Chapter IV: Warren Hastings in Bengal (1772-1785)

CHAPTER IV

WARREN HASTINGS IN BENGAL (1772-1785)

THE British Parliament passed the Regulating Act in 1773. Warren Hastings, who had succeeded as Governor of Bengal in 1772, became the first Governor-General in 1774 under the new Act. Three members of his Council, including Philip Francis, were appointed from England, and two other members were chosen from among the servants of the Company. A Supreme Court was established in Calcutta. It was hoped that the administration of India would be improved under these new arrangements.

The name of Warren Hastings recalls memorable events in Indian history, which formed the subjects of long debates in the Houses of Parliament. It brings back to mind the story of the Begams of Oudh, the Raja of Benares, and the war with the Rohillas. Less dramatic but far more important events connected with the administration of Hastings were the great struggles of the British with the Mahrattas in the west and with Haidar Ali in the south. And the conduct of Warren Hastings in respect of all these events has formed the subject of controversies which have not yet closed, after more than a century since the close of his administration.

It gives us unspeakable relief to be able to sweep aside all these controversies from the present narrative. In accordance with the scope of this work, we will confine our attention strictly to those measures of Warren Hastings which affected the material well-being of the million, the economic condition of the nation. In the present volume we will only review the civil and revenue administration of Warren Hastings, leaving out those controversial matters which have engaged the tongue of the orator and the pen of the historian for over a hundred years.

We have met Warren Hastings before as a strong and able man, as a just and honourable man, striving manfully but in vain to save the clear rights of Mir Kasim against the usurpations of the Company’s servants, to save the inland trade of the people of Bengal from the privileged rapacity of their new rulers. But the land system of Bengal was entirely a new problem to Hastings, as it was to all Englishmen of his time; and the continuous demands of the Directors of the Company for an increasing revenue from the land left him little opportunity to master the problem correctly or to deal with it fairly.

Englishmen in the eighteenth century were familiar only with the English land system, under which the soil belonged to landlords, was let to farmers, and was tilled by labourers. The Bengal system was entirely different; and the contending claims put forward from time to time by the State, by the landlords or Zemindars, and by the cultivators or Ryots, obscured for a long time the real features of the institution. The State was in no sense the proprietor, but was only entitled to a revenue from the soil. The Zemindars held their estates from generation to generation; were virtually feudal lords armed with civil and criminal powers; and were entitled to customary rents from the cultivators. The cultivators or Ryots were not mere labourers, but had rights to their holdings, which they transmitted from father to son, paying the customary rents to the landlords. Occasionally the Nawabs of Bengal re-surveyed the estates and enhanced the revenues; occasionally Zemindars increased their rents; but, nevertheless, through long centuries the arrangements remained unchanged in their main features. The State was entitled to a revenue; the Zemindars were entitled to customary rents, paying a revenue to the State; the Ryots had a hereditary right to their holdings, subject to payment of customary rents to landlords.

In 1765, when the East India Company became the Dewan or administrators of Bengal under the Imperial grant, the Company’s servants did not immediately take upon themselves either the management of the revenues or the administration of justice. The Mahomedan officer at Murshedabad continued to make revenue collections in Bengal under the superintendence of the Company’s Resident at the Nawab’s court; and Sitab Roy, a Hindu chief, continued to make revenue collections in Behar under the superintendence of the Company’s Agent at Patna ¹. Only the Twenty-four Perganas, Burdwan, Midnapur, and Chittagong districts, which were the Company’s old possessions, were managed by the Covenanted Servants of the Company.

In 1769, Supervisors were appointed by the Company, with powers to superintend the collection of revenue and the administration of justice. The “Dual Government” had not worked well. The real rulers of the land, screening themselves behind Hindu and Mahomedan revenue collectors, took over the collections, but did not feel the responsibilities of rulers. The Hindu and Mahomedan revenue collectors felt themselves as agents for the Company, and therefore failed to realise the responsibilities of rulers. The people were oppressed by both and protected by neither. The inquiries made by the Supervisors appointed in 1769 showed that the administration was in the utmost disorder. The collecting officers “exacted what they could from the Zemindars and great farmers of revenue, whom they left at liberty to plunder all below, reserving to themselves the prerogative of plundering them in their turn.” And with regard to the administration of justice, “the regular course was everywhere suspended; but every man exercised it who had the power of compelling others to submit to his decisions.“¹

