Hypothesis:
“History is always stranger than fiction”
The above statement quotes Ian Morris, a British historian, archaeologist and
professor, from his bestselling book, Why the West Rules (for now!), which he
starts by positing a very interesting alternate history paradigm.
What if, between 1839 and 1842, the Chinese had won the Opium Wars?
To you or me, that might sound outlandish.
“The British were a 19th-century imperial powerhouse.
And isn’t China being powerful a more recent phenomenon?” is what the
armchair historian would say.
But at any point in history, if an individual selected at random had to decide
whether they were to hedge their bets on China, among the great Asian
imperial powerhouses
Or Britain, a tainted European island nation, then the layman would blindly side
with China.
How is that relevant here, exactly?
Well, the relevance can be explained through a question.
How exactly did Britain get here?
The answer? Adam Smith, Venture Companies, and, the star of this show,
Colonialism.
Through this project, I explain how the British used fiscal instruments to ensure
that “the sun never set” on their rule in India.
Now, as an Indian student, I followed my guttural instinct and went to the
NCERT website to find the 8th-grade History textbook.
And, as usual, while the NCERT was simple and easy to understand, it lacked
context and depth. Context and depth are not from the British perspective, but
from the Indian perspective.
The NCERT version of events can be summarised as follows:
The original system of revenue collection once the British received Diwani rights
was the “permanent settlement” system, which fixed a certain amount of land
revenue, and the traditional Zamindars were to provide that amount to the
Company Sarkar, failing which they lost their zamindari rights. This system was
inadequate due to the inability to revise rent, which was too high during bad
harvest years and fairly low during good harvest.
Following this, the Mahalwari system was introduced, which asked groups of
villages, or mahals, to provide the Sarkar with certain revenue, which was
periodically revised. However, this revenue demand was always set too high to
be met.
The final blow came with the Ryotwari or Munro system, wherein the company
collected revenue from individual farmers, rather than collectives, as was
traditional in southern India.
A simple narrative. Simple, easy and understandable.
Also incomplete, inadequate, and lacking conclusivity.
I want to do better than that. I do not wish to create a narrative. I simply wish
for an explanation of each of the three major British revenue collection
systems, why and how they came into being, their impact, and what flaws each
system had.
How the Permanent Settlement came into being
Contrary to popular understanding, the Permanent Settlement system was not
the brainchild of Charles Cornwallis and Warren Hasting alone. The first
mention of an unrevised revenue system was by Alexander Dow, a scottish
mercantilist, who recommended an “assessment for ever” (1770) in the
Company’s then newly acquired Bengal Diwani. Similar ideas were proposed by
Henry Pattullo in 1772, and Philip Francis in 1776. So, why were so many British
mercantilists interested in setting a fixed land revenue for Bengal? The answer
is rather simple. They wanted the landlords to reinvest.
The permanent settlement was introduced 1793. Now, at this time, the British
had very limited political control in India, and were still a largely financial entity.
They had not yet stumbled upon the Helenian Dagger that was colonialism.
They wanted the value of the land under them to increase, while maintaining
economic stability for the company. The best way, they thought, was to set a
fixed rent, so that whenever a good harvest occurred, landlords would use the
surplus revenue to improve their land.
The present landlords were the Zamindars. They served roles not purely limited
to that of a landlord, though. They served as mediators, revenue collectors, and
even money lenders in times of distress. That much power hardly ever yields
good results. According to company and contemporary accounts of the time,
the Zamindari system was plagued with corruption.
Thus, we finally come to Charles Cornwallis. Cornwallis’s major contribution was
the introduction of a contractual relationship between the Zamindars and the
peasants. Permanent Zamindari settlements were made in Bengal, Bihar,
Orissa, Banares division of U.P. This settlement was further extended in 1800 to
Northern Carnatic (north-eastern part of Madras) and North-Western Provinces
(eastern U.P.). It roughly covered 19 percent of total area of British India.
So, in conclusion: How did the permanent system come into being? By virtue of
the desire of the British to increase the value of assets while maintaining their
own stability.
Impact of the Permanent Settlement System
When originally introduced as the “Zamindari System” by Hastings, the land
rights were sold to the highest bidder (id est he who promised highest revenue
to the company), leading to an alienation of the traditional Zamindars from the
land.
When Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement system through the
Permanent Settlement act of 1793, he made changes to make sure that the
Zamindars felt a sense of ownership. Zamindars were made the proprietors of
the land, the company conducted surveys to set revenue demands (10/11ths to
the company, 1/10th to the Zamindar) which were not to be changed, and the
tenants were given records, called pattas, that informed them about the land
that they were leased, and the revenue they had to pay to the Zamindars.
The Company had decided that the proprietorship of the Zamindars could be
actioned at any point if they failed to meet the Sarkar’s revenue demand,
which was set so high that it left the Zamindars merely with means of
sustenance.
Issues with Permanent Settlement System :
However, the surveys were inadequately conducted, resulting in the rents being
fixed inordinately high. This in turn led to the land of the Zamindars being
auctioned, and being purchased mostly by Britishers.
The few Zamindars who managed to keep up with the sky-high prices were the
ones who used unscrupulous means to do so, resulting in peasant revolts.
Thus, primarily because of inadequate revenue generation, the permanent
settlement was removed.
How the Ryotwari came into being:
Whilst I should have mentioned this fact during the introduction of the
Permanent Settlement system itself, I withheld saying this till the current point
for a reason that shall be made clear shortly:
The British didn’t really invent any systems. They just knew how to make things
worse for the populous they were in charge of, and better for themselves. The
Zamindari system that Charles Cornwallis “conceived” had been the norm for
years, he just made it worse by setting the tax requirements too high. The
same can be said for the Ryotwari system. The Ryotwari, or direct revenue
collection system, had been the norm in southern India for the last few
centuries, as, unlike Northern and Northwestern India, private property was
permitted to exist. The British, however, as they were with the Zamindari
system, were not satiated by the way things were.
The reason I did not mention the fact eluded to at the beginning of this header
in the introduction of the Permanent Settlement system is that this fact is
even clearer with the ryotwari system, where the only change came in the way
that the amount collected was to be decided, as mentioned in the next section.
Initially, they tried to implement the later discussed Mahalwari system in
southern India too, as Zamindari and Ryotwari were criticised by the Tanjore
Committee (EPW, V.28, p.A151), but due to its unacceptable nature, it was
replaced with the Ryotwari system soon thereafter.
The Ryotwari System, in the British perspective, to quote JS Mill, was “a
perpetual lease without its responsibilities, inasmuch as he [the Ryot] can at
any time throw up his lands, but cannot be ejected so long as he pays his dues;
he receives assistance in difficult seasons, and is irresponsible for the payment
of his neighbours”.
What that quote leaves out is that the rent was set, again, inordinately high.
According to a paper published by Michihiro Ogawa from The University of Tokyo
in the Journal of Asian Network for GIS-based Historical Studies,
“The territory of the Marathas in the eighteenth century was divided into
thirteen provinces, called suba (Kulkarni 1996: 181), which were in turn
subdivided into several parganas. A pargana consisted of several contiguous
villages. START HERE Among these three segmental units, a subha was
administered by a Governor who was sent by the Central Government, while a
village was administered by a hereditary village headman, who was called patil.
Between subha and village, a pargana was managed by the officer sent from
the government and by the hereditary local officer. The former was called the
kamavisdar, who represented the Central Government, and the latter was the
desai or deshmukh, who represented the local community. Under the Marathas,
the pargana was the linchpin for government control over local areas. Even in
the British period, parganas, which were renamed taluka under colonial rule,
were still important administrative units. The Ryotwari settlement introduced
pargana to pargana in the nineteenth century. The settlement reports of this
land system under the British rule were produced pargana-wise only. “
Thus, as mentioned, the British did not really invent a new method of revenue
extraction.
Under the influence of the scholarship of their predecessors like Montesquieu
and Bernier, the Brittons too took the negatives of the system to the
theoretical extremes, and completely sidelined any benefits of the original.
It was stale bread, in new packaging.
Impact of the Ryotwari system
The taxation collected was set not on the basis of an assessment of what the
Royt actually produced, but instead on the basis of the “potential of the soil”,
which, in some cases, was over 50% of the farmer’s total revenue.
This led to the rent to be set inordinately high, and since the plot of land was
leased to the farmer, the inadequacies of the Ryotwari system are often cited
as the reason behind the emergence of the “Landless Labourer” phenomenon,
as when the Ryots were unable to pay, they lost their land.
