Peasant Movements And Uprisings After 1857. How Indigo Revolt Succeeded?

Colonial economic policies, the new land revenue system, the colonial administrative and judicial systems, and the ruin of handicrafts leading to the over-crowding of land transformed the agrarian structure and impoverished the peasantry. When the peasants could take it no longer, they resisted this oppression and exploitation.

The most militant and widespread of the peasant movements was the Indigo Revolt of 1859-60.

A major reason for the success of the Indigo Revolt was the tremendous cooperation, organization and discipline of the ryots. Another was the complete unity among Hindu and Muslim peasants. Leadership for the movement was provided by not just ryots but 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.Missionaries were another group that 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.

During the 1870s and early 1880s, Bengal was facing agrarian unrest, because of efforts by 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.

The main form of struggle was that of legal resistance. There was very little violence — it only occurred when the zamindars tried to compel the ryots to submit to their terms by force.It was not aimed at the zamindari system. The agrarian leagues kept within the bounds of the law, used the legal machinery to fight the zamindars, and raised no anti-British demands.So 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.

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.Peasant resistance also developed in other parts of the country. Mappila outbreaks were endemic in Malabar.

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, centred almost wholly on economic issues and against zamindars and moneylenders etc.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. 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.