CHAPTER IX
MUNRO AND THE RYOTWARI SETTLEMENT IN MADRAS (1820-1827)
Sir Thomas Munro came to Madras as Governor of that Province in May 1820, and the Ryotwari system was declared to be generally introduced in the same month. Every possible opportunity was taken of getting back, on occasions of lapses or by means of purchase, the Zemindaris and Mootahs, and all other tenures into which the Ryotwari system was now to be introduced, and village leases were rapidly got rid of. Collectors were encouraged to break up joint-tenure wherever it existed, and to enter into engagements with tenants separately. The high rate of assessment, by which the State demand was fixed at 45 per cent., or 50 or 55 per cent. of the field produce, caused endless oppression; and was generally reduced under the considerate administration of Sir Thomas Munro.
It is not our purpose in the present chapter to trace the history of the introduction of the Ryotwari system into every district in Madras. But from the voluminous State records of the period a few extracts will throw much side-light on the operations of these years, and the economic condition of the people of Madras.
NELLORE.
The Collector of Nellore had selected the village of Covoor for the experimental introduction of the Ryotwari system, after survey, classification, and assessments of lands, as early as 1818; and the proceedings of the Board of Revenue show how the assessment was originally made, and how it was subsequently modified.
Wet lands.—“The grain being valued at 20 rupees per Candy, being the average selling price, gives Rs. 34,374, from which the usual Calavasum or 6 1/4 per cent., or Rs. 2234, being deducted, there remains to be divided between the Circar [State] and the cultivators Rs. 32,139.“¹
“The proportion allowed the cultivators being nine in twenty, or 45 per cent., comes to Rs. 14,462; and consequently the sum which remains receivable by the Circar [State] is Rs. 17,667.”
Dry lands.—“The dry land and garden produce being estimated upon similar principles, and valued at 28 rupees per Candy, the share which remained to Government was for dry lands, Rs. 768, for garden Rs. 205.”
The cultivators objected to the Collector’s calculations and the selling prices of grain which he had assumed. Some deductions were allowed, and the Board came to the conclusion that “the estimated amount of the annual revenue of Covoor will be in round numbers about Rs. 15,600.” In other words, about one-half the estimated produce of the village was demanded by the State as its revenue under the new system.²
TRICHINOPOLY.
The village of Tertaloor was selected by the Collector of Trichinopoly, and was measured and assessed after a classification of soils. The estimated gross produce, after the usual deductions, was 5816 Cullums.³
“This being divided being the Circar [State] and the inhabitants at the usual rate of Warum, 50 per cent., leaves as the Circar’s share 2908 Callums, which being commuted at the average price of the last three years, as recommended by the Collector, amounts to Rs. 3,232.” ¹ Certain further deductions and additions were made, and the revenue fixed upon was Rs. 3211. One-half the produce of the soil, levied as land-tax, was an impoverishing taxation, but the Madras Board was slow to reduce their demand even to one-third, while they still professed moderation! “Although one-third of the gross produce,” they said, “cannot be considered as a standard for a general assessment to be valued and paid in money, it may nevertheless serve as a guide to direct Collectors to moderation.”
COIMBATORE.
In the District of Coimbatore the evils of a gross corruption were added to the evils of a cruelly excessive assessment. A Commission was appointed to inquire into these abuses, and they reported that the treasurer, Causy Chitty, from his first appearance upon the scene, “directed his attention constantly and anxiously to the converting of every person and everything in the country to the benefit of his private trade.” The Collector, Mr. Garrow, was suspected to be equally corrupt, and the Court of Directors wrote indignantly in 1821 to Sir Thomas Munro, then Governor of Madras.
