No More Learning

You have now three capable men below you, each of them
bent in a more or less quiet way on having his head, and each entitled to have his
views respectfully considered, and nine times out of ten probably right, but the
tenth time capable of bringing things into a dangerous mess. And then there is
the weak man, who is a greater nuisance than the strong uppish man. "
Lord Sydenham illustrates Morley's reluctance to rely on the con-
Lyall, Life of Dufferin, IT, 203:
? Life of Frete, 1, 441-2; Lord Sydenham, My Working Life, pp. 229-31, also 247,
· Ronaldshay, op. cit. 11, 57-60, 416.
* Morley, Recollections, 1, 263.
1
16-2


## p. 244 (#280) ############################################

244
THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
victions of responsible rulers in personal and daily touch with facts1
and realities. Morley certainly carried this feeling to excessive
lengths. A uniform policy which sets the time for all subordinates is
obviously necessary. But India is still the country of which Wood
said in 1853, "On nearly all sides I find that there is the greatest
difference between its various parts". Diversity of circumstances
renders general. conditions difficult to arrive at; and provincial rulers
who are not backward in pressing their convictions, even at the cost
of jarring on doctrines and theories conceived in a very different
atmosphere, are entitled to a full and unbiassed hearing. It is still
true that
there can be no successful government in India unless the fundamental fact of the
immense diversities of Indian countries and peoples be recognised, and each great
province be administered by its own separate government with a minimum of
interference from outside. ?
THE LAST WORD
We have seen the secretary of state growing in stature as years went
by, anxious at times to play an energetic part in the actual governing
of India, and reluctant to think that after all this must be the task of
the men on the spot. Throughout our period it was the central and
provincial governments who, working through the officers of the public
services among vast Asiatic communities split into thousands of
sections and possessed of traditions and usages of immemorial an-
tiquity, gave shape and living form to the policies of distant parlia-
ments and cabinets. It was they who brought India through the
supreme trial of more than four years of a world-wide war. It was
the governor-general in council who designed the arrangements of
1861, initiated the discussions which led to the constitutional changes
of 1892 and 1909, and suggested the momentous declaration of
20 August, 1917, although he did not frame its terms.
In Lord Birkenhead's words of 5 November, 1929, we find an
echo of the Duke of Argyll's dispatch of 1870.
“The authority and position of the secretary of state”, said the late holder of
that office, “are complementary of the authority and position of the viceroy.
Sometimes the special atmosphere in which the viceroy lives, or the wholly different
atmosphere in which the secretary of state lives, may be the corrective of a rash
impulse, whether that be formed in Delhi or in Whitehall. ”
Differences of opinion, he added, must sometimes arise between these
high authorities. With good will on both sides these were almost
invariably accommodated. The last word necessarily rested with the
representative of the cabinet and parliament of this country. It is
much to be regretted that so great a public servant as Lord Curzon
found it so hard to accept this obvious consideration. But only on
these terms can viceroys discharge their heavy and harassing re-
sponsibilities.
· My Working Life, p. 226. 2 Strachey, India, p. 64. • Hansard, Lords Debates.


## p. 245 (#281) ############################################

CHAPTER XIII
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
1858–1918
The sixty years which followed the suppression of the Mutiny were
in Bengal years of rapidly increasing population, of growing wealth,
of expanding communications, of widely extending knowledge and
contact with Western ideas. In spite of a daily burden of increasing
case-work, district officers and their subordinates were constantly
called on to make fresh efforts in new directions, to push forward
education, vaccination, sanitary improvement, local self-government,
to throw all their energies into carrying out schemes devised by higher
authority. But before proceeding with the history of district adminis-
tration, we must observe the succession of changes which finally
transformed the old Lower Provinces (Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and
Assam) into the modern provinces of (a) Bengal, (6) Bihar and
Orissa, and (c) Assam.
The first of these changes was the transfer of Assam in 1874 from
the charge of the lieutenant-governor of Bengal to that of a separate
chief commissioner. The next in 1905 was the partition of Bengal,
Bihar and Orissa into two new provinces of Western Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa and Eastern Bengal and Assam. Each of these charges
was committed to a lieutenant-governor; and the lieutenant-governor
of the western province was from 1910 assisted by an executive council
which consisted of two British members and one Indian. In 1912
Assam was again handed over to a chief commissioner; Bihar a:d
Orissa were entrusted to a lieutenant-governor in council; and
Bengal was made over to a governor in council. Each executive
council consisted of two British members of the civil service and a
non-official Indian gentleman.
We have seen that from 1859 the magistrate-and-collector, or
district officer, once more became sole head of the district. The police
were his subordinates, although from 1861 they were managed and
disciplined by a British superintendent, often supported by an as-
sistant superintendent. These officers and their men belonged to a
provincial force which was presided over by an inspector-general and
two or more deputy inspectors-general with whom the district officer
constantly corresponded. He also conducted business with the
director of public instruction, with the opium agent, with the chief
engineer, and, as time went on and communications extended, with
the heads of other departments which gradually came into being,
such as excise, jails, sanitation, land records. He had long been
subordinate to a commissioner, but now was menaced by a variety of


## p. 246 (#282) ############################################

246 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
masters. Such a state of affairs was likely to lead to overmuch corre
spondence, to neglect of the real work of administration and to loss
of touch with the needs of the people of his charge. Perceiving the
danger, George Campbell, lieutenant-governor from 1871 to 1874,
laid down emphatically the principle that heads of departments were
on no account to dictate to district officers, who within their charges
should, subject to the control of their commissioners, be supreme over
everyone and everything except the courts of justice. The police, who
were then their sole agency for all purposes connected with the peace,
,
order and conservancy of their districts, the regulation of public
assemblies and other administrative matters, must be employed with
discrimination. Campbell was anxious to devise some other sub-
ordinate agency which would relieve the police of such miscellaneous
duties as attention to the state of the roads; but he did not succeed
in an attempt to do this. There was in Bengal no village record system,
no collection of revenue by subdivisional Indian officials. It was,
therefore, impossible to find sufficient employment for a new sub-
ordinate executive establishment.
The great and growing city of Calcutta was not included in a
district, although it formed part of the charge of the commissioner of
the principal or presidency division. Its stamps and customs were
under the direct superintendence of the Board of Revenue. It
possessed a special police establishment under the control of a special
commissioner assisted by deputy commissioners. Criminal justice was
administered by five stipendiary magistrates, and by a municipal
magistrate appointed to try exclusively offences under the municipal
acts.
Honorary magistrates had been appointed in some districts of the
Lower Provinces in the year 1857 in order that the services and in-
fluence of land-holders and resident non-official Europeans might be
actively enlisted in support of the administration. Indigo planters in
Bihar had in that stormy time been authorised to raise small bodies
of police for the protection of their immediate neighbourhoods and
in command of these had done good service. In 1859, when the
Mutiny was over, Sir Frederick Halliday abolished honorary magis-
tracies; but their value had been proved and on the suggestion of the
Government of India, his successor, Sir John Peter Grant, appointed
forty-five honorary magistrates in Calcutta and forty-five more in the
mufassal or outlying districts. All of these were zamindars, European
planters, or other persons of position; they were generally invested
with power to try minor cases only, and nowhere exercised control
over the police. The system was extended in 1872-3 by Sir George
Campbell, and again in 1889 by Sir Stuart Bayley, with a view to
promoting habits of self-government. Benches of honorary magis-
trates were established in municipalities. Much good work was done
1 Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors, 1, 74.


