Vol 19

VOL.
19
MISCELLANEOUS
Compiled by
Dharampal
Ashram Pratishtan, Sevagram - 442102

May 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. HISTORIANS OF INDIA, PAKISTAN AND CEYLON ....................................................... 3

2.REAL SELF GOVERNMENT FOR ............................................................................................14
3.RURAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN SWEDEN, ITALY AND INDIA.............................16
4. A STUDY OF PANCHAYAT IN MADRAS ...........................................................................17
5.THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION, Science and Politics .......................................18
6. LETTER AND EDITORIAL FROM THE "TIMES" 1878.......................................................22
7. A.SARADA RAJU: ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE MADRAS PRESIDENCY
1800-1850, U of M, 1941...................................................................................................................30
8. CHARLES WILLIAM BOUGHTON ROUSE: Dissertation Concerning
the Landed Property of Bengal, 179 . ...........................................................................................32
Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 2 of 37

1. HISTORIANS OF INDIA, PAKISTAN AND CEYLON
Edited By C.H.Philips, Professor of Oriental History University of London, page 217-229, oup.1961
Professor of Oriental History, University of London, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
In our lifetime the history of the peoples of Asia will be rewritten, certainly by Asian
historians themselves striving to express their new outlook as they emerge from the era
of European dominance. Already this is taking place in India and Pakistan, whose
history as it stands at present is to a large degree the creation of European, especially
British, writers, In the past decade Europeans, too, have been taking a fresh look at this
history, and for the first time have begun to examine the foundations of European
historical writing in Asia.
If any systematic attempt is to be made to recreate objectively the history of India and
Pakistan, whether by British or other historians, it is essential to establish first the basis
from which we all have to start. What have been the course and the character, the major
trends, of historical writings on these countries? What is our heritage? British historical
writing on India constitutes the core of the problem. What, therefore, have been the
major assumptions, attitudes, and purposes of British historians and what schools of
thought have been dominant? In point of fact these fields of inquiry are as yet almost
unexplored1.
The British, in their conquest of India, found a country unlike the Europe of their time
but resembling in some respects their own idea of the Europe of the middle ages, or
even of the ancient empires described by Herodotus. So they could not turn away from
the question: Are we to try to modernize this ancient land or in some way to preserve
its institutions and govern through them?
At the period in the late eighteenth century when the English East India Company's
power was spreading into Bengal, the ancient literature of the Hindus and much of
Indian Muslim literature were still relatively unknown, as were the laws and customs of
the people, and the Company's officers were groping for information about their new
and numerous subjects. Just as Warren Hastings, during his governor-generalship,
began deliberately to experiment in different system of tax-gathering in order to
discover who actually were the proprietors of land, so he began to encourage research
into the laws, customs, and history of the people. He got a fellow Persian scholar, Nath
Halhed, to translate the Gentoo Code, and with the arrival in Bengal in 1784 of William
Jones (a Fellow of University College, Oxford, and a classical and Persian scholar), the
stage was set for the discovery of the forgotten early history of India. Jones soon became
interested in Sanskrit, a knowledge of which was just beginning to grow outside India,
and he soon identified the early Indian ruler, Chandragupta, with the Sandrocottos of
Greek historians. It was the beginning, in Jones's words, of a seach for Indian `historical
writing unmixed with fable'. But Jones and his fellow-members of the Asiatic Society,
1This paper was written as a sample for the Conference. Much of it has been developed and
modified by subsequent papers.

which he founded, sought in vain, for the fact was that the Hindus and the early Indian
empires, unlike the Muslims and their Indian states, had left few directly historical or
chronological works; so few that we are justified in concluding that it was a branch of
literature, a form of activity for which the need was small and which therefore they did
not hold in high regard. Jones and his colleagues, unaware, thus sought a history that
was as flimsy as gosamer. However, through their study of Sanskrit grammer, drama,
and poetry, through their acquaintance with Hindu law, through Hinduism, they
formed an extremely high opinion of the quality of early Hindu civilization, confirming
the expectations of Hastings that their work would òpen a new and most extensive
range for the human mind, beyond the present limited and beaten field of its
operations". But these scholar-administrators - with Jones, Charles Wilkins, and Henry
Colebrook the three most prominent - were few in number and understandably their
work was slow in maturing.
Meanwhile, British India was being conquered and governed, and India had become
one of the nuclear subjects of English politics. Civilians and soldiers poured into India.
An English society grew up, aloof, fitting neatly into caste society. Meanwhile, Britain
herself was changing. Evangelicalism and industrialization had their effects. The
Brahmanized Englishman became an object of suspicion, the tolerant feelings of Warren
Hastings for the Indian peoples, his desire to lay down a system for `reconciling the
people of England to the nature of Hindustan,' were challenged by new views. The
governor-general, Sir John Shore, and his friend Charles Grant, both of whom had long
served in Bengal, represented the evangelical viewpoint, which had already been fully
expressed, though not published, in Grant's Observations on the state of society among
the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, in which he urged the application of Christianity
and of western education to change, in his view, à hideous state of Indian society'. A
group of Christian missionaries were busy getting into print with a similar indictment,
and the battle to determine British purposes in India was fully joined in London.
It was at this stage, in 1806, that James Mill, the Utilitarian philosopher and writer, at
the age of thirty-three, began to work in London on his History of British India. Twelve
years later, in six substantial books, it was published. By deliberately attempting in the
second and third books an estimate of the full significance of Hindu and Muslims
government and civilization in India, it ranged far beyond its title, and the whole work
constituted in fact the first comprehensive history of India. Its chief significance now is
that it has exercised great influence on British writing and thinking on India, which has
persisted down to our own day.
Surprisingly, little study has been made of Mill's History. Leslie Stephen, in his work
The Utilitarians, dismissed it in a few lines; Halevy, in The Growth of Philosophic
Radicalism, gave this side of Mill only cursory attention. Only recently has attention
been drawn to the significance of Mill's work. This neglect is the more surprising
because, at the time of its publication, the History made a great impression. On the
strength of it the East India Company's directors appointed Mill to a senior post on their
London staff. Ricardo praised it to the skies. Ten years or so later Macaulay could refer
to the History in the House of Commons as on the whole the greatest historical work
which has appeared in our languages since that of Gibbon", and afterwards in his