In 1772 it was decided to place the administration of the country in the hands of British officers. The Governor, Warren Hastings, and four members of his Council, formed a committee, and adopted measures for the management of the revenues and the administration of justice. The exchequer and the treasury were removed from Murshedabad to Calcutta, and were placed under a Board of Revenue composed of the Governor and his Council. In the provinces the European Supervisors, now called Collectors, were empowered to collect the revenues; a settlement of the land revenues for five years was adopted; and four junior members of the committee went on a circuit to carry this plan into execution. For the administration of justice a civil court and a criminal court were formed in each district; the Collector presided over the civil court, and he also attended the criminal court, where a Mahomedan Kazi, with the help of two Maulvies, dispensed justice. Appeals from these civil and criminal courts were allowed to two superior courts in Calcutta. A new system of police was organised; native police officers, called Fauzdars, were appointed in the fourteen districts into which Bengal was then divided; and regulations, framed for the guidance of the revenue and judicial officers, were printed and promulgated in the languages of the country. All these various administrative reforms bear testimony to the ability and capacity of Warren Hastings; but they also reveal that defect in British administration which has continued down to the present day—a want of trust and confidence in the people. Hindu and Mahomedan officers in the eighteenth century were corrupt and rapacious, as the Company’s servants were corrupt and rapacious. Endeavours were made by Hastings, and by his successor Cornwallis, to make the British servants honest, by placing them in positions of trust and responsibility, and giving them adequate remuneration for their work. No endeavour was made to place Hindu and Mahomedan officers in positions of trust and responsibility, to pay them adequately, and to accept their cooperation in the work of administration.

In 1774 Warren Hastings became Governor General under the Regulating Act. The settlement of the lands for five years had proved a failure. The rights of the Zemindars, who were hereditary landlords, had been ignored, and the settlement had been made by auction. Bidders at the auction had been led by the eagerness of competition to make high offers, had squeezed the cultivators of the soil, and had yet failed to pay the promised revenue. The land system of Bengal had been misunderstood, the ancient landed families had been ruined, the cultivating population had been grievously oppressed. In 1774 the European Collectors were recalled, the superintendence of collections was vested in Provincial Councils at Calcutta, Burdwan, Dacca, Murshedabad, Dinajpur, and Patna; and native Amils were appointed in districts to perform an impossible duty.

In 1776 the policy of an equitable land settlement was discussed at Calcutta. Warren Hastings and Barwell proposed that estates should be sold by public auction or farmed out on leases, and settlements should be made with purchasers or lessees for life. A wiser statesman, who is known to English literature as the author of the “Letters of Junius”, took a broader and juster view of the situation. Philip Francis was then a member of the Council of the Governor-General, and in one of the ablest minutes recorded in India, recommended that the land revenue demand of the State should be permanently fixed.

“The greater part of the Zemindars were ruined and dispossessed of the management of their lands, and there were few people of rank and family left, or of those who had formerly held high employments; such as there were, looked for large profits, which the country could not afford them and pay the rents also. People of lower rank were therefore of necessity employed as Amils or collectors on the part of the Government. These people executed a contract for a stipulated sum for the district to which they were appointed, and in effect they may be considered as farmers of revenue. They then proceeded from the Sudder, or seat of government, to the districts, to settle with the Zemindars or tenants for the revenue they had engaged to pay.”

Having described the evils of this farming system, and its disastrous effects on the country, Philip Francis recommended a perpetual settlement of the land revenue as calculated to promote the prosperity of the people.

“The Jumma [assessment] once fixed, must be a matter of public record. It must be permanent and unalterable; and the people must, if possible, be convinced that it is so. This condition must be fixed to the lands themselves, independent of any consideration of who may be the immediate or future proprietors. If there be any hidden wealth still existing, it will then be brought forth and employed in improving the land, because the proprietor will be satisfied that he is labouring for himself.“¹

When these proposals came before the Directors in London, they hesitated to take a final step. With a policy of drift, truly British, they replied that, “having considered the different circumstances of letting the land on leases for lives or in perpetuity, we do not, for many weighty reasons, think it at present advisable to adopt either of these methods.” This was the very worst decision which the Directors could come to; for it negatived the life-leases proposed by Warren Hastings and the perpetual leases proposed by Philip Francis, and it permitted those short leases by auction which had already half ruined the Province of Bengal. The merchant rulers of India were keenly alive, “for many weighty reasons,” to the constant and frequent increase of their revenue, and Bengal continued to be afflicted by the auction system, the short leases, and the imprisonment of defaulting Zemindars, for ten years more.

In 1777 the five years’ settlement made in 1772 came to an end. The auction system was somewhat modified, and preference was now given to hereditary Zemindars. But the harshness of the system was greatly exaggerated when it was declared that the estates would be let, not for five years, but annually. Lands were thus let annually to Zemindars in 1778, 1779, and 1780. The country groaned under this economic tyranny, the revenues failed once more.

