Chapter XX: Elphinstone in Bombay (1817-1827)

CHAPTER XX

ELPHINSTONE IN BOMBAY (1817-1827)

THE dominions of Baji Rao, the last of the Mahratta Peshwas, were annexed in 1817, and he himself was captured, after a long pursuit, in the following year. He retired on a pension, and his extensive territory now forms the most important portion of the Province of Bombay.

The duty of settling this wide tract of country fell on one of the ablest and best servants of the Company. Mountstuart Elphinstone, son of the eleventh Lord Elphinstone, had come out to India in 1796, as has been stated in the last chapter, and after varied experience had been appointed to Poona in 1811. In 1818 he was appointed Commissioner of the territories annexed from Baji Rao.

No better selection could have been made. Junior to Thomas Munro by nearly twenty years, Elphinstone had the same capacity for revenue work, the same sympathy with the people, the same literary instincts, the same broad and statesmanlike desire to promote the prosperity of the Indian Empire. The first half of the nineteenth century produced a number of great administrators in India, distinguished no less by their sympathy with the people than by their capacity for organisation and work. But it is perhaps no injustice to the other meritorious servants of the East India Company of this period to acknowledge that Munro of Madras and Elphinstone of Bombay stand a head and shoulders above the rest. It is a melancholy reflection which forces itself on all thoughtful observers that this class of sympathetic administrators became rarer in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and that a desire to repress the political advance of the people, rather than to promote their progress and self-government, has often influenced later administration.

Elphinstone’s “Report on the Territories Conquered from the Peshwa”, submitted to the Governor-General in October 1819, is a masterly account of the country and of the measures adopted for its settlement. It is a voluminous paper, and covers nearly seventy folio pages of the fourth volume of “East India Papers”, and all that we can do here is to make a few extracts.

VILLAGE COMMUNITIES.

“In whatever point of view we examine the Native Government in the Deccan, the first and most important feature is, the division into villages or townships. 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. Though probably not compatible with a very good form of government, they are an excellent remedy for the imperfections of a bad one; they prevent the bad effects of its negligence and weakness, and even present some barrier against its tyranny and rapacity.

“Each village has a portion of ground attached to it, which is committed to the management of the inhabitants. The boundaries are carefully marked and jealously guarded. They are divided into fields, the limits of which are exactly known; each field has a name and is kept distinct, even when the cultivation of it has long been abandoned. The villagers are almost entirely cultivators of the ground, with the

addition of the few traders and artisans that are required to supply their wants. The head of each village is the Patil, who has under him an assistant, called a Chaugulla, and a clerk called a Kulkarni. There are, besides, twelve village officers, well known by the name of the Bara Baloti. These are the astrologer, the priest, the carpenter, barber, &c., but the only ones who are concerned in the administration of the government are the Sonar or Potdar, who is silversmith and assayer of money, and the Mhar, who, in addition to various other important duties, acts as watchman to the village. Each of these classes consists of one or more individuals, according as their original families have branched out. The Mhars are seldom fewer than four or five, and there are besides, where those tribes are numerous, very frequently several Phils or Ramoshis, employed also as watchmen, but performing none of the other duties of the Mhar.

“The Patils are the most important functionaries in the villages, and perhaps the most important class in the country. They hold office by a grant from the Government (generally from that of the Moguls), are entitled by virtue of it to land and fees, and have various little privileges and distinctions, of which they are as tenacious as of their land. Their office and emoluments are hereditary, and saleable with the consent of the Government, but are seldom sold, except in cases of extreme necessity, though a partner is sometimes admitted, with a careful reservation of the superiority of the old possessor. The Patil is head of the police and of the administration of justice in his village, but he need only be mentioned here as an officer of revenue. In that capacity he performs on a small scale what a Mamlatdar or a Collector does on a large; he allots the land to such cultivators as have no landed property of their own, and fixes the rent which each has to pay; he collects the revenue for Government from all the Rayats; conducts all its arrangements with them, and exerts himself to promote the cultivation and the prosperity of the village. Though originally the agent of the Government, he is now regarded as equally the representative of the Rayats, and is not less useful in executing the orders of the Government than in asserting the rights, or at least in making known the wrongs, of the people.”

