No More Learning

2 Cf. Moreland, India at the death of Akbar, p. 97.


## p. 467 (#495) ############################################

SAIR REVENUE
467
Beside the land revenue there were a host of miscellaneous taxes,
licences and monopolies, designed to secure the sovereign a share in
the income arising from every source.
Thus there were taxes on
houses, on looms, on oil presses, on stonemasons, on dancing girls,
and on most petty industries; taxes on forest produce; monopolies
of salt, of liquor, and of ghee, and duties on the transport of goods.
The revenue derived from these sources was small, partly because
of the prevailing poverty, partly because the machinery for collection
was neither trustworthy nor efficient. By far the most important of
these miscellaneous taxes were the duties levied on the transport of
goods. The right to levy these taxes was usually farmed out. The rates
of duty and the location of the stations at which they were levied
were governed partly by custom, partly by the discretion of the
farmer. The stations were very numerous. On some routes they
were on the average not more than ten miles apart, and duties had to
be paid at each one. But trade is more easily killed or frightened
away than agriculture, and the farmers of the transit duties were
therefore less oppressive than the land revenue officials. 1
In European eyes the three radical evils in South India were
the insubordination of the zamindars and poligars, the lack of
recognised laws and law courts, and the uncertainties of the land
revenue system. Since 1775 the court of directors had been pressing
the Madras Government to take steps towards correcting these evils
in the territories under their control, that is in the Northern Sarkars
and the jagir. But when Lord Cornwallis came to India, there was
as yet little to distinguish the administration of these territories from
that of the adjoining native states. A blank ignorance of the people,
their customs, and their languages, inclined the Company's servants
to give unlimited discretion to the persons whom they chose to
exercise authority in their stead. All business was transacted through
interpreters. There was no incentive to exertion. Money was the
chief consideration, and it could only be acquired by corrupt means.
But a new spirit was soon to be infused. In 1792, the defeat of Tipu
Sultan and the annexation of the Baramahal and Dindigul to the
Madras Presidency made it plain that the administration of the
Company's territories would henceforth be the chief duty of the
Company's servants, and that there was a career for those who
equipped themselves for this work. A stimulus to industry was
supplied by the fact that for lack of civil servants with a knowledge
of the languages and customs of the people, Captain Read with three
military assistants was appointed to take charge of the land revenue
administration of the Baramahal. A central Board of Revenue had
betn set up in 1786, and the working of the new spirit led it to fall
foul of the corrupt and inefficient chiefs and councils in the Northern
1 Cf. Baramahal Records, section VII.
2 Fifth Report of 1812, pp. 78 sqq.
3 Arbuthnot, Selections, p. xxxvii.


## p. 468 (#496) ############################################

468
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
Sarkars, who had allowed their territories to go from bad to worse,
obstructing every effort towards reform. In 1794, the governor of
Madras, Lord Hobart, was induced to abolish, these authorities and
to substitute district collectors, subordinate to the Board of Revenue.
In the same year the whole of the jagir was put under a single
collector, Lionel Place. The district collector, having an interest in
his work and exercising a wide discretionary authority much the
same as that which was vested in the amildar under native rulers,
soon showed himself far better fitted to overawe opposition and to
obtain information than the councils and committees that had
preceded him. ” Light began to flow in on the foundations of the land
revenue system, the land tenures, and the customs of the villages.
These things had hitherto been regarded as impenetrable mysteries,
but the district officers now began to understand them, and to see
that it was possible and advantageous to work through the indigenous
institutions, reforming and adapting them to suit their ends.
In the jagir, Place found the villages owned in heritable shares
by mirasdars who exercised the right of disposing of their shares by
mortgage, gift, or sale. This discovery upset the then accepted theory
that the state was the owner of the soil
, and that the cultivator was
little more than a tenant-at-will with at most a preferential right
to cultivate on the terms which the state chose to offer. The principal
mirasdars had been accustomed to act together on behalf of the
village, and it was found convenient and profitable to abandon the
old practice of renting out the jagir in parcels to speculators, and to
settle instead with the mirasdars of each village for a lump sum
calculated to be equivalent to the state's share of the crop. Place
exerted himself to restore the efficiency of the village accountants, and
he acquired a close knowledge of the affairs of the villages under his
control. The system, therefore, worked smoothly enough and gave an
increasing revenue during the four years of his administration.
A similar system was applied in the government villages in the
Northern Sarkars. But the results there were less satisfactory, partly
because the villagers were less capable of joint action, partly because
the collectors had not Place's knowledge.
The conditions with which Read had to deal in the Baramahal
were widely different from those which Place had found in the jagir.
In the latter was a tradition of an original colonisation, and the
mirasdars of each village traced their titles to a joint-occupation of its
lands. The main crop was rice, which was threshed on a common
threshing-floor. The state's share was calculated in grain on the total
produce of the village, and its amount or its equivalent in cash was
demanded in the lump from the village, the apportionment of the
a
1 Fifth Report of 1812, pp. 89-90, and App. 14.
2 Idem, App. 16; ct. Wellesley Despatches. I, 230.


