Colonialism and the countryside

Exploring Official Archives

Introduction

The zamindars of Bengal , travel to the the rajmahal hills where the paharias and the santhals lived , and then move west to the Deccan .
The East India Company established its raj in the countryside , implemented its revenue policies .
laws introduced by the state have consequences for people .

Bengal and the zamindars

Colonial rule was first established in Bengal
The earliest attempts were made to recorder rural society and establish a new regime of land right and a new revenue system .

An auction in burdwan

In 1797 there was an auction in Burdwan
It was as big public event
The permanent settlement had come into operation in 1793.
The East India company had fixed the revenue that each zamindar had to pay
The purchases turned out to be servants and agents of the raja
Over 95% of the sale at the auction was fictitious

The problem of unpaid revenue

The permanent settlement, British officials hoped to resolve the problems they had been facing since the conquest of bengal .
By the 1770s, the rural economy in bengal was in crisis , with recurrent famines and declining agricultural output .
They thought to develop agriculture , trade and the revenue resources of the state by encouraging investment in agriculture
Company officials thought that a fixed revenue demand ensure regular income
The permanent settlement was made with the rajas and tuluqdars of bengal
The zamindars had was not a landowner in the village but a revenue collector of the state
The zamindars collected rent and paid the fixed amount and keep the excess as income
The zamindar collected rent from the different villages .

why zamindars defaulted on payments

The reasons for this failure wee various :

First : The initial demands were very high

Second : It difficult for the ryots to pay their dues to the zamindars

Third : The revenue was invariable , regardless of the harvest , and had to be paid punctually

Fourth : Limited the power of the zamindar to collect rent form the ryot and manage

Measures taken by the state to control the zamindars

The state subdue their authority and restrict their autonomy
The zamindars troops were disbanded customs duties abolished.
Their cutcheries bought under the supervision of a collector appointed by the company
Zamindars lost their power to organise local justice and the local police .
Jotedars and mandals - were only too happy to see the zamindar in trouble .
in Burdwan alone there were over 30000 pending suits for arrears of rent payment in 1798 ..

The rise of the Jotedars

A group of rich peasants were consolidating their position in the villages.
In Francis , Buchanan's survey of the dinajpur district in north bengal we have a vivid description of this class of rich peasants known as jotedars .
The jotedars were most powerful in north bengal .
Rich peasants and village headmen were emerging as commanding figures in the countryside in one parts of bengal

zamindars resist

Zamindars lived in Urban areas , the jotedar were against zamindars

straggles of the zamindars to face the pressure from the state

Fictitious sale was one such strategy
Always take possession , At times their agents would be attacked by lathyals

The fifth report

The fifth report as a report to submit to the British parliament
The fifth report was a report on the administration and activities of the East India Company in India .
The report was having 1002 pages It was submitted to the British parliament 1813 .
The fifth report was one such report produced by a select committee .
It become the basis of intense parliamentary debates on the nature of the East India Company 's rule in India .
The evidence contained in the fifth report is in valuable .
The fifth report exaggerated the collapse of traditional zamindari power as also overestimated the scale on which zamindars were losing their land .

The hoe and the plough

The wetlands of bengal to dries zones , from a region of settled cultivation one where shifting agriculture was practised .

In the hills of rajmahal

In the early nineteenth - century , Buchanan travelled through the rajmahal hills
the inhabitants of the rajmahal hill were known as paharias
They lived around the rajmahal hills , substitution forest produce and practicing shifting cultivation
They cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth .
The life of the paharias - as hunters , shifting cultivators, food gather , charcoal producers silkworm rearers was thus intimated connected to the forest.

