By India Act XXI of 1845 the Government of India placed
the localities affected by the custom under the sole jurisdiction of
special agents appointed by the governments of Bengal and Madras
and the governor of Bengal, and made them amenable to rules framed
by itself.
the localities affected by the custom under the sole jurisdiction of
special agents appointed by the governments of Bengal and Madras
and the governor of Bengal, and made them amenable to rules framed
by itself.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
The zamindars themselves
stoutly maintained that the levy of any such impost would be unjust
and contrary to the pledges given them by the government of
Cornwallis. This plea was long debated and not rejected till 1870.
For years, too, the governor-general in council, hard pressed by
war expenditure, failed to appreciate the importance of good roads
in Bengal. Some idea of the backward state of communications may
be formed from the facts that even in 1855–6 four streams on the
Grand Trunk Road (from Calcutta to North-Western India) re-
mained to be bridged, and that only then was a project for bridging
the Hughli at or near Calcutta considered. 2 Sir John Strachey
describes conditions existent in Bengal about 1854.
There were almost no roads, or bridges or schools, and there was no proper
protection to life or property. The police was worthless, and robberies and violent
crimes by gangs of armed men, which were unheard of in other provinces, were
common not far from Calcutta. 3
But a better cra was dawning. Dalhousie fully appreciated the
need of improved communications. He transferred the charge of
public works from inefficient military boards to provincial govern-
ment departments. His engineers mctalled a longer mileage of roads
than had been constructed by the four preceding governors-general. 4
Before he resigned office a system of trunk lines had been sketched,
and the first section of the East India Railway had been opened; the
modern postal system had been inaugurated; a telegraph line ran
from Calcutta to Agra. Modern India had begun to take shape.
Before observing the violent storm which attended its birth, we must
notice certain kinds of epidemic crime which, encouraged by adminis-
1 Bengal District Administration Committee Report (1913-14), p. 12.
2 Buckland, op. cit. p. 29.
3 Strachey, India, p. 420.
Hunter, "India of the Queen”. Cf. Imperial Gazetteer, III, 366.
4
## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################
THAGI
33
trative deficiencies and lack of communications, long afflicted the
districts of Bengal.
In 1853 Kaye remarked of the India of his day:
hundreds of its natives disappear; and their disappearance is either hardly noted
or it creates no astonishment or alarm. A journey in India is a matter of many
months; and numerous are the perils which beset the path of the unprotected
pedestrian. Hence it was that whole hecatombs were sacrificed to the goddess
Devi, and no one took account of the victims.
He refers to the monstrous crimes of the thags (literally “cheats”)
who for years infested every part of India except the Konkan in the
Bombay Presidency. They were a fraternity of murderers who bore
a name earned apparently by their disguises and crafty methods of
procedure. Before starting on expeditions to rob and murder, they
invoked the aid of the Hindu goddess of strength and destruction,
Kali alias Devi alias Bhawani, consecrating to her the weapons of
their trade, the strips of cloth used in strangling their victims and the
pickaxes with which the graves of these poor people were dug:
“ A thag”, wrote Captain Sleeman, “considers the persons murdered
precisely in the light of victims offered up to the goddess. ”
It was some time before the Supreme Government awoke to the
fact that within their own home territory organised bands of pro-
fessional and hereditary robbers and murderers, recognised and
indeed to a certain extent tolerated by their fellow-men, were com-
mitting the most horrible crimes “with as much forethought and
ingenuity as though murder was one of the fine arts, and robbery
a becoming effort of human skill, nay even were glorying in such
achievements as acts welcome to the deity”. But when at last the
position was understood, a thagi police department was organised
under Captain, afterwards Sir William, Sleeman, one of the Com-
pany's ablest servants. In the older provinces, however, to catch a
thag was far easier than to procure his conviction, for thags "throve
upon the legal niceties and the judicial reserve of the English tribunals
and laughed our regulations to scorn". 1 So in 1836 a special act was
passed by which any person convicted of belonging or having belonged
to a gang of thags became liable to imprisonment for life. Thus all
that was necessary to secure conviction was to prove association of
an individual with these pests of society. Encouraging approvers,
Sleeman and his officers by indefatigable and comprehensive opera-
tions gradually put an end to thagi, rooting out what he justly calls
“an enormous evil which had for centuries oppressed the people and
from which it was long supposed that no human efforts could relieve
them”. 2 By 1852 the guild had been scattered, never again to re-
assemble; but Bengal had been infested by river thags as well as by
1 Kaye, op. cit. pp. 354-79; O'Malley, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, pp. 346–50.
· Quoted, Calcutia Review (1860), XXXV, 372.
CHIVI
3
## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################
34
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
road thags, and even in 1854 as many as 250 boats manned by these
miscreants were infesting the Ganges between Calcutta and Benares.
The struggle against dakaiti or dacoity (brigandage) lasted even
longer than that against thagi, and had not attai. d complete success
at the close of our period. Warren Hastings had applied “an extra-
ordinary and exemplary coercion”,+ not only against dacoity but also
against those whom he stigmatised as its “nursing-mothers”, the
zamindars and the police. The snake, however, was only scotched.
In 1810 Lord Minto observed that “a monstrous and disorganised
state of society existed at the very scat of that government to which
the country might justly look for safety and protection". Bengal was
far more subject to brigandage than more recent acquisitions and less
civilised tracts. This anomaly was due to the riches of the country,
its long security from invasion, its venal police and unscrupulous
zamindars, who frequently regarded their estates “as fields to plunder
in, extort and pillage”. The dacoits had secured their position by
systematic intimidation. 2
“It is impossible”, wrote Minto, "to imagine without seeing it the horrid
ascendancy which they have obtained over the inhabitants at large of the countries
which have been the principal scene of their atrocities. . . . In truth the captains of
the band are esteemed and even called the hakim or ruling power, while the govern-
ment does not possess either authority or influence enough to obtain from the
people the smallest aid toward their own protection. ”
Minto initiated a vigorous campaign against dacoity; but in 1823
the pest was so rife in the Purnea district that leases of estates were
sought for in the expectation that profits would be swelled by shares
from illicit plunder. Afterwards, with the aid of the recently organised
thagi police-force, some gangs of dacoits were broken up; but cap-
tures seldom ended in conviction as victims feared to testify against
their oppressors; so in 1843 an act was passed similar to that pre-
viously directed against thagi. To secure conviction it sufficed merely
to prove association with a gang of dacoits either within or outside
the Company's territories before or after the passing of the new
measure. Doubt, however, arose as to the applicability of this enact-
ment to dacoits who did not belong to certain tribes therein specified.
In 1851 this doubt was removed by further legislation. Kaye tells us
that even then by terrorism, by producing numerous false witnesses,
and by availing themselves of the barriers which the complicated
machinery of the law placed between “the eyes of the British func-
tionary and the crimes which were committed around him”, the
dacoits were still glorying in their exploits “as sportsmen do".
In 1852 Wauchope, the magistrate of Hughli, forwarded to the
superintendent of police a list of 287 dacoits belonging to three gangs
which were concerned in eighty-three dacoities, adding that at least
1 Bengal Revenue Consultations, 19 April, 1774.
2 O'Malley, op. cit. pp. 305-6; also Mill and Wilson, VII, 284.
## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################
THE SANTALS
35
thirty-five gangs were then committing depredations near Calcutta.
He was himself appointed special Dacoity Commissioner and, assisted
by the new enactments, rapidly improved the situation. But the
central difficulty of the situation was the fact that the sufferers were
100 apathetic to defend themselves individually, and even in 1859 the
Dacoity Commissioner was still indispensable.
Among the best achievements of the Company's servants in parts
of the Lower Provinces were the conversion of restless and savage
tribes of aboriginals into generally law-abiding cultivators. The
pacification of the Santals, of the Chuars or Bhumij of Manbhum, of
the Larka Kols of Chota Nagpur, of the Khonds of the Orissa hills
was effected not only by the exercise of superior force which alone
could subdue rapine and bloody ferocity, but by methods of concilia-
tion and kindness practised by certain British officers whose names
still blossom in the dust.
From time to time religious and agrarian agitation produced
relapses into barbarism. Such a relapse was the Santal rebellion of
1855, which arose from the resentment of a tribe of primitive culti-
vators at their impotence to resist the exactions of Bengali and Bihari
landlords. About 30,000 Santals overran a large expanse of country,
roasting Bengalis, ripping up their women and torturing their
children. The rising was quelled by a strong military force and after-
wards the Santal Parganas were constituted a separate district and
ruled on a simpler system designed to secure closer personal contact
between British officers and the people.
District administration in Bengal weathered the trials of the Mutiny
right gallantly. When the storm broke there were in Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa only 2400 European soldiers as against Indian forces of
more than 29,000. In Calcutta there was a single British regiment.
No other British troops were nearer than Dinapur, 380 miles away,
where a regiment was employed in watching four Indian regiments
and the great city of Patna. ? In June, 1857, Lord Canning found it
necessary to pass a stringent Press Act, operative for one year, which
was required rather for Calcutta and Bengal than for Upper India.