## p. 469 (#497) ############################################

ALEXANDER READ
469
demand being left entirely to the mirasdars. But in the Baramahal
the rice crop was of minor importance. The majority of the cultiva-
tors drew their living from the unirrigated lands. The population was
sparse, the waste lands extensive, and titles were derived from the
individual's occupation of waste. The ties which bound the villagers
together were therefore comparatively weak, and the habit of joint
action less highly developed. Instead of a committee of the principal
mirasdars, there was a village headman who collected the state's dues,
sometimes in his capacity as a state servant, sometimes as the renter
who had leased the village from the amildar. In either case he dealt
separately with each individual cultivator, and each cultivator's dues
were assessed and paid in cash. Read was a man of extraordinary
integrity and industry. He studied the history and the details of the
land revenue system in force in his district, and observed its effect
on the cultivators. The scheme which he devised for its reform based
itself on existing practice and deviated but little from the lines
marked out by the best Indian administrators in dealing with such
tracts. He determined to dispense with all renters and middlemen,
and to deal direct with the individual cultivator through his own
servants, among whom he included the village accountant and the
village headman. To relieve the cultivator from all uncertainty, to
give him confidence, and to protect his improvements, he wished to
fix the land revenue due from each field once for all in terms of
money, and to leave the cultivator free to take up or relinquish such
fields as he chose. For this purpose a detailed survey field by field was
necessary, and such a survey was undertaken and carried through.
Read actually published a proclamation outlining his scheme of land
revenue administration, and promising the cultivators an assessment
fixed in perpetuity. His proclamation was neither confirmed nor can-
celled by superior authority. He was left in the district and tried
to give effect to his plan. But he had made certain miscalculations.
In proposing to fix a money assessment in perpetuity he had ignored
the chance of a permanent change in the price of grain. In fact the
fall in the price of grain during the next fifty years would have con-
verted even a moderate money assessment into an intolerable
burden. But the standard of assessment which Read took for his
guidance was far too high for the success of his scheme; he took
into consideration the theoretic claim of the state, which in this
district was usually about half the crop, and the actual collections
made by Tipu; he aimed at fixing rates that would be a little below
the average collections made by Tipu. But by discovering concealed
cultivation and improving the machinery of collection he actually
drew from the country as much as Tipu and his officers had drawn
to prepare for war and to satisfy private greed. To maintain taxation
1 Arbuthnot, Selections, pp. xxxix-xl; cf. Munro to his father, 21 Septem-
ber, 1798, ap. Gleig, Munro, I, 204.


## p. 470 (#498) ############################################

470
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
at such a level would have been a fatal obstacle to improvement, and,
a
even if improvement had been no object, it was simply impossible to
collect such an assessment in bad seasons from cultivators who had
no capital. Again, the agency which Read had at his disposal was
neither sufficiently trustworthy, nor sufficiently experienced, to make
a survey which could be accepted as final. The assessment was very
unequal, and required to be revised as mistakes came to light. The
result was that the plan of a fixed assessment was never rigidly
adhered to. Remissions had to be allowed on account of poverty,
loss of crops, loss of cattle, death of working members of the family,
and such like reasons. Nor did Read succeed in fulfilling his inten-
tion to protect the cultivator's improvements and give him full free-
dom to relinquish the land he did not want. Half a century had to
elapse before the obvious wisdom of Read's ideas could overcome
the bad traditions of the revenue administration.
But though Read's plan could not be carried into effect in its
entirety, it was worked in a modified form and gave good results.
Among Read's assistants was another soldier, Thomas Munro, who
was Read's equal in industry and integrity, and had besides a clear
head and a reflective disposition. After the fall of Seringapatam,
Munro was transferred to the newly annexed district of Kanara to
take charge of the land revenue administration there. Kanara was in
many respects very unlike the Baramahal, but the native land revenue
system had been even more definitely ryotwari. A money assessment
had been fixed on each holding centuries before and, though extra
assessments had been superimposed upon this, the original assessment
was still known and recorded. Munro was thus confirmed in the
belief that the ryotwari system was the indigenous system of South
India, and therefore presumably the system best suited to the needs
of the country. Under his direction it gave good results in Kanara.
There, too, Munro found surviving a strong sense of private property
in land, of which he had seen no trace in the Baramahal. He traced
the existence of this sense of property to the original low level of the
land assessment. He held that the development of this sense of
property was the only road to the improvement of the country. He
argued that it could not exist where, as in the Baramahal and through-
out the Carnatic districts, the assessment was so high as to swallow up
the whole of the economic rent, and thus became a steady advocate of
a policy of lowering the assessment. But he held that it was for
government to decide whether the standard of assessment should be
lowered to promote improvement, and that his duty as collector was to
be guided by the standard set up by previous rulers, taking care only
to see that his demand was not so high as to discourage the cultivator
or encroach upon his stock, and thereby occasion a future deterioration
of the revenue. Acting on this principle, he allowed at once a small
remission on his own responsibility, and recommended government
to grant a further remission later, though he gave reason to believe


