No More Learning

Milder-mannered princes, such as the nawab. of Arcot, tended to
supplant the amildars by renting out whole districts to rich or
influential speculators. Where this was done, all the authority
formerly exercised by the amildar in practice devolved upon the
renter, since any restriction upon his proceedings was made an
excuse for withholding the sum contracted for. Neither the amildar
ncr the renter enjoyed any security of tenure. As a rule they looked
only for immediate profit regardless of longer views. 1
But South Indian rulers were not everywhere strong enough to
1 Srinivasaraghava Aiyangar, Memorandum, App. pp. xx sqq.
a


## p. 463 (#491) ############################################

THE POLIGARS
463
collect the revenue on the system which suited them best. Half the
Northern Sarkars and elsewhere many of the less accessible tracts
were under local chiefs who had never been completely subdued,
feudal nobles who had succeeded in retaining their feudal status, local
officials and adventurers with local influence who had seized power
and asserted a partial independence. These poligars and zamindars
exercised within their own territory all the functions of a sovereign,
even making war on their own account upon their peers. But they
acknowledged an obligation to pay tribute or peshkash to the sovereign
and to serve in his campaigns with a certain number of armed
retainers. The peshkash was sometimes fixed, sometimes it varied
from year to year with the state of cultivation. But its amount and
the regularity with which it was paid depended less upon the resources
of the poligar's territory than on the ease with which he could be
coerced.
Unlike the renters and the amildars the zamindars and poligars
had an hereditary interest in the territories under their control. But
their traditions and upbringing were as a rule essentially martial.
“Eat or be eaten” was the condition of their existence. Their grand
aims had always been to extend their territories at the expense of
their neighbours and to strengthen themselves to resist the central
power. Many of them were too spirited to exchange uncontrolled
if precarious authority for the assured income of a peaceful landlord,
and very few of them were capable of believing that the central power
would continue to allow them to intercept a share of the land revenue
once they had been disarmed. The central power usually aimed at
extirpating these territorial chiefs, as opportunity offered. Hyder
and Tipu of Mysore were especially active in pursuing this policy. It
is unlikely that the cultivators often regretted their poligar when he
was hanged. For he had to consider first the interests of his armed
retainers and he was often under the necessity of satisfying their
demands for arrears of pay by giving them authority to collect the
land revenue direct from the villages. 1
The workers of South India, the agriculturists and the artisans,
living for the most part in villages, hoped little and feared much from
their rulers. So narrow was the margin on which the cultivators were
living that advances of seed-grain had often to be made to enable them
to raise a crop. In many South Indian villages the land revenue
depends upon the upkeep of the irrigation works and some amildars
spent pains and money on this account. But as a rule the works seem
to have been neglected or maintained only by the villagers. Even
for protection the villagers relied chiefly on their own mud walls or
thorn fences which could be defended by stone-throwing against the
predatory horse and the camp followers of the period. Whether these
owed allegiance to an invading power or to the country's prince made
1 The Fifth Report of 1812, pp. 80 sqq.


## p. 464 (#492) ############################################

464
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
little difference in the feelings which they inspired among the villagers.
There were no made roads, no bridges, and no wheeled vehicles
outside a few large towns. Trade was carried on by pack cattle.
There was no code of law generally recognised as being in force; and
even where Hindu or Muhammadan law-books were supposed to have
authority, there were no regular courts in existence to interpret or
give effect to them, or to solidify custom and precedent into law.
Petty crime was dealt with by the village headman and most civil
disputes were settled in the village by the award of arbitrators or
by the decisions of village panchayats or juries. Caste offences were
punished by caste headmen or caste panchayats, the state only inter-
fering to raise revenue by leasing out the right to levy fines. Grave
crimes could be brought before the amildar, who might inflict any
punishment short of death. There were no gaols, and imprisonment
was not a recognised form of punishment. Mutilation for the poor
and fines for the rich were the order of the day. The proceedings of
the amildar were controlled not by law, but by his sense of equity.
The powers of the amildar were also exercised not only by zamindars
and poligars, but also by renters and military officers, and indeed by
any person who had at his command the force necessary to give effect
to his decision. The same authorities could sometimes be induced to
appoint arbitrators for the decision of important civil disputes. There
was always the possibility of an appeal to the sovereign, but access to
him was difficult, and the chance of a careful enquiry small. 1
For police in the more orderly tracts the villagers relied chiefly
on the hereditary village-watchman. But where criminal tribes or the
retainers of a poligar lived in the neighbourhood, they usually found
it expedient to invite one of their tormentors to become their kavalgar
or guard, and to pay him to save the village from theft, or at least to
obtain restitution of the stolen property for a reasonable consideration.
A poligar or other person of local influence often had himself recog-
nised as a head-kavalgar controlling the village kavalgars throughout
his sphere of influence and sharing their emoluments. In one or two
districts this system was reported to work well, but in general it
seems to have been a convenience to the criminal classes rather
than to the cultivators.
But if the sovereign concerned himself little with most aspects
of his subjects' lives, his interests in the produce of their agriculture
was close and persistent. Everywhere a share in the produce of the
land was claimed either by the sovereign, or by a grantee of the land
revenue deriving his right from the sovereign, or by a zamindar or
poligar who claimed this among other rights of sovereignty. In the
absence of any court of law, the nature of the sovereign's rights and
the cultivators' tenure was determined not by law but by the interplay
of three forces the power of the sovereign, the custom of the village,
1 Ct. Gleig, Munro, I. 405 sqq.