MIRASDARS OR PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

“A large portion of the Rayats 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, and even then they have for a long period (at least thirty years) the right of reclaiming their estate on paying the dues of Government. Their Land-Tax is fixed, but the late Mahratta Government loaded it with other impositions, which reduced that advantage to a mere name; yet so far, however, was this from destroying the value of their estates, that although the Government took advantage of their attachment to make them pay considerably more than an Upri, and though all the Mirasdars were, in ordinary cases, obliged to make up for failures in the payment of each of their body, yet their lands were saleable, and generally at ten years’ purchase. . . .

“An opinion prevails throughout the Mahratta country, that under the old Hindu Government all the land was held by Mirasis, and that the Upris were introduced as the old proprietors sank under the tyranny of the Mohammedans. This opinion is supported by the fact that the greater part of the fields now cultivated by Upris are recorded in the village books as belonging to absent proprietors; and affords,

when combined with circumstances observed in other parts of the peninsula, and with the light Land-Tax authorised by Manu, a strong presumption that the revenue system under the Hindus (if they had a uniform system) was founded on private property in the soil.”

CHANGES UNDER THE BRITISH RULE.

“The outline of the revenue system adopted since our acquisition of the country is contained in my letter dated July 10th, conveying instructions to the Collectors, and in that dated July 14th, enclosing instructions for Mamlatdars. The leading principles are to abolish farming, but otherwise to maintain the native system; to levy the revenue according to the actual cultivation, to make the assessment light, to impose no new taxes, and to do none away unless obviously unjust; and, above all, to make no innovations. Many innovations were, however, the result of the introduction of foreign rulers and foreign maxims of government; but in the revenue department most of them were beneficial. The country, which had been under many Mamlatdars, with very unequal extent of territory and power, was placed under five principal officers (I include Satara), with much superior weight and respectability. The chief authority now resided in the District, and devoted his whole time to its affairs, and all subordinate agents were obliged to follow his example. The straggling revenue divisions of the Mahrattas were formed into compact districts, each yielding from Rs. 50 to Rs. 70,000 a year, and placed under a Mamlatdar.”

EVILS OF A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT.

“Many of the evils from which this country has hitherto been exempt are inseparable from the introduction of a foreign Government; but perhaps the greater may be avoided by proper precautions. Many of the upper classes must sink into comparative poverty, and many of those who were employed in the court and army must absolutely lose their bread. Both of these misfortunes happened to a certain extent in the commencement of Baji Rao’s reign; but as the frame of Government was entire, the bad effect of these partial evils was surmounted. Whether we can equally maintain the frame of Government is a question that is yet to be examined. The present system of police, as far as relates to the villages, may be easily kept up; but I doubt whether it is enough that the village establishment be maintained and the whole put under a Mamlatdar. The Patil’s respectability and influence in his village must be kept up, by allowing him some latitude both in the expenditure of the village expenses, and in restraining petty disorders in his village. So far from wishing that it were possible for the European Officers to hear all complaints on such subjects, I think it fortunate that they have not time to investigate them, and think it desirable that the Mamlatdars also should leave them to the Patils, and thus preserve a power on the aid of which we must, in all branches of the Government, greatly depend. Zealous co-operation of the Patils is as essential to the Collector of the revenue, and to the administration of civil justice, as to the police; and it ought, therefore, by all means to be secured. Too much care cannot be taken to prevent their duty becoming irksome and their influence impaired by bringing their conduct too often under the correction of their superiors. I would lend a ready ear to all complaints against them for oppression, but I would not disturb them for inattention to forms; and I would leave them at liberty to settle petty complaints their own way, provided no serious punishment were inflicted on either party.”

EDUCATION.

“Books are scarce, and the common ones probably ill chosen, but there exist in the Hindu languages many tales and fables that would be generally read, and that would circulate sound morals. There must be religious books tending more directly to the same end. If many of these were printed and distributed cheaply or gratuitously, the effect would, without doubt, be great and beneficial. It would, however, be indispensable that they should be purely Hindu. We might silently omit all precepts of questionable morality, but the slightest infusion of religious controversy would secure the failure of the design.

“It would be better to call the prejudices of the Hindus to our aid in reforming them, and to control their vices by the ties of religion, which are stronger than those of law. By maintaining and purifying their present tenets, at the same time that we enlighten their understandings, we shall bring them nearer to that standard of perfection at which all concur in desiring that they should arrive; while any attack on their faith, if successful, might be expected in theory, as is found in practice, to shake their reverence for all religion, and to set them free from those useful restraints which even a superstitious doctrine imposes on the passions.”

