Chapter 4
The Rural Places of Exchange:
Markets in the Age of Gandhi
"Gandhi kijai " (Long Live Gandhi) echoed in many
marketplaces in the early 1920s, when the bazaar became both a scene and site of
contention. Its reverberations throughout the Bihar countryside signaled the
transformation of the nationalist movement led by the Indian National Congress into a mass
organization. It was a development reflected in the rise of the Noncooperation and
Khilafat Movement in 1921 22 and in the movement's changing emphasis. For one thing, many
Muslims were won over because of the pan-Islamic Khilafat Movement, which championed the
case of the Ottoman caliph (khalifa) . A campaign that began with students quitting
government-run educational institutions and with lawyers and others withdrawing from
official institutions progressed to involve people in a boycott of foreign cloth and later
in a struggle for complete independence. The ultimate objective was the Gandhian ideal a
postcolonial nation and community without harmful divisions of caste, class, religion, or
gender. But the "emphasis. . . on unifying issues and on trying to cut
across or reconcile class divisions"[1] necessarily entailed
negotiating the problematic contradiction of forging a unified nation by
"disciplining" its many dividing communities. In the very process of widening
its constituency, as
162
Ranajit Guha argues, the Congress-organized nationalist movement
sharpened the "contradiction between the elite and the subaltern domains of politics
and of an increasing elite concern to deal more effectively with it."[2]
Along with its insistence on nonviolence, the Noncooperation Movement,
at the national and regional levels, couched its rhetoric from the outset in terms of
"unifying issues," advocating causes that averted social and economic
confrontations stemming from such potentially volatile issues as nonpayment of taxes to
government and of rent to landholders. Gandhi pointedly spoke out against looting markets
and withholding taxes from government and rent from landlords.[3]
Contrast these "officially" sanctioned concerns and actions
with popular pronouncements in Bihar. "Speeches" given by followers of
Noncooperation (termed asahayogis , from the term asahayog , meaning noncooperation)
, or "Volunteers" (the appellation favored in government records) of the
movement, provide apposite entre into this rhetoric because they "capture" (an
especially fitting term to use because they were recorded by government informants or
preserved in pamphlets proscribed by government) the voices of the grassroots, both
leaders and rank and file. One especially valuable compilation of such speeches is a
confidential government document of 1922, which conveys a vivid sense of the popular
vocabulary of Noncooperation, although some of the flavor of the vernacular is no doubt
lost in translation (the document exists only in English translation). This compendium,
apparently only "a fraction of the volume of abuse and
vituperation. . . poured forth in this province," identifies none of
its authors and lists "speeches" only by date and district of origin-which
serves to accent the heteroglossic nature of this discourse.[4]
163
Nationalistic publications, on the other hand, are best in documenting
the history of the movement's local chapter and local heroes. Largely absent from this
record are details about episodes and events that did not conform to the official story.
For the standard nationalist materials were not the mediums through which "abuse and
vituperation" flowed; this was much more likely to have occurred in the kinds of
extemporaneous speeches delivered to local audiences and preserved for later observers by
government informants.[5]
According to the Muzaffarpur Congress Committee, the Noncooperation
Movement was waged on ten fronts: (1) boycott of government schools and establishment of
nationalist schools, (2) relinquishment of government and legal positions, (3) boycott of
foreign cloth, (4) relinquishment of all government degrees and titles, (5) establishment
of village councils (panchayats ), (6) use of spinning wheels and homespun
cloth (khadi ), (7) ban on intoxicating substances, (8) recruitment of
rank-and-file Congress members, (9) collection of Tilak Swaraj Funds, and (10) collection
of a muthia (handful of grain) from every household.[6]
Notwithstanding Gandhi's estimation that the Noncooperation Movement in
Bihar was well attuned to his ideal of nonviolence and notable for its successes in
creating alternative schools, boycotting government-controlled liquor, and popularizing
homespun cloth, local leaders diverged substantially from the Gandhian path.
"Volunteers" openly broached the possibility of violence and injected agrarian
issues into their campaign, with the result that their rhetoric and actions were aimed at
the colonial state as well as its local allies and coadjutors. And the marketing centers
of the region, the bazaars, became both the scene and site of contention. The market as an
"extraterritorial" space recurred with acts of inversion and subversion,[7] including thirty-five documented cases of "hat [haat ,
periodic market] -looting in Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Monghyr and Purnea in January 1921
(with men who claimed to be Gandhi's disciples trying to enforce just prices at some
places) . . . and widespread tension in Champaran and Muzaffarpur
164
districts over appropriation of traditional village pastures by zamindars
and indigo planters."[8]
The Noncooperation Movement staked out a presence in the
"extraterritorial" space of the market because its objective and strategy
centered on territoriality: inclusion as well as exclusion. The bazaar, this choice locale
for articulating the imagined greater community, was a venue par excellence where the
colonial state encountered indigenous society literally and figuratively. Furthermore, the
bazaar was part of a system of markets that bound villages into localities and small
communities into larger communities. Indeed, the key themes of separation and boycott
highlighted the commonalties between different categories of people who commingled in the
bazaar. In other words, the project was to forge a nationalist community defined
ideologically, ethnically, and spatially, a community whose construction entailed
distinguishing those who were committed to the nationalist cause from those who were not.
Demarcation was one of its principal strategies, boycott one of its major tactics.
Ironically, however, the "unifying" project of Noncooperation
itself opened up the divisions, for the bazaar constituted the "epitome of a spatial
boundary," a "space where local society materially and culturally reproduced
itself," a "vernacular" space that was a "social nexus," a
"typical site of collective discourse," a container of solidarities as well as
of antagonisms and contradictions. Therefore, local dramas of Noncooperation, although
scripted in accordance with the nationalist project, gave rise to local variants of the
agrarian struggle, in a narrative that pitted peasants and petty landholders against local
magnates. In addition, the boycott of British products, particularly textiles, also fed
the contention in the marketplace because it embroiled traders and merchants in disputes
over the use of foreign goods. This was after all a group that was increasingly staking
out prominent roles in the towns and bazaars of north India; the bazaar was their locus of
activity.9 Political "sedition" against the state and social and economic
agitation against local elites therefore went hand in glove, a combination threatening
enough to attract the attention of the official documentation pro-
165
ject. Ostensibly a record of "unruly" subjects engaged in
"criminal misconduct" disruptive of "law and order" and "peace
and security," the colonial archive resonates with words and agendas that suggest a
"hidden transcript" pointing to the bazaar itself as the locus of conflict.
Occasionally loud and clear, but always audible beneath the surface of the official
transcript, are voices that speak not only in the nationalistic and anticolonial idiom but
also in the vocabulary of subaltern resistance.[10]
Appropriately enough, the disjuncture between popular and elite notions
surfaces in the bazaar, the setting in which these conflicting ideas were negotiated and
in which they gained their currency. For nowhere were the contradictions of the Movement
more visible than in the bazaar, that "hybrid place" where "a commingling
of categories usually kept separate and opposed [occur]: centre and periphery, inside and
outside, stranger and local, commerce and festivity, high and low."[11]
This clash of ideas, furthermore, reflects the extent to which popular culture and popular
ideas more generally intersected in the bazaar.
This chapter will consider the popular rhetoric of Noncooperation and
then turn to the popular action and behavior that placed the bazaar at the center stage.
It will reconstruct the drama as it was enacted in three different locales in the region
in 1921 22: the Katia and Bhorey area in Saran; the Sitamarhi area in Muzaffarpur; and the
thanas of Bagaha, Dhanaha, Jogapatti, and Lauriya in Bettiah subdivision,
Champaran. These three sets of incidents serve to identify the popular constituency of
Noncooperation: they fuse the political with the social and economic agenda, as they
unfold in the bazaar. Moreover, these particular localities were closely scrutinized by
the documentary and surveillance project of the colonial state and the documentary and
advocacy project of the nationalist movement. The enterprises together the former
concerned with recording and establishing the occurrence of acts of "sedition"
and the latter with documenting and celebrating the rising tide of nationalist sentiment
have left the historian a record that speaks in the contrary voices of these antagonistic
projects. Thus, the
166
data on the events of Noncooperation in these localities is especially
rich. To view this drama so closely is to see its social, economic, and cultural scripts,
which grew out of the political text of Noncooperation and were textualized by the
"hybrid" place, the bazaar.
The local drama in Saran, in particular, speaks to the question of why
the bazaar became the scene and site of both Noncooperation and agrarian conflict.
Specifically, I will set the incidents that occurred in Katia and Bhorey against the
backdrop of the marketing system of that locality. In teasing out the workings and
meanings of the local marketing system of Saran, I can trace the dynamics of this system
more generally, down to the lowest level ordered around periodic markets (haats) ,
and thereby illustrate spatially the organization and interrelationships of markets. This
taxonomy of sites as well as of their hierarchical relationships will also be filled in by
detailing the pattern of horizontal and vertical trade, the movement of local agricultural
and craft commodities and of nonlocal products from higher-level to lower-level markets.
This reconstruction of the structure and functioning of a local
marketing system underscores the extent to which the unfolding of the dramatic events of
1920 22 in the bazaar represented a historical process of increasing marketization and
commoditization embodied in the growth of a full-fledged marketing system. By focusing on
Katia and Bhorey, my intention is not only to detail its workings within the specific
setting of one district, but also to show how these were tied to the changing nature of
agrarian relations and conflict for the spatial grids organized by the marketing system
shaped and were shaped by the power of both the colonial state and local landholders. The
local experiences of Noncooperation, plotted against the backdrop of the local marketing
system, therefore portray the bazaar in the round: as a place for political as well as
economic, social, and cultural transactions.
The chapter concludes by mapping the spatial and social coordinates
generated by the marketing system along which a notion of community was constructed. It
was, however, a system with dual capacities: to embrace the national ideal espoused by
Congress leaders and to divide into more particularistic identities and groups shaped by
caste and class. The dynamics of the local marketing system reveal that markets were units
of economic, social, and political organization, within which power and influence were
wielded and contested: not just the power of the colonial state, but also that articulated
by local controllers and elites. This "hybrid place" thus provided the nexus in
167
which attempts to create a community both succeeded and failed:
anticolonial sentiment fostered a sense of nation while also sharpening existing
contradictions among the many constituent communities of the region.
Let us eavesdrop in the marketplace. Asahayogis , or
"volunteers," frequently spoke of "our duty .. .to liberate India," to
attain "Swaraj" (self-rule) from British rule, demonized as a "Satanic
Government." There was growing consensus about this message, as Noncooperation
coupled with Khilafat enabled Congress to build up a mass base in 1920-22. Speeches
warning Hindus and Muslims that their religion was "in danger" were aimed at
this larger constituency, as were specific calls for people to come together as Indians.
"Hindus and Muhammadans must unite," urged one speaker in Patna in February
1922, a message reinforced on another occasion by the charge that the British had
deliberately fomented quarrels "between Hindus and
Muhammadans. . . [in order] to remain themselves in peace."[12]
Ironically, this very attempt to bridge the religious divide in the
Noncooperation era of 1920-22 led subsequently to a phase in which distinct communal
sentiments came to prevail.[13] The message of Noncooperation was a
mixed one: it was uttered with appropriate religious coding to speak to "unifying
issues," but in a vocabulary that also emphasized the distinctiveness of Hindu and
Muslim traditions. Consider the characterization of the evil government and
"Hatyachar Raj [destructive rule]" as a "Rawan Raj"-as a tyrannical
force and a religious threat set in stark contrast to the ideal government and polity
embodied in the notion of "Ram Raj." No doubt, for the Shiite Muslims in the
audience, this speaker also equated the present government with "that of Yazid of the
ancient times." On another occasion at Patna, a "Volunteer," obviously
appealing to the religious sensibilities of his audience, remarked: "Do the Hindus
think that this Satanic government will not use the same shells and shot against their
sacred places as they
168
had used against the sacred places of Islam?" Presumably
addressing Muslims, another speaker, also at Patna but on a different date, reminded his
listeners that the sacred cities of "Mecca and Medina are no longer in your
possession."[14]
Such talk had the desired effect: it greatly alarmed the government.
Local authorities reacted with concern to what they construed to be "appeals to
racial antagonisms or religious fanaticism," a concern that resonated with their
long-standing fear of religion-based opposition to their rule. Although they came from
different perspectives, Ghulam Husain and Veeraswamy shared in common a view of their
superordinates that was partly informed by their religious outlooks. Indeed, from the very
outset of colonial rule but particularly in the aftermath of the Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857,
government had trained a wary eye on religious issues because it considered religion in
India to constitute the bedrock of popular consciousness. Moreover, the religious coloring
of "abuse and vituperation" in the Noncooperation era was especially volatile
because it attracted a wide audience; in fact, "in the rural areas, the more
outspoken the appeal the more popular is its reception."[15]
As yet ignored in both Congress and government understanding of this rhetoric, was the
possibility that an "outspoken" religious ideology would eventuate in a
religious divide rather than a broadbased nationalist community.
