HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

Colonialism and the Countryside: Exploring Official Archives

The British rule in India deeply impacted the people who lived in the countryside. Forest laws
and revenue policies completely changed the lives of people who lived in the countryside.

Bengal and the Zamindars

Bengal was the first state to be annexed by the East India Company (EIC). In the initial years,
efforts were made by the EIC to establish land rights and the revenue system.

Permanent Settlement of Bengal

The Permanent Settlement of Bengal was introduced by Lord Cornwallis in 1793. Main features
of the settlement were
 Settlements were made with the rajas and taluqdars who now came to be known as
zamindars.
 The Company recognised the zamindars as the owners of the land. They were given
permanent hereditary rights to collect revenues.
 The British fixed the revenue demands which could not be increased in the future.
 Zamindars had to pay revenue at a fixed date. If they failed to do so, their lands were
taken away and sold to other zamindars.
The British thought that they could improve the revenues in Bengal by fixing the amount of
revenues. If done, zamindars would invest in agricultural lands. This would also create a class of
loyal zamindars and rich farmers. However, zamindars regularly failed to pay the revenue
demands. This was due to the following reasons:

www.topperlearning.com 2
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

The Permanent Settlement of Bengal also made the zamindars powerful. The Company took
various measures to control the powers of the zamindars. These were
 Troops maintained by the zamindars were disbanded.
 Zamindars lost their power to organise local justice and local police.
 Courts of the zamindars now began to be supervised by the Collector.
 Over a period of time, the Collectorate emerged as alternative centre of authority.
 Whenever the zamindars failed to pay revenues, his zamindari was auctioned. This greatly
reduced the power and prestige of zamindars.

The Rise of the Jotedars

In the 18th century, there was a rise of new class—jotedars. They were rich peasants who
consolidated their position in villages. They gradually began to exercise control over poor
section of people in villages. Their rise weakened the authority of the zamindars. This is due to
the following reasons:
 In the early 19th century, jotedars had acquired vast areas of land. They controlled local
trade and money lending exercising greater control over the peasants of the village.
 While the zamindars usually lived in towns, the jotedars lived in villages and were able to
influence and control poor peasants.
 Sometimes they also prevented revenue collectors of zamindars from executing their duties
and delayed their payments to them.
 Soon they began to be appointed as village headmen in various regions.

Power in Rural Bengal

• In villages, the zamindars

distributed the revenue demands
and collected revenues from
peasants.
• The ryot or cultivator had to pay
rent to the zamindars.
• Jotedars provided loans to the
poor farmers and sold their
produce.
• Ryots cultivated some lands and
gave out the rest to under-ryots
on rent.
• Because the under-ryots
cultivated the fields of the ryots,
they paid rents to the ryots.

www.topperlearning.com 3
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

How did the Zamindars Survive?

Although the zamindars faced several problems, they did manage to survive and the zamindari
did not collapse. Faced with exorbitantly high revenue demands and possible auction of their
estate, they adopted various policies.
 The Raja of Burdwan, when faced with possible auction of his lands, transferred some of his
zamindari to his mother as the Company had decreed that the property of women could not
be taken over.
 At the time of the auction, the zamindar’s men manipulated the auctions. They bid for the
property by outbidding other purchasers, but they refused to pay the amount and the land
had to be auctioned again.
 This process was repeated several times exhausting the state and other bidders at the
auction. Finally, the estate was sold at a low price back to the zamindars.
 In case an outsider bought the land, he was attacked by the men of the zamindars.
Because the zamindari held a sense of identity and pride, it was not easy to displace zamindars
from their lands. In the beginning of the 19th century, prices of agricultural land rose and the
zamindars became powerful. It was only during the Great Depression in the 1930s that their
authority collapsed and the jotedars became powerful in the countryside.

The Fifth Report

The Fifth Report was a famous document submitted to the British Parliament by a Select
Committee in 1813. It focused on the affairs of the EIC particularly in revenue and judiciary.
The Report consisted of 1002 pages of which about 800 pages contained petitions of the ryots
and zamindars. The Fifth Report became the basis of intense debate in England because of the
following reasons:
 Various trading groups in Britain alleged that the EIC was governing India in an unjust
manner. Their actual intention was to oppose EIC’s monopoly of trade in India and China.
 They wanted a revocation of the Royal Charter which gave the monopoly to the Company.
 Groups of many private traders wanted a share in Indian trade and the British industrialists
wanted to open Indian markets for British-manufactured goods.
 Information regarding the Company’s mismanagement in India was debated, and the corrupt
practices of the officials of the EIC were widely debated.
In the 18th century, the British Parliament passed several Acts to regulate and control the
Company’s rule in India.

Criticisms of the Fifth Report

Although the Fifth Report has been an important source, it was criticised on the following
grounds:
 It was felt that the Report aimed at criticising the administration of the EIC and thus
exaggerated the fall of traditional zamindari power.

www.topperlearning.com 4
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

 It also overestimated the scale on which the zamindars were losing their lands which was
not the case. Even during auctions, zamindars were not always displaced.

