Agriculture

CHAPTER VIII

AGRICULTURE

India’s Greatest Industry.

In the preceding chapters we have discussed the “minor” industries of India. We have shown how the cotton and silk industries were crushed in the early days of British rule; to what extent they have been revived and what hampers their further growth; how the shipping industry has vanished; and how the country stands in the matter of its mineral produce. We have also shown who controls and benefits from the other principal modern industries of India, such as jute, tea and coffee.

In this chapter we propose to discuss what, by common consent, is the greatest industry of India. “In India,” says Mr. J. S. Cotton in the Oxford Survey, “agriculture forms the one predominant industry to an extent which is difficult for those to realise who are familiar only with the conditions prevailing in England. According to the occupation returns of the census of 1901, almost two-thirds of the total population of 294 millions are supported directly by agriculture proper and the subordinate industry of cattle raising; but if those supported indirectly be included it has been estimated that the proportion would rise to nine-tenths, leaving only one-tenth for all the towns inhabited by as many as 5,000 persons each.”

The annual harvests are therefore a subject of supreme concern not only to the cultivators themselves, but also to the Government, and it might be added, to the people at large. Nay, one might go a step further and say that they are of supreme importance to the workers of Great Britain, as well.

The failure of a single harvest in India means famine, which may possibly result in a temporary fall in revenue collections but which does certainly involve a heavy expenditure for famine relief and also a certain decline in imports. The revenue from land is the principal source of government income, the realisation from land tax alone forming about one-third of revenue proper of the Government of India. In the budget figures of 1914-15, the realisation from the land tax was shown to be a little less than 21½ million pounds sterling out of a total of slightly over 85 millions sterling, the estimated income from all sources including railway receipts, proceeds of opium and canal receipts for 1913-14. Customs in India bring only a paltry sum. In 1913-14 there was an income of 7½ millions sterling from customs, while the realisation from the income tax was £1,950,250. In 1914-15 the figures were £5,960,469 and £2,036,733 respectively.

The land tax is not levied on the actual produce of the year. It is generally assessed for a number of years varying from ten to thirty years, except in certain areas where it has been permanently fixed. The failure of harvest therefore does not necessarily mean a reduction in Government income. Suspensions of one year are as a rule made good in another, and remissions are few. On the other hand, the sufferings of the people assume so terrible a shape that the Government is compelled to spend large sums of money on “famine relief.” Of famines, of deaths from famine, of collections of revenue during famine years, and of the government expenditure for famine relief, we will speak in detail later on. A famine year is generally a bad one for imports, and a falling off in imports affects British industries. A failure of harvest in India thus spells not only disaster to India but loss to Great Britain as well. The very fact that 90 per cent. of the population should depend almost solely on such a precarious industry as agriculture is sufficiently condemnatory of the system of administration that has failed to look ahead and make provision for other sources of national income which would secure variety of occupation to the workers of the country and insure them against unemployment and starvation in the event of agriculture failing them.

The total cropped area (net after deducting area cropped more than once) in 1914-15 was 227,611,132 acres out of a total net area by professional survey of 619,392,157 acres.

By crops the area stood as below:—

The yield returns are given for the whole of India including the native states.

The figures for 1913-14 are taken from the “Parliamentary Blue Book on India for 1913-14,” and those for 1914-15 from the “Indian Year Book for 1917.” The yield returns are taken from Blue Books.

India produces almost half the rice of the world. All exports of rice are subject to a duty of about six shillings ten pence per ton. In 1913-14 India exported rice to the value of £17,738,000 (as valued at Indian ports) as against £21,704,000 worth of rice exported in the year before. The figures for 1914-15 are not given in the Blue Book, but it is said that there was a falling off in exports.

The export figures of wheat and wheat flour are subject to great fluctuations. It is said that “in a famine year, the export falls to a trifling quantity,” which fact is not borne out by the table of exports given in the margin of the Blue Book which shows the maximum quantity of wheat exported in 1904-05 at 2,150,000 tons. Except in one year during the ten years, the quantity exported did not fall below 801,400 tons. The only exception is for the year 1908-09 when the quantity exported fell to 109,750 tons of wheat and 30,100 tons of wheat flour. In 1914-15 the exports of wheat were 706,400 tons and of flour 54,000 tons.

The following are the export figures of tea, jute, cotton, and oilseeds for 1913-14 and 1914-15:

To what extent India meets the requirements of the United Kingdom in the matter of raw produce may be judged from the following figures for the years 1903-04 to 1912-13 taken from the Statistical Abstract for British India:

IMPORTS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE FROM INDIA INTO GREAT BRITAIN

Raw Jute

The United Kingdom is the largest importer of raw jute from India.

Raw Wool

The United Kingdom is not only the largest importer of raw wool, but practically the whole of the raw wool exported by India goes to the United Kingdom. Out of a total of £1,756,448 worth of raw wool exported in 1912-13, the United Kingdom took of the value of £1,704,785.

Rice

Wheat

The United Kingdom is not only the largest buyer of wheat from India but in some years takes practically the whole of the total quantity exported. That was so until 1908-09. In 1909 and 1910, she took more than £7,000,000 worth out of a total of almost £8,500,000 worth exported. In 1911-12 she took £6,741,190 worth of wheat of a total of £8,898,972 exported and in 1912-13 £8,380,422 worth out of a total of £11,795,816.

Barley

The United Kingdom is the greatest consumer of Indian barley. In seeds, again, we find that the United Kingdom heads the list of importers from India.

Tea

More than two-thirds of the tea exported from India goes to the United Kingdom.

Similarly the United Kingdom gets the largest quantity of raw skins, dressed or tanned hides and dressed or tanned skins.

Land Tax.

For the latest figures of land revenue and the official explanation of the policy underlying them, we make the following lengthy quotation from the Parliamentary Blue Book for 1913:

“From time immemorial a share of the produce of the land has been the chief source of public revenue in India. Land revenue is still the mainstay of the Government, constituting about 36 per cent. of the total net revenue that accrues to the Indian Exchequer.[^2]

“Owing to its far-reaching social and political effects the proper administration of the land revenue has always been one of the chief problems of the Indian Government, and during the early years of British rule the best methods of assessment were keenly debated. In 1793 Lord Cornwallis introduced into Bengal a permanent settlement, by which the demand of the State was fixed and made for ever unalterable. Other systems were gradually evolved, and at length over the greater part of India a system of periodical settlements was established, under which the State demand is revised at recurring periods of twenty to thirty years, the latter period prevailing in all the larger provinces except the Punjab and the Central Provinces, where settlements are usually made for twenty years, and in Burma, where the term of twenty years is now being adopted. Under the system of periodical revisions of the land assessment the State secures a share in the increased rental value arising from the general progress of the community. Of late years measures have been taken to exempt improvements from assessment, and generally to make the enforcement of the rights of the State as little burdensome as is possible to the revenue-payer. Periodical revision also affords the opportunity of reducing the assessment in villages or tracts which have declined in prosperity and of correcting inequalities arising from any cause.

“When the revenue is assessed by the State permanently or temporarily, on an individual or community owning an estate, and occupying a position identical with, or analogous to, that of a landlord, the assessment is known as zamindari; where the revenue is imposed on individuals who are, or who represent, the actual occupants of holdings, the assessment is known as ryotwari. Under either system there may be rent-paying sub-tenants. In Southern India, where most of the land is held by petty occupiers direct from the State, the occupiers have the right to retain their holdings so long as they pay the revenue due from them. The permanently settled districts, in which all holdings are zamindari, cover most of Bengal and Bihar, and parts of Madras and the United Provinces. As regards temporarily settled districts, zamindari estates, held by proprietary groups or large individual proprietors, are chiefly found in the Punjab, the United Provinces, the Central Provinces, and Orissa, while in Bombay and Sindh, Burma, Assam, Berar, and two-thirds of Madras the system of ryotwari, or peasant proprietors, prevails.

“Revenue Assessments and Incidence. Land revenue is realised in the form of an annual payment of cash, the assessment rates being subject to no alteration during the term of a settlement, though the amount leviable in any year may vary according to the area actually cultivated or to the condition of the harvest.[^3] Except in Bombay (where assessment is not fixed in terms of produce) the land revenue is assessed so as to represent a share, not of the gross, but of the net produce (or net assets). In the zamindari, or landlord settlements, that widely prevail in Northern India, the cultivating tenant pays rent to a landlord. Of this rent the Government usually takes rather less than 50 per cent. as land revenue.

