Something new is happening in Punjab, which might answer the question about the left’s incapability to address the caste question. Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee (ZPSC) is a well-organized Dalit-left organisation working have successfully taken control of reserved one-third of the village common land for Dalits and established cooperative farms in more than 150 villages. The organisation started a march on August 20th, which was supposed to cover 300 villages in one month. It took 44 days to cover all three hundred villages. A report by AMOL PATIALA.
Groundxero | March 4, 2025
Punjab is the state where the extra-parliamentary Indian Left is still surviving. The 2020 farmers’ protest was one of the largest protests of this century, and the Hindu supremacist leader Modi kneeled in front of farmers’ demand to take back the corporate-friendly farm laws. The Left was the primary force behind these protests. The Punjabi left exists but is still struggling with the limitations and failures of the global Marxist-Stalinist left. One of the issues that the Indian Left has been struggling with is the caste question. Dalit Ambedkarite activists have accused the Left of being casteist, and Marxism is rejected as a tool to understand the casteist reality of India.
However, something new is happening in Punjab, which might answer the question about the left’s incapability to address the caste question. The extra-parliamentary left in Punjab is organising and mobilising Dalits to demand land reforms. Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee (ZPSC) is a well-organized Dalit-left organisation working for the land rights of Dalits in the Indian state of Punjab. They have successfully taken control of reserved one-third of the village common land for Dalits and established cooperative farms in more than 150 villages. The organisation started a march on August 20th, which was supposed to cover 300 villages in one month. It took 44 days to cover all three hundred villages.
The commencement
On the 20th of August, the march started from the village of Tolewal in Malerkotla district of Punjab. The commencement of the march was organised in the part of village common land cultivated by the Dalits under the leadership of ZPSC. A small alley that went to a tubewell room was decorated with red flags on both sides. Around 60 people were gathered around the tubewell, sitting in the shadow of neem trees, and people from surrounding villages were arriving. On the left, women were seated with red flags in their hands and on the right, men. Everyone was served milk-tea in paper glasses. After some time, the numbers swelled. The leaders of the organisation arrived. A play was enacted by the members of a fraternal student organisation, depicting the economic hardships, the caste oppression and the struggle for land. The monologue play asserted that their fight was a class struggle, not a caste one. A leaflet titled ‘Why the Dalit Emancipation March’ was distributed among the people. Mukesh Maloud, the organisation’s president, spoke about the purpose of the march.
The speech
In every village, the program started with a play, then a call for organising in the form of a speech, and finally, getting the contact numbers of those interested in building the organisation in their village. Mukesh, the president of the organisation, talked about their struggle and how it has changed the lives of Dalits in his speech. After repeating what has been said in the leaflet and then elaborating on the issues they fight for, he talked about the discrimination Dalits face in government policies. He calls for building organisations to fight for the land. He mentioned that although land doesn’t make Dalits self-sufficient, now the Jatts (landowning upper caste) cannot harass our sisters and mothers in their fields. The land has brought pride and self-respect to them; Dalits are being heard now.
The march starts from the sanjha khet (common field) in the village Tolewal
The first act
The march started from sanjha khet (common field) of the village of Tolewal. People were on the three trolleys attached to tractors, a couple of cars and a few bikes. It circled around the village of Tolewal, raising slogans for land rights, and went to the upper caste side of the village. Revolutionary songs were played from the tractors in loudspeakers while passing through the villages. Young men playing songs on the tractors is not rare in Punjab. This time, it was not the Jatt youth playing the songs of Jatt supremacy, but the Dalit youth playing the song of the inevitable win of the working people, demanding the sky and the land. This was a challenge to the Jatt supremacy in the village. The march stopped near the Ravidas Dharamshala, the Dalit inn. These dharamshalas have been the central point for organising Dalits in every village. Usually, they have a couple of rooms; some have electricity connections and a verandah to sit. One of the organisers started singing the bolis (couplets) on the dhol (drum) beat, and the women started to dance to it. The organiser sang,
‘The women of Punjab are tall and strong
They will shake the power with their struggle
And unfurl the red flag on their land.’
After a couple of bolis, the women took the command and started singing the sarcastic traditional bolis,
‘My husband is dark
Take him to the Nabha
And get him whitewashed.’
‘All of my in-laws are fashionable
But the one I love
He doesn’t even wake up from his sleep.’
The young girls from the fraternal student organisation sang,
‘Born in Malwa, I am the queen of dances
We will break away the reins of slavery and caste.’
Women singing and dancing.