Another Bihar variant of Noncooperation also alarmed the government its
divergence from the Gandhian credo of nonviolence, as the following speech in the official
record reveals: "I cannot agree with Gandhiji inhis
creedofnon-violentnon-co-operation . If you agree with me[,] Oh Rajputs' sons and
Brahmans' sons[,] get up and try your best to root out this dishonest Government at any
cost."[16] Others, too, broached the possibility of violence,
although not explicitly. Few, however, would have missed the meaning of the following
allusion to the
169
virtuous king who destroyed the demon king and villain: "If the
present Government. . . [is] Ravan Raj then you must do all that Maharaja
Ram Chandra did to destroy the Ravan Raj." No less ambiguous must have been the
answer to the rhetorical question "Do you know what should be done where thousands of
cows are killed? Blood should be shed." The same message was conveyed in entreaties
to set fire to the rakshas (demons), to "drive them [the British] away by
beating," and "to tear the jail to pieces and burn it." Violence was also
suggested by a speaker who informed his Patna audience that the ulama (Muslim
religious and legal authorities) had declared "Jehad [holy war], but that it be
non-violent for the present." But he then added, "I may, however, warn you that
Jehad with sword may be declared by the Ulamas before long and that you should be ready to
join it if they want you to do so. But until then you must be non-violent."[17]
Local violations of the Gandhian conception of nonviolence assumed other
forms as well. Although local practitioners of Noncooperation followed the nationalist
leadership in urging supporters to withdraw from government jobs and withhold services
from government and its representatives, they also sought to extend noncooperation to
areas specifically forbidden by Gandhi. Whereas the Mahatma deliberately elected not to
make the payment of taxes an issue, local Volunteers openly took it on. "Stop payment
of taxes" was the unequivocal call issued in Saran in December 1921. A similar plea
in Muzaffarpur in August of that year targeted the chaukidari tax, collected to
defray the expenses of maintaining chaukidars , or night watchmen. By this act, the
movement became embroiled in agrarian issues, because night watchmen were, in part,
village-level representatives of the police and, in part, petty servants of landholders
tied to estate and village systems of control.[18]
The conflation of political, social, and economic issues also surfaced
in attacks against wealth and privilege that were leveled not only at perquisites
accumulating to the British but also at those enjoyed by their local allies, the so-called
principal zemindars and other elite land-
170
holding families. As one speaker asserted in Shahabad, "This
Government is for the rich, because the rich become members of the Council. This
Government is not for the labourers." On another occasion, the maharaja of Dumraon,
Shahabad's largest landholder, was singled out for criticism because he was said to have
contributed a sizable amount of money in honor of the visit of the Prince of Wales.[19]
Boycott of foreign cloth and the reliance on homespun cloth (khadi)
also had the potential of being divisive because they were directed against both the
consumer and the seller. Trade in cloth in north India in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries was increasingly in the hands of the rising bania groups, many
of whom had established themselves in Bihar over the course of the nineteenth century and
many of whom both there and elsewhere had attached themselves to Gandhi. But it was an
issue that had widespread resonance as well, because many people were aware, and had been
aware since the late nineteenth century (e.g., Bholanauth Chunder), that indigenous and
artisanal products in general had been declining because of foreign competition.
Deindustrialization was not known by that name, but its adverse effects were familiar to
many.
The boycott campaign rested on two pillars: (1) the economic, or the
notion of the drain of wealth, that India's once robust textile industry had been
shattered by the rise of machine-made goods mass produced inexpensively by the mills of
England, and (2) the semiotic, or the Gandhian stress on self-reliance. Consequently,
cloth took on several layers of signification relating to national identity and
difference.
The belief that the indigenous cloth industry had declined as a direct
result of British design and sabotage was widespread. As one speaker declared,
"Cloths of superior quality were woven in India. The thumbs of 1,400 Jolahas were cut
away[,] and since then the weaving of good cloths in Bengal came to an end. Gradually we
became accustomed to foreign cloths. Every art and manufacture became extinct, for he who
was the protector turned out to be the destroyer. Everything was destroyed as soon as we
were deprived of arts and trade."[20] The much-sung ode of
Noncooperation addressed to "Firangia"-Veeraswamy had employed the pejorative
"phirangi" in referring to the British almost a hundred years earlier-lamented:
"If cloth does not come from foreign coun-
171
tries we shall have to live naked, O Firangia. Cotton is purchased
cheap from us and there from [sic] cloth is manufactured and sold to us, O
Firangia. In this way India's wealth is plundered and sent away to foreign countries, O
Firangia."[21]
Gandhi's championing of indigenous products therefore appealed to a wide
audience. For it "articulated and elaborated on the theme that the Indian people
would only be free from European domination, both politically and economically, when the
masses took to spinning, weaving, and wearing homespun cotton cloth, khadi . To
give substance to these theories, he created the enduring symbols of the Indian
nationalist movement; the chakra (spinning wheel), which appeared on the Indian National
Congress flag and . . . the wearing of a khadi 'uniform,' a
white handspun cotton dhoti , sari , or pajama , kurta and a
small white cap."[22]
Cloth was the dressing on the larger issue of "ruin" that many
considered to have been inflicted on their country by the "nation of
Hatwearers." In a tenor remarkably similar to the cry taken up by Patna writers
during the era of revolution, the chant repeated in the bazaar evoked an image of a
"once beautiful and charming" India that had, in the words of the
"Firangia," been "turned into a burning ghat":
172
Yet even as the advocates of Noncooperation faulted the regime for
causing "ruin," as had their Patna ancestors more than a century earlier, their
lament was pitched in a distinctly Hindu vocabulary. The opening line about "burning
ghat" refers to a Hindu practice of cremating their dead; the role models upheld were
Rana Pratap Singh and Shivaji, both historical figures renowned for their active
resistance to Muslim rule; and the pantheon of heroes invoked was drawn from the great
Hindu epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata .[24]
Active resistance and the contradictions of Noncooperation surfaced in
the bazaar, too. A delineation of the workings of the local marketing system of Saran can
help explain why the bazaar became host to Noncooperation as well as to related incidents
of agrarian violence.
It is significant that the most dramatic events in Saran occurred in
Katia and Bhorey, northwestern localities far removed from the major markets of the
district and from the central place of Patna; the pattern of related events in Champaran
and Muzaffarpur was similar. These incidents occurred in geographically peripheral areas,
which highlights the shift in the growing popular base of the nationalist movement. Having
sprung to life initially in the late nineteenth century in the metropolitan centers and
port cities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, the movement spread inland, first to the
urban centers in the interior and then to the countryside. The political mobilization of
the hinterland, in other words, corresponded to the reticulations facilitated by the
spread of markets into the interior.
The distinctions drawn here between different levels of markets follow
the classification used previously to sketch the Patna marketing system. The top two rungs
in this formulation are occupied by the "central market" and
"intermediate" market town, or qasba . Standard markets, constituting the
third tier, were generally the termination point of goods "imported" in for
peasant consumption. Consequently, this level of markets represented the lowest echelon of
the local marketing hierarchy that received the foreign goods targeted by the
Noncooperation Movement.
Neither Katia nor Bhorey was among the 68 marketing settlements
identified in the district as existing prior to 1765 (see Map 3).[25]
By
173
1793, however, both had emerged as markets, 2 of the 179 so identified
as markets in the district. Katia, a ganj according to the police tax rolls, was
primarily a grain market occupied by "braziers, mercers, suttrunjees [carpet]
sellers, confectioners, cloth dyers and venders of oil, fish, rice, pease, sautoo [parched
gram, a coarse grain consumed especially by the poor], beetleleaf [sic] , tobacco
and herbs," whereas Bhorey was described as a "bazaar. . . [of]
merchants, oilmen, choorywalas [bangle sellers] and sellers of spices, rice, pease,
beetleleaf, salt and tobacco."[26]
Over the next century and a half with the district population steadily
rising by as much as 0.9 percent per year in the nineteenth century many more settlements
took on marketing functions. Comprehensive village-by-village data produced by the
revisional settlement of the district in 1915 21 reveal that by the early twentieth
century, Saran supported 364 markets, more than twice the 1793 total.[27]
This expansion in the number of markets as in Patna districtreflected
the proliferation of periodic markets in particular; the two highest levels of the
marketing system in the district saw no numerical or compositional change over the
colonial period. As in 1793, so in 1921: only one site ranked as the central market town
Chapra, the district headquarters. The same constancy shows up in the second rung of the
marketing hierarchy as Siwan, Revelganj, Mirganj, Maharajganj, Goldinganj, Manjhi,
Darauli, and Gopalganj persisted as the eight intermediate towns. (Again the comparison
with Patna district is instructive.) This continuity, however, conceals the fact that
their importance in relation to one another and to Chapra did not remain constant.
Continuity with change is even more striking in the case of standard markets, whose number
remained fixed at 32 throughout the colonial pe-
174
riod but whose roster was altered significantly. Only 9 of the 32
standard markets from 1793 continued in that role in the twentieth century; 23, in other
words, were supplanted by new ones. The most dramatic change occurred, however, at the
level of periodic markets, which rose in number from 138 in 1793 to 323 in 1921.[28]
In Saran, as in Patna, the remarkable expansion in number of haats
ensured a more even geographical distribution of markets across the district. The
following information showing percentage of population in each thana relative to
overall district population, and the percentage of periodic markets in each thana
relative to the district total, indicates that the share of markets located in each thana
relative to its proportion of population was predominantly even, except in the case of
Chapra and Manjhi thanas . A slight distortion existed there because of the
clustering of marketing functions in and around Chapra.
Katia and Bhorey were part of an area, thana Mirganj as were the thanas
of Chapra, Manjhi, and Basantpur whose share of the overall number of markets (16.3
percent) exceeded its relative proportion of population (16.1 percent). Contrast this
pattern with that of thana Gopalganj, where the percentage of haats evenly
matched the percentage of population residing there, or the thanas of Mashrak,
Parsa, Sonepur, Darauli, and Siwan, where the percentage of population exceeded their
proportion of the overall population. But in terms of number of people per periodic
market, Mirganj's figure of I haat for every 7,319 persons was surpassed only by
Chapra (1:9,526), Manjhi (1:10,669), and Basantpur (1:7,742). In the remaining six thanas
of the district, periodic markets were far more abundant relative to population: Mashrak thana
returned the best ratio at 1 haat for every 5,621 persons.
The sizable proportion of people and periodic markets in Mirganj was the
result of developments in the colonial period. One of the least inhabited areas in the
late eighteenth century along with Gopalganjit comprised part of the northern tract, which
experienced the largest expansion of cultivation and presumably of population over the
course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As Kalyanpur Kuari (Mirganj
was carved out of this pargana) , this locality appar-
175
ently had only two markets before 1765 and six in the 1790s, four of
which were standard markets (Katia was one) and two periodic markets Bhorey was not one of
these two. In the early twentieth century, however, Bhorey was one of fifty-two periodic
markets enumerated for Mirganj. The adjoining thana of Gopalganj followed a similar
upward trend, its thirty-seven haats in 1921 constituting more than double the
number that existed in the late eighteenth century in the two parganas of Sipah and
Dangsi from which it had been formed.[29]
The increase in markets in the northern tracts came in the wake of a
spurt in the late eighteenth century that had added markets to the southern portion of
Saran, particularly to the interior localities away from its riverine boundaries. This
phase was characterized by phenomenal rates of market growth in the southern and central parganas:
a 500 percent increase in Goa, more than 280 percent in Bal, a 175 percent increase in
Marhal, and more than 85 percent in Barrai; parganas Pachlakh and Bara experienced
a rise of 75 percent.[30]
The steady push toward marketing symmetry can also be plotted according
to the relationship of higher-order markets to one another and to lower-order markets.
Particularly telling in this respect are two interrelated processes: the declining
centrality of Chapra, on the one hand, and the growing importance of towns in the
interior, on the other hand. Both trends reflect the rising force of central-place
symmetry, which resulted in the widespread distribution of markets throughout the
hinterland, in Saran and, as has already been discussed, in Patna.
A village when the Mughal emperor Babar halted there in the late
sixteenth century, Chapra prospered into a town. Its commercial prospects, especially
trade in saltpeter, attracted Europeans as early as the seventeenth century. By 1793, in
the words of the Saran collector, it was "the residence of wealthy shroffs and other
individuals of property, and is much frequented by travellers."[31]
Although not comparable in size and scale to the city of Patna, its ganjs and
bazaars together rated
176
the highest police tax in the district Rs. 1,439-10 annas (Patna was
assessed Rs. 28,287) levied on "traders and shopkeepers of every description"
and on merchants and bankers. Shops in Chapra dealt in every kind of grain, especially
rice and sattu (parched gram), and vegetables and fruits. Other shops specialized
in spices, salt, fish, and meats. And because it was the marketing center of the district,
it provided goods and services not readily found elsewhere. Among its specialty
shopkeepers, traders, and skilled workers were sellers of cloth and silk, betel leaf and
tobacco, hookas, lac, toddy, mats, rope and twine, oil, and sweetmeats (confectioners);
goldsmiths, braziers, and cloth dyers also plied their trade in this town.
Converging on Chapra was trade flowing along the Ganges and Gogra.
