No More Learning

Unlimited cor:1petition which, in fact, would exclude all Indians
from participating he regarded as a step back, not a step forward,
for, he said, “while the old system could not have been permanent,
the present plan would not be felt as an abuse in this country, what-
ever it might be in India, and it would therefore be allowed to con-
tinue without improvement”. 4 But this forecast, which subsequent
events confirmed in every letter, fell unregarded.
It has been said that this act of 1853 was mainly based on a memo-
randum prepared by Dalhousie in 1852. 5 That does not seem to have
been the view of Dalhousie himself. “The India bill is a wretched
thing”, he exclaims; “no wonder Lord John wished to have nothing
to do with it. " Its great fault lay in its clinging too closely to the
ideas which forty years earlier had been wise, far-sighted, liberal,
which even twenty years before had been sound and progressive, but
which had come to need a revision, expansion, reorientation, which
they were not destined to find, either in 1853 or in 1858.
1 16 & 17 Vic. c. 95, s. 16.
3 Hansard, 3rd Ser. CXXVIII, 745 599.
Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 219.
2 Idem, s. 17.
4 Idem, cxxix, 784.
6 Private Letters of Dalhousie, p. 260.
2-2


## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################

CHAPTER II
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
1818–1858
IN 1818 the governor-general was also ex officio governor of Bengal.
His title was governor-general of the presidency of Fort William in
Bengal. In 1833 he became "Governor-General of India”.
In 1818 the presidency of Fort William 1 Bengal included Bengal,
Bihar, Orissa, Benares and “the ceded and the conquered provinces
which, including Benares, were styled in 1834 the province of Agra
and in 1836 the North-Western Provinces. Between 1818 and 1858
the presidency received the following accretions:
(a) the Sagar and Narbada territories, first placed under an
agent to the governor-general and then added to the North-Western
Provinces;
(6) Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim, ceded in 1826 by the king of
Burma after the Treaty of Yandabo;
(c) pieces of Dutch territory at Fulta, Chinsura, Calcapur and
Dacca, ceded in 1824 under a treaty signed in London between Great
Britain and the Netherlands;
(d) the town of Serampur, sold to the East India Company by the
king of Denmark in 1845;
(e) an enclave in Sikkim, which was presented to the East India
Company by the raja of Sikkim in 1835 and became the site of
Darjeeling;
(s) a belt of land between the north boundary of Bengal and
Darjeeling, ceded after the Sikkim expedition of 1850.
In 1836, however, the North-Western Provinces, while remaining
part of the Bengal Presidency and styled the Upper Provinces of
Bengal, ceased to be administered from Calcutta and were placed
under a lieutenant-governor, without a council, who was given the
powers of a governor with certain reservations. And in 1854 Bengal,
Bihar, Orissa and Assam, styled the Lower Provinces of Bengal, were
entrusted to the charge of a lieutenant-governor without a council.
Tenasserim remained directly under the governor-general in council,
and Arakan was at first made over to the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal but was soon retransferred to the Supreme Govern-
ment. At the close of our period the lieutenant-governor of “the
Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency held charge of the
following territories:


## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################

EARLY NEGLECT
21
. . .
. . .
. . .
Area in
quare miles
Bengal
85,0001
Bihar . . .
42,000
Orissa
7,000
Orissa (tributary mahals)
15,500
Chota Nagpur and tributary states
on south-west frontier
62,000
Assam
27,500
It is difficult to realise that these wide territories were long ad-
ministered by over-burdened governors-general in council who
further held charge of the opium manufacture, whether carried on in
Bengal or in the North-Western Provinces; of the Bengal salt manu-
facture; of the marine and pilot establishments; of educational and
other institutions in Calcutta with its large European population.
Eastern Bengal moreover, for reasons which will be apparent later
on, has always presented peculiarly difficult problems to governments,
whether Moghul or British. Altogether we can understand that the
necessity of placing the Bengal Lower Provinces under a local govern-
ment was realised long before it was officially recognised. But for
many years governors-general were so fully occupied with expanding
or consolidating empire, with financial and other anxieties, with
prolonged and sometimes irritating dispatches from the directors and
the Board of Control, that they found little time for careful attention
to the needs of provinces inhabited by a population traditionally
unwarlike and apathetic. That Bengal was under-administered, that
its conditions demanded continuous and thoughtful care, if abuses
were not to grow and multiply, was doubtless true. But what
of this, when the responsible government was preoccupied with
French intrigue in the peninsula, or a Maratha war, or trouble with
Sikhs and Afghans; when the directors were insisting on strict eco-
nomy, or parliament was interested in some spectacular phase of
Indian affairs? Now and then, indeed, as we shall see, a governor-
general would suddenly awake to the existence of unsatisfactory
conditions in the capital province and would resolve on drastic
reform. But soon his attention was perforce directed elsewhere, and
in any case his span of office was brief. His successor arrived pre-
occupied with large general interests. And so Bengal remained
generally neglected until her crying needs compelled particular
remedies. In 1826 Sir John Malcolm had urged the advisability of
separating the duties of the governor-general altogether from those
of “the local government of Bengal”, and so "withdrawing his high
name from those minor acts which must always agitate a community
composed like that of Calcutta”. Seven years later, by the Govern-
· Figures taken from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Administration Report (1855-6).


## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################

22
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
ment of India Act of 1833, the governor-general was empowered to
appoint a member of his council to be deputy-governor of Bengal
when absent from Calcutta himself, and to invest the deputy with the
whole or part of a governor's powers. As British India expanded and
governors-general were necessarily often absent from Bengal, the
capital province passed more and more into the charge of deputy-
governors selected, as a rule, only because they happened to be senior
members of council. Writing in 1852 George Campbell observed that
the existing deputy-governor of Bengal had served with credit in the
army for fifty-two years, but had never enjoyed experience of civil
affairs. He was the latest of nine successive governors (i. e. governors-
general or deputies) who had administered the province for the past
twelve years. “It is no wonder”, Campbell added, "that such a
government is inefficient, that nothing has generally been done
beyond mere routine, and that Bengal has suffered in consequence. ”3
What was apparent to Campbell was equally apparent to Lord
Dalhousie.
“Parliament”, said that indefatigable proconsul, "has lately supplied a remedy
for that great deficiency which pervaded the entire system and was felt in every
department of the administration. I mean the want of a lieutenant-governor who
should be able to devote the whole of his time and capacity to the Lower Provinces
alone. ”3
On Dalhousie's recommendation, when the Company's charter was
renewed in 1853, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam became the charge
of a lieutenant-governor. On 28 April, 1854, F. J. Halliday took over
the new office.
By far the greater part of the province of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa
was governed on a system laid down by elaborate regulations which
since the days of Hastings and Cornwallis had gradually been evolved
at Calcutta. But much territory had been added to the British
dominions in Northern India since those early days; and it was plainly
impossible to govern all the new peoples in accordance with the letter
of the law in the older provinces. Within those provinces, too, were
primitive races, distinct from the ordinary population, who, without
protection, fell easy victims to grasping money-lenders, tyrannical
police, rapacious landlords and pleaders. For simple peoples, as
simple a system of administration as possible must be devised which
would bring them closely into touch with British officers, and would
conform with the spirit but not with the letter of the Bengal regula-
tions. Arrangements were made accordingly whereby the peoples of
newly annexed territories or of tracts inhabited by aboriginal tribes
were governed under a "non-regulation” system. Sometimes, too,
1 Lord Curzon, however, says: "Eight such appointments with the title of President of
the Council of India and Deputy Governor of Fort William and the Town of Calcutta
were made between the years 1837 and 1855". (British Government in India, 11, 74. )
2 Modern India and its Government, p. 228.
3 Minutc dated 24 April, 1854.


## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################

THE DISTRICTS
23
it was found necessary to withdraw particular districts in the older
provinces from the operation of the general regulations and to govern
them on less elaborate principles. In Bengal, for instance, on the
north-eastern frontier of Rangpur this plan was necessarily followed. 1
Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim were made non-regulation territories;
and so were the south-west frontier tracts of Orissa and the tributary
mahals. So were later the Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling districts and the
hill tracts of Chittagong. The British executive in non-regulation
territories was composed of military as well as of civil officers. But
our main concern is with the more complex regulation system, which
prevailed over the greater part of the Lower Provinces of the Bengal
Presidency.
Cornwallis had left Bengal proper, which then included some areas
now in the province of Bihar and Orissa, divided into sixteen very
large districts. These districts were gradually brought under sys-
tematic management. At first they were suffering badly from the
effects of years of chaotic administration combined with the devasta-
tion wrought by the famine of 1769–70. From a modern point of
view, they had so far hardly been administered at all. For long
centuries there had been vague confusion varied by the consolidation
of some central power strong enough to enforce payment of revenue
and raise military levies when required. In later years there had been
Maratha raids, wars, Clive's dual system of governing, later experi-
ments, and the appalling ravages of a severe famine unmitigated by
remedial measures. The consequences of so dismal a past were
grievous; and systematic administration could only make way by
degrees. When it began, tracts of culturable land were overgrown
with jungle and infested with wild beasts. Banditti were swarming,
and freebooters from over the border made frequent incursions into
Bengal and Bihar. As years rolled on, it became plain that districts,
territorial units of administration, must be increased. Commerce,
business, reference of quarrels to the law courts, grew rapidly; culti-
vation extended far and wide; the ownership of land passed largely
from the hands of the big zamindars into those of new families and
proprietary communities; it became necessary to subdivide all dis-
tricts into police-circles and not into large estates of individual
zamindars. Here and there non-regulation ch irges were created
because a simpler form of governnient was required for aboriginal
tribes. Two districts, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, were formed from
new territory. Elsewhere grave defects in existing boundaries, re-
vealed by survey operations, necessitated transfers of villages from
one district to another. Arrangements were inade whereby in every
district civil and criminal and revenue jurisdictions might become
cotcrminous.
Examining the history of the Lower Provinces from Cornwallis's
1 Bengal Administration Report (190-12), Historical Review, p. 98.


## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################

24
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
a
days to these, we find the number of districts increasing before,
during, and after our period. 1 Bengal alone now contains twenty-
eight districts.
In 1818 the magisterial and police control of a district in the Lower
Provinces vested in a judge-magistrate? or in one of those district
magistrates whose appointment had been sanctioned by a permissive
regulation passed in 1810. Police administration in all districts was
supervised by four superintendents of police posted since 1808-10 at
Calcutta, Dacca, Patna and Murshidabad. The collectors of districts
presided over fiscal arrangements only, under the supervision of the
Board of Revenue at Calcutta. In 1829 the government of Lord
William Bentinck decided to appoint “commissioners of revenue and
circuit”. Each commissioner was placed in charge of a division
embracing several districts. In subordination to the Board of
Revenue, he supervised the work of his collectors; and in subordina-
tion to the government he superintended the administration of the
judge-magistrates and district magistrates. He possessed wide execu-
tive discretion, was also sessions judge and held assizes in each district
of his division. The duties of the judges of the provincial courts of
appeal and of the four superintendents of police were made over to
him; and these officials were abolished. In 1831 further changes were
ordained. Sessions work was transferred from the commissioners to
the district civil judges, who made over their magisterial duties to the
collectors. For a brief period the magistrate and collector reappeared
in Bengal. But in 1837 it was decided once more to divide his func-
tions; and separate district magistrates were revived. Almost every
district had its civil and sessions judge, its collector and its magistrate;
but one judge sometimes presided over the civil and criminal judicial
work of two districts. The rank of the judge was superior to that of
the collector and the rank of collector was superior to that of the
district magistrate. In 1845 officers holding simultaneously the posts
of collector and magistrate survived in three Orissa districts only.
The leading officers of a district were supported by assistants
belonging to the covenanted civil service, and by deputy-collectors
and deputy-magistrates, principally natives of the country but often
Europeans or Eurasians, belonging to the uncovenanted services
recruited by the Government of India. At every district headquarters
there were a magistrate's office and a collector's office, which included
a treasury, both with ministerial establishments. There were the
courts of assistant and deputy-magistrates and collectors and the
court of the judge. If instalments of land revenue were not paid into
the treasury by appointed dates, estates of defaulters were sold at the
collector's office under the sunset law”.
a
1 Rai Manohan Chakrabatti Bahadur, Summary of the changes in the jurisdiction of districts
in Bengal (1757-1916).
-2 Mill and Wilson, History of India, vii, 285.


## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################

DISTRICT OFFICIALS
25
The post of deputy-collector was legally established by Regulation ix
of 1833, and that of deputy-magistrate, with or without police
powers, by a regulation of 1843. 2 To these posts persons of any religion,
colour, descent or place of birth might be appointed. Desiring to give
collectors and magistrates special assistance from senior subordinates
who would be entrusted with powers wider than those which could
be conceded to ordinary assistants, covenanted or uncovenanted, the
government of Lord William Bentinck created a rank of "joint
magistrate” to which senior covenanted assistants might be appointed.
Later on, with the double object of increasing magisterial control
over the police and of bringing justice nearer to the doors of the
people, joint magistrates were posted to the charge of subdivisions of
districts with the title of "subdivisional officer". These officers
resided in their subdivisions. Afterwards assistant and deputy-magis-
trates also were posted to subdivisions which were originally created
in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Located with regard to the posi-
tion of important villages or markets, or in the centre of some out-
lying part of an extensive district, or in a tract where some big
zamindar was playing the tyrant, they developed piecemeal under
pressure of varying circumstances. Even in 1856 there were in the
whole province only thirty-three subdivisional magistracies. 3
We have seen that in 1845 only three magistrates-and-collectors
remained. But the union of magisterial and fiscal functions also
survived in eight "independent” joint magistrates who presided over
eight minor districts, offshoots from older districts, and subdivisions
still in regard to revenue business, but separate charges in other
respects. Taxes were paid in at the parent headquarters treasury; but
the “independent joint magistrate”, although merely a sub-collector,
possessed all the powers of a district magistrate. These arrangements
were designed to secure more vigilant and effective magisterial super-
vision for remote tracts where crime was rampant. 4 Seven of these
semi-districts were converted into ordinary district charges in 1861.
From 1837 to 1854 the experiment was tried of transferring the
supervision of the police from the commissioners to a provincial
superintendent whose headquarters were at Calcutta. Assam, how-
ever, and the non-regulation portion of Orissa were excluded from
his jurisdiction. In 1850 Chittagong was also excluded; and in 1854
the office of superintendent was abolished, and the duties were re-
transferred to the commissioners.
Thus at the close of our period we have district administration in
Bengal superintended by commissioners and conducted generally by
collectors and district magistrates assisted by joint magistrates,
deputy-magistrates and deputy-collectors. The judicial decisions of
Historical Summary, Bengal Administration Report (1911-12), pp. 45-6.
2 Idem.
a Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenani-Governors, I, 26, 219.
• Historical Summary, Bengal Adnii. istration Report (1911-12), p. 47.


## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################

26
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
all magistrates were, except in petty cases, appealable to the district
judges, who combined the functions of sessions judge with those of a
civil judge. As civil judges they heard appeals from the decisions of
subordinate Indian judges. Anxious to give the natives of India a
more honourable share in the administration, Lord William Bentinck
had very largely increased the jurisdiction of Indian judicial officers
appointed to try civil suits. He created a new rank of principal sadr
amin' with power to try original suits up to a value of Rs. 5000, and
decided that in respect of suits for property above a certain value
appeals from the decisions of the principal sadr amins should lie not
to the civil and sessions judge but to the sadr court, the chief (Com-
pany's) tribunal of the province. The lowest grade of judicial officer
in civil cases was that of the munsiff, who had succeeded the "native
commissioner" of Cornwallis's days. His decisions were appealable
to the district judge.
The districts, averaging toward the end of our period about 3000
square miles in area, were each divided into from fifteen to twenty
thanas (police-circles). At each thana headquarters was an officer
styled daroga, supported by a clerk, a sergeant and from twenty to
fifty armed men, all badly paid. In any considerable outlying town
was a small resident force of police under a petty officer. In all villages
were chaukidars (watchmen) supposed to keep guard at night, to notice
the movements of bad characters, to apprehend felons caught
flagrante delicto, and to report all important matters at the thana
headquarters. Chaukidars generally were appointed by the zamindars
of their villages, and any appointment might be vetoed by the district
magistrate. But Regulation XIII of 1813, which was the first municipal
enactment in Bengal, provided for the appointment in large towns of
chaukidars who were to be paid by the residents, the preamble laying
down the principle that the people for whose benefit and protection
such an establishment might be entertained should defray the charge
of their maintenance. 1 Ordinary village chaukidars were remunerated
by the state for watch-and-ward, but in many respects were the
private servants of the zamindars from whom they held chakran
(service) lands upon which the government possessed a limited lien.
This arrangement worked badly. The chaukidars were useless and
corrupt, the supple tools of the zamindars. Although by regulations
passed in 1808 and 18122 the latter were liable to heavy penalties and
even to forfciture of their lands if they failed to give carly information
of the commission of offences or afforded countenance to robbers,
they had only to establish friendly relations with the police darogas to
reign as they pleased over weaker neighbours and reap ample profits
from the villainies of banditti. The British officers, who alone could
prevent such malpractices, were scanty in number, hampered by a
1 Bengal District Administration Committee Report (1913-14), p. 97.
2 Mill and Wilson, op. cit. VII, 288.


## p. 27 (#57) ##############################################

POLICE REFORMS
27
faulty and unstable administrative system and served by corrupt and
ill-trained subordinates. Moving about was often difficult and
generally slow. Lawlessness and violence were frequent and easy. 1
In 1855 the first lieutenant-governor, Sir Frederick Halliday, sub-
mitted to the Supreme Government specific proposals improve-
ment in the pay of the regular district police, admitting that “the
outlay though considerable could not be regarded as final, as the
police establishment was numerically weaker than it should be for the
protection of property and the preservation of good order”. In 1856
he further pressed the question, urging the importance of raising the
tone of the whole administration of criminal justice in Bengal. The
police were bad and the tribunals were inefficient. These two circum-
stances acted and reacted upon each other. The thirty-three sub-
divisional magistrates were too few to exercise adequate control. The
village chaukidars were extremely corrupt.
"Whether right or wrong", he wrote, "the general native opinion is that the
administration of criminal justice is little below that of a lottery, in which, however,
the best chances are with the criminals; the corruption and extortion of the police
cause it to be popularly said that dacoity is bad enough, but the subsequent enquiry
very much worse. "
Halliday recommended five indispensable measures: (a) the improve-
ment of the character and position of the village chaukidars; (b) ade-
quate salaries and fair prospects of advancement for the regular
stipendiary police; (c) the appointment of more experienced officers
as district magistrates who should be of a standing not inferior to that
of the collectors; (d) the appointment of one hundred more deputy-
magistrates, and the investment of all magistrates with judicial and
executive powers; (e) improvement in the criminal courts of justice.
He dwelt on the necessity of good roads and of a popular system of
vernacular education. In communicating with the court of directors
on the whole subject the Government of India recommended a
movable corps of military police for each division in the Lower
Provinces. After the Santal insurrection, which will be noticed
later, the lieutenant-governor, in reply to a reference from the
Supreme Government, advised the formation of a body of well-
organised and officered military police for the internal defence of
Bengal. The corps was raised and was afterwards expanded during
the Mutiny, drawing recruits largely from the hardier races of Upper
India. The proposals of the lieutenant-governor did not bear general
fruit until after 1858; but in 1856 he succeeded in procuring the
passing of a Chaukidari (or village police) Act which provided for the
watch-and-ward of those larger towns and villages to which it was
applied. In them chaukidars were appointed by the district magistrates
on such salaries as they thought fit. The cost was recovered from the
a
i Buckland, op cil. p. 23.


## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################

28
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
inhabitants, in proportions assessed by panchayats, committees of five
leading men.
Any surplus available from tax-funds was spent on
sanitary and other improvements.
Halliday desired the union of judicial and executive power in all
magistrates. He considered, too, that each district should have one
head only. The office of magistrate-and-collector should be revived.
The case for this reform had been trenchantly stated by Dalhousie.
When in 1854, enumerating the defects which called for removal
in Bengal, that great governor-general gave the first place to "the
separation of the offices of collector and magistrate contrary to the
system which had long prevailed in the lieutenant-governorship of
the North-Western Provinces”. 1
These views were warmly advocated by Halliday; and Dalhousie's
successor, Canning, recorded, in a minute dated 18 February, 1857,
that as regarded the people, the patriarchal form of government was
most congenial to them and best understood by them; and as regarded
the governing power,
the concentration of all responsibility upon one officer cannot fail to keep his
attention alive, and to stimulate his energy in every department to the utmost
whilst it will preclude the growth of t. . ose obstructions to good government which
are apt to spring up where two co-ordinate officers divide the authority. 2
This decision was endorsed by Lord Stanley, secretary of state for
India, in a dispatch dated 14 April, 1859. The change was rapidly
carried out, and at the same time seven of the eight "independent
joint magistracies were converted into districts.
The reform was one of great importance. The magistrate-and-
collector, or district officer of our period in Bombay, Madras and the
North-Western Provinces, was practically a local governor, exercising
a
a wide-ranging superintendence over his district and regarded by its
people as their helper and ruler. In discharging his responsibilities he
derived great advantage from the combination of his powers. During
the hot season he remained at his headquarters unless called to some
outlying place by an emergency. But at the beginning of the cold
weather he "went into camp”, i. e. toured over his district with tents
and a small office establishment. Halting here and there, he visited
and inspected police-stations, superintended police arrangements
generally, visited schools, examined all matters connected with the
expenditure of local funds and the welfare of the people. As collector
he presided over a large revenue and land-records establishment
distributed throughout his district, and devoted careful attention to
,
the doings of officials responsible for the collection of revenue and the
proper maintenance of village accounts and registers. In the North-
>
i Dalhousie's minute is quoted in full in Chakrabatti's Summary of the changes in the
jurisdiction of districts in Bengal.
3 Buckland, op. cit. pp. 24-5.


## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################

THE MAGISTRATE AND COLLECTOR
29
Western Provinces his district was divided into tahsils (revenue sub-
divisions which were distinct from police-circles), each with a head-
quarters office and treasury, presided over by a tahsildaror sub-collector
of revenue who was invested with petty magisterial powers and in
education and status was decidedly superior to the average thanadar
(police-station officer). The revenue was paid into the tahsil treasuries;
and through the tahsildars the district officer was kept in constant
touch with rural affairs. Subordinate to the tahsildars were kanungos,
travelling inspectors of the registers kept up by patwaris (village
accountants). The energy and practical ability which were necessary
qualities for a good district officer were essential also for a good
tahsildar.
"The magistrate", says Campbell, “may be considered the delegate of the ruling
powers of the government, the collector its agent in cverything that concerns its
own interests and the interests of those connected with it in thc land; but the two
duties are intimately connected, and the functions materially assist and aflect one
another. "
A magistrate-and-collector was kept in check by a liberal, widely
understood, and freely exercised power of appeal from his decisions.
He was in all executive and revenue matters subordinate to his com-
missioner and was liable to see his judicial decisions in criminal cases
upset by the sessions judge. Yet in fact he possessed great influence and
powers of initiative, and to the people he represented the one em-
bodied authority whom they could easily and frequently approach.
In most Bengal districts, however, during the twenty years which
preceded the Mutiny there was no such representative of the govern-
ment possessed, by virtue of his office, of pre-eminent power and
responsibility. It was the duty, the inspiring duty, of no one servant
of the Company to watch over and promote the general welfare, from
every point of view, of the people committed to his charge. And as
onc legacy of the Permanent Settlement was the payment of all
revenue into the district headquarters treasury, and another was a
complete absence of any attempt to register either thc tenures and
the holdings of cultivators or any changes in thc ownership of land,
no Bengal collector enjoyed the assistance of tahsildarsl or of any
subordinate revenue staff. All orders from hcadquarters to outlying
parts of the district travelled through the corrupt and oppressive
police. These administrative shortcomings, and the long years which
elapsed before Bengal became the sole charge of a whole-time
governor, combined with other consequences of the Permanent
Settlement and a wide lack of communications to bear hardly on
rural populations.
The government of Cornwallis had recognised its duty “to protect
all classes of people and more particularly those who from their
· Tahsildars were abolished in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1802.


## p. 30 (#60) ##############################################

30
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
a
situation are most helpless". 1 It had reserved power to enact such
regulations as might be thought “necessary for the protection and
welfare of the dependent 'talukdars' (sub-proprietors), ryots (tenants)
and other cultivators of the soil”. It had ordered that zamindars
should give their tenants written leases and that village accountants
should keep the accounts of the ryots in registers. But these orders
were never carried out. Subsequent governments contented them-
selves with facilitating collection of land revenue by enabling
zamindars to employ, instead of civil suits for the recovery of arrears
of rent, such summary processes as arrest, imprisonment or distraint
of property. These concessions to the landlords were unaccompanied
by any attempt on the part of the government to secure the rights of
the tenants by registering their holdings, rents or customary privileges.
At first, indeed, tenants were protected by the existence of a large
culturable and uncultivated area. They were in demand. But as the
country settled and population increased, competition for holdings
intensified, and opportunities for rack-renting arose. Summary eject-
ments became frequent. If the victims appealed to the collectors they
were referred to the civil courts, where they were unable to produce
written leases in support of their assertions and could not refer the
presiding officers to any government record of their rights and holdings.
Being in every suit the weaker and the poorer party, they obtained
little or no assistance from the vakils (pleaders), who were ready to
appear for the zamindars. From the latter they received little or no
generosity. Many of the big landlords had given place to new men or
to proprietary communities, or had leased or mortgaged their villages
to money-lending families. Expanding cultivation, rising rents, the
fixed and unalterable government demand, the powerlessness of
tenants in the civil courts, and the tendency of estates to split into
numbers of shares, enhanced the market value of landed property,
Zamindars, lessees, sub-lessces, mortgagees, sub-mortgagees increased
and multiplied. In village after village layers of middlemen inter-
posed between the cultivators and the zamindars, who were re-
sponsible to the government for payment of revenue. All these
interlopers, and the persons from whom they derived their titles,
endeavoured to screw as much profit as possible from the tenants,
who were squeezed, rack-rented, and driven more and more to the
money-lenders. The scramble among those over him for profits from
his labours tended to drive the Bengal cultivator nearer and nearer
to the wall. But he was sustained by long practice in self-protection;
he was favoured by the copious rainfall, the fertilising rivers and the
rich soil of his province. Thus it was that in 1852 an observer noted:
What strikes me most in any village or set of villages in a Bengal district, is the
exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish plenty surrounding the cultivator's abode,
the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against anything like famine.
1 Regulation 1 of 1793.