“I doubt”, he said, “whether it is fully known or understood to what an auda-
cious extent sedition has been poured into the hearts of the native population of
India within the last few wecks under the guise of intelligence supplied to them by
the native newspapers. . . . It has been done sedulously, cleverly, arſfully. . . . In
addition to perversion of facts there are constant vilifications of the Government,
false assertions of its purposes, and unceasing attempts to sow discontent and
hatred between it and its subjects. ”2
Yet despite all adverse circumstances, despite a general lack of
communications, despite defects of administrative organisation already
noticed, although hardly a single district escaped either actual danger
or the apprehension thereof, so little was the public peace disturbed
Buckland, op. cit. p. 6. * Donogh, History and Law of Sedition, p. 183.
2
3-2
## p. 36 (#66) ##############################################
36
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
1
that in submitting his final detailed report on the whole of that
troublous period, the lieutenant-governor was able to state that “the
outbreak, as far as the Lower Provinces are concerned, had been
simply a military mutiny, and there has been at no time anything
that can be called a rebellion in the sense in which that term may
properly be used”. 1
The people of Bengal are for the most part, as Lord Canning said,
"less warlike and turbulent than those of Upper India". But while
large sections of them are timid, apathetic and peculiarly susceptible
to the domination of unscrupulous terrorism, there were in 1857 many
restless and truculent men who desired nothing more ardently than
the overthrow of the one power which stood between the province
and anarchy. Between all such and the achievement of their designs
stood a small band of British officers and the general confidence of
the people in the power and determination of the British government.
Here, for the present, we must leave our subject, remembering that,
so far, the educational policy adopted in 1835 had hardly touched
Bengal outside Calcutta. Even in 1852 there were in the government
educational institutions of the whole Lower Provinces upwards of
11,000 pupils only, of whom 103 were Christians, 791 were Muham-
madans, 189 were Arakanese, thags, and Bhagalpur Hill aborigines,
while the rest were Hindus. 2 Action on the famous Education
Dispatch of 19 July, 1854, had barely commenced when it was re-
tarded by the outbreak of the Mutiny and consequent financial
difficulties. State education was, later on, to bring in new problems;
but to the gross ignorance which prevailed so widely within our period
are largely to be ascribed not only certain monstrous evils mentioned
in this chapter, but also the general incompetence and dishonesty of
the police. The field for the selection of capable and trustworthy
government servants was narrow and restricted. This circumstance
naturally affected the efficiency of the law courts which were not
guided by the carefully considered codes of law and procedure of a
later day. The criminal law was then “a patchwork made up
of
pieces, engrafted at all times and seasons on a ground nearly covered
and obliterated”. 4
If we weigh these circumstances with the consequences of adminis-
trative mistakes made far away in the past and postponements of
Bengal interests to more immediately pressing considerations, if we
remember the lack of communications and the physical features of
the eastern districts, we shall rather wonder that things went as well
as they did than cavil because they did not go better.
It may be asked why, in view of the onerous nature of the task of
district administration in Bengal, was no serious attempt made to
introduce local self-government? Efforts were made, dictated largely
1 Buckland, op. cit. p. 157.
2 Kaye, op. cit. p. 614.
3 Calcutta Review (1860), XXXV, 372.
• Campbell, Modern India, p. 465.
## p. 37 (#67) ##############################################
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
37
by sanitary considerations, to establish a municipal system in towns
which were willing to accept one; but Campbell tells us that when
a deputy-governor of Bengal had imposed a municipal constitution
on a certain town, and the district magistrate tried to "carry out its
details”, he was “prosecuted” in the Supreme Court at Calcutta by
some of the inhabitants and ordered to pay damages as a majority of
the inhabitants did not desire the innovation. “Strange to say",
remarks Campbell, “the unenlightened Indian public cannot be
brought to understand the pleasure of taxing themselves and resolutely
decline the proffered favour. "1 Neither for sanitation, nor for main-
taining an adequate system of watch-and-ward, nor for any similar
purpose, was there any popular inclination to spend money.
1 Campbell, op. cit. p. 261.
## p. 38 (#68) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
1818–1857
THROUGHOUT this period the history of Madras was generally
untroubled. But difficulties arose in the jagir of Kurnool over
which the Company had acquired suzerainty in 1800. A disputed
succession in 1815 had led to the temporary occupation of Kurnool
town; another vacancy in 1823 had involved the arrest of the heir for
murder and the installation of Rasul Khan. His freaks might have
passed unnoticed but for his buying cannons and repairing forts. Then,
agitated by rumours of a general Wahahi conspiracy, the govern-
ment, in 1839, sent commissioners with troops to make enquiries. The
nawab took refuge with his Rohilla and Arab soldiers and a conflict
ensued in which the Rohillas suffered severely. Rasul Khan was
taken to Trichinopoly, where he diligently attended services at a
Christian chapel until he was murdered by one of his servants. The
nawab was probably mad, but the affair ended in the annexation of
his state, which was administered as a non-regulation province by
a commissioner or agent till 1858 when it was combined with other
areas to form the present district of Kurnool.
On the west coast Canara became involved in the Coorg War
through Coorg holding part of the lowlands, and was the scene of a
repulse with considerable loss of a small force advancing from the
coast. The war resulted in the restoration to Canara of the patch of
lowland, but some malcontents remained there and found occupation
in 1837 in chasing the collector and his sepoys back to Mangalore
where they did some damage, ill-armed as they were, before they
were dispersed.
Malabar had had an unusual spell of peace before the Moplahs
(who include Malayali converts to Islam as well as the descendants
of Arabs and Malayali women) in 1836 began a series of twenty-two
disturbances within eighteen years. There was desperate fighting in
1849 when all the sixty-four Moplahs “out” were killed and the
outbreak of 1852 was accompanied by hideous murders in which, for
the first time, the Hindu women and children were not spared.
Strange, of the sadr adalat, deputed to enquire, attributed the dis-
orders to fanaticism and advocated stern repression. His mission was
followed by the murder of Conolly, the collector, and laws were
passed for the better prevention of outrages and to deprive the Mop-
lahs of their war-knives. The effect of these measures was dis-
appointing, as will be seen later.
1 India Acts XXIII and XXIV of 1854 and XX of 1859.
## p. 39 (#69) ##############################################
THE NORTHERN ZAMINDARS
39
a
The north had not known peace for generations. It was reported
in 1759 that the forms and even the remembrance of civil government
seemed to have been wholly lost in the Circars. In Ganjam turmoil
had been incessant. Family feud, mutual jealousy, resentment against
civil decrees or revenue demands, hatred of the police—there was
always some reason for a zamindar to be in arms, some occasion for
troops to be contracting fever. Matters came to a head in the
Parlakimedi zamindari where rival raai's had embroiled the hill chiefs
in a feud of nineteen years' duration. In the midst of the trouble the
estate came under the Court of Wards whose manager became
involved in the fray, and other zamindaris were drawn in too. It was
time to settle things once and for all. George Russell, of the board,
was appointed special commissioner with extraordinary powers and
a large body of troops. A special tribunal was set up to try prisoners.
Russell proclaimed martial law. Forts were reduced, the rebels were
defeated everywhere, some were hanged, others transported or con-
fined as state prisoners, estate lands were sequestrated. By 1834 the
trouble seemed over. But, at the beginning of the operations,
Dhananjaya Bhanj, raja of Gumsur, “that ty annous monster”, had
been enlarged from captivity by the government, credulous of fair
promises, and restored to his estate, and the opportunity seemed to
him too good to be wasted. He withheld the revenue and defied the
authorities. But the blood of the government was up. Russell was
reappointed and the troops set in motion again. Dhananjaya fled for
refuge to the Khonds in the hills. For the first time in history the
Company's forces entered those fever-stricken tracts. Dhananjaya
died, laying injunction on the Khonds not to allow his women-folk
to be captured. In this they failed, but they overwhelmed the
detachment in charge of Dhananjaya's belongings and killed several
of the women to save them from anticipated dishonour. The troops
spread over the country and returned to finish their work the following
year. The reb. llious chiefs were killed, hanged or transported. The
Gumsur and Surada zamindaris were declared forfeit. For the first
time since 1768 Ganjam had a spell of peace which lasted until the
Savaras in 1853, and again in 1856, descended from the hills to
plunder and burn. They quieted down when their own huts and
crops were burnt in retaliation. In the meantime there had been an
outbreak in the Vizagapatam hills which involved military operations
for three years. These troublesome Northern Circars, which covered
almost the whole of the present five northernmost districts, had been
held subject to an annual payment to the Nizam, until 1823, when the
liability was capitalised and discharged. The condition of the adminis-
tration moved the directors to order in 1849 that the Circars should be
placed under the direct charge of a member of the board as special
commissioner, and this arrangement continued for five or six years.
For his story see the Ganjam District Manual.
## p. 40 (#70) ##############################################
40
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
Russell's operations had results still to be mentioned. One of these
was the enactment of India Act XXIV of 1839, which withdrew the
hill tracts of Ganjam and Vizagapatam from the operation of the
ordinary courts and laws, and placed them under the sole control of
the collectors of those districts, styled agents to the governor, an
arrangement which still endures. Another consequence demands
longer description.
At that time strange and terrible crimes were moving under the
surface of Indian life. Timorously but successfully the government
had legislated against sati, never much in vogue in Madras.
