720 Subalterns and Sovereigns
not been received even by the start of the cultivation season in
1908, despite being expected by the end of 1907, there was much
uncertainty. In those villages to be displaced entirely, people
were caught between the pincers of prohibition on cultivating
existing fields, on the one hand, and being convicted under the
Forest Act of cutting fresh penda, on the other.65
In the light of all this correspondence, official claims about
the suddenness of the 1910 rebellion and the lack of warning
seem difficult to believe. In fact, the rebellion started precisely
in those areas where reservation first took place in the Kanger
forests. The Parja villages which were most active were not just
those which were to be afforested but also those whose shifting
cultivation was circumscribed.66 But even after the rebellion, the
authorities refused to concede that reservation had been a prime
cause, attributing it to elite intrigue instead. At the same time,
they were forced to take heed of popular discontent to the extent
that work on reservation was temporarily suspended, and the
area to be reserved was reduced to 2727 square miles or roughly
half of that planned before 1910. However, what it gave with
one hand, the government took away with the other. Now all
rights of nistar, grazing and hunting were officially closed in
the reserved areas, though in practice, of course, people could
not be totally prevented. In effect, before 1910, the forests had
been protected rather than reserved forests. While reducing
reserves, enforcement became stricter.
Standardization of Land Administration
Apart from the fact that it was said to cause destruction of
forests, shifting cultivation presented other problems for the
colonial administration in Bastar. First, the image of the
shifting cultivator militated against both the Victorian and the
upper caste concept of the honest toiler: productive permanent
cultivators and wage labourers. Secondly, shifting cultivation
65 xxiii, 2, Forest Officer to Suptd., 22 April 1908, Notes made on a tour
through the Kanger reserve; Suptd. to Forest Officer, 27 September 1909,
JRR.
66 e.g. Elingnar, Kakalgur, Kotomsar, Kankapal, Kandanar, Chindgarh,
Nangalsar, Nethanar, Kolawada, Chitalgarh, Chachalgurh, Kawapal, Tiria,
Tahakwada all in and around the Kanger range, xxiii, 18, JRR.
Rebellious Pasts 121
produced less revenue for the state than permanent cultivation.
Thirdly, it made difficult the task of land revenue collection
based on permanently settled villages, clearly demarcated fields,
and standardized units of land and soil types. The stand-
ardization of the land revenue system was important to the
colonial authorities because it enabled the efficient collection
of revenue and also because it was a mechanism for an increase
in knowledge of the villages and people of the State.67 -
Right up to the first half of the twentieth century, the official
policy remained that of spreading permanent cultivation. Con-
sequently, policies designed to encourage outsiders to' settle
introduced shortly before 1876, were extended. This included
initial remissions in land revenue,68 as well as free grants of
timber to outsiders to build houses etc., at a time when it was
restricting the general right to forest produce.69 Inviting new
settlers in was not distinctive of British colonialism alone, but
characteristic of all expanding agrarian states.70 The difference
here perhaps was in the scale of migration areas like Bastar,
especially in the hilly, forested and more inaccessible regions of
the country, had so far been relatively free of large-scale settle-
ment by alien groups.71
Due to the predominance of shifting cultivation, cadastral
surveys were not applied to Bastar. Demarcation of villages itself
was a problem as often one village had several sites within a
certain area and distances between villages were too great.72 In
1896, the diwan, Pandit Alamchand, carried out a summary
67 LI, 13, i, Note on the Settlement Operations of Bastar State by Mr Sly,
Political Agent, 1899, JRR.
68 u, 7/1, Establishment and Leasing of Villages, 1904; Revenue Circular
no. 1, 1931, BS Revenue Manual (1931), JRR.
69 xxiii, 23, A Corres. reg. free grant of timber, JRR.
70 See Venkatramayya and Sarma (1982:681-3).
71 The census of 1891 registered an increase of 58.4 per cent in population
over 1881. While much of this was attributed to better census methods, there
was also considerable immigration from other areas, especially Raipur. The
majority of these would be grain dealers and other merchants, those in
government service as policemen, patwaris, forest guards or schoolteachers,
possibly soldiers and those in the private employ of landlords or money-
lenders. CP Census Report, 1891, vol. n, Part i, pp. 56-7; CP Census Report,
1911, pp. 50-1.
