NCERT Ruling The Countryside
NCERT Ruling The Countryside
NCERT Ruling The Countryside
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Over the years the Company also learnt that it had to
move with some caution. Being an alien power, it needed
to pacify those who in the past had ruled the countryside,
and enjoyed authority and prestige. Those who had held
local power had to be controlled but they could not be
entirely eliminated.
How was this to be done? In this chapter we will see
how the Company came to colonise the countryside, organise
revenue resources, redefine the rights of people, and produce
the crops it wanted.
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The need to improve agriculture
If the economy was in ruins, could the Company be
certain of its revenue income? Most Company officials
began to feel that investment in land had to be
encouraged and agriculture had to be improved.
How was this to be done? After two decades of debate
on the question, the Company finally introduced the
Permanent Settlement in 1793. By the terms of the
settlement, the rajas and taluqdars were recognised
as zamindars. They were asked to collect rent from
Fig. 3 – Charles Cornwallis
the peasants and pay revenue to the Company. The
amount to be paid was fixed permanently, that is, it
Cornwallis was the Governor-
General of India when the was not to be increased ever in future. It was felt that
Permanent Settlement was this would ensure a regular flow of revenue into the
introduced. Company’s coffers and at the same time encourage
the zamindars to invest in improving the land. Since
Source 1 the revenue demand of the state would not be
increased, the zamindar would benefit from increased
Colebrook on production from the land.
Bengal ryots
The problem
In many villages of The Permanent Settlement, however, created problems.
Bengal, some of the Company officials soon discovered that the zamindars
powerful ryots did not were in fact not investing in the improvement of land.
cultivate, but instead The revenue that had been fixed was so high that the
gave out their lands to zamindars found it difficult to pay. Anyone who failed to
others (the under-tenants), pay the revenue lost his zamindari. Numerous zamindaris
taking from them very were sold off at auctions organised by the Company.
high rents. In 1806, H. T. By the first decade of the nineteenth century the
Colebrook described the situation changed. The prices in the market rose and
conditions of these under- cultivation slowly expanded. This meant an increase in
tenants in Bengal: the income of the zamindars but no gain for the
The under-tenants, Company since it could not increase a revenue demand
depressed by an that had been fixed permanently
excessive rent in kind, Even then the zamindars did not have an interest in
and by usurious returns improving the land. Some had lost their lands in the
for the cattle, seed, and earlier years of the settlement; others now saw the
subsistence, advanced possibility of earning without the trouble and risk of
to them, can never investment. As long as the zamindars could give out the
extricate themselves land to tenants and get rent, they were not interested in
from debt. In so abject improving the land.
a state, they cannot
labour in spirit, while
they earn a scanty
subsistence without
Activity
Why do you think Colebrook is concerned with the
hope of bettering their
situation. conditions of the under-ryots in Bengal? Read the
preceding pages and suggest possible reasons.
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H.T.
On the other hand, in the villages, the cultivator
found the system extremely oppressive. The rent he paid Mahal – In British
to the zamindar was high and his right on the land was revenue records mahal
insecure. To pay the rent he had to often take a loan is a revenue estate
from the moneylender, and when he failed to pay the which may be a village
rent he was evicted from the land he had cultivated or a group of villages.
for generations.
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Activity should act as paternal father figures protecting the ryots
under their charge.
Imagine that you are a
Company representative All was not well
sending a report back Within a few years after the new systems were imposed
to England about the it was clear that all was not well with them. Driven by
conditions in rural areas the desire to increase the income from land, revenue
under Company rule. officials fixed too high a revenue demand. Peasants were
What would you write? unable to pay, ryots fled the countryside, and villages
became deserted in many regions. Optimistic officials
had imagined that the new systems would transform
the peasants into rich enterprising farmers. But this
did not happen.
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two prints: both use a rich blue colour – commonly called
indigo. Do you know how this colour was produced?
The blue that you see in these prints was produced
from a plant called indigo. It is likely that the blue dye
used in the Morris prints in nineteenth-century Britain
was manufactured from indigo plants cultivated in India.
For India was the biggest supplier of indigo in the world
at that time.
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From the last decades
of the eighteenth century
indigo cultivation in
Bengal expanded rapidly
and Bengal indigo came
to dominate the world
market. In 1788 only about
30 per cent of the indigo
imported into Britain was
from India. By 1810, the
proportion had gone up to
95 per cent.
As the indigo trade
grew, commercial agents
and officials of the
Company began investing
in indigo production. Over
the years many Company
officials left their jobs to
look after their indigo
Fig. 7 – The Slave Revolt in business. Attracted by the prospect of high profits,
St Domingue, August 1791, numerous Scotsmen and Englishmen came to India and
painting by January Scuhodolski
became planters. Those who had no money to produce
In the eighteenth century,
French planters produced indigo
indigo could get loans from the Company and the banks
and sugar in the French colony that were coming up at the time.
of St Domingue in the Caribbean
islands. The African slaves who How was indigo cultivated?
worked on the plantations rose There were two main systems of indigo cultivation – nij
in rebellion in 1791, burning the
plantations and killing their rich and ryoti. Within the system of nij cultivation, the
planters. In 1792 France abolished planter produced indigo in lands that he directly
slavery in the French colonies. controlled. He either bought the land or rented it from
These events led to the collapse other zamindars and produced indigo by directly
of the indigo plantations on the
Caribbean islands.
employing hired labourers.
