Indira Gandhi

National Open University

MHI-06
School of Social Sciences Evolution of Social
Structures in India
Through the Ages

Block

8
SOCIAL QUESTIONS UNDER COLONIALISM
Unit 28
Colonial Forest Policies and Criminal Tribes 5
Unit 29
Gender/Women Under Colonialism 14
Unit 30
Social Discrimination 23
Unit 31
Popular Protests and Social Structures 34
Unit 32
Studying Tribes Under Colonialism 45
Suggested Readings 54
Expert Committee
Dr. Nayanjot Lahiri Prof. Yogendra Singh
Delhi University Formerly Professor at Centre for
Delhi Study of Social Systems, J N U, New Delhi
Prof. M G S Narayanan Prof. Satish Saberwal
Formerly Professor of History Formerly Professor of History
Calicut University, Calicut At C H S, J N U , New Delhi
Prof. Dilbagh Singh Prof. A R Khan
Professor of History Programme Coordinator
At C H S, J N U IGNOU
New Delhi New Delhi

Programme Coordinator Prof. A.R. Khan

Course Coordinator Ajay Mahurkar
Block Editor Dr. Shri Krishan
Block Preparation Team
Unit No. Resource Person
28 & 30 Dr. Shri Krishan
M D University
Rohtak, Rewari Regional Centre, Rewari.
29 Dr. Shobhna Warrier, Hansraj College,
University of Delhi, Delhi.
31 Dr. Amrit Basra, College of Arts and Commerce,
University of Delhi, Delhi.
32 Dr. Archana Prasad, Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library, Teen Murti Bhavan, New Delhi.

Material Production Secretarial Assistance

Mr. Jitender Sethi Mr. Mahesh Kumar
Mr. S.S. Venkatachalam Mr. Sunil Patwal
Mr. Manjit Singh

November, 2006
 Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2006
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BLOCK INTRODUCTION

Much emphasis has been placed on colonialism as an agency of socio-historical

change in India. Scholars have argued how much of India’s ‘tradition’ was recast
and reinvented under the influence of colonial social policies. In order to place this
social change in a proper context, it is important to study the interplay of cultural and
administrative practices. The initiatives of colonial state by themselves cannot sum up
the complexity of interaction that took place between Indian social structure and
colonial polity and contestation between them in various fields. As the project of
colonization unfolded in the Indian sub-continent, critical changes took place in social
relationships-not only in class terms but were refracted through a countless set of
social and cultural relationships including those of caste and community as well as of
gender. These relationships were not only inherited from the pre-colonial past but
were in constant process of renegotiation and reformulation under the colonial rule.
At one level, the colonial policy makers reaffirmed their faith in non-interventionist
stance, although the waves of free trade, utilitarianism and evangicalism did have
different degrees of impact on the social milieu of India. In some areas, the change
was devastating in nature and scale especially in dealing with the tribal and forest-
dependent communities. Large-scale commercial exploitation of Indian forest re-
sources disrupted life style of tribal communities and the network of colonial official-
dom, private trading interests and Indian usurers subdued them. In certain other
fields, the change was more finely tuned as was the case with gender-relations. We
had earlier investigated some aspects of social history of caste and class under
colonialism. In the present block, we will focus our attention on specific forms of
social discrimination, colonial forest policies, categorization of certain tribes as ‘crimi-
nals’ and gender-relations under colonialism.

Unit 28 entitled “Colonial Forest Policies and Criminal Tribes”, narrates how the
colonial state privileged sedentary agriculture because it was much easier to tax as
well as control settled communities over the wandering pastoral and tribal commu-
nities subsisting on shifting cultivation. It also describes how the colonial state estab-
lished it overall control over the forest resources of India and destroyed the existing
customary rights of indigenous communities and their collective entitlement to com-
mon property resources, thereby, threatening their livelihood. In the end, the story of
stigmatization of certain communities as ‘criminal’ has also been examined.

Unit 29 analyzes the construction of gender under colonial rule and how it shaped
the lives of women in public space and private domain. Besides investigating the
construction of patriarchal ideology and domestication of women, the unit also high-
lights the resistance offered by the women actors.

Unit 30 deals with the problem of social discrimination. It is explained that while
professing formal equality, the colonial state upheld and reinforced the principle of
social hierarchy, which resulted in various forms social discrimination under coloni-
alism based on race, caste and gender. As rulers, the British attributed superior
qualities to their race and devalued indigenous populations in every conceivable way
and this contributed to the first strand of discrimination. This unit also describes caste
and gender based social inequity and distinction that found expression under the
impact of colonial regime.

Unit 31 deals with issues of popular protests and social structures. This unit will give
you an account of the historiographical trends on this theme and broadly familiarise
you with the issues involved.
Social Questions Under Unit 32 discusses the various aspects of colonial ethnography in dealing with the
Colonialism
tribal communities and compares it with the nationalist discourse on the issue. Mainly,
two tendencies have been identified about the perception of tribes. One argued for
the isolation of tribes in order to preserve their uniqueness, culture and heritage while
the other stressed the assimilation of tribal communities in the mainstream of Indian
social life. Of course, in between them there were various degrees of opinions and
the exigencies of colonial rule also played their role in these perceptions.

4
UNIT 28 COLONIAL FOREST POLICIES AND
CRIMINAL TRIBES
Structure
28.0 Introduction
28.1 Pre-colonial Legacy
28.2 The Forest Acts and Ecological Warfare
28.3 The Imperial Forest Department and Forest Acts
28.4 Impact of colonial Forest Policy on Indigenous Communities
28.5 Pacifying the Internal Frontiers
28.6 The Criminal Tribes Acts and Branding of Indigenous Communities
28.7 Law vs. Custom Debate
28.8 Summary
28.9 Glossary
28.10 Exercises

28.0 INTRODUCTION

The early Company rule in India tried to make use of the indigenous communities on
the margins of the sedentary and settled agriculture in its programme of conquest and
pacification. This was a tactic inherited from the practice of making use of fluid
political arrangements by the pre-colonial polities like the Marathas. The recognition
of the Bhil chiefs as rajas in return for a fixed tribute, establishment of a special Bhil
Corps (1823) and a special police force of the Mewatis were part of this approach.
The colonial State recognized the importance of forest and wasteland in the settlement
of rural society. The disappearance of forest-cover in early 19th century was mostly
due to cutting of forests for military or security reasons. Another reason was extension
of cultivation under pressure so as to increase the revenue-resource base of the Raj.
The colonial state favoured sedentary agriculture. Its main motive was to settle and
discipline nomadic and pastoral communities and to wean or coerce tribal people from
their traditional slash-and-burn agriculture or hunting-gathering life style. The systematic
ecological warfare of the late 19th century, however, was chiefly a product of
commercial needs and requirements. Although, indigenous elements in the form of
merchant-cum-usurers were associated with the process, the institutional and ideological
framework was specifically colonial. This institutional arrangement consisted of the
Forest Acts and bureaucracy as well as the Criminal Tribes Acts and the settlements.
We will trace the convergence of environmental, legal and social history in the next
sub-sections of this Unit.

28.1 PRE-COLONIAL LEGACY

Alfred Crossby (1986) gave a notion of ‘ecological imperialism.’ According to the

notion, a complex set of weeds, animals and diseases brought by the biological
expansion and migrations from Europe destroyed the flora, fauna and human societies
or the indigenous ecosystems of the New World. Basing themselves on this notion,
Gadgil and Guha (1992) projected colonialism in India as an ecological watershed.
According to them, although the Europeans could not create neo-Europes in India by
decimating and devastating indigenous population and their natural resource-base but
they did intervene and radically altered existing food producing systems and their
ecological basis. Three basic elements of this unprecedented intervention in the
ecological and social fabric of Indian society by colonialism, according to them, are:
5
Social Questions Under (a) A shift from subsistence-oriented resource gathering and food-production to
Colonialism commercial production;
(b) Destruction of cohesive local communities and their institutions and emergence
of individualism in their place; and
(c) Breakdown of a system of restraints on traditional resource-use due to
development of markets as the focal points for organizing access to resources.
Richard H Grove (1998) has criticized this line of thinking as a belief in pre-colonial
golden age of ecological balance and harmony.

According to him, exclusivist forms of state forest controls developed in pre-colonial

states in South Asia, which saw rapid state-sponsored de-forestation. The control of
state over forest-resources was gradually increasing in India since about 800 A.D.
It was reinforced in Mughal period and received further impetus during the ascendancy
of successor states. The Maratha state tried to acquire control over forests of the
Western Ghats and to set-up plantations, both for shipbuilding and revenue. The
states of Cochin and Travancore also exercised similar monopoly rights over forests.
The Amirs of Sind adopted a policy of afforestation and forest protection during
1740-1840. This was meant to encourage development of their hunting reserves or
sikargahs. However, the state control in pre-colonial times was limited to the extraction
of certain plant and animal species or to the maintenance of hunting reserves.
Sometimes state asserted control over certain specific products. For instance, Tipu
Sultan asserted right of state over sandalwood, a valuable tree. Forest management
and control was also crucial for military reasons in some cases especially for the
defense of forts. Sometimes agrarian empires in the pre-colonial times cleared
woodlands to augment land revenue resources in pre-colonial times. Although
commercial and strategic compulsions initiated the process of forest clearance in pre-
colonial periods, there were no sharp conflicts over control of forest-resources like
the one that surfaced in the colonial period. In the pre-colonial period, even if there
was no perfect ecological harmony, arable land was in abundance, state control was
limited and a hierarchy of user-rights rather than an absolute notion of property in
arable and forestland was prevalent.

28.2 THE FOREST ACTS AND ECOLOGICAL

WARFARE

Large-scale commercial logging began in the 19th century. The demands of European
entrepreneurs and the colonial state were much more extensive than the demands of
earlier rulers. The contractors hewed many teak forests during 1800-1830 on the
Western Ghats for the Bombay marine. Palmer & Company, a managing house
based in Hyderabad, similarly logged in the Berars. The expansion of Coffee plantation
in South after 1840 and of Tea plantation in Assam and the Bengal Hills further
accelerated the process. By around 1860, commercial demands for timber were
growing due to demand from shipbuilding, iron smelting and other industries. As a
result of this Oak forests in Britain started vanishing. Therefore, there was great
demand for Indian teak as it was the most durable of shipbuilding timbers. Construction
of ships in Surat and on the Malabar Coast and export of teak-timber to meet the
demands of the Royal Navy greatly stimulated the process of deforestation and
denudation. The revenue orientation of colonial land policy also worked towards
deforestation. Forests were seen as an obstacle to expansion of settled agriculture.
Under the pressures of heavy land-revenue assessments especially on better soils,
peasant cultivators moved into hills or onto poorer waste soils and cleared forests.
The British, drawing on their experience of Ireland and Scotland took ecological
warfare to new heights. There was a large-scale expansion of cultivable land due to
‘clearings’ of forests in Northern India after1860. This led to a sharp decline in the
6 fortunes of the extensive nomadic and pastoral economy of the plains.
The expansion of railways after 1850s was another main cause of commercial Colonial Forest Policies
logging. European and indigenous private contractors made huge gains in the process and Criminal Tribes
of utilizing woods for commerce. Before the opening of Raniganj coalmines, railways
used wood as fuel. The railways were using fuel wood in North Western Province
even in 1880s. [Link], in his work, The Forests and Gardens of South India
(1860) described the impact of the railways especially in Melghat and North Arcot
Hills. The pace of deforestation was correlated with the expansion of railways. The
railways expanded from 1349 Kms in 1860 to 51,658 Kms in 1910. The demand for
railway sleepers grew proportionately. Only three Indian timbers- teak, sal and deodar-
were more suitable as sleepers. Sal and teak forests were available near railway lines
in the Peninsular India and were worked in early years. However, subsequently
deodar forests in the sub-Himalayan region of Kumaon and Garhwal were also
utilized.

28.3 THE IMPERIAL FOREST DEPARTMENT AND

FOREST ACTS

The policy of non-intervention and laissez faire gradually gave way to legitimate State
intervention. The Scottish Surgeons like Alexander Gibson and Hugh Cleghorn, in the
service of the East India Company, pointed the connection between denudation and
droughts after 1837. Protection of forests was now seen as essential for maintaining
water supplies and safeguarding agricultural prosperity. Some scholars see conservation,
as a justification for the strategic and commercial interests of Empire while Richard
Grove believes that a wider concern with agrarian prosperity and social stability was
primarily responsible for this shift in the attitudes of the colonial officials. The role
played by strategic and commercial needs of the Empire cannot be denied as the
colonial administrators indicted traders and private capital in their accounts but the
real brunt of state regulation and control was felt by small indigenous forest users like
tribes practicing shifting cultivation. In particular, Kumri or shifting cultivation in
Western Ghats, was held to be responsible for deforestation. Shifting cultivation was
banned in Coorg in 1848 and restrictions were imposed on it in Belgaum in 1856. In
1847, Bombay Forest Department was established. By 1865, an Imperial Forest
Department, with a formal bureaucratic all-India structure had been formed. A special
executive post of forest officer was created and government’s control over larger
tracts of woodlands was established. This paved the way for exclusion of private
capital as well as rural forest-users and shifting-cultivators from the forests.

Dietrich Brandis, a German botanist, was appointed the first Inspector- General of
Forests. The Forest Act of 1865 initiated the process of establishing a legal mechanism
to curtail the previously open access enjoyed by the rural communities. The colonial
state, prior to Forest Act of 1865, recognized the customary rights of common
property resources in forests. The Forest Acts of 1865 and 1878 asserted state
monopoly over forest resources. The Forest Act of 1865 was passed to facilitate
state’s possession of those forests that were required for railway supplies. The pre-
existing customary rights of rural people were left untouched. However, the powers
of regulation and control were given to the forest officers. Prior to 1878, forest
reserves area was limited and there were only 14,000 square miles of reserved forest
for the whole of India. However, forest officers were asserting their powers even
on non-zamindari private lands. In March 1868, teak, sal and shisham were declared
protected species in the Central Province even if they grew on non-zamindari private
lands.

The status of forests and woodlands as a common property resource became a

matter of legal debate among colonial forest administrators. Sharp and conflicting
viewpoints emerged in a conference of forest officers in 1874 that was called to
examine the defects of the 1865 Act and suggest a new piece of legislation. The 7
Social Questions Under debate on the issue was framed within a specific discourse of property. This discourse
Colonialism celebrated proprietorship and as a result customary common property rights in pastures
and woodlands, which were a negation of such notion of private property, were
denied.

Three distinct strands of thinking manifested within the colonial bureaucracy on the
question of customary common property rights. The first section, called ‘annexationist’
by Gadgil and Guha, wished for a total state control over all forest areas. They
argued that all land, those were not cultivated by peasants belonged to the state. They
further claimed that the so-called norms of community and access to forests were
dependent on the sweet will of the rulers. They cited Tipu Sultan’s edict banning the
cutting of sandal wood trees. They asserted that only those rights of use, which were
explicitly granted by the state, were to be accommodated and conceded. Baden-
Powell and the then Secretary of the Agricultural Department, [Link] took this
position that state monopoly of forest and wasteland was an undisputed feature of
‘Oriental’ sovereignty and the colonial state by its ‘right of conquest’ inherited this
monopoly right. The second prominent position mainly held by forest officials of
Madras government, denied the legitimacy of any state intervention in the customary
rights of use exercised by the rural communities. Intermediate position, represented
by the Inspector-General of Forests, Dietrich Brandis and some other officials, held
the view that the state had undisputable right in certain cases but favoured retention
of customary rights of villagers to freely graze their cattle, cut wood, etc., subject to
some restriction by the state. The passing of Indian Forest Act (1878) clearly resolved
the question in favour of an ‘annexationists’ position. The imperatives of colonial
economy, conquered subjects, commercial and strategic interests of Empire
overshadowed and destroyed the customary rights of use of the rural communities.

The forests were classified into three categories as reserve forests, protected forests
and village forests under the Forests Act (1878). The reserved forest consisted of
compact and valuable areas, which would lend themselves to sustained exploitation.
A complete state control extinguished private rights, transferred them somewhere
else or in exceptional cases, allowed their limited exercise. The second category of
protected forests was also under state control where rights of state and other users
were recorded. However, state’s control was strictly maintained by outlining detailed
provisions for the reservation of particular tree species as and when they became
commercially valuable, and for closing the forest whenever required to grazing and
fuel-wood collection. Subsequently, with the rising commercial demand, many protected
forests were converted into reserved forests. The Act also created a class of village
forests but this option was hardly exercised over large parts of the sub-continent. The
Act of 1878 also enlarged the scope of punitive sanction available to the forest
administration, closely regulating the extraction and transit of forest produce and
prescribing a detailed set of penalties for transgression of the Act. ‘Protection’ was
meant to increase timber-productivity, which could be achieved only by eliminating
trees and species that were not important commercially. The forest department made
a distinction between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ species for this purpose. To manage
such multi-species forests, cutting the ‘inferior’ varieties and planting ‘superior’ species
in the ‘blanks’ increased proportion of ‘superior’ trees. Exclusion of livestock and
prevention of fire were two main planks of the ‘scientific management’ by which
forest officials manipulated cycles of renewal to selectively assist timber trees. It was
only at the turn of the century that experience demonstrated that such strict exclusion
of rural forest users did not increase timber productivity. It was found that grazing
and fires did not necessarily affect timber trees. The forest officials towards the end
of the 19th century adopted a flexible approach within overall framework of control.

Another important aspect of forest administration was that it generated surplus revenue
consistently in the period 1870-1925. In other words, the administrative machinery
was more than self-financed. This was made possible by the rising demands of the
8 urban centres for fuel-wood, furniture, and building timber material and supply facilitated
by improved transport. In the 20th century, a variety of industrial uses of the forest Colonial Forest Policies
produce such as resin, turpentine, essential oils and tanning material also increased and Criminal Tribes
the commercial value of the forests. The strategic value of India’s forests was also
realized in the World Wars when they supplied huge quantities of timber and bamboos
to the timber branch of munition board.

28.4 IMPACT OF COLONIAL FOREST POLICY ON

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

The colonial Forest Acts had a number of ruinous consequences for many nomadic
and pastoral communities and for people surviving on hunting gathering of forest
produce and based on shifting cultivation. The Acts enforced an unnatural separation
between agriculture and forests. Many of the customary rights exercised by rural and
tribal people were abolished while the use of forests was determined according to the
commercial priorities of the Empire. Grazing and shifting cultivation was banned.
Such changes in the use of forests had very harmful effects on the daily life of the
villagers. The pattern of local use and control gave way to state control.

