Colonialism and the CountrysideClass 12 History Notes

Bengal and the Zamindars

Colonial rule was first established in Bengal, and it was here that the British East India Company first tried to reshape rural society. Their main goal was to create a new system for land rights and revenue collection.

An auction in Burdwan

In 1797, a major public auction took place in Burdwan (now Bardhaman). The estates of the Raja of Burdwan were being sold off because he had failed to pay the revenue demanded by the Company. This was a direct consequence of the Permanent Settlement, a new system introduced in 1793. Under this system, the Company fixed the amount of revenue each zamindar (a powerful landowner, often called a Raja) had to pay. If they failed, their land was auctioned.

However, a strange thing happened at the auction. The Collector discovered that many of the buyers were actually servants and agents of the Raja himself. They had bought the land on his behalf. In fact, over 95% of the sales were fictitious. So, although the Raja's estates were publicly sold, he secretly remained in control. This event shows us that the new colonial laws didn't always work as planned and that local powers found clever ways to resist them.

The problem of unpaid revenue

The British introduced the Permanent Settlement to solve several problems they faced after conquering Bengal. By the 1770s, Bengal's rural economy was in a deep crisis due to recurring famines and falling agricultural production. British officials believed that if they secured property rights for landowners and fixed the revenue demand forever, it would encourage investment in agriculture.

The logic was simple:

• A fixed revenue would give the Company a steady and predictable income.
• Landowners, knowing that the state wouldn't increase its demand, would be motivated to improve their land and keep the extra profit.
• This would lead to the rise of a class of wealthy farmers and landowners who would not only improve agriculture but also be loyal to the Company.

After much debate, the Company made this settlement with the rajas and taluqdars (holders of a territorial unit called a taluq) of Bengal, who were now all classified as zamindars. Under this system, the zamindar was not technically a landowner but a revenue collector for the state. They collected rent from the hundreds of villages under their control, paid the fixed revenue to the Company, and kept the difference as their income.

Why zamindars defaulted on payments

Despite the Company's hopes, many zamindars failed to pay the revenue in the early years of the Permanent Settlement. There were several key reasons for this:

• Extremely high initial demand: The Company, worried it would lose out on future income from rising prices and expanded cultivation, fixed the initial revenue demand at a very high level.
• Low agricultural prices: The high demand was imposed in the 1790s, a time when the prices for agricultural produce were very low. This made it difficult for peasants (ryots) to pay their rent to the zamindar, who in turn couldn't pay the Company.
• The Sunset Law: The revenue was inflexible and had to be paid on time, regardless of the harvest. According to the Sunset Law, if the payment did not arrive by sunset on a specified date, the zamindari was immediately auctioned.
• Limited power of the zamindar: The Company wanted to control the zamindars. It disbanded their troops, abolished their customs duties, and brought their local courts (cutcheries) under the supervision of a British Collector. The zamindar lost the power to organize local justice and police, making it harder to collect rent from powerful ryots.

Rent collection was a constant struggle. Rich ryots and village headmen, known as jotedars and mandals, often deliberately delayed payments to cause trouble for the zamindar.

The rise of the jotedars

While many zamindars were in crisis, a new group of rich peasants, the jotedars, was becoming very powerful in the villages, especially in North Bengal.

Key features of the jotedars:

• They owned vast areas of land, sometimes thousands of acres.
• They controlled local trade and moneylending, giving them immense power over poorer cultivators.
• Much of their land was cultivated by sharecroppers (adhiyars or bargadars), who gave half of their produce to the jotedars.

Unlike zamindars, who often lived in cities, jotedars lived in the villages and had direct control over the local population. They fiercely resisted the zamindars' attempts to increase revenue, prevented zamindari officials from doing their duties, and encouraged other ryots not to pay. When zamindaris were auctioned, jotedars were often among the buyers. Their rise significantly weakened the authority of the zamindars.

The zamindars resist

Faced with high revenue demands and the threat of auctions, the zamindars developed strategies to survive.

1. Fictitious Sales: As seen with the Raja of Burdwan, this was a common tactic. The zamindar would deliberately withhold revenue, and when the estate was auctioned, his own men would buy it. They would then refuse to pay the purchase money, forcing another auction. This process was repeated until the state and other bidders gave up, and the estate was sold back to the zamindar at a very low price. Such transactions made in the name of a fictitious person are called benami.
2. Force and Loyalty: If an outsider did manage to buy an estate, taking possession was not easy. They were often attacked by the former zamindar's musclemen, known as lathyals. Sometimes, the ryots themselves resisted the entry of outsiders, as they felt a sense of loyalty to their old zamindar, whom they saw as a figure of authority and themselves as his proja (subjects).