72 LI, 13, i, Settlement Note, Sly, 1899, JRR.
 122 Subalterns and Sovereigns *

settlement based on the seed capacity of fields.73 Rents were which the lessee wanted to cultivate himself, overcharging of
enhanced by eight annas to one rupee per plough.74 The first rents, demands for grains at one-third the market price in lieu
regular settlement based on soil classification was completed in of cash rents, and failure to give receipts were common com-
1904, but for only 486 villages of Jagdalpur tehsil (out of 2170 plaints against lessees.80 Flight was not uncommon in these
villages for the state as a whole). The remaining 253 villages of circumstances, judging from the frequency with which malguzars
Jagdalpur tehsil were summarily settled on rough measurement surrendered their land citing inability to pay on account of
of length and breadth of each field, while the other four tehsils desertion. From the state's point of view, the frequent change
and the zamindaris were left unsurveyed, and settled on the of malguzars was not a good thing, as the policy of giving each
plough system.75 In short, at this point it was not an increase new malguzar revenue remission for a certain period led to
in rents that was sought, since that would deter cultivators, but revenue loss.81
an increase in cultivation, which it was hoped to record and tax
by better survey and settlement methods.76 In thekedari villages, Table VI: Malguzars and Muafidars in 1892
the lessees retained twenty to twenty-five per cent of the total
revenue, while elsewhere the rents were collected by the local Tehsil No. ofkhalsa No. of mat- No. ofmuafi Total No.
headmen and paid into the state treasury.77 After the 1876 Villages guzar Villages Villages of Villages
rebellion, majhis were given first preference on the lease, and Jagdalpur 195 225 232 752 '
settlements (e.g. in 1896) were made on the basis of consultations Kondagaon 147 222 112 481
with them.78 But it is clear from Table VI that even after the
Antagarh 303 ml 170 473
rebellion of 1876, there was no significant decrease in the
Bijapur 179 4 90 273
number of malguzars/thekedars or muafidars and they held a
large number of villages. Konta 85 5 9 99
Officially, under rules sanctioned by the Chief Commisioner, Total 909 456 613 2078
peasants could not be removed from their land so long as they Zamindaris excluded
paid their rents. Lands were not alienable and could change Source: LI, 13, I, Suptd. BS, to Pol. Agent, 1982, JRR.
hands only by inheritance. There was only one class of tenures,
although sub-leases were possible.79 However, as the administra-
tion was to discover after the rebellion, ejection from lands Famine: Eating Rabbit Shit to Survive
As part of the standardization of land revenue, rents were
'3 The summary settlement involved estimating the extent of land from demanded in cash from the summary settlement of 1896-8,
the amount of seeds sown, equating them to ploughs and checking the estimate
against an actual count of village plough cattle.
except for the villages around Jagdalpur whose supplies were
74 u, i, Rough notes on the settlement of Jagdalpur Tehsil by A.S. Womack,
required for the royal family. This enhanced the potential for
1902, Pol. Agent, JRR. 7.5 khandis of seeds = 1 plough in settled parts; 5.5 famine as against the traditional system of keeping the portion
in forest areas. of land revenue levied in kind in numerous local storehouses
75 LI, i, i, Note on Settlement for the Gazetteer, JRR. for general availability in times of scarcity.82 In 1896-7, in
76 u, 13, i, Settlement Note, Sly, 1899, JRR. 1899-1900 and again in 1906-8, there were droughts followed
77 DeBrett (1988:63-4).
78 LI, 1, Preliminary Report on Jagdalpur Tehsil by Settlement Officer, 80 For. Sec. i, Aug 1911, Pro. no. 34-40, E.A. DeBrett, Officer on Special
Jwala Pershad, 14 December 1900, JRR. Duty, BS to Commr., Chattisgarh Div., CP, 23 June 1910, NAI.