State reservation of forests affected the ecology as certain plant species like Oak and
Terminalia were replaced by commercially useful species of teak, pine and deodar.
The former types were quite useful for indigenous communities as fuel, fodder,
manure, and small timber while the latter served the commercial interests of the
colonial state. The colonial administration disapproved shifting cultivation or Jhum and
forced many tribal communities to adopt sedentary agriculture as the colonial officials
believed that revenue generating potential of settled agriculture was more. For instance,
frenetic attempts were made in 1860s to wean away the Baigas of Mandla, Balaghat
and Bilaspur area of the Central Provinces from shifting cultivation. The discrediting
of the traditional subsistence mode of livelihood of the rural and tribal people also
meant devaluation of traditional conservation methods or indigenous wisdom about
the forests and their ecology. The Forest Act of 1878 excluded a range of activities
of indigenous hunters especially of the underprivileged groups belonging to low caste
and tribal communities. At the same time, the colonial bureaucracy institutionalized
hunting or shikar as an organized ‘sport’ for maintaining the physical fitness and
leadership qualities of white sahibs. It became not only a form of amusement but
also affirmed their status as racially distinct elite. Even the selection of wild carnivorous
animal species to be eliminated was culturally informed as such errant and dangerous
species were compared to human outlaws.

The impact of colonial forest policy, on the indigenous social groups, however, was
not uniform. For instance, private forests of malguzars and zamindars constituted
about 20% total land area in the Central Province and there was a triangular contest
between the colonial state, revenue right holders and their tenants over forest use
rights. Colonial state’s redefinition of property rights brought large tracts of cultivable
waste under the control of Forest Department and became a key factor in the
colonization of the land. The control and power of colonial bureaucracy also
strengthened agrestic serfdom and practice of begar (unpaid free labour) in many
areas inhabited by tribal communities. Associated with increasing penetration of market
forces was intrusion of indigenous capital (merchant-cum-usurer) into forest areas.
The settlers from plains entered areas inhabited by tribal groups secured by proprietary
rights and forms of debt-recovery alien to such indigenous communities. As a result
of all these social and economic changes, conflicts and confrontations over forest and
pasture lands, over the exercise of customary rights by local social groups became
frequent. A variety of forms of resistance including migration, defiance of forest laws,
legal assertion of their rights to open fituris or rebellion were adopted by the indigenous
communities to articulate their grievances against the partnership of colonial state and
money-lender-traders. 9
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 28.5 PACIFYING THE INTERNAL FRONTIERS

The colonial state paid special attention to the mechanism of social control and
pacification of internal frontiers. Control and distribution of forest and cultivable
waste and extension of arable was part of their policy to contain the ‘unruly elements’
such as Pindaris (erstwhile irregular cavalry soldiers in the service of the Maratha
polity) and other nomadic groups. Forests were seen in the eyes of colonial officials
as the abode of robbers, lawless squatters. They drew up on their experience of
break-up of common tenurial systems of Ireland and the Scottish highlands to push
back forest frontier and achieve political stability by wiping out unstable concentration
of power on the fringes of settled agriculture. They discontinued with the earlier
practice of not assessing forest and cultivable waste and promoted sedentary
agriculture. The colonial authorities attempted to settle and discipline groups such as
the Gujars, Bhattis, Rangar Rajputs and Meos, who moved around with their cattle,
extracting ‘protection rent’ as they moved. From the very beginning, the colonial state
used surveillance and mechanism of social control and defined certain social groups
as beyond the bound of civility. This criterion was applied to entire castes and
communities. [Link]’s The Ramaseeana or the Vocabulary of Thug
Literature, exemplified this process of depicting certain groups as barbaric. In 1835,
a special Thagi and Dacoity Department was set up to investigate and punish gang
robberies and murders. Subsequently, a large number of people, groups, communities
and tribes were stigmatized as ‘the criminal tribes’. The legal language of the colonial
officials was used against a wide variety of marginal groups who did not conform to
pattern of settled agriculture and wage labour, especially nomadic, pastoral communities
and forest -dwelling tribes.

28.6 THE CRIMINAL TRIBES ACTS AND BRANDING

OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

A wide variety of ideological elements converged in the making of ‘criminal tribe’

ideology. The Brahmin subordinates of British officials were always apprehensive of
nomadic and wandering groups outside the institution of caste. The British tradition
also associated forests with crimes and outlaws. The hereditary-based theory of
crimes that was popularized in Europe by Cesare Lombroso perceived the criminal
man as a separate species with specific hereditary and anatomical features. This
belief in the professional and hereditary character of crime was commonly prevailing
among the colonial administrators of 19th century. The Criminal Tribes Act (1871)
provided for registration of all or any member of such tribes who were notified as
‘criminal tribes.’ The registered members had to report themselves to the local police
authority at fixed interval of time and notify their place of residence or any intended
change of residence. Any contraventions of these legal provisions invited severe
punitive measures.

The construction of entire caste and communities by the British officials as ‘criminal’
was part of a larger discourse in which caste and community determined the
occupational as well as social and moral profile of all its members. The ‘criminal
tribes’ were branded simultaneously as typical and deviant. The Criminal Tribes Act
(1871) listed over 150 tribes as ‘criminal.’ Most of these belonged to marginalized
social groups outside settled domesticity. The colonial state defined these groups as
criminal by reference to their caste identity and a legal characterization that rendered
crime as an in-born trait of such selected communities. Such communities could
not lay any claims to the protection and impartiality of law. Their criminality
was represented as an inheritance and a profession, inextricably linked to their
forefathers.
10
Even before the passing of Criminal Tribes Act (1871), colonial authorities adopted Colonial Forest Policies
similar modes of surveillance. A Superintendent of Thugi and Dacoity Department and Criminal Tribes
referred to a ‘predatory tribe’ of Bawarias especially in the lower Doab region.
Kanjars and Sansis were also treated in the same manner. Attempts were made by
police and judicial authorities to register all Sansis, Harnis and Bawarias. Thanedars
or head-constables were required to take security from village headmen where these
tribes resided and were to be held responsible for reporting on their movements.
Gradually attributes generally given to the Thugs such as cruelty and violence were
also ascribed to such groups. The authorities at district administration level, especially
Magistrates, in Punjab and North Western Provinces maintained that the provisions
of Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure were inadequate to
suppress their criminal activities. Therefore, they emphasized special surveillance
measures to deal with this peculiar and hereditary nature of their criminality. They
were to be treated like wild dangerous animals- to be watched, tamed and hunted up.
The chief mechanism of control was to start from the maintenance of their record
and by maintaining a check on their mobility.

The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 instituted a special set of laws, rules and procedures
for dealing with the ‘criminal classes’. The members of these classes and tribes were
denied a right to appeal in an ordinary court of law. The Act was similar to the
Habitual Criminal Act passed in England in the late 19th Century to exercise discipline
and control over the criminal sections of the working class in order to construct moral
subjects. Subsequently, a distinction was made between honest, industrious section of
the working class and vagrant, criminal, dangerous elements and a need for institutional
segregation of the later was stressed in the period 1860-75 in England. The legal
enactment put restrictions on the movement of the members of ‘criminal tribes’ and
provision of a regular attendance gave powers to the village patels and local police
officials. They used such provisions to harass and exact forced labour from the
members of such communities. Even when the repressive strategy was supplemented
by a strategy of reclamation or reform, officials highlighted the failure of re-settling
such tribes in terms of stereotype attitudes. It was claimed that the members of these
communities were unwilling to accept hard moral life of domesticity. This attitude
tended to reinforce the stereotype of innate criminality of such tribes. The Amended
Criminal Tribes Act (1908) provided for settling of convicted members of tribes in
special settlements, to mould and reform them by enforcing work habits under the
control of special settlement officers. These settlements acted as sanctified prisons
providing captive labour at miserable wages and harsh working conditions to a number
of factories, state forests and public works departments. The basic assumption of
colonial sociology was that hereditary circumscribed communities that moved from
place to place and shifted their identities committed most of the crimes. Such assumptions
and enactments of the colonial state were in accord with the values of indigenous
landed magnates and their notion of social order.

28.7 LAW VS. CUSTOM DEBATE

The British ruled over India by their ‘right of conquest’. The colonial state used law
as the most important source of constituting its legitimacy. The appropriation of
revenue, forest and natural resources was not arbitrary, unjustified exaction as was
the case under ‘oriental’ pre-colonial despotic rule but as a legal right of the state.
The colonial state itself was projected as a firm and impartial law-providing authority
that respected ‘universal principles of jurisprudence’. Law making, however, was an
ideological enterprise and as an alien power, the colonial state could not completely
ignore the existing legal norms and customs based on rank, status and gender. The
colonial rule monopolized legitimate violence and used it as a sole prerogative of the
state in its pacification drive. It, however, also used rhetoric of reconciliation with
“laws and customs of people”. For instance, if the indigenous penology punished
11
Social Questions Under crimes according to the caste status of a criminal, the colonial state also recognized
Colonialism caste hierarchy. Concessions were made to ‘rank and respectability and to the
patriarchal authority of husband over wife and of master over servant. The high caste
and rank people were exempted from religious oath in the courts of the Company.
The colonial state exhibited ambivalence towards the principle of equality before law.
It stemmed from negotiation of the colonial state with the existing customs. Many of
the customary practices were re-ordered by the colonial state to suit its law and civil
authority. The colonial state exercised its discretion in selectively retaining such
customs and practices. For instance, in case of ‘criminal tribe’ this offence was
traced and deduced from membership of a ‘criminal community’, but the powerful
land-owning elites who were also often knit into indigenous systems of power and
patronage with these same communities, were not made target of such special laws.

Veena Oldenburg (2002) has shown how the codification of ‘custom’ as adjudicable
law in the Punjab countryside led to an erasure of women’s voices and customs.
According to her, in the pre-colonial customs, women had been co-parceners in the
agricultural produce with their male counterparts as they engaged in sowing, weeding,
harvesting, threshing and other agricultural works. However, colonial legal arrangements
privileged male tillers of the soil and made them sole proprietors of the lands and its
produce. In the pre-colonial society, the transmitted customary practices were negotiated
and contested by men and women. These fluid customs were converted into written,
fixed, judiciable and enforceable corpus of law. They were elicited only from men
and customary law and its colonial legal rendition was only a high caste male reading
of the principles of clan, caste, tribal organization and societal norms.

28.8 SUMMARY

In this unit we have seen how the forest policies of the colonial state and branding
of certain communities by it marginalized nomadic and pastoralist people and devalued
their mode of living. The colonial policies were driven by the commercial needs and
requirements. They harmed the existing customary practices and rights of common
people in the common property resources especially in woodlands and pastures. The
colonial state also stigmatized certain communities as criminal by birth in order to
maintain a rigid social-control over the mobile elements of the society. Law was an
important tool of the colonial authorities for subjugating people and resources of the
indigenous society in a legitimate manner. The colonial state, however, could not
completely ignore the existing customs, legal norms and power arrangements within
the indigenous society. It selectively used and retained practices relating to social
rank, status and gender, thus privileging the upper caste male practices. In the
process, it marginalized the lower caste people, the nomadic and pastoral communities
outside settled agrarian economy and women. The mechanism of social control
reinforced the grand alliance of alien colonial authority and indigenous powerful upper
castes and classes.

28.9 GLOSSARY

‘Annexationist’ : A strand in thinking of colonial officials that

Forest Policy favoured total control of state over forests and
wanted to abolish existing customary rights of the
indigenous communities.

‘Criminal Tribes’ : Branding of certain communities as ‘criminals’ by

birth.

Common Property : Resources that are managed and used by

12 Resources community collectively.
Customary Rights : Certain rights sanctioned by popular customs of Colonial Forest Policies
the people. and Criminal Tribes

Ecological Imperialism : A set of weeds, animals and diseases brought by

the biological expansion and migrations from
Europe destroyed the indigenous ecosystems of
the colonies.

Ecological Warfare : The process of destruction of ecosystems due to

intrusion of commercial interests.

Kumri/ Zhum/ Slash-and- : Shifting cultivation practiced by tribal communities.

burn Agriculture Shifting
Cultivation

Pacification Drive : Attempt to disarm and control people.

28.10 EXERCISES
1) Describe the various positions taken by the British officials in formulating forest
policy.
2) What was the impact of colonial forest policy on the indigenous communities?
3) List the main provisions of the Criminal Tribes Act(1871).

13
Social Questions Under
Colonialism UNIT 29 GENDER/WOMEN UNDER
COLONIALISM

Structure
29.0 Introduction
29.1 The Historical Perspective on Woman Emerging in the Neneteenth Century
29.2 The Impetus of Social Change and Reform Centering on Women in the
19th Century
29.3 The Changing Role of Women in the Modern Period
29.4 The Normative Order and the Changes that Movements Brought to Women
in the Political Space
29.5 The Class Differentiation of Women and their Consequent Public Spaces or
Lack of Public Presence
29.6 Summary
29.7 Glossary
29.8 Exercises

29.0 INTRODUCTION

The nature of women’s question in the colonial period was quite complex. The
women were subject to a traditional order, which reigned them in as regards their
social and public positions. It was the campaign of the social reformers in the 19th
century, which brought their conditions centrestage. Western ideas and legislations by
the colonial authorities under pressure from the reformers sought to create conditions,
which were conducive to emancipation. In this unit, we will be taking you through
the story of some major developments in which women themselves played an active
role in changing their lot.

29.1 THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON WOMEN

EMERGING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The historical developments regarding woman was and continues to grip the human
intellect even today. There have been many ways of looking at the woman question:
from the Conservative to liberal Feminist, Marxist to Socialist Feminist and now the
Post modernist and the Deconstructionist schools of analysis. Today a large number
of works relating to women and work, middle class women, women and nationalism
have become possible. These studies range from being very general to extremely
specialised monographs focussing on women. This is because of the initiatives of the
feminist movement, the International Decade of women and academic projects
focussing on the status of women in India. Today the scholars working on women
range from those who are parts of women in history or women and history or history
of women perspectives.

In the 19th century when the woman’s question came to play an important part of
public discourse the issue of great importance was women’s suffrage and equality in
the western world. In the case of India that these questions came up during the
course of our integration into the colonial society and culture as well as that a number
of demands centering on woman became part of the anti-colonial movement has its
relevance for shaping the nature of questions raised on the woman question aping of
western values by Indian woman and its dangers, the essentialising of the golden era
that India too had when there were women who too had a share in the fields of
14
knowledge and were themselves achievers to be glorified as ideals. These ideas Gender/Women Under
would in their own way contribute to the debate around woman in colonial India in Colonialism
such a way that the problems of woman in Indian society got lost in the maze of
culture, ideology, hegemony and assertion of the male idiom of politics of representation,
identity politics of national culture and the national liberation movement that assumed
centre stage till 1947. Issues such as social reform and women which had found
conducive environment under the anti-colonial movement lost steam completely in the
post colonial period until these issues were raised by women’s groups in contemporary
India.

The context of the range of works on the conditions of women in our society from
very early on as in the writings of Altekar etal was to look at how hindu culture
provided or limited the roles assigned for women from the ancient times. There are
the examples of the Gayatris and Maithrayees who challenged the sages and were
in their own right capable and knowledgeable human beings. The dominant option that
prevails is that women were at some point in history subordinated to their acceptance
of domesticity and reproduction and nurture role in our society. “A mother is more
revered than a thousand fathers”. Though a large section of women toiled alongside
men in the fields, the mines and in the 20th century in the factories, it is the former
image of women that has larger presence. It is the middle class women and their
issues that found greater focus in the process of the anti-colonial movement and even
today as it is their voice that can be rendered more easily on account of their social
standing and educational background. The range of issues that came up in this
situation was therefore demands such as women’s education, women’s representation
in various bodies, property rights and so on. The visual representations were of the
subordinated purdah clad and voiceless woman folk of the country who were waiting
to be emancipated and liberated from the drudgery of domesticity, reproduction,
sexual inferiority and subalternity. Here we can place the writings of women, men
both Indian and from the European world who have written heart rending and at
times sensational picturisation of the condition of women in India as for example the
work of Katherine Mayo in the text “Mother India”. Such characteristics of the
dismal defensive responses from Indian intelligentia as well as radical and reformative
experiments that particularly in the 19th century created a whole range of debate on
modernity, westernisation, progress and development among the Indian intellectuals.

29.3 THE IMPETUS OF SOCIAL CHANGE AND

REFORM CENTERING ON WOMEN IN THE
19TH CENTURY

It was in the nineteenth century when the Indian subcontinent was teeming with ideas
of significant importance on reform and change that the woman question assumed
centre stage. This was to some extent related to the nature of questions that were
taken up in the 19th century. These were influenced by the colonial ideology and
political concerns that were voiced during these times. Campaigns such as for example
that the condition of the women in a country is representative of the conditions and
civilisation of the area transformed the mindset of the educated literati of Indians who
saw in the amelioration of the conditions of the ideas such as Western impact and
Indian response schema has been put out as the characterising the social reform
agenda in the 19th century or for that matter transforming society. To Desai, this
resulted in measures that were conducive for the emancipation of women and attempts
to elevate their status that were initiated by social reformers. Was this a period of
Renaissance? This was another rendition of the 19th century where scholars such as
Sushoban Sarkar see in the reform initiatives the rebirth of vitality into colonial
Bengal. All this engagement with the woman question relaised major reform legislation
very helpful for women: Anti-Sati bill of Bentinck, Widow Remarriage Act of 1856
and Educational Institutions for girls. The reform movements produced variety in its 15
Social Questions Under regional focus on one or many of the issues that generally invited the concern of the
Colonialism 19th century mind.

In Western India part of the reform was on education of women and a range of
social practices such as child marriage, widow re-marriage and the freedom of
woman too to not consent to a marriage. Thus we have the images of Pandita
Ramabhai, Ramabai Ranade and Tarabhai Shinde who worked on these issues on
whom a number of scholarly works are available. That Ramabai Ranade was the
child wife of a very important social reformer in Maharashtra M. G. Ranade made
it possible to raise these issues in the nationalist campaigns. That the questions
relating to woman such as the age of marriage as well as educational opportunities
became the sites of reform for the Indian Social Conference under the leadership of
Ranade. Interestingly it was on the issue of Age of Consent Bill that there came up
a debate within Indian Nationalist dividing them: Tilak, totally against appealing to an
alien government to make any such legislation to remedy an Indian social evil and the
likes of Ranade etc. favouring it. Pandita Ramabai for example taking a particularly
critical stance on the Rukmabai episode which was the case of a woman who did
not want to give conjugal rights to her husband who was illiterate, sick and from
whom she wanted to be free. It is at this time Malabari sought to work on getting
the Age of Consent raised as well as divorce possible for women. Both these issues
raised hell among many Hindu Nationalists as it was deemed as going against the
grain of hindu beliefs and customs for women and as attempts to ape the western
values for Indian women which was too much to accept.