## p. 247 (#283) ############################################

LAW COURTS AND THE BAR
247
by the honorary magistrates, and an accumulating burden of litiga-
tion was somewhat lightened.
Municipal boards and local cess committees, established at first
under strict official control with very limited powers, developed in
the 'eighties into municipal and district boards with wider responsi-
bilities, containing an official element and generally presided over by
district officers. Innovations transplanted from the West, they were
at first hardly appreciated or understood except in large centres of
population where municipal boards formed "an oasis of popular
control in the midst of an official system”, concerning themselves
with roads, schools, hospitals, sanitation and vaccination. The district
boards excited no popular interest partly perhaps because no attempt
was made to graft them on to the village “chaukidari” panchayats, or
councils of five, whose duties were still confined to assessment and
collection of the local police rate levied for payment of the village
chaukidars (watchmen).
Civil and criminal courts were subject to the jurisdiction of the
Calcutta High Court of Judicature which was established by letters
patent on 14 May, 1862, and took the place of the old Supreme Court
and the Company's “Sadr Adalat”. Small cause courts for the trial
of civil suits were set up in 1860 under judges, who in 1867 were
amalgamated with the “Principal Sadr Amins” and the munsiffs 2 in
a single provincial department, the higher grade of which was com-
posed of "subordinate judges”, and the lower of munsiffs. The district
and sessions judge presided over the civil and criminal courts of a
district; but the district officer was expected to watch and supervise
generally the proceedings of his subordinate magistrates. By Act X
of 1859, to which we shall refer later on, original jurisdiction in suits
between landlord and tenant was transferred from the civil courts to
the (revenue) courts of the collector and his assistants. But this
arrangement was cancelled by Act VIII of 1869 when suits for rent or
ejectment of tenants returned to the civil courts. Suits and cases, the
whole volume of work transacted by district establishments, increased
very greatly during our period, particularly in Eastern Bengal, and
led to proposals for the partition of certain districts which at first
excited little or no popular opposition.
But gradually there came a change. With a rapid extension of
communications, of intercourse with England, of Western education,
lawyers grew and multiplied. Local bars increased, developing not
only at district but at subdivisional headquarters. In Mymensingh,
for example, the local bar in 1872 consisted of fifty-two pleaders; in
1913 it mustered 403 pleaders and barristers, 384 mukhtars (law-
agents) and ninety-six revenue agents. The population of that district
indeed had almost doubled within the period; but legal business
would not have afforded a livelihood, adequate or inadequate, to so
1 Report on Constitutional Reforms, 1918, p. 104.
: Cf. chap. ii, supra.
>


## p. 248 (#284) ############################################

248 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
many had it not been stimulated by a liberal employment of touts.
It incr-ased eno: mously; and the energies of district and subdivisional
officers were more and more confined to the business of trying cases.
District officers vere also oppressed by growing correspondence with
the various provincial departments. Not only were they prevented
from moving freely about their districts and becoming acquainted
sufficiently with actual conditions, but the quality of their work at
headquarters necessarily suffered. The eventual situation has been
faithfully described by one of their number, 2 who wrote in 1913:
As matters stand at present, we are neglecting the work which matters most
because neglect does not show; and in order that we may do the work which is
intrinsically of no greater importance, but which must have the preference because
it comes more immediately to the notice of the government. It is because the mass
of the people are so submissive to authority, and because they cherish an old belief
that the British government desires to do justice, that they do not make their voices
heard, when the district officer fails to secure them from such delay in obtaining
justice in the criminal courts as amounts to a denial of justice, because he has no
time to control the work of the courts; when the district officer fails to give them a
fair price for their homestead land acquired for a public purpose because he has
not time to control the work of the “Land Acqusition Deputy Collector". . . . None
of these defects come very prominently before the notice of government, because
the people do not often complain; but the cumulative effect of these omissions,
though slow, cannot fail to be far-reaching; and there is grave danger that the
effect may become more rapid, now that ill-disposed people have got to work to
persuade the masses that government does not care for their interests. 1
Partition or rearrangement of charges was the only effective remedy
for such a state of affairs, but involved considerable initial expenditure
of public revenues and for this reason excited adverse criticism. As,
too, every partition implied some disturbance of vested interests, some
apprehensions of loss of clients, some loss of custom to shops in
particular towns; as after 1905 the agitation against the partition of
Bengal struck a key-note which reverberated among the Hindu
educated classes in every town throughout the province; however
desirable a partition might be, it was always a signal for loud news-
paper protest. But we have carried this part of our narrative far, and
must return to the peaceful period which followed the Mutiny.
It was recognised then that no more time must be lost in providing
the Lower Provinces with improved communications, and that in
other to finance a satisfactory scheme local rates must be introduced.
The landlords, however, urged that when the permanent settlement
was concluded, they were informed that no demand would ever be
made on them, their heirs and successors, "for an augmentation of
the public assessment in consequence of the improvement of their
respective estates”. They were therefore not liable to pay road or
education cesses. The dispute was finally settled by the Duke of
Argyll, secretary of state, who ruled in 1870 that
rating for local expenditure is to be regarded, as it had hitherto been regarded in
all provinces of the empire, as taxation separate and distinct from the ordinary
1 Report of the Bengal District Administration Committee, 1913-14, p. 24.


## p. 249 (#285) ############################################

TENANCY LAW
249
land-revenue; that the levying of such rates upon the holders of land irrespective
of the amount of their land assessment involves no breach of faith on the part of
the government, whether as regards holders of permanent or temporary tenures;
and that where rates are levied at all, they ought, as far as may be possible, to be
levied equally without distinction and without exemption upon all holders of
property assessable to the rate.
Effect was given to this decision by the Road Cess Act passed in 1871,
which authorised the raising of a local rate or cess for the construction
and maintenance of roads and other means of communication, pre-
scribing a valuation of land and a registration of the holders of landed
interests. Landlords,lessees, mortgagees, sub-proprietors were required
to present returns of receipts, and were informed that only rents
returned would be realisable by process of law. Records and valua-
tions of all landed property liable for payment of the cess were pre-
pared. Cesses were to be spent entirely within the districts wherein
they were levied. 1
Tenants generally still suffered from the absence of any system of
registration of their rights and holdings. Act X of 1859, the first
tenant law passed for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, named classes of
tenants whose rents were unalterable, and conferred a right of
occupancy on tenants who had held the same land for at least twelve
years, either personally or through predecessors from whom they had
inherited their holdings. It also limited the right of distraint which
till then had been exercised by landlords in a very arbitrary fashion.
a
But while doing these things, it failed adequately to secure the
occupancy rights which it created. It further failed to safeguard the
power which it conferred on landlords of enhancing occupancy rents
which fell below prevailing rates. Above all it made no provision for
any field-to-field survey, or for the preparation of records of rights.
Thus the tenants, and indeed any party to a case on whom lay a
burden of proot, still suffered from serious disabilities in law courts.
Tenants too were frequently shifted by their zamindars from one
holding to another in order to prevent their acquiring occupancy
right in any holding. In 1872 serious trouble developed in the Pubna
district, where landlords habitually exacted heavy cesses from tenants
and even endeavoured to obtain written agreements to pay rents
swollen by such unjust demands. The victims organised themselves
for systematic resi-tance, proclaiming that they were'rebelling against
their tyrants and not against the government. Disturbances took
place; the neighbouring district of Bogra caught the contagion; and
outward peace was only restored by the mediation of the district
officers, while discussions were started which eventually led to legisla-
tion in 1885, when a new Bengal Tenancy Act superseded the act of
1859. It was based on three principles, fixity of tenure for the tenant,
an adjustment of rent which would enable the landlord to obtain his
1 O'Malley, History of Bengal, p. 458.


