Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
N S
Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
This article unpacks the history of a ‘tribal’ region in Central India to show that the current
appearance of ‘two-dimensionality’ or stark opposition between the people and the state is
a product of colonial and post-colonial policies rather than a pre-colonial relic. It challenges
the idea of ‘coercive subordination’ as an adequate explanation for kingship in this area, as
argued by the late Alfred Gell. Instead, this article uses the same phenomena, annual Dussehra
rituals and successive rebellions, to argue for a more dialectical concept of hegemony. It also
takes issue with culturalist interpretations of rule, arguing instead for a historically nuanced
political economy.
Gell starts by assuming that Bastar has always been ‘socially remote’ or cul-
turally and politically isolated, and its state two-dimensional, consisting pri-
marily of the king and his subjects, with few intermediaries. The economy
was marked by low levels of revenue extraction over the long term, which
was primarily responsible for the absence of a dense ruling class or the ladder
of social hierarchies that existed in other parts of India. His basic argument
is that the responsibility for this two-dimensionality and the lack of extrac-
tion, even by colonial authorities, lies with the tribal people themselves
who played on an ‘image of wildness’ totally at odds with their lack of
military organization or political leadership (Gell 1997: 435). The annual
Dussehra festival and successive rebellions both had the intention (or func-
tion) of exalting the king ritually and thereby keeping the state weak in
practice. The assembled population overwhelmed the king by their pres-
ence at times of worship like Dussehra, and the fear this generated in the king
was amplified during times of rebellion. Gell (1997: 436-7) refers to this phe-
nomenon as ‘coercive subordination’, ‘rituals of rebellion’, or ‘pre-emptive
unrests’.
This article begins with some historical and ethnographic detail on Bastar
which is intended to provide an alternative account to Gell’s.1 I show first that
the region was not isolated throughout its history; secondly, that the polity
was not ‘two-dimensional’, consisting only of ruler and subjects; thirdly, that
low rates of land revenue extraction were not the defining feature of the local
economy and that as forests and minerals became more commercially viable
surplus extraction depended on the extraction of these resources. Industrial
exploitation of forests meant keeping people out of them, and it was negoti-
ation over this which was the primary cause of resistance in the major rebel-
lion of 1910, not taxes. The importance of forests and other natural resources
in contests over defining the local economy in South Asia as a whole is cor-
roborated by the weight of new ecological work (see essays in Arnold & Guha
1995; Grove, Damodaran & Sangwan 1998).
My central thrust, however, is that state legitimacy is rarely one-sided, rarely
imposed by the state from above or, as Gell argues, by the people from below.
The balance of forces that make up its legitimacy change over time, and these
changes must be understood in their own context, not in terms of a given
cultural template. In discussing the three rebellions by Bastar peasants, in 1876,
1910, and 1961-6, Gell (1997: 437) argues that ‘the symbolic mechanism in
all of these uprisings was the same, i.e. the assertion of tribal control over the
Raja’s person and, through him, the capacity to resist the extension of the
power of the state’. Against this, I argue for a historically specific account of
each rebellion, which is alive to continuities and the underlying importance
of political economy, but which does not subsume each event in the same
cultural framework or assume a static economy.
At different stages in the history of Bastar, popular allegiance to or rebel-
lion against the king served as the metaphor for negotiations with a chang-
ing order, an order which went far beyond the immediate relations between
people and king. The appeal to a ‘just king’ in 1876 gave way in 1910 to
rebellion against the entire colonial apparatus and those associated with it,
including the king, and then finally, in 1966, to tribals rallying around the
former king as a protest against the policies of the independent Indian state.
NANDINI SUNDAR 21
There are also small pockets of Mundas, Saoras, and Gadabas. However, the
extent to which they constituted tribes, rather than diverse populations speak-
ing a common language or sharing an occupational specialization, is doubt-
ful (see S. Guha 1999; Sundar 1997). Finally, there is a range of groups
(Maharas, Rauts, Kumhars) which fall under the official category of ‘castes’,
since they are relatively more Hinduized, and generally speak Halbi or Hindi.
