Deccan Uprising (Deccan Riots), 1875
The Deccan Uprising, popularly known as the Deccan Riots of 1875, was a major agrarian disturbance in the Bombay Deccan, directed primarily against the excesses of Marwari and Gujarati moneylenders. Rooted in decades of mounting peasant indebtedness under the Ryotwari Settlement, and sharpened by the sudden boom and bust of the cotton trade during the American Civil War, the uprising saw Kunbi peasants across Poona and Ahmadnagar districts organise social boycotts and direct action against their creditors — seeking not the overthrow of colonial authority, but the destruction of the very debt bonds that had enslaved them economically. The episode is historiographically significant, having generated a rich and still-unsettled debate among historians such as Ravinder Kumar, Ian Catanach, and Neil Charlesworth over its underlying causes, making it an important topic for UPSC History Optional aspirants studying both the agrarian economy and the historiography of peasant movements in colonial India.
Background: The Ryotwari Settlement and Rising Peasant Debt
- As British rule expanded from Bengal into other parts of India, new systems of land revenue administration were introduced, since the Permanent Settlement was rarely extended beyond Bengal.
- Because the revenue demand under the Permanent Settlement had been fixed, the colonial state could not claim any share of subsequently enhanced agricultural income. Keen to expand its financial resources, the government instead opted for temporary revenue settlements in territories annexed during the nineteenth century.
- The revenue system introduced in the Bombay Deccan came to be known as the Ryotwari Settlement.
- Unlike the Bengal system, revenue here was settled directly with the ryot: the average income from different soil types was estimated, the ryot’s revenue-paying capacity assessed, and a proportion of it fixed as the state’s share.
- The first revenue settlement in the Bombay Deccan was made in the 1820s, and the demand fixed was so high that, in many places, peasants abandoned their villages and migrated elsewhere.
- When rains failed and harvests were poor, peasants found it impossible to meet their revenue obligations, and by the 1830s the problem had grown considerably more severe.
- Agricultural prices fell sharply after 1832 and failed to recover for over a decade and a half, further eroding peasant incomes.
- Compounding this distress, the Deccan countryside was devastated by a severe famine between 1832 and 1834, which killed roughly one-third of the region’s cattle and half its human population.
- Survivors, left with no agricultural stocks to see them through the crisis, were inevitably forced to borrow — revenue could rarely be paid without a loan from a moneylender.
- Once taken, however, such loans proved difficult to repay; as debts mounted, peasants grew increasingly dependent on moneylenders, needing credit even to meet everyday needs and production expenses. By the 1840s, colonial officials were already documenting alarming levels of peasant indebtedness across the region.
The Cotton Boom (1861–65)
- Before the 1860s, roughly three-fourths of Britain’s raw cotton imports came from America, a dependence that had long troubled British cotton manufacturers.
- When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, panic spread rapidly through British cotton circles as raw cotton imports from America collapsed to less than three per cent of normal levels, prompting frantic calls to boost cotton exports from India and elsewhere.
- In Bombay, cotton merchants toured the cotton-growing districts to assess supplies and encourage cultivation, while export merchants, eager to secure as much cotton as possible to meet British demand, extended advances to urban sahukars, who in turn extended credit to rural moneylenders willing to secure the produce.
- Deccan ryots suddenly found themselves with access to seemingly limitless credit. Between 1860 and 1864, cotton acreage in the region doubled, and by 1862, over 90 per cent of Britain’s cotton imports were being sourced from India.
Crisis Returns: Post-War Collapse and Renewed Revenue Pressure
- With the end of the Civil War in 1865, American cotton production revived, and Indian cotton exports to Britain went into steady decline. Export merchants and sahukars in Maharashtra grew correspondingly reluctant to extend further long-term credit.
- Just as credit dried up, revenue demands increased sharply: where the first settlement of the 1820s-30s had set one level of assessment, the new settlement raised demands dramatically — by 50 to 100 per cent.
- Farmers once again turned to moneylenders for relief, but this time were refused: moneylenders had lost confidence in the ryots’ capacity to repay.
- This refusal enraged the peasantry. What infuriated them was not simply the depth of their debt or their total dependence on the moneylender for survival, but the moneylenders’ apparent indifference to their plight.
- In one of the many cases later investigated by the Deccan Riots Commission, a moneylender was found to have charged over Rs 2,000 as interest on a loan of just Rs 100 — a striking illustration of the exploitative terms peasants routinely faced.
