PEASANT MOVEMENT 41 during 1904-05 to 1944-45, although the non-food index rose by 54 per cent during this period. The index of per hectare yeild of foodgrains actually declined by 13 points during the same period. There was only a marginal increase in the yield of non-food crops. Taking India as a whole, the agricultural growth rate during this period hardly kept pace with the paltry growth of population. The per capita food availability declined from 200.2 kg per year in 1905-06 to only 152.2 kg per year in 1945-46. The nature of the peasant movement in the colonial period can only be understood in the context of the then existing mode and relations of production and the unlimited support extended by the highly oppressive colonial government to the vested landed interests. All attempts to organise the peasantry immediately invited the wrath of the colonial administration and its rural feudal interests and their lackeys. Consequently, the peasant movements became inextricably linked with the anti-imperialist nationalist movement. In fact, many important social and religious movements which were launched in various states to achieve certain social demands very soon acquired a militant, anti-imperialist character in view of the repression let loose by the government. Under these conditions, the main strategy of the peasant leadership was to unite all sections of the working peasantry and landless labour against the rural feudalinterests, the moneylenders and the colonial regime. For the peasant movement, the most important contradiction existed between the peasantry on the one hand, and the imperialist regime supported by the landlords and moneylenders on the other. The policy of united action of all peasantry was most realistic. For this reason, the contradiction within the peasantry and that between cultivators and landless labour were played down by the leadership. This was primarily because the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle was given the prime importance. Furthermore, the contradiction within the peasantry had not yet emerged in an accentuated form. The relatively limited monetisation of the agricultural economy, its relatively backward technology of production, and its imperceptibly slow progress, meant that the objective basis for differentiation between cultivators and agricultural labourers on the one hand and between the small and big peasants on the other hand had not yet fully developed. The mode of production remained primarily pre-capitalist, traditional and semi-feudal. The landless labourers like the artisans wexle governed by the traditional jajmnai system and the village proletariat fed not developed the characteristics of free labour. The main strategy of the peasant movement was to wage anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle while carrying the entire peasantry (including landless labour) with it in this task. Consequently, even though the slogan of class struggle was advanced for propaganda and mobilisation, except for anti-feudal struggle hardly any issues were taken