DECCAN RIOTS OF 1875

In the year 1875, Maharashtra’s peasants began a revolution against rising agrarian distress. They revolted because moneylenders charged them exorbitant interest on their land and crops. The moneylenders were socially ostracised. Later on, the movement spread to other parts of the country. Famine-related mortality rose. In May 1875, in Supa, a village near Poona, a peasant uprising against moneylenders was documented for the first time in the Deccan.

DECCAN RIOTS- 

Deindustrialization forced workers out of the land once the company’s control was transferred to the monarch. Agriculture was harmed by high taxes. May 1875, in Supa, a village near Poona, a peasant uprising against moneylenders was documented for the first time in the Deccan.

Riots have been reported in around 30 villages of the cities of Poona and Ahmednagar. The unrest was mostly directed at Gujarat moneylenders. Under the British administration, peasants were required to pay revenue directly to the government. Moneylenders were also allowed to attach defaulters’ mortgaged land and sell it off under a new rule. 

This resulted in a land transfer from farmers to non-cultivating castes. The cultivators became locked in a vicious circle of debt and were unable to pay the remaining loan, forcing them to leave cultivation.

Before the 1860s, the United States supplied 3/4 of Britain’s raw cotton imports. Manchester Cotton Company was founded in 1859 by British cotton manufacturers to promote cotton exports. When the American Civil War started in 1861, imports from the United States plummeted. To keep cotton exports going, British merchants began purchasing and securing cotton from India. As a result, they began making advances to Indian moneylenders, who transformed the advances into ryot debts. In the demand boom, ryots took a lot of credit and were often forced to take credit and sign bonds and deeds. In this economic situation, moneylenders utilised deception and fraud to gain as much benefit as possible. Cotton demand plummeted dramatically after the Civil War, and moneylenders began to recoup their losses.

Money is made by charging ryots hefty interest rates. Most of the time, the ryots were unable to repay their debts, and their estates were evicted and sold. This enraged the ryots, who began a violent protest against crafty and deceptive moneylenders. They took their grievances to the authorities for remedy. The Limitation Law in 1859 limited the validity of bonds to three years. This could reduce the amount of money given to moneylenders by peasants. Moneylenders, on the other hand, began signing fresh bonds for three years and then signing new bonds when the old ones expired. As a result, it fueled riots and insurrection. 

Credit, trade, inequality, and growth all became intertwined as Indian agriculture became more integrated into the global economy. Falling agricultural prices, high taxes, and a sense of political powerlessness caused the growers’ despair. Small peasants were burdened by the commercialization of agriculture under colonial land revenue policies, which put a premium on access to credit to finance productive investments in the land. Local moneylenders secured limitless ownership of their debtors’ property and labour by using capital lent by European merchants; this allowed them the “authority to entirely wreck and enslave the debtor.” This power was by them to control peasant labour in the nineteenth century, rather than their land, which was worthless without people to work it.

These agricultural developments weakened the community customs that had constituted the bedrock of Indian village life. Because the colonial authority misinterpreted various forms of shared usage, access to the forests was restricted, and the colonial government reconfigured the state’s relationship with pastoral groups, access to common resources was rapidly reduced.

Vasudeo Balwant Phadke, an Indian patriot, led a violent campaign against colonial rule in 1879, with the goal of establishing an Indian republic by pushing them out. His uprising, however, was only partially successful. Phadke was imprisoned and transported to Aden, where he died during a hunger strike in 1883.

CAUSES OF DECCAN RIOTS OF 1875- 

• The British policy of economically exploiting India was the most significant source of popular resentment. This harmed people from all walks of life. 
• Due to heavy tax demands under the Ryotwari system and a stringent revenue collection programme, peasants suffered. 
• The large-scale influx of inexpensive British manufactured products into India devastated artisans and craftsmen, making their hand-made goods uneconomical to create. 
• The excesses of Gujarati and Marwari Money lenders, trapped peasants into an endless and vicious debt cycle.
• In 1874, the local peasant organised a social boycott against these moneylenders, which later spread to surrounding districts and later turned into a violent movement with outbreak of arson and violence against the moneylending class.

DECCAN RIOTS COMMISSION- 

When the insurrection expanded across the Deccan, the Bombay government was originally unconvinced that it was genuine. However, the government of India, troubled by the events of 1857, exerted pressure. Bombay’s government is forming a commission, a commission of inquiry to look at the reasons for the riots. The commission issued a report that was well-received.

In 1878, it was presented to the British Parliament. The Deccan Riots Report is the name given to this report, and offers historians a variety of historical sources.

The riot was studied. The commission looked into the matter documented in the districts where the disturbances extended ryots, sahukars, and eyewitnesses’ statements gathered statistics on revenue rates and pricing and interest rates in various regions, which were compiled reports from the district. 

CONCLUSION- 

The Deccan Riots of 1875 show the socioeconomic changes that occurred in rural Maharashtra during the first five decades of British rule in western India. The riots are of particular interest to social historians because they revolved around relationships between two distinct rural social groups, namely, cultivators and moneylenders. The societal developments that led to this dispute will be the topic of this study. I’ll also try to connect these shifts to the social values and political goals that motivated Maharashtra’s new rulers and shaped its administrative policy.