INTRODUCTION:

Haryana, unlike Bengal, Punjab or Gujarat, cannot claim to be a historical region. It has always been considered a ‘sub-region’ or a ‘sub-tract’ in historical writings.¹ Moreover, its location has always been mentioned in a vague, never specific, manner. Historically, Haryana is neither a well-defined geographical, nor a linguistic or cultural region, much less a nationality. Hence the vagueness about its territorial limits. The people of Haryana belong to motley traditions. Those living in the districts of Faridabad and Gurgaon are culturally closer to the people of Braj country. Those living in Mahendergarh, Sirsa and Hissar regions belong to the Rajasthani (Bagri) culture.

The imprint of Panjabi culture is clearly visible on the inhabitants of Karnal and Ambala areas. Thus, only the inhabitants of the remaining four districts, viz., Rohtak, Sonepat, Jind and Bhiwani can claim to the legitimate representatives of the ‘Haryanvi’ culture, as understood in popular parlance. The people of the entire state of Haryana do not share a common dialect, much less a language, nor even a common culture, psychological make-up, and dressing pattern. Most of the people of Haryana have had a varied and chequered past. This cardinal fact of history seems to have been ignored while the present state of Haryana was carved out of the former state of East Punjab in 1966.

In the early 19^th century, when the English East India Company extended its sway over Delhi and its neighborhood, the Haryana region was under the dej jure control of the Sindhia rulers of Gwalior.² The Company established its rule over the eastern parts of Haryana when the Sindhia ruler Daulat Rao Sindhia conceded them under the Treaty of Surji-Arjangaon on 30 December 1803.³ These areas were made a part of the Agra province. When Haryana passed in to the hands of the Company, its policy was to extract maximum revenue from the peasants. By 1850 the basic pillar of British colonialism was still the direct appropriation of the agricultural surplus and it was pressing hard upon the producers.⁴ The Company’s regime was characterized by a series of ‘settlements’,⁵ ‘assessments’,⁶ ‘famines’⁷ and ‘lapses’.⁸ All these happenings prepared the ground of Haryana for the Mutiny of 1857.

1. The Mutiny, Transfer of Power and New Imperialist Policy

The Mutiny of 1857 which took place in Awadh and the Agra Province, ‘must be regarded in one of its principal aspects, as a peasant revolt led by the zamindars, against the main agrarian exploiter, the British regime’.⁹ In this, the urban artisans and the sepoys of the Bengal army also played a role. However, Talmiz Khaldun has wrongly characterized the Mutiny as ‘a peasant war against [both] indigenous landlordism and foreign imperialism’.¹⁰

It has been argued that the Mutiny of 1857 first started in Haryana.¹¹ Leaving aside such claims, it cannot be denied that once started, the Mutiny spread like wild fire in Haryana. For the first time, the peasants of Haryana unleashed their accumulated anger against their rulers. They attacked the district courts, revenue offices and police chowkis, tore off the records and released the prisoners.¹² Administration in large part of Haryana came to a standstill and then collapsed.¹³ The participation of the peasants, irrespective of their caste and creed, turned the Sepoy Mutiny into a peasant rebellion. Their targets were chosen and show the direction of their anger. It was a huge spontaneous outburst against the excessive revenue demand and arbitrary administration of the Company.

The feudal rulers of Haryana also participated in this rebellion. Their grievances were, however, different from those of the peasants. Most of the small principalities of Gurgaon district had ‘lapsed’ to the Company by 1836.¹⁴ As most of the nawabs of Haryana derived their legitimacy from the fiction of accepting the overlordship of the Mughal emperor, they favorably responded to the symbolic call of the octogenarian emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar to overthrow the firangi’s yoke. Thus, the rajas and nawabs of Haryana were less inspired by ‘patriotism’¹⁵ and more by their contingent interests. The combined strength of the landlords and peasants gave a tough time to the British administrators and commanders throughout Haryana. The Mutiny seems to have aroused the millenarian hopes of the Haryanvi peasantry, as is evident from the following folk song of the peasants of Mewat:¹⁶ Jayego re jayego firangi tero raj (‘O foreigner, your rule will go’). Simultaneously, the Wahabis, a revivalist Islamic sect, also became active in many towns of Haryana for the ‘resurrection of Muslim Power’.¹⁷

It was with the help of neighboring states of Jaipur, Patiala, Bharatpur and Bikaner that the Company ultimately succeeded in quelling the rebels in Haryana.¹⁸ Some of the rebels were executed,¹⁹ while others were dispossessed of their property.²⁰ Parts of Haryana were handed over to the rulers of Patiala, Jind, Jaipur, Alwar and Bharatpur as a reward for their support to the English during the harrowing experiences of 1857.²¹ A sizeable territory of Haryana thus became part of different princely states. The remaining territory formed the Ambala division of the Punjab province. Thus, the larger part of Haryana came under the direct control of the British crown. From then these two areas tended to take divergent paths. While the British areas came into the vortex of national and international politics, the areas under the princely states were further insulated from the mainstream.

The Company lost India in 1858 to the British industrial interests. Under the new regime of the British Crown, the emphasis shifted from raising land revenue to exploitation of India as a market for British manufactures and a source of raw materials for British factories. This change had an immediate impact on the policy of British imperialism towards the zamindars.

The total value of exports rose between 1878 and 1901 from 67.43 crores to 121.95 crores.²² The demand for foodgrains, raw cotton, jute, hides and skin was increasing in the total value of export. There was a real shift in Indian agriculture to the production of raw materials for England, a shift in relative acreage from foodgrains to non-food crops, and, of course, an enlargement, within the acreage under foodgrains, of the portion devoted to crops for export.²³ This transformation in Indian agriculture called ‘commercialization’ had a polarizing effect on the rural population.