## p. 250 (#286) ############################################

250
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
fair share of increment in the value of the produce of the soil, and
settlement of disputes between landlords and tenants on equitable
principles. It laid down the rule that occupancy right could be
acquired in all land held by a tenant provided that for twelve years
previously the occupier had held any land whatever in the village,
and thus put an end to the zamindars' practice of shifting tenants
arbitrarily from one holding to another. It empowered the central
government to order a survey and the preparation of a record of rights
in any area, and permitted the provincial government to direct
similar operations to be undertaken in any estate where they were
asked for by either side or were considered necessary to compose
disputes. A field-to-field survey, a preparation of records, and a
settlement of occupancy rents began in North Bihar; and later on
other surveys and settlements were begun in various Bengal districts.
All these operations were conducted by a staff which worked under
a director of land records. One-fourth of the cost was borne by the
government and three-fourths by landlords and tenants concerned.
In this way effective steps were at last taken to introduce system,
justice and clarity into revenue administration in Bengal. A further
act, passed by the provincial legislative council in 1895, required
privileged tenants to register all changes in their holdings due to
succession or transfer. Records of rights were to be revised periodically
and not checked and maintained continuously after the fashion
followed in the North-Western Provinces and Panjab. The results of
these new measures were beneficial.
We have now examined the system and framework of district ad-
ministration in Bengal and have reviewed agrarian legislation. Field-
to-field survey and settlement of occupancy rents, and preparation of
a record of rights, when at last ordered by the government, were
carried out under the supervision of the officers of the land records
and settlement departments. The outside world knows nothing of the
immense debt which rural India, and by far the greater part of India
is rural, owes to these men who were always selected with particular
care. Their devotion, their elaborate diligence, their tireless sympathy
with the people, can be adequately appreciated only by those who
have seen them at work or inherited the fruits of their labours. A very
accurate idea of economic conditions in a fairly typical Bengal district
may be gathered from a book written by the late Mr J. Č. Jack, of
the Indian civil service, a brilliant and devoted settlement officer.
The people of Faridpur, the district of which he wrote, are favoured
by a rich soil and generally live in comfort, obtaining sufficient sub-
sistence from agriculture and fishing, but often get into debt, mainly
by reason of their improvidence and lavish expenditure on marriages
and other domestic ceremonies. They pay little in taxes. Many
members of the cultivating classes enter menial or domestic service.
The big landlords of the province are generally absentees; the small


## p. 251 (#287) ############################################

THE BHADRALOK
251
9
or ordinary landlords, the co-sharers, the lessees, the mortgagees,
sub-lessees, sub-mortgagees are seldom in contact with the land and
content themselves with collecting their rents, having little or no
inclination for farming of any kind. The small land-holders are largely
intermingled with the professional and clerical classes, and all alike
are known as bhadralok (respectable people), who live not only in
towns as in other provinces, but also in villages. The original bhadralok
were Brahmans, Kayesthas (writers) or Baidyas (physicians); but the
spread of Western education and the practical advantages of university
credentials have caused many members of lower castes to adopt
bhadralok ideals. It is the bhadralok who have shown that consuming
passion for English education which has distinguished Bengal. It is
they who have established Anglo-vernacular schools in towns and
villages on a scale unknown elsewhere in India, schools attended by
throngs of youths, who look to the Calcutta University as their portal
to a profession and a satisfactory marriage. Mr Jack says that in
Faridpur the average income of the bhadralok is higher than that of any
other class, largely because the lawyers are all bhadralok and "an able
lawyer will make five or ten times as much a year as an equally able
doctor, while even an incapable lawyer will make a better income
than most capable members of other professions”. Competition,
however, is keen; and in Faridpur and elsewhere many bhadralok live
in poverty. The strong position of this class in rural areas is un-
challenged by any martial caste. There are none of the army pen-
sioners who count for so much in many districts of other provinces.
The agriculturists are generally timid or apathetic; and, as we have
seen, in earlier times bands of brigands battened on numbers of
unresisting victims. Between the years 1905 and 1906 brigandage and
terrorism were revived and practised by bhadralok youths known as
“political” dacoits.
Internal trade in Bengal depends largely on means of communica-
tion, which improved greatly within our period, but were defective
even at its close. In the eastern portion of the province trade is mainly
carried on boats. Fishing and weaving are the principal industries;
but weaving has suffered greatly from the introduction of factory-
made goods and from the ravages of malaria among workmen ab-
sorbed in sedentary pursuits. Mr Jack observes that weavers have
taken largely to agriculture or domestic service. From 1860 onwards
Calcutta and its neighbourhood were largely affected oy a remarkable
expansion of foreign trade, a general increase of prices, and a rise in
the standard of living. Large industrial works were started, conducted
by machinery and affording employment to numbers of labourers
who came from villages and returned to their lands at certain seasons.
In 1881 there were nineteen jute mills with 39,000 operatives; in 1911
there were fifty-eight jute mills and 200,000 operatives. Coalfields
were developed at Raniganj, Jherria and Giridih; but inland centres


## p. 252 (#288) ############################################

252
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
of industry were few; the villages remained the chief units of economic
life and village lands were parcelled out in small holdings. Various
parts of the Lower Provinces have been visited by drought from time
to time. The most notable of these visitations was the terrible Orissa
famine. 1
Toward the close of the viceroyalty of Lord Curzon it became
increasingly apparent that the Lower Provinces generally, and the
eastern half of Bengal particularly, were administratively starved.
Service for Europeans in these eastern districts was generally solitary
and unhealthy. Its unpopularity encouraged a tacit assumption that
this rich and fertile area with its teeming populations required no
more than a meagre official establishment. Its communications were
bad; its government buildings were mean and inadequate; its police
stations were few. It contained no troops and no mounted police.
Several of its districts were too large for administration by a single
magistrate-and-collector. Its agricultural population was becoming
richer and more litigious; its law courts and district establishments
were over-burdened with work; its scattered schools and colleges were
multiplying and producing a growing throng of young men who
turned their faces persistently towards government service or the
overstocked bar. Disappointment bred discontent which was ag-
gravated by political and newspaper teachings that foreign rule was
the source of the mischief. Meantime civil servants, and especially
those whose lot lay in Eastern Bengal, were generally tied to their
desks and found little time for informal contact with the people of
their districts. In the extensive Dacca and Chittagong divisions with
their population of 17 millions, there were toward the close of the
year 1907 only twenty-one British covenanted civil servants and only
twelve British police officers. And while Eastern Bengal was so
scantily manned, the whole of the Lower Provinces needed a larger
administrative staff, more liberal financing and the attention of more
than one provincial administration. Thus the first partition of the old
Lower Provinces came about. For reasons with which this chapter is
not concerned, it was intensely unpopular with congress politicians
and the leaders of the Hindu bhadralok. A boycott of European goods
was proclaimed; schoolboys and students were enlisted in picketing
operations. Within the years 1906-9 no less than 557 resultant dis-
turbances came before the criminal courts of the new province of
Eastern Bengal and Assam, and in most of these disturbances school-
boys and students were concerned. But the worst was yet to come.
Young men belonging to the English-educated classes had for some
time been engaged in revolutionary conspiracy, and armed with
bombs and pistols commenced subterranean intermittent warfare
against the government and society, organising gangs for the per-
petration of "political” dacoities, the proceeds of which went to
1 Cf. chap. xvii, infra.