The other area where the position of women was the site of reform was Bengal in
the early 19th century. There has been a major debate on the implications of these
efforts of social reform. To some historians the reform agenda was part of the
process of modernisation of the traditional society. To others, reform was a tool in
the hands of the colonised to regain their identity and to rejuvenate Indian culture.
To some others it was through reform that the nationalist discourse constructed
woman in an essentialist sensibility. And thus it was through reclaiming the space
for woman, albeit based on essentialist notions, within the social fabric that the male
colonial subject helped form a hegemonic national culture. This to some historians is
the basic weakness of the social reform agenda of the 19 th century. It remain
embedded in the politics of power and representation that only situated the condition
of the woman and through it sought to create the nationalist basis of mobilisation but
did not resolve the woman question in any way. For example, the entire age of
consent debate though technically concerned with the issue of the mature age at
which the state wanted to ensure marriage took place, became the battleground for
Indian nationalists as an attack on the right of the colonised to decide matters for
themselves. Nonetheless, significant important issues that came to the fore and even
were legislated upon was the Anti Sati Act of Bentinck, 1829, the widow remarriage
Act of 1856. It is through these issues concerning the position of women within
Indian society that the first visible mobilisation of Indians through associations took
place. The demand for womens’ education too gained aground as it was argued that
it was of utmost need for the happiness, welfare and civilisation. The fact that there
were texts such as Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s paribarik prabandha that are essays
concerned with characterisation of the family.

Partha Chatterjee raises interesting questions: Was the field of education the site of
challenge from the inroads of western ideas for the Indian reformers. And hence
became a thrust area of great effort for the social and cultural space in colonial India
was one where the colonial state put out the civilising mission of the colonised
worshipping four million gods and prey to a variety of social evils by way of modernising
them and liberating the ‘barbarian’ minds through western education. The nationalist
agenda around the woman question put out its cultural defence that at its initial phase
manifested as reform of woman’s condition and at a later stage became a revival of
16 earlier traditions neither of which resolved the woman’s question. To Partha Chatterjee
then the nationalist paradigm made its own selection “to make modernity consistent Gender/Women Under
with the nationalist project” And thus reform was both emancipation and self Colonialism
emancipation of woman and the image of the new woman who was fixed between
the confluence of modern bourgeois values of order, cleanliness etc. as well as
culturally specific spiritual and faithful qualities of traditional moorings. Role models
of women were inscribed by the social and religious regulatory family and kinship
practices. And thus the nationalist project of emancipation was incomplete because
of its limited endeavour and aspirations that never really undid the social normative
order: of the relations between gender in society and only touched its surface somewhat
in its mobilisation strategies in the course of the anti-colonial movement.

In taking these arguments further in the context of the characterisation of the role
of woman in Bengal, Tanika Sarkar points out that the good woman in Bengal was
a good wife. The political vocabulary of Hindu nationalism was woman’s chastity. To
quote her, “The chaste body of the Hindu woman was thus made to carry the unusual
weight since she had maintained this difference in the face of foreign rule:. As
opposed to the Hindu man who she argues had been colonised and assaulted by the
western power knowledge. However she points out there also was the space that
was traditionally available to women to read the scriptures that found the way out
for the aspirations and expectations of women in traditional society to work through
critically. For example in the life of Rashsundari Devi a Vaishnavite landlord wife
whose biography Aman Jiban she evaluates, she elaborates this argument of feminine
autonomy. Rashsundari’s biography is of the life of an ordinary Hindu woman in 19th
Bengal which very carefully centres itself on her concerns and herself who was
married off early. Although Rashsundari suffered the long winding years of caged
existence as a wife and mother, she found refuge in reading the religious texts that
probably had a liberating effect on her otherwise drab existence. It is only when
Rashsundari becomes a middle age woman that we get a sense of fulfillment and
peace in her when she puts out the idea of my sansar at the point when she is a
mother-in-law, a grandmother and is beyond that stage of life where she was controlled.
What thus comes across is the image of a woman who while fully rendering the
familial responsibilities as in the various stages of life too at the same time through
traditional idioms of reading religious literature and devotion expressed herself identity
in such difficult times too.

In Southern India too under the leadership of Veersaslingam and later in the Madras
Presidency legislature two issues around women became very crucial in the debates,
one the anti nautch movement and the marriage bill which became the Sarada Act.
In Kearla the Marumakkathayam was done away with by way of legislation in 1896
and in it’s place after a long standing debate within Kerala society, the integration of
Kerala into the patriarchal rights concept came into being in the early twentieth
century. With the work of Anne Besant and Margaret Cousins the question of
women’s rights to representation and suffrage became an issue that engaged the
minds and petitions of emergent women’s groups in colonial South India. It was in
colonial Tamilnadu that the movement of Periyar, that the anticaste movement also
took up the question of the role of women in society as its centrepiece as articulating
its ideas of a new society which has its tensions in theory and practice for woman
as has been shown in the writings of S. Anandhi.

Educating women was an important area of focus of the reformers. The Woods
despatch of 1854 and the move to focus on mass education of the Indians included
the women as an important component to be targeted. Thus came the Bethune
schools, the Theosophical Society endeavours as well as a range of reform initiative
schools such as under the Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj etc. But then came up the
issue of the nature of education and it is here the different approach to woman may
be seen and their socially assigned role primarily as middle class mothers come to
light as most of the initiative for educating girls initially was towards needle work,
homecare and such other mattes apart from the ability to read. Thus this was at some 17
Social Questions Under level the duplicating of the colonial state endeavour to generate consent for
Colonialism colonialism through educating the women who would then inculcate similar values to
their children.

29.3 THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE

MODERN PERIOD

It is with the policies if the state as well as through popular pressure through reformist
organisations, cultural politics as also nationalist mobilisation that a number of measures
relating to woman’s condition got taken up. These had far reaching consequences on
the nature of the family and position of woman within societies. The impact on
women was by no means a unilinear, progressive one. Instead today there is recognition
that some of the earlier liberatarian measures too had embedded within them the
privileging of the dominant notions of woman’s role in society as well as was building
new images of women that did not undo the conservative social fabric. The reformist
measures to educate women remained an elite enterprise that even today remains
unrealised for a substantial section of women in society. Reform for women in the
19th century was also varied depending on the community, region and class that we
are talking about and hence it is necessary to keep this in mind while making any
general assessment for women and reform in modern India. For an upper caste
woman the matter of education and widow remarriage was significant while for the
lower caste woman in the early twentieth century just the right to cover her breasts
and to be able to go to the temple of worship or learning would mean a qualitative
difference in their acquisition of rights and empowerment.

In the context of Kerala to state a case the Madras High Court decree of 1869 called
the sambandham not marriage but a state of concubinage. Thus by a single legal
decision that declared the practice of sambandham as null and void as far as the
legality of such custom as signifying marriage. This provoked a major debate in
colonial Malabar as to the legitimacy and the viability of such social custom as being
a primitive practice that as Sir Sankaran Nair put out was a great legal impediment
to progress. In the course of the next fifty years first the Malabar Marriage Act 1896
and then the Marumakkathayam Act of 1933 contributed to the disintegration of the
earlier practice of taravad and in it’s place brought into being the patriarchal, patrilineal
family as the norm where earlier matriliny had been the accepted practice. Thus
some of the legislation that was undertaken during this period had far reaching
consequences on the nature of the family. These acts in Malabar created the patrilineal
family where earlier the woman was the key determinant of lineage.

29.4 THE NORMATIVE ORDER AND THE CHANGES

THAT MOVEMENTS BROUGHT TO WOMEN IN
THE POLITICAL SPACE

The political experiences of women had by the early twentieth century facilitated the
emergence of institutional mechanisms. Thus organisations of women came up in the
twentieth century that then became the sites of public policy making and intellectual
discussions. Major women’s organisation that came up are the WIA, Women’s Indian
Association, the National Council of Women in India, NCWI and the All India Women’s
Conference, AIWC. All of this was middle class in its orientation except for a few
as for example the work of Maniben Kara who became part of the M N Roy Group
and took up the cause of the woman workers. Most women’s organisations concentrated
on politics, religion, education and philanthrophy and thus were successful in bringing
feminism and nationalism closer in the anti colonial movement and were part of the
nationalist political horizon within which they remained. Thus a number of successful
18
women such as Muthulakhshmin Reddy, Shaffi Tyabji, Sarojini Naidu, Amrit Kaur to Gender/Women Under
name a few luminaries did good work. Most of these women came from well heeled Colonialism
families and it is that rendered possible the space for them to emerge as well as laid
the limits of their program for women too. Most of the time the women’s question
was subordinated to the larger interest of the freedom movement and thus Margaret
Cousins for example exhorted, “Work first for political liberty…”.

The demands of the women for political representation in the twenties and thirties
brought to the fore the opposition to these reforms within the nationalists. The reform
minded women did not stop at piecemeal legislation, they were aspiring by now for
economic independence and comprehensive legislation for social and economic change.
Even Gandhi who wanted to improve the status of women appealed to these women
to live in the villages to realise that law was not relevant in the manner in which they
were demanding for a sizeable number of rural women. Nehru endorsed women’s
public life but privileged agrarian reform over family law reform such as of property
law and was against any collaboration on this matter with the colonial state. The
Muslim league had no opposition to reforms so long as it was confined to Hindu Law.
Thus the question of reform of family laws found no support from the mainstream
political personalities and it remained a feeble though consistent demand of the
women’s organisations as necessary to change social relations in the family that still
remains incomplete. Franchise compromise and the Rau’s Committee’s report did not
reflect the mood of the women who gradually became one of the minority groups in
the political firmament of vote bank politics of the twentieth century.

With the widening of the mass base of the national liberation movement under
Gandhiji, we witness the greater representation of women in numbers in the public
space. Gandhiji’s ideal of women’s passivity and self imposed suffering as celebrations
of strength was limiting with the widening of the mass base of the national liberation
movement under Gandhiji, we witness the greater representation of women in numbers
in the public space. Gandhiji’s ideal of women’s passivity and self imposed suffering
as celebrations of strength was strengthened by the impetus the Civil Disobedience
movement got from the involvement of women. Women were now part of the mass
politics and were picketers at foreign cloth shops, at liquor shops, at mill gates and
in front of nationalist processions as barricades. We have the evidence of firebrand
radical women such as Latika Ghosh, Sarojini Naidu as also patient self sacrificing
women such as Ambujathammal a staunch Gandhian activist in Madras and Satyavati
Devi in Delhi all of them in their own way imbued nationalist politics with a gender
sensibility. At the same time it must also be noted that though women became part
of the nationalist rhetoric and the subject matter of reform in this period it did not in
any way lead to a fundamental transformation of women’s roles within society or for
that matter provide a fertile ground for the shaping of the identity of woman different
form that prescribed by the norms laid out in contemporary society. Most of the
efforts of the reformers were at the level of work that remained at the tip of the
iceberg. There were centuries of ideologically ingrained values that appeared to be
common sense, common custom and popular practice that could not easily be shorn
off from the people’s sensibilities.

The anti-colonial movement centre staged the woman question whose partial resolution
was part of the enterprise of the nationalist question. But post the nationalist movement
paradigm, with the attainment of freedom the reformative endeavour on the condition
of the Indian woman and her social position has remained incomplete. The civil rights
and the citizenship of woman integrally and equally as any other group in the mainstream
social fabric has not happened in the Indian subcontinent as yet.

19
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 29.5 THE CLASS DIFFERENTIATION OF WOMEN
AND THEIR CONSEQUENT PUBLIC SPACES OR
LACK OF PUBLIC PRESENCE

It was during the colonial period that the modern factory as a form of workplace took
shape. This has far reaching consequences for the nature of work relations for
women. As unlike the open field in these factories women and men were cooped up
with not enough light, space or ventilation. Thus the questions that came up with the
women going to work in the factories was one such debate in late 19th century India.
To the conservatives this would create women with loose morals as also made the
safety of women very difficult to ensure. At the same time it was impossible to
prevent the employment of women as these were the new sectors where women
secured work easily. In fact, in the initial period of industrialization, women were
invited to become part of the workforce as there were ample jobs available for men,
women and children. Not to forget, women were sought after for they made economic
and social sense for the employer: cheap labour, amenable to ardous labour. And it
is in the factory system that we see legislation particularly for women bearing in mind
their primary role as a mother and as a secondary wage earner taking shape. The
emergent work relations and policies towards women workers in colonial India has
been well brought out in the writings of Radha Kumar for Bombay, Samita Sen for
Bengal and Janaki Nair for Mysore. We thus have evidence of how state policies
impacted traditional society and vice-versa and at times how the bourgeois visions of
the colonial state created its poor image in colonial India for the women engaged in
industrial work. These in turn created the new work culture for women and men in
the factory system.

Hence came the question of how to make the workplace safer for women and such
attempts by labour reformers as well as government. That the factory and its environs
were restrictive in many ways may be seen in a folk song from Ambasamudram
where workers described the ethos of the mill as follows: “In the distance the dorai
is coming, keep three feet off or he will beat you for three days...”5 It may well
have been the case that the power of the dorai at the mill was so all encompassing
then just as we now are witness to the torture of domestic helps within urban
environments even in contemporary India. For the woman, the workplace was
constraining more than in just physical terms. The constant fear of advances from
the “all powerful maistri” is an oft-repeated complaint from women workers to every
authority for possible redressal. The Royal Commission on Labour recorded this as
universal phenomena all over India. We have ample instances of this being a major
problem for women at the workplace. In Madurai and Coimbatore, there were many
attempts to seek redressal from the management through the maistri’s suspension and
the appointment of a female maistri in departments where women worked in large
numbers.

In India, the Factory Act of 1881 marked the beginning of the colonial government’s
endeavours to influence labour regulations and industrial management by British laws
and practices.8 This act defined what a factory unit was, as also the measures that
were binding on an industrialist to operate a factory. It sought to prevent the
overworking of children but little effort was made in the interest of women workers.
The Indian Medical Department advised the inclusion of women also as a section to
be protected from overwork, night work and long hours.9 Acts that incorporated the
recommendation followed in due course. The fact that India was a colony of the then
most industrialized nation had great consequence not only for the course of
industrialisation that took place but also the pattern of legislation. The next Act of
consequence for women workers was the Act of 1922, whereby the government
excluded women and children from all heavy work. Act II of 1922 also made
20 provision for complete prohibition of night work for women workers.19
The issue of wages is a disputed arena for the simple reason that the grounds for Gender/Women Under
payment were by no means rational. To the worker, there was always the scope to Colonialism
demand more, while for the entrepreneur there was always the urge to keep it to the
minimum. As regards the payment of wages to women, the rationale operative was
the secondary nature of women’s work. Well grounded in the patriarchal family
structure was the enunciation of the male wage as primary and later the concept of
the living/fair wage as accommodating the upkeep of the male labourer’s entire
family. This, we see, was the determining factor for the low wages of women. A
male doffer earned more than did a woman doffer. That cannot be explained as being
the result of lower skill, as we shall discuss later in this section. In this, regional
variation is also marked as in Madras the wages were higher than in Madurai, which,
however, rated better than Coimbatore in terms of the wages paid.

Thus around the issue of wage, sexual harassment by the maistri or a petty official
at the mill, for better conditions at the workplace the women were actively involved
in protests and strikes. Though this as well as their involvement in nationalist mobilization
especially during major movements such as the civil disobedience and Quit India the
women from the working classes also got integrated into the public space of protest
and strike politics.

There is also work that bring out the early involvement of women form the peasant
group being actively associated with the local level politics as well as Kisan Sabha
questions. The writings of Kapil Kumar represent the visibility of women in protest
politics for example in the movements spearheaded by Swami Sahajanand. Women’s
involvement in mass politics during the anti colonial movement is evidence of their
integration into the political questions of their times. Captain Lakshmi in the INA,
Godavari Parulekar in working with the Warli tribe, the women working for the
Telengana movement and the variety of women involved in the communist party
activities in the course of the twentieth century carved out a niche for themselves
in the male bastion that was politics.

29.6 SUMMARY

In this unit, we familiarised you with the story of women in India coming into their
own in a landscape which was dominated by the colonial impact and the nationalist
movement. That the women’s question became a part of both reform movements and
the movement for independence. But in this process, we cannot undermine the
agency of women themselves who played an active role in fashioning a space for
themselves. We also gave you an idea about how there was a difference between
the conditions of women in the working class and the women belonging to the middle
class. Some of the questions they addressed were different. However, a patriarchy
buttressed by the colonial rule itself was an overarching framework within which
women struggled to come into their own.

29.7 GLOSSARY
Essentialising : Here it is meant the phenomenon of looking at a period or a
movement by pegging it to one basic feature.
Feminism : The movement of women often led by women around the issue
of the reform of their condition or aspiring for their revolutionary
change.

21
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 29.8 EXERCISES
1) What were the issues taken up by the social reform movement which impacted
the women’s question?
2) Discuss the aspects of the movements that brought women into political
space.
3) What were the issues women faced at the modern factory in the colonial
period.

22
UNIT 30 SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

Structure
30.0 Introduction
30.1 Notions of Racial Superiority
30.2 Colonial Sociology and the Study of Subordinated others
30.3 Continuity and Change in Discriminatory Practices Based on Caste
30.4 Certain Socio-Economic Aspects of Servitude
30.5 Gender Discrimination
30.6 Clothes and Customs as Marker of Social Discrimination
30.7 Religious and Social Discrimination
30.8 Summary
30.9 Glossary
30.10 Exercises

30.0 INTRODUCTION

Historians of Modern India have keenly debated about the kind of social change
brought about under the colonial rule. There is no doubt about qualitative changes in
the nature of administration and economy initiated by the intervention of British
administrators. However, British administrators also borrowed the notions of rank,
status and hierarchy from the indigenous cultural and religious traditions. The early
colonial rule may have been a period of military conquest and economic plunder but
it was not one of clumsy and ham-fisted social intervention by rulers imbued with a
sense of racial superiority. Early British orientalists did not regard Indian culture and
traditions as inferior. There was, however, a definite bias towards studying the more
elite and exclusivist traditions of upper caste Hindus and respectable Muslim classes
rather than the more flexible and all-encompassing religious and cultural traditions of
lower orders of society. This was reflected in privileging of knowledge of Brahmanical
texts and pronouncements of ulema or Muslim religious leaders rather than the
uncodified cultural traditions of subordinated social groups. The principles of caste-
hierarchy and ritual distinction helped in settlement of countryside by providing
ideological support to British scholars and administrators, who, making use of a neo-
Brahmanical interpretations of Indian society set about the task of rank-ordering
indigenous social groups in various regions. The colonial sociology involved multiple
changes in the social structure of colonial India. The social relations affected in the
process of consolidation of colonial rule ranged from familial domain to that of
community, from personal relationship to larger linkages in public spheres. One could
argue that notions of status, hierarchies both indigenous and those imported from
metropolis permeated these intricate and many-sided relationships. Even when a formal
equality was professed between kinship and caste groups under the colonial regime,
two broad categories of privileged and deprived existing side by side were a norm.

