Rangpur Dhing Rebellion (1783)
The Rangpur Dhing Rebellion of 1783 was one of the earliest and most significant peasant uprisings against the East India Company’s revenue administration in Bengal. Breaking out in the northern district of Rangpur, the rebellion was a direct response to the ruinous exactions of the Company’s revenue-farming system, introduced in the years following the grant of the Diwani in 1765. The peasants, acting largely on their own initiative and organising a rebel government of their own, offer UPSC History Optional aspirants an important early case study of popular resistance to colonial economic exploitation — well before the more widely studied peasant movements of the nineteenth century.
Background: The Diwani and the Company’s Revenue Demands
- Peasants often resisted British rule on their own initiative, and the Rangpur Rebellion of 1783 in the northern districts of Bengal stands as an ideal example of such opposition.
- The acquisition of the right to collect Bengal’s territorial revenues in 1765 gave the East India Company access to a potentially vast source of wealth.
- In its attempt to fully exploit this revenue-bearing territory, the Company came into violent conflict with an already overburdened population — a conflict exemplified by the Dhing, or peasant rebellion, that broke out in the northern district of Rangpur in 1783.
- After acquiring the Diwani, the Company’s foremost objective was to extract as large a sum from the country as could possibly be collected.
- Henry Verelst, who became Governor of Bengal in January 1767, observed that the period following the acquisition of the Diwani witnessed oppression and intrigue unknown in earlier times.
- Throughout the years of the Diwani, the Rangpur district remained overburdened with excessive revenue demands.
- When the Five-Year Settlement was introduced in 1772, the district’s economy was already in a languishing condition, yet the rate of assessment was increased further still.
- The Collector of the district himself admitted that the increased burden was beyond the district’s capacity to bear.
- By 1777, the Five-Year Settlement had proved a failure, prompting the Company to fall back on annual settlements — a system it had earlier condemned. This began another phase of indecisive experimentation that continued until the introduction of the Permanent Settlement.
The Revenue-Farming System and Peasant Oppression
- Under this system, a European Collector operated in tandem with an Indian revenue farmer (ijardar), who was contracted to pay a fixed sum of tax to the Company and whose personal profit depended on whatever surplus he could extort from the cultivators.
- Likewise, a district posting gave the Collector considerable scope to profit from illicit private trade and the misappropriation of government funds.
- As a result, in the early days of the revenue-farming system, the peasantry was oppressed by both revenue contractors and Company officials alike, who imposed high revenue demands and frequently collected illegal cesses.
Causes of the 1783 Uprising
- In 1783, Rangpur became the scene of a formidable peasant revolt, triggered by a gross act of provocation on the part of the land revenue farmer, or ijardar.
- All manner of coercion was employed against the zamindars to enforce payment of the farmer’s heavy demands, and as these demands and exactions mounted, the zamindars in turn passed the burden onto the ryots.
- In a mass petition, the ryots described their plight in stark terms: “We raiyats are ruined. In our house we have nothing left, our grain, our cattle, and other effects we have sold.”
- The worst offenders were revenue contractors such as Debi Singh and Gangagobinda Singh, who unleashed a reign of terror across the villages of Rangpur and Dinajpur districts.
- Debi Singh, appointed ijardar of Rangpur and Dinajpur in 1780, practised untold severity in realising the revenue.
- The immediate trigger for the uprising was the large-scale disposal of agricultural holdings of defaulting ryots at nominal prices.
- When a petition sent to Goodland, the chief of the district, failed to bring any relief, the ryots took the law into their own hands.
The Rebellion of the Ryots
- The peasants first sent a petition to the Company’s government seeking redress; only when their appeal for justice went unheeded did they organise themselves into open rebellion.
- They elected their own leader, raised a large army, and equipped themselves with primitive weapons — bows, arrows, and swords.
- They then attacked the local cutchery (a court of law), looted grain stores, and forcibly released prisoners.
- The uprising broke out on 18 January 1783, and for a full five weeks, the rebels held virtual control over the parganas of Tepa, Kazirhat, and Kakina in the Rangpur district.
- The mass character of the revolt was reflected in the huge assemblage of peasants who joined it, cutting across caste and community lines.
- Kena Sarkar of Gotamari, in the pargana of Kakina, emerged as the main leader of the uprising.
The Rebel Government
- The rebels went on to form a government of their own, seeking to legitimise their movement by invoking what historian Sugata Bose has called “the symbols of the pre-colonial state system.”
- They addressed their leader as “Nawab” and appointed officers such as the Dewan and the Bakshi to run a regular administration.
- The rebel government issued proclamations forbidding all payments of revenue to the existing Company administration, and levied its own taxes to defray the expenses of the uprising.
- The unrest soon spread to Dinajpur, with Hindu and Muslim peasants fighting side by side in the rebellion.
Suppression of the Revolt
- On Debi Singh’s appeal, the Company’s government under Warren Hastings dispatched troops to crush the rebellion, and these forces, together with the Collector of Rangpur, Goodland, moved to suppress the insurrection.
- On 22 February, the rebels made a desperate last stand at Pattong, but the ensuing battle proved an unequal fight — a great many rebels were killed and many more taken prisoner.
- A reign of terror was subsequently unleashed across the district of Rangpur in the aftermath of the suppression.
- Nonetheless, the brutal crushing of the revolt was followed by some reforms in the revenue-farming system, marking a limited but tangible administrative response to the peasants’ grievances.
