1. INTRODUCTION:

The Radical Undercurrent in the ‘Loyalist’ Belt:

The conventional historiography of colonial Haryana, or for that matter, the larger territory of Southeast Punjab, has been largely dominated by the Indian National Congress's constitutionalism and the Punjab Unionist Party's agrarian populism. It has generally been portrayed as a "loyalist" belt and a vital recruitment base for British military recruitment, where the peasantry was kept beholden to the landed gentry through their biradari affiliations. However, this was accompanied by a potent undercurrent of radicalism, which was suppressed but never hidden. Born in the late 1920s, the Kirti Kisan Party was a major ideological break from the conventional, offering a Marxist-Ghadarite critique of the existing agrarian order. By doing so, we find a new history of subaltern resistance and hidden radicalism, which aimed at the complete annihilation of the existing order.

The study asserts that KKP offered a revolutionary alternative to the status quo in a two-pronged challenge. It redefined the anti-colonial struggle against British Imperialism as a pursuit of complete economic freedom from "land revenue tribute", and it offered a challenge to landlordism in colonial India by rallying the landless Kirti (Dalit labourers and artisans) and Kisan (subsistence farmers) against the Zamindars, as agents of colonial power. The spatial focus of this study on the Ambala Division, which included Rohtak, Hissar, and Karnal, is significant, as these districts were uniquely impacted by the effects of irregular rainfall and revenue demands, making the peasantry in this region particularly susceptible compared to the canal colonies of Central Punjab (Rai, 1987).

Perhaps the most radical contribution of the KKP was in its attempt to substitute the colonial "Agriculturist" concept of caste with a united Class Consciousness. While the Unionist Party flourished on the legal dichotomy created by the Land Alienation Act of 1900, the KKP aimed to create a "Subaltern Solidarity" that united the tenant-farmers and landless labourers. In this way, the KKP undermined the very fabric of society on which the British depended to create regional stability and enlist their colonial army. An examination of the period between 1927 and 1939 will attest to the fact that the KKP was the intellectual antecedent to the contemporary Left in Haryana, a Left that possessed a language of opposition to colonial reformism itself (Chhabra, 1962).

The Genesis of the 'Kirti' in Southeast Punjab: Ghadarite Legacies and Bolshevik Echoes:

The formation of the Kirti Kisan Party (KKP) in the Ambala Division was a product of a highly sophisticated international revolutionary network, rather than local agrarian grievances. To grasp the genesis of the 'Kirti' in Rohtak, Hissar, and Karnal, one has to examine the intellectual journey of Ghadarite revolutionaries from North America to Southeast Punjab, as informed by the revolutionary fervour of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The founding of the Ghadar movement was facilitated by "Babas," veteran revolutionaries such as Santokh Singh and Rattan Singh, who came from political exile with the intellectual influence of the Communist International (Comintern). The veteran revolutionaries used their "Brave Soldier" credentials, which enjoyed a revered position in the martial traditions of Rohtak and Hissar, to gain entry to village chaupals. The 'Kirti' (labourer) as a political actor in the world revolution was introduced, with the Russian Revolution being portrayed as a revolution where workers became the masters of their own destiny (Puri, 1983).

The intellectual lifeblood of this movement was a monthly journal called *Kirti*, which functioned as an ideological textbook for the Ambala Division. The journal translated complex Marxist ideas, such as "surplus value," into the local language, transforming complaints against the Sahukar (moneylender) into a critique of International Capitalism. The KKP's Haryanvi cadres were successful in popularising the abstract notion of "Proletarian Dictatorship" as "Kisan Mazdoor Raj." By employing folk culture and the notion of "Sewa" or service, they were able to connect global anti-imperialist movements with local concerns, such as high-water rates (abiana) on the Western Jumna Canal. By applying folk culture, they were able to connect global anti-imperialist movements with local concerns. For example, they used folk culture and the notion of "Sewa" or service to transform the abstract notion of "Proletarian Dictatorship" into "Kisan Mazdoor Raj." They were able to connect global anti-imperialist movements with local concerns, such as high-water rates (Abiana) on the Western Jumna Canal.