“Great as these abuses are in themselves, they excite the most painful considerations when they are contemplated as an evidence of defect in our institutions. We can see no ground of assurance that what has happened in Coimbatore should not happen in any other District; that a Collector should not obtain the confidence of the Board of Revenue, and becoming either the dupe or the accomplice of an artful and fraudulent native, render the whole Province subject to his mismanagement, the prey of a few men armed with the powers of Government. If either the weakness or the corruption of the Collector may produce such scenes as those which were exhibited in Coimbatore, and for seven years laid the property of the inhabitants, as well as the public revenue, at the mercy of the lowest agent of the Government, without exciting the attention of those whom we have appointed to superintend the details of government and to discover and prevent abuse, it is impossible not to dread the extensive existence of evil, and infer the necessity of more effectual securities. As the death of Mr. Garrow has rendered it unnecessary for us to decide upon the propriety of his being allowed to continue in our service, it is of less importance to determine the species and degree of his delinquency. It is certain, however, that the existence under a public officer of abuses of great extent and long duration, abuses which were attended with great profit to his immediate dependents, and which an ordinary degree of vigilance would have enabled him to prevent, is to a certain degree evidence of corrupt participation.“¹
In another letter, written in the subsequent year, the Court of Directors give us details of the over-assessment of Coimbatore, apart from its oppression from corrupt motives.
“A rent called a full rent was, according to custom, charged upon all the arable, not garden, i.e. upon the uncultivated and fallow as well as upon that under crop. A third or a fourth of the full rent was charged for grass land, and something more than the full rent for the garden land….
“In his letter dated 7th September 1816, he [the Collector, Mr. Sullivan] says: ‘When a ryot has occupied and paid rent for land for two years, he is considered as its proprietor, and is, in fact, saddled with the rent of it as long as he can pay.’ It hence appears that his character of proprietor was fixed upon him by the Government for its own advantage, and not for his, viz., that he might be made responsible for a certain amount of rent….
“The additional tax upon land watered by wells, or cultivated with garden produce, is justly represented by the Collector as a tax upon improvement. He describes the formation of wells as by far the greatest improvement of which the land in that part of India is susceptible. A well places the crops of the land which it suffices to water beyond the accidents of season, so variable, and often so fatal, in India. Nothing, therefore, can be more useful than to give encouragement to the formation of wells. All the encouragement necessary would be to allow the people to reap the fruit of their own labour; for the Collector describes them as prone to the formation of wells, but deterred by the tax.”¹
The complaint of over-assessment runs through the whole of the correspondence of these years, and yet the Directors, while they were eloquent in condemning the sins of the deceased Mr. Garrow, were not very prompt or explicit in remedying their own. In a letter written only three weeks before the one quoted above, the Directors speak thus:
“ ‘The same features,’ he [the Collector of Trichinopoly] adds, ‘of distress and poverty which must ever accompany a rack-rent, are but too visible in Trichinopoly, and the ruin of all agricultural improvements is evident in the depreciation of the value of landed property. Mirasdars who formerly farmed an extent of land amounting to some thousand Cawnies, now possess scarcely as many hundreds, and these will be sold in the course of this or the ensuing year, if either the assessment is not altered or the balance of arrears allowed to lay over. But what I chiefly wish to impress upon the Board is my conviction of the impossibility of continuing the present assessment.’ . . .
“For a remedy of the immediately pressing evils, you [Madras Government] have thought proper, without dissolving the leases, to authorise remissions in proportion to what may, in each several instance, appear to the Collector to be required. This is, therefore, an annual settlement in fact; and it will require some pains on your part to prevent it from having the effects of an annual settlement without the accuracy; in other words, from pressing too heavily upon the renters in some instances, and sacrificing too much of the interests of Government in others—in accordance to the zeal or humanity, the negligence or severity of the Collectors.”1
In other words, the assessment was to be maintained at an impossible rate, and as much of it was to be taken from the cultivators from year to year as they could possibly pay. And the Directors considered this compatible with the improvement of the condition of the people!
TANJORE.
The same story is repeated from the once flourishing State of Tanjore.
“The lease settlement of Tanjore expired with Fusly 1229 [1820], and the money value of produce having greatly fallen, and appearing likely to remain at a depressed level, the money assessment had become higher than was intended, and sufficient evidence was adduced of the necessity of an abatement. . .
“It was, no doubt, expedient to adhere, as you [Madras Government] did, to the principle of the fixed money assessment, notwithstanding the predilection of the people for their old methods of a division of the produce. . .
