Peasantry Their Problem and Protest in Assam (1858-1894)

Copyright © 2014 by Kamal Chandra Pathak.

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Contents

Preface

Glossary

Maps

Chapter – One

Introduction

Chapter – Two

The peasants and their uprisings in and around the globe

Chapter – Three

The Agrarian policy: the British vis-à-vis the Peasants

Chapter – Four

Middle alias elite group: centrifugal and centripetal role

Chapter – Five

Raij-mels: manoeuvre and modus operanding

Chapter – Six

The Uprising: 1861

Chapter – Seven

The years of unrest and irritation: 1862-92

Chapter – Eight

The uprisings: 1893-94

Conclusion

Bibliography

The book unravels the theoretical framework of the peasant uprisings with definition on unrest, uprising and movement. The peasant uprisings in India and abroad from ancient to modern time, the British agrarian policy with reaction of the peasants, emergence of middle class in the 19th century with their opinions and activities on various socio-economic and political problems, role of the Raijmels, root causes of the uprisings of Phulaguri of Nowgong (1861), Rangia and Lachima of Kamrup, and Patharughat of Darrang (1893-94) have been discussed in this book thoroughly. Attempt has also been made by pointing-out the gap period (1862-92), making it a systematic, comprehensive and total study in place of either narrative or stray one.

PREFACE

Discontentment of the peasants against the high trend of revenue of the British was a common feature of the 19th century India. The uprisings of Assam draws attention not only of all the parts of India, its echo was reflected even in the Imperial Legislative Assembly of Britain also. The uprisings was aimed at not for freedom from the colonial yoke, but for emancipation from exploitation and revenue-hike.

The book, specially, deals with the peasant unrest and uprisings in the erstwhile three districts of Assam viz. Kamrup, Darrang and Nowgong from 1858 to 1894. The year 1858 has been taken as a starting point, as it has a special importance in the history of the British India. After the’Great Mutiny of 1857, ‘Assam like other parts of India went into the hands of the British Crown in 1858. The Colonial Government decided to augment the rate of revenue on land from this year with a view to removing the loss of the ‘Great Mutiny.’ Hence, this year may be termed as the ‘CONFRONTATION YEAR’ between the peasants and the government, which continued upto 1894 and even beyond that.

The peasant unrest of Assam have fetched some new aspects in to focus, and some of them have been referred here at proper places. The specific period (1858-94) has yet not been studied, notwithstanding lots have been done in this field. It is because of that it has received not due attention, as is given to the same phenomena in other parts of India. This book is an endeavour to give as far as possible a comprehensive, accessible and a crystal picture of a series of complex scenario. The book is chiefly built up on the primary as well as the secondary datas, both published and unpublished, the details of which are appended in the bibliography.

For my father Umesh Chandra Pathak (Uma) who grew me up and Lakshi Pathak, my elder sister who loved me enough.

This book has grown out of my doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of North Bengal, Darjeeling (West Bengal) in 2010 under the supervision of Dr. B. K. Sarkar, the then Head, Department of History of North Bengal University. I owe a great debt to him. I am equally grateful and indebted to Dr. J. B. Bhattacharjee, former Head, Department of History of NEHU, Shillong and former Vice-Chancellor of Assam University, for his constant encouragement and blessings apart from the interest that he had infused in me for the completion of the book. I am also equally grateful and beholden to Dr. S. D. Goswami, former Professor of the Department of History, Dibrugarh University; Dr. S. D. Dutta, former Professor of History and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Rajiv Gandhi Central University; Professor Dr. M. K. Sharan, Department of History of Magadh University, for their valuable suggestions at the initial stage of progress of my book. In the completion of this book, I have been helped by many others in more ways than one, and my acknowledgements are due to all without mentioning any particular name. My sincere thanks are due to the Directors, Librarians and also to the Staff members of North Bengal University Library, Indian Council of Historical Research Library of Gauhati University, K. K. Handique Library of Gauhati University, NEHU Library, Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development Library, Directorate of Archives of Guwahati and a few other similar institutions for their help and co-operation.

