Majid Hayat Siddiqi

History and Society in a Popular Rebellion: Mewat, 1920–1933

In late 1932 and early 1933 a popular rising occurred in the region of Mewat in northern central India. Although this rebellion broke out in opposition to the political power of the princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur, as a peasant rebellion it spread over and was supported from areas of British India. It was not, pace Harold Laski, merely an instance of peasant rebellion in an area of indirect British rule. Popular protest in Mewat arose within the totality of an historical context made up as much of developments in British India as of features that were specific to areas of indirect rule. The ideological and social world of the rebellion was also constituted of elements common to British and princely India and to the local histories of the peasant community of the Meos who rose in rebellion. The context that we write about, therefore, is one of a multiplicity of different, yet interlocking, histories—legendary, secular, reformist, sectarian, legitimist, nationalist, rebellious, nativistic—all of which end, as it were, in a final denouement in the rising of 1933.

The Peasant Movement in Pratapgarh, 1920

There were, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, two peasant movements between 1920 and 1922. The first, the Kisan Sabha movement, took place between the summer of 1920 and that of 1921. The second, the Elca movement, erupted in November 1921 to last till April 1922. The Kisan1 Sabha movement originated from Pratapgarh district and later spread to the neighbouring districts of Sultanpur, Rae Bareilly and Fyzabad. The Eka

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, The Colonial State. Theory and Practice, 2016, Primus Books, Delhi, 228 pp., ₹ 1495, ISBN: 9384092010

new textual data. Relics and reliquaries have also been the focus of numerous recent publications, including a 2016 Cambridge University dissertation by Wannaporn Rienjang, who has also contributed to this volume; also deserving note is a chronological study of inscriptions on reliquaries by Stefan Baums. This publication offers, for the first time, access to Masson’s finds in the form of beautiful photographs and clearly vetted documentation. A body of evidence with far-reaching implications that now is accessible to the broader scholarly community.

Book Reviews : ERIC STOKES, The Peasant Armed. The Indian Rebellion of 1857, edited by C.A. Bayly, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986, pp. 261

Nevertheless, although information on these process of capitalism which affect tribal life abounds now, as in the work of Dr. K. Suresh Singh himself, for some reason, like other anthropologists, he too shrinks from making the conceptual leap from ethnicity to class. The tribals remain special, even exotic and whereas the effects on them of the general societal processes unfolded by actions of the state are analysed, the political-economic domain of class formation is only implicit. Thus the book remains an excellent anthropological treatise but falls short of becoming an analysis of the political economy of tribal India.

Book reviews : PETER ROBB ed., Rural India: Land, Power and Society under British Rule, London, Curzon Press, 1983, viii + 314 pp., £9.50

the classic volumes of the first series of English Factories approached this ideal. Fawcett fell away from the ideal in the later volumes of English Factories and, I suppose, the decision not to attempt it is wise. Professor Om Prakash has, however, put us all in his debt by his meticulous annotations, much of which conveys once more to the English reading public, those facts locked away in the Dutch language. .

Book reviews : RANAJIT GUHA, ed., Subaltern Studies III: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1984, 337 pp., Rs. 135

legal tender in British India. Doubtless, economy was the declared motive for shutting down the mints. But the timing of such drastic economy and of the new rupee need to be explained. Alternative explanations must await further research. It is likely these explanations would have to take into account the specific pressures of British rule during these years when, with the decline of textile production and export, the problems of tribute exaction necessitated cutting back expenditure, heavy taxation and, in extreme situations, the export of bullion and coin. In the discussions that preceded the Act of 1833 the experience of 1831, when large quantities of bullion and coin were exported to Britain, was fresh in the minds of policy-makers. One advantage of a single standard rupee would be that, if exported, the expense of melting it for evaluation would be saved. ’

Book reviews and notices : RANAJIT GUHA: Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. 361 pp. Rs 140

have begun to depend on market purchases. This-in addition to private property in land, education, urban influences and money economy-is destroying the spirit of village community and tribal solidarity. Social customs, rituals and festivals are all being modified, given up or reduced in frequency and intensity. There is increasing influence of Hindu religion, so much so that the Gonds have even started making pilgrimage to the Tirupati temple. The crux of the matter is that the tribal economy and society of Andhra Pradesh are respectively getting integrated at their peril into the wider market economy of India and the caste society of the Hindus. The tribal ’struggle for survival’ here is doomed to fail. The adversaries are formidable.