79 LI, 13, i, Memo on the principles which should guide the Revenue officers 81 LI, 13, i, Note on Sly's Report, 1899, JRR.
and Courts in Feudatory States under direct management in regard to the 82 Int. A Feb. 1897, nos. 256-66, Scarcity in Bastar, NAI; LI, 13, i, Settlement
administration of land, 22 July 1889, JRR. Note, Sly, 1899, JRR.
 Rebellious Pasts 125
124 Subalterns and Sovereigns
squeeze it, then drink the water, keeping the rice bundle for
by famine. The 1899-1900 famine seems to have been one of further use. Many did not even have this. People were forced
the worst famines to affect any part of India.83 to eat rabbit shit, Dayaro Pujari of Kukanar recounted, but even
Traditionally, Bastar had been relatively famine-proof because
they survived, while those who ate earth died.
of the forests: scarcity foods included grass seeds (jhipa), and the
Several large landlords (who were later to be accused of grave
inside of the sulphi tree which was ground and made into bread.
self-interest in the 1910 rebellion) such as the two Ranis, Lai
But in 1899, there was such severe drought that even the mahua
Kalandar Singh, Murat Singh Bakshi, Bala Pershad and Abdul
did not flower and the forest died. In the more fertile areas of
Rahman Khan, made personal contributions towards famine
Jagdalpur and Antagarh, the rice crop was less than one-third
relief, as did the American Methodist Mission, which had been
the normal output in 1899-1900, while in the other areas like
established in Bastar in 1893. Lai Kalandar Singh, for instance,
Bhopalpatnam, the fall was even more drastic.84 Prices rose
gave each of his tenants two rupees per plough, besides remitting
dramatically, from about 45-60 sers of paddy per rupee in the
much of their revenue. Among the tribals themselves, people
1890s to eight sers a rupee in June 1900.85 Wage rates for kabadis shared whatever they had. According to Gayer, 'One richish
or bonded labour and day labourers, on the other hand, had
Muria practically beggared himself by feeding free the villagers
remained stable over a twenty year period, especially since
of three villages.' The state itself suspended some land revenue,
payment was largely in kind.86 though less than half, and set up relief works road and tank
The government's policy in 1896-7 of allowing free exports
construction, and relief kitchens which the tribals were
of gram by merchants from surrounding areas who swarmed to
reluctant to attend, owing to a general distaste for anything
Bastar, while simultaneously buying up stocks at an artificially
to do with the state, although the Maharas, Pankas, Panaras,
low rate to feed labourers and pay wages,during the monsoons,
had grave consequences in 1900.87 Even during normal times, Sundis and other Hinduized castes came.89
There were dispersed attempts at grain looting and related
the monsoon months are lean, hungry months, a time when
'crime' such as cattle theft, both punished with whipping
grain stocks begin to run low, and the roads become impassable.
when caught. The later stages of the famine were also marked
In 1900, peasants fearing that the government would follow the
by cholera, followed by diarrhoea, dysentery and malaria;
same policy as before, hid their grains. By October, the situation
had come to such a pass that people were scared to leave their cowpox in the south and south-west; and large-scale cattle
homes for fear their grain would be requisitioned in their deaths due to lack of fodder and water. Human mortality
was difficult to ascertain as the villagers would flee into the
absence, and grain riots were imminent. 88
Lakshman Jhadi of Gangalur, Bijapur (one of the areas badly forests in times of cholera and not return to the same site,
affected) told me that if any household had rice, they would or else return only after it had been rid of the sickness
pound it very softly at night lest the neighbours hear or else through purification ceremonies. The famine of 1900 was
they would all come and compel forcible redistribution. People compounded by the failure of the Banjaras to come because
would tie rice in small cloth bundles, dip it into water and of lack of water and fodder for their cattle.90 The growing
drought from 1906-8 onwards was in many ways a repeat
of the 1900 experience, with fodder scarcity and cholera,
83 Baker (1993:172-235).
84 Int. A Feb. 1897, nos. 256-66, Scarcity in Bastar, NAI. though it was not as severe as before.91
85 u, 13, i, Jwala Pershad's Settlement Report for Jagdalpur Tehsil, 1900;
xvii, 3, G.W. Gayer to Pol. Agent, CFS, Report on Famine as it affected Bastar
89 GOI For. Int. A Pro. 86-9, February 1900, MN Fox-Strangways, Sec. to
state, 10 November 1900, JRR.
