PEASANT MOVEMENTS AND UPRISINGS AFTER 1857

 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 were

down, 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 anyone

else 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 from

the 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   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 Hindu￾Muslim 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