Introduction
In the free countries of the world in the 19th and 20th centu- ries, the number of people engaged in agriculture was decreasing while those in industry and service sectors of the economy were increasing. But in India, the reverse was happening. Industries, trade and commerce, banking and shipping were almost all destroyed by the middle of the 19th century as noted before. India's agriculture was the only industry of importance left where people flocked to subsist. The coordination of agriculture and industries of India was destroyed while the co-ordination of India's agri- culture and Britain's industries was firmly established. The avenues of national income, the expansion of which is the function of a government, were being narrowed down to chiefly agriculture.
This phenomenon of increasing agriculturalisation and increasing deindustrialization continued even at the end of British rule. This fact of overcrowding in agriculture and absence of almost any other occupation for the bulk of the population was the root cause of India's poverty—a fact which was clearly recognized as early as 1880 even by the official Famine Commission appointed in 1878 to consider the problem of growing famines in India during the British rule. "At the root of much of the poverty of the people of India, and of the risks to which they are exposed in seasons of scarcity, lies the unfortunate circumstance that agri- culture forms almost the sole occupation of the mass of the population, and that no remedy for present evils can be complete which does not include the diversity of occupa tions, through which the surplus population may be drawn from agricultural pursuits and led to find the means of subsistence in manufactures or some such employment.
Needless to say that no action was ever undertaken by the British to diversify occupations and thereby help remove the root cause of poverty.
Fragmentation and sub-division of holdings
In pre-British days, land in India hardly possessed any exchange value and labour was costly. During British rule, millions and millions of people from the cities and from the villages lost their industries and trade. They flocked to the land which became costly and the labour became cheap. Also the proportion of the land to each cultivator declined, and went on declining during the British rule as more and more people went on depending on agriculture. Thompson and Garratt quote from the Report in 1917 of Bombay Director of Agriculture, Dr. Mann, who made the study of a typical village near Poona in Deccan regarding the hold- ings of the cultivators and whose 'conclusions hold good for much of India"
"It is evident that in the last sixty or seventy years the character of the land holdings has altogether changed. In the pre-British days, and in the early days of British rule, the holdings were usually of a fair size, most frequently more than nine or ten acres, while individual holdings of less than two acres were hardly known. Now the number of hold- ings is more than doubled, and eighty-one per cent of these holdings are under ten acres in size while no less than sixty per cent are less than five acres.
Sir T. W. Holderness in 1912 estimated after calculat- ing the total population and land under cultivation, that there was 'not more than one acre and a quarter per head for that portion of the population which is directly supported by agricultre' and went on to point out that 'not only does the land of India provide food for this great popu- lation, .but a very considerable portion of it is set apart for growing produce which is exported. .In fact, it pays its bill for imports of merchandise and treasure, and discharges its other international debts, mainly by the sale of agricultural produce. Subtracting the land thus utilized for supplying toreign markets from the total area under cultivation, we shall find that what is left over does not represent more than two-thirds of an acre per head of the total Indian population. India, therefore, feeds and to some extent clothes its popula- tion from what two-thirds of an acre can produce. There is probably no country in the world where the land is required to do so much.
Dependence of a large population on agriculture led not only to small holdings, but also to high rents and prices for land. In turn, it led to fragmentation of small holdings as a definite high correlation exists between a large sub-division of land and its high rent and prices. This fragmentation went on to such a fantastic degree that instances are not wanting where an acre of land was divided into 20 portions. In such conditions, mechanization of agriculture or even full utilization of traditional methods of agriculture became impossible. Consequently food produc- tion suffered considerably. Other factors were also responsi- ble for less food production, such as the land tenure and land revenue system both introduced by the British to exploit the masses and keep India under their cringing subjection.