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TERRORISM
253
finance their campaign. The terrorism which they were soon able to
exercise showed that the character of the village people had altered
little since the far-away days of the first Lord Minto. The principal
theatre of their operations was Eastern Bengal; and the government
of that province was long unable to obtain sympathetic recognition
of its needs from higher authority. " As late even as 18 May, 1908,
the chief secretary of Eastern Bengal and Assam addressed the
Government of India in the following terms:
Every branch of education, every department of administration, makes urgent
demands upon the revenues of this ill-equipped province; and the normal income
barely suffices to meet the necessary items of expenditure.
The situation grew worse and at last forced recognition from Simla
and Whitehall. Adequate legislation was undertaken; the police
were strengthened materially in Eastern Bengal; the number of
British officers was increased, and schemes for administrative and
educational reforms were under discussion when the sudden alteration
of the partition in December, 1911, remanded all such plans for
further consideration in altered circumstances. Bengal became one
province again but was still plagued by revolutionary crime. At last
on 23 October, 1913, the central government appointed a committee
consisting of five experienced executive officers (one from Bihar and
Orissa, one from the United Provinces, one from the Central Pro-
vinces, and two from Bengal) to examine the conditions prevailing
in the districts of Bengal; to compare them with those existing in other
provinces; and to report in what respect the administrative machinery
could be improved,
whether by the reduction of inordinately large districts, by the creation of new
subordinate agencies or otherwise, with the object of bringing the executive officers
of government into closer touch with the people.
After extensive touring in Bengal and neighbouring provinces, the
committee submitted their conclusions in a detailed report. They
found that for some years a succession of revolutionary outrages had
obstructed and unsteadied the administration of certain districts; that
terrorism had been rampant; that Bengal district officers were, from
causes beyond their control, somewhat out of touch with the people.
“A district officer”, they wrote, “or a police superintendent who is over-worked
and borne down by a load of office and inspection duties, cannot be reasonably
expected either to become well acquainted with the people of his district or to
exercise over his subordinates that watchful and sympathetic control that is essential
to good administration. Still less can he be expected to devise or ascertain how
progress is attainable.
Such matters require careful and deliberate reflection and
for this there is no time. The subordinate staff suffer with him, and it is idle to
expect officers overburdened by routine work to spare time for tours or interviews
with people whom they are not obliged to see. Their days are entirely occupied
with endeavouring to keep pace with those duties which they must perform.
1 Report of the Bengal District Administration Committee, 1913-14, chap. ii.
>
3 Idem, p. 18.
• Idem, p. 17.


## p. 254 (#290) ############################################

254
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
The committee proposed the following remedies :
(a) partitions or rearrangements of certain districts or subdivisions;
(6) development of a village watch-and-ward and self-government
organisation by means of “union panchayats” under the control of
circle officers who would be subordinate to the subdivisional magis-
trates and would in some degree fill the place of the subordinate
tahsil agencies in neighbouring provinces;
(c) reforms in connection with the management of Anglo-
vernacular schools;
(d) measures calculated to promote industrial development;
(c) the
appointment of more European deputy directors of agricul-
ture for demonstration work.
The report was published by the Bengal Government in 1915. The
war was then in progress and money was needed in new directions.
Effective measures were taken under the Defence of India Act to
suppress revolutionary conspiracy; but in all other respects reform
was tarrying in Bengal in November, 1918.
In no province had the difficulties of district officers been so
harassing. The causes lay partly in the careless neglect with which,
as we have seen, the province was treated in the far-away past under
the vague impression that because its population contained no martial
element its problems could wait. In later times Bengal district officers
were also called on to suffer for short-sighted economy in high quarters
and for an obstinate reluctance there to face facts which they never
failed faithfully to represent. 1
· Chirol, Indian Unrest, pp. 96, 315; Morley, Recollections, I1, 212, 312; Bengal District
Administration Committee Report (1914), p. 17.


## p. 255 (#291) ############################################

CHAPTER XIV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
1858–1918
In Bombay, as in other provinces, the main features of the adminis-
N
trative machinery had stood the test of time, and its practical working
had become stereotyped. The history of the second half of the nine-
teenth century is, therefore, in the main concerned with the improve-
ment of the administrative organisation bequeathed by the Company
and its adaptation to the rapid intellectual and material advancement
of the people of Western India. Until very recent times the Bombay
Government maintained and conducted relations with a host of petty
a
Bhil, Rajput and other chiefs too insignificant to be dealt with directly
by the Government of India. The officials charged with the duty of
arranging terms with the Indian princes and land-holders in the earlier
years of the nineteenth century had been persuaded to treat the de
facto exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction by a land-holder as an
indication of quasi-sovereign status. The political agents, who were
ultimately enrolled in a separate political cadre, were from the begin-
ning chosen generally from among the officers of the Company's
military forces, except in the case of small isolated states contiguous
to British districts, when the collector of the district was appointed
ex officio political agent of the state concerned. By the opening of the
period under review the system had become firmly established, the
functions of the agent varying from the mere giving of advice and
exercise of general surveillance to an actual share in the administra-
tion of the state.
In the case of the peninsula of Kathiawar, which comprised no less
than 193 separate states, the Bombay Government in 183 i established
a criminal court, presided over by the political agent, to assist the
durbars of the several states in the trial of serious crimes; but subject
to this innovation, their interference with the judicial administration
of the peninsula was restricted up to 1863 merely to diplomatic
representation. By the latter date, however, the criminal jurisdiction
of all the chiefs had been defined and classified, and each of the four
divisions (prant), into which the peninsula was formed for adminis-
trative purposes, was placed in charge of an assistant to the political
agent, empowered to exercise residuary jurisdiction with wide civil
and criminal powers. Later years witnessed further developments,
such as the appointment of a deputy to each of the four assistant
political agents, stationed at the headquarters of each prant and
exercising subordinate civil and criminal jurisdiction; the alteration
in 1903 of the designation of the political agent and his four assistants


