Breaking down the question
The command word is illustrate — you are asked to bring out, with concrete detail, the contributions of the Tebhaga Movement to the broader peasant struggle in India. The focus is therefore on legacy and significance, not merely a narrative of events, though a compact account of what happened is needed to ground the argument.
The central term Tebhaga — meaning three-shares — names the demand at its heart: that sharecroppers keep two-thirds of the harvest rather than half. Your answer must connect this specific agitation to the longer history of agrarian mobilisation.
How to approach it
Begin by identifying the movement — Bengal, 1946-47, led by the Kisan Sabha under Communist guidance. State its demand and social base clearly. Then organise the contributions thematically: the assertion of sharecropper rights, the mobilisation of the rural poor including women and tribals, the sharpening of agrarian class consciousness, and its influence on later land-reform legislation. Close with a balanced note on its limits.
Model answer
The Tebhaga Movement erupted in the Bengal countryside in 1946-47, led by the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha under Communist leadership. Its name captures its demand: that the bargadars or sharecroppers retain two-thirds (tebhaga) of the crop they raised, rather than the customary half, with the jotedar landlord's share reduced accordingly. Its contributions to the Indian peasant struggle were substantial and enduring.
First, it asserted the rights of the sharecropper as a distinct agrarian class. Earlier peasant agitations had often centred on rent or revenue; Tebhaga foregrounded the exploited bargadar, giving the landless and near-landless tiller a place at the centre of agrarian politics for the first time.
Second, it achieved a remarkable breadth of mobilisation. The movement drew in women, who formed nari bahini defence squads, as well as tribal and low-caste cultivators such as the Rajbansis and Santhals. This showed that the rural poor could be organised across gender and community lines around a shared material demand.
Third, it deepened agrarian class consciousness. By pitting bargadar against jotedar, Tebhaga made the structural conflict of the Bengal countryside visible and articulate, feeding the wider tradition of left-led peasant struggle that A. R. Desai and D. N. Dhanagare later analysed.
Fourth, and most tangibly, it shaped subsequent legislation. Though suppressed and only partially successful in its own time, the movement's pressure informed later measures — the Bargadari provisions and, ultimately, Operation Barga in West Bengal in the late 1970s, which recorded and protected sharecroppers' rights. Tebhaga thus supplied both a template and a moral charter for tenancy reform.
Its limits should be acknowledged: the movement was regionally confined to parts of Bengal, was checked by state repression and the disruptions of Partition, and did not immediately win its demand. Yet as a model of militant, organised peasant assertion it remained influential. For the broader canvas, see the note on peasant and farmers' movements.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who move beyond narrative to contribution — sharecropper rights, wide mobilisation including women and tribals, class consciousness, and the line running to Operation Barga. Precise anchoring in Bengal 1946-47 and the tebhaga demand signals command of fact. A measured note on the movement's regional and temporal limits, rather than uncritical celebration, marks the strongest scripts.