Editor's Note on the Documentation on the Deccan Riots Commission

It is a pleasure to be able to include with this issue the text of the report of the East India (Deccan Riots Commission) being the report of the Commission appointed in India to inquire into the causes of the riots which took place in the year 1875 in a number of villages in the Poona and Ahmednagar districts of the Bombay Presidency. This is one of the rare reports which attempts to analyse meticulously the various factors responsible for accumulation of heavy indebtedness among the farmers in the above two districts of the Deccan which led to widespread riots by the farmers against the Marwari money lenders in the two districts. The riots were largely in the nature of the farmers forcibly seizing the bonds and decrees from the money lenders and destroying them, greater violence was resorted to where there was resistance from the money lenders to this.