## p. 31 (#61) ##############################################

POSITION OF THE RYOT
31
Did any man ever go through a Bengali village and find himself assailed by the cry
of want or famine? Was he ever told that the ryot and his family did not know
where to turn for a meal; that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to bathe
in, no employment for their active limbs? That villages are not neatly laid out
like a model village in an English county, that things seem to go on, year by year,
in the same slovenly fashion, that there are no local improvements, and no advances
in cultivation, is all very true. But considering the wretched condition of some of
the Irish peasantry, or even the Scotch, and the misery experienced by hundreds
in the purlieus of our great cities at home, compared with the condition of the
ryots, who know neither cold nor hunger, it is high time that the outcry about the
extreme unhappiness of the Bengal ryot should cease. 1
There is often, however, in Indian villages much which does not
catch the eye of a superficial observer but nevertheless gravely affects
the happiness of the cultivators. It is not good for simple and illiterate
peasants to be driven to distant law courts to plead for ordinary
consideration, and when they have arrived at their destination, to
find themselves at a serious disadvantage through the absence of
registers which should record their status, their rents, the particulars
of their holdings. It is not good for them to be placed at the mercy of
rapacious landlords, pleaders and court underlings. It is not good
for them to be expelled from their ancestral fields for no fault what-
ever, to see their rights ignored because a paternal government has
not troubled itself to ascertain and record those rights. As long
ago as 1822 Lord Hastings, in the midst of a thousand cares, found
time to ponder over these things. On i August, 1822, his government
proposed to the court of directors that a survey should be undertaken
and a record of rights prepared in the permanently settled districts
of Bengal “as being the only real means of defining and maintaining
the rights of the ryot”. But for the next thirty-seven years all that
was ever done was to refer aggrieved tenants to the civil courts,
where their chances of success or fair play were obviously indifferent.
Surveys of districts indeed began in 1834-5, but these were not
cadastral, from field to field, as were surveys in the neighbouring
North-Western Provinces. In the Lower Provinces village boundaries
were demarcated, and useful statistics were prepared; but nothing
was done to secure the position of the cultivators. In short, the revenue
system bequeathed to Bengal by Cornwallis did not conduce to the
happiness or content of the people, and its defects and omissions
tended to obstruct free and beneficial intercourse between district
officers and the rural population of the province.
Roads were a matter of peculiar difficulty even in western Bengal,
where in seasons of heavy rainfall and high floods wide tracts became
sheets of water. But eastern Bengal was at all times largely a water
country. Its features were thus described by the District Adminis-
tration Committee of 1913-14:
Those members who have previously been unacquainted with Eastern Bengal
are convinced that no one who has not travelled over its rural areas is likely to grasp
1 Kaye's Administration of the East India Company, p. 194.


## p. 32 (#62) ##############################################

32
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
its difficulties. Communications are more scanty and more inefficient than in any
part of India known to us. Traversed by mighty rivers, and tributary streams,
visited by abundant rains, these castern districts are mainly a water-country which
yields rich harvests of rice and jute to a teeming population, partly concentrated
in a few towns, but mainly scattered over a number of villages. The villages, often
close to marshes or winding along the banks of some tortuous stream, generally
consist of scattered homesteads, built on whatever rising ground may be available.
Often the houses are hidden in thickets of bamboos, fruit-trees and undergrowth.
In the rains vast tracts of the country are completely submerged; the houses, each
on its own section of naturally or artificially raised land, stand up like islands in
the flood; and only a few of the more important roads are out of water. Boats are
the ordinary means of transit, and markets spring up on the banks of waterways.
Even in the drier weather the country is intersected by streams and creeks. It is
easy for wary dacoits to choose their time and prey, to effect their purpose and to
disappear, leaving no tracks behind.
It was long held to be doubtful whether the terms of the Permanent
Settlement precluded the imposition of cesses or rates on the zamin-
dars in order to provide means of cxtending clementary education
and of making and maintaining roads. The zamindars themselves
stoutly maintained that the levy of any such impost would be unjust
and contrary to the pledges given them by the government of
Cornwallis. This plea was long debated and not rejected till 1870.
For years, too, the governor-general in council, hard pressed by
war expenditure, failed to appreciate the importance of good roads
in Bengal. Some idea of the backward state of communications may
be formed from the facts that even in 1855–6 four streams on the
Grand Trunk Road (from Calcutta to North-Western India) re-
mained to be bridged, and that only then was a project for bridging
the Hughli at or near Calcutta considered. 2 Sir John Strachey
describes conditions existent in Bengal about 1854.
There were almost no roads, or bridges or schools, and there was no proper
protection to life or property. The police was worthless, and robberies and violent
crimes by gangs of armed men, which were unheard of in other provinces, were
common not far from Calcutta. 3
But a better cra was dawning. Dalhousie fully appreciated the
need of improved communications. He transferred the charge of
public works from inefficient military boards to provincial govern-
ment departments. His engineers mctalled a longer mileage of roads
than had been constructed by the four preceding governors-general. 4
Before he resigned office a system of trunk lines had been sketched,
and the first section of the East India Railway had been opened; the
modern postal system had been inaugurated; a telegraph line ran
from Calcutta to Agra. Modern India had begun to take shape.
Before observing the violent storm which attended its birth, we must
notice certain kinds of epidemic crime which, encouraged by adminis-
1 Bengal District Administration Committee Report (1913-14), p. 12.
2 Buckland, op. cit. p. 29.
3 Strachey, India, p. 420.
Hunter, "India of the Queen”. Cf. Imperial Gazetteer, III, 366.
4


## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################

THAGI
33
trative deficiencies and lack of communications, long afflicted the
districts of Bengal.
In 1853 Kaye remarked of the India of his day:
hundreds of its natives disappear; and their disappearance is either hardly noted
or it creates no astonishment or alarm. A journey in India is a matter of many
months; and numerous are the perils which beset the path of the unprotected
pedestrian. Hence it was that whole hecatombs were sacrificed to the goddess
Devi, and no one took account of the victims.
He refers to the monstrous crimes of the thags (literally “cheats”)
who for years infested every part of India except the Konkan in the
Bombay Presidency. They were a fraternity of murderers who bore
a name earned apparently by their disguises and crafty methods of
procedure. Before starting on expeditions to rob and murder, they
invoked the aid of the Hindu goddess of strength and destruction,
Kali alias Devi alias Bhawani, consecrating to her the weapons of
their trade, the strips of cloth used in strangling their victims and the
pickaxes with which the graves of these poor people were dug:
“ A thag”, wrote Captain Sleeman, “considers the persons murdered
precisely in the light of victims offered up to the goddess. ”
It was some time before the Supreme Government awoke to the
fact that within their own home territory organised bands of pro-
fessional and hereditary robbers and murderers, recognised and
indeed to a certain extent tolerated by their fellow-men, were com-
mitting the most horrible crimes “with as much forethought and
ingenuity as though murder was one of the fine arts, and robbery
a becoming effort of human skill, nay even were glorying in such
achievements as acts welcome to the deity”. But when at last the
position was understood, a thagi police department was organised
under Captain, afterwards Sir William, Sleeman, one of the Com-
pany's ablest servants. In the older provinces, however, to catch a
thag was far easier than to procure his conviction, for thags "throve
upon the legal niceties and the judicial reserve of the English tribunals
and laughed our regulations to scorn". 1 So in 1836 a special act was
passed by which any person convicted of belonging or having belonged
to a gang of thags became liable to imprisonment for life. Thus all
that was necessary to secure conviction was to prove association of
an individual with these pests of society. Encouraging approvers,
Sleeman and his officers by indefatigable and comprehensive opera-
tions gradually put an end to thagi, rooting out what he justly calls
“an enormous evil which had for centuries oppressed the people and
from which it was long supposed that no human efforts could relieve
them”. 2 By 1852 the guild had been scattered, never again to re-
assemble; but Bengal had been infested by river thags as well as by
1 Kaye, op. cit. pp. 354-79; O'Malley, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, pp. 346–50.
· Quoted, Calcutia Review (1860), XXXV, 372.
CHIVI
3


## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################

34
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
road thags, and even in 1854 as many as 250 boats manned by these
miscreants were infesting the Ganges between Calcutta and Benares.
The struggle against dakaiti or dacoity (brigandage) lasted even
longer than that against thagi, and had not attai. d complete success
at the close of our period. Warren Hastings had applied “an extra-
ordinary and exemplary coercion”,+ not only against dacoity but also
against those whom he stigmatised as its “nursing-mothers”, the
zamindars and the police. The snake, however, was only scotched.
In 1810 Lord Minto observed that “a monstrous and disorganised
state of society existed at the very scat of that government to which
the country might justly look for safety and protection". Bengal was
far more subject to brigandage than more recent acquisitions and less
civilised tracts. This anomaly was due to the riches of the country,
its long security from invasion, its venal police and unscrupulous
zamindars, who frequently regarded their estates “as fields to plunder
in, extort and pillage”. The dacoits had secured their position by
systematic intimidation. 2
“It is impossible”, wrote Minto, "to imagine without seeing it the horrid
ascendancy which they have obtained over the inhabitants at large of the countries
which have been the principal scene of their atrocities. . . . In truth the captains of
the band are esteemed and even called the hakim or ruling power, while the govern-
ment does not possess either authority or influence enough to obtain from the
people the smallest aid toward their own protection. ”
Minto initiated a vigorous campaign against dacoity; but in 1823
the pest was so rife in the Purnea district that leases of estates were
sought for in the expectation that profits would be swelled by shares
from illicit plunder. Afterwards, with the aid of the recently organised
thagi police-force, some gangs of dacoits were broken up; but cap-
tures seldom ended in conviction as victims feared to testify against
their oppressors; so in 1843 an act was passed similar to that pre-
viously directed against thagi. To secure conviction it sufficed merely
to prove association with a gang of dacoits either within or outside
the Company's territories before or after the passing of the new
measure. Doubt, however, arose as to the applicability of this enact-
ment to dacoits who did not belong to certain tribes therein specified.
In 1851 this doubt was removed by further legislation. Kaye tells us
that even then by terrorism, by producing numerous false witnesses,
and by availing themselves of the barriers which the complicated
machinery of the law placed between “the eyes of the British func-
tionary and the crimes which were committed around him”, the
dacoits were still glorying in their exploits “as sportsmen do".
In 1852 Wauchope, the magistrate of Hughli, forwarded to the
superintendent of police a list of 287 dacoits belonging to three gangs
which were concerned in eighty-three dacoities, adding that at least
1 Bengal Revenue Consultations, 19 April, 1774.
2 O'Malley, op. cit. pp. 305-6; also Mill and Wilson, VII, 284.


## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################

THE SANTALS
35
thirty-five gangs were then committing depredations near Calcutta.
He was himself appointed special Dacoity Commissioner and, assisted
by the new enactments, rapidly improved the situation. But the
central difficulty of the situation was the fact that the sufferers were
100 apathetic to defend themselves individually, and even in 1859 the
Dacoity Commissioner was still indispensable.
Among the best achievements of the Company's servants in parts
of the Lower Provinces were the conversion of restless and savage
tribes of aboriginals into generally law-abiding cultivators. The
pacification of the Santals, of the Chuars or Bhumij of Manbhum, of
the Larka Kols of Chota Nagpur, of the Khonds of the Orissa hills
was effected not only by the exercise of superior force which alone
could subdue rapine and bloody ferocity, but by methods of concilia-
tion and kindness practised by certain British officers whose names
still blossom in the dust.
From time to time religious and agrarian agitation produced
relapses into barbarism. Such a relapse was the Santal rebellion of
1855, which arose from the resentment of a tribe of primitive culti-
vators at their impotence to resist the exactions of Bengali and Bihari
landlords. About 30,000 Santals overran a large expanse of country,
roasting Bengalis, ripping up their women and torturing their
children. The rising was quelled by a strong military force and after-
wards the Santal Parganas were constituted a separate district and
ruled on a simpler system designed to secure closer personal contact
between British officers and the people.
District administration in Bengal weathered the trials of the Mutiny
right gallantly. When the storm broke there were in Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa only 2400 European soldiers as against Indian forces of
more than 29,000. In Calcutta there was a single British regiment.
No other British troops were nearer than Dinapur, 380 miles away,
where a regiment was employed in watching four Indian regiments
and the great city of Patna. ? In June, 1857, Lord Canning found it
necessary to pass a stringent Press Act, operative for one year, which
was required rather for Calcutta and Bengal than for Upper India.
“I doubt”, he said, “whether it is fully known or understood to what an auda-
cious extent sedition has been poured into the hearts of the native population of
India within the last few wecks under the guise of intelligence supplied to them by
the native newspapers. . . . It has been done sedulously, cleverly, arſfully. . . . In
addition to perversion of facts there are constant vilifications of the Government,
false assertions of its purposes, and unceasing attempts to sow discontent and
hatred between it and its subjects. ”2
Yet despite all adverse circumstances, despite a general lack of
communications, despite defects of administrative organisation already
noticed, although hardly a single district escaped either actual danger
or the apprehension thereof, so little was the public peace disturbed
Buckland, op. cit. p. 6. * Donogh, History and Law of Sedition, p. 183.
2
3-2


## p. 36 (#66) ##############################################

36
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
1
that in submitting his final detailed report on the whole of that
troublous period, the lieutenant-governor was able to state that “the
outbreak, as far as the Lower Provinces are concerned, had been
simply a military mutiny, and there has been at no time anything
that can be called a rebellion in the sense in which that term may
properly be used”. 1
The people of Bengal are for the most part, as Lord Canning said,
"less warlike and turbulent than those of Upper India". But while
large sections of them are timid, apathetic and peculiarly susceptible
to the domination of unscrupulous terrorism, there were in 1857 many
restless and truculent men who desired nothing more ardently than
the overthrow of the one power which stood between the province
and anarchy. Between all such and the achievement of their designs
stood a small band of British officers and the general confidence of
the people in the power and determination of the British government.
Here, for the present, we must leave our subject, remembering that,
so far, the educational policy adopted in 1835 had hardly touched
Bengal outside Calcutta. Even in 1852 there were in the government
educational institutions of the whole Lower Provinces upwards of
11,000 pupils only, of whom 103 were Christians, 791 were Muham-
madans, 189 were Arakanese, thags, and Bhagalpur Hill aborigines,
while the rest were Hindus. 2 Action on the famous Education
Dispatch of 19 July, 1854, had barely commenced when it was re-
tarded by the outbreak of the Mutiny and consequent financial
difficulties.