It
is worth taking a look at the effects of colonial exploitation of the
Indian peasants. Colonial
economic policies, the
new land revenue system, the
colonial administrative and judicial systems, and the
ruin of handicraft
leading to the
over-crowding of land, transformed the
agrarian structure and
impoverished the peasantry. In
the vast zamindari
areas, the peasants
were left to the
tender mercies of
the zamindars who
rack-rented them and compelled
them to pay
the illegal dues
and perform begar.
In Ryotwari areas, the
Government itself levied heavy land
revenue.
This forced
the peasants to
borrow money from
the moneylenders. Gradually, over
large areas, the actual cultivators were reduced to the status of
tenants-at-will, share-croppers and landless labourers, while their lands,
crops and cattle passed into the hands of landlords, trader-moneylenders and
rich peasants.
When the
peasants could take
it no longer,
they resisted against the
oppression and exploitation; and, they found whether their target
was the indigenous
exploiter or the
colonial administration,
that their real
enemy, after the
barriers weredown, was the
colonial state.
One form
of elemental protest,
especially when individuals and small
groups found that
collective action was
not possible though their
social condition was
becoming intolerable, was to
take to
crime. Many dispossessed
peasants took to
robbery, dacoity and what has been called social banditry, preferring
these to starvation and social degradation.
The most
militant and widespread
of the peasant movements was the Indigo Revolt of 1859-60.
The indigo planters, nearly all Europeans, compelled the tenants to grow indigo
which they processed in factories
set up
in rural (mofussil) areas. From the beginning,
indigo was grown
under an extremely
oppressive system which involved
great loss to
the cultivators. The
planters forced the peasants
to take a
meager amount as
advance and enter into
fraudulent contracts. The
price paid for
the indigo plants was
far below the
market price. The
comment of the Lieutenant Governor
of Bengal, J.B.
Grant, was that
‘the root of the
whole question is
the struggle to
make the raiyats
grow indigo plant, without
paying them the
price of it.’
The peasant was forced to grow
indigo on the best land he had whether or not he wanted
to devote his
land and labour
to more paying
crops like rice. At
the time of
delivery, he was
cheated even of
the due low price.
He also had
to pay regular
bribes to the
planter’s officials. He was forced to accept an advance. Often he was
not in a position to repay it, but
even if he could he was not allowed to do so. The advance was
used by the planters to compel him to go on cultivating indigo.
Since the
enforcement of forced
and fraudulent contracts through the
courts was a
difficult and prolonged
process, the planters resorted
to a reign
of terror to
coerce the peasants. Kidnapping, illegal
confinement in factory
godowns, flogging, attacks on
women and children,
carrying off cattle,
looting, burning and demolition
of houses and
destruction of crops
and fruit trees were
some of the
methods used by
the planters. They hired or
maintained bands of
lathyals (armed retainers)
for the purpose.
In
practice, the planters were also above the law. With a few exceptions, the
magistrates, mostly European,
favoured the planters with
whom they dined
and hunted regularly.
Those few who tried
to be fair
were soon transferred.
Twenty-nine planters and a
solitary Indian zamindar
were appointed as
Honorary Magistrates in 1857,
which gave birth
to the popular
saying ‘je rakhak se bhakak’ (Our
protector is also our devourer).
The
discontent of indigo growers in Bengal boiled over in the autumn of
1859 when their
case seemed to
get Government support.
Misreading an official letter and exceeding his authority, Hem Chandra
Kar, Deputy Magistrate
of Kalaroa, published
on 17 August a
proclamation to policemen
that ‘in case
of disputes relating to
Indigo Ryots, they
(ryots) shall retain
possession of their own
lands, and shall
sow on them
what crops they
please, and the Police
will be careful
that no Indigo
Planter nor anyoneelse be able to interface in the
matter.
The
news of Kar’s proclamation spread all
over Bengal, and peasant felt that the
time for overthrowing the hated system
had come. Initially, the
peasants made an
attempt to get
redressal through peaceful means.
They sent numerous
petitions to the authorities and
organized peaceful demonstrations. Their
anger exploded in September 1859 when they asserted their right not to grow indigo
under duress and
resisted the physical
pressure of the planters
and their lathiyals
backed by the
police and the courts.
The
beginning was made by the ryots of Govindpur village in Nadia district
when, under the
leadership of Digambar
Biswas and Bishnu Biswas,
ex-employees of a
planter, they gave
up indigo cultivation. And
when, on 13
September, the planter
sent a band of
100 lathyals to attack their
village, they organized
a counter force armed with lathis and spears and fought back.