famous Minute on Indian Education paid it the compliment of using some of Mills
material. Mill's son John Stuart, described it as òne of the most instructive histories ever
written', and Hayman Wilson, Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, perhaps the most severe
critic of the detail of the History, yet finally judged it in 1844 as still `the most valuable
work upon the subject which has yet been published.'
We are led to ask what provoked Mill, who had never been to India and had no
acquaintance with its languages, into writing on its history. Why, when he had
ostensibly set out to deal with British India, did he dwell in such detail on Hindu and
Muslim civilization, and how did he come to make such a sweeping condemnation of
their history? In a recent article in The Cambridge Journal, Mr.Duncan Forbes has
argued that Mill wrote his History to propagate the doctrine of his friend and master,
Jeremy Bentham; that it served his purpose to describe a despotically ruled Indian
people dominated by caste, privilege, and religion, as then and always barbarous; that in
the process he elaborated his own `scientific' sociology and with it fashioned a
`scientific' instrument for the legislator in India. He concludes that Mill, who was
beginning to write in the year 1806, at a time when a direct assault on Church and State
in England was impossible, found a convenient way, in this attack on Hinduism, of
undermining these institutions in England2.
This argument, sound though it may be, by no means gives us a full explanation of
why the History was written3 Mills History is much wider in conception than this
interpretation allows, as I think we can soon establish if we turn to Mill's own preface; of
which his son, John Stuart, said: Ìt gives a picture, which may be entirely depended
upon, of, the sentiments and expectation with which he wrote the History'. Mill tells us
that in his study of British history he was surprised to find that "the knowledge requisite
for attaining an adequate conception of that great Indian scene of British action was
collected nowhere". This was certainly all the more surprising because, for twenty years
past, India had been one of the most controversial subjects of English politics, and in
that period nothing more dramatic had occurred in London, for example, than the
impeachment of Hastings. The materials, in the form of parliamentary reports, lay
readily to hand, as yet undigested.
Mill's motives in writing on India were complex, but uppermost was his desire to
apply utilitarian doctrines in governing British India. As Halevy suggests, Bentham's
reference to India in his Treatise on the Influence of Time and Place in Legislation
had interested Mill, and in the History he states that he intended "to provide for British
India, in the room of the abominable existing system, a good system of judicial
procedure", but whereas Bentham was interested in finding out whether and how far
his principles could be applied in India, Mill was bent on proving that they could be,
and in the process designed a ladder or scale of civilization to simplify the legislator's
task of prescribing for each society on each particular rung. `To ascertain', he said, `the
2`James Mill and India' October 1951

3For example, Mill's great predecessors, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon had shown that History
could make money. There is also evidence to suggest that Mill had his eye on a post at India
House

true state of the Hindus in the scale of civilization....is to the people of Great Britain....an
object of the highest practical importance.' But by what tests was this state to be judged?
Èxactly in proportion as Utility is the object of every pursuit, may we regard a nation as
civilized'.4
By this assessment, contemporary as well as ancient India, whether in science,