Female infanticide, though known among the Khonds, concerned
that presidency little. In 1836 legislative and executive measures were
initiated against thagi. That crime, too, was alien to Madras, though,
in the 'thirties, gangs were at work in Anantapur, and sundry ruffians
were hanged and gibbeted. The crime which Russell's campaigns
brought into prominence (its existence had been reported nearly
seventy years before) was human sacrifice as practised under the
name of Meriah (Mervi) among the Khonds of Ganjam. The victims
were bought or were dedicated as children to the earth-goddess. They
were treated with veneration till their time came, often after a lapse
of many years, and, on attaining maturity, a Meriah boy would be
given a Meriah girl to wife; the children born to such a couple were
victims by heredity. Sacrifices were so arranged that each family
should have at least once a year a strip of flesh for burial in the family-
land to ensure good crops. When the victim's turn came, he or she
was put to death after strange ceremonies and in revolting ways; the
flesh was stripped off, sometimes while the poor wretch was still
alive, and distributed. This practice prevailed in the hills of Ganjam,
Vizagapatam and neighbouring tracts. A military officer was deputed
to stop it and tactfully won wer the tribes. In 1842 two tribes agreed
to give up the custom, if permitted to denounce the government as
responsible for their apostasy. Other tribes followed suit, those of
Boad celebrating their conversion by a grand, final slaughter of
120 victims, just half the number immolated on a New Moon Day
in 1841.
By India Act XXI of 1845 the Government of India placed
the localities affected by the custom under the sole jurisdiction of
special agents appointed by the governments of Bengal and Madras
and the governor of Bengal, and made them amenable to rules framed
by itself. This arrangement lasted till 1861, but the last Meriah
sacrifice in Madras seems to have occurred in 1855. It is reckoned
that between 1837 and 1854 over 1500 destined victims were saved.
A few words may be added here about slavery which, usually in
a mild form, existed on the west coast and in the Tamil country. In
the former area there were both predial and personal slaves, and
there had been some export trade in slaves which, however, was early
1 Madras Reg. I of 1830.
## p. 41 (#71) ##############################################
THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
41
made illegal. 1 In the latter area the slaves were predial only (apart
from a certain amount of slavery "on contract”) and the institution
was already dying out in 1819. 2 Nevertheless, certain classes of
labourers used in some parts to be sold or mortgaged with the land
until the passing of India Act V of 1843, which declared that no rights
arising out of slavery should be enforced by the courts. Even in the
present century, however, deeds of sale of land have occasionally
contained a clause transferring to the purchaser the debt which
bound the farm-labourers to the vendor by a chain hardly differing
from that of slavery.
By 1803 the movements and hazards of half a century had secured
to Madras a territory of a hundred and forty thousand square miles.
The subsequent changes in the outline of the presidency have been
few. Canara gained a bit from Coorg in the war of 1834, but lost
more by transfer to Bombay in 1862; the tributary state of Kurnool
was annexed in 1839, and certain parings off the Central Provinces
were allotted to Godavari in and after 1874. To these alterations may
be added the cession to the Company in 1818 of suzerainty over the
Sandur state.
The government was composed of a governor and a council of three
senior merchantsS who had power to legislate, but were in entire
subordination to the governor-general in council at Fort William.
Such was the position until 1833 when, with a view to centralise all
authority in the governor-general of India in council, as he was thence-
forward to be called, the power to legislate was withdrawn and the
court of directors was authorised to reduce or abolish any provincial
council. This last provision did not receive effect, for the directors,
although they reduced the civilian councillors to two, counter-
balanced this by adding the local commander-in-chief to the council. ?
In 1786 a Board of Trade and a Board of Revenue had been esta-
blished, each consisting of three members with a member of council as
president. The former body looked after the commercial interests of
the Company, but its business dwindled into insignificance after the
abolition of the Indian monopoly8 and it disappeared in 1825. At
the outset the Board of Revenue had, extra-legally, certain judicial
powers. These were confirmed for parts of the country by Regulation i
of 1803, but were extinguished soon afterwards. It became by
Regulation v of 1804 a Court of Wards for the presidency and had for
many years control over religious and other endowments. ío Until 1887
a
3
1 51 Geo. III, c. 23, and Reg. I of 1812 (repealed by Reg. n of 1826).
2 Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 1818, and 25 November, 1819.
24 Geo. III, c. 25, and 33 Geo. III, c. 52. Writers, factors and junior and senior
merchants represented at the time the covenanted civil service.
• 39 and 40 Geo. III, c. 79, and 47 Geo. III, sess. 2, c. 68.
33 Geo. III, c. 52.
3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85.
: Political Dispatch, No. 18, 27 December, 1833.
53 Geo. III, c. 155. • Reg. 1 of 1806.
10 Reg. vn of 1817.
8
## p. 42 (#72) ##############################################
42
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
the united board exercised general supervision over revenue matters.
In that year the portfolio system was introduced, the number of
members was raised to four (the councillor-president had disappeared
long before) and the various branches of the revenue administration
were distributed among the members as commissioners.
The country was, and is, divided into districts? which have varied
in number from twenty to twenty-six, and these again into taluks
which now average about 700 square miles. At the head of the
district stands the collector, who first appears on the scene in 1787.
The twentieth century found him still the local representative of
government; chief magistrate; head of the Land Revenue and Forest
Departments; as president of the District Board, supervising roads,
schools and hospitals; possessed of a measure of control over the police
and municipalities; as a revenue judge, exercising summary juris-
diction in many matters. In his revenue capacity he is in direct
subordination to the board, to which body appeals lie against many
of his orders, executive and judicial. To collectors were assigned in
1792 covenanted assistants, and, later on, fixed territorial jurisdictions
were allotted to the assistant and subordinate collectors in the form
of divisions made up of groups of taluks wherein they exercise most of
the powers possessed by collectors. The taluks were from the first under
Indian tahsildars; above them all the executive officers were English.
No practical steps were taken to open the higher executive to natives
of the country until India Act I of 1857 authorised the appointment
of deputy-collectors, who occupy a position similar to that of
covenanted divisional officers.
A Supreme Court had been established in 18012 but its jurisdiction
was almost wholly confined to Madras town. The administration of
justice up-country was conducted under the system introduced in
1802-6 and modified by the legislation of 1816. The reforms of the
latter year were designed to reduce expense and hasten disposal by
larger employment of native agency, to simplify litigation by reverting
to earlier methods whereby civil and criminal cases were largely
disposed of in the village, and to ensure greater control over crime by
restoring to collectors magisterial powers and the supervision of the
police. The central court for up-country purposes consisted of a body
of judges presided over by a member of council. 3 On its civil side this
tribunal was called “sadr adalat”; on its criminal side, “sadr
faujdari adalat”. Below this body functioned four provincial courts
dealing with most of the civil appeals and with suits over Rs. 5000;
these bodies, as courts of circuit, disposed also of all the more im-
portant criminal work. 4 In the district the principal civil judge was
Forinerly called zillahs, the taluks being styled districts.
39 & 40 Geo. III, c. 79.
3 Regs. v and viu of 1802 and in of 1807. This court, as at first constituced, consisted
of the governor in council.
• Regs. IV and vir of 1802 and xi of 1809.
2
## p. 43 (#73) ##############################################
JUDICIAL ORGANISATION
43
the zillah judge, assisted sometimes by registers or assistant judges to
whom actions might be referred for disposal. 1 The presiding officers
of all the above courts were European covenanted civilians, who were
assisted on legal points by Indian law officers. Below came three
classes of native judges, namely, sadr amins to whom suits up to Rs. 300
might be referred, district munsiffs who were authorised to deal with
suits up to Rs. 2004 and village headmen or munsiffs who had power to
dispose of certain cases not exceeding in value Rs. 10 or, with the
consent of the parties, Rs. 100. 5 Both the district and the village
munsiffs were required, on demand, to summon panchayats, or bodies
of arbitrators, which had unlimited jurisdiction in respect of the
classes of cases which might be referred to them.
Within the district the principal criminal jurisdiction was vested
in the zillah judge to whom the register gave help as assistant criminal
judge, but six months' imprisonment was the limit of the latter's
powers.
. ? The collector as magistrate and his covenanted assistants as
assistant magistrates had a very restricted power of punishment, their
main duty being the arrest and commitment of offenders. & Certain
petty misdemeanours were punishable by tahsildars and village head-
men. ' For want of anything better, the Muhammadan criminal law,
as interpreted by the law officers and modified from time to time by
enactment, was applied in the criminal courts until the Penal Code
came into force in 1862.
Such were the judicial arrangements as they stood in 1818; and of
the reforms carried out in 1816 none was more important adminis-
tratively than the severance of the unsuitable association of the judge
with the magistracy and police, none more popular than the creation
of the district munsiffs. 10 It was, in fact, the popularity of these latter
officers which rendered ineffectual the effort to revive the old method
of adjudication by panchayats. Soon afterwards we find the directors
pressing for a still more extended use of Indian agency and, as a con-
sequence, provision was made for the establishment of “auxiliary”
and “native” civil and criminal courts, possessing in defined areas
jurisdiction on the same lines as that exercised by the zillah and
criminal judge. 11 The “auxiliary” judges differed from the “native"
judges in that they had jurisdiction in respect of Europeans and
Americans, but they disappeared in time, whereas the “native”
judges, under changed titles (they were known as principal sadr amins
after 1836), have lasted to the present day. It was at this point that
Regs. Il of 1802 and vir and xn of 1809.