“It is certain that the Government NOW[^4] takes a very much smaller share of the gross product than was customary in pre-British days. The incidence of ordinary land revenue for all British India in 1913–14 works out at 1s. 8d. per head of the population.[^5]

“The Government makes liberal reductions of assessments in cases of local deterioration, where such reductions cannot be claimed under the terms of settlement.”

The fiscal policy of the British Government is an anomaly from more than one point of view. It insists on imposing a heavy tax on land and agriculture in pursuance of the “universal practice of the country” but ignores:

(a) That under the best Hindu and Mohammedan rulers the Land Tax was practically the sole tax levied upon the people. A great many of the other taxes imposed by the British Government were unknown to the country. There was no income tax, no tax on justice, no stamp tax and no duty on succession.

(b) That all the proceeds of the tax were spent in the country and returned to the people in different forms like showers of rain from clouds formed of water sucked by the rays of the sun in the hottest months of the year.

(c) That except under the Moguls, the Government share was taken in produce. There was no fixed cash assessment. Besides, there were many ways of avoiding the giving of the full share, which cannot be used under the British system organised as it is to the minutest detail.

(d) Excessive demands were opposed or stopped by threats of revolt which kept the demands within proper bounds. A revolt of the peasantry under the British rule is impossible. The rate at which the Land Tax is fixed in India is unheard of in any other part of the globe and is the principal if not the only cause of the appalling poverty of the agricultural masses.

(e) Formerly large numbers were employed in other industries which have been driven out of existence under British rule. The numbers supported by industries other than agriculture have been steadily falling off (see the 1911 census report of India, by Gait, I. C. S., chapter on occupations). It is no credit to an enlightened Government like the British that they should justify their policy on the ground of the “universal practice of the country.” Under the light of modern civilisation many an immemorial practice has been discontinued and even the British Government in India has given aid to stop and prohibit practices which were considered immoral and iniquitous.

The tests which should be applied are: Is the land tax just? Is it moderate? Is it fair? Does it leave sufficient margin to the agriculturist to live a decent life? Does it not result in an unequal distribution of the burdens of Government in favour of the moneyed classes? Judged by these standards there can be no doubt that the rate at which land tax is assessed is unjust, unfair and excessive. It tells extremely heavily on the very class which ought to be protected by an enlightened system of administration. The poor require protection against the wealthy; the weak against the strong, yet the present system of taxation maintained under the plea of[^6] “an immemorial practice” tells most heavily on the poorest and the weakest. It is they who have to live on insufficient food from day’s end to day’s end; it is they who are not only underfed but also underclothed, and whose children have to go without education and are crushingly handicapped in the struggle for life and in the race for progress. Yet it is they who fight for the Empire and lose life and limb in the service of the Government. Many a noble-minded Englishman has felt the injustice of the system.

But one strong feature of the British system in India is that the Home Government, while it professes to support the man on the spot in all measures of repression, in all things which affect the dignity and privilege of the ruling classes, in all recommendations which refuse to make concessions to public opinion, in all things which tend to perpetuate power in the hands of the bureaucracy to the detriment of the people, has in numerous instances overruled the men on the spot when the latter made recommendations favourable to the people. Men realising large revenues, inventing new sources of income, have been honoured and promoted; men making light assessments have been dismissed, deported or censured. The Government has often used the authority of eminent Anglo-Indian Administrators in support of its policy, ignoring those portions of their opinions or recommendations which were favourable to the people. They have always accepted what was likely to bring them larger revenues, rejecting safeguards provided against hardship.

The economic history of India amply shows how the recommendations of the men on the spot in favour of a just and more considerate treatment of the cultivator in the matter of land tax, as also their recommendations in favour of import duties in the interests of Indian industries, have from time to time been vetoed by the authorities in England. In the preceding chapter we have referred to the praiseworthy attempts of Anglo-Indian Administrators in the matter of import duties. In this chapter we show how the efforts of eminent Anglo-Indian statesmen in the matter of securing a fixity of land revenue demand and of moderation in the rates have from time to time failed. The history of the land tax is as full of painful incidents as the history of Indian industries.

Bengal.

The first chapter of the history of land administration by the East India Company opens with the management of districts made over to them in Bengal and in the Karnatic by the native ruling princes in payment of debts incurred on account of subsidies promised, but not paid. It also includes the story of the management of lands or tracts the revenues of which were assigned to European servants of the East India Company in liquidation of the private debts advanced by the latter to the ruling Princes of Bengal and Karnatic and swelled to fabulous sums by all the methods of chicanery and fraud known to money-lenders. These lands were not crown lands that could be given away by the ruling princes without any regard to the rights of those who owned them or held them. They were lands which in many cases had been owned and held for generations in the families of the then existing owners, occupiers or holders thereof. The only right which the ruling Princes had was the Government’s share of the produce, call it revenue or rent as you please. Yet the East India Company and its European servants treated these assignments of revenue as if the lands themselves had been given to them in complete ownership, regardless of the rights of those to whom they had belonged or by whom they had been cultivated or held in some sort of tenure for generations. Estates held for generations were put to auction and given over to the highest bidder. “In the provinces of Burdwan and Midnapur,” wrote Governor Verelst in a letter to the Directors of the East India Company on December 16, 1769, “those evils which necessarily flowed from the bad policy of the Moorish Government had in no sort decreased. On the contrary, a plan was adopted in 1762 productive of certain ruin to the province.”

“The lands were let by public auction for the short term of three years. Men without fortune or character became bidders at the sale; and while some of the former farmers, unwilling to relinquish their habitations, exceeded perhaps the real value in their offers, those who had nothing to lose advanced yet further, wishing at all events to obtain an immediate possession. Thus numberless harpies were let loose to plunder, whom the spoil of a miserable people enabled to complete their first year’s payment.”

The intense cruelty and heartlessness with which revenues were collected in Bengal is proved by documentary evidence on the subject. In a letter of the Directors of May 9, 1770, occur the following sentences:

“The famine which has ensued, the mortality, the beggary, exceed all description. Above one-third of the inhabitants have perished in the once plentiful province of Purneah, and in other parts the misery is equal.” On the 11th September they wrote: “It is scarcely possible that any description could be an exaggeration of the misery the inhabitants . . . have encountered with. It is not then to be wondered that this calamity has had its influence on the collections; but we are happy to remark they have fallen less short than we supposed they would.”

On the 12th February they wrote: “Notwithstanding the great severity of the late famine and the great reduction of people thereby, some increase has been made in the settlements both of the Bengal and the Behar provinces for the present year.”

On the 10th January, 1772, they wrote: “The collections in each department of revenue are as successfully carried on for the present year as we could have wished.”

It is painful to read of this rigorous collection of the land tax during years of human sufferings and deaths, perhaps unexampled in the history of mankind. It was officially estimated that in the famine of 1770 about one-third of the population of Bengal or about ten millions of people had died. Wrote Warren Hastings on November 3, 1772:

“Notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of the province, and the consequent decrease of the cultivation, the net collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of 1768. . . . It was naturally to be expected that the diminution of the revenue should have kept an equal pace with the other consequences of so great a calamity. That it did not was owing to its being violently kept up to its former standard.[^7]

Later on, when the East India Company had the Dewani or the revenue administration of the three provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, conferred on it by the Great Mogul, a dual system was set up by which the collection of revenue was done by the servants of the Nabob under the superintendence of supervisors appointed by the Company’s Government. This system was bad enough for the landlord and the cultivator, but the worst was yet to come. In 1776 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. This was of course in utter disregard of the rights of those who had held the lands for generations before. Philip Francis, another member of the Bengal Council, saw the evil and proposed a permanent settlement. The most valuable part of his minute, however, is that in which he describes the system then in vogue. But the Directors would not agree to letting the land on lease for years or in perpetuity. In 1778, 1779 and 1780 the system of five year leases was given up and estates were let annually.

