Deccan Riots — Mains Strategy

Mains Strategy

Build the answer as a causal sequence, beginning with the cultivator’s obligations and sources of finance. Explain how revenue pressure and credit dependence interacted with a cotton-market boom and subsequent contraction. Then connect that sequence to the concrete form of protest, especially the attack on documents supporting debt claims.

Use the distinction between immediate targets and structural causes to organise the central argument. A creditor could become the focus of anger even when the circumstances also reflected state demands and global market changes. Avoid a single-cause explanation, but do not replace it with an unconnected list of factors. Each factor should explain a link in the sequence.

Include a short paragraph on evidence. Compare the purpose of an official inquiry with the perspective of a cultivator’s petition, noting how selection and recording shape the archive. Conclude that agrarian resistance can expose the workings of institutions that seem abstract in a policy description. Keep the scale and historical context of the episode clear, without projecting later political programmes onto the participants.