The peasant disturbances and indigo strikes spread rapidly to other
areas. The peasants
refused to take
advances and enter into
contracts, pledged not
to sow indigo,
and defended themselves from
the planters’ attacks
with whatever weapons came
to hand —
spears, slings, lathis,
bows and arrows,
bricks, bhel-fruit, and earthen-pots (thrown by women).
The indigo
strikes and disturbances
flared up again
in the spring of
1860 and encompassed
all the indigo
districts of Bengal. Factory
after factory was
attacked by hundreds
of peasants and village after village bravely defended itself. In many cases, the
efforts of the
police to intervene
and arrest peasant leaders were met with an attack on
policemen and police posts.
The planters
then attacked with
another weapon, their zamindari powers.
They threatened the
rebellious ryots with eviction
or enhancement of
rent. The ryots
replied by going
on a rent strike.
They refused to pay the
enhanced rents; and
they physically resisted attempts
to evict them.
They also gradually learnt to
use the legal
machinery to enforce
their rights. They joined together and raised funds to fight court cases filed
against them, and they
initiated legal action
on their own
against the planters. They
also used the
weapon of social
boycott to force
a planter’s servants to leave him.
Ultimately, the
planters could not
withstand the united resistance of
the ryots, and
they gradually began
to close their factories. The
cultivation of indigo
was virtually wiped
out fromthe
districts of Bengal by the end of 1860.
A
major reason for the success of the
Indigo Revolt was the tremendous
initiative, cooperation, organization and discipline of the
ryots. Another was
the complete unity among
Hindu and Muslim peasants.
Leadership for the
movement was provided
by the more well-off
ryots and in
some cases by
petty zamindars, moneylenders and
ex-employees of the planters.
A
significant feature of the Indigo Revolt was the role of the intelligentsia of
Bengal which organized
a powerful campaign
in support of the
rebellious peasantry. It
carried on newspaper campaigns, organized
mass meetings, prepared
memoranda on peasants’ grievances
and supported them
in their legal
battles.
Outstanding in
this respect was
the role of
Harish Chandra Mukherji, editor
of the Hindoo
Patriot. He published
regular reports from his
correspondents in the
rural areas on
planters’ oppression,
officials’ partisanship and
peasant resistance. He himself
wrote with passion,
anger and deep
knowledge of the problem
which, he raised
to a high
political plane. Revealing
an insight into the
historical and political
significance of the
Indigo Revolt, he wrote
in May 1860:
Bengal might well
be proud of its
peasantry. . Wanting power, wealth, political knowledge and even leadership, the
peasantry of Bengal
have brought about
a revolution inferior in magnitude and importance to none that has happened
in the social history of any other country . . . With the Government against
them, the law
against them, the
tribunals against them, the
Press against them,
they have achieved
a success of which
the benefits will
reach all orders
and the most distant generations of our countrymen.’
Din Bandhu
Mitra’s play, Neel
Darpan, was to
gain great fame for vividly
portraying the oppression by the planters. The
intelligentsia’s role in
the Indigo Revolt
was to have
an abiding impact on
the emerging nationalist
intellectuals. In their very
political childhood they
had given support
to a popular peasant movement
against the foreign
planters. This was to
establish a tradition
with long run
implications for the
national movement.
Missionaries were
another group which
extended active support to the
indigo ryots in their struggle. The
Government’s response to
the Revolt was
rather restrained and not as harsh as in
the case of civil rebellions and tribal uprisings.
It had just
undergone the harrowing
experience of the Santhal uprising and the Revolt of 1857. It was also
able to see, in time,
the changed temper
of the peasantry
and was influenced by
the support extended
to the Revolt
by the intelligentsia and the
missionaries. It appointed a commission
to inquire into the
problem of indigo
cultivation. Evidence brought before the
Indigo Commission and
its final report
exposed the coercion and
corruptio0 underlying the
entire system of
indigo cultivation. The result
was the mitigation
of the worst
abuses of the system.
The Government issued
a notification in
November 1860 that ryots could
not be compelled to sow indigo and that it would ensure
that all disputes
were settled by
legal means. But the planters were already closing down
the factories they felt that they
could not make
their enterprises pay
without the use of
force and fraud.
Large parts
of East Bengal
were engulfed by
agrarian unrest during the 1870s
and early 1880s. The unrest was caused by the efforts of
the zamindars to
enhance rent beyond
legal limits and to prevent the tenants from acquiring
occupancy rights under Act X of 1859.