My thanks of gratitude are due to my honourable college authority and colleagues irrespective to teaching and non-teaching for their assistance during my long journey of the work. I do wish to thank… . for publishing the book.

I devotedly express my deep respect and gratitude to my aie Jamila Pathak for her blessings, good wishes and endless inspiration, especially, for this book. Last but not the least, no words suffice to offer my love and best wishes to my sahadharmini Purabi and my jiyari Sukanya (Daisy) who always revived my spirit enough to complete the book by giving constant support and enormous co-operation in innumerable ways.

Despite proper guidance and care, there may be omissions or errors of judgment. For that, author eveready to bear the onus of this.

Kamal Ch. Pathak

Pratap-villa, Hatigaon, Guwahati-38

GLOSSARY

COLONIAL ASSAM

Sketch drawn under the shade of H. K. Barpujari’s (ed)

‘The Comprehensive History of Assam’, Vol. IV (1826-1919)

KAMRUP, DARRANG AND NOWGONG (ERSTWHILE)

Sketch drawn under the shade of H. K. Barpujari’s (ed)

‘The Comprehensive History of Assam’, Vol. IV (1826-1919)

CHAPTER – ONE

Introduction

The peasants, who constitute the largest single segment of mankind, play a special role in shaping our destinies. Chayanov and Mao Tse-tung have interpreted the historical qualities of the peasantry and they offer two widely different, even opposite, views. Yet, they inspired in to the past of the peasantry for discovering its capacity for change and resistance. In order to reconstruct the peasant-history in India, D.D.Kosambi and R.S.Sarma, together with Daniel Thorner, brought peasants in to the study of Indian history for the first time.

Literally, a peasant is one who tills the land. Raymond William says that peasant, a word of French origin, came to be widely used in English from the 15th century for one, who worked on land and also lived in the village.¹ Oswald Spengler portrayed the peasant as an organic, rather than historical figure. The peasant in the legal sense was not an ancient figure unaffected by history but rather a historical figure that emerged in the high middle ages. Evidence reveals that the word ‘peasant’ did not appear before those engaged in agriculture became legally distinguishable.² But such a definition is not so simple as it appears to be. It is naturally elusive to give a rigorous definition of the peasant. Habib takes the peasant to mean a person who undertakes agriculture on his own, working with his own implements and using the labour of his family.³ This definition is acceptable to Marxists as well as to Chayanov. In general, a peasant is one who generates income out of the land owned by him.

Revolutionary transformation has become a world-wide process. Hardly a year passes without a revolutionary change in some or other part of the world.⁴ This change began to attract the attention of the social scientists since 1960. Prior to that, there was only political history as historians had concentrated their attention on that. Recently, some social scientists turn their attention on peasant-study in a class framework that is rooted in Marxism.⁵

Sometime, on the contrary, movements hope to preserve the status-quo in the face of threatened changes. In this case, social movement can play a vital role in changing the pattern of society according to its desire.

The terms like rebellion, revolution, revolt, uprising, movement and insurrection have been used synonymously. Dictionaries, encyclopedia and glossaries have given different meaning to the term ‘movement.’ According to Chamber’s Dictionary, movement means ‘general tendency of current thought, taste, opinion or action or mere drift.’ So, a series of combined action and endeavour of body of persons for a special object is called movement. According to Lenin, revolution is a profound, difficult and complex science.’⁶ Revolutions are not made to orders; they cannot be timed to any particular moment. They mature in a process of historical development and break-out at a moment determined by a whole complex of internal and external causes. Revolution breaks out when tens of millions of people come to the conclusion that it is impossible to live in the old way any longer.⁷

Revolutions are inevitable in the process of social development. Political and social revolutions are not the same thing. ‘Every revolution dissolves the old society and to that extent, it is social,’ wrote Marx. ‘Every revolution overthrows the old power and to that extent, it is political.’ Revolutions affect the foundations of the rule of one or another class, but coups only replace persons or groups of persons in power. Similarly, reforms help to overcome social contradictions but revolutions not.⁸