Land Tenure and Land Revenue Systems
In pre-British India, the state was in no sense the pro- prietor of the soil, unlike in Britain. The state was entitled to only a certain portion of the revenue collected either directly or through the landlords or Zamindars, who kept certain percentage for their services and passed on the rest to the state. Even if the king wanted land for his personal use he had to buy it. As long as the peasants paid this fixed customary share of the produce, normally in kind but cptionally in cash, the peasants had the inheritable and transferable right to their holdings. No agency-zamin- dar or the state-could deprive the peasants of their holdings, again unlike Britain, where actual cultivators were mere labourers. Even in rare cases, when the peasant was eva- cuated from his land in case he did not pay his customary dues, the land did not become the property of the zamindar or the state. It was given to another peasant by the admi- nistrative body of the village, called Panchayats, after giving full chance, opportunity and time to pay the arrears. During the period of civil wars and confusion after Aurangzeb's death in 1707, zamindars enhanced their share of the pro- duce of the land, called land revenue. But still their share was based on the year's produce; and not fixed in advance on the basis of the land holding irrespective of the produc- tion or the cultivation, as was the case during the British rule.
Even this enhanced land revenue was mild as compared to the one the British levied. In every state conquered by the British, the land revenue collected was much more than collected immediately before British annexation. It has been said before how much land revenue was increased in Bengal when the Company got the right of civil administra- tion. The Deccan was conquered by the British in 1818. In 1817, its revenue was £800,000; in 1818 it was raised to £1,150,000 and in a few more years to £1,500,000. The Punjab was annexed in 1849 by the British. In 1847-48, the land revenue of the Punjab was £820,000. Within three years, after British annexation, it went up to £1,060,000. The fall in prices added to the distress of the cultivators, now required to pay their revenue in money,'" as opposed to payment in kind, before the annexation. In the latter case, the government shared proportionately the produce of the land in good as well as in bad years.
From the beginning of the British rule up to 1793, government made the settlement of lands from one to five years. Land revenue was collected, not through the here- ditary zamindars (who were not the owners but only the revenue collectors), but through the native agents or government supervisors, whose title was changed to collectors in 1770. Besides, the methods of collecting the revenue were most cruel and rapacious. We quote below the report of a commissioner who enquired into these "frightful and savage enormities' of one such collector to collect the utmost revenue for Britons. The manner of treating the husbandmen, according to the Commissioner, 'would never gain belief if it was not attested by the records of the Company.'
"The cattle and corn of the husbandmen were sold for a third of their value. and their huts were reduced to ashes! The unfortunate owners were obliged to borrow from usurers, that they might discharge their bonds, which had unjustly and illegally been extorted from them while they were in confinement, obliged to borrow money not at twenty, or forty, or fifty, but at SIX HUNDRED per cent to satisfy him (the collector)! Those who could not raise the money were most cruelly tortured. Cords were drawn tight round their fingers, till the flesh of the four on each hand was actually incorporated, and became one solid mass. The fingers were then separated again by wedges of iron and wood driven between them! Others were tied, two and two, by the feet, and thrown across a wooden bar, upon which they hung with their feet uppermost. They were then beat on the soles of the feet till the toe-nails dropped off! They were afterwards beat about the head till the blood gushed out at the mouth, nose, and ears. They were also flogged upon the naked body with bamboo canes, and prickly bushes, and above all, with some poisonous weeds, which were of a caustic nature, and burnt at every touch. The cruelty of the monster who had ordered all this, had contrived how to tear the mind as well as the body. He frequently had a father and son tied naked to one another by the feet and arms, and then flogged till the skin was torn from the flesh; and he had the devilish satis- faction to know that every blow must hurt; for if one escaped the son, his sensibility was wounded by the know- ledge he had, that the blow had fallen upon his father. The same torture was felt by the father, when he knew that every blow that missed him had fallen upon his son.
"The treatment of the females could not be described. Dragged from the inmost recesses of their houses, which the religion of the country had made so many sanctuaries, they were exposed naked to public view. The virgins were carried to the Court of Justice, where they might naturally have looked for protection, but they now looked for it in vain; for in the face of the ministers of justice, in the face of the spectators, in the face of the sun, those tender and modest virgins were brutally violated. The only difference between their treatment and that of their mothers was that the former were dishonoured in the face of day, the latter in the gloomy recesses of their dungeon. Other females had the nipples of their breast put in a cleft bamboo, and torn off.'