2. Commercialization of Agriculture, Rise of New Landlordism and Change in Land Distribution Pattern

Conditions for the development of a land market had already been created in Haryana. As land began to yield an increasing rent to its owner, it became the object of struggle in rural society.²⁴A hectic process of sale and mortgage of land began. The dispossession of the peasantry could only take place through the market, and that required the creation of a situation where the peasant would be forced to sell his land.

There were two ways whereby the peasants lost their land during the colonial period. The first was the process by which a small number of zamindars began to expropriate the village common land. The second was the process in which increasing indebtedness due to speedy monetization through payment of land tax in cash and credit mechanism resulted in forced sales of land.

During the medieval period the task of revenue collection was entrusted to the zamindars by the Mughal state. The British also set about creating a small indigenous class of zamindars which, on the one hand, would owe its loyalty to the colonial government and, on the other hand, would have a considerable influence in the countryside. For this purpose, the elite of the village community, who were generally also the largest land-owners, were picked up.²⁵ They were designated as lambardars. One lambardar was made responsible for collecting land revenue from one fraction (patti) of a village. For performing this task the lambardars were allowed five per cent of the revenue as commission. In addition, the lambardars received a grant of up to 75 acres from the village waste land.²⁶

The colonial administration used the lambardars not only for the collection of land revenue, but also for settling all civil and criminal matters relating to their village. Thus, the lambardars commanded considerable influence and acquired a kind of administrative clout as he emerged as the sole media between the colonial administration and the villagers. The lambardars and other large land-owners of the village also appropriated a large part of the village common fund (malba). With this money they bought most of the uncultivable village common land at nominal prices.

Between 1855 and 1891 some eight to nine million acres of village common land was brought under cultivation in Punjab.²⁷ The tenant-cultivated areas during the same period increased by 10.85 million acres, which is greater than the estimated village common land brought under cultivation during this period.²⁸ Thus, it may be concluded that not only was the peasantry dispossessed of a large part of its share of the village common land, but it also lost some of the cultivated land in its possession.

3. Change in Land Revenue System and Rise of Rural Indebtedness

Though rural indebtedness existed during medieval periods also, it did not force the peasants to sell off their lands, as no land market existed at that time.²⁹ On the other hand, the process of peasant indebtedness that was initiated in the early years of the British rule forced a large section of peasants to part with their land. Upon annexation of areas, the colonial rulers undertook ‘summary settlements’ and temporarily fixed the land tax at the assumed average of the collections of the three preceding years. This tax proved to be onerous for reasons outlined below.

Firstly, while in the pre-colonial period, the tax was a share of the produce and was automatically adjusted to the state of harvest, under the British rule the tax was an amount fixed in cash and had to be paid no matter how poor the harvest. A succession of bad harvests in the first few years added to the peasants’ problems. Secondly, the fact that tax had to be paid in cash meant that the cultivator had to sell a large part of his produce at the harvest time. However, a local market for the produce on the scale required did not exist and there were no cheap and easy means of transporting (e.g., roads or railways) it cheaply out of the region. As a result, there was a substantial fall in agricultural prices. For instance, the price of wheat in 1851 was only 60 per cent of that used for commutation to tax two years earlier. For these reasons the ‘summary settlements’ collapsed in a number of districts, as the peasants refused to pay the tax in cash and offered considerable resistance.³⁰ The response of the colonial rulers was two-fold. On the one hand, the unwilling peasants were severely dealt with by the settlement officers who transferred the land to those who agreed to pay the government revenue, or sold it to the highest bidder.³¹ On the other hand, the tax was everywhere revised down by 10 to 20 per cent on an average.³² These measures and good harvest made it possible for the British officials to tide over this crisis. But substantial debts were incurred by the peasantry during this period. As the peasant was held responsible for the prompt payment of a fixed amount in cash as tax at the harvest time, it continued to be the primary cause of peasant indebtedness during most of the colonial period. In order to pay the tax, the peasant was forced to turn to the money-lender whenever the harvest was poor. In Haryana, where agriculture has often been described as ‘a gamble in the rains’,³³ this was fairly frequent.

There were other factors responsible for increasing peasant indebtedness. Firstly, the growing dependence of the peasant on the market made him increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations in market prices. These prices had little connection with the state of harvest in the region.³⁴ A fall in agricultural prices increased the burden of money payments on the peasant; he had to pay taxes, water charges or interest and was thereby further forced into debt. Secondly, the famines that occurred quite frequently during the first half of the British rule contributed significantly to peasant indebtedness. In periods of famine, a peasant was forced to borrow not only for consumption purposes but also for buying working capital, i.e., seeds and bullocks, before he could resume cultivation. According to Calvert, it was in the famine of 1860-61 that the money-lender began to get a grip on the peasantry, and the famine of 1868-69, which was of even greater intensity, further strengthened his hold.³⁵ These were followed by even more severe famines in 1879-80, 1896-97 and 1900-01. Thirdly, the credit system itself was an important factor for increasing peasant indebtedness. It also served as the mechanism for the dispossession of the peasant. An oft-stated cause of peasant indebtedness is ‘his extravagance and extra expenditure on marriage and social ceremonies’. But as pointed out by the ‘Deccan Riots’ Commission of 1876, such ‘expenditure’ by itself rarely appears as a nucleus of his indebtedness.³⁶

In Punjab, farm credit could only come from the money-lender. Under the British rule, especially after the advent of commercial agriculture, land became a good investment. The money-lender began to use it as an outlet for his rapidly expanding savings. He, therefore, sought to get the peasant in his clutches and oust him from the land. The peasant ‘to his surprise and delight found that his formerly petty borrowing powers were now practically unlimited, his Bunniah (money-lender) being ready to accommodate him to any extent’.³⁷ However, once the peasant was in debt to a money-lender, it was almost impossible for him to escape. The latter used all possible means, legal and illegal, to seize the illiterate peasant’s land.