By the early 1800s, the economic depression was over, and those zamindars who had survived the 1790s were able to consolidate their power.

The Fifth Report

Much of what we know about this period comes from a famous report submitted to the British Parliament in 1813, known as the Fifth Report. This 1002-page document was one of many reports produced to monitor the activities of the East India Company. In Britain, many groups were critical of the Company's trade monopoly and accused its officials of corruption and misrule. Parliament passed acts to regulate the Company and demanded regular reports on its administration.

The Fifth Report became the basis for intense debates in Britain about the nature of Company rule in India.

The Hoe and the Plough

This section shifts focus from the settled agriculture of Bengal to the hills and forests of the Rajmahal region, exploring the conflict between different ways of life.

In the hills of Rajmahal

In the early 1800s, Francis Buchanan, a physician and employee of the East India Company, traveled through the Rajmahal hills. He described the area as dangerous and impenetrable. The local people were hostile and suspicious of officials.

These hill folk were known as the Paharias. Their lives were deeply connected to the forest.

• Livelihood: They practiced shifting cultivation, clearing patches of forest with a hoe. They also survived by hunting, gathering forest produce like mahua flowers for food, and making charcoal.
• Identity: They considered the entire region their land and resisted the intrusion of outsiders. Their chiefs maintained unity and led them in battles.
• Relationship with the Plains: The Paharias regularly raided the plains where settled farmers lived. These raids were a way to survive in times of scarcity and assert power. Zamindars on the plains often paid a regular tribute to the Paharia chiefs to maintain peace, and traders paid a toll to use the passes they controlled.

This fragile peace broke down in the late 18th century as the British encouraged the expansion of settled agriculture. To the British, forests represented wildness, and forest people were seen as savage and unruly. They believed forests had to be cleared and the people tamed. As forests shrank, conflict between the Paharias and settled cultivators grew.

The British responded with two policies:

1. Extermination (1770s): A brutal campaign to hunt down and kill the Paharias.
2. Pacification (1780s): Proposed by Augustus Cleveland, the Collector of Bhagalpur. Paharia chiefs were given an annual allowance and made responsible for keeping order. Many chiefs refused, and those who accepted were often seen as traitors by their own communities.

As a result, the Paharias retreated deeper into the mountains, continuing their conflict with outsiders. When Buchanan visited, their suspicion of him was shaped by these memories of repression.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

The British, having failed to "civilize" the Paharias, turned to another group: the Santhals. The Santhals were seen as ideal settlers. They were experts at clearing forests and were willing to use the plough to cultivate the land.

Zamindars and British officials encouraged the Santhals to settle in the foothills of Rajmahal. In 1832, a large area of land was demarcated as Damin-i-Koh, declared to be the land of the Santhals. They were supposed to live there, practice plough agriculture, and become settled peasants.

The Santhal population grew rapidly, from 40 villages in 1838 to 1,473 villages by 1851. As they expanded, they pushed the Paharias, who used the hoe, deeper into the hills, taking over the more fertile lower slopes. This conflict is often symbolized as the battle between the hoe and the plough.

However, the Santhals soon found themselves in trouble.

• The state imposed heavy taxes on the land they had cleared.
• Moneylenders (dikus) charged them high interest rates and took over their land when they couldn't repay debts.
• Zamindars began to assert control over the Damin area.

Feeling exploited, the Santhals rose in the Santhal Revolt (1855-56) against the zamindars, moneylenders, and the colonial state. After the rebellion was crushed, the British created the Santhal Pargana, a separate territory with special laws, in an attempt to pacify them.

The accounts of Buchanan

It is important to remember that Francis Buchanan was not just a traveler. He was an agent of the East India Company. His journeys were funded by the Company, which needed information about the lands it controlled. He was instructed to look for natural resources that could be exploited, such as minerals, iron ore, and commercially valuable stones.

His reports were not neutral observations. He wrote about landscapes not just as they were, but how they could be transformed to become more productive for the Company. His vision was shaped by Western ideas of progress and commerce. He was critical of forest dwellers and believed that forests should be cleared and turned into agricultural land.

A Revolt in the Countryside: The Bombay Deccan

Now we move to western India to explore a peasant revolt that happened later, in the mid-19th century. Peasant revolts provide a powerful glimpse into the lives and frustrations of ordinary people.

