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In this chapter you will see what colonial rule meant to those who livedin the countryside. You will meet thezamindars of Bengal, travel to theRajmahal hills where the Pahariasand the Santhals lived, and then move west to the Deccan. You will look at the way the English East India Company (E.I.C.) established its raj inthe countryside, implemented itsrevenue policies, what these policiesmeant to different sections of people,and how they changed everyday lives.Laws introduced by the statehave consequences for people: they determine to an extent who growsricher and who poorer, who acquiresnew land and who loses the land they have lived on, where peasants go when they need money. As you will see,however, people were not only subject to the working of laws, they alsoresisted the law by acting according to what they believed to be just. In doingso people defined the way in whichlaws operated, thereby modifying their consequences. You will also come to know about the sources that tell us about thesehistories, and the problems historiansface in interpreting them. You will readabout revenue records and surveys, journals and accounts left by surveyorsand travellers, and reports produced by enquiry commissions.
Fig. 10.1Cotton being carried from the village to the 
mandi,Illustrated London News,
20 April 1861
Colonialism and theCountryside
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