PRAKASH KARAT Agrarian Relations in Malabar—igs^ to 1(^48 PART ONE THE development of the organised peasant movement in South India was concentrated in three districts of the Madras Province. In the 1930s and 1940s class-based peasant organisations made rapid advance in Krishna (Andhra), Than-javur (Tamil Nadu), and Malabar (Kerala). These three districts provided the overwhelming proportion of Kisan Sabha membership in the mid-forties in South India. The attempt in this two-part article is to delineate the nature of agrarian relations in Malabar district in the period following the Malabar Rebellion of 1921. Such a study will provide the objective basis for analysing the rise of the political movement among the peasants and development of the Karshaka Sangham (Peasants Union) in Malabar, which became one of the strongholds of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles of the peasant masses of India. Any study of the objective conditions prevailing in the twentieth century must necessarily begin with the socio-economic formation created under British rule and its impact on the correlation of class forces in that society.1 For the theoretical framework of this study, we have relied mainly upon the chapters pertaining to agriculture in Karl Marx^s Capital, Volume 32 and Lenin's The Development of Capitalism