Session 5

Before I begin, these readings were an absolute delight after previous sessions were historiography, and not history were discussed. It was a chance to point out and identify the methodologies, and subtleties learnt in previous readings, all whilst enjoying some good old history.

Now, Gyan Pandey created an interesting picture of peasant rebellions of Audh using very interesting sources. His use of Gandhi’s rules for the peasant movements as a source of the way Indian nationalists looked at the peasantry is very creative, albeit slightly presumptuous. It builds too much on very little, and puts that out as the belief of the Indian nationalists. It is fair to assume that the primary goal of Indian nationalists was to end imperialism, but to think Gandhi’s rules were meant to take away agency from the peasant and manipulate them seems a little harsh. An important linkage pointed out in this account was between the Zamindars and Indian nationalists, where the Zamindars were benefactors of the Indian nationalists which lays credence to the hypothesis that the two were colluding with each other. According to the picture drawn by Pandey, the peasants were on one side of the battlefield, fighting for their just, traditional right, while the British, Zemindars, and Indian nationalists were on the other side. All three worked together to suppress the voice of the peasantry, and that was the tragedy at hand. His account portrays the peasant with limited awareness, based on his own traditional outlook. He, like many others, such as EP Thompson, points out the peasantries’ desire for only limited emancipation, so as long as their subsistence needs were being met. There is some evolution shown in the thoughts of the peasantry in the agenda of the Kisan movements where before they would not dream of opposing the Thakur directly, but later said that they would oppose any ‘’bedakhli.’

Where it is interesting to see some evolution in the thoughts of the peasantry, I would like to see literature of evolution of peasant thought beyond subsistence. This, by no means, looks down on the awareness of the peasant in his own terms, which is obviously legitimate, but a hope to see the needs of the peasantry breathe air to bigger dreams than mere subsistence.

Dipesh Chakrabarty’s work provided us with another interesting source to gauge the sensibilities of Colonial Government of India, in light of Marx’s work. His analysis of intelligence officer reports gives us a perspective on the motivations behind rules and regulations for Indian workers. Like the rules and regulations in Britain, here too, the rules served the capitalist agenda instead of promoting worker rights. They were driven by a need to make the workers more efficient, structure their time, keep them safe from diseases, and give them the illusion that the government cared about them. Where this analysis provides a grim view of a colonial government which always strived to project itself as benevolent, it does not do so without legitimate pretext.