* Abolished by India Act XI of 1864. They were also employed as sadr amins.
* Regs. vil and x of 180g and viu of 1816.
* Reg. vi of 1816.
* Reg. IV of 1816.
6 Regs. V and vi of 1816.
• Reg. x of 1816. The limit was raised to two years' imprisonment in certain cases by
Reg. vi of 1822.
Reg. ix of 1816.
• Reg. xi of 1816.
19 They took the place of the "native commissioners" of 1802 with jurisdiction up to
Rs. 80.
11 Regs. 1, 11, vi and vm of 1827.
.
STEPHENS
GAR
)
## p. 44 (#74) ##############################################
44
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a modified form of the English jury-system was introduced into the
courts of circuit by Regulation x of 1827.
A new phase opened with India Act VII of 1843. The provincial
courts of civil appeal and circuit and the zillah courts were abolisned
and their civil and criminal powers were distributed between new
“civil and sessions” judges of the zillah and the principal sadr arins
(or the "auxiliary” judges); at the same time the powers of the
magistrates were substantially enlarged. In the result, whereas in
1802 no Indian could try a criminal case or deal with a suit valued
at more than Rs. 80, an Indian judge might now adjudicate suits up
to Rs. 10,000 in value and pass sentences of two years' imprisonment.
There was an extension in the same direction later, 2 when district
munsiffs were conceded a limited criminal jurisdiction.
At the beginning of the present period the zamindari system pre-
vailed in the Northern Circars, Salem, Chingleput and certain other
areas; village leases in the Ceded districts, Nellore, the Arcots, Palnad,
Trichinopoly, Tinnevelly and Tanjore; ryotwari in Malabar, Canara,
Coimbatore, Madura and Dindigul. 2
As a revenue system, the zamindari settlement was not a success,
even where it had for basis the old estates of poligars; as to the artificial
estates, or muttahs, they came tumbling down almost as soon as they
were set up. The process of decay was both rapid and long continued,
so that we find the whole of the Guntur collectorate and much of the
Masulipatam collectorate passing over from zamindari to ryotwari
between 1835 and 1849, and now the system applies to less than one-
fourth of the presidency. Certain features of the settlement call for
further remarks.
After long discussion in Bengal it was decided that the demand on
the estates should be fixed in perpetuity. The principle of an un-
alterable assessment is not in favour nowadays, but, throughout the
first half of the last century, there prevailed in Madras, vaguely felt
rather than definitely asserted, an idea that, in all forms of land-
revenue settlement, fixity of demand should be aimed at. This view
was not always endorsed by the court of directors, but it commended
itself to the secretary of state as late as 1862, and in 1868 the Board
of Revenue had nothing to say against a permanent ryotwari settle-
ment. Though a rapid rise in prices led to the abandonment of the
notion, it was not formally renounced until 1883. 3
In investing zamindars with “the proprietary right of the soil", the
legislature gave rise to misconceptions which had to be corrected later
by a declaration that there was no intention to infringe the rights of
third parties. There never had been such intention, but the legisla-
1 India Act XII of 1854.
: Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 1818.
• Court's Dispatch, 16 December, 1812 (Revenue Selections, 1820, vol. 1); Board's Pro-
ceedings, No. 6369, 8 September, 1868; S. of S. Dispatch, 28 March, 1883, and Baden
Powell, 1, 340.
Reg. IV of 1822.
## p. 45 (#75) ##############################################
THE ZAMINDARI SETTLEMENT
45
tion of 18021 gave insufficient protection to the cultivators, while
granting to the zamindars powers of distraint and ejectment which
could be challenged only through a regular suit. This defect led to
Regulation v of 1822, which brought the collector in as a summary
arbitrator between zamindar and occupier, an arrangement which
worked with some success until the courts began to admit claims to
determine rents on a competitive basis and to alter the customary
modes of sharing the crops. Act VIII of 1865 was intended to settle
these and other questions but caused much greater confusion by
declaring that all contracts for rent, express or implied, must be
enforced. The position was not made clear until the Estates Land
Act, 1908, came into operation. This elaborate enactment brought
the revenue courts into summary operation in all relations between
zamindar and ryot, conferred, in express terms, right of permanent
occupancy upon most of the zamindar ryots, and enabled others to
secure that privilege by, means of a small payment. The need for
protecting the tenants had been mainly felt in the Telugu country;
among the Tamils there had always been a much stronger sense of
private property in land and the ryot's claim to occupancy right had
generally been accepted. So much for the cultivators. The question
whether the zamindars themselves did not need protection was con-
sidered by Munro, but nearly eighty years elapsed before anything
was done in that direction. Then, when debt and suits for partition
had broken up various estates, it became a matter of concern to the
government to preserve the rest. The case of indebtedness was met by
authorising the government, on request, to place embarrassed estates
under the Court of Wards. 3 The other threat had arisen from a change
in judicial opinion, the courts receding from the position that im-
partibility and inalienability attach by general custom to the ancient
zamindaris, and holding that the existence of these attributes must
be proved for each individual estate. This dictum gave rise to much
ruinous litigation, but, after considerable delay, a remedy was pro-
vided in the form of a law which imposed restrictions upon the
alienation of specified estates, and declared them to be impartible
and heritable by a single heir.
The decennial leases, introduced by the Madras Government “to
become a fixed settlement if approved” and immediately condemned
by the court of directors, were drawing to a close when the present
period opens and did not everywhere run their full course. With the
expiration of the last of them, the village lease system disappeared
except in a few peculiar localities. The decennial leases had been
1 Regs. xxv and xxxn of 1802.
· Minute, 19 September, 1820.
• Act IV of 1899.
• Act II of 1904, replacing similar acts of 1903 and 1902; see also Srinivasa Ragha-
vachari, Progress of the Madras Presidency, p. 245.
• Dispatches, 16 December, 1812, and 16 December, 1813.
## p. 46 (#76) ##############################################
46
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a
granted on more lenient terms than the triennial ones, but the general
result of the arrangement never came under review. According to
the Board of Revenue the leases were working satisfactorily in 1818,1
but the board was strongly prejudiced and the reports from individual
districts are by no means suggestive of success. The board's bias in
favour of village lcascs may, perhaps, be explained in part by the
existence in portions of the Tamil country of a tenure to which they
really seemed to be thoroughly well adapted. This tenure, commonly
known as mirasi right, was decaying but sufficiently alive to engender
a vast and enthusiastic correspondence in which the varying views of
the government are generally in opposition to the varying views of
the board. In this tenure the ownership of each village (subject to
the usual claim of the state to a share of the produce) vested in a single
mirasidar or, more commonly, in a body of mirasidars. From the tilth
the mirasidars derived a share of the produce and, in some places,
grain-fees also; over the waste they claimed certain privileges. The
main controversy arose over the questions whether a ryotivari settle-
ment should be made with the mirasidars or the actual cultivators, and
whether the mirasidars had a right to prevent the state from assigning
the waste for cultivation. The former point may be considered to have
been settled by the cautious instructions of the directors to respect
the rights of the mirasidars but to be chary of ousting persons already
recognised as owners, and to dispose of all disputes on their merits. 2
On the latter point the final decision was that the mirasidars had no
power to keep waste out of cultivation, but should have the first
refusal of any part applied for by a non-mirasidar. 3 The government
showed a disposition to go back on this decision, but was vigorously
reproved by the board and overruled by the directors. 4
Officially the mirasi system is dead, but traces of it survive in
Chingleput, where the ordinary assessment is in some cases reduced
to allow of the payment to old mirasi families of sums in lieu of
former claims upon the cultivators.
Ryotwari falls into three stages, early, middle and late, and the
only description common to all is that it is a mode of settlement with
small farmers, so small, indeed, that their average holding is, on
recent figures, only about 6, acres. Nowadays the tenure is regarded
as possessing the following properties: the registered occupier is, so
far as concerns government, free to alicnate, cncumber and devise his
land at discretion; subject to unimportant qualifications, he may at
any time relinquish any portion of his holding; he can never be ousted
unless he fails to pay regularly the assessment fixed on the land or any
1
1 Proceedings, 5 January, 1818. The vigorous style of this paper, a masterly bit of work,
shows the warm concern of the board in the result of the duel between village lease and
ryotwari.
? Dispatch, 18 August, 1824.
· Dispatches, No. 8, 28 July, 1841, and No. 17, 3 July, 1844.
Dispatch, 17 December, 1856.
## p. 47 (#77) ##############################################
THE RYOTWARI SETTLEMENT
47
other charge by law recoverable as land revenue, in which case his
land may be attached and sold to the extent necessary to discharge
the debt;. no additional charge may be imposed on account of im-
provements effected at the ryot's cost, but a separate charge may be
made for minerals extracted; thc rate of assessment is liable to
alteration on the expiry of the specified period for which it has been
fixed and then only. But these peculiarities have been of gradual
growth; not onc of them can be said to have been universally applicable
to early ryolwari which, introduced by Read, approved by the
directors as an experiment, widely extended by Munro and others,
was abruptly brought to an end in some districts by the zamindari
settlement, in others by the village leases.
stoutly maintained that the levy of any such impost would be unjust
and contrary to the pledges given them by the government of
Cornwallis. This plea was long debated and not rejected till 1870.