86 u, 13, i, Jwala Pershad's Settlement Report, 1900, JRR.
CC, CP, to Administrators, CFS, 14 August 1899, NAI.
90 xvii, 3, Gayer's Famine Report, 1900, JRR.
87 Int. A Feb. 1897, nos. 256-66, Scarcity in Bastar, NAI.
91 C.B. Ward to Dr A.B. Leonard, 30 June 1908 (1259-7-3:46), MRC.
88 xvii, 3, Gayer's Famine Report, 1900, JRR.
 126 Subalterns and Sovereigns
The 'Punishment of Begar'
After 1876 the demand for begar increased even further as the
bureaucracy and official apparatus in Bastar grew steadily, leading
to greater demands on the peasants for food supplies and labour.
In one representative report from Kuakonda police circle, it was
noted that 123 villages were involved in making roads, carrying
loads for visiting officers from one village to another, carrying
grass and bamboo to Dantewara, repairing forest barriers, cutting
boundary lines in the reserved forests, carrying bamboos to
depots, carrying grass and bamboo to repair schools, hospitals,
forest buildings etc.92 In addition to work on official buildings,
lessees and officials both demanded work on their personal
houses, free supplies for themselves, and fodder for their horses.
Duffadar, Darogah, Patwari, Nakedar . . . all came in turn and
people described sleeping with a stick and a bundle of rice at all
times in readiness to be called for carrying loads on tour.
Chendru, watchman of village Asna, remembered that until as
recently as ten years ago, the police would ask him and other
kotwars to sweep the police station and perform sundry odd jobs
every time they went to make their reports. Sometimes, the
officials even demanded village women, and beyond censuring
them for turning majhis and kotwars into procurers, the senior
administrators saw this purely as a problem of private morality!93
Even traders and foreign merchants felt entitled to conscribe the
peasants,94 and at one point a system developed of private
individuals giving their servants badges (cbupras) similar to those
worn by state servants, in order to create the impression of
authority and thus get labour.95 School masters, who were almost
all non'-tribal, also collected supplies and subscriptions free or at
reduced prices.96 Several old men have recounted to me how
corporal punishment was the norm in schools.
Those were also the days of extensive road building. The
92 xxii, 4, Police Department Report, 14 September 1928, JRR.
93 LI, 25, Part I, Order by E.S. Hyde on the transfer of Revenue Inspector
R.N. Pathak, 1936, JRR.
94 xxxviii, 25, Commissioner Eraser's Tour Notes, 1892, JRR.
95 xxxviii, 26, Chupras, 1892, JRR.
96 In 1886 the first 3 schools were opened, followed by schools in all the
tehsil headquarters by 1889. Seejoshi (1990:50). By 1909 there were 58 schools,
mostly primary. DeBrett (1988:68).
Rebellious Pasts 127
Raipur-Jagdalpur road was finished in 1898; the Jagdalpur-
Chanda road in 1904; the Jagdalpur-Kotpad-Jeypore road com-
menced in 1899; while the Kondagaon-Narayanpur-Antagarh
road was completed in 1907.97 Remembering the building of the
Darbha ghat road from Jagdalpur to Sukma over and down the
mountain, and through the Kanger forests, Chendru Murtak,
aged seventy plus, described it as a heavy task, with the people
having to bring boulders down from the mountain. Dayaro
Pujari too described working on that road when he was a child,
unpaid and surviving the whole day on only a leaf cup of mohua.
His elder sister who had also taken part, agreed 'It was really
a punishment'. If villages were assigned to work on roads far
away, they could be away from their homes for two months,
sometimes during the prime harvesting and threshing season.98
Villages decided among themselves which stretch of the road to
work on, and it was then divided among households on the
basis of ploughs. Among several common complaints that
persisted almost till independence in 1947, i.e. as long as roads
were built by forced labour, was that the length of roads allotted
to a village was too high compared to the number of tenants,
and that they were made to work on both forest and PWD
roads.99 The burden was greater on smaller families, who had
less labour to spare. These were also generally the poorer families.
