Ruling the Countryside

This is Chapter 3 of Our Pasts – III. Chapter 2 (hess202) ended with the Company as Diwan of Bengal. This chapter asks what it did with the countryside: how it organised land revenue — the Permanent Settlement (1793), the Mahalwari settlement (1822) and the ryotwari system — how these redefined the rights of zamindars, village headmen and peasants, and how the British got Indian fields to grow crops for Europe, with indigo as the case study ending in the Blue Rebellion of 1859–60 and a link to Champaran (1917). NCERT notes a tension throughout: as an alien power, the Company had to control the old rural elites without eliminating them.

• Links within this book: hess202 (the Diwani and the bullion problem it solved); hess204 (Tribals — forest laws and the ‘dikus’, the other side of rural rule); hess205 (1857 — after which the government feared another rising, which shaped its response to the indigo ryots); hess208 (Champaran in the national movement).
• Live pages to pair with: lehs301 (Class 12, Colonialism and the Countryside) — the Permanent Settlement in depth: the Burdwan auctions, the sunset law, jotedars, the Fifth Report, and the Deccan ryotwari and riots of 1875; keec101 (the colonial economy: the three land systems, commercialisation of agriculture and the drain); jess304 (Class 10, The Age of Industrialisation — the Company and the weavers, and the deindustrialisation debate); kesy101 (Class 11 sociology — colonialism and industrialisation in India and Britain); jess302 and lehs303 (Champaran, 1917).
• UPSC: Modern Indian history is among the most heavily tested parts of Prelims and GS1, and the land-revenue settlements are among its favourite topics: who introduced which system and where (1987, 1988, 1993, 2000, 2017), features of ryotwari (2012) and of Cornwallis’s settlement (2024), the indigo disturbances (1994) and the decline of indigo (2020). Mains asks about the economic policies of British India (2014). This foundational chapter gives the base; lehs301 and keec101 add depth.

• Diwani (12 Aug 1765): the Company becomes chief financial administrator; squeezes revenue, buys cloth cheap → artisans flee, peasants default → 1770 famine (NCERT: ten million dead, a third of the people).
• Permanent Settlement (1793, Cornwallis): rajas and taluqdars made zamindars; revenue fixed for ever. Demand too high → auctions; later rising prices helped zamindars, not the Company; no investment; ryots squeezed.
• Mahalwari (1822, Holt Mackenzie): North-Western Provinces; village (mahal) assessed plot by plot; headman pays; demand revised periodically.
• Ryotwari (Read, then Munro): south India; settled directly with ryots; fields surveyed. All new systems fixed demands too high → ryots fled.
• Indigo: Europe’s dyers preferred it to woad; Britain’s industrialisation and Caribbean collapse → India’s share of British imports 30% (1788) → 95% (1810). Nij (<25%) vs ryoti (satta, advances, ≥25% of holding, endless debt).
• Blue Rebellion (1859–60): ryots refuse indigo, backed by headmen, zamindars, Calcutta intellectuals; Indigo Commission (1860) blames planters → collapse in Bengal → Bihar → Champaran (1917).

On 12 August 1765 the Mughal emperor appointed the East India Company Diwan of Bengal. As Diwan, the Company became the chief financial administrator of its territory and had to organise land revenue so as to meet its growing expenses — while, as a trading company, also buying the products it needed. It had to move carefully: as an alien power, it needed to pacify those who had ruled the countryside, controlling them without eliminating them.

The Company still saw itself mainly as a trader. It wanted large revenue but would not set up any regular system of assessment and collection; it tried to raise revenue as much as possible and to buy fine cotton and silk as cheaply as possible. Within five years, the value of goods it bought in Bengal doubled; Bengal’s revenue, not British bullion, now paid for exports. Soon the economy was in deep crisis: artisans deserted villages, forced to sell to the Company at low prices; peasants could not pay the dues demanded; craft production declined and cultivation showed signs of collapse. In 1770 a terrible famine killed, NCERT says, ten million people in Bengal — about one-third of the population.

With Bengal’s economy in ruins, could the Company be sure of its revenue? Most officials came to feel that investment in land had to be encouraged and agriculture improved. After two decades of debate, the Company introduced the Permanent Settlement in 1793. The rajas and taluqdars were recognised as zamindars, asked to collect rent from peasants and pay revenue to the Company. The amount was fixed permanently — never to be increased. This, it was felt, would ensure a regular flow of revenue and encourage zamindars to invest in improving the land, since they would keep the gains from higher production.

It created problems. Zamindars did not invest. The revenue was set so high that they found it hard to pay, and anyone who failed to pay lost his zamindari: numerous zamindaris were sold at auctions organised by the Company. By the first decade of the nineteenth century the situation changed: market prices rose and cultivation expanded, so zamindars’ incomes grew — but the Company gained nothing, as it could not raise a demand fixed for ever. Even then zamindars did not improve the land: some had lost their lands in the early years; others could earn without the risk of investment, as long as they could rent land to tenants. In the villages, the cultivator found the system extremely oppressive: rent was high, his right to the land insecure; to pay rent he often borrowed from the moneylender, and if he failed to pay he was evicted from land his family had tilled for generations.