In Haryana, the degree of indebtedness was the highest in Gurgaon district and the lowest in Karnal.³⁸ Within district Gurgaon the tehsils of Nuh and Firozpur showed the highest degree of indebtedness. It is interesting to note that in 1877 in Gurgaon more peasants were indebted to agriculturist money-lenders than to the non-agriculturist ones, but it was not so in Rohtak. The agriculturist money-lenders began to outnumber the non-agriculturist money-lenders during the 1930s. By 1929-30, there were only 123 bania money lenders in Rohtak district with a capital of Rs. 82 lakh as against 562 agriculturist money-lenders who had invested Rs. 147 lakhs in money-lending.³⁹

Thus, the changes introduced by the British in the system of taxation and the growing monetary requirements of the peasants forced them to borrow from the money-lenders at the time of poor harvests. The money-lenders exploited their monopoly position and the ignorance of the peasants to extract interest on loans at extremely high rates. This further weakened the position of the peasant and as the burden on debt mounted he was forced to first mortgage and then sell some of his land.

4. Hierarchy and Mobility in Rural Society

The process of dispossession at work in the region during the colonial period was by no means evenly spread out among all strata of peasantry. It affected different groups in different measures. For understanding how this happened one should classify Haryana’s landed gentry (i.e., zamindars) into the following four groups:

(a) These owning 25 acres or more constituted the landlord class proper. Persons of this group derived their income from rent extracted from their sharecroppers. They seldom employed family labor.

(b) These owning from 15 to 25 acres formed the class of rich peasants. For cultivation, they mainly depended on their family labor, though they also rented out some land and contracted some wage labor.

(c) Those owning 5 to 15 acres of land constituted the middling peasants. They neither rented out land nor hired wage labor. Their family’s labor capacity usually corresponded to the size of holding. Those at the lower rung within this group did perhaps rent in some land, if they had a surfeit of labor.

(d) In the fourth group may be included the poor peasants, landless sharecroppers and agricultural laborers. What demarcated these three groups from each other was that the poor peasants owned some land, a pair of bullocks and some other agricultural implements, while the agricultural laborers had nothing but bare hands to work with. The common element between them was that they derived all, or a substantial portion, of their income by working on others’ land.

There was an unceasing movement both within each group, and from one group to another. However, this mobility was not random but had a certain pattern of its own. The resources of the society were unequally distributed. The agricultural laborer had only his bare hands, while the landlord had everything he wanted. The landlord could also invoke the authority of the state to help him. Other groups stood in between these two polar opposites. As in any other agrarian society, in Haryana land was the source of wealth, power and status. Hence, each individual attempted to get as much land as he could. Thus, there was a constant struggle for the ownership of land. Natural calamities such as famines, epidemics and personal misfortunes, though random in occurrence, had devastating socio-economic effects. A similar impact was exercised by the fluctuations in commodity prices, especially prices of foodgrains and cotton.

In this situation, the poor peasants and sharecroppers could barely manage to make ends meet during normal times. They did not have any reserve with which to meet unforeseen expenses. Personal misfortunes such death of a bullock, or a natural disaster such as drought or epidemic forced them to immediately borrow from the money-lender. The added burden of interest payment made their life more precarious. Given that the rate of interest on unsecured loans was usually as high as 20 to 30 per cent and was compounded annually, even a small debt could accumulate to murderous proportions within a short time. Very soon, the poor peasant was forced to mortgage/sell his land and join the ranks of sharecroppers. The sharecropper was in the same way forced to become wage laborer. Some of the indebted peasants could redeem their land whenever good crops and high prices of grain could be fetched, but the logic of a high rate of compound interest on debt and almost zero savings dictated that the net movement over the long run would be in the downward direction.⁴⁰

The fate of the middling peasant was hardly any different. Sooner or later, he, too, got indebted and had to mortgage/sell a part of his land and thus went down the scale. If father escaped the grip of debt, the system of inheritance which divided the land equally between the sons, was sure to buffet his descendants into the poor peasant group. Rarely could a middling peasant become a rich peasant. Sons of quite a few poor and middling peasants joined the army and the additional income from this source may have enabled them to maintain their socio-economic position or even improve it.

Rich peasants owned surplus land. This surplus land could be used for money-lending or buying others’ lands. They were in a position to educate their sons and secure better employment for them. They had the potential of acquiring more land and becoming landlords. In practice, only the enterprising amongst them went up on the scale, while a large number of them, over a generation or two, were reduced to the level of middling peasants.⁴¹

The landlord class was in the most fortunate position. Their land provided them with a large surplus to which was added income from money-lending. Good harvests and high prices enriched them, as they had more to sell than any of the other groups, and even famines and low prices were to their advantage, as these provided an opportunity for them to buy or take on mortgage land from those who were forced to part with it in order to meet their day-to-day needs. According to Darling, in 1930 about half the total agricultural debt, i.e., Rs. 700 million, was owed to agriculturist money-lenders and at least three-fourths of the usufructuary mortgage debt had been advanced by them.⁴²

On the basis of the above discussion, we may conclude that during the colonial period we would expect to observe a process of differentiation amongst the peasantry, with an increasing proportion of peasantry being pushed into the bottom group (poor peasants, sharecroppers and agricultural laborers), and a growing concentration of land in the hands of the landlord class. We will now examine more data pertaining to all the districts of Haryana to determine the extent to which this process actually took place.

