...Agency of Peasant Protests: A Corrective to Conservative Ideology
The Chayanovian populist framework incorporated in the middle peasant thesis (Wolf 1968, Alavi 1965), moral economy (Scott, 1990, 1985, 1976; Adas 1979), and Subaltern Studies interested in discovering the "elementary" for of peasant insurgency (Guha, 1983; Cahtterjee 1988) argues that the main reason behind peasant protests is to resist capitalist penetration that threatens their traditional way of life. This argument is premised on an assumption of a universal peasant way of life that they must preserve against capitalist (or socialist) onslaught. It is a trans-historical view of a peasant way of life and peasant movements. The thesis that peasants fight to preserve their traditional way of life threatened by an encroachment of capitalism is particularly problematic with regard to peasant movements in colonial societies. It is premised on an assumption that colonialism led to the penetration of capitalism dissolving pre-capitalist relations and values that defined peasants' traditional way of life. It thus excludes the possibility that colonialism rather than dissolving the pre-capitalist traditions, was forced to enter into compromise and accommodation with pre-capitalist forces, as was the case with princely states covering two-fifth of the entire territory during the British colonial rule in India. Peasants in princely states were protesting not against a threat to their traditional way of life. The contrary. They were protesting against the traditional way life. And they were selectively using the elements of tradition in their fight against their traditional rulers - a situation similar to the eighteenth century crowd in England analyzed by E.P. Thompson [1978]. The main objective of peasants' protests was not the conservation but the dissolution of the traditional way of life which allowed for their exploitation and subordination, and was also an obstacle to the development of capitalism - commoditification of land and labor in the countryside. Hilton's seminal observation that "successful peasant resistance to lords' pressure for the transfer of surplus...must be regarded as a critical turning point in the history of the 'prime mover' within the feudal mode of production" is more relevant to peasant protests in princely states. In bringing about the decline of feudalism and thereby contributing to the dissolution of the colonial rule (Cf. Singh 1998), these protests were the "prime mover" within the colonial-feudal social economic formation in India.
References Adas, M., 1979, _Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements Against the European Colonial Order_, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Chatterjee, P. 1988. "More on Modes of Power and the Peasantry", in R. Guha and G. Spivak. eds. Selected Subaltern Studies, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp., 351-90. Guha, R., 1983, _Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India_, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Scott, J.C., 1990, _Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts_, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Scott, J.C., 1985, _Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance_, New Haven: Yale University Press. Scott, J.C., 1976, _The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia_, New Haven: Yale University Press. Singh, H. 1998. _Colonial Hegemony and Popular Resistance: Princes, Peasants, and Paramount Power_, Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London: SAGE. Thompson, E.P., "Class Struggle without Struggle", _Social History_, Vol. 3, No 2 (May 1978), pp. 133-65. Wolf, E. 1969, _Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century_, New York: Harper
<www.edgehill.ac.uk/research/smg/pdf%20-%20Conference/ Singh-antifeudalpaper.pdf> -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>