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Princely states, peasant protests, and nation building in India: the colonial mode of historiography and subaltern studies
Hira Singh a a Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada. Online Publication Date: 01 October 2003 To cite this Article: Singh, Hira (2003) 'Princely states, peasant protests, and nation building in India: the colonial mode of historiography and subaltern studies', Social Movement Studies, 2:2, 213 - 228 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/1474283032000139788 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1474283032000139788
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Princely States, Peasant Protests, and Nation Building in India: the colonial mode of historiography and subaltern studies
Hira Singh
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada
The postcolonial unity of India as a single nation state incorporating the princely states covering two-fth of the territory and a quarter of the population that remained outside the direct jurisdiction of the colonial state has not been problematized in the colonial and postcolonial historiography of India. This problematization is nonetheless essential in order to understand the internal dynamics of the colonial social formation in India, especially the agency of peasant movements in princely states in the dissolution of tbe colonial state and in preparing the ground for the postcolonial unity of the Indian state. The tendency to ignore the agency of peasant movements in princely India during the colonial rule is what I have characterized as the colonial mode of historiography. Subaltern Studies project which claims to distinguish itself for its role in restoring the agency of peasant insurgency in colonial India is indeed a continuation of the colonial mode of historiography. Keywords: Peasant movements, Princely States, colonial and postcolonial discourse, subaltern studies.
The population of India in 1931 numbered 340 millions, and of these one quarter, over eighty millions, are the subjects of princes. India contains close to two million square miles. Of these two-fths lie in the princely states. The area of Great Britain is 88,000 square miles, its population 45 millions. In these simple terms the importance of the subject lies revealed. (Sir George MacMunn 1936) You will appreciate that it is of the highest importance to us that the States should t in properly into the picture of India. It is bad enough that India has to be partitioned. It would be disastrous if this process went further and resulted in the balkanization of the country We might well have to go back one hundred years when the East India Company was consolidating its power in India (Nehru to Lord IsmayChurchills closest military advisor during the war and subsequently Lord Mountbattens Chief of Staff in 194719 June 1947, emphasis added)
ISSN 1474-2837 print/ISSN 1474-2829 online/03/020213-16 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1474283032000139788
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Introduction
If one looks at the map of India during British colonial rule, there were two colours representing two Indias, British India and Indian India. Indian India, covering onequarter of the population and two-fths of the territory of the country, remained outside the direct jurisdiction of the colonial state. It was the territory of the princely states. Following the end of colonial rule, the two Indias were integrated into a single nation-state. In the ofcial accounts of Indian historiography, the integration of princely states is presented as an act of the leadership of the post-colonial elite, the Indian National Congress and the Indian bureaucracy (cf. Menon 1956). However, it is argued here that the foundation of the post-colonial unity of India as a single nation-state was laid by the peasant movements in princely states. In their struggle against the landlords, peasants in princely states found an afnity with peasants in British India and vice versa. The basis of afnity between the peasants in the two Indias was found in their common class interests. The Indian National Congress and the political organizations on the left facilitated the development of India-wide awareness of peasant unity. Peasant unity cutting across the division between the two Indias was a serious blow to the autonomy of princely states as well as to the survival of the colonial state. The agency of peasant movements in princely states in bringing down the wall of separation between the two Indias, in addition to their role in the decline of the landed aristocracy and the end of colonial rule, has been overlooked in the mainstream historiography of colonialism. Subaltern Studies, which claims to restore the agency of peasant insurgency in colonial India, is not different from the mainstream historiography in its failure to overcome this limitation. As argued below, this failure of Subaltern Studies is not accidental. It is intrinsic to its theoretical, albeit ideological commitment. This article is divided into three sections. In Section I, I present a brief outline of the agrarian structure and the peasant movements in the princely states of Rajasthan (former Rajputana) from the 1920s to the 1940s. In Section II, I analyse the main objective of the movements. In Section III, I examine Subaltern Studies and other theories of peasant movements in the light of my ndings from the princely states discussed in the rst two sections.