Chapra also commanded the trade headed across the Ganges to Patna and to other parts of
southern Bihar. As one early-nineteenthcentury Chapra resident recalled, "Large
quantities of cotton, Cashmere shawls, and Benares brocades, &c. are imported from the
North-West for shipment to Calcutta; while English goods, such as woolens, cottons,
chintzes, &c. are brought up from the Eastward for the Chupra market, and the interior
of the district."[32] A late-nineteenth-century source placed
the value of piece goods and cotton brought into Chapra for redistribution in the district
and in Champaran, Gorakhpur, and Nepal at Rs. 600,000. No wonder it was considered in its
heyday to be "one of the largest emporia of commerce in Behar. . . [,]
the centre of five well-marked streams of trade . . . from Champarun,
Muzafferpur, Nepal, Gorakhpur, and a river borne import from. . . the North
Western Provinces."[33]
The pull of Chapra was further enhanced by the fact that it constituted
the core of a definable agglomeration of two highest-order markets clustered along a
twelve-mile stretch on the Ganges and Gogra. Goldinganj occupied the eastern extremity,
Chapra was six miles away, almost the middle, and to the west, also six miles from the
district headquarters, was Revelganj. "To the east," observed one resident,
"Chuprah unites with another considerable town called Sahibgunge [a muhalla of
Chapra]. This town again joins Gobingunge [another muhalla] , and Gobingunge unites
with Cherau[n]d and Dooregunge [muhallas of Goldinganj]; from the river they
resemble one long strag-
177
gling Town, extending from Dooregunge to Revelgunge, a distance of
fourteen miles."[34]
Local inhabitants termed this cluster of settlements with Chapra as the
focal point Chirand-Chapra. Chirand, six miles east of Chapra, lent its name to this
marketing complex because it formed part of Goldinganj, which in the late eighteenth
century was an emerging intermediate market. And like Goldinganj, Revelganj, near the
confluence of the Ganges and the Gogra, was a rapidly rising market. By the early
nineteenth century it was considered a "great mart for saltpetre and grain of every
description . . . imported from the interior, as well as from
adjoining districts for shipment to Patna in the East, and Ghazeepoor, Benares and
Mirzapoor in the North-West."[35]
Chapra's marketing pull in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth
centuries was also signaled by the presence of a heavier concentration of higher- and
lower-order markets in the south and southwestern part of the district than in the north
and northeastern sector (except for Dangsi and Marhal). Well into the early twentieth
century , a large number of markets, especially periodic and standard ones, were clustered
in the southern and southwestern areas extending over Chapra subdivision, particularly
Chapra, Parsa, and Mashrak thanas (the old Bal, Manjhi, Goa, and Makair parganas)
, and Basantpur and Darauli thanas in Siwan subdivision (portions of parganas
Bal, Bara, and Barrai, and Chaubara and Andar). To one local resident, the imbalance was
perceptible: "The southern and the eastern parts. . . i.e., the
Gogra-Gangetic Valley and the Gandak Valley, present such an admirably striking contrast
that it seems as if nature has equipoised her gifts of good and evil to this district. The
Southern Valley. . . [is studded] with places of bustling trade and
commerce, and it is inhabited by whatever classes of sturdy cultivators, traders and men
of intelligence and education the district can boast of.. . . The Gandak
Valley exhibits quite a diametrically opposite picture .. . . Not much
trade is carried on by the river, and there is scarcely a single Bazar [sic] worth
the name on its banks."[36]
178
The primacy of Chapra was also epitomized by its relatively large
population. Police returns for 1813 enumerated 8,700 houses in the town, and with each
calculated to lodge 5 residents, its population was estimated at 43,500. Settlements at
the intermediate marketing level Siwan, Revelganj, Goldinganj, Maharajganj, Mirganj, and
Darauli had far fewer inhabitants. Siwan, where the next largest aggregation of people
lived (1,768 houses, 8,840 people) constituted only one-fifth of Chapra's numbers;
Mirganj, a rapidly growing market in the nineteenth century, had only 1,640 inhabitants
(328 houses).[37]
In the late nineteenth century, however, Chapra increasingly followed
the Patna pattern of economic decline, a decline precipitated by the interrelated factors
of changes in modes of communication and in the spatial patterning of markets. In part its
decline was ushered in by a shift in the course of the Ganges and Gogra. By the early
nineteenth century, the main stream of the Ganges, which formerly had run close to Chapra,
veered in the direction of Shahabad. And by the end of the century the Gogra had also
shifted course. Coupled with the declining fortunes of the saltpeter and indigo
industries, two commodities whose trade was centered in Chapra, the town's commercial
importance was clearly fading at the turn of the twentieth century.
This downward spiral was reflected in its changing relationship with
Revelganj, which had emerged as a major commercial entrepôt in the nineteenth century.
Although inhabited by only 13,500 people, it was, in the words of an 1873 report, the
"most important centre of trade" in north Bihar, "the chief place of export
for the surplus produce of Sarun and Chumparun, and. . . of the
North-Western Provinces. . . [, from which] a great deal of produce which
comes . .. in smaller boats is transhipped.. . . It is also the mart whence
these districts draw their supplies of salt, piece-goods, and other foreign
commodities."[38] An estimate of the trade conducted between
Revelganj and Calcutta showed a total tonnage of 37,000 (or over 1 million maunds) in
1872-73 (a figure that does not include goods flowing between Revelganj and the
North-Western Provinces or between Revelganj and the rest of Patna Division). In addition
to this through trade between Bengal and the North-Western Provinces, Revelganj also
served as the principal local port of imports and exports for Saran as well as for
Champaran
179
and Nepal. Along with Patna, Revelganj dominated the trade in
oilseeds, a commodity transported there from Bihar and the North-Western Provinces for
purchase by agents of "down-country merchants," including a branch firm of the
European agency of Messrs. Ralli and Valletta (who were also stationed in Patna) and large
numbers of Bengali traders buying for the Calcutta market. Earlier in the century, the
firm of Messrs. Wharton, Cleave, and Flough had been in Revelganj to trade in wheat,
hides, and other commodities.[39]
Revelganj's star rose only momentarily, however, since its fortunes also
began to fade. In the case of Revelganj as well, the decline as a prime trading center was
related to the rivers shifting course, receding toward the bank away from the town; the
Ganges-Gogra junction also shifted eastward. Census figures point to the chronology of
Revelganj's decline: in 1872, 13,415 people were enumerated there; by 1921 that
number had fallen to 8,186, a 39 percent loss, in a
"once . . . thriving trade centre. . . now fallen
on bad times."[40]
Even with these adverse effects on trade, the severest blow to the
commercial health of Chapra and Revelganj was in fact dealt by the development of the
railways, whose lines rapidly became the main arteries of trade. By the early 1890s water
traffic accounted for only 25 percent of the overall trade of the district.
The "bad times" affected the entire Chirand-Chapra complex,
which began to lose some of its primacy in the district. Goldinganj's fortunes were
mirrored by the fate of its grain market of Dariaganj (Doriganj), which by the early
twentieth century was memorable merely for its past as "a large grain-market."[41]
Although also located along the river twelve and forty-four miles,
respectively, northwest of Revelganj along the Gogra Manjhi and Darauli, both thriving
market settlements in the late eighteenth century, were affected differently by the hard
times of Chirand-Chapra. Manjhi faded in part because the Manjhi zamindars lost their
fortunes over the course of the nineteenth century. Darauli continued to prosper, how-
180
ever, its centrality defined not solely by its dependence on a
river-borne trade but also by its importance in the traffic of merchandise flowing between
Saran and the North-Western Provinces.[42]
Contrast the decline of these southern marketing centers, whose fortunes
were partly tied to the river-based Chapra trade of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth
centuries with the rising prosperity of inland markets in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, a prosperity that thrust the hinterland into the vortex of
nationalist politics in the early 1920s. Siwan, Maharajganj, Mirganj, and Gopalganj, the
four intermediate markets in the interior, were strategically located to service the trade
flowing across the district on an east-west axis as well as toward Nepal in the north:
Siwan lay approximately forty miles northwest of Chapra, Gopalganj twenty-one miles
northeast of Siwan, Mirganj ten miles northwest of Gopalganj; and Maharajganj stood almost
in the center of the district twenty-five miles northwest of Chapra and ten miles
southwest of Siwan. Like Chapra, each of these settlements served not only as a collection
point for goods produced locally but also as a transshipment center for goods being moved
in either direction: between north Bihar and Bengal on the one side and the North-Western
Provinces on the other. As long as trade flowed primarily along the rivers, these interior
markets commanded little of it. Nor were these sites well connected by roads until the
late nineteenth century. However, the development of roads followed by the extension of
railways into the interior in the late nineteenth century enhanced the status of these
markets, as did the rising force of central-place symmetry, buoyed undoubtedly by the
weakening pull of the Chirand-Chapra complex.[43]
As these markets grew in importance, they were able to offer a range of
goods and services comparable to what could be obtained in Chapra. Some items were
available only in Chapra; but even in the eighteenth century, intermediate markets
trafficked in their own specialties. Siwan, for example, had long been a center of
artisanal manufactures: of pottery and brass manufacture and of articles made of phul
(a white metal of copper, saltpeter, and a small admixture of zinc); calico cloth,
birdcages,
181
soap, and silver links were other notable products. An
early-twentieth-century inventory of its industries indicates that it continued to support
its special and highly skilled pottery, its glassblowing, its brass works, its sugar
factory, and its tikuli making (glass plates encrusted with gold leaves).
Maharajganj, for its part, possessed "a considerable iron industry," which
produced iron for utensils and other products.[44]
Siwan had a head start on the other three intermediate markets because
it was a "very large" settlement in the late eighteenth century. To continue in
the words of the district magistrate of 1794, "[M]any bankers and merchants of
considerable property reside there, and it is the place where the merchants trading from
Benares and all parts of the Behar Province to Nepaul assemble and proceed from thence in
bodies to dispose of their goods in Nepaul."[45] By 1872 its
population stood at 11,099, and by 1891 it had peaked at 17,709. Although by 1921 its
population, estimated at 11,862, had followed the downward trend that characterized towns
throughout north Bihar in the 1890s and early 1900s, its role as a major intermediate
market remained undiminished, indeed, was even enhanced by the advent of the railways.[46]
The qasba of Maharajganj-about which sufficient detail exists to
highlight its role as an intermediate market vis-Ã -vis lower-order markets and the
hinterland generally-is another instructive example of the changing spatial and
hierarchical configuration of markets, as well as of the extensive links tying interior
markets to extralocal networks. Furthermore, it once again highlights the patronage role
of landholders in the development of markets.
This qasba's beginnings lie in Pasnauli village, which was given
to Raja Murlidhar as a birtbrahmotar (rent-free grant to a Brahmin) in 1766-67. On
taking possession of this largely uninhabited village, the raja "expended a large
amount on some uncultivated ground upon which he erected and peopled a new gunge [ganj
]."[47] By 1791 it was already recognized as one of the
principal ganjs of the district. By the late
182
nineteenth century it had emerged as one of the largest bazaars in the
district, perhaps second only to Revelganj. A visitor in 1870 found it "very thickly
inhabited" and "a tolerably flourishing place." Available at its shops were
maize (makai) , paddy, wheat, country sugar, and cotton, as well as, according to
one informant, about a thousand strips of gunny (thirty feet long by one foot wide) and
iron brought in from Gaya. The presence of vast quantities of spices convinced this 1870
visitor that it was "a great spice Bazaar-probably the largest in the district."
In his estimation, Maharajganj's annual transactions totaled two thousand to three
thousand rupees.48
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Maharajganj served
as a focal point of trade for the entire region, from Bengal and the North-Western
Provinces, as well as from Nepal. A primary collection point for surplus produce and a
goods-and-service center for a marketing area extending over a five- to six-mile radius in
every direction, particularly to the north, south, and west, it catered to those needs of
the local population that could not be met by the periodic or standard markets in the
locality. To the south, people from villages as far as six miles away came to sell their
produce. To the east, the presence of the Gandaki River and of other markets reduced its
pull. Village-by-village data for 1915-21 indicate that at least 161 villages were nested
in its intermediate marketing area, which was inhabited by over eighty-six thousand
people.49
For inhabitants of Manichapra, who had easy access to the standard
markets of Rasulpur and Ekma, Maharajganj was the place for their "bigger
purchases." And as the collection point for its intermediate area, it was the focal
point of the surplus produce of the locality. Villagers from Khajuhan, for example, two
miles away, carried their jute and molasses there for sale; from Tesuar, cultivators
brought molasses, barley, and wheat, and from Atarsan molasses, potatoes, brinjals, and
mustard seed. And from Ramapali, whose Dhanuks were known for their production of jute
strips, jute was prepared for the Maharajaganj
183
market. Corn was supplied from other villages, such as Ramgarha and
Lakipur.[50]
Maharajganj was a magnet for other reasons as well: it was the site of
the locality's police station, dispensary, middle English school, post office, and a
district board inspection bungalow. Like most higher-order markets, its economic and
administrative salience was further enhanced by its religious importance: Maharajganj was
the site of a Brahmasthan (sthan means place) , Kalisthan, Satisthan, a math
(monastery), and several temples.[51]
These characteristics of the intermediate market of Maharajganj
reiterate the differences between the three lowest rungs of the local marketing system.
Because of the range and volume of goods and services available at each of these levels,
the relative pull exerted by intermediate, standard, and periodic markets in their
locality differed markedly. Compare, for instance, the spatial dimensions of Maharajganj's
marketing area with that of the standard market of Pachrukhi or the periodic market of
Jigrawan located within its intermediate marketing area. Maharajganj commanded the
attention of buyers and sellers living in 161 villages scattered over an area spanning
five or six miles. The marketing area of Pachrukhi, by contrast, essentially comprised a
primary service area of 3 5 villages largely located within a three- to four-mile radius.[52]
Within the intermediate marketing area of Maharajganj were five haats
Jigrawan , Bhikhaban (Basantpur thana no. 144), Harpur (Siwan thana no.
396), Bishambharpur (Siwan thana no. 400), and Tarwara (Siwan thana no.
538). Except for Bhikhaban, which was one mile from Maharajganj, the other periodic
markets in the marketing area focusing on Maharajganj were farther away, generally along
the periphery of the marketing area. These different level markets were generally not in
competition with one another. First, each offered a very
184
different range and volume of goods and services; second, the various haats
were open on different days.[53]
Standard markets in the late eighteenth century typically offered
agricultural products, both those grown in their locality and those brought in from the
outside, as well as goods and services generally not available in the periodic markets.