“The principle which you have laid down for such contingency we think a proper one, ’that no addition should be made to the assessment unless the price of grain should rise 10 per cent., but that a deduction should be allowed if it should fall 5 per cent.,’ the degree of addition or deduction to correspond with the alteration in the price.“¹
ARCOT.
The same melancholy tale was told from Arcot.
“The Board, in conformity with the suggestion of the Collector, made, and as you say ‘strenuously urge,’ another proposal—a reduction of the assessment. This is a subject which peculiarly attracts our attention. The Collector and the Board of Revenue are unwilling to acknowledge our assessment. They declare the assessment to be ‘as high as the exhausted state of the country could bear,’ but express a confident expectation that it could be realised. They allege, however, that under such an assessment the country could not improve, and in order to afford it the means of improving, they propose a reduction from 7 to 10 per cent.
“Upon this you [Madras Government] express a very strong opinion with respect to the evils arising from overassessment, and you add that it did not appear to you that there were any grounds for reducing the settlement in the Northern Division of Arcot which did not exist equally in other districts. In fact, you affirm that the same necessity exists in every part of the country. You then proceed to recommend a general reduction, and you propose that the standard upon which it should be regulated should be that of a third of the gross produce as the Government share…
“We must, however, express a doubt whether a third, or any other proportion of the produce, can be assumed as an invariable standard of assessment.“¹
These extracts are enough. They will sufficiently indicate to every reader the distress and poverty from which the people of Southern India suffered during the first quarter of the nineteenth century through the harshness of local officers and the greed of the Court of Directors. It is to the credit of Sir Thomas Munro that he strove all through his seven years’ administration to lower the assessments, and that he did succeed in lowering them throughout the Province. He has himself given us, in his own lucid and forcible style, an account of his aims and endeavours in his Minute recorded on the 31st December 1824, perhaps the most thoughtful and statesmanlike minute ever recorded in India since the time of Lord Cornwallis. It is a long document, and covers more than thirty folio pages of the East India Papers.“²
It is impossible within our limits to give a full summary of this valuable document, and we can, therefore, only make a few extracts from those portions of the Minute which relate to the condition of the people.
Fixed and Moderate Assessment of Land.
“In order to make the land saleable, to encourage the Ryots to improve it, and to regard it as a permanent property, the assessment must be fixed and more moderate in general than it is now; and above all, so clearly defined as not to be liable to increase from ignorance or caprice. . . .
“The Ryot is the real proprietor, for whatever land does not belong to the Sovereign belongs to him. The demand for public revenue, according as it is high or low in different places and at different times, affects his share; but whether it leaves him with only the bare profit of his stock, or a small surplus beyond it as landlord’s rent, he is still the true proprietor, and possesses all that is not claimed by the Sovereign as revenue. . . .
“It is the ever-varying assessment which has prevented, and as long as it continues will prevent, land from becoming a valuable property; for even where the assessment is lowest, the knowledge that it may at any time be raised, hinders the land from acquiring such a value as to render it a saleable article. We cannot communicate to it the value which it ought to possess, or render it a private property capable of being easily sold or mortgaged, unless the public assessment upon every part of it be previously fixed. When it is fixed, all uncertainty is removed, and all land, which is not absolutely overassessed, soon acquires a value which is every day increased by improvements, made in consequence of the certainty of reaping all the profit arising from them.”
Employment of Indians in Administrative Work.
“With what grace can we talk of our paternal Government if we exclude them from every important office, and say, as we did till very lately, that in a country containing fifteen millions of inhabitants, no man but a European shall be entrusted with so much authority as to order the punishment of a single stroke of a rattan. Such an interdiction is to pass a sentence of degradation on a whole people for which no benefit can ever compensate. There is no instance in the world of so humiliating a sentence having ever been passed upon any nation. The weak and mistaken humanity which is the motive of it can never be viewed by the natives as any just excuse for the disgrace inflicted on them, by being pronounced to be unworthy of trust in deciding on the petty offences of their countrymen. We profess to seek their improvement, but propose means the most adverse to success. The advocates of improvement do not seem to have perceived the great springs on which it depends; they propose to place no confidence in the natives, to give them no authority, and to exclude them from all office as much as possible; but they are ardent in their zeal for enlightening them by the general diffusion of knowledge.
