THEME-10

COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE

• The British colonial rule was first established in Bengal. It is here that the earliest attempts were made to reorder rural society and establish a new regime of land rights and a new revenue system.
• Lord Cornwallis realized that the direct collection of taxes from the peasants was impossible to the company. So the company entered into some arrangement with the Zamindars for tax collection on a permanent basis.
• In 1793 the Permanent settlement was introduced in Bengal by Lord Cornwallis.

• He was the commander of the British forces during the American War of Independence and the Governor General of Bengal when the Permanent Settlement was introduced there in 1793.

The Permanent Settlement of Bengal

• By this system the zamindars became permanent, hereditary owners of the land for which they had to pay a fixed revenue to the company every year.
• The zamindar collected rent from the different villages, paid the revenue to the Company, and retained the difference as his income. He was expected to pay the Company regularly, failing which his estate could be auctioned.
• In the early decades after the Permanent Settlement, however, zamindars regularly failed to pay the revenue demand and unpaid balances accumulated.

Why Zamindars defaulted on payments?

• The reasons for this failure were various. First: the initial demands were very high.
• Second: this high demand was imposed in the 1790s, a time when the prices of agricultural produce were depressed, making it difficult for the ryots to pay their dues to the zamindar. If the zamindar could not collect the rent, how could he pay the Company?
• Third: the revenue was invariable, regardless of the harvest, and had to be paid punctually. In fact, according to the Sunset Law, if payment did not come in by sunset of the specified date, the zamindari was liable to be auctioned.
• Fourth: the Permanent Settlement initially limited the power of the zamindar to collect rent from the ryot and manage his zamindari.

The rise of the jotedars

• While many zamindars were facing a crisis at the end of the eighteenth century, a group of rich peasants called Jotedars were consolidating their position in the villages.
• By the early 19^th C, jotedars had acquired vast areas of land – sometimes as much as several thousand acres. They controlled local trade as well as moneylending, exercising immense power over the poorer cultivators of the region.
• A large part of their land was cultivated through sharecroppers (adhiyars or bargadars) who brought their own ploughs, laboured in the field, and handed over half the produce to the jotedars after the harvest.

The rise of the jotedars

• Within the villages, the power of jotedars was more effective than that of zamindars. Unlike zamindars who often lived in urban areas, jotedars were located in the villages and exercised direct control over a considerable section of poor villagers.
• They deliberately delayed payments of revenue to the zamindar with the support of peasants.
• In fact, when the estates of the zamindars were auctioned for failure to make revenue payment, jotedars were often amongst the purchasers.

The zamindars resist

• The authority of the zamindars in rural areas,however, did not collapse. Faced with high revenue demand and possible auction of their estates, they devised ways of surviving the pressures. New contexts produced new strategies.
• Fictitious sale was one such strategy. The Raja of Burdwan, for instance, first transferred some of his zamindari to his mother, since the Company had decreed that the property of women would not be taken over.
• When people from outside the zamindari bought an estate at an auction, they could not always take possession. At times their agents would be attacked by lathyals of the former zamindar. Sometimes even the ryots resisted the entry of outsiders.

The zamindars resist

• By the beginning of the nineteenth century the depression in prices was over. Thus those who had survived the troubles of the 1790s consolidated their power. Rules of revenue payment were also mad somewhat flexible.
• As a result, the zamindar’s power over the villages was strengthened. It was only during the Great Depression of the 1930s that they finally collapsed and the jotedars consolidated their power in the countryside.

The Fifth Report

• Many of the changes took place in the countryside were documented in detail in a report that was submitted to the British Parliament in 1813.
• It was the fifth of a series of reports on the administration and activities of the East India Company in India.
• Often referred to as the Fifth Report, it ran into 1002 pages, of which over 800 pages were appendices that reproduced petitions of zamindars and ryots, reports of collectors from different districts, statistical tables on revenue returns, and notes on the revenue and judicial administration of Bengal and Madras (present-day Tamil Nadu) written by officials.

The Fifth Report

• From the time the Company established its rule in Bengal in the mid- 1760s, its activities were closely watched and debated in England.
• There were many groups in Britain who were opposed to the monopoly that the East India Company had over trade with India and China.
• These groups wanted a revocation of the Royal Charter that gave the Company this monopoly.
• Information about Company misrule and maladministration was hotly debated in Britain and incidents of the greed and corruption of Company officials were widely publicised in the press.
• The British Parliament passed a series of Acts in the late eighteenth century to regulate and control Company rule in India.