In several colonial documents, we see an attitude towards
corvee as a crucial form of labour management in tribal areas,
'the only way to get work out of those lazy buggers,' even as
the pressure of notions of free labour compelled a move towards
replacement of corvee by wage labour.100 Thus, Mitchell, Ad-
ministrator of Bastar state noted that in the collective opinion
of the state officials, the system was not wholly bad.
In many parts of the state the problem is not one of obtaining labour
without wages or unduly low wages, but one of obtaining labour at
all ... the people equally object to working for wages calculated at
97 Joshi (1990:75).
98 xxii, Part 4, Extract from the Tour Notes of the Administrator, BS, for
January 1943, JRR.
99 xxii, 1/1, Part i, Corres. Reg. Allotment of Villages for annual repairs
to the PWD roads of the state, JRR.
100 While the IPC outlawed forced labour in 1860, in Bastar it was abolished
only in the 1940s.
 128 Subalterns and Sovereigns
full market rates as they do to providing kavad begar (porterage) for
officials. Men will labour all day to catch one rat for distribution
among four or five, rather than earn 2 1/2 annas each for the same
amount of labour on an adjacent road. Similarly women will spend
from dawn to dusk emptying a forest pool for the meager handful of
small fry which they will find in the mud, rather than undertake paid
but organized work. In a society where money means very little beyond
the price of a bottle of liquor and where the real bugbear is work,
begar nttd not be understood to have the same unpleasant implications
as it would and does in more advanced areas.101
The most common form of resistance to begar was, once
again, flight. Routinely, villagers would desert, especially when
new roads were created near their village, and along with it came
the demands for begar.'02 Even in 1892, A.H.L Fraser noted that
the rents of land within a certain radius of Jagdalpur were
reduced by one third to induce people to stay there.103 The
burden was perhaps not as heavy as elsewhere in India, and
certainly nothing compared to the 240-70 days in a year de-
manded of Kikuyu squatters in Kenya.104 But what mattered here
was not absolute labour time demanded alone, but the arbitrary
nature of much of this demand, which signified the petty power
of the state over people, as well as the constraints of an externally
imposed work discipline.105 Literally, it was begar or labour power
that sustained both the traditional and the British administrative
state. Roads are a perfect example of fetishization in this context
portrayed as a great benefit of'development' and 'civilization5,
they were in fact built through conscripted labour and used to
exploit local resources, for the benefit of classes elsewhere.
Conclusion: How were the Wealthy
and the Law Interwoven?
At the start of the colonial period, the situation was one of
social and political mobility. Access to both land and forest
101 XMI, i, Part i, Corres. Reg. payment for Porterage, Mitchell, 25 September
1940, JRR.
102 xxxviu, 25, Commissioner Fraser's Tour Notes, 1892, JRR.
103 Ibid.
104 Furedi (1989:13).
105 Thompson (1993:352-403); Cooper (1992).
Rebellious Pasts 129
resources depended largely on the amount of labour power one
could command, revenue demands were low, and although there
was trade, there was little permanent settlement by outsiders. In
the colonial period, however, all this changed with the increasing
need of the state to generate revenue through agriculture, but
even more importantly in areas such as Bastar, to gain income
and timber from forests. Railways and ship building were
essential to British imperialism by facilitating the movement of
resources and troops. This in turn required controls on shifting
populations and shifting cultivation, in order to ensure labour
for forest logging and demarcation, or the construction of roads
all of which were necessary to take resources out. A fixed
population was also required for recruitment to armies and
plantations (see chapter 6).
