The Blue Mutiny- The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal 1859-62 by Blair B Kling

 

The Blue Mutiny- The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal 1859-62 by Blair B Kling

Flotsam & Jetsam

Speak of colonial India history- the images that spring to our minds are those of magnificent buildings, regal Viceroys, grand Durbars where native princes reiterate their allegiance to the Crown and so on. Dig a little deeper, and we come across intrepid officials- Collectors in the districts, Surveyors who mapped the forests, geography and geology of the country, Residents in the courts of princely states, not to speak of numerous army officers (and mercenaries in the service of native states), who have left behind their memoirs. Of these, several adopted the policy of paternal autocracy towards their subjects, while others turned into unapologetic Indophiles. But most remained professional outsiders, who did their jobs efficiently, amassed wealth unashamedly, and returned to their native country- England or Scotland, to live out their lives in undreamt of luxury.

The seamy side of colonialism is less well known. Together with the worthies cited above, there were numerous other individuals- thugs, deserters, drunks, free-booters, merchants, buccaneers, not to speak of others described in gentle Victorian terms as ‘women of easy virtue’ . Most of these came to India like their more respectable compatriots in search of a fortune (or a spouse), and having failed to realize their ambitions, lapsed into poverty (or ennui)- too poor (or too lazy) to book a passage home.

Falling between these two extremities are the missionaries, and the planters among others. The former came to harvest souls, the latter to harvest indigo. Given the wide difference in the nature of the commodities that they dealt with, they ought to have dwelt in parallel Universes, and their paths ought never to have crossed. But given the complexity of the human condition, these two sets of non-state actors were often at loggerheads with one another. At the heart of the dispute was the manner in which the planters, some of them White Zamindars, dealt with the native peasantry. Enabled by soft racist laws of the colonial set up, the planters behaved like petty tyrants in the rural hinterland far from the seat of governance in Calcutta. The missionaries piqued by the unchristian ways of their countrymen protested. How John Peter Grant, the first Deputy Governor of Bengal (under Canning) and a handful of dedicated officials subdued the planters by first bringing them under the jurisdiction of the native civil courts, and then by conscientizing the peasantry about their civil rights makes an interesting story. Most entertaining is the way a Bengali play titled Nil Darpan (The Blue Mirror), translated by Michael Madhusadan Dutt, under commission of the missionary James Long, came to be inadvertently printed and distributed by the colonial Government at its own expense. This must rank as the most original ‘own goal’ in history.