In 1781 great changes were introduced. Thirteen Articles and Regulations were prepared for the guidance of civil courts, which were afterwards incorporated in the Civil Code of ninety-five Articles of Regulations, which were printed with translations in the Persian and Bengali languages. Civil Judges and Collectors were entrusted with the powers of magistrates to grapple with the increase of crime in the province. A Committee of Revenue was formed at Calcutta, and submitted a plan for a new settlement of the land revenue for one year only, preference being given to Zemindars. The settlement was effected, and the land revenue was increased by twenty-six lakhs, or about £260,000.

All the great Zemindars of Bengal, all the ancient landed families, suffered under this system of annual settlements, frequent enhancements, and harsh methods of realisation, such as they had never known before. Descendants of old houses found their estates pass into the hands of moneylenders and speculators from Calcutta; widows and minor proprietors saw their peaceful subjects oppressed by rapacious agents appointed from Calcutta. It so happened that the three largest estates in Bengal, each paying a revenue of over a hundred thousand pounds sterling, were then under the administration of three distinguished ladies, who have left their names engraved in the memories of their countrymen. Burdwan, with its revenue of over £350,000, was held by the widow of the celebrated Tilak Chand, and mother of the equally celebrated Tej Chand. Rajshahi, with its revenue of over £260,000, was held by the venerable Rani Bhavani, whose name is cherished in India to this day for her high rank and abilities, as well as for her pious life and munificent charities. And Dinajpur, with its revenue of over £140,000, lost its Raja in 1780, and his widow was the guardian of the heir, then five years old. The history of these three estates will illustrate to some extent the sufferings of the people under the harsh and ever-changing revenue policy of Warren Hastings.

Dinajpur suffered most. An unscrupulous and rapacious agent, Debi Sing, was appointed from Calcutta to manage this estate during the minority. Debi Sing had been guilty of tyranny in Purnea and in Rungpur, and had been removed from his previous employment, and branded in the Company’s records; but he was chosen as a proper agent when the object was to screw up the revenues of Dinajpur during a minority. Debi Sing proved himself equal to the task. With a cruelty perhaps unparalleled even in Bengal in the eighteenth century, he imprisoned the Zemindars and flogged the cultivators in order to raise the revenue. Women were not exempted from his tyranny, and insult and indecent outrage were added to the tortures of the stake and the lash.

The oppression of Debi Sing drove the suffering cultivators of Dinajpur from their homes and villages. They attempted to leave the district, but bands of armed soldiers drove them back. Many fled into the jungles, and large numbers of the most passive and submissive race of cultivators on earth were goaded to rebellion. The insurrection spread through Dinajpur and Rungpur; soldiers were called in, and then followed punishments and cruel executions. Mr. Goodlad, the English chief of the district, described the rising as the greatest and most serious disturbance which had ever happened in Bengal; the cruel severity by which it was suppressed was also perhaps unexampled in Bengal.

The story of Burdwan is less tragic, because the great wrong done fell on the territorial house, and not to any great extent on the people. Maharaja Tilak Chand had died in 1767, and the succession of the minor son, Tej Chand, had been allowed and confirmed. Lalla Umi Chand, a friend of the family, had been appointed administrator of the estate by the deceased Zemindar; but John Graham, the British chief of the district, forced on the widow Rani a rapacious and unscrupulous manager in Braj Kisor. The Rani, as far as a woman could, endeavoured to stop his dishonesty, and refused him the great seal of the estate.

“My son’s seal,” she said in a petition to Warren Hastings in 1774, “was in my own possession; and as I affixed it to no paper without first perusing it, Braj endeavoured by every method to get it into his own hands, which I constantly persisted in refusing him. Upon this, in the Bengal year 1179 [A.D. 1772], Braj Kisor, having prevailed upon Mr. Graham to come to Burdwan, took from me my son Tej Chand, then nine years of age, and confined him in a separate place under a guard. In this situation, through affliction and apprehension, having remained more than seven days without sustenance to the absolute endangering my life, and finding no resource, I gave up the seal.“¹

The letter went on to say, that after thus obtaining the seal of the estate, Braj Kisor wasted the wealth of the estate, embezzled a large sum of money, and refused to submit any accounts. The Rani with her son was in dread of her life, and prayed to be allowed to proceed to Calcutta to reside in safety.

Clavering, Monson, and Francis, members of the Governor-General’s Council, asked for an inquiry into the charge of embezzlement against Braj Kisor and John Graham. “We do not enter into the truth or falsehood,” they wrote on 11th January 1775, “of the charge against Mr. Graham and the Dewan of Burdwan of an embezzlement of above eleven lakhs of rupees [£110,000], alleged to be the property of her infant son. It will be her business to make good the truth of her allegations. We are not so unjust as to give credit to charges against the honour or innocence of any man before the proofs are produced; neither does the Rani’s petition require it of us. Let the prayer of the petition be granted.“²

The dissensions in the Council, however, prevented a proper inquiry, and Warren Hastings defended John Graham. “Such inconsiderable presents,” wrote Clavering, Monson, and Francis, “as the Governor-General says Mr. Graham received, could never have created the immoderate fortune he is known to possess.” “I am totally unacquainted,” replied Hastings, “with Mr. Graham’s fortune; I know not on what foundation the majority style it immoderate. I thought it incumbent to vindicate him from the calumnies of the Burdwan Rani.”