## p. 256 (#292) ############################################

256 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
to those of agent to the governor and political agents of the prants
respectively; the appointment of a member of the covenanted civil
service as judicial assistant to the agent to the governor, in order to
assist him in the disposal of grave criminal cases, remitted to his court
from the prants, and of civil and criminal appeals; and the appoint-
ment as ex officio assistant political agent of a superintendent
managed estates. The agent to the governor was also placed in control
of a small police force for watch-and-ward duty in the various thanas
and civil stations of the agency; but outside that area it has always
been customary to hold the chiefs and land-holders responsible for the
preservation of order and for indemnifying losses due to crime within
the limits of their respective territories.
The task of administering the border states of Gujarat and Raj-
putana, which contain large numbers of wild tribes, was for many
years one of great difficulty--so much so, indeed, that in 1838 the
Bombay Government established a system of border panchayats, with
the object of exercising a check upon continual border raids and of
providing a tribunal of speedy justice for these primitive tribesmen.
The experiment proved so successful that in 1876 these panchayats
were converted into regular courts under two British officers, one of
whom represents the Rajputana state and the other the Bombay state
concerned. These courts still exist and meet as occasion demands. 1
Another department of the administration which was established
during the Company's régime and continued to function for several
years after its demise was that of the survey settlement. The settlement
of the revenue demand from each occupant of land under the ryotwari
system was a necessary consequence of the political pacification of the
country and of the increase of cultivation and internal trade thereby
engendered. The ryotwari system had existed in Bombay and Madras
from ancient times, but the accounts relating to it had either been lost
or fallen into confusion during the later years of Indian rule. After
the first few years' administration, therefore, the Bombay Govern-
ment organised a Survey Department, which, after measuring and
mapping every holding, proceeded to classify the fields according to
depth and quality of soil, situation, and natural defects, placing each
field in a class corresponding to a certain "anna valuation” or
fractional share of the maximum rate calculated in sixteenths. Sub-
sequently villages were grouped into blocks on the basis of their
propinquity to markets and high roads and other economic condi-
tions, the maximum rates for each block being fixed in relation to
these conditions and to average prices. The survey department, which
was established in 1835, imposed at the outset assessments which were
too high and caused much distress. They were therefore reduced, and
a further enquiry was set on foot, which resulted in the formulation
by the department in 1847 of the principles which still form the basis
Imperial Gazetteer, Provincial volume 1, Bombay, pp. 86–8.
1


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LAND-REVENUE
257
of the Bombay land-revenue system. Incidentally the operations of
the department brought to light many cases of land held rent free
without authority, which were subsequently investigated and adjusted
by an Inam Commission appointed in 1852. The settlement of the
presidency was completed in 1882, except in the districts of North
Kanara and Ratnagiri, which were completed in 1891 and 1893
respectively, and the special survey department was then abolished,
the future revisions of the settlement, which take place every thirty
years, being entrusted to the assistant or deputy-collector in charge
of the subdivision of a district.
The arrangements in Sind were different, owing to the fact that
the ryotwari tenure in that region was less common than the zamin-
dari, under which the land-holder (zamindar) supplied seed, plough,
cattle and labour, divided the crop with the actual cultivator, and
paid the assessment in kind out of his share of the crop, after deducting
,
the value of the seed advanced. For several years after the annexation
of the province, the revenue was collected in kind, as previously
remarked; but during the governorship of Sir Bartle Frere (1862–7)
cash payments were everywhere introduced, and a regular survey was
commenced in 1863. The operations of the survey department and
the progress of irrigation resulted in 1882–3 in the province containing
three types of settlement—the original, the revised, and the irriga-
tional, and of these the last-named, which bases the assessment of land
on the method of irrigation adopted, was eventually (1902–3) applied
to the whole province.
In order to avoid the huge volume of detail involved in a survey of
the growth of the departmental administration of Bombay since 1858,
it seems advisable to give a succinct account of the main features of
the Bombay administration, as it existed in the year 1914. The out-
break of war in that year involved a variety of new burdens in the
sphere of daily administration, which were successfully shouldered
until the close of military operations; and the general results of the
armistice had hardly had time to make themselves felt, before the
whole problem of administration was subjected to revision in con-
nection with the publication and adoption by parliament of the con-
stitutional reforms associated with the names of Mr E. S. Montagu
and Lord Chelmsford.
In 1914, then, the Bombay government consisted of a governor,
appointed under the Government of India Act of 1833, and three
ordinary members of the council appointed under the Indian Councils
Act of 1909. Of the ordinary members two had to be persons who at
the date of their appointment had been in the service of the crown in
India for at least twelve years. In accordance with the spirit and
letter of the Morley-Mintó reforms, which underlay the act of 1909
(9 Edw. VII), the appointment of third ordinary member was given
to an Indian.
17
CHI VI


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258 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
)
In order to diminish the pressure of business, advantage was taken,
in the discharge of the executive and judicial functions, of the special
requirements of the different members of the government. The
governor himself, for example, might dispose of the business of the
political department (except civil, criminal and political cases), of the
public works department (except railways), of the general department,
relating to volunteers, cantonment and miscellaneous military matters,
and of the legal department, regarding matters pertaining to the
legislative council. The responsibility for the efficient administration
of revenue, financial and railway affairs was usually accepted by the
revenue member; while the work of the judicial department, in which
were included all questions concerning the urban and district police,
the work of the educational, marine and ecclesiastical departments,
and the remaining business of the political department and of the
general department—the latter including the important subjects of
local self-government and public health-would be usually divided
between the other two ordinary members of council. Questions which
presented no special difficulty were disposed of by the members in
charge of the department in which they occurred; on more important
questions and in cases involving heavy expenditure, the opinion of a
second member was sought; and if there were any difference of
opinion, or if any case of peculiar difficulty or general public interest
arose, the matter was settled according to the balance of opinion either
as recorded by the different members or after discussion at the meeting
of the executive council. Ordinarily the opinion of the majority was
decisive at such meetings of the council. But in the case of an equality
of votes on any question the governor or other person presiding had
two votes or the casting vote. In any grave political emergency,
however, affecting the safety or tranquillity of British rule, the governor
was empowered under section 47 of the East India Company Act of
1793, which had never been repealed, to set aside even the unanimous
opinion of his councillors, his orders in such cases having the validity
of orders passed by the whole council.
All papers connected with public business reached government
through the secretariat, where they were properly arranged and sub-
mitted to the members in charge of the departments to which they
belonged, together with all available material for forming a decision
in the shape of former correspondence, acts, or resolutions relating to
the subject, and also with the recorded opinions of the secretary or
under-secretary of the departments concerned, or of both. The
secretariat was composed as follows: for the revenue and financial
departments a secretary and an under-secretary who were covenanted
civilians, and two assistant secretaries belonging to the uncovenanted
service; for the political, judicial and special departments a covenanted
secretary and an under-secretary and two uncovenanted assistant
secretaries; for the general, educational, marine and ecclesiastical


