The Roots of 'Communal' Violence in Rural Bengal.

A Study of the Kishoreganj Riots,

1930
Author(s): Sugata Bose
Source: Modern Asian Studies , 1982, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1982), pp. 463-491
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/312117

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Modern Asian Studies, x6, 3 (1982), PP. 463-491. Printed in Great Britain.

The Roots of 'Communal' Violence

in Rural Bengal
A Study of the Kishoreganj Riots, 1930

SUGATA BOSE

University of Cambridge

I. Introduction

IN 1947 the fabric of Bengali rural society woven together by a c

language and a syncretist popular culture was torn asunder on li
religion. During the final two decades of colonial rule in In
Ganga-Brahmaputra-Jamuna deltaic tracts of east Bengal increas
became the scene of tension and violent conflict between a Muslim
peasantry and a predominantly Hindu landed gentry. The conflict
between rival 'lites in a plural society over government jobs and
positions of vantage in the legislative arena has been a subject of
scholarly studies in twentieth-century Bengal.' Successive 'legislative
attacks' of one status and interest group upon another have been
carefully identified and documented, and their significance assessed.2
The inner dynamics of the struggle in the countryside and the periodic
outbursts of 'communal' fury that rent rural Bengal during this period
have not come under the same systematic investigation. Yet, without
the agrarian dimension to the Hindu-Muslim problem in Bengal, the
politics of separatism would in all likelihood have proved ineffectual and
been washed away by the strong tide of a composite nationalism. In
1906-07, at the time of the Swadeshi movement, the riots atJamalpur in
Mymensingh and in Comilla had shown up what was to be the Achilles'
I am grateful to Dr C. A. Bayly, Mr Charu C. Chowdhuri and Professor Eric Stokes
for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Responsibility for views expressed
and errors if any rests with me.
Abbreviations: GB= Government of Bengal; WBSA= West Bengal State Archives
BSRR= Bangladesh Secretariat Record Room.

1 John H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal (Berkeley,
1968); Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal (New Delhi, 1976).
2 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, pp. 284-95-

oo26-749X/82/o5o6-o2o8$o2.oo ? 1982 Cambridge University Press

463

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464 SUGATA BOSE
heel of mass nationalism in Bengal.3 In
and elsewhere in east Bengal together
frightened a majority of the Hindu na
favour of a partition that forty ye
resolutely opposed.4
It is proposed here to probe the
twentieth-century Bengal by making
bances in Kishoreganj subdivision of
Apart from localized violence in rura
Hindu-Muslim rioting had been an
mainly upcountry people and not
however, or perhaps a little earlier, inc
part of Muslim peasants against Hindu
became almost a regular feature in
instances of incendiarism and looting o
be cited for this period, it is possible to
widespread disturbances-in Kishoreg
circle of Dacca district in 1941,5 and fin
Noakhali and Tippera on the eve of i
The Kishoreganj disturbances ought
serious claim on the historian's attenti
agrarian policy they surpassed the
nineteenth century.6 They also foresh
fateful decade of colonial rule which s
demand. At the same time, having
Pakistan cry was raised, they give us a
agrarian content of Hindu-Muslim riots

3 For a discussion of these riots, see Sumit Sar

Igo3-1908 (New Delhi, 1973), PP- 444-64; also,
Unrest in Bengal, 1875-I908' (unpublished C
4 Not only the communalist Hindu Mahasabh
leaders saw no hope of reconciliation betw
legislators voted overwhelmingly in favour of
Chandra Bose who together with the Muslim
Hashem tried till the last to secure a united B
5 In the riots in the rural areas of Dacca in 194
in a matter of five days. 2519 households (join
affected by looting or arson. See, Report of the Dac
Bengal (Alipur, 1942), p. 33-
6 For accounts of the Deccan riots, see I. J. C
(Oxford, I970), Ch. I; I.J. Catanach, 'Agrarian
India' in Indian Economic and Social History Rev
(March 1966); Ravinder Kumar, 'The Deccan Ri
(August 1965), pp. 613-35-

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 465
taken up for study in isolation, it might be rather more difficult to
separate the strands of class conflict and communal feeling for analysis
and to assess the precise roles and interaction of the two forces. It is
hoped that a study of the Kishoreganj disturbances would enable us to
form a clearer idea of the nature of the economic grievances and
agrarian class conflict that fed the communal fire.

II. The Setting: Agrarian Social Structure in Mymensingh

Mymensingh, the largest district in Bengal,7 was located almost in the

centre of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Jamuna delta. Muslims accounted
for nearly three-quarters of its vast population at the turn of the century,
and their proportion in relation to the Hindus steadily increased.8 The
superior revenue-collecting rights over the bulk of the land in Mymen-
singh were held by a few big zamindars, a great majority of Brahman
and Kayastha Hindu families but also a handful of Muslims. There was
not much subinfeudation of rent-collecting rights and tenures rarely
went below the second degree. The Hindu bhadralok of the district
largely filled the ranks of the petty talukdars-some of whom were
landlords under the permanent settlement paying revenue to govern-
ment, and the rest tenure-holders acting as intermediaries in the
rent-collecting structure between superior zamindars and raiyats. There
were some who took service in the zamindari kachharis or were pleaders
and mukhtears in the mofussil towns, or schoolmasters, doctors and
clerks, but few of these men did not have ties with the land.9 The battle
over occupancy right and rent enhancement between these rentiers and
the raiyats had been fought and lost by the former in the later nineteenth
century.'0 The Bengal Tenancy Act of I885 modified the settlement of
1793 in important ways to give a large body of actual cultivators a

7 6300 sq. miles in area with a population in 1911 of 4,526,422, F. A. Sachse,

Mymensingh District Gazetteer, 1917 (hereafter referred to as M.D.G.)
8 Hindus Muslims

1901 1,o088,857 2,795,548

1911 ,161,585 3,324,146
1921 1,174,015 3,623,719
1931 1,174,328 3,927,552

Census of India, Bengal, Tables, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931

9 M.D.G., pp. 61-2.
10 K. K. Sengupta, 'Agrarian Disturbances in Nineteenth Century
VIII, I (March I971), PP. 192-212. For the agitation in Mymensingh
203-4.

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 466 SUGATA BOSE
measure of tenurial security and mode
District Gazetteer (1917) reported that
collected and that there were never any e
rent, especially by the smaller gentry, bec
and, if figures from Wards' and Attac
index, after 1907 there was scarcely a
reached 50 per cent of the total rental.'3
rental income and rising prices, the depen
source of income acquired enhanced signi
zamindars as well as the petty talukdars,
locally called 'lagni karbar', literally tr
but really nothing but usury pure and si
As in other districts in Mymensingh, th
between legal status and social reality.
that some noncultivating rent-receiver
registered as raiyats in the district se
majority of actual cultivators got the sta
against eviction and rent increase. Ind
would have occupancy right by custom.'4
holding was 2.67 acres.15 At the time o
the lands held by raiyats were sublet to u
held raiyati holdings as well.16 F. A. Sa
estimated that some 3 per cent of the to
produce-rents. Of this, a small fractio
raiyats or under-raiyats who paid a fixed
the rest by bargadars (sharecroppers) wh
year's crop. The bargadars, Sachse pointed
themselves.... The bargadar is usually
renting his homestead and one or two plot
landlord on a cash rent'." The landless
said to be 'limited'.'8 The Mymensingh
" The Tenancy Act was the government's respon
that swept east Bengal in the i87os and the early 18
of high landlordism in Bengal. According to the Ac
to a tenant who had cultivated any plot of land in
rent could be enhanced only once in 15 years on
more than 12.5 per cent of the existing rent.
12 M.D.G., p. 64.
13 Annual Reports on the Wards' and Attached Est
pp. 1 I3-15.
14 F. A. Sachse, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of
Mymensingh, 19o8-1919 (hereafter referred to as M.S.R.), pp. 43-5.