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in the territory covered under the grant, and the thikanedars dealt with their subjects agriculturists and non-agriculturistsdirectly without any intervention from the Durbar. It may be noted that by the 1880s, over 7580 per cent of the land in the major princely states of Rajasthan were under the control of the thikanedars (Jagir File No C/3/4, Vol. I, Jagirdars Ravenue Powers, Rajasthan State Archives, Bikaner (RSAB). The right to own land carried with it the right to rule: a landlord was a political lord and a judge. Hence, the thikanedars were the rulers and the judges within their territories. They had the right to exercise extra-economic coercion, ranging from physical torture and humiliation to the attachment and sale of the peasants movable and immovable property, in extracting the surplus from a dependent peasantry. In practice, extra-economic coercion was commonly applied (ibid.). An important feature of land tenure in the princely states was that the landlords (the Durbar and the thikanedars) did not cultivate their land, nor did they get them cultivated by non-free or free wage labourers. Instead, they leased their land to peasants (kisans) in return for rent (hasil/bigori), cess (lag-bag) and forced labour (begar). The peasants had the right to possess land and, provided they paid their dues and performed the services required of them, they could not be evicted from their tenures (Hawala File 4/4, Part I; Settlement Reports, Jodhpur (1884), RSAB). As dependent tenure holders, they were subordinate to the landlordseconomically, politically, and juridically (for details see Singh 1998).
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In addition to the economic and political complaints, the peasants were resentful of the landlords lifestyle, characterized by conspicuous consumption, paid for by the peasants, which was in sharp contrast to the peasants own life of austerity. At the same time, they were asserting their right to cultural autonomy. In the process, they were tearing down the symbolic boundaries that separated them from the landlords and that were indicative of their inferior status (cf. Singh 1998).
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On 15 May 1941 the Standing Committee of the Conference issued the following statement:
It is manifest that the fate of the states is indissolubly linked with the fate of India and the peril of India is equally the peril of the states. Danger and peril have thus demonstrated afresh the unity of India and the comradeship of the people of the states with their brethren in the rest of India. This imminent danger makes the establishment of freedom in the states all the more imperative. The time has come when people of the states should have full Responsible Government with the princes and the people owing allegiance to the free India Government. (Ibid., emphasis added)
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tactical move to recover the ground which he apparently lost to his rivals on the left, turned his attention to the question of the peasant unrest in Indian States. In a resolution passed at this Session, the Congress reiterated its objective of standing for the same political, social, and economic freedom in the states as in British India. It considered the states as integral parts of India. In order to experiment with his new line of action, Gandhi chose the princely state of Rajkot (Bombay), where his father had been Dewan (Prime Minister), as the site of his direct involvement. At the same time, he kept a close watch on the events unfolding in the states of Rajasthan. In January 1938, when Jamnalal Bajaj, one of Gandhis close associates, was arrested in Jaipur, Gandhi declared that the Congress would be neglecting its duty if it allowed the spirit of the people of states to be crushed for want of support from the party. In fact, the neutrality of the Congress Party towards the popular movements in princely states was merely a tactical device that should not be confused with its strategy. It is true that the peasant movements in princely states were not directly organized by the Congress, and the local organizations actively involved in the movements were formally independent of the Congress. However, the independence of these political organizations was only an appearance. The All-India States Peoples Conference, coordinating the Praja Mandals and Lok Parishads in the princely states, was virtually a subsidiary of the Indian National Congress. On the eve of negotiations with Mountbatten regarding the fate of the princely states in post-colonial India, the President of Conference was none other than Jawahar Lal Nehru (who was later to become the Congresss choice for the rst Prime Minister of India). Many of the other eminent Congress leaders were actively involved in popular movements in the princely states in different parts of India: Vallabh Bhai Patel in Baroda, Kasturba Gandhi in Rajkot, Panikkars in Travancore (the Panikkar family had served the state for over 100 years), C. Rajgopalachari and Pattabhi Sitaramayya in Madras, Sarojini Naidu in Hyderabad, Madan Mohan Malviya (whose son occupied an eminent position the state bureaucracy of Mewar), Birla, Bajaj and Surana in Rajasthan, to mention a few. The connection between the peasant movements in the princely states and the Indian National Congress was, however, far more serious: ideologically, tactically and strategically there was an organic link between the peasant movements against landlords in the princely states and the anti-colonial, anti-landlord struggles in British India led by the Congress (cf. Singh 1998). As argued below, these links were instrumental in bringing removing the boundaries between British India and Indian India, paving the way for the unity of India as a single nation-state.