“No conceit more wild and absurd than this was ever engendered in the darkest ages, for what is in every age and every country the great stimulus to the pursuit of knowledge but the prospect of fame, or wealth, or power? or what is even the use of great attainments, if they are not to be devoted to their noblest purpose, the service of the community, by employing those who possess them, according to their respective qualification, in the various duties of the public administration of the country? . . .
“Our books alone will do little or nothing; dry simple literature will never improve the character of a nation. To produce this effect, it must open the road to wealth, and honour, and public employment. Without the prospect of such a reward, no attainments in science will ever raise the character of the people.
" This is true of every nation as well as India; it is true of our own. Let Britain be subjugated by a foreign power tomorrow, let the people be excluded from all share in the Government, from public honours, from every office of high trust or emolument, and let them in every situation be considered as unworthy of trust, and all their knowledge and all their literature, sacred and profane, would not save them from becoming, in another generation or two, a low-minded, deceitful, and dishonest race.
" Even if we could suppose that it were practicable without the aid of a single native to conduct the whole affairs of the country both in the higher and in all the subordinate offices, by means of Europeans, it ought not to be done, because it would be both politically and morally wrong. The great number of public offices in which the natives are employed is one of the strongest causes of their attachment to our Government. In proportion as we exclude them from these, we lose our hold on them, and were the exclusion entire, we should have their hatred in place of their attachment, their feelings would be communicated to the whole population, and to the native troops, and would excite a spirit of discontent too powerful for us to subdue or resist. But were it possible that they could submit silently and without opposition, the case would be worse, they would sink in character, they would lose with the hope of public office and distinction all laudable ambition, and would degenerate into an indolent and abject race, incapable of any higher pursuit than the mere gratification of their appetites. It would certainly be more desirable that we should be expelled from the country altogether, than that the result of our system of government should be such a debasement of a whole people.”
TAXATION AND LEGISLATION.
“The right of the people to be taxed only by their own consent has always, in every free country, been esteemed amongst the most important of all privileges; it is that which has most exercised the minds of men, and which has oftenest been asserted by the defenders of liberty. Even in countries in which there is no freedom, taxation is the most important function of government, because it is that which most universally affects the comfort and happiness of the people, and that which has oftenest excited them to resistance, and hence both its utility and its danger have, under the most despotic governments, taught the necessity of employing in its administration the ablest men of the country….
“In other countries, Government and its officers are part of the community, and are of course acquainted with the effect of every public measure and the opinion of the country regarding it, but here Government is deprived of this advantage, it makes laws for the people who have no voice in the matter, and of whom it knows very little, and it is therefore evident that it cannot adapt its laws to the circumstances of the people, unless it receive accurate information upon this subject from active and intelligent local officers, whose duty it is to investigate carefully the conditions and opinions of the inhabitants, and to report upon them. But these officers can acquire this information only through an establishment of experienced native servants, who have, beyond all other men, from the very nature of their official duties, the best means of obtaining it.”
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BRITISH RULE.
“If we make a summary comparison of the advantages and disadvantages which have occurred to the natives from our Government, the result, I fear, will hardly be so much in its favour as it ought to have been. They are more secure from the calamities both of foreign war and internal commotions; their persons and property are more secure from violence; they cannot be wantonly punished or their property seized by persons in power; and their taxation is, on the whole, lighter. But, on the other hand, they have no share in making laws for themselves, little in administering them, except in very subordinate offices; they can rise to no high station, civil or military; they are everywhere regarded as an inferior race, and often rather as vassals or servants than as the ancient owners and masters of the country.
“It is not enough that we confer on the natives the benefits of just laws and of moderate taxation, unless we endeavour to raise their character; but under a foreign government there are so many causes which tend to depress it that it is not easy to prevent it from sinking. It is an old observation that he who loses his liberty loses half his virtue. This is true of nations as well as of individuals. To have no property scarcely degrades more in the one case than in the other to have property at the disposal of a foreign government in which we have no share. The enslaved nation loses the privileges of a nation as the slave does those of a freeman; it loses the privilege of taxing itself, of making its own laws, of having any share in their administration, or in the general government of the country. British India has none of these privileges. . . .