religion, government, law or political economy, was barbarous. But Sir William Jones
and his fellow Sanskritists had meanwhile been arguing that the early Hindus had
reached a high degree of civilization. Mill denied this, partly because, he said, the term
civilisation was by Jones, as by most men.....attached to no fixed and definite
assemblage of ideas, partly because he had no difficulty in finding evidence to suit his
purpose. While the scholars who agreed with Jones, like Colebrook and Wilkins and
Prinsep, had been slow in producing results, other more superficial and often
prejudiced interpreters, and not only missionaries and evangelicals, had been quick and
prolific in publication.
Mill chose to rely, for example, on the evidence of Robert Orme, whose accounts of
India were written early and not intended for publication; on Buchanan, who had tried
and failed to learn Sanskrit and was prejudiced against Indians; on Tennant, a most
superficial observer; and on Tytler, who was very young and had seen Indian society
through the refractive medium of the criminal law courts. Once committed to this view
that Indian society was barbarous, Mill was highly selective in his use of evidence. The
testimony of Dubois the Missionary, of Tytler and others, is cited when hostile to the
Hindus, ignored when it is favourable; and them massive evidence on the character of
Indians, collected in the parliamentary investigation of 1813, on the whole favourable to
them went unnoticed. In his Preface, Mill had gone to great pains and shown great
ingenuity in defending himself against the criticism that he had never been to India and
knew nothing of its languages - arguments now-a-days that will convince no one. If had
visited the country he would probably have gained just that experience through which
to distinguish clearly between reliable and unrealiable witnesses. As it was he could not
judge that evidence which lay beyond his experience, and he commonly attached the
greatest weight to the writers who are least entitled to confidence. In this manner he
constructed a damning indictment of Indian society and then went on to prescribe on a
revolutionary curve to be achieved through the application of government and law on
utilitarian principles.
Mill's History, once published, held the field unchallenged for twenty-five years,
being reprinted in 1820, 1826 and 1840. Then a modest competitor appeared, in Mount
Stuart Elphinstone's History of Hindu and Muhammadan India, taking a more
favourable view of Indian society; but it covered only part of the subject, and was much
less impressive, more cautious in approach and manner, much less exciting to read, and,
in any event, soon afterwards, in 1848, Hayman Wilson, the leading Orientalist of the
day, produced an other edition of Mill, with elaborate footnotes and an extension of the
4Mill in fact accepted the Rationalist's assumption that progress could be taken for granted, and
also the Scottish Sociological school's arguments based on an assumed uniformity of human
nature.

story from 1805 to 1834, that is, down to the day when the Company became wholly a
political body. Mill was thus given a new lease of life, so that his History in effect over
the whole middle range of the nineteenth century provided the main basis for British
thought on the character of Indian civilisation and on the way to govern Indians. What
then, was the place of Elphinstone and Hayman Wilson?
In this first phase of empire we have seen three schools of thought competing to
control the attitude and policy of Britain towards India. First, those like Hastings and
Jones, joined later by Elphinstone, Munro and Malcolm, who not only knew India and
something of its languages and peoples, but also showed a romantic, sympathetic
understanding of their problems, Indians, they agreed, would have to undergo change,
but slowly, with deference to their own institutions and not on speculative principles
Secondly, the evangelicals like Shore and Grant, both backed by and backing the
missionaries. And thirdly, the rationalists represented by Mill, the last two groups
finding much in common in their condemnation of Hinduism and, to a lesser extent,
Mohammedanism. The evangelicals sought to change India mainly through education,
the rationalists put their emphasis on government and law. The happiness, not the
liberty, of Indians was the end in view. Mill had produced in his history a justification
for the policy of the rationalists; Grant had written his Observations; now Elphinstone
tried to redress the balance by writing and encouraging others to write histories worthy
of the romantic school.
As administrator and scholar, Elphinstone gave his life to India. Sent out as a boy of
sixteen, and naturally wild and gay, he had every inducement, like the notorious Willam
Hickey, to become a rake. But, deliberately taking himself in hand, he sublimated this
wildness infield sports, and consciously sought to become a scholar-administrator. The
range of his reading, to judge by his diary alone, was vast; in the first months of 1805 -
when he was twenty--six, and resident at Nagpur in the thick of the Maratha struggles-
he mentions the Iliad, which he had just finished; the Electra of Sohocles; Philoctetes; he
was fagging away at Greek, reading Oedipus Tyrannus, Alcestis, diverging to Tyrtaeus
and some of the elegiac poets. Then he applied himself to a course of Greek History,
beginning with Thucydides, Xenophon, and the orations of Demosthenes. There is
mention casually of Cobbett, Petrarch, and Walter Scott's newly published Lay of the
Last Minstrel, and novels innumerable.
He sustained this manner of life until, in 1827, at the age of forty eight, he chose to
retire from the Bombay governorship. He refused all honours and all further
employment, whether the governor generalship of India, the under-secretaryship of the
Board of Control, or an important mission to Canada. He was still bent on becoming the
complete scholar, and took up his Greek again. All along Elphinstone has been deeply
interested in History. Thucydides was his bedside companion. He had inspired others of
his own way of thinking to write history. In 1816, given the time he would have started
on a history of the Maratha peoples of western India; instead he stimulated his assistant
at Poona, Captain Grant Duff, into doing it, handing over to him the Peshwa's state
papers and correspondence, and in 1825 Grant Duffs two-volume work A History of the
Mahrattas appeared. It is a straightforward, sympathetic account, invaluable in that it
is based on material that has long since disappeared; a classic account though never, in

