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Dr. Mahipal Singh Rathore

 ABOUT ME

Dr. MAHIPAL SINGH RATHORE

I teach History, Polity and

Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
6 Years of teaching Experience.
Mentor for UPSC aspirants
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@mahipalrathore
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PLUS ICONIC
 Peasantry under the Crown
The peasants suffered from:

High rents,
Illegal levies,
Arbitrary evictions,

Unpaid labour in zamindari areas,

Heavy land revenue in Ryotwari areas.

Farmer overburdened with
rents/taxes/crop failures

Borrowed from moneylenders,

mortgaging his land and cattle
Moneylenders took advantage of the
farmers’ difficulties by extracting
heavy interests and framing
fraudulent loan contracts (many
farmers were illiterate)
Moneylender seized the farmers’
belongings – actual cultivators
reduced to ‘tenants-at-will’
Changed nature of Peasant Resistance after
1857
• Peasants emerged as the main force in agrarian
movements, fighting directly for their own demands (not
led by fallen zamindars anymore).

• Demands centred completely on economic issues.

• Movements were directed against immediate enemies of

peasants – foreign planters, Indian zamindars and
moneylenders.
• The struggles were directed towards specific and limited
objectives and redressal of particular grievances.

Foreign rule was not the target of these movements.

• Limited territorial reach.

• No continuity of struggle or long-term organization.

• Peasants gradually developed awareness of their legal

rights and asserted them in and outside courts.
Indigo dye is an organic compound with
a distinctive blue color.

Historically, indigo was a natural

dye extracted from the leaves of some
plants of the Indigofera genus, in
particular Indigofera tinctoria.

Mainly used in the production of

denim cloth suitable for blue jeans.
The dye from
plantations was
processed in
factories in
Bengal, often
using forced
labour.
“About the middle of the nineteenth
century another tyranny arose in Bengal.
Certain English people established
themselves as landlords in order to carry
on trade in indigo. They made very hard
terms with their tenants about the
cultivation of the indigo plant. The tenants
were compelled to grow the indigo plant in
a certain part of their holdings, and then
had to sell this at a fixed rate to the English
landlords or planters, as they are called.
This system is called the plantation
system.”
“The British Government then came to the help of the
planters, and passed special laws to force the poor tenants to
cultivate indigo according to those conditions. By these laws,
with their punishments, the tenants of those plantations
became serfs and slaves of the planters in some respects.
They were terrorized over by the agents of the indigo
factories, for these English or Indian agents felt quite secure
with the protection of the government.
Often, when the price of indigo fell, it was far more
profitable for the cultivator to grow something else, such as
rice, but he was not permitted to do so. There was a great
deal of trouble and misery for the cultivator, and at last,
exasperated beyond measure the worm turned.”
Indigo cultivators
and workers were
often hit hard by
famines.
 Indigo Revolt
• Revolt by the indigo peasants
broke out in 1859.

• Leaders: Digambar Biswas and

Bishnu Biswas of Nadia district.
• The cultivators decided not to grow indigo under duress
and resisted the physical pressure of the planters and their
lathiyals (paid henchmen with lathis, acting as retainers).

• The planters were often backed by the police and the

courts.

• The rebels also organized a counter force against the

planters’ attacks.
Mongolganj indigo factory (nil kuthi)
ruins in North 24 Parganas, today.
• The planters tried methods like evictions and enhanced
rents.

• The ryots replied by going on a rent strike – refusing to pay

rent and physically resisting eviction attempts.

• With time, the farmers learnt to use the legal machinery

and initiated legal action against planters by fund
collection.
The Bengali intelligentsia played a significant role by
supporting the peasants’ cause through:

Newspaper campaigns,
Organization of mass meetings,
Preparing memoranda on peasants’ grievances,
Supporting them on legal battles.
1859 – Dinobondhu Mitra wrote
the play ‘Nil Darpan’ in Dhaka on
plight of Indigo farmers and
cruelty metted out to them by
landlords.
1860 – Finally, the British government formed the Indigo
Commission due to Abdul Latif's initiative with the goal of
putting an end to the repressions of indigo planters.