For years, too, the governor-general in council, hard pressed by
war expenditure, failed to appreciate the importance of good roads
in Bengal. Some idea of the backward state of communications may
be formed from the facts that even in 1855–6 four streams on the
Grand Trunk Road (from Calcutta to North-Western India) re-
mained to be bridged, and that only then was a project for bridging
the Hughli at or near Calcutta considered. 2 Sir John Strachey
describes conditions existent in Bengal about 1854.
There were almost no roads, or bridges or schools, and there was no proper
protection to life or property. The police was worthless, and robberies and violent
crimes by gangs of armed men, which were unheard of in other provinces, were
common not far from Calcutta. 3
But a better cra was dawning. Dalhousie fully appreciated the
need of improved communications. He transferred the charge of
public works from inefficient military boards to provincial govern-
ment departments. His engineers mctalled a longer mileage of roads
than had been constructed by the four preceding governors-general. 4
Before he resigned office a system of trunk lines had been sketched,
and the first section of the East India Railway had been opened; the
modern postal system had been inaugurated; a telegraph line ran
from Calcutta to Agra. Modern India had begun to take shape.
Before observing the violent storm which attended its birth, we must
notice certain kinds of epidemic crime which, encouraged by adminis-
1 Bengal District Administration Committee Report (1913-14), p. 12.
2 Buckland, op. cit. p. 29.
3 Strachey, India, p. 420.
Hunter, "India of the Queen”. Cf. Imperial Gazetteer, III, 366.
4
## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################
THAGI
33
trative deficiencies and lack of communications, long afflicted the
districts of Bengal.
In 1853 Kaye remarked of the India of his day:
hundreds of its natives disappear; and their disappearance is either hardly noted
or it creates no astonishment or alarm. A journey in India is a matter of many
months; and numerous are the perils which beset the path of the unprotected
pedestrian. Hence it was that whole hecatombs were sacrificed to the goddess
Devi, and no one took account of the victims.
He refers to the monstrous crimes of the thags (literally “cheats”)
who for years infested every part of India except the Konkan in the
Bombay Presidency. They were a fraternity of murderers who bore
a name earned apparently by their disguises and crafty methods of
procedure. Before starting on expeditions to rob and murder, they
invoked the aid of the Hindu goddess of strength and destruction,
Kali alias Devi alias Bhawani, consecrating to her the weapons of
their trade, the strips of cloth used in strangling their victims and the
pickaxes with which the graves of these poor people were dug:
“ A thag”, wrote Captain Sleeman, “considers the persons murdered
precisely in the light of victims offered up to the goddess. ”
It was some time before the Supreme Government awoke to the
fact that within their own home territory organised bands of pro-
fessional and hereditary robbers and murderers, recognised and
indeed to a certain extent tolerated by their fellow-men, were com-
mitting the most horrible crimes “with as much forethought and
ingenuity as though murder was one of the fine arts, and robbery
a becoming effort of human skill, nay even were glorying in such
achievements as acts welcome to the deity”. But when at last the
position was understood, a thagi police department was organised
under Captain, afterwards Sir William, Sleeman, one of the Com-
pany's ablest servants. In the older provinces, however, to catch a
thag was far easier than to procure his conviction, for thags "throve
upon the legal niceties and the judicial reserve of the English tribunals
and laughed our regulations to scorn". 1 So in 1836 a special act was
passed by which any person convicted of belonging or having belonged
to a gang of thags became liable to imprisonment for life. Thus all
that was necessary to secure conviction was to prove association of
an individual with these pests of society. Encouraging approvers,
Sleeman and his officers by indefatigable and comprehensive opera-
tions gradually put an end to thagi, rooting out what he justly calls
“an enormous evil which had for centuries oppressed the people and
from which it was long supposed that no human efforts could relieve
them”. 2 By 1852 the guild had been scattered, never again to re-
assemble; but Bengal had been infested by river thags as well as by
1 Kaye, op. cit. pp. 354-79; O'Malley, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, pp. 346–50.
· Quoted, Calcutia Review (1860), XXXV, 372.
CHIVI
3
## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################
34
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
road thags, and even in 1854 as many as 250 boats manned by these
miscreants were infesting the Ganges between Calcutta and Benares.
The struggle against dakaiti or dacoity (brigandage) lasted even
longer than that against thagi, and had not attai. d complete success
at the close of our period. Warren Hastings had applied “an extra-
ordinary and exemplary coercion”,+ not only against dacoity but also
against those whom he stigmatised as its “nursing-mothers”, the
zamindars and the police. The snake, however, was only scotched.
In 1810 Lord Minto observed that “a monstrous and disorganised
state of society existed at the very scat of that government to which
the country might justly look for safety and protection". Bengal was
far more subject to brigandage than more recent acquisitions and less
civilised tracts. This anomaly was due to the riches of the country,
its long security from invasion, its venal police and unscrupulous
zamindars, who frequently regarded their estates “as fields to plunder
in, extort and pillage”. The dacoits had secured their position by
systematic intimidation. 2
“It is impossible”, wrote Minto, "to imagine without seeing it the horrid
ascendancy which they have obtained over the inhabitants at large of the countries
which have been the principal scene of their atrocities. . . . In truth the captains of
the band are esteemed and even called the hakim or ruling power, while the govern-
ment does not possess either authority or influence enough to obtain from the
people the smallest aid toward their own protection. ”
Minto initiated a vigorous campaign against dacoity; but in 1823
the pest was so rife in the Purnea district that leases of estates were
sought for in the expectation that profits would be swelled by shares
from illicit plunder. Afterwards, with the aid of the recently organised
thagi police-force, some gangs of dacoits were broken up; but cap-
tures seldom ended in conviction as victims feared to testify against
their oppressors; so in 1843 an act was passed similar to that pre-
viously directed against thagi. To secure conviction it sufficed merely
to prove association with a gang of dacoits either within or outside
the Company's territories before or after the passing of the new
measure. Doubt, however, arose as to the applicability of this enact-
ment to dacoits who did not belong to certain tribes therein specified.
In 1851 this doubt was removed by further legislation. Kaye tells us
that even then by terrorism, by producing numerous false witnesses,
and by availing themselves of the barriers which the complicated
machinery of the law placed between “the eyes of the British func-
tionary and the crimes which were committed around him”, the
dacoits were still glorying in their exploits “as sportsmen do".
In 1852 Wauchope, the magistrate of Hughli, forwarded to the
superintendent of police a list of 287 dacoits belonging to three gangs
which were concerned in eighty-three dacoities, adding that at least
1 Bengal Revenue Consultations, 19 April, 1774.
2 O'Malley, op. cit. pp. 305-6; also Mill and Wilson, VII, 284.
## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################
THE SANTALS
35
thirty-five gangs were then committing depredations near Calcutta.
He was himself appointed special Dacoity Commissioner and, assisted
by the new enactments, rapidly improved the situation. But the
central difficulty of the situation was the fact that the sufferers were
100 apathetic to defend themselves individually, and even in 1859 the
Dacoity Commissioner was still indispensable.
Among the best achievements of the Company's servants in parts
of the Lower Provinces were the conversion of restless and savage
tribes of aboriginals into generally law-abiding cultivators. The
pacification of the Santals, of the Chuars or Bhumij of Manbhum, of
the Larka Kols of Chota Nagpur, of the Khonds of the Orissa hills
was effected not only by the exercise of superior force which alone
could subdue rapine and bloody ferocity, but by methods of concilia-
tion and kindness practised by certain British officers whose names
still blossom in the dust.
From time to time religious and agrarian agitation produced
relapses into barbarism. Such a relapse was the Santal rebellion of
1855, which arose from the resentment of a tribe of primitive culti-
vators at their impotence to resist the exactions of Bengali and Bihari
landlords. About 30,000 Santals overran a large expanse of country,
roasting Bengalis, ripping up their women and torturing their
children. The rising was quelled by a strong military force and after-
wards the Santal Parganas were constituted a separate district and
ruled on a simpler system designed to secure closer personal contact
between British officers and the people.
District administration in Bengal weathered the trials of the Mutiny
right gallantly. When the storm broke there were in Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa only 2400 European soldiers as against Indian forces of
more than 29,000. In Calcutta there was a single British regiment.
No other British troops were nearer than Dinapur, 380 miles away,
where a regiment was employed in watching four Indian regiments
and the great city of Patna. ? In June, 1857, Lord Canning found it
necessary to pass a stringent Press Act, operative for one year, which
was required rather for Calcutta and Bengal than for Upper India.