After quoting this report, Howitt wrote "What follows is too shocking and indecent to transcribe! these unmanly deeds were perpetrated by British agents, and for the purpose of extorting the British revenue... But it was not merely the commission of these outrages which the poor inhabitants had to endure. The English courts of justice, which should have protected them, became an additional means of torture and ruin.
The inhuman policies of the British created a famine in 1769-70 which was an 'appalling spectre on the thre shold of British rule in Bengal" and which swept away to official reckoning 1/3 of the total population of Bengal of 30 million; although some English eye-witnesses put the deaths at half of the total population, i.e. 15 million.* Bengal had never before experienced any such widespread devastating famine in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The servants of the Company carried on their private trade in rice for their private gains. They bought all the rice, staple food of the people at a very low price and sold it all at fabulous prices, causing famine. They and their agents 'remain to this day under the charge of carrying off the husbandman's scanty stock at arbitrary prices, stopping and emptying boats that were importing rice from other provinces, and 'compelling the poor ryots to sell even the seed requisite for the next harvest'.
No enquiry was even made by the government and nobody was ever punished for profiteering at the cost of at least ten million lives. Although the famine laid waste about a third of the land and ten to fifteen million people died, the land revenue of the government instead of decreasing actually increased. How this revenue was kept up and how the survivors paid for the dead is described by the Governor- General, Warren Hastings, in a letter written to the Direc- tors of the Company on Nov. 3, 1772. A few extracts are given below "But its (famine of 1770-71) influence on the Revenue has been yet unnoticed, and even unfelt, but by those from whom it is collected; for, notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the Inhabitants of the province, and the consequent decrease of the cultivation, the nett collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of 1768. It was naturally to be expected that the diminution of the Revenue should have kept an equal pace with the other consequences of so great a Calamity. That it did not, was owing to its being violently kept up to its former Standard. To ascertain all the means by which this was effected will not be easy. One tax, however, we will endeavour to describe, .It is called Najay, and it is an Assessment upon the actual inhabitants of every inferior Description of the Lands, to make up for the Loss sustained in the Rents of their neighbours who are either dead or have fled the Country. Not only was no land tax remitted in the year when 'thirty-five per cent of the whole population and fifty per cent of the cultivators perished", ten per cent was added to it for the ensuing year, 1770-71.
The famine of 1770-71 was only the first in a long chain of famines that followed each other in quick succes- sion, the second in 1784, the third in 1787, and the fourth in 1790. We will discuss famines later.
Permanent Land Settlement
The peasants could no longer tolerate the rapaciousness and unbounded oppressions of these tyrants, and conse- quently they rose in sporadic revolts against the government in the 70's and 80's of the 18th century. Therefore, the British needed not only increased land revenue, but also some base for the safety and preservation of their empire. This they achieved with the help of certain types of people who depended upon the British for their very bread and therefore were loyal to them. They were the British offi- cered Indian military, police, and civil service; money-lend- ers, zamindars or landlords, and native princely rulers. All of these were strong props and pillars of the British empire in India who by and large remained faithful to the British for their livelihood and existence. The British also remained faithful to these reactionaries and feudal elements through- out their rule, because their empire in India depended upon these elements.
The zamindars were made the proprietors of the land, which they were not before, by the Permanent Land Settle- ment of 1793. The true purpose of this was described by the Governor-General of India himself in an official speech on Nov. 8, 1829: "If security was wanting against extensive popular tumult or revolution, I should say that the Perma- nent Settlement, though a failure in many other respects, has this great advantage at least, of having created a vast body of rich landed proprietors deeply interested in the continuance of British Dominion and having complete com- mand over the mass of the people.