fact, much read. The first publisher he went to told him he would publish if the title
were altered, Ì said,"It is the history of the Mahrattas and only of the Mahrattas". '
`Who knows anything about the Mahrattas?' `That's the reason the book has been
written-no one does.'
`Well,and who cares to know? If you call it The Downfall of the Moguls and the Rise
of the English or something of that kind, it may do, but A history of the Mahrattas - that
will never sell'.
So Grant Duff took his manuscript to another publisher and had it published at his
own expense. Also among Elphinstone's disciples were William Erskine, one of his
Bombay officials, who completed a translation of the Memoirs of Babur, the first Mogul
Emperor, and Captain James Tod, who between 1812 and 1823 collected into three rich
volumes The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, this being the first serious attempt to
investigate the beliefs of the Indian peasantry, trying to do for them what the Sanskritist
was doing for the Brahmins. Walter Scott particularly expressed delight in Tod's
Rajasthan, and in the early writing of Elphinstone and of his colleague, John Malcolm,
appreciating perhaps not only `the shepherd state' of the societies they described but
also their interpretation of them.
All along, Elphinstone had been uneasy about Mill's History of India, uneasy because it
was in his view masterly, yet misguided, setting out to revolutionise India on abstract
principles, the converse of his own empirical methods in attempting to reorganize the
defeated Maratha peoples. With characteristic under-emphasis, after reading it when it
first appeared, he said: `The ingenious, original, and elaborate work of Mr. Mill left
some room for doubt and discussion'. Moreover and here he really begins to knock the
props away - `the excellence of histories derived from European researchers alone does
not entirely set aside the utility of similar enquiries conducted under the guidance of
impressions received in India; which, as they arise from a separate source, may
sometimes lead to different conclusions.' In retirement he became increasingly critical of
Mill - `the offensive thing...is the cynical, sarcastic tone', he was uncandid ìn the native
part' (that is, the Hindu and Mohammedan part); às the disciple of a school of
philosophy advancing new opinions, Mill was obliged to resort to argument to establish
his principles and destroy those offered to him.'
Elphinstone had sent for and eagerly read Bentham's writings but he had concluded
that human experience was too vast and rich to be comprehended by Benthamism. He
once told Malcolm, his friend and successor in Bombay: `You will not know what
difficulty is until you come...to reconcile Maratha custom with Jeremy Bentham.'5 But
Elphinstone was above all a modest man; he had seen the need to combat Mill and did
not feel equal to it, or to the subject. To his friend, William Erskine, he confided that `to
write India's early and medieval history would require great knowledge, and a very
philosophical and reflecting mind. If suitably executed it would be a most important
work. The subject of India, he said, might be unimportant to European readers and ìt
5 I am indebted for this apt quotation to Dr.K.A.Ballhatchet.

must therefore, be made up by connecting it with the general history of the species: and
this requires a thorough knowledge of the principles of human action. The style also
must be condensed and animated, and the reflections striking and profound.'
Encouraged by Erskine and others, and driven by a sense of duty, he forced himself
to begin in June 1834, concentrating on the Hindu and Mohammedan histories. But in
1836 he again lost confidence and put the manuscript away- `The whole seems common
place and what...might easily be produced by any ordinary workman'. But, prodded
again by his friends, he went back to it and in 1841 this part of the book was published.
He then turned to the British conquest, which, he said had already been `well digested
by Mill' and therefore needed only àn agreeable form, which requires imagination and
eloquence'. But he had already confessed that in the matter of style he did not feel equal
even to Mill, and in truth he found writing difficult.
At this point he happended to read in The Edinburgh Review Macaulay's essay on

Clive, which took the form of a review of Malcolm's Life of Clive. Macaulay begins by
wondering why English readers are not interested in the conquest of India. `This subject,
is, to most readers,' he says,`not only insipid, but positively distasteful. Perhaps the
fault lies partly with the historians.' And now that he himself had been to India, we note
that he has modified his view of Mill- Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great
and rare merit, it is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read
for amusement.' In his essays on Clive and Hastings, Macaulay had therefore
deliberately set out to make good this deficiency. For Elphinstone this was the end; he
already felt inferior to Mill, and now unable to compete with Macaulay's fireworks. His
History of British Power in the East, which had got as far as Hastings' Governor
Generalship, was therefore put aside, never to be finished.
On British India, then he had failed to replace, Mill, and this failure was signalized by
the appearance of Hayman Wilson's edition of Mill. Although Wilson, who was a
Sanskritist, differed radically from Mill's interpretation of Hindu civilisation (and indeed
exposed it), he yet chose to do this in the form of foot notes, leaving Mill's text as it
stood. It is incredible that he should not have chosen to write a new history altogether,
but possibly his training as a Sanskritist, which had accustomed him to the method of
interpreting a text in this way, had something to do with his choice. On British problems
in governing India, then, Mill and Wilson remained the standard work; and new
editions appeared in 1848 and again at the time of the Mutiny and on the assumption of
Indian government by the Crown.
On the Hindu and Mohammedan parts Elphinstone was a competitor but not, I think,
a powerful competitor. It is true that his account was informed by personal observation
and based on chronicles provided by his friend, Erskine, and that in the year of its
publication it came into use at Haileybury College, where the East Indian Civil Service
cadets were trained. But Elphinstone was too diffident, too cautious; his criticism of Mill
was implied, never open, his attack always oblique. So, to Mill's sweeping judgements
on the Hindus he offers:
...Our writers confound the distinctions of time and place;