5. Changing Patterns of Land Ownership

When the Unionist Government intervened in a major way by the enactment of the so-called ‘Golden Laws’ or Agrarian Legislation during the late 1930s, the situation in rural Punjab was actually very alarming. Despite the insistent denial by the Unionists of any division within the cultivators, sharp inequalities had emerged among the peasantry.⁴³ Only 15.5 per cent of landowners possessed 61.3 per cent of the total cultivated land; 26.2 per cent possessed 26.6 per cent of land and only 12 percent possessed the remaining 58.3 per cent. The average holding for the actual cultivators of land was around 108 acres which was hardly economical.⁴⁴

The condition of agricultural laborers, who accounted for a three-quarters of a million-strong population of rural Punjab,⁴⁵ was still worse. They were totally engaged in agricultural production, yet they were not included in the statutory list of ‘Agricultural Tribes’ under the Alienation of Land Act of 1900. Apart from these, there were many landless cultivators who were declared ‘agriculturists’ but possessed no land. The total number of persons declared as ‘Agricultural Tribes’ was 12,326,000. Out of these, only 3,500,000 owned land, while 8,826,000 persons, though declared ‘agriculturists’, did not own any land. Out of these 3,500,000 land-owning agricultural tribes, 500,000 were estimated to have been owner-cultivators.⁴⁶

5. Rise of Agricultural Money Lending

The number of money-lenders in Punjab was rising. From 8,400 in 1902, their number went up to 55,000 during the late 1930s according to the Banking Enquiry Committee of Punjab.⁴⁷ Correspondingly, rural indebtedness, too, was rising in Punjab (including Haryana). But after the passage of the Alienation of Land Act, all sales or mortgages of land involved agriculturist money-lenders. The figures of sales and mortgages of land from 1929 to 1939 suggest a progressive increase in the acreage of land held by the rich landlords and agriculturist money-lenders of Punjab. The following table makes it more clear:

Table: Sale, Mortgage and Redemption of Land in Punjab (1929-39)

Year	Sale of land by agr. tribes to agr. tribes	Mortgage of land by agr. tribes to agr. tribes	Redeemed (land) by agr. tribes from agr. tribes
1929-30	159,956	297,683	146,442
1932-33	142,513	357,743	110,557
1935-36	151,203	208,019	105,638
1938-39	193,914	168,775	145,448

Source: Land Revenue Development, Government of Punjab, Annual Reports for Financial Years 1929-30, 1932-33, 1935-36, 1938-39.

The number of occupancy tenants was decreasing, while that of the tenants-at-will was increasing. In 1926-27, the occupancy tenants cultivated 2,408 thousand acres (8.3 per cent) out of a total 2,370 thousand acres of cultivated land.⁴⁸ By 1932, this area declined to 2,234 thousand acres (7.3 per cent) of a total 29,913 thousand cultivated land.⁴⁹ The acreage under tenants-at-will, however, kept on increasing. From 13,245 thousand acres (45 per cent) in 1927, it went up to 14,399 thousand acres (47 per cent) in 1932-33.⁵⁰

Similarly, the area mortgaged by the agriculturists to the agriculturists was also increasing, as shown in the following table:

Table: Area owned by Agriculturist Tribes, with Details of Portions held by Usufrustuary Mortgage from 1921-22 to 1938-39

Year	Total cultivated area in acres	No. of mortgages	Cultivated under mortgages in acres	Percentage of area held mortgage to the total cultivated area
1921-22	22,697,104	967,262	1903,821	6.6
1929-30	23,558,499	1269,559	2334,559	7.8
1938-39	24,475,457	1734,931	3037,459	9.8

Source: Table prepared from statement III appended to the Land Revenue Department Annual Report for the relevant years.

This change in the pattern of economic relationships created tensions in rural Punjab. From various places, murder of money-lenders and conflicts between landlords and tenants on the one hand and between landowners and landless agriculturists on the other were reported.⁵¹ The situation became very alarming. Even the Jat Gazette of Sir Chhotu Ram noted these developments in an ominous tone:⁵²

Since the passing of Punjab Alienation of Land Act, the rich zamindars have substituted themselves for the non-zamindar sahukars. Despite this Act, the small zamindar is unable to save his heavily mortgaged property which gets sold to the richer zamindar. Many small zamindars have already lost their lands to the big zamindars. Soon they will be reduced to the position of agricultural labourers from that of land owners, and there would be no difference between the United Provinces, and the Punjab. This question will soon take the form of an agitation. The zamindar sabhas and other caste sabhas will start questioning as to why a portion of zamindars should remain under a few sahukar zamindars, and continue to be exploited and looted by them.

The Unionist government dominated by the landlords and rich peasants was alarmed and took the initiative to diffuse the mounting tension. This was the background in which the so called ‘Golden Laws’ were enacted by the Unionists. These acts were: (a) Restitution of Mortgage Bill; (b) Benami Act; (c) Zamindar Sahukar Act; and (d) Registration of Money-Lenders Act.

The Unionists claimed that tremendous benefits accrued the peasants as a result of these Acts. In Sir Chhotu Ram’s estimate, 1,300 thousand cultivators were to get 4,000 thousand bighas of land worth Rs. 16 crores from the banias without paying a single paisa.⁵³ The Benami Act also enabled the cultivators to get an amount of Rs. 16 crores which was with the bania money-lenders under fictitious transactions.⁵⁴ According to another view, the four agrarian acts proved ‘Golden’ for the landlords and rich peasants. They successfully eliminated their competitors from the money market.⁵⁵ It is possible that in their immediate impact these acts did marginally alleviate the misery of some cultivators, but in the long run the exploitation of agricultural laborers and tenants continued.