The Land Transfer Debate: Ravinder Kumar and His Critics
- According to historian Ravinder Kumar, the Deccan Uprising resulted from a “redistribution of social power in the villages of Maharashtra.”
- He locates the roots of discontent in the changing relationship between Maratha Kunbi peasants and sahukar moneylenders: while sahukars had traditionally lent money to Kunbi peasants without seeking closer control over the village economy, the introduction of the Ryotwari system transformed this relationship, as each peasant now required individual credit, and the creation of property rights in land — backed by the courts — generated a land market and a corresponding rise in demand for land.
- Moneylenders now lent against the mortgage of peasant land at high interest, and on default, took possession of the land through a court decree.
- Caste prejudices, however, prevented moneylenders from personally cultivating this land, so it was typically leased back to its former owner-cultivators — who thereby became tenants on their own land.
- The precise extent of land transfer in Maharashtra during this period, and how far it actually caused the riots, remains a matter of historiographical controversy.
- Ian Catanach (1993) accepts that land transfers did occur, but does not endorse Kumar’s view that this was the primary cause of peasant discontent.
- Neil Charlesworth, by contrast, largely dismisses this factor altogether, estimating that only around 5 per cent of cultivable land in the Deccan had actually passed into the hands of Marwari or Gujarati moneylenders by the time of the riots.
- Even so, it must be acknowledged that this small proportion of transferred land was often the most fertile in the region, meaning its loss would have been keenly resented regardless of its limited overall extent.
The 1867 Revenue Increase
- The situation moved toward open conflict when the government raised revenue rates in 1867, citing the extension of cultivation and rising agricultural prices as justification.
- In the taluka of Indapur, the average increase in revenue demand was around 50 per cent, though in some villages it reached as high as 200 per cent.
- Charlesworth has argued that this new taxation was hardly the primary cause of the riots, noting that some of the villages most severely affected by the disturbances in Ahmadnagar district had faced no tax revision at all, while several revised talukas remained entirely passive throughout the period.
- Even granting this, however, it is difficult to ignore that these new rates were announced at a particularly inopportune moment: the artificial cotton boom generated by the American Civil War had just collapsed, leaving peasants impoverished and virtually certain to fall into hopeless debt — a scenario in which any revenue increase was bound to trigger panic.
The Appeal for Revision and the Role of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
- The Kunbis appealed for a revision of the new rates, but their traditional leadership proved wholly out of touch with the new colonial institutions and the unfamiliar, rational-legal language of communication these demanded.
- The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, a newly formed association of middle-class intellectuals, stepped into this gap, presenting a formal “Report” in 1873 making the case for a revision of revenue rates, and sending volunteers into the villages to mobilise Kunbi peasants against the new assessments.
- Under this pressure, the Bombay government granted a significant concession: in cases of revenue default, a peasant’s movable property would be attached first, with his land put up for auction only if the movable property proved insufficient to cover the debt.
- Paradoxically, this very concession became a fresh source of conflict between peasants and moneylenders, as the latter — in 1874 — refused to extend further credit for revenue payment, citing what they considered a lack of adequate security now that land could no longer be seized as readily.
Multiple Causes of the 1875 Riots
- The riots of 1875 were not the product of any single cause, but stemmed from a combination of factors, including:
- The dislocation of the local economy caused by the American Civil War and the subsequent collapse of the cotton boom.
- An ill-conceived revision of land revenue rates at the worst possible moment.
- Agitation initiated by the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, which politicised peasant grievances.
- Longstanding hostility between the Kunbi peasantry and the moneylenders, rooted in decades of debt and dependence.
Social Boycotts: The First Phase of Protest
- A spontaneous protest movement began in December 1874 in Kardab village, Sirur taluka. When local peasants failed to persuade the moneylender Kalooram to refrain from acting on a court decree to demolish a peasant’s house, they organised a complete social boycott of “outsider” moneylenders in an effort to secure their demands peacefully.
- Peasants refused to buy from the moneylenders’ shops; no one would cultivate their fields; and the bullotedars — village service providers such as barbers, washermen, carpenters, ironsmiths, and shoemakers — refused to serve them. Even domestic servants would not work in their households.
- Social sanctions were also imposed on any peasant or bullotedar who declined to join the boycott. The movement spread rapidly to the villages of Poona, Ahmednagar, Sholapur, and Satara districts.