This they tried
to achieve through
illegal coercive methods such
as forced eviction
and seizure of
crops and cattle as
well as by
dragging the tenants
into costly litigation
in the courts.
The peasants
were no longer
in a mood
to tolerate such oppression. In May 1873, an
agrarian league or combination was formed
in Yusufshahi Parganah
in Pabna district
to resist the demands
of the zamindars.
The league organized
mass meetings of peasants.
Large crowds of
peasants would gather
and march through villages
frightening the zamindars and appealing to other peasants to
join them. The league organized a rent-
strike — the ryots
were to refuse to pay the enhanced rents — and challenged the zamindars
in the courts. Funds were raised from the ryots
to meet the costs.
The struggle gradually
spread throughout Pabna and
then to the
other districts of
East Bengal. Everywhere agrarian leagues
were organized, rents
were withheld and zamindars
fought in the
courts. The main
form of struggle
was that of legal
resistance. There was
very little violence
— it only occurred when the zamindars tried to compel the ryots
to submit to their terms
by force. There
were only a
few cases of looting
of the houses of
the zamindars. A
few attacks on
police stations took place
and the peasants
also resisted attempts
to execute court decrees.
But such cases
were rather rare.
Hardly any zamindar or
zamindar‘s agent was
killed or seriously
injured. In the course
of the movement,
the ryots developed
a strong awareness of
the law and
their legal rights
and the ability
to combine and form associations for peaceful agitation.
Though peasant
discontent smouldered till
1885, many of the
disputes were settled
partially under official
pressure and persuasion and
partially out of the zamindar‘s
fear that the united
peasantry would drag
them into prolonged
and costly litigation. Many
peasants were able
to acquire occupancy
rights and resist enhanced rents.
The Government
rose to the
defence of the
zamindars wherever violence took
place. Peasants were
then arrested on a large sale. But
it assumed a
position of neutrality
as far as
legal battles or peaceful
agitations were concerned.
The Government also promised to
undertake legislation to protect the tenants from the worst
aspects of zamindari
oppression, a promise
it fulfilled however imperfectly
in 1885 when
the Bengal Tenancy
Act was passed.
What persuaded
the zamindars and
the colonial regime
to reconcile themselves to
the movement was
the fact that
its aims were limited
to the redressal
of the immediate
grievances of the peasants
and the enforcement
of the existing
legal rights and norms. It was not aimed
at the zamindari
system. It also did not have
at any stage
an anti-colonial political
edge. The agrarian leagues kept within the bounds
of law, used
the legal machinery to fight
the zamindars, and
raised no anti-British
demands. The leaders often
argued that they were against
zamindars and not the
British. In fact,
the leaders raised
the slogan that
the peasants want ‘to
be the ryots
of Her Majesty
the Queen and of
Her only.’ For
this reason, official
action was based
on the enforcement of the Indian
Penal Code and it did not take the form of
armed repression as
in the case
of the Santhal
and Munda uprisings.
Once again
the Bengal peasants
showed complete HinduMuslim
solidarity, even though
the majority of
the ryots were Muslim and the majority
of zamindars Hindu. There
was also no effort to create
peasant solidarity on
the grounds of
religion or caste.
In this
case, too, a
number of young
Indian intellectuals supported the
peasants’ cause. These included
Bankim Chandra Chatterjea and R.C.
Dutt. Later, in
the early I
880s, during the discussion of the Bengal Tenancy Bill,
the Indian Association, led by
Surendranath Banerjee, Anand Mohan Bose
and Dwarkanath Ganguli,
campaigned for the
rights of tenants,
helped form ryot’ unions, and organized huge meetings
of upto 20,000 peasants in the districts
in support of the Rent
Bill. The Indian
Association and many of
the nationalist newspapers
went further than
the Bill. They asked for
permanent fixation of the
tenant’s rent. They warned that since
the Bill would confer occupancy rights even on non-cultivators, it
would lead to the growth
of middlemen — the jotedars —
who would be
as oppressive as
the zamindars so far
as the
actual cultivators were
concerned. They, therefore, demanded that
the right of
occupancy should go
with actual cultivation of the soil,
that is, in
most cases to
the under ryots and the tenants-at-will.
A major
agrarian outbreak occurred
in the Poona
and Ahmednagar districts of
Maharashtra in 1875.
Here, as part
of the Ryotwari system,
land revenue was
settled directly with
the peasant who was
also recognized as
the owner of
his land. Like the
peasants in other
Ryotwari areas, the
Deccan peasant also found
it difficult to
pay land revenue
without getting into the
clutches of the
moneylender and increasingly
losing his land.
