Dynamics of the peasant world
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Delineation of two centuries of India’s peasant history from the social context of economic pursuits and decisions
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PEASANT HISTORY OF LATE PRE-COLONIAL AND COLONIAL INDIA— Vol. VIII, Part 2: Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri; Centre For Studies In Civilizations and Pearson Longman, 482 F.I.E., Patparganj, Delhi-110092. Rs. 2700.
Suranjan Das
This book has significantly enriched Indian historiography. Written in a lucid style within an argumentative format and grounded in a strong empirical tradition, Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri critically syncretises the existing literature on peasant history of the late pre-colonial and colonial India and provides new entry points for fresh researches.
Economic decline
Chaudhuri’s delineation of India’s peasant history of about two centuries revolves round the changing and relative roles of land and labour in agriculture, and social framework of peasant production. Moving away from the fashion of imparting cultural markers “for distinguishing peasantry”, the author approaches the peasant question by delineating the cultivators’ material links to ecology, economy and politics. Not land-ownership alone, but engagement with cultivation is considered crucial to be a peasant. Those “living off peasant rent” have been justifiably excluded from the present concern.
The first chapter is a convincing critique of “the inconclusive debate” whether the Mughal collapse caused an economic decline. Sceptical of the idea of relative autonomy of the economy, he shows how the regional powers, succeeding the centralised Mughal authority, “more deeply intruded into the local rural society”, which did not increase agricultural productivity, but primarily enabled the state to usurp “part of the income appropriated until then by other social groups.”
In this context the second chapter of Part-I of the book outlines the following major features of peasant economy on the eve of colonialism: small peasant farming, internally determined social stratification, and peasant labour as the organising element in production. It questions the hypothesis of a direct correlation between fluctuations in agrarian economy and an independent market system.
Comparative studies
Based on comparative case studies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras Presidencies, United Provinces, Central Provinces and the Punjab, the book’s second part explicates the Indian peasantry’s new political and economic links under colonialism. If agricultural fluctuations in pre-colonial period “were mostly conjunctional”, colonialism was marked by a structural causal link between agriculture and the new politico-economic system. During the first century of colonialism such factors as the depression between the 1820s and 1840s, inadequate labour supply, and exposure to London-based market system caused a downturn of exports of manufactured goods.
The consequent breakdown of indigenous artisan industry and erosion in domestic demand of peasant product caused agricultural decline. In North India these economic variables along with rising revenue demand directly caused impoverishment of traditional aristocratic families and “economic deflation.” However, the post-1855 years witnessed agricultural growth, movement of agricultural prices, population movement and commercialisation of agriculture, although with regional variations.
The period saw a decreasing direct role of the state and rising assertion of market forces in developments affecting the agrarian sector. He argues that peasants started reacting to price movements rationally, but this was constrained by an inadequate knowledge of international market practices.
Colonialism was contemporaneous with increasing peasant differentiation and the rise of a rich peasant group. Although sharecropping was a major manifestation of this process, the roots of “dependence of inferior peasants” were not necessarily same, as aptly revealed by his case studies of three presidencies and the Punjab.
Another issue related to peasant stratification was bonded labour, largely confined to lowest Hindu castes, particularly the untouchables. But he doubts if “caste sanctions” were “invariable attributes” of bonded labour. Instead, the landlord domination over bonded labour was related to their control over villages, buttressed by state support, and dispossession of the concerned cultivators from their land. Neither was landowners’ hegemony unquestioned. Besides, later years of colonialism experienced weakening of the bonded system, mostly due to “expanding labour market.”
Forest communities
The last two chapters are concerned with adivasis and forest dwellers, who were historically linked to peasant village. Colonialism seriously undermined the old order within the adivasi society. Based on a reconstruction of Santal, Munda and Oraon experience, he shows that adivasi regions under colonialism registered “slow growth of cultivation”, due to difficult geographical terrain, capital shortage, lack of irrigation, and violation of historical adivasi rights on forest resources. Considering the view that pre-colonial use of forests ensured ecological balance as only “partially valid”, he underlines in the last chapter certain “crucial changes” in forest management under colonialism, which impinged upon the traditional livelihood of forest communities.
The colonial state asserted its sovereignty over forests, primarily to guarantee timber supply for ship-building and railway network, and use other forest products for enhancing its income. This colonial intrusion facilitated settlement of outsiders in forests who tended to cultivate land differently or adopt new occupations.
The book represents the rich insights into India’s peasant world that Chaudhuri has gained through academic engagement and will be immensely useful. But peasant history surely does not stop at an understanding of peasant agriculture. It also entails the deciphering of complex contours of peasant resistance.
We await from the author another complementary volume on everyday forms of peasant protests during the period under consideration.
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