Other groups were brought in by successive Kakatiya kings and zamindars to
spread settled agriculture (Brahmins from Orissa), to function as scribes and
officials (Kayasth and Marathi Brahmans), as priests and advisers to the king
(Maithili Rajguru Brahman family), or as mercenaries and traders (Rohillas).
actions of the local peasants, and Gell is not the first to point this out
(see Sundar 1995; 1997: 90). Equally important were a series of paternalist
anthropologist-administrators who believed the tribals must be left in peace
in order to develop differently from the rest of India. However, even where
the formal state withheld itself by granting a space to ‘customary law’, it
entered into the very marrow of local custom, politics, and ways of relating
to the state (Sundar 1997: 156-90). The absence of an ‘established ruling class’
(even were one to agree with Gell (1997: 436) that ‘grubby malguzars, traders
and moneylenders’ did not constitute such a class) is not the same as the
absence of a state. To say, as Gell (1997: 436) does, that the ‘whole mechanism
of state was made to revolve around the divine ruler’ thus amounts to a mere
fetishization of the state as kingship at the expense of a realistic understand-
ing of how governance worked in practice.
To summarize, neither society nor the polity were two-dimensional, nor
were local conceptions of the state centred solely on the king. The idea that
Rohilla mercenaries could be employed by Gond (tribal) zamindars, the variety
of political and military negotiations with outside powers and smaller chiefs,
the existence of a composite culture which had to be created out of the inter-
mingling of several linguistically and ethnically different groups, all suggest that
we need to revise our idea of the homogeneity of tribal life. Certainly tribal
society was not a ‘protean mass’ characterized by a ‘lack of military organisa-
tion or political leadership’ (Gell 1997: 435).
settlements, the malguzar kept the difference. The settlements were apparently
so favourable to malguzars that many of them abandoned cultivation them-
selves and lived entirely on the excess rents of their tenants or on the basis
of begar (forced labour) extracted from them.
In heavily forested areas like Bastar, however, it was not land surpluses, but
forest revenues and trade in non-timber forest produce (NTFP), which were
the major sources of income for the state.2 In the pre-colonial period, while
there was some amount of commercial exploitation of the forests by the raja
and the zamindars, there was no systematic forest department or policy. The
tropical, moist, deciduous forests of Bastar contain sal (Shorea robusta) and teak
(Tectona grandis), both important commercial species. British interest in the
timber trade started as early as the 1860s, but it was only after the state came
under direct management in 1891 that the reservation of forests began.
Between 1891 and 1910 the state attempted to reserve one-third of all forest
land, which meant deporting entire villages which came within these demar-
cated reserves, and putting an end to their shifting cultivation. Colonial
authorities despised swidden not merely because it produced low surpluses,
but because it interfered with state control over forests, which were impor-
tant sources of revenue to the state (see also Gadgil & Guha 1992: 152). To
argue, as Gell (1997: 446) does, that peasants resorted to rebellion in order to
keep taxes low rather than because they needed their forest land to subsist,
misses out on several factors intrinsic to shifting cultivation as a mode of pro-
duction. Under shifting cultivation, peasants needed a larger amount of forest
land for subsistence, compared to settled agriculture, especially since swidden
was mostly accompanied by hunting, fishing, and gathering of forest produce.
Low taxes were an important factor, of course, but swidden was also valued
as a form of risk diversification, especially when the rains failed or bullocks
died, making rice agriculture difficult.
The colonial attempt to take over forests for commercial production also
involved granting monopolies on NTFPs to outside traders and imposing
duties on peasant consumption of forest produce and grazing. While little
research has been done on the importance of NTFPs to local economies, pri-
marily because of the colonial designation of these products as ‘minor’ com-
pared to the ‘major’ product, timber, there is some evidence that these products
were of great trading importance in the pre-colonial period. One common
route for itinerant traders (Banjaras) was from north to south through Bastar.
In 1862 the annual volume of traffic on this route was as high as 10,000 laden
bullocks. In return for lac, resin, wax, galls, horn, dyes, teak, silk cocoons, ele-
phants, and so forth, the Bastar peasants purchased salt and cloth from the
Banjaras. The discovery of Buddhist stupas, usually found along trade routes,
in north Bastar further reinforces the importance of Bastar and its forest
produce in pre-colonial trading networks, which colonial rule disrupted.
Even now, Bastar appears to be a beneficiary of several development pro-
grammes, and its people pay very little in the form of land revenue. Indeed,
local traders argue that the adivasis are a pampered lot.The Centre for Science
and Environment report of 1984-5 (1985: 93) revealed, however, that although
Rs. 50 million were spent every year on the region, the annual revenue gen-
erated from it (in the form of forest and mineral wealth) was Rs. 470 million.