The police tax registers of 1793 reveal that this level of market was typically levied
taxes ranging from as little as fifty rupees to as much as two hundred rupees, or
approximately one twenty-eighth to one-seventh the amount collected from the Chapra
market. The tax rolls for the standard market of Hassanpura, for instance, identify
goldsmiths, sellers of oil, cloth dyers, cotton beaters, and confectioners as its
taxpayers. At the standard market of Bagoura, shoppers were likely to find goldsmiths,
sellers of oil, sellers of cotton, curriers and sellers of silk, cloth dyers,
confectioners, bangle sellers, and cotton beaters, in addition to the usual range of shops
devoted to selling agricultural produce.[54]
Detailed information from the early twentieth century presents a similar
picture of standard markets, one that highlights their growing significance in rural
society and ultimately their emergence as sites of contention during the Noncooperation
Movement. The standard market of Basantpur counted 175 families in 1917, most of whom were
engaged in trade and only a few nominally in cultivation. Of these, the principal families
involved in trade were 7 Rauniar families, 5 Rastogi families dealing in cloth, 2 Barawar
families in the spice trade, 20 Kalwar families, and 56 Madhesia Kandu families in grain,
spices, and minor articles. Three Sonar families (2 of whom were nonresidents) also
maintained shops where they carried on their traditional trade as goldsmiths. As a
standard market, some goods were imported by cloth merchants who bought their material
wholesale from Calcutta. Many from nearby villages offered their vegetables, spices, and
other produce
185
for sale at Basantpur. Much the same dimensions of a standard market
in the early twentieth century characterized Bithuna, which lay in the vicinity of
Basantpur and was frequented by people whose marketing needs were not met by their nearby
periodic market. This 1918 source estimated an attendance of some four hundred people and
seventy to eighty stalls and shops.[55]
Pachrukhi is another example of a standard market. It emerged because
its landholder took advantage of its location on the railway line between Siwan and Chapra
to establish a Monday and Thursday haat that made its mark by enticing traders from
Maharajganj to use it as a place to purchase gur (unrefined sugar) from
"surrounding villages." Within a fifteen-year period, it became a standard
market, a collection point for as much as two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand
rupees' worth of sugar purchased there annually for export to other marketing centers. In
addition to serving as a bulking center for gur , it also had fifteen shops selling
other goods, including grains, spices, and sweetmeats.[56]
Haats occupied the lowest rung of the marketing system. The
police tax register for 1793 shows that these periodic markets paid as little as a few
annas in taxes and at most fifty rupees. Panapur, identifiable as a haat in 1793,
and again from the records of 1915 -21, was not unusual for this kind of market in that
its shops only dealt in the sale of cloth and coarse grain (sattu) . Much more
diversified was the periodic market of Kalyanpur in the vicinity of Bhorey, its shops
offering in addition oil, fish, rice, peas, betel leaf, tobacco, and herbs.[57]
Late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century data provide similar
profiles. The haat of Nagra, largely populated and controlled by Muslims, bustled
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, its customers coming to make purchases of "every sort of
ordinary things." In the neighboring village of Kadirpur, in the 1890s, there sprang
up a few shops run by people from nearby villages. These shops had the makings of a
nascent haat and sold fish, vegetables, and oil. Two decades later this had turned
into a regular biweekly haat (Tuesdays and Fridays), in contrast to the Tuesday and
Thursday schedule of neighboring Nagra. The haat
186
at Dumri, held every Wednesday and Saturday at "a central spot in
the village," is another example of a periodic market, albeit a large one. One
visitor encountered twenty shops, of which three dealt in cloth, two in grain, and the
rest in miscellaneous items. Of these he estimated that perhaps five or six may have had
capital of more than one hundred rupees a year; the rest fell far below that level. Aphaur
was yet another village with the essential elements of a haat . Also a market where
"articles of ordinary daily use [were] sold," its population of almost
twenty-five hundred people included a range of cultivating, landholding, moneylending, and
laboring castes. But as its village note writer observed, the existence of the market also
meant the presence of an oil presser (Teli), a tailor (Darzi), an ironsmith (Lohar), a
weaver (Jolaha), and a Bania.[58]
As this reconstruction of the marketing system of Saran indicates, the
bazaar at all its different levels was a venue of "a commingling of categories."
Therefore the local dramas of Noncooperation staged at these places magnified the
contradictions of local society, which surfaced in actions that were textualized as an
agrarian script. Throughout 1921 and in the first months of 1922, the Sitamarhi area of
Muzaffarpur became the "storm-centre of non-cooperation activity in the
province." To cite the inflammatory language of a police report, it was in a state of
"violence and general lawlessness brought about by agitators of the non-co-operation
cult."[59] According to police reports, local leaders insisted
that neither the chaukidari tax nor the land revenue be paid; shopkeepers selling
"English cloth" were told not to engage in that business, with the warning that
their shops would be looted if they did. The burning of bideshi (foreign) cloth and
the picketing of shops, usually of toddy, cloth, liquor, and ganja (hemp), were
common occurrences. A confidential police diary reported that a complete hartal
(strike) called for April 6, 1921, led to "not a single shop . . [doing] any business
and even the big Pethia [market] being deserted."[60]
In this charged atmosphere, a "general hatred" developed in
Sitamarhi, particularly toward the police, who, according to one report,
187
were "daily being abused in filthy language." Local
administrators found themselves deprived of the services and provisions customarily
provided them when they were on tour in the countryside. The consequence of such a
boycott, as one subdivisional officer discovered, was that he had to cut short his rounds
as he "could get no help to erect his tent, or anything to eat, so had to return to
Sitamarhi for his food. Europeans driving through the Subdivision are frequently pelted
with bricks, mud or sticks." Frequent were the incidents involving the local European
population, mostly indigo planters. At the Sitamarhi Mela in April 1921, a group of
Europeans was "surrounded by a frenzied crowd, crying out 'Mahatma Gandhi ki
Jai."'[61]
In Champaran in 1921 the name of Gandhi filled the air in the thanas
of Bagaha, Lauriya, Dhanaha, and Jogapatti. The Noncooperation Movement in this district,
as in Muzaffapur, led to "systematic antagonism against Government and
Europeans," that is, against administrators and their functionaries, especially the
police, and the local European indigo planters who played prominent roles in the
political, social, and economic life of the district.
Police reports cite numerous instances of "large mobs numbering
several thousands" marching in the vicinity of indigo factories shouting
"Gandhijee-ki-jai." Repeated attempts were made to induce factory workers to
leave their service, in one case, resulting in a group of ten men beating up a factory
servant who refused to quit. In February 1921, employees of the Majowah factory in Bagaha
were attacked. In July a "mob" pursued the patwari (village accountant)
of Baikunthpur Factory in Dhanaha thana from village to village, finally catching
him and assaulting him. Factory property also came under attack: on three separate
occasions in November 1921 parts of the Chauterwa factory were set on fire.[62]
But in Muzaffarpur as well as in Champaran, the Noncooperation Movement
triggered actions sparked by local agrarian conflicts. As the
188
Congress newspaper, Searchlight , remarked, the "unrest
among the masses. . . is largely agrarian, directed more against the
landlords and planters than against the Government." P. T. Mansfield, the Sitamarhi
subdivisional officer, echoed this finding. "People entirely disregard
authority," he noted, referring not only to the activities associated with the
Noncooperation Movement but also to such incidents as the attempt to rescue a "debtor
from the custody of two civil court peons" and the difficulty landlords experienced
in collecting rent in Belsand thana .[63]
The "spirit of lawlessness" also assumed the form of haat
looting in Muzaffarpur in early 1921; the government sought to pin the blame on the
"sympathisers" of the movement, but, as the Congress newspaper pointed out, its
volunteers had tried to stop it. These cases generally involved people of low castes and
of little means attempting to enforce lower prices. At Sakri Saraya, ten people were said
to have looted the market in January because prices were not lowered. Two men claiming to
speak for the government demanded that fish be sold in the market of Pakri at the reduced
price of one anna per seer. Threats were also leveled at sellers at another market; they
were warned that their fish and meat would be looted if they did not reduce prices.[64]
Similarly, the Noncooperation Movement in Champaran developed an
agrarian "complex" as "systematic antagonism against Government and
Europeans [was] . . . extended to all loyal zemindars and
raiyats." The bazaar became, as in Muzaffapur, the locus of activity, particularly in
the southern portion of the district, as "a general attack on all bazaars owned by
Europeans [ensued,] with the object of breaking them up and causing loss. The idea being
that if these Europeans are caused loss they will leave the country."[65]
In four different localities of Champaran, "noncooperators"
attempted to establish haats to compete with those controlled by the indigo
factories. Through persuasion or coercion, they sought to direct local inhabitants away
from the old markets and toward the new ones. In the name of Gandhi acts of "haat
looting" were also carried out.
189
Typically, these incidents involved people marching into markets and
imposing and enforcing just prices; on many occasions goods were looted when prices were
not lowered. There were a number of instances of "haat looting" of fish and meat
in Champaran.[66]
Another issue that manifested a decidedly agrarian character was the
conflict over the payment of abwabs , or cesses. This conflict was centered in
precisely those areas of Bettiah subdivision that had "for many years past been
notorious for the friction and ill-feeling between the landlords who hold villages under
lease from the Bettiah and Ramnagar estates and their tenants."[67]
The agrarian script in Saran was enacted in the Katia and Bhorey area.
Over a twelve-month period in 1921 and 1922 a wave of "lawlessness," attributed
by local authorities to the nationalist movement, swept thirty-eight villages in the
locality, which was dominated by the great estate of Hathwa. But along with the picketing
of liquor shops and the attacks on the police, including several cases of arson involving
police stations, there were also assaults on chaukidars and attempts to interfere
with the collection of the chaukidari tax. One police station diary recorded as
many as fifty-three complaints of "threats against the rural police" filed
between January and November 1921.
No less conspicuous were the overt and open expressions of hostility
directed at the maharaja of Hathwa by his tenants, who were increasingly recalcitrant
about paying their rent. According to a police diary of April 1922, the estate's patwaris
(accountants) were "threatened with assault or arson" on four separate
occasions; in other instances, various other officials of the estate were attacked.
Throughout the area a locality where disputes between the local population and the estate
dated back to the early nineteenth century conflicts with tenants were commonplace.[68]
Although geographically peripheral far removed from Patna and even
farther removed from the Chirand-Chapra area Katia and Bhorey
190
were choice targets for Noncooperation because two of the seven police
stations in Gopalganj subdivision were located there. These places, that is, were more
than marketing centers: they were home to the deepest extension of the colonial state, the
machinery of the police. Both Katia and Bhorey, however, were distant police outposts.
Thus, the official response to the outbreak of "lawlessness" in these localities
"completely cut off from the rest of the district" was to impose a punitive
police presence. Local administrators were aware that Katia "police-station is badly
situated being nearly 80 miles from headquarters [Chapra], 25 by road from the nearest
railway station [Mirganj], and 14 from any Telegraph office [Hathwa]. Bhore police-station
is not much better situated."[69]
Such distance existed (and persisted), notwithstanding growing marketing
symmetry, because the gravitational pull of the southeastern quadrant centered on Chapra
remained compelling, its drawing power reinforced by its administrative salience. From the
outset of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century, Chapra was the designated
headquarters. All the "public offices" staffed by the British were located there
except for that of Henry Revel, the collector of government customs, whose posting at
Godna led to its subsequent emergence as Revelganj. From this
commercial-cum-administrative apex, the state gradually extended its reach into the
interior over the course of nineteenth century. This never extended much beyond the
subdivisional level, however. In addition to Chapra a second administrative jurisdiction
was created in 1848, with the founding of Siwan subdivision; a third subdivision, with
Gopalganj as the headquarters, was carved out in 1875.[70]
The most intrusive and coercive machinery of the state was its system of
police organized by police thanas (a police circle that was generally a smaller
unit than the revenue thana) and outposts. Confined initially to such intermediate
markets as Siwan, Goldinganj, Manjhi, and Darauli, the thanas were subsequently
expanded, the headquar-
191
ters of many of them established in settlements that were standard
markets. In the 1920s the district had twenty-eight "independent" police
stations in all: twelve in Chapra subdivision, nine in Siwan, and seven in Gopalganj.
"Formal government," as Hagen states, "roughly coincided
with market place levels.. . . [These] stood out obviously as the backbone
of settlement patterns and human interaction down which trickled a modest formal
government. The informal political context, or hierarchies of control, on the other hand,
had a more equal but complex relationship with the economic system."[71]
The superimposition of an administrative grid on higher-order markets, in other words, was
a regular feature of the Indian landscape. Thus, colonial administration was designed to
fit in with the higher-order markets and to reach down to the level of standard markets.
The maintenance of an administrative presence at the higher levels of
the local marketing system and the siting of administrative headquarters in towns and
other large settlements reflected the ambition of the colonial state to prevent competing
centers of power from flourishing at the highest-order marketing nodes. In part,
government's goal was to safeguard its share of the revenue, which it facilitated by
taking up residence in the main centers of commerce; in part, it sought to preserve law
and order. But the control network of the state clearly tapered off sharply at the
intermediate, and especially the standard, market level; lower-order markets and their
hinterlands were largely beyond the pale of direct government control.
