Peasant Movement in India is steeped in history and is pregnant with several rebellions that have taken place in numerous regions within the country. Peasant movement and Uprisings in India occurred mostly during the British rule, as the economic policies devastated traditional ways of livelihood, and resulted in seizure of land and increase in debt of the peasants and farmers. The exploitations of British colonialism were borne by the Indian peasants adversely. However the peasants stood their ground and fought against the British at every single step. There was a change in the resistance behavior of the peasants, because they started fighting for their demands and the unjust done to them. This behavior became more prominent and in action after 1858.
It is worth taking a look at the effects of colonial exploitation of the Indian peasants. Colonial economic policies, the new land revenue system, the colonial administrative and judicial systems and the ruin of the handicrafts leading to the over-crowding of land, transformed the agrarian structure leading to the over-crowding of land, transformed the agrarian structure and impoverished the peasantry. In the vast zamindari areas, the peasants were left to the tender mercies of the zamindars who rack-rented them and compelled them to pay the illegal dues and perform beggar. In Ryotwari areas , the government itself levied heavy land revenue. This forced the peasants to borrow money from moneylenders. Gradually, over large areas, the actual cultivators were reduced to the status of tenants-at-will, share-croppers and landless laborers, while their lands, crops and cattle passed into the hands of landlords, trader-moneylenders and rich peasants.
When the peasants could take it no longer, they resisted against the oppression and exploitation; and, they found whether their target was the indigenous exploiter or the colonial administration, that their real enemy, after the barriers were down, was the colonial state.
One form of elemental protest, especially when individuals and small groups found that collective action was not possible though their social condition was becoming intolerable, was to take to crime. Many dispossessed peasants took to robbery, decoity and what has been called social banditry, preferring these to starvation and social degradation
Imran Khan 7 years, 7 months ago
Peasant Movement in India is steeped in history and is pregnant with several rebellions that have taken place in numerous regions within the country. Peasant movement and Uprisings in India occurred mostly during the British rule, as the economic policies devastated traditional ways of livelihood, and resulted in seizure of land and increase in debt of the peasants and farmers. The exploitations of British colonialism were borne by the Indian peasants adversely. However the peasants stood their ground and fought against the British at every single step. There was a change in the resistance behavior of the peasants, because they started fighting for their demands and the unjust done to them. This behavior became more prominent and in action after 1858.
It is worth taking a look at the effects of colonial exploitation of the Indian peasants. Colonial economic policies, the new land revenue system, the colonial administrative and judicial systems and the ruin of the handicrafts leading to the over-crowding of land, transformed the agrarian structure leading to the over-crowding of land, transformed the agrarian structure and impoverished the peasantry. In the vast zamindari areas, the peasants were left to the tender mercies of the zamindars who rack-rented them and compelled them to pay the illegal dues and perform beggar. In Ryotwari areas , the government itself levied heavy land revenue. This forced the peasants to borrow money from moneylenders. Gradually, over large areas, the actual cultivators were reduced to the status of tenants-at-will, share-croppers and landless laborers, while their lands, crops and cattle passed into the hands of landlords, trader-moneylenders and rich peasants.
When the peasants could take it no longer, they resisted against the oppression and exploitation; and, they found whether their target was the indigenous exploiter or the colonial administration, that their real enemy, after the barriers were down, was the colonial state.
One form of elemental protest, especially when individuals and small groups found that collective action was not possible though their social condition was becoming intolerable, was to take to crime. Many dispossessed peasants took to robbery, decoity and what has been called social banditry, preferring these to starvation and social degradation
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