People’s Resistance Against British Before 1857

People’s Resistance: Defining the Scope of Resistance

• In the context of people’s resistance against British rule, the word ‘people’ encompasses several sections of Indian society who were affected by the alien rule. The peasants, artisans, tribals, ruling classes (active or dispossessed), military personnel (those under the Company as well as the demobilised soldiers of ex-rulers), religious leaders (Hindu and Muslim), etc., fought for the protection of their interests, at times separately and at times together.
• Examples:
• Agitation in Benares in 1810 against a house tax imposed by the colonial government
• Surat riots in 1814 against the salt duty
• Rising in Bareilly in 1816 against police tax and municipal taxes
• According to Bipan Chandra, people’s resistance took three broad forms: civil rebellions, tribal uprisings, and peasant movements. Military revolts, involving Indians employed in the Company’s forces, are also considered a form of people’s resistance.

Genesis of People’s Resistance: Roots of Anti-British Sentiment

• In pre-colonial India, people’s protests against the rulers and their officials were not uncommon—high land revenue demand by the State, corrupt practices and hard attitude of the officials being some of the instigating factors. However, the establishment of colonial rule and its policies had a much more annihilative effect on the Indians as a whole. There was no one to hear their grievances or pay attention to their problems. The Company was merely interested in extracting revenue.
• The colonial law and judiciary safeguarded the interest of the government and its collaborators—the landlords, the merchants and money-lenders. Thus the people left with no options, chose to take up arms and defend themselves. The conditions of the tribal people were not different from those of the people living in the mainland but the encroachment by outsiders into their independent tribal polity made them more aggrieved and violent.

Causative Factors for People’s Uprisings Against British Rule

• Colonial land revenue settlements, heavy burden of new taxes, eviction of peasants from their lands, and encroachments on tribal lands.
• Exploitation in rural society coupled with the growth of intermediary revenue collectors, tenants and money-lenders.
• Expansion of revenue administration over tribal lands leading to the loss of tribal people’s hold over agricultural and forest land.
• Promotion of British manufactured goods, heavy duties on Indian industries, especially export duties, leading to devastation of Indian handloom and handicraft industries.
• Destruction of indigenous industry leading to migration of workers from industry to agriculture, increasing the pressure on land/agriculture.