For the rest, the Burdwan estate was heavily assessed. Ganga Govind Sing, the Dewan of the Revenue Board, was no friend of the Burdwan house, and he fixed the assessment higher than in any other old zemindari in Bengal. For many decades Burdwan suffered from this; and the descendants of the feudal lords, who had been virtual rulers in their own estate, and had helped the old Nawabs of Bengal against the invasions of the Mahrattas, found themselves unable to meet the heavy pecuniary demands of the new masters of Bengal. The house was saved from utter ruin by the creation of a new order of permanent lessees who shared the responsibilities of the Zemindar; but to the present day the Burdwan estate pays a larger proportion of its collections as Government revenue than any other of the great estates in Bengal.

But the venerable lady whose misfortunes were regarded with the greatest commiseration in the eighteenth century, and whose name is cherished with almost religious respect by millions of men and women in Bengal to this day, was Rani Bhavani of Rajshahi. Her great estates had virtually embraced the whole of Northern Bengal before Lord Clive won the battle of Plassy. She had witnessed the greatness and decadence of the Mahomedan power and the rise and extension of the British power. Her talents and abilities stood forth as a signal example of the capacity of Hindu women in administration. And her pious life and unbounded benevolence made her name cherished as a household word in Bengal. To the present day her story is read by Hindu girls and boys as one of the nine women in history and fiction who are the models of Indian womanhood.

The new revenue system introduced by Warren Hastings, and the five-years’ settlements made in 1772, affected Rajshahi as they affected every other estate in Bengal. The Governor and Council, in their letter of the 31st December 1773, remarked that “Rani Bhavani, the zemindar of Rajshahi, proves very backward in her payments.” And on the 15th March 1774 they determined to make “a declaration to the Rani, that if she did not pay up the revenue due from her to the end of the Bengal month of Magh [10th February] by the 20th Phalgun [1st March], we should be under the necessity of depriving her of her zemindari, and putting it into the possession of those who would be more punctual in fulfilling their engagements with Government.” In another letter, dated 18th October 1774, the Governor-General “resolved to dispossess her both of her farm and her zemindari, and of all property in the land, and to grant her a monthly pension of 4000 rupees (£400) during life, for her subsistence.“¹

Among the many petitions which the aged Rani submitted to avert this disgrace and humiliation, there are some which are of more than usual interest. In one of these petitions she recounted the history of her estate since the five-years’ settlement of 1772, the oppressions committed by the farmer, Dulal Roy, who had been appointed, and the depopulation of the country in consequence.

“In the year 1179 [A.D. 1772], the English gentlemen of the Sircar [Government] did blend all the old rents of my land together, and did make the Ziladari Mathote [exactions on tenants] and other temporary rents perpetual. . . . I am an old Zemindar; and not being able to see the griefs of my Ryots, I agreed to take the country as a farmer. I soon examined the country, and found there was not enough in it to pay the rents. . . .

" In Bhadra, or August 1773, the banks broke, and the Ryots’ ground and their crops failed by being overflowed with water. I am a Zemindar, so was obliged to keep the Ryots from ruin, and gave what ease to them I could, by giving them time to make up their payments; and requested the gentlemen [English officials] would, in the same manner, give me time, when I would also pay up the revenue; but not crediting me, they were pleased to take the Cutchery [rent-collection office] from my house, and bring it away to Motijhil, and employed Dulal Roy as a servant and Sazawal, to collect the revenue from me and the country. . . .

" Then my house was surrounded, and all my property inquired into; what collections I had made as farmer and Zemindar were taken; what money I borrowed and my monthly allowances were all taken; and made together Rs.22,58,674 [#226,000].

" In the new year 1181 [A.D. 1774], for the amount of Rs.22,27,824 [#223,000] the country was given in farm to Dulal Roy, taking from me all authority Then Dulal Roy and Paran Bose, a low man, put on the country more taxes, viz., another Ziladari Mathote [exaction on tenants], and Assey Jzaffer, loss of Ryots’ desertion taken from present Ryots, &c. These two men issued their orders, and took from Ryots all their effects, and even seed grain and ploughing bullocks, and have depopulated and destroyed the country. I am an old Zemindar; I hope I have committed no fault. The country is plundered, and the Ryots are full of complaints.