Thus, the changes in the legal structure and the system of land taxation introduced by the British, along with the development of market relations in land, resulted in the commercialization of land and the dispossession of peasantry. As a result, by the end of the colonial period a highly differentiated structure of peasantry emerged in the region, with most of the peasantry in ‘poor-peasant’, landless sharecropper and agricultural laborer’ categories and more land in the hands of the landlord class.

The role of usury during this entire process was of considerable significance. In the context of Haryana it is all the more important because from the 1920s onwards, the Unionist Party mobilized the ‘indebted peasants’ against the ‘culpable’ bania. While usury had strong roots in the pre-British Indian agrarian economy,⁵⁶ it now greatly facilitated the subversion of small peasant cultivation and the growth of cultivation controlled by landlords and rich peasants. At the same time, usury was a parasitical in nature. The money-lender stood forth as a claimant to a large share of the rural surplus, sometimes rivaling the landlord. It often suited the interests of the British administration to proclaim ‘rural indebtedness’ as the source of all evil that befell the peasantry. In fact, this became a kind of swan song in the writings of most of the official surveys. Little did the colonial administrators realize that the phenomenal growth of usury was an inseparable aspect of the transformation of the Indian agrarian economy brought about by colonialism itself.

6. Alliance between the Colonial Ruling Class and the Landlord Class, and the Impact of Arya Samaj

The alliance which was formed between the Indian landlord class and the colonial state was further consolidated by various legislations. The most prominent of these was the Alienation of Land Act of 1900. The subsequent amendments to this Act were only to make it more serviceable to the landlords.

In the colonial period, there were factors that gave birth to two new classes in the Indian society, the bourgeoisie and the industrial proletariat. The irreconcilable contradiction between imperialism and its junior ally, the landlord class on the one hand, and the bulk of Indian people, including the bourgeoisie, the working class and the peasantry, on the other, laid the seeds for the struggle for national liberation.⁵⁷

The struggle for Indian independence also found expression in the movements to reform and democratize the social institutions and religious outlook of the Indian people. One such movement led by Arya Samaj which was founded by Dayanand Saraswati in 1875 found a fertile soil in the Haryana region. The post-Mutiny socio-cultural awakening that gave birth to the Indian Renaissance hardly ever touched Haryana. The Arya Samaj movement, on the other hand, was embraced by the urban as well as the rural people.⁵⁸

The Arya Samaj movement had two faces. While its reformist programme tended to unite the people, its religious activities created disunity among them. Its attack on outdated rituals brought lower caste people in its fold, while its proselytism alienated the Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.⁵⁹ The movement split in 1893 on certain issues, involving education and meat eating, among others.⁶⁰ Arya Samaj entered Haryana at a time when its reformatory zeal was petering out and its virulent attack on other religions and a dogmatic eulogization of Vedas had begun. This turn of the Arya Samaj strengthened the hold of outdated rituals and caste separatism. It gave birth to numerous caste Aryas in Haryana.⁶¹ The educational programme of the Arya Samaj remained a peripheral task in Haryana as the Gurukul branch, instead of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (DAV) section, struck deeper roots in Haryana.

The colonial authorities considered Arya Samaj ‘dangerous’, especially when it started providing activists to the national movement. In the Haryana region, the Arya Samaj had become quite popular with those castes which were considered ‘safe for recruitment into army’ by the British. It was for these reasons that the Arya Samaj was an anathema to the British. Elsewhere in the country, Arya Samaj became a sub-soil for the growth of Indian nationalism. In Haryana, it produced either collaborators or at best half-baked nationalists. This stance of the Arya Samaj itself proves the point that its reformist edge had been considerably blunted. The rise of loyalist politics proved to be a cause as well as an effect of this weakness of the Arya Samaj.

7. Rise of Unionist Party

The informal political alliances that had existed between the British and the rural rich ever since the beginning of the post-Mutiny era, became institutionalized in 1923 with the creation of the Unionist Party. During the years 1923-39, it completely dominated the provincial politics and was an important stabilizing influence, helping to maintain social control in the countryside and reduce communal tension.

The British selection of rural allies in Punjab reflected regional variations in the landholding structure. In western Punjab, they turned to leading landlord families to form an important pillar of their rule.⁶² In the central and eastern districts, the British looked upon the rich Muslim, Sikh and Hindu peasants as their main allies. The backward areas of the Ambala division of the province benefited in particular from the British advances in communications, sanitation, medical and educational facilities. Most important of all to the region’s increasing rural prosperity was the British extension of its irrigation system. Towards the end of the 19th century the British began work on the canal colony irrigation development. It nearly transformed over 6 million acres of land in the south-west Punjab from arid waste land into the richest farming area in the whole of the subcontinent. Nowhere else in India were the benefits of colonial rule so tangible or the rewards for political loyalty so great. In order to strengthen the bonds of this alliance, the British liberally gave away cash, land grants, honorary ranks and titles to the rural elite of Punjab.

