Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The first century of British colonial rule: social revolution or social stagnation?
- 2 Privileged land tenure in village India in the early nineteenth century
- 3 Agrarian society and the Pax Britannica in northern India in the early nineteenth century
- 4 The land revenue systems of the North-Western Provinces and Bombay Deccan 1830–80: ideology and the official mind
- 5 Traditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nationalism: the context of the 1857 Mutiny Rebellion
- 6 Nawab Walidad Khan and the 1857 Struggle in the Bulandshahr district
- 7 Rural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts
- 8 Traditional elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857: some aspects of rural revolt in the upper and central Doab
- 9 The structure of landholding in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1948
- 10 Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension
- 11 Peasants, moneylenders and colonial rule: an excursion into Central India
- 12 The return of the peasant to South Asian history
- Glossary
- Index
7 - Rural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The first century of British colonial rule: social revolution or social stagnation?
- 2 Privileged land tenure in village India in the early nineteenth century
- 3 Agrarian society and the Pax Britannica in northern India in the early nineteenth century
- 4 The land revenue systems of the North-Western Provinces and Bombay Deccan 1830–80: ideology and the official mind
- 5 Traditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nationalism: the context of the 1857 Mutiny Rebellion
- 6 Nawab Walidad Khan and the 1857 Struggle in the Bulandshahr district
- 7 Rural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts
- 8 Traditional elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857: some aspects of rural revolt in the upper and central Doab
- 9 The structure of landholding in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1948
- 10 Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension
- 11 Peasants, moneylenders and colonial rule: an excursion into Central India
- 12 The return of the peasant to South Asian history
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
In most accounts of the rural uprisings of 1857 the moneylender, whether described as ‘sleek mahajan’ or ‘impassive bania’, is cast as the villain of the piece. It is he who is seen as the principal beneficiary of the landed revolution that occurred in the first half-century of British rule in the North-Western Provinces and gave the non-agricultural classes of the towns a mounting share in the control of land. And his ascendancy is attributed directly to the institutional changes effected by British rule, among the most important of which were the transformation of the immediate revenue-collecting right (malguzari) into a transferable private property; the heavy, inelastic cash assessments; and above all, the forced sale of land rights for arrears of revenue or in satisfaction of debt. ‘The public sale of land’, says Professor Chaudhuri, ‘not merely uprooted the ordinary people from their smallholdings but also destroyed the gentry of the country, and both the orders being victims of British civil law were united in the revolutionary epoch of 1857–8 in a common effort to recover what they had lost.’
Professor Chaudhuri elsewhere spells out the consequences of this unwitting partnership of the moneylender and the British revenue laws:
The baniyas were mostly outsiders who purchased with avidity the proprietary rights of the zamindars and peasants when they came under the operations of the sale law. By this process a vast number of estates had been purchased by these ‘new men’ and a large number of families of rank and influence had been alienated. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Peasant and the RajStudies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India, pp. 159 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1978