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entire notion of land ownership. In the later stage of the movements, the peasants were demanding independent proprietorship of land under their possession and an end to the thikanedari system per se. It is true that only rarely did the peasants or the outside leadership of the Praja Mandals, Lok Parishads, the Indian National Congress, or even the political parties on the left directly challenge the economic rights of the ruler (Durbar). In fact, most of the time the Durbar was the nal court of appeal for the rebellious peasants and their leaders. So, apparently, the main targets of the movements were the thikanedars. However, the economic demands of the peasants were, in the nal analysis, as much against the interests of the Durbars as those of the thikanedars. This was so since the thikanedars and the Durbars shared a common basis of economic power, namely monopoly of land ownership. As noted above, the Durbar and the thikanedars together controlled all land, and the Durbar, after parcelling out land to the thikanedars, still remained the biggest landlord in the state. The dependence of peasants on landlords (the Durbar and the thikanedars) for landtheir means of subsistencein return for rents, cesses and forced labour was the essence of the existing production relations. In challenging the economic rights of the thikanedars to extract rents, cesses and free labour and in claiming independent proprietorship of land in their possession, the peasants were challenging the very foundation of these relationslandlords monopoly of landownershipwhich, in the nal analysis, was as much against the interests of the Durbar as those of the thikanedars. Peasants political demands were as radical as their economic demands. In the early stages of the movements, their political demands, like their economic demands, were simple and limited in scope, urging the Durbar to curb the excesses committed by the thikanedars in the course of the extraction of surplus and in the exercise of their administrative and judicial powers. However, as the movements progressed, the scope of political demands was enlarged to a Responsible Government under the Aegis of the Durbars, that is, the abolition of the politicaljuridical authority of the thikanedars. In this way it was a demand challenging the authority of the thikanedars but not that of the Durbars. Its implications were, however, radical, affecting the very basis of the authority of the Durbars as much as that of the thikanedars. As discussed above, the right to land ownership carried with it the political right to rule and juridical authority to judge. This organic unity of economy and polity (Anderson 1978) was a historical necessity of the feudal mode of production in which extra-economic coercion was necessary for the extraction of the surplus from the direct producers. That being so, a challenge to the thikanedars politicaljuridical authority meant a challenge to the Durbars authority as well, in so far as the basis of the Durbars authority to rule was the same as that of the thikanedars. There was yet another element of the existing power structure that was under attack. Politics in the existing system was the exclusive preserve of the landlords, members of the warrior Rajput caste. The peasants and other groups were not allowed to be warriors, and hence not entitled to participate in the exercise of politicaljuridical power. In demanding a Responsible Government under the Aegis of the Durbar, the peasants were essentially demanding a restructuring of power relations on a democratic basis in which they and other subaltern groups could participate in political processes, irrespective of their class and caste.
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In addition, the peasants were emphasizing unity of their cause with that of the peasants in British India. The division of territory and populations into two Indias was a necessary condition for the survival of the colonial state as much as it was a condition for the survival of the princely states themselves (cf. Singh 1998). This division was, however, an anachronism. Identifying their interests with those of the peasants in British India, the peasants in the princely states were preparing the ground for an end to that anachronism. The demand for an end to the system of dual sovereignty of British India and Indian India was simultaneously a challenge to the sovereignty of the princely states as much as to the survival of the Paramount Power, the colonial state. The future of the Indian States was a matter of serious concern to the colonial state, the Rulers of the States, and the Indian National Congress. In October 1929, the Simon Commission communicated to the British Prime Minister that in considering the direction of the future development of India, it was of immense importance to bear in mind the relations which might develop between British India and the Indian states (Menon 1956: 26). Later, reacting to the recommendation of the Commission, the British Government of India noted that there was an essential unity embracing the whole of India, which had to be accommodated in future political institutions. In 1935, the Joint Select Committee (of the British House of Commons) deliberated over the future relations between the Indian States, which in its opinion were wholly different in status and character from the Provinces of British India. Unlike the Provinces in British India, Indian States were sovereign, and they were not prepared to federate on the same terms as the Provinces (Menon 1956: 34). In September 1948, Nehru acknowledged the historic importance of the integration of the princely states with the rest of India: The historian who looks back will no doubt consider the integration of the States into India as one of the dominant phases of Indias history (Menon 1956: 489, emphasis added). By the time the Constitution of India came into force (26 January 1950), all the Indian States were integrated into Indian union as part of a single nation-state under one constitution. Patel (the rst Home Minister of India) described the integration of Indian States as a bloodless revolution which has affected the destinies of millions of our people (Menon 1956: 488, emphasis added). In August 1947, when the transfer of power took place, very few could have conceived as possible the revolutionary change that was to come over the States within such a short time, wrote V. P. Menon, a senior Indian bureaucrat involved in the negotiations between the Indian National Congress, princely states, and the colonial bureaucracy. Menon mistakenly attributes the integration to the events between 1947 and 1950. In reality, however, the ground for the integration was prepared from below by the peasant movements of the 1920s1940s, which had already transcended the boundaries between the two Indias. The post-colonial state only institutionalized it.