## p. 471 (#499) ############################################

THE RYOTWARI SYSTEM
471
that the government's demand in Kanara was lower than that usual
on the east coast. 1
From Kanara, Munro was transferred in 1800 to the Deccan
districts newly ceded by Hyderabad. These districts were overrun
by poligars and extraordinarily lawless, but otherwise conditions
were not unlike those with which Munro had been familiar in the
Baramahal. The ryotwari system was clearly applicable. Starting
with four surveyors, and training his men as he went along, Munro
surveyed and assessed the tract field by field. As elsewhere the
standard assessment fixed was intended to be a little below the
average actual collections made under the native rulers. But the
tract had suffered from a decade of anarchy under the Nizam, and
Munro won the Board of Revenue's applause by the patience with
which he nursed its revenue, keeping the demand low at first and
raising it gradually to the standard as the ryots accumulated stock,
gained confidence, and extended their cultivation. Munro himself
was not wholly satisfied. He still held that a general lowering of the
standard of the assessment was the crying need of the country, and
he was alarmed by the pressure from above for increased revenue.
He obeyed this pressure, but when he left the district in 1807 he put
on record a recommendation for a 25 per cent. reduction in the
standard assessment.
In 1799 Tanjore and Coimbatore, and in 1801 Malabar and the
territory of the nawab of Arcot, were annexed to the Madras Presi-
dency. The ryotwari system of management was as a rule found
easily applicable, but in some tracts, notably in Tanjore, the village
organisation resembled that which Place had found in the jagir, and
village settlements were customary. But the Board of Revenue was
at this time much impressed by the tyranny exercised by the principal
inhabitants under the village settlements. Preference was therefore
given to the ryotwari system, and in 1805 it was at least nominally
in force in all these districts, and surveys had been or were being
carried out in most of them. Many of the collectors of districts had
been trained under Read or Munro, but not all of them showed
equal discretion in adapting the system to the circumstances of their
districts. In Malabar, Macleod provoked a fresh outbreak of rebellion
by trying to raise the land assessment nearer to the standard recog-
nised on the east coast, ignoring the peculiar history of Malabar
where the land tax was an innovation introduced after the Mysore
conquest. 3 In South Arcot the Board of Revenue supported the
collector in demanding a share in the crop which the government
later condemned as "excessive beyond measure and we hope beyond
1 Cf. Munro to Cockburn, 7. October, 1800, and to Read, 16 June, 1801, ap.
Gleig, Munro, I, 288, and II, 161.
2 Munro to Board of Revenue, 30 November, 1806, and 15 August, 1807,
ap. Rev. and Jud. Sel. I, 94 sqq. , and 115 sqq.
3 Logan, Malabar Manual, p. 540.


## p. 472 (#500) ############################################

472
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
example in other parts of the Company's territory”. Nowhere was it
found possible to give full effect to Read's original plan. Annual
settlements had everywhere to be made not only because cultivation
extended and shrank with the rainfall, but because the survey
assessment could only be treated as a maximum. Collectors had to
exercise their discretion freely in granting remissions in view of the
property of the cultivator or the failure of his crop. Still the system
did work. If the state demand was not rigidly fixed the collector had
a standard for his guidance in making the annual settlement. The
cultivator at least knew his maximum liability before he began to
sow, and later on he could get a bill under the collector's signature
showing the details of the demand upon him for the year. It was
thus easier for him to distinguish between authorised and unautho-
rised exactions, and to explain his grievance when he had been
wronged. Above all, the system had in itself the seed of improve-
ment. The government and the collector felt a direct responsibility
for all that was done or left undone in the assessment and collection
of the land revenue. They were therefore impelled to reform abuses
rather than to treat them as inevitable. The collectors were brought
into close touch with the affairs of the village. They learnt to know
something cf the cultivator's needs, his rights, and the wrongs he
suffered. They had to make frequent reports to the Board of Revenue,
and a store of experience and information thus accumulated steadily
year after year.
Where the ryotwari system was in force, civil and criminal justice
usually continued to be administered much as it had been under the
native rulers, the collector taking the place of the amildar. But the
authority of poligars and kavalgars in police matters was no longer
recognised, and the fees formerly paid to them were claimed by
government. Reliance was placed instead on the village headman
and the village watcher, who was restored to his emoluments where
these had been encroached upon by the kavalgar. The work that could
not be done by village police was entrusted to the collector's revenue
subordinates assisted where necessary by armed irregulars locally
levied. This concentration of all authority in the collector's hands
was useful not only in enabling him to overawe poligars and protect
the cultivator against their retainers, but also because it made it easier
to brush aside a rank growth of inconvenient customs such as that
by which the same village office might be shared among different
members of a family.
But before Place, Read, and Munro had had time to show what
could be done by working along the lines of indigenous systems, the
Bengal Government was pressing for the introduction into Madras of
the exotic revenue and judicial systems it had recently planted in
Bengal. The Madras Government wished to move slowly, but in
1 Malcolm to Lord Hobart, ap. Kaye, Malcolm, I, 176; and Wellesley
Despatches, I, 121.
1