" For these reasons I make my petition now; that as Rs.22,27,817 [#223,000] is become the revenue which Dulal Roy is to pay for this year, I am ready, and will take care that the Sircar [Government] suffers no loss, and that this sum be paid.” [1]

These extracts are valuable because they give us an insight into what was going on in most parts of Bengal. Old zemindars, if they failed to compete with auction bidders, were turned out from estates which their fathers had held for generations. If they kept their estates as farmers at an enhanced revenue, and failed in prompt payment, managers were forced on their estates, and they plundered the tillers of the soil and caused misery and depopulation. The land revenues failed, however, in spite of the utmost coercion; one-third of the cultivated lands in Bengal were overgrown with jungles.

Pran Krishna, son of Rani Bhavani, submitted other petitions, and there were many revenue consultations. Philip Francis protested against the practice of European servants holding farms in the names of their Banians or Indian agents. “The country,” he said, “belongs to the natives. Former conquerors contented themselves with exacting a tribute from the land. . . . Every variation hitherto introduced from the ancient customs and establishments of the country appears to have been attended with fatal consequences, insomuch that I understand it to be the general opinion, that at least two-thirds of the whole surface of Bengal and Behar are in a state of total depopulation. The timid Hindoo flies from the tyranny which he dare not resist.” 2

In the end, the majority of the Council resolved in 1775 “to deprive Raja Dulal Roy of the farm of Rajshahi, and that the Rani be reinstated in possession of her lands in farm.” Hastings never entirely approved of this decision; he never appreciated, like his successor Lord Cornwallis, the claims of the old hereditary families of Bengal; he never withdrew his support from the auction purchasers and farmers, who grew up under his harsh and unsympathetic system. Large slices of the old Rajshahi estates were carved out to create a flourishing estate for Kanta Babu, the Banyan of Warren Hastings.

The evils of an oppressive and ever-changing system of land administration were aggravated by the fact that virtually the whole of the revenues of the province were drained out of the country, and did not return in any shape to the people, to fructify their trades, industries, and agriculture.

“Notwithstanding the famine in 1770, which wasted Bengal in a manner dreadful beyond all example, the Investment, by a variety of successive expedients, many of them of the most dangerous nature and tendency, was forcibly kept up. . . . The goods from Bengal, purchased from the territorial revenues, from the sale of European goods, and from the produce of the monopolies . . . were never less than a million sterling, and commonly nearer £1,200,000. This million is the lowest value of the goods sent to Europe, for which no satisfaction is made. About £100,000 a year is also remitted from Bengal on the Company’s account to China, and the whole of the product of that money flows into the direct trade from China to Europe. Besides this, Bengal sends a regular supply in time of peace to those Presidencies [in India] which are unequal to their own establishment. . . .

“When an account is taken of the intercourse, for it is not commerce, which is carried on between Bengal and England, the pernicious effects of the system of Investment from revenue will appear in the strongest point of view. In that view, the whole exported produce of the country, so far as the Company is concerned, is not exchanged in the course of barter, but it is taken away without any return or payment whatever. . . .”

“But that the greatness of these drains and their effects may be rendered more visible, your Committee have turned their consideration to the employment of those parts of the Bengal revenue which are not employed in the Company’s own Investments, for China and for Europe…. From the portion of that sum which goes to the support of civil government the natives are almost wholly excluded, as they are from the principal collections of revenue. With very few exceptions, they are only employed as servants and agents of Europeans, or in the inferior departments of collections, when it is absolutely impossible to proceed a step without their assistance.”¹

The following figures, showing the receipts and disbursements for Bengal for eight years, are taken from official records:²

Table

We have so far dwelt on the state of things in Bengal. If we travel out of Bengal, and briefly survey the condition of other provinces which came under the administration or the influence of Warren Hastings, we shall find that the first results of the extension of his power was not happy. Among the many little States into which Northern India was divided in the eighteenth century, none was more flourishing and prosperous, according to the testimony of all eye-witnesses, than Benares. The people were industrious, agriculture and manufactures flourished, and Raja Balwant Sing had his capital in that sacred city which was revered by all Hindus in all parts of India.

Balwant Sing died in 1770, and his liege lord, the King of Oudh, known as the Vizir, confirmed his son, Chait Sing, in succession on receipt of a succession fee and on a slight increase of the revenue previously paid. The East India Company had interested themselves in this succession, and in a general letter to the Directors, dated 31st October 1770, the Governor of Bengal wrote that “the Vizir’s readiness in complying with this our recommendation and request has offered us great satisfaction, and is a circumstance the most pleasing, as it must give strength to the opinions of the several Powers in Hindustan of the strict friendship subsisting between the English and him.“1

The King of Oudh, Suja-ud-Daula, himself died in 1775, and Warren Hastings, then Governor-General, took advantage of the death of the old ally of the British to extend British dominion and power. In May 1775 a new treaty was ratified between his son and successor, Asof-ud-Daula, by which Benares was ceded to the East India Company, and Raja Chait Sing became a vassal of the British.