The peasants throughout the world have displayed a great role in various movements, and their participation in all such movements catapulted the movements to a new height. Indian scholars were largely influenced by various peasant movements that took place within and outside India. Chinese revolutions and number of agrarian movements in Latin America are special among them. Naxalite movement in the second half of the 20th century also provided more scope to Indian sociologists, political scientists and scholars. The peasants played a predominant role in bourgeois revolutions which helped in ushering capitalist society in England and France, and communist societies in China and Russia. Regarding the rebellious nature, Barrington Moor Jr. said that the Chinese peasants were more rebellious than the peasants of India. But A.R.Desai in 1979, Dhanagare in 1983, R.Guha in 1983 and Kathlene Gough in 1974 disagreed with Moore’s comment. Gough counted 77 revolts and classified them in terms of their ‘goals, ideology, methods and organizations as restorative, terrorist, mass, religious and social banditary.’⁹ But she overlooked some peasant movements which were linked with the nationalist movement in some ways or other.

According to Marx, peasant movement took place in response to extraction of surplus by landlords, money-lenders and the state. In the rural society of India, caste and economic interest play an important role in all respects. ‘Class conflict is based on exploitation of peasantry,’ Marx said. He treated the peasantry as a secondary social class, and criticized the French peasantry for not taking side with the industrial proletariat in their struggle against the bourgeois in 1848.

It is noteworthy to explore why Indian peasants couldn’t achieve their goal what the European and the Chinese peasants could. Scholars in their studies find the fact. Caste system and the Hindu religion is an obstacle for which poor peasants could not organize against the exploitation. Like Marx, Ranajit Guha also mentioned about the primary and secondary discourse, terrible insurgencies and elite leadership. He in order to understand the peasant movement gives importance to exploitation on peasantry. Some scholars want to explain the peasant movement as predominantly middle-class movement. But it is not true in the case of the south. The poor peasants and the labourers are the ‘backbone of resistance from the beginning till the very end.’¹⁰

The emergence of innumberable social movements with a multitude of issues, values and demands are very noticeable phenomenon in all contemporary societies. With the gradual transformation of the economic and social structure of the society and as a result of industrial revolution, various social movements emerged. Industrial revolution tore the structure and relations of feudalism and replaced it with capitalism. Development of capitalism and its inherent contradictions gave birth to many social movements in history. Fundamental rights have also played a significant role in the emergence of various contemporary social movements. Most of the historically significant political movements by nature and implication are social movements.

Many social scientists have attempted to provide definition of social movement. The earliest definition perhaps was provided by Lorenz Vonstein, the Danish historian 1852. In his analysis of the French revolution, he defined social movement as people coming together to change the conditions of society. According to him, masses were the volatile element in society which was capable of bringing about social disruption and political change.

In order to reach its goal, a social movement needs collective action, a social mobilization. For social mobilization, a social movement needs to depend on some kind of organization to provide leadership and direction. For this, the leadership needs some kind of ideology to explain a situation convincingly which it wants to change through mobilization. With the help of ideology, the leadership justifies the existence and continuity of a social movement. A social movement cannot exist without some goals, social mobilization, organization, leadership and ideology. These are the foundations on which ‘the edifice of the movement stands; the stronger the foundation, the stronger is the movement and its impact on society and history.’¹¹

The term ‘peasant movement’ and ‘agrarian movement’ refer to all kinds of collective attempt of different strata of the peasantry either to change the system which they felt, was exploitative or to seek redress for particular grievances without necessarily aiming at overthrowing the system. The rural sociologists have analyzed the peasant unrest in different terms. For instance, A.R.Desai calls the unrest as ‘the peasant struggle.’ Kathlene Gough terms it as ‘peasant uprising’, for N.G.Ranga again, ‘it is a struggle of the peasantry’ and according to Hamza Alavi, ‘it is a peasant revolution.’ It appears that the sociologists who are oriented to Marxism have analysed the peasant agitation as struggle on the pattern of class struggle and class war. These sociologists look at the peasant agitations from the perspective of class antagonism. D.N.Dhanagare reviews the peasant agitation as ‘a peasant movement.’ The dictionary meaning of ‘agrarian’ means anything related to land, its management or distribution. Agrarian system also includes land tenure system. Andre Beteille says that agrarian system does not mean only peasantry.¹²