## p. 473 (#501) ############################################

L
THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT
473
1798 the governor-general, Lord Wellesley, ordered the Madras
Government to introduce the Bengal system without delay. The
Board of Revenue was accordingly asked to report how this could be
done. Now one main object of the Bengal Permanent Settlement
had been to promote the cultivation of the land. In Bengal almost
the whole country was in the possession of great zamindars whose
position bore at least a superficial resemblance to that of English
landlords. It was therefore possible to suppose that the object in
view could be attained by giving them a guarantee against any future
enhancement of the state's demand from the land. But there were
no zamindars in the greater part of the territories then included in
the presidency of Madras. Even in the Northern Sarkars hardly half,
and that not the richer half, was in their possession. Elsewhere there
were only a few unimportant poligars. It was evidently good policy
to confirm the zamindars and poligars in their existing possessions if
that would induce them to acquiesce in the extinction of their military
power. But there was nothing to suggest that they would make good
landlords, or that it was desirable to extend their control over neigh-
bouring villages. Neither in the jagir nor in the Baramahal was there
any landlord class or any other class which seemed capable of supply.
ing good landlords. To achieve the object in view, to encourage the
improvement and extension of cultivation, there was no need to set
landlords over independent villages. The end could more easily be
attained either by making a permanent settlement with each village
or by fixing a moderate assessment on each field. But the Board of
Revenue was very anxious to get rid of the uncertainties of the
existing system as soon as possible. It still felt itself to be groping
hopelessly in the dark, and it doubted whether its officers could ever
acquire sufficient knowledge to enable them to deal successfully with
the villages. It was therefore glad to follow the beaten path and to
rid itself of responsibility by a zamindari settlement. To meet the
difficulty caused by the non-existence of zamindars the board proposed
the simple expedient of grouping villages to form estates of con-
venient size, and selling them by auction to the highest bidder. The
original object of the Permanent Settlement had almost dropped out
of view. No one can seriously have supposed that the purchasers
would or could promote the improvement or extension of cultivation.
The argument pressed by the champions of the Permanent Settlement
in Madras was that it would relieve government of the duty of assessin:
and collecting the land revenue, a duty which government officers
were judged incompetent io perform. The Madras Government
accepted the board's proposals, and in 1800 it received authority
from Bengal to effect a permanent settlement on those lines through-
out the presidency. In the following year the cou. : of directors
concurred, but warned the Madras Government that the work should
1 Cf. Minute of the Board of Revenue, ap. Kaye, Administration, p. 225.


## p. 474 (#502) ############################################

474
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
be done well rather than quickly, and that the military establishments
of the zamindars and the spirit of insubordination should first be
suppressed. A special commission was appointed in 1802 and between
1802 and 1804 the Northern Sarkars, the jagir, the Baramahal, and
Dindigul were settled on the lines prescribed. The zamindars were
forbidden to keep up a military establishment, and were deprived
of their police authority and their control over the miscellaneous
sources of revenue. They were declared to be proprietors of their
estates with the cultivators for their tenants. They were given the
power of distraint and were authorised to collect rent at the rates
which prevailed in the year preceding the Permanent Settlement. In
return they were required to pay yearly a peshkash fixed in perpe-
tuity; if the peshkash fell into arrears their estate could be attached
and sold. The peshkash was usually calculated to be the equivalent
of one-third of the gross produce, or two-thirds of the gross rental, of
the estate; but deviations from the standard were allowed in special
cases.
Simultaneously with the introduction of the zamindari system in
each district care a new judicial system and a code of regulations
modelled on those of Bengal. The collector ceased to exercise civil or
criminal jurisdiction or to be concerned with the police. A zillah (or
district) judge was appointed with a jurisdiction in all civil cases.
Attached to him was a native commissioner empowered to try and
decide petty suits. Appeals lay from the zillah judge to a provincial
court. Serious criminal cases were tried by judges of this court
touring as a court of circuit. The zillah judge was also district
magistrate, and in this capacity he controlled the new police force of
thanadars and darogas who were posted at selected stations through-
out the district, the village watchmen being put under their authority.
The new courts and the new code of regulations were intended to
protect the cultivator's existing rights against the landlord whom the
zamindari settlement had set over him. But the courts were fettered
by British rules of procedure and evidence, and litigation was tedious
and costly. Ignorant, illiterate, and poverty-stricken cultivators
could rarely venture to challenge their landlords' proceedings before
an unfamiliar and distant authority. The protection given them by
the courts was in fact little more than an illusion. 2
The principles of the permanent zamindari settlement were at the
same time applied in dealing with the palayams of the Carnatic.
The
armed force which the Carnatic poligar had at his disposal was often
formidable, the peshkash due from him was small, and it was rarely
paid except under duress. By the treaty of 1792 Lord Cornwallis had
1 General letter from England, 11 February, 1801, ap. Rev. and Jud. Sel. I,
601.
Report of Board of Revenue, 18 December, 1815, idem, II, 391; Bengal to
Madras, 19 July, 1804 (idem, IV, 924); Gleig, Munro, I, 413 sqq. , especially
Munro's letters to Cumming.
2