15 Ibid., p. 25. 16 Ibid., p. 44. 17 Ibid., p. 45. 18 M.D.G., p. 86.

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 467
labour from Bihar and the neighbouring districts of Faridpur, Jessore
and Tippera at harvest time. With the building up of demographic
pressure over time the ranks of a marginalized peasantry swelled and
landlessness increased.
The agrarian social structure of Bengal, it will be seen, differed
significantly from the area zamindar and village controlling dominant
peasant pattern of northern India or of the dry zone in the south.
Contrary to the existing view of a jotedar-bargadar dichotomy in
Bengal,19 big jotedars cultivating substantial lands through dependent
sharecroppers were to be found only in northern Bengal and in the
Sunderbans in the south where large credit advances from rich,
enterprising farmers had been required to clear the scrub and jungle
for cultivation during the nineteenth century. J. C. Jack in his classic
'Economic Life of a Bengal District' (1916) wrote of the east Bengal
district of Faridpur: '... the cultivators are a homogeneous class'.20
Sachse found that the land in Mymensingh was rather more unevenly
divided than in Jack's district, but nowhere except in a small pocket in
Dewanganj were there any substantial landholders who could be
regarded as village-controllers, not to speak of'defacto village landlords'.
The Settlement Report sets out the picture of stratification within
'agricultural families':21
TABLE I

Average cultivated Gross income

land per family per family

Families with net profit of Rs 800

or more: 30,000 or 4 per cent I2 acres Rs oo000
Families with net profit of Rs 240
or more: 270,000 or 36 per cent 5 acres Rs 415
Families with net profit nil
or subsistence ryots: 450,000 or 6o per cent 2 acres Rs 166

19 The jotedar thesis gets its most rigorous formulation in Rajat and Ratna Ray,
'Zamindars andJotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal', in Modern Asian Studies, 9,
I (February 1975), pp. 81-102. See also, Sunil Sen, Agrarian Struggle in Bengal (Calcutta,
1972), Ch. I, and Ratna Ray, Change in Bengali Agrarian Society (New Delhi, 1979),
Epilogue.
20 J. C. Jack, Economic Life of a Bengal District (London, 1916), p. 8I. The word 'jote'
simply means cultivation or tillage and the majority of the 'jotedars' of east Bengal may
best be described as peasant smallholders. 'Jotedars' in the sense of 'de facto village
landlords' were to be found in certain peripheral regions rather than in the old settled
tracts of Bengal.
21 By 'agricultural families' the Settlement Officer meant ryot families. The legal

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 468 SUGATA BOSE
Did such inequalities in the landholding
time congeal into separate classes over a
a number of reasons whether a distin
separate itself out in the first half o
anthropological work on rural east Beng
a process of unilinear class differentiati
directional mobility in peasant society w
households and the rise of relativel
remember that even during periods of
nineteenth century and the Second Wor
prices lagged behind the all commoditie
the chief cash crop of Bengal, never en
as did, for instance, cotton and wheat i
While there was little scope for serious c
to develop within peasant society, th
Bengal in general and of Mymensingh in
cultural identity which included relig
identical set of tenurial, credit and mar
external economic relations, we shall ar

category of 'ryots' would include not only peasa

had their lands cultivated by under-raiyats and
the figures give in the table are the result of a
settlement records and cess records. According
cess ryots paid cess on a rent of more than Rs 22
more than Io acres; but Sachse decided to includ
agricultural families and assumed that 30,000 f
The table therefore does not quite present a
peasantry. It is only used in the absence of bet
p. 25.
22 At a much later period, viz. the I96os, Bertocci discovered an inter-generational
circulation of economic and social status among households of different landowning
classes, cited Peter J. Bertocci, 'Structural Fragmentation and Peasant Classes in
Bangladesh', Journal of Social Studies, 5 (October 1979), p. 56. Abu Abdullah writing on
the agrarian structure in Bangladesh in the mid-1970os accepted Shanin's point about
'the barriers to polarization set up by the internal structure of peasant society' with a
caution that over emphasis on this aspect could lead one to underestimate 'emergent'
class conflicts and change processes in rural society, Abu Abdullah et al., 'Agrarian
Structure and the IRDP Preliminary considerations', in Bangladesh Development Studies,
IV, 2 (April 1976), p. 217. The question of individual mobility of peasant households in
the first half of the twentieth century is more difficult to fathom, but can at least be
partially probed by studying the pattern of land alienation from registration records in
conjunction with settlement records of selected villages.
23 See Prices Enquiry Committee Report (1914) and the Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry
Committee Report (1929) (hereafter referred to as BPBECR), cited B. B. Chaudhuri, 'The
Process of Depeasantization in Bengal and Bihar 1885-1947', in Indian Historical Review,
2, I (1975), PP. 115-16.

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNAL' VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 469
able degree of cohesiveness that the peasantry of east Bengal displayed in
political action.
The tenurial structure of Mymensingh has already been sketched; but
with the close of the era of high landlordism by the later nineteenth
century, rent as a means of surplus appropriation became less signifi-
cant. In the early twentieth century the Mymensingh raiyat's rent
proper was held to be 'the least important factor in his budget'.24 Bengal
agriculture was, however, drawn into the web of an export-oriented
colonial economy. Small peasant producers of east Bengal raised cash
crops for the world market on their minuscule holdings. The market and
the credit system which kept the peasant family alive and helped to
reproduce the small peasant economy were more important channels of
the drain on the Mymensingh peasant. Yet, the conventional belief
among British administrators was that the jute cultivator of east Bengal
thrived on a buoyant cash-crop economy. Sachse was surprised to find
that in spite of the inflated prices in the years preceding the First World
War and the 'influx of crores' into Mymensingh, 'the standard of living
has not gone up to an appreciable extent' while indebtedness had
increased. He put it down to 'the absolute improvidence of the people
and their fondness for litigation',25 though rather incidentally he
mentioned other more important factors as well. It is obvious that to find
an explanation of the continued poverty and indebtedness of the
Mymensingh peasantry we must delve deeper.
In east Bengal, where in the later nineteenth century rapid extension
of cultivation was taking place, the margin appears to have been
reached by the second decade of the twentieth century. The census of
1921 and folk literature of the time depict the crowding out of cultivators
from east Bengal to Assam.26 Sachse reports in 1919 that in Mymen-
singh cultivation had 'almost reached its full limits'.27 The land was
already supporting 1.3 persons to the acre. Subdivision not only of
holdings but of individual plots between three and five brothers was
proceeding at such a rapid pace that it was estimated if the settlement
24 M.D.G., p. 64. As B. B. Chaudhuri has pointed out, the volume of rent burden of
peasants in their impoverishment has often been exaggerated. The size of rural
indebtedness was estimated by the Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee in
1930 to be Rs ioo crores, while the 'gross rental' was estimated by the Land Revenue
Commission in 1940 to be only Rs I 1.32 crores, Chaudhuri, 'Process of Depeasantiza-
tion', p. io8 fn.
25 M.S.R., pp. 28-29.
26 Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Bengal, Pt I, pp. 132-3. See also a fascinating folk poem
by an immigrant to Nowgong, Assam from eastern Mymensingh, Md. Abdul Hamid,
Pater Kabita (Juriya, Assam, 1930).
27 M.S.R., p. 29.