The Hoe and the Plough

• Agriculture expanded from the wetlands of Bengal to drier zones, swallowing up pastures and forests in the hilly areas.
• So many changes took place in these areas after the expansion of agriculture.

IN THE HILLS OF RAJMAHAL

• The inhabitants of the Rajmahal hills were known as Paharias. They lived around the Rajmahal hills, subsisting on forest produce and practising shifting cultivation.
• They cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth. On these patches, enriched by the potash from the ash, the Paharias grew a variety of pulses and millets for consumption.
• They scratched the ground lightly with hoes, cultivated the cleared land for a few years, then left it fallow so that it could recover its fertility, and moved to a new area.

FRANCIS BUCHANAN

• Francis Buchanan was a physician who came to India and served in the Bengal Medical Service (from 1794 to 1815). For a few years he was surgeon to the Governor-General of India, Lord Wellesley.
• In the early 19^th C, Buchanan travelled through the Rajmahal hills. From his description, This is an area that signified danger. Wherever he went, people were hostile, apprehensive of officials and unwilling to talk to them. In many instances they deserted their villages and absconded.

In the Hills of Rajmahal

• From the forests they collected mahua (a flower) for food, silk cocoons and resin for sale, and wood for charcoal production.
• The undergrowth that spread like a mat below the trees and the patches of grass that covered the lands left fallow provided pasture for cattle.
• The life of the Paharias – as hunters, shifting cultivators, food gatherers, charcoal producers, silkworm rearers – was thus intimately connected to the forest.

In the hills of Rajmahal

• They lived in hutments within tamarind groves, and rested in the shade of mango trees.
• They considered the entire region as their land, the basis of their identity as well as survival; and they resisted the intrusion of outsiders. Their chiefs maintained the unity of the group, settled disputes, and led the tribe in battles with other tribes and plainspeople.
• the Paharias regularly raided the plains where settled agriculturists lived. These raids were necessary for survival, particularly in years of scarcity; they were a way of asserting power over settled communities.

In the Hills of Rajmahal

• The zamindars on the plains had to often purchase peace by paying a regular tribute to the hill chiefs.
• Traders similarly gave a small amount to the hill folk for permission to use the passes controlled by them. Once the toll was paid, the Paharia chiefs protected the traders, ensuring that their goods were not plundered by anyone.
• The British encouraged forest clearance, and zamindars and

jotedars turned uncultivated lands into rice fields.

• To the British, extension of settled agriculture was necessary to enlarge the sources of land revenue, produce crops for export, and establish the basis of a settled, ordered society.

In the Hills of Rajmahal

• As settled agriculture expanded, the area under forests and pastures contracted. This sharpened the conflict between hill folk and settled cultivators.
• The former began to raid settled villages with increasing regularity, carrying away food grains and cattle. Exasperated colonial officials tried to supress the Paharias. But this was not easy.
• In the 1770s the British embarked on a brutal policy of extermination, hunting the Paharias down and killing them.

In the Hills of Rajmahal

• Then, by the 1780s, Augustus Cleveland, the Collector of Bhagalpur, proposed a policy of compromise.
• Paharia chiefs were given an annual allowance and made responsible for the proper conduct of their men. They were expected to maintain order in their localities and discipline their own people.
• Many Paharia chiefs refused the allowances. Those who accepted, most often lost authority within the community.

In the Hills of Rajmahal

• As the pacification campaigns continued, the Paharias withdrew deep into the mountains, insulating themselves from hostile forces, and carrying on a war with outsiders.
• So when Buchanan travelled through the region in 1810 -11 the Paharias naturally viewed him with suspicion.
• The experience of pacification campaigns and memories of brutal repression shaped their perception of British invasion into the area.
• Every white man appeared to represent a power that was destroying their way of life and means of survival, snatching away their control over their forests and lands.