“The cession of Benares and the other territories of the Raja Chait Sing,” wrote the Governor-General to the Directors in August 1775, “to the Company, we flatter ourselves, will prove perfectly agreeable to your ideas, as it conveys a valuable acquisition to the Company. . . . The revenue which accrues from this acquisition amounts to Rs.23,72,656 [£237,000], and will be paid by the Raja in monthly payments as a neat tribute, without rendering any account of his collections, or being allowed to enter any claims for deduction.”

Three years after this the unfortunate Chait Sing comprehended the full import of the change of his masters. “War having been declared between the Courts of Great Britain and France,” wrote Warren Hastings to Chait Sing in July 1778, “by the former on the 18th March . . . I am to request of you, in my own name and that of the Board, as a subject of the Company, bound to promote their interest on every occasion, to contribute your share of the burden of the present war.”

In justice to one honest Englishman, it is necessary to record that Philip Francis endeavoured to oppose the demands and exactions of Warren Hastings. He had been the foremost to bring the State of Benares under British supremacy; but he protested against arbitrary demands on the Raja, who was now a vassal of the Company.

“There is no question but the Raja must yield to the power of this Government, and I shall be as ready as any member of this Board to support its authority as long as its power is directed by justice. I did from the first express a doubt whether we had strictly a right to increase our demands upon the Raja beyond the terms which we originally agreed to give him, which he consented to, and which, as I have constantly understood it, were made the fundamental tenure by which he held his zemindari. If such demands can be increased upon him at the discretion of the superior Power, he has no right, he has no property, or at least he has no security for either. Instead of five lakhs let us demand fifty, or whether he refuses or is unable to pay the money, the forfeiture of his zemindari may be the immediate consequence of it.”

These protests were made in vain. A second year’s contribution of five lakhs (£50,000) was demanded from Chait Sing, then a third year’s contribution of five lakhs, and then a fourth year’s contribution, besides expenses of troops. He was reprimanded for failure of payment and then arrested; and when his people attacked the Company’s guards, his fate was sealed. He fled from his estate; his sister’s son, Mahip Narayan, was seated in his place with a large increase of the revenue demand; and the administration was controlled by the Governor-General’s own agents.

The administration was a ghastly failure—not because Warren Hastings was a less able administrator than Bulwant Sing and Chait Sing, under whom Benares had flourished—but because the increased revenue demand under the new administration crushed the agricultural industry of the State.

The first deputy whom Hastings appointed for the Raja was dismissed for the offence of not making punctual payments. The second accordingly acted upon the “avowed principle that the sum fixed as the revenue must be collected.” Lands were over-assessed, collections were made with the utmost harshness, the population was plunged into misery, and the country was desolated by a terrible famine in 1784.

Hastings himself witnessed the effects of the desolation and the famine. “From the confines of Buxar,” he wrote to the Council Board on the 2nd April 1784, “to Benares, I was followed and fatigued by the clamours of the discontented inhabitants. The distresses which were produced by the long continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent. Yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive, administration. I am sorry to add, that from Buxar to the opposite boundary, I have seen nothing but traces of complete devastation in every village. I cannot help remarking that, except the city of Benares, the province is in effect without a government. The administration of the province is misconducted, and the people oppressed, trade discouraged, and the revenue in danger of a rapid decline from the evident appropriation of its means.“¹

Such was the condition of Benares nine years after it had passed from the dominions of Oudh to the dominions of the East India Company. We will now travel a step further and survey the condition of Oudh itself.

Suja-ud-Daula, the ally of the British, died in 1775, as has been stated before. He was cruel and relentless towards his enemies, but he left the population of his kingdom contented, prosperous, and happy; and English officers who visited Oudh during the last years of his administration bear testimony to the flourishing condition of the country and its people.

When Asof-ud-Daula ascended his father’s throne, Warren Hastings extended the power of the East India Company in Oudh. The old treaty with Suja-ud-Daula was modified, and a new treaty was made with Asof-ud-Daula, “by which the latter eventually and necessarily became a vassal of the Company.“²

This vassalage was the ruin of Oudh. Colonel Hanny, who was sent up to Oudh by Hastings in command of a brigade, shared with many of his countrymen of those days the desire to make the best of his opportunities, and to rear a rapid fortune in his new station. The practice of the assignment of the land revenues, which had proved so fatal in Madras and elsewhere, was pursued in Oudh. Colonel Hannay exercised civil and military powers in Oudh, and became the farmer of the revenues of Bahraich and Gorakhpur. Rents were increased; collections were made with every circumstance of cruelty and coercion; the people fled from their fields and villages; the country became desolate.

