In writing a preface to the third Indian edition of TRIAL OF REVEREND JAMES LONG AND NILDURPAN, I did not possess enough material to place before my readers the complex issues which led to the indigo revolt of 1859-60 and the urgent need for writing such a drama as NILDURPAN on those issues The Indian Mutiny of 1857 58 had hardly been suppressed when the Government of India wan confronted with a new mutiny within the earshot of Calcutta itself. In the autumn of 1859, the Bengali cultivators on the extensive indigo plantations of lower Bengal defied their European masters and refused to sow indigo. As the disturbances spread and the excitement increased, the British Government was besieged with grim reports from its district officers and desperate petitions from the British merchants of Calcutta. From the Indian side, events were reported in newspapers, popular songs were written by unknown composers and lastly this play appeared on the scene, producing the effect comparable to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book which helped to end American slavery. Events in Bengal's countryside affected the public life of Calcutta where the Bengali community united with the sympathetic officials and missionaries in the political struggle against the British indigo planters. Sisir Kumar Ghose, a founder of The Amrita Bazar Patrika, rightly remarked that the fight against the indigo planters taught Indians how to fight against British imperialism, Nildurpan was published from Dacca, now in Bangladesh, on 2nd Aswin, Saka 1782, corresponding to the middle of September, 1860, while the Report of the Indigo Commission was published in November, 1860. It may be presumed that it was written curlier than the date of the Report's publication. But apart from his personal and intimate knowledge of the subject, Dinabandhu chose carefully the description of incidents, points and counter-points raised before the Commission by the contending parties and used these arguments as dialogues by the characters of the drama. The episodes, incidents and characters were so skilfully drawn that they effectively covered almost all the issues relating to the British administration in India.
It might see that the drama was written in order to show to the reading public the oppressive nature of the indigo planters who had forced the then British Government to pass an Act XI of 1860 on 9th April, 1860. The Section XII of this Act made provision for the appointment of a Commission of Enquiry into the practice of indigo planting. But the main part of the Act provided for punishment of a riot by imprisonment or by levying damages for not cultivating indigo according to contract. Instigating a riot to break contract or conspiring with others to cause a breach of contract was also made liable to punishment by imprisonment or fine or both. In the drama Nildurpan Dinabandhu, from the very start, tried to make it clear that peasants did not like to sow indigo and that the socalled conspiracy of the native land-holders with the peasants in boycotting indigo planting was totally false.
Since pre-historic times indigo had been grown and processed in India, and during the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages small quantities had been exported to Europe. Indigo was one of the rare tropical products which first attracted European traders to India, and after the Portuguese discovered the sea-route to the Indies, they began to import Indigo a quantity sufficient to supply the entire European market. In the seventeenth century the Dutch successfully destroyed the Portuguese monopoly of the indigo trade. The English followed closely on the heels of the Dutch and soon the East India Company numbered indigo among its most profitable imports. In some of the past voyages of the English East India Company to Surat, indigo consumed the entire investment and earned for the Company a profit of 400 per cent on its investment. It attracted the West Indies planters to the market. As early as the middle of the seventeenth century high quality West Indies dye grown and processed by the Europeans began to drive Indian indigo from the European market. In 1724 the East India Company was no longer able to compete with West Indies planters and hence abandoned indigo trade. During the American revolution, when the British found all their sources of dye in enemy hands, the East India Company was once again encouraged to import Indigo from India.
Between 1779 and 1788 the Company entered into contract with a number of private traders who, instead of setting up European supervised factories, supplied the Company at exorbitant prices with inferior quality of dye manufactured in Agra and Oudh. In 1788 the Company terminated those contracts and gave its support to 8/10 pioneer European planters in Bengal, who attempted to manufacture indigo by West Indies methods. They could produce indigo that was equal in quality to the finest West Indies product. The Government of Bengal helped these planters with advances.
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