The present unit proposes to explore the nature of social discrimination and its diverse
forms in different parts of India. The interface between colonial state and society on
the one hand and relationships among Indians on the other hand provided the context
within which social discrimination was practised. Social discrimination and
backwardness existed in India even before the advent of British rule. But the formation
and development of colonial state heralded the process of major social and administrative
changes, which remoulded many of the pre-existing social hierarchies. We wish to
explore how the new colonial milieu influenced various forms of social discrimination
along race, caste, class and gender. In other words, we hope to pinpoint the structural
basis of institutionalised discrimination. 23
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 30.1 NOTIONS OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY

The British colonial rulers came to India imbued with the spirit of liberal humanism.
This liberalism defined white European men as the maker of history, the creators of
empires, the founders of modern nations, the conquerors of backward people and
masters of sciences and technology. Naturally, they placed the people who did not
make progress or lagged behind in time at the lower ladder of development. The
colonial subjects were simply written out of history, out of modernity and into a time-
less primitiveness-Eden-like, simple and permanently fixed. The colonial rulers used
the domestic ideology of gender to demonstrate backwardness of India and its
inhabitants. The European white men were strong, active, and intellectually fertile
with a sense of self-control and discipline while the colonial Indian subjects were
effeminate, fearful, passive and sentimental. In other words, British imperial experience
brought into prominence the ‘masculine’ virtues of the master race and devalued
‘feminized’ colonial subjects. The British sahibs maintained their privileges and
segregation not merely in ideological realm but in various fields. The British in India
maintained their segregated and dominant position in India. They not only built their
bungalows separately but even their shopping malls, recreational clubs were also
distinct. The relationship with Indians was established for the purpose of governance.
The British as administrators, military personnel’s and even as civilians demanded
regulated behaviour from Indians. It was presumed that in hierarchical society, Indians
were bound to adhere to their customs and they had no rights to appropriate symbols
of ruling class.

The urban morphology exhibited this clearly. The Europeans lived in large segregated
sprawling houses with surrounding lawns and separately even from indigenous elite
and mercantile groups. Despite the notions of rule of law and equality before law, the
British community in India opposed Ilbert Bill, which sought to empower Indian
magistrates in the countryside to try British subjects. The Indians were denied every
opportunity to join the privileged Indian Civil Service, which was dominated by the
graduates from elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The white sahibs were
to be carried around in palanquins in the early phase of colonial rule. The post was
accessible to them even before sorting out of post. The Post Office Act (1854)
charged double postal rates from indigenous newspapers to that charged on the
imported English newspapers. While the liberal traditions wished to recreate India as
the mirror image of British society, in actual practice India was governed with an iron
hand and Utilitarians also declared that India was not capable of governing itself. In
order to establish their control over the forest resources of India, the British forest
bureaucracy discouraged slash and burn cultivation practised by many indigenous
tribal groups and penalized small scale hunting by such social groups, which used to
be a major source of proteins in their diets. But, organized hunting was cultivated as
a sport among the members of civil and military colonial bureaucracy to demonstrate
their racial distinctiveness.

In the 1830s [Link], a judge in upper India resented that ‘natives of rank’ visited
the rooms of Englishmen with their shoes on. He was adhering to the practise where
in British had noticed that only rich Indians generally wore shoes and their helpers
and subordinate went barefoot. The complaint of [Link] rested on the notion that
British were the superiors in India. He attributed the behaviour of Indians to ‘the bad
manners of the natives of Calcutta’ belonging to ‘an inferior order’. Shore also
regretted that it was the carelessness of Europeans and their unfamiliarity with
‘eastern etiquette’, which had resulted in usage of practice. In their public
pronouncements and patronized newspapers, British often ridiculed Indians. For instance
Tribune, which was started by Dayal Singh Majithia in 1881, exposed the misdeeds
of administrators in Punjab. In a series of articles, the paper exposed the deputy
commissioner, [Link] of Multan in handling the issue of cow- slaughter. The
24
Tribune noted that decisions of [Link] had resulted in communal riots in 1881. It Social Discrimination
was strongly refuted by the Civil and Military Gazette. In one of its article, it dubbed
Multanis as liars. It accused them of exaggerating and fabricating actual incidents.

The rulers also believed in public display of their power. The colonial rulers made use
of the many ceremonial trappings of pre-colonial sovereignty for this purpose. The
imperial durbar in 1911was specifically organized to display their racial superiority. In
that year, King George V & his queen came to India and King George was formally
crowned as the King Emperor of India. To celebrate the occasion, the Government
of India decided to hold the imperial Durbar in which the leading Princess by offering
homage would express their respect to the imperial majesties. Before the actual
ceremony, rehearsal was also held to explain the proper form of offering homage to
King Emperor and his consort by the Princess. However Gaekwad of Baroda could
not attend the rehearsal. On his behalf, his brother took notes. On the day of the
imperial Durbar, the Gaekwad also offered his homage. He came wearing a plain
knee-length jacket, red turban and white European trousers. He also carried an
English style walking stick. In offering his obeisance, Gaekwad however neglected
the Princess and while retracing several steps, he turned back and walked down the
steps swinging his stick. It was this behaviour which was dubbed by the Times
reporter as seditious. Very soon English newspapers in India and England started
heated discussion on the behaviour of Gaekwad. In analysing this episode Bernard
S. Cohn has pointed out that use of a walking stick had evoked strong reaction among
the British because they regarded it as marker of white sahib’s identity.

30.2 COLONIAL SOCIOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF

SUBORDINATED OTHERS

An understanding of process of social discrimination requires some background of

pre-colonial hierarchy and rank ordering of society as well as transformations initiated
by the colonial state. In the historiography of modern India, works on colonialism such
as those of Thomas Metcalf, Nicholas Dirks and Partha Chatterji have explored its
institutional and ideological basis. Bernard S. Cohn in particular has shown that
colonial rule was also a cultural construct. The very process of acquiring information
about Indians was connected with strengthening and legitimisation of colonial rule in
India. The process started after the annexation of Bengal in eighteenth century. The
interests of British administrators in knowledge of Indian law, culture and religion
were intertwined with requirements of running the colonial dispensation. Colonialism
reconstructed cultural forms and social institutions like caste to create a line of
difference and demarcation between themselves as European modern and the colonized
Indian traditional subjects. In such production and identification of Indian traditions,
caste-hierarchy was recast as the spiritual essence of India that mediated and regulated
the private domain. Caste-ridden Indian society was depicted as different from the
European civil society because this institution was opposed to the basic premises of
individualism. The operation of this pre-colonial source of identification and sense of
loyalty could easily be used to justify the rule of modern colonial administrators. So,
according to Dirks, it was the colonial rule of India that organized the ‘social difference
and deference’ solely in terms of caste. Caste hierarchy and ritual ranks in their
various manifestations and forms were not unchangeable in the pre-colonial times.
There were also non-caste affiliations and social identities such as kinship networks
linked by matrimonial alliances, commercial activities and state service and patronage
in pre-colonial times. However, caste was also a typical marker of identity and a
powerful social metaphor that designated higher and lower orders. The penal system
of Peshwas, for instance, punished culprits according to caste status. Caste, therefore,
was not merely a fabrication of British rulers designed to demean and subjugate
Indians. It, however, did definitely helped colonial rulers in justifying their rule to
‘civilise’ and ‘improve’ the ‘fallen people’. The evangelicals condemned the 25
Social Questions Under ‘Brahmanical tyranny’ and the colonial state also used the principles of caste-hierarchy
Colonialism as a kind of bulwark against anarchy and as an upholder of social order. Till 1860s,
tenets of social policy centred on abolition of Sati and Female infanticide and this was
connected with ‘civilizing mission’ of the rulers. Their notion of patriarchy made them
conclude that they alone were capable of maintaining a rational social order based
on the idea of material and moral progress in India. As India became the direct
colony of Britain in 1858, rulers stressed racial superiority in the public domain.
Viewed from this perspective, social discrimination can be described as those policies
of British rule, which denied equality and respect to Indians. Social discrimination was
also inherent in the assumptions of rulers revolving around customs and behavioural
pattern of Indians. However it also remains a fact that upper castes and dominant
groups in India endorsed some of these practices. Social discrimination was, in this
sense, rooted in exploitation, denial of identity to subordinate groups. It was also
rooted in practice of segregation and imposition of subordination on exploited and
oppressed groups.

30.3 CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN

DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES BASED ON
CASTE

In this section, we deal with the changing face of caste during nineteenth century.
The colonial rule was consolidated and it acquired powers of intimidation and
observation that influenced the Indian subjects. It was in these conditions that caste
became the measure of the new ranking order. Thus, the tribal social groups like
Bhils, Kolis and Ramoshis became dependent labourers while the privileged landowning
and trading castes Hindus were treated as high, pure and superior. With their notions
of private property and privileging of settled agriculturists, the Britishers gave tangible
force to distinctions between ways of life that had not previously been analytically
ranked, compared and standardized. It was not merely the census, which enumerated
Indians, and fixed caste identities, there were also several policies adopted by British
administrators, which dubbed some tribal and caste groups as criminal. Stewart N.
Gordon’s study of the Bhils highlights this change in their life. During the Mughal
period, Bhils residing in isolated tract in northeast Maharashtra had moved into the
Khandesh valley. During the rule of Marathas they started collecting levies from
passing carvans. In order to protect travellers, some Bhils leaders were granted the
right to collect duties from travellers. Gradually they started working as watchmen.
Many of them settled on the plains and became peasant cultivators. When the British
controlled central India in 1818, they formulated policies, which perpetrated stereotypes
against Bhils and their ways of food production. While land was given to Zamindars,
Bhils residing in hills were without permanent sources of income. They were seen
as criminal. The very fact that they lived in hills generated fear among British. John
Malcolm dubbed them as outlaws and ‘enemies of order and peace’. They were seen
as those who cherished their predatory rights. This led British to dub them as ‘criminal
tribe’. John Briggs, commissioner of Khandesh harped on this rigid identity for Bhils.
Subsequently, under the policy of Elphinstone, who was the governor of Bombay,
Bhils were gradually settled in plains but it remained a fact that those residing in hills
remained segregated and many of them became the victims of agrarian bondage as
agricultural labourers for the landowning Hindu castes.

During the nineteenth century, colonial administrators classified the subcontinent’s

‘castes’, ‘tribes’ and races in terms of importance and desirable quality defined as
per the ‘modern science’ and discovered tenets of ‘Hindu religious faith’. These
classificatory schemes served the needs of British administration, which wished to
represent itself as protector of the ‘sanctity of contract and private property’, and
settled agriculturists against the ravages of Pindari-bands and other so called predators.
26
The thrifty husbandman, the pious man of trade and the chaste ‘clean-caste’ wife Social Discrimination
became ideal inhabitants of India and those primitive tribes, pastoralists and low-caste
untouchables who shared little in the domain of modern progress were placed at a
lower ladder in the newly constructed taxonomy for social groups. In the pre-colonial
periods, birth and moral attributes did play a role in determining a person’s caste
status but there was also considerable openness and fluidity. Now, in the middle of
colonial rule, Brahmanical standards of piousness, purity and refinement of manners
were applied more vigorously to the caste-hierarchy. This finely tuned difference
created rigorous barriers between those of ‘clean’ caste, and those stigmatised as
innately degraded, unclean and polluting. Defined as the fixed attributes of birth and
rank, jati and varna ideals were used to coerce and dominate, especially as rural elites
tried to maintain authority over tenants and dependent labourers. But while new
disabilities were, thus, imposed on lower castes and tribal social groups, the volatile
and unpredictable colonial milieu also simultaneously offered new opportunities and
new set of material and ideological resources which could be utilized by the less
disadvantaged to move up and demand better entitlement to the resources. In the
formal sense, the colonial rule professed equality between its subjects. But this did
not mean an end to social discrimination. The insistence on contract, enforceable by
law and new courts, meant that those with better resources could consolidate their
position by manipulating the new colonial institutional framework.

The local rural magnates in different parts of the country tried to claim a right to
demand servitude and deference from landless labourers or subordinated kamins and
other balutedars(clients) as well as from the marginal tribal cultivators. Much of this
was done with extra-economic coercion using strict norms of hierarchy and pollution-
barrier. In large parts of Madras Presidency the greater part of agricultural labourers,
belonging to lower castes, had been reduced to near servitude. Large parts of Tamil
country as well as Malabar and Kanara region witnessed growth of this type of
agrarian bondage. In some districts, the conditions of untouchable Pallans or Paraiyans
were really terrible. In this part, The British legal and judicial system reinforced the
traditional caste institution and social distinctions, giving a fresh lease of life to the
power, privileges and authority of upper castes. The Brahman landlords, who did not
engage themselves in any kind of manual unclean, ritually polluting labour processes
utilized the services of either tenant-cultivators or employed bonded labourers in their
fields. This type of agrarian servitude was also quite common among the Cherumans
of Malabar where they were treated like slaves and could be sold, mortgaged and
rented out. There were groups outside the agricultural sector in the countryside who
provided various kinds of services to the upper castes and classes. The Bhangi
‘scavengers’ of north India, the Vannan washermen of Malabar, the Chamar leather-
workers of north India and the Shannars or toddy- tappers of Tamilnad. Various
social disabilities were imposed on such people who performed indispensable defiling
tasks for the purity-conscious upper caste Hindus. They were forbidden entry into
temples. They could not make use of public wells. They were also denied use of
certain types of clothes, ornaments and other paraphernalia of upper caste people, to
walk freely in certain quarters and localities. A Nadar of Tamilnad could not approach
a Brahman within twenty-four paces. Their women were not allowed to cover their
breasts. There were also much larger group of dependent rural labourers such as
Chamars in the Gangetic plain, the Mahars in the western India and Paraiyan, Pala,
Mala, Holeya and Cheruma in the south who were depicted as permanently unclean
and impure by virtue of the defiling labour which they performed, not as free wage
labour but as providers of compulsory labour services to local rural magnates or
proprietors. However, much of this ritually defined subordination of these lower social
orders was the creation of colonial economic penetration because until well into
nineteenth century, settled agriculture had not completely overshadowed the pastoral
and tribal ways of life and production systems. Expansion of cultivation in less fertile
tracts involving dry crops required few labourers apart from the immediate kin of
peasant family. There were, of course, caste-specific conventions and norms of
27
Social Questions Under pollution-removal acts and services that provided the model the working of village
Colonialism baluta system in the western India and jajmani relationships elsewhere in the pre-
colonial scheme of things. This also had created a separate category of village menial
servants known as kamins, praja and ayagars in different regional contexts. The
relationship of these social groups with their patrons was not always harmonious and
it is doubtful whether their share in the material and ritual assets of the indigenous
society were so well protected as sometimes depicted. The famine records of
nineteenth century demonstrate that they were, in fact, first to perish in large numbers
in case of calamity. Yet, in more recent colonial times, these lowly placed kamins and
group of dependent labourers, accustomed to limited entitlements, found that their lot
was worse off as their former patrons abandoned the existing webs of rights and
services, leaving former dependents to fend for themselves in a presumably casteless
labour market.

Sometime it is believed that untouchability and rigid concepts of pollution were basically
a reflection of traditional rural India and the colonial milieu created new avenues of
opportunities in the form of urban industrial workplaces and modern western education.
There is no doubt that social transformation linked to colonialism brought many non-
elite migrants into colonial coastal towns and industrial and new administrative centres.
Moving to cities, leather workers tended to be employed as low-paid labourers in
tanning and shoe-making factories. Doms or the traditional north Indian funerary
specialists took up the jobs as mortuary attendants at dissecting rooms of the colonial
hospitals. In cotton mills also mill hands were generally from social groups that had
been identified as ‘impure’ or unclean. In the rural settings, these groups faced
conditions of servitude and bondage and paradoxically, when they moved to urban as
unskilled labourers, the Bhangi, the Mahar and the Chamar also encountered caste
norms. The nature of casual labour in the factories, shipyards and tanneries tended
to increase the power of pollution barrier and social life in such workplaces also
reinforced their lowly, impure and untouchable status. Thus, we find a close correlation
between caste norms and ritually governed entitlement to resources. Moreover, while
most of these social norms and practices predate colonial rule, the latter in fact,
entailed certain changes in the position of subordinate social groups in different parts
of the country.

30.4 CERTAIN SOCIO-ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF

SERVITUDE

Most of the agricultural labourers in south Gujarat belonged to the tribal groups like
Dubla, Naika and Dhodia communities. Many among them worked as halis or
bonded labourers. Halis were like permanent estate servants of their masters known
as dhaniamas. They would become bonded labourer in perpetuity for a trifling sum
of money. They were like unpaid labourers who did all type of manual begar for the
local rural magnates. M.B. Desai estimated that in Surat district about one fifth of
tribal labourers were halis. The upper caste women of landowning castes like Anavils,
Rajputs and Patidars could not work in the fields due to social taboo associated with
manual labour. Such groups, therefore, employed bonded labour on a large scale. The
caste divisions in south Gujarat had got crystallized into two major categories: the
kaliparaj and the ujaliparaj. The ujaliparaj comprised the higher castes such as Brahman,
Bania and Rajputs whereas the kaliparaj included the lower castes such as Dublas,
Dheds, Dhodias and Naikas. The distinction was clearly visible in the various aspects
of their social life including food habits, literacy and religious beliefs. More importantly,
however, it was a matter of entitlement to various material and productive assets and
resources especially agricultural land and expanding networks of markets that were
created by the colonial economy and differential access to it for various sections of
rural society. Similar class cleavages were also discernible in the other parts of
28 western and southern India where untouchable lower castes, tribal groups and marginal
tenant-cultivators suffered from insidious social discrimination. Hali system of keeping Social Discrimination
bonded labour in south Gujarat was permeated by notion of patronage and was based
on use of labour-services of subordinate families in perpetuity by the dominant landlords
of that locality. According to Jan Breman, Hali was the term used for a farm servant
who along with his family was in the permanent employment of a landlord, a dhaniamo.
Such form of labour employment was everlasting and was transferred from one
generation of farm servants to next generation. The practice had its genesis in
incurring of debt by an agriculture labour for marriage or any other social ceremony.
The debt was obtained from a master who was willing to employ him. Over the
period of time, as debt increased, enduring oppression of farm servant also became
fixed and preset, as the hali would never be in a position to repay his debt. According
to Jan Breman, established service relationship could end only if another master was
willing to take over the hali. The Hali system governed the social relationships
between Dublas and Anavil Brahmins, who were not priest as in the traditional social
hierarchy. Many of them had become landlords even before the Mughal period.
Being of the highest castes, they did not participate and contribute in the defiling
manual labour that was so vital for agricultural production. Employing halis belonging
to Dublas caste facilitated their dodging of such menial tasks, which would degrade
their position in the caste-hierarchy. Hali apart from working as farm servant often
performed other duties assigned by his master. His wife also served as maid in the
house of the master undertaking all domestic drudgery. His children also served the
master especially in tasks involving animal husbandry.