## p. 475 (#503) ############################################

THE POLIGARS
476
made the Company responsible for the collection of the peshkash; but
the nawab's sovereignty continued, and the Madras Government
found themselves thwarted in their efforts to reduce the poligars to
subordination. The court of directors insisted that the military power
of the poligars must be suppressed and their peshkash raised to a
level at which it would absorb the resources that had formerly been
applied to secure the allegiance of hordes of armed retainers. It was
impossible to give effect to these orders while a war with Mysore was
in prospect; but after the fall of Seringapatam a military force was
sent to overawe the poligars of Tinnevelly, who were particularly
formidable and refractory. Most of the poligars chose to fight. Two
severe campaigns and some executions and forfeitures were necessary
before their spirit could be broken, but by the end of 1801 the work
was done. A permanent settlement was then made with twenty-four
poligars. Of the six forfeited estates, three were sold by auction and
three went to reward poligars who had rendered service to the
Company. Elsewhere less difficulty was experienced. Ramnad was
in the Company's possession and the poligar of Sivaganga was under
the district collector's influence. There was some trouble in Dindigul,
and an expedition had to be sent to reduce the small poligars of
Chittur; but the four great western poligars acquiesced in the
arrargements proposed to them. In the Ceded Districts the poligars
had defied the Nizam's officers, but they were quickly brought to
order by Munro who had a military force at call. As in the Carnatic
they were forbidden to maintain any armed force and were deprived
of their police authority; and Munro further took the opportunity
to fix definitely the rents which they were entitled to demand from
the cultivators: The peshkash which they were required to pay was
calculated to leave them sufficient to support their dignity.
Regarded as a measure designed to induce the existing zaminaars
and poligars to acquiesce in the loss of their military power and to
become quiet subjects of the Company, the Madras zamindari settle-
ment was on the whole a success. he peshkash fixed on the old
zamindaris and palayams was usually paid punctually, and even when
the collector found it necessary to attach or sell the estate, there was
rarely any reason to fear a disturbance. But the scheme for creating
new zamindaris had only bad results. The speculators who brought
the newly-formed estates proved, as might have been expected,
thoroughly unsatisfactory, whether they were regarded as landlords
or as farmers of the land revenue. Some extorted what they could
from the cultivators and defaulted, leaving government to recover
the arrears from an impoverished estate; but what wrecked the
scheme was less the character of the purchasers than the level at
which the peshkash had been fixed. Though the standard set up left
the proprietors only a narrow margin of profit, the tendency in Madras
at this time was against leniency, and in calculating the actual pesh-
kash the collectors were inclined to err in favour of government and


## p. 476 (#504) ############################################

476
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
to anticipate improvements which were long in coming. Few of the
purchasers had the capital necessary to meet the loss in a bad year.
From the first many of the newly-created estates in the jagir and the
Baramahal began to fall into arrears. 1806-7 was a bad season. Many
estates came to sale and the trouble spread even to the old zamindaris
in the Northern Sarkars which had been assessed on more favourable
terms. Bidders were few; and when estates began to lapse into
government management, it was often found that the villages had
deteriorated under the exactions of the late proprietor. Meanwhile
the whole theory and practice of the Bengal system had come to be
challenged, and men now doubted the wisdom of thrusting an exotic
system on Madras where two indigenous systems had already been
made to work tolerably, and seemed capable of being adapted to give
still better results. In 1804 the court of directors again warned the
Madras Government of the danger of concluding permanent settle.
ments in haste. Munro and the assistants trained under him had by
this time gained much influence, and Lord Wiiiiam Bentinck, who
was governor of Madras from 1803 to 1807, was attracted by their
doctrine. Further progress with the zamindari settlement was
stayed; but, instead of working along the lines of the ryotwari system,
the Board of Revenue in 1808 sought and obtained from Lord
William Bentinck's successor permission to experiment again with
village settlements.
The ryotwari system found its champion in Munro, whose ex-
perience had been gained in districts where the corporate life of the
village was comparatively undeveloped, and the revenue officers had
been in the habit of dealing with individual villagers rather than with
the village as a whole. But the leading spirit in the Board of Revenue
at this time was Hodgson. The district with which he was best
acquainted was Tanjore, where the corporate life of the village was
vigorous, and the leading mirasdars had been accustomed to settling
with the revenue officers on behalf of the village. Hodgson succeeded
in persuading his colleagues that the village system might be made
the foundation of a satisfactory land revenue system for the whole
presidency. The average produce or the average collections of each
village could be estimated or calculated and a fair demand arrived at
from those data. The right of collecting the government share of the
crop could then be leased to the principal inhabitants at that sum for
a term of years. Later a lease in perpetuity might be substituted for
the temporary lease. Where there was no body of mirasdars accus-
tomed to act on behalf of the village, the lease could be given to the
village headman. It was true that at an earlier date the board had
been impressed by the manner in which headmen and principal
inhabitants had abused the powers which these village settlements
gave them. But the new judicial system had in 1806 heen extended
to the ryotwari districts, and the oppressed could now seek protection
fror: the courts. A variety of motives induced the board to prefer