- When the social boycott proved insufficiently effective, it soon transformed into open agrarian rioting.
The Uprising Begins (May 1875)
- The riots first broke out on 12 May 1875 at Supe, a village in the Bhimthadi taluka of Poona district, where a systematic attack was launched on the houses and shops of moneylenders. The unrest quickly spread to other villages across Poona and Ahmadnagar districts.
- Supe was a market town where numerous shopkeepers and moneylenders resided. Ryots from the surrounding countryside gathered there, attacking shopkeepers and demanding their account books and debt bonds.
- They burnt account books, looted grain shops, and in some cases set fire to the houses of sahukars — individuals who acted as both moneylenders and traders.
- From Poona, the revolt spread to Ahmednagar, and over the following two months, it extended further still, covering an area of roughly 6,500 square kilometres and affecting more than thirty villages.
- The rioters’ specific objective was to seize and destroy debt bonds, deeds (often signed under pressure, in ignorance, or through outright fraud), decrees, and other documents relating to their debts held by the moneylenders.
- Violence was resorted to only when moneylenders refused to hand over these documents; villagers were led throughout by their traditional headmen, the Patels.
- As in its earlier phase, the uprising continued to involve social boycott — both of the moneylenders themselves and of any villager who declined to join the boycott. The movement later received support from the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, led by Justice Ranade.
Suppression and Aftermath
- As the revolt spread, police posts were established in affected villages to intimidate the rebellious peasantry into submission, and troops were rapidly deployed, resulting in numerous convictions. Nonetheless, it took several months to bring the countryside fully under control.
- Had the British not acted promptly, there is good reason to believe the spirit of rioting could have spread across the whole of Maharashtra.
- The Bombay government moved swiftly to prevent any recurrence of such unrest, ultimately protecting peasants against future land seizure through the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act of 1879.
- Interestingly, while contemporary colonial officials and many later historians have referred to these events as the “Deccan Riots,” the peasants themselves understood their action as a revolt, or band — consciously situating their uprising within a long tradition of rebellion in Maharashtra.
Result: The Deccan Riots Commission and the Relief Act of 1879
- When the revolt first spread across the Deccan, the Government of Bombay was initially reluctant to treat it as a serious matter.
- The Government of India, however — mindful of the memory of 1857 — pressured Bombay into establishing a commission of inquiry to investigate the causes of the riots.
- The Deccan Riots Commission produced a report that was presented to the British Parliament in 1878, leading directly to the passage of the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act, 1879.
- Under this Act, peasants could no longer be arrested and imprisoned simply for failing to repay their debts — a significant, if limited, legal protection for the agrarian population.
Character of the Revolt
- Gujarati and Marwari moneylenders were targeted everywhere not merely because they were perceived as “outsiders,” but because they were widely regarded as particularly avaricious.
- They also tended to reside within the villages themselves, making them more exposed to attack than Brahman moneylenders, who typically lived in better-protected towns and cities.
- Notably, there was very little violence directed at the person of the sahukars; the rioters’ primary targets were their debt bonds, which were seized and destroyed. Violence was employed only where moneylenders resisted handing over these documents — a feature that clearly distinguishes the Deccan Riots from the more common genre of “grain riots” driven by sheer poverty and hunger.
- In most locations, the riots functioned as demonstrations of popular sentiment and of the peasantry’s newly discovered unity and collective strength; while moneylenders’ houses and shops were looted and burnt at Supe, this pattern was not repeated everywhere.
- The rioters had clearly identified their target as an instrument of oppression and dominance, suggesting a considerable awareness among the peasantry of the new institutional framework of power relations within which they now found themselves enmeshed.
- Once again, the modern nationalist intelligentsia of Maharashtra extended its support to the peasants’ cause.
- As early as 1873-74, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, under Justice Ranade, had already organised a successful campaign among the peasantry, as well as in Poona and Bombay, against the land revenue settlement of 1867 — an agitation that helped cultivate a mentality of resistance among the peasants, contributing directly to the rise of protest in 1875.
- The Sabha, along with several nationalist newspapers, also lent its support to the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief (D.A.R.) Bill.
- Ultimately, the Deccan disturbances were marked by very limited objectives, and by a notable absence of anti-colonial consciousness.
- It was precisely this limited, non-political character that allowed the colonial regime to extend the peasantry a measure of protection against the moneylenders through the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act of 1879, passed by the British Parliament on the recommendation of the Deccan Riots Commission.
