ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the neglected political history of the Kirti Kisan Party (KKP) in Southeast Punjab, which comprises modern-day Haryana, during the late colonial period. Conventional historiography has portrayed this "Loyalist belt" of the Indian Empire as a stronghold of Sir Chhotu Ram's Unionist Party. However, this paper seeks to reveal a complex radical political movement that challenged the political hegemony of the Unionist Party from a Marxist-Ghadarite perspective. By using the British Home Department's Political Department Records, vernacular revolutionary literature, and provincial archives, this paper aims to examine the ways in which the KKP attempted to transform the rural political discourse from a 'statutory identity' based on caste to a class identity. It will also examine the KKP's innovative mobilisation strategies, including the utilisation of Haryanvi folk traditions to propagate Bolshevik ideas and the conduct of militant 'No Tax' movements during the Great Depression. It will also examine the 'double oppression' of the KKP from both the British Empire and the native landed gentry. It argues that the KKP's legacy formed the intellectual and organisational basis of post-colonial rural radicalism in Haryana, thereby redefining rural populism beyond conventional communal and caste boundaries.