The events of Katia and Bhorey in 1921-22 therefore point to another
principle underlying the dynamics of the local marketing system: the relationship of
bazaars to landholders and their networks of control and power. To focus on this aspect
requires looking at the ties that bound Katia and Bhorey to Hathwa, the seat of the great
estate of Hathwa and not coincidentally also the site of a standard market. Bhorey, in
fact, was one of the administrative and rent collection points for the great estate. These
two localities, moreover, were problem areas for Hathwa, a consideration that made at
least one local administrator hesitate to assign punitive police there, because, as he
observed, the estate was "on bad terms with its tenants. . . and
though the [Hathwa]
192
Raj as Zamindar would have to bear its share of the cost, the
assessment of the entire areas would tend to create the idea that it is specially directed
against recalcitrant tenants of the Raj."[72]
This conflict grew out of deep-rooted animosities in the Bhorey area. An
early chapter of this history of conflict was the so-called internal rising of 1844, when
Bujahawan Misra, a Brahmin of Bhorey, supported by Bhumihar Brahmins and peasants of his
locality, claimed an extensive tract of land, including the former zamindari
headquarters of Huseypur, as his rent-free grant (birt) . In the ensuing conflict,
several clashes took place before government intervened on behalf of Hathwa and quelled
the disturbance. By the early twentieth century, the village was riven by a factionalism
that pitted a group of Bhumihar Brahmins against a group of Brahmins, a conflict echoing
the historic tensions in the locality between the Bhumihar landholder of the area, the
maharaja of Hathwa, and the village-level elite, the Brahmins. Where the twentieth-century
version differs from the early-nineteenth-century story is in the ostensibly more
caste-centered alignment of the opposing groups, for the earlier struggle had involved the
Brahmin supporters of the ousted Bhumihar Huseypur raja and their multicaste tenants, on
the one side, and the Bhumihar cadet line of the Huseypur family, the Hathwa raja, on the
other.[73]
No wonder the political struggle for independence in Katia and Bhorey
was infused with local social and economic issues of a distinctly agrarian complex, a
weaving together of conditions and causes that ultimately underlined Hathwa dominance
throughout Gopalganj subdivision, as well as the involvement of landholders in the
founding and control of markets. Both of these aspects are well illustrated by the links
between Katia and Bhorey, on the one hand, and Hathwa, on the other, connections that yet
again reiterate the extent to which the market structured events and processes.
Tied to one another by a metaled road built in the late nineteenth
century, Katia and Bhorey were also connected to Hathwa, and all
193
three to the intermediate market of Mirganj. Contrast these ties
cemented literally by a major road with the fact that neither Katia nor Bhorey was as well
connected by roads to its subdivision headquarters of Gopalganj. On the contrary, from
Katia the way to Gopalaganj was mostly via a third-class road; and from Bhorey, the best
route was to take the first-class road south to Mirganj and then head north to Gopalganj,
which was roughly on the same latitude.
A haat in 1793, Hathwa's stature as a marketing settlement rose
with its emergence as the headquarters village of the great estate. Formerly known as the
Huseypur raj, the estate had been based in Huseypur (thana no. 362), sixteen miles
to the northwest of Hathwa, an important standard market more prosperous than either Katia
or Bhorey.[74]
By the 1840s Hathwa was described as having "large bazaars"
and biweekly markets. Fort, palace, and bazaar: all the markers reflecting and exercising
the power and authority of this great estate were thus in place by the early nineteenth
century. In the 1870s the buildings and bazaar surrounding the Hathwa fort where the raja
resided were razed and a new bazaar erected at great expense: the bazaar alone cost over
Rs. 5,700 to build. An early-twentieth-century account describes Hathwa as an impressive
standard market, its shops offering a range of agricultural and consumer goods and its
specialists providing a variety of services. The presence of schools and temples further
accentuated its centrality in the locality. Its salience-and its value to the estate-can
also be quantified: the estate collected Rs. 1,400 per annum as professional tax from
traders stationed there.[75]
The strongest link tying Katia and Bhorey to Hathwa was the network
shaped by the great estate's system of control. Because Hathwa was the hub, it was the
seat of the raja's residential palace; and Hathwa and its nearby villages housed most of
the key retainers of the estate. In addition to the estate kachcheri (office),
located in the Hathwa cluster
194
of villages, were the estate manager's bungalow, the diwan's
house, the Hathwa Eden school, the post office, the raj dispensary, and the temple called
Gopalmandir.
Like Katia and Bhorey, Hathwa was not only a standard market but also
part of a larger economic system, in this case centering on the intermediate market of
Mirganj. Proximity made the tie to Hathwa closer Mirganj is only two and one-half miles
away; Katia and Bhorey were farther afield at twenty-two and fifteen miles, respectively.
A Sunday and Thursday market, Hathwa relied on Mirganj's Tuesday and Friday market that
emerged in the nineteenth century as an intermediate market with a much wider range of
goods and services. Consider the roster of shops existing in the two markets. Hathwa
bazaar had two retail cloth shops, eleven confectioners' shops, twenty-five kanjurais(kunjras
, Muslim vegetable seller) shops, fifteen grain (galdar) shops, four betel shops,
eight tailor's shops, three dyer's shops, and one ganja and opium shop. Mirganj, on
the other hand, had seventeen retail cloth shops, nineteen grain golas , three
metal dealers, six spice shops, twenty pulse shops, six confectioners, ten oil shops,
seven shops selling miscellaneous commodities, eleven silk makers, twelve tailor shops,
seven meat butchers, three ghee shops, four iron shops, twelve jewelers, and three betel
shops. Cattle were also sold. It was, in addition, an entrepôt for grain from the north
and northwest, which was then exported to Patna and elsewhere. Furthermore, several Patna
merchants stationed agents there for linseed, cotton, and gur .[76]
As a standard market, Hathwa was linked to but also overshadowed by the
intermediate market of Mirganj. Their complementary economic relationship was reinforced
by their communication links. The so-called Hathwa railway station was in Mirganj the
branch line of the Bengal and North-Western Railway linking Siwan to Thawe intersected it
as were the police station and subregistry office for the locality. In other words,
Mirganj was part of the Hathwa system of control; its very development stemmed from Hathwa
efforts.[77] Moreover, the
195
role of Mirganj as the main marketing node in the vicinity of Hathwa
reflected the dominant presence of the great estate in another respect: Mirganj allowed
the Hathwa raj to keep the state at a distance, at arm's length from its seat of power, a
feat that would have been far more difficult to accomplish had Hathwa developed into an
intermediate market and therefore attracted the attention of state power. Higher-order
marketing nodes naturally drew government attention: the siting of a police station in
Mirganj is one illustration of this rule. A similar process no doubt explains the symbolic
connotations of the act of situating the Hathwa bazaar at a remove from the Hathwa fort,
where the raja resided.
The lengths to which zamindars, especially great landholders, were
willing to go to keep government at bay is illustrated by a wellknown nineteenth-century
case involving the maharaja of Bettiah, whose estate extended across much of Champaran.
When government sought to station an assistant or deputy magistrate in Bettiah in 1845,
the raja refused to provide space, conceding only that he "could grant no allotment
of ground nearer than 2 coss or 4 miles from Bettiah." To continue in the words of
this district administrator, the raja consistently endeavored "to prevent as much as
he possibly can, the confirmation of the Government order; indeed, were I to believe one
half of the reports that are current, he would give a lack [lakh] of rupees to have the
cutcherry [office] removed some distance from Bettiah."[78]
Fifteen years later, in 1860, local administrators were still trying to
stake out an official presence in this "large Native Town" of almost fifteen
thousand people that stood at the center of the lines of trade and traffic of the
district. Furthermore, Bagaha thana , an area of intense activity in 1921-22, was
at a distance of sixty miles from the district headquarters of Motihari. As the magistrate
observed:
In Bettiah the word of the Rajah or his seal is the law. It is true
there is a Darogah [police officer] there but what can he do? If he does his duty he has
all the Rajah's Amla [retainers] against him. They will, by perpetually bringing frivolous
or false charges, sooner or later prejudice the Magistrate against him. If they fail with
one Magistrate, they will succeed with another. . .
196
On the other hand, if the Darogah does not do his duty he risks his
appointment. Bettiah is thirty miles from Moteeharry.[79]
Chaukidars in Bettiah, as the commissioner noted, consulted with
the raja or with his agents before conveying information to the police.[80]
Although this episode ends with the great estate capitulating to the
demands of government, its details rightly point to another significant feature relating
to the emergence of the bazaar as the site and scene of social and political action: the
significant involvement of landholders in the affairs of the bazaar, as also in the
establishment and maintenance of fairs. The Hathwa hand, so visible because of its size
and activity, can be clearly seen at work in developing markets throughout its estate.
Much of the intensification of markets that has been traced for the north and northwestern
thanas of Mirganj and Gopalganj in the nineteenth century can be attributed to the
emergence of this great estate. Because of its political and social control of the area,
as well as its considerable economic resources, the estate was instrumental in having this
formerly market-poor subdivision of Gopalganj catch up with the rest of the district in
number of markets.[81]
Hathwa's attention to markets was not confined to its residential
village or to settlements in the heart of its estate. As early as 1794 the estate's
strategy of expansion was to "purchase . . . lands."[82] Chapra and Revelganj were two places where it acquired substantial
interests during the course of the nineteenth century. In 1873 74, for instance, the
estate sank Rs. 108,200 into the purchase of a half-share of Ratanpura, a hamlet of
Chapra. By 1886 Hathwa had gained control of the entire village. It also secured
substantial interests in Revelganj, particularly in Godna, where it first erected a
bungalow and then proceeded to purchase nearby lands, which became the site of its bazaar
and grain golas .[83]
197
Hathwa was not alone in playing the market strategy. One dynamic
underlying the growing symmetry in distribution of markets was the active role of
landholders in establishing them. Maharajganj and Pachrukhi, discussed earlier to
highlight the dimensions of an intermediate and a standard market respectively, provide
two clear-cut examples of landholders purposively taking on the task of building up
markets. The substantial market of Maharajganj, as already noted, grew out of the village
of Pasnauli in the 1760s, when its landholder established a ganj on its
uncultivated land. Similarly, Pachrukhi, founded in 1901, sprang to life because its
"proprietor," Moti Chand, took advantage of its location on the railway line to
erect some houses on the parti (waste or uncultivated land) area near the village's
railway station. By enticing traders from Maharajganj to frequent the village to purchase gur
from "surrounding villages," he managed in the course of fifteen years to turn
the village into a standard market.[84]
Classical central-place theory, as these two illustrations suggest and
additional data confirm, can only partly explain the geographical pattern of markets; it
certainly cannot satisfactorily account for all the forces that led to a particular
geographical distribution of markets; nor can it resolve why some areas of the south and
the east had a higher clustering of marketing nodes than others. Instructive examples are
provided by the parganas of Bal and Goa (latter-day thanas of Chapra, Parsa,
and Mashrak) at the turn of the nineteenth century, an area by then already highly
cultivated, well populated, and intersected by some of the district's best communication
lines. Also significant about this area is that its settlement and landholding patterns
endowed certain families with decisive power in these localities. Pargana Bal was the area
in which related Eksaria Bhumihar Brahmin families established residential headquarters at
Parsa, Chainpur, and Bagoura, zamindari centers that also became the prime
marketing settlements in their localities. As one contemporary observer noted, the
zamindars of Parsa, Chainpur, and Bagoura "exercised great influence over the
inhabitants of this Pergunnah."[85] Their
"influence"
198
was spelled out in the late-eighteenth-century tax roster of markets,
which recorded their proprietorship over many of Bal's markets. Branches of this clan,
which had set up additional zamindaris in Rusi, Khaira, Manjha (Dangsi), and
Salempur, commanded markets in parganas Bara, Barrai, and Dangsi (Siwan
subdivision), three other areas with large numbers of markets.[86]
Amnaur, Mashrak, Tajpur, and Makair are other notable examples of zamindari
centers that doubled as standard markets. In south India, too, landholder involvement with
markets was commonplace, many markets convening at or near the residences of zamindars.
Throughout the subcontinent, as Richard G. Fox writes, "much of the history of town
formation has to do with a local raja , navab , or big zamindar who
established a town or created a market. This sort of petty nobility or local strong men
endowed towns and began market places and, traditionally, provided supra-caste integration
to them."[87] The development of market settlements as zamindari
centers in north India "was probably internal to the process of growth in the
marketing system. This was because Rajput, Bhumihar or Jat lineage elites and rajas
founded markets where there was already a good degree of peasant interaction and where
merchants would be expected to gather. While most central places combined several
functions, political circumstances or temporary economic situations related to non-local
trade might determine that some were overwhelmingly more important in one function than
others."[88]
Markets in Saran above the periodic and standard size, except for
Darauli, which formed part of the large estate of the Gorakhpur-based raja of Majhauli,
and Manjhi, which belonged to the Muslim Manjhi family of Shahamat Ali Khan, were,
however, generally not the property of individual landholders. Higher-order markets were
too big and too complex to remain intact in the hands of one family, especially given the
fact that the standard nineteenth-century experience of many Saran estates was that of
increasing fissioning and subdivisions. Moreover, except for Hathwa and a few large
zamindars, the district was largely in the hands of many small landholders.