`Ten different civilised nations are found within India they combine in one character
the Maratha and the Bengali...Those who have known the Indians longest have always
the best opinion of them....It is more to the point that all persons who have retired from
India think better of the people they have left after comparing them with others even of
the most justly admired nations. These considerations should make us distrust our own
impressions, when unfavourable, but cannot blind us to the fact that the Hindus have in
reality some great defects of character.'
This is typical of his matter and method. His work is so scrupulous that it lacks the
intensity of spirit and the animation of personality which alone can transform historical
composition into historical literature. He had set out to make as short a history as Mill, `
more full in facts and free from disputes and dissertations'6. He uses the adjective
`romantic' to describe this schools of middle nineteenth-century British historians - most
prominent among whom was Thomas Arnold. Elphinstone's work has close affinity
with their work. They diverge basically from the Utilitarians in the nature of their
conception of development in their psychological theory, and represent a revolt against
Utilitarian thinking. As Mr.Forbes has shown, progress for them was not an
unquestioned assumption.) But with Mill holding the field and saying what he had said,
and in the way he had said it, the hour called for `disputes and dissertations'.
But in 1857 the Mutiny occurred, accompanied by acute racial bitterness, and
culminating in what was termed `the British reconquest of India'. These events tended
to reinforce the lines of thought on Indian civilization drawn by Mill rather than those
suggested by Elphinstone. Writing in 1844, Hayman Wilson had asserted that Mill's
History was exercising a deep formative influence on British policy and practice in
India. Wilson himself had served in Bengal for a quarter of a century, and after his
return acted for many years as oral examiner of the Indian Civil Service cadets at
Haileybury College, so we may give emphasis to his statement:
Ìn the effects which Mill's History is likely to exercise upon the connection between
the people of England and the people of India.....its tendency is evil: it is calculated to
destroy all sympathy between the ruler and the ruled; to preoccupy the minds of those
who issue annually from Great Britain to monopolise the posts of honour and power in
Hindustan, with an unfounded aversion towards those over whom they exercise that
power. ...There is reason to fear that these consequences are not imaginary, and that a
harsh and illiberal spirit has of late years prevailed in the conduct and councils of the
rising service in India which owes its origin to impressions imbibed in early life from the
History of Mr. Mill'.
Wilson may well have had in mind the ill effects of over-centralization under the
Charter Act of 1833, the severity of land revenue policy under Holt Mackenzie, or under
Pringle in the Bombay Deccan on principles laid down by Mill, or the land settlement of
Bird and Thomason in the North West Provinces, described as 'a fearful experiment ...
calculated so as to flatten the whole surface of society', which no doubt was partly
6Since writing the above I have seen Mr. Duncan Forbes' study of The Liberal Anglican Idea of
History.