## p. 477 (#505) ############################################

VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS
477
the village system to the ryotwari. Hodgson was influenced by the
belief that it would keep alive and stimulate the habit of village
self-government, a habit which the ryotwari system tended to destroy.
He also realised that it was not only principal inhabitants who could
be oppressive. All collectors were not Munros. Some were corrupt
and many were lazy. The Indian agency at their command was by
tradition high-handed, extortionate, and venal. Under a corrupt or
slack collector the ryotwari system gave these men ample opportu-
nities and government would share the discredit of their misdeeds.
The board also hoped for some saving in expenditure under the village
lease system, since the task of assessing and collecting the dues of
each cultivator would be left to the villagers.
But the decisive motive seems to have been the fear of the newly-
established courts of judicature. It appeared a hopeless task to train
the petty agents of government, long accustomed to be a law unto
themselves, to observe the elaborate procedure laid down in an
unfamiliar code. It was doubtful whether the provisions of a code
drawn up à priori would prove. workable when applied to existing
conditions, and there was reason to fear that an inexperienced
judicature would show little respect for the practical necessities of
administration. The board, therefore, thought it desirable to throw
the responsibility for the apportionment and the collection of the land
revenue on to the villagers, and the government accepted the board's
view. 1
Accordingly, in 1808-9 the collectors of most districts were re-
quired to lease out all villages not included in a permanently settled
estate to the principal inhabitants or headmen for a term of years.
The lease amounts were to be fixed with reference to the actual
collections of the past, with a view to maintaining the land revenue
at the level then reached. Full effect could not be given to the board's
scheme, because many villages feared to bind themselves to pay a
fixed sum for three years. They had little credit, and the risk of loss
in a bad year far outweighed the hope of gain in a good. Even where
the leases were accepted, the scheme did not always work smoothly.
In some villages the lessees were too weak to collect their dues.
Elsewhere they were strong enough to throw an unfair share of the
burden on to their weaker neighbours. But the most serious obstacle
to the success of the scheme was the same as that which had already
upset Read's plan for a permanent ryotwari settlement, and wrecked
the permanent zamindari settlement. The state demand had been
fixed too high to be collected every year without regard to the state
of the season and the circumstances of the individual cultivator.
Munro knew this, and had in 1807 submitted a new scheme for a per-
manent ryotwari settlement, the essential feature in which was a
1. Revenue letter from Madras, 24 October, 1808, ap. Rev. and Jud. Sel. 1,
475; Minute of Board of Revenue, 5 January, 1818, ap. Kaye, Administration,
p. 222.


## p. 478 (#506) ############################################

478
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
reduction of 25 per cent. in the survey assessment. Government
ruled out the possibility of such a reduction, and preferred the board's
village lease scheme, not seeing that a reduction was more necessary
under this scheme than under the ryotwari system. For without a
general reduction seasonal remissions could not be dispensed with,
and, except under the ryotwari system of dealing separately with
each cultivator, it was rarely possible for the revenue authorities to
ensure that the remissions given were such as the season required
or that they reached the cultivator who stood in need of them.
Though the reports of the district collectors on the working of the
village leases were generally unfavourable, the government decided
to try new leases for a period of ten years, and even proposed that
they should be made perpetual; 1 but the court of directors had
prohibited the conclusion of any arrangement in perpetuity without
the court's specific sanction. Reductions were made in the lease
amounts demanded, but they were generally inadequate. It was still
found necessary to allow remissions in bad seasons and a door was
opened for fraud. Having been relieved of the duty of a detailed
scrutiny of the village accounts, which the ryotwari system had
imposed on them, the collector and his staff were relapsing into their
former state of ignorance, and the village accountants found them-
selves masters of the situation.
But hardly had the ten-year leases begun to run when the affairs
of the Madras Presidency were reviewed in the fifth report of the
Select Committee of the House of Commons. The committee was
impressed by the doctrine and achievements of Munro and his school.
They doubted the wisdom of forcing zamindars on districts where
no zamindars were found. They saw that Munro had made his system
work smoothly and bring in an increasing revenue in regions so
disturbed, so distant, and so dissimilar as Kanara and the Ceded
Districts. They did not consider that the theoretic advantages
claimed for the village lease system justified the substitution of that
experiment for a system which had given good results under trial.
They saw that a sound land revenue system was the chief need of
South India, and concluded that, if it was incompatible with the new
judicial system, it was the latter and not the former that should be
modified:
The report was thus decisively in favour of the ryotwari system
and Munro henceforward had the ear of the court of directors and
made use of this advantage to remodel the Madras administrative
system in accordance with his own ideas.
Though the policy of forcing Cornwallis's zamindari settlement
upon Madras had been discredited since 1804, the Cornwallis judicial
system had been allowed to establish itself and the ideas of the Corn-
wallis school had still numerous and influential champions. To pre-
i Revenue letter from Madras, 5 March, 1813, ap. Rev. and Jud. Sél. 1, 558.


