The Deccan Riots of 1875: prehistory

Detail

The Deccan ryot (peasant cultivator) did not explode overnight in 1875. The anger was built up over about fifty years. Four things stacked on top of each other: a harsh revenue system, a famine, a cotton boom that ended badly, and a legal system the moneylender learnt to game.

1. The ryotwari settlement and over-assessment (from 1818/1820s)

• What ryotwari means. Revenue was fixed directly on each ryot (the individual cultivator), not through a zamindar. The ryot alone faced the state. If he failed, nobody stood between him and the collector.
• The Deccan settlements made from 1818 / the 1820s set the demand too high.
• Results recorded in the chapter:
• Peasants deserted their villages and moved away rather than pay.
• Collectors seized crops from the fields.

• Whole villages were fined together when revenue fell short.

• Point to remember: the demand was fixed in cash, and it did not fall when prices fell. So the burden was heaviest exactly when the peasant could pay least.

2. Price collapse and the famine of 1832–34

• After 1832 agricultural prices crashed. The peasant's grain fetched less money, but the revenue amount stayed the same.
• The famine of 1832–34 then hit the Deccan. The chapter records the scale:
• One-third of the cattle died.

• Half the population died.

• Cattle deaths matter more than they sound. No bullocks means no ploughing and no carts. The survivor could not restart farming on his own.

• Key consequence: those who lived through it could pay revenue only by borrowing. Debt stopped being an emergency tool and became the normal way to pay the government.
• By the 1840s officials themselves said the level of indebtedness was alarming.
• Recovery after 1845 was real but hollow — the rebuilding of cultivation was itself funded by credit. So a better harvest did not clear the old debt; it sat under a new loan.

3. The cotton boom, 1861–65

Why Britain panicked.

• Britain drew three-fourths of its raw cotton from America.
• Worry about depending on one supplier came before the war:
• Cotton Supply Association, 1857.

• Manchester Cotton Company, 1859.

• The American Civil War (1861–65) cut off the supply. Imports fell from over 2 million bales in 1861 to 55,000 in 1862.

• The Lancashire mills' resulting collapse is known as the Lancashire cotton famine, 1861–1865. [3]
• The North's blockade of the southern ports stopped cotton exports, which is what produced starvation in the Lancashire mill towns. [3]

Note: [3] adds that Indian raw cotton was judged inferior to the best American — the fibre was shorter and coarser. This explains why buyers returned to America the moment they could. It extends, and does not contradict, the scaffold.

What the boom did in the Deccan.

• Credit flooded in. Sahukars (moneylenders/merchants) gave advances of Rs 100 per acre planted with cotton.
• Cotton acreage doubled between 1860 and 1864.
• By 1862, over 90 per cent of Britain's raw-cotton imports came from India.
• But the gain was not shared:
• Only some rich peasants actually profited.
• For the majority, growing more cotton simply meant taking on more debt — the advance was a loan, not a gift.

4. The bust, from 1865 — three blows at once

• From 1865, American cotton production revived and Britain went back to it. [3]

• The Deccan then took three hits together: 1. Merchants and sahukars closed operations, restricted advances and demanded repayment. 2. The second revenue settlement raised the demand by 50 to 100 per cent. 3. The moneylender refused fresh loans altogether.

• This is the crucial squeeze. The peasant had switched to cotton on credit, the price of cotton fell, the revenue went up, and his only source of cash shut its door. Three doors closed in the same years.

5. The experience of injustice — why anger turned on the sahukar, not the state

The ryots were poor before. What was new in 1875 was the feeling that a customary norm had been broken.

• The rule of "fair interest". Custom said interest could not exceed the principal. A Rs 100 loan could grow to Rs 200 owed, and no further. This was the moral line.
• How badly it was broken. The Deccan Riots Commission recorded a case where over Rs 2,000 in interest was charged on a loan of Rs 100.
• Because the sahukar broke a rule the village itself recognised, he — not the distant collector — became the target.

6. How the law was turned upside down

• The Limitation Law of 1859.
• Intention: a loan bond was valid for only three years, so that interest could not pile up forever.

