The Deccan Riots: event and aftermath

Detail

Where it started — Supa, 12 May 1875

• Supa was a large market village in Poona (Pune) district, Bombay Presidency. Market villages had shops, grain dealers and moneylenders.
• On 12 May 1875, ryots (peasant cultivators who paid land revenue straight to the government) came in from nearby villages and attacked the shopkeepers of Supa.
• Their first demand was not money. They demanded the bahi khatas — the account books — and the debt bonds (the signed papers that recorded each loan).
• They burnt the khatas, looted the grain shops, and set fire to the houses of the sahukars.
• A sahukar was moneylender and trader in one person. He lent money at interest and also bought the ryot's crop. So the ryot owed him money and sold to him as well.
• Why burn the books, not steal the cash? The book was the debt. Destroy the written record and the claim on the ryot becomes hard to prove in a court.

What the District Magistrate reported (16 May 1875)

• One moneylender's house burnt down.
• About a dozen more houses gutted (insides destroyed by fire).
• ~50 people apprehended (arrested) in the first round.
• Losses over Rs 25,000 by official count. Moneylenders themselves claimed over a lakh (Rs 1,00,000) — a gap that shows the two sides were also fighting over the size of the damage.

How far it spread

• From Poona the revolt moved to Ahmednagar district.
• Over two months it covered 6,500 sq km and more than thirty villages.
• Everywhere the pattern was the same — this sameness is the key point:
• sahukars attacked;
• account books burnt;
• debt bonds destroyed;

• terrified sahukars ran away and left their property behind.

• Same method in village after village = not random rioting. The ryots knew exactly what they wanted destroyed.

The British reaction — "the spectre of 1857"

• British officials saw the spectre of 1857 — they feared another Revolt of 1857 was beginning.
• Steps taken:
• village police posts set up;
• troops called in;

• 951 arrested, many of them convicted.

• Even so, months passed before the countryside was under control.

Background that made the ryot a debtor

• The Deccan was under the ryotwari system — revenue collected directly from each individual cultivator by government agents, with no zamindar in between. It was devised by Captain Alexander Read and Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Munro at the end of the 18th century, and became the standard system of the Madras Presidency and most of southern India. [2]
• The word ryot is the British form of the Arabic word raʿiyyah, meaning a peasant or cultivator. [2]
• Under ryotwari, ryots were often loaded with high taxes and faced ill-treatment by lower officials, which pushed cultivators into poverty. [2]
• Revenue had to be paid in cash, on a fixed date, whether or not the harvest was good.
• No harvest, still pay → the ryot borrows from the sahukar → the debt bond is signed → the cycle starts.

The Deccan Riots Commission

• The Government of Bombay at first brushed the revolt aside as unimportant.
• The Government of India, worried by the memory of 1857, pressured Bombay into appointing a commission of enquiry.
• The commission's report was sent to the British Parliament in 1878.
• How the commission worked — a good example of how colonial evidence was made:
• held enquiries in the districts where the riots happened;
• recorded statements of ryots, sahukars and eyewitnesses;
• compiled statistics on revenue rates, prices and interest rates;

• collated the reports of collectors from the districts.

• It was asked one pointed question: did the government's revenue demand cause the revolt?

• Its answer: the revenue demand was NOT the cause. The moneylenders were to blame.
• This verdict came back again and again in colonial enquiries. It shows the persistent official reluctance to admit that popular discontent could come from government action.
• Compare the earlier Indigo Commission, set up in 1860 after the Bengal indigo disturbances — the same device of an official enquiry after rural unrest. [3]

Why the source matters for a student

• The commission report is a rich source — but a biased one.
• It gives us the ryot's own words (statements were recorded), yet the conclusion was written to protect the government.
• Lesson: read the evidence inside a colonial report separately from the verdict on top of it.

Prelims Hooks

• The Deccan riots began at Supa, a market village in Poona district, on 12 May 1875.
• Bahi khata = the moneylender's account book; ryots demanded and burnt these.
• A sahukar = moneylender and trader in the same person.
• District Magistrate's report of 16 May 1875: 1 house burnt, about a dozen gutted, ~50 apprehended, losses over Rs 25,000; moneylenders claimed over a lakh.
• The revolt spread from Poona to Ahmednagar, covering 6,500 sq km and more than thirty villages in two months.
• Total arrests during suppression: 951.
• The Government of India, not Bombay, forced the setting up of the Deccan Riots Commission.
• The Deccan Riots Commission report was presented to the British Parliament in 1878.
• The commission concluded the government revenue demand was not the cause; it blamed the moneylenders.
• The Deccan was a ryotwari area — revenue taken directly from each cultivator; system devised by Alexander Read and Thomas Munro. [2]
• Ryot comes from the Arabic raʿiyyah = peasant/cultivator. [2]
• The Indigo Commission was established in 1860 — an earlier enquiry of the same type. [3]

Mains Points

• The target tells you the grievance. Ryots burnt account books and debt bonds, not government revenue records. The fight was over the written contract that turned a bad harvest into permanent debt. Yet the debt itself grew out of a cash revenue demand fixed by the state — so the enemy in front (sahukar) and the cause behind (revenue system) were not the same thing.
• Commissions as damage control, not truth-finding. Bombay wanted to ignore the revolt; the Government of India, still shaken by 1857, wanted a paper trail. The 1878 report to Parliament collected ryots' statements, prices and interest data — then cleared the government and blamed moneylenders. Use this to argue that colonial enquiries were built to contain discontent, not to explain it.
• Same colonial logic across revolts. Indigo (Commission, 1860), Santhal, Deccan (1875) — in each case an official enquiry located the fault in a middleman (planter, zamindar, sahukar) rather than in state policy such as ryotwari's cash demand or high tax pressure on cultivators. [2][3]
• Continuity with later agrarian politics. The Deccan pattern — indebted peasant, trader-moneylender, demand for relief from debt bonds — set the template for later peasant movements and for debt-relief legislation in western India, and shows why land revenue and rural credit became central nationalist issues.