199
Because of the pattern of landholding in the district, the role of
small landholders in the intensification of markets cannot be ignored. Pargana
Goa's markets typify this pattern of growth. In the late eighteenth century its markets
were in the hands of many, a trend also discernible from the early-twentieth-century
information on thanas Mashrak and Parsa, areas which encompassed that pargana
and which remained rich in markets. Most thanas characterized by large numbers of
small landholders Sonepur, where the average estate size was four acres, and Parsa,
Mashrak, Siwan, and Darauli, where it was seven, eleven, twelve, and thirteen,
respectively were also localities with the highest shares of markets.[89]
One manifestation of landholder involvement in the founding,
development, and control of markets was the intense competition waged by rival zamindars,
a rivalry that often erupted into open conflict. As early as 1789, local administrators
had to enforce as "an established usage, that no market shall be erected in the
vicinity of another, or be held on the same day, to its
prejudice.. . . [But the] word 'vicinity' must be construed by the
collector, and give rise to numberless disputes."[90] Typical
of such cases was the dispute between Subh Narain and Bhore Narain, referred to the civil
courts in 1802, because the latter had started a new haat in "Hoosypoor"
village that threatened to disrupt the business of the long-standing minor market of the
former in adjoining "Simurdah." The presiding official noted that "frequent
complaints. . . [were made] by zemindars. . . relative to
the institution of Hauts or markets, in the neighbourhood of others which have been
established for many years."[91]
The establishment of new haats and the disputes that ensued in
the wake of their founding continued to be sources of conflict well into the twentieth
century. Such confrontations, well documented in the criminal records, frequently turned
violent. In the words of one police report, an enduring source of criminality was the
"trouble arising from
200
the quarrels of rival setters-up of markets."[92]
Representative of this kind of "trouble" is the 1863 case involving the maliks
(proprietors, owners) of Alhunpore, who attempted to construct a new haat next to
an existing one at Khodaibagh. In the "serious disturbance" that ensued,
"several men were wounded. Some of the rioters have been punished by imprisonment for
two years and Rs. zoo fine each."[93]
The Noncooperation Movement in Champaran pursued a deliberate strategy
of establishing new markets to compete with existing ones. Time and again attempts were
made to prevent people from patronizing markets controlled by European indigo planters. In
many instances, rival haats were founded. Local officials, seeking to disband these
new, rival markets, prosecuted people under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code,
which allowed magisterial officers to issue "temporary orders in urgent cases of
nuisance or apprehended danger," the "danger" and "nuisance"
stemming from the new markets competing with and even displacing existing ones. People
implicated in these incidents were charged with unlawfully restraining others from
resorting to old markets, illegally starting new ones in the ambit of existing markets,
and violating orders not to establish new ones.[94]
Zamindars vied with one another for the control of markets-as they also
did for melas-because they were a reliable source of income and prestige: they allowed
landholders to play the role of patron. Especially in lower-order markets, where the
influence and power of landholders was most prevalent, the opportunities for profit were
manifold. With the state largely absent at this level of society (and indeed, only
nominally represented at even the higher-order markets) the only challenge to their
supremacy was that posed by rival landholders.
Official interest in markets was largely defined by revenue and
considerations of law and order. Government's stake in them was otherwise minimal and had
been so from the outset of colonial rule. As articulated by one district official in 1771,
in a voice almost suggestive of disinterest, markets were the "property of the
zemindars in whose Districts they are, and included in their Agreements [with
government]." On another occasion, this same official declared that there were no
201
markets "dependent on government," nor were there any that
did not belong to landholders.[95]
Contrast the limited presence of the state in the operations of markets
with the elaborate mechanisms and processes of control maintained by the zamindars. The
1790s case of the intermediate market of Goldinganj, whose zamindar was prosecuted for
continuing to collect dues in the market even though government had assumed "all
gunges, bazars [sic] and hauts," provides a telling example. The Goldinganj
zamindar, Mulchand, was singled out for punishment because his case was to serve as an
example of the state's prerogative to restrict the rights of landholder to collect dues
because the practice of sayer (taxes on nonland items such as on markets and
customs and transit duties) had been abolished. However, this was only one instance, and a
rare exception to the rule of allowing landholders a free rein over their markets. Other
than the targeting of a few landholders for illegally collecting market dues in the early
1790s, government never again made any concerted effort to stamp out the practice.[96]
Government's investigation into the practices obtaining at Goldinganj
revealed that every shop was required to pay a "ground rent" to the market darogha
(steward), who collected on behalf of his employer. In addition, as Beni Bakkal, the
market weighman, testified, fees were also levied on a variety of transactions. Merchants
importing salt for sale at this market paid a few copper coins (two falus and twelve dams)
per maund. Additional collections were made by Mulchand's retainers (amla) from
buyers and shopkeepers who came to buy, as well as from sellers who came to offer their
wares. The rates varied from item to item: for example, purchasers of gur and sugar
paid nine dams and three couries per rupee, while those selling these goods paid less, six
dams per rupee. Grain sellers were charged by the bullock load, one seer for every load.
Other fees were levied to subsidize the pay of the market staff: for the weighmen, who
numbered eight in all, for the chaudhuri , whose job was "to collect from
moodies and other sellers of goods in gunge and to encourage and protect beoparries,"
and for the
202
peons, mutasaddis (writers), and pasabans (watchmen) who
comprised the rest of the staff.[97] According to Mulchand, the
charges levied at the market had been agreed upon by mutual consent when "beoparries
and mahajuns" (traders and moneylenders or bankers) came to him en masse to seek his
protection. Other than ground rent, he claimed, the rest of the monies collected was used
to defray various expenses: paying the market staff, maintaining a godown for the storage
of salt, hauling water to the market, or transporting sepoy battalions of the East India
Company across the Ganges. And whatever sums remained were given to charity. In the
estimation of the police tax rolls, Goldinganj earned at least one thousand rupees per
annum for its landholder.[98]
The prosecution of the Goldinganj zamindar in 1793-he was fined three
thousand rupees and imprisoned for six months-did little to stop the levying of
"illegal cesses" (abwabs) . Throughout the colonial period landholders
continued to impose and collect a wide variety of illegal imposts. Markets in particular
were valuable sources of income for their holders, who profited from the collection of
ground rent and from fees or dues levied on practically every type of establishment set up
there, as well as on every form of transaction enacted there. Typically, fees were levied
on stalls erected in haats . In Dumuria each stall paid kouri , a nominal
fee of one and a half pies per haat day (twelve pies = one anna; sixteen annas =
one rupee). In Bishunpore, vegetable, sattu, and oil shops each paid one-half pice (three
pie = one pice; four pice = one anna); the vegetable shop also gave some vegetables. Rice,
gram, wheat, and presumably other grain shops offered a "handful of grains,"
while cloth shops, which must have made the most money on their sales, were levied the
highest fee-one anna per month. At Barahima shopkeepers selling goods brought by them
personally had to pay one quarter of a dhegua (or twelve kauris per head) and those who
used bullocks to transport their goods paid twice as much, half a dhegua or twenty-four
kauris each. Every cartload of merchandise brought in for sale paid six pies; cloth
dealers gave three pies per shop. At Mirganj the Hathwa raj charged four annas for each
cartload of
203
potatoes brought in for sale and six pies for that of onions. Fees
were charged for both buying and selling cattle, a comparatively high rate of two annas
per head of cattle. And if shops dealt in large quantities of vegetables, a rate of
one-half anna was added on to the fee of supplying a one-half seer to the thikadar
.[99]
A lengthy list of illegal cesses compiled specifically for Patna
Division in the late nineteenth century can be divided into four categories: Those imposed
on shops or shopkeepers had a rate varying from area to area and also according to the
kind of merchandise they dealt in. Some were imposed on the actual producers of goods
marketed and on the purchasers of the merchandise. Others were levied on the products
themselves. And finally there were levies on the modes of transportation used to bring
goods to the market.
To take the illegal cesses on shops and shopkeepers first: The practice
of pethiya in Tirhut targeted dealers in haats . They had to pay a fee, in
cash or in kind, prorated according to the value of goods they sold. Another general cess
termed ugahi was directed at anybody who offered goods for a sale at a market. The
tendency in some localities was to levy a higher abwab on shopkeepers holding land
in a marketing settlement than on those who were nonresident shopkeepers, a distinction no
doubt intended to entice outside entrepreneurs. Fees were also levied on specific types of
shops: in Patna district, for instance, abkari dictated that every toddy shop
contribute one pot of toddy on various occasions.[100]
Another set of cesses that persisted throughout the colonial era was
directed at peasants who marketed their produce. Mauginchutki referred to a cess in
Tirhut imposed on villagers selling grain retail; it essentially targeted the sellers (and
producers) of small amounts of grain. Another cess called hati taxed cultivators
and those buying from them for trading in the "staple articles of the village":
two pies per rupee from the seller and four pies per rupee from the buyer. And if peasants
were engaged in selling vegetables and fruits they paid an annual cess of two to four
annas. Similarly, tobacco growers were charged from one anna and four pies to five annas
for every bigha
204
(roughly one-third of an acre) of land devoted to tobacco. Growers of
cash crops were invariably taxed the price of cultivating crops promising better returns
than did the price of ordinary foodcrops.[101]
Such cesses were not restricted to producers of agricultural goods.
People engaged in the making of virtually every kind of marketable item were subjected to
some form of illegal cesses. Considered a ground rent in part, mutharfa was
actually a "tax on trade. . . levied by proprietors on residents of
their estates for allowing them to carry on their respective trades or to perform social
and religious ceremonies in peace."[102]Mutharfa in
Muzaffarpur in the 1890s was imposed on weavers for working their looms (tana) , on
oil pressers for operating each oil press (chiragi ), on lac makers for trading in
lac-made items and bangles (lahi) , on Chamars for skinning dead cattle and dealing
in hides (charsa ), and on the weighman of a market for conducting his business (haat
or haatwai ).[103]
Other taxes, termed dundidari , were imposed on buyers typically
petty banias and traders purchasing small amounts who came from outside the village
to buy grain from cultivators. Still other cesses were imposed on sellers and buyers
dealing in larger transactions. Wholesale grain dealers (usually at ganjs) not only
paid rent for their stalls but also paid golamundpie , a cess of one-quarter of a
seer for every maund of grain they had in storage. In many marketing settlements of Patna
a "bazar [sic] duty" was exacted on every article brought into the
bazaar. Even goods passing through a landholder's area were subject to cesses. For
instance, there was a tobacco and grain duty to be paid to the area's landholder on every
bundle and every bag of grain transported through a locality. Bardana in Patna
necessitated a fee of one-half anna on the maund for every article brought in for sale on
pack bullocks; bardana in Tirhut was a levy of five to six annas per bullock.
Loading or unloading a boat at a ganj in Saran cost another illegal cess one anna
on every boat according to the practice of kistibojhai as did every bullock or pony
that carried a load each animal paid three or four annas per annum. A fee called chutti
in Tirhut was levied on grain
205
in ganjs unloaded from boats or carts and stocked in sacks or
kept on the ground outside a shop. Even owning a cart in Tirhut subjected a person to a
cess: eight to ten annas per cart, or garihana .[104]
Although abwabs had been declared illegal in 1793, the government
made little effort to enforce the law. On the contrary, its official position was to allow
landholders the right to exact, with few exceptions, whatever claims and dues they could
from the rest of the population: "If a person not entitled to levy dues levies them
in any thoroughfare or public place, he shall be liable to fine. If the village hat is
held on the high road passing through the village, or on ground which the public have an
undoubted right to use for the purpose, the exaction of dues should be
prohibited.. . . But when it is held, as is most commonly the case, on land
which is the private property of the zamindar, or on land over which the public may
perhaps have the right of way, but not a prescriptive right to use the land for the
purpose of holding a market, no special legislative or executive interference appears to
be called for."[105]
Such dues were considered beyond official purview even in cases where
government had granted compensation to landholders for the abolition of duties at the time
of the Permanent Settlement. According to the Bengal authorities, "It is not uncommon
for the proprietor, on establishing a new market, to promise that no dues shall be taken
for a year or two, with the object of attracting buyers and sellers to the market. But in
the great majority of cases tolls are levied either in cash or in kind, and frequently in
both of these forms; and it does not appear that in any case the levy of dues is forgone
upon the acknowledged ground that compensation for their abolition has been granted."[106] Local officials were unanimous in recommending that government not
interpose in this matter, as the custom had existed "from time immemorial, and [is]
willingly acquiesced in by the people, and [the] imposition [of taxes] does not in any way
interfere with the healthy growth of trade in hats and market."[107]
Government's unwillingness to legislate against the practice of levying
cesses also continued in the face of evidence it uncovered that in the past the custom had
been the price people paid to landholders for pro-
206
tection and that that was still the case. Government nevertheless
opposed making the practice a "criminal offence," believing that the "main
security for the public . . . is the free trade in hauts, that is, in
the multitude of hauts, and the freedom of people to go to this market, or to that."[108] The lone dissenting view was proffered by the Patna collector, who
did not see the practice as one submitted to by the people without "murmur or
inconvenience." On the contrary, he noted, the burden of these tolls or duties was
felt greatly by the poorer classes and was also responsible for enhancing the price of
commodities. Nonetheless, he, too, believed that special legislation was unnecessary.[109]
Another factor contributing to the events of 1921-22 unfolding in the
bazaar was the fundamental dynamic of the local marketing system, which defined the local
community. Both the colonial state and the landholders understood and exploited this
dynamic. It was this very structure and functioning that enabled the people of the
localities of Katia and Bhorey to organize as a community and to identify their targets:
the colonial state and the great estate of Hathwa.