The Paharis in the Rajmahal Hills

Rajmahal Hills during the British rule was part of Bengal Presidency. It was inhabited by the hill
folks commonly known as the paharis. Francis Buchanan was a physician who served in the Bengal
Medical Service in India. He travelled through the Rajmahal Hills in the 19th century. He
considered these hills as impenetrable and the people as hostile.
The paharis living in the Rajmahal Hills depended on the forests and its products for their
living. They practised shifting cultivation, collected mahua for food and raised silk cocoons.
They grew pulses and millets for consumption. They lived in hutments within tamarind groves
and resisted the intrusion of outsiders. The paharis also raided agricultural settlements. It was
due to the following reasons:
 Because Rajmahal was a dry region, raiding was necessary for survival, especially during the
years of scarcity.
 It was their way to assert power over the settled communities.
 Zamindars paid regular tribute to the paharis to buy peace.
 Traders also gave a small amount of money to them as a charge for passing through the
roads which were used by them.
In the late 18th century, the British began to encourage forest clearing and expand cultivation
to maximise their revenues. This brought the paharis in conflict with the British. The former
thus increased their raids on settled cultivators carrying away their grains and cattle. The
British found it difficult to subdue them. In 1770, they embarked on a brutal extermination of
the paharis, chasing and killing them. Later, they followed a policy of pacification. They gave
annual allowance to the pahari chiefs and asked them to maintain discipline among their people.
Many chiefs refused the allowances. Later, they withdrew deep into the hills. The British not
only brutally subdued the paharis but also snatched away their land and forests. They
destroyed their way of life.
As the paharis withdrew into the hills, the santhals encouraged by the British occupied their
area, cleared forests and began cultivating.

www.topperlearning.com 5
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

The Santhals

Santhals had begun to come to Bengal in about 1780s

While the Zamindars hired them to reclaim land and expand cultivation, the British invited them
to settle in the Jangal Mahals

Later, the British forced them to settle in the Rajmahal Hills as the paharis refused to cut down
forests to expand agriculture

They settled as peasants in the foothills of Rajmahal

The number of Santhal villages grew from 40 in 1838 to 1,473 in 1851

Santhals and Damin-i-Koh

Damin-i-Koh was the land allocated to the Santhals. The Santhals could live on the land and
practise plough agriculture, thus helping them to carry out settled agriculture. However, the
British demanded high revenues from the Santhals.
The Santhals began to resist the British during the eighteenth century because of the following
reasons:
 They realised that they were losing control of the land demarcated as Damin.
 The British had levied a high rate of taxation on their lands. To pay revenues, they
borrowed money from moneylenders at high rates of interest.
 Because most Santhals were not able to pay their debts, the zamindars began to assert
control over the Damin.

The Santhal Revolt (1855–56)

www.topperlearning.com 6
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

Francis Buchanan’s accounts and records of Rajmahal are an important source to understand the
geography and the people living there. But while reading his accounts, we need to keep in mind
that
 Francis Buchanan was an employer of the EIC and he undertook the journeys to Rajmahal
not because he loved forest landscapes but because he was asked to do it.
 The costs of his travels were borne by the EIC and the latter instructed him about what he
had to discover and record.
 Buchanan criticised the life styles of the forest dwellers and considered them as savages
and believed that forests should be converted to agricultural fields.

The Bombay Deccan and a Revolt in the Countryside

Revolts are ways in which the rebels express their anger and fury. They are the means by which
rebels rise against perceived injustices. Histories of revolts help us in not only analysing the
reasons for revolts but also shed light on the lives of the rebels.
The State also did not simply suppress but also tried to understand and study the reasons for
rebellions so that policies could be formulated to avoid any outbreak of revolts in the future. In
the 19th century, there were several evidences of peasant revolts in India.

Introduction of the Ryotwari System

Ricardo’s idea of land ownership was introduced in the ‘Bombay Deccan’. Ricardo said that
landowners should have a claim only to the ‘average rent’ that prevailed at a given time. When
the land yielded more than the average rent, the landowner had a surplus that the state needed
to tax. Landowners were unlikely to spend the surplus income in improving lands. The British
realised the limitations of the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in this respect.
The British introduced the ryotwari system of land revenue in Bombay Deccan. In this system,
the British directly collected revenues from the ryots or cultivators. Lands were classified
based on different types of soil and a proportion of it was fixed as revenue. These lands were
resurveyed after every 30 years. Thus, unlike the Permanent Settlement, the revenue demands
were not fixed.

Revenue Demands and the Condition of Peasantry

 First revenue settlement in Bombay Deccan was made in the 1820s.
 Revenue was high, and so, it forced peasants to migrate to new regions.
 If peasants failed to pay, then crops were seized and a fine was imposed on the whole
village.
 In 1832, the prices of agricultural products fell sharply.
 In 1832−34, a famine struck this region in which one-third of the cattle was killed.
As life became difficult for the peasants, they began to borrow money from moneylenders at a
high rate of interest. Most peasants failed to repay. It increased their indebtedness and their
economy was on the verge of collapse. By mid-1840, there were signs of economic recovery and
the British moderated the revenue demands to encourage peasants to grow crops.

www.topperlearning.com 7
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

Cotton Boom

Expanded cotton production in Bombay

Deccan

Cotton Export merchants gave advances to

boom moneylenders to give credit to peasants
growing cotton

Peasants easily received loans from

moneylenders

www.topperlearning.com 8
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

End of the American Civil War

The Experience of Injustice

After the end of the American Civil War, export of cotton from India to Britain declined
drastically. The price of cotton in India declined dramatically impoverishing thousands of cotton
farmers in India. Sahukars or moneylenders were now not keen to give long-term credit to
peasants and they began demanding repayment of their outstanding dues.
Meanwhile, the British increased the revenue demands from 50 to 100%. It became increasingly
difficult for the ryots to pay revenues when the demand and the prices of cotton declined
considerably.

www.topperlearning.com 9
 HISTORY COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: EXPLORING OFFICIAL ARCHIVES

The Deccan Riots Commission

The Report published by the Deccan Riots Commission is an important source of history as the
commission held enquiries in the riot-hit districts. It recorded the statements of the ryots,
sahukars and eyewitnesses. It also compiled statistical data on revenue rates in different
regions. However, while studying the report, one has to be careful as the Report blamed
moneylenders for the revolt and not the high, unjust revenue demands of the British.

www.topperlearning.com 10