Indigo revolt
peasant revolt
The Indigo revolt (or Nil bidroha; Bengali: নীল বিদ্রোহ) was a peasant movement and subsequent uprising of indigo farmers against the indigo planters, that arose in Bengal in 1859, and continued for over a year. The village headmen (Mandals) and substantial ryots were the most active and numerous groups who led the peasants. Sometimes disgruntled former employees of European planters - 'gomashta' or 'diwan' of the Indigo factories, took the lead to mobilise the peasants against the Indigo planters.
In the summer of 1859 in Bengal when thousands of ryots refused to grow indigo for the European planters with a show of rage and undying resolve, it became one of the most remarkable peasant movements in Indian history. Emerging in the Nadia district, led by two local Zamindars, Digambar Biswas and Bishnu Charan Biswas, the revolt spread to other districts of Bengal in the 1860s and indigo factories and planters faced violent attacks in many places. The revolt ended after the formation of Indigo commission in 1860 which offered reforms of the system, which was inherently exploitative.
Background
Indigo planting in Bengal dates back to 1777, when Louis Bonnaud, a Frenchman, introduced it to the Indian subcontinent. He became the first indigo planter in Bengal, starting to cultivate the crop at Taldanga and Gondolpara near Hooghly. With the Nawabs of Bengal under Company rule, indigo planting became more and more commercially profitable because of the demand for blue dye in Europe. It was introduced in large parts of Burdwan, Bankura, Birbhum, North 24 Parganas, Nadia Jessore and Pabna, and by 1830 there were more than a thousand indigo factories throughout Bengal.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indigo revolt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.