responsible for the Mutiny. In 1844, too, the Government declared that candidates
qualified by a knowledge of English would be given prefernce in the pubic service, and
other measures removed the traditional protection given to Indian religious ceremonies.
The Company's administration was becoming heavy-handed and its domestic policy
forcible.
Mill's History was an established textbook at Haileybury College, where, from 1809 to
1855, the Company's Civil Service cadets were trained, and where a succession of
eminent utilitarians or close sympathizers held senior teaching posts; Malthus, Empson,
James Mackintosh, and later the celebrated Sir James Stephen. Holt Mackenzie, Pringle,
and Thomason went to Haileybury, and also Henry Elliot, the very first `competition
wallah', who did more than anyone else to perpetuate the Mill tradition in writing on
Indian history. Elliot (who rose to be chief secretary in the government of India's Foreign
Department) learnt Persian and devoted all his spare time to collecting the chronicles of
the Indian Muslim annalists of the Muslim and Mughal empires of the eleventh to
seventeenth centuries, which he duly catalogued and classified; with the help of John
Dowson (formerly a tutor at Haileybury and later Professor of Hindustani at University
College, London) and others, selections from these chronicles were translated and
published between 1867 and 1877 in eight large volumes. Since then, the story of
Muhammadan rule in India has been largely written from them: including Sir Wolseley
Haig's important third and (in part) fourth volumes of The Cambridge History of India,
published in 1928 and 1937, and still accepted as the standard British work. Elliot
poured as great scorn on Muhammadan government in India as Mill had done on the
Hindu; in the process pushing into the background the more sober, more sympathetic,
and objective interpretation of Elphinstone.
Not that Elliot wrote a formal history, but if he had, I think we can tell from his
preface and selection of material what line it would have taken.7 He strikes a note which
was to be caught by John Strachey in the field of administration, by Fitzjames Stephen in
law and political thought, by Kipling in literature, by Sir John Seeley in history, and by
Curzon in government. They were all agreed that the happiness of the governed which
might be ensured by strong executive government; and the rule of law was more
important than self-government their influence overbore Macaulay's and John Stuart
Mill's attempts to liberalize the utilitarian views of James Mill and also Ripon's
experiment in training Indians for self-government.
The British administration had moved into a phase of imperial dogmatism and
complacency about its achievement in India. Sir William Wilson Hunter, one of the most
famous of Indian civilians, who in the eighteen-eighties organized the great Imperial
Gazetteer of India, including a volume on history, and followed it up with a History of
British India, put this question to a friend; 'Can we ever conciliate India?' This was the
vital question to which the ablest administrators deliberately answered `No' in the India
of the Company. It remains the vital question to which we deliberately answer`Yes' in
the India of the Queen. As a matter of fact, he concludes triumphantly:`The task of
7 Dr.P.Hardy has drawn my attention to Elliot's most revealing preface to his History of India as
told by its own historians.

conciliation has been accomplished". This was in 1891, on the eve of the swaraj, or
freedom movement. Others, less eminent, answered differently. There was Digby,
whose study called Prosperous British India asserting that Britain was unfairly exploiting
India, draining her of wealth, set off a controversy that is not yet closed.
There were, too, Octavian Hume, Wedderburn, and Cotton, who chose to put their
emphasis rather on the British need to satisfy the new Indian middle class. With the
growth of this class, preoccupied with politics, a new audience with a passionate and
vested interest in Indian history had appeared; an audience which exaggerated India's
ancient glories and present miseries, in demanding a more sympathetic interpretation of
their own history. In an attempt to meet them, new editions of Elphinstone's work were
brought out in 1905 and 1911, the preface stating that they were intended for Indian
university students.
But by this time the researches of innumerable persons, members of the Asiatic
societies, Sanskritists, Persian scholars, not least the contribution of the archaeologists
and numismatists, had rendered Elphinstone's work hopelessly out of date, and had
carried the range of Indian historical studies beyond the reach of any one man; but the
evident need for text-book summaries persuaded Vincent Smith, whore retired from the
Indian Civil Service in 1900 and was teaching Indian History at Dublin, to write, in 1904,
the first general and authoritative history of early India in English, and seven years
later to put together in one volume his own researches on early India with those of Elliot
and Elphinstone and others on Muslim India, and those of Mill, Wilson, Hunter, and
others on the British period.
It had, in fact, taken a century of British paramountcy to produce an adequate text-

book on the history of India. Smith wrote at the close of the Curzon era and at the start
of the transition to Indian self-government and his work forms an important bridge in
our story. In his desire to write on the early and medieval history of India, and in his
sympathetic treatment of Indian civilisation, he links up with Elphinstone; but some of
his fundamental assumptions revealing differing views. When describing the disturbed
condition of India in the seventh century, after the death of the emperor Harsha, he
cannot help commenting that from this description the reader will gain a notion of
what India always has been when released from the control of a superior authority, and
what she would be again if the hands of the benevolent despotism, which now holds
her in its iron grasp, should be withdrawn'. In his outline history, `which' he says, `was
designed to preserve due proportion throughout', he can find no more suitable place at
which to bring to an end a story of over 2,000 years than `the memorable visit of Their
Imperial Majesties to India at the close of 1911.'
It was almost impossible to write in such a way as to satisfy both the Indian
nationalists and the Indian Civil Service. Each side claimed that it, and it alone,
represented the masses, and in this conflict, and in a genuine doubt on British ways and
purposes in India, much of the zest, the frankness, and interest passes out of British
historical writing on India. When, as in the nineteenth century, no one thought of any
public but a British one, criticism was lively and positive judgement was passed without
regard to political exigencies. In the twentieth century most of those who have written

