বাংলা 
English 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century a number of indigo planters bought zamindaris in Kushtia district. The English indigo planters forced the tenants to cultivate indigo through dadan (advance loans). The John and Watson Company held zamindari over several hundred square miles in Kumarkhali and Khoksa of Kushtia. As the finest quality indigo was grown in this region, the zamindars made the ordinary tenants cultivate indigo by force. For this indigo cultivation, feudal lords such as zamindars, indigo planters and jotedars inflicted unspeakable oppression on the tenant populace. The tenants had no rights over their land.
The zamindars evicted tenants from their homesteads for rent arrears. Even when people were seized at the kachhari, tortured and killed, there was no trial for it. Because indigo cultivation was profitable, they inflicted this unspeakable cruelty upon the tenants.
In 1774 a French youth named Louis Banno began indigo cultivation in Bengal for the first time. The next year the Englishman Cabral Blum set up the first indigo factory. As indigo cultivation yielded abundantly and profitably in the Kushtia region, indigo factories had been set up all over the country, including Kushtia, by 1815. The indigo plant was like the jute or hemp plant. Four to five feet tall, this plant was produced twice a year - sown once in the months of Baishakh and Jyaistha and again in Ashwin and Kartik. It was cut, rotted in vats, and boiled in water to make indigo dye. In Bangladesh about 1.28 million maunds of indigo were produced a year on 2.04 million acres of land. A ryot produced two and a half to three seers of indigo per bigha of land, which cost 12 taka; yet the ryots received only one to three taka from the factory agents. For this reason the ryots did not want to cultivate indigo. The English factory agents and the government inflicted inhuman persecution on the ryots for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The English indigo planters forced the ryots of Kushtia district to sign dadan contracts for their land, then had indigo cultivated, cut and rotted with the ryots' own bullocks and ploughs, taking the indigo without paying a penny. Defiant ryots were abducted and murdered, with no news of it ever coming out. The indigo planters of Kushtia district included T. I. Kenny, Fergusson, Crawford, Stevenson, Simpson, Ses, Shelly, Watts, Hemilton and others.
Unable to bear the planters' oppression any longer, exhausted by long years of injustice and cruelty, they rose in revolt in 1860 - which took the shape of the Indigo Revolt.
Under the oppression of Thomas Ivan Kenny, the Sheikh and Mridha families of Shalghar Madhua of Kumarkhali (near Piarpur, close to Durbachara) and many families of neighbouring villages abandoned their homesteads and left the country. For all these reasons the dam of people's patience broke. In protest against this oppression of the ryots there emerged the zamindar Pari Sundari.
Pari Sundari - an unforgettable character of the Indigo Revolt, a name like an unextinguished flame of patriotism. She was the youngest daughter of Ramananda Singh, zamindar of Sadarpur in Mirpur upazila of Nadia district of undivided Bengal (present-day Kushtia). All her life she fought for the land and its people, for the interests of the motherland. Her struggle against the oppressive indigo planters, leading the village commoners and the lathials, is legendary. Her adversary was the indigo planter Thomas Ivan Kenny - T. I. Kenny in short. Fergusson, Shelly, Crawford, Stephenson, Simpson and the like were among the oppressive planters, and the most feared name of all was Kenny's. Testifying before the Indigo Commission, the magistrate of Barasat, Ashley Eden, had said: 'There is no crime - murder, assault, riot, robbery, plunder, arson, abduction of people - that the indigo planters have not committed.' Kenny's oppression was excessive even beside theirs. It was against him that Pari Sundari stood up.
Kenny's kachhari stood in the Beki Dalan of Kushtia town, and his factory stood not far away at Shalghar Madhua.
Against Pari Sundari's patriotism and her love for the tenants stand the tales of Kenny's injustice, oppression and persecution in the historical books. News of this was published also in The Hindoo Patriot, edited by Harish Chandra Mukherjee. It is told in special detail in Mir Mosharraf Hossain's Udasin Pathiker Moner Kotha. That book cites instances of Pari Sundari's courage, wisdom and patriotism thus: 'My lathials have plundered the factory; hearing this from ten mouths my heart is glad. I am a daughter of Bengal; I have sacked the sahib's factory - what greater joy can there be!'
The contest between the indigo planter Kenny and the zamindar's daughter Pari Sundari was full of drama, to which even the plots of imaginary tales, novels and plays must yield. Her vow of devoting herself entirely to the country, holding her head high with befitting wisdom and skill against the snares of cunning and deceit, has earned her the place of an unextinguished flame of patriotism in the history of Bengal's Indigo Revolt.
The life and work of the tenant-loving Pari Sundari are enough to kindle patriotism, to initiate one into the fire-mantra. As when she said: 'Whoever by any means brings Kenny's head to me - this bundle of a thousand taka I have tied up for him... I declare with religion as my witness: all the property of Sadarpur I have kept for Kenny... Life itself is spent in protecting the tenants from the hand of the audacious planter; he too is my stake. I do not think at all of my own life. Hearing of the country's distress and the hapless tenants' plight, my heart is bursting.'
