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- Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (1889-1950), was born in a Jijhoutia Brahmin family of Gazipur of Uttar Pradesh state of India, was an ascetic of Dashnami Order of Adi Shankara Sampradaya (a monastic post which only Brahmins can hold) as well as a nationalist and peasant leader of India. Although he was born in Uttar Pradesh (U.P. ), his social and political activities centered mostly in Bihar in the initial days, and gradually spread to the rest of India with the formation of All India Kisan Sabha. He had set-up an ashram at Bihta, near Patna and carried out most of his work in the later part of his life from there. He was an intellectual, prolific writer, social reformer and revolutionary all rolled into one. The Kisan Sabha movement started in Bihar under the leadership of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati who had formed in 1929 the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS) in order to mobilise peasant grievances against the zamindari attacks on their occupancy rights, and thus sparking the Farmers' movement in India Gradually the peasant movement intensified and spread across the rest of India. All these radical developments on the peasant front culminated in the formation of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in April 1936 with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati elected as its first President and it involved prominent leaders like N.G. Ranga, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Pandit Karyanand Sharma, Pandit Yamuna Karjee, Pandit Yadunandan (Jadunandan) Sharma, Rahul Sankrityayan, P. Sundarayya, Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev and Bankim Mukerji. The Kisan Manifesto released in August 1936, demanded abolition of zamindari system and cancellation of rural debts, and in October 1937, it adopted red flag as its banner . Soon, its leaders became increasingly distant with Congress, and repeatedly came in confrontation with Congress governments, in Bihar and United Province. On hearing of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati's arrest during Quit India Movement, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and All India Forward Bloc immediately decided to observe 28 April as an All-India Swami Sahajanand Day for the purpose of protesting against his incarceration as a fitting reply to the British Government. Government of India had issued a commemorative stamp in the memory of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, and the stamp was officially released on 26 June 2000 by Ram Vilas Paswan, the-then Minister of Communications, Government of India. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has an award Swamy Sahajanand Saraswati Extension Scientist/ Worker Award instituted in his honour. In 2001, a two-day Kisan Mahapanchayat was organised on the occasion of the 112th birth anniversary of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati and had been inaugurated in Rabindra Bhawan by the then state assembly Speaker Sadanand Singh and attended, among others, by Rama Pilot wife of Rajesh Pilot; O P Kejriwal, the then director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, medical education minister Shakeel Ahmad, registration minister Vijay Shankar Dubey and former assembly Speaker Radhanandan Jha. Bihar Governor R. S. Gavai released a book on the life of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati on his 57th death anniversary in Patna. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, along with other Bihar leaders celebrated the 119th birth anniversary of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the architect of the farmers' movement. Former Minister of Railways, president of Rashtriya Janata Dal and former Chief Minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav had promised way back in 2003 to erect a life-size atatue of Swamiji at Patna exhorting that the “The BJP should have installed his portrait in Parliament".
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