“I doubt”, he said, “whether it is fully known or understood to what an auda-
cious extent sedition has been poured into the hearts of the native population of
India within the last few wecks under the guise of intelligence supplied to them by
the native newspapers. . . . It has been done sedulously, cleverly, arſfully. . . . In
addition to perversion of facts there are constant vilifications of the Government,
false assertions of its purposes, and unceasing attempts to sow discontent and
hatred between it and its subjects. ”2
Yet despite all adverse circumstances, despite a general lack of
communications, despite defects of administrative organisation already
noticed, although hardly a single district escaped either actual danger
or the apprehension thereof, so little was the public peace disturbed
Buckland, op. cit. p. 6. * Donogh, History and Law of Sedition, p. 183.
2
3-2
## p. 36 (#66) ##############################################
36
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
1
that in submitting his final detailed report on the whole of that
troublous period, the lieutenant-governor was able to state that “the
outbreak, as far as the Lower Provinces are concerned, had been
simply a military mutiny, and there has been at no time anything
that can be called a rebellion in the sense in which that term may
properly be used”. 1
The people of Bengal are for the most part, as Lord Canning said,
"less warlike and turbulent than those of Upper India". But while
large sections of them are timid, apathetic and peculiarly susceptible
to the domination of unscrupulous terrorism, there were in 1857 many
restless and truculent men who desired nothing more ardently than
the overthrow of the one power which stood between the province
and anarchy. Between all such and the achievement of their designs
stood a small band of British officers and the general confidence of
the people in the power and determination of the British government.
Here, for the present, we must leave our subject, remembering that,
so far, the educational policy adopted in 1835 had hardly touched
Bengal outside Calcutta. Even in 1852 there were in the government
educational institutions of the whole Lower Provinces upwards of
11,000 pupils only, of whom 103 were Christians, 791 were Muham-
madans, 189 were Arakanese, thags, and Bhagalpur Hill aborigines,
while the rest were Hindus. 2 Action on the famous Education
Dispatch of 19 July, 1854, had barely commenced when it was re-
tarded by the outbreak of the Mutiny and consequent financial
difficulties. State education was, later on, to bring in new problems;
but to the gross ignorance which prevailed so widely within our period
are largely to be ascribed not only certain monstrous evils mentioned
in this chapter, but also the general incompetence and dishonesty of
the police. The field for the selection of capable and trustworthy
government servants was narrow and restricted. This circumstance
naturally affected the efficiency of the law courts which were not
guided by the carefully considered codes of law and procedure of a
later day. The criminal law was then “a patchwork made up
of
pieces, engrafted at all times and seasons on a ground nearly covered
and obliterated”. 4
If we weigh these circumstances with the consequences of adminis-
trative mistakes made far away in the past and postponements of
Bengal interests to more immediately pressing considerations, if we
remember the lack of communications and the physical features of
the eastern districts, we shall rather wonder that things went as well
as they did than cavil because they did not go better.
It may be asked why, in view of the onerous nature of the task of
district administration in Bengal, was no serious attempt made to
introduce local self-government? Efforts were made, dictated largely
1 Buckland, op. cit. p. 157.
2 Kaye, op. cit. p. 614.
3 Calcutta Review (1860), XXXV, 372.
• Campbell, Modern India, p. 465.
## p. 37 (#67) ##############################################
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
37
by sanitary considerations, to establish a municipal system in towns
which were willing to accept one; but Campbell tells us that when
a deputy-governor of Bengal had imposed a municipal constitution
on a certain town, and the district magistrate tried to "carry out its
details”, he was “prosecuted” in the Supreme Court at Calcutta by
some of the inhabitants and ordered to pay damages as a majority of
the inhabitants did not desire the innovation. “Strange to say",
remarks Campbell, “the unenlightened Indian public cannot be
brought to understand the pleasure of taxing themselves and resolutely
decline the proffered favour. "1 Neither for sanitation, nor for main-
taining an adequate system of watch-and-ward, nor for any similar
purpose, was there any popular inclination to spend money.
1 Campbell, op. cit. p. 261.
## p. 38 (#68) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
1818–1857
THROUGHOUT this period the history of Madras was generally
untroubled. But difficulties arose in the jagir of Kurnool over
which the Company had acquired suzerainty in 1800. A disputed
succession in 1815 had led to the temporary occupation of Kurnool
town; another vacancy in 1823 had involved the arrest of the heir for
murder and the installation of Rasul Khan. His freaks might have
passed unnoticed but for his buying cannons and repairing forts. Then,
agitated by rumours of a general Wahahi conspiracy, the govern-
ment, in 1839, sent commissioners with troops to make enquiries. The
nawab took refuge with his Rohilla and Arab soldiers and a conflict
ensued in which the Rohillas suffered severely. Rasul Khan was
taken to Trichinopoly, where he diligently attended services at a
Christian chapel until he was murdered by one of his servants. The
nawab was probably mad, but the affair ended in the annexation of
his state, which was administered as a non-regulation province by
a commissioner or agent till 1858 when it was combined with other
areas to form the present district of Kurnool.
On the west coast Canara became involved in the Coorg War
through Coorg holding part of the lowlands, and was the scene of a
repulse with considerable loss of a small force advancing from the
coast. The war resulted in the restoration to Canara of the patch of
lowland, but some malcontents remained there and found occupation
in 1837 in chasing the collector and his sepoys back to Mangalore
where they did some damage, ill-armed as they were, before they
were dispersed.
Malabar had had an unusual spell of peace before the Moplahs
(who include Malayali converts to Islam as well as the descendants
of Arabs and Malayali women) in 1836 began a series of twenty-two
disturbances within eighteen years. There was desperate fighting in
1849 when all the sixty-four Moplahs “out” were killed and the
outbreak of 1852 was accompanied by hideous murders in which, for
the first time, the Hindu women and children were not spared.
Strange, of the sadr adalat, deputed to enquire, attributed the dis-
orders to fanaticism and advocated stern repression. His mission was
followed by the murder of Conolly, the collector, and laws were
passed for the better prevention of outrages and to deprive the Mop-
lahs of their war-knives. The effect of these measures was dis-
appointing, as will be seen later.
1 India Acts XXIII and XXIV of 1854 and XX of 1859.
## p. 39 (#69) ##############################################
THE NORTHERN ZAMINDARS
39
a
The north had not known peace for generations. It was reported
in 1759 that the forms and even the remembrance of civil government
seemed to have been wholly lost in the Circars. In Ganjam turmoil
had been incessant. Family feud, mutual jealousy, resentment against
civil decrees or revenue demands, hatred of the police—there was
always some reason for a zamindar to be in arms, some occasion for
troops to be contracting fever. Matters came to a head in the
Parlakimedi zamindari where rival raai's had embroiled the hill chiefs
in a feud of nineteen years' duration. In the midst of the trouble the
estate came under the Court of Wards whose manager became
involved in the fray, and other zamindaris were drawn in too. It was
time to settle things once and for all. George Russell, of the board,
was appointed special commissioner with extraordinary powers and
a large body of troops. A special tribunal was set up to try prisoners.
Russell proclaimed martial law. Forts were reduced, the rebels were
defeated everywhere, some were hanged, others transported or con-
fined as state prisoners, estate lands were sequestrated. By 1834 the
trouble seemed over. But, at the beginning of the operations,
Dhananjaya Bhanj, raja of Gumsur, “that ty annous monster”, had
been enlarged from captivity by the government, credulous of fair
promises, and restored to his estate, and the opportunity seemed to
him too good to be wasted. He withheld the revenue and defied the
authorities. But the blood of the government was up. Russell was
reappointed and the troops set in motion again. Dhananjaya fled for
refuge to the Khonds in the hills. For the first time in history the
Company's forces entered those fever-stricken tracts. Dhananjaya
died, laying injunction on the Khonds not to allow his women-folk
to be captured. In this they failed, but they overwhelmed the
detachment in charge of Dhananjaya's belongings and killed several
of the women to save them from anticipated dishonour. The troops
spread over the country and returned to finish their work the following
year. The reb. llious chiefs were killed, hanged or transported. The
Gumsur and Surada zamindaris were declared forfeit. For the first
time since 1768 Ganjam had a spell of peace which lasted until the
Savaras in 1853, and again in 1856, descended from the hills to
plunder and burn. They quieted down when their own huts and
crops were burnt in retaliation. In the meantime there had been an
outbreak in the Vizagapatam hills which involved military operations
for three years. These troublesome Northern Circars, which covered
almost the whole of the present five northernmost districts, had been
held subject to an annual payment to the Nizam, until 1823, when the
liability was capitalised and discharged. The condition of the adminis-
tration moved the directors to order in 1849 that the Circars should be
placed under the direct charge of a member of the board as special
commissioner, and this arrangement continued for five or six years.
For his story see the Ganjam District Manual.
## p. 40 (#70) ##############################################
40
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
Russell's operations had results still to be mentioned. One of these
was the enactment of India Act XXIV of 1839, which withdrew the
hill tracts of Ganjam and Vizagapatam from the operation of the
ordinary courts and laws, and placed them under the sole control of
the collectors of those districts, styled agents to the governor, an
arrangement which still endures. Another consequence demands
longer description.
At that time strange and terrible crimes were moving under the
surface of Indian life. Timorously but successfully the government
had legislated against sati, never much in vogue in Madras.