Further impetus to the growth of the KKP came through the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS), which served as an "urban bridge" by organising students in cities such as Ambala and Rohtak. These youth took their radical ideas back to their ancestral villages during harvest seasons. This created a system of dual pressures: one from urban agitation and another from rural non-cooperation. The KKP faced initial challenges from Sir Chhotu Ram’s Unionist Party, which termed it a "foreign-funded" disturbance. The KKP found a unique niche by focusing on the landless labourers, also known as Kamins. The KKP provided a secular worker-peasant identity, where menial workers could hold their own against the Zamindars. This provided a revolutionary challenge to the region’s rigid caste structure (Mukherjee, 2004).

The Conflict of 'Kisan' Identities: KKP vs. Unionist Hegemony:

The politics in 1930s Haryana was marked by an essential ontological conflict in the construction of the concept of a ‘Kisan.’ On one side, the Punjab Unionist Party under the leadership of Sir Chhotu Ram employed a ‘Zamindara’ ideology to unify the landed peasantry into a loyalist, undivided bloc across religious lines. However, the Kirti Kisan Party, in a bid to break this alliance, attempted to reveal the class contradictions embedded in it. While the Unionists employed the British-imposed Land Alienation Act of 1900 to build ‘horizontal solidarity’ among the agricultural castes of Haryana, the KKP launched a direct attack on the caste-based identity of the people. Inspired by Marxist-Leninist theory, the KKP contended that caste was a colonial construct created to obscure the issue of class, and a rich Jat Zamindar would have more common interests with a British administrator than a poor Jat tenant or a Dalit Kamin (labourer) (Mukherjee, 2004).

The KKP’s critique of the "Golden Laws" was similarly sophisticated and unflinching. "Whereas the Golden Laws have secured the rural peasant against the exactions of the Urban Money-Shylocks, they have merely exchanged one set of Shylocks for another, the Urban Money-Shylocks being succeeded by the Rural Landlord-Shylocks." Archival records in the Haryana State Archives demonstrate that KKP "Peasant Study Circles" drew attention to the "ignoring of the interests of the Mujeras, or Tenants-at-Will, and of Landless Labourers, who have no land to mortgage." In the Great Depression, the KKP used declining agricultural prices to mobilise "Jathas" in Hissar, campaigning in favour of "total tax holidays." This "radicalisation from the Left" obliged the Unionists to fall back on a more populist rhetoric to preserve their electoral base in the midst of an economic crisis.

The most explosive friction point involved the KKP's outreach to the landless Kamins and Scheduled Castes and their vision of "Subaltern Solidarity." In confrontation with the "Landlord's Haryana," the KKP held joint rallies where Jats and Dalits sat together, advocating the redistribution of Shamlat land. This "Red Threat" struck fear in the hearts of the Unionist leaders, who, through their official position, sought to label KKP activists as "Bolshevik atheists" and disrupt their meetings through "Zamindara Leagues." However, the KKP's attack on the Unionists as "loyalist tools of the Raj" found fertile ground among young, nationalist-minded Jats, fundamentally transforming the course of Haryanvi agrarian politics (Puri, 1983).

Mobilisation Strategies: From Village Panchayats to 'No-Tax' Campaigns:

The Kirti Kisan Party's (KKP) achievement in Southeast Punjab's "loyalist" region was the result of a complex strategy that circumvented colonial rule and the landed aristocracy. "By subverting the traditional Panchayat and the Chaupal systems of local self-government, the KKP initiated modern economic agitations such as the 'No Tax' campaign without inviting the immediate colonial reprisals that a political rally would have entailed." The Chaupal was the focal point of Haryanvi social life in the 1930s, usually controlled by the pro-British Lambardars. "The KKP politicians, comprising Ghadarite 'Babas' and Naujawan Bharat Sabha students, adopted the technique of 'Infiltration Politics.' Through the medium of Ragini or folk songs and Sang or traditional theatre, they wove their Marxist message into the fabric of traditional stories. They portrayed the workers' struggle against Imperialism as a modern Mahabharata, the struggle of the worker against Imperialism as a Dharam Yuddha or a holy war, thus removing the taint of 'foreignness' from Bolshevism." (NAI, File No. 132/34).