## p. 259 (#295) ############################################

JUDICIAL ORGANISATION
259
departments a secretary who was a covenanted civilian, and an un-
covenanted assistant secretary; for the legal department a covenanted
secretary who was also remembrancer of legal affairs, a covenanted
assistant remembrancer of legal affairs who was also ex officio secretary
to the legislative council, and an assistant secretary who was chosen
from the subordinate judges of the province; and for the public works
department (which included a railway branch) a secretary, a joint
secretary, and two under-secretaries, who were either royal or civil
engineers, and two uncovenanted assistant secretaries. The senior of
the three covenanted civilian secretaries to government was styled the
chief secretary. There was also a separate department in charge of the
chief secretary, assisted by the senior of the civilian under-secretaries.
Reference has already been made to the relations between the
Bombay government and the Indian states of the province. Up to
the date of the constitutional changes involved in the passing of the
Government of India Act of 1919 all the Indian states in the Bombay
Presidency were under the supervision of the Bombay government,
with the exception of Baroda, where the resident political officer was,
and is still, an agent to the governor-general.
Under letters patent of 1865, the administration of justice through-
out the regulation districts of the presidency was, and still remains,
entrusted to the high court, consisting of a chief justice and seven
puisne judges. This court possesses both ordinary and extraordinary
civil and criminal jurisdiction, and exercises original and appellate
functions. The appellate judges of the high court also supervise the
administration of justice by the different civil and criminal courts of
the regulation districts. Ordinary original jurisdiction is exercised in
both civil and criminal matters arising within the limits of the city
and island of Bombay. By virtue of its extraordinary jurisdiction the
high court may remove and itself try any civil suit brought in any
court under its superintendence, and may in criminal cases exercise
jurisdiction over all persons residing in places within the jurisdiction
of any court subject to the superintendence of the high court. Besides
acting as an appeal court in civil and criminal matters, the high court
also functions as an insolvency court and possesses the civil and
criminal jurisdiction of an admiralty and vice-admiralty court in
prize cases and other maritime questions arising in India. It has also
been invested with testamentary jurisdiction, and has matrimonial
jurisdiction over Christians. One of the judges of the high court
officiates as judge of the Parsi matrimonial court; while matrimonial
decrees by district courts require confirmation by the high court.
The high court has no jurisdiction over the province of Sind except
in respect of its powers under the Administrator-General's Act of
1874, of probates and administrations, of decrees in matrimonial
cases, and in respect of European British subjects. All the functions
of a high court are performed by the court of the judicial commissioner,
17-2


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260
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
which replaced the former sadr court in 1906. A separate judicial
commissioner for Sind was first appointed in 1866. By the commence-
ment of the twentieth century the judicial work of the province had
so greatly increased that the court was enlarged to consist of the
judicial commissioner and two assistant judicial commissioners, one
of whom must be a barrister of at least five years' standing and be
qualified to deal with mercantile cases. The court serves also as a
district and sessions court for the Karachi district and as a colonial
court of admiralty.
In addition to the high court of Bombay and the court of the
judicial commissioner in Sind, four grades of courts administer civil
justice throughout the presidency, namely, those of district and
assistant judges and of first and second class subordinate judges. These
subordinate judges date from the year 1868–9, when the old titles of
sadr amin and munsif were abolished, and when at the same time the
number and limits of the judicial zillahs or districts were altered, the
appointment of judgeships and assistant judgeships were divided into
grades, and a thorough redistribution of the subordinate courts took
place, in order that the boundaries of their jurisdiction might corre-
spond as far as possible with the talukas or revenue subdivisions of the
presidency. In 1914 the cadre of the district judicial department
included seventeen judges, three joint judges, and seven assistant
judges, all these officers being members of the Indian civil service
except three district and three assistant judges, who belonged to the
Bombay provincial service. The first and second class subordinate
judges numbered respectively seventeen and eighty-nine. The regular
judicial staff was also entrusted with the work performed originally by
a separate staff of three judges (a special judge and two subordinate
judges) under the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879, which
was passed after the severe famine of 1876–8. Of the total staff of
subordinate judges four were employed exclusively in assisting the
district judges in the inspection of the subordinate courts in their
respective districts and in reporting on the working of the act above-
mentioned. As regards the district judges, it may be remarked that
those at Surat and Poona served also as judges of the Parsi matri-
monial courts in those towns; while the judge of Poona, as “Agent for
the Sardars in the Deccan”, decided under Regulation xxix of 1827
cases in which certain gentlemen of high rank are interested. For the
easy recovery of small debts and demands, small cause courts, invested
with sumynary powers, existed in Bombay and in six smaller towns,
Ahmadabad, Nadiad, Poona, Surat, Broach and Karachi. The Deccan
Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879 was also responsible for the creation
of appointments of village munsiffs and “conciliators", of whom the
former are empowered within the area of one or more villages to
dispose of petty suits up to Rs. 10 in value, and the latter endeavour
to induce parties to agree to a compromise of matters in dispute or to


## p. 261 (#297) ############################################

DISTRICT OFFICIALS
261
a reference to arbitration. Other civil courts are those of the canton-
ment magistrates, who in 1910 were empowered, as occasion might
demand, to dispose of suits within a limit of Rs. 500, while in 1906
mamlatdars were given jurisdiction in suits regarding the immediate
possession of immovable property.
The judicial arrangements outlined above did not apply to the
scheduled districts, which may be defined as “those which have never
been brought within, or have from time to time been removed from,
the operation of the general acts and regulations and the jurisdiction
of the ordinary courts of judicature”. Excluding the Panch Mahals
district, which was not included in the regulation districts until 1885,
the scheduled districts included Sind, where the judicial system is
almost identical with that of the rest of the presidency; Aden and its
dependencies, in which the resident had rather more extensive powers
than a district and sessions judge, and his assistants were usually vested
with inferior civil and criminal jurisdiction; and lastly the villages of
the Mewasi chiefs, over which the collector of the West Khandesh
district, as ex officio political agent, exercised both civil and criminal
jurisdiction, subject to appeal to and revision by the high court.
The revenue administration of the Bombay Presidency was carried
out by the following superior staff in 1914: four revenue commis-
sioners, including the commissioner of customs, opium, salt and abkari;
eleven senior and ten junior collectors, including the colleetor alt
revenue and the collector of Bombay; seventeen first and eighteen
second assistant collectors, some of whom were serving in the judicial
branch and some were on special duty in Sind; sixty-one deputy-
collectors, including the personal assistant to the director of agricul-
ture, who were divided into six grades and were in charge of district
treasuries or divisions of districts. In Sind, under the commissioner,
the revenue administration was carried on by four collectors, two
deputy-commissioners, six assistant collectors, and twenty-two deputy-
collectors.
The ordinary collectorate (or district), which has not altered
appreciably since the beginning of the present century, is composed
of twelve talukas or subdivisions, cach of which contains about a
hundred government villages, i. e. villages which have not been
alienated and the total revenues of which belong to the state. Each
village has its regular complement of officers, who are usually hcrc-
ditary, namely thc patel, the kulkarni or talati, the mhar and the watch-
man. The position and duties of these village officials, as well as of the
other hereditary village servants, have already been explained in an
carlier chapter. The revenue accounts of a village, which are simple
and complete, are based upon the survey register. Every occupant is
provided with a separate receipt book in which the total amount of
his holding is entered, and the patel and kulkarni are bound, under
heavy penalties, to record in it the sums he has paid. Every year what