Asaf-ud-Daula saw the ruin he had brought on himself. In 1779 he wrote to the British Government: “From the great increase of expense, the revenues were necessarily farmed out at a high rate, and the deficiencies followed yearly. The country and cultivation is abandoned.“¹ The Nawab accordingly protested against fresh assignments for the new brigade, declaring that the troops were quite useless to him, and were the cause of loss in the revenues and of confusion in the affairs of his government.

The Calcutta Council deliberated on this important communication. Philip Francis, with that instinct of justice which was natural to him, recorded a characteristic Minute.

“I have not been long enough in the habits of dominion to see anything offensive or alarming in the demand made by an independent prince to be relieved from the burden of maintaining a foreign army, which, it is notorious, have devoured his revenues and his country under colour of defending it. . . .

“The Court of Directors, in their letter of the 15th December 1775, approve of the keeping of a brigade in the service of the Soubah of Oudh, provided it be done with the free consent of the Soubah, but by no means without it.

“Concerning this part of the army, however, there is at present no dispute, since the Vizier does not desire to have it recalled; his demand goes solely to the temporary brigade and independent battalions under Major Hanny and Captain Osborne; the former, he says, is not only quite useless to his government, but it is, moreover, the cause of much loss both in the revenues and customs; the latter, he asserts, bring nothing but confusion to the affairs of government, and are entirely their own masters. . . .

“The motion supposes not only a necessity of our compelling him to keep those troops in his pay, but that we ourselves should be collectors of the revenues which is to pay them; which, as things are now managed, is nearly equivalent to putting his country under military execution. Thus one necessity produces another, and will continue to do so as long as the Indian States possess anything that can tempt our avarice or gratify our ambitions, or until we ourselves are taught by experience that there is some self-wisdom in doing justice to others.“¹

In the eyes of Warren Hastings, the pecuniary loss which would be inflicted on the Company by withdrawing the battalions had greater weight than the miseries imposed on the people of Oudh. The Nawab, he said, was the vassal of the Company, and the troops “cannot be withdrawn without imposing on the Company the additional burden of their expense.” “It was for a great convenience, then,” remarks the historian of India, James Mill, “and for nothing else, that the English, without any claim of right, compelled the Nawab Vizir to maintain their troops, that is, treated as the vassal which Hastings described him, and substantially seized and exercised the rights of sovereign and master over both him and his country.“²

The demands of the British Government in 1780 stood at £1,400,000. How the Governor-General recalled Bristow from Lucknow and sent Middleton as Resident; how the Nawab was helped to rob his mother and his grandmother, the Begams of Oudh, to meet the demands of the Company’s government; and how a large sum of money was extorted from them with every circumstance of oppression and indignity, are matters of history which it is unnecessary to narrate in these pages. The condition of the cultivators of Oudh is of far greater importance for the purposes of the present work than the more dramatic story of the wrongs of the royal house.

The facts which were deposed to at the celebrated impeachment of Warren Hastings relating to the collection of rents from the impoverished tenantry are sufficiently dismal. It was stated that the defaulters were confined in open cages, and it was replied that confinement in such cages under the Indian sun was no torture. It was stated that fathers were compelled to sell their children, and it was replied that Colonel Hanny had issued orders against such unnatural sales. Large masses of the people left their villages and fled the country, and troops were employed to prevent their flight. At last a great rebellion broke out; farmers and cultivators rose against the unbearable exactions; and then followed horrors and executions with which the untrained tillers of the soil are put down by the infuriated soldiery.

Colonel Hanny was then recalled from Oudh, and the rebellion was quelled, but Oudh was in a state of desolation. Captain Edwards visited Oudh in 1774 and in 1783. In the former year he had found the country flourishing in manufactures, cultivation, and commerce. In the latter year he found it “forlorn and desolate.” Mr. Holt, too, stated that Oudh had fallen from its former state, that whole towns and villages had been deserted, and that the country carried the marks of famine. A severe famine actually visited the province in 1784, and the horrors of starvation were added to the horrors of misgovernment and war.

The cruel exactions of the East India Company, the miseries inflicted upon the people in every new territory added to their dominions, and the failure of the Regulating Act of 1773 to effect any adequate reforms, were revealed to the British Parliament by the Six Reports of the Committee of Secrecy, and the Eleven Reports of the Select Committee, published in 1782 and 1783. A reform in the administration was loudly called for. Fox’s India Bill, supported by Edmund Burke, was rejected by the House; but at last Mr. Pitt’s Bill for the better government of India was passed into law in 1784, and for the first time placed the administration of the Company under the control of the Crown. All civil, military, and revenue affairs of the Company were placed under the superintendence of six Commissioners appointed by the Crown. Warren Hastings resigned his post in the following year, and Lord Cornwallis, a nobleman of high character and of a generous disposition, was sent out as Governor-General to India.

