Deccan Riots Commission

Topic: Peasant and Tribal Resistance under Company Rule · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"

Meaning

The Deccan Riots Commission was a commission of enquiry (an official group set up to look into an event). The Government of Bombay appointed it under pressure from the Government of India, to find out what caused the Deccan riots of 1875. Its report went to the British Parliament in 1878. The report said the government's revenue demand did not cause the riots and blamed the moneylenders instead.

It matters for two reasons. It is one of the richest official records of peasant life in the colonial Deccan. It also shows a pattern: colonial enquiries kept refusing to admit that government policy could make people angry.

Explanation

Background: the riots that led to the Commission

• Supa, 12 May 1875: ryots (peasants who paid land revenue directly to the government) came in from nearby villages and attacked the shopkeepers of Supa, a large market village in Poona district.
• They demanded the bahi khatas (the moneylenders' account books) and the debt bonds (signed papers that recorded each loan).
• They burnt the khatas.
• They looted the grain shops.

• They set fire to the houses of the sahukars (people who were moneylender and trader at the same time).

• Why burn the books? The written record was the debt. Without it, the moneylender would find it hard to prove his claim in court.

• Spread: from Poona the revolt moved to Ahmednagar. In two months it covered 6,500 sq km and more than thirty villages. The pattern was the same everywhere: sahukars attacked, books burnt, bonds destroyed, and sahukars running away and leaving their property behind.
• The British reaction: officials saw "the spectre of 1857", meaning they feared another Revolt of 1857 was beginning.
• They set up village police posts and called in troops.
• They arrested 951 people, and many were convicted.
• Even so, it took months to bring the countryside back under control.

Why the ryot was in debt

• The Deccan was a ryotwari area. Under ryotwari, government agents collected revenue directly from each cultivator, with no zamindar in between. Alexander Read and Thomas Munro devised the system at the end of the 18th century. [2]
• Ryot comes from the Arabic word raʿiyyah, meaning a peasant or cultivator. [2]
• Ryots were often loaded with high taxes and badly treated by lower officials, and this pushed them into poverty. [2]
• How the debt cycle worked:
• Revenue had to be paid in cash, on a fixed date, even if the harvest was bad.
• With no harvest but tax still due, the ryot borrowed from the sahukar and signed a debt bond.
• The debt grew, and the ryot also had to sell his crop to the same man.

How the Commission was set up and how it worked

• Step 1: at first the Government of Bombay brushed the revolt aside as unimportant.
• Step 2: the Government of India, still worried by the memory of 1857, pressed Bombay to appoint a commission.
• Step 3: the Commission collected evidence:
• it held enquiries in the districts where the riots took place;
• it recorded statements of ryots, sahukars and eyewitnesses;
• it compiled statistics on revenue rates, prices and interest rates;

• it collated (gathered and arranged) the reports of district collectors.

• Step 4: its report was presented to the British Parliament in 1878.

Its verdict and what it shows

• The Commission was asked one direct question: did the government's revenue demand cause the revolt?
• Its answer: no. The revenue demand was not the cause. The moneylenders were to blame.
• Why historians question this:
• Colonial enquiries gave this kind of verdict again and again.
• It shows that officials kept refusing to admit that popular anger could come from government action.

• Yet the ryot's debt grew out of a cash revenue demand that the state itself had fixed.

• Result for students: the report is a rich but biased source. It keeps the ryots' own words, but its conclusion was written to protect the government.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: riots in May 1875, then about two months of spreading unrest; report to Parliament in 1878.
• Region: the Deccan in the Bombay Presidency, mainly Poona (Pune) and Ahmednagar districts. The riots began at Supa.
• Authorities involved: the Government of Bombay, which appointed the Commission; the Government of India, which forced the enquiry; and the British Parliament, which received the report.
• People involved: ryots, sahukars, eyewitnesses and district collectors.
• How we know:
• the Deccan Riots Commission report itself, with ryots' statements, statistics and collectors' reports;
• the District Magistrate's report of 16 May 1875: one moneylender's house burnt, about a dozen gutted (burnt out inside), about 50 people arrested, and losses of over Rs 25,000. The moneylenders claimed over a lakh, which shows the two sides also disagreed about how big the damage was;
• NCERT Class 12 uses this report as an example of how to read colonial official archives.

Don't confuse with

• Indigo Commission (1860): set up after the indigo disturbances in Bengal. It is an earlier enquiry of the same kind, but it was about indigo planters, not Deccan moneylenders. [3]
• Deccan riots (1875): the event itself, started by the ryots at Supa. The Commission was the government's enquiry into that event, and its report came in 1878.
• Government of Bombay vs Government of India: Bombay appointed the Commission, but only because the Government of India pushed it to. Bombay itself first ignored the revolt.
• Ryotwari vs Permanent Settlement: the Deccan was ryotwari, where revenue was taken directly from each cultivator. The Permanent Settlement (1793) of Bengal collected revenue through zamindars.

Prelims Hooks

• The Deccan riots began at Supa in Poona district on 12 May 1875. The revolt spread to Ahmednagar.
• The Government of India, not the Government of Bombay, forced the Deccan Riots Commission to be set up.
• The Commission's report was presented to the British Parliament in 1878.
• Verdict trap: the Commission blamed the moneylenders (sahukars), not the government revenue demand.
• A total of 951 people were arrested while the riots were put down.
• Chronology: Indigo Commission (1860) [3] → Deccan riots (1875) → Deccan Riots Commission report to Parliament (1878).

Mains Points

• Enquiries as damage control. Bombay wanted to ignore the revolt. The Government of India, still shaken by 1857, wanted an official record. The Commission collected ryots' statements and data on prices and interest, then cleared the government and blamed the moneylenders. You can use this to argue that colonial commissions were built to contain discontent, not to explain it. The Indigo Commission of 1860 is a similar case. [3]
• The enemy in front vs the cause behind. Ryots burnt the sahukar's account books and debt bonds, not government records. But their debt came from ryotwari's fixed cash revenue demand and high tax pressure on cultivators. [2] The Commission focused on the visible enemy, the sahukar, and hid the deeper cause, which was state policy.
• Reading colonial archives. The report is valuable evidence of rural debt in the Deccan. A historian must read the evidence inside it separately from the verdict on top of it. The debt problem it records also helps explain why land revenue and rural credit later became central issues for nationalists.

Related concepts

• Supa
• Deccan riots
• Deccan Agriculturists Relief Act 1879

Read more

• The Deccan Riots: event and aftermath