Peasant Uprisings

Growing burden of taxation, eviction from land and the Bengal famine led to the impoverishment of a large section of the peasantry. Many of these people being evicted from lands joined the bands of Sanyasis and Fakirs.

Though they were religious mendicants they used to loot the grain stocks of the rich and the treasuries of the local government. The Sanyasis often distributed their wealth among the poor and established their own government. However, they could not sustain their struggle for long in the face of strong repressive measures of the British rulers.

Bankim Chanddra Chatterjee wrote a novel, Anand Math to imortalise the Sanyasi Rebellion. Peasants of Rangpur and Dinajpur, two districts of Bengal, were aggrieved by the tyranny of the revenue contractors. One such revenue contractor, Debi Singh, created a reign of terror by torturing the peasants in order to collect taxes.

When the British officials failed to protect the peasant, the peasants took the law in their own hands. They attacked the local cutchheries and store houses of the contractors and government officials. The rebels formed their own government and stopped paying revenues to the Company agents. This rebellion was in 1783. The rebels were finally forced to surrender before the Company officials.

In South India, the situation was in no way different. The dispossessed landlords and displaced cultivators raised the banner of revolt. The poligars of Tamilnadu, Malabar and coastal Andhra revolted against the colonial rule in the late 18th and the early 19th century.

The revolt of the Mappilas of Malabar was most significant. The Mappilas of Malabar were the descendants of the Arab settlers and converted Hindus. Majority of them were cultivating tenants, landless labourers, petty traders and fishermen. The British conquest of Malabar in the last decade of the 18th century, and the introduction of the British land revenue administration in Malabar enraged the Mappilas.

Over assessment, illegal taxes, eviction from land and the change in land ownership right caused growing discontentment among them. Thus, they rose in revolt against the British and the landlords. The religious leaders helped in strengthening the solidarity of Mappilas and in developing anti-British consciousness. These Mappilas were suppressed by the colonial rulers.

In Northern India the Jats of Western U.P. and Haryana revolted in 1824. In Western India Maharashtra was a common centre of uprising and Gujarat also witnessed the revolt of the Kolis.