• What actually happened: the moneylender made the peasant sign a new bond every three years, and entered the unpaid balance as the new principal. Interest thus became principal, and then earned interest again. The protective law became the engine of compounding.

• Everyday tricks of the sahukar (all from the record):

• Refused to give receipts for repayments made.
• Entered fictitious figures in the account books.
• Bought the harvest cheap, fixing a low price at the moment the ryot was helpless.
• Took over property — land, cattle, carts.

• Deeds of hire: the peasant was made to pay rent for the very bullocks and carts that had once been his own. He worked with his own plough as a tenant of his own tools.

• The written word itself became the enemy.

• The British insisted every transaction be in legally enforceable contracts, deeds and bonds, replacing the older informal understanding based on memory and village witness.
• The peasant signed documents he could not read.
• The chapter's phrase: peasants came to fear the written word. In the riots the crowds went straight for the bonds and deeds.

7. The wider setting (class 8 link)

• The Deccan build-up belongs to the same family as the earlier peasant and tribal resistance movements under Company rule across the 1770s–1850s, where the cash-revenue demand, the moneylender and the new courts appeared together.
• The nearest cousin is the Indigo Revolt in Bengal, which also turned on advances, bonds and forced cultivation of a commercial crop. [4]
• An official enquiry was the standard British response to such agrarian trouble — the Indigo Commission was established in 1860. [4] The Deccan Riots Commission of 1875 followed the same pattern.

8. The aftershock that proves the diagnosis

• Government's own answer was to limit the moneylender's grip: the Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act, 1879 (Act XVII of 1879). [2]
• It came into force on 1 November 1879. [2]
• It first extended to the four districts at the heart of the trouble: Poona, Satara, Sholapur and Ahmednagar, with power to extend it elsewhere. [2]
• Exam point: the state legislated against debt and interest, not against its own revenue demand. That choice tells you where the British located the problem — in the sahukar, not in the ryotwari assessment.

Prelims Hooks

• Deccan ryotwari settlements began in 1818 / the 1820s; over-assessment made peasants desert villages.
• The famine of 1832–34 killed one-third of the cattle and half the population of the affected Deccan tract.
• American Civil War cut Britain's cotton imports from over 2 million bales (1861) to 55,000 (1862).
• Cotton Supply Association — 1857; Manchester Cotton Company — 1859.
• Sahukars advanced Rs 100 per acre of cotton; Deccan cotton acreage doubled 1860–64.
• By 1862, over 90 per cent of Britain's raw-cotton imports came from India.
• The second revenue settlement after 1865 raised the demand by 50 to 100 per cent.
• Limitation Law of 1859: loan bonds valid only three years — subverted by re-bonding with unpaid balance as new principal.
• The Deccan Riots Commission recorded over Rs 2,000 interest on a Rs 100 loan, breaking the custom that interest must not exceed principal.
• The British mill crisis of these years is called the Lancashire cotton famine, 1861–1865. [3]
• Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act, 1879 — in force 1 November 1879; first applied to Poona, Satara, Sholapur, Ahmednagar. [2]

Mains Points

• Commercialisation without security causes revolt. The Deccan case shows a cash crop boom financed entirely by credit. When the external market (American cotton) returned in 1865, the risk fell wholly on the ryot, while the state's demand rose by 50–100 per cent. Integration into a world market made the peasant more, not less, vulnerable.
• Law as a weapon rather than a shield. The Limitation Law of 1859 was protective in intent but was inverted into a compounding device; the insistence on written bonds transferred power to the literate creditor. Useful for any GS-I answer on how colonial legal-administrative "modernisation" reshaped rural power.
• Why the anger targeted the sahukar and not the sarkar. The revolt's moral logic was the violation of the customary "fair interest" ceiling and of everyday honesty (no receipts, false entries, deeds of hire). The state was the ultimate cause, but the moneylender was the visible breaker of a known rule — which is why crowds burnt bonds and deeds rather than revenue offices.
• A pattern, not an isolated event. Deccan 1875 sits alongside the Indigo Revolt of Bengal [4] — advance, bond, forced commercial crop, then a government commission of enquiry [4] and remedial legislation (Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act, 1879 [2]). Colonial policy consistently addressed the intermediary while protecting its own revenue demand.