British apologists argue that British introduced this system in ignorance of the land system prevailing in India. But this is merely an excuse. The fact is that Cornwallis himself was fully aware of what he was doing.The peasant proprietors and owners of the land were now mere tenants, who could be ejected at the free will of the zamindar, who in turn could be ejected by the overlord i.e. the British, in case the zamindar was unable to pay the tax to the government. The Permanent Land Settlement was applied in Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and later to some parts of Madras. The tax share of the government fixed permanently was 90% of the total which the cultivators paid at the time of the settlement, and 10% was the share of the zamindar. Thus £3 million was fixed as the share of the government from Ben- gal, which was a staggering increase in the land revenue. Nothing was said about the rent to be charged from the actual cultivators by the zamindars, who were given a “blank cheque' in dealings with tenants. One may like to compare this figure with the position in England herself. During one hundred years before 1798, the Land Tax in England was between 5 and 20% of the rental. In 1798, William Pitt made it perpetual and redeemable.
Many old zamindars, still considerate to the peasants and their difficulties, could not collect such a heavy tax and therefore were ejected and new zamindars, who were mostly from the urban areas and who did not have any knowledge or interest in agriculture, became the new proprietor of the land. Their only interest was to collect as much tax as possible from the cultivators by all possible means. If any tenant was unable to meet the demands of the zamindars, he was instantly replaced by those who were willing to take their places. The displaced tenant had no other means of subsistence, and nowhere to go and seek employment. This resulted in ruinous consequences. Not only this, there arose a host of middlemen between the zamindar and the actual cultivator as the custom of sub-letting the land-tax grew. Each middleman added his own share of profit to that of his superior. Ultimately the burden of the profits of all these middlemen, alongwith tax and rent, fell very heavily on the cultivator. In such circumstances, he could not possibly have any incentive to improve his production and the land since he knew that most of it would go to the zamindar and the government anyway. The zamindar did not have any incentive to improve his land since he was a townsman, completely ignorant of agriculture. Moreover he knew that without even visiting his land, he would get enough to lead a luxurious life since the cultivator had to work hard to live and to pay the rent and taxes at the cost of his and his family's death. The zamindar knew very well that his position was supported by the law, the military, and the police of the British government. In such circum- stances agriculture was bound to suffer.
So "feudalism on the one hand, and serfdom on the other, were the principal characteristics of the land system of Bengal", remarked the Lieutenant-Governor of that pro- vince. An agricultural authority says that 'next to war, pestilence and famine, the worst thing that can happen to a rural community is absentee landlordism. This was inaugurated by the British first in permanently settled areas, and eventually in all India. The author of the 'Three Presidencies of India' tells us the devastating effects of the Per- manent Settlement. "In his endeavour to fix the land-reve- nue of Bengal upon a firm and profitable footing, Lord Corn- wallis perpetuated one of the greatest wrongs, committed one of the most enormous blunders, that is to be found on re- cord. .The fiat went forth by which twenty million small landholders were dispossessed of their rights, and handed over, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of a set of exacting rackrenters. The injustice of this gigantic robbery, great though it seems, was not by any means the whole of the cruelty. Wrong upon wrong was committed; fraud upon fraud. .Lord Brougham, in speaking of this celebrated set- tlement, said that it wrung from the ryot eighteen shillings out of every twenty. Under this zamindari system the op- pression of the ryots is aggravated by the custom of sub. letting the land-tax to various grades of middlemen, who in- terposing between the zamindars of the district and the cul- tivator, adding their own shares of profits to that of the great man, and having no sort of interest in the matter beyond ex- torting as much as possible in a given time, press upon the means of the wretched tiller of the soil, until his case is so helpless, that, worn out by years of toil and oppression, he flies from the scenes of his misery, and if he has not heart enough left to turn dacoit (gang-robber), in all probability dies of starvation in the jungle. (That I am not dealing in fiction may be ascertained by reference to the evidence on this subject given before the Parliamentary Committee in 1830 by Mr. H. C. Christian of the Board of Revenue of Lower Bengal). To the above must be added the iniquitous practice of extorting abwabs or presents from the villagers upon every possible occasion . Every feast, festival or visit received by the zamindar is made the pretext for rob- bery. . Nor is it only the renters who thus extort; every one of their subordinates, from the naib or accountant, who helps to falsify the books, down to the paiks of abwab. The beggarly race of peasants, who, though, nominally free-born British subjects, are more degraded and less cared for than the slaves of Cuba or the serfs of Russia.