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470 SUGATA BOSE

operations had come five years

mile would probably have been
In attempting to raise the va
holding, the Mymensingh peasan
often long-term fluctuations in
1907-12 boom injute prices, ther
was not until 1922 that prices p
brief boom reached its peak in 1
taper downwards and plummete
it reached an all-time low in 1
slump until as late as 1937-38.30
roused in the east Bengal coun
returned. Indeed, it is probabl
value forjute throughout the pos
1913.1 In 1907 the rustic poet
wonderful qualities ofjute, or na
Look he cried, the jute cultivato
instead of the traditional bamboo
of strong Joanshahi timber.3
cultivator became the burden
embraced the fickle jute and sen
Rangoon.33 The bane of over-
indebtedness, the profits of the

28 Ibid., p. 27.
29 For the movements in the price of r
30 Ibid.; and Chaudhuri, 'Process of
31 Capital, 15 August 1929, cited, BP
32 Balo bbai, nailyar shaman kirshi n
Nailya bepari, satkhanda bari,
Joanshaiya thuni diya banchhe cho
(Say brother, there is no crop like
From the memory of Mr Charu C. C
33 One poem describes a meeting of a
arrivistejute with paddy presiding:
Dhanya bale duiti katha shuno mor
Tomader katha shuni aphshos hoiach
Chharilo tomader hoilo durgati
Rangoon deshete jano amar bashati
Gariber lagia ami eshechhi sada
Kinia khailo dekho oishab gadha
Nalita dekho kata jatan karilo
Amay hela kore chhariat dilo
Tomra amake dekho karilet raja
Hoitechhe krishaker kato jeno shaja
Abdul Samed Mian, Krishak Boka (Ah

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 ROOTS OF ' COMMUNAL' VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 471
high costs of jute cultivation were harped on-themes that are
beginning to be taken seriously by the economic historian of today.34
What the poetaster did not appreciate was that by the 1920s growing
jute was hardly a matter of choice.
Sincejute began to encroach upon a sizeable portion of the cultivated
acreage, Mymensingh made up its deficit in rice by imports from
Burma. Our area of special interest, Kishoreganj subdivision, was able
to market jute and some sugar-cane and fish, all the paddy and mustard
that was produced being consumed locally.35 Jute was an expensive
crop to cultivate, especially because of its much higher labour costs, and
consequently enlarged the credit needs of the peasantry. Over its prices
the cultivator had no control. The dispersed nature of peasant
production meant that the grower had little bargaining power vis-a-vis
the highly organized trading sector.36 A long chain of middlemen-
farias, beparis, aratdars-handled the trade in jute from the village to
the mills and the exporters,37 and a part, a fifth according to the
Director of Agriculture in 1929,38 of the cultivator's due was eaten away
as middlemen's commission. More important, however, was the
cultivator's lack of holding power which compelled him to sell
immediately after harvest when prices were at their lowest. Not only did

34 Beshi pata karo bhai re beshi takar ashe

Jemon asha temon dasha dena pater chashe
Taka taka majur diya niran kulan kam
Marwarira ghare boshe panch taka dey dam
Again
Eto pat dili keno tui chasha
Ebar pater chashe desh dubali, ore buddhinasha
Bujhli na tui burar beta, Abeder katha noyko jhuta
Khete hobe pater gora thik janish mor bhasha
Mone korechho nibo taka,
She asha tor jabe phanka,
Panchiser poya hobe tor, hrine porbi thasha
Nibi bote taka ghare,
Peter daye jabe phure
Hisheb kore dekhish khata, jato kharacher pasha.
Abed Ali Mian, Desh Shanti (Gantipara, Rangpur, 1925)-
35 SDO Kishoreganj to Collector Mymensingh in Report on Marketing of Agricultural
Produce in Bengal 1926, GB (Calcutta, 1928).
36 Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Private Investment in India IgoO~-939 (Cambridge, 1972), pp.
266, 268-9.
37 Royal Commission on Agriculture in India 1926-28 Appendix Vol. I4, p. 70; 'Note on
Marketing of Agricultural Produce' by J. M. Mitra, Registrar of Cooperative Societies
Bengal in Evidence RCA Vol. 4, pp. 137-8; BPBECR Vol. I, pp. 104-5; Bagchi, Private
Investment, pp. 264-5-
38 Evidence of R. S. Finlow and K. Mclean, Director and Asst. Director of
Agriculture Bengal in Evidence RCA Vol. 4, p. I3.

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 472 SUGATA BOSE

he not have facilities of storage

peasant required cash at the t
interest payments to the money
Often he would have borrow
trader-moneylender. The Distr
'In case ofjute, cultivators are
growing a certain quantity o
prevailing market rate. The cult
"dadandars" and have to dis
dadandars.'40 In a context o
diminishing holdings the mech
market interacted with and reinforced the credit mechanism to hold
the peasant in their pincer grip and to perpetuate and immiserize at the
same time the small peasant economy of Bengal.
We may conclude our brief portrayal of the agrarian economy and
social structure of Mymensingh by setting out the salient features of the
relationship between the peasantry in debt and the moneylenders. F. D.
Ascoli, the Settlement Officer of Dacca, had on the basis of an economic
survey calculated in 1917 the accumulated debt in the localities in
Dacca adjoining Mymensingh at Rs 2I per head of the whole
population.41 Sachse doubted whether the situation was really as bad,
but acknowledged that 'interest is so high in this country that its
payment constitutes a severe drain on the resources of the agricultural
population, especially as only a small fraction of the total indebtedness
can be considered as capital employed productively'.42 The bulk of the
loans given by the mahajans were short-term ones at high monthly
interest rates. Mahajani-tejarati (moneylending) was usually combined
either with talukdari (rent-collecting rights over land) or with trade. A
great majority of the talukdar-mahajans of Mymensingh were high
caste Hindus while the small traders were mainly drawn from the
intermediate Nabashakh castes-Sahas, Telis, Baniks and others.
Sometimes the three roles could be combined in a single person. This is
not to say that actual control of land and moneylending went hand in
hand. Quite the contrary, the rural credit scene in east Bengal did not
display the type of congruence of large landholding and moneylending
which is so integral a part of the 'semi-feudalism' argument.43 A
9 Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 286.
40 Dt. Agrl. Offcr. Mymensingh to Collr. Mymensingh in Rep. on Marketing of Agrl.
Produce in Bengal 1926.
41 M.S.R., p. 27.
42 Ibid.
43 The classic exposition of the 'semi-feudalism' argument for Bengal is Amit Bhaduri,

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 ROOTS OF ' COMMUNAL' VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 473
talukdar usually held rent-collecting rights over small tracts of land
though he often had his own bit of 'khas khamar', and could hardly be
said to exercise actual possessory dominion over the soil. His instrument
of control over the indebted peasant was essentially an economic one
through usury. Though considering age-old village status terms the
talukdar-mahajan would be led to vaunt his position as talukdar, in
economic terms his moneylending function had clearly assumed
crucial importance in the twentieth century and was the source of
what power he had. The unfreedom of the small peasant of east
Bengal weighed down by scarcity of land and usury bore no resem-
blance to that of the dependent sharecropper held down by debt
peonage and extra-economic coercion by the village landlord/rich
farmer-cum-creditor.

