Class 12 NCERT history chapter 10

            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. 










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