In the Hills of Rajmahal

• By this time in fact there were newer intimations of danger.
• Santhals were pouring into the area, clearing forests, cutting down timber, ploughing land and growing rice and cotton. As the lower hills were taken over by Santhal settlers, the Paharias receded deeper into the Rajmahal hills.
• If Paharia life was symbolised by the hoe, which they used for shifting cultivation, the settlers came to represent the power of the plough. The battle between the hoe and the plough was a long one.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

• At the end of 1810, Buchanan crossed Ganjuria Pahar, which was part of the Rajmahal ranges, passed through the rocky country beyond, and reached a village.
• It was an old village but the land around had been recently cleared to extend cultivation. Looking at the landscape, Buchanan found evidence of the region having been transformed through “proper application of human labour”.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

• The soil here was rocky but “uncommonly fine”, and now here had Buchanan seen finer tobacco and mustard.
• On enquiry he discovered that the frontiers of cultivation here had been extended by the Santhals.
• They had moved into this area around 1800, displaced the hill folk who lived on these lower slopes, cleared the forests and settled the land.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

• The Santhals had begun to come into Bengal around the 1780s.
• Zamindars hired them to reclaim land and expand cultivation, and British officials invited them to settle in the Jangal Mahals.
• Having failed to subdue the Paharias and transform them into settled agriculturists, the British turned to the Santhals.
• The Paharias refused to cut forests and resisted touching the plough.
• The Santhals, by contrast, appeared to be ideal settlers, clearing forests and ploughing the land with vigour (great interest).
• The Santhals were given land and persuaded to settle in the valleys of Rajmahal.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

• By 1832 a large area of land was demarcated as Damin-i- Koh. This was declared to be the land of the Santhals. They were to live within it, practise plough agriculture, and become settled peasants.
• The land grant to the Santhals stipulated that at least one- tenth of the area was to be cleared and cultivated within the first ten years. The territory was surveyed and mapped.
• Enclosed with boundary pillars, it was separated from both the world of the settled agriculturists of the plains and the Paharias of the hills.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

• After the demarcation of Damin-i-Koh, Santhal settlements expanded rapidly. From 40 Santhal villages in the area in 1838, as many as 1,473 villages had come up by 1851.
• Over the same period, the Santhal population increased from a mere 3,000 to over 82,000. As cultivation expanded, an increased volume of revenue flowed into the Company’s coffers.
• When the Santhals settled on the peripheries of the Rajmahal hills, the Paharias resisted but were ultimately forced to withdraw deeper into the hills.
• In this situation the Paharias could not effectively sustain their mode of cultivation. When the forests of the region were cleared for cultivation the hunters amongst them also faced problems.
• The Santhals, by contrast, gave up their earlier life of mobility and settled down, cultivating a range of commercial crops for the market, and dealing with traders and moneylenders.

The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

• The Santhals, however, soon found that the land they had brought under cultivation was slipping away from their hands.
• The state was levying heavy taxes on the land that the Santhals had cleared, moneylenders (dikus) were charging them high rates of interest and taking over the land when debts remained unpaid, and zamindars were asserting control over the Damin area.
• By the 1850s, the Santhals felt that the time had come to rebel against zamindars, moneylenders and the colonial state, in order to create an ideal world for themselves where they would rule.
• It was after the Santhal Revolt (1855-56 ) that the Santhal Pargana was created, carving out 5,500 square miles from the districts of Bhagalpur and Birbhum.
• The colonial state hoped that by creating a new territory for the Santhals and imposing some special laws within it, the Santhals could be conciliated.

The accounts of Buchanan

• While reading the reports of Buchanan we should not forget that he was an employee of the British East India Company. His journeys were not simply inspired by the love of landscape and the desire to discover the unknown.
• He marched everywhere with a large army of people – draughtsmen, surveyors, palanquin bearers, coolies. The costs of the travels were borne by the East India Company since it needed the information that Buchanan was expected to collect.
• Buchanan had specific instructions about what he had to look for and what he had to record. When he arrived at a village with his army of people, he was immediately perceived as an agent of the sarkar.

The accounts of Buchanan

• As the Company consolidated its power and expanded its commerce, it looked for natural resources it could control and exploit.
• It surveyed landscapes and revenue sources, organized voyages of discovery, and sent its geologists and geographers, its botanists and medical men to collect information.
• Buchanan, undoubtedly an extraordinary observer, was one such individual.
• Everywhere Buchanan went, he obsessively observed the stones and rocks and the different strata and layers of soil.
• He searched for minerals and stones that were commercially valuable, he recorded all signs of iron ore and mica, granite and salt petre.
• He carefully observed local practices of salt-making and iron ore- mining.

The accounts of Buchanan

• When Buchanan wrote about a landscape, he most often described not just what he saw, what the landscape was like, but also how it could be transformed and made more productive – what crops could be cultivated, which trees cut down, and which ones grown.
• And we must remember that his vision and his priorities were different from those of the local inhabitants: his assessment of what was necessary was shaped by the commercial concerns of the Company and modern Western notions of what constituted progress.
• He was inevitably critical of the lifestyles of forest dwellers and felt that forests had to be turned into agricultural lands.