The highly unfavourable product market and credit relations in

which the east Bengal peasant was involved did have an impact on the
market in land, but it was not as drastic as upholders of a 'depeasantiza-
tion' thesis have believed.44 The mahajan was not particularly anxious
to sell up his debtors and claim their lands. As Sachse informs us, 'as long
as he [the debtor] can pay the interest he is in no hurry to pay off the
capital, and he has no fear of being sold up'.45 It was an exception rather
than the rule for the creditor to buy up an occupancy holding; when he
did so he resettled it with the previous owner at an increased rent and
occasionally insisted on a produce rent.46 The peasant would under
usual circumstances look upon the mahajan (literally, great man) as a
sort of benevolent father-figure who tided him over the times of need.
There were occasions, however, when the moral economy of the peasant
was outraged. In 1930 the Muslim peasantry of Kishoreganj threw
deference to these 'great men' of the countryside to the winds and
pillaged their homes with astonishing fury.

III. The Disturbances of 1930

The atmosphere in the districts of Bengal in mid-1930 was charged with

the tension of the civil disobedience campaign. In Mymensingh since
'A Study in Agricultural Backwardness under Semi-feudalism', in Economic Journal, 82
(1973), pp. 120-37; see also Rajat and Ratna Ray, 'The Dynamics of Continuity in
Rural Bengal under the British Imperium', in IESHR, X, 2 (I973), pp. II iff.
44The 'depeasantization' thesis is best expounded in Chaudhuri, 'Process of
Depeasantization'.
45 M.S.R., p. 27.
46 M.D.G., p. 69.

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474 SUGATA BOSE

April packets of contraband salt

read in public, schools and colleg
denied to government officers
arrest a more or less successful bo
district.48 Vigorous picketing w
to prevent the issue of country l
in Mymensingh, leading to a ser
Sobhan Sheikh was killed and ano
interior Congress volunteers con
taxes and urged chaukidars an
Local Anjuman associations org
dissuade the Muslim peasantry f
The year 1929 had been bad
severely hit by the depression in
countryside bore the prospect of
area to be harvested in a month's
sure to fall on account of short-
about Rs 5 As 8 could hardl
Administration Report for 1930-
follow:

Distress was worst in the jute growin

prosperity are densely populated, an
holdings of an acre in area or less. T
holdings cannot support them for a
jute which they grow on part of
wherewithal to supplement their foo
market and their jute remaining un
Early in July there were stirrin
47 Clayton Cmsr Dacca Dn to Hopkyn
File 435(1)/30 (WBSA).
48 Hopkyns CS to Burrows DM Mymen
(WBSA).
9 Dutt DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 1
(WBSA).
5o Burrows DM Mym. to Clayton Cm
51 1/30 (WBSA).
"5 Dutt DM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Da
DM Mym., 18 June 1930, GB Poll Con
52 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns
(WBSA). Tanika Sarkar is obviously in
failure almost amounting to a famine
First Phase of Civil Disobedience in Ben
(July 1977), PP. 93-4. There was a good
price equivalent of a famine situation.
53 Report on The Land Revenue Administr

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 KISHOREGANJ RIOTS (T'o 0"
July 1930

Dhokuric

14t

Surati

?; "h.~ CGangatia
Chfr 0 ~14th
Silashi a
15 th
snthur A14th
15hTntl Char* NO!,a--=
Gafforgoon I i?-?,0 a KISHOREGANJ
a1514'h
, U0 s h 1,e lroibari/
Dhulih
S..a"0
,ro 'th~a -, Bipai
(.PS)Ch
13tlo414th
nkuic .th ,2 -'.. t;
ndtphs ih
Char
a ===::c-- jthAs~hU tI G% at ~
0 (mM)
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14 t h:

3th ItI

FC ,[S~ olic Ie ,"Nggf

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iL I * . 1. thS4"oKod
,'Chan
rr14th tposc
11 15 j ,osr
oinpuiSchcd
,r19)3th I Kt ml ng ic

ath Kamii" l ," ' ICIlnl rn,

ok n i ,, I'M ij at
n crandi

/ \\ / \ ...,, .. "',,
Olt+ischintapur* th,13th
?0 14th~
(to)Lksh ic umorpur (

Mirz r it 14t Baniagrom

1%12t,13& 12th '
Bahadia ;I
0I 13th It wa
%, Aingodi of=l1
S13th,14th It%
airIN 13th,14th itI
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0 1 2 3 4 ~milts

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476 SUGATA BOSE

Kishoreganj, Hossainpur and Pakun

meetings of raiyats were held. At one m
which local officers took note of, the N
Kachhari at Hossainpur was condemne
Mohurrum procession the previous mon
tenants, and resolutions were passed aga
moneylenders.54
It was on the afternoon of the I Ith th
began around midday at village Chand
the houses of one Surendra Nath,
newspaper as 'a millionaire of that q
moneylenders were attacked by mobs an
on and carried out similar attacks on
Narandi including that of Ananda Sar
them. On the 12th, Jangalia, Mirzapu
pur were attacked as well as Chandipa
lay sufficiently far apart (see map) to ind
gangs were operating and that the moti
were more or less general.56
It was at Jangalia that the most gr
Krishna Chandra Roy, talukdar, preside
moneylender on a large scale and hold
bargadars, had received news of the loo
afternoon and had engaged two buses
valuable possessions. The rioters arrived
could get away, destroyed the buses and
Krishna Roy put up a stout defence fro
upon the rioters with two guns. Two
wounded when the ammunition ran out
and the nine male members of the fa
were also wounded defending their husb
to her injuries. The other women num
harmed, but all the buildings were com
smashed that was not carried away. The
the village, all belonging to Hindu mone
looted and burnt, while the others were
54 Ibid.; Amrita Bazar Patrika (hereafter referre
55 AI P, I6July 1930.
56 Teleg. from Secy Mukhtears Bar Kishorega
Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July i930; B
July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); A
"' Teleg. from Secy Mukhtears Bar Kish. to GB

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 ROOTS OF CCOMMUNAL9 VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 477
The same day a mob of about 300 rioters armed with sharp weapons
was dispersed outside Baniagram in Katiadi thana by Surendra
Chaudhuri, a local talukdar, who opened fire."58 This action prevented
any further attack in those parts. But in Pakundia thana the trouble
spread farther on the i3th to villages Lakshmia, Baratia, Kodalia,
Jaitra, Bahadia, Egara Sindur, Aingadi as well as to Mirzapur and
Narandi again. The primary objective of the looters was to get hold of
bonds or other documents in the custody of the moneylenders and burn
them or tear them to pieces.59 In the market centres of Kaliachhapra
and Pulerghat the big shops of Ram Chandra Saha,Jagat Nananda and
Gnan Majumdar were pillaged.60 Refugees from the villages poured
into Kishoreganj town. There were panicky rumours of plans of an
attack on the town itself, which however did not materialize.61
On the I4th in Pakundia thana, Matkhola, Jamalpur, Nischintapur,
Aingadi and Egara Sindur were attacked. Matkhola was a big business
centre and counted among its inhabitants 50 mahajans. Many refugees
had also taken shelter in the Matkhola Kali temple. At noon on I 4July a
thousand-strong mob armed with lathis, swords, ramdaos, and halongas
attacked the bazaar attached to the Kalibari. A small police force had to
retreat in the face of the onslaught but reinforcements arrived just in
time and in the police firing four rioters were killed. The big tin sheds of
all but three of the mahajans of Matkhola were in this way saved from
destruction.62

Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July I930; Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 14 July 1930;
Report about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd 12 July 1930;
Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I8July I930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA);
ABP, 15, 16 and 3oJuly 1930; Lakshmikanta Kirtaniya, Loter Gan (Songs Commemorat-
ing The Loot, Matkhola, Mymensingh 1930).
58 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 28 July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA); ABP, 3oJuly 1930.
59 Teleg. from ADM Mym. to GB, 13July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS,
I8 July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 16 July 1930.
60 ABP, I6July 1930.
61 Ghatak ADM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July 1930; Rep. about the
looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd 13 July I930; Teleg. from ADM
Mym. to GB, 14 July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).
62 Rep. about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish dtd 14 July 1930;
Inspr Kish. to ASP II Mym., I4July i93o; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I8July
193o, GB Poll Con File 6I3/30 (WBSA); ABP, 30 July 193o; Lakshmikanta Kirtaniya,
Loter Gan.