III Peasant Movements and Subaltern Studies: The Colonial Mode of Historiography and Elite Ideology
I want now to discuss some of the implications of my ndings for a theory of peasant
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movements, with particular reference to the Subaltern Studies Project (SSP), which has rightly emphasized the critical importance of peasant insurgency in the historiography of colonial India. Among its other accomplishments, the Project made an effective contribution to dispel the notion, popularized in particular by Moore (1966), that Indian peasantry was passive. Ranjit Guhas account of the various forms of peasant insurgency (Guha 1983), preceded by Kathleen Goughs earlier response (Gough 196869, 1974) (unfortunately, ignored by the SSP), is a convincing refutation of Moores rather ctitious account of peasant passivity in India. While recognizing the valuable contribution of Subaltern Studies to the study of peasant insurgency, it must be underlined that the Project fails to accomplish its own objective, that is, to restore the agency of peasants and peasant movements in colonial India. As argued below, this failure is intrinsic to the theoretical, albeit ideological, predilections of the Project.
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had developed in Europe as a critique of feudalism was made to promote a neo-feudal landlordism in India (1988: 26). One may ask: why did European political economy have one role in Europe, another in India? The main problem with Guha is the assumption that the agency of doing, or not doing, anything in India (in this case, promoting feudalism or neo-feudalism) was entirely a prerogative of European political economy. Indians or pre-colonial Indian society and culture had nothing to contribute. This is an attribute of the colonial mode of historiography. However, the central argument of my study (1998) is that pre-capitalist (feudal) structures and values survived, as they did during British colonial rule, not because European political economy wanted them to but because of resistance by the landed gentry. The encounter between European political economy and the pre-colonial Indian economic, political, cultural system was a two-way process in which both sides affected and modied each other. In other words, it is not only European political economy that modied pre-colonial (pre-capitalist) Indian structures and cultures; it was also modied by the latter not only in the colony but also at home in Europe (cf. Anderson 1966; Kiernan 1972). The colonial mode of historiography is even more pronounced in Partha Chatterjees (another eminent gure in the SSP) argument that colonialism was an intrusion of new extractive mechanisms into the agrarian economy, resulting in a
differentiated impact on pre-capitalist structuressometimes destroying them, sometimes modifying them to t in with the new demands of surplus extraction and other times keeping intact, perhaps bolstering, pre-existing productive systems and local organizations of power while merely establishing a suitable extractive mechanism. (Chatterjee 1988: 388, emphasis added)
It is this one-sided view of the colonial encounter, in which India and Indians appear as mere objects of manipulation by colonial-capitalist forces to meet the functional requirements of the latter, which typically characterizes the colonial mode of historiography. This feature is equally evident in Dirks (an acknowledged member of the SSP, cf. Prakash 1992) ethnohistory of a princely state in South India. He writes: Ultimately, colonialism must be seen as a hegemonic structure, which articulated its own particular impact and inuence through a variety of institutional and ideological forms. He continues:
Colonialism purposefully preserved many of the forms of the old regime, nowhere more conspicuously than in the indirectly ruled princely state(s). Under British rule (little) kings in India were constructed as colonial objects and given special colonial scripts. They were maintained, altered, and managed as part of a systematic set of colonial purposes and understandings The Raja was reconstructed andultimately deconstructedas an object of colonialism. (1987: 282, emphasis mine)
The tendency to see the rajas (princes) and ranis (queens) as merely creations of colonial architecture, and not as contributors to that architecture, is looking at the edice of colonialism one-sidedly. The princes were not only being deconstructed and reconstructed by the colonial state, they were also shaping the structures and the processes of colonialism. It was a two-way process of give and take in which the colonial state and rajas were constantly engaged in constructing and deconstructing each other. Colonial
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hegemony was not totalizing (a point well made by Guha (1997) himself). Colonial penetration was not a one-way process. The counter-penetration of colony into metropolis was the other side of the coin. The colonial tamasha (farce) of Imperial Durbars was a stance par excellence of the colonial state borrowing from the Indian tradition. The paraphernalia that accompanied the Durbars was Indian, as was the meaning behind it. The British were simply imitating the Indian rulerscasting the British queen/king into the model of the Great Moghaland making Indians pay for it (cf. Singh 1998).
