Material evidence of indigo dye in history
The earliest material evidence of indigo dye are traces found in textiles preserved in Egyptian tombs dating to the late Bronze Age. The earliest literary mention occurs in the Atharvaveda at the start of the first millennium BCE.
It appears later in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a navigational text from the first century CE. A detailed description of the dye-making process was recorded around the same time by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, suggesting that indigo-dyed textiles were being traded across the Indian subcontinent, West Asia and around the Mediterranean sea.
Indigo, the blue dye, was extracted from plants in ancient times, some 5000-6000 years ago (3000-4000
BCE), both in the Old (Asia, Africa and Europe) and New (Americas) Worlds. It got its name Indigo,
because it reached Europe from Indus Valley, India and later from other parts of India by the Portuguese and other European sailors.
Indigo cultivation in India during British rule
Indigo was commercially encouraged and traded by the British, firstly by the cultivation of indigo plant and production of the dye in South Carolina, USA in mid18th century, which was then a British colony. However, this stopped after the British colonies in USA gained their freedom after American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).
It was then that British East India Company (BEIC) started its production in Bengal and part of the current Bihar states of India and continued it until the second decade of 20th century. The Company looked for ways to expand the area under indigo cultivation in India.
From the last decades of the eighteenth century, indigo cultivation in Bengal rapidly expanded. Only about 30% of indigo imported to Britain in 1788 was from India. This figure went up to 95% by 1810.
Commercial agents and officials of the Company began investing in indigo production to increase their profit. Many Company officials even left their jobs to look after their indigo business.
Many people from Scotland and England came to India and became planters; to grab the opportunity.
The Company and banks were giving loans for indigo cultivation at that time.
Faced by high prices charged by the British traders for indigo dye, German chemists had already started their search for making synthetic indigo and Adolf Baeyer succeeded in synthesizing it in 1882.
The synthetic dye was much cheaper and blew the final blow to the natural plant produced indigo dye and indigo crop became a part of history.
Now most of the indigo dye used world -over is made synthetically.
Indigo Revolt
It was a rebellion of peasant farmers in 1859–60 in the Bengal against British indigo planters.
The Indigo Revolt began as a nonviolent strike in March 1859, as the ryots of a village in Bengal’s Nadia district all agreed to refuse to grow any more indigo. The movement quickly spread to the other indigo-growing districts of Bengal.
The 1860 play Nil Darpan (“Mirror of the Indigo”), by Dina Bandhu Mitra, did much to draw attention in India and Europe to the plight of the indigo growers. It was translated into English, reportedly by Bengali poet and dramatist Michael Madhusudan Dutta.
In March 1860 the British government in Bengal passed the Indigo Act, which enforced the fulfillment of the indigo contracts for one season while creating an Indigo Commission to investigate the indigo cultivation system in Bengal. The commission issued a report in August that was highly critical of the planters’ practices and affirmed that the ryots could not be forced to grow indigo.
The indigo industry quickly declined in Bengal, but it continued in Bihar.
Tinkathia system
British policies in Eastern India, such as the Tinkathia system, made it mandatory for landowners to grow indigo in at least three kathas (a unit of land measurement) in each bigha (1 bigha = 20 kathas) of their land. These landowners (or indigo planters, as they were then known) enlisted the services of agricultural workers who were often made to cultivate Indigofera instead of food crops.
The Tinkathia System was challenged by the Champaran Satyagraha(1917) led by Mahatma Gandhi and was finally abolished.
Must read: Economic policies of the British in India
External link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_revolt
PRACTICE QUESTIONS
QUES . Indigo cultivation in India declined by the beginning of the 20th century because of: UPSC 2020
(a) peasant resistance to the oppressive conduct of planters
(b) its unprofitability in the world market because of new inventions
(c) national leaders’ opposition to the cultivation of indigo
(d) Government control over the planters
Ans (b)