Raids of the paharias

The paharias frequently raided the plains of the settled agriculturists .these raids were important for them at the time of scarcity .
Their raids were a way of asserting means of negotiating political relations with outsiders
The zamindars on the plain areas had to pay regular tribute to the hill chief of the paharias
During the 1770 the British a policy of extermination of the paharias
But in 1780 when Augustus leveland became collector of bhagaipur , he proposed for pacification with the paharias
The paharias chief were given an annual allowance and made responsible for the proper conduct of his people .
They were also assigned the responsibility of maintaining the law and order in their

The santhals :pioneer settler

At the end of 1810 Buchanan crossed ganjuriapahar , which was part of the rajmahal ranges passed through the rocky country beyond , and reached a village .
On enquiry he discovered that the frontiers of cultivation here has been extended by the santhals
They had moved into this area around 1800 , displaced the hill folk who lived on these lower slopes , cleared the forests and settled the land .
The British gave land to the sunthals and peruaded them to settle in the foothills of rajmahal .
By 1832 a large area was demarcated as Damin -i -koh and land of the santhals who lived within it
After the demarcation of Damin- i -koh ,santhal settlement expanded rapidly from 40 santhal villages in the area in 1838 to 1473 villages by 1851 .
The santhals soon realized that the land they bought under cultivation was slipping out of their lands
The British started levying taxes on those lands and the money lenders were charging them with high rate of interest and look over their land in case of defaulters.
By the 1850s, the santhals felt that the time had come to rebel against zamindars money lenders and the colonial state , in order to create an ideal world for themselves.
It was after the santhal revolt (1855-56 ) the santhal pargana was carving out 5500 square miles from the districts of Bhagalpur and birbhum

A Revolt in the countryside

The Bombay Deccan

Later period , and explore what was happening in the countryside in the Bombay Deccan
Through the 19th century , peasants in various parts of India rose in revolt against moneylenders and grain dealers .

Account books are burnt

The movement began at supa , a large village in Poona district
On 12 may 1875 , ryots from surrounding rural areas gathered and attacked the shopkeepers demanding their bahi khatas and dept bonds
They burnt the khatas , looted grain shops , and some cases set fire to the hoers of sahukars
To prevent the revolt , the British established many police posts in village , troops were rushed to the areas of the revolt .

A new revenue system

The permanent revenue system was not extended beyond bengal
One reason was the since the revenue was fixed , the state could not claim any share of the increased revenue .

David Ricardo

He was an eminent economist in England in 1820.
His economic theories influenced the revenue policies of the British in India
Hid idea of land ownership was introduced in the Bombay Deccan
Land owner should claim only the average rent
There the zamindars seemed to have turned into renters , leading out land and living on the rental incomes.
The revenue system that was introduced in the Bombay Deccan came to be known as the ryotwari

Revenue demand and peasant debt .

The first revenue settlement in the Bombay Deccan was made in the 1820
The revenue demand in the Bombay Deccan was very high .
In many places peasants desired their village and migrated to new regions
The countryside was devastated by a famine in the year 1832-34
The cultivators borrowed money from the money lender to pay the revenue
By the 1840 , officials were finding evidence of alarming levels of peasants indebted everywhere
They needed money to buy seeds and land

Then came the cotton boom

In 1857 the cotton , supply association was founded in Britain and in 1859 the Manchester cotton company was formed .
When the America civil was broke out in 1861 , a wave of panic spread through cotton circles in Britain .
Frantic message ,cotton were sent to India and elsewhere to increase cotton exports to Britain
In Bombay .cotton merchants visited the cotton districts to assess supplies and encouragement cultivation
By 1862 over 90% of cotton imports into Britain were coming from India

Credit dries up

Shoulder and export merchants in Maharastra stopped long term credit and started demanding repayment of debts .
The Government made new settlement and increased revenue demand from 50 to 100 %.
The peasants were utterly dependent on the money lender for survival. But the money lender refusing to come .

Experiences of injustice

There was customary norm that the interest charged . could not be more than the principal. It put limit on the money lender's exactions. It could be counted as fair interest .
Under British rule his norm broke down Deccan Riots commission cited that the interest on a loan of Rs 100.
They ryots came to see the money lender as devious and deceitful.
The ryots complained of money lender manipulating laws and forging accounts. limitation law was passed in 1859.

Deeds and bond

Deeds and bonds were regarded as a symbol of the new oppressive system.

B.R.Foundation

Class 12 NCERT history chapter 10