The continuation of Hali system was the result of not merely the exploitative power
of landlords. It was rooted in the established social relationship based on patronage
and the so-called affection, generosity and intercession of their semi-feudal masters
and a ‘permanent security of livelihood’ for the halis could be assured. Thus, their
servitude was mixed up with a sense of gratitude. Alongside, Hali system guaranteed
dominant status of anavil Brahmins. During nineteenth century, many of them were
involved in sugar plantation. As their income increased, many of them married their
daughters into the families of Desais. The employment of halis provided them with
continuous supply of agricultural labour.

The conditions of lower social orders in other parts of the country were no better.
The Chandels in Bengal, the Doms in Bihar and Bhuniyas in south Bihar also reveal
that similar scrupulous discriminatory processes of prejudice and inequity were at
work. The Namsudras of Bengal, earlier known as Chandels were relegated to the
position of Antyaja, for whom even service castes such as barbers, washermen and
sometimes lowly placed scavengers refused to perform services. The Bhuniyas
provided labour services to the high caste Maliks as bonded labourers and they were
incorporated as kamias in the social hierarchy. The changes associated with
colonialism, thus, represented a real shift in both the language and the lived reality
of rural social life. The landowning local magnates who had earlier defined their
respectable status predominantly in terms of protected landed rights and privileged
military service in some parts of the country, now buttressed demands for labour
services by imposing grand codes of ritual servility onto an increasing assortment of
landless farm servants and former tribal share-croppers who had not previously been
bracketed with ‘untouchables’. The colonial policy-makers helped such social
engineering by inventing customary obligations for those defined low in caste terms.
The protection provided to their landed rights by the colonial regime further encouraged
such elites to demand begar and vethi from disadvantaged social groups.

30.5 GENDER DISCRIMINATION

Several studies have explored gender relation in colonial India. The position of women
within households was marked by subordination at a general level. The institution of
29
Social Questions Under Patriarchy and the legal machinery in public sphere further reinforced this subordination.
Colonialism Radhika Singha, Tanika Sarkar and Kumkum Sangari have highlighted these aspects
in their works. Urvashi Butalia has pointed out particularly how communal riots
violated bodies of women. The print media especially newspapers during colonial rule
clearly indicates that women were essentially seen as marker of honour of community
and nation. They were not regarded as independent individuals capable of actualising
their innate potential. In a male dominated social arrangement, any attempt by them
to marry out of caste or with males of different religion evoked widespread resentment.
Seen from the perspective of women, social discrimination was practised both at the
familial and public levels. The denial of an independent identity amounted to subjection
of women. Here it is also important of point out that social religious reform movement
focused mainly on the plight of upper caste women. The fate of women and men
belonging to lower stratum of society remained neglected. Here women suffered
from several discriminatory practises, which were, imposed in the name of customs
by the appropriation of upper castes norms and values. Even the stress on the
education of women enabled them to become better wives, mothers and managers
of their affluent households. The social reformers evoked the vision of an ideal social
world, which was at variance from the actual world in which they lived. Therefore,
their moral world was conservative and hierarchical, a framework comprising of high
and lowly, each in their place. In this male vision, women were placed at the margins
of public space. They had to be subordinated even within the realm of domesticity.
In some cases, it was the fear of Christian conversion that led to creation of institutional
and organizational networks to spread female education. Women had no genuine say
over theologies, educational curricula and administrative structures in such institutions.

Sometimes, when the reformers tried to reclaim ‘golden age of equality’, a time when
women were educated and could participate equally in rituals with men; in such
discourses also they stressed the traditional and venerated ideal of pativarta and the
social role of women were still moulded by high caste, middle class patriarchal
values. In the religious and social discourses, women were relegated to the margins
of sacred space. More importantly, their sexuality, their forms of entertainments and
their habits were to be controlled in the name of traditions and customs of lineage.
In order to recover a lost past, reformers paint a picture of contemporary moral and
cultural degeneration and a homogenized image of traditional women. For the nationalist
intelligentsia, securing image of domesticity through a moral and physical rigorous
confinement to maintain the fidelity and chastity of women became a new rationale
for the subordination of women. The Victorian colonial image of women also equally
emphasized the authority of a new reformed ideological community in enforcing these
notions of proprieties and contributed to fortification of women subordination in domestic
and public space.

30.6 CLOTHES AND CUSTOMS AS MARKER OF

SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

In any society, clothes worn by people of different age, gender and class background
act as marker of specific identity. Such identity is reflected not merely in familial
space but also in public domain. In colonial India, wearing of specific clothes was
connected with maintenance of social distinction. In many parts of India, low castes
and tribals were not allowed to wear clothes used by higher castes. It severely
restricted the mobility of women belonging to lower castes and tribals. They were
subjected to numerous exploitative practices, which were justified in the name of
prevailing customs.

In the state of Tranvancore, low caste shanars who identified themselves as Nadars
were engaged in menial and other informal and casual jobs. They were palm tree
tappers, carters and agricultural labourers. Many of them were tenants of Nair
30
landlords. In social hierarchy, they were placed below Nairs who were the landowners Social Discrimination
and performed military service in the state. Social norms in society were enforced
by the state by pointing out specific code of respect and avoidance behaviour. Thus
a low caste person while approaching a Brahmin had to speak from a specific
distance. In case of Nadars, they were required to stand at the distance of thirty-
six paces from the Nambudri Brahmin. Nadars were also not allowed to wear shoes,
golden ornaments and carry umbrellas. Their women were not allowed to cover the
upper parts of their bodies. All castes below the rank of Nair could wear single cloth
of rough texture, covering their bodies from waist up to the knee.

The situation changed when missionaries in Tranvancore started spreading Christianity.

They were concerned about clothes worn by Nadar women. Under the influence of
Christianity, many Nadar women started wearing long clothes. Many of them opted
for Nair style breast cloth. It evoked strong reaction from Nair community. During
1820s many Nadar women wearing such clothes were attacked and were beaten up
in the markets. There was widespread social tension in 1859. The Maharaja of
Travancore responded to social tension by issuing a proclamation on 26 July 1859.
Under this proclamation all communities were allowed to dress in coarse cloth. They
were also allowed to cover their bosoms. However the proclamation also directed
Nadar women not to wear breast clothes identical to that worn by Nair women. Thus
even the Maharaja of Travancore believed in maintaining social distinction. However
Nadar women defied this directive. In his assessment, Hardgrave has concluded that
response of Nadars was connected with their attempt to enhance their social status.
[Link] however has linked this issue with a wider class struggle in the state
of Travancore.

30.7 RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

The social history of colonial India is replete with instances of discrimination of

untouchables and other low castes in the name of religion and established social
norms. The Brahmanical domination and ritual purity of upper castes was maintained
in villages and urban areas in numerous ways. Even when reformers sought to break
caste restrictions, it did not work. For instance, during 1920s Shuddhi movement by
the Arya Samaj sought to remove caste divisions. For this purpose, purification
ceremonies were held and inter-caste dining was encouraged. However, Swami
Shardhanand noted that though upper caste leaders participated in such ceremonies
but they did not participate in inter caste-dining ceremonies.

In many parts of India, untouchables were not allowed to enter temples and other
sacred places. In villages they were allowed to live only on the outskirts of village
residential area. They were not allowed to fetch water from village wells. Under
colonial rule, even when traditional ties broke down in the wake of growing economic
penetration of colonial economy, it was seen that there were virtually no avenues for
low castes to ensure make use of expanding opportunities as they had no entitlements
to land and other non-material resources. In Madras, Punjab and Maharastra, some
individuals and small sections among lower castes had tried to improve their conditions
but by and large they did not have access to education. Even when they had appropriate
skills, in factories they could be employed only in tasks considered to be polluting. For
instances in Jullundhur, Kanpur, many were employed in tanneries and shoe-making
factories but upper castes maintained distance from them.

There was growing realisation among exploited people that they were discriminated
against by dominant and powerful castes due to their lowly ritual status. Non-Brahmin
movements such as that of satyasodhaks under Jyotiba Phule in western India and
activities of other reformers and leaders like B. R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi
sharpened such consciousness. The above-mentioned trends can be exemplified by
31
Social Questions Under analysing the position of Mahars in Maharashtra. In villages, Mahars were employed
Colonialism as watch men, wall menders, messengers, servants of village headmen and government
officials. They were also engaged in the task of removing cattle carcasses. The
families of Mahars performed these duties from one generation to another. They
were not allowed to question their subordinate position. In the mid-nineteenth century,
a Mahar boy from Dharwar sought admission in a government school. He was not
granted admission. For the redressal of his grievances, the ‘untoucables’ of Dharwar
appealed to the Education Department of Bombay province. In 1857, they also
petitioned to the government of India at Calcutta. However, his petition was dismissed
on the ground that there was strong opposition from higher castes. In 1890, Gopal
Baba Walangkar, and some the retired army soldiers from Ratnagri submitted a
petition to the ‘Shankaracharya and other Hindu leaders’. In their petition they listed
the disadvantages suffered by the ‘untouchables’. They also pointed out that the
‘untouchables’ did not have access to schools. They were denied stay in dhamshalas
and were not allowed to participate in trade.

Krishnaji Keshav Damle vividly described the social stigma attached to ‘untouchabilty’
in the nineteenth century in his poem:
The First question of the Untouchables Boy
The children of untouchables
Poor, gay, playing on the road side—-
A Brahmin came from far
To the simple, kind what should he say:
‘ O you brats of Mahars, move away
Be gone! What are you playing at, you lout?
Run and give way to the Brahmin!’
The boy fled— who would dare stay!
One amongst them did;
The wicked Brahmin brandished his club and shouted,
“Ass! Thy shadow must not fell on me,
Get thee gone, or else this “sweet present”!’
The kid too slunk homes words,
Musing——————-
“What if my shadow fell on him?
What’s so wrong about it?”
At home he asked the question to his mother.
The poor mother said:
“We are low and they are high,
When you see them, you had “better step aside”
——————————————————————-

In Bengal, though economic position of Namasudras were not identical in all parts of
province, but they were subjected to numerous social disabilities. These affirmed the
dominant position of Bhadraloks. For instance, their own Brahmans performed all the
religious and social ceremonies of Namasudras. In social feasts they had to sit
separately and were expected to clean their dishes. Their living space was also
segregated. The voices of many Namasudra recounted such experiences. Citing his
32
childhood experiences, a Namasudra pointed out that his mother worked in the Social Discrimination
houses of Kayastha landlords in Burdwan. He also accompanied his mother. His
sister also helped in looking after the children of landlords. Thus though coming from
lower caste, they were allowed entry into the house of a higher caste landlord.
However, one day he saw the eldest son of the landlord urinating in the house. He
also did the same but his act infuriated the landlady. She thrashed him. After words,
she bathed ceremonially as she had touched an untouchable.

It was presumed by dominant upper castes in Punjab that they had the right to
demand labour from Kamins. The latter worked as scavengers and agricultural
labourers. Over the period of time, such exploitation was resented. In 1927, in village
Baghiana in Lahore district, Kamins belonging to the Balmiki community refused to
continue their traditional work of the flaying of dead animals. Against this decision,
landowerners offered joint contract to Balmikis at lower rate to do the work. When
it was refused, landlords resorted to boycott of Balmikis. The latter were not allowed
to use the village tank, thoroughfares and common lands. They were also attacked
and were not allowed to lodge complaint at the local police station.

30.8 SUMMARY

On the basis of certain instances, an insight into the processes of social discrimination
based on caste, gender and unequal entitlement to resources has been provided.
These discriminations were practised under the norms of ritual distinctions and
patriarchal ideology. Subordinate social groups also experienced unequal entitlements
to land, educational opportunities and other non-material community resources. It was
these lived social experiences, which provided the rationale for the resistance against
the disadvantaged position inflicted on some social groups by the colonial rule. The
institutionalised discrimination was discernible in social relationships in rural India.
However, what was considered as natural and inevitable by dominant castes was
eventually perceived discriminatory by the lower castes and this opened the terrain
for contestation between them.

30.9 GLOSSARY

Hali System : It denoted relationship between Anavil Brahmin landlords and

Dublas farm labourers.

Bhadraloks : Upper Castes, mainly Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaidyas in Bengal

Kamins : Untouchables in Punjab who are required to offer begar/forced

labour to upper caste landlords.

Mahars : Untouchable caste in Maharashtra.

Dhaniamo : Landlord-creditor in South Gujarat.

30.10 EXERCISES
1) “British Rulers denied social respect and equality to Indians rulers for upholding
the dominant position” Comment.
2) How did women of lower caste suffer in Indian society during nineteenth century?
3) Describe Hali system in South Gujarat
4) Recount some of the experiences of untouchables pointing out social discrimination
in colonial India. 33
Social Questions Under
Colonialism UNIT 31 POPULAR PROTESTS AND SOCIAL
STRUCTURES

Structure
31.0 Introduction
31.1 Historiographical Trends
31.2 Dominant Features of Pre-Colonial Society
31.3 Colonial Rule and Ruptures in Society
31.4 Characteristics of Popular Protests
31.5 Kol Revolt
31.6 Santal Revolt
31.7 Munda Uprisings
31.9 Moplah Uprisings
31.9 Punjab Disturbances of 1907
31.10 Kisan Sabhas and Baba Ramchandra
31.11 Telengana
31.12 Summary
31.13 Glossary
31.14 Exercises

31.0 INTRODUCTION

The official documentation deploys terms like Fituri, Hool, Ding , Ulgulan and Vidroha
to describe varied uprisings which were dubbed mainly as law and order problems.
However recent researches have shown that these terms denoted popular uprisings
against colonial exploitation. These were led by peasants and tribals who were not
monolithic entities. The differentiation within peasants and tribals indicated that they
were parts of existing social structures and during time of protest, they were as much
helped by other poor classes.

31.1 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL TRENDS

Numerous works exist on the agrarian and social history of precolonial and colonial
India. While the imperialist historiography has denied exploitation of India and has
taken credit for bringing intellectual awakening in India, the nationalist historiography
for a long time has only focused on Indian national movement. The role of congress
leadership in mobilising peasants has been highlighted. However this has come under
scrutiny.
Within Marxian framework, agrarian society and economy has been analysed within
the context of mode of production. In the process social differentiation within peasantry
has been also pointed out. However Shahid Amin in his study of ‘Peasant Production’
in colonial Uttar Pradesh has stressed the need to study process of production. In his
assessment, only then the problems of peasants and nature of their subjectivity can
be highlighted.
Initially works like those of [Link] also focussed on the role of peasantry in
studying popular movements. However this lacuna has been removed. Social
Anthropologists and Historians have focused on various tribal movements to indicate
the nature of social structures that determined popular protests led by tribals. In this
regard [Link] Singh has produced seminal works on the protest movement led by
34 Birsa Munda.
Ranajit Guha who has studied the popular aspects of peasant insurgency between Popular Protests and
1783 and 1900 has provided an analytical framework. He has shown that official Social Structures
documentation was indicative of ‘power-discourse’. The points out since most of
rebels were illiterates they found their existence in official documentation within
colonial perspective so only by deconstructing these documents voices of peasants
can be found.

He has argued that, as the rebel was conscious of starting revolt against dominant
groups so he was an insurgent. However he found his identity at the level of dominant
groups. That’s why he possessed negative consciousness. Ranajit Guha’s work definitely
helps in understanding social ties, intellectual and spiritual beliefs that went into the
making of peasant revolts. Though historians have questioned his concept of negation
and the categories of dominant and subaltern groups but it remains a fact that he has
produced wealth of information on the nature of popular protests.

The role of national movement, Mahatma Gandhi and Communist leadership in mobilizing
people and coordinating anti imperialist movements has been highlighted in several
works. Gyanendra Pandey and Kapil Kumar have analysed Kisan-Sabha movements
in Northern India during 1920s. The autonomy of Kisan leaders like Baba Ramchandra
and role of restrictive leaderships of congress in controlling peasant movements has
been highlighted. Similarly the role of communist party in 1940s in leading popular
protests against colonial and feudal exploitation has been highlighted. Mridula Mukherjee
in her study on the Punjab has shown the variegated social structures in rural areas,
which provided the milieu for variegated protest movements against colonial regime.

In recent years, there has been stress on the environmental history. Ramchandra
Guha and Gadgil have argued that Marxian framework of mode of production does
not take into account the exploitation of natural resources. They have focussed on
‘modes of resource use’ to point out how human beings either used natural resources
rationally or exploited them on an unlimited scale. Both have argued there emerged
‘ecosystem people’, ‘omnivores’ and ‘carnivores’. In ‘This Fissured land’, both have
focused on colonial forestry to point out its role in dislocating ‘ecosystem people’.
Their work definitely helps in understanding the social economic position of tribal &
non-tribal people who were at the subsistence level.

Several historians and anthropologists have done the categorisation of various popular
protests. Kathleen Gough has focused on restorative and trans formative movements.
[Link] has deployed the concept of social banditry in studying pre-industrial
Europe. He has differentiated between crime and revolt. Gough has also used this
category. However Ranajit Guha has argued that while Hobsbawn has dubbed such
protest as pre-political in pre-industrial Europe, however under colonial rule, aims and
ideological basis of peasants revolts, though in nascent form were political in nature.
[Link] Singh in his analysis has pointed out the changing nature of various protest
movements.

The presence of millennarian trends in popular uprisings has been studied by Stephen
Fuchs in his ‘Rebellious Prophet’ the emergence of messianic leaders who emerged
during times of ruptures between traditional and alien cultural norms has been highlighted
by him.