With Pari Sundari went the wholehearted participation of a people who had lost everything. Cultivating indigo cost 10 taka per bigha of land, yet the planters paid only three and a half taka. In Nadia, 700 maunds of indigo were produced on 17,600 bighas of land. Among them Kushtia stood first, with the indigo planter T. I. Kenny as the player behind the scenes.
Incidentally, the historian Binoy Ray noted in his work on the course of Bengal's social history: 'Between 1770 and 1780 Louis Bonard began indigo cultivation first in undivided Bengal.' Carroll Blum set up the first indigo factory. Later, under the East India Company's charter, Europeans obtained permission to buy land and cultivate indigo in this country.
The beginning of the Kenny-Pari Sundari conflict lay in the forced cultivation of indigo on the paddy lands of the Bharal-Poradaha area. Farmers, tenants and ryots harassed by oppression complained to Pari Sundari day after day for redress. She advised her naib Ramlochan to recruit a lathial force and attack. They were defeated by Kenny's force. The Bharal factory was plundered. Kenny's oppression grew.
Pari Sundari, armed with a new weapon, attacked Kenny's factory. Kenny was not at the factory and so escaped with his life. Mrs. Kenny saved herself from Pari Sundari's lathials by scattering countless handfuls of raw coins. Kenny filed a case against Pari Sundari for the plunder of the factory.
Unafraid - on the contrary, proud - Pari Sundari announced a reward for Kenny's head and vowed to dress Mrs. Kenny as a Bengali bride. Kenny was enraged. He declared that whoever could bring Pari Sundari to him would receive a thousand taka as reward, and that he would dress Pari Sundari in a gown as a mem and keep her at his factory. A seesaw of counter-rewards and attacks began. Pari's force attacked Kenny's factory again. The cunning Kenny fled and survived. The magistrate and the police too escaped with their lives. Daroga Mohammad Bax was killed. Again a case was filed against Pari Sundari. In a farcical trial the English government seized the entire zamindari. With poor farmers, ryots and tenants, Pari Sundari was left in deep waters. She appealed against the verdict and recovered her zamindari. But by then she was crushed under debt, and so settled a vast portion of the zamindari as patni tenures.
In an essay titled 'Pari Sundari: the Forgotten Heroine of the Indigo Revolt', Dr. Abul Ahsan Chowdhury wrote: 'Pari Sundari was an extraordinary popular leader nurtured in love for the tenants, patriotism and non-communal consciousness.'
The oppressive Kenny himself admitted that Pari Sundari was ahead of him in every respect; he was terrified and anxious before her courage and patriotism. As he said: 'I fear even to name Pari Sundari among women.'
Tenant-loving, philanthropic, patriotic Pari Sundari is a forgotten name of her time. T. I. Kenny, by contrast, is the very emblem of barbaric oppression. The street of the Beki Dalan in Kushtia town is still known by word of mouth as Kenny Road. Whether this survival is homage, fear or hatred is a matter of question.
Remembered or not, Pari Sundari added to the history of the Indigo Revolt the unextinguished flame of patriotism - a history spanning 1849 to 1860. As a result of these movements the British government took notice. To observe these real conditions, the then Lieutenant Governor Sir John Peter Grant came to Kushtia. As he came to Kushtia along the Kumar river, the ryots leapt in front of his vessel and stopped the boat. The ryots of the area sought his intervention to stop indigo cultivation. At his initiative a vast conference of the ryots was held at Pana. Lieutenant Governor Sir John Peter Grant declared at that conference that, like other crops, whether or not to cultivate indigo would be left to the ryots, thereby protecting them from this cursed life; he also declared that anyone who forced the ryots to cultivate indigo would be severely punished. From the time of this declaration the ryots cut the indigo plants and threw them into the Kaliganga and the Kumar rivers.
In the course of this struggle the English government stepped back from the policy of forcing indigo cultivation on paddy land. The next year Kushtia was given the status of a subdivision. The lifelong maiden Pari Sundari was not only in name but in life and deed a unique symbol of patriotism.
On the other hand, indigo factories were numerous in Kushtia's Chuadanga subdivision. The zamindars forced the people of the area to cultivate this indigo. For a very long time the factory sahibs inflicted unspeakable persecution on the indigo cultivators. To keep this indigo business going they divided the subdivision into six parts. They built up their dominance in this area too, oppressing the helpless ryots. Against these oppressions stood up the fiery figure of the time, Mohesh Chandra Chattopadhyay. His father Ram Sundar Chattopadhyay was diwan of the Gossain Durgapur indigo factory. After finishing his lessons at the village school, Mohesh Chandra learned Arabic and Persian from a moulvi. Later he took a job at the indigo factory. But seeing the planters' inhuman persecution he gave up the job.
Around this time, at the request of Dinabandhu Krishnanath, he served for some days as naib of their 'Bahar Band' pargana. With his help many became established. He taught many poor students to read and write. With his help Justice Dwarkanath Mitra of Gossain Durgapur was established.
For the crime of protecting the helpless farmers from the planters' oppression, the planters filed one false case after another against him, and he was utterly ruined. In January 1862 Mohesh Chandra passed away. His contribution to Kushtia's indigo movement remains for ever memorable.
Source: Daily Sangram