The Matkhola Kali temple provides an interesting example of the syncretist tradition
in rural Bengal. Muslims would vow to sacrifice goats or sheep before the deity for the
fulfilment of their wishes and at the time of Durga or Kali Puja a number of goats or
sheep would be brought by Muslims to be sacrificed. The only difference between the
Hindu and Muslim offerings was that whereas the Hindus would take away the carcass

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478 SUGATA BOSE

In Hossainpur thana, the first attac

Sahedal, Barsikura, Dhankuria, Dhulj
bances spread northwards on the 14th t
Char, Char Katihari, Madhakhola, Sur
There were also stray attacks in a few
such as Patabika, Kamaliapara, Binna
On 15 July the contagion spread acros
the Gaffargaon region. The looting b
Hindu moneylenders of village Sakch
through a number of villages. The rio
cally visited the houses of all the mone
demanded the surrender of all documen
ment had given Swaraj to them for the
led to nothing further than the burnin
produced an attack upon the house a
smashed open and anything in the
destroyed. A police party caught up wit
the act in the house of Ram Sarkar of S
checked the further spread of the riots
One interesting feature of the riots wa
under the impression that the gover
Similar notions, real or imagined, of su
against immediate oppressors have of co
peasant rebellion in other regions and
maulavies from Dacca and Bhowal
cultivators that the government suppor
interfere if they demanded back their b
moneylenders and extorted them forcib
leaving only the head for the Goddess, the Mus
they would not touch the meat of any animal
orthodox way by cutting open the windpipe. Th
with one stroke of the sabre and failure to do
Matkhola temple was not touched during the 19
it was looted and partly burnt. But it was demoli
troops during the Bangladesh war of 1971 and t
the Ganges at Benares.
I am indebted for this information to Mr Charu
had established the Matkhola Kali temple.
63 Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, I6 July 1930
July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); A
64 Teleg. from ADM Mym. to GB, i6 July I
Bengal, I6 July 1930; Rep. on the Police Firin
South; Rep. on Disturbances at Gaffargaon in
GB Poll Con File 6I3/30 (WBSA); ABP, 17 Jul

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 479

instances of such beliefs appear in the documents.65 When the Circle

Officer of Kishoreganj confronted the looters atJaitra in Pakundia elaka
on 12 July he was asked why he had come to interfere when the
authorities had done nothing of the kind in Dacca. On 15 July, Burrows,
the District Magistrate, had a conversation with Ali Sheikh, a resident of
Kuriman in Hossainpur thana, who on being asked why his village was
practically empty replied that the villagers had all gone south to
demand back their deeds from mahajans. He added that everybody said
that this was the government order promulgated about ten days
previously. Finally, a rioter wounded in police firing at Ashutia on 14
July cried out before he died 'Ami British governmenter proja, dohai
British government' and could not evidently understand why he had
been shot by government forces.66
With the District Magistrate having left on tour on the day of the
outbreak, local officers with the forces at their disposal were at a loss to
deal with the situation on the first couple of days of the disturbances.
The usual modus operandi was for a mob of anything between Ioo and
I oo1000 men to demand back from a moneylender all the documents in his
possession. Temporary immunity could be purchased, but if the
documents were not produced at the time fixed his house was looted and
in some cases burnt. The looting usually took place during daytime
evidently because it was considered cowardly according to the Shariat
to go out plundering at night. On the 12th and 13th police patrols had to
flee from belligerent mobs.67 Reinforcements were rushed from head-
quarters and on the 13th night a contingent of 50 Easter Frontier Rifles
arrived from Dacca. The District Magistrate reached the troubled area
on the following day and stern action was taken in the Pakundia and
Hossainpur thanas, the worst affected areas, with the police firing on
excited mobs at Gobindapur, Ashutia, Patuabhanga, Nischintapur,
Aingadi, Tengar and Matkhola causing a number of casualties. By the

65 Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 16July 1930; Rep. about the looting and rioting in
Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd. I4July 193o; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, i8July
1930, GB Poll Con File 6I3/30 (WBSA).
66 In the I906-07 riots in Mymensingh also the rioters had believed that the
government had authorized the pillage of Hindu mahajans, cf. M.S.R., p. 30; very
similar notions appear to have been held by peasant rebels during the Deccan riots of
1875, cf. Catanach, 'Agrarian Disturbances', pp. 70-2, and in the grain riots in Madras
in 1918, cf. David Arnold, 'Looting, Grain Riots and Government Policy in South India
1918', in Past and Present, 84, (1979), p. 145; analogies can also be drawn in this respect
with peasant behaviour in rural riots in eighteenth-century France and Russia. See, for
instance, George Rude, The Crowd in History (New York, 1964), p. 28.
67 Ghatak ADM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July I930; Teleg. from ADM
Mym. to GB, 14 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

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 480 SUGATA BOSE
i6th the worst was definitely over,
alarms in Gaffargaon, Katiadi, Nikli
of firings on the I4th seemed to have b
the situation. A short spell of fair wea
government forces by motor transpo
having erupted near Pakundia on I I Ju
the following days, were quickly repre
Magistrate was able to write with sm
and the Eastern Frontier Rifles force have been as invaluable as usual.
Johnny Gurkha commands the greatest respect in mofassil Bengal as a
fighting man and the mere fact that he is present is a valuable asset to
district authorities in troubled times.'70
The balance-sheet of casualties showed:

Killed Wounded

I. Those attacked by rioters 11 I

(incl. I woman and
lo in one family)
2. Rioters 1 15
(2 by persons (8 by persons
attacked, rest in attacked, rest in
police firing) police firing)
3. Government servants 5

22 21

Personal viole
Krishna Ray
Namusudra B
was no molestation of women. The wrath of the rioters was directed
against property in general, and loan bonds in particular. By the end of
the month it was ascertained that 90 villages had been attacked.72 On
68 Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, I4 July 1930; Teleg from DM Mym. to GB, i6July
1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I8 July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
69 Clayton Cmsr Dac, Dn to Hopkyns CS, 31 July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
70 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I8 July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
71 Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, i6July I930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS,
18 July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 30 July 1930.
72 Mackenzie SP Mym. to Burrows DM Mym., 2 August I930, GB Poll Con File
613/30 (WBSA).

