After 1765, becoming the Diwan the Company (and later the Crown) continually struggled with the three related problems: (i) A lack of understanding of existing institutional arrangements, (ii) Limited administrative capacity, and (iii) Especially after the “Mutiny” of 1857, concerns with political stability.

East India Company encouraged the investment in land to improve the agriculture. The key event in this process, was the proclamation of the “Permanent Settlement” of 1793.  By the terms of the settlement, the rajas and taluqdars were recognized as zamindars. The zamindars were a diverse group. Some who had enormous estates, military capacity, and judicial and administrative responsibilities might well be called (Bose 1993, p. 70) “feudatory chiefs. ”

The zamindars were , only the first tier in the agrarian hierarchy. They were asked to collect rent from the peasants and pay revenue to the Company. The amount to be paid was fixed permanently, that is, it was not to be increased ever in future.

The Permanent Settlement remained ineffective because zamindars were not investing in the improvement of land. In In the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, an Englishman called Holt Mackenzie devised the new system called as ‘Mahalwari System’ which came into effect in 1822. 

He developed the system of land assessment . Collectors had to inspect and measure the land . They had to record the customs and rights of different groups. This survey was to be revised periodically, not permanently fixed. The charge of collecting the revenue and paying it to the Company was given to the village headman, rather than the zamindar.

In the British territories of the south the Ryotwari system was deployed and extended by Captain Alexander Read and Thomas Munro. For Munro ideally the title and the tax assignment would be with the cultivator himself, not with an intermediary like the zamindar.

British realised that the countryside can yield revenue and grow the crops that Europe required.  The 1859 Act set the stage for conflict between occupancy tenant and zamindar. One easy way for the zamindar to defeat its purpose was to switch the tenant from plot to plot (Rothermund, 1978, p. 99) so he could not show occupation for twelve years and thereby acquire occupancy rights.

By the late eighteenth century the Company was trying to expand the cultivation of opium and indigo. The indigo plantation in British India was part of forced plantation regime.   A small amounts of Indian indigo reached the European market and its price was very high.  A plant of the temperate zones, ”Woad” was more easily available in Europe. It was grown in northern Italy, southern France and in parts of Germany and Britain. Worried by the competition from indigo, Woad producers in Europe pressurized their governments to ban the import of indigo. Indigo produced a rich blue colour , whereas the dye from woad was pale and dull, so preferred by textile industries over the woad. Government had to lift the ban on import of indigo.

By the end of the eighteenth century, following the expansion and industrialisation of cotton textile the demand for Indian indigo grew further. At the same instance, its existing supplies from the West Indies and America collapsed for a variety of reasons.

Between 1783 and 1789 the production of indigo in the world fell by half. Faced with the rising demand for indigo in Europe, the Company in India looked for ways to expand the area under indigo cultivation.  Post famine (1770) and post permanent settlement, Bengal saw some changes in the rural power structure. The process of evolution of a land market and recognition of sub-letting rights through the Putni regulations of 1819 created a space for the intrusion of new element in the rural agrarian scene (Bhaduri 1976; Chaudhuri 1975; Cohn 1970).  

The bureaucracy of the former zamindars, the revenue amlah, the urban and mercantile groups, and civil servants, etc, emerged as claimants to the land. From the last decades of the eighteenth century indigo cultivation in Bengal expanded rapidly and Bengal indigo came to dominate the world market .

In 1788 only about 30 per cent of the indigo imported into Britain was from India. By 1810, the proportion had gone up to 95 per cent. As the indigo trade grew, commercial agents and officials of the Company began investing in indigo production. Attracted by the prospect of high profits and due to availability of credit, numerous Scotsmen and Englishmen came to India and became planters. 

There were two main systems of indigo cultivation, ‘nij’ and ”ryoti’ . Within the system of nij cultivation, the planter produced indigo in lands of their own control. Planter either bought the land or rented it from other zamindars and produced indigo by directly employing hired workers. The planters found it difficult to expand the area under nij cultivation as Indigo could be cultivated only on fertile lands, and these were already densely populated. Only small plots scattered over the landscape could be acquired. They attempted to lease in the land around the indigo factory, and evict the peasants from the area. But this always led to conflicts and tension. 

Indigo plantation needed huge number of workers at the same time when they were busy with paddy cultivation. Nij cultivation was not able to get availability of ploughs and other amenities as peasants were using them in their own paddy fields. So nij cultivation was confined to only 25% while ryoti cultivation exceeded. Under ryoti system,  the planters forced the ryots or village headmen to sign a contract, an agreement (satta) on behalf of ryot. Those who signed the contract got cash advances from the planters at low rates of interest to produce indigo.

 But the loan committed the ryot to cultivating indigo on at least 25 per cent of the area under his holding. When the crop was delivered to the planter after the harvest, a new loan was given to the ryot, and the cycle started all over again. 

Payment of advances continued only when the production with the peasant was surplus . 

The price they got for the indigo they produced was very low and the cycle of loans never ended.

Indigo, replaced the paddy as it had deep roots and it exhausted the soil rapidly, it affected the subsistence in terms of food security of ryots. The moral economy perspective has not even found space in the margins of the discourse on the Indigo movement.  The subsistence was a factor in the Indigo movement. Customary and traditional notions of rights and legitimacy occupied important position in the minds of peasants. The peasant, to all intent and purposes, became an agricultural labourer, merely assisting the planter in the process of cultivation.

