In the winter of 1946, somenath hore, one of India's major painter-sculptors, was assigned by the Communist party to document the tebhaga movement in North Bengal. A young art student at the time, hore witnessed the massive mobilization taking place in a network of villages and captured the widespread spirit of peasant consciousness and militant solidarity, all the more remarkable at a time when communalism was rife in National politics. Somnath hore’s personal diary and sketches of the tebhaga days are an unusual social document of a peasant movement seen through the eyes of a committed artist. Closely involved in the struggle, the tebhaga experience remained a source of inspiration for him. One can see in these sketches the rugged lines since transformed into sculptured forms, but charged with the same intensity of anguish and anger; and the seeds of the vision that infused his later work.