PERCEPTION OF INSURGENT PEASANTS OF BENGAL 31
gents^ iThese are mostly non-official documents. The official sources (i.e., the records preserved by Ahe English East IndAa Company) can only be taken into account in so far as these may be reinterpreted and made amenable to provide certain information, albeit, indirectly, on the motivations of the rebel peasants. In the category of non-official documents, two nearrcontemporary Bengali verses have been located which sought to depict the Fakir-Sannyasi and the Rangpur uprisings, by and large, from the side of the insurgents: one is Majnu Shaher Hakikat and the other is known as Rangpurer Jager Gan. The Hakikat was composed by Jamiruddih Dafadar, a local poet of Birbhum, in 1873. The manuscript has Aeen recently printed as an appendix to Bidrohi Fakir Nayak Majnu Shah, written by M. Abdur Rahman. The Jager Can was composed by Ratiram Das soon after the Rangpur rising and was later published in Rangpurer Sahitya Parishad Patrika (1315 BS). The manuscript was reprinted in Narahari Kavirafs work, A Peasant Uprising in Bengal, 17 83 (Delhi, 1972).
As an immediate reaction to the colonial inroads, the major perception of the peasants at the initial stage was focussed around the mounting burden of increased revenue and the severe methods introduced by the new intermediaries or the new zamindars of the East India Company. This perception comes out sharply from the passages of both the Hakikat and the Jager Gan,
The passages, after translation, would run as:
There was a mazar of Darvish Hamid
in the domain of Asaduzzaman
(the old zamindar of Birbhum).
There in the Khanqah of the old Pir Khadim
came Majnu Fakir to offer his Salam.
Khadim urged Majnu in despair:
'Lakhs of people are dying in famine,
try to save their lives!
The Company's agents and picks
torture tillers and ryots
for exorbitant revenue; and
people are deserting villages'.
The same resentment against the Company's imposition of exorbitant revenue and the merciless extraction by the agents can be heard from the following lines of Rangpurer Jager Gan:
Under the Company, the ruler was Debt Singh. Because of his misdeeds, the country faced famine. Revenue assessment was not fixed, but the extraction from the peasants steadily increased. His only aim was to demand more and more;
Under severe torture a wail of agony arose.