ViLLAGE PANCHYETS.

“But with all these defects, the Mahratta country flourished, and the people seem to have been exempt from some of the evils which exist under our more perfect Government. There must, therefore, have been some advantages in the system to counterbalance its obvious defects, and most of them appear to me to have originated in one fact, that the Government, although it did little to obtain justice for the people, left them the means of procuring it for themselves. The advantage of this was particularly felt among the lower orders, who are most out of reach of their rulers, and most apt to be neglected under all Governments. By means of the Panchayat, they were enabled to effect a tolerable dispensation of justice among themselves; and it happens that most of the objections above stated to that institution do not apply in their case. . . .

“I propose, therefore, that the native system should still be preserved, and means taken to remove its abuses and revive its energy. Such a course will be more welcome to the natives than any entire change, and if it should fail entirely, it is never too late to introduce the Adalat. . . .

“Our principal instrument must continue to be the Panchayat, and that must continue to be exempt from all new forms, interference, and regulation on our part.”¹

It will appear from the preceding extracts that the great aim of Elphinstone was to conserve what was good in the old institutions of the Mahrattas. It were well for the country if Elphinstone’s successors were as cautious in introducing innovations. But under the administration of succeeding generations of rulers, Village Communities have disappeared, and the right of peasant proprietors to hold their lands at fixed rates has been crushed under increasing revenue demands.

Elphinstone’s great ability marked him out as the most suitable head of the Government, and he was appointed Governor of Bombay in 1819, a year before Sir Thomas Munro was appointed Governor of Madras. It is necessary now to describe briefly his endeavours to arrive at a proper land settlement in Bombay within the eight years of his administration.

BROACH.

In 1821 the Governor recorded a Minute on the land revenue arrangements at Broach, and did not contemplate with pleasure the increase in the Land-Tax which had already commenced under the British Rule.

“The assessment is made entirely by villages, without any inquiry into the circumstances of individuals. One of the hereditary revenue officers is sent to inspect the crops of each harvest. He makes a statement of the quantity of land cultivated with each sort of produce by each Ryot, and calculates the quantity of each sort that will be produced in each field. The sum of these gives the whole amount of each sort of grain produced in the village. . . . The general principle is to take half of the money produced by the sale of the crops, and leave the rest to the Ryot. . . .

“It is always difficult to guess whether the assessment is light or heavy. On the plan here adopted it is utterly impossible. An increase of four lakhs and a half [£45,000] has taken place this year: a circumstance which I cannot contemplate with pleasure.“¹

AHMEDABAD.

On the same date Elphinstone recorded another Minute on the land revenue operations in Ahmedabad and Kaira, and his remarks betray the same caution and hesitation.

“In the Ahmedabad Zilla, the number of villages that have been let to the highest bidder, the consequent detection of all sources of revenue, and in some cases the raising of the Bigoties by Panchyats granted at the suggestion of the farmer, have a tendency to strain the revenue to the highest pitch.“¹

SURAT.

In May 1821 Elphinstone recorded a Minute on Surat, in which he once more deplored the heaviness of the land assessment.

“If I were to decide on the present condition of the people in this Collectorship, I should pronounce it to be very much depressed. The Ryots seem to be ill-clothed and ill-lodged, and although some parts of the District are highly productive, I should think that in others the cultivation was very imperfect…. These evils are by no means to be ascribed to the present system. On the contrary, I am persuaded that the measures now in progress will go far to relieve us from the system which we inherited from our predecessors. The great obstacle will be the extreme heaviness and perhaps the inequality of the assessment.“²

THE CONCAN.

The state of things in the Northern Concan was unsettled. The Collector recommended “that the demand of the Government be fixed at one-third of the gross produce, and at a reduced ratio on the inferior kinds of soil, to be divided into three, or at the utmost into four classes of land; that no rent be paid in kind, which is a system expensive to Government and offers opportunities of peculation to the inferior native officers; that the commuted money-payment be fixed for six years; that the rate of assessment be not fixed in perpetuity, but that a settlement be made for twelve years.“³

A separate letter was recorded in the same year in reference to Southern Concan, which gives us some information with regard to the Khotes and the rights of cultivators generally.