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Nij cultivation on a large scale also required many
Bigha – A unit of
ploughs and bullocks. One bigha of indigo cultivation
measurement of land.
required two ploughs. This meant that a planter with
Before British rule, the
1,000 bighas would need 2,000 ploughs. Investing on
size of this area varied.
purchase and maintenance of ploughs was a big
In Bengal the British
problem. Nor could supplies be easily got from the
standardised it to about
peasants since their ploughs and bullocks were busy
one-third of an acre.
on their rice fields, again exactly at the time that the
indigo planters needed them.
Till the late nineteenth century, planters were therefore
reluctant to expand the area under nij cultivation. Less
than 25 per cent of the land producing indigo was under
this system. The rest was under an alternative mode of
cultivation – the ryoti system.
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How was indigo produced?
Fermenting
Vat
Beater
Vat
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Fig. 8
When the crop was delivered to the planter after the
harvest, a new loan was given to the ryot, and the cycle
started all over again. Peasants who were initially
tempted by the loans soon realised how harsh the system
was. The price they got for the indigo they produced
was very low and the cycle of loans never ended.
There were other problems too. The planters usually
insisted that indigo be cultivated on the best soils in
which peasants preferred to cultivate rice. Indigo,
moreover, had deep roots and it exhausted the soil
rapidly. After an indigo harvest the land could not be
sown with rice. Source 2
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the Lieutenant Governor toured the region in the winter
of 1859. The ryots saw the tour as a sign of government
sympathy for their plight. When in Barasat, the
magistrate Ashley Eden issued a notice stating that
ryots would not be compelled to accept indigo contracts,
word went around that Queen Victoria had declared
that indigo need not be sown. Eden was trying to placate
the peasants and control an explosive situation, but
his action was read as support for the rebellion.
As the rebellion spread, intellectuals from Calcutta
rushed to the indigo districts. They wrote of the misery
of the ryots, the tyranny of the planters, and the horrors
of the indigo system.
Worried by the rebellion, the government brought
in the military to protect the planters from assault,
and set up the Indigo Commission to enquire into the
system of indigo production. The Commission held the
planters guilty, and criticised them for the coercive
methods they used with indigo cultivators. It declared
that indigo production was not profitable for ryots. The
Commission asked the ryots to fulfil their existing
contracts but also told them that they could refuse to
produce indigo in future.
Source 3
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After the revolt, indigo production collapsed in Bengal. But
the planters now shifted their operation to Bihar. With the
discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century their
business was severely affected, but yet they managed to expand
production. When Mahatma Gandhi returned from South
Africa, a peasant from Bihar persuaded him to visit Champaran
and see the plight of the indigo cultivators there. Mahatma
Gandhi’s visit in 1917 marked the beginning of the Champaran
movement against the indigo planters.
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Indigo making in the West Indies
In the early eighteenth century, a French missionary, Jean Baptiste Labat,
travelled to the Caribbean islands, and wrote extensively about the region.
Published in one of his
books, this image shows
all the stages of indigo
production in the French
slave plantations of
the region.
You can see the slave
workers putting the
indigo plant into the
settler vat on the left.
Another worker is
churning the liquid with
a mechanical churner
in a vat (second from
right). Two workers are Fig. 14 – Making indigo in a Caribbean slave plantation
carrying the indigo pulp
hung up in bags to be dried. In the foreground two others are mixing the indigo
pulp to be put into moulds. The planter is at the centre of the picture standing on
the high ground supervising the slave workers.
Let’s recall
1. Match the following:
ryot village
mahal peasant
nij cultivation on ryot’s lands
ryoti cultivation on planter’s own land
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2. Fill in the blanks:
Let’s imagine (a) Growers of woad in Europe saw __________
as a crop which would provide competition to
Imagine a their earnings.
conversation between
a planter and a (b) The demand for indigo increased in late-
peasant who is being eighteenth-century Britain because of __________.
forced to grow indigo.
What reasons would (c) The international demand for indigo was
the planter give to affected by the discovery of __________.
persuade the peasant?
What problems would (d) The Champaran movement was against
the peasant point __________.
out? Enact their
conversation.
Let’s discuss
3. Describe the main features of the Permanent
Settlement.
4. How was the mahalwari system different from the
Permanent Settlement?
5. Give two problems which arose with the new Munro
system of fixing revenue.
6. Why were ryots reluctant to grow indigo?
7. What were the circumstances which led to the
eventual collapse of indigo production in Bengal?
Let’s do
8. Find out more about the Champaran movement
and Mahatma Gandhi’s role in it.
9. Look into the history of either tea or coffee
plantations in India. See how the life of workers in
these plantations was similar to or different from
that of workers in indigo plantations.
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