Book I, Chapter 4: Land Settlements in Bombay

CHAPTER IV

LAND SETTLEMENTS IN BOMBAY

THE British frontier in Western India rapidly advanced under the Marquis of Hastings, and the whole of the Deccan came under British rule in 1817, after the last Mahratta War. Valuable reports on the newly-acquired territories were submitted, first by Mountstuart Elphinstone in 1819, and then by Chaplin in 1821 and 1822. And these reports throw much light on the state of agriculture, and the condition of the peasantry, under the Mahratta rule.

The first and most important feature of the Mahratta Government in the Deccan, wrote Elphinstone, was the division of the country into townships or Village Communities. “These Communities contain in miniature all the materials of a State within themselves, and are almost sufficient to protect their members if all other governments are withdrawn.”¹ The Patel or head of the Village Community, wrote Captain Robertson of Poona, “was, and is still, a magistrate by the will of the community as well as by the appointment of Government; he enforces the observance of what in England would be termed the bye-laws of the corporation; he formerly raised by contribution a sum of money for the expenses of the corporation as such, and for the support of his own dignity as its head; he suggested improvements for the benefit of the association, and marshalled the members to aid him in maintaining the public peace; he dispensed and still dispenses civil justice as a patriarch to those who choose to submit to his decision as referee or arbitrator; or he presides over the proceedings of others whom either he himself or the parties might nominate as arbitrators of their disputes.”²

The next most important feature of society under the Mahratta rule was the cultivation of the land by peasant proprietors, called Mirasdars or hereditary owners of their fields. Elphinstone tells us that “a large portion of the Ryots are the proprietors of their estates, subject to the payment of a fixed land tax to Government; that their property is hereditary and saleable; and they are never dispossessed while they pay their tax.” “He is in no way inferior,” writes Captain Robertson, “in point of tenure on its original basis, as described in the quotation, to the holder of the most undisputed freehold estate in England.” The Mirasi tenure, says Chaplin, “is very general throughout the whole of that part of the conquered territory which extends from the Krishna to the range of Ghats.” And Mr. Chaplin adds that “the Collector [of Poona] is very properly an advocate for preserving the rights of Mirasdars, a line of policy which he strenuously recommends in several places; but as nobody, I trust, has ever thought of invading their rights, the discussion of the question at any length would be superfluous.”³

It is a lamentable fact that both these ancient institutions, the Village Community and the Mirasi tenure, virtually ceased to exist before the first generation of British administrators had closed their labours in the conquered territories. A fixed resolve to make direct arrangements with every separate cultivator, and to impose upon him a tax to be revised at each recurring settlement, necessarily weakened Village Communities and extinguished Mirasi rights. No impartial historian compares the Mahratta rule with its interminable wars, with the British rule which has given peace and security to the people. At the same time no impartial historian notes without regret the decay of the old self-governing institutions, the extinction of the old tenant-rights, and the consequent increase of the burdens on the soil, which have been the results of British administration in India. It is an unwise policy to efface the indigenous self-governing institutions of any country ; and the policy is specially unwise under an alien rule which can never be in touch with the people, except through the natural leaders and representatives of the people. Eighty-five years have elapsed since the British conquest of the Deccan, but the system of rural self-government, which the Village Communities represented, has never been replaced.

Land Settlements were made temporarily in different districts immediately after the conquest of the Deccan ; and regular Survey Settlements were commenced by Pringle of the Bombay Civil Service in 1824-28, but ended in failure. His assessment was based on a measurement of fields and an estimate of the yield of various soils, and the Government demand was fixed at 55 per cent. of the produce. The measurement, however, was faulty ; the estimates of produce were erroneous ; the revenue demand was excessive ; and the Settlement operations ended in oppression. “Every effort, lawful and unlawful, was made to get the utmost out of the wretched peasantry, who were subjected to torture, in some instances cruel and revolting beyond all description, if they would not or could not yield what was demanded. Numbers abandoned their homes and fled into the neighbouring Native States. Large tracts of land were thrown out of cultivation, and in some districts no more than a third of the cultivable area remained in occupation.”⁴

A re-survey was commenced by Goldsmid and Lieutenant Wingate in 1835, and they founded the system on which land revenue administration in Bombay is based up to the present time. This date marks, therefore, the commencement of the current land system of Bombay, as 1833 marks the commencement of the current land system of Northern India. And both in Bombay and in Northern India, Settlements have been made for long periods of thirty years from these dates.

