Before reducing all palayakkarars of southTamilnadu into submission the East India
Company
had acquired the revenue districtsof Salem, Dindigul at the conclusion
of the warwith Tipu in 1792. Coimbatore was annexedat the end of the
Anglo-Mysore War in 1799.In the same year the Raja of Thanjavur
whosestatus had been reduced to that of a vassal in1798 gave up his
sovereign rights over thatregion to the English. After the suppressionof
resistance of Kattabomman (1799) andMarudhu Brothers (1801), the
British chargedthe Nawab of Arcot with disloyalty and forced atreaty on
him. According to this Treaty of 1801,the Nawab was to cede the
districts of NorthArcot, South Arcot, Tiruchirappalli, Maduraiand
Tirunelveli to the Company and transfer all the administrative powers to
it. But the resistance did not die down. Thedispossessed little kings
and feudal chieftainscontinued to deliberate on the future courseof
action against the Company Government.The outcome was the Vellore Revolt
of 1806.The objective conditions for a last ditch fightexisted on the
eve of the revolt. The sepoys inthe British Indian army nursed a strong
sense of
resentment over low salary and poor prospectsof promotion.
The English army officers’ scantrespect for the social and religious
sentimentsof the Indian sepoys also angered them. Thestate of peasantry
from which class the sepoyshad been recruited also bothered them
much.With new experiments in land tenures causing
unsettled
conditions and famine breaking outin 1805 many of the sepoys’ families
were in direeconomic straits. The most opportune situationcome with the
sons and the family members ofTipu being interned in Vellore Fort. The
triggerfor the revolt came in the form of a new militaryregulation
notified by the Commander-in-
Chief Sir John Cradock.
Major Cootes, who was outside theFort, informed Colonel Gillespie, the cavalry
commandant
in Arcot. Gillespie reached thefort along with a squadron of cavalry
underthe command of Captain Young at 9.00 am.In the meantime, the rebels
proclaimed FatehHyder, Tipu’s eldest son, as their new rulerand hoisted
the tiger flag of Mysore sultans inthe Fort. But the uprising was
swiftly crushedby Col. Gillespie, who threw to winds all warethics. In
the course of suppression, according
to an eyewitness account, eight
hundredsoldiers were found dead in the fort alone. Sixhundred soldiers
were kept in confinement inTiruchirappalli and Vellore awaiting
Inquiry.The Vellore Revolt failed because there wasno immediate help
from outside. Recent studiesshow that the organising part of the revolt
was
done perfectly by Subedars Sheik Adamand Sheik Hamid and Jamedar Sheik
Hussainof the 2 nd battalion of 23 rd regiment and twoSubedars and the
Jamedar Sheik Kasim of the1st battalion of the 1st regiment. Vellore
Revolthad all the forebodings of the Great Rebellion of1857. The only
difference was that there was nocivil rebellion following the mutiny.
The 1806revolt was not confined to Vellore Fort. It had its echoes in
Bellary, Walajabad, Hyderabad,Bengaluru, Nandydurg, and Sankaridurg.
Santhals,
scattered in various parts ofeastern India, when forced to move out of
theirhomeland during the process of creation ofzamins under Permanent
Settlement, clearedthe forest area around the Rajmahal Hills.They were
oppressed by the local police andthe European officers engaged in the
railwayconstruction. Pushed out of their familiar habitat, the Santhals
were forced to rely on the moneylenders for their subsistence.Soon they
were trapped in a vicious circle
of debt and extortion. Besides this,
Santhalsalso felt neglected under the corrupt Britishadministration and
their inability to render justice to their legitimate grievances.One of
the prominent tribal rebellionsof this period occurred in Ranchi, known
asUlugulan rebellion (Great Tumult).The Mundapeople were familiar with
the co-operative orcollective farming known as Khuntkatti (jointholding)
land system. It was totally erodedby the introduction of private
ownershipof land and the intrusion of merchants andmoneylenders. The
Munda people were also
forcefully recruited as indentured labourers
towork on plantations. In the 1890s tribal chiefsoffered resistance
against the alienation oftribal people from their land and imposition
ofbethbegari or forced labour.
The movement received an
impetus whenBirsa Munda declared himself as the messengerof God. Birsa
claimed that he had a prophecy andpromised supernatural solutions to the
problemof Munda people and the establishment of
Birsaite Raj. The
Munda leaders utilised the cultof Birsa Munda to recruit more people to
theircause. A series of night meetings were held and
a revolt was
planned. On the Christmas day of 1889, they resorted to violence.
Buildings were burnt down and arrows were shot at Christian missionaries
and Munda Christian converts. Soon police stations and government
officials
were attacked. Similar attacks were carried out over the
next few months. Finally the resistance was crushed and Birsa Munda was
arrested in February 1900 who later died in jail. BirsaMunda became a
folk hero who is to this daycelebrated in many folk songs. The
Mundarebellion prompted the British to formulate
a policy on Tribal
land. The ChotanagpurTenancy Act (1908) restricted the entry of
non-tribal people into the tribal land.The mutiny was equally supported
by
an aggrieved rural society of north India.Sepoys working in the
British army were infact peasants in uniform. They were equallyaffected
by the restructuring of the revenueadministration. The sepoy revolt and
thesubsequent civil rebellion in various parts ofIndia had a deep-rooted
connection with ruralmass. The first civil rebellion broke out in
partsof the North-Western provinces and Oudh.These were the two regions
from which thesepoys were predominately recruited. A large
number of
Zamindars and Taluqdars werealso attracted to the rebellions as they
hadlost their various privileges under the Britishgovernment. The
talukdar–peasant collectivewas a common effort to recover what theyhad
lost. Similarly, artisans and handicraftspersons were equally affected
by the dethroningof rulers of many Indian states, who were amajor source
of patronage. The dumping ofBritish manufactures had ruined the
Indianhandicrafts and thrown thousands of weaversout of employment.
Collective anger against theBritish took the form of a people’s revolt.
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