Notes On 'Peasant Insurgency' in Colonial Mysore: Event and Process

Abstract

Peasant insurgency has been an awkward subject for the Indian scholar, and thus for comparativists -usually historical sociologists -who more often than South Asianists, have studied the matter.The awkwardness arises from the following paradoxes.India is one of the most ancient peasant societies in the world, and one in which it is possible to speak of a peasantry in many of its parts even when India is also one of the major industrial and advanced technical and scientific societies in the world.Yet, despite its provenance as an historical and contemporary peasant society, neither insurgency nor rebellion, much less 'wars' of the sort treated by Eric Wolf, have been events that have occupied the place in historiography that the subject has occupied in Europe (where the peasantry has passed from the scene for the most part) or in China where its peasantry ranks along with that of India as a major element of the present.Explanations of the absence of widespread peasant political mobilisations against established authority in India have seldom risen above those favourite residual explainers of all certainties (and most uncertainties), caste or religion.With Ranajit Guha's recent book, we are presented with a treatment of the subject which is both stimulating and ambitious.EZementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in ColoniaZ India, brings peasant political mobilisations during the nineteenth century into history for the first time, and his estimate of some 110 events of this sort -'ranging from local riots to warlike campaigns' -are merely some of the events which Guha asserts, rightly, deserve serious study.He is also right in arguing that though such events were systematically denigrated and buried by the imperial rulers of India, their records are often the only traces of these events and accordingly must be made to yield something other than (often, indeed, the opposite of) British interpretations.He finally rejects, again rightly for India at least, Eric Hobsbawm's characterisation of similar British protests during the early nineteenth century as &dquo;'prepolitical&dquo;' ; this was not true for Indian movements of this time nor later, even if true elsewhere. On the contrary, Guha claims, Indian peasant insurgencies were not only profoundly political, but also self-consciously and programmatically opposed to landlords' appropriations of wealth based upon extra-economic dominance and coercion.These are important assumptions in Guha's approach and argument which give both their cut and cogency.There are other elements -some entailed by his approach and argument, others less clearly so -which circumscribe his work and defeat some

Princely India Re-imagined

“…Amongst these, Hermann Kulke has proposed the notion of the 'integrative polity', which attaches more importance to the incorporative ritual force of the single royal centre rather than to the fragmenting force of semi-autonomous peripheral centres (Kulke 1982). Stein himself later on proposed the idea of 'military-fiscalism' as an alternative to feudalism in explaining the character of certain pre-colonial regimes, such as that of Tipu Sultan (Stein 1985). 8 Whatever the differences may be amongst the historians of pre-modern India, it is interesting to note that both Stein and Kulke accepted the idea of a distinction between the single ritual centre and one in which there are many political centres within a state.…”

“…In August 1830, 200 armed followers of Budi Basappa (or Buda Basvappa) attacked a fortress in Shimoga, Nagar district, the northernmost part of Mysore princely state (Stein 1993;Lind 2004;Shama Rao 1936, vol. 1: 416-41).…”

“…The causes of the Nagar rebellion were complex: class/caste antagonism between Maratha Brahmin officials and majority Veerashaiva (Lingayat) peasants in Nagar; the notorious tax-farming shirti contract that stimulated the contractors, who were often outsiders, to force peasants to pay more tax; and the inability of the maharaja's government to control corrupt amildars in charge of local administration. However, the heavy burden of subsidiary tribute imposed by the British left the Mysore maharaja with little opportunity to dispense effective, and truly, lucrative patronage towards the peasants (Joseph 1979: 154;Stein 1980Stein : 670-81, 1993. Stephan Joseph has thrown light on the fact that, although the total tribute from the 198 princely states to the British administration was only Rs 72 lakhs per annum, Mysore was overburdened with the payment of Rs 35 lakhs, or nearly 50 per cent of the total 1 (Joseph 1979: 154).…”

“…While this discussion has been largely focused on the theoretical legitimacy of the 'jajmāni system', the central position of the king or dominant caste in the gift exchange (or grain sharing) relations was something on which most scholars agreed, both empirically and theoretically. Royal gift giving in medieval southern India is another theme to which historians have paid considerable attention (especially see Shulman 1985;Stein 1980). Medieval kings gave land to temples, mat has (monasteries), Brahmins, military retainers, and vassals, who were given rights to take some or all of the revenue from the land given to them.…”

Les Subaltern Studies ou la critique postcoloniale de la modernité

“…Il très vite apparu, cependant, qu'une pareille entreprise était semée d'embûches théoriques. Le reproche le plus immédiat a été l'accusation de « mentalisme » : Ranajit Guha aurait été victime de l'illusion qu'il est possible de savoir ce qui se passe réellement dans la tête des gens (par exemple Stein 1985 : 2). C'était là se méprendre sur le sens profond de son propos, qui ne relevait pas prioritairement de l'histoire des mentalités, mais visait d'abord à critiquer l'herméneutique de l'historiographie dominante et l'occultation constante de la conscience et de l'expérience des subalternes qui en résultait, et à faire ressortir à quel point elle avait ainsi partie liée avec le pouvoir des élites.…”