## p. 465 (#493) ############################################

POSITION OF THE RYOT
465
ana the economic condition of the district. The Hindu family system
and the lack of stock tended to divide up the land into small holdings.
In many villages, especially in the irrigated tracts, there was a tradi-
tion of a joint settlement and a common ancestry, and the whole
village was owned in shares, the lands in some of them being periodi-
cally redistributed. In such villages there was a habit of common
action which enabled the villagers to oppose a certain resistance to
the sovereign and his agents. Elsewhere rights were derived from the
individual occupation of waste land, and the power of resistance was
very small. Almost everywhere there was more cultivable land than
could be cultivated by the labour and stock of the inhabitants. The
ruler therefore had seldom any reason to assert a claim to the land
itself or to oust a cultivator from it. His anxiety was to find cultivators
for the land and to secure the largest possible share of the product
of their industry. The share of the crop which he succeeded in
obtaining was usually so high as to leave the cultivator no more than
a bare subsistence. This, taken together with the presence of land
waiting to be brought under cultivation, prevented the land from
acquiring any saleable value except in Tanjore and in a few other
specially favoured localities. The cultivator therefore had all the
security of tenure that he desired. Hereditary rights were seldom in
question. The ryot was more concerned to assert his right to relin-
quish a holding-a right which the amildar was at pains to deny. To
the ruler's demands for an increasing land revenue the cultivator
could oppose an ill-defined village custom and sometimes the records
of an old assessment which showed what the cultivator ought to pay.
But the state's admitted share was itself very high, amounting often
to more than half the whole crop; and the cultivator was unable to
resist the imposition of all manner of extra cesses to meet the needs
of the ruler, the amildar and the village officers. It was said that in
practice the ruler and his agents took all that they could get, some-
times even the whole crop, and that the cultivator often kept no more
than he could conceal. But it must be remembered that, in the
circumstances of the time, it was easy for the cultivators to conceal
the extent of cultivation and to misrepresent the out-turn of their
crops. The village accountants and the revenue underlings who esti-
mated or measured the out-turn could usually be propitiated at no
very extravagant cost. At the opening of our period the uncertainty
and the inequality of the incidence of the demand was probably at
least as great an evil as the magnitude of the total sum collected.
To prevent fraud, it was clearly in the interest of the ruler that
his claim should be commuted for a fixed sum of money or a fixed
quantity of grain payable annually in good and bad seasons alike,
and in some districts there were in the hands of the village account-
1 Ellis, Mirassi Paper, ap: Rev. and Jud. Sel. I, 810.
2 Graeme's Report on N. Arcot, 31 March, 1818, ap. Rev. and Jud. Sel. 1, 959. ,
30


## p. 466 (#494) ############################################

466
MADRAS DISTRICT SYSTEM AND LAND REVENUE
ants records of old surveys in which the sum payable on each field or
on each holding was defined. Elsewhere attempts had been made to
fix the sum payable by each village. But so long as the state's
demand in average years left the cultivators little more than'a bare
subsistence, it could not be paid in bad years. The revenue underlings
and the village officers opposed a system which tended to curtail the
sources of illegitimate gain; and the cultivators feared that the fixed
demand might operate merely as a minimum and would not protect
them against extra cesses.
The most important crop in South India was the rice crop
cultivated on the irrigated lands. The state's share of this crop was
usually calculated each year in grain. The villagers were sometimes
required to buy back the state share at a price fixed at the discretion
of the sovereign's agent. Sometimes the state's share was stored in
granaries to be consumed by the state servants, or sold when prices
rose. To eliminate competition the villagers were often forbidden to
sell their grain till the state had disposed of its stock. The unirrigated
lands of South India were far more extensive than the irrigated. A
great variety of crops was raised and many of these crops were har-
vested piecemeal. To assess, collect, store and market the state's
share in all these crops would have been an impossible task. It was
therefore commuted for a money payment. This was sometimes
fixed on each field, sometimes for each kind of crop cultivated; and
sometimes it varied with the state of the season.
The net result was that every year saw a struggle between the
state's agent and the villagers to raise or lower the assessment, and
a good crop well cultivated might cost the village dear. When the
demand on the whole village had been fixed for the year, the appor-
tionment of it among the villagers was usually left to the discretion
of the village headmen, or other principal inhabitants, who might
or might not be charitably disposed to the poor, but were very
unlikely to encourage exceptional enterprise, industry, or thrift.
There was thus everything to discourage improvement and the
cultivator lost all interest in his land. So much was this the case that
there had grown up among the revenue officers a tradition that the
cultivator was idle, and that it was their duty to drive him and to
force him to cultivate more land than he was willing to be responsible
for. The cultivator on his side was often on the look-out for an
opportunity to relinquish old land in order to take up waste that
happened to be more leniently assessed. He would even leave his
village for this purpose. Indeed the most effective check on the
activities of the revenue officers was the readiness of the cultivator
to fly to some adjoining district where the administration was less
exacting.
1 Revenue letter from Madras, 6 February, 1810, ap. Rev. and Jud. Sel. I, 502.
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.