This led
to growing tension
between the peasants
and the moneylenders most
of whom were
outsiders — Marwaris
or Gujaratis.
Three
other developments occurred at this
time. During the early I 860s,
the American Civil
War had led
to a rise
in cotton exports which had pushed up prices. The end of the Civil War in 1864 brought about an acute depression
in cotton exports and a crash
in prices. The
ground slipped from
under the peasants’ feet. Simultaneously, in
1867, ‘the Government
raised land revenue by
nearly 50 per
cent. The situation
was worsened by a succession
of bad harvests.
To pay
the land revenue
under these conditions,
the peasants had to go to the
moneylender who took the opportunity to
further tighten his
grip on the
peasant and his
land. The peasant began to turn against the perceived
cause of his misery, the
moneylender. Only a spark was needed to kindle the fire.
A
spontaneous protest movement
began in December
1874 in Kardab village in Sirur
taluq. When the peasants of the
village failed to convince
the local moneylender, Kalooram,
that he should not
act on a
court decree and
pull down a
peasant’s house, they organized
a complete social
boycott of the
‘outsider’ moneylenders to compel them to accept their demands a
peaceful manner. They refused to buy from their shops. No peasant would cultivate their fields. The bullotedars
(village servants) — barbers, washermen, carpenters,
ironsmiths, shoemakers and
others would not serve
them. No domestic
servant would work
in their houses and
when the socially
isolated moneylenders decided
to run away to the taluq headquarters, nobody would agree to drive their carts.
The peasants also
imposed social sanctions
against those peasants and
bullotedars who would not join the boycott of moneylenders. This social boycott
spread rapidly to the villages of Poona,
Ahmednagar, Sholapur and Satara districts.
The
social boycott was soon transformed into agrarian riots when it
did not prove
very effective. On
12 May, peasants gathered in
Supa, in Bhimthari
taluq, on the
bazar day and began
a systematic attack
on the moneylenders’
houses and shops. They
seized and publicly
burnt debt bonds
and deeds —signed under pressure, in ignorance, or
through fraud — decrees, and other documents
dealing with their
debts. Within days
the disturbances spread to
other villages of
the Poona and Ahmednagar districts.
There was
very little violence
in this settling
of accounts. Once the
moneylenders’ instruments of oppression —
debt bonds — were surrendered,
no need for
further violence was
felt. In most places,
the ‘riots’ were
demonstrations of popular
feeling and of the
peasants’ newly acquired
unity and strength.
Though moneylenders’ houses and shops were looted and burnt in Supa, this
did not occur in other places.
The Government
acted with speed
and soon succeeded in repressing
the movement. The
active phase of
the movement lasted about
three weeks, though
stray incidents occurred
for another month or
two. As in
the case of
the Pabna Revolt,
the Deccan disturbances had very limited objectives. There was once again an
absence of anti-colonial
consciousness. It was, therefore, possible
for the colonial
regime to extend
them a certain protection
against the moneylenders
through the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act of 1879.
Once again,
the modern nationalist
intelligentsia of Maharashtra supported
the peasants’ cause.
Already, in 1873-74,
the Poona Sarvajanik
Sabha, led by
Justice Ranade, had organized a successful campaign among the
peasants, as well as at Poona and
Bombay against the
land revenue settlement
of 1867. Under its impact, a
large number of peasants had refused to
pay the enhanced
revenue. This agitation
had generated a mentality of resistance among the peasants
which contributed to the rise of peasant
protest in 1875. The Sabha as well as many of the nationalist newspapers also
supported the D.A.R. Bill.
Peasant resistance
also developed in
other parts of the
country. Mappila outbreaks
were endemic in
Malabar. Vasudev Balwant Phadke,
an educated clerk,
raised a Ramosi
peasant force of about
50 in Maharashtra
during 1879, and
organized social banditry on a significant scale. The Kuka Revolt in
Punjab was led by
Baba Ram Singh
and had elements
of a messianic movement. It
was crushed when
49 of the
rebels were blown
up by a cannon
in 1872. High
land revenue assessment
led to a series
of peasant riots
in the plains of
Assam during 1893-94. Scores were killed in brutal firings
and bayonet charges.
There was
a certain shift
in the nature
of peasant movements after 1857.
Princes, chiefs and landlords having been crushed or
co-opted, peasants emerged
as the main
force in agrarian movements.