Female infanticide, though known among the Khonds, concerned
that presidency little. In 1836 legislative and executive measures were
initiated against thagi. That crime, too, was alien to Madras, though,
in the 'thirties, gangs were at work in Anantapur, and sundry ruffians
were hanged and gibbeted. The crime which Russell's campaigns
brought into prominence (its existence had been reported nearly
seventy years before) was human sacrifice as practised under the
name of Meriah (Mervi) among the Khonds of Ganjam. The victims
were bought or were dedicated as children to the earth-goddess. They
were treated with veneration till their time came, often after a lapse
of many years, and, on attaining maturity, a Meriah boy would be
given a Meriah girl to wife; the children born to such a couple were
victims by heredity. Sacrifices were so arranged that each family
should have at least once a year a strip of flesh for burial in the family-
land to ensure good crops. When the victim's turn came, he or she
was put to death after strange ceremonies and in revolting ways; the
flesh was stripped off, sometimes while the poor wretch was still
alive, and distributed. This practice prevailed in the hills of Ganjam,
Vizagapatam and neighbouring tracts. A military officer was deputed
to stop it and tactfully won wer the tribes. In 1842 two tribes agreed
to give up the custom, if permitted to denounce the government as
responsible for their apostasy. Other tribes followed suit, those of
Boad celebrating their conversion by a grand, final slaughter of
120 victims, just half the number immolated on a New Moon Day
in 1841.
By India Act XXI of 1845 the Government of India placed
the localities affected by the custom under the sole jurisdiction of
special agents appointed by the governments of Bengal and Madras
and the governor of Bengal, and made them amenable to rules framed
by itself. This arrangement lasted till 1861, but the last Meriah
sacrifice in Madras seems to have occurred in 1855. It is reckoned
that between 1837 and 1854 over 1500 destined victims were saved.
A few words may be added here about slavery which, usually in
a mild form, existed on the west coast and in the Tamil country. In
the former area there were both predial and personal slaves, and
there had been some export trade in slaves which, however, was early
1 Madras Reg. I of 1830.
## p. 41 (#71) ##############################################
THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
41
made illegal. 1 In the latter area the slaves were predial only (apart
from a certain amount of slavery "on contract”) and the institution
was already dying out in 1819. 2 Nevertheless, certain classes of
labourers used in some parts to be sold or mortgaged with the land
until the passing of India Act V of 1843, which declared that no rights
arising out of slavery should be enforced by the courts. Even in the
present century, however, deeds of sale of land have occasionally
contained a clause transferring to the purchaser the debt which
bound the farm-labourers to the vendor by a chain hardly differing
from that of slavery.
By 1803 the movements and hazards of half a century had secured
to Madras a territory of a hundred and forty thousand square miles.
The subsequent changes in the outline of the presidency have been
few. Canara gained a bit from Coorg in the war of 1834, but lost
more by transfer to Bombay in 1862; the tributary state of Kurnool
was annexed in 1839, and certain parings off the Central Provinces
were allotted to Godavari in and after 1874. To these alterations may
be added the cession to the Company in 1818 of suzerainty over the
Sandur state.
The government was composed of a governor and a council of three
senior merchantsS who had power to legislate, but were in entire
subordination to the governor-general in council at Fort William.
Such was the position until 1833 when, with a view to centralise all
authority in the governor-general of India in council, as he was thence-
forward to be called, the power to legislate was withdrawn and the
court of directors was authorised to reduce or abolish any provincial
council. This last provision did not receive effect, for the directors,
although they reduced the civilian councillors to two, counter-
balanced this by adding the local commander-in-chief to the council. ?
In 1786 a Board of Trade and a Board of Revenue had been esta-
blished, each consisting of three members with a member of council as
president. The former body looked after the commercial interests of
the Company, but its business dwindled into insignificance after the
abolition of the Indian monopoly8 and it disappeared in 1825. At
the outset the Board of Revenue had, extra-legally, certain judicial
powers. These were confirmed for parts of the country by Regulation i
of 1803, but were extinguished soon afterwards. It became by
Regulation v of 1804 a Court of Wards for the presidency and had for
many years control over religious and other endowments. ío Until 1887
a
3
1 51 Geo. III, c. 23, and Reg. I of 1812 (repealed by Reg. n of 1826).
2 Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 1818, and 25 November, 1819.
24 Geo. III, c. 25, and 33 Geo. III, c. 52. Writers, factors and junior and senior
merchants represented at the time the covenanted civil service.
• 39 and 40 Geo. III, c. 79, and 47 Geo. III, sess. 2, c. 68.
33 Geo. III, c. 52.
3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85.
: Political Dispatch, No. 18, 27 December, 1833.
53 Geo. III, c. 155. • Reg. 1 of 1806.
10 Reg. vn of 1817.
8
## p. 42 (#72) ##############################################
42
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
the united board exercised general supervision over revenue matters.
In that year the portfolio system was introduced, the number of
members was raised to four (the councillor-president had disappeared
long before) and the various branches of the revenue administration
were distributed among the members as commissioners.
The country was, and is, divided into districts? which have varied
in number from twenty to twenty-six, and these again into taluks
which now average about 700 square miles. At the head of the
district stands the collector, who first appears on the scene in 1787.
The twentieth century found him still the local representative of
government; chief magistrate; head of the Land Revenue and Forest
Departments; as president of the District Board, supervising roads,
schools and hospitals; possessed of a measure of control over the police
and municipalities; as a revenue judge, exercising summary juris-
diction in many matters. In his revenue capacity he is in direct
subordination to the board, to which body appeals lie against many
of his orders, executive and judicial. To collectors were assigned in
1792 covenanted assistants, and, later on, fixed territorial jurisdictions
were allotted to the assistant and subordinate collectors in the form
of divisions made up of groups of taluks wherein they exercise most of
the powers possessed by collectors. The taluks were from the first under
Indian tahsildars; above them all the executive officers were English.
No practical steps were taken to open the higher executive to natives
of the country until India Act I of 1857 authorised the appointment
of deputy-collectors, who occupy a position similar to that of
covenanted divisional officers.
A Supreme Court had been established in 18012 but its jurisdiction
was almost wholly confined to Madras town. The administration of
justice up-country was conducted under the system introduced in
1802-6 and modified by the legislation of 1816. The reforms of the
latter year were designed to reduce expense and hasten disposal by
larger employment of native agency, to simplify litigation by reverting
to earlier methods whereby civil and criminal cases were largely
disposed of in the village, and to ensure greater control over crime by
restoring to collectors magisterial powers and the supervision of the
police. The central court for up-country purposes consisted of a body
of judges presided over by a member of council. 3 On its civil side this
tribunal was called “sadr adalat”; on its criminal side, “sadr
faujdari adalat”. Below this body functioned four provincial courts
dealing with most of the civil appeals and with suits over Rs. 5000;
these bodies, as courts of circuit, disposed also of all the more im-
portant criminal work. 4 In the district the principal civil judge was
Forinerly called zillahs, the taluks being styled districts.
39 & 40 Geo. III, c. 79.
3 Regs. v and viu of 1802 and in of 1807. This court, as at first constituced, consisted
of the governor in council.
• Regs. IV and vir of 1802 and xi of 1809.
2
## p. 43 (#73) ##############################################
JUDICIAL ORGANISATION
43
the zillah judge, assisted sometimes by registers or assistant judges to
whom actions might be referred for disposal. 1 The presiding officers
of all the above courts were European covenanted civilians, who were
assisted on legal points by Indian law officers. Below came three
classes of native judges, namely, sadr amins to whom suits up to Rs. 300
might be referred, district munsiffs who were authorised to deal with
suits up to Rs. 2004 and village headmen or munsiffs who had power to
dispose of certain cases not exceeding in value Rs. 10 or, with the
consent of the parties, Rs. 100. 5 Both the district and the village
munsiffs were required, on demand, to summon panchayats, or bodies
of arbitrators, which had unlimited jurisdiction in respect of the
classes of cases which might be referred to them.
Within the district the principal criminal jurisdiction was vested
in the zillah judge to whom the register gave help as assistant criminal
judge, but six months' imprisonment was the limit of the latter's
powers.
. ? The collector as magistrate and his covenanted assistants as
assistant magistrates had a very restricted power of punishment, their
main duty being the arrest and commitment of offenders. & Certain
petty misdemeanours were punishable by tahsildars and village head-
men. ' For want of anything better, the Muhammadan criminal law,
as interpreted by the law officers and modified from time to time by
enactment, was applied in the criminal courts until the Penal Code
came into force in 1862.
Such were the judicial arrangements as they stood in 1818; and of
the reforms carried out in 1816 none was more important adminis-
tratively than the severance of the unsuitable association of the judge
with the magistracy and police, none more popular than the creation
of the district munsiffs. 10 It was, in fact, the popularity of these latter
officers which rendered ineffectual the effort to revive the old method
of adjudication by panchayats. Soon afterwards we find the directors
pressing for a still more extended use of Indian agency and, as a con-
sequence, provision was made for the establishment of “auxiliary”
and “native” civil and criminal courts, possessing in defined areas
jurisdiction on the same lines as that exercised by the zillah and
criminal judge. 11 The “auxiliary” judges differed from the “native"
judges in that they had jurisdiction in respect of Europeans and
Americans, but they disappeared in time, whereas the “native”
judges, under changed titles (they were known as principal sadr amins
after 1836), have lasted to the present day. It was at this point that
Regs. Il of 1802 and vir and xn of 1809.