In 1781 a new settlement was affected, this time preference being given to Zemindars (landlords), though for one year only, by which the land revenues increased by about £260,000.[^8]

Similarly harsh measures were adopted in the Upper Provinces, which the rapacity of Warren Hastings managed to bring under the control of the East India Company. How Warren Hastings coerced the Raja of Benares and then the Nabob Vizier of Oudh are matters of political history.[^9]

Bengal, however, soon obtained relief by the permanent settlement of Lord Cornwallis, effected with the Zemindars on a basis of nine-tenths of the actual rental then received by them. But the Upper Provinces did not receive the full benefit of this concession because at that time they were still nominally under native government. It will be interesting to compare the results of this settlement in the field of revenue with those of native rulers previous to the advent of the British. We take the figures from the famous “Minute” of Mr. Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, of June 18, 1789:

The actual collections, however, of the five years immediately preceding British rule were:

The last year was the first year of the Dewani granted to the British by the Mogul. The collections were made by Mohammed Raza Khan under the dual authority of the Nabob and the Company.

The collections made by the British in 1790-91 were £2,680,000 or $13,400,000, which was nearly double the assessment of Jaffar Khan and of Suja Khan in the early part of the century; it was three times the collection of Maharaja Nandkumar in the year 1764-65, and it was nearly double the collection made by Mohammed Raza Khan under British supervision in the first year of the Company’s Dewani. Yet it was a relief to the people of Bengal because it was final and permanent.[^10]

Madras.

From Bengal let us turn to Madras. The story begins with the assignments of land revenues made by the Nabob of Karnatic in payment of his debts to the Company and its servants. The results of the system were testified to by one, Mr. George Smith, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in 1782.

“George Smith, Esquire, attending according to order, was asked how long he resided in India, where, and in what capacity? He said he arrived in India in the year 1764; he resided in Madras from 1767 to October, 1779. Being asked what was the state of trade at Madras at the time when he first knew it, he said it was in a flourishing condition, and Madras one of the first marts in India. Being asked in what condition did he leave it with respect to trade, he replied at the time of his leaving it, there was little or no trade, and but one ship belonging to the place. Being asked in what state the interior country of the Karnatic was with regard to commerce and cultivation when he first knew it, he said at that period he understood the Karnatic to be in a well-cultivated and populous condition, and as such consuming a great many articles of merchandise and trade. Being asked in what condition it was when he left Madras with respect to cultivation, population, and internal commerce, he said in respect to cultivation, greatly on the decline, and also in respect of population; and as to commerce, exceedingly circumscribed.”

Speaking of the Principality of Tanjore, in the Province of Karnatic, one Mr. Petrie said in his evidence before the Committee of Secrecy in 1782:

“Before I speak of the present state of Tanjore country it will be necessary to inform the Committee that not many years ago that province was considered as one of the most flourishing, best cultivated, populous districts in Hindustan. I first saw this country in 1768, when it presented a very different picture from its present situation. Tanjore was formerly a place of great foreign and inland trade; it imported cotton from Bombay and Surat, raw and worked silks from Bengal; sugar, spices, etc., from Sumatra, Malacca, and the eastern islands; gold, horses, elephants, and timber from Pegu, and various articles of trade from China. It was by means of Tanjore that a great part of Haidar Ali’s dominions and the north-western parts of the Mahratta empire were supplied with many European commodities, and with a species of silk manufacture from Bengal, which is almost universally worn as a part of dress by the natives of Hindustan. The exports of Tanjore were muslins, chintz, handkerchiefs, ginghams, various sorts of long-cloths, and a coarse printed cloth, which last constitutes a material article in the investments of the Dutch and the Danes, being in great demand for the African, West Indian, and South American markets. Few countries have more natural advantages than Tanjore; it possesses a rich and fertile soil, singularly well supplied with water from the two great rivers Cavery and Coleroon, which, by means of reservoirs, sluices, and canals, are made to disperse their waters through almost every field in the country; to this latter cause we may chiefly attribute the uncommon fertility of Tanjore. The face of the country is beautifully diversified, and in its appearance approaches nearer to England than any other part of India that I have seen. Such was Tanjore not many years ago, but its decline has been so rapid, that in many districts it would be difficult to trace the remains of its former opulence. . . .

“At this period (1771), as I have been informed, the manufacturers flourished, the country was populous and well cultivated, the inhabitants were wealthy and industrious. Since the year 1771, the era of the first siege, until the restoration of the Raja, the country having been during that period twice the seat of war, and having undergone revolutions in the government, trade, manufactures, and agriculture were neglected, and many thousands of inhabitants went in quest of a more secure abode.”

How fabulous fortunes were made by the servants of the East India Company; how their interests came into conflict with the interests of the Company; how the latter censured the former; how the matter was eventually brought before Parliament for final settlement of the debts claimed from the Nawab by individuals once in the employ of the Company; how seats in Parliament were purchased by one of them, Mr. Paul Benfield, and how eventually all debts were realised up to the last penny, are matters which do not properly fall within the scope of the chapter. Mr. Dutt has described them with some detail and they may be studied there. The following quotation from James Mill’s “History of British India” and from Burke’s speech delivered in the discussion on the Nawab of Arcot’s debts, may however be given here as a sample of how things were managed in those days:

“It was to hold the corrupt benefit of a large parliamentary interest, created by the creditors and creatures, fraudulent and not fraudulent, of the Nawab of Arcot, that . . . the Ministry of 1784 decided that they should all, whether fraudulent or not fraudulent, receive their demands.”[^11]

“Paul Benfield is the grand parliamentary reformer. What region in the empire, what city, what borough, what country, what tribunal in this kingdom, is not full of his labours? In order to station a steady phalanx for all future reforms, the public-spirited usurer, amidst his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor rotten constitution of his native country. For her he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House, to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach, some other Houses, but with real, solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. Paul Benfield made, reckoning himself, no fewer than eight members of the last Parliament. What copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into the veins of the Present. . . .

“For your Minister, this worn-out veteran (Benfield’s agent) submitted to enter into the dusty field of the London contest; and you will remember that in the same virtuous cause he submitted to keep a sort of public office or countinghouse, where the whole business of the last general election was managed. It was openly managed by the direct agent and attorney of Benfield. It was managed upon Indian principles and for an Indian interest. This was the golden cup of abominations . . . which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land, had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? That no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here you have it, here before you. The principal of the grand election manager must be indemnified. Accordingly the claims of Benfield and his crew must be put above all inquiry.”[^12]

An account of what happened to Madras under the British Land Administration system may profitably be preceded by a brief description of the condition of things before the British took charge of the country. It appears from the reports made by the Committee of Secrecy that had been appointed by the Court of Directors (originally in 1775, abolished in 1778, revived in 1783) to inquire into the state of the Northern Circars in the Madras Presidency, that land in that part of the country was held partly by Zemindars and partly by cultivators direct under the ruling authority. In the fifth report of this inquiry is given an account of the village community which is too valuable to be omitted.

“A village, geographically considered, is a tract of country comprising some hundreds or thousands of acres of arable and waste land; politically viewed, it resembles a corporation or township. Its proper establishment of officers and servants consists of the following descriptions: The potail, or head inhabitant, who has the general superintendence of the affairs of the village, settles the disputes of the inhabitants, attends to the police, and performs the duty, already described, of collecting the revenues within his village, a duty which his personal influence and minute acquaintance with the situation and concerns of the people renders him best qualified to discharge; the curnum, who keeps the accounts of cultivation and registers everything concerned with it; the talliar and totie, the duty of the former appearing to consist in a wider and more enlarged sphere of action, in gaining information of crimes and offences, and in escorting and protecting persons travelling from one village to another, the province of the latter appearing to be more immediately confined to the village, consisting, among other duties, in guarding the crops and assisting in measuring them; the boundary-man, who preserves the limits of the village or gives evidence respecting them in case of dispute; the superintendent of tanks and water-courses distributes the water therefrom for the purpose of agriculture; the Bramin, who performs the village worship; the schoolmaster, who is seen teaching the children in the villages to read and write in the sand; the calendar Bramin, or astrologer, who proclaims the lucky or unpropitious periods for sowing and threshing; the smith and carpenter, who manufacture the implements of agriculture and build the dwelling of the Ryot; the potman, or potter; the washerman; the barber; the cowkeeper, who looks after the cattle; the doctor; the dancing-girl, who attends at rejoicings; the musician, and the poet. These officers and servants generally constitute the establishment of a village; but in some parts of the country it is of less extent, some of the duties and functions above described being united in the same person; in others it exceeds the number of individuals which have been described.

