#চুয়াড় বিদ্রোহ@Chuar Rebellion: Midnapur Bankura legacy of freedom and Resistance!
Palash Biswas
Video:https://www.facebook.com/palashbiswaskl/videos/1702587569769645/?l=8439862445005580068
Millions of farmers in Latin America, Africa and south Asia are, at present, direct victims of the wondrous regime set up by the WTO and world order sustained by governments worldwide led by ruling hegemony of ruling dynasties in desguise of democracy and their agencies all on name of growth,development and humanitarian cause and projected mass movement .
With the gradual dismantling of quantitative restrictions and tariff barriers, the peasantry in the poorer countries is facing rack and ruin.
A whole range of farm commodities can be offered for trading by the technologically advanced Western countries at prices that would not cover farmers' costs in the poor continents. One reason is the neo-colonial edict: some are more equal than others; subsidies are out for farmers in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, but not for those in the US, or in France.
But agrarian Midnapur and Jangal Mahal in Bengal have a different legacy of resistance to reject the Global Order,indiscriminate industrializaion,urbanisation and infrastructure.
I am just drawing your attention to this humanscape of continuous resistance inherent.
Midnapur is quite different from rest of Bengal,rest of India.So the tribal India,which it makes with Jharkhand,dandakarnya,Orrissa,MP,Maharashtra and Andhra are quite different in culture,psyche,linguistics and history.
We have brute apathy against them!We may include tribal Gujarat and rajasthan along with UP and Bihar in this list.Then entire North East.
For Example as Warren Hastings failed to quell the Chuar uprisings. The district administrator to Bankura wrote in his diary in 1787 that the Chuar revolt was so widespread and fierce that temporarily, the Company's rule had vanished from the district of Bankura.
Finally in 1799 the Governor General, Wellesley crushed these uprisings by a pincer attack. An area near Salboni in Midnapore district, in whose mango grove many rebels were hung from trees by the British, is still known by local villagers as "the heath of the hanging upland", Phansi Dangar Math.
Some years later under the leadership of Jagabandhu the paymaster or Bakshi (of the infantry of the Puri Raja), there was the well-known widespread Paik or retainer uprising in Orissa. In 1793 the Governor General Cornwallis initiated in the entire Presidency of Bengal a new form of Permanent Settlement of revenue to loyal landlords.
This led to misfortunes for the toiling peasantry: in time they would protest against this as well.
First Chuar Rebellion (1767.)
But the world owes much to rebels who would dare to argue in the face of the pontiff and insist that he is not infallible.
-Babasaheb Ambedkar
In the fight for Swaraj you fight with the whole nation on your side...[but to annihilate the caste], you have to fight against the whole nation—and that too, your own. But it is more important than Swaraj. There is no use having Swaraj, if you cannot defend it. More important than the question of defending Swaraj is the question of defending the Hindus under the Swaraj. In my opinion, it is only when Hindu Society becomes a casteless society that it can hope to have strength enough to defend itself. Without such internal strength, Swaraj for Hindus may turn out to be only a step towards slavery. Good-bye, and good wishes for your success.
-B.R. Ambedkar