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 481
30 August with police investigations complete, 142 cases were instituted,
one case being brought for all looting cases occurring in the same village
on the same day and committed by the same gang. Charge sheets were
actually submitted in 129 cases against 631 people, only the 'principal
culprits' having been selected for being charge-sheeted.73
Not surprisingly, considerable controversy raged even at the time
over the responsibility for these extensive riots as well as their true
nature. Had the 'disobedience' fostered by the Congress recoiled on
them? How far were the disturbances an outcome of the design of the
colonial state to divide Hindu and Muslim? What mischievous roles did
the itinerant maulavies play? Had Kishoreganj witnessed a 'class war' or
a 'communal outbreak'?
'Too much violence and intimidation by Congress volunteers seems
have been allowed in Kishoreganj,' angrily wrote Clayton, Comm
sioner of Dacca Division, which in his view had 'done much to
undermine the respect for the authority of Government'.74 There seems
to be, however, little causal link between the disaffection spread by the
Congress party and the outbreak in Kishoreganj. There is considerable
evidence on the other hand that it was an innocently held belief that the
forces of law and order would under the circumstances support
lawlessness and disorder if directed against the Hindus that emboldened
the Muslim cultivators to revolt. Local officers acknowledged that the
mobs were encouraged by 'misleading rumours' spread by maulavies of
what had occurred in the Dacca district.75 Dacca along with Comilla
and Chittagong had been a major centre of civil disobedience in east
Bengal. In the last week of May 1930 a bitter communal riot broke out in
Dacca town and its outskirts. A large body of evidence furnished before
an official Dacca Riots Enquiry Committee suggests that professional
goondas, many of whom it was alleged by Hindu victims lived and
practised sword-play in the Nawab ofDacca's bagicha, attacked Hindus
and looted Hindu shops while the police under British officers turned a
blind eye.76 The police moreover took the opportunity of the communal
clashes to raid Hindu houses and generally spread terror among the

73 Special Report Case No. 93/30 Report III by Khaleque ASP Mym., 30 August
193o, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).
74 Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn to Hopkyns CS, 31 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
75 Ibid.
76 GB Poll Con File 444/30 (WBSA). Apart from the testimony of the victims, there is
a mass of evidence furnished by eye-witnesses, e.g., the evidence of Miss R. B. Verulkar,
Principal, Eden High School and College for Girls, Dacca, and of Miss P. Haldar,
Headmistress in charge of Vernacular Training Schools.

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 482 SUGATA BOSE
nationalist ranks." Disturbances also o
district outside the town and the enquir
villages, Matwail, Jinjira, Ati and Roh
had a grievance against their Hindu m
events in Dacca encouraged them to g
that messengers went out from Dacca on
villagers that the Nawab had ordered th
and that the 'paramount power' would
that on the 27th, 500 to 700 Muslims
villages surrounded Rohitpur hat and
prominent Sahas.79 After the inciden
accompanied by the Nawab of Dacca v
to the victims that the looting by the M
the civil disobedience campaign.s0 Th
from the Dacca side carried to the Mu
were not entirely lacking a basis in fact
Was government policy in Mymens
District Magistrate G. S. Dutt's colleague
the Divisional Commissioner, became
viewed as his weak-kneed and over
Congress movement, and in the first we
Burrows.8s Dutt had in a letter of 2 Jun
communal trouble between bands of vol
and local Muslims.82 On I July Bu
apprehensions on that score were 'entire

" The official enquiry committee report, me

acknowledged that raids were carried out on H
curious justification of the apparent partialit
opinion having recognized 'the insufficiency
Muhammadan mobs, who were far more numer
Hindu mobs', the police did their duty by taking
an end to the chance of any further provocation f
Committee Report 193o (hereafter referred to as
78 Ibid., p. I9. 79 Ibid., pp. 19, 25-
80 Ibid., p. 38. The report maintained, however, that local officials did nothing wrong
in striking an alliance with the Nawab of Dacca.
81 Craig DIG Dac. Range asked Lowman IGP whether there was any hope of Dutt
being replaced, GB Poll Con File 51i1/30; Clayton complained that the police would
have done a better job if Dutt had given proper support and considered that 'a better
selection might have been made for Mymensingh', Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn to Hopkyns
CS, 25 May 193o, GB Poll Con File 435/30 (WBSA).
82 Dutt DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 2 June 1930; Hopkyns CS to Burrows DM Mym.,
18 June I930, GB Poll Con File 5 I1 /30 (WBSA).
83 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I July 1930, GB Poll Con File 511/30
(WBSA).

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 483
upon his arrival in Mymensingh two false rumours were circulated. The
first was that he was against the Hindus generally and the second that he
had been sent by Government in Dutt's place to create communal
trouble. He addressed two meetings in the Pleaders' Bar Library and the
Mukhtears' Bar Library to contradict these rumours. Regarding the
enrolment of volunteers by Anjumans he had to say that they had as
much right to enrol volunteers as the Congress. He had been informed
by Anjuman leaders that they were quite willing to accept Hindus as
volunteers who were against the civil disobedience movement in the
same way as Congress were enrolling Muslims who were in favour of the
movement. The issue, he put it, was not between Muslims and Hindus
but those against and in favour of the civil disobedience movement.
Burrows clearly recognized that the civil disobedience movement could
be contained if the Muslim peasantry at large did not join in it. He set
out his policy to Calcutta thus: 'So far the Muhammadans have kept
themselves aloof mainly in their own interests and my policy will be to
maintain this attitude without giving any encouragement to communal
aggression.'84 He urged the Chief Secretary to bring some influence to
bear upon Maulavi Abdul Hakin, M.L.C., a leading Muslim supporter
of civil disobedience in Mymensingh, at the next session of the Council.
'For the rest,' he wrote, 'I propose to be quite firm with all the actions of
the Congress party and have already taken action accordingly in one or
two cases .... The jail is very full at the moment.'85 Both Hindus and
Muslims were left to draw their own conclusions. Widespread and
uncontrolled violence was, however, a dangerous thing for government
to encourage and, as we have seen, the Kishoreganj disturbances were
put down with a firm hand after they had broken out. Once order had
been restored the argument which clinched the issue against the
imposition of punitive police was that it was something the nationalists
'might utilise to persuade the Mahommedans from their present
opposition to the Civil Disobedience Movement'.86
The nationalist press asserted that the Kishoreganj riots had been
planned by masterminds who had their own axes to grind.87 The
urban-based Muslim politicians fighting with the Hindus for jobs and
council seats and their religious agents had indeed made a vested interest
of the poverty and misery of the Muslim peasantry which they used to
further their own ends. The Charu Mihir of Mymensingh complained

84 Ibid. 85 Ibid.
86 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I8 July I930, GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
87 ABP, i August 193o; Liberty, 25 July I930.