Moreover, the forging of a community based on the networks of the local
marketing system was an emerging pattern in the late nineteenth century. This mobilization
of a "a shared sense of community,"[110] documented as
well for other parts of north India, is evident in the Cow Protection Movement of the late
nineteenth century. My previous study of the movement in Saran focuses on the 1893
Basantpur "riot" to show that this event turned out a crowd drawn largely from
the standard marketing area of Basantpur who took up the cause of cow protection and
rioted over the issue of cow killing. Not only did the market at Basantpur provide the
opportunity to organize a crowd the riot occurred on a Wednesday, a marketing day, when
the presence of large numbers of people would go unremarked but it also provided the
community itself. A standard market, Basantpur was the "only market of any importance
in this elaka (locality)."[111]
207
The settlement of Basantpur in 1893 had approximately sixteen hundred
inhabitants who were engaged principally in trade and only nominally in cultivation. More
than 50 percent of its population consisting of Madhesia Kandus (31 percent), Kalwars
(11), Telis (5), Rauniars (4), Rastogis (2), Buruwars (1), and Sonars (0.5) can be
identified as traders. In addition some nonresident Sonars also kept shops there. Of the
remaining residents, many had small shops or worked as artisans: Turhas (4 percent) were
vegetable growers and sellers, Barais (2) were betel leaf growers and sellers, Lohars (1)
were blacksmiths, Darzis (2) were tailors, and Jolahas (2) were cotton weavers. The
Rastogis, Rauniars, Buruwars, Kalwars, and Madhesia Kandus were "the principal
trading class." Madhesia Kandus traded in various agricultural goods, including grain
and spices. The latter item was also the specialty of Buruwars; Rastogis were the major
cloth merchants.
Basantpur was a collection and distribution point that received the
grains, spices, vegetables, and other agricultural produce from many villages in the
locality. Sujad Hossein, for example, went there every harvest to sell some of the ten to
fifteen maunds of grain he produced. Basantpur was also the distribution point for grain
from outside of the district that made its way there via such higher-level markets as
Siwan, Mairwa, and Maharajganj. Cloth, the other major import, was purchased wholesale
from Calcutta another example of the direct trade links forged to standard markets instead
of connections via higher-order markets.
Several service functions were also clustered in Basantpur. In 1871 it
had become the headquarters of a thana that assumed its name. Along with a police
station, it also supported a dispensary and an inspection bungalow. The opening of a
subregistry office in December 1892 lent it further administrative importance. Such
services established Basantpur not only as a center for filling many needs of the locality
but also as a magnet for people like Khub Narain, who moved there to take up the
profession of writing documents for people who wished to register them.[112]
The marketing center of Basantpur included in its orbit at least
forty-four villages, giving it a total population of over ten thousand people. Since our
sources identify only the market used most frequently,
208
they often do not note the fact that most villagers relied on more
than one market, certainly more than their neighborhood haat . Therefore, for many
villages in the vicinity of Basantpur the only information offered is that they focused on
this or that minor market. Yet as the data suggest, as in the case of Babhanauli, its
residents frequented the haat of Khawaspur but also went to Basantpur to make
"larger purchases," for haats that were in its marketing area were
comparable neither in size nor in the range of goods offered. Bala, for instance, provided
vegetables and rice, but it was a "small bazaar. . . [and] cloth shops
seldom opened here."[113]
The villages considered "most guilty" in the riot lay within
the standard marketing area of Basantpur. To the north were seven villages along the
Salempur Ghat road; their inhabitants had participated in all the incidents beginning with
the mass meeting of the Gaurakshini Sabha, which preceded the riot at Basantpur. The
ringleaders were from these villages: Lakhnowrah, Narharpur, Bala, Shampur, Khawaspur,
Basawan, and Madarpur. Two other clusters of "guilty" villages lay immediately
to the west and northwest of Basantpur. One of these was almost adjacent to the market,
the other a little removed. Only the fourth cluster of villages lay outside the immediate
marketing area of Basantpur: it was nested in the intermediate marketing area of
Maharajganj, which served as a major conduit of grain and other goods for various markets,
including Basantpur.
The faces in the crowd can also be traced to Basantpur and its marketing
locality. The seven principals accused in the riot case were residents of Lakhnowrah,
Narharpur, Shampur, Bala, and Madarpur "men of influence in the neighbourhood,"
or, as the local police inspector addressed them, "you are the raises of the
district, respectable men."[114] They were either resident
zamindars or petty officials of their villages, in two cases they were both landholders
and cloth merchants in Basantpur. That witnesses easily identified members of the crowd is
testimony not only to its distinguished composition but also to the fact that participants
and bystanders alike were drawn from the "neighborhood" defined by the marketing
system.
These social dimensions of Basantpur's marketing area were repeatedly
alluded to at the trial. Time and again local residents appearing as
209
witnesses explained they knew this or that person "by name as
well as by their features." What they meant by this is that both acquaintances and
friendships were delimited by the marketing area of a locality. One local inhabitant named
Sujad Hossein explained that he and Rahmat Ali lived in the same village but were not good
friends. Occasionally when they met they would walk together, as they did on the day of
the Basantpur riot. The latter put it more directly when he followed his nonfriend's
testimony: "There is no dosti [friendship] between me and the last
witness.. . . We never go to the bazar [sic] together." [115] Similarly Bindeshri Prasad pointed to the dynamics of the
marketing networks in explaining his ability to identify one of the accused: "I came
to know him in the ordinary way, having seen him coming and going about not in any
particular manner.. . . I came to know him well during the last eight or
nine months. I have seen him going to and coming from the market, and that is how I came
to know him. When a person comes to a place, he does not get acquainted with all the
people there at once. I asked him his name, and he told me. We were going along the road
when I asked him his name."[116]
In short, the locus of the Basantpur riot was the standard marketing
community, and leadership, whether at the local Cow Protection Movement meeting or at the
head of the crowd, was comprised of men who were the influential figures within this area.
They were the supporters of the movement and played the primary role in the collective
action. These petty maliks and substantial raiyats operating at the level of
the standard marketing area were thus the key to control and conflict in local society.
A similar investigation of the Katia and Bhorey incidents again turns up
a local community defined by its markets. According to a lead furnished by police reports,
the principal activists involved in the various incidents were supplied by thirty-eight
"guilty villages." Ten of these villages can be identified incontrovertibly as
belonging to the standard marketing area of Katia, six to that of Bhorey, and the
remaining twenty-two, by virtue of their location and relation to their periodic markets,
can be tied to the marketing areas of one or the other.[117]
210
Important enough to justify the stationing of a police thana ,
which became the target of several attacks during the period of "lawlessness,"
the standard marketing center of Katia constituted, according to its village note of 1917,
a "big market" whose "advantage" was taken "by numerous
villages." By my reckoning, its "advantage" extended to an area whose
farthest limits were four or even five miles away precisely the zone within which many of
the remaining twenty-two villages were located although its immediate and regular
customers came from a cluster of sixty-nine villages within about a three-mile radius. Ten
of the so-called guilty villages can be placed squarely within this area.[118]
Bhorey, the other focal point of the incidents of 1921 22, was also a
"big village," its five hamlets of some 350 households rounded out to a total
population of seventeen hundred people. As in the case of Katia, its significance as a
nodal point was recognized in the late nineteenth century by the establishment of a police
station and a dispensary there. Six "guilty villages" were situated within its
marketing area encompassing a total of twenty-seven villages largely within a two-mile
radius.[119]
Virtually all of the remaining twenty-two villages said to be infected
with "a spirit of lawlessness" can be traced to the gravitational field of Katia
or Bhorey or tied to them through links to the minor markets clustered around them. The
evidence for the "guilty" village of Kurthia (thana no. 199) is
irrefutable: its village note indicates that its people frequented both the Katia and
Bhorey markets, each of which lay at a distance of about four miles. A link can also be
established for Deuria (no. 413), the scene of a "sensational case" involving a
woman who was paraded around naked and blackened, as well as for the villages of Shamdas
Bagahi (no. 410) and Ram Das Bagahi (no. 392), from which people turned out in great
numbers to riot against the police sent in to investigate the case. Although all three of
these villages, as well as the four neighboring "guilty" villages Dharmagta (no.
412), Indarpatti (no. 429), Semaria (no. 43 ), and Rupi Bagahi (no. 433), are not
specifically identified in the village notes as being within the marketing area of Katia,
they clearly formed part of the wider area serviced by
211
Katia, a standard market. Furthermore, Deuria, Semaria, and Rupi
Bagahi can be distinctly placed in the minor marketing area of Indarpatti; the remaining
three of the seven "guilty" villages can be clustered together as well because
Ram Das Bagahi and Dharmagta belonged to the marketing area of Shamdas Bagahi. Whereas
Shamdas Bagahi was a minor market of some note its market yielded fees of Rs. 135 per
annum Indarpatti was a smaller haat earning a meager income of only Rs. 6 a year,
and, whereas the former counted twenty-four villages in its marketing area, the latter
included only twelve. Shamdas Bagahi was a place for purchasing local necessities grain,
salt, tobacco, vegetables, and meat. All transactions were retail, and sellers were
sometimes both banias (professional shopkeepers) and cultivators, although this
latter group primarily sold its grain to the banias . Indarpatti was a market of a
different scale: its trade focused primarily on salt, tobacco, and vegetables and did not,
as its village note reveals, deal in grain. The proximity and the different capacities of
these markets meant that their constituencies overlapped considerably. Moreover, the
markets operated on different schedules. Shamdas Bagahi convened on Tuesday and Friday,
Indarpatti on Tuesday and Saturday. Furthermore, both of these overlapped with yet another
periodic market in the vicinity: the "minor" market of Jamunha (no. 424), which
had an income closer to that of Shamdas Bagahi than to that of Indarpatti because it, too,
was largely a grain market. Jamunha's marketing days were on Wednesday and Sunday, meaning
that people could, if they wanted to, frequent all three markets.[120]
These three areas were all tied to Katia, which was literally the focal
point of the locality because the district roads converged on it. The inhabitants of
Pakarian (no. 477), for instance, could frequent their local haat for everyday
necessities but go to Katia for "bigger purchases." Whereas Shamdas Bagahi,
Indarpatti, and Jamunha offered their customers grain and other foodstuffs, Katia offered
much more, a volume and a range suggested by its annual lease amounting to Rs. 790, or
almost six times the income of Shamdas Bagahi, and by its population of 1,842, or almost
five times that of Shamdas Bagahi and nine times that of Jamunha. Another index of
difference in scale is the number of people engaged in trade. Indarpatti had four houses
of banias , Jamunha
212
had ten, and Shamdas Bagahi four. By contrast, Katia, boasted a range
of trading castes: eight houses of Umuar Banias, twelve of Banna Banias, three of
Kasarwani Banias, seven of Agrahris, twenty-seven of Kalwars, and one of Marwaris. These
groups provided many of the market's cloth vendors and moneylenders. The difference
between minor markets and intermediate markets can also be gauged from the castes involved
in other service occupations. Shamdas Bagahi had six Churihar families who made bangles
for the local market, Jamunha had one toddy vendor, and Indarpatti had four Churihars and
one tailor. Contrast these totals with that of Katia, which numbered one confectioner,
three tailors, six dyers, and three bangle makers. Local labor was also abundant in Katia.
[121]
Katia and Bhorey were also home to service facilities developed there in
the late nineteenth century. In the early 1870s Katia became the site of one of the
district's ten middle vernacular schools. Subsequently, the Hathwa raj established a
primary school there and another one at Bhorey. Furthermore, both of these marketing
settlements were singled out administratively to become the sites of police outposts, two
of the twenty-eight police stations scattered across the district. Bhorey was also one of
six places in the district that had a medical dispensary, a facility maintained and
supported by Hathwa.[122]
Government and Hathwa connections to these two standard markets
therefore explain why they became significant sites of conflict and why the incidents
occurring there mobilized such large numbers of people. In the aftermath of the
"sensational" Deuria incident, the investigating police force was confronted by
a crowd of two thousand men. Most of these were identified as hailing from thirteen
villages, Shamdas Bagahi (no. 410), Ramdas Bagahi (no. 392), Rupi Bagahi (no. 433,
identified in the government records as Bagahi Bindoe), Deuria (no. 413), Indarpatti (no.
429), Patkhauli (no. 171), Belwa Dube (no. 180), Dharmagta (no. 412), Natwa (no. 527),
Semaria (no. 431), Motipur (no. 494), Gaura (no. 468), and Chhitauna (no. 404). These
villages were inhabited by a total population of more than six thousand. All,
213
except for Natwa (no. 527) and Gaura (no. 468), were part of the
periodic marketing system of Indarpatti or Shamdas Bagahi, and all thirteen were in the
standard marketing area of Katia.
The structure of the market can also be identified in the April 1922
attack on the Katia police station. Most of the offenders were identified residents of
Ijra (no. 203), Bari Sujawal (no. zoz), Panan Khas (no. zoo), Banian Chhapar (no. 197),
Sonhnaria (no. 192), Baikunthpur (no. 189), and Dumrauna (no. 75). These seven villages
had a total population of 1,770 and were located within three or four miles of Katia, that
is, within its standard marketing area.[123]
The relationship between numbers and the dynamics of the local marketing
system is clear. Consider again the details for Saran. Periodicity, a defining
characteristic of haats , encouraged the people of a locality to congregate only on
days set aside for exchange: local leaders capitalized on this fact in their efforts to
mobilize numbers. The overwhelming number of markets followed this periodic pattern, the
exceptions being Chapra and some of the intermediate markets. Indeed, only larger markets
met daily. According to one source, 88.3 percent of the district's markets met twice a
week; of the rest, 7.1 percent convened triweekly, 3.6 percent once a week, and .9 percent
four times a week. There is considerable correlation between frequency, size, and
importance. While haats and standard markets typically followed biweekly schedules,
markets convening only once a week were among the smallest of periodic markets. For
instance, the Friday haat of Chakla was "small" (Siwan no. 163), that of
Gosain Chapra (Siwan no. 343), also a Friday market, was a "very poor bazaar,"
and that of Bhelpur (Siwan no. 499), a Sunday market, was only for selling paddy and other
grains. The intermediate market of Manjhi was held five days a week; and the three markets
Garkha, Paighambarpur, and Harpur open four days a week were among the district's larger
standard markets.[124]
214
Moreover, this had been the pattern throughout the colonial period.