31.2 DOMINANT FEATURES OF PRE-COLONIAL

SOCIETY

Several researches have shown that pre colonial Indian society was not static. Though
village was the basic unit of administration and social ties. India was mainly rural and
was constituted by thousands of villages. However these were not ‘little republic’ as
35
Social Questions Under colonial administrators dubbed them to show that villages were static and self-dependent,
Colonialism having no linkages with larger ‘political set-up’. The land revenue was the main
source of income for the state. After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, decline and
disintegration of Mughal Empire was followed by the emergence of numerous successor
states. During this period social structure was shaped by several elements. One of
the most important elements was rooted in economic ties within village and between
villages and urban centres.

The political turmoil of the later eighteenth century left its mark on the countryside.
In the Delhi region, semi-tribal groups like the Gujars and Jats extended their settlements
from the upper doab, to the arable ‘upland’ plain. Their settled village communities
depicted hierarchy of traditional rights over land. There were either ‘primary’ or
‘secondary Zamindars’. Mostly there existed joint extended family management and
partial ownership constituted the most common tenurial form. In Punjab, primary
Zamindars were the cultivators. The bhaichara communities of the Jats owned land
collectively. In the upper doab, primary land control rights were held by dominant
castes that were elites in the society.

The relationship between groups of dominant peasant castes and service and artisan
castes were shaped by the Jajmani system. It centred on the organization of production
and distribution around the institution of hereditary occupational castes. The non-
agricultural castes were either granted fixed village produce in lieu of their services
or small plots of land. The prevalence of caste system did not denote rigid division-
[Link] has pointed out the process of upward mobility in several parts of India.
Though service and occupational castes were free to sell their products within village
or even outside, however there was a tendency towards a high degree of specialization.
It resulted in close relationship between specific castes and occupations. The dagbar
who made leather bags for holding Ghi and Sugar cane juice was socially and
occupationally distinct from the Chamar manufacturing shoes, leather ropes and
drumhead. The flexibility and mobility was evident in the fact that a very large
proportion of the gentry in Bihar, both Hindu and Muslims, cultivated with their own
hands. Brahmins were also farmers in the South.

In the tribal regions like Bengal, land hitherto held by tribals was gradually being
claimed by dominant castes. While some tribal groups were hunters and gatherers,
others were engaged in shifting cultivation. There was dependence on forest and
water bodies. In the western ghats of Maharashtra, villages were formed by two
castes groups of the Kunbis and Gavlis. The former living in the lower valley practised
paddy cultivation. The Gavlis living on the upper hill terrace kept large herds of
buffaloes and cattle. There was interdependence between both groups for obtaining
necessities of life. In the state of Karnataka, in a village Masur, British Gazetteers
noted the existence of thirteen different endogamous groups. Some of them were
fishing communities, other were agriculturalists, horticulturalists and entertainers.

There were no direct linkages between caste and class. Within a caste, social
differentiation existed on the basis of status and power. Infact the relations of domination
and subordination were governed by moral codes. The low castes were required to
obey and respect dominant castes. Within the family, patriarchal domination caused
the subordination of women. Kinship and sexual status was also marked by difference
in speech. In his description of Malabar in the nineteenth century, Logan noted—

‘The house itself is called by different names according to the occupant’s caste. The
house of a Pariah is a cheri, while the agrestic slave –the cheraman-lives in Chala’.

In Gujarat a patidar youth was not allowed to initiate conversation in the company
of his elders. In Orissa, a Bauri untouchable was not to speak to a high caste until
spoken to. In parts of southern India, a servant would cover his mouth while receiving
36 his master’s command. The objects of wear also constituted status symbol. Umbrella
and shoes were markers of high castes. In Gujarat, the so-called impure Mahars Popular Protests and
were not allowed to tuck up their loin cloths but had to trail it along the ground. Social Structures

Thus social differentiation was buttressed by customary and cultural norms. The
religious groups enjoyed power in tribals regions. There was faith in superstitions and
rituals sanctioned by dominant religions. There existed village deities and also symbols
of nature. The role of education was limited. It was the religious beliefs, which
shaped the ritual practices and belief systems of people.

Within this milieu, several changing processes marked colonial intervention.

31.3 COLONIAL RULE AND RUPTURES IN SOCIETY

It was the East India Company, which had come to India for trade. Taking advantage
of local polity, it laid the foundation of colonial rule from Bengal in the eighth-century.
Irfan Habib has divided colonial rule of British into three distinct phases from
monopolistic trading rights, company shifted to the policy of free trade in the early
nineteenth century. After 1813, British declared themselves to be the ‘Paramount
Power’ in India. The colonial expansion lasted till 1856. After suppressing the revolt
of 1857, British converted India into the direct colony of Britain. In the subsequent
years, colonial domination was further entrenched.

From the outset British evolved policies, which were meant to maximize their resources.
The ideological basis of British rule rested upon the suppression of subject population.
The advent of Christianity from eighteenth century was marked by the establishment
of press, church, hospitals and orphanages. Alongside administrative structure was
supported by the police and the army.

The established colonial hegemony led to disaffection of different social groups. The
Dual System in Bengal (1765-1772) resulted in widespread famine claiming 1/3 of
total population. The attempts of British to deprive locally influential Rajas, Zamindars
and Military persons also caused tension.

As land was the main source of income for the state so British focused on the land
revenue system. For this purpose Cornwallis introduced the Permanent settlement in
1793 in Bengal. Bihar and Orissa. During the same period, Monroe introduced the
Ryotwari system in Madras. In 1835, William Bentinck introduced the Mahalwari
system in North Western Province. It was further extended to Punjab. After annexing
Punjab, in 1849, British introduced agrarian changes in the provinces. There was
extensive canal colonisation in western Punjab. These agrarian changes not only
augmented the resources of state but also gave birth to colonial sociology.

The colonial sociology encouraged land lordism. In canal colonies, supporters of Raj
were given land, which led to settlement of Punjabis in western Punjab from central
Punjab. Everywhere position of peasantry started declining.

The penetration of market forces and connection with capitalism led to

commercialisation of agriculture. However numerous studies have shown that it only
led to decline and indebtedness of peasantry. In pre-colonial times also small peasants
had to borrow from village’s Banias. However in the existing network, peasants could
not be evicted from their land. Under colonial rule, big merchants and Zamindars
became the moneylenders. They used the legal system to deprive peasants of their
land. The situation was worse in tribal regions where outsiders started settling as
traders and moneylenders. In several places, tribal population could not understand
the implication of established legal and administrative set up. There was hatred for
outsiders or dikus as they were called.
37
Social Questions Under The process of deindustrialisation further deprived peasants of their source of income.
Colonialism Numerous village industries declined. The artisans were reduced to the position of
labourers. They had to leave their villages in search of work. Their living conditions
in industrial belts like Calcutta, Bombay and Kanpur were miserable. In this way,
there was decline and disintegration of traditional ties symbolised by the Jajmani
System.

As British declared themselves to be the owners of forest wealth, it directly affected

the position of tribal communities which were dependent upon forest It was in 1865
that an Act was passed which declared claims of the state over the forests. It was
followed by the enactment of the Indian Forest Act of 1878. Under this Act, control
of state over the resources of forests increased. Very limited rights were given to
traditional tribal communities. Thus, there was ban on the shifting cultivation. The
tribals as per their customs were not allowed to hunt and they were assigned limited
space for their animals. The extension of railways network further led to penetration
of rich trading classes into the distant areas of India. The development of plantation
economy not only led to degradation of environment but the ‘rule of records’ as
formed by the ‘ British led to the undermining of traditional rights.

Subjected to exploitation, various castes and communities responded in multiple ways.

The web of relationships that had existed since pre-colonial times were sustained in
several parts of India. Those who had been deprived of power and authority gained
support from common people. Thus displaced rulers had the support of local population.
Within specific regions, tribal population reacted against exploitation. In several cases
intertribal affinities were formed.

The social religious reform movement in nineteenth century also had its bearing on
small peasants, low caste groups and tribal population. There was influence of
Christianity as well. There was affirmation of faith in specific belief systems. By late
nineteenth century, as nationalism was evident in public domain and gradually it gave
birth to mass nationalism, there was change also in the popular protest movements.
While some retained their autonomy, others joined anti imperialist struggle.

31.4 CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULAR PROTESTS

In his assessment, Ranajit Guha has counted 118-protest movements between 1783-
1900. Their number kept on rising in the twentieth century. It is not possible to analyss
hundreds of these movements. However by focusing on the structure of protest,
dominant characteristics of popular protests in colonial times can be pointed out:
1) In the initial years of British rule displaced rulers and military personnels reacted
against colonial demands. For instance when Warren Hastings demanded money
from Chet Singh, Raja of Banaras and when latter failed to give it, he was
arrested. However people of Banaras supported Chet Singh and protested
against colonial rule. The Bishenpur revolt of 1789 led by local ruler and supported
by local people was also identical in nature. Between 1799-1800 Poligars who
were deprived of their military power adopted Gorilla warfare to thwart the
authority of British rulers. These were localised protests and rooted in specific
causes.
2) In all popular protests, economic exploitation as perpetuated by the British rule
caused tension. The land revenue policies and Forests laws led to resentment.
Alongside exploitation of dominant Indian Zamindars and Moneylenders was
also opposed. Thus the revolt of Sanyasis and Fakirs, which resulted from the
famine of 1769-70, was directed against British rulers and local Zamindars in
Bengal. The revolt of Kols (1831-32) and Bhumij (1832-33) was also rooted in
colonial exploitation.
38
3) Many uprisings were restorative in nature. The rebels aimed to restore back Popular Protests and
pre-existing political structure and social and economic rights. There was protest Social Structures
against the penetration of alien authorities and outsiders. Thus in the revolt of
1857, leadership of traditional rulers was accepted. Alongside small peasants
belonging to Jat and Rajputs also rose against alien rule. There were peaceful
efforts to restore back what the protestors regarded their rights. Thus in the
Pabna uprising of 1873-1883 tenant farmers hoped that the British rule was in
favour of restoring back their landed rights.
4) In numerous uprisings there was protest against growing indebtedness. Thus the
Deccan revolt of 1875 was against Marwaris moneylenders.
5) Violence was an integral part of popular protests. It was directed against
oppressors.
6) Over the period of time, protest movements/uprisings became more organised.
The role of charismatic leaders and religion in providing support and strength to
rebels also became clear. Thus Titu Mir in rising against the exploitation of
zamindars, who were Hindus, effectively used Islam in forging solidarity among
his people .The millenarians trends were also evident in the revolt of Santals and
Mundas.
7) In terms of seeking support it was found that inter-tribal and inter regional
linkages were also formed. The revolts were only directed against exploiters.
Thus, the Kinship ties, caste and tribal identities were permeated by class-
consciousness.
8) The role of women was also apparent in the revolts of Santals, Mundas and
Mopilahs. They were an integral part of families and communities. They helped
their male folks in productive activities and during the time of tension, they also
joined them in acts of violence.
9) Numerous historians have explored the nexus between popular movements and
national movement. The role of Gandhian leadership in converting national
movement into mass movement was also evident. During 1920s Kisan Sabhas
in U.P and Bihar provided organizational skills to peasants. Similarly, the role of
communists in leading peasants’ protests against colonial and feudal exploitation
became explicit in 1940s.
The above-mentioned features can be analysed in detail by focusing on specific
protests in colonial period.

31.5 KOL REVOLT

It erupted in some parts of Bihar in 1831-1832. Kols were agriculturalists. The

growing land revenue and indebtedness caused socio-economic tension in the area.
It was noted by British official Wilkinson that landlords and contractors had increased
land revenue by 35%. There was resentment against the land revenue system as the
British introduced it. The tension erupted when in 1831; twelve villages of Sinhari
Manki in Sonpur were handed over to outsiders. They were reports about maltreatment
being meted out to his sisters. It was also reported that one Munda women had been
kidnapped in Singbhum. There was growing recognition that British policies had
deprived Kols of their rights over land. It was against this exploitation that Kols of
Sonpur, Tamar and Naundgoan were directed to assemble in Tamar. The decision
was taken to avenge insult by indulging in acts of loot, killing and burning. They were
also extended help by the Mundas. The revolt spread in Chotanagpur, Singhbhum and
Palamau. Thus the revolt of Kols exhibited the tribal consciousness against exploitation.
Their ability to unite their people and to secure help from other tribals residing in their
vicinity was indicative of the fact that they were united in their protest against
colonial exploiters .
39
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 31.6 SANTAL REVOLT
Santal revolt was characterised by class solidarity transcending ethnicity. There was
not only well defined programme to resist exploitation but the leadership of Sido and
Kanho was characterized by usage of spiritual codes to organise rebels. Before the
outbreak, elaborate preparations were made. Both written and oral messages were
used to solicit support. Above all, women also played an important role in the uprisings.
The way this revolt started and spread over vast space showed that Santals were
determined to combat their exploiters.
Santals lived in Birbhum, Singbhum, Hazari Bagh, Bhagalpur and [Link] were
agricultualists .However the entrechment of land lordism, usage of legal machinery
by money lenders subjected them to continuous exploitation. As per the contemporary
accounts of lawyer Degamber Chakravarty and Chhotre Dasmanj , Santals failed to
comprehend the exploitative nature of British administration. Initially they hoped that
their grievances would be redressed by the British officials. However when it did not
happen , Santals decided to rise in revolt.
In leading Santals against growing exploitation, leadership was provided by Sido and
[Link] proclaimed divine sanction to lead the revolt. They issued parwanas
containing their messages and directing local population to extend help to them. For
it, they sought help from non tribal population like artisans and other service groups
like the Dom , the Lohar and the Gwala. The defaulters were explicitly warned that
they work loose their lives. Thus Sido and Kanhu exhorted their local populace to
take up arms against exploiting money lender and British administrators. Thus one of
the parwana sent by Sido and Kanho read, “the sahib and the white soldiers will fight.
Kanoo and Seedoo manjee are not fighting. The thacoor himself will fight————
——“. They also observed, “The Mahajans have committed a great sin; The Sahibs
and the amlah have made everything bad, in this the Sahibs have sinned greatly.
Those who tell things to the magistrate and those who investigate cases for him, take
70 to 80 Rupees. with great oppression in this the Sahibs have sinned. On this
account the Thacoor has ordered me saying that the country is not the Sahib”.
There were series of meetings in which tribal chiefs and local population outlined
preparations for the revolt. It started in 1855 with series of dacoities in Bhagalpur,
Birbhum and Bankure where Bengali landlords were attacked and their properties
were looted. From the beginning looted goods were equally divided among rebels.
There was participation of women in dacoities. There was appropriation of religions
rituals practised by upper castes. For instance, Sido and Kanhu offered puja to
Goddess Durga. For the performance of Puja , two Brahmins were abducted. It was
also decided to march to Calcutta in order to present their grievances before the
rulers. However brutal suppression by authorities who resorted to destruction of
Santals villages and accumulated loot, led to weaking of the movement. Santals
resorted to plundering for the purpose of sustaining themselves. However ,eventually
the army suppressed the revolt. There were arrests on large scale. Women were also
arrested.

31.7 MUNDA UPRISINGS

The scholarly work of [Link] Singh on the history of Munda tribe reveals how this
tribal community responded to on going exploitation. The penetration of outsiders and
colonial administration coupled with missionary activities created a milieu in which
Birsa Munda provided the charismatic leadership and led the revolt in 1899-1900. The
millenarian trends were evident in this uprising. The support of regional customary
ties permeating different tribal groups helped in solidifying support for the Mundas.
The leadership of Birsa Munda was successful in uniting exploited against the exploiters.
40
This tribe resided in the region south of Ranchi. The land holdings were based on Popular Protests and
tribal lineages or the Khuntkatti land system. This was eroded by merchants and Social Structures
money lenders who penetrated into their area as contractors and landlords. There
was recruitment of indentured labour. To redress their grievances , Mundas resorted
to peaceful methods. They sought help from missionaries. However there was no
change in their position.
The growing resentment resulted in the protest of tribal chiefs-Sardars. They tried to
dislodge the alien landlords and also tried to put an end to forced labour. In this, they
sought help of a Calcutta based Anglo-Indian lawyer. However they were cheated.
It led to the feeling that both Sarkar and he missionaries had done nothing to resolve
their problems They had to seek help from within their community.
It came in the form of Birsa Munda. He was born in 1874. His father was a share
cropper. Initially, he received education from the missionaries. He was also influenced
by Vaishnava religion. The practitioner of vaishnavas had led a movement in 1893-
94 to prevent village waste land being taken over by the forest department. Birsa
Munda also came under the influence of Christianity and mixed many of its beliefs
in his religious and spiritual formulations. It was in 1895 that he had a vision of a
supreme God. He claimed himself to be a prophet having miraculous heading powers.
Soon thousands of people flocked to hear the ‘new word’ proclaiming an immediate
deluge. For extending help to the Sardars in their struggle, Birsa was jailed in 1895.
After two years, when he was released, Birsa had become more determined to fight
against oppression. In 1898-99, a series of night meetings were held in the forest.
Birsa exhorted gatherers to kill ‘Thakedars, Jagirdars, Rajas, Hakims and Christians’.
He promised that ‘the guns and the bullets of enemies would turn into water’. There
was faith in his miraculous powers.
The uprising began in 1899 on Christmas Eve. The Mundas shot arrows and tried to
burn down Churches in Ranchi and Singhbhum. They also targeted the police. However
they were defeated at Sail Rakab hill on January 9. There was arrest of Birsa Munda
who died in jail. Many hundreds of Mundas were arrested and were punished.
Though the Munda urising failed to redress grievances of local population but the
vision of Birsa Munda survived and kept on inspiring the local people.

31.8 MOPLAH UPRISINGS

Between 1836-1919 , Moplahs rose 28 times against the exploitation of Jenmis or

landlords. There was participation of only 349 Moplahs in these outbreaks. However
what distinguished their violent revolt was the permeation of Islam in inducing them
to rise against the landlords. Though illiterate Moplahs did not understand the doctrines
of Islam correctly but they believed that by killing Jenmis and then by facing death,
they would attain martyrdom. In this form of protest,they were symbolically prepared
by their wives.