“The villages are either termed Kulargee or Khotegee. In the former, each cultivator is understood to stand assessed at a certain fixed rental on the public records, beyond which nothing can be properly levied from him; whilst in the Khotegee villages, though a Khote or head of the village can only levy a particular sum from one particular class of Ryots, yet with others, either occupying new lands or renting the Khote’s own, he may make what bargain he pleases. And this naturally leads to an explanation of the only two descriptions of tenures prevalent in this Zilla, viz., the first Dharekari, and the second Ardheli.

“The former of these seems very nearly to correspond with the Mirasi of the Deccan, for he cannot be dispossessed as long as he makes good his payments according to the custom of the country; and if he cannot actually sell, he may unquestionably mortgage his property, though it is generally believed he may even dispose of it. . . .

“The Ardheli Ryot is on the footing with the Upri elsewhere. He is the tenant of the Khote, or of some other holder of land, as the case may be. He cannot either sell or mortgage what he occupies, because it, of right, belongs to another, and he only holds it by sufferance. He may be dispossessed either by the owner choosing to take the land into his own hands, or to assign it to some one else, though this latter course would be considered a hardship if the Ryot regularly fulfilled his engagements. These engagements are, however, mostly annual, and it is therefore obvious the owner of the land might easily effect an ejectment by raising his demands till the land would not be worth the cultivation. The Ardheli Ryot who may cultivate rice-land generally pays his landlord half the produce in kind…

“From the foregoing description, your Honourable Court will perceive that the Khotes very much resemble the smaller class of zemindars in Bengal.“¹

Footnotes

¹ Report on the Territories conquered from the Peshwa, dated 25th October 1819

¹ Minute dated 15th August 1821.

² Minute dated 6th May 1821.

³ Revenue Letter from Bombay to the Court of Directors, dated 19th April 1822.

¹ Revenue Letter from Bengal to the Court of Directors, dated 23rd February 1822.

THE DECCAN.

We have so far referred to the reports of experimental Settlements in the Western Coast, from Broach to the Concan. We turn now once more to the Deccan. Mr. Chaplin had succeeded Elphinstone as Commissioner of the Deccan, and his lucid reports of November 1821 and August 1822 cover, with their enclosures, over five hundred folio pages of the East India Papers.

The population of the newly acquired territory, including Poona, Ahmadnagar, Khandesh, Dharwar, Satara, and the Southern Jaigirs, was estimated at nearly four millions. An endeavour was made, in the early land settlement, to combine the Ryotwari system, which had been introduced in Madras by Sir Thomas Munro, with the village system, which had been so strongly advocated by the Madras Board of Revenue. The settlement made was professedly the Ryotwari, and was so essentially; but the individual distribution was left with a good deal of latitude to the village officers. The new system did not at first essentially differ from that which had been followed under the Mahratta Rule at the time of their renowned minister, Nana Farnavis, except that the Mamlatdars or district officers had less power in increasing or decreasing the revenue. The payments of the Ryots were fixed by the Company’s servants with reference to their cultivation and the receipts of former times, and the levy of the State demand was more rigorous than before. In 1817 the revenue of the newly acquired territory was £800,000; in 1818 it was raised to £1,150,000, and in a few more years to £1,500,000. The village officials were allowed less and less power of interference; the Company’s servants liked to come in closer contact with each individual cultivator; and the Village Communities virtually disappeared in a few years in Bombay, as they had disappeared in Madras.

Footnotes

¹ Revenue Letter from Bengal to the Court of Directors, dated 23rd February 1822.

KHANDESH.

The district of Khandesh was under the administration of Captain Briggs, who distinguished himself in later years by his great work on the Land Tax of India, and his translation of Ferishta’s History of India, and who with Elphinstone and Malcolm, Grant Duff, Todd, and Horace Hayman Wilson, stands foremost among the Anglo Indian writers and historians of the first half of the nineteenth century. He found in Khandesh “the dilapidated remains of more than one hundred substantially built dams for diverting the water into channels for irrigation, many of them constructed at prodigious expense,” which attested “the liberal and enlightened policy of the early Mahomedan monarchs.” But Khandesh in his time was desolated and impoverished. Frequent wars, the incursion of the Bheels, and the havoc caused by tigers, which in three months had destroyed 500 men, and 20,000 head of cattle, added to the miseries of the district. And Captain Briggs experienced “the difficulty of drawing the line between a moderate and a high assessment in the absence of all authentic records of the resources.”