The plan adopted by Goldsmid and Wingate was very simple. They classed all soils into nine different classes according to their quality; they fixed the assessment of a district after inquiries into its circumstances and previous history; and they distributed the district demand among the villages and fields contained in the district. The owner of each field was then called upon to cultivate his holding on payment of the Land Tax fixed for his field. “The assessment was fixed by the Superintendent of Survey without any reference to the cultivator; and when those rates were introduced, the holder of each field was summoned to the Collector and informed of the rate at which his land would be assessed in future; and if he choose to retain it on those terms, he did; if he did not choose, he threw it up.”⁵

It will be seen that this simple scheme entirely ignored the Village Communities of the Deccan, and extinguished the rights of Mirasi tenants to hold their hereditary lands at fixed rates. British administrators judged it wise to make a settlement directly with every individual tenant; and they imposed on each field a Land Tax according to their own judgment. The new assessment, too, was more or less guess-work, and was therefore subject to the same uncertainty which vitiated the system of Northern India. It was liable to vary as the Settlement Officer was moderate or severe. And moderation shown at one Settlement, during a time of distress, was liable to be followed by severity at the succeeding Settlement, at the first signs of prosperity. The accumulation of agricultural wealth was impossible so long as Settlement Officers retained the power of varying the Land Tax at each recurring settlement according to their own judgment. And any permanent improvement in the condition of the peasantry was impossible when the peasantry possessed no security against arbitrary enhancements of the State-demand.

The Sadar Board of Revenue and the Government of India saw this weakness in the system of the Ryotwari Settlement, which then appeared in its worst form in Madras. Ten years after the death of Sir Thomas Munro, Madras affairs were in the utmost confusion. The land assessment was raised, lowered, and raised again. The evils of uncertainty were added to the evils of over-assessment. The excessive revenue demand could not be met, and was never met. The peasantry was crushed to the ground, and there was widespread agricultural distress in the country. It was against this system that the Sadar Board of Revenue raised its voice.

A copy of the Sadar Board’s letter was forwarded to Bombay. Though mainly directed against Madras, the letter was an attack on the Ryotwari System itself. And as Goldsmid and Wingate were introducing the same system in Bombay, they stood up for the system. In their able letter of October 17, 1840, they attributed the wretched state of Madras to over-taxation, and not to the Ryotwari System itself. And they contended that the Ryotwari System, properly worked, might be as beneficial to the people as the system which was introduced in Northern India by Merttins Bird. A few extracts from this remarkable letter will throw light on the land systems of Northern India, Madras, and Bombay, which were still in the process of formation at that period.

“3. In the North-Western Provinces the Land Tax is assessed upon estates generally comprising many occupancies instead of upon single fields, as here. An estate may be a single village, or occasionally only a part of a village; an aggregation of villages, or parts of villages; and, instead of being simply the property of one individual, is almost invariably that of many proprietors, who are jointly responsible for the payment of the Land Tax, which is assessed on the estate in the lump. In the Deccan, on the contrary, the existing divisions of land are usually fields of moderate size, capable of being conveniently cultivated by one person; these divisions have been preserved in our Settlement, and the Land Tax fixed independently upon each.”

“9. . . . It appears to us that a proprietary right in land can only be destroyed by the imposition of an assessment so heavy as to absorb the whole of the rent; for as long as the assessment falls in any degree short of the rent, the portion remaining will give a value to the land, and enable its possessor to let or sell it, which, of necessity, constitutes him a proprietor. Whether or not Sir Thomas Munro disregarded the rights of the real proprietors, and recorded the land simply in the names of the actual occupants, who thus became responsible for the payment of the assessment, we do not think it necessary to inquire; but we unhesitatingly record that our Settlement recognises all existing proprietary rights, and that the proprietor has the fullest liberty to assign his land to under-tenants upon whatever terms he chooses, and which right is everywhere exercised.”

“11. . . . We have adopted for the portion of the Deccan, to which our operations have as yet extended, nine classes of gradations, to one of which every peculiarity of soil has been referred; and these we have reason for believing to be sufficiently numerous.”

“15. . . . The present condition of the agricultural classes, the state of the particular villages, the amount of the Government realisations, the prices of produce, and similar considerations, compared with those of preceding years,⁶ affording us the chief groundwork for determining satisfactorily what abatement or addition should be made to the existing Jumma.”