The Ryotwari settlements were made in major portions of Bombay, Madras and
Sindh Province. The principles of this system were also applied to Assam and
Burma.
Issues with Ryoatwari
The reason for the failure of the Ryotwari system was, in a way, threefold.
The first and primary reason was the strictness with which the system was
enforced. As it was introduced after a gruesome string of Anglo-Mysore wars,
the British Raj was very particular about rent collection, demanding unrevised
rents set on the basis of 1799-1800.
Secondly, The government necessitated that the Royts must pay revenue in
cash, as opposed to the traditional form of revenue collection, which was in the
form of kind, more particularly in the form of a fraction of the farmer’s produce.
This, in turn, necessitated farmers to grow cash crops, like cotton, instead of
traditional food produce.
Lastly, after the American Civil War ended, the demand for cotton imports
reduced drastically, leading to the investments made by the farmers moot, as
the “cash” crops could no longer get them cash.
Thus, a conglomeration of unyielding management, and an insistence on cash
revenue when the global geopolitical scenario was not agreeable with said
aforesaid, the Ryotwari system had to be eliminated.
How the Mahalwari System came into being:
The Mahalwari system was different from its contemporaries in one key way:
The other settlements were individualistic.
The term “mahalwari” comes from “mahal”, meaning group.
While the average Indian correlates the term “Mahal” with a palace, it must be
understood that the ‘Mahal’ is a collection of all the buildings in a royal
courtyard, and is, in the case of land revenue collection, the Mahal is the
collection of villagers, from one or more villages, who bear collective
responsibility for revenue collection.
In the Mahal system, the entire Mahal was inspected, and a rent (which was
periodically revised) was set for the mahal. This system was initially brought to
India by Holt Mackenzie, but his applications had caused, to quote the next
governor general William Bentick, “widespread misery”. Under the supervision of
Martins Bird, the scheme was re-introduced after being revised. Officers called
“Lambardars, “Numberdars”, “Talukdars” were in-charge of assigning the land,
and “Pattwaris” were in-charge of keeping a record of land rights.
Impact of the Mahalwari system:
The Mahalwari tenure was introduced in major portion of U.P., the Central
Provinces, the Punjab (with variations) and the central providences;-while in
Oudh villages are placed under taluqdar or middlemen with whom the
government deals directly. This system covered nearly 30 percent of the British
controlled area.
The system took back power from the hands of powerful and often corrupt
zamindars, only to put it in the hands of the now powerful and corrupt
intermediaries.
Different regions followed different systems, including the Patidar mahalwari
system, the zamindar mahalwari system, the Talukdar mahalwari, Muffassal
mahalwari, Muqadammi mahalwari, chaichara mahalwari, and others.
These systems were not always mutually exclusive, but they were generally
followed in distinct regions.
Failures of the Mahalwari System:
This might start to sound a bit too familiar by this point, but the mahalwari
system failed because of two major reasons: corruption, and exteremly high
revenue demands.
The middlemen (Lambardars, Zamindars, Tehsildars, etc.) often made inaccurate
estimates of revenue, either to skim the revenue for personal monetary gain, or
simply due to lack of proper investigation.
Secondly, the company, as usual, had revenue demands set extremely,
unreachably high.
This lead to the mahals defaulting, and rich moneylenders buying off the land
in question, removing the smaller farmers, and contributing further to the
aforementioned “landless labourer” phenomenon.
Changes after the transfer of power to the crown:
"The 15th of March 1858 was a memorable day for Oudh. The Governor-General
in his wrath confiscated the land of Oudh, with the exception of the estates of
six loyal chiefs. The proprietary right in the soil of the province,' said the
Governor-General in a voice of thunder, 'is confiscated to the British
government, which will dispose of that right in such a manner as may seem
fitting." It was announced to those land-holders, however, who would make an
immediate un- conditional surrender, that their lives would be spared, 'provided
their hands are unstained by English blood murderously shed:' but it was
declared that. as regards any further indulgence which may be extended to
them, and the condition in which they may hereafter be placed, they must
throw themselves upon the justice and mercy of the British government."
-Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 73 (2012): 737–46.