By the early nineteenth century many officials were convinced the system had to change again: how could revenue be fixed permanently when the Company needed ever more money for administration and trade? In the North-Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency (now mostly Uttar Pradesh), Holt Mackenzie devised a new system that came into effect in 1822. He thought the village was an important social institution in north India that should be preserved. Collectors went from village to village, inspecting and measuring fields and recording the customs and rights of different groups. The estimated revenue of each plot was added up to give the revenue of each village (mahal); the demand was to be revised periodically, not fixed for ever; and the village headman, not a zamindar, collected and paid it. This was the Mahalwari settlement.

In the south there was a similar move away from permanent settlement. The ryotwar (ryotwari) system was tried on a small scale by Captain Alexander Read in areas taken after the wars with Tipu Sultan, then developed by Thomas Munro and gradually extended over south India. Read and Munro argued that the south had no traditional zamindars, so the settlement had to be made directly with the cultivators (ryots) who had tilled the land for generations, after careful, separate surveys of their fields. Munro thought the British should act as paternal father figures protecting the ryots.

All was not well. Within a few years, driven by the desire to raise income from land, revenue officials fixed too high a demand. Peasants could not pay, ryots fled the countryside and villages became deserted in many regions. Officials had imagined the new systems would turn peasants into rich, enterprising farmers. It did not happen.

The British realised that the countryside could yield not only revenue but also the crops Europe needed. By the late eighteenth century the Company was trying hard to expand opium and indigo; over the next century and a half the British persuaded or forced cultivators in different regions to grow other crops. NCERT’s list:

The indigo plant grows mainly in the tropics. By the thirteenth century Indian indigo was used by cloth manufacturers in Italy, France and Britain, but only small, expensive quantities reached Europe, so dyers relied on woad, a temperate plant grown in northern Italy, southern France and parts of Germany and Britain. Woad producers, fearing competition, made their governments ban indigo imports; but dyers preferred indigo’s rich blue to woad’s pale, dull colour, and by the seventeenth century the bans were relaxed. The French grew indigo in St Domingue (Caribbean), the Portuguese in Brazil, the English in Jamaica, the Spanish in Venezuela, and plantations appeared in North America.

By the end of the eighteenth century demand rose further: Britain began to industrialise and its cotton production expanded dramatically, creating a huge demand for dyes, while supplies from the West Indies and America collapsed — between 1783 and 1789 world indigo production fell by half, NCERT says. The Company looked to expand indigo in India. From the last decades of the eighteenth century indigo cultivation in Bengal expanded rapidly and came to dominate the world market: in 1788 only about 30 per cent of indigo imported into Britain came from India; by 1810, 95 per cent. Company agents and officials invested in indigo, many left their jobs to run indigo businesses, and numerous Scots and Englishmen came out as planters, with loans from the Company and new banks.

There were two main systems. Under nij cultivation the planter grew indigo on land he directly controlled — bought, or rented from zamindars — with hired labourers. But nij was hard to expand. Indigo needed fertile land, which was already densely populated; only small scattered plots could be acquired, while planters wanted large compact blocks; attempts to lease land around the factory and evict peasants led to conflict. Labour was hard to mobilise, since it was needed precisely when peasants were busy with rice. Nij also needed many ploughs and bullocks: one bigha needed two ploughs, so 1,000 bighas needed 2,000 ploughs — costly to buy and keep, and peasants’ ploughs were busy on their rice fields at the same time. So until the late nineteenth century less than 25 per cent of indigo land was under nij.

The rest was under the ryoti system. Planters forced ryots to sign a contract (satta), sometimes pressuring the village headmen to sign for them. Signers got cash advances at low interest — but the loan committed the ryot to grow indigo on at least 25 per cent of his holding. The planter provided seed and drill; the cultivators prepared the soil, sowed and tended the crop. When the crop was delivered, a new loan was given and the cycle began again. Peasants tempted by the loans soon found the system harsh: the price was very low and the loans never ended. Planters insisted on the best soils, where peasants preferred to grow rice, and indigo’s deep roots exhausted the soil — after indigo, rice could not be sown.

In March 1859, NCERT says, thousands of ryots in Bengal refused to grow indigo. As the rebellion spread they refused to pay rents to planters and attacked indigo factories with swords, spears, bows and arrows; women joined with pots, pans and kitchen implements. Those who worked for planters were socially boycotted; the gomasthas who came to collect rent were beaten; ryots swore they would take no more advances and not be bullied by the planters’ lathiyals.