“39. The Board conclude their letter with a lengthened and impressive summary of the evils deemed by them inherent in the Ryotwari System, as evidenced by the wretched state of the Madras districts, which they contrast with the flourishing condition of the North-Western Provinces under the present Settlement, and thence deduce the immeasurable superiority of the village-plan of management; but, in our humble opinion, the immeasurable superiority observed in the North-Western Provinces is the result of the moderation of the Government demand; the undeniable inferiority in the Madras management arises from the error committed of imposing exorbitant and illiberal assessments.”

“44. We further believe many most important elements of national prosperity to be secured by the plan of settlement now being followed in the Deccan, among which may be enumerated: a moderate and equal assessment, leaving a proportion of the rent with the proprietor or holder; the settlement confirmed for thirty years; security against increase of demand, on any account whatever, during the term of the Settlement; the consequent accruement of all benefits arising from improvements to those who make them; limitation of joint responsibility to a few cases where fields are held in common, or have been subdivided by coparceriers; recognition of property in the soil; perfect freedom of management with regard to rent from sub-tenants, and sale, secured to its owners; facilities for effecting sales or transfers of land afforded, by the apportionment of the assessment on fields or such limited portions of land as would, in the circumstances of the proprietors of this country, be naturally made the subject of such transfers; collection of the assessment from cultivated land only, and thus permitting the Ryot to contract and extend the sphere of his labours, according to the means at his immediate command, a privilege of immense importance in a country where the capital of the agriculturist is not only small in itself, but subject to great fluctuation from the effect of variation in the seasons.”

Armed with this and other Reports, John Vibart addressed the Bombay Government, defending the Bombay system against the charges of the Board of Revenue. Vibart had no difficulty in showing that in fixing the assessment, the Bombay officers proceeded on precisely the same considerations as the officers of Northern India. Indeed the first impression left on the reader’s mind on perusal of this correspondence is that if the assessment of Bombay was guess-work, the assessment of Northern India was guess-work also; and Northern India reproving Bombay was like Satan reproving Sin! But nevertheless there was an essential difference. In Northern India the assessment was made for an entire estate or village, and the owners of the estate or the village collectively could protest with some effect if the guess-work assessment was wrong. In Bombay, every field was separately assessed, and the humble cultivator of a field had little chance of redress if the Settlement Officer made a wrong guess.

The reader will perceive at once the great difference between a Province where old institutions like Village Communities and hereditary landlords were maintained, even in a crippled state, and a Province where they were swept away or ignored, and an absolute Government stood face to face with each individual tiller of his field.

It is customary with superficial writers to regard intervening landlords in India as incumbrances on the land; but thoughtful men, who have closely studied the social and economic conditions of India, have recorded a different opinion. They have recognised that, apart from the political gain of having influential bodies of men between an alien Government and an unrepresented nation of cultivators, the opinion and influence of such men, belonging to the country and to the people, leaven the administration, correct its mistakes, resist its arbitrariness, and bring it more in touch with the people. Land revenue administration in Northern India has been more successful, and land assessments have been lighter, than in Bombay and in Madras, because there were influential leaders and communities in the first-named province, who made their wishes felt, influenced the administration, and moderated taxation. The saddest mistake made in Madras and in Bombay was to ignore or to sweep away Village Communities, Polygars, Jaigirdars, and other influential bodies belonging to the people, instead of enlisting them in the cause of good administration.

“Joint responsibility for the payment of the revenue and joint village management,” said Goldsmid and Wingate in their own justification, “were perhaps universal in the Deccan, but we can find no traces of joint ownership.”⁷ It would have been a gain to British rule, if this “joint village management,” through Village Communities, which was universal in the Deccan, had been fostered and preserved. And the high admiration with which every student of history cherishes the memory of a great and good man like Sir George Wingate will not conceal from him the painful truth that, in setting aside Village Communities and making separate settlements with a hundred thousand cultivators for a hundred thousand fields in each district, Wingate made a fatal mistake. The Madras Board of Revenue protested against this mistake in Madras in 1818,—in vain. The Sadar Board of Revenue protested once more against this mistake in 1838,—in vain.

