Sutradar’s prelude in “Nuroldin”- translated title of Syed Shamsul Haq's "নূরলদীনের সারা জীবন"

The antagonistic polarisation of the peasant on the one hand and the East India Company-Zamindar-Mahajan alliance on the other had surfaced within three decades of the East India Company rule in Bengal. The Zamindar-Mahajan class was the supplementary local power group to the Raj. As a result, the history of resistance to the colonial oppression in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Bengal was one of peasant uprisings at the primary level against the Zamindar-Mahajan class and indirectly against the Raj.

There were as many as 29 peasant uprisings against the zamindar, the mahajan, the East India Company and later the British Raj (Mukul 60, my translation). Nuroldin (as the name is spelled after the pronunciation of Nooruddin in the village tongue of Rangpur) was created as a peasant leader by the uprising of 1783. It was an organised resistance, even running a peasant government in the Rangpur district. The peasants under the leadership of Nuroldin stopped payment of taxes to the zamindars and subscribed to Nuroldin’s war of resistance. His resistance gained success in defeating the mercenary forces of the zamindars and mahajans. He was well aware of his strength and he never aimed at confrontation with the East India Company forces. His aim was to convey the message of peasant discontentment at the zamindari oppression, the primary oppression of his time. But the East India Company compelled Nuroldin to fight face-to-face with the Company forces. This confrontation resulted in the death of Nuroldin and the end of the Rangpur rebellion.

There was an internal conflict over the class transformation of the peasant leader. It arose from a section of peasants who wanted to see a Nabab in Nuroldin and his determination to remain a peasant-leader. These are the historical records from the history of Shuprokas Roy. This material from history has been developed into a playtext by Syed Shamsul Haq (58). An analysis of Nuroldin describes the subaltern historiography that rewrites a colonial history of Bengal from the perspective of the peasants. Although, Syed Haq used historiographical devices of salvaging the history of peasant, he appropriates the text in the elite political interest.