POONA.

The District of Poona was under the administration of Captain Robertson, and his answers to queries put to him by the Commissioners throw a flood of light on the institutions and the condition of the cultivators of the Deccan. The Mirasi tenant in the Deccan was virtually a peasant proprietor, subject to the payment of a Land-Tax to the Government. “He is in no way inferior,” wrote 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 ancestors of many of the present occupants of the lands of the Deccan were probably holders of land antecedent to the Musalman conquest of their country, on the condition of paying a reddendum equal to a sixth part of the produce of the land they held.” “If I were to make any such distinction respecting the payment made by the Thalkaris [Mirasi tenants] of the Deccan, I should term it a tax and not a rent.” 1 Modern administrators who speak of the cultivators’ rights to the soil in Southern India, and the Zemindars' rights to the soil in Northern India, as the creation of British legislation, will find from the voluminous reports of early British administrators that private property in the soil, heritable and transferable, was stronger in India before the British conquest than under modern revenue settlements. The soil belonged to the nation and not to the State, and the State was never entitled to anything except a Tax - a fixed Tax-from the Mirasdars. Captain Robertson’s remarks on the common possession of villages by families of cultivators are equally instructive. “Every original paper relating to Thalkaris [Mirasi tenants] and their occupation of land, every return I have obtained from the districts concerning them and the ancient distribution of land, proves beyond to him by the Commissioners throw a flood of light on the institutions and the condition of the cultivators of the Deccan. The Mirasi tenant in the Deccan was virtually a peasant proprietor, subject to the payment of a Land-Tax to the Government. “He is in no way inferior,” wrote 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 ancestors of many of the present occupants of the lands of the Deccan were probably holders of land antecedent to the Musalman conquest of their country, on the condition of paying a reddendum equal to a sixth part of the produce of the land they held.” “If I were to make any such distinction respecting the payment made by the Thalkaris [Mirasi tenants] of the Deccan, I should term it a tax and not a rent.” 1 Modern administrators who speak of the cultivators’ rights to the soil in Southern India, and the Zemindars' rights to the soil in Northern India, as the creation of British legislation, will find from the voluminous reports of early British administrators that private property in the soil, heritable and transferable, was stronger in India before the British conquest than under modern revenue settlements. The soil belonged to the nation and not to the State, and the State was never entitled to anything except a Tax - a fixed Tax - from the Mirasdars. Captain Robertson’s remarks on the common possession of villages by families of cultivators are equally instructive. “Every original paper relating to Thalkaris [Mirasi tenants] and their occupation of land, every return I have obtained from the districts concerning them and the ancient distribution of land, proves beyond a shadow of doubt that at a former time the whole of the arable land of each village was apportioned out among a certain number of families…. Their descendants collectively are termed a Jutha; they are inferred to possess the whole of the original estate among them; they are responsible as a body corporate for the payment of whatever is due to Government and others for the whole One Jutha appears to have been selected, either by Government or the other Juthas, to perform, through the representation of its elder branch, the duty of collecting from all other Juthas, and to be responsible for the claims of Government on them all; thus collectively rendered under one head a body corporate, for the discharge of certain obligations and for the enjoyment of certain privileges. The members of the Jutha thus selected have the distinguishing appellation of Patils, and probably always had that or some other distinguishing name, and a person of the elder branch of it actually in officio as its head is styled Mukaddam…. He 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 on their disputes.” ¹

For the rest, Captain Robertson proved the heritable and transferable nature of the Mirasi tenure by many documents, and added that “the Mirasi tenure may be said to have existed in all villages in this Collectorship. There are not many in which it does not now exist.” ¹ This was written in 1821, and gives us some idea of the status and rights of Bombay cultivators under Mahratta rule.

Footnotes 1 Paragraphs 19, 20, and 22 of Robertson’s Report, dated 10th October 1821. 1 Paragraphs 19, 20, and 22 of Robertson’s Report, dated 10th October 1821.

AHMADNAGAR.