The most potent weapon of the KKP was its resistance against Land Revenue (Malguzari), especially in the context of British "Settlements" in Hissar and Rohtak (Chhabra, 1962). The KKP’s method of operation included social boycott of revenue officials, collective grain hiding during the Great Depression, and a challenge to collective fines by terming the Raj a "Dacoit State." The KKP’s mobilisation in different areas also varied: in Hissar, radicalisation was encouraged by exorbitant water supply rates (Abiana), while in Rohtak, it was an intellectual movement centred on student networks at Jat College (Rai, 1987). In these areas, the KKP created "Parallel Panchayats" or clandestine village governments, as mentioned in police diaries, which referred to it as a system of "Dual Power" challenging British courts (HSA, File No. R/1/1932).

The logistical arm of the movement was provided by the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS), whose activists functioned as a rural-urban courier service, distributing banned literature in the countryside. The young radicals organised "Kirti Melas" in association with rural festivals, capitalising on the memory of the 1857 Mutiny to whip up anti-British fervour and brand military recruitment for the colonial forces as "blood money." Meanwhile, the KKP also sought to address the complex problem of caste by organising the landless Kamins into Mazdoor Sabhas. By demanding an end to Begar and treating Dalit labourers as the primary political constituency, the KKP undermined the traditional Jajmani system, even if this meant alienating the wealthier and more influential Jat peasants, in favour of a loyal subaltern cadre, in the Marxist tradition, who had "nothing to lose but their chains."

State Repression and the 'Communist' Label in the Haryana Heartland:

By the mid-1930s, the British establishment saw the Kirti Kisan Party (KKP) as a major existential risk for the stability of Southeast Punjab, given its commitment to extra-parliamentary action and Bolshevik ideologies. In Rohtak and Hissar, for instance, the colonial state created a repressive machinery that was both physical and ideological in nature, referring to the KKP as "alien" and "atheistic" in nature in order to alienate it from the socially conservative peasantry of the region. The British intelligence establishment sought to disenfranchise the KKP by referring to it as "Communist" and spreading rumours of the seizure of temples, as well as placing "returned Ghadarites" under intense "History Sheet" surveillance, in an attempt to split the radical "Kirtis" from the moderate "Kisan" movement (Singh, 1991).

The Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929 compelled the leadership of Southeast Punjab to go underground and establish clandestine "Cells." It was in response to this that the British established the role of Zaildars as informers and set up "Punitive Police Posts" in villages considered rebellious, compelling them to pay for their own surveillance. Ironically, this created a situation that lent credence to the KKP's claim of a "Dacoit State." The KKP was further weakened by internal dissensions, as the Ghadarite "Old Guard" and the new crop of Naujawan Bharat Sabha intellectuals disagreed over Comintern policy and structure. By 1934, the KKP was undermined by police penetration and ideological conflicts with the Communist Party of India (CPI) (Datta, 1985).

What made institutional repression in Haryana special was the complicity of the Unionist Party with the colonial state. Leaders like Sir Chhotu Ram saw the KKP as a challenge to their "Zamindara" vote bank and made use of the Punjab Public Press Act to confiscate radical literature and ordered lathi charges against the "No-Tax" procession in Hissar. This showed that the indigenous landlord was even more intransigent than the colonial bureaucrat in defending class interests. Yet, the KKP ideas showed remarkable staying power, and when suppressed, the activists went into the CSP. The KKP was able to imprint a new political agenda, and even the mainstream politicians were forced to use radical rhetoric against "exploitative moneylenders" in order to retain their own vote banks.