## p. 479 (#507) ############################################

MUNRO'S VIEWS
479
vent oppression, reliance was placed on codes and courts adminis-
tering law on British lines. Magisterial and police work could best
be supervised by a judicial officer both because of his legal knowledge
and because he would act as a check on the executive activities of the
revenue department. The administration of justice was to be kept
as far as possible in the hands of British officers, Indian agency being
assumed to be incorrigibly untrustworthy. Since the new judicial
courts had been allowed to banish the ryotwari system, these ideas
had begun to dominate the Madras administration. Munro criticised
them with great effect. The men who stood in need of protection
were poor and illiterate cultivators, accustomed to acquiesce in
oppression. They would never seek, nor, if they did seek, could they
obtain, protection from the complicated and costly procedure of
strange and distant courts. Our British judges had not and could
not through their court work acquire a real knowledge of the life of
the villages which they had no occasion or leisure to visit. They
were therefore unfit to be magistrates or to control the police. The
Company could not supply British judges in numbers adequate to
the business arising in so wide and populous a country. If it could
the expense would be ruinous. Further, the systematic exclusion of
Indians from all offices of trust was a cruel policy calculated to
destroy all vestiges of self-respect and to crush the springs of
improvement. 1
Munro's own view was that the incidence of the land revenue
more than anything else decided the cultivator's fortune. The collec-
tor should, therefore, take direct responsibility for its assessment and
collection. To enable him to fulfil his responsibility, and because his
revenue duties gave him an intimate knowledge of the life of the
people, magisterial power and the control of the police should be
concentrated in his hands. This was the native system, and in govern-
ing the country we should make the greatest possible use of native
institutions and native agency. Even in apportioning the land
revenue the collectors should aim at ascertaining and acting upon
the genuine opinion of the villages, and for determining civil disputes
the village panchayat should be kept active. Such disputes as could
not be dealt with by the panchayat should go in the first instance
before Indian judges, but the appellate work and the trial of grave
crin inal cases being reserved for British judges.
This view was now to prevail. In 1812 the Madras Government
received orders to revert to the ryotwari system, and in 1814 the
court of directors required them to make certain other administrative
changes which went a long way towards mecting Munro's views.
Munro himself was sent out as a special commissioner to see that
the orders were carried out, and in 1816 the Madras Government
sanctioned a series of regulations giving effect to the changes
1 Cf. Judicial letter to Madras, 29 April, 1814, ap. Rev. and Jud. Sel. I,
236-56.


## p. 480 (#508) ############################################

480
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
proposed. The office of district magistrate and the control of the
police were transferred from the zillah judge to the collector. The new
police force of darogas and thanadars was disbanded, and the police
work was left to be carried out by the village watchmen and the
collector's revenue servants. Native district munsiffs, with juris-
diction to decide civil suits of value up to 200 rupees, were appointed
in adequate numbers and stationed at convenient centres; and a
suitable remuneration was attached to the office. Power was given
to village headmen to try petty civil suits and to summon village
panchayats which were authorised to determine all suits without
limit of value if the parties agreed to submit to their jurisdiction. In
1817 the Board of Control concurred with the court of directors in
pronouncing the creation of artificial zamindars highly inexpedient.
Thus all idea of extending the zamindari system was finally aband-
oned, and in 1818 the Board of Revenue issued instructions to the
collectors for the introduction of a revised ryotwari system. This
was admittedly based on that of Read and Munro, and such changes
as were introduced were not in practice important. It had been
proposed to give the force of law to these instructions by embodying
them in a regulation, but Munro advised against this in pursuance
of his policy of reserving for government the power of controlling
the collector's discretion and limiting the opportunities for the
interference of the courts. 1
Looking back across the interval traversed in this chapter we see
that by the year 1818 the administration of the Madras Presidency
had come to be quite unlike anything that could be found in the
South India of 1786. The government possessed a military force
which was without any external rival and their territories were all
but completely immune from invasion. In all districts they had
agents who were capable of supplying information and could be
trusted to carry out the instructions sent them. No inferior authority
was in a position to question their orders. The zamindars and poligars
had been reduced to subordination and their military organisation
broken up. This last was a most beneficial change. It was estimated
that at the end of the eighteenth century the southern poligars alone
maintained 100,000 armed retainers, who were employed in resisting
the central power, in making war upon one another, and in plundering
peaceable cultivators. By 1818 the poligars' retainers were hardly
anywhere a serious menace. Most of them had settled down to
cultivate the land in earnest. Those who belonged to criminal tribes
could not forsake their traditions so readily, but their activities were
no longer public and unrestrained. Though no regular police force
was in existence, the military power of the government made it easy
for the collector to maintain order by means of his revenue servants
and the village watchmen. Regular judicial courts had been set up
1 Cf. Baden-Powell, Land Systems, , 32.


