1Section 1 of 1About 1 min
People’s Resistance Before 1857
Meaning and Historical Setting
-
The Revolt of 1857 was not the first resistance to British rule. From the early phase of Company expansion, rulers, zamindars, peasants, artisans, tribals, religious groups and Company sepoys repeatedly challenged British authority in different parts of India.
-
These resistances emerged as the British transformed existing political, agrarian, economic and social structures to suit colonial interests.
-
The term “people” in these movements covered diverse groups whose immediate interests were different but whose grievances increasingly converged against foreign rule:
- dispossessed rulers and zamindars;
- peasants and tenants;
- artisans and rural labourers;
- tribal communities;
- religious and scholarly classes;
- demobilised soldiers;
- Indian sepoys serving in Company armies;
- sections of the urban population.
-
The major forms of resistance before 1857 were:
- Civil uprisings;
- Peasant movements;
- Tribal revolts;
- Sepoy mutinies.