ATTITUDES TO PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 39 Congress workers turned their attention to the Krishak and Proja movements. In November 1925, the Labour Swaraj Party of the Indian National Congress was founded. The Langal, a Bengali weekly, was the organ of this party, with poet Nazrul as director. The first issue of Langal was published on 25 December 1925. Manubhusan Mukhopadhyay, a friend of Nazrul, was its editor. The Langal upheld the cause of the downtrodden people, workers and peasants. Nazrul's famous poems ^Samyabadi' and Krishaker Can were published in this paper. In January 1926, an attempt was made to found the Bangiya Krishak Sramik Dal. In the second session of the Nikhil Bangiya Proja Sammelan, held at Krishnagar, Nadia, in February 1926, the Bengal Peasants' and Workers' Party was founded. It was not affiliated to the Congress. The Labour Swaraj Party was merged with this organization. The following members took part in founding this organization: Muzaffar Ahmad, Abdul Halim, Kutubuddin Ahmad, Shamsuddin Husayan, Samsuddin Ahmad, Soumendra Nath Tagore, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Dr Naresh Chandra Sen Gupta, Atui Chandra Gupta and poet Nazrul Islam. In 1928, the All-India Workers' and Peasants^ Party was established. Most of workers engaged on these fronts were associated with the Communist Party of India. But the landholders did not like the word Langal as a title of a paper. Nor did they welcome the Peasants' and Workers' Party. We would get a clear idea about the typical character of a Bengali middle-class youth in the 1920s from the conversation between Sabyasachi and poet Sashi of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's Father Dabi. Sabyasachi, the main character of the novel, advised Sashi to compose songs not for the peasants and workers, but for the educated bhadraloks {Father Dabi, eighth edition, p 357). Sarat Chandra Chatterjee gave an adverse hint, through Sabyasachi, toward the Songs of the Ploughs (for a detailed study of the typical attitude o^ the Bengali, bhadraloks towards the peasants see Muzaffar Ahmad^s Qazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha pp 396-400). Perhaps at a ater stage Sarat Ghandra Chatterjee changed his attitude. He stated that the economic growth of the entire Bengali society was obstructed due to the activities of the zamindars, talukdars and innumerable middlemen created by the Permanent Settlement (See Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's unpublished articles collected after his death, quoted in ^Sarat Chandra Chatto-padhyay", an article by Saroj Mukherjee, published in the Ganashakti, evening daily of Calcutta, 17 September 1975, p 2). The peasant movement in Bengal took a concrete shape in 1937. On behalf of the presidium of the first session of the Krishak Sabha, Muzaffar Ahmad submitted a document under the title "Krishak-Samasya" before the delegates assembled at Patrasaer on 28 March 1937, which was endorsed by all. The members of the presidium were: (1) Bankim Mukhopadhyay, (2) Dr Bhupendra Nath Datta, (3) Syed Ahmad Khan (Noakhali), (4) Niharendu Datta Majumdar and (5) Muzaffar Ahmad {Krishak-Samsaya, op. cit.) On behalf of the Kisan Sabha the following members met the Floud Commission on 22 March 1939 and gave their oral evidence: (1) Bankim Mukhopadhyay, (2) Rcbati Burman, (3) M A Rasul and (4) Bhowani Sen, Report, vol VI, op. cit., p 62). It is clear from this account that a small section of Bengali intelligentsia firmly stood by the peasant. 64 Report, vol I, pp 1, 3, 41-42. <5 Ibid., pp 227, 231, 319, 337-341. Referring to the census of 1931 Radha Kumud Mookerji wrote thus in a note in 1940: "According to the Census Report, non-cultivating proprietors of land who receive rent in cash or kind number 7 lakhs 83 thousand. Each of these has to supprot a large number of working and non-working dependants, ranging from five to fifty in accordance with the size of his income. Considering that there arc more than 1 lakh revenue-paying estates, and 27 lakhs of tenures, the number of rent-