## p. 481 (#509) ############################################

RESULTS
481
and were freely resorted to by those who could afford the cost of
litigation. Indeed so popular were these innovations that Munro
failed in his attempt to give new life to the village panchayat, which
could hardly survive in competition with professional lawyers and
judges. The uncertainties of the land revenue system continued but
had become less alarming. In many districts there was a fixed
maximum assessment on record. The cultivators no longer ran the
risk of being handed over to a stranger who had rented a district for
a short term of years and was anxious to see what could be made out
of it in the time allowed him. The collector was now almost as free
from legal restraint as the renter had been. But he was influenced
by longer views and feared the future effect of his current demands.
And even where the collector was too severe, there was a chance of
redress. As early as 1804 the government had overridden the Board
of Revenue and removed a collector whose assessments were inju-
diciously high. But with the strengthening of the administration had
coine a great increase in the efficiency of the assessing and collecting
agency. This had its danger, since the recognised standard of assess-
meni was still that which had been sanctioned by the practice of
Indian rulers. If the proportion of the annual crop actually taken by
the state agents was not higher than it had been in 1786, certainly it
was usually too high to allow the cultivator to accumulate stock. There
was a persistent pressure for revenue to meet the heavy military and
administrative expenses of the presidency, and no attention had been
paid to Munro's plea for a substantial reduction in the standard
assessment. Turning to the miscellaneous sources of revenue we find
that some of the most vexatious and unprofitable imposts had been
swept away but others were unnecessarily retained. The inland transit
duties had been replaced by the hardly less objectionable town duties.
The new salt monopoly was a far more powerful instrument for
raising money than the medley of systems which it replaced, and
the new stamp tax produced very considerable sums. The Company's
subjects suffered less from vexatious methods of taxation but more
money was drawn from them.
The subjugation of the poligars, the establishment of judicial
courts, and the improvement of the revenue system had absorbed the
chief of the government's energy. Little thought or money could be
spared for other matters. It was during our period that India was
converted from an exporter to an importer of cotton cloth. A French
missionary has left us a vivid description of the ruin which that revo-
lution brought upon the cloth weavers of South India, but this aspect
of the matter hardly attracted the attention of the Madras Govern-
ment. Information was gathered about the prevalence of slavery in
the Tamil country and on the west coast, but no action was taken. It
was not till 1822 that an enquiry into the state of education was set
on foot. Munro seems to have been almost the only Madras official
who had considered the advisability of employing Indian officers in
31


## p. 482 (#510) ############################################

482
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
positions of trust. Famines were dealt with when they came by
opening relief works and granting remissions, but the government
had not yet learnt to regard them as recurring visitations gainst
whose coming preparations should be made in advance. Even Munro
supposed that they could only arise from war or gross misgovernment,
and that there was never likely to be a succession of crop failures
bad enough to produce a famine. Some collectors, notably Place in
Chingleput, had shown great activity in repairing the irrigation
works; and for this purpose, and for the improvement of the roads
the nucleus of a public works organisation had been brought into
being. But its activities were narrowly restricted, because no
adequate funds were placed at its disposal. Much less was there any
serious thought of providing money for the construction of great new
irrigation works, though the existence of so many ancient works was
recognised as a challenge inviting honourable emulation.


## p. 483 (#511) ############################################

CHAPTER XXVIII
AFGHANISTAN, RUSSIA AND PERSIA
TH
HE student of Indian history hardly needs the caution that the
British India of the earlier part of the nineteenth century was vastly
different in size and in environment from that of to-day. The boundary
to the north-west was the Satlej for. but a very short distance;
Bahawalpur and the desert bordering Rajputana lay further south;
whilst beyond the frontier were two great states, of one of which at
least little was known, the Panjab and Sind. The frontier problems
were necessarily different from those of our own time, different and
much more important. In the eighteenth century the French had.
been the great rivals of the English in the East; but their place was
now taken by Russia, a power which had natural connections with
Central Asia, and one whose mission and intentions were dreaded
and much misunderstood for the rest of the century. It is one of
the few claims to statesmanship which can be urged on behalf of
Auckland that he refused to be frightened of Russia, and that almost
alone of the men of his time he took a moderate view of what she
could do that might harm the Indian Empire.
The modern kingdom of Kabul came into existence on the break
up of the great empire of Nadir Shah, the Persian. That famous
adventurer himself came from Khorassan and when he was, perhaps
owing to Persian jealousy of the Afghans, assassinated in 1747 Ahmad
Khan of the Abdali tribe, chief of the sacred Sadozai clan, the most
important in Afghanistan, was chosen king by the revolting nation.
He changed the name of his tribe from Abdali to Durani, and after
the change was always known as Ahmad Shah Durani. Having been
crowned at Kandahar he proceeded to build up a state, understanding,
what it would have been well if the English had remembered, that
ne who would maintain any hold upon the Afghans must keep them
busy with constant warfare. He resolved that wherever there were
Afghans there should his rule extend, and so when he died in 1773
he left his family firmly established in a kingdom which, as defined
by Ferrier, was bounded on the north by the Oxus and the mountains
of Kafaristan; on the south by the sea of Oman; on the east by the
mountains of Tibet, the Satlej, and the Indus; and on the west by
Khorassan, Persia, and Kirman; and if this empire was to some extent
what Sir Henry Maine would have called a tributary empire, there
was present a strong national feeling which would keep the centre
at any rate vigorous and independent.
Ahmad Shah left eight sons, of whom he had designated the
second, Taimy: Mirza. as his successor. He was governing Herat when


## p. 484 (#512) ############################################

484
>
AFGHANISTAN, RUSSIA AND PERSIA
his father died, and his elder brother, Sulaiman Mirza, at once pro-
claimed himself king at Kandahar. Sulaiman had married the
daughter of Shah Wali Khan, wazir of Ahmad Shah, and this gave
him confidence. Shah Wali Khan, however, when Taimur approached,
at once deserted to him, and together with others of his party was
promptly executed. Sulaiman finding himself without sufficient
support fled to India.