Why then? The system was intensely oppressive, but the oppressed rebel only at times. In 1859 the ryots felt they had the support of local zamindars and village headmen: headmen who had been forced to sign contracts mobilised peasants and fought pitched battles with lathiyals, and some zamindars toured villages urging resistance, resenting the planters’ growing power and being forced to give them land on long leases. The ryots also believed the British government would support them: after 1857 it feared another popular rising. When the Lieutenant Governor toured the region in the winter of 1859, ryots saw sympathy; when the magistrate Ashley Eden at Barasat issued a notice that ryots would not be compelled to accept indigo contracts, word spread that Queen Victoria had declared indigo need not be sown. Eden meant to calm the situation, but his notice was read as support. Intellectuals from Calcutta rushed to the indigo districts and wrote of the ryots’ misery and the planters’ tyranny.

Worried, the government sent the military to protect planters and set up the Indigo Commission to enquire into the system. It held the planters guilty, criticised their coercive methods and declared indigo unprofitable for ryots. It asked ryots to fulfil existing contracts but told them they could refuse indigo in future. After the revolt, indigo production collapsed in Bengal; planters shifted to Bihar. The discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century hit their business, though they still managed to expand. When Gandhi returned from South Africa, a peasant from Bihar persuaded him to visit Champaran; his visit in 1917 began the Champaran movement against the indigo planters.

The chapter’s three Activities, in order. Short outlines follow.

‘Let’s recall’ (two), ‘Let’s discuss’ (five), ‘Let’s imagine’ and ‘Let’s do’ (two), pages 37–38.

Numbers

One-liners

• As Diwan from 1765, the Company became Bengal’s chief financial administrator.
• Revenue squeezing and low prices for artisans led to crisis and the 1770 famine.
• The Permanent Settlement (1793) fixed the zamindars’ revenue for ever.
• Zamindars did not invest; many estates were auctioned; ryots were squeezed.
• Mahalwari (1822) was settled with the village through its headman, with periodic revision.
• Ryotwari was settled directly with surveyed cultivators (Read, Munro).
• All the new systems set the revenue demand too high.
• The countryside was made to grow crops for Europe: opium, indigo, jute, tea, wheat, cotton.
• Industrialising Britain and the Caribbean collapse made Bengal the main source of indigo.
• Nij: planter’s land and hired labour; ryoti: ryot’s land under contract and advance.
• The ryoti system trapped peasants in endless loans and exhausted their best soils.
• In 1859 ryots refused indigo, backed by headmen, zamindars and Calcutta intellectuals.
• The Indigo Commission (1860) blamed the planters; indigo collapsed in Bengal.
• Planters moved to Bihar; Gandhi’s Champaran movement began in 1917.

Traps to avoid

• The Permanent Settlement fixed the state’s revenue, not the ryot’s rent.
• Cornwallis: Permanent Settlement (1793); Wellesley: subsidiary alliance; Holt Mackenzie: Mahalwari; Read and Munro: ryotwari.
• Ryotwari: Madras and Bombay Presidencies; Cornwallis had no part in it.
• Ryotwari gave no exemption from revenue in bad harvests.
• Mahalwari demand was revised periodically, not fixed for ever.
• Munro was Governor of Madras 1820–27 (NCERT: 1819–26).
• France abolished colonial slavery in 1794, not 1792 (NCERT).
• 30% → 95% is India’s share of Britain’s indigo imports, not of world output.
• Under 25% of indigo land was nij; ryoti contracts required at least 25% of a holding.
• Indigo declined by 1900 mainly because synthetic dyes made it unprofitable on the world market.
• Raj Kumar Shukla, not Rajendra Prasad, persuaded Gandhi to go to Champaran.
• NCERT spells Colebrooke as ‘Colebrook’ and the painter as ‘Scuhodolski’ (Suchodolski).

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Who introduced what, where: Cornwallis — zamindari/Permanent Settlement (1987; 1988 Assertion–Reason); not the subsidiary system (1988 pairs); ryotwari in Madras and Bombay (1993) by Read and Munro (2017); land-system matching (2000: zamindari = revenue farmers, ryotwari = individual peasant’s rights, Mahalwari = village).
• Features: ryotwari — direct payment, pattas, survey before assessment (2012); Cornwallis’s collection — zamindars lost estates for default; no ryotwari remission in bad harvests (2024).
• Indigo: the upheaval in Bengal immediately after 1857 was the indigo disturbances (1994); decline by 1900 because of synthetic dyes (2020); Champaran — Raj Kumar Shukla, not Rajendra Prasad, brought Gandhi; Kripalani was with him (2010).
• Answer-key notes (keep all keys): 1988 A–R — the Reason (‘a landed class … for support’) is the textbook reading but historians also stress revenue security and Physiocratic ideas; keep (a). 1993 — NCERT says only ‘south India’; Bombay is Beyond NCERT but correct.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• Economic policies of British India (2014): use this chapter for the revenue phase (Diwani, the 1770 famine, the three settlements and their results) and commercialisation (opium, indigo, jute, tea, cotton, wheat); add the drain and deindustrialisation from keec101 and jess304, with the historians’ debate attributed.
• Peasant movements: the Indigo Revolt (1859–60) is a model case of why peasants rebel ‘only at times’ — grievance plus allies plus perceived openings; compare Pabna (1873), the Deccan riots (1875, lehs301) and Champaran (1917).

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