Moplahs lived in Malabar where they were either lease holders – Kanamdars or
cultivators- Verumpattandars. They were Muslims and were subjected to the growing
authority of Hindu upper caste landlords. These were Namboordi and Nair Jenmis.
The British policies further strengthened their hold over Moplahs. They lived in small
villages and had very limited resources. It was the mosque, which provided them
identity. The number of mosques rose in Malabar from 637 in 1831 to 1058 by 1851.
They also came under the influence of Sayyid Alwawi and his son Fadl who were
Tangals of Mambram near tirurangadi. It were in Ernad and Walluvanad talukas of
South Malabar that revolts started . Many Jenmis were killed. Most of Moplah
martyrs were poor peasants. Thus some historians see it as a class struggle, which
was permeated by religious ideology.

41
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 31.9 PUNJAB DISTURBANCES OF 1907

The process of canal colonisation in western Punjab was rooted in the rule of British
paternalism. Large tracts of land were colonised by carefully selecting different caste
and status groups. The crown tenants were granted the right to purchase land after
completing an initial period of probation. Many big landlords emerged in this region
.The existing laws were manipulated. The local lower level bureaucracy extorted
money to prevent punishment to the potential defaulters. Subjected to everyday
administrative interference, resentment grew in several canal areas.

It exploded in the form of the agrarian agitation of 1907. The discontent of peasants
resulted from a series of government measures. The Punjab land colonisation bill was
introduced in the Punjab council on October 25, 1906. It sought to alter the conditions
on which land was granted to colonists in the canal colonies. In November 1906,the
government ordered enhancement in the canal water rates on the Bari Doab canal.
It provided water for irrigation in the district of Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Lahore. The
increased rate was up to 50 percent. The land revenue in the Rawalpindi district was
also enhanced. More over the colonization Bill of 1906 sought to legalize the imposition
of fines for infringements of the conditions laid down for grant of land. These were
to remain outside the purview of courts. The law of primogeniture for inheritance
was stressed. There was even bar on the purchasing of the land by the colonists.

Subjected to these restrictions, peasants started their agitation. Not only there was
breakdown in rural and urban divide but also peasants cutting across religious differences
joined the struggle. The big Zamindars Association took the lead. With the coming of
Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai, agitation became wide spread. Numerous public
meetings were held to criticise government’s measures. Eventually the government
had to yield. The viceroy vetoed the colonization Bill. The Punjab government also
withdrew the enhancement of water rates. The agitation symbolised radicalization of
peasantry and its linkages with nationalism.

31.10 KISAN SABHAS AND BABA RAMCHANDRA

David Hardiman has observed that by the end of nineteenth century, there was
emergence of peasant nationalism. By the time mass nationalism had emerged under
the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, there was widespread influence of Congress in
many parts of India. In U.P, numerous Kisan sabhas had emerged. When the Non-
Cooperation movement started in 1921. Kisan Sabhas provided the recruitment ground
for Satyagrahis. However autonomy of Kisan Sabhas and their participation in anti
imperialists struggle was also evident in Southeast Avadh. Here, Baba Ramchandra
provided the leadership. His domination over peasants was resented by the Congress
leadership, which wanted peasants participation to be non-violent in nature. However
peasants rose in widespread agrarian riots in Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Fyzabad and
Sultanpur between January and March 1921. Not only bazaars were attacked, the
houses and crops of Talukdars and property of merchants was also targeted. On
January 6, 1921, 10000 peasants attacked Fursatganj bazaar in Rae Bareli and resorted
to fixing of prices for grain and cloth. There were also clashes with police. The
subversion of colonial authority was evident in setting up of peasants’ panchayats to
redress their grievances. Thus through Kisan sabhas, peasants were organising
themselves. They also responded to mass nationalism. However, they also exhibited
consciousness, which was cognitive of exploitation being perpetuated by big landlords
and merchants. That’s why attempt of Congress to channelise them in peaceful
struggle directed only against authorities failed.

42
 Popular Protests and
31.11 TELENGANA Social Structures

During 1930s and 1940s peasants had come under the influence of Kisan Sabhas,
Congress and Communist ideology. In several states, violent protests were led by
feudal exploitation and the control of land by feudal lords was strongly resented. It
was in Telengana that the biggest peasant guerrilla war occurred between July 1946
and October 1851. It spread over 16,000 square mills covering 3000villages. Nearly
three million people participated in the struggle.

It was in Telengana that lower caste, tribal peasants and debt slaves were subjected
to exploitation of Muslims and high caste deshmukhs and Jagirdars. The state of
Hyderabad under Asafjahi Nizams was also indifferent. The influence of communists
spread during world war II. They had used the Andhra Mahasabha to spread their
influence. They also provided leadership in leading struggle against local issues.
There was also massive collection of arms by peasants.

The revolt began when on July 4, 1946, thugs employed by the deshmukh of Viunar
in Jangaon taluka of Nalgonda murdered a village militant. The latter was involved
in struggle to defend a land of poor washerwoman. Very soon, the movement spread
into the district of Warangal and Khammam. From early 1947 small bands were
formed. They used guerrilla warfare resulting in disappearance of Vetti and bonded
labour. Not only agricultural wages were increased but also in several instances,
confiscated land was returned back to previous peasants holders. Even wastelands
were redistributed. Sundarayya , a leading figure in the armed struggle had shown
in his narrative, how socio-economic equality was sought to be established in the
liberated areas. There was wide spread influence of the communist leaders. However
strong military action and indifference of better off peasants led to slackening of
influence of communist leaders. They were driven out from the settled plains of
Nalgonda, Warrangal and Khamman. They had to make Nallamallia hills across the
Krishna to the south and the Godavari region to the northeast as their base. Chenchu
and Koya tribals were organised. However gradually by 1950-51, guerrilla action
degenerated into occasional murders. Though the Telengana movement could not
benefit tribals but the regime of Hyderabad was destroyed. Andhra Pradesh was
formed on linguistic lines and Jagirdari was also abolished.

31.12 SUMMARY
The above-mentioned narrative indicates the popular movements denoted struggle of
dispossessed and exploited peasants and tribals. Their social milieu was tied down by
co relationship with several other caste groups. The colonial rulers through their
administrative set up also subjected them to exploitation. There was penetration of
outsiders into their region. Over the period of time, several protests sought redressal
of their grievances in peaceful [Link] also responded to the call of dispossessed
local Rajas in their struggle against colonial rulers. However, over the period of time,
there was recognition that both rulers and Indian dominant groups were
exploiting them. Most of popular protests remained localized. During the time of
revolts, they used existing social ties cutting across ethnicity. There was also influence
of religions In an era of mass nationalism, these protests came to exhibit class
consciousness. Autonomous leadership provided the ideological basis and all India
based movement led by the congress. The growing influence of communists also
became apparent. Thus both leadership and specified goals came to characterise
popular uprisings.

43
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 31.13 GLOSSARY

Vanis : Village Mahajans

Thangals : Priests in malabar
Jenmis : Landlords of Malabar region
Social Banditry : a term used by [Link], to point out acts
of violence in pre industrial Europe by poor
people. These were not criminal acts but were
result of collective action by poor people to
redress their grievances
Deshmukhs : revenue collector turned landlords.
Restorative Movement : a term used by Kathleen Gough to study those
protest movements of peasants and tribals, which
aimed at restoring pre-colonial political
set up.
Transformative Movements : These denoted strong organisational set up and
well defined ideological base. Leaders, who after
subverting colonial authority aimed at establishing
new order in the region often, led these. Such
set up was meant to grant rights and privileges
to exploited people.
Insurgency : Acts of violence/protests by peasants
Millenarianism : Stephan Fuchs studied these movements under
this concept, which were marked by the
emergence of messianic leaders. They drew
inspiration of various religious and promised their
followers new world where in they were to enjoy
their rights.

31.14 EXERCISES
1) Assess the role of British policies in undermining the rights of peasants in
nineteenth century India
2) Briefly describe the dominant features of popular protests in the nineteenth century
3) Describe the role of religion in the Moplah and Munda uprisings.
4) Assess the contribution of Ranajit Guha and K. Suresh Singh in the historiography
of popular uprisings in colonial India.
5) Briefly describe the Telengana struggle of 1946-1951.

44
UNIT 32 STUDYING TRIBES UNDER
COLONIALISM

Structure
32.0 Introduction
32.1 Perceptions of Tribes Before Colonial Annexation of Territories
32.2 Tribes and their Colonial Rulers
32.3 Romanticism and Tribal Protection: Colonialism and Anthropology in 20th Century
32.4 Tribals and the Nationalists: Anthropology for Nation Building
32.5 Summary
32.6 Glossary
32.7 Exercises

32.0 INTRODUCTION

This unit shows how the different perceptionsof tribes and their problems have
influenced the anthropological writings of our times. In the main we identify two
tendencies in this unit: one which argued for the isolation of tribes in order that their
ancient heritage be preserved and the second one that argued for the assimilation of
tribal people into the mainstream of Indian life. Between these two ends of the
spectrum there were varying degrees of opinion that reflected the status, political
stance and historical conjecture at which particular actors stood. But this was only
part of the story as perceptions of tribes were also determined by the exigencies of
colonial rule. Thus the competing perceptions of tribes, as we know them today, were
a result of the transformations of the polity, society and economy in different points
in history. It uses selected primary and secondary materials for this purpose.

32.1 PERCEPTIONS OF TRIBES BEFORE COLONIAL

ANNEXATION OF TERRITORIES

The first forays of British colonists into North and Central India in the late 18th
century got them in touch with several non-agricultural communities. These communities
were dependent on both land and forest resources for their survival and often came
into conflict with their rulers in order to meet their needs. In his recent work on
Khandesh and Central India Sumit Guha shows that early British accounts in the
region suggest that the complex interrelationships between pre-colonial regimes of
natural resource management, environmental changes and tribal subsistence in the
Maratha period. The resultant identity of people as tribals is then governed by the
multiple contexts of survival within which these people used to live. Larger patterns
of resource use and the impact of other forces on them also determined the political
economy of such identities and survival systems.

In pre-colonial Central and Northern India one of the main factors that had an impact
on both identity and subsistence was the military conflict between ruling elite in both
the Maratha and Mughal periods. The chieftain societies of different tribes like the
Gonds or the Khakkars or Jats also participated in these conflicts. At the same time
the tribals who were peasants and or gatherers in the forests were forced to support
their own chieftains and therefore formed bands in forests and formed important part
of the chieftains mercenary army. In this context it is important to remember that the
term “tribes” has been used very loosely for communities which were existed in a
“pre-class society”. In keeping with this definition many communities that were later
45
Social Questions Under described as peasants by Britishers were termed tribes by the accounts of the
Colonialism medieval period. Chetan Singh’s early article on the role of tribal chieftains in Mughal
administration clearly identified warrior and ruling classes of indigenous kingdoms as
superior tribal linkages. Amongst these were the Jats, the Kakkhars, Baluchis and
Afghans in this vein, the chief feature of their society not only being their blood and
kinship line of descent but also their pastoral and non-sedentary occupational
characteristics. In a later article Singh is however more categorical about the mention
of hunters and gatherers as primitive people. For example he writes of their references
in Akbarnama where tribal people were described as “men who go naked living in
the wilds, and subsist by their bows and arrows and the game they kill”. He also
argues that the medieval texts show that in case of tribals like the Gonds “that people
of India despise them and regard them outside the pale of their realm and religion”.
Such an identification of tribals as outside the realm of the sedentary cultivation was
contingent upon the development of a system of land administration which was an
important characteristic of the Mughal 16th and 17th centuries and British regimes of
the 19th century. Before that the British perceptions of tribes were conditioned by
their own contingencies. For example the Anglo-Maratha conflicts of the 18th century
led to descriptions that described the Gond chieftains as the “lords of the rugged hills”
and their subjects as people who were prone to anarchic behaviour and “ habitual
depredations”. Some of these depredations were described as “ravages of lawless
tribes” who assisted the errant and “chaotic rulers. We see similar perceptions of the
tribes on the Northeast frontiers of the British Rule. Writing about the Eastern Naga
tribes in the early 19th century Captain Michelle said that the Nagas carried on the
most profitable trade in slaves and suppressed all ryots in their neighbourhood. The
greed of gain caused endless feuds between villages and tribes. . There are numerous
accounts like this that stress the importance and the situation of the tribes before the
annexation of territories and after British domination. In almost all these accounts the
tribal problem appears to be one where the British see themselves as people who
have a duty towards teaching tribals civilised behaviour and an orderly life. While this
expression of the civilising mission did not change after the annexation of territories.
Rather it expressed itself in a different form.

32.2 TRIBES AND THEIR COLONIAL RULERS

The advent of colonialism in regions that were earlier under residencies and indigenous
chieftancies saw the assertion of British colonial sovereignty in several significant
ways some of which have been described by Nandini Sundar in the context of tribal
Bastar. However from the point of view of perceptions about tribals themselves
perhaps the most important factor that influenced them was the settlement of territories
and land rights in the Provinces with significant amount of tribal populations. The
permanent settlement in Bengal in the late 18th century and the subsequent ryot
settlements in Madras, Central Provinces and United Provinces all betrayed a bias
towards a certain notion of the agrarian society which was firmly grounded in the
ideas about modernity and progress. Within this perspective an evolutionary way of
seeing development also influenced the colonial images of tribal life. For example the
Report of the Ethnological Committee of the Races of Central Provinces that
described its task in the following manner:

“We have confined our analysis entirely to very curious tribes in this
country, which are usually called aborigines, their original seat in reality
being unknown and which are supposed to be different in languages,
custom and physical formation from the greatness of India”.

The term ‘race’ excluded all races and castes that were considered immigrants, i.e.,
the Hindu cultivators who settled in the valleys and the plains since the ancient times.
It only included the tribals who were considered the original inhabitants of the country
46
and carried special reports on areas like Chanda, Bhandara and others that were Studying Tribes Under
considered to be strongholds of tribal population. The notion that tribes were the Colonialism
original and isolated inhabitants of the forests was useful to colonial officials in their
endeavour to take over the fertile plains and valleys of different parts of the country.
In keeping with this image they were also described as rather timid, shy and well
behaved. For example Briggs remarked in his Lecture on the Wild Tribes that they
were the “best behaved wild tribes” even while they lived in seclusion and acted as
the “wild beasts around them”.

The second characteristic of the official images in the early and mid 19th centuries
was the notion that these “primitive tribes” were essentially animist forest people who
hated the intrusion of outsiders into their life. A good example of this was the
description of the Baigas and the Gonds of the “remotest hills” in the Central Provinces
who were described as living in harmony with nature. Forsyth’s account of the
Maikal hills was reflective of this when he wrote that:

“The real Byga of the hill ranges is still almost in the state of nature.
They are very black, with an upright slim, though exceedingly wiry
frame showing less of the negretto type of features than any other of
these wild tribes.... Destitute of all clothing but a small strip of cloth....
The Byga is the very model of a hill tribe”.

This introduction to the Byga is accompanied by Forsyth’s detailed account of the

forest hunt and the pursuit of game. He considered their cultivation practices and
hunting as a sign of their seclusion and primitiveness.

Finally, despite such a classification of the Bygas, Forsyth and his colleagues were
not unaware of the differentiation within the tribal economy. Tribals were classified
according to their level of development and their amalgamation of the Hindu society.
Social customs and conventions was a yardstick to assess the ‘scale of civilisation’.
On the economic front the scale of civilisation that the report referred to was
measured by the yardstick of progress which was manifested in the idea of a
peasant. This meant that the colonial ideals about the improvement of the tribal
society was centred around their perception of their own role in teaching tribal people
how to live a civilised life. This meant that they were to be taught plough cultivation
that was more desirable than shifting cultivation and that all those living in the rural
areas had to be taught the value of a sedentary peasant society.

It is in this context that the first impressions of bewar (a term for shifting cultivation
in the Central Provinces) justified the British need of intervention for the improvement
in Baiga lifestyle in consonance with the above-mentioned idea of progress. In colonial
terminology the terms bewar and dhaiya were used for the Baiga cultivation. The
term bewar was sometimes also used for the field that the Baigas prepare for
cultivation. Despite this confusion, in all cases the term dhaiya and bewar were used
for survival systems that were classed primitive, isolated and highly destructive to forests.
For example, Richard Temple just after the formation of the Central Provinces that:

“One great cause of wastage and destruction of the forest is called Dhya
cultivation? This Dhya cultivation is practically a substitute for ploughing
and a device for saving trouble of that operation. It is resorted to by hill
people who are averse to labour and have virtually no agricultural capital”.

Temple classified the dhaiya economy as “primitive” or “backward”. Its traits were
laziness and wastefulness. He implied that the tribals of the Central Provinces preferred
to do the minimum amount of labour to eke the minimum that they needed. Above
all such images also stressed the fact that bewar cultivation was not eco-friendly and
brought about the destruction of the forests. All these arguments were used to justify
colonial interventions for controlling land and forests in the 19th century.
47
Social Questions Under
Colonialism 32.3 ROMANTICISM AND TRIBAL PROTECTION:
COLONIALISM AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN 20TH
CENTURY

The late 19th century saw a worsening of living conditions of tribal people in the tribal
areas. Most areas like Bihar, Orissa and Central Provinces, land alienation and
indebtedness amongst tribal people grew at an alarming rate. At the same time the
conditions of tribals in forests also worsened as they were reduced to providing cheap
labour to the forest department. All this created conditions of extreme dissatisfaction
that also led to much protest by tribal people. Some of the most famous ones were
Birsa Munda’s movement in 1875, the Gudem Ramapa Uprising and the Santhal
Uprising that forced the colonial policies. In other areas like the Mandla district of
the Central Provinces Baiga tribal people fled from the forests and the British were
forced to negotiate with them so that they remain in their villages and work for the
forest department. They were thus forced to create an area where the otherwise
banned practice of shifting cultivation would be allowed in some part of the forests.
All these protests and negotiations not only resulted in some welfare measures being
put into place but also resulted in the crystallisation of the tribal cultural identity which
was reflected in anthropological and official texts of the time.

One of the most important debates of the time was the debate about the demarcation
of tribal areas into protected zones under the Government of India Act of 1935. The
enactment of the provisions showed that the tribals had now become completely
dependent on the welfare measures of the state to meet their basic needs. The
debate on the measures proposed under the Act also revealed the way in which
different people viewed tribal people. One of the most important figures in the debate
was W.V. Grigson, an official who was commissioned to enquire into conditions of
tribals in the Central Provinces viewed them with the lens of benevolent patriarchal
authority. In the Maria Gonds of Bastar he wrote that the Marias, a primitive tribe
of Bastar, were people who had lived in harmony with forests and thus he said that:

“In most of this area (penda area) the forests have been too remote and
inaccessible to be exploited, and that, even though some fine timber has
been sacrificed much that has gone is over mature. Vast areas of forest
have been reserved by the State, and it is not possible to work half these
reserves. The Maria does not rage through the forest clearing patches
for cultivation at random; he has more or less definite rotations, and a
field of two to three years’ they may have a twelve or fourteen years’
rest, and a dense forest at the end of it. The axe and fire have let the
light of civilisation penetrate slowly but surely into the Bison-horn country
as nothing would have done for centuries; they alone have prevented the
Abujhmarh tract from remaining a trackless wilderness”.

