• Following the annexation of Avadh in 1856, the taluqdars, or big landlords, strengthened their grip on the province’s agrarian society in the second half of the nineteenth century. 
• Exorbitant rents, illegal levies, renewal fees or nazrana, and arbitrary evictions or bedakhli had resulted, making life difficult for the majority of the cultivators. 
• The high cost of food and other necessities that accompanied and followed World War I made oppression even more unbearable, and the tenants of Avadh were ripe for a message of defiance.

Kisan Sabha

• The more active members of the Home Rule League in Uttar Pradesh were the ones who started the process of organising the province’s peasants into kisan sabhas on modern lines. 
• The Uttar Pradesh Kisan Sabha was founded in February 1918, thanks to the efforts of Gauri Shankar Misra and Indra Narain Dwivedi, as well as Madan Mohan Malaviya’s support. 
• The Uttar Pradesh Kisan Sabha was very active, and by June 1919, it had established at least 450 branches in 173 tehsils across the state. As a result of this activity, a large number of kisan delegates from Uttar Pradesh attended the Indian National Congress sessions in Delhi and Amritsar in December 1918 and 1919.
• The reports of a nai-dhobi band (a type of social boycott) on an estate in Pratapgarh district near the end of 1919 were the first signs of grass-roots peasant activity. 
• Kisan meetings called by village panchayats became common in the villages of taluqdari Avadh by the summer of 1920. This development was linked to the names Thinguri Singh and Durgapal Singh. But soon after, another leader, Baba Ramchandra, rose to prominence as the rallying point. 
• Baba Ramchandra: A Maharashtra Brahmin, was a wanderer who left home at the age of thirteen, worked as an indentured labourer in Fiji, and eventually arrived in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, in 1909. 
• He wandered around as a sadhu until 1920, carrying a copy of Tulsidas’ Ramayan on his back and reciting verses to rural audiences from it. 
• He rose to prominence as a leader of Avadh’s peasants in the middle of 1920, and quickly demonstrated considerable leadership and organisational abilities. 
• Baba Ramchandra led a group of tenants from the Jaunpur and Pratapgarh districts to Allahabad in June 1920. 
• He met Gauri Shankar Misra and Jawaharlal Nehru there and asked them to accompany him to the villages to see for themselves the tenants’ living conditions. As a result, between June and August, Jawaharlal Nehru visited the rural areas several times and formed close ties with the Kisan Sabha movement.
• Meanwhile, the kisans found comfort in Mehta, the Deputy Commissioner of Pratapgarh, who promised to look into the complaints that had been forwarded to him. The Kisan Sabha in village Roor, Pratapgarh district, became a hub of activity, with approximately one lakh tenants reportedly filing complaints with the Sabha for a fee of one anna each. During this time, Gauri Shankar Mia was also very active in Pratapgarh, and was in the process of negotiating with Mehta over some of the most important tenant complaints, such as bedakhli and nazrana. However, when Mehta went on leave in August 1920, the taluqdars took advantage of the opportunity to strike at the growing kisan movement.
• On August 28, 1920, they were successful in having Ramchandra and thirty-two kisans arrested on a fabricated theft charge. Indignant, 4,000 to 5,000 Kisans gathered at Pratapgarh to see their leaders imprisoned, only to be dispersed after much persuasion.
• A rumour that Gandhiji was coming to secure Baba Ramchandra’s release brought tens of thousands of kisans to Pratapgarh ten days later, and this time they only returned to their homes after Baba Ramchandra gave them darshan from atop a sugar-cane field tree. Their numbers had swelled to 60,000 by this point. 
• Mehta was summoned from his vacation to deal with the situation, and he quickly dropped the theft charge and attempted to persuade the landlords to change their ways. 
• This easy victory, on the other hand, instilled new confidence in the movement, which proliferated.
• Meanwhile, the Calcutta Congress had chosen the path of non-cooperation, and many U.P. nationalists had pledged their allegiance to the new political path. Others, such as Madan Mohan Malaviya, preferred to concentrate on constitutional agitation. 
• These divisions were reflected in the U.P. Kisan Sabha as well, and on October 17, 1920, the Non-Co-operators established an alternative Oudh Kisan Sabha at Pratapgarh. 
• Through the efforts of Misra, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mata Badal Pande, Baba Ramchandra, Deo Narayan Pande, and Kedar Nath, the new organisation was able to bring under its wing over 330 grassroots kisan sabhas in the districts of Avadh in the previous few months. 
• The Oudh Kisan Sabha urged kisans to refuse to till bedakhli land, to refrain from offering hari and begar (unpaid labour), to boycott those who refused to accept these conditions, and to settle their disputes through panchayats. 
• The Sabha’s first major show of strength was a rally on the 20th and 21st of December in Ayodhya, near Faizabad, which drew around 100,000 peasants. Baba Ramchandra appeared at the rally, bound in ropes to represent the oppression of the Kisans. 
• The Kisan Sabha movement was distinguished by the presence of kisans from both the high and low castes among its ranks. The nature of peasant activity, however, changed dramatically in January 1921. The districts of Rae Bareli, Faizabad, and, to a lesser extent, Sultanpur, were the epicentres of activity. 
• The looting of bazaars, houses, and granaries followed a pattern of clashes with the police. 
• Some, like those in Munshiganj and Rae Bareli’s Karhaiya Bazaar, were sparked by the arrests or rumours of the arrest of leaders. Local figures such as sadhus, holy men, and disinherited expropriators often took the lead, rather than recognised Kisan Sabha activists. 
• The government, on the other hand, had little trouble putting a stop to these riots. Crowds were shot at and dispersed, leaders and activists were arrested, cases were filed, and the movement was over by the end of January, with the exception of a few incidents in February and March. 
• The Seditious Meetings Act was enacted in March to cover the affected districts, effectively halting all political activity. Nationalists continued to defend the tenants’ cases in court, but they couldn’t do much else. 
• Meanwhile, the government pushed through the Oudh Rent (Amendment) Act, which, while providing little relief to the tenants, helped to raise hopes and, in some ways, contributed to the movement’s demise.