“Under this simple form of municipal government the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of villages have been but seldom altered, and though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated, by war, famine, and disease, the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the breaking up and divisions of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged; the Potail is still the head inhabitant, and still acts as the petty judge and magistrate and collector or renter of the village.”

These village communities were not confined to the South. They existed more or less all through India, North, South, East and West. They have now vanished, though in some places the name is still kept up. The substance, however, is gone, perhaps never again to appear. The causes that have operated to bring about the result have been stated by Mr. R. C. Dutt as follows:

“Two causes, however, operated from the commencement of the British rule to weaken the old village communities. An extreme anxiety to enhance the land revenue to its very utmost limits induced the administrators to make direct arrangements with every individual cultivator. An equally unreasonable anxiety to centralise all judicial and executive powers in their own hands led the modern rulers to virtually set aside those village functionaries who had so long exercised these powers within the limits of their own villages. Deprived of their functions, the village communities rapidly fell into decay, and the Indian administration of the present day, better organised in many respects than the administration of the past, suffers from this disadvantage, that it is more autocratic, and rests in a far less degree on the co-operation of the people themselves.”

The history of the Zemindari settlements in the Northern Circars (Madras) may be stated in a few words. These lands were settled with Zemindars until 1778; then Sir Thomas Rumbold made a five-years’ settlement. In 1783 the practice of annual settlements was resumed and continued until 1786, when a three-years’ settlement was concluded on an increased revenue demand. In 1789 a settlement for three and eventually for five years was concluded, and the Zemindars were assessed at two-thirds of their gross collections. For the lands not occupied by the Zemindar was adopted the system which has since become known as the Ryotwari system. So far back as 1787 two different methods were adopted for collecting the revenue due on these lands. “In some places they collected it directly from the cultivators in kind by taking a share of the produce as the Government revenue; and in other places they farmed out the lands for stipulated sums.” The principle of the system was “dealing direct with the cultivator.” As other parts of the country came into the possession of the Company, the principle of settling directly with individual cultivators was made universal and the rights of all middlemen were swept away. The one name which is indelibly written on the Land Administration of the Madras Presidency is that of Thomas Munro, who afterwards rose to the Governorship of the Presidency under the title of Sir Thomas Munro. His assessments were fairly moderate. In no instance, said he, in one of his letters of October 7, 1800, was the Government share “more than one-third. In many it was not more than one-fifth or one-sixth, and in some not more than one-tenth of the gross produce.”[^13] Even under those moderate assessments he showed an increase of 50 per cent., i.e., from £402,637 to £606,909, within seven years. From the context of a letter published by Mr. Dutt in his book “Early History of British Rule” (page 126) it appears that but for fear of being overruled by the Directors Munro’s assessments should have been even more moderate. He had before him the example of a friend “who was about to be removed from the service because he had made assessments which the Board of Revenue had considered too low” (page 127).

While Munro was making the Ryotwari settlements in districts not held by Zemindars, steps were taken in the latter by which it was attempted to oust the proprietors from their holdings. The Zemindars, called the Polygars, revolted and had to be punished. In addition to the death sentences passed on some of the rebels, their lands were confiscated and subjected to Ryotwari settlement. With fourteen of these Southern Polygars permanent settlement was made in 1803. The revenues fixed varied from 41 per cent. to 51 per cent. of the gross rental. Similar settlements were made with the Polygars in Sivaganga and Ramnad. Permanent settlements were also made with the Western Polygars in 1802. But the Polygars of Chitoor were mostly expelled from their estates as a punishment for having resisted British claims by show of force.

The policy of Lord Wellesley was to “obtain for Government the utmost that the land will yield in the shape of rent.”[^14] The Ryotwari system was found to be most favourable to this object and was almost universally adopted. The greatest champion of the system was Thomas Munro who had settled several districts on those principles and had recommended the universal adoption of them for the rest of the country. Before his departure for Europe in 1807 he made a report recommending a Ryotwari settlement for the ceded Districts adding (a) that the assessment should be permanent and that (b) “the exorbitant revenue he had raised,”[^15] viz., 45 per cent. of the gross produce, be reduced by a quarter.

Munro’s recommendation of a permanent Ryotwari settlement was confirmed by Lord William Bentinck, the then Governor of Madras, and six years later when Munro was examined by the Committee of the House of Commons, in connection with the renewal of the East India Company’s Charter in 1813, he repeated his views most forcibly. In the meantime the Board of Revenue at Madras had started another idea, viz., that of a permanent village settlement, which differed from both the Bengal Zemindari settlements and Munro’s Ryotwari settlements in so far as the settlement was to be made neither with individual landlords nor with individual cultivators but with each village community as a unit. The Board of Revenue also supported Munro’s recommendation for a reduction of 25 per cent. in the government demand. The recommendations of the Board of Revenue were accepted by the Government of Madras, which authorised the “conclusion of triennial village settlements as a preparatory measure to the introduction of a permanent village settlement.”[^16] And on the expiration of these triennial settlements they proposed to the Court of Directors the conclusion of a decennial settlement to become permanent if approved by the Directors.[^17]

The Directors, however, refused to sanction the element of permanency. The Government of Madras made two different appeals to the Court of Directors in favour of a permanent settlement, but in vain. We give the following quotations from these dispatches:

“That agriculture was regarded as the basis of national wealth and prosperity; that it was considered essential to the improvement and extension of agriculture to restrict the demands of Government upon landed property; that it was not supposed Government could lose by this restriction, since without it agriculture would never be improved and extended, nor the resources of the country increased. . . . In offering the foregoing remarks, we have considered the Permanent Settlement strictly as a question of fiscal policy. But it does not need to be shown that it is of vital importance also, as being calculated to give to the mass of the people, who are engaged in agriculture, a deep and permanent interest in the stability of our Government.”[^18]

In the following year, the Government of Madras made a still more eloquent appeal to the Court of Directors in favour of permanent village settlements and against permanent Ryotwari settlements.

“If the primary object of a Permanent Settlement be to give the people the management of their own affairs, from the belief that their affairs will be indefinitely managed by themselves than by public officers, how little would that object be attained under such a system (the Ryotwari system)? How entirely would all management still remain in those hands from which it was meant to transfer it. It is singular that, under such a system, professedly designed to protect the rights and interests of landed proprietors, they are to forfeit all property in any land which through general or peculiar calamity or indolence or mismanagement, they may any year fail to cultivate, and their property in it is, on every such occurrence, to escheat to the Government; assuredly a more violent encroachment on landed property, where it really exists, than ever was attempted under any other system. . .

“He (the cultivator) is not secure against a fraudulent measurement on the estimation of the land he quits or the land he occupies; nay, if to escape from the mode of oppression he resolves not to alter his limits, the current business of agriculture, the means of irrigation, the distribution of Tuccavy, or of an abatement of rent on account of calamity, all must be regulated by men who have no interest in his property, no sympathy with his feelings. Surely it were better that confidence should be reposed where self-interest affords a security against its being abused, and that the people should be left to improve the country in their own way, without the encumbrance of useless and ill-judged aid from public officers, and without the dread of their oppression and rapacity. At any rate, we own that the Ryotwari system, proposed by Colonel Munro, seems to us in no respect to deserve the name of a Permanent Settlement of the land revenue, but, on the contrary, to leave land revenue and landed property as unsettled as ever, and the people liable to all that prying, meddling interference of public officers under which no private concern can prosper. . .

