5^ SOCIAL SCIENTIST in this book and Manikuntala Sen in her reminiscences (Sheidner Katha) also mention how much more difficult it was to organize Muslim peasant women observing 'purdah*. Tribal and *low-caste' Hindu women were generally more in touch with the outside world in their daily lives. 14. Peter Ousters' 'Women's Role in Tebhaga Movement', EPW, Vol. XXI No. 43, Oct. 25,1986, is an example of this kind of research. The article proceeds on the assumptions that. (a) women's participation in the Tebhaga movement was entirely spontaneous. (b) The 'opportunistic' leadership of the Communist Party thwarted the development of women's initiative because of its 'patriarchal prejudices', (c) but for this 'opportunism' the uprising would have contributed to the supposedly revolutionary situation at the national level. As for the third assumption, Ousters' evidence is very meagre and mostly based on hearsay. The widespread popularity of Congress leadership and atmosphere of communal tension are but two of the well-known factors complicating the national situation in 1946-47, but Custers does not see even one. As for his belief that the Tebhaga Movement might have turned into a revolutionary war, Custers has rushed in where better-equipped people have trodden warily. D.N. Dhanagare, for example, provides ample reason for rejecting Hamza Alavi's thesis which is on similar lines (Peasant Movements in India 1920-1950, OUP, 1983, p. 192). But Custers' simplistic account seems to have but one purpose : to foist the entire responsibility of betraying the supposedly 'revolutionary' situation on the Indian Communist Party. The political-organizational weaknesses of the Tebhaga Movement have been extensively discussed. In fact, some of the criticisms given out by Custers to be whispered confessions can be found in elementary texts on the movement. These weaknesses surely derived at least partly from weaknesses of the Kishan Sabha and of the Party. Moreover a party is made of people, these people come from a particular social situation and do not generally give up overnight the prejudices— even patriarchal prejudices— which they bring with them from their lived life. This requires a protracted ideological battle of which the Tebhaga situation offers one interesting example. It is one thing to analyse the course of this ideological battle, and another to regard the party-stricture as a straitjacket imposed from above and perpetuating traditional hierarchies- This is a totally mechanical view of party-organization to say the least. But Custers must uphold this mechanical and simplistic notion since he has to counterpose the^spontane" ous* militancy of the women against it. Tebhaga movement supplied a platform for different interest-groups from the most oppressed sections of the peasantry to come together. Women joined hands with men, and agricultural labourers put down their lives side by side with sharecroppers, although the movement started with specific issues involving the sharecroppers only. That more specific demands for women (e.g. equal wages for equal work) and for the agricultural labourers, were not raised during the movement is no doubt symptomatic of its weakness. But the suggestion that organisational leadership deliberately suppressed such demands and abandoned the movement in the face of danger is totally unwarranted. This attitude also fails