Dr. Marshman, after about 100 years of British rule. wrote in 1852 about the condition of the peasantry of Bengal "No one has ever attempted to contradict the fact that the condition of the Bengal peasantry is almost a wretched and degraded as it is possible to conceive-living in the most miserable hovels, scarcely fit for a dog kennel, covered with tattered rags, and unable in too many instances, to procure more than a single meal a day for himself and family. The Bengal ryot knows nothing of the most ordi- nary comforts of life. We speak without exaggeration when we affirm that if the real condition of those who raised the harvest, which yields between 3,000,000€ and 4,000,000 £ a year, was fully known, it would make the ears of one who heard thereof tingle.
When the Permanent Settlement was introduced, the amount of tax levied was the highest any government could impose at the time. However, due to many subsequent reasons, unforeseen at the time of the Settlement, the fixed share of the government became smaller as compared to the zamindar's share. The government could not become a party in the loot and spoilation of the cultivators because of its commitment not to increase the revenue, although to some extent, this was done through adopting backdoor methods, by levying other taxes, which were now called 'cesses' instead of land revenue. The government thus began losing money. Hence, all the future settlements were made temporary.
Ryotwari System
Ryot means peasant and Ryotwari system of land settlement was the direct settlement between the govern- ment and the peasant. This system was prevalent in Bom- bay, Madras (excepting few areas), the Punjab, and some other places covering about 51% of the total area of India. The period of land settlements in later years varied between 20 and 40 years; although in the initial stages this settlement was either yearly or every five or ten years. The peasant was recognized as the proprietor and he could not be ejected as long as he paid the stipulated sum. But the land revenue demands of the government were extremely high. Worse still, they were fluctuating and not fixed unlike pre-British India. Whereas in the permanently settled areas, the extortionate rent was charged first by the zamindar and then by the British, in Ryotwari areas, it was charged directly by the British. In the permanently settled areas, it was the zamindar who used rapacious methods to extort the maxi- mum out of the peasant, in the Ryotwari areas, the settle- ment officers (with a very few exceptions) of the govern- ment used the same methods. The end result was that a peasant though nominally the owner of his land, virtually was a slave or a serf. An eminent Indian economist writes "The Company had as good a grip over the cultivators as a slave-owner has over his slaves, and could take away all that was not needed to keep them alive. 'It can not be concealed or denied, I think', said one Director, 'that the object of this (ryotwari) system is to obtain for Government the utmost that the land will yield in the shape of rent'.
Not only the people, but a few revenue officers of the Company felt that the land tax was too heavy a pressure that reduced the cultivators to a race of paupers. They pleaded in vain with the company to cut down the tax. But the British never relaxed their grip over the masses.
A distinguished Englishman, Bishop Heber, toured ex- tensively through India in 1824 to 1826. He wrote a letter dated March 1826 in which he says. "Neither native nor European agriculturist, I think, can thrive at the present rate of taxation. Half the gross produce of the soil is demanded by Government, and this, which is nearly the average rate wherever there is not a permanent settlement, is a sadly too much to leave an adequate provision for the peasant, even with the usual frugal habits of Indians, and the very inartifical and cheap manner in which they cultivate the land. Still more it is an effectual bar to everything like improvement; it keeps the people, even in favourable years, in a state of abject penury; and when the crop fails, in even a slight degree, it does not prevent men, women, and children dying in the streets in droves, and the roads being strewed with carcasses . That the peasantry in the Com- pany's provinces are, on the whole, worse off, poorer, and more dispirited, than the subjects of the native Princes; The fact is, no native Prince demands the rent which we do; and making every allowance for the superior regularity of our system, etc. I met with very few public men who will not, in confidence, own their belief that the people are over- taxed, and that the country is in a gradual state of impover- ishment. The Collectors do not like to make this avowal officially.'