“The grand difference between the view at present taken in England regarding Indian land revenue and that taken here, seems to be, that in England the fear is that the public demands upon the resources of India may not keep pace with its prosperity; while here the universal sentiment, we believe without any exception whatever, is, that the prosperity of the country is so much depressed by the public demands, that, without the most liberal and judicious management, there is more danger of its resources declining than room to hope for their speedy increase. This is a sentiment which we cannot too strongly convey to your Honourable Court. It is addressed to your wisdom, to your sense of justice, to your humanity; it concerns the successful administration of your Government no less than the welfare and happiness of a numerous population and the prosperity of an extensive country, favoured by nature, protected from internal commotion and foreign assault, and requiring only moderation in the demands of Government upon its resources to render it rich and flourishing. Compared with the attainment of these great ends, of how little value appears every sacrifice which can be made for them?”[^19]

In 1818, the Board of Revenue repeated its views on the desirability of a permanent village settlement in a minute which R. C. Dutt calls “one of the most exhaustive and memorable minutes ever written in India” and from which we make the following extracts:

“The ancient Zemindars and Polygars were, in fact, the nobility of the country, and though the origin of some of their tenures would not bear too minute a scrutiny, they were connected with the people by ties which it was more politic, more liberal, and more just to strengthen than to dissolve. Had our power in the Circars been as strong on the acquisition of these provinces as it subsequently became at the period of the transfer of the Ceded Districts, the ancient Zemindars, like the Polygars of the latter country, might perhaps have been removed from their lands and reduced to the situation of mere pensioners on our bounty; but when the attachment of the people to their native chieftains and the local situation of many Zemindaris are considered, it may be greatly doubted whether such a policy would not have been as unwise as it would have been ungenerous.

“In the Northern Division of Arcot, all these superiorities (special rights of Mirasdars or hereditary peasant proprietors) were also resumed and incorporated with the public revenue. In short, the survey assessment was raised so high as to absorb in the Government revenue any little rent remaining to the landholders. No intermediate person was acknowledged between the State and the actual cultivator. . . .

“The Ryotwari settlement, in fact, was made annually, frequently by the Tehsildars and Sheristadars (subordinate low-paid officers), and was not in general concluded until after the crop had been raised; the system then was to make as high a settlement as it was practicable to realise. If the crop was good, the demand was raised as high within the survey rates as the means of the Ryots would admit; if the crop was bad, the last farthing was notwithstanding demanded, and no remission was allowed unless the Ryot was totally unable to pay the rent. On this point the most severe scrutiny was instituted, for not only was the whole of the Collector’s detailed establishment of servants employed in an investigation of his means, but each of his neighbours were converted into inquisitors by being themselves made liable for his failure unless they could show that he was possessed of property. . . .

“He (the cultivator) was constrained to occupy all such fields as were allotted to him by the revenue officers, and whether he cultivated them or not, he was, as Mr. Thackery emphatically terms it, saddled with the rent of each. To use the words of Mr. Chaplin, the Collector in Bellary, one of the most able of Colonel Munro’s former assistants, and still one of the most strenuous advocates of the Ryotwari system, it was the custom under it, ’to exert in a great degree the authority, which is incompatible with the existing regulations, of compelling the inhabitants to cultivate a quantity of ground proportionate to their circumstances.’ This he explains to have been done by ’the power to confine and punish them,’ exercised by the Collector and his native revenue servants; and he expressly adds, that if the Ryot was driven by these oppressions from the fields which he tilled, it was the established practice ’to follow the fugitive wherever he went, and by assessing him at discretion, to deprive him of all advantage he might expect to derive from a change of residence.'

“Ignorant of the true resources of the newly-acquired countries, as of the precise nature of their landed tenures, we find a small band of foreign conquerors no sooner obtaining possession of a vast extent of territory, peopled by various nations, differing from each other in language, customs, and habits, than they attempt what would be called a Herculean task, or rather a visionary project even in the most civilised countries of Europe, of which every statistical information is possessed, and of which the Government are one with the people, viz., to fix a land-rent, not on each province, district or country, not on each estate or farm, but on every separate field within their dominions. In pursuit of this supposed improvement, we find them unintentionally dissolving the ancient ties, the ancient usages which united the republic of each Hindu village, and by a kind of agrarian law, newly assessing and parceling out the lands which from time immemorial had belonged to the Village Community collectively, not only among the individual members of the privileged order (Mirasdars and Kadeems), but even among the inferior tenantry (Pykaris), we observe them ignorantly denying, and by their denial abolishing private property in the land, resuming what belonged to a public body (the Gramamanium), and conferring in lieu of it a stipend in money on one individual; professing to limit their demand to each field, but in fact, by establishing such limit, an unattainable maximum, assessing the Ryot at discretion, and, like the Mussulman Government which preceded them, binding the Ryot by force to the plough, compelling him to till the land acknowledged to be over-assessed, dragging him back to it if he absconded, deferring their demand upon him until his crop came to maturity, then taking from him all that could be obtained, and leaving him nothing but his bullocks and seed grain, nay, perhaps obliged to supply him even with these, in order to renew his melancholy task of cultivating, not for himself, but for them.”

The village system advocated by the Board of Revenue was rejected, but what pains the student of Indian History is that the permanency of the assessments, recognised and admitted by the Madras Government down to 1862 in accordance with the promises and declarations of Sir Thomas Munro, has since been ignored and the Government demand is being altered at each recurring settlement, which leaves the agricultural population of Madras in a state of perpetual uncertainty and chronic poverty.

Sir Thomas Munro returned to Madras as Governor in May, 1820, and the Ryotwari system was generally introduced in the same month. All opportunities were seized of acquiring Zemindaris and breaking up village tenures through the high rate of assessments by which the state demand was fixed at 45 per cent. or 50 or 55 per cent. of the field produce. . . . In the Administration report of Madras for 1855–56, it was stated that “the Ryot 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.” In 1857 the Board of Revenue said that “a Madras Ryot is able to retain land perpetually without an increase of assessment. In 1862 the Government of Madras wrote to the Government of India that “there can be no question that one fundamental principle of the Ryotwari system is that the government demand on the land is fixed for ever.” (Letter of February 18, 1862.) Yet none of these declarations and assurances availed the Madras Ryot. Since 1855 he has had “no fixity of rental and no security against enhancement.” In 1858, on the transference of the administration of India from the East India Company to the Crown, Lord Halifax laid down the policy of the Government in the matter of land tax. He fixed it at half of the rent, but in practice, says R. C. Dutt, the land tax in Madras sweeps away the whole of the economic rent, particularly in small holdings.

Northern India.

Turning to Northern India we find the same story of over-assessments and broken pledges. Benares was permanently annexed in 1795 by Lord Cornwallis.

Six years after, the Nawab of Oudh was compelled by a series of unjust coercive measures, fully noted by James Mill in his “History of British India,” to cede to the East India Company “more than one-half and not much less than two-thirds” of his territory. These districts were settled under orders of Henry Wellesley, the brother of the Governor General. That they were over-assessed has been practically admitted by Henry Wellesley himself, who in his work called “Papers Relating to East India Affairs,” has said that although he “was still apprehensive” that the settlement had been made upon an erroneous calculation of the existing assets of the country and that the amount would be with difficulty realised, he “determined not to annul the enforcements which had been recently concluded by the collectors from an apprehension that any immediate interference on my part might tend to weaken their authority,—which at that critical period it appeared to him so necessary to support.” The sentiments expressed in this extract furnish the keynote of British policy in India. If the “man on the spot” errs on the side of the Government he is to be supported; if he errs on the side of the people, he is to be investigated and overruled. The following figures taken from the statement appended to the report of Henry Wellesley show the increase in the revenue made by the British:

In 1803 a Regulation was enacted (XXV of 1803) recognising the triennial settlement of the land revenue already made, and notifying that, at the expiration of that term, another settlement would be made for three years, to be followed by a settlement for four years, at the expiration of which a permanent settlement would be concluded.

“In these terms,” says the Select Committee of the House of Commons in their report of 1812 (Fifth Report, page 51), “the Supreme Government pledged itself to the land holders for the introduction of a Permanent Settlement” at the expiration of an aggregate of ten years from the first settlement of Henry Wellesley.