In the Malewal village, an ex-Sikh militant reported to the police that the ZPSC was disturbing communal harmony with these bolis. The Ravidas Dharamshala didn’t have a bathroom and was on the edge of a dirty, foul-smelling village pond. The organisation asked the Gurudwara committee for permission to stay at the Gurudwara for one night during the march, but they were denied. The ex-Sikh militant Darshan Singh controls the Gurudwara committee and village council and tills most of the reserved land.
The Leaflet
During the march, a two-page leaflet titled ‘Why the Dalit emancipation March’ was distributed among the people. The leaflet focused on two facets of Dalit ordeals: caste oppression and economic depravity. It talks about the caste oppression and sexual harassment faced by the women in the fields of Jatts. It talks about the abuses hurled at the Dalit women when they go to the Jatts’ fields to get grass for their cattle and the physical and sexual harassment faced by them; caste hate that Dalits face at every step of their survival.
Demands charter on a trolley attached to a tractor.
After briefly mentioning caste oppression, it turns to the economic demands. It claims that the land reforms (putting a cap of 17.5 acres) will result in 3 acres of land for every landless household. However, the academic studies on land distribution give us a grim picture of reforms — the land every landless household will get, on the national level, will be 0.33 acres. It talks about the 57 thousand acres of panchayati (village common) land, of which one-third is reserved for the Dalits to bid for every year. This village common land has been central to ZPSC’s success in the last decade. They have successfully secured lease of this land for common farming in over 150 villages.
Secondly, they demanded houses for Dalits. Most of the Dalits are settled on village land, but on paper, they didn’t own this land, so they couldn’t use it as collateral for loans. The government agreed to give every Dalit family a plot of 1400 sq. ft. to construct houses. However, the scheme has been an utter failure. Even though the government provided land plots in some villages, it failed to provide grants to build the houses.
The leaflet demands a waiver of all types of loans. As landless workers, they lack the collateral to take a loan from a bank. Several microfinance companies offering loans at exorbitant interest rates have emerged in the last ten years. Rising debt among rural workers has been a concern. The last demand is an increase in the daily wage to a minimum of 1000 rupees and to ensure the availability of work through employment generation schemes.
At the end of the leaflet, it muses about caste oppression and its solution. It points out that if Dalits get their land, homes, and permanent employment, they won’t have to depend upon the landed upper castes and won’t have to face the caste oppression at their hands. It remains silent on the caste hate it talked about earlier that Dalits face in their everyday lives.
Participants were carrying the stories of their personal and social struggles with themselves, and some shared these stories. In these interviews, we see a relationship between institutions and personnel. First is a category used by the organisation to point out the castist individuals who play an important role in the implementation of caste oppression — DhanadChowdharies. This group of people are Jatt by caste and usually belong to the rich peasantry. They dominate the other institutions of village power like gurudwara and village council and are part of mainstream regional politics. They see the organisation (ZPSC) as challenging their authority over the village institutions. Second is the Sikh religious shrine — Gurudwara. These Sikh shrines are part of the institutionalised Sikh religious structure, the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). An institution dominated by the Jatt Sikhs, the village sikh shrine committees are dominated by the DhanadChowdharies. It is used as an institution to maintain its authority and materialise caste oppression. The third is the village council — Panchayat. The village council has power over the village resources and the grants given by the government. Most of the DhanadChowdharies have direct involvement in the panchayats and use the village resources and grants to benefit privileged castes. During the bid for the reserved common land, all these three entities come together to oppress and discriminate against the Dalits.
Village Tolewal
Nabha, the erstwhile princely state, is known for manufacturing agricultural machinery. It also has a large pharmaceutical company GSK’s manufacturing plant. We found many Dalit men working in these industries. Pawan, a 24-year-old, is a sympathiser of ZPSC. He works in a factory in Malerkotla (half an hour’s distance from Nabha) making air conditioner parts. He earns Rs 9500 monthly with some extra for overtime. He told us about their fight for reserved land. In 2019, a fight between Dalits and Jatts broke out during the bidding process for this village’s 7 acres of reserved land. Both sides pelted stones; during this, fifteen Dalits were injured. Videos of a rich Jatt landlord, Lal Singh, beating Dalits with a lathi went viral on social media. He was charged with Dalit atrocities under pressure from the organisation. That year, the auction was cancelled almost 10 times; the organisation succeeded in getting hold of the reserved land the next year. They rent tractors and other machinery to cultivate this land. The organisation collects Rs 5000 per household. They earn Rs 6000 just by selling the extra rice, the wheat is distributed among themselves, and the people with cattle get the green fodder from the common field. Unlike a normal one-year lease, Tolewal made history by getting the reserved land for three years.
