INDIAN HISTORY (INDIA'S STRUGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE: BIPIN CHANDRA ) :CHAPTER 1. THE FIRST MAJOR CHALLENGE: THE REVOLT OF 1857

CHAPTER 2. CIVIL REBELLIONS AND
TRIBAL UPRISINGS
The Revolt of 1857 was the most dramatic instance of traditional
India’s struggle against foreign rule. But it was no sudden
occurrence. It was the culmination of a century long tradition of
fierce popular resistance to British domination.
The establishment of British power in India was a prolonged
process of piecemeal conquest and consolidation and the
colonialization of the economy and society. This process produced
discontent, resentment and resistance at every stage. This
popular resistance took three broad forms: civil rebellions, tribal
uprisings and peasant movements. We will discuss the first two
in this chapter.
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The series of civil rebellions, which run like a thread
through the first 100 years of British rule, were often led by
deposed rajas and nawabs or their descendants, uprooted and
impoverished zamindars, landlords and poligars (landed military
magnates in South India), and ex-retainers and officials of the
conquered Indian states. The backbone of the rebellions, their
mass base and striking power came from the rack-rented
peasants, ruined artisans and demobilized soldiers.
These sudden, localized revolts often took place because of
local grievances although for short periods they acquired a broad
sweep, involving armed bands of a few hundreds to several
thousands. The major cause of all these civil rebellions taken as a
whole was the rapid changes the British introduced in the
economy, administration and land revenue system. These
changes led to the disruption of the agrarian society, causing
prolonged and widespread suffering among its constituents Above
all, the colonial policy of intensifying demands for land revenueand extracting as large an amount as possible produced a
veritable upheaval in Indian villages. In Bengal, for example, in
less than thirty years land revenue collection was raised to nearly
double the amount collected under the Mughals. The pattern was
repeated in other us of the country as British rule spread. And
aggravating the unhappiness of the farmers was the fact that not
even a part of the enhanced revenue was spent on the
development of agriculture or the welfare of the cultivator.
Thousands of zamindars and poligars lost control over their
land and its revenues either due to the extinction of their rights
by the colonial state or by the forced sale of their rights over land
because of their inability to meet the exorbitant land revenue
demanded. The proud zamindars and poligars resented this loss
even more when they were displaced by rank outsiders —
government officials and the new men of money — merchants
and moneylenders. Thus they, as also the old chiefs, who had
lost their principalities, had personal scores to settle with the
new rulers.
Peasants and artisans, as we have seen earlier, had their
own reasons to rise up in arms and side with the traditional elite.
Increasing demands for land revenue were forcing large numbers
of peasants into growing indebtedness or into selling their lands.
The new landlords, bereft of any traditional paternalism towards
their tenants, pushed up rents to ruinous heights and evicted
them in the case of non-payment. The economic decline of the
peasantry was reflected in twelve major and numerous minor
famines from 1770 to 1857.
The new courts and legal system gave a further fillip to the
dispossessors of land and encouraged the rich to oppress the
poor. Flogging, torture and jailing of the cultivators for arrears of
rent or land revenue or interest on debt were quite common. The
ordinary people were also hard hit by the prevalence of
corruption at the lower levels of the police, judiciary and general
administration. The petty officials enriched themselves freely at
the cost of the poor. The police looted, oppressed and tortured
the common people at will. William Edwards, a British official,
wrote in 1859 that the police were ‘a scourge to the people’ andthat ‘their oppression and exactions form one of the chief
grounds of dissatisfaction with our government.’
The ruin of Indian handicraft industries, as a result of the
imposition of free trade in India and levy of discriminatory tariffs
against Indian goods in Britain, pauperized millions of artisans.
The misery of the artisans was further compounded by the
disappearance of their traditional patrons and buyers, the
princes, chieftains, and zamindars.
The scholarly and priestly classes were also active in
inciting hatred and rebellion against foreign rule. The traditional
rulers and ruling elite had financially supported scholars,
religious preachers, priests, pandits and maulvis and men of arts
and literature. With the coming of the British and the ruin of the
traditional landed and bureaucratic elite, this patronage came to
an end, and all those who had depended on it were impoverished.
Another major cause of the rebellions was the very foreign
character of British rule. Like any other people, the Indian people
too felt humiliated at being under a foreigner’s heel. This feeling
of hurt pride inspired efforts to expel the foreigner from their
lands.
The civil rebellions began as British rule was established in
Bengal and Bihar, arid they occurred in area after area as it was
incorporated into colonial rule. There was hardly a year without
armed opposition or a decade without a major armed rebellion in
one part of the country or the other. From 1763 to 1856, there
were more than forty major rebellions apart from hundreds of
minor ones.
Displaced peasants and demobilized soldiers of Bengal led
by religious monks and dispossessed zamindars were the first to
rise up in the Sanyasi rebellion, made famous by Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee in his novel Anand Math, that lasted from
1763 to 1800. It was followed by the Chuar uprising which
covered five districts of Bengal and Bihar from 1766 to 1772 and
then, again, from 1795 to 1816. Other major rebellions in
Eastern India were those of Rangpur and Dinajpur, 1783;
Bishnupur and Birbhum, 1799; Orissa zamindars, 1804-17; and
Sambalpur, 1827-40.





(UPTO PAGE NO. 14)