According to an early-nineteenth-century source that listed the marketing periodicity for
twenty-four markets (most of which were standard markets), the lower-order markets
generally convened twice a week. Mirganj, an intermediate market, is described by the same
account as meeting daily, whereas Darauli, Manjhi, and Gopalganj met biweekly. Over time,
however, these last three markets developed into standing bazaars, following a well-known
pattern of adding marketing days to settlements that become more central and complex
marketing nodes. The configuration of markets in the district reveals that this
transformation was more the exception than the rule, however. More typically, the enhanced
demand created by population increases was accommodated by the substantial rise in number
of biweekly haat s.[125]
Periodicity especially the two-day schedule was a standard feature of
Saran's markets because that was sufficient to meet local demand, even of large numbers of
people. The marketing needs of peasants in a subsistence economy were simply limited.
Furthermore, poor transportation and communications infrastructure of the eighteenth and
at least the first half of the nineteenth century probably meant that most markets served
limited geographical areas. Even in the early twentieth century most buyers and sellers
frequented markets within a four-to-six-mile radius, a distance most people could
comfortably travel back and forth over in a day. Thus, periodicity went hand in glove with
dense market distribution, both serving to reduce the "friction of space and
time" in the local society. Markets in the same locality therefore almost always met
on different days of the week; for instance, Mangarpal Nuran's haat convened on
Thursdays and Sundays, whereas Mangalpal Murtuza's met on Wednesdays and Saturdays.[126]
This system enabled most villagers to use multiple markets. Residents of
Sheikhpura, Dumouma, Durgauli, Jajauli, Bahuara, and Bishunpura, for instance, frequented
several markets within a three-mile radius: the haats of Deoria, Maghar, and
Bilashpur for routine transactions and the standard market of Mashrak for a wider range of
goods and services. Access to multiple markets also served the interests of
215
peasants who were producers and sellers of their surplus agricultural
commodities or those who engaged in artisanal industries.[127]
Periodicity was much less "related to the mobility of individual
'firms."' Unlike in China, where the "itinerant entrepreneur" was a
characteristic feature of rural markets, periodicity therefore fulfilling the valuable
function of "concentrating the demand for his product at restricted localities on
certain specific days. . [so that] he can arrange to be in each town in the circuit on its
market day," the typical shopkeeper or trader in Saran was a local if not of the
marketing settlement itself then of a nearby village. Thus, many of the shopkeepers in the
periodic market of Jano were drawn from its 1,443 residents; others came from the outside,
such as the three Dhunia families from neighboring Bhabri village who were involved in
cotton and rice trade, another Dhunia family who dealt in horses and ponies, and a Kandhu
who maintained a tobacco store.[128]
Markets therefore attracted large numbers of people. As the average
figures for Mirganj thana (in which Katia and Bhorey were located) indicate, even
periodic markets had the possibility of reaching several thousand; there was typically a haat
for every 7,319 people. Such numbers were the reason why the "volunteers" of
Noncooperation invariably made the rounds of the marketplaces, big and small. In the small
markets of Muzaffarpur, audiences numbering between 1,000 and 2,000 were commonplace:
2,000 at Rasulpur on April 3, 1,000 at Pupri on August 1, and 2,000 at Sursand on the same
day. On three occasions, crowds at Sursand numbered 1,500, 2,000, and even 3,000. Not
surprisingly, the largest gatherings were in the town of Sitamarhi: Mahanth Sia Ram Das
drew 5,000 in April 1921, and Ramanandan Singh, another local leader, attracted an even
larger gathering of 6,000 in February of the same year. But the biggest assembly by far
was in Sitamarhi, on April 6, the day of the hartal , which featured a procession
of 15 ,20,000 marchers. No wonder "volunteers" such as Mathura Prasad Dikshit
had restraining orders placed on them barring them "from
216
speaking in any bazar [sic ] . . . [where]
in the opinion of the magistrate . . . speeches are likely to lead to
a breach of the peace."[129]
The men and women who typically converged on a local market generally
enjoyed some level of dosti (friendship) or familiarity with one another. For many
the bazaar was a place for both "commerce and festivity." It was a "social
as well as an economic nexus. It was the place," in India, as in eighteenth-century
Britain or France, "where one-hundred-and-one social and personal transactions went
on; where news was passed, rumour and gossip flew around.. . . [It] was the
place where people, because they were numerous felt for a moment they were strong."[130] And as places where people routinely gathered in large numbers to
traffic in social, cultural, and economic exchanges, they naturally attracted government
attention. In other words, market towns typically doubled as administrative centers, where
the functionaries of the colonial state regularly established their district and
subdistrict headquarters. How appropriate therefore that a movement that sought to keep
categories patriotic Indians and alien rulers and their coadjutors "separate and
opposed" was played out largely in the bazaar.
The hybrid quality of the bazaar also surfaced in the ways in which its
crowds were linked to "festivity," to popular culture. For the movement
consistently sought to mobilize people to join its cause through a variety of activities.
In addition to the rhetoric, with its popular vocabulary and cadences, there were the
participatory rituals of celebrations employed to involve crowds another means. The
recitation of the Delhi fatwa was a collective chanting, as was the practice of
"non-cooperators in the streets and bazaars singing national songs in chorus."[131] Processions, such as on hartal-day in Sitamarhi, when
everyone carried pictures of Gandhi and other nationalist leaders "garlanded with
flowers," provided another vehicle for people to define themselves as a community.
Arrayed against this imagined community was the colonial state and its
administrators and coadjutors, an "us and them" distinction vividly played out
in popular demonstrations combining theatrics with crowd
217
participation. Two entries from a police report offer a glimpse of
such occasions, though without conveying any sense of the mood or spirit of the gathering:
"On 30th July 1921 the non-co-operator volunteers dressed up a bamboo with a hat,
coat, etc., like an European in the Sitamarhi Hat-all had pot-shots at it, who cared
to.. . . On 30th September 1921, Bishun Mahtha, Luchman Mahtha and Ram
Lakhan Gupta dressed up a figure like a European, sitting on a chair which the crowd spat
on, pulled its ear and eventually burnt it on a bonfire."[132]
Both the sense of the crowd in the bazaar and its awareness of the
hybrid and separative quality of the market figured in the many incidents involving
attempts to enforce the code of Noncooperation among the local population. At its most
concrete level, this aspect of the bazaar was played up in crowd efforts to prevent
customers from patronizing "liquor and other excise shops, and snatching away their
purchase." After all, two objectives of Noncooperation was to stop the distribution
of goods considered anathema to the nationalist project and to deny goods and services to
functionaries of the colonial state. The bazaar was necessarily targeted because it was
the place where foreign-made cloth and liquor, to name two of the principal goods singled
out for attack, exchanged hands. Volunteers therefore urged their supporters to picket
cloth and liquor shops. Not surprisingly, much of the crowd action in the markets involved
attempts to close down such shops or attack people who indulged in these taboo products.
The report by the Muzaffapur police that foreign cloth "is being burnt all over the
place and each toddy, cloth, liquor and ganja shop has its picket of national
volunteers" and that "bullock carts carrying drums of liquor are stopped, people
entering excise shops are assaulted" was a scenario repeated time and again
throughout the region. Another product-related issue was the effort to prevent goods and
services from the bazaar flowing into the hands of the functionaries of the
"evil" Empire. "Volunteers are endeavouring," as one confidential
government document noted, "to induce bazaar people to stop all supplies to the
police."[133]
The bazaar was also the place where people assembled in numbers and
exerted their strength and unity of purpose in actions that were liter-
218
ally and figuratively designed to humiliate wrongdoers, actions that
were charivaris. In the wake of the "sensational" Deuria case of February 1921,
when the "exponents of non-violence painted a woman black and took her naked round
[the] village," the investigating police subinspector "was attacked by about
2,000 men and he and his force were beaten and put to flight. As a result 56 men were
prosecuted and 33 convicted."[134]
This woman had apparently incurred the wrath of the crowd because she
had violated the discipline of Noncooperation her initial "wrong" was to refuse
to pay a fine levied on her by a council (panchayat) set up to enforce the code of
Noncooperation and then filed a case with police.[135] Much more
typical, however, were cases of offenders apprehended in flagrante delicto and promptly
handed out rough justice. Gope Kahar was seized by his fellow Kahars and other townspeople
for refusing to give up drinking and paraded around town in black face. The crowd handled
most offenders in this manner. For having imbibed liquor at a haat , a person
"had his face smeared with blacking [and] a shoe hung round his neck." Numerous
were the incidents involving "violators" who were paraded around the town or
marketplace "mounted backwards on a donkey." A variation of this form of
humiliation in this case the offender's head was shaved prior to the ritual parading was
inflicted on a chaukidar in Champaran for having consumed liquor.[136]
Official reports tended to attribute outbreaks to outside agitators. The
comings and goings of Gandhi were scrupulously monitored as were those of other leaders
such as Rajendra Prasad, the leading Congress figure in Bihar. In addition, there were
always the usual suspects at the district level. Bindeshri Prasad, for example, was said
to be "the leading Saran non-cooperator," and his movements were invariably
linked to incidents of Noncooperation.[137]
The overwhelming majority of participants in the events associated with
Noncooperation were drawn from the local population, however.
219
As many as two thousand people "armed with lathis [staffs],
spears, etc." were said to be involved in the attack on the police who came to
investigate the "sensational" Katia case. Of the fifty-seven men (one died later
in jail) singled out for prosecution from this "mob," the largest numbers were
Koeris (seventeen people), Brahmins (fourteen), Bhumihar Brahmins (nine), Jolahas (six),
and Ahirs (five); the rest were Banias (two), Bhar (one), Nonia (one), Teli (one), and one
whose caste cannot be identified from his name. One can glean additional details regarding
these people by looking at the locality from which the crowd originated. Both those
singled out by name for being the "leading" noncooperators (that is, thirty-two
out of the fifty-seven who were actually sentenced) and those comprising the so-called
volunteer masses were drawn from thirteen villages clustered around the market of Katia.
The village notes of 1915-21 reveal that Brahmins were the dominant caste in six villages;
in three villages they were the most prominent caste along with the Bhumihar Brahmins. No
upper castes resided in the remaining four villages; Koeris were the most prosperous caste
in those places, some among them prosperous enough to serve as the village moneylenders.
Brahmins were also the most prominent inhabitants of the seven villages that manned the
ranks of attackers of the Katia police station on April 26, 1922. In six of the seven
villages they were the dominant caste; in the remaining village Rajputs were the most
salient caste. In four out of the seven villages, Ahirs were numerically preponderant.[138]
Similar configurations of supravillage elite--mostly upper-caste men
with significant standing in the locality of periodic markets-and the more prosperous
cultivating castes, such as Koeris, Kurmis, and Ahirs, can be identified among the
principals involved in clashes over markets in Champaran. Acchey Lal and Mathura Prasad,
two Kayasths, were at the forefront of the group that sought to establish a market to
compete with Ghorasahan bazaar, controlled by the Purnahi factory, a branch of the
Motihari indigo concern. And implicated with them were a few other people of high caste
but also many with trading and agricultural caste backgrounds.[139]
220
An alliance of upper landholding and substantial peasant castes and
lower-caste peasants also characterized the "Hindu community" that took up the
cause of cow protection in the 1890s and the second decade of the twentieth century in the
Bhojpur region extending across Bihar into eastern United Provinces. In the late
nineteenth century these groups had also become conspicuous presence "on the
road," thus adding to the growing traffic of pilgrims and mela-goers. Whereas they
sought to team up with Muslims under the flag of Noncooperation and Khilafat in the 1920s,
here they mobilized against the small local Muslim population in the name of saving the
cow. Within the "Hindu community" itself, however, there were divisions. As Gyan
Pandey notes, "In the 1910s and '20s .. when the Koeris, Kurmis and Ahirs became
better organized and increasingly militant in pressing the demands for a more respectable
status[,] the upper-caste Hindu zamindars joined hands with the upper-caste Muslim
zamindars of the region to keep these 'upstart' peasant castes in their
place.. . . That divide between upper and lower castes and classes, and the
strife attendant upon it, remained the predominant feature of the rural political scene in
eastern U.P. and Bihar, more marked than any perceptible rift between local Hindus and
Muslims, at least until the 1940s."[140]
Indeed, upper-caste and some cultivating lower-caste groups (in the
incidents referred to here consisting principally of Brahmins, Bhumihar Brahmins, and
Rajputs on the one hand and Kurmis and Ahirs on the other hand) were increasingly
asserting their rising power and influence at the local periodic market and village level,
often assuming leadership roles in challenging the authority of the colonial state or the
local magnate. In many areas, these groups were joined by petty traders and moneylenders
many of whom were drawn from precisely these groups who were prominently featured
Noncooperation Movement; they could be found on both sides of the struggle.[141] How these groups emerged from the age of revolution to attain
featured roles in the "rural political scene" of the early twentieth century
forms the focus of the next chapter.
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