The British gave this name to a long-running conflict in the
Bengal area in the second part of the eighteenth century.
The British East India Company was establishing its
economic, political, and military influence over the country at this time,
producing widespread social upheaval in traditional Bengali society.
Organized bands of soldier-ascetics, including Hindus and
Muslims, were among the entrenched forces with whom the British struggled.
These ascetics were powerful local forces, gaining military
and economic power through mercenary services, trading, and money-lending, and
competing with the British East India Company for political power and land
revenue.
Following the Bengal famine of 1770–1771, tensions between
the British and the ascetics rose.
The rebellion was sparked in part by competition for
drastically reduced agricultural revenue and British-sponsored changes in land
ownership patterns, in which East India Company officials replaced many
"unprofitable" traditional landowners with Company employees.
Many traditional landowners owed austere moneylenders
(Sanyasis) money and had pledged their land earnings as collateral.
When the landowners were changed and the debts were not
paid, the Sanyasis were furious.
The Company's officials, for their part, were hesitant to
allow the ascetics, who traveled in heavily armed bands, to pass through their
territories while on religious pilgrimage, as they had done in the past.
The ascetic attacks eventually became disorganized and
localized, and the disparate Sanyasi bands were unable to withstand British
resources and organization.
The Sanyasi Rebellion was fictionalized in Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee's (1838–1894) novel Anandamath, which used the Sanyasi Rebellion as
a coded call for resistance to contemporary British rule.