In 1803 and 1805 first conquests were made in Northern India and practically the whole country between the Jumna and the Ganges now known as the United Province of Agra and Oudh with the exception of parts of Oudh that remained with the Nabob till Dalhousie made short business of him, came under British sway. The Regulations recently introduced in the Ceded Districts of Oudh were introduced into the “Conquered Provinces” also and “the same pledge which had been given to the land holders of the former country” about the permanency of the settlement after ten years “was given in the latter. . . . Two years later the pledge was repeated, but with the proviso that the conclusion of the permanent settlement would depend on the confirmation of the Court of Directors.”[^20]

Then came the famous discussions on the question of a permanent settlement in Northern India; the Special Commissioners R. W. Cox and Henry St. George Tucker submitted their report, “admitting the benefits of a Permanent Settlement, but declaring themselves adverse to the immediate conclusion of such a settlement in the Ceded and the Conquered Provinces.”[^21]

The arguments of the Special Commissioners were replied to by H. Clebrooke, who said:

“3. Government is pledged, by the proclamations of the 4th July, 1802 and 11th July, 1805, to conclude a Permanent Settlement with the landholders, at the expiration of the periods there specified, for such lands as may be in a sufficiently improved state of cultivation to warrant the measure, on fair and equitable terms. It was judged expedient, on full consideration of the subject, and with ample knowledge of the circumstances now alleged, to anticipate these periods; and accordingly, in June, 1807, the Governor-General in Council notified to the Zemindars and other proprietors, by Regulation X., 1807, that the Jumma assessed for the last year of the ensuing settlement shall remain fixed for ever, if they be willing to engage, and the arrangement shall receive the sanction of the Court of Directors.

“4. The pledge which has thus been solemnly contracted cannot be forfeited without such a glaring violation of promise as would lose us deservedly the confidence of the people. . . .

“9. The argument on which, if I mistake not, the late Commissioners chiefly rely, is that the right of participating in future improvement ought not to be relinquished, because Government is in a manner the landholder and proprietor of a vast estate. . . .

“26. Upon the important occasions of the Permanent Settlement of Bengal and Behar, and of the territories on the coast of Coromandel, and after mature deliberation, a claim of participation in the future improvement of the waste lands was relinquished to a greater extent than the proportion at which they are computed by the late Board of Commissioners in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces.

“27. The happy result of the measure is now witnessed in Bengal. The reviving prosperity of the country, its increased wealth and rapid improvement, are unquestionably due to the Permanent Settlement, the principle of which was so wise that even the serious errors that were committed in filling up the outline of the plan could not ultimately disappoint its views. . . .

“32. I appeal to this experience in preference to any speculative argument. . . . It was expected that the improvement of estates by the culture of waste lands would enrich the landholder by the increase of his usual income, and enable him to meet the variations of seasons and temporary calamities of drought and inundation without needing remissions of revenue.

“33. These expectations have been realised. . . .

“38. It appears to be a very prevalent opinion that the British system of administration is not generally palatable to our Indian subjects. Admitting this opinion to be not unfounded, it follows that while they taste none but the unpalatable parts of the system, and while the only boon which would be acceptable to them is withheld, the landed proprietors and with them the body of the people, must be more and more estranged from the Government, in proportion to the expectations which they formed, and the disappointment which they will have experienced. . . .

“63. I shall conclude by declaring my concurrence in the Commissioners’ recommendation, that steadiness, moderation and justice should be the features borne by the administration of Government. But it is not by abandoning a measure deliberately resolved on, and beneficial to our subjects, that we shall prove our steadiness. It is not by grasping at the highest revenue and wringing from our peasants the utmost rent, that we shall evince our moderation; nor is it by depriving the sons of our petty landholders of their birthright that we shall demonstrate our sense of justice.” (Colebrook’s minute of 1808.)

Lord Minto, then Governor-General, supported H. Colebrook and said that on a mature consideration of all the documents connected with the establishment of a Permanent Settlement in the provinces of Bengal, Behar, Orissa, and Benares, and in the territories dependent on the Presidency of Fort St. George, and of all the reports and minutes respecting the proposed Permanent Settlement in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, he was entirely satisfied of the sound policy, or rather of the urgent necessity, of the measure. (Letter dated September 15, 1808.)

The Directors, however, had made up their minds. They replied:

“No settlement shall be declared permanent in Cuttack or in any other of our Provinces till the whole proceedings preparatory to it have been submitted to us, and till your resolutions upon these proceedings have received our sanction and concurrence.”

Nine months after, they again wrote that “the object of the present despatch is to caution you in the most pointed manner against pledging us to the extension of the Bengal fixed assessment to our newly acquired territories.” (Despatch of 1st February, 1811, and 27th November, 1811.)

The Government of India naturally resented this and pointed out that the pledges given in the Regulations of 1803 and 1805 and the Proclamation which formed a part of Section 29 of Regulation XXV of 1803 were unconditional; that these pledges had been given by the responsible servants and agents of the company and were therefore binding on them. “Had the Honourable Court’s dissent,” wrote the Indian Government, “to the arrangements established by the Regulations of 1803 and 1805 been signified at an early period after the enaction of those regulations, the inherent powers of control possessed by the court might have been urged in support of such dissent, although those regulations contained no reserve of the court’s approval; but now that the whole term of the contract has expired in the ceded provinces, and two-thirds of it in the conquered countries, the annulment of it, at this distant period, could not, we apprehend, as already intimated, be reconciled to the dictates either of policy or justice.”[^22]

Lord Minto, in a minute recorded by himself, endeavoured to construe the directors’ recent orders in a restricted sense, as he could not reconcile a literal construction of those orders “with the maintenance of the faith of government so publicly and so solemnly pledged to the landlords.”[^23]

One more protest was submitted by Lord Minto against the directors’ orders before he left India in 1813. He pointed out that a permanent settlement involved no sacrifice of revenues; that a variable land-tax had been condemned even by Adam Smith in his “Wealth of Nations,” as a discouragement to improvements in land; that a permanent settlement could be effected for the estates actually held by the landlords in Northern India without including the waste lands; and finally if the object of good government was “to ameliorate generally the conditions of the natives, it is our firm conviction that no arrangement or measure will tend so speedily and effectually to the accomplishment of those important objects as the establishment of a permanent settlement.” ^24

But the directors of the company were obdurate. Their professed desire for the good of the people of India would not move them to surrender their own profits. They had indeed fixed upon a plan of getting out of the pledges given in 1803 and 1805. They suggested an evasion which would not be held valid by any court of justice, and which was unworthy of honest merchants, not to speak of the rulers of an empire.

“Continued possession and a punctual discharge of the dues of government during the triennial leases formed only one part of the condition on which government pledged itself to a permanent settlement with the landholders. There was another and still more important clause in the condition, viz., that the land should, in the interval, be brought to a sufficiently advanced stage of cultivation to warrant us in fixing perpetual limits to our demand upon it. The precise point of improvement at which such a measure might become expedient, or even justifiable, was not determined by the Regulation of 1803 and 1805, and would not, indeed, be determined by any prospective Regulation. The question was left completely open for the future exercise of the judgment of Government; nor is there anything in these Regulations by which its decision can, or ought to be, in the smallest degree fettered.” ^25 No Permanent Settlements were made in any estates in 1813, nor have any been made since, which shows that the argument was only a subterfuge to evade a solemn pledge.

Repeated efforts were made by responsible English officers to secure a Permanent Settlement for the Ceded and the Conquered Provinces in accordance with the pledge mentioned above, but the Directors remained obdurate.

All these efforts failed and the policy of the Government as to land tax was embodied in Regulation VII of 1822. The settlements were to be revised periodically. In estates held by superior landlords the assessments were to be so regulated as to leave the landlord a net profit of 20 per cent of the Government demand. When the lands were held by cultivators in common tenancy the State demand might be raised to 95 per cent of the rents. In actual practice it came to “over 83 per cent” in one case and to practically the whole of the economic rent in another.^26

The system introduced by Regulation VII of 1822 was found to be impracticable and oppressive. It “broke down ultimately by reason of its own harshness.” A new policy was laid down by Regulation IX of 1833, by which the Government demand was reduced to two-thirds of the gross rental and the settlements were made for thirty years. In accordance with the Regulation, settlements were made by a “very just and humane officer” of the name of Robert Bird, but so high was the Government demand that numerous villages were deserted by the peasants and vast tracts of the country became waste until the Government felt bound to reduce the Government share to 50 per cent. of the net rental in 1855. This continues the basis on which settlements are now made in Northern India.

Bombay. To complete the story of the development of the land tax in India, we have to state what was done in the Bombay Presidency. Bombay was more fortunate than the other provinces, in so far as the administration of its affairs and the settlement of the country, after its annexation in 1817, were entrusted to a man noted for his broad sympathies and statesmanlike desire to promote the prosperity of the people put in his charge. This man was Mountstuart Elphinstone (afterward Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone, author of a monumental history of early and Moslem India).