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 484 SUGATA BOSE

that the maulavies went about telling t

in the jute market was due to the p
Congress. Yet, the foreign rulers as we
'natural leaders' of the Muslim commun
existing contradictions in Bengali rur
maulavies assuring the Muslim peasantr
lent neutrality was but a spark which s
east Bengal countryside alight. What
inherent in agrarian society that lay at
1930?
The Kishoreganj disturbances were, acccording to the District
Magistrate of Mymensingh, 'primarily economic with a necessary
communal tinge because more than 90 per cent of the tenants and
debtors in the affected area are Muhammadans, while the large
majority of the moneylenders are Hindus. Muhammadan moneylenders
have, however, been proportionately threatened and looted.'89 This
view was reiterated by the Governor of Bengal in reply to a deputation of
M.L.C.s who called on him.90 A substantial section of the Hindus
asserted, however, that the uprising was 'not in fact a class war'91 or
simply a debtor's revolt and claimed that only Hindus and no Muslims
had been attacked and that many persons without any connection to the
moneylending business were victims of the rioters.92 The District
Magistrate was able to supply names of nine Muslim moneylenders who
had lost their documents and said that he had received requests for help
from several more. He cited the actual figures from the first information
reports which showed that only a small proportion of the victims were
not connected with the moneylending business. According to these
figures, 995 Hindu houses and shops and 6 Muslim houses were looted
with documents, 33 Hindu shops were looted in which no demand for
documents was made and 21 Hindu and 3 Muslim houses lost
88 For instance, the government-appointed committee explained the origin of the
Dacca riots in this way: the Hindus to further the civil disobedience campaign had
attempted 'to divide the Muhammadans and thus weaken the influence of their natural
leaders'; when the several associations of the Muhammadans succeeded in coming
together again and felt themselves under one leader, the Nawab of Dacca, 'they were
naturally elated and anxious to take the first opportunity of showing the Congress party
that their intrigues had failed', DRECR 1930, p. 25-
89 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, I8 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
90 ABP, 17 July 1930.
91 Statement by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, ABP, I August 1930.
92 Ibid.; Statement by B. P. Hindu Sabha, Advance, 2 August 1930 and ABP 24 July
1930; Memorial to H. E. the Governor of Bengal from the Hindu population of Kish.,
GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNAL' VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 485
documents under threat without any looting.93 While these statistics
speak eloquently of the nature of agrarian conflict in rural east Bengal,
the District Magistrate appears to have been a little anxious to discount
the role of communalism. Reports from some of his subordinate officers
indicate that looting, once it began, gathered its own momentum and
the rioters were not always discriminating in their purpose. The S.D.O.
Kishoreganj, for instance, wrote, 'All the Namasudra houses at Jaitra
had been looted and damaged.'94 In Bahadia the looters were said to
have 'entered about 70 Hindu houses including many huts of poor
people through which the looters marched committing some mis-
chief'.95 In the market centres of Pulerghat and Kaliachhapra the
Superintendent of Police found that 'loot was the object and since only
Hindu shops were looted, Muhammadan shops being exempted, a
certain amount of communal bias was evident'.96 There is little doubt,
however, that the principal target of the rioters was the moneylender
who in most cases in east Bengal was Hindu.
One prominent Hindu leader refused to believe that the riots were
fundamentally economic and argued that the actual pinch of scarcity
caused by low prices could not have been felt when the disturbances took
place as the bulk of the jute crop still stood on the fields. The destructive
acts of the rioters, he said, made it clear that they were not actuated by
the necessity of finding food.97 The fact that the looters often chose to
destroy paddy rather than steal it can hardly be said to indicate that
there was no genuine economic discontent behind the disturbances.98
The cultivators already hard hit by the low prices obtained forjute and
paddy in the previous year, knew that they would be called upon to
make payments on their bonds as soon as the aus paddy and jute crop
had been reaped. It was clearly their desire to avoid these exactions
which led them to seize and destroy loan bonds. The slump was striking

93 Burrows DM Mym. to Press Officer GB 5 August I930; GB Poll Con File 613/30
(WBSA).
94 Rep. about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd 12July 1930, GB
Poll Con File 6I3/30 (WBSA).
" Special Report Case No. 93/30 Report III by Khaleque ASP Mym., 30 August
I93o, GB Pol Con File 613/30 (WBSA).
96 Notes on Kishoreganj Investigations by Mackenzie SP Mym., 24 Aug. 1930, GB
Pol Con File 613/30 (WBSA).
9' Statement by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, ABP I August 1930.
98 During food riots in eighteenth-century England, it was not unusual for starving
people to scatter grain along roads and hedges or to dump it in the river. Their main
purpose was to punish proprietors for violating their notions of justice, cf. E. P.
Thompson, 'The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century', in
Past and Present, 50 (February 1971), PP. 14-i5.

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486 SUGATA BOSE
at the roots of the old paternalist mo
interest met with a refusal by the mah
'actual pinch' was in fact soon to come.
reporting sporadic cases of looting of p
the end of the year the Government
80 ooo to Mymensingh to relieve acute
Let us now have a look at the mahajan w
chief class enemy of the peasant in the
the ill-fated Krishna Chandra Roy ofJ
example of the nature of the financ
talukdar-mahajan. In 1917 at the time
record-of-rights of his locality, Krishna
Shyama Charan held 5.19 acres as a pe
rent in four different khatiyans, 10.05 a
raiyat of the village, and 1.21 acres in tw
rent) raiyat.102 Some of his lands held
raiyats and those that he held in his
cultivated by bargadars and farm lab
records of the district registration offi
1930 twenty-four mortgage deeds were
Roys' favour by Muslim and Namasu
mostly short-term loans for periods betw
at usurious rates of interest of up to
mortgaged in all cases was to remain in t
If he could not repay the principal with
the condition was that he would cont
defaulted in the payment of interest, th
sell up the land, and if that did not cove
interest, he would be empowered to rea
debtor's moveable and immoveable pr
99 The problem of loan refusals was to become m
reported from Noakhali in May 1931 that 'the u
give loans may give rise to riots like tho
threats.... the Mahommedans had boycotted H
that unless they gave loans freely neither their l
Cmser, Chittagong Dn to CS, 28 May 1931, G
100 Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 23 Sep. 193
September I930; Burrows DM Mym. to Secy Rev
Con File 613/30 (WBSA).
101 GB Poll Con File 35/31 (WBSA).
102 Record of Rights of Mouza Jangalia, D
Collectorate Record Room).
103 Deeds of Land Sales and Mortgage,
Registration Office).

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 487
distraint, and to all this, the deeds declared in grandiose legal Bengali,
neither the executant nor his descendants would have the right to make
any objection. The extent of the Roys' moneylending business in
Jangalia and its environs which did not involve registration and security
of land we can only imagine. However, in the 1920O the talukdar-mah-
jan did not go on a spree of buying up raiyati holdings. We find that
between 1918 and 1930 while Krishna Chandra and his brother spent
Rs I I I 17 in ten different purchases of shares in Shikmi taluks, they
dispossessed only five Muslim cultivators of whole or part of their raiyati
holdings.x'4 On 23/2/22 they bought 0.96 acres from Sk. Alimuddin et
al. for Rs 400; on 26/6/22 o.o8 acres from Sk. Himmat Akan for Rs 32; on
10/2/25 2.65 acres from Sk. Amjad et al. on a court decree; on 19/5/30
0.37 acres for Rs 200 from Sk. Yasin of Dagdaga who we find ten years
ago had borrowed Rs Ioo at 4 per cent monthly interest by mortgaging
nearly 3 acres of land; and finally, less than a month before the family
was exterminated, 0.45 acres from Sk. Himmat Baksh for Rs 385. The
reason cited for each of the above sales was indebtedness or simply
urgent need of cash. With the onset of the depression the mahajans were
to face increasing difficulty in recovering their money and were left with
little alternative other than foreclosing mortgages to get back at least a
part of their outlay. Unsecured loans were largely to be lost.
The anti-moneylender character of the Kishoreganj disturbances
need not be further emphasized. Yet, it is at the deeper and more subtle
level of human motives that the problem of class conflict versus
communalism has still to be resolved. In a good number of peasant
studies the role of immediate economic interest in actuating peasant
action has been stressed and religious and other ideology seen as
'legitimizing' more practical grievances.105 However, the satisfaction of
an irrational and perhaps subconscious passion can conceivably be a
stronger human motive than the satisfaction of a material interest. Is it
possible, if a sequential pattern can at all be discerned, that psychologi-
cal alienation precedes the comprehension of a rational material
grievance?. For a disaffected intelligentsia, as in the case of the early
Indian nationalists, it is arguable that disaffection caused by more
subjective affronts leads on to the building of an intellectually presen-
table case of economic exploitation. For a peasantry the same probably
does not hold true for the economic grievance in this case is often hunger.