This view marked a significant departure from the views of officials in the 19th
century. It also showed that the officials were forced to recognise the rights of tribal
people in a manner that they were being articulated at that time. Further people like
Grigson also reflected upon the role of the British Empire in tribal development when
he wrote that,

“Above all there must be an approach to some elements of ‘economic

democracy’ if the aboriginal is to play his due part in the India of the
future.... There is no political democracy without economic democracy”.

For Grigson ‘economic democracy’ denoted ownership of land, freedom from

indebtedness and from exploitation of labour at unusually low wages. To achieve
‘economic democracy’ outside intervention in tribal areas had to be restricted and
48
government protection ensured. However what is significant about Grigson’s perception Studying Tribes Under
is the fact that he considered the people in Bastar as similar to that of people in Colonialism
Africa when he wrote that:

“The primitives have more in common with African tribes than they have
with people in other parts of India such as the plains of Bengal, the Punjab
or Maharashtra…. I don’t think that “self governance” outside the village or
tribe has ever entered their heads. It is obvious that what is needed is a form
of protectorate and this can only be achieved through benevolent autocracy”.

The belief that tribals were not able to look after their own interests was largely
based on the assumption that they had always lived in a hostile society that had
exploited them. The creation of a protectorate would in fact enable forces that had
their benefit at heart to protect their interests and also bring about their economic
development. This perception was integral to many official anthropologists of the
period whose vision was also informed by the European anthropological writings of
their times. The most prominent of these anthropologists was Verrier Elwin who
worked first in Central India, then Eastern India and finally the NorthEast. The
romanticism and the functionalism of his anthropology have had an important impact
on the way in which people have looked at tribal people. In the 1940s Elwin wrote
in his famous pamphlet, Aboriginal, that “a tribe that dances does not die”. By
making such a statement he exemplified the fact that tribal people were distinguished
from others by their distinctive cultural identity. For Elwin the ‘primitive’ was a
romantic category which he described in the following way when he wrote that:

"The life of a true aboriginal is simple and happy, enriched by natural

pleasures. For all their poverty, their days are spent in the beauty of the
hills. A woman carrying a load to the hill-top pauses a moment to see
the scene below her. It is the ‘sweet forest’ the ‘forest of joy and
sandal’ in which they live".

The ‘forest of joy’ was Elwin’s dreamland - a place where people tended the dead,
were devoted to the soil, staged a magnificent and colourful tribal festivals, and were
infused with the spirit of sharing. For Elwin these were ‘things of value in tribal life’.
For him the ‘primitive’ constituted a ‘pure’ and a ‘pristine’ state of existence that was
morally superior to the civilized world. Elwin’s image of the forest dwellers voiced
his despair at the tendency towards the destruction of an idyllic society. However this
emotion was not expressed in a vacuum and embedded in it the critique of the
modern industrial society. Thus he said that:

“Until modern life is itself reformed, until civilisation is itself civilised,

until war is vanished from Europe and untouchability from India, there
is no point in trying to change the aboriginals”.

"Far better let them be for the time being – not forever of course; that
would be absurd. Perhaps in twenty, fifty or hundred years a race of
men may arise who are qualified to assimilate these fine people in their
society without doing them harm. Such men do not exist today".

Elwin assumed that the contact between the tribals and the wider agrarian society
would result in the injustice to their cause. In this he also critiqued the British rule
for its policies towards the tribals. He opposed the British policy of extending of
modern commercial economy into these areas, and wanted a relaxation of forest
rules. In this he also received the support of some colonial officials, noteable amongst
whom was the Governor of Bombay, Mr Wylie who wrote that:

“We are dealing with people whom their admirers describe as the ancient
lords of the jungle but whom I personally prefer to consider as forest
49
Social Questions Under labourers isolated from the normal working of the law of demand and
Colonialism supply and as such at the mercy of the Forest Department who are the
sole pervayors of the labour from which, if the inhabitants of the forest
villages are to stay there at all, they have got to make a livelihood”.

Sharing such a crtitique with Elwin also ensured that many colonists like Wylie and
Grigson also shared with him the solutions to the problem. Ideally Elwin wanted the
forest dwellers to acquire the spirit and benefits of civilisation without a painful
transition process. Thus he wrote that:

“I advocate, therefore, for the aboriginals a policy of temporary partial

protection, and for their civilized neighbours a policy of immediate
reform....It is not enough to uplift them into a social and economic
sphere in which they cannot adapt themselves, but to restore to them
liberties of their own countryside”.

By advocating this position, Elwin showed how systemic change in forested areas,
were organically linked to changes in modern society, which he considered decadent.
Such a perception of tribes, their problems and he solutions was to influence the
thinking of scholars down the ages. The most prominent of these is Ramachandra
Guha, who in a recent biography of Verrier Elwin celebrated the cultural primitivism
for which Elwin became really well known:

“Most of all Verrier Elwin must be distinguished from other primitivists

in that he actually lived with the persons whose culture he so vigorously
celebrated. The narrator of primitivist revelries has the choice, which he
generally excersices. ‘to return, at the end his sojourn, to the highly
civilized countries he came from’…. Not many who wrote so eloquently
of the return to nature,’ he [Elwin] remarked, ‘were prepared however,
to take the journey themselves, at least not without a return ticket”.

Elwin was living with the tribals and his understanding of their problems was therefore
based on their experiences and life rather than the participant observation of an
academic anthropologist. But even if this distinguished him from others, his long-term
ideas and the policies that he recommended succeeded in supporting the benevolent
imperialism of people like Grigson. But it is not only Guha who were influenced by
colonial anthropology. Several other actiivists and anthropologists also used the
arguments of people like Elwin and Grigson to justify their arguments for the restoration
of traditional tribal rights and identities in the current polity.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, tribes were seen as self sufficient and isolated societies
that lived in harmony with nature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a significant body
of environmental history concentrates on the history of state forest management and
its impact on the rights of local people. In these studies, some historians follow the
assumptions of their predecessors by stressing that tribal communities had stable
systems of survival. However the notion of stability and harmony is elaborated in
terms of the theory of ecological prudence. Authors like Ramachandra Guha and
Madhav Gadgil argue that pre-colonial societies were well-adjusted caste institutions
that regulated resource use where each community occupied a specific ecological
niche in society. These ecological niches were closed and self-contained systems of
resource use that were regulated by social and cultural codes. And within this system
the tribes were given the niche of being either hunter gatherers or shifting cultivators
who were well adjusted to their surroundings in all its aspects.
The notion of a community is characterised by the idea of egalitarianism and
homogeneity where there is little differentiation in terms of access to resources. It
is also marked by the fact that political and ritualistic authorities are the source of
resource management as well as the cohesiveness of the community. Kinship is
50 defined as the organising principle of labour and the conceptual and the cultural
aspects of society defined the way in which the community related with other and Studying Tribes Under
defined the boundaries of the community. This is reflected in the work of Nandini Colonialism
Sundar and Ajay Skaria who attempt to complicate the picture by hinting at the
transformation of community identities in history. While they are right about the
transformations in identity, they too refuse to acknowledge the fact that the identities
that they themselves were writing about were a result of the underdevelopment of
tribal regions. The self-perceptions of tribals people of themselves as the original
inhabitants or as shifting cultivators and hunters and gatherers got solidified with the
colonial governement putting a ban on these practices. Thus the primordial tribal
identity was hardly traditional in nature and infact reflected the destruction of the
productive forces in tribal societies.

32.4 TRIBALS AND THE NATIONALISTS:

ANTHROPOLOGY FOR NATION BUILDING
In the contrast to the views of the anthropologists and the colonists the nationalists
of the 1930s and 40s were severly critical of colonial policies and hostile towards
anthropological writings that celebrated the cultural primitivism. The supporters of
tribal culture values considered the relationship between tribes and peasants to be
exploitative in character. They contended that the segregation of these people was
the most effective way of modernising them. Nationalist anthropologists and
Congressmen contested these assertions, thereby arguing that the basis of exclusion
was completely unfounded. The Congress debated the pro-exclusion British officials
on two counts. The first argument was political. It concentrated on being anti-
imperialist in its stance and laid emphasis on the development of an overwhelming
Indian identity that was intended to mobilise people against the colonial rule. The
second contention contested the social and anthropological basis of the contentions
made by those supporting the government policies of Exclusion and Partial Exclusion.
The Congress thought that the future of tribals was integrally linked with the economic
progress of the rest of the Indian population. They did not want to deny these
communities an opportunity to associate and learn from other advanced communities.
They disagreed with the official view that the tribal people had special needs and
rejected anything that celebrated the distinctiveness of cultures. For example in this
scheme of thinking anthropology deserved contempt. Two leaders of the Central
Provinces, M.S. Aney and N.M. Joshi, charged all anthropologists with desiring to
keep all the “primitive races of India uncivilised and in a state of barbarism as raw
material for their science in order to add to their blessed stock of scientific knowledge.
But the most articulate position in this respect was taken by G.S. Ghurye in his
monograph Aborigines – so called and their future in which the crux of his thesis
was that ‘aborigines’ were an integral part of the Hindu society since a very long
time. Explaining why these communities must be called “so-called aborigines” he said
that:

“It is clear from this discussion that the proper description of these
peoples must refer itself to their place in it near Hindu society and not
to their supposed autochthonism. While sections of these tribes are
properly integrated with Hindu society, very large sections, in fact a bulk
of them, are rather loosely assimilated. Only very small sections, living
in the recesses of the hills and the depths of the forests, have not been
more than touched by Hinduism. Under the circumstances the only
proper definition of these people is that they are imperfectly integrated
classes of Hindu society. Though for the sake of convenience they may
he designated the tribal classes of Hindu society, suggesting thereby the
social fact that they have retained much more of the tribal creeds and
organisation than many of the castes of Hindu society, yet they are in
reality Backward Hindus”. 51
Social Questions Under According to Ghurye, the historical process inevitably led to the Hinduization of the
Colonialism tribals. He argued that they would witness moral and economic betterment if they
were ‘properly assimilated’ into such a society. Their dance and music would be
allowed in Hindu society; and even if they lost some part of their culture, they would
be at an advantageous position in the long-run. Of the preservation of “tribal culture”
Ghurye stated that:
“Isolationism or assimilationism does not therefore appear to owe its
inspiration either to a supposedly queer academic interest of the
anthropologist or to the possibility of the perverse mentality of British
administrators. It is very largely a matter of opinion as to [which is] the
best way of preserving the vitality of the tribal people only secondarily
complicated by other considerations”.
Ghurye stated that the exclusion of the tribals was a political statement that was to
be opposed. According to him its sociological and historical assumptions were
inaccurate. He saw the peasant and tribal communities as open and dynamic structures,
each influencing the other. But despite this conceptual framework, the merits of the
assimilation of the tribes into Hindu society continued to be over emphasised in
Ghurye’s work.
Ghurye was not the only nationalist sociologist to criticise the pro-Exclusionist policies.
In an essay entitled ‘Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption’ Nirmal Kumar Bose laid
down his interpretation of the relationship of the dominant Hindu communities with
tribes. He said that,
“From what has been observed among the Juangs and from the reading
of law books, it is to be noted that the Hindu society while absorbing a
new tribe or while creating a new jati by differentiation of occupation,
always guaranteed or tried to guarantee monopoly in a particular
occupation to each caste within a given region. The last point is very
important; for the same jati may be found practising many different
trades if it finds the prescribed hereditary occupations no longer
economically satisfactory”.
The stances of both Ghurye and Bose resulted in a defence of Hindu culture and
society. They saw the tribal identity as a sub-set of the larger identity of the caste
Hindu society and therefore did not consider the assimilation into Hindu society a
major problem. But this was not true of all nationalists. Social workers like A.V.
Thakkar reflected upon the need to develop a strong nationalist identity. In 1941
Thakkar wrote that,
“These people were the original sons of the soil and were in possession
of our country before the Aryans poured in from the North West and
North East passes, conquered them with their superior powers and
talents and drove them from the plains to the hills and forests. They are
older and more ancient children of the soils than the Hindus and more
so than the Muslims and Anglo-Indians. But they are steeped in ignorance
and poverty and do not know their rights and privileges, much less their
collective and national responsibilitie”.
In his interpretation of the tribal past, Thakkar tried reinstate the position of these
communities as the ‘original inhabitants of India’. However in doing so he also
asserted that the present conditions of poverty and ignorance in which tribal people
lived had to be changed. This transformation could not be brought about through a
policy of isolationism or Exclusion. Thakkar argued that the spirit of provincial
government of national responsibility could only be inculcated into these communities
through a policy of “assimilation”. But his path of assimilation was slightly different
from that of Ghurye and Bose. He said that:
52
 “It is difficult for me to understand why these persons [persons in favour Studying Tribes Under
of Exclusion and Partial Exclusion] fear the contact with the Hindus and Colonialism
Muslims of the plains. In few cases the social evils of the plains are
likely to be copied by unsophisticated aboriginals. But it is not right to
consider that contact will only bring bad customs into tribal life and that
the aborigines will suffer more than they benefit. Safeguards may be
instituted to protect the aborigines from more advanced people of the
plains, as has been done with regard to non-alienable land. But to keep
these people confined to and isolated in their inaccessible hills and jungles
is like keeping them in glass cases of a museum for the curiosity of
purely academic persons”.

Thakkar considered the strategy of assimilation was an essential part of their

development process. He believed that if these communities learnt some good things
from the Hindu society, they would also be exploited by it. Hence he proposed a
different type of a policy of protection for these communities. Rather than the
confinement of these communities in a segregated space, he proposed protection of
the forest communities through the legislation of special laws. In this sense, even if
Thakkar was opposed to the Exclusion, he was in favour of some kind of protection
for tribals.

The predominant nationalist view that the tribes was not a historically and
anthropologically valid category was reflected in the writings of post colonial writers
who were inspired by them. Reviewing the literature on tribes and peasantry Andre
Beteille wrote in 1987 that there was no satisfactory way of defining the tribal
society. Arguing that it was difficult to call any one a tribal in Indian society, rather
the agrarian society was comprised of a heterogeneous body of peasants cut up into
various ethno-linguistic categories. In a similar vein Guha also argues that historically
informed anthropologists like G.S. Ghurye and D.R. Gadgil were justified in repudiating
the categories of aboriginals and tribals and that the historical record supported such
skepticism. Thus we find that the anthropologists, sociologists, and historians of
contemporary tribal India were profoundly influenced by the writings of people who
studied tribes in the colonial times.

32.5 SUMMARY

In this unit we introduced you to various strands of writings on tribal studies. We

saw how the colonial officials and the nationalists differed in their perceptions of
tribes in India. Different shades of opinions amongst both of them have also been
spelt out.

32.6 GLOSSARY

Pre Class Society : Historically societies that emerged before the formation
of classes occurred. These societies were primarily
marked by kin based or lineage based formations.

32.7 EXERCISES
1) What were the different views of British officials about tribes in India?
2) What was the defining principle of the nationalists on tribes in India?

53
SUGGESTED READINGS
Arnold, D. and Guha, Ramchandra, eds, Nature, Culture and Imperialism:
Essays on the Enviornmental history of South Asia, Oxford Uni. Press,
N. Delhi, 1995.
D’Souja, Dilip, Branded by Law : Looking at India’s Denotified Tribes, Penguin
Books, New Delhi, 2001.
Gadgil (Madhav) and Guha, RamChandra, This fissured Land, Oxford University
Press, 1992.
Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism : Colonial Expansion, Tropical Eden and the
Origin of Enviornmentalism –1600-1860, Cambridge, 1994.
Grove, Richard, Ecology, Climate and Europe, Oxford Uni. Press, Delhi, 1998.
Nigam, Sanjay, “Discipling and policing ‘the criminals’ by birth”, Indian Economic
and Social History Review, Vol.27, No.2, 1990.
Rangarajan,Mahesh, Fencing the Forests, Oxford Uni. Press, Delhi, 1996.
Singha, Radhika, Despotism of Law.
David Arnold, Colonizing the Body, Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth
Century India, Delhi, 1983.
“Touching the Body: Perspective on the Indian plague”, in Ranajit Guha, Gayatri
Chakravarty Spivak, Eds, selected subaltern Studies, Oxford University Press,
1983.
Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchables to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement,
Manohar, 1992.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India, Curzon
Press, surrey, 1997.
Anand A. Yang, ed. Crime and Criminality in British India, Arizona, 1995.
Robert Hardgrave, “The Breast Cloth Controversy: Caste Consciousness and Social
Change in Southern Travancore”, Indian Economic and Social History Review,
5, 1868.
[Link], A Backward Class Movement for Social Freedom, Madras, 1978.
Mridula Mukherjee, Peasants in India’s Non-Violent Revolution: Practice and
Theory, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2004.
Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1996.
Mark Juergensmeyer, Religious Rebels in the Punjab: The Social Vision of
Untouchables, Delhi, 1998.
Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non Brahmin Movement
in Western India: 1873 to 1930, Bombay, 1976.
Jan Breman, Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian relations in South
Gujarat, India, Berkeley, University of California, 1974.
Kenneth W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India. III, I, Socio Religious
Reform Movements in British India.
Verrier Elwin, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin, Bombay, 1964.
K S Singh, Ed., Tribal Movements in India, 2 Vol., New Delhi, 1982.
Kumkum Sangri and Sudesh Vaid, Ed., Recasting Women, Kali for Women,
New Delhi, 1988.
 M. A. History
List of Courses

Course Title of the Course Credits

Code

MHI-01 Ancient and Medieval Societies 8

MHI-02 Modern World 8

MHI-03 Historiography 8

MHI-04 Political Structures in India 8

MHI-05 History of Indian Economy 8

MHI-06 Evolution of Social Structures in India Through the Ages 8

MHI-07 Religious Though and Belief in India 8

MHI-08 History of Ecology and Environment: India 8

M. A. Course - Evolution of Social Structures in India Through the Ages

Block-wise Course Structures

Block 1 : Introductory

Block 2 : Cultures in Transition

Block 3 : Early Historic Societies: 6th Century-4th Century A.D.

Block 4 : Early Medieval Socieities

Block 5 : Medieval Society

Block 6 : Society on the Eve of Colonalism

Block 7 : Modern Society