Elphinstone’s “Report on the Territories Conquered from the Peshwas,” submitted to the Governor-General in October, 1819, is a masterly account of the country as it was then, and of the measures adopted for its settlement by the British. From it we make the following 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 con-tain 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 Bara Baloti. These are the astrologer, the priest, the carpenter, barber, etc., 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.

“A large portion of the Rayats are the proprietors of their estates, subject to the payment of a fixed land tax to Government; 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.” . . . Then follow certain detailed recommendations which Elphinstone made for the future administration of the country. In conclusion he said:

“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.”

We have given these long extracts as they contain the most valuable testimony regarding the institutions of the country in pre-British days and furnish incontestable material for comparison.

But even Elphinstone was unable to override or depose the greed of his masters, the Directors of the East India Company. In reviewing the settlement assessments of the territories under his Governorship he had on several occasions expressed his concern at the rapid growth of revenue, and the only thing he could do was to approve of Mr. Chaplin’s decision to fix it at one-third the gross product.

We have a piece of valuable evidence on the aspects of this system of taxation left on record by the distinguished English divine, Bishop Heber, who toured India, 1824–26. In his letter to the Right Honourable Charles Williams Wynn, dated Karnatic, March, 1826, he said:

“Neither Native nor European agriculturist, I think, can thrive at the present rate of taxation. Half the gross produce of the soil is demanded by Government, and this, which is nearly the average rate wherever there is not a Permanent Settlement, is sadly too much to leave an adequate provision for the present, even with the usual frugal habits of the Indians, and the very inartificial and cheap manner in which they cultivate the land. Still more is it an effective bar to anything like improvement; it keeps the people, even in favourable years, in a state of abject penury; and when the crop fails in even a slight degree, it involves a necessity on the part of the Government of enormous outlays in the way of remission and distribution, which, after all, do not prevent men, women, and children dying in the streets in droves, and the roads being strewed with carcasses. In Bengal, where, independent of its exuberant fertility, there is a Permanent Assessment, famine is unknown. In Hindustan (Northern India) on the other hand, I found a general feeling among the King’s officers, and I myself was led from some circumstances to agree with them, that the peasantry in the Company’s Provinces are, on the whole, worse off, poorer, and more dispirited, than the subjects of the Native Princes; and here in Madras, where the soil is, generally speaking, poor, the difference is said to be still more marked. The fact is, no Native Prince demands the rent which we do, and making every allowance for the superior regularity of our system, etc., I met with very few men who will not, in confidence, own their belief that the people are over-taxed, and that the country is in a gradual state of impoverishment. The Collectors do not like to make this avowal officially. Indeed, now and then, a very able Collector succeeds in lowering the rate to the people, while by diligence he increases it to the State. But, in general, all gloomy pictures are avoided by them as reflecting on themselves, and drawing on them censure from the Secretaries at Madras or Calcutta, while these, in their turn, plead the earnestness with which the Directors at home press for more money.

“I am convinced that it is only necessary to draw less money from the peasants, and to spend more of what is drawn within the country, to open some door to Indian industry in Europe, and to admit the natives to some greater share in the magistracy of their own people, to make the Empire as durable as it would be happy.” ¹

With this might be read the following answers given by Mr. Robert Richards, a retired Anglo-Indian officer, to the questions put to him by the Committee of the House of Commons in an enquiry on the subject.

“Where the revenue is collected, as it is in India, on the principle of the Government being entitled to one-half of the gross produce of the soil, and vast numbers of officers, whose acts it is impossible to control, are also employed in the realisation of this revenue, it is a moral impossibility for any people whatever to live or prosper so as to admit of a very extensive commercial intercourse being carried on with them. . . .

“It may be done (i.e. manufacture of articles for foreign exportation) in lands not subject to the aforementioned exorbitant tax. It may also be the case in Bengal, where the Permanent Settlement has been enforced for many years, and where its original ruinous pressure is no longer so severely felt; but it would be quite impossible in lands, for example, subject to the Ryotwari Tax, or from lands where from 45 per cent. to 50 per cent. of the gross produce is actually levied as revenue.

“I am personally acquainted with instances where the revenue assessed upon certain lands has actually exceeded the gross produce. I have also known other lands in India where a revenue has been assessed as being specifically derivable from rice lands, plantations of fruit trees, pepper, vines, and other articles, and each portion particularly described; but on comparing the assessment with the lands in question, those very lands have been found to have been nothing but jungle within the memory of man.”

The whole subject has been exhaustively discussed by Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs in a book of 500 pages called “The Present Land Tax in India” (London, 1838), in which he points out that among ancient nations — the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians and the Chinese, the right of the State consisted in levying a tax of a tenth of the produce. Among the Hindus the right of the King was to a levy of one-eighth, one-sixth, or one-twelfth of the produce according to the nature of the soil and the expense of cultivation. We make no apology for making the following quotation from page 108 of his book:

“The flourishing condition of the country under the Moghal Emperors is recorded by all European travellers who have visited the East within the last three centuries; and the wealth, the population, and the national prosperity of India, far surpassing what they had seen in Europe, filled them with astonishment. That the condition of the people and the country under our Government presents no such spectacle, is every day proclaimed by ourselves, and we may therefore assume it to be true. . . .

“If I have proved that we have departed from the practice of our predecessors, that we have established a system far exceeding theirs in rigour, even in the worst of their regular governments, then indeed there is some reason to call for a reform, and to hope at least for investigation. . . .

“ I conscientiously believe that under no Government whatever, Hindu or Mohommedan, professing to be actuated by law, was any system so subversive of the prosperity of the people at large as that which has marked our administration. . . .

“ Although we have everywhere confessed that the heavy pressure of taxation was the most cruel injury they sustained, we have in no instance alleviated that pressure. So far from it, we have applied a false measure for fixing the impost, that of money instead of produce; we have pretended to abolish minor taxes on other classes, but we have laid the amount on the landholder; and by minute scrutiny into every individual’s concerns, have, under the plea of justice to ourselves, in many instances deprived the cultivators of the means they enjoyed of paying the heavy taxes from which they sought relief under us, till by rigid exactions we have increased our own revenue and reduced the people to the condition of mere labourers. This is the professed maxim of our rule, the certain and inevitable result of taking the whole surplus profit of land. . . .

“ Having assumed that the Government is the sole landlord, it (the present Government), considers the land to be the most profitable source of all revenue; it employs a host of public servants to superintend the cultivator; and it professes to take all the profit. A Land-Tax like that which now exists in India, professing to absorb the whole of the landlord’s rent, was never known under any Government in Europe or Asia.”

The results of the settlements in the Bombay Presidency in 1824–28 are thus stated in the official language of the Bombay Administration Report of 1872–73 (page 41).

“From the outset it was found impossible to collect anything approaching to the full revenue. In some districts not one-half could be realised. Things now went rapidly from bad to worse. Every year brought its addition to the accumulated arrears of revenue, and the necessity for remission or modification of rates. . . . Every effort, lawful and unlawful, was made to get the utmost out of the wretched peasantry, who were subjected to torture, in some instances, cruel and revolting beyond all description, if they would not or could not yield what was demanded. Numbers abandoned their homes, and fled into the neighbouring Native States. Large tracts of land were thrown out of cultivation, and in some districts no more than a third of the cultivable area remained in occupation.”

It is no wonder that the system had to be abandoned and was replaced by another inaugurated by the joint report of Messrs. Goldsmid, Wingate and Davidson in 1847, which established the principle of the separate assessment of each field as distinguished from a holding or a village, for a fixed term of 30 years on the basis of the estimated value of lands. The Bombay settlements are now made on these principles.

The Punjab. The Punjab, which is said to be the granary of India, was annexed to the British dominions, part by Lord Hardinge in 1846 and the rest of it by Lord Dalhousie in 1849.

