Chapter 6 : People's Resistance against the British before and after 1857

People's Resistance against the British before and after 1857

People's Resistance and its Genesis

• Concept of 'People': Encompasses peasants, artisans, tribals, ruling classes (active or dispossessed), military personnel (under the Company and demobilised soldiers of ex-rulers), and religious leaders (Hindu and Muslim).
• Nature of Resistance: Fought for the protection of interests, sometimes separately, sometimes together. Many movements were not completely suppressed and erupted beyond 1857.
• Urban Movement Examples:
• Agitation in Benares (1810): Against a house tax imposed by the colonial government.
• Surat riots (1814): Against the salt duty.
• Rising in Bareilly (1816): Against police tax and municipal taxes.
• Participants: Lower strata (artisans, petty shopkeepers, urban poor) fought together with the prosperous urban gentry.
• Forms of Resistance (according to Bipan Chandra):

1. Civil rebellions
2. Tribal uprisings
3. Peasant movements

• (Source addition): Military revolts (involving Indians in the Company's forces).
• Genesis:
• Pre-colonial protests existed against high land revenue, corrupt practices, and hard attitudes of officials.
• Colonial rule had an annihilative effect; the East India Company was merely interested in extracting revenue.
• Colonial law and judiciary safeguarded the government and its collaborators (landlords, merchants, moneylenders).
• Tribal conditions worsened due to encroachment by outsiders into independent tribal polities.

Key Terms

📌 Exam Tidbits

• Bipan Chandra classified resistance into 3 broad forms: civil rebellions, tribal uprisings, and peasant movements.
• Urban movements saw cross-class solidarity (urban poor + prosperous gentry).
• Colonial law → protected landlords/merchants/moneylenders → people left with no option but to take up arms.

Causative Factors

The major factors responsible for the people's resentment and uprisings against the Company rule are (5 factors):

1. Colonial land revenue settlements, heavy burden of new taxes, eviction of peasants from their lands, and encroachments on tribal lands.
2. Exploitation in rural society coupled with the growth of intermediary revenue collectors, tenants, and money-lenders.
3. Expansion of revenue administration over tribal lands, leading to the loss of tribal people's hold over agricultural…