Maharashtra: AIKS holds convention of temple land peasants in Kolhapur

Santram Patil

On March 23, 2011, the martyrdom anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, the AIKS held a convention at Kolhapur of over 600 temple land peasants from six districts of Western Maharashtra and Konkan. These districts included Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Solapur, Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri. The chief guests at the convention were AIKS joint secretary N K Shukla and AIKS CKC member Dr Ashok Dhawale. The guests first garlanded the portrait of Bhagat Singh.

(A view of the convention)

There are 17,168 temple trusts in Maharashtra that own 5.58 lakh acres of land. These are the registered temple trusts. Thousands of unregistered temple trusts also own huge amounts of land. Lakhs of peasants have been actually cultivating this land for generations, but it is not vested in their names. Hence they cannot get any crop loans, they cannot take advantage of irrigation schemes, they cannot get any relief in case of natural calamities. The main demand of this convention was that all these temple lands must be vested in the names of the cultivating peasants.

The AIKS first took up this issue in Kolhapur district a couple of years ago and the movement then spread to the other districts of Western Maharashtra and Konkan named above. Several agitational actions have been organised by the AIKS around the burning issues of temple land peasants, especially in Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara districts of Western Maharashtra. It may be remembered that Western Maharashtra is the citadel of the powerful sugar lobby in Maharashtra.

The convention was inaugurated by Chandrakant Yadav, the working president of the AIKS-affiliated Temple Land Peasants Organisation. He gave the historical background of the problem, outlined the main issues involved and explained the outcome of the talks held with the state government.

AIKS CKC member Dr Ashok Dhawale spoke of the significance of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev at the hands of the British imperialists and explained the twin objectives of freedom and socialism for which Bhagat Singh and his comrades laid down their lives. He castigated the state government which for 63 years after independence had not thought it fit to change the 1863 Act of British colonial rule vintage that still governed temple lands. In contrast, he placed the record of land reforms of the Left-led state governments of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, whereby lakhs of agricultural workers and poor peasants had got lands for the first time.

In Maharashtra, he gave the examples of the successful five-year struggle of the peasantry of Raigad district that resulted in the denotification of the huge 10,000 hectare Mahamumbai SEZ that was being sought to be developed by Mukesh Ambani, and the recent huge AIKS Jail Bharo stir of one lakh peasants in the state for the stringent implementation of the Forest Rights Act. He called for launching a similar statewide stir on the temple lands issue.

AIKS joint secretary N K Shukla, after congratulating the peasants for taking up this just issue, briefly outlined the glorious 75-year history of the AIKS that was formed on April 11, 1936 and which brought the question of ‘Land to the Tiller’ to the centre stage of the peasant movement. He explained the travesty of land reforms carried out by bourgeois state governments after independence and said that even now in states like Bihar the AIKS is leading struggles of the rural poor against the landlord lobby on the land question.

He then spoke of the disastrous impact of the neo-liberal policies pursued by the Congress and BJP-led central governments during the last two decades on agriculture and the peasantry. It was these policies that had led to the unprecedented phenomenon of thousands of peasant suicides due to indebtedness in large parts of the country and also to land alienation on a large scale. Multinationals and corporates are invading the agricultural sector in search of profits and this is leading to massive rise in the cost of inputs like seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. But the peasants do not get remunerative prices for their produce, and it is this that leads to indebtedness. The corporates are also cornering large chunks of agricultural land for corporate and contract farming. He called upon the gathering to strengthen the AIKS and wished the temple lands struggle all success.

AIKS state council member and president of the AIKS-affiliated Temple Land Peasants Organisation, Santram Patil in his presidential speech, gave a call for intensifying the struggle in the coming days. As the first step, he declared, the AIKS will lead a demonstration on the Pune Divisional Commissioner office on April 7 on the temple land issue. Other AIKS leaders from the participating districts who addressed the convention were Umesh Deshmukh, Manik Avaghade, Anna Shinde, S M Patil and Ananda Vengurlekar.

On April 7, 2011, hundreds of temple land peasants from these districts marched on the Divisional Commissioner office in Pune and submitted a memorandum of demands. The Commissioner held talks with the AIKS delegation and gave some positive assurances. The Pune demonstration was led by AIKS state general secretary Kisan Gujar, Chandrakant Yadav, Santram Patil, Umesh Deshmukh, Manik Avaghade and others.

The AIKS Maharashtra state council has decided to organise temple land peasants all over the state in the coming days so that this just struggle for land gains even more strength.