Captain Pottinger administered the District of Ahmadnagar, and reported that “those Ryots who are Mirasdars can dispose of or mortgage their lands when they like.” “The Mirasi tenure has existed in this part of India (in common, I believe, with all others) from time immemorial; and when I have asked about the period of its establishment, I have been told I might as well inquire when the soil was made. I observe that Mr. Ellis, in his numerous replies on Mirasi, states in a note, ’the fact is, that the thing (Mirasi) existed in India when the lawgivers of the land wrote;’ and his authority is, in my humble judgment, quite definitive.” ²

DHARWAR.

The District of Dharwar was under the administration of Mr. St. John Thackeray. He was an experienced revenue officer, mixed much with the cultivators, and gave some characteristic replies to the queries sent to him. “With respect to the personal exertions of revenue officers,” he wrote, “in promoting agriculture, I have generally found them more inclined to bully than to encourage the Ryots; and their object is rather to display their zeal by showing an increase of cultivation on paper, than to augment the resources

Footnotes

of the country…. The Ryot cultivates for his profit, and when this is adequate, he needs no spur.” ¹

THE DECCAN.

Enclosing these and other District Reports, the Commissioner Chaplin submitted his own exhaustive Report on the revenue settlements of the Deccan. He referred to the previous settlement of Malik Ambar, which was as famous in the Deccan as the settlement of Todar Mall was in Northern India. Malik Ambar’s settlement was in the nature of a fixed money demand for each village, and his policy was greatly to encourage the ancient Mirasi tenure, by which the arable land of the country “acquired most of the substantial qualities of private property.”

Passing on to the subject of the assessment of the soil under the newly established British Rule, Chaplin assumed that a cultivator of middling circumstances held ten acres of dry land and probably one-third acre of garden land, and had two ploughs and four bullocks, and made an income of £12 in the year. His expenditure is thus estimated: ²

Table

It will be seen that a State demand of £4, 4s. out of an estimated income of £12 is less than 45 or 50 per cent. of the gross produce which the Government originally demanded both in Madras and Bombay from the peasantry. But even this tax of £4, 4s. out of £12 left the cultivator no savings and no resources. It is quite clear that the Ryotwari system found favour with the Directors of the Company for this very reason, viz., that there were no intermediate landlords or Village Communities to intercept a part of the profits. The Company had as good a grip over the cultivators as a slave-owner has over his slaves, and could take away all that was not needed to keep them alive. “It cannot be concealed or denied, I think,” said one Director, “that the object of this [Ryotwari] system is to obtain for Government the utmost that the land will yield in the shape of rent.“¹

With regard to the Mirasi tenure, Chaplin wrote that it “is very general throughout the whole of that part of the conquered territory which extends from the Krishna to the range of Ghats that divide Gungterre from Khandesh.” That “a Ryot having once acquired the hereditary right of occupancy is, together with his heirs, entitled to hold it by sale, gift, or mortgage, and according to the usage of the Deccan, without previously obtaining the permission of the Government.” That a Mirasdar “has a voice in all the village councils, has a right of pasture on the village commons, can build a house or dispose of it by sale.” That in Poona the proportion of Mirasdars to Upris or tenants at will “may be about three to one.” That to the north, beyond the Godavari, “the existence of the Miras right becomes less general, and the difference between it and the Upri tenure more faint and indistinct.” That in the Southern Mahratta country, “Miras does not exist at all,” but “permanent occupancy is, however, recognised.” That “the privileges of Miras in Satara are the same as in other parts of the Deccan.“¹

“The Collector [of Poona] is very properly an advocate,” Chaplin wrote, “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.“² Mr. Chaplin did not anticipate that later British administration would virtually confiscate the ancient Mirasi rights of the Deccan cultivators.

Chaplin’s long report ended with an exhortation to English officials to observe forms of civil intercourse with the people of India.

“It ought to be recollected that since the change of Government has inevitably deprived them of so much consequence, it is the more incumbent on us to continue to them the forms of civil intercourse which are yet in our power; and that although we may be apt to consider them as far beneath us, yet that they held a respectable rank under their native prince, which, as we now occupy his place, we ought to preserve to them as far as lies in our power.