The British, at the end of the first Indian struggle for independence, were filled
with a spirit of vengeance. They created a slew of policies that deliberately
were aimed at impoverishing the already impoverished Indian subjects.
This is most evident from accounts of the situation of the Landowning muslims
of Bengal, as is highlighted in the Economic and Social review (P), Autumn 1974,
pages 243-254:
“W.W. Hunter, in his book, The Indian Musalmans, published in 1871.7 In its fourth
chapter he has described the general condition of the Muslims and also the
difficulties and disadvantages they were confronted with on account of the
unfavourable educational and administrative policy of the Government. Hunter
spoke of the Muslims of Bengal, the province with which he was best
acquainted, but he believed his description was true of the Muslims of all parts
of the sub-continent.
Speaking of the land-owning classes of Bengal, he declared that if any
stateman wished to make a sensation in the House of Commons he had only
to narrate the history of one of the ruined Muslim families, 10 Those who had
formerly dwelt in palaces were compelled to live in stables. The ruined
mansions of the impoverished aristocrats swarmed "with grown-up sons and
daughters, with grand-children and nephews and nieces, and not one of the
hungry crowd" had "a chance of doing anything for himself in life."1 "A hundred
and fifty years" earlier "it was almost impossible for a well-born Musalman in
Bengal to become poor." It was now almost impossible for him to grow rich.
Hunter next refers to the position of Muslims in the public service which during
the days of their supremacy had been the main source of livelihood for their
educated classes. The repressive policy of the Government resulted within a
few years in their almost total exclusion from all important services. Muslims
were now shut out of the army as it was considered to be essential for the
safety of British rule in the sub-continent.14 This impoverished a large number
of Muslim aristocratic families.”
Thus, the post-1857 system of revenue collection was aimed more at solidly
establishing the “supremacy” of the British crown, so at to ensure that a new
situation similar to that of 1857 did not arise.
One of the key methods of achieving this was the British policy of making India
an exporter of raw materials and an importer of finished goods.
This led to the established Indian industrial sector being completely uprooted, a
policy that the British had dabbled in ever since their fore into Bengal, but were
now pushing further, to the rest of the nation.
This led to an even more severe pressure on the Indian agricultural sector to
come up with revenue, increasing pressure of peasant/tillers. That is what we
shall discuss in the next section.
Economic impact and Magnitude of revenue collection:
In practice the British land revenue policies may have been most disruptive,
not through their adjudication of land tenure, but at the simple level of
financial demands they made. Many of the early British settlements- notably
the permanent settlement of Bengal of 1793 and Pringle’s in Bombay during the
1820s and the 1830s were marked by considerable over assessment. The in
their zeal for funds, often accepted the most optimistic inherited estimates of
agriculture‟s capacity to pay, claims which were excessive in the depressed
conditions of the first third of the nineteenth century. Finally it terms of
political consequences, Stokes’s recent work has undermined the notion of the
mutiny conflagration of 1857-8 as a simple outburst by the victims of British
agrarian policy, particularly in Mahalwari regions. On the other side several
peasant uprising occurred in nineteenth century both in Zamindari and
Raiyatwari regions, and a number of grim famines appeared in these
settlement area.57 The magnitude of land tax in 1851-52 shows the
exploitative character of imperial power in India. During this period the amount
of land revenue was very high in every province. The total net revenues of India
in 1851-52 were 19, 927.039 pound. A comparative index of Land Tax in India:
Bengal oscillated in last four years from 3,500,000 to 3,560,000 pound. North
West oscillated in last four years from 4,870,000 to 4,900.000 pound Madras
oscillated in last four years from 3,640,000 to 3,470,000 pound. Bombay
oscillated in last four years from 2,240,000 to 2,300,000 pound.
Gross Revenue in 1852-52:
Bengal……………………………….10000, 000 pound
Madras……………………………….5000, 000 pound
Bombay………………………………4800, 000 pound Sum total
revenue from these three provinces was 19,800.000 pound.
The total of which, in modern-day currency, comes out to be 1 billion, 587
million, 684 thousand 780 (1,587,684,780) pounds.