They now fought
directly for their
own demands, centered almost
wholly on economic
issues, and against their
immediate enemies, foreign planters and indigenous zamindaris and
moneylenders. Their struggles
were directed towards specific
and limited objectives and redressal of particular grievances. They
did not make
colonialism their target.
Nor was their objective
the ending of the system
of their subordination and exploitation.
They did not
aim at turning
the world upside down.’
The territorial
reach of these
movements was also
limited. They were confined
to particular localities
with no mutual communication or
linkages. They also
lacked continuity of struggle or long-term organization. Once
the specific objectives of a
movement were achieved,
its organization, as
also peasant solidarity built
around it, dissolved
and disappeared. Thus,
the Indigo strike, the
Pabna agrarian leagues
and the social-boycott movement of
the Deccan ryots
left behind no
successors.
Consequently, at
no stage did
these movements threaten
British supremacy or even undermine it. Peasant protest
after 1857 often
represented an instinctive and spontaneous
response of the
peasantry to its
social condition. It was
the result of
excessive and unbearable oppression, undue
and unusual deprivation
and exploitation, and a
threat to the
peasant’s existing, established
position. The peasant often
rebelled only when
he felt that
it was not
possible to carry on in the existing manner.
He was
also moved by
strong notions of
legitimacy, of what was justifiable and what was not. That
is why he did not fight for land
ownership or against
landlordism but against
eviction and undue
enhancement of rent. He did not
object to paying interest on the
sums he had
borrowed; he hit back
against fraud and chicanery
by the moneylender
and when the
latter went against tradition in depriving him of his
land. He did not deny the state’s right
to collect a
tax on land
but objected when
the level of taxation
overstepped all traditional
bounds. He did
not object to the
foreign planter becoming
his zamindar but
resisted the planter when
he took away
his freedom to
decide what crops
to grow and refused to pay him a proper price for his crop.
The peasant
also developed a
strong awareness of
his legal rights and
asserted them in and outside
the courts. And
if an effort was
made to deprive
him of his
legal rights by
extra-legal means or by
manipulation of the
law and law courts, he countered
with extra-legal means
of his own.
Quite often, he believed
that the legally-constituted authority
approved his actions or
at least supported
his claims and
cause. In all
the three movements discussed
here, he acted
in the name
of this authority, the sarkar.
In these
movements, the Indian
peasants showed great courage
and a spirit
of sacrifice, remarkable
organizational abilities, and a solidarity that cut across religious and
caste lines.
They were
also able to
wring considerable concessions
from the colonial state.
The latter, too,
not being directly
challenged, was willing to
compromise and mitigate the harshness of the agrarian system though
within the broad
limits of the
colonial economic and political
structure. In this
respect, the colonial
regime’s treatment of the
post-1857 peasant rebels
was qualitatively different from
its treatment of the participants
in the civil rebellions, the
Revolt of 1857
and the tribal
uprisings which directly
challenged colonial political power.
A major
weakness of the
19th century peasant
movements was the lack
of an adequate
understanding of colonialism
— of colonial economic
structure and the
colonial state —
and of the social framework of the movements
themselves. Nor did the 19th century
peasants possess a
new ideology and
a new social, economic and
political programme based
on an analysis
of the newly constituted
colonial society. Their
struggles, however militant,
occurred within the framework of the old societal order.
They
lacked a positive conception of an alternative society a conception which would unite
the people in a common struggle on
a wide regional and all-India plane and help develop long-term political
movements. An all-India leadership
capable of evolving a strategy
of struggle that
would unify and
mobilize peasants and other sections of society
for nation-wide political
activity could be formed only on
the basis of
such a new conception, such a fresh
vision of society.
In the absence
of such a
flew ideology, programme, leadership
and strategy of
struggle, it was
not to difficult for
the colonial state,
on the one
hand, to reach
a Conciliation and calm
down the rebellious peasants by
the grant of some concessions
arid on the
other hand, to
suppress them with the full use of
its force. This weakness was, of course, not a blemish
on the character
of the peasantry
which was perhaps incapable of
grasping on its
own the new
and complex phenomenon of
colonialism. That needed
the efforts of
a modem intelligentsia which was itself just coming into existence.
Most of
these weaknesses were
overcome in the
20th century when peasant
discontent was merged
with the general anti-imperialist discontent
and their political
activity became a part
of the wider
anti-imperialist movement. And,
of course, the peasants’
participation in the
larger national movement
not only strengthened the
fight against the
foreigner it also, simultaneously, enabled
them to organize
powerful struggles around their
class demands and to create
modem peasant organization.