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262
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
is termed the jamabandi of the village is made, which determines the
total amount of revenue due from the village. This process brings the
assistant or deputy-collector into annual contact with each village in
his charge and enables him to acquaint himself with its wants and
requirements; it enables the returns of cultivation and other registers,
useful for statistical purposes, to be checked; and it affords an oppor-
tunity of examining the village accounts, verifying transfers of land,
and generally of making such
a scrutiny as will protect the individual
cultivator from fraud.
Each taluka or subdivision of a collectorate is in charge of a mam-
latdar, whose duties have considerably increased since the first quarter
of the nineteenth century. He is responsible for the treasury business
of his taluka, and for seeing that instalments of revenue are punctually
paid by the villages, that the village accounts are accurately kept, that
the cultivators' payments are duly receipted, that the boundary-
marks of the fields are in repair, and generally that the village officers
are performing their duties properly. He functions as a subordinate
magistrate and has also to supervise the administration of the local
funds. With a view to giving him some assistance, a certain number of
villages are placed under the supervision of circle inspectors and other
members of the mamlatdar's official establishment; but he is expected to
assure himself by personal examination that they are doing their work.
Above the mamlatdar is the assistant or deputy-collector who is in
charge of, on an average, three talukas, and is expected to travel about
his charge throughout the seven fair-weather months of the year. He
has to satisfy himself by direct personal inspection that the revenue
work is regularly carried out; he sees that the revenue of each village
is brought to account at the time of the annual jamabandi; he
nominates the village officers; enquires into the needs of his talukas in
respect of local roads, wells, planting of trees and so forth; he hears
appeals from the orders of the mamlatdars; corresponds with them on
matters concerned with the administration of their respective talukas,
and generally supervises their proceedings.
Above the assistant and deputy-collectors is the collector and magis-
trate, who is in charge of the whole district. He has to travel through
his charge during four months of the year, and besides superintending
the revenues and magisterial work of his district he has to administer
the excise and other special taxes and to supervise the stamp revenue.
He is also ex officio district registrar and visitor of the district jail, and
has important duties to perform in connection with municipalities and
local funds, with the Land Acquisition Act (I of 1894), and with forests.
On all questions of executive administration his opinion is invariably
required.
Finally general superintendence and control over the revenue ad-
ministration are exercised by the three revenue commissioners (for
the northern, central and southern divisions of the presidency) and
the commissioner in Sind. During the fair season these officers are


## p. 263 (#299) ############################################

PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
263
constantly moving about their divisions; judging for themselves of the
requirements of the various parts of the country, of the manner in
which the revenue administration and that of policeare being carriedon,
and of the qualifications of the district officials. They entertain appeals
from the collector's decisions and are the channel of communication
between them and the government. Speaking broadly, it may be
said that, except for a general increase of business resulting from the
progress of the presidency, for a few changes such as the introduction
of local self-government in the form of partly elective local boards,
and for administrative readjustments such as the creation of a third
revenue division, the general system of revenue administration in
force in 1914, and also at the present date, is practically the same as at
the date of the assumption of the government of India by the crown.
The main features of the system can be traced back directly to the
arrangements initiated by Elphinstone for the settlement of the
Deccan and other territories taken from the Peshwa, and indirectly
and with certain marked differences, mainly due to the differences in
land tenures, to the arrangements in Bengal.
During the periou succeeding the year 1858 the administration and
expansion of the chief ports of the territories controlled by the Bombay
government were provided for by the establishment of the Bombay
Port Trust in 1873, of the Karachi Port Trust in 1880, and of the Aden
Port Trust in 1889. The plague which broke out in 1896 was directly
responsible for the creation of the City Improvement Trust in 1898–
a body composed of members partly elected and partly nominated,
which was charged with the duty of preparing a comprehensive
scheme of improvement for Bombay, with particular reference to the
better ventilation of densely crowded areas, the removal of insanitary
dwellings, and the prevention of overcrowding. The act legalising the
establishment of this trust provided for the nomination by the Bombay
Government of three of the trustees, including the chairman, and for
the appointment, as trustees ex officio, of the collector of Bombay, the
municipal commissioner, and the general officer commanding the
Bombay district.
The public works department was gradually organised after the
transfer of control to the crown, on the foundations laid by Lord
Dalhousie for the whole of India in 1854. A considerable addition
was made to the department in 1868-9, and by the year 1914 the
establishment, including the railway branch, consisted of two chief
engineers, the senior of whom was the secretary to government and
the junior the joint secretary to government, six superintending en-
gineers, including a sanitary engineer, thirty-eight executive engineers,
and fifty-nine assistant engineers. The growth of official buildings and
the introduction of electric power had also necessitated the appoint-
ments of a consulting architect, an architectural draughtsman,
and an electrical engineer, all of whom were employed on five years'
1 Report on Administration of Bombay Presidency, 1911-12.


## p. 264 (#300) ############################################

264
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
agreements, as well as an electrical inspector and ten temporary
engineers.
Like the public works department, the administration of the forests
of the presidency originated in the definite and prudent policy
enunciated by Lord Dalhousie in 1855, and was gradually evolved
subsequent to the year 1860. The great famine of 1876–8 led to a
revision of the provincial arrangements for forest conservancy, and
to the introduction of legislative measures which placed the whole
system of forest administration in Bombay on a secure and well-
defined basis. For administrative purposes the presidency was divided
into four forest circles, corresponding to the four revenue divisions,
three of which were in charge of conservators and the fourth (Sind)
in charge of a deputy-conservator. The controlling staff was divided
into an imperial service and a provincial service, of which the former
had been reorganised in 1907 and the latter in 1915. The imperial
service, in accordance with that revision, was composed of three con-
servators and twenty-four deputy and assistant conservators, and the
provincial service of five extra deputy-conservators and twenty-three
extra assistant conservators. Below these was the protective establish-
ment of rangers, foresters and forest guards. As forest control and
conservancy are regarded as a branch of the general administration,
the central authority in forest matters has always been the com-
missioner of the revenue division, subject to the grneral orders of the
Bombay Government. In all professional and technical matters the
professional forest officer has full control and responsibility; but in
regard to such matters as the rights and privileges of the people in
forests, the local supply of grass, grazing and fodder, and the gencral
relations of the department with the people, control is vested in the
collectors of the districts, to whom for these purposes the forest officers
are subordinate. A comprehensive survey of the forests was com-
menced in 1888, and the work of forest settlement was completed
before the close of the period dealt with in this review. The classifica-
tion of the forests also into forest proper, fuel and fodder reserves, and
pastures was completed throughout the presidency before the year
1914, though a working plans division is still maintained in each forest
circle for the purpose of ascertaining the productive capacity of the
forests and of preparing scientific proposals for the profitable ex-
ploitation of the sylvan resources of the presidency.
The salient features of the educational administration subsequent
to 1858 were the introduction of the grants-in-aid code in 1865,
designed for the benefit of any private primary or secondary school,
which was controlled by a board of management and was not main-
tained solely for private profit; the reorganisaticn in 1868 of the
supply of trained schoolmasters; the foundation in 1890 of the joint
schools committee to supervise and control primary education in
Bombay city; and the amendment of the constitution of the university,
founded in 1857, which synchronised with a declaration of the educa-


