What were the salient features of Peasant Revolt in South India?

The foregoing discussion on the economic condition of South India would show that in spite of the conspicuous role of agriculture in the economy of the land, the lot of the peasants who form the majority of the population was deplorably bad. Burden of rent, illegal exactions and oppressions of the revenue and police officials, and a variety of cases combined to produce a situation in which the peasants found themselves caught in the internal fire of unremitting poverty and eternal indebtedness.

They were surrounded by a host of exploiters and oppressors, the Zamindars, the Karindars, the Mahajans, the Sahukars etc., who constituted the land-owning and money lending class and they were joined by the cruel and greedy police and revenue officers to complete the circle of exploitation. Living in the ever thickening and sticky murkiness of ignorance and poverty, they pulled on their burdensome year cursing their fate and submitting themselves, without resisting, to the rapacity of these oppressors for long.

But with advancing years, when the economic exploitation became more methodical and unbearable, they began, rather involuntarily, to raise their standard of revolt. The milieu of South Indian peasantry we have depicted was congenial for the spirit of revenge and revolt to grow as a natural reaction against the forces of oppression.

This spirit appeared early in South India wherever the British established their supremacy, especially in Malabar, Baramahal and Karnataka. We have already referred to the generally uprising of the people of Malabar as a result of the oppressive land reforms affected by Major Macleod. This coincided with the penultimate phase of the Pazhassi rebellion in 1802-03. Innes describes it as follows:

” In 1802 he (Machleod) aroused great discontent by attempting to disarm the district; and later on in the year he fanned into flame the dying embers of revolt not only be a grievous enhancement of the land assessments, but by revising the table of exchange. The first sign of recrudescence was the capture of Panamaram fort in the Wynad in October 1802 and the massacre of its garrison by the proscribed rebel Edachenna Kunjan at the head of a body of Kurichiyans (Peasants and labourers who were tribal)…

The thousand men collected at the Fish pagoda near Mananthoddy, and the rebels soon held the Kottiyur and Periya passes. Troops were purred into the Wynad from the low country; but the whole district was not ablaze, and before the year was out the rebels had ventured nearly as far as the coast and had laid waste the spice plantation at Anjarakkandi. This, however, was their last important success. Major Macleod resigned his office (as collector) on March 11th, 1803 and Mr. Rickards, his successor, did much by timely concessions to allay the storm in South Malabar.”

In 1812 the same area was the scene of another peasant revolt known as the Kurichiya rebellion which put the British administration off its track for quite some time. It was the result of the new revenue settlement effected by Thomas Warden after the Pazhassi rebellion which in the words of T.H. Baber, pressed much harder upon the people than cultivators in their insulated situation could bear.

“The most grievous source of complaint is,” says Baber, “the inequality in the Land Law; nominally the assessment is in some Districts a moiety and in other six-tenths of their incomes, but if ever an account is made of the actual income in each particular estate, it will be found that some are not taxed at all, and generally the rates fluctuating from twenty to hundred per cent; and there is not one man in ten, who knows that he has to pay on each separate estate.”

Not only had the heavy assessment of their lands, but the cruel methods used in collecting the revenue infuriated the people. The corrupt officials forced them to part with their hard-earned money as illegal payments. “

They exacted from the inhabit­ants, “wrote Baber to the Government of Fort St. George, “several thousands of rupees on their private account but which in point of fact are all tantamount to extortion and that of the grossest kind, one third perhaps of the amount collected is not disbursed. The inhabitants who contribute to the demands of the revenue officers know they would be annoyed a thousand ways if they dared to prefer complaints.”

The discontent of the peasants steadily mounted as the Sheristadars and Parbatties started seizing and selling the property and personal effects of the poor revenue defaulters. The rebellion started on 25th March, 1812. It was hatched, directed, and led by the tribal peasants and workers themselves. The details of the rebellion are given in an earlier chapter.

Peasant disturbances broke out in 1796 in Pachchaimalai, Muniur and Anjiur in Tamil country. Unrealistic survey and assessment of land and enhancement of rent were the common source of unrest and spirit of rebellion among peasantry in South India during the early years of the British rule. Pachchaimalai, Muniurmalai and Anjiurmalai have been inhabited by Malaialis, a hill-tribe.

The first had about 50 villages and the last two together and upward of seventy villages. Attached to these hills were several villages on the plain which were called Kombas. Some of these Kombas were inhabited by the same castes of Sudras as the other villages on the plain; others are inhabited by the Malaialis or hill caste and some by both castes. The Kombas were generally owned by the Malaiali manigars.

In the course of survey by the British all the Kombas were measured and settled and rent levied. The Malaialis of Manipur and Anjiur, a turbulent community, refused to pay their rents saying that if the Kombas were taken from them they could not live. They declined to meet the collectors, and also refused to admit the peon sent by the Tahsildar to demand their kist.

They stopped up with thorns the communication between the hills and the low country and drove away the peon sent by the collector by posting a few men on the way to the hill with pikes. They insisted that they would have no terms with the government until they got back their Kombas and the rents were reduced by 500 chakmas.

As a result sepoys were called upon to subdue the turbulent peasants. The Collector recalled a similar situation in the same area ten years ago when these people showed refractory behaviour on the same issue. That shows that the authorities had, without regard to the just and hereditary claims of the people, carried on the settlement of lands and collection of rents, doing nothing to remove the causes of unrest. The untutored mass of these hill peasants stoutly opposed the British claims and yielded only when superior military force was used against them.

In 1802 peasant contumacy shook up the Balaghat area in the Baramahal territory due to over-assessment of the land. The ryots of the districts of Ottoor and Dankencottah rose in revolt and thirty of their leaders marched a long way to Madras (now Chennai) to present a petition to the Board of Revenue-Collector. Cockburn’s new revenue settlement made the rich and poor ryots alike destitute and desperate; they left their villages in large numbers in defiance of authorities and demanded redress.

The government, instead of looking into their grievances, took stern action by arresting the leaders and employing military force to disperse the peasants who assembled-about one thousand in numbers- ten miles away from Ryacotta, the headquarters of the Collector. Cockburn reports,”

In the above number there are about 150 match-locks, and about an equal number of pikes and swords. They commit no irregularities further than resisting all authority, refusing to return to their villages unless the prisoners are set free-and using means to make other ryots to join them.” Four companies of soldiers were asked for to suppress this peasant uprising.

The violent crowd made the immediate release of the 30 prisoners a preliminary before dispersing to their respective villages. The Collector apprehended the spread of this disturbance to the neighbouring districts also, as he had intercepted “letters written to the principal Monegars in the Tingrecottah District, inviting them to join the Ryots of Balaghat and I know that the greatest part of the mongers in the other Districts of the Baramahal have received invitations of the same kind…. I have great cause to think that their numbers will daily increase.”

In a day their number rose by 800, and “it is impossible, “said the collector, “to foresee to what lengths they may go.” As a result of the grave situation developed in the Balaghat area, the Governor-in-Council ordered two troops of cavalry from Arcot, four companies of Native infantry with two six ponders from Vellore and six companies of Native infantry from Sankerrydroog to move to quell the peasants in revolt.

Balaghat was again the scene of another serious disturbance in 1810. The ryots of the Dankencottah, a part of the Balaghat, district had shown the spire of resistance in a most decided manner; they assembled together in various places neglecting their cultivation and refusing to appear before the Collector when he summoned them to do so.