Towards “Total Revolution”: Insights from the Bodhgaya land struggle of the late 1970s in Eastern India

The Bodhgaya land movement that resulted in Dalits (former untouchables) and women, securing rights to agricultural land, offers a unique and compelling backdrop to examine the socio-spatial transformations in rural Bihar through ‘peaceful’ means.

The proposed project uses narratives of Dalits and urban activists who responded to the septuagenarian Gandhian and Socialist leader, Jaya Prakash Narayan’s call for “total revolution," to illuminate how the movement was able to upend centuries old debilitating practices of bondage and slavery by securing land rights for landless Dalit women.

Through the use of narratives, the project analyzes the praxis of the movement to offer fresh perspectives on the older questions pertaining to caste, gender and land rights.