In other words, pointing to low rates of revenue extraction through time does
NANDINI SUNDAR 25
from May, the colonial administrator on whom Gell relies, none of the
sources on Dussehra from the early part of the century onwards, or the Hindu
priests who might have been expected to be zealous over the conventional
Rajput-Hindu claims of the royal family, mention the Ram story. Other king-
doms in Orissa and elsewhere, with adivasi populations, also had one member
of the dominant tribe performing the investiture ceremony, and no king
appeared to find it denigrating to be thus placed on his throne (Mahapatra
1987).
While Dussehra was a moment for the expression of public loyalty, it was
simultaneously contingent on the king’s proper behaviour and acknowledge-
ment of the role of his subjects. Their loyalty could fracture, as happened in
1910, 1876, and even earlier in 1774, when the Halbas of Dongar rebelled
against King Daryaodev, led by his half-brother, Ajmer Singh. The establish-
ment of hegemony is not a one-time accomplishment, but something cease-
lessly contested and constantly re-established. In the following section I shall
discuss three rebellions in turn, bringing out the manner in which they were
responses to administrative restrictions, rather than pre-emptive uprisings. In
the process, we see the changing role of the kingship.
There are two interesting aspects of the 1876 rebellion: first, the king’s
plaintive complaints to the British about being hit by clods of earth and being
treated with contempt by his subjects indicates a scepticism about the king’s
divinity that was shared by ruler and ruled alike; secondly, in this case, the
upholder of custom was not the king but the colonial official who restored
order. Consequently, we might be better off understanding the 1876 rebellion
not merely as a ‘customary rebellion’ or ‘ritual of rebellion’ in the traditional
sense, but as a new stage of the encounter between the Bastar peasants, their
ruler, and the British paramount power.
As mentioned before, at the turn of the century one of the most impor-
tant issues locally was the reservation of forests and the prospect of being dis-
placed from their villages, which in turn would have meant the disruption of
the special relationship the villagers had with their ‘Earth’. The Earth is the
main object of worship in Bastar, far more important than any Danteswari or
any king. Local elites who were also involved in rebelling against the state
resented the loss of their untaxed land and the reduced opportunities for
commercial exploitation of the forest. Colonial rule also meant an influx of
petty officials and traders and an increase in official demands on peasants for
free labour and supplies. Increased land revenue rates were only one among
many other complaints.
In 1910 all these factors sparked a major rebellion, popularly known as the
Bhumkal. It was rather different from the 1876 rebellion. Whereas the 1876
siege was peaceful, confined to the palace, and involved only a few parganas
around Jagdalpur, the 1910 rebellion was dispersed and covered most of the
state, with bazaars looted, traders killed, and government property attacked. It
was preceded by weeks of planning among the villages and consultations with
elites in the town, though actual leadership was in the hands of pargana and
village headmen. In 1876, the protest was put down in a month, while in
1910 it took the colonial authorities from February to mid-May to capture
and punish all the rebels. In both cases, the majority of rebels appear to have
been from tribal and low-caste groups, although in 1910 town elites also took
a prominent role. There were also some zamindars and tribal headmen, who
had gained from the new land revenue system, who collaborated with the
British in 1910. The greater spread of the Bhumkal, as well as the existence
of both rebels and collaborators, reveals the greater entrenchment of colonial
rule by 1910.
The king, who was equated with the unpopular government, was
clearly one of the targets of the rebellion. Some evidence suggests that the
rebels were keen to replace him with his cousin, Lal Kalandar Singh, but
there is other evidence to show that the mass of peasants regarded a
tribal shaman called Gunda Dhur as their real leader. Gunda Dhur has never
been clearly identified and remains a mysterious but inspirational figure in
the area.
