70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST countryside on the eve of theTebhaga movement in the first part of her work. In the second part of the book Adrienne Cooper has described the tradition of the sharecroppers' struggle from 1930 onwards. In the initial phase, the discontent was sporadic and localised in nature. The basis of organisation was traditional religious or tribal identity, but the struggle was directed against different forms of economic oppression. The groundwork for tenants and sharecroppers' agitation was done by the Krishak Praja Party and the Peasant and Workers' Party. Later, radical elements in the Krishak Praja Party and Congress organised together to form the Bengal Provincial Krishak Sabha (pp. 115-128). The most important political groups in the Bengal Provincial Krishak Sabha (BPKS) were the Communist Party and the Congress Socialist Party, both committed to the concept of class struggle. When the middle class activists launched a mass contact programme from 1937 onwards through nationalist networks, they first reached the rich peasants. Their initial demands concerned all strata, and a flexible strategy was adopted to involve all peasants against landlordism and the colonial state, but as poor peasants and tenants became involved gradually, more radical demands like abolition of abwabs^ commutation and reduction of rent began to be raised. During scarcities and the famine conditions of 1942-45, food became the major issue. There were numerous instances of hunger marches, paddy-looting, paddy-cutting and dacoities. Rural tension acquired a communal colour in areas dominated by Muslim sharecroppers and Hindu landlords (pp. 130-150). Cooper has catalogued and analysed the peasants and tenants' discontent of the pre-Tebagha period to trace the historical continuities, the involvement of organisations and parties, which raised the political consciousness in the countryside and led to the final outburst of the movement. The story of the intense and widespread Tebhaga struggle of 1946-47 is not entirely unknown to us. But Cooper has emphasised the circumstances which contributed to this intensity; firstly, there was pressure within the CPI and BPKS for more militant campaigns and adoption of poor peasants' demands as priority; secondly, there was extreme scarcity of food and prices were exorbitant; thirdly, BPKS attempted to unite peasants in mass agitations to counter communal division (p. 168). The major demand of sharecroppers was reduction of rent from one-half to one-third of the produce. Small landlords agreed to the tebhaga demand, while big landlords refused and tried force, and so invited the wrath of the sharecroppers. A vivid account of the struggle is given by the participants themselves. A poor peasant narrated, 'The jotedar asked, where is the ink and paper for your tebhaga legislation? A peasant leader replied, 'the paper will be your skin, the ink your blood and pen your bone.' (p. 172). 'Tebhaga elaka' or liberated zones were formed. Paddy crops were harvested by sharecroppers collectively by force and landlords were