It is argued by economists and sociologists that the present agrarian problem of rural India is the outcome of the colonial policy adopted by the British in Pre-Independent India.¹³ The process of Sanskritisation and Westernisation brought socio-cultural change in India which broadened the mental horizon of the people, and brought a revolutionary change in their socio-economic life. Imbibed by this, they tried to break hitherto prevailing obsolete system. This gave birth to confrontation. It does not mean that the people never sought change before the starting of the process of westernization. But it became imminent after that.¹⁴

In recent years, the peasants study receives much importance at the hands of Subaltern groups. It may be noted that earlier the historians, particularly, the Imperialist and the Nationalist historians have paid less importance on the role of the peasants in their movements. They emphasized to study their history through the eyes of the elite leadership.

Those who believe in Marxist-Leninist-Maoist formulations regarding peasant movements, they assign the role of motive force in such movements to the urban proletariat, and in the rural areas, to the poor peasantry. Middle peasants are taken to be firm allies and on occasions, alliance is envisaged even with the rich peasants. Counter to this, in recent years, a school of peasant studies has sprung-up which sees the middle peasant as the class most liable to rise in revolt and feels that the socio-economic condition handicaps the poor peasants, including agricultural labourers and it makes them more revolutionary. To these social scientists, ‘assigning primacy in peasant movement to the poor peasantry is no more than conforming to Marxist orthodoxy.’¹⁵

II

The land known as Assam is situated to the extreme north-east of India. Assam in different periods was known in different names. Her earliest name was Pragjyotishpur. The name Pragjyotishpur is found mentioned in the Mahabharata and the Puranas. Narakasur, Bhagadatta, Ghatotkacha and Bana, the father in law of Lord Krishna’s grandson Aniruddha, all were hailed from Pragjyotishpur. The great king Bhagadatta took part in the battle of Kurukshetra. Pragjyotishpur later came to be known as Kamarupa. The earliest reference to the name of Kamarupa is found mentioned in the Allahabad Prasasti of Samudra Gupta engraved about 360 A.D. Regarding the origin name of Kamarupa, there is a legend in the Purana, but this has no historical value. The more reasonable view is that the term Kamrup is derived from Kambru or Kamru, the name of a non-Aryan God. According to Yogini Tantra, Kamrupa in ancient time was divided in to four parts: Ratnapith, Kamapith, Svarnapith and Soumarpith. The first three historical and royal dynasties of Kamarupa: the Varmanas, the Salastambhas and the Palas ruled over Kamrupa from the 4th century to the beginning of the 12th century. The name Kamarupa continued to be used till the advent of the Ahoms in the Brahmaputra valley in the 13th century. With the coming of the Ahoms, Kamrupa came to be known as Assam. The arrival of the Ahoms is a decisive factor in the history of Assam. The Ahoms, a Shan tribe from Burma, wandered in to the Brahmaputra valley about the year 1226. Established once firmly in the upper Brahmaputra valley, they followed a policy of expansion and by 1700, had conquered the territories once included in the kingdom of Kamarupa. The Ahoms had to fight a series of battles against the Koches and the Mughals; against the Kacharis and the Jayantias; against the Chutias and the Barabhuyans and thus, had to defend and sometime to offend the hill tribes. Not withstanding that, Assam did not become a part of other and thus, they proved their might. The Moamoria uprising shook the very foundation of the Ahom kingdom and in utter distress, the king had to seek the help of the British in quelling the uprising. Moreover, internal dissension, feud, internecine conflict, intrigues, maladministration and sycophancy, all these made the foundation of Ahom kingdom fragile and topsy-turvy. There also prevailed social inequalities, like the kings could only build houses of bricks and mortars, nobles could wear shoes, ride on horses, travel in palanquin but same were denied to the ordinary people. The people of humble birth were obliged to fold chaddar over the left shoulder, not over right like the nobles. All these social disparity gave birth to discontentment amongst the subjects. This and such type of environment encouraged the Burmese to interfere in to the internal affairs of the Ahom kingdom and thus, precipitated her collapse as the time marched.¹⁶