Account books are burnt

The movement began in Supa, a village in Poona district, on 12 May 1875. Ryots from surrounding areas gathered and attacked the local shopkeepers and moneylenders. Their main demand was for their bahi khatas (account books) and debt bonds. They burned the account books, looted grain shops, and sometimes set fire to the houses of sahukars (who were both moneylenders and traders).

The revolt spread across the Deccan, affecting over thirty villages. The pattern was the same everywhere: attack the sahukars and destroy the records of debt. Terrified moneylenders fled the villages. The British, alarmed by memories of the 1857 revolt, sent in troops and arrested hundreds of people. The main target of the ryots' anger was the system of debt that trapped them.

A new revenue system

The Permanent Settlement was not used outside of Bengal. By the 1820s, British officials, influenced by the economic ideas of David Ricardo, developed a different system for the Bombay Deccan.

Ricardian theory suggested that a landowner was only entitled to the "average rent." Any surplus income from the land should be taxed by the state. Otherwise, landowners would become lazy rentiers (people who live off rental income) instead of investing in improving the land. Officials felt this had happened with the zamindars in Bengal.

The new system was the ryotwari settlement.

• The revenue was settled directly with the ryot (the peasant).
• The revenue was not permanent; the land was resurveyed every 30 years, and the rates were increased.

Revenue demand and peasant debt

The first ryotwari settlement in the 1820s was harsh. The revenue demanded was so high that many peasants left their villages. The problem was worse in areas with poor soil and unreliable rainfall.

The situation became critical in the 1830s:

• Prices for agricultural products fell sharply after 1832.
• A terrible famine between 1832-34 killed half the human population and one-third of the cattle.
• Peasants fell deeper into debt, borrowing from moneylenders just to pay the revenue and survive.

By the 1840s, peasant debt had reached alarming levels across the Deccan.

Then came the cotton boom

In the early 1860s, events far away in America dramatically changed the lives of Deccan ryots. Before this, Britain imported three-fourths of its raw cotton from America. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, that supply was cut off.

British cotton manufacturers panicked and turned to India.

• Cotton prices in India soared.
• Export merchants in Bombay gave advances to sahukars, who in turn gave loans to ryots to grow cotton.
• Suddenly, peasants had access to seemingly limitless credit.

Between 1860 and 1864, the area under cotton cultivation doubled. However, this boom did not bring prosperity to everyone. For most small farmers, it meant taking on even heavier debts.

Credit dries up

The boom ended as quickly as it began. When the American Civil War ended in 1865, American cotton production resumed, and British demand for Indian cotton collapsed.

• Cotton prices in India crashed.
• Moneylenders, seeing the risk, stopped giving new loans and demanded repayment of old debts.
• At this very moment, the government introduced a new revenue settlement, increasing the demand by 50 to 100 percent.

The ryots were trapped. Prices were falling, credit was gone, and the government's revenue demand had skyrocketed. They had to turn to the moneylender, but the moneylender now refused to help.

The experience of injustice

The ryots were enraged by the moneylenders' refusal to help. Their anger stemmed from a sense of injustice. Moneylenders were violating the customary norms that had long governed rural life. For example, there was a general rule that the amount of interest charged could not be more than the principal amount of the loan. Under colonial rule, this broke down, with some moneylenders charging exorbitant interest.

The ryots also felt cheated by the new legal system. In 1859, the British passed a Limitation Law stating that loan bonds were only valid for three years, a measure meant to stop interest from accumulating forever. However, moneylenders turned this law against the peasants. They forced ryots to sign a new bond every three years. In the new bond, the outstanding interest was added to the original loan, and this new, larger amount became the principal for the next loan. This created a vicious cycle of ever-increasing debt.

The Deccan Riots Commission

Worried by the revolt, the Government of India pressured the Government of Bombay to set up a commission of enquiry. The commission's report, known as the Deccan Riots Report, was presented to the British Parliament in 1878.

This report is a rich source for historians, containing statements from ryots and sahukars, revenue data, and reports from district collectors. However, like the Fifth Report, it is an official source and must be read with caution. The commission was specifically asked to determine if the government's revenue demand was the cause of the revolt. Unsurprisingly, it concluded that the government was not to blame; the moneylenders were. This shows the colonial government's reluctance to admit that its own policies could cause popular discontent. To get a fuller picture, historians must compare official reports with other sources like newspapers, legal records, and unofficial accounts.