REVOLT IN THE COUNTRY SIDE THE BOMBAY DECCAN

• Through the nineteenth century, peasants in various parts of India rose in revolt against moneylenders and grain dealers. One such revolt occurred in 1875 in the Deccan.

Account books are burnt

• The movement began at Supa, a large village in Poona (present-day Pune) district. It was a market centre where many shopkeepers and moneylenders lived.
• On 12 May1875, ryots from surrounding rural areas gathered and attacked the shopkeepers, demanding their bahi khatas (account books) and debt bonds. They burnt the khatas, looted grain shops, and in some cases set fire to the houses of sahukars. (A sahukar was someone who acted as both a moneylender and a trader)

• From Poona the revolt spread to Ahmednagar. Then over the next two months it spread even further, over an area of 6,500 square km. More than thirty villages were affected.
• Everywhere the pattern was the same: sahukars were attacked, account books burnt and debt bonds destroyed.
• Terrified of peasant attacks, the sahukars fled the villages, very often leaving their property and belongings behind.
• As the revolt spread, British officials saw the spectre of 1857. Police posts were established in villages to frighten rebellious peasants into submission.
• Troops were quickly called in; 951 people were arrested, and many convicted. But it took several months to bring the countryside under control.

Why the burning of bonds and deeds? Why this revolt?

A NEW REVENUE SYSTEM

• As British rule expanded from Bengal to other parts of India, new systems of revenue were imposed….instead of Permanent Settlement…
• Why?
• After 1810, agricultural prices rose, increasing the value of harvest produce, and enlarging the income of the Bengal zamindars. Since the revenue demand was fixed under the Permanent Settlement, the colonial state could not claim any share of this enhanced income.
• Influence of Ricardian theory of rent- According to Ricardian ideas, a landowner should have a claim only to the “average rent” that prevailed at a given time. When the land yielded more than this

“average rent”, the landowner had a surplus that the state needed to tax. So the company introduced new and different system.

THE RYOTWARI SYSYTEM

• The revenue system that was introduced in the Bombay Deccan came to be known as the ryotwari settlement.
• The revenue was directly settled with the ryot.
• The average income from different types of soil was estimated, the revenue-paying capacity of the ryot was assessed and a proportion of it fixed as the share of the state.
• The lands were resurveyed every 30 years and the revenue rates increased. Therefore the revenue demand was no longer permanent.

Revenue demand and peasant debt

• The revenue demanded in the Bombay Deccan was very high.
• In many places peasants deserted their villages and migrated to new regions.
• When rains failed and harvests were poor, peasants found it unable to pay the revenue.
• The revenue collectors extracted revenue with utmost severity. If the peasant failed to pay, his crops were seized and a fine was imposed.
• By 1830s prices of agricultural products fell sharply.

Revenue demand and peasant debt

• There was a decline in peasant’s income
• The countryside was devastated by a famine in the years 1832- 34.
• The cultivators borrowed money from the moneylender to pay the revenue.
• But ryot found it difficult to pay it back and debt mounted.
• Ryot needed more loans to buy their everyday needs.
• One third of the cattle of the Deccan were killed, and half the human population died. Those who survived had no agricultural stocks to see them through the crisis. Unpaid balances of revenue mounted.

Revenue demand and peasant debt

• How did cultivators live through such years? How did they pay the revenue, procure their consumption needs, purchase their ploughs and cattle, or get their children married?
• Inevitably, they borrowed. Revenue could rarely be paid without a loan from a moneylender.
• But once a loan was taken, the ryot found it difficult to pay it back. As debt mounted, and loans remained unpaid, peasants’ dependence on moneylenders increased.
• By the 1840s, officials were finding evidence of alarming levels of peasant indebtedness everywhere.
• There is no way to peasants…. other than revolt…..

The Cotton Boom

THE COTTON BOOM

• Before the 1860s, three-fourths of raw cotton imports into Britain came from America. British cotton manufacturers had for long been worried about this dependence on American supplies.
• They eagerly looked for alternative sources of supply.
• In 1857 the Cotton Supply Association was founded in Britain, and in 1859 the Manchester Cotton Company was formed.
• Their objective was “to encourage cotton production in every part of the world suited for its growth”.
• India possessed suitable soil, a climate favourable to cotton cultivation, and cheap labour.