An officer of the Company, Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs, made an exhaustive study of the land tax in ancient as well as modern India. He wrote a book in 1830 in which he says "The flourishing condition of the country under the Moghal Emperors is recorded by all European travellers who have vitisted the East within the last three centuries; and the wealth, the population, and the national prosperity of India, far surpassing what they had seen in Europe, filled them with astonishment. That the condition of the people and the country under our Government presents no such spectacle is every day proclaimed by ourselves, and we mav therefore assume it to be true .I conscientiously believe that under no Government whatever, Hindu or Mahomedan, professing to be actuated by law, was any system so subver- sive of the prosperity of the people at large as that which has marked our administration Although we have every- where confessed that the heavy pressure of taxation was the most cruel injury they sustained. we have in no instance alleviated that pressure till by rigid exactions we have increased our own revenue and reduced the people to the condition of mere labourers. This is the professed maxim of our rule, the certain and inevitable result of taking the whole surplus profit of land. .A land tax like that which now exists in India, professing to absorb the whole of the land- lord's rent, was never known under any Government in Europe or Asia.
According to an official report of the Bombay adminis- tration of 1822-93 relating to 1825 land assessment opera- tions, "Every effort was made-lawful and unlawful-to get the utmost out of the wretched peasantry, who were subjected to torture-in some instances cruel and revolting beyond description-if they could not or would not yield what was demanded. Numbers abandoned their homes and fled into the neighbouring Native States; large tracts of land were thrown out of cultivation, and in some Districts no more than a third of the cultured area remained in occupation.
Another official report in 1818 by the Board of Reve- nue of Madras Government tells us how and how much land revenue was collected. Only a few extracts are given beolw . the system then was to make as high a settle- ment as it was practicable to realize. If the crop was good, the demand was raised as high within the survey rates as the means of the Ryots would admit; if the crop was bad, the last farthing was notwithstanding demanded, .He (the cultivator) was constrained to occupy all such fields as were allotted to him by the revenue officers, and whether he cult- vated them or not, he was as Mr. Thackeray emphatically terms it, saddled with the rent of each. To use the words of Mr. Chaplin, the Collector in Bellary, it was the custom under it (Ryotwari system) 'to exert in a great deg- ree the authority, which is incompatible with the existing regulations, of compelling the inhabitants to cultivate a quantity of ground proportionate to their circumstances' This he explains to have been done by 'the power to confine and punish them, and he expressly adds, that if the Ryot was driven by these oppressions from the fields which he tilled, it was the established practice 'to follow the fugitive wherever he went, and by assessing him at discretion, to deprive him of all advantage, he might expect to derive from a change of residence. . We observe them (a small band of foreign conquerors). binding the Ryot by force to the plough, compelling him to till and acknowledged to be over-assessed, dragging him back to it if he absconded, deferring their demand upon him until his crop came to maturity, then taking from him all that could be obtained, and leaving him nothing but his bullocks and seed grain, nay, perhaps obliged to supply him even with these, in order to renew his melancholy tasks of cultivating, not for him- self, but for them.
In similar terms, the Sadar Board of Revenue of Madras wrote to the Government of India in 1838; but again to no avail. The revenue was kept up to the highest paying capacity of the country by 'almost universal" methods of torture. The evils of such a system were exposed by even the officials of the Government of Madras during the Parlia- mentary Enquiries of 1852 and 1853, preceding a fresh re- newal of the Company's Charter. The Government of Madras was forced to appoint an Enquiry Commission consisting of Englishmen-all supporters of the Ryotwari settlement. Even their guarded report in 1855, nearly a hundred years after British rule, found that the practice of torture for the realisation of the government revenue existed in the province; and that the injured parties could not obtain any redress. The kinds of torture, adopted by the officials of the govern- ment which were most common, according to the Commis- sion, were "keeping a man in the sun; preventing his going to meals or other calls of nature; confinement; preventing his cattle from going to pasture; quartering a peon on him; the use of Kittee Anundal, i.e., tying a man down in a bent position; squeezing the crossed fingers; pinches, slaps, blows with fist or whip, running up and down; twisting the ears, making a man sit with brickbats behind his knees; putting a low caste man on his back; striking two defaulters' heads, or tying them by the back hair; placing in the stocks; tying by the hair to a donkey's or a buffalo's tail; placing a neck- lace of bones or other degrading or disgusting materials round the necks; and occasionally, though rarely, more severe discipline.
