Yadunandan Sharma (also spelled Jadunandan) (1896–1975) was an Indian peasant leader and national liberation figure from the Indian state of

Bihar Bihar ( ) is a states and union territories of India, state in Eastern India. It is the list of states and union territories of India by population, second largest state by population, the List of states and union territories of India by are ...

. He had started a movement for the rights of tillers against the zamindars and Britishers at ''Reora'' celebrated as the ''Reora Satyagraha''.

Biography

Yadunandan Sharma was born in a

Bhumihar Bhumihar, also locally called Bhuinhar and Babhan, a Hindu Indian caste system, caste mainly found in Bihar (including the Mithila (region), Mithila region), the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, the Bundelkhand region of Madhya ...

family in Manjhiyawan village,

Gaya district } Gaya district is one of the thirty-eight districts of the Indian state of Bihar. It was officially established on 3 October 1865. The district has a common boundary with the state of Jharkhand to the south. Gaya city is both the district he ...

, in 1896. The village was part of the

Tekari Tekari is a city and a municipality in Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar and was the centre of erstwhile Tekari Raj. Maharaja Gopalsaran was the king of this area in British times. Etymology In South Bihar, the representative of sev ...

zamindar A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semi-autonomous feudal lord of a ''zamindari'' (feudal estate). The term itself came into use during the Mughal Empire, when Persian was the official language; ''zamindar'' is the ...

i. His father died when Sharma was aged three and he had to begin work as a cowherd while very young. This cause him to miss school and it was only in 1914 that, impelled by the desire to become literate, he ran away to

Benaras Varanasi (, also Benares, Banaras ) or Kashi, is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world.* * * * The city has a syncretic tradition of ...

where he learned the alphabet. He matriculated in 1919 from Tekari high school and became a teacher for one year in a village school. He worked also as a manager in a zamindari, getting a first hand knowledge of the system. Not happy with it, he again went off to Benaras and joined

Benaras Hindu University Banaras Hindu University (BHU), formerly Benares Hindu University, is a collegiate, central, and research university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India, and founded in 1916. The university incorporated the Central Hindu College, ...

and studied until 1929 when he graduated. After his B.A. degree, he left education and joined

Civil Disobedience Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizenship, citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be cal ...

Movement. He was arrested and sentenced for 16 months in 1930. After being released from jail, he joined the Kisan movement in 1933 and started the famous Sandako and ''Reora Satyagraha'' in the 1930s. He became the undisputed leader of peasants in the

and second in command to the legendary freedom fighter and peasant leader Sahajanand Saraswati. Most of his life was spent in the Neyamatpur village in an ashram from where he kept revolting against the British Rule and Zamindari. Pandit Nehru paid a visit to the Ashram in 1936 on a chilling winter night in December to meet him and address a mass gathering of the locals. He died in 1975.After freedom once he fought election from makhdumpur constituency of gaya district for MLA but he lost.

Books authored

* Sharma, Yadunandan, 1947, Bakasht Mahamari Aur Uska Achook Ilaaz (Bakasht Epidemic and its Infalliable Remedy) in

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

Allahabad Prayagraj (, ; ISO 15919, ISO: ), formerly and colloquially known as Allahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi, Varanasi (Benar ...

References

Swami and Friends- By Arvind N Das http://www.virginia.edu/soasia/symsem/kisan/papers/swami.html * http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol05/no04/sharma.htm * Peasant Satyagraha of Reora (January 1939) told by its leader Jaduanandan Sharma eported bySho Kuwajima esearcher and translatorPeasant Symposium Presentation, May 1997 http://www.virginia.edu/soasia/symsem/kisan/papers/reora.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Sharma, Pandit Yadunandan Indian independence activists from Bihar Banaras Hindu University alumni Indian revolutionaries 1896 births 1975 deaths

Biography

Books authored

See also

References