have been haunted by the question: `will what I say in this difficult period of transition
make for easier and quieter government?' This awareness of an eavesdropping Indian
public has exercised a constant, silent censorship, seeming to make some writers like the
late Professor Dodwell, for example, appear unsympathetic to Indian political
aspirations, and others, like Edward Thompson, merely sentimental about them.
But for the greater part, this silent censorship has had the effect of reinforcing those
trends in British historical writing on India were created by Mill and Elliot, in a word, to
focus attention on what the British were doing in India, in government, law and
administration and to ignore what was happening to Indian society, and nowhere is this
more clearly to be seen than in the Cambridge History of India, the standard and by far
the most solid work of British historical scholarship on India, five volumes of which
were published between 1922 and 1937. This co-operative history bears the mark of the
period in which it was written and the legacy of this dominant tradition of which I have
been speaking.
The two volumes on the Mohamedan empires, edited and substantially written by Sir
Wolseley Haig, are built on Elliot's researches, representing a chronicle of chronicles and
a chronicle of emperors. Government and the army are prominently displayed, but
society, whether Muslim or Hindu, is conspicuous by its absence. The general tone is
cool and occasionally contemptuous. The two volumes on India under the British give
overwhelming attention to problems political and diplomatic, and especially in the last
volume, to questions of British central and district administration; no doubt valuable in
themselves, but throwing the work as a whole sadly out of balance. The social and
economic development of the country, and the evolution of the Indian peoples, is treated
as secondary; and, for instance, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, the protagonist of Bengali
Hindu nationalism, is not even mentioned. In these volumes the tradition of Elliot, Mill,
and Fitzjames Stephen is manifest. But volume one, on ancient India, edited by Rapson
the Sanskritist, stands apart. Unlike the other volumes, which were largely written by
professional historians and members of the Indian Civil Service, it was written by
Orientalists. Perhaps because of this, it evokes the spirit of William Jones and
Elphinstone, describing sympathetically a whole civilization, equally as concerned with
society as with government. Unlike the other volumes, it with stands the impact of the
Act of Independence of 1947.

2.REAL SELF GOVERNMENT FOR
By W.A. Hirst
Sometime Principal, Gujerat College, Ahmedabad
India Office No. P/T. 3380 Watts & Co,. London, 1933 6d. (3374-3384) pp.31
Preface:
Brief account of this scheme for reviving the Indian Village Panchayats have been
contributed by me to the Èmpire Review' and the `Spectator' but nothing has been
reproduced from these articles.
My object is to propose a system of rural self government for India in opposition to

the hybrid scheme which is now before the public. All acknowledge that our present
policy of abdication (if unhappily it should be carried into effect) will plunge India into
bloodshed and anarchy.
Let us stand upon the ancient ways and give the village a chance.
October 6, 1933.
pp.14.
"We have the natural materials for building up a stable self-governing State, and we
have perversely chosen to introduce an alien force which has ever acted as a dissolvent
in the East, and always will do so.
....The plain fact is that all parliamentary constitution are malignant poisons in the East
-a drug that doth work like madness in the brain.
pp.13.
Morley in Parliament: "If it could be said that what I propose would lead directly
upto the establishment of a Parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have
nothing at all to do with it.
pp.15.
A third truth, disregarded but implicit in the two afore-stated, is that the village
panchayats would give India local self government which would maintain instead of
impairing its welfare......It was an unhappy circumstance that, during the process of the
consolidation of our rule more than a hundred years ago, Oriental institutions were
regarded as by nature inferior to Western and the conscientious, energetic civilians,
who laboured to repair the ravages of many decades of war and confusion, reported that
the various practices and institutions which they found were an obstacle to progress,
and they hastened to replace them by something better. In most cases, however
excellent in themselves the new methods might have been, they were less suitable. But

there was then dominant the theory of the perfectibility of the human race by means of
laws and institutions, the new broom of the reformer had fullsway.
pp.16. In some aspects this prepossession-the fruits of Bentham's triumph - was very
unfavourable to the remaking of India; the belief that it was necessary to reform and
abolish antiquarian rubbish.. Instead of Oxford and Cambridge, the Indian Universities
were modelled on London, and this has hampered us from the first and is partly
responsible for the creation of a hybrid and discontented clan - the class for which it is
proposed to sacrifice the whole of India......the worst of all though least noted, was the
suppression of local self government. The panchayats were allowed to decay
p.17. Sir F.Lely struck the keynote in remarking to a witness (D.Com):(Centralisation) "In
an attempt to get the people govern themselves, in passing over the village and
beginning at the towns, have we not made a false step?". The witness was inclined to
agree with him.
pp.22 "The best of the Mohammeddan, Mahratta and Karnatic rulers, the best of the
Dravidian chiefs of the South, the feudatory sovereign or the territorial magnates of
upper India, did all they could to uphold the strength and prestige of the autonomy of
the village community and the authority of the village "panch". The worst of them
refrained from interfering with it in any manner."
(The Future Government of India - K.Vyasa Rao pp.21.)
pp.24 Here, then, was, and to some extent still is, a valuable system of self
government. But alas! the British administration has a black record in that respect. The
officers found as they thought, and in Elphinstone's words, a system "not compatible
with a very good form of government", and so determined to replace it with something
better. Then the village headman was subordinated to the Taluk or Patel, or other
minor official, and the various powers of the panchayat rapidly decayed.
pp.28. India has been the prey of theorists and megalomaniacs. Ignorant theorists come
from the West and attempt to force upon the country various political institutions whose
only effect is to disturb and disintegrate, Many of those who ought to have knowledge
of India, who ought to be in touch with the people, have piled up Secretariats at Simla
or Delhi, establishing castles of ignorance, where the denizens can never learn the
manifold lessons which are necessary to the management of these hundred and fifty
millions of people,...