After this Commission's Report, the Madras Government issued an order dated August 14, 1855, which admit ted that at present, cultivation is undoubtedly repressed by the heavy burdens on the land direct and indirect" with the result that there is a vast extent of unoccupied land, with a peaceful and industrious population, scantily fed and scan- tily employed" After about a 100 years of British plunder, now the Government of Madras proposed 'an accurate and careful settlement of the land revenue' which 'will remove the evils' of corruption, cringing and bribery so that 'a large revenue may be obtained than at present with less inconve- nience to the people' by increasing the land under cultivation.
The Directors proposed that, as in North India, two- thirds of the net produce should be fixed as land revenue. In 1864, the Secretary of State fixed one-half (i.e., 50%) of the net produce as the government's share in Southern India, as it was in Northern India.
That 50% demand was only in theory. In the settle- ments which took place in Madras between 1861 and 1875, the British government often absorbed the whole rental and encroached on profits also' Considering the figures of re- venuc from 1861-75 and other items, an Indian economist points out that "judging the state demand in relation to the total produce of the Province, and to the price of that pro- duce, it was undoubtedly a heavier taxation on the people in 1875 than it was in 1860. Consequently a terrible famine took place in Madras in 1877 and three million people died.
Between 1876-98, the gross demand of the government rose by over 70%, whereas the area under cultivation in- creased by less than 14%. Obviously, many farmers could not meet this enormous increase in land revenue. As a conse- quence, they were turned out and their property sold. After quoting a high British official of India, the author of "The Failure of Lord Curzon' concludes "Roundly one-eight part of entire agricultural population was sold out of house and home in little more than a decade. (1879-80 to 1889- 90). Not only were their farms brought to auction, but their poor personal belongings, their plough, cattle and their cook- ing utensils, their beds and everything but their scanty clothes were sold to provide money for mostly 'imperialist" adven ture. The picture is incomplete till it is remembered that these eleven years of "denudation" immediately followed the terrible famine of 1877-78, during which Madras lost three millions of its inhabitants by starvation.
From time to time, some officers of the Government of India proposed to limit the land tax to a reasonable limit, but their proposals were like asking the cannibals not to kill human beings and drink their blood. For example, Lord Rippon, the Viceroy of India from 1880-84, proposed that the land revenue should be increased according to price in- crease. But even this mild proposal, which did not mention that enhancement of land revenue would not be made at every recurring settlement, was rejected by the Secretary of State in 1885.
Mahalwari system
The same tragic story of over-assessments is repeated in North India. Here also the system of periodical settle- ments for short terms continued with disastrous consequences.
According to the Regulations of 1822, it was called Mahalwari settlement (Mahal means estate). Each estate was jointly responsible for the payment of land revenue. The state demand was to be over 83% of the gross rental of estates if the estate was held by the landlord or zamindar. If the estate was held by the cultivators in common tenancy. the state revenue might be raised to 95%. The collectors were given lot of discretionary powers. Under its own harsh- ness the system ultimately broke down within 11 years, and gave way to the regulation of 1833.
The Regulation of 1833 reduced the state demand to 66% of the rental and the settlements were made for thirty years. This was decidedly an improvement over excessive and oppressive settlements made during the first 30 years of British rule. But still the state demand was harsh and the rent was ascertained generally by guess work,
Ultimately in 1855, after the persistent blunders and over-assessments of half a century, the state demand was re- auced to 50% of the net produce, which continued until the end of the British rule. In South India, as noted before, the rule of 50% was adopted in 1864. In this way, 50% of the net produce was claimed by the state in theory through- out India except in the Permanently settled areas.
In actual practice, this rule of 50%, which is unfair, by itself and perhaps not imposed by any civilized govern- ment in any part of the globe, was violated in practice. This is confirmed by Sir Louis Mallet, the Under Secretary of State for India, in 1875 . That in truth the 50 percent of the net produce has been a mere paper instruction, a fic- tion which has had very little to do with the actual facts of the administration, and that in practice the rates levied have often absorbed the whole rental, and not infrequently, I suspect, encroached on profits also.