Law played a crucial role in this process. ,It represented a
significant site of contradiction, being both 'a maker of hege-
mony and a means of resistance'.106 As one of the major cultural
idioms of the British state,107 the 'rule of law' was marketed by
British colonialism as the great gift of Empire to its backward
subjects and played a significant role in institutionalizing the
colonial apparatus as indigenous groups too began to make use
of colonial legal systems for their own ends. Yet, particular laws
dealing with expropriation of land and resources away from
groups which formerly controlled them were violent in them-
selves, and the maintenance of'law and order' part of a coercive
order rather than any law.108
In Bastar, by the time forest reservation was considered in
the early 1900s, the principle that all forests belonged to the
state was fairly well entrenched. Considerations of peasant access
were voiced by certain people, but by and large the question
was phrased as one of how not to alienate the locals, and how
to retain their services for forest labour. Here, as elsewhere,
services, first fruit offerings and gifts provided by the peasants
to the raja, especially during Dussehra, which I have argued
could be interpreted as symbolic assertions of their right to the
produce in the first place, were re-interpreted by colonial officials
106 Lazarus-Black and Hirsch (1994); Mann and Roberts (1991:35-6).
107 Thompson (1975); Skillen (1978).
108 Burman and Harell Bond (1979); Sumner (1979).
130 Subalterns and Sovereigns Rebellious Pasts 131

as returns for 'privileges' allowed them in the forest. The con-

tinuation of these 'privileges', therefore, was to be paid for in FromRaipur
^ i East Godavari
work for the new administration making roads and carrying
loads. The alternative was to have the people pay directly in the ^CHARAMA"" (
>~.^.-<
T"-*,-^\- \ ,.' \\
form of nistar dues, and the two, cash dues and services, were
S0) KANKERV- .. i,
on occasion traded off against each other. In the English case, ;-' BHANUPRATAPPUR <V / \
E.P. Thompson has described how through a series of cases and
the establishment of legal precedents, there was a 'reification "Y v.~_^o~T-V~^--\ V ^~^-' SfANTAGARH \KESHKAL

and cashing of usages as properties'.109 In many of these cases, "( "' \ ,' ) * r-., \
the courts relied on the legal fiction of customary rights in '. I V r -., . \
commons being derivative from some original grant. But there c.^ JPHARASGAONt ""--' "'^ \ NARAYANPUR X*^T4'" " )
too, as Thompson notes, 'Anglo-Saxon and Norman monarchs
and lords did not graciously institute but, rather, regulated and
r.^. ^ v-^^ ;
curtailed' these rights."0
\. \ ^
, ^ ^^ .. T~Q KONDAGAON ,
l.-\ \ '' ^^s )
In the colonies, however, the legal justifications for state '? -7 ~-/ ' \-N"~>^-
ownership of land varied considerably. Nineteenth century C'"' r-/^
/^ .'"Chhota Dangar \ ,'
Australian courts were divided on whether aboriginal ownership
of land had survived the right of conquest,1" while in India,
this right was recognized only for certain classes, e.g. zamindars,
X

'r-v-t: -"
: * ^,K^V

\
_ _ .v
^IPURI..

X &I
and not for others, especially those who held resources in Kutru."^^
Kutru - ^Barsur
LJU i
common.112 In short, law was not just transported from England ..BHAIRAMGARH 1 X.^/VAGDALPUR
to the colonies but represented a complex mixture of imperial '- ^--.A- */ 7^7 ;KESHLOOR ALNAR
;i<isHLOOR -ALNAR
BHOPALPATNAM
'ALPATNAM/ --,. ^i Q
i-j ^
^V /"
/" 7
/ "">-NETHANAR
"'""> -NETHANA
legislation, local administrative initiatives and the particulars of I v ..,-' ^BIJAPUR
,-'"' /BIJAPUR X ( / DANTEWARA>O_ N / * f
a changing agrarian history.113 But in each case, the effect was ^2^"^"" .' .... / KUAKONDA ** }-/^" .' (
the consolidation of the colonial state, and the recasting of '--j JBailadila' / \_,o^6-O '^ (|
existing patterns of ownership and rights in common resources. / /'"" * '^ ' ' U

In time, these new patterns would come to be seen as 'customary' \R

through that peculiar irony with which history is created. X
Jagargunda
~i
i Chintalnar
KEY
>
District Boundary
Tahsil Boundary
Revenue Indpector's
Circle Boundary
Road Connecting
Important Places
0 District Headquarter
9 Tahsil Headquarter
109 Thompson (1993:136).
110 Ibid.:133.
111 Hookey (1984). Map 5: Bastar: Sites of 1910 Rebellion
112 Singh (1986:15).
113 Vincent (1989).
Source: Based on Index Map of Bastar in P.C. Agarwal, (1979:12)