“Young men on their first arrival in India, and their first appointment to office, are so prone to form opinions entirely at variance with those which I have just expressed, and to act on notions so diametrically opposite, that I have deemed it proper to inculcate these principles to the assistants who have been appointed to the Deccan; and I lately circulated for their guidance the judicious instructions of Sir John Malcolm on this subject. It would, I think, be attended with good effect if a code of this kind were given as a sort of manual for every one newly arrived from England. The motto of it might be in the words of Shakespeare:

‘O but man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven As make the angels weep.’”¹

On receipt of this valuable and exhaustive report with its many enclosures, the Governor of Bombay, Mountstuart Elphinstone, directed a gradual survey and assessment of the whole of the conquered territories. He also insisted on the preservation of the Patil’s authority in each village; recommended that the assessment should be light and equally distributed; and urged on the Commissioner the importance of preserving the rights of the cultivators under every species of tenure in use. The Court of Directors also expressed their satisfaction with the proposal of a general survey.²

The Commissioner of the Deccan submitted one set of survey rules in September 1824, and a modified set of rules in February 1825. Sir Thomas Munro had reduced the Land-Tax in Madras to about one-third of the field produce; and Chaplin adopted the same standard for the Deccan in paragraph 7 of his Circular issued with the revised Survey Rules. This severe State demand has been the ruin of agricultural prosperity in Southern India. In Madras the rule is still maintained as the maximum of the Government demand; in Bombay, while all endeavour to fix any specific share of the produce has been abandoned, the actual Land-Tax levied often approximates to or exceeds one-third of the field produce. Thus Henry St. John Tucker’s shrewd remark, quoted above, as to the cause of the extension of the Ryotwari system, is justified by facts.

The proposal of a general survey still hung fire. Mountstuart Elphinstone endeavoured to keep the village system untouched in the Deccan. His idea, as stated before, was to combine the principle of the Ryotwari system with the principle of the village system. His object was to settle, after a Survey, what each cultivator should pay to the State, and then to realise this from each village through its Patil. “The Survey will fix the rights and the payment of each Ryot, after which the village may be farmed for a certain number of years to the Patil.” ¹

It must be admitted there was an initial weakness in this proposal. If the village Patil and the village Council were to be deprived by the proposed Survey of all their power of distributing the collective village assessment among the cultivators forming the village, what was the good of keeping up the Patil and his Council at all? If the functions which they had discharged in past centuries of assessing the Ryots of the village in order to make up the collective State demand was to be taken away from them, where was the necessity of maintaining them only as farmers of revenue?

The question had been fought out in Madras on first principles. The Madras Board of Revenue were out and out “Collectivists,” and desired to maintain the village institutions and their authority unimpaired. Thomas Munro was an out and out “Individualist,” and insisted on direct relations between the State and each individual cultivator, without any interference from the village authorities so far as the Land-Tax was concerned. Thomas Munro had his way, and the Village Communities of Madras at once lost their vitality, in spite of Munro’s own endeavours to keep them up by bestowing upon them other powers.

These experiments and results carried their own lesson. Village Communities could only be maintained in India, as they had been maintained for centuries, by leaving the work of internal assessment to the Village Councils and Panchyets. A few rules might have been framed against excessive assessment in view of the produce of lands, and subject to these rules the village elders might have been permitted to continue their work of separate assessments and realisations, and their collective payment to the State. Such an arrangement would have had the obvious advantage of a continuity of the ancient system of India, as well as of leaving an organised popular body in every Indian village. But such an arrangement was against the very spirit of the Company’s rule. The Company’s policy was to deal individually with every taxpayer in the land, and to levy as much tax as he could pay. Elphinstone himself was so far carried away by this spirit as to approve of a Survey which would fix the liability of each individual cultivator. And after this, when he still desired to deal with villages collectively through the headman, his plan was open to the obvious criticism that the headman’s occupation was gone!

Elphinstone left India in 1827, and in the same year the Court of Directors found out the weak point in Elphinstone’s plan, and took advantage of it.

“If the survey should really fix the rights and payments of each Ryot, and if the Ryot has immediate access to redress on account of any infringement of his rights, the Patil may be usefully employed in the manner adverted to in a preceding paragraph of this despatch. The experience which you have had of the evils produced by the system of revenue farming during the administration of the late Peshwa ought to make you extremely cautious in confiding powers to individuals which their previous habits and practice must render them liable to abuse. Nor can we place any confidence in the security which a moderate assessment, payable by the village contractor to Government, would afford against exaction.”¹

This was the beginning of the end of the Village System.

Footnotes