History Optional (Tribal and peasant revolts) by Shivlal Gupta

Model Answer

Question #1. “The tribal revolts in colonial India could be better understood in the background of state monopoly verses community control”.  10 marks (150 words)

Hints:

After the establishment of state monopoly over the forest areas under the Indian Forest Act 1865, the colonial state was in search of a more stringent piece of legislation to regulate the local use of forested areas.

This need was fulfilled by the Indian Forest Act 1865 & 1878, but there was a serious debate over the kind of control that should be exercised over the forests. Officials like B.H. Baden Powell argued that the state had an irrevocable authority on forest resources and any right granted to the people would only be a ‘privilege’ received at the ‘pleasure of the state’.

This position refused to recognize the fact that the forest dwellers, pastoralists and agricultural communities enjoyed some customary rights in the forests and were therefore entitled to use these resources.

This position, termed as the ‘annexationist’ position was based on the theory that all land which was not under cultivation belonged to the state and that all customary use was exercised at the mercy of the monarch. However this position was contested by the Madras government. The Commissioner of Madras argued that village woodlands were not village ‘privilege’ but village property, thereby inadvertently admitting that the state had no absolute control over forests.

The first Inspector General of Forests, Dietrich Brandis, tried to mediate between these two ends of the spectrum. While Brandis himself believed in the critical role of the ‘village forests’, and agreed with the Madras government that local people in India should have rights similar to the rights of a user in Europe.

But he proposed an in-between position to reconcile the opposed arguments, suggesting that the rights in village forests should be exercised under the overall control of the state. So he advocated a restricted take-over of forests by the State. However this position gave way to a centralized 1878 Forest Act

Question #2. “Not only the peasant revolts/uprisings, but also the tribal revolts went through several changes in 19th Century”. Discuss the statement with special reference to Munda rebellion. 15 marks (250 words)

Hints:

In pre-colonial India popular protest against the Mughal rulers and their officials was not uncommon. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed many peasant uprisings against the ruling class. Imposition of a high land revenue demand by the state: corrupt practices and harsh attitude of the tax collecting officials, were some of the many reasons which provoked the peasants to rise in revolt. However, the establishment of colonial rule in India and the various policies of the colonial government had a much more devastating effect on the Indian peasants and tribes.

The overall impact of economic changes on the peasant and tribal society was very destructive. The appropriation of peasants surplus by the company and its agents, the increasing burden of taxes made the peasants completely dependant on the mercy of the revenue intermediaries and officials, the merchants and the money-lenders. Moreover, the destruction of indigenous industry led to migration of large scale workers from industry to agriculture. The pressure on land increased but the land revenue and agricultural policy of the government allowed little scope for the improvement of Indian agriculture.

While the British economic policy led to pauperization and impoverishment of the Indian peasantry, the British administration turned a deaf ear to the peasants grievances. British law and judiciary did not aid the peasantry; it safeguarded the interest of the government and its collaborators-the landlords, the merchants and the money-lenders. Thus being the prey of colonial exploitation and being deprived of justice from the colonial administration the peasants took up arms to protect themselves. The grievances of the tribal people were not different from those of the peasants. But what made them more aggrieved was the encroachment by outsiders into their independent tribal polity.

Peasant and tribal movements have been interpreted differently by different schools of historians. The historians with sympathies towards the British and the established order often regarded these uprisings as a problem of law and order. The range of problems faced by these tribals and peasants from the pre-colonial to the colonial times (see above) were often overlooked as possible causes for these uprisings. The rebels were often portrayed as primitive savages resisting “civilization”. The Nationalists tended to appropriate the peasant the tribal history to the purposes of the anti-colonial struggle ignoring certain other facets of the oppressed people’s struggle. Those more sympathetic to the cause of the tribals and peasants however tended to negate very often the logic of peasant and tribal protest in terms( of the people’s own experience. It is also necessary to understand the domain of peasant and tribal action in its own terms. This effort has scarcely begun yet.

The rebellions that took place before 1857 were not apolitical acts; they constituted political action that demonstrated, although in different ways, the political consciousness of the peasantry. As RanajitGuha has shown, they exhibited, first of all, a clear awareness of the relations of power in rural society and a determination to overturn that structure of authority. The rebels were quite conscious of the political sources of oppression, and this was demonstrated in their targets of attack-the zamindars’ houses, their grain stocks, the moneylenders, the merchants and ultimately the state machinery of the British, which came forward to protect these local agents of oppression. A clear identification of the enemies was.