Fifteen years after this, a high administrator, a Governor of Bombay, was examined as a witness before Select Committees of the Lords and Commons. And he had the courage to state that wherever the Ryotwari System had been introduced,—sweeping aside Village Communities and intermediate landlords,—the agriculturists were a nation of paupers. Sir George Clerk’s evidence is so clear and cogent, that it is necessary to quote some of his remarks.

Q. Which system of managing land is most beneficial to the people at large—by Ryots or by Zemindars? A. They have their respective advantages, but the Ryotwari is most detrimental to the country. . . . Q. Is not the character of the population in our dominion more generally that of the paupers? A. Only where the Ryotwari Settlement prevails, I should say?⁸

The above evidence was given before the Lords’ Committee in 1852. The same witness explained the evils of the Ryotwari System more fully before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in the following year.

Q. Will you state in a few words what the principle of the Ryotwari System is? A. It is a very minute and detailed assessment of land under individual cultivators, in small allotments, directly by the Government, so that they are, as we found them, still paupers. There is nothing between them and the Government. . . . Q. Your idea of the Ryotwari System is that it does not work well, either for the Government or for the natives? A. Certainly not; they have no head landholders over them to acquire capital; they are of a class who never acquire capital in any country; mere cultivators. . . .

Q. What is the system of revenue which prevails in the North-Western Provinces?

A. There has been a new Settlement carried out there of leases on long terms to Zemindars of different calibre, some holding a single village or so, and others being the many heads of a village.

Q. Was that Settlement laid down on the principle recommended by Mr. Bird?

A. I believe so, but the principle was not new; it was much older than Mr. Bird’s time; it was a very ancient mode of assessment of Land Revenue in India.

Q. Has that worked well, in your opinion?

A. I think it works remarkably well, when in forming your assessment of revenue with the heads of villages you have not infringed the rights of any Zemindar. . . .

Q. Are the Zemindars in the habit of assisting the Ryots in case of the failure of their crops?

A. Yes.

Q. In what way do they assist them?

A. They will assist them with funds, or with seed, corn, or with oxen; that is the advantage of the Village or the Zemindari Settlement.

Illustrious men like Cobden and Joseph Hume were members of the Select Committee, and it is interesting to read the witness’s answers to their special questions.

Mr. Cobden: You have stated that one difficulty attending the Ryotwari System in Bombay arises from the widespread and general corruption of the native population, and that where you lose the services of Europeans, you find it impossible to obtain faithful administrators. How do you reconcile that with the statement you made in the former part of your evidence as to the general morality and truthfulness of the population of India ? A. I do not think I made use of the term widespread corruption of the population; I certainly meant nothing of the kind. I meant that the under-paid native agents whom you must use, in consequence of the want of funds to obtain others, are not to be trusted with the disposal of the money remitted from the revenue, or to carry out the Ryotwari System in all its minute parts. Q. If the mass of the population be truthful and honest, where is the difficulty in finding honest agents among them ? A. You impose laborious duties upon them, and do not give them adequate salaries to maintain themselves. . . . Mr. Hume: You have stated that the present Ryotwari System leaves the cultivators in a state of beggary, and you have expressed a doubt how far the Village System could be adopted. Is there any other step which you could recommend as a means of improving the condition of the cultivators of Bombay ? A. I do not think I expressed a doubt as to the Village System. It is the system I have always advocated and adopted.⁹

The Ryotwari Settlement went on in Bombay. The rules of the Settlement were finally gathered up in 1847 in what is known as the Joint Report, signed by H. E. Goldsmid, Captain Wingate, and Captain Davidson. This Joint Report of 1847 was the basis of the Bombay Settlement, as Thomason’s Directions to Settlement Officers, published in 1844, was the basis of the Settlement in Northern India.

The principles of the Bombay Settlement, as explained in the Joint Report, were, firstly, that it was based on the assessment of each field separately; secondly, that it granted long leases for thirty years; thirdly, that it abandoned the basis of produce-estimates, and substituted the basis of the value of lands for distributing the assessment.

“The cultivator’s title to occupation of the fields is indestructible while he continues to discharge the assessment laid upon them, though his engagement for each be annually renewed; and by placing the assessment upon each field, instead of on his whole holding, he is enabled, when circumstances make the course desirable, to relinquish any of the former, or take up others which may be unoccupied, so as to accommodate the extent of his liabilities to his means. The fixed field assessment for the term of thirty years, introduced by our surveys, thus secures to the cultivator the full advantages of a thirty years’ lease without burdening him with any condition beyond that of discharging the assessment for the single year to which his engagement extends. He has thus all the security of tenure which the longest lease could confer, without the attendant liabilities and risk which his limited capital and precarious circumstances would be quite inadequate to meet.”¹⁰

For the purpose of estimating the value of lands, all lands were classed under nine different classes, as shown in the table on the opposite page.¹¹

Fields being thus classified, it remained to determine the Government demand for a whole district, so that it might be then distributed among the fields and villages contained in the district.