“One of the greatest disadvantages of our Government in India is its tendency to lower or destroy the higher ranks of society, to bring them all too much to one level, and by depriving them of their former weight and influence to render them less useful instruments in the internal administration of the country. The native governments had a class of richer gentry, composed of Jageerdars and Enamdars and of all the higher civil and military officers. These, with the principal merchants and Ryots, formed a large body, wealthy or at least easy in their circumstances. The Jagheers and Enams of one prince were often resumed by another, and the civil and military officers were liable to frequent removal, but as they were replaced by others, and as new Jagheers and Enams were granted to new claimants, these changes had the effect of continually throwing into the country a supply of men whose wealth enabled them to encourage its cultivation and manufactories. These advantages have almost entirely ceased under our Government. All the civil and military offices of any importance are now held by Europeans, whose savings go to their own country.”
FUTURE OF INDIA.
“There is one great question to which we should look in all our arrangements; what is to be their final result on the character of the people? Is it to be raised or is it to be lowered? Are we to be satisfied with merely securing our power and protecting the inhabitants, leaving them to sink gradually in character, lower than at present, or are we to endeavour to raise their character, and to render them worthy of filling higher situations in the management of their country, and of devising plans for its improvement? It ought undoubtedly to be our aim to raise the minds of the natives, and to take care that whenever our connection with India might cease, it did not appear that the only fruit of our dominion there had been to leave the people more abject and less able to govern themselves than when we found them. Many different plans may be suggested for the improvement of their character, but none of them can be successful, unless it be first laid down as a main principle of our policy, that the improvement must be made. This principle, once established, we must trust to time and perseverance for realising the object of it. We have had too little experience, and are too little acquainted with the natives, to be able to determine without trial what means would be most likely to facilitate their improvements. Various measures might be suggested, which might all probably be more or less useful; but no one appears to me so well calculated to ensure success, as that of endeavouring to give them a higher opinion of themselves, by placing more confidence in them, by employing them in important situations, and perhaps by rendering them eligible to almost every office under the Government. It is not necessary to define at present the exact limit to which their eligibility should be carried, but there seems to be no reason why they should be excluded from any office for which they were qualified, without danger to the preservation of our own ascendancy….
“When we reflect how much the character of nations has always been influenced by that of governments, and that some, once the most cultivated, have sunk into barbarism, while others, formerly the rudest, have attained the highest point of civilisation, we shall see no reason to doubt that, if we pursue steadily the proper measures, we shall in time so far improve the character of our Indian subjects, as to enable them to govern and protect themselves.”
Three-quarters of a century have elapsed since the death of Sir Thomas Munro. Administrators of the stamp of Thomas Munro are rare, and the difficult task of realising an equitable land-tax from 150,000 tenants in each district in the Province of Madras has not been satisfactorily performed. Twenty-five years after the death of Munro, another eminent Scotchman, who rose to high distinction as an Indian administrator, wrote thus of the Madras system:
" Only imagine one Collector dealing with 150,000 tenants, not one of whom has a lease; but each pays according as he cultivates and gets a crop, and with reference to the number of his ‘cattle, sheep, and children’; and each of whom gets a reduction if he can make out a sufficiently good case. What a cry of agricultural distress and large families there would be in England or any other country under such a system ! Would any farmer ever admit that his farm had yielded anything, that his cattle had produced, or that his wife had not produced ? If the Collector were one of the prophets, and remained in the same district to the age of Methuselah, he would not be fit for the duty; and as he is but an ordinary man and a foreigner, and continually changed, it would be strange if the native subordinates could not do as they liked, and, having the power, did not abuse it. Accordingly, it is generally agreed that the abuses of the whole system, and specially that of remissions, is something frightful; chicanery, and intrigue of all kinds, are unbounded; while the reliance of the Madras Collector on informers by no means mends the matter.” 1
Sir Thomas Munro had laboured all his life to obtain for the cultivator of Madras a fixity of rental, so that all improvements made by him might lead to his own profit. And though such a fixity of rental was not declared by any Act or Proclamation, it was accepted as a fact by the Madras Government forty years after the time of Thomas Munro. The Madras Ryot, said the Administration Report of 1855-56, “cannot be ejected by Government so long as he pays the fixed assessment…. The Ryot under the system is virtually a proprietor on a simple and perfect title, and has all the benefits of a perpetual lease.” “A Madras Ryot,” said the Board of Revenue in 1857, “is able to retain his land perpetually without any increase of assessment.” “There can be no question,” said the Government of Madras in 1862 to the Government of India, “that one fundamental principle of the Ryotwari system is that the Government demand on the land is fixed for ever.“¹
These repeated assurances, as emphatic as words can make them, have now been ignored and set aside. Since the survey operations organised in 1855, the land-tax assessed on each holding is fixed at the discretion of revenue officers at each recurring settlement. The Madras Ryot has no fixity of rental, no security against enhancements, no adequate motive for improvements. The uncertainty of the land-tax hangs like the sword of Damocles on his head.