A local leader of the ZPSC, Jagraj Singh, told us about a struggle they fought against the automobile manufacturer Ashok Leyland. In 2015, the village council was dominated by Jatts and headed by the local leader of the Sikh regional party — Akali Dal; they gave 60 acres of village common land to Ashok Leyland to open a driving school on a twenty-year lease. The organisation fought for jobs in the driving school and made a pact with the government to fill sixty per cent of jobs from the village residents. But the promise was never fulfilled. One instructor in the driving school tried to shut down the Dalit shops surrounding the school; the organisation fought a prolonged struggle for his suspension. Now, the school is closed, and they have lost both the land and the jobs. But, in this struggle to get jobs for village residents, the upper castes did not side with the organisation.
At the tubewell room in the common field.
Jhaneri village
35-year-old Rajinder Singh and 40-year-old Raj Singh hail from the village of Jhaneri. Rajinder Singh works as a construction labourer, and Raj Singh has a sweet shop and cooks at weddings. They staged dharnas (sit-in protest) to get the 32 acres of reserved land, and some were also jailed during the struggle. Now, they do cooperative farming on the land. They told us it is rare to find a Siri (an attached labourer) in the villages, a common occupation for the Dalits in the past; most people prefer wage work outside the village over doing agricultural labour under the Jatts. Rajinder said that mechanisation has reduced the number of workdays needed in agriculture; now, Jatts needs labourers for one or two months in a year. That demand for labour is being satisfied by the influx of migrant labourers from the poorer states. It points out the reduced economic dependence of Dalits on Jatts.
Rajinder and Raj took us to a female participant of their village. Balvir Kaur, a 60-year-old. She has four daughters and two sons. She looks after the two buffalos and a cow her family owns. When asked about the change that the organisation has brought in her life, she said, “Jatts used to abuse us when we go to get green fodder from their fields with our daughters. But now the order has changed. We no longer go to their fields; we have our own land. We, the women, have tricycles, and we go to the sanjha khet (common field) whenever we want.”
Mukesh, the state president of ZPSC, told us about their struggle in Jhaneri. Gurtej Singh, who could be seen as the epitome of DhanadChowdharies, is a local goon who acquires the disputed real estate with the help of his connections in police and politics and then sells it. He is the leader of the truck owner’s union, a union close to the mainstream ruling parties, and also the district president of the Akali Dal party. Under his patronage in 2015, the village council gave 100 acres of land to a private company to establish a solar power plant. ZPSC decided to burn his effigy in the village to protest this resolution. Gurtej Singh gave a message to the organisation that if they burned his effigy, he would kill one of them. A local member of the Legislative Assembly intervened, and Gurtej Singh agreed to annul the resolution within the next 15 days. In return, the organisation would cancel the call of protest against him.
Next year, he hired a Dalit proxy bidder to bid for him for the land reserved for the Dalits. On the day of the bid, given the possibility of a violent clash, the farmers’ union intervened and tried to resolve the issue with talk. The talk was held in Gurtej Singh’s office. The big table between them was decorated with guns pointing to Mukesh. Gurtej told him that, this time, it was too late. Next year, the organisation should come to meet him before the bid, and he would see. The meeting did not conclude. Gurtej Singh’s goons were at the bidding place armed with guns, and ZPSC members gathered with stones. There was stone pelting from the Dalit side; the goons didn’t get the opportunity to fire their guns. Police came and arrested 14 of Gurtej Singh’s aides and himself. They were booked under the scheduled caste atrocities act, and a case was also filed against the organisation’s members. Coming under constant pressure to protect his public image as a political leader, Gurtej Singh reached out to the organisation for a compromise; he agreed that only Dalits should bid for the reserved land. Now, the Dalits tills the land as a cooperative.
A vandalised poster of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
Bina Heri
In her early thirties, Kuljit Kaur was the only woman leader accompanying the march. In her village, Bina Heri, 48 acres of the village common land is cultivated by Dalits. Although she has been active in organising, she still holds no post. Her husband, a mason, is also an active organisation member. She spoke about the struggle they had to fight to get one-third of the village’s common land. Jatts bought off a Dalit to bid for them. This proxy bidder was kept in the gurudwara to keep him aloof from his community. The DhanadChowdharies dominate the Gurudwara committee. These DhanadChowdharies also dominate the village council (panchayat, the elected body of the village). Half of the reserved land, 24 acres, was controlled by Jatts. The organisation forced the Jatts to leave that land by continuously obstructing farming (by uprooting the seedlings and stopping the water supply to the land). But the gurudwara saw this incident as an attack on the dignity of Jatts. The gurudwara committee decided to cultivate the land on behalf of Jatts. The organisation agreed to give land to the gurudwara on the condition that the other castes also give the land from their share of the village common land. It also insisted on having Dalit members in the gurudwara committee. However, the demand was too much for the Jatts, who reigned over the village institutions; they gave the Dalits 48 acres of reserved land. Every Dalit household gets two bighas (one bigha = one-fifth of an acre) of land. They sow wheat, rice, and greens for the cattle. After using it in the home, they get extra wheat, rice, and milk, which they sell in the market to earn extra money, and a part of this money goes into the collection to pay the lease rent of the land.
