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Business News/ Opinion / Déjà View | Haunting tales of woe
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Déjà View | Haunting tales of woe

Two villages and a story that never changes

Photo: AFP Premium
Photo: AFP

The first signs of trouble flared up in the village of Karde. It takes around an hour and a half to drive from Pune to Karde. You can take state highway number 27 from Pune to Karegoan, past the Fiat India and LG Electronics factories, and then swing right onto the Karegaon-Karde road.

It all started when Babasaheb Deshmukh was taken to court by a moneylender named Kalooram Marwari. Having acquired a ruling in favour of repossession, Kalooram took over Deshmukh’s house in Karde. He then auctioned it off to himself and proceeded to tear the old house down. A heartbroken Deshmukh begged the Marwari to stop. Give him his house back, Deshmukh pleaded, and he would not only pay back his old debts, but also an additional sum as rent for the house as long he lived in it. Kalooram Marwari, unimpressed, dismissed these exhortations and proceeded to pull the house down.

This is how a letter-writer to a local Marathi weekly magazine described what happened next:

“Defendant took to heart these proceedings of the sowkar (moneylender), and he collected together the village ryots (cultivators) and resolved that as the Marwaris have commenced to ruin them, it would be better neither to borrow from them nor to serve them or purchase anything from them in future.

“This unanimous resolution of the villagers put the Marwaris Sachiram, Pratap, Shivram, and one or two others to the greatest inconvenience for want of servants, &c. They therefore proposed to remove themselves to Sirur with the aid of the police… When the Marwaris had loaded their carts with their goods and things, the villagers submitted a petition to the government that as they had given grain to the Marwaris, they should not be allowed to leave the village until the Government assessment has been paid by them.

“Mr Editor, if the example of these villagers be followed everywhere, and the unanimity of the people secured, the pauperised state of our country will, I think, certainly disappear very soon. I beg you will kindly excuse me for the length of this letter, and trust that you will not fail to publish it in your journal."

The letter, sent to the Dnyan Chakshu magazine, was signed “A Traveller".

The Traveller did get what he wished for—the villagers of the Deccan began to rise up against debt. The Marwaris of Karde left in January. On 12 May, a similar uprising took place in the village of Supa, which is located in Ahmednagar district. “The victims of the rioters were the Gujarathi sowkars," mentions the official report of the East India (Deccan Riots Commission). “Their houses and shops were attacked by a large mob principally recruited from the hamlets round Supa, who had assembled ostensibly to attend the market on bazar day."

Within a week, riots, or the threat of imminent riots, spread to another two dozen villages across the region. With the government soon realizing the extent of the problem on their hands, the police and then the military were deployed across the region.

By 15 June, what would become famous as the Deccan Riots had all but died down. Across Pune and Ahmednagar, police arrested 951 “persons connected with disturbances" of whom 501 were convicted.

The scale of the riots and the speed with which it had spread across the Deccan had deeply unsettled the government. Indeed, it had briefly become a matter of world news. So an inquiry commission was set up to look into the immediate and long-term causes of these riots. Why did they happen? What had provoked them?

“It is so far from their natural tendency to resort to physical force," the inquiry report says of the local farmers, “that the fact of their having done so is advanced generally by the officers of the disturbed districts as a proof of the reality of their grievances."

In other words, what had provoked these peaceful cultivators to turn into rioters?

The riots, the report said, arose out of the relationship of the farmer with the moneylender. This relationship had its foundation in the nature and extent of debt borne by Deccan farmers. What were the causes of this debt?

The report listed several factors: poverty, uncertain income, lack of financial education, inherited debt, precariousness of climate, inadequate irrigation, increase of population leading to pressure on land, low productivity, and increase in an “inferior kind" of moneylending.

The normal condition of the farmer, the report said, is “one of indebtedness".

The report then suggested ways to improve the plight of the poor farmers in the Deccan and across the country.

Those reasons written above will seem unsurprising to anyone familiar with the state of Indian agriculture. My point was not to state the obvious. But to state that the obvious has been obvious forever.

The Deccan Riots took place 140 years ago, in December 1875. The report of the Deccan Riots Commission quoted here was printed in 1878.

Almost a century-and-a-half later, perhaps it is time to own up to a simple fact: we are incapable of helping our farmers. It is time we brought down our farmers from their pedestals of misery and found them new jobs.

Every week, Déjà View scours historical research and archives to make sense of current news and affairs.

Comment at views@livemint.com. To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/dejaview

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

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Published: 24 Apr 2015, 05:17 PM IST
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