8. The Alienation of Land Act, 1900

The major British legislation against the traditional money-lenders’ growing influence was the Alienation of Land Act of 1900. This Act divided the entire population into ‘agriculturist’ and ‘non-agriculturist’ tribes (read castes). The Banias, Mahajans and Khatris were categorized as ‘non-agriculturist tribes’ and were forbidden to acquire land permanently in the countryside. No piece of land of the agriculturists could be mortgaged or sold to the non-agriculturists. The Act, therefore, halted the increasing expropriation of impoverished landowners by the non-agriculturist money-lenders, but opened the gates for them to be buckled up by the landlords and rich peasants. This Act also laid the basis for the extremely wealthy landlords of western Punjab and the rich peasants of Haryana to come together and thus find concrete expression to their common interests. The British went a stage further in encouraging the creation of a rural political grouping in 1919 when they granted ‘agriculturist tribes’ a preferential right of recruitment to government services. British education policy was a further factor in securing loyal allies amongst the landlords of Punjab/Haryana.

The British and their rural allies did not want to see the more sophisticated and organized urban elite take advantage of the spread of representative politics in the province. Many of the British administrators shared their rural allies’ dislike of the urban elites. They were regarded as potentially disloyal. Even worse, they were considered by some as completely treacherous, corrupt and unmanly, totally lacking in all the qualities that the British admired in the rural population. The Punjab Government thus ensured that the franchise and distribution of seats for the new Legislative Council created by the 1919 Montague-Chelmsford Reforms favoured the rural rich. Separate electorates were created for the Punjab’s rural and urban areas, each having a total number of seats proportionate to its population. Only members of the ‘agricultural tribes’ as defined by the Alienation of Land Act were allowed to stand as candidates for the rural seats.

9. Legislative Council of Punjab: Unionist-Chhotu Ram Alliance

Mian Fazl-i-Hussain, the leading Muslim politician in the province, with the help of the Jat leader Sir Chhotu Ram, formed a loose grouping of rural members in the first Legislative Council. The Unionist Party emerged from this shortly before the 1923 Council elections. It was based on an alliance between the rich landlords of western Punjab and the wealthy peasant-proprietors of the Haryana region. The two wings of the Unionist Party did not differ so much in their social composition as they did in their organization and approach to winning political support. Husain and his successors relied mainly on informal family, religious and educational links to weld the large landlords together. In western Punjab, the Unionists won elections not because of the popularity of their programme but because of their economic, social and religious influence over the voters in their constituencies. In Haryana, kinship and caste loyalties played an important part in mobilizing political support. But in order to attract the votes of the rural populations the Unionist Party had to put forward an effective programme of agrarian reforms. This called for much greater organization than that existed in western Punjab. Sir Chhotu Ram consequently founded the Samindara League as an adjunct to the Unionist Party to expand its support base at the village level. He depended more on the support of the military personnel who at that time constituted two-fifths of the total electorate. He also mobilized the non-official revenue agency, namely, the safaidposhs, lambardars and zaildars into his organizational and electoral network. The Unionist Party’s success depended on a careful balancing of the interests of its two wings. The British bent over backwards to make this possible.⁶³

All this led to a resounding victory for the Unionist Party in the elections of 1937. In the Haryana region, the Unionists swept the polls in the rural constituencies. The Congress Party was badly mauled at the hustings. It was proved that the Congress Party was a party of the urbanites as the two city constituencies were retained by them.

Ambala Division (Haryana) had been allotted 22 seats under the Government of India Act, 1935. There were 11 general rural seats, two general urban seats, three reserved seats, and six Muslim rural seats. In 1937, in the general rural constituencies the Unionists captured 10 out of 11 seats. In 1946 they won only two seats. In the 1937 elections, the Unionists secured 54.57 per cent of the polled votes in the general rural constituencies. In the 1946 elections they polled only 32.72 per cent votes. The Congress Party secured 31.23 per cent votes in the 1937 and 52.13 per cent in the 1946 elections. The two urban Hindu seats remained with the Congress in both these elections. The Congress secured 63 per cent votes in 1937 and 49 per cent votes in 1946. This strongly indicates that the Congress Party drew its strength mainly from the Hindu middle class and mercantile groups. The Ambala division had been given three reserved seats for the Scheduled Castes. The Unionist Party lost all the three seats. However, after the elections, two out of the three independent Scheduled Caste candidates, all of whom had won with the Congress help, went over to the Unionists. As a reward for changing loyalty, one of the two was made Parliamentary Secretary. This began the history of defections on the soil of Haryana. The six Muslim rural constituencies were won by the Unionists in the elections of 1937. In the 1946 elections, the Unionists contested on four out of six seats and lost all of them to the Muslim League.

The social base of the Unionist Party was by and large derived from among the rich land-owners, military personnel, official and non-official revenue agency and other government servants. These social groups fully supported the Unionists in the elections of 1937. In order to consolidate its base among these sections, the Unionist government passed the four ‘Golden Laws’ during the late 1930s.⁶⁴ Early in September 1938, more than 150,000 peasants attended the Zamindara Conference which Sir Chhotu Ram organized at Lyallpur to demonstrate the support for these ‘reforms’.

The four agrarian Acts of the Punjab Government were ‘Golden’ only for the rich agriculturists and the agriculturist money-lenders who ruled the province through the Unionist Party. They successfully eliminated their rivals (the non-agriculturist money-lenders) from the land market. These Acts could not and did not mitigate the misery of the poor peasants, tenants and agricultural laborers. The exploitation of these subaltern classes by the landlords and the agriculturist money-lenders continued apace.

