Pabna initiative

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The Pabna Initiative , starting from 1873 to 1885 in the Bengali district of the same name , was a struggle to secure property rights to land for agricultural tenants ( raiyat ). The unrest was significant because it was the first time that simple farmers were granted the right to freedom of assembly and association. The resistance was not directed directly against the British colonial government, but against the landowners, and thus presented a challenge to the ruling classes and was fiercely fought by them. The movement served as a model for later nonviolent actions during the struggle for independence.

root cause

The Pabna district was comparatively wealthy around 1870; two annual harvests were possible as well as the cultivation of the profitable jute . Large landowners, the Zamindar , were mostly Hindus from Kolkata who were seen as exploiters, dependent on the land tenants, mostly Muslims.

The area ( Pargana ) Yusufshahi with 272 estates and 695 villages belonged to the Raja of Nator . When he failed to meet his obligations to the East India Company , the land was sold to five nouveau riche Zamindar families by 1815, who treated their tenants relatively arbitrarily. The Bannerjees and the Tagores are said to have performed worst . It was not until Act X of 1859 that the farmers were granted permanent property rights after they had cultivated a certain piece of land for 12 years, and it granted in a certain way protection against evictions and arbitrary rent increases (p 22). About 50 percent of them had managed to acquire such rights. As a countermeasure, however, the Zamindar changed the basic dimensions of the land survey (1 bigha = 5x6 poles to 14 cubit (cubit), 14 fingers of which one cubit was 23¾ inches. After 1853 the British measure of 18 inches / cubit was used) so that the same height Rent had to be paid on the significantly smaller basic unit.

Economic situation

The average size of a small farm is estimated to be 2 to 3 acres (1 acre / 4047 m²) in 1873 , which allowed tenants to earn between 12 and 58 rupees per year for two harvests , but this was diminished by the poor prices of the middlemen. Due to the assessment, property tax of Rs 314,500 would have been due from 5772 villages in the district; in fact, in the financial year 1871/72 the property tax paid by the district to the provincial government was more than double. For land that was cultivated with rice or wheat, the farmers generally had to pay 3 rupees per acre to the Zamindar, who were entitled to collect property tax within the framework of permanent settlement . This left them with an immense profit. Since 1793 the fees for the tenants had risen sevenfold. Nevertheless, since the 1860s, the landowners tried to push through further rent increases, also to comply with the increased taxation by the colonial power. For this purpose, fraudulent measures such as incorrectly measured land, thugs and the invention of arbitrary illegal taxes ( awab ) were used.

course

The district had been one of the centers of the indigo riots from 1859 to 1861 . The tenants of the Parganas Yusufshahi (in today's Sirajganj district ) were the first to form an aid association ( Agrarian League, called Bidrup ). B. collected for court costs and informed the farmers about their rights at events. The impetus for this was a legal proceeding against 43 leading tenants in the village of Urkandee to enforce further rent increases.

The protest was largely within the law and mostly peaceful. The main demands were: land surveying on the basis of the 23¾ inch yard, lowering the rent to the level at the time of the Raja and abolishing the illegally demanded taxes and written confirmation of the fulfilled demands.

This was enough, however, to arouse fierce opposition from the possessing class. The British Indian Association with its newspaper Hindoo Patriot presented the movement as communalist agitation. The older brother of Rabindranath Tagore , Dwijendranath , who, as Zamindar, was affected by lost income due to refused tax payments, demanded calm and order through the most drastic measures in July 1873 restore (App. A, S 151). Apart from the refusal of rent payments, there were only a few riots, which were essentially limited to the period between June 15 and July 3. In July, larger police units were brought in from Bihar , but they did not understand the local language. A number of those involved were convicted of looting, trespassing and unauthorized gathering in 1873. A total of 559 people were arrested, of which 228 were acquitted and 331 convicted by June 1874. The convictions mostly led to prison terms of 1 to 6 months, sometimes also to fines, which often exceeded the annual income of a family with amounts of up to 80 Rs.

A young Irish official from Sirajganj district, P. Nolan, helped defuse the situation through his forward-looking assessment and the protection of smallholders he advocated. The leaders were the small farmer Ishan Chandra Roy, the village chief Shambhu Pal and Khoodi Moolah. They set up a self-defense force called the Rebel Army to protect against the Zamindar thugs.

The movement initially subsided during the famine of 1873/74. In the following years, however, it revived again and again, also because costs rose due to the creeping devaluation of the silver rupee against the gold-backed pound, and the living conditions of the peasant middle class, who often sublet the land, deteriorated.

As early as July 4, 1873, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir George Campbell - not to be confused with George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll , who at the same time served as Secretary of State for India and as Whig in some ways his opponent was - promised to protect the farmers from blackmail. In early 1879 the Rent Law Commission was formed, which in June tabled a bill to change the land lease system with greater security for the tenants. After intensive lobbying by the Zamidars, a heavily watered-down version was decided on March 11, 1885, which came into force on November 1.

literature

  • Kalyan Kumar Sen Gupta: Pabna Disturbances and the Politics of Rent 1873–1885. Peoples Publishing House, New Delhi 1974. (Partial dissertation. University of Calcutta 1971.)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Raiyat
  2. ↑ a b c Kalyan Kumar Sen Gupta: Pabna Disturbances and the Politics of Rent 1873–1885. New Delhi 1974.
  3. ^ Sumit Sarkar: Modern India 1885-1947. New Delhi 1998, ISBN 0-333-90425-7 , p. 51.
  4. ↑ Bengal Judicial (Police) Prog., 448, December 3, 1874, pp. 78-79; reprinted in Sengupta. 1974, app. D and E.
  5. ↑ 1879–1885 Secretary of the Board of Reveue , then until 1891 Secretary to the Government for Bengal. Sengupta. 1974, p. 64.