104 Ibid.
105 The voting behaviour of the Punjab peasantry on the eve of partition has, for
instance, been recently explained in these terms, cf. I. A. Talbot, 'The I946 Punjab
Elections', Modern Asian Studies, 14, I (February 1980), p. 90 and passim.

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 488 SUGATA BOSE
Nevertheless we must take account of
Zamindari referred to in a memorial
'dream of mastering it over the Hindus'1
rising in Kishoreganj. This 'dream' is
though possibly powerful motive as
helping to legitimize the Muslim pe
demands and protests.
Since the later nineteenth century an
the Muslims of Bengal became noti
expression in such acts as the adoptio
highhandedness of Hindu zamindars a
hitherto been meekly accepted beg
movement in Mymensingh had its origi
twentieth century in protests against th
a seat in the kachhari and the use of t
polite 'apni' in addressing Muslim elders
naibs.107 Nirad C. Chaudhuri writing
recalls the Hindu bhadralok's 'mixed c
Muslim peasant, whom we saw in the sa
Hindu tenants, or, in other words, as
explains how mental attitudes were form
Nothing was more natural for us to feel abo
Even before we could read we had been told that the Muslims had once ruled
and oppressed us, that they had spread their religion in India with the Koran in
one hand and the sword in the other, that the Muslim rulers had abducted our
women, destroyed our temples, polluted our sacred places. As we grew older we
read about the wars of the Rajputs, the Marathas and the Sikhs against the
Muslims ... .109

A Muslim boy growing up in early twentieth-century Mymensingh was

bred in a tradition the polar opposite to that of the Hindu. Abul Mansur
Ahmad, who became an important Proja leader of Mymensingh, fecalls
in his memoirs an inspiring Bengali ballad about going to Lahore to
'06 Satish Chandra Roy Chaudhuri MLC Manager of Atharabari Zamindari to
Hopkyns CS, 17 July I930, GB Poll Con File 6I3/30 (WBSA).
107 Abul Mansur Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar (Dacca, 1968), pp. 5-6,
12-13.

108 Nirad C. Chaudhuri, An Autobiography of An Unknown Indian (London, I95i),

p. 230. The author described four distinct aspects in the Hindu bhadralok's attitude to
Muslims: retrospective hostility for their one-time domination, utter indifference on the
plane of thought to Muslims as an element in contemporary society, friendliness for the
Muslims of their own economic and social status and mixed concern and contempt for
the Muslim peasant.
109 Ibid.

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNAL' VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 489
fight in ajehad against the Sikhs which used to be his favourite as a little
boy. 'Chachaji, where is Lahore? what are Sikhs?' he asked. 'Lahore is a
distant place in the west of Hindusthan. And Sikhs? They are wicked
enemies of Allah' replied Chachaji. 'As wicked as the Hindus?' was the
inquisitive little boy's next question. 110 These were of course attitudes to
historical and somewhat unreal labels 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' and did not
quite correspond to attitudes to Hindus and Muslims in flesh and blood
who were each other's neighbours. The Swadeshi movement has been
seen as a crucial turning-point which brought Hindu-Muslim
antagonism down from the historical to the contemporary plane. 111 It is
quite plausible as well that the notion of a temporary withdrawal of
the repressive role of the colonial state in regard to communal violence
leading to the Mymensingh and Comilla riots in 19o6-o7 marked for the
first time a brief release of the Muslims of east Bengal from their old fear
of the Hindus.112 Yet, if a 'dream' of getting even with the Hindus as a
community did percolate down to the Muslim peasantry of east Bengal,
it is our view that the limiting factor of the structure of the local political
and moral economy had so long ensured that it would remain an idle
dream.

IV. Conclusion

So long as the Muslim peasant of east Bengal remained invol

kind of symbiotic economic relationship with the Hindu talukd
mahajan, the possibility of a sustained conflict could be ruled o
historical significance of the Kishoreganj riots of 1930 lies in the
it dramatically announced the collapse of that relationsh
momentous impact that the slump was going to have on the sys
agrarian relations could hardly have been recognized at the tim
had on earlier occasions been strains on the system when in bad
peasants protested against what they regarded as unjust dem
their resources; but the crisis would soon be resolved and th
revert to its old way of functioning. The magnitude and the ex
nature of the economic crisis of the 1930s were unprecedented:
ties snapped. The guardians of the law were pleased to have been

110 Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar, pp. I, 4-5-

111 Chaudhuri, Autobiography, p. 232.
112 The peasants of Dewanganj who were deeply in debt took advantage of
that the government had authorized the pillage of Hindus to loot bazaars an
Hindu mahajans, M.S.R., p. 30.

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 490 SUGATA BOSE

put down the 'dangerous disturb

few casualties;113 they had onl
climax was to be reached in I94
witness to this day.
In the years following 1930 Kish
combinations to put pressure o
cases of incendiarism by debtors
experience of Kishoreganj and the
non-payment of debts in east Be
and Mymensingh prompted the
tion in the form of the Bengal A
setting up of debt settlement b
ailing system of rural credit r
Kindersley, District Magistrate
Indebtedness Department of th
Enquiries seem to show that through
willing and also less able to lend mon
of the depression of 1930-31 than pr
of the Agricultural Debtors' Act has
willingness to lend.

He added that 'far from encou

before the depression, mahajans
who can give security which ca
ornaments or other similar mo
Bengal Moneylenders Act of 1940
the amount of the principal recov
the coffin. Agrarian Bengal emer
period of war and famine. The o
Ironically, the 1930S which b
Bengal peasant also witnessed a
power in the countryside in his f
of rural credit relations, the slum
mahajan the major source of hi
deference to the mahajan also va
of guarantor of the peasant's s
113 Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns
(WBSA).
114 Fortnightly Reports on the Polit
January 1932, first half of March 193
July 1935-
115 Kindersley DM Mym. to Jt. Secy CCRI Dept., 27 November 1937, GB Rev. B
May 1940 Progs 14-57 (BSRR).

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 ROOTS OF 'COMMUNALI VIOLENCE IN RURAL BENGAL 491
production and reproduction of the small peasant economy of east
Bengal he had ceased to perform his function. The irrational strength of
Muslim identity ensured that the conflict in rural Bengal was channelled
into the movement for Pakistan and not into the broad stream of the
national struggle. To the vast mass of smallholding peasants living
under similar yet very splintered conditions of economic existence in east
Bengal, religion seemed to impart a sense of 'community'; at a crucial
juncture in Bengal's history it was claimed as well to provide the basis of
a form of 'national bond', however narrow, and became the rallying cry
of a 'political organization'. 116 The appeal of a small enlightened Hindu
intelligentsia and their nationalist Muslim comrades to the Muslim
peasantry in the name of progressive nationalism and socialism went
unheeded; it was to the call of Islamic unity that they responded to give
in their own minds a powerful ideological legitimation to their rejection
of the old economic, political and moral order.
Underlying all the religious fanaticism of the immediate pre-indepen-
dence years there remains a largely economically determined fact. From
1930 onwards the Hindu talukdars and traders of east Bengal were not
merely hated, but were increasingly seen to be utterly redundant. In
1947 they were forced to pack their bags and begin their trek towards the
newly demarcated Indian border.
116 The phrases in quotes are those of Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, K. Marx and P. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. i (Moscow, i962), p. 334-

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