III

On the north-east corner of the Republic of India, lies the present state of Assam, situated between the twenty-fourth and twenty-eighth degrees of north latitude, and eighty ninth and ninety-seventh degrees of east longitude. The long alluvial valley of the Brahmaputra or Assam proper extended at the beginning from the river Manah on the north bank of the Brahmaputra to the foot of the Himalayas close upon the frontier of China. On the north, it is bounded by the hills inhabited by the tribes of various groups that separate Assam from China and Burma. On the south-east lie the states of Cachar and Manipur. From the Patkai hills, which form the natural boundary with Burma, runs the irregular chains of mountains commonly known as the Assam Range occupied by the Nagas, the Jayantias, the Khasis and the Garos westward in succession. Guarded, thus, almost on all sides by mountain barriers, Assam remained practically isolated. Geography had imposed a ‘formidable barrier on her contact with the rest of the world.’ Navigation along the river Brahmaputra before the steam-age was always uncertain and at times extremely hazardous.¹⁷

The interference of the Burmese in the internal affairs of Assam is a dark chapter in the history of Assam who unleashed a region of terror. Plunder, devastation, murder and desecration became the order of the day. There was wholescale depopulation, industry collapsed, agriculture was neglected and trade, if any, was at a standstill. Major John Butler and Maniram Dewan described the outrages of the Burmese, ‘the dreadful atrocities perpetrated on the helpless Assamese could better be imagined than described.’¹⁸

In 1825-26, the British appeared on the scene in the guise of saviours, and expelled the Burmese from Assam. So, people at large naturally welcomed their advent and expected that their troubles would end; and peace, prosperity and normalcy would return soon to the land. But the hopes entertained by the people with unbounded joy were soon turned to bitter disappointment, and the first flush of popular enthusiasm gave way to growing discontent while it dawned in their mind that the British had come to stay and their motto was to turn the land in to an agricultural estate of tea-drinking Britons, transform local traditional institutions to suit the colonial pattern of exploitation. The people found-out from experience ‘the new master’s immediate concern was extortion of land revenue, even to the detriment of the welfare of their subjects.’¹⁹ Shorn of their power and privileges, the official aristocracy of the former Ahom Government ‘gave vent to their bitter feelings and hostility in a number of abortive attempts to overthrow the alien rule.’²⁰

The disaffected section of the nobility was the first to strike at the alien rulers, albeit with the avowed purpose of restoring its own social status and privileges. Upper Assam was the mainstay of the Ahoms and the haunt of the European tea planters; the anti-British uprisings occurred in Upper Assam within a few years of British occupation.²¹

The old aristocracy which had lost its offices of profit was the first to react violently to the alien rule. The first revolt was at the initiative of Gomdhar Konwar, a prince of the Ahom royal family in1828. Dhananjoy Borgohain, his son Haranath and many members of the dispossessed nobility were a party to this rebellion. But the ill-organized revolt was suppressed by Lt.Rutherford in October, 1828. The second revolt took place in 1829 under Gadadhar Singha, but this also met failure. The third attempt was made in 1830. The British crushed the third attempt too. Some leaders were sent to Dacca for detention, and Piyali Barphukan and Jiuram Dihingia Barua were hanged in August, 1830. The revolt of 1830 was much more organized than the 1828 and the 1829’s.

Within four years of the treaty of Yandaboo, revolts began in Assam. The Khasis fought under the leadership of UTirat Singh, and the Singphos under a Khamti Chief. Thus, alongside the dwellers of the plains, the hillmen also made their mark as rebels. The Khasis fought the British for four years from 1829 to 1833. As for the Singphos, they were in contact with the leaders of the Khasi insurrection and of the 1830 of Assam.²²

The system of British administration reduced vast masses to poverty. The result was mal-administration as the foreign government cared more for revenue than for the philanthropic work. For example, Nowgong became depopulated in 1832-33 due to the hike of revenue, and ¼ of the total population abandoned their houses and took asylum in Jayantia, Kachar and Yamunamukh. Four years later in 1836, some peasants of Nowgong revolted against revenue-hike. ‘The attempted reform and reorganization of the administration could not eradicate the evils of an alien government and their satellites whose interest was more of economic exploitation than improving the lot of the masses or redress of their augmented grievances.’²³