How the British came into conflict with the Sikhs in the Punjab, after the strong hand of Maharajah Ranjit Singh was removed from the control of its affairs by his death in 1839; how bravely the Sikhs fought; how they were betrayed by the treachery of their own leaders and how Lord Hardinge decided to annex a part of the province, leaving the rest under the sovereignty of the minor son of Ranjit Singh, to be administered during his minority by a council of regency appointed by him and under the guidance of a British Resident with practically unlimited powers, are matters which belong to the domain of political history and are outside the scope of this book. So are all the subsequent events which led to the second Sikh War and the annexation of the Punjab by Lord Dalhousie, in spite of the protests made by Henry Lawrence, the British resident at the Court of the minor Maharaja of the Punjab and many others, who argued that having assumed the guardianship of the person and the property of the minor Maharaja by a treaty solemnly entered into between the British Government and the three guardians of the Maharaja in 1846, the British Government could not by any rule of law, or of justice, equity and good conscience, deprive the Maharaja of his dominions, simply because the Sikh army or some of the subordinate leaders of the Punjab had revolted against the authority of the British. Lord Dalhousie knew of no law but that of Empire-making. The map of British India was incomplete without the Punjab, so he annexed the province and his masters in England approved his decision. There is an authentic official record of the condition of the Punjab, at the time of the annexation, in the first administrative report of the province, compiled by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Richard Temple, under the instructions of the Lawrence brothers, afterwards known as Sir Henry and Lord John Lawrence.

This report shows that the Sikh rule fully recognised private property in land and although the taxa-tion was heavy yet “in some respects the Government gave back with one hand what it had taken with the other.” We are told that the land tax under Mahajara Ranjit Singh was in theory assumed to be one-half of the gross produce, but in practice “may be said to have varied from two-fifths to one-third of the gross produce.” It was raised not in money but in kind and it was therefore, says R. C. Dutt, proportionate to the produce of the fields in good years as well as in bad years. Under such a system cultivators were not called upon to pay a fixed and immutable sum when their harvest had failed; nor were they required in years of low prices to pay a revenue, calculated on the basis of high prices.²⁸

John Lawrence, the first Chief Commissioner of the Punjab after annexation, was a kind-hearted ruler, sympathetic to the people, and his instructions were contained in the following sentence which occurs in one of his letters to Nicholson: “Assess low, leaving fair and liberal margin to the occupiers of the soil and they will increase their cultivation and put the revenue almost beyond the reach of bad seasons.” But the actual assessments were not low. Mr. S. S. Thorburn, ex-commissioner in the Punjab, has said that the first effect of the British occupation of the Punjab was over-assessment (Digby’s “Prosperous British India,” footnote on p. 91). In 1847-48 the Land Revenue of the Punjab was £820,000. Within three years of the British annexation it went up to £1,060,000.²⁹ “There has been a general demand,” says the Punjab report for 1852, “among the agriculturists for a return to grain payments,—to a division or appraisement of the crops every season.” The figures for 1856-57 and 1857-58 show a considerable increase in revenue as compared with the figures for 1852.

In the regular settlements started in 1860, one-sixth of the produce was demanded as the land revenue, but by later rules framed under the Land Revenue Act of 1871 the Government limited its demand to one-half of the actual rents paid by ordinary tenants-at-will in average years, in accordance with the policy determined upon in connection with the then Northwestern Provinces. In theory, that is the principle on which the land tax is assessed in the Punjab now. Additions to it have been made in the shape of water-rates and various cesses for roads, police, education, etc., etc. The story of these cesses has been very effectively told by Mr. Thorburn, I. C. S. (a retired Financial Commissioner of the Punjab) in his book called “The Punjab in Peace and War,” London, 1904. When the Government decided to establish a Famine Insurance Fund every province was required to contribute. Mr. Thorburn gives a picture of how the Punjab quota was raised. Says he: “In the eyes of the Punjab Government, the peasantry were the class to be squeezed, they being ‘prosperous,’ lightly assessed, accustomed to bear burdens without murmuring and prospectively the chief beneficiaries from the tax. The sum wanted was £120,000 each year. To enhance the land revenue pro tanto would have been simple but illegal.” So “the legal difficulty was surmounted by calling the enhancements a ‘cess.’ Accordingly an additional local rate cess of 6 per cent. on the land revenue was legalised and levied.” (Page 236.)

Central Provinces. The story of the development of the land tax in the Central Provinces is very similar to that of the other provinces. Immediately after the annexation of the different parts, enormous increases in the land tax were the features of the British assessment. For example, in the Hoshangabad and Leonee districts “the assessment fixed by Major Macpherson in 1821 was £10,359 from an area which had been assessed by the Mahratta Government at £2,277 only.” In 1825 it was still further increased to £13,877. This enormous demand could not be realised and remissions had to be made,³⁰ which “were not sufficient and very strenuous efforts were made to collect the revenue by any means, so that to this day, a most lively recollection of the tortures and cruelties then suffered lives in the minds of the Zemindars.” (Settlement Report of Hoshangabad, 1855, by Charles Elliot, paragraph 50.) At last in 1836 a twenty-year settlement was made at a reduced assessment of £6,192.

In the settlement of the Sagor by Col. Maclean (1867) we find the following remarks: “The Government demands press so heavily upon the people that all enterprise has been crushed, and there is not the slightest attempt at improvement. I have personally satisfied myself that in many instances the Government demand exceeds the gross rental assets of some villages.

“The people have lost heart to that extent that in some instances the rightful owners of hereditary descent refused on any terms to accept the proprietary rights of villages.

“The impressions conveyed to me on inspecting these tracts was that the people were dead, so vast was the desolation, and so scarce the signs of life or of human beings.” (Settlement report of Sagar, by Colonel Maclean in 1867.) It is needless to add that this state of things was strongly condemned by the Government of India and new settlements were made in 1863-67. The principle of one-half of the rental of states as government revenue, was adopted, but the actual results in some cases exceeded that proportion (see a table given by Mr. R. C. Dutt on page 30 of his book called “India in the Victorian Age,” which he takes from a letter of the Chief Commissioner to the Governor-General of India, No. 1862 of April 11, 1901).

The Present Policy as to the Land Tax. The more recent history of the question and the controversy on the subject have been summed up by Mr. R. C. Dutt in a chapter headed “The Land Resolutions of Lords Ripon and Curzon,” in his book “India in the Victorian Age.” This chapter is a fair summary of the case on both sides and gives ample quotations from the originals. The general principle is that the Government demand is fixed at 50 per cent. of the rental and the settlement is made for twenty to thirty years. For the effect of this policy on the economic condition of the population of India depending on agriculture and comprising nine-tenths of the whole, the reader is referred to the next chapter.

The general Government position on the subject has been given by us in the earlier part of this chapter from the Blue Book for 1913-14, viz., the statement showing the moral and material progress of India.

A Summary of Land Revenue Receipts from 1861 to 1913-14.

“The total increase in the gross land revenue during the past fifty years,” says the writer of the Government memorandum (1909) “has been sixty per cent.”

measured in rupees; though as the gold value of the rupee has fallen from 24d. to 16d. the increase, if measured in gold, has been less than 6 per cent.”

Footnotes

^24 Letter dated 17th July, 1813.

“The Village Communities are little Republics, having nearly everything that they want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindu, Pathan, Moghal, Mahratta, Sikh, English, are masters in turn; but the Village Communities remain the same. In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves; a hostile army passes through the country; the Village Community collect their cattle within their walls, and let the enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be directed against themselves and the force employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly villages at a distance, but when the storm has passed over they return and resume their occupations. If a country remain for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the villages cannot be inhabited, the scattered villagers nevertheless return whenever the power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the places of their fathers, the same site for the village, the same position for the houses, the same lands, will be reoccupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when the village was depopulated; and it is not a trifling matter that will drive them out, for they will often maintain their post through times of disturbance and convulsion, and acquire strength sufficient to resist pillage and oppression with success.

“The union of the Village Communities, each one forming a separate State in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India through all revolutions and changes which they have suffered, and it is in a high degree conducive to their happiness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence. I wish, therefore, that the Village Constitutions may never be disturbed, and I dread everything that has a tendency to break them up. I am fearful that a Revenue Settlement with each individual cultivator, as is the practice in the Ryotwari Settlement, instead of one with the Village Community through their representatives, the headmen, might have such a tendency. For this reason, and for this only, I do not desire to see the Ryotwari Settlement generally introduced into the Western Provinces.”