'PEASANT RESISTANCE 21 the West while the Indian demand for Western products was usually negligible. The import of bullion ceased after 1757. The problem was solved for the East India Company after the victory at Plassey. Now the surplus from land revenue and the plunder from Bengal were enough for the Company's 'investment' in India—a blatant process of drain, as the profits from new acquisitions in Bengal were being used to buy goods at arbitrary low rates for export from the province. The 'investment', which had already amounted to 6 million current rupees in 1767, rose to Rs. 10 million in 17772. The drain of bullion along with one-way export of materials by the Company tended to affect severely the traditional world of trade and manufacture of silk, cotton and other items of comn^erce in Bengal. Enhancement of land revenue was carried out bv the colonial rulers through various administrative »experiments which initially, encouraged replacement of the old zamindars by a new group of intermediaries who were allowed to indulge in public auction of land. As early as in 1775, the Court of Directors of the Company in their Minute of 15th September remarked: "we have reason to believe that not less than one-third of the Company's lands are or have lately been held by the Banians of English gentlemen. The Governor's Banian stands foremost by the enormous amount of his farms and contracts." Between 1765 and 1777 "lands were let in general too high, and to find out the real value of the lands, the most probable method was to let them to highest bidders and also to dispose of the farms by public auction''.^ With the help of these intermediaries who could be willingly ruthless, unhampered by ^roots that clutch', collection of land revenue increased four times between 1765 and 1784 and the burden of this phenomenal enhancement was ultimately placed on the ryots or the small peasants. Thus a crucial contradiction took shape and antagonism bacame acute between the ryots and the other discontented classes, on the one hand, and the colonial rulers and their new intermediaries, on the other. This was the nature of major contradiction in Bengal during the early colonial phase and we shall try to place the insurgent peasants and assess the anti-colonial character of their resistance in the context of unfolding of this contradiction. There might h^ve been some differences among the discontented classes themselves as well as certain clash of interests between the colonial rulers and their new intermediaries. But these were minor contradictions which did not alter the essential positions of different classes in relation to basic economic forces unleashed by the colonial rule. (II) Peasant resistance became particularly active after the devastating famine of 1769-70 which brought into sharp focus the contours of major contradiction and the inherent crisis came to a flash point/There was a partial failure of crops rh December 1768 due to shortfall in rains. In the early months of 1769, prices soared high. The September crop, which used to be less important than the December harvest, was also scanty. There was not a drop of rain for six months, nor any supply of the inferior grain— chaitali harvest—