In the commission report, E. W. L. Tower noted that "not a

chest of Indigo reached England without being stained with
human blood".

As a result, the government issued a notification that the

ryots would not be compelled to grow indigo and that it
would ensure that all disputes were settled by legal means.

The Indigo Act 1862, finally put an end to indigo

plantations using forced labour.
An indigo factory in Bengal.

• When Bengal indigo was far

superior to German indigo it
was called ‘devil’s dye’ in
Germany.

• This finally changed when

Alfred von Baeyer invented
the chemical dye in 1870s.
 Pabna Agrarian Leagues
1870s to 1880s – Agrarian uprisings in eastern Bengal, owing
to oppression by the zamindars.

Zamindars were extracting enhanced rents beyond the

legal limits and prevented the tenants from acquiring
occupancy rights under Act X of 1859.

Zamindars also carried out forcible evictions, seizure of

cattle and crops and prolonged, costly litigation in courts
(where peasants could not afford lawyers).
Pabna
• Peasants of Yusufshahi Pargana in Pabna
district formed an agrarian league to
resist the demands of the zamindars.

• The league went on a rent strike –

refusing to pay rents to the zamindars
and challenged them in courts.

• Funds were raised by ryots to fight the

court cases.
• The main form of the struggle was legal resistance.

There was very little violence.

Most cases were solved by persuasion of zamindars by

British officials, under legal pressure.

Many peasants were able to acquire occupancy rights and

resist enhanced rents.
1885 – Bengal Tenancy Act was passed.

This protected the peasants from the worst aspects of

zamindari oppression.

Intellectuals like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, RC Dutt, and

the Indian Association under Surendranath Banerjea took
up the peasants’ cause.
 Deccan Riots
• Ryots of the Deccan region suffered heavy taxation under
the Ryotwari system.

• Peasants exploited by moneylender networks.

• Moneylenders were mostly Gujaratis or Marwadis –

peasants started considering them outsiders (as a result of
rising sentiments after being systematically exploited).
Conditions worsened due to:

• A crash in cotton prices after the end of the American Civil

War (1864).

• The British Indian government raised land revenue by 50%

in 1867.

• A succession of droughts, leading to bad harvests.

1874 – Tension between moneylenders and peasants
resulted in a social boycott movement organized by the ryots
against the “outsider” moneylenders.

Ryots refused to:

Buy from their shops,
Cultivate their fields,
Barbers, washermen, shoemakers refused to serve
moneylenders.

• The social boycott spread to Poona, Ahmednagar, Solapur

and Satara.
• The social boycott turned into agrarian riots in many places.

Attacks on moneylenders’ houses and shops.

The debt bonds and deeds were seized and publicly burnt.

• The government repressed the movement.

• As a conciliatory measure for farmers, the Deccan

Agriculturalists Relief Act was passed in 1879.
 Weaknesses
• Lack of adequate understanding of colonialism.

• The 19th Century peasants did not have a new ideology or a

new social, economic and political programme.

• The uprisings (even the militant ones) occurred within the

framework of the old societal order – lacked a concept of
an alternative society.
“For a colonized people the most
essential value, because the most
concrete, is first and foremost the
land: the land which will bring them
bread and, above all, dignity.”

– Frantz Fanon.
“Yes, there can be few sights that are sadder
than the sunken eyes of our kisans with the
hunted, hopeless look in them. What a burden
our peasantry have carried these many years!
And let us not forget that we, who have
prospered a little, have been part of that burden.
All of us, foreigner and Indian, have sought to
exploit that long-suffering kisan and have
mounted on his back. Is it surprising that his
back breaks?
But, at long last, there came a glimmering of
hope for him, a whisper of better times and
lighter burdens. A little man came who looked
straight into his eyes, and deep down into his
shrunken heart, and sensed his long agony.”
In the next lecture, we shall learn
about the emergence of Gandhi.
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