The Fakir and Sannyasi Uprisings

So long the Fakir and Sannyasi rebellion has been mostly characterised by the historians either as a disturbing law-and-order problem affecting Pax Britannica or as a full-fledged peasant insurrection blossoming into a sort of anti-British nationalist outburst. Dr. Atis K. Dasgupta, in this thesis, has carefully avoided both the extremes. He seeks to locate the essential material basis of the Fakir and Sannyasi uprisings in the context of the new class alignments emerging from the major economic changes unleashed by the ruthless colonial drive to maximise the land revenue of Bengal for financing one-way export trade of the English East India Company. Dr. Dasgupta has also investigated the multiple roles of the Fakirs and the Sannyasis such as religious, landholding, trading, mercenary and moneylending. These complicated roles had their impact, both positive and negative, on the shaping of the uprisings, which became broad-based after the mass-scale entry of the pahi-Kasht peasants following the famine of 1769-70. He has marshalled his data not only from the official records of the Company but also from the religious texts and certain rare Bengali manuscripts.