CIVIL REBELLIONS AND TRIBAL UPRISINGS…
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 uprising and peasant movements. We will discuss the first two in this chapter..
The series of civil rebellions, which run like a thread thought the first 100 years of British rule, were often led by deposed Rajas and Nawab or their descendants, uprooted and impoverished Zamindars, Landlords and poligars (landed military’s magnates in South India),and ex-retainers and officials of the conquered India state .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 serval thousand..
The major cause of all these civil rebellion’s taken as a whole was the rapid changes the British introduced in the economy, administration and land revenue system. These change led to the disruption of the agrarian society, causing prolonged and
widespread suffering among its constituents..
Tribal Uprisings in British India..
CIVIL REBELLIONS AND TRIBAL UPRISINGS… Many of the various tribal groups in India revolted against the forceful and devastating intrusions into their life and region by the British. The tribals had been living peacefully and in harmony with nature for hundreds of years in their own forests prior to the arrival of the colonial powers. The British came and introduced many changes in their way of life and also introduced outsiders into their turf. This reduced them to the status of labourers and debtors from masters of their own land. The uprisings were basically against this unwelcome intrusion and a fight for their independence.
In accordance with the geographic area occupied, tribal movements are further split into two kinds.
- a) Non-Frontier Tribe: These tribes make up 89% of the overall tribal population. The non-frontier tribes were mostly restricted to Andhra, West-Central India, and central India. Khonds, Savard, Santhal, Munda, Orson, Kaya, Kool, Gond and Bhil were a few of the tribes that took part in the movements. These tribes’ uprisings were quite violent and included several significant uprisings.
- b) Frontier Tribes: These are the inhabitants of Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura, seven of the frontier states in the northeast.
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Tribal Uprisings in British India..
Before the uprising of 1857, also known as the Indian Rebellion or the First War of Independence, there were several instances of resistance by the people of the Indian subcontinent against British colonial rule. These acts of resistance, though sometimes localized and sporadic, laid the groundwork for the broader movement of dissent that culminated in the events of 1857.
After the British took over parts of northern India following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, there were occasional outbursts of unrest from different groups of Indian people for about a hundred years. One form of this unrest was civil uprisings. Below are descriptions of some important civil uprisings during this time:
Sanyasi Revolt (1763-1800)
During a terrible famine in 1770 and due to the harsh economic policies of the British, a group of sanyasi (Hindu ascetics) in Eastern India decided to fight against British rule. These sanyasi, who were originally peasants or had been kicked off their land, joined forces with small zamindars (landlords), former soldiers, and poor villagers who had lost everything. They attacked British Company factories and treasuries and fought against the Company’s soldiers. It took a long time for the British under Warren Hastings to finally defeat the sanyasi. Both Hindus and Muslims took part in these uprisings, which are sometimes called the Fakir Rebellion. Important leaders included Magnum Shah, Chirag Ali, Musa Shah, Bhawani Pathak, and Debi Chaudhuriid. Debi Chaudhari involvement highlights the important role of women in early resistance against the British. The Sanyasi Revolt inspired Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay to write the semi-historical novel “Ananda math.” He also wrote another novel, “Devi Chaudhuriid,” recognizing the importance of women in the struggle against a foreign rule that threatened traditional Indian values.
Revolt in Midnapore and Dhal hum (1766-74)
In 1760, the English took control of Midnapore, where there were about 3,000 zamindars (landlords) and talukdars (estate holders) who had good relationships with their riot’s (tenant farmers). However, this peaceful situation changed when the English introduced a new land revenue system in 1772. According to the British governor Vansittart, the zamindars of Midnapore supported the riots in conflicts with English revenue officials. Eventually, the zamindars from areas like Dhal hum, Mangham, Raipur, Planchet, Jhatibuni, Karnagarh, and Bagri, located in the Jungle Mahals of western and north-western Midnapore, lost their landholdings by the 1800s. Important leaders of these uprisings were Damodaran Singh and Jagannathan
Civil Uprisings in Gorakhpur, Basti and Bachrach (1781)
Warren Hastings needed money for wars against the Marathas and Mysore, so he came up with a plan to involve English officers as revenue farmers in Awadh. In 1778, he got Major Alexander Hanna, who knew the area well, to become a revenue farmer. Hanna got control over Gorakhpur and Bachrach and was supposed to collect 22 lakh rupees for a year. This was actually a secret test by the Company to see how much money they could get from the region. However, Hanna’s harsh methods and high demands upset the people who were doing well under the Nawab’s rule. In 1781, the zamindars and farmers rebelled against Hanna’s unfair demands. Within weeks, all of Hannah’s helpers were either killed or surrounded by guerrilla fighters from the zamindars. Even though the rebellion was put down, Hanna was fired, and his control over the revenue was taken away forcefully.
THOUSANDS OF ZAMINDARS AND POLIGARS..
British colonial rule had a tremendous impact on all sections of Indian society. Can
you imagine being ruled by some strangers year after year? No, we cannot. Most
of us were born after 1947 when India had already become independent. Do you
know when the British conquered India and colonised its economy they faced stiff
resistance from the people.
There were a series of civil rebellions. These rebellions
were led by rulers who were deposed by the Britishers ex-officials of the conquered
Indian states, impoverished zamindars and poligars. It brought together people
having different ethnic, religious and class background against the British rule. In this
lesson, we will read about some important popular uprisings their nature and
significance.
We will also read about the uprising of 1857 which had a major impact
on our National Movement.
Thousand 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 exorbitant land revenue demanded.The proud zamindars anmmd pligars resented this loss revenue demanded .The proud zamindars and poligars resented this loss even more when they were displaced by rank outsiders_government officials and new men of money- merchants and moneylenders. Thus they also the old chiefs , who had lost their princepalities, had personal scores to sattle with the new rulees…
The scholarly and priestly classes were also active in inciting hatres and rebellions against foreign rule…looks at peasants who lost their land to urban expansion in the last three decades. It seeks a territorial explanation for the gap between the magnitude of peasants’ grievances and the low frequency of protests on the one hand, and peasant’s mobilizational capacity on the other. It argues that the mobilizational capacity of peasants is undermined by the snowballing effect of forced relocation. Forced relocation often leads to the deterioration of villagers’ household financial status, disintegration of village organization, and rupture of collective identity, all of which contribute to village deterritorialization. More specifically, relocation produces deterritorialization through nebulous compensation negotiations that undermine mutual trust within villages, phased demolition and relocation that gradually destroy the physical environment and village solidarity, and switching peasants’ status from members of village collectives to urban residents, thereby splitting villagers’ interests. These moves weaken villagers’ potential for successful collective action.
The traditional rulers and ruling elite had financially supporter scholars religion 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 patron patronage came to ab end and all those who had defended on it were impoverished..
The traditional rulers and ruling elite had financially supported scholars , religion 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 foreigners heel.This feeling of hurt pride inspired efforts to expel the foreigners from their lands..
The civil rebellions began as British rule was established in Bengal and Bihar, and 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 rebellions in one part of the country or the other. Form 1763 to 1856,there were more than forty major rebellions aapart 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 Chatterjea in his novel Anand Math, that lasted from 1763 to 1800. It was followed by the Chuar uprising which covered five district of Bengal and Bihar from 1766 to 1772 and then, again from 1795 to 1816. Other major rebellions in Eastern Indian were those of Rangpur and Dinajpur, 1783,Bishnupur and Birbhum, 1799, Orissa zamindars, 1804-17, and Sambalpur, 1827-40.