* Abolished by India Act XI of 1864. They were also employed as sadr amins.
* Regs. vil and x of 180g and viu of 1816.
* Reg. vi of 1816.
* Reg. IV of 1816.
6 Regs. V and vi of 1816.
• Reg. x of 1816. The limit was raised to two years' imprisonment in certain cases by
Reg. vi of 1822.
Reg. ix of 1816.
• Reg. xi of 1816.
19 They took the place of the "native commissioners" of 1802 with jurisdiction up to
Rs. 80.
11 Regs. 1, 11, vi and vm of 1827.
.
STEPHENS
GAR
)
## p. 44 (#74) ##############################################
44
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a modified form of the English jury-system was introduced into the
courts of circuit by Regulation x of 1827.
A new phase opened with India Act VII of 1843. The provincial
courts of civil appeal and circuit and the zillah courts were abolisned
and their civil and criminal powers were distributed between new
“civil and sessions” judges of the zillah and the principal sadr arins
(or the "auxiliary” judges); at the same time the powers of the
magistrates were substantially enlarged. In the result, whereas in
1802 no Indian could try a criminal case or deal with a suit valued
at more than Rs. 80, an Indian judge might now adjudicate suits up
to Rs. 10,000 in value and pass sentences of two years' imprisonment.
There was an extension in the same direction later, 2 when district
munsiffs were conceded a limited criminal jurisdiction.
At the beginning of the present period the zamindari system pre-
vailed in the Northern Circars, Salem, Chingleput and certain other
areas; village leases in the Ceded districts, Nellore, the Arcots, Palnad,
Trichinopoly, Tinnevelly and Tanjore; ryotwari in Malabar, Canara,
Coimbatore, Madura and Dindigul. 2
As a revenue system, the zamindari settlement was not a success,
even where it had for basis the old estates of poligars; as to the artificial
estates, or muttahs, they came tumbling down almost as soon as they
were set up. The process of decay was both rapid and long continued,
so that we find the whole of the Guntur collectorate and much of the
Masulipatam collectorate passing over from zamindari to ryotwari
between 1835 and 1849, and now the system applies to less than one-
fourth of the presidency. Certain features of the settlement call for
further remarks.
After long discussion in Bengal it was decided that the demand on
the estates should be fixed in perpetuity. The principle of an un-
alterable assessment is not in favour nowadays, but, throughout the
first half of the last century, there prevailed in Madras, vaguely felt
rather than definitely asserted, an idea that, in all forms of land-
revenue settlement, fixity of demand should be aimed at. This view
was not always endorsed by the court of directors, but it commended
itself to the secretary of state as late as 1862, and in 1868 the Board
of Revenue had nothing to say against a permanent ryotwari settle-
ment. Though a rapid rise in prices led to the abandonment of the
notion, it was not formally renounced until 1883. 3
In investing zamindars with “the proprietary right of the soil", the
legislature gave rise to misconceptions which had to be corrected later
by a declaration that there was no intention to infringe the rights of
third parties. There never had been such intention, but the legisla-
1 India Act XII of 1854.
: Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 1818.
• Court's Dispatch, 16 December, 1812 (Revenue Selections, 1820, vol. 1); Board's Pro-
ceedings, No. 6369, 8 September, 1868; S. of S. Dispatch, 28 March, 1883, and Baden
Powell, 1, 340.
Reg. IV of 1822.
## p. 45 (#75) ##############################################
THE ZAMINDARI SETTLEMENT
45
tion of 18021 gave insufficient protection to the cultivators, while
granting to the zamindars powers of distraint and ejectment which
could be challenged only through a regular suit. This defect led to
Regulation v of 1822, which brought the collector in as a summary
arbitrator between zamindar and occupier, an arrangement which
worked with some success until the courts began to admit claims to
determine rents on a competitive basis and to alter the customary
modes of sharing the crops. Act VIII of 1865 was intended to settle
these and other questions but caused much greater confusion by
declaring that all contracts for rent, express or implied, must be
enforced. The position was not made clear until the Estates Land
Act, 1908, came into operation. This elaborate enactment brought
the revenue courts into summary operation in all relations between
zamindar and ryot, conferred, in express terms, right of permanent
occupancy upon most of the zamindar ryots, and enabled others to
secure that privilege by, means of a small payment. The need for
protecting the tenants had been mainly felt in the Telugu country;
among the Tamils there had always been a much stronger sense of
private property in land and the ryot's claim to occupancy right had
generally been accepted. So much for the cultivators. The question
whether the zamindars themselves did not need protection was con-
sidered by Munro, but nearly eighty years elapsed before anything
was done in that direction. Then, when debt and suits for partition
had broken up various estates, it became a matter of concern to the
government to preserve the rest. The case of indebtedness was met by
authorising the government, on request, to place embarrassed estates
under the Court of Wards. 3 The other threat had arisen from a change
in judicial opinion, the courts receding from the position that im-
partibility and inalienability attach by general custom to the ancient
zamindaris, and holding that the existence of these attributes must
be proved for each individual estate. This dictum gave rise to much
ruinous litigation, but, after considerable delay, a remedy was pro-
vided in the form of a law which imposed restrictions upon the
alienation of specified estates, and declared them to be impartible
and heritable by a single heir.
The decennial leases, introduced by the Madras Government “to
become a fixed settlement if approved” and immediately condemned
by the court of directors, were drawing to a close when the present
period opens and did not everywhere run their full course. With the
expiration of the last of them, the village lease system disappeared
except in a few peculiar localities. The decennial leases had been
1 Regs. xxv and xxxn of 1802.
· Minute, 19 September, 1820.
• Act IV of 1899.
• Act II of 1904, replacing similar acts of 1903 and 1902; see also Srinivasa Ragha-
vachari, Progress of the Madras Presidency, p. 245.
• Dispatches, 16 December, 1812, and 16 December, 1813.
## p. 46 (#76) ##############################################
46
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a
granted on more lenient terms than the triennial ones, but the general
result of the arrangement never came under review. According to
the Board of Revenue the leases were working satisfactorily in 1818,1
but the board was strongly prejudiced and the reports from individual
districts are by no means suggestive of success. The board's bias in
favour of village lcascs may, perhaps, be explained in part by the
existence in portions of the Tamil country of a tenure to which they
really seemed to be thoroughly well adapted. This tenure, commonly
known as mirasi right, was decaying but sufficiently alive to engender
a vast and enthusiastic correspondence in which the varying views of
the government are generally in opposition to the varying views of
the board. In this tenure the ownership of each village (subject to
the usual claim of the state to a share of the produce) vested in a single
mirasidar or, more commonly, in a body of mirasidars. From the tilth
the mirasidars derived a share of the produce and, in some places,
grain-fees also; over the waste they claimed certain privileges. The
main controversy arose over the questions whether a ryotivari settle-
ment should be made with the mirasidars or the actual cultivators, and
whether the mirasidars had a right to prevent the state from assigning
the waste for cultivation. The former point may be considered to have
been settled by the cautious instructions of the directors to respect
the rights of the mirasidars but to be chary of ousting persons already
recognised as owners, and to dispose of all disputes on their merits. 2
On the latter point the final decision was that the mirasidars had no
power to keep waste out of cultivation, but should have the first
refusal of any part applied for by a non-mirasidar. 3 The government
showed a disposition to go back on this decision, but was vigorously
reproved by the board and overruled by the directors. 4
Officially the mirasi system is dead, but traces of it survive in
Chingleput, where the ordinary assessment is in some cases reduced
to allow of the payment to old mirasi families of sums in lieu of
former claims upon the cultivators.
Ryotwari falls into three stages, early, middle and late, and the
only description common to all is that it is a mode of settlement with
small farmers, so small, indeed, that their average holding is, on
recent figures, only about 6, acres. Nowadays the tenure is regarded
as possessing the following properties: the registered occupier is, so
far as concerns government, free to alicnate, cncumber and devise his
land at discretion; subject to unimportant qualifications, he may at
any time relinquish any portion of his holding; he can never be ousted
unless he fails to pay regularly the assessment fixed on the land or any
1
1 Proceedings, 5 January, 1818. The vigorous style of this paper, a masterly bit of work,
shows the warm concern of the board in the result of the duel between village lease and
ryotwari.
? Dispatch, 18 August, 1824.
· Dispatches, No. 8, 28 July, 1841, and No. 17, 3 July, 1844.
Dispatch, 17 December, 1856.
## p. 47 (#77) ##############################################
THE RYOTWARI SETTLEMENT
47
other charge by law recoverable as land revenue, in which case his
land may be attached and sold to the extent necessary to discharge
the debt;. no additional charge may be imposed on account of im-
provements effected at the ryot's cost, but a separate charge may be
made for minerals extracted; thc rate of assessment is liable to
alteration on the expiry of the specified period for which it has been
fixed and then only. But these peculiarities have been of gradual
growth; not onc of them can be said to have been universally applicable
to early ryolwari which, introduced by Read, approved by the
directors as an experiment, widely extended by Munro and others,
was abruptly brought to an end in some districts by the zamindari
settlement, in others by the village leases.