Those peasants who possessed uneconomic holdings in Punjab constituted about 58 per cent of the owners of the cultivated land. They numbered 2,053,400. Out of them, 625,400 possessed about one acre of land and 1,498,000 possessed land ranging in size from one to five acres.⁶⁵ This situation gave birth to peasant unrest in the countryside. Various agricultural worker castes turned violent towards the landlords.⁶⁶ The tenants of many estates such as those of Skinner’s and Ingram’s organized movements against their masters. Similarly, the tenants of Chhuchhakwas and Talao villages of Rohtak district fought against their oppressive landlords.⁶⁷ There are other such isolated incidents of the poor peasants turning against their rich landowners. But these movements remained confined to one or two estates and could not spread widely. That is why, unlike other regions of India at that time, Haryana did not witness large ‘Kisan movements’. The muzara movement in the Patiala State might have inspired the tenants of Haryana,⁶⁸ but it did not widen the scope of movements. The role played by the Unionist government in helping the landlords suppress these peasant movements cannot be denied. The peasant unrest exposed the false claim of the Unionists that there existed a ‘solidarity’ between all sections of cultivators. The pro-landlord bias of the Unionists became self-evident.

During the early 1940s the support structure of the Unionist Party collapsed for a variety of reasons. The military personnel were the first to desert the Unionists. In the Haryana region, these soldiers/officers numbered 36,680 or 41 per cent of the total electorate of 89,855 under the 1919 Act. Large-scale recruitment into the British army enabled many members of the ‘martial castes’ to emerge as leaders of the Unionist Party during the two decades from 1921 to 1940. With the onset of the Second World War, new problems surfaced. The Indian National Army trials, rehabilitation of the demobilized soldiers and the problem of the war deserters led many military personnel to shift their allegiance from the Unionists to the Congress Party. All these issues were taken up by the Congress Party at a larger level. The second social group to desert the Unionists was that of the rich growers of grain. The British war efforts and the Unionist government’s contribution to that effort infuriated the rich peasants. Their grain was perforce to be sold off cheaply, depriving them of wartime profiteering. For the British, it had became imperative to put statutory curbs on food prices. The other articles of daily consumption became rarer and costlier. Hence, the rich peasants thought that the Unionist government was unnecessarily supporting the British war efforts and sacrificing their interests.

Meanwhile, the Congress Party’s programme of ‘mass contact’ had been launched. The Congress Party had been taking up the cause of the rural poor earlier also. But now they paid more attention to their problems. This also turned the scales against the Unionists in Haryana’s countryside as the rural poor began to rally behind the Congress Party.

10. Rise of the Muslim League

The Muslim League vanquished the Muslim wing of the Unionists in western Punjab. In the 1937 elections, the Muslim League had fared badly. In October 1937 in the Lucknow session of the All India Muslim League, a pact was concluded between the League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Unionist leader Sikandar Hyat Khan. Thereafter, the Unionist Muslims’ hold on the Punjab Muslim League began to increase, but their social base began to shift towards the League. The British attitude changed towards the League and the Congress during the war. According to one study, the Unionists were simultaneously deserted by their patrons, i.e., the British also.⁶⁹ Thus, the Unionist Party which held sway over Punjab from 1923 to 1946 was first deserted by their social base. Therefore, it was logical that they should be deserted by their patrons too. The British patrons could patronize the Unionists so long as the collaborators were helpful to them. The rising tide of Indian nationalism and the demand for Pakistan ultimately sealed the fate of the Unionist Party. The party lost the 1949 elections rather badly. The increasing ambivalence on the part of the British government on issues of India’s independence and Pakistan led the Muslim Unionists to join the League en masse. As a corollary to that, the Hindu wing of the Unionist Party also collapsed. Due to the fear of future victimization, the Hindu Unionists scampered to the Congress camp.

11. Congress Movement in Haryana

The Congress movement was initially very popular with the Jat peasantry in Haryana, but the ascendancy of Sir Chhotu Ram in the politics of Punjab led many of them away from the freedom struggle. The other agriculturist castes also responded to the new opening similarly. It was in fact the inherent weakness of the nationalist forces in the Haryana region which made for the early and easy success of Chhotu Ram’s politics. For example, where Chhotu Ram succeeded in projecting the Congress Party as a party of the urban banias at the time of passing of the so-called ‘Golden Laws’, the Congress miserably failed in exposing Chhotu Ram’s pro-landlord bias when the tenants of villages Chhuchhakwas and Talao of Rohtak district and Skinner’s estate (Hissar) and the Ingram estate (Gurgaon) organized themselves to fight the landlords. Most of the tenants belonged to the agriculturist castes (including the Jats), but this did not impel Chhotu Ram to support them against the landlords who were not even Jats.

Incidentally, it was not the Jat landlords alone who had Chhotu Ram to speak for them. This tendency existed among almost all the castes. Meos, for example, had Chaudhary Yasin Khan. But the other castes could not produce as articulate and steadfast a leader as Chhotu Ram was. The economic, social and numerical dominance of the Jats might have helped Chhotu Ram to outshine others. Casteism as an ideology came to the force during these two decades. Even the Arya Samaj and the Congress Party were afflicted with this disease in Haryana. Statutory casteism created by British imperialism became a potent force in various parts of India. In Haryana, it struck deeper roots because of the relative weakness of the anti-caste movements. In the elections of 1946, the Unionist Party collapsed in Haryana not because Congress had fought it politically or ideologically. Its collapse was a natural corollary to the decline of its senior partner, the Muslim Unionists in the Punjab. Though the Muslim Unionists were swallowed by the Muslim League and the Hindu Unionists by the Congress Party, these elements again became dominant in their respective regions once power was transferred to the League and the Congress. The new regimes began to protect their interests in the same way as the British used to do. The continuity of the landlords’ and rich peasants’ dominance in provincial politics and decision-making machinery forces us to conclude that the Transfer of Power in 1947 was not a ‘revolution’ in any sense of the word. In the elections of 1946, personalities, caste and local issues had ceased to matter,⁷⁰ but they again became important in post-independence India.