In March 1859 thousands of ryots in Bengal refused to grow indigo. As the rebellion spread, ryots refused to pay rents to the planters, and attacked indigo factories. 

Those who worked for the planters were socially boycotted, and the gomasthas – agents of planters – who came to collect rent were beaten up.  In 1859, the indigo ryots assumed that they had the support of the local zamindars and village headmen in their rebellion against the planters. In some villages zamindars and village headmen went around villages urging the ryots to resist the planters. These zamindars were unhappy with the increasing power of the planters and angry at being forced by the planters to give them land on long leases. After the Revolt of 1857 the British government was particularly worried about the possibility of another popular rebellion.  

Lieutenant Governor J.P. Grant  toured the region in the winter of 1859. The ryots saw the tour as a sign of government sympathy for their plight. Barasat magistrate Ashley Eden issued a notice stating that ryots would not be compelled to accept indigo contracts. Urban intellectuals raised literary support for the revolt.

The planters formed their own political association to establish their authority in the indigo districts. Thus, they emerged as a new element in the agrarian economy which eroded the powers and privileges enjoyed hitherto by the Zamindars. A growing confrontation became acute between landlords and planters on the one hand, and the planters and peasants on the other. Indigo rebellion does not show any class struggle between the peasants and zamindars.  Rather the real objective of the Zamindars was to oppose the encroachment of Europeans on principle and to fight for their own vested interests.

 The social base of the revolt was very wide.  In Bengal there was already a history of peasant resistance to the planter system associated with the Fara’idi sect of East Bengal. This group of people had been active in the struggle against oppression by planters in the 1830s and 1840s. Their role is significant in the sense that while they were addressing religious concerns they also took up the economic aspect of the problem .   

In his essay on Neel Darapn, Ranajit Guha shows , how the grievances of the peasants were used by various superordinate classes to press their own demands. The richer peasants wanted to free themselves from the oppression of the planters so that they could operate their own mahajani i.e. money-lending and usury, freely. The intelligentsia sought to establish themselves as the true friends of the peasants and thus their legitimate political representatives. In all of this the peasants’ own voices were largely ignored, and in the end they gained very little from the struggle .

By the Rent Act passed in 1859, the British government went out of its way to protect the peasants and the power of the zamindars was curtailed. In April 1859, the Punjab System of Administration was introduced in Bengal whereby administrative and magisterial powers became concentrated in the hands of the District Collector, who became an extremely powerful figure.

Indigo cultivators in the large districts of Pabna and Nadia and in the Barasat subdivision had declared the first general strike which soon spread to the whole Bengal.  By 1860 the movement had gathered force in the delta region of Bengal. While the zamindars were also not pro-planters they did not as a rule actively support the peasants. Leadership to the rebellion was provided by the substantial peasantry – the class which had earlier acted as intermediaries between the planters and the small peasants. 

Worried by the rebellion, the government brought in the military to protect the planters from assault, and set up the Indigo Commission to enquire into the system of indigo production. The Indigo Commissiion, as it came to be called was constituted of 5 members including: W.S. Seton Karr and R. Temple who represented the British government , Rev. J. Sale represented the Christian Missionaries , W. F. Ferguson represented the European planters and Chandramohan Chatterjee represented the Zamindars.

Most importantly it was a revolt of both the major religious groups of farmers in Bengal, notably a farmer Haji Molla of Nischindipur said that he would “rather beg than sow indigo”.  The Commission held the planters guilty, and criticised them for the coercive methods they used with indigo cultivators. It declared that indigo production was not profitable for ryots. The Commission asked the ryots to fulfil their existing contracts but also told them that they could refuse to produce indigo in future.

At the request of the Indigo Planters Association, Act XI of 1860 was passed which criminalized ‘Breach of Contract’ by the ryots. The planters used this law to further their control and oppression of the peasants. A huge number of suits were filed against them.  

The peasants joined together to raise funds to fight court cases filed against them. Commission recommended few important  improvements. First, the ryot should sow indigo according to his wishes and terms. Second, the contract should be simple in nature, extending not more than 12 months and there shouldn’t be any renewal if the peasant failed to meet his engagements to avoid the accumulation of debt. Third, factories should pay for the stamp paper, not the ryots. Fourth, the selection of land for indigo should be negotiated equally by both the parties. Fifth, the expense of delivering the plant by cart or boat to factories should be borne by the factories, not the ryots.

The Neel Bidroha inspired literature, music and films. Dinabandhu Mitra’s play Nil Darpan or the ‘Mirror of Indigo’ remains a classic because it was written during the movement in 1859. It narrated the sufferings, oppression and struggle of indigo cultivators.  In order to feel the pulse of the local people, following the popularity of this play, W.S. Seton-Karr, Secretary to the Governor of Bengal, assigned Rev. James to translate the work into English and circulate it among like-minded Britons.

After the revolt, indigo production collapsed in Bengal. But the planters now shifted their operation to Bihar. With the discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century their business was severely affected, but yet they managed to expand production. Indigo Rebellion can be termed the first form resistance of the countryside against the British in economic and social terms. Unlike the spontaneous revolt of the soldiers in the Sepoy Mutiny, this countryside revolt evolved over the years and, in the process, rallied different strata of society against the British – a thread of dissent that lasted many decades  thereafter .