Indian Peasant Uprisings Author(S): Kathleen Gough Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol
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Indian Peasant Uprisings Author(s): Kathleen Gough Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 32/34, Special Number (Aug., 1974), pp. 1391-1393+1395-1397+1399+1401-1403+1405-1407+1409+1411-1412 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4363915 Accessed: 28-04-2020 06:46 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic and Political Weekly This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Tue, 28 Apr 2020 06:46:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Indian Peasant Uprisings Kathleen Gough Indian peasants have a long tradition of armed uprisings, reaching back at least to the initial Bri- tish conquest and the last decades of Moghuil governnent. For more than 200 years peasants in all the major regions have risen repeatedly against landlords, revenue agents and other bureaucrats, money- lenders, police and military forces. During this period there have been at least 77 revolts, the smallest of which probably engaged several thousand peasants in active support or in combat. About 30 of these revolts must have affected tens of thousands of peasants, and about 12, several huindreds of thousands. The uprisings were responses to deprivation of unusually severe character, always economic, and often also involving physical brutality or ethnic persecution. The political independence of India has not brought surcease from these distresses. Major up- risings under communist leadership since British rutle not unnaturally show a continuity of tactics with earlier peasant revolts. Of these, the more successful have involved mzass insurrections, initially against specific grievances, and the less successful, social banditry and terrorist vengeance. Both in the case of communist revolts and in that of earlier peasant uprisings, social banditry and terrorist vengeance, when they occurred, appear to have happened in the wake of repression of other forms of revolt. Although the revolts have been widespread, certain areas have an especially strong tradition of rebellion. Bengal has been a hotbed of revolt, both rural and urban, from the earliest days of British ruile. Some districts in particular, such as Mymensingh, Dinajpur, Rangpnlr and Pabna in Bangladesh and the Santhal regions of Bihar and West Bengal, figured repeatedly in peasant strutggles and continue to do so. The tribal areas of Andhra Pradesh and the state of Kerala also have long traditions of revolt. Hill re- gions where tribal or other minorities retain a certain independence, ethnic unity and tactical manoeuvr- ability, and where the terrain is suited to guerilla warfare, are of course especially favourable for peasant struggles, but these have also occurred in densely populated plain regions such as Thanjavur, where rack- renting, land hunger, landless labour and unemnployment cause great suffering. IN Kilvenmani village in eastern Than- during and since British rule. We may leadership against the landlords and the javur, Tamil Nadu, in 1969, a group of define a social movement as "the at- British and the pacifying influence of Harijan landles's labourers, influenced tempt of a group to effect change in Gandhi on the peasantry.7 I would by the CPI(M), struck for higher wa- the face of resistance"5 and peasants argue that peasant revolts have in fact ges in view of the increased produc- as people who engage in agricultural or been common both during and since tion and price inflation brought about related production with primitive (pa- the British period, every state of pre- by the 'green revolution'.1 Goons hired laeotechnic) mneans and who surrender sent-day India having experienced se- by their landlords arrived on their part of their produce or its equivalent veral over the past two hundred years. street at night, imprisoned 42 men, to landlords or to agents of the state. Thus in a recent brief survey I disco- women and children in a hut and burnt This article is confined to social move- vered 77 revolts, the smallest of which these people to ashes.2 Again, in ments which (a) involved peasants as probably engaged several thousand pea- Chandwa-Rupaspur village, Bihar, in the sole or main force, (b) were class sants in active support or in combat. November 1971, a movement of San- struggles against those who exacted About 30 revolts must have affected thal tribespeople resisting encroach- surplus from peasants arnd (c) under- several tens of thousands, and about 12, ment of their land was met by land- took or were provoked to armed strug- several hundreds of thousands. Includ- lords' thugs. For Santhals were roast- gle in the course of their careers. ed in these revolts is the 'Indian Mu- ed alive, 10 were shot dead or hacked Generally, the scope and significance tiny' of 1857-58, in which vast bodies to pieces, 33 were severely wounded of India's peasant uprisings have been of peasants fought or otherwise work- and 45 huts burned down.3 These in- understressed. Barrington Moore, Jr, ed to destroy British rule over an area cidents and many similar ones have il- for example, in spite of acknowledge- of more than 500,000 square miles.8 lustrated a process of peasant resistance ing at some length instances of peasant The frequency of these revolts and the and landlord reprisals that has inten- revolts described in recent Indian writ- fact that at least 34 of those I consi- sified in India during the past seven ings, concludes that China forms "a dered were solely or partly by Hindus, years. Sinoe the Naxalbari uprising in most instructive contrast with India, cause me to doubt that the caste system West Bengal in 1967 and the emergence where peasant rebellions in the pre- has seriously impeded peasant rebellion of rebel and revolutionary groups among modern period were relatively rare and in times of trouble. both townsfolk and peasantry, several completely ineffective and where mo- There does seem no doubt that, apart peasant struggles have erupted, hun- dernisation impoverished the peasants from the Mutiny, peasant uprisings in dreds of landlords, police and money- at least as much as in China and over China usually had a wider geographi- lenders have been assassinated, and as long a period of time".6 Moore at- cal scope than those in India. At least thousands of peasants have died by tributes the alleged weakness of Indian since late Moghul times the reasons for violence.4 peasant movements to the caste system this may have included the political Social movements among the peasant- with its hierarchical divisions among vil- fragmentation as well as the diversity ry have been widely prevalent in India lagers and to the strength of bourgeois of language and culture among India's 1391 This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Tue, 28 Apr 2020 06:46:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Special Number August 1974 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY people. During the later decades of nial and post-colonial state than from dura to extract taxes from them in tra- Moghul rule the country had already the caste system or from peculiarities ditionally independent hill 'regions.'5 disintegrated into a number of virtual- of village structure. At least two Indian As it spread gradually throughout ly autonomous, mutually warring king- authors have, indeed, argued that the India, however, British rule brought a doms and principalities between whose caste system provided a framework for degree of disruption and suffering peasants there was little contact. The the organisation of peasant rebellions, among the peasantry which was, it British conquered India piecemeal over since in many cases peasants were able seems likely, more prolonged and wide- a hundred year period from the mid- to assemble quickly through the me- spread than had occurred in Moghul eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth cen- dium of their caste assemblies." times.'6 The effects of British rule turies. Early revolts against their rule When peasant uprisings figure in the came, of course, unevenly and in sta- therefore tended to occur at different British literature, they are often ob- ges, but once operative, they created a dates in different regions, although scured under such headings as "com- structure of underdevelopment in the there was inter-regional co-ordination munal riots" between major religions, Indian countryside which became en- among the largest - for example, those fanatical religious cults, or the activi- demic, and which has been modified led by Raja Chait Singh in Oudh and ties of "criminal" castes and tribes. but never eradicated since Indepen- other areas in 1778-81, by Vizier Ali in While the armed struggles of peasants dence. Although I cannot analyse this Gorakhpur in 1799, and by the military have often had these characteristics, a structure in detail here, the following chiefs (poligars) of Madras and Andhra large proportion of such movements seem to me to have been the major in 1801-5.9 has also, and primarily, been concern- changes that have affected Indian pea- ed with the struggles of tenants, agri- Shortly after the British had subdued sants during the 200-odd years be- cultural labourers, plantation workers, tween the beginning of British rule most of India a huge uprising, widely or tribal cultivators, against the exac- and the present time.