CONCLUSION:

The Legacy of Radicalism in Post-Colonial Haryana:

The political trajectory of the Kirti Kisan Party in Southeast Punjab does not end when the party was officially absorbed into the Communist Party of India in the early 1940s. Rather, the ideological legacy of the KKP fundamentally reshaped the "grammar" of Haryanvi politics, offering the first systematic Socialist critique of the agrarian economy, which had been understood solely in terms of caste or colonial loyalty until this point. The KKP was the primary intellectual wellspring for the first generation of Haryanvi Marxist leaders, politicised in the Chaupals of Rohtak and the grain markets of Hissar. They went on to form the core of the post-1947 All India Kisan Sabha movements, and the "Left" perspective of landless labourers and tenant farmers was guaranteed, even in the face of the Green Revolution and the emergence of wealthy landholding classes.

One of the lesser-noticed but most significant impacts of the KKP was its "radicalisation from the periphery," which compelled the mainstream agrarian leadership to take a populist turn. By continuously pressurising the Unionist Party from the Left, the KKP's mobilisation can be seen as a precursor to the mobilisation of leaders like Chaudhary Devi Lal. His appeal to the 'Jat' identity and 'economic justice' for farmers was a direct carryover of the KKP's 1938 'No Tax' agitations, which proved that to survive in the Haryanvi political landscape, the agrarian leadership had to cater to the economic grievances of the Kirti, the worker.

Finally, the KKP offered a rare, secular option in a region increasingly divided along the communal fault lines of the 1940s. The party’s focus on class, rather than creed, provided a space of shared identity for Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh peasants within the Ambala Division. Though the Partition of 1947 saw the end of this particular network, the tradition of "Subaltern Solidarity" – seeking to unite the land-holding Jat with the landless Dalit – remains a vital, if dormant, blueprint for progressive politics in contemporary Haryana.

In the end, the lasting significance of the KKP lies in its capacity to evolve, to survive within the shells of mainstream politics, forever changing the goalposts of Haryanvi political discourse to encompass agrarian justice and class solidarity.

REFERENCES:

1. Chhabra, G. S. (1962). The advanced history of the Punjab: Vol. II (1849–1960). New Academic Publishing Co.

2. Datta, V. N. (1985). Ideology of the political elite in Punjab (1900-1920). Punjabi University Press.

3. Mukherjee, M. (2004). Peasants in India's non-violent revolution: Practice and theory. Sage Publications.

4. Puri, H. K. (1983). The Ghadar movement: A study in ideology and organisation. Guru Nanak Dev University.

5. Rai, G. (1987). Agricultural development in Punjab (1849-1947). Concept Publishing Company.

6. Singh, G. (1991). The Kirti Kisan Party of Punjab. In the Communist movement in Punjab (1926-47). Ajanta Publications.

ARCHIVAL SOURCES (CONSULTED):

1. Haryana State Archives (HSA), Panchkula:

a. Confidential Files of the Commissioner, Ambala Division (1932–1939).

b. Deputy Commissioner Files, Rohtak (1928–1934): File No. R/1/1932 (Political Agitation in Hissar).

2. National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi:

a. Home Department (Political) Branch: File No. 130/29 (Bolshevik doctrines in Rohtak).

b. Home Department (Political) Branch: File No. 132/34 (Growth of Communist Influence in Ambala).

c. Home Department (Political) Branch: File No. 18/8/1938 (Intelligence on Communist Agitators).

Received on 07.04.2026 Revised on 28.04.2026

Accepted on 13.05.2026 Published on 06.06.2026

Available online from June 10, 2026

Int. J. Ad. Social Sciences. 2026; 14(2):83-86.

DOI: 10.52711/2454-2679.2026.00018

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