After 1910, the colonial government backed off somewhat under a series
of sympathetic administrators, but their efforts were ultimately limited. Inde-
pendence brought little relief in terms of land and forest policies, and the
problem was exacerbated by the electoral opportunism of political parties like
the Congress. The last king, Pravir, had been dispossessed of his kingship
after accession. His property had also been taken over by the government,
NANDINI SUNDAR 31
which had declared him insane. In order to get it back, he toyed with
electoral politics first by supporting the Congress party and later by setting
up a series of his own party and non-party organizations. These organizations
were popular because they also focused on village-level issues, such as reclaim-
ing common property resources from the clutches of Congress leaders and
other elites, tree-felling, and the taking-over of government land and of land
owned by upper castes, moneylenders, or traders. In 1965-6, at a time when
the entire country was suffering from a food crisis, a forcible grain levy
brought several hundred villagers, especially women, out onto the streets. The
rice issue and that of restoring the king to his throne (or to his legal posi-
tion as ex-ruler, to be precise) became synonymous in people’s minds.
They believed that the government was not to be trusted, and that if the grain
was collected and given to the king instead, he would redistribute it among
the poor.
A series of public protests, demonstrations, and the like throughout the
1960s culminated in Pravir’s death in a gun battle with the police in 1966.
Although official estimates say that only eleven others died along with the
king, there are rumours of hundreds having died or having been injured.
Pravir’s success was not simply an adaptation of ‘traditional’ kingship to
‘modern’ electoral politics (Bailey 1963). Nor was it a continuation of divine
kingship, though of course there was some element of that, which he pur-
posely played upon. While the ritual importance of the king in warding off
drought was common to both 1876 and 1966, the public expression of this
demand was quite different in both cases. Pravir’s popularity and the move-
ment arose at a particular historical juncture and represented a critique of the
post-colonial state.
Following this brief description of the three rebellions, let us now appraise
Gell’s interpretation of them. According to Gell, all these rebellions were in
support of a ruler (or a claimant) against the government. The outcome the
peasants were trying to stave off was not actual abuses but the ‘disruption of
the all-important relationship between the Raja and his subjects by an over-
mighty Prime Minister or later the Indian government’ (Gell 1997: 437). Since
the people of Bastar were better off than those elsewhere in terms of taxes
and restrictions on access to land, water, and forest, this had to be a pre-
emptive move on their part to ward off higher taxes, rather than reactions to
state oppression (1997: 437-7, 446).
The Bastar peasants, however, were not keen students of comparative taxa-
tion, content that their taxes had been raised only slightly compared to the
one-third that was extracted from peasants elsewhere. What upset them was a
decline in their own circumstances compared to their own past, rather than
the fact that they might be better off than those elsewhere. Gell’s argu-
ment is incapable of explaining the timing of the rebellions. They were both
pre-emptive and reactive. While the threat of repeated popular resistance was
instrumental in ensuring indirect, as against direct, British rule, there is enough
written and oral evidence to show that, in each period, the peasants had spe-
cific economic complaints. After every rebellion certain key decisions, such as
the reservation of one-third of the forest land to the state or the imposition
of a forcible grain levy, were rescinded, even as the structures of the state were
more firmly entrenched.
32 NANDINI SUNDAR
Conclusion
In this article I have attempted to do two things. The first is to provide an
account of the political and ritual history of one ‘tribal’ district in Central
India which brings out the manner in which so-called isolated or two-
dimensional regions were always connected to larger historical, economic, and
political processes. The pre-colonial polity, cobbled together partly through
force and partly through ritual, tried to weld together a heterogeneous, par-
tially stratified, and often fractious populace. This was later ironed out under
colonialism to create the appearance of binary opposition between people and
state that has come to be the hallmark of tribal areas.
The second objective of this paper has been to argue against purely cul-
turalist interpretations, which reduce this complex history to a unidimensional
level. The whole course of the Bastar polity cannot be explained simply as
NANDINI SUNDAR 33
the outcome of successive and successful attempts by the tribals to keep the
king to themselves and make him rule in their interests, through ‘rituals of
rebellion’, as Gell argues. In the interests of showing that rule was not uni-
laterally imposed from above, Gell veers too far in the other direction by
claiming that the kingship was invited or self-imposed by the people. The
reality is more dialectical. In any case, the kingship was just one aspect of the
changing polity, and several political-economic changes were introduced in
the colonial and post-colonial period that affected different sections of society
in different ways. The rebellions were only partially successful in staving off
the worst effects of these changes. No one belief can explain all the rebel-
lions. While each was a response to economic changes and each built upon
the past, there was a historical and cultural specificity that made each a unique
event. In the end, for all their neatness and intellectual enticement, purely cul-
turalist interpretations can never be a substitute for historically nuanced politi-
cal economy.
NOTES
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