The Cotton Boom

• When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, a wave of panic spread through cotton circles in Britain. Raw cotton imports from America fell to less than three per cent of the normal.
• Messages were sent to India and elsewhere to increase cotton exports to Britain. In Bombay, cotton merchants visited the cotton districts to assess supplies and encourage cultivation.
• They provided financial support and these developments had a profound impact on the Deccan countryside. The ryots in the Deccan villages suddenly found access to seemingly limitless credit. They were being given Rs 100 as advance for every acre they planted with cotton.
• Cotton production in the Bombay Deccan expanded. By 1862 over 90 per cent of cotton imports into Britain were coming from India.

Credit dries up

• As the Civil War ended, cotton production in America revived and Indian cotton exports to Britain steadily declined. Export merchants and sahukars in Maharashtra were no longer keen on extending long-term credit.
• They could see the demand for Indian cotton fall and cotton prices slide downwards. So they decided to close down their operations, restrict their advances to peasants, and demand repayment of outstanding debts.
• While credit dried up, the revenue demand increased dramatically: from 50 to 100 per cent.
• How could ryots pay this inflated demand at a time when prices were falling and cotton fields disappearing?
• Yet again they had to turn to the moneylender. But the moneylender now refused loans. He no longer had confidence in the ryots’ capacity to repay.

The experience of injustice

• The refusal of moneylenders to extend loans enraged the ryots.
• What infuriated them was not simply that they had got deeper and deeper into debt, or that they were utterly dependent on the moneylender for survival, but that moneylenders were being insensitive to their plight.
• The moneylenders were violating the customary norms of the countryside.
• One general norm was that the interest charged could not be more than the principal. This was defined as “fair interest”.
• Under colonial rule this norm broke down.
• In one of the many cases investigated by the Deccan Riots Commission, the moneylender had charged over Rs 2,000 as interest on a loan of Rs 100.
• In petition after petition, ryots complained of the injustice of such exactions and the violation of custom.

The experience of injustice

• The ryots complained of moneylenders manipulating laws and forging accounts.
• In 1859 the British passed a Limitation Law that stated that the loan bonds signed between moneylenders and ryots would have validity for only three years. This law was meant to check the accumulation of interest over time.
• The moneylender forced the ryot to sign a new bond every three years. When a new bond was signed, the unpaid balance – that is, the original loan and the accumulated interest – was entered as the principal on which a new set of interest charges was calculated.
• They refused to give receipts when loans were repaid, entered fictitious figures in bonds, acquired the peasants’ harvest at low prices, and ultimately took over peasants’ property.

The experience of injustice

• Deeds and bonds appeared as symbols of the new oppressive system. In the past such deeds had been rare.
• According to the view of the British the terms of transactions had to be clearly stated in contracts, deeds and bonds, and regulated by law. Unless the deed or contract was legally enforceable, it had no value.
• Over time peasants came to associate the misery of their lives with the new regime of bonds and deeds. They were made to sign and put thumb impressions on documents, but they did not know what they were actually signing.
• They had no idea of the clauses that moneylenders inserted in the bonds. They feared the written word. But they had no choice because to survive they needed loans, and moneylenders were unwilling to give loans without legal bonds.

The Deccan Riots Commission

• When the revolt spread in the Deccan, the Government of Bombay was initially unwilling to see it as anything serious. But the Government of India, worried by the memory of 1857, pressurized the Government of Bombay to set up a commission of enquiry to investigate into the causes of the riots.
• The commission produced a report that was presented to the British Parliament in 1878. This report, referred to as the Deccan Riots Report, provides historians with a range of sources for the study of the riot.
• The commission held enquiries in the districts where the riots spread, recorded statements of ryots, sahukars and eyewitnesses, compiled statistical data on revenue rates, prices and interest rates in different regions, and collated the reports sent by district collectors.

TIMELINE

• 1765 English East India Company acquires Diwani of Bengal.
• 1773 Regulating Act passed by the British Parliament to regulate the activities of the East India Company.
• 1793 Permanent Settlement in Bengal.
• 1800s Santhals begin to come to the Rajmahal hills and settle there.
• 1818 First revenue settlement in the Bombay Deccan.
• 1820s Agricultural prices begin to fall.
• 1840s-50s A slow process of agrarian expansion in the Bombay Deccan.
• 1855-56 Santhal rebellion.
• 1861 Cotton boom begins.
• 1875 Ryots in Deccan villages rebel.

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