashtra movement argued that freeing the economy would help farmers take care of themselves. Unlike movements that demanded more subsidies or government support, Shetkari Sanghathana believed that economic freedom-access to global markets and the latest technology-was the solution to rural poverty. This “positive liberalism” brought them into conflict with other movements like KRRS, which viewed liberalization as an extension of Western capitalist domination over the Third World.

The contrasting positions on globalization highlighted the ideological diversity within India’s farmers’ movements. While Karnataka’s KRRS organized massive protests against multinational corporations like Cargill and Monsanto, Maharashtra’s Shetkari Sanghathana welcomed foreign investment and market opening as tools for farmer empowerment.

Adoption and adaptation of Gandhian methods 🔗

Despite their ideological differences, India’s post-Gandhi farmers’ movements shared a common toolkit of protest methods derived from the Gandhian tradition. Satyagraha-based movements employ a range of nonviolent methods to resist oppression, including civil disobedience, noncooperation, peaceful marches and rallies, and hunger strikes. These techniques, first deployed in India during the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, became standard features of farmers’ agitations across the country.

The Karnataka movement employed strategies including long marches, bandh (strikes), hartal (work stoppages), fasting, and withholding taxes. They also developed what might be called “post-Gandhian techniques” to pressure the system into listening to farmers’ demands. Some innovative methods included “Continuous Laughing” protests before officials-a creative approach to non-violent resistance.

Tension between method and ideology 🔗

An interesting contradiction existed in some movements between their protest methods and their ideological rhetoric. The Shetkari Sanghathana, despite using Gandhian techniques like dharna (sit-in protests) and agitation, frequently employed militaristic language in its communications-something incompatible with Gandhian principles. For Joshi, non-violence was a practical tool rather than a moral absolute.

The Karnataka movement took a different approach, viewing non-violence more expansively. As KRRS explained, non-violence meant respecting all living beings including police and even people working for multinationals. They even viewed the destruction of MNC property and warehouses as part of non-violence-a creative interpretation that Gandhi himself might have questioned.

Legacy and continuing relevance 🔗

The ideological diversity of India’s farmers’ movements continues to shape agrarian politics today. The debates between those favoring state protection and those advocating market freedom have resurfaced in recent controversies over agricultural reform. Similarly, the tension between Gandhian self-reliance and integration with global markets remains unresolved.

What these movements demonstrated is that ideology in social movements is rarely pure or consistent. Leaders and organizations adapt ideas to suit their contexts, drawing from whatever intellectual traditions best articulate their grievances and aspirations. The farmers’ movements after Gandhi created a new vocabulary for understanding rural exploitation in independent India-one that continues to influence how farmers organize and demand their rights.

What do you think? Can movements with such diverse ideologies sustain unity when their fundamental visions for agriculture differ so dramatically? And in today’s context of climate change and corporate agriculture, which ideological framework-Gandhian self-reliance or market liberalism-offers a more viable path for India’s farmers?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka_Rajya_Raitha_Sangha
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharad_Anantrao_Joshi
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champaran_Satyagraha