Besides, the state virtually swept away the profits of the improvements made by the private persons, although, again in theory, the government made the rule that improvements would be exempted from the tax.
Moreover, the cultivators were not consulted at all at the time of settlements, which were treated as if they were state secrets. They did not have any recourse of appeal to an independent authority. The cultivators had to submit to the demands of the state the alternative was death of themselves and their family.
As if this was not sufficient, other taxes on land called 'cesses' were imposed by the British even in the areas which were permanently settled, breaking the solemn written pro- mises enacted into law that the rate assessed on the land was 'irrevocably fixed for ever' Up to 1872, the local needs of the police, post office, education etc. were met from the land revenue. But after this date, separate taxes were levied for these local purposes which could amount from 10 to 16% of the government demand. J. Keir Hardie, the British mem- ber of Parliament and leader of the independent Labour Party-the forerunner of the British Labour Party, wrote in 1909, "probably not less than 75 per cent of the harvest goes in taxes. To most people this will seem incomprehen- sible. A 5 per cent tax on income at home leads to heavy and continuous grumbling, and yet the 5 per cent is assessed not on the total produce of the land, but on the profits. What, then, must be the condition of a country in which the tax is not 5 per cent on the profits, but 75 per cent on the harvest reaped? .It is this fact which keeps the people of India in a condition of perpetual, hopeless, grinding poverty.'
Extremely heavy land tax enhanced at every recurring settlement alone is sufficient to destroy agriculture and agri- culturists of any country. Commenting on the methods of dealing with land and land revenue, Sir Henry Cotton wrote in 1907 "Our rigid and revolutionary methods of exacting the land revenue have reduced the peasantry to the lowest extreme of poverty and wretchedness, and the procedure of our settlement courts has been the means of Jaying upon them burdens heavier than any they endured in former times. Famine is now more frequent than former- ly and more severe, and it is the irony of fate that our statute-book is swollen with measures of relief in favour of the victims whom our administrative system has impoverished,"
Even during the famines, the government increased the land revenue. A retired member of the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.) and Member of the British Parliament wrote in 1908 "Fifteen years ago, Mr. S. S. Thorburn, Financial Commissioner to the Government of the Punjab, declared, as the result of a house-to-house inquiry, that over large areas, the peasantry was already ruined beyond redemp- tion' the chief cause assigned by him being 'borrowing from money-lenders to pay land revenue. There have been
two minor famines in the Punjab in the past ten years. During the past five years the Punjab has been swept by plague, . Last year 52,000 died in a single week. The Musulman community alone has lost half a million. In spite of these disasters, far from there being any remission of land tax, the revenue derived from it has increased. .by 30 per cent in fifteen years" from 1891 to 1906.
The same story of enhancement of land revenue is told by the author in various other parts of India." "Our system of land revenue alone', declared A. J. Wilson in 1909, 'would bring, and does bring, them (natives of India) into a state of slavery and abject dependence, almost whether we like it or not." "The Government assessment does not leave enough food to the cultivator to support himself and family throughout the year' declared Sir William Hunter, former member of the Viceroy's Council in 1883. Because of the heavy assessments, "he (Indian peasant) is ground until everything has been expressed, except the marrow of his bones."
In very extreme conditions, tardy suspension or remis- sion (extremely rare) of land revenue was made. But this was at best a mere palliative. Even during the Depression of 1930's no respite was given to the Indian farmers who were hit very hard like agriculturists everywhere else. Between 1828-29 and 1933-34, the value of agricultural crops in India declined by 55%, but the money payments which the peasant was required to make for taxes, rent etc. remained unchanged." The poor peasants of India could not even get an absolute minimum help from the government. No wonder, the debt of the cultivators increased considerably during this period. It is estimated that between 1931 and 1937, the agricultural debt rose from £675 million to £1,350 million, that is by 100%.