The euphoria of 1946-47 was short-lived, and almost immediately after freedom a distinct deterioration in the number of Congress supporters was reported. The Haryana region showed the hardening of factionalism within the Congress. The difference between the ‘dominant Jats’ and ‘non-Jats’ started to surface. The ‘Hindu Jats’ started resenting the ‘interference’ of the ‘non-Muslims of western Punjab’ in the politics and government service in this region. The caste syndrome, nurtured in the region from the early 1920s by the British officials with the support of ‘caste leaders’ could not remain dormant for long and continues till today.

REFERENCES:

1. Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963, p. 16; I. R. Khan, ‘Historical Geography of the Punjab and Sind with Special Reference to River Changes’, The Aligarh Muslim University Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 1934, pp. 31, 55.

2. F. C. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District, Lahore: Central Jail Press, 1882.

3. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District.

4. Irfan Habib, ‘Colonisation of the Indian Economy, 1757-1900’, Social Scientist, vol. 3, no. 32, 1975, pp. 23-53.

5. The number of settlements varied from district to district.

6. Even the settlement officers have accepted this fact in their various settlement reports.

7. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; W. E. Purser and H. C. Fanshawe, Report on the Revised Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District of the Hissar Division of the Punjab, 1873-79, London: W. Ball, Printer, 1880.

8. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Revised Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District. Upto 1838 many nawabis and principalities of the Haryana region had lapsed to the Company.

9. Habib, ‘Colonisation of the Indian Economy’.

10. Talmiz Khaldun, ‘The Great Rebellion’, in P. C. Joshi (ed.), Rebellion, 1857: A Symposium, Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1957, p. 52.

11. K. C. Yadav’s findings about the Mutiny. This is a running theme in all of his findings. See K. C. Yadav, The Revolt of 1857 in Haryana, Delhi: Manohar, 1977.

12. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

13. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Revised Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

14. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Revised Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

15. K.C. Yadav unnecessarily attributes ‘patriotic’ motives to persons like Rao Tula Ram etc. (Yadav, The Revolt of 1857 in Haryana).

16. The song was recorded while conducting the Pilot Survey of Mewat in December 1982.

17. Joshi (ed.), Rebellion 1857.

18. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

19. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

20. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

21. Channing, Land Revenue Settlement of the Gurgaon District; Purser and Fanshawe, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Rohtak District.

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23. Habib, ‘Colonisation of the Indian Economy’.

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25. Hamid, ‘Dispossession and Differentiation’, p. 55.

26. Punjab District Gazetteers, 1893-94, Lahore.

27. Hubert Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare of the Punjab, Being Some Studies in Punjab Rural Economics, Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1922, pp. 67-68.

28. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, pp. 67-68.

29. Irfan Habib, ‘Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India’, Enquiry, New Series, vol. 3, no. 3, 1971, pp. 1-56.

30. Hamid, ‘Dispossession and Differentiation’, p. 57.

31. Hamid, ‘Dispossession and Differentiation’, pp. 56-59.

32. S. S. Thorburn, Musalmans and Money-lenders of the Punjab, Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1886, p. 49.

33. M. L. Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, Manohar, 1977, pp. 93-110.

34. ‘The prices of what in the Punjab mandi (market depends, not on the local conditions, but on the prices in Liverpool (Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, p. 131).

35. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, p. 132.

36. S. J. Patel, Agricultural Labourers in Modern India and Pakistan, Bombay: Current Book House, 1952, p. 53.

37. Thorburn, Musalmans and Money-lenders, p.50.

38. Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, p. 85.

39. Prem Chowdhry, ‘Jat Domination in South-East Punjab; Socio-Economic Basis of Jat Politics in a Punjab Districts’, IESHR, vol. 19, nos 3-4, 1982, p. 334.

40. Hamid, ‘Dispossession and Differentiation’, p. 61.

41. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, pp. 13-14.

42. Darling, The Punjab Peasant, p. 17.

43. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, p. 172.

44. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, p. 172.

45. Hamid, ‘Dispossession and Differentiation’, p. 66.

46. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare, 1922, p. 176.

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49. Chowdhry, ‘Rural Relations’, p. 473.

50. Chowdhry, ‘Rural Relations’, p. 473.

51. Chowdhry, ‘Rural Relations’, p. 473.

52. Jat Gazette, 6 May 1934.

53. Jat Gazette, 25 January 1936.

54. Jat Gazette, 24 May 1939.

55. Chowdhry, ‘Rural Relations’, p. 479.

56. Irfan Habib, ‘Usury in Medieval India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 6, no. 4, 1964, pp. 393-419.

57. Habib, ‘Colonisation of the Indian Economy’.

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60. Barrier, ‘The Arya Samaj’, p. 347.

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63. Talbot, ‘Deserted Collaborators’, p. 74.

64. Chowdhry, ‘Rural Relations’, p. 475.

65. Chowdhry, ‘Rural Relations’, p. 475.

66. Chowdhry, ‘Role of Sir Chhotu Ram’, pp. 330-85.

67. Chowdhry, ‘Role of Sir Chhotu Ram’, pp. 330-85.

68. Mridula Mukherjee, ‘Peasant Movement in Patiala State, 1937-48’, Studies in History, vol. 1, no. 2, 1979, pp. 215-83.

69. Talbot, ‘Deserted Collaborators’, pp. 90-91.

70. Prem Chowdhry, ‘The Congress Triumph in South-East Punjab Elections of 1946’, Studies in History, vol. 2, no. 2, 1980, pp. 81-110.

Received on 04.06.2017 Modified on 20.06.2017

Int. J. Rev. and Res. Social Sci. 2017; 5(2): 121-131 .

DOI: 10.5958/2454-2687.2017.00013.2