What is the Land Tax? The Court of Directors declared in 1856 that the right of the Government is not a rent which consists of all the surplus produce after paying the cost of cultivation and the profits of agricultural stocks, but a land revenue only.² Two years after this, the East India Company was abolished, and the first Secretary of State for India under the Crown, Sir Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, declared that he desired to take only a share, generally a half share, of the rent as Land Tax.³
This is a very high rate, but fixes a clear and intelligible limit. In practice, even this high limit is exceeded; and what is realised as Land Tax in Madras often sweeps away the whole of the economic rent. The maximum limit now fixed by the Government is one-third the field produce; and this is virtually the whole of the economic rent. For in small farms, yielding a produce of about £12 in the year, the cost of cultivation and the profits of agricultural stocks approximate to £7 or £8, and the claim of the Government to £4 as Land-Tax is virtually a claim, not to 50 per cent., but to 100 per cent., of the economic rent.
The evils of an uncertain State demand grew with the lapse of years; the Madras cultivators remained resourceless; the famine of 1877 found them helpless and swept away five millions of the population of that province. The Marquis of Ripon came to India as Viceroy three years after, and he at last grappled with the Madras Land Question.
Without conceding to the Madras cultivator that absolute fixity of the Land Tax which had been acknowledged as one of his rights by the Madras Government in 1856 and 1862, Lord Ripon laid down a rule that in districts which had once been surveyed and settled, the Land Tax would not be raised except on the equitable ground of a rise in prices.¹ It left the door open for the enhancement of the land revenue, while at the same time it gave the cultivators an assurance against such enhancement except on the reasonable ground of a rise in the prices of the field produce. It was the most reasonable compromise which could be effected after the right of an absolutely fixed rental had been ignored; and it gave some security to the agricultural population of Madras, without which agriculture cannot flourish in any part of the world.
The Marquis of Ripon left India in December 1884, and in January 1885, the Secretary of State for India cancelled the equitable rule he had established! The India Office thus proved itself as un-generous and harsh to the Indian cultivators as the old Court of Directors. And the Madras cultivator today (1901) has no effectual security against uncertain State demands and unjust enhancements, and has therefore no motive to save and no power to improve his own condition.
Footnotes
¹ Fractions of Rupees have been omitted in these extracts.
² Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, dated 17th September 1818.
³ Fractions are omitted.
¹ Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, dated 26th November 1818.
¹ Revenue Letter from the Court of Directors to the Governor in Council at Madras, dated 31st October 1821.
¹ Revenue Letter from the Court of Directors to Madras, dated 2nd January 1822.
¹ Revenue Letter of the Court of Directors to Madras, dated 18th August 1824.
¹ Revenue Letter from the Court of Directors to Madras, dated 12th December 1821.
² Vol. iii., London, 1826, pp. 602-632.
¹ Letter of 18th February 1862.
² Despatch of 17th December 1856.
³ Despatch of 1864.
¹ Despatch of 17th October 1882.