In this brief narrative of the administration of Warren Hastings, we have strictly confined our attention to the economic condition of the people, and we deplore, with all impartial historians, that, from this point of view, his administration was a failure. In justice, however, to Warren Hastings, it is necessary to quote what was so ably urged in 1789 in his defence by Mr. Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth.

“A period of twenty-eight years has now elapsed since the Company first acquired a right to the revenues of any considerable part of the provinces, and of twenty-four years only since the transfer of the whole in perpetuity was regularly made by the grant of the Dewani. When we consider the nature and magnitude of this acquisition, the character of the people placed under our dominion, their difference of language and dissimilarity of manners, that we entered upon the administration of the government ignorant of its former constitution and with little practical experience in Asiatic finance, it will not be deemed surprising that we should have fallen into errors, or if any should at this time require correction.” ^1

There is a great deal of truth in these remarks; and yet they apply to Warren Hastings in a less degree than perhaps to any other Englishman of his time. Warren Hastings was not a stranger in India, and was not ignorant of the people. He had come to India almost as a boy. He had passed his early life in a humble capacity, had mixed with the people, and had studied and appreciated their character. “I affirm, by the oath that I have taken,” he said before the British Parliament, twenty-eight years after his retirement from India, “that this description of them [that the people of India were in a state of moral turpitude] is untrue and wholly unfounded. . . . They are gentle, benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them than prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, and as exempt from the worst properties of human passion as any people on the face of the earth.” ^2 Such were the people whom Hastings knew, and among whom he worked, with brief intervals of absence, for thirty-five years of his life, from 1750 to 1785.

Nor were these sentiments of Warren Hastings towards the people altogether belied by his public acts in India. At a time when the Company’s servants were engaged in acquiring sudden and large fortunes by robbing the people of Bengal of their inland trade, Warren Hastings stood forth alone by the side of his leader, Vansittart, to oppose the tyranny of his countrymen. And even during his own administration of thirteen years, from 1772 to 1785, he endeavoured to bring order out of chaos; he compiled and published the laws of the Hindus and the Mahomedans; he established courts to administer those laws; he shaped a system of administration which has been improved since, but of which he was the first great architect.

From a man so gifted with the power of organisation and so rich in the knowledge of the country and its people, a high degree of administrative success would naturally be expected. Yet, if the success of a government be judged by the happiness it confers on the people, the administration of Hastings was a ghastly failure. The extension of British power and influence did not ameliorate the economic condition of the people, but left behind it a dark trail of misery, insurrections, and famines, in Bengal, Benares, and Oudh.

It is possible for us, after the lapse of a century, to calmly inquire into the causes of this failure. Hastings shared with all other Englishmen of his age the ineradicable conviction that India was a great estate for the profit of the East India Company and its servants, and he applied the whole forces of his vigorous mind to make India pay. The good of the people was made subservient to this primary object of the Company’s administration; the rights of princes and people, of Zemindars and Ryots, were sacrificed to this dominant idea of the commercial rulers of India. Land revenue was increased even after the famine of 1770 had swept away one-third of the population of Bengal; landed families who had owned their estates for centuries were made to bid for them as annual farmers against money-lenders and speculators; cultivators flying from their homes and villages or rising in insurrection were driven back by soldiers to their homes with cruel severity; and a great portion of the money so raised was annually sent in the shape of Investments to the gratified shareholders in England. No administrator however gifted, and no administration however perfect, could prevent national poverty and famines when the whole of their fiscal policy was to drain the resources of one country for the traders of another.

This was the main cause of the failure of the administration of Warren Hastings, and his harsh, despotic, and arbitrary measures deepened the evils. There is a verdict on the conduct of great rulers which is more true and more abiding than that of historians, and that verdict is the verdict of the people. The people of India look back with pain and horror on the administration of Hastings which impoverished the country, as they look back with feelings of gratitude on the administration of his Footnotes

¹ Letter from the President and Council, dated 3rd November 1772.**

¹ Philip Francis’ Minute of 1776, published in London in 1782.

¹ Select Committee’s Eleventh Report, 1783, Appendix O.

² Ibid.

¹ Select Committee’s Eleventh Report, 1783, Appendix O.

[1]: Select Committee’s Eleventh Report, 1783, Appendix O.

¹ Select Committee’s Ninth Report, 1783, p. 55.

² Volume ii. of the Six Reports of the Committee of Secrecy, 1782, p. 362.

1 Select Committee’s Second Report, 1782, p. 452.

[¹]: Quoted in Mill’s History of British India, 1858, vol. iv. chapter vii.

[²]: Select Committee’s Tenth Report, 1783, Appendix 7.

^1 Select Committee’s Fifth Report, 1812, p. 169.

^2 Minutes of Evidence taken before the Lords’ Committees, 1813, p. I.