Dr. Md Hamid Husain and Firoj High Sarwar, co-authors of a published paper
titled “A Comparative Study of Zamindari, Raiyatwari and Mahalwari Land
Revenue Settlements: The Colonial Mechanisms of Surplus Extraction in 19th
Century British India” state the impact thusly:
“ Basically, these were the modern way of extracting maximum revenues from
the peasants and, an absolute plan to plunder Indian resources constantly. The
land tax was the major source of revenue for the British Government;
amounting in 1858-59, to Rs 18.12 corers or 50.3 per cent of total its revenues “
The economic impact was nothing short of absolutely disastrous, and what
adds insult to injury is the fact this was done in a deliberate manner.
Conclusion:
I started this project by briefly mentioning the NCERT’s understanding of Indian
land revenue systems during the rule of the British:
A simple narrative. Simple, easy and understandable.
Also incomplete, inadequate, and lacking conclusivity.
With this project, I set out to answer questions that I had had as an 11-year-old.
Were the systems imposed one after another? Was there ever any mixture of
the three systems? Did the systems just magically disappear after
independence? Did the Revolt of 1857 make any differences? How was revenue
extracted from tribals? Just how much money did the British take away?
During the course of my research, I realised something that, in retrospect, is
obvious. After reading scanned PDFs of books written in the 1890s and
comparing works written on the same subjects a 100 years later, after
reviewing PhD theses and Policy documents, after spending hours and hours on
end, I realised the reason why the NCERT gave the 8th graders of the world
such a simple, whole-ridden narrative.
No, it was not to spark curiosity.
No, it was not because it was easier to write,
It was because not only are most 8th graders not interested in finding the
answers enough; most adults aren’t interested enough.
The only solution to that is to let those who are interested find their own
paths.
And what better conclusion could I hope to arrive at
then to be able to say
I think I’ve found mine.
Bibliography:
- Mohanty, Bibhuti Bhusan. “State and Tribal Relationship in Orissa.” Indian
Anthropologist 27, no. 1 (1997): 1–17.
- Junejo, Zaffar Iqbal, and Azharudin Mohamed Dali. "THE COMPANY SARKAR’S
EXPERIMENTATION WITH LAND TENURE AND LAND REVENUE SYSTEMS RESULTING
IN THE INDIAN REBELLION OF 1857." SARJANA 34, no. 2 (2019): 26-34.
- Ogawa, Michihiro. "Mapping the Transition of the Land Revenue System in
Western India from the Pre-Colonial to the Early Colonial India: Evidence from
to Indapur Pargana (1761-1836)." Journal of Asian Network for GIS-based
Historical Studies Vol. 3 (Dec. 2015) (2015): 12-20.
- Chanana, Priyanka. “COLONIAL REMODELING OF LAND RIGHTS AFTER THE
UPRISING OF 1857: CONFERMENT AND RESUMPTIONS IN BAISWARA REGION.”
Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 73 (2012): 737–46.
- CHUGHTAI, MUNIR-UD-DIN. “Post-1857 Economic and Administrative Policies of
the British in India and the Muslims.” Pakistan Economic and Social Review 12,
no. 3 (1974): 243–54.
- Rekha Bandyopadhyay. “Land System in India: A Historical Review.” Economic
and Political Weekly 28, no. 52 (1993): A149–55.
- Vinay Krishin Gidwani. “‘Waste’ and the Permanent Settlement in Bengal.”
Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 4 (1992): PE39–46.
- Guha, Amalendu. Review of Ideological Roots of the Permanent Settlement, by
Ranajit Guha. Economic and Political Weekly 17, no. 41 (1982): 1651–54.
- Husain, Md Hamid, and Firoj High Sarwar. "A comparative study of Zamindari,
Raiyatwari and Mahalwari land revenue settlements: the colonial mechanisms
of surplus extraction in 19th century British India." Journal of Humanities and
Social Science 2.4 (2012): 16-26.
- Baden-Powell, Baden Henry. A Manual of the Land Revenue Systems and Land
Tenures of British India... Superintendent of Government Printing, 1882.
- Our Pasts III, National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2023.
- Themes in Indian History II, National Council of Educational Research and
Training, 2023.
Permanent Settlement:
Alexander Dow
Philp Francis
Charles Cornwallis
Transfer of Diwani to the EIC
Ryotwari:
J S Mill
Statue of Thomas Munro in Chennai
Mahalwari:
William Bentick
Thomas Munro
After transfer to the crown:
Magnitude of revenue collection:
Map showing the distribution of various systems in India