“It only remains to complete the Settlement to fix the absolute amount of assessment to be levied from the whole [district].

“The determination of this point is, perhaps, the most important and difficult operation connected with the survey, and requires, beyond all others, the exercise of great judgment and discrimination on the part of the officer on whom it devolves. The first requisite is to obtain a clear understanding of the nature and effects of our past management of the district, which will be best arrived at by an examination and comparison of the annual revenue settlements of as many previous years as trustworthy data may be procurable for, and from local inquiries of the people during the progress of the survey. . . .

“Furthermore, to assist in tracing the causes to which the prosperity or decline of villages, or tracts containing several villages are to be attributed, independent statements of the annual revenue settlements of each village should be prepared. . . .

“And finally, with the view of affording the fullest information on this important subject, detailed figured statements should be furnished, exhibiting the source and amount of every item of revenue hitherto derived from land of every description, whether Government or alienated, comprised within the limits of the villages for which an assessment is proposed.

“The information thus collected and exhibited, with that obtained by local inquiries into the past history of the district, will generally enable us to trace the causes which have affected its past condition; and a knowledge of these, aided by a comparison of the capabilities of the district with those of others in its neighbourhood, will lead to a satisfactory conclusion regarding the amount of assessment to be imposed.”¹²

It will be perceived at once from these elaborate rules how much was left to the discretion and judgment of the Settlement Officer in determining the district demand from the past history and circumstances of the district and its villages. The utmost latitude for moderation was left to a considerate officer, and of severity to an inconsiderate officer. And the fortunes of a hundred thousand tillers depended, not on fixed and customary rates, but on the different judgments of different officers. More than this, an assessment based on the past history of a district must necessarily rise after an era of prosperity; and any permanent improvement in the condition of the peasantry was impossible under a system which thus laid an increasing and deadening tax on prosperous agriculture.

This weak point in the method of assessment did not escape the Government of Bombay. The Governor of Bombay, in his Minute of November 16, 1847, remarked: “I cannot but admit that, at present, we are entirely dependent on the judgment of our Superintendents; and so we must remain until our Revenue Commissioners do something more than make their offices the channels of communication between the Superintendents and ourselves.” But the Revenue Commissioners themselves were powerless in the matter. The Hon. Mr. Read, Member of the Bombay Council, in his Minute of May 16, 1848, very pertinently remarked: “I concur in the Honourable the President’s appreciation of what must be left to the judgment of the Superintendents of Survey. We must indeed be almost wholly dependent upon them, for I do not think that we can hope for Revenue Commissioners who can do more than exercise a very general supervision over their operations. Few Revenue Commissioners possess the knowledge, and none could devote the time necessary for a minute scrutiny into them.”

It is creditable to Wingate that he exercised his irresponsible powers with moderation, tact, and humanity; that his guess-work in making assessment was performed with care and assiduity; and that his Settlement relieved the peasantry of the Deccan from that misrule and oppression from which they had suffered for twenty years. The name of Sir George Wingate is remembered in Bombay, as the name of Sir Thomas Munro in Madras, and of Robert Merttins Bird in Northern India, not because their work was free from grave faults, but because they succeeded, on the whole, in introducing some order where chaos and disorder had prevailed, and in building up systems which have lasted to our day.

The financial results of land assessments by British administrators in Bombay can be best exhibited by figures. The limits of British territory remained virtually unchanged in this province from the acquisition of the Peshwa’s dominions in 1817-18, to the survey and settlement of Wingate, commenced in 1836. And yet the land revenue was increased immediately after the conquest.

In other words, the Land Revenue of the province, including the conquered dominions, was more than doubled within four years from the conquest.

Wingate’s settlement, commenced in 1836, was virtually completed by 1872, and showed an increase in the Land Revenue (excluding Poona and a few other places then under a revised settlement), from £1,534,000 to £2,032,000, or an increase of 32 per cent. Figures for the different districts are given below.¹³

Footnotes