Like the other parts of India, the echo of revolt of 1857 was felt in Assam also, and it was fuelled by Maniram Dewan. The revolt of 1857 had imposed severe financial strain on the British Indian Government. Local authorities in Assam began to tap new sources of revenue to meet their increasing expenditure. The government increased the revenue demand by 3 to 4 times. Stamp duties and income tax were introduced in 1858 and 1861 respectively in addition to excise duties and taxes for grazing and cutting timber and reeds. To make the large number of opium-eaters dependent entirely on government opium, cultivation of poppy was totally banned in 1861. Already, the increase of land revenue on dry crop lands in 1861 was much resented in Nowgong. But as the news of the ban on the poppy cultivation reached Nowgong, the fury of the peasants burst-out, as it affected their economy the most. The people were also apprehensive about the imposition of tax on betel nut and paan cultivation. All these, however, led to an agitation, mainly, among the Lalung tribe of Phulaguri in Nowgong in 1861. All sections came out in support of the rebels, but finally met fiasco.

In 1868-69, the government had increased the rates of revenue on rupit and non-rupit lands from 25 to 50%. The people particularly in the districts of Kamrup and Darrang reacted against this enhanced through the Raij-mels. The people launched no-tax campaign against ruthless imposition of higher rates of assessment in Kamrup (Lachima, Rangia and neighbouring areas) and Darrang (Patharughat) towards the close of the 19th century. Both the Hindus and the Muslims met together in the mels, and nauseated their protest against the revenue-hike on land. Anyway, the movements of Rangia, Lachima and Patharughat lost their edge and met ultimate fiasco. Indeed, all revolts against the British from 1828 onward failed to achieve their goals. P.N.Gohain Barua, the founder of the Ahom Sabha said, ‘the period from 1838 to 1893 was a season of dead-march for the Ahom community.’ Within these years, he said, they became ‘insignificant and neglected.’²⁴

IV

Though the movements of Patharughat (Darrang); Rangia and Lachima (Kamrup) and Phulaguri (Nowgong) are the main areas of this book, the persistence of these movements were seen in other segment also, which were within and beyond the periphery.

The period 1858 to 1894 has been chosen for two major considerations: The peasant movements of Kamrup, Darrang and Nowgong particularly of this specific period have not been studied systematically, though lots have been made in brief, narrative and casual type. That’s why, they have not received its due attention, as is given to the same phenomena in other parts of India. So, attempts have been made to give a systematic and clear-cut picture of this. The North-Eastern regions including Assam had fiercely resisted the colonial domination. But little is known of the peasants of this region, who resisted revenue hike of the colonial government; and the year 1858 has a special importance in the history of Assam. After the great mutiny of 1857, Assam also like other parts of India went in to the hands of the British Crown in 1858. The Crown contemplated and finally, decided to increase revenue on land in this year (1858) so as to remove their loss in the mutiny of 1857. Augmentation of revenue gave birth to direct confrontation between the government and the peasants. As a result, there took place peasant movements in Assam, which came to an end in 1894.

The peasant movements of colonial Assam have some peculiar aspects. The movements did not get adequate momentum in all districts, except three viz. Kamrup, Darrang and Nowgong. Instead of zamindari system, ryotwari system was prevalent there. Moreover, distinction was very much less between the rich and the poor peasants. Both agricultural and non-agricultural classes took active role in the movements. The peasant movements of Assam, unlike the south, were open rebellion against the state, open rebellion not for freedom from colonial yoke, but for emancipation from revenue burden and exploitation. The movements of Assam could be termed as popular movements, as all sections irrespective to caste and creed took active part in that. Another noticeable feature is that the peasants organized themselves through the Raij-mels. The Raij-mels were, mainly, the peasants mobilization campaign. The peasants and non-peasants assembled for a common purpose under the leadership of Gossains, Dolois, Gaonburhas or land-owners. Numerical strength to the movements was given by them. Non-political character of the union was another feature of the peasant movements of Assam, and it