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landed aristocracy) any agency, excepting as the instruments or puppets of the colonial state. Repudiation of the notion of indirect rule is therefore a necessary step towards de-colonizing the historiography of colonial India. It would also be useful to have a closer look at this concept in analysing the colonial history of the African countries under colonial rule, as the notion of indirect rule is frequently applied to them.
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peasantsthe functionaries of the jajmani system, landless labourers, members of the various caste groups engaged in occupations that were considered polluting, and the various tribal groups. These groups either remained inactive or were excluded from the movements, which raises two important questions. First, why did a section of the subaltern group (peasants) engage in insurgency, while others (non-peasant groups) did not? Second, why did peasants (subaltern) engaged in rebellion against landlords (elite) join hands with another section of the elite (merchants, leaders of the political parties), while excluding other subaltern groups (non-peasant populations)? The notion of a structural split, with an autonomous domain of subaltern politics, does not even raise these questions, let alone answer them. These questions are nevertheless important for an understanding of the real struggles and lives of the real people not only in colonial India but also in post-colonial India. And the answer is class interests. The interests of the rich and middle peasants were opposed to those of the landlords above as well as to those of the other subaltern groups below. The Indian National Congress, wedded to bourgeois liberal ideology, supported the alliance of the rich, middle peasants and the merchants. The rich and middle peasants, who were active in the movements, became part of the dominant group, while the subaltern groups who were not included, or were excluded, from the movements are excluded from the dominant power structure in post-colonial India. Instead of seeing it for what it is, namely a logic of class struggle, the SSP calls it betrayal by the elite (Guha 1982, 1997; Sarkar 1983). Betrayal may be a noble sentiment, not an explanation.
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is opposed to the transition theme in Indian historiography of colonialism on the grounds that the transition model is mimetic of European historiography and subordinate to it (Chakrabarty 1997: 284). If we accept this premise of Subaltern Studies, we have to exclude the peasant movements in the princely states between the 1920s and 1940s, which, as discussed above, were aided by political organizations and conscious ideologies seeking to change the existing economicpolitical structure. However, to exclude these movements is to deny their agency in the decline of the landed aristocracy in the princely states, which contributed to the end of colonial rule, preparing the ground for the post-colonial unity of India as a nation-state. This is rather ironic, considering that the main claim of Subaltern Studies is to restore the agency of subaltern politics, particularly peasant insurgency, in the historiography of colonial India (cf. Guha 1983). While claiming to draw attention to subaltern politics as its distinguishing feature (Guha 1997: xvi), Subaltern Studies ends up doing the opposite; that is, it drowns subaltern politics to t its ideological commitment, which it has in common with bourgeois liberal social science in the West and the East.
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Appendix Glossary
Lag-bag Swaraj Cess. Self-rule.
Acronyms
RSABRajasthan State Archives, Bikaner. SSPSubaltern Studies Project. The Author Hira Singh is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at York University and is currently working on a paper titled The Coolie and the Raj: Indian Indentured Labor in South Africa. Other works include Colonial Hegemony and Popular Resistance: Princes, Peasants, and Paramount Power and Caste, Class, and Peasant Agency in Subaltern Studies Discourse: Elite Ideology, Revisionist Historiography.