Women travelling with the march.
Harigarh
Parmvir Singh, a 26-year-old member of the organisation, hails from Harigarh village near Patiala. He completed primary school but did not continue his studies. He belongs to the Majhabi Jaat (a subcategory of the Dalits), the lowest in the caste hierarchy. His village has around 27 acres of reserved land, but it is under the Gurudwara’s control. His brother, Dharamvir, is a member of the organisation’s state body. He has filed a case against the Gurudwara’s illegal occupation of the village’s common land. Their family took a massive loan of 2.5 million rupees to buy a combined harvester, with their home as collateral. They travel to Gujarat to harvest crops and earn good money. When we asked about the discrimination he faces in the village, he said, “We still have separate living spaces in the village. The organisation is not allowed to make announcements from the Gurudwara speakers. When we go to work in the state of Gujarat, we don’t face any caste discrimination. It’s like leaving our caste behind.” In the village, he also has a few Jatt friends. He visits their homes and has dinner there. But he said that there are still people who discriminate against Dalits. When asked what should be done to change this mentality of upper caste people, he said, “It is impossible.”
Guara Village
All the people we met worked outside agriculture; Dalits prefer to work outside the village. But who works if Dalits are not working as agricultural labourers? Sushil was sitting on his still bicycle and watching the play. We asked him if he knew about the organisation, and he answered negatively. He is a migrant labourer from Bihar. Migrated labourers are called bhaiya, a term that means brother but is used in a derogatory manner, making fun of their language. In his early forties, he has lived in Guara village for the last 20 years. Five persons live in a single room at the Lakha Sardar’s (a Jatt) tubewell room. All of them do wage labour in agriculture. They get 500 rupees daily wage. He is from a middle caste, which stands above the Dalit caste in the caste hierarchy. However, migrated labourers are looked down on by the Dalits, too. He has one acre of land in his village back in Bihar. But there is no irrigation facility. These migrated labourers are not even considered part of the village. In some of the villages, we saw anti-immigrant sentiment among Dalits. In Safipur Kalan, some Dalits were angry at the head of the village council as the plots for houses had been allotted to the bhaiyas (migrant labourers) but not them. Even the organisation has been silent on migrants’ issues.
Bhattiwal Kalan
Kaka Singh, a 53-year-old auto rickshaw driver, was an organiser earlier. They have 12 acres of reserved land, and the number of Dalit families is over two hundred and fifty. Most Dalits don’t own cattle in this village, so they cultivate wheat and rice cooperatively. When asked about the movement’s future, he said the present movement for reserved land is just an awakening for the more significant movement for land redistribution. When asked how many landlords own more than the supposed cap of 17.5 acres (the land reforms law makes it illegal to hold more than 17.5 acres of land by a household), he said no such big landlords are in his village.
A gathering at the sath in the village Bhattiwal Kalan.
Conclusion
The land question is again emerging in erstwhile third-world countries where urban and rural poor depend on the land for their survival while doing wage work. The neoliberal capitalism doesn’t pay them enough to make ends meet. These new subjects are called semi-proletariats. But, in India, the land question intersects with the caste question. The Green Revolution reduced the economic dependence of Dalits on landed castes, but they still largely depended on the land for fodder for their cattle. The land struggle by ZPSC where successful has reduced this dependence, too. Women don’t have to face the abuses and harassment at the hands of Jatts while collecting green fodder from their fields. The Left’s fascination with class is justifiable; any struggle against global capitalism will have to take the class seriously. But is it possible to build a united working people struggle by ignoring the caste question?
The Left needs a new understanding of caste. The Left seems grappling with applying its theoretical understanding of caste; it seems incapable of understanding caste oppression without economic dependence. However, the decade of ZPSC’s struggle has been impressive. Though most of their demands are economical, they are fighting against caste oppression and discrimination while struggling for economic demands. They are struggling against the Jatt hegemony in the villages by fighting upper caste dominated institutions like Gurudwara and the village council. However, the next question they face is how to build a united struggle on these demands with the working people of other middle castes, who face the same economic depravity. Is it possible to do it while the caste hierarchy, caste-based oppression and hate prevails?
Amol Patiala is a freelance writer.