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AGRICULTURE
265
tional policy of the Indian Government in 1903-4. Broadly speaking,
education in the Bombay Presidency is imparted partly through direct
official agency, partly through the medium of grants-in-aid. The
Bombay Government in 1918 maintained arts colleges in Bombay,
Poona and Gujarat, a medical college, a college of science, an agri-
cultural college, a veterinary college, a school of art, a law school and
a college of commerce, as well as a model secondary school in Bombay
and at the headquarters of each revenue district or collectorate. While
the Bombay municipality is now responsible for primary education in
the city, the majority of the primary schools throughout the presidency
are maintained by the district and taluka local boards, who receive
grants-in-aid from the government. The official staff responsible for
the educational administration consisted in 1918 of a director, an
inspector in each of the four divisions of the presidency, and in each
district or collectorate a deputy-inspector with assistants.
The importance of agriculture as one of the chief factors in the
progress of the presidency was recognised about 1884 by the organisa-
tion of a separate department of land records and agriculture, pre-
sided over by a director chosen from the ranks of the covenanted civil
service. The activities of the department were for several years con-
fined mainly to the simplification of revenue-settlement procedure
and the improvement of the land-record system; and in connection
with the latter branch of its duties a class of circle inspectors, who were
subordinate to the mamlatdars of the talukas, was tentatively introduced
about 1887. The agricultural work of the various provinces was
eventually co-ordinated by the appointment in 1901 of an inspector-
general of agriculture with the Government of India, and the increased
attention paid to agriculture after that date led in 1905 to the separa-
tion of the appointments of director of agriculture and director of land
records, and to the appointments of a deputy-director, an agricultural
chemist and an economic botanist for the Bombay Presidency. The
director of land records had ample work to perform in supervising the
preparation of the “record of rights” in land, which followed on the
passing in 1901–2 of a special Record of Rights Act as a complement
to existing legislation governing the Bombay land-revenue system.
A further attempt to advance the welfare of the agricultural worker
and improve rural credit was made in 1904 by the passing of the
Co-operative Credit Societies Act by the legislative council of the
Government of India. In Bombay the task of organising and super-
vising such societies under the terms of the act was entrusted to a
registrar, aided by a staff of assistant registrars, auditors, and other
officers. Shortly after the close of the period with which this chapter
deals the Bombay Presidency contained 1648 agricultural credit
societies, 211 non-agricultural credit societies, twelve banks, and fifty
unions, while the capital of the agricultural and non-agricultural
societies amounted respectively to 83) and 62 lakhs of rupees.
As regards miscellaneous departments of the administration it may
a


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266
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
be mentioned that the control of excise was vested at the close of 1918
in the collectors of the districts, subject to the general control of the
commissioner of customs, salt, opium and abkari (excise). They were
assisted in this branch of their duties by a special staff of assistants,
inspectors, sub-inspectors, gaugers, clerks, petty officers and menials.
The salt department of the presidency proper was separately adminis-
tered by the commissioner of customs and a special staff
, while there
were separate establishments for Sind and Aden, which were con-
trolled respectively by the commissioner in Sind and the political
resident. The customs administration of the port of Bombay was
managed by a collector of customs and six assistants, and of the port of
Karachi by a collector and two assistants, subject respectively to the
general control of the commissioner of customs, Bombay, and the
commissioner in Sind. The collector of land-revenue in Bombay,
assisted by four inspectors of factories, was responsible for the adminis-
tration of the Cotton Duties Act II of 1896.
Excluding the military administration, railways, public works, etc. ,
and special trusts created for developing ports and urban areas, it may
be broadly stated that the various administrative appointments and
establishments created between 1858 and 1918, in response to the
progress and requirements of the people of the presidency, were grafted
upon, added to, or linked more or less closely for administrative pur-
poses with the framework of the revenue organisation, which had been
constructed, tested and improved during the first half of the nine-
teenth century. The most important part of that framework was the
district officer, who as collector was responsible for the revenue ad-
ministration, and as magistrate supervised the inferior courts and
directed the work of the police. The revenue organisation, while it has
always served, and still serves "its peculiar purpose of collecting the
revenue and keeping the peace”, is, in the words of the Montagu-
Chelmsford Report,
so close-knit, so well established, and so thoroughly understood by the people, that
it simultaneously discharges easily and efficiently an immense number of other
duties. It deals with the registration, alteration, and partition of holdings; the
settlement of disputes; the management of indebted estates; loans to agriculturists;
and above all, famine relief. Because controls revenue, which depends on agri-
culture, the supreme interest of the people, it naturally serves as the general adminis-
tration staff.
Specialised services, such as the establishments for irrigation, roads
and buildings, agriculture, industries, factories, and co-operative
credit, may possess separate staffs which are under the control of their
own departmental heads. But, “in varying degrees, the district
.
officer influences the policy in all these matters, and he is always there
in the background to lend his support, or, if need be, to mediate
between a specialised service and the people”. 1
1 Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, 1918, pp. 102, 103.
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CHAPTER XV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
1858–1918
THE storm of the Mutiny raised only a couple of ripples in Madras.
A hill-chief of Godavari, marching upon a private quarrel
, proclaimed
himself a forerunner of Nana Sahib, and strove to raise the country,
but paid for the boast with his life. Between a dismissed tahsildar of
Bellary and malcontents in Dharwar a plot was hatched to bring
about a general rising. The rebels got possession of the fort of Kopal,
but the place was stormed with heavy loss to the defenders and of the
survivors seventy-seven were executed.
The transfer of the government of India to the crown caused no stir
whatever. The local annals are silent on the subject because methods
and principles remained unchanged.
Only a few events disturbed a period of general serenity. On
1 November, 1864, at Masulipatam, torrential rain preceded early
darkness and a devastating wind. Towards midnight, at a cry “The
sea is coming”, Captain Hasted looked from his half-wrecked house
on a "wild waste of luridly phosphorescent water, not in waves, but
swirling, boiling, pouring round the house and lifted against it and
over it in sheets by the raging wind”. In a mass 13 feet above high-
water mark, the Bay of Bengal had poured itself on the land. At
midnight, with indescribable din and immeasurable fury, the waters
rushed back. They had penetrated 17 miles inland, overwhelmed
800 square miles and destroyed 30,000 people and countless cattle.
The next event was much graver. There are seventeenth-century
records of awful famines; the Guntur famine of 1833 “covered the
country with human bones from Ongole to Masulipatam”; the Orissa
famine of 1865-6 afflicted a quarter of the presidency; but it may
be
doubted whether the tragedy of 1876–8 did not surpass all previous
calamities of the sort. Of the 200,000 square miles affected more
than a third fell within Madras, where the famine is charged with
causing the death of nearly four million people and cost the state over
800 lakhs. The material loss to the community at large was incal-
culable and was made good only to a trifling extent from the huge
Mansion House Fund, though most of that fund was laid out in the
Madras Presidency. The calamity left its trace on the agricultural
statistics for twenty-five years, and the population which had been
advancing up to 1871 at the rate of about half a million a year showed
no increase for the decennium ending with 1881. The government has
never ignored its duty towards the starving, though the succour given
has not always been adequate or timely. Public relief, which dates back


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268
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
1
to the eighteenth century, has taken various forms: importation
of grain through official agency; bounties, advances and guarantees
of price to private traders; opening of public works; gratuitous dis-
tribution of food, cooked or uncooked. The great famine led to the
preparation of a famine code which centres all famine operations in
the collector and requires the maintenance for each district of a pro-
gramme of the public works ready to be put into immediate operation.
As a further preparation for sudden emergencies a scheme was intro-
duced in 1907 for forming provincial famine funds by an annual
credit of 2 lakhs up to a maximum of 25 lakhs, and mention should
be made here of the protective irrigation works on the Rushikulya
river, which, completed about 1898, serves to afford some security to
Ganjam, a region of frequent dearth.