CASTE OPPRESSION IN THANJAVUR 53 ist exploitation. Their class organizations, therefore have multiplied and their struggle against this exploitation has risen to a high level witnessed by the numerous partial struggles and has brought a new, political consciousness to them . . . Secondly, the past ye^r has been of small reliefs for the peasantry, secured to them from the Provincial Governments. The crying inadequacy of these reliefs, the greater obstacles created by the vested interests that have to be encountered, showing them the patent incapability of provincial autonomy, to solve any of the basic problems, have fully exposed the hollowness of the provincial autonomy.551 The AIKS then clearly linked its fundamental demands, its day-to-day struggle against the zamindars and the landlords to the pressing question of a national government. The demands of the freedom movement, it was emphasised, were the demands of the peasantry and the people in the countryside, as a whole. The root cause of the misery of the peasantry, the involved and myriad jungle of tenancy, land rights and the worsening conditions of labour—rack-rented and indebted—was sustained by the colonial exploitation of India. While provincial autonomy and the rule of popular Congress governments in the provinces might wrest concessions for the rural areas, they could not alter the fundamental situation in the countryside without complete independence. In this vital sense, the peasant movement was an integral part of the freedom movement in India. This was made clear in the armed worker-peasant uprising in Punnapra-Vayalar against the native feudal ruler of Travancore —who was propped up by the British and refused to join free India—and in the] armed struggle of the people of Telangana against the oppressive rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad. The struggle of the labouring people in Thanjavur during the 1940s also expressed the rising social and economic expectations of a people on the verge of freedom. Spontaneous Sruggles The early spontaneous protests of the labourers in Thanjavur provoked the mirasdars in the 1930s into complaining to the Madras Government against the 'troublesome' attitude of their labourers. An interesting example of such struggle surfaced on the estate of the Brahmin landlord, Ganapathi Subramania lyer, of Kaliyakudi village in Nannilam taluk, who owned over 100 velis (1 veli « 6.61acres) of land. He had 100 pannayals working for him and paid them lower-than-customary wages. In March 1938, in a militant protest against inhuman treatment, they refused to work and petitioned the Government. The mirasdar was forced to raise