3.RURAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN SWEDEN, ITALY AND INDIA
H.Zink A.Wahlstrand-F.Benevent -R.Bhaskaran T16880 International Political Science Association
Stevens 1957.
Study with an idea to determine role in land reforms. good para by Bhaskaran on
graft on page 130-1. Historical summing up on India page 19-24.
Pages 19-20: "In fact, the British administrators hold that the old Indian communities
were constituted on a narrow basis of hereditary privilege or caste, closely restricted in
the scope of their duties -collection of revenue and protection of life and property were
their main functions-and were neither conscious instruments of political education nor
important parts of the administrative system".
Under the British, collection of revenue and protection of life and property became
the business of an organised and country wide bureaucracy which also undertook the
responsibility for communication, public works, health and education. There was
nothing left to local initiative or enterprise. The rural local communities languished;
........
Pages 22-23: "(after 1919) There was a great extension of democracy and a sincere desire
to extend the services of the local bodies to the public as well as to turn over to local
bodies much of there responsibility for major roads, education and pubic health. But
the bitter political struggle which gripped the nation, the persistence of communalism
and faction, the rise and dominance of party bosses in local bodies, the lack of
experience and administrative incompetence among the officials employed by the local
bodies, these factors prevented again the smoother progress of local government.
.........."Again democratic provincial governments were compelled by experience to

supercede, dissolve or abolish local boards, diminish their function and tighten the
inspection over them. The general political and economic condition of the country
detoriorated after 1930. Local government could receive no attention in the final period
of political struggle in the country, local bodies being under the control of political
parties more intent on national freedom than local problems"

4. A STUDY OF PANCHAYAT IN MADRAS
- K.Jayaraman. (Spl. Pan. Officer, Govt. of Madras) I.S. Ag Ec, Bombay - 1947. pp.157 [V.2338-
I.O.Number] (approved by Madras Government)
N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar - (former Registrar-General) in Introduction "It (blame)

should rather be traced to the narrow vision of already established Government
departments and the mishandling of this vital village institution by means of those who
have, for the last quarter of a century, been engaged in public affairs". "Village faction is
no doubt there, but the surest method of eliminating it is to give villagers of different
factions, based upon community, religion and personal spite, the opportunity of coming
together for devising measures for the betterment of every individual in the village. The
organisation for the provision of these opportunities has not either been there or as been
tackled with an amount of suspicion and lack of confidence which it did not
deserve......Like all institutions of the kind, there will be continuous need for direction,
guidance and supervision from above for these institutions not only to help in ordering
their proper development but in the prompt weeding out of undesirable personalities
and influences which militate against their success."
Chapter I -Village Assemblies in Ancient South India
pp.1-17 page 15. The decline of the village organisation seems to have begun during the
Mussulmen invasion of the earlier part of the 14th century.... But the ancient community
spirit does not seem to have disappeared altogether in spite of these changes, for even
as late as the 18th century we hear of an instance of a village meeting to consider the
case of desecrating a village temple "in which people of all castes - from the Brahmins to
the Pariah - took part".
"At the beginning of the 19th century however, the village communities were getting
disintegrated even in those parts of the country where they still retained their original
form, and the various economic and administrative changes introduced by the British
rule hastened the decay of these institutions. It was the inevitable result of the
establishment of order by Government, internal tranquility and suppression of external
aggression, and the growth of the means of communication that the relation of the
village was broken and the villagers brought into more direct and intimate contact with
the State."

5.THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION, Science and Politics
Edited by Anne M. Bailey and Josep R.Llobera

(ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL, 1981 London, Boston and Henely )
pp 34-37, 44-5 Part I (eds) p 13-45
Marx's ethnological research and his correspondence on the Russian mir (47)
In the last years of his life Marx returned to his interest in precapitalist societies, this
time devoting himself to a more concrete study of these societies rather than attempting
to relate them to the categories of the capitalist mode of production. In reading Morgan
and Kovalevsky he began to see communal systems as a set of variants. In his critical
appraisal of Maine and Phear he returned to India as the laboratory for the study of the
dissolution of communal forms.
In his critical notes on Maine, Marx reproaches Maine's critique of John Austin's
theory of sovereignity. (48) Maine had failed to distinguish between government,
society, and the state. The state, in all its forms, appears at a certain stage of social
evolution, once there has been a process of individuation from the communal bonds of
the group. These ìndividualities' or interests are themselves class interests: `hence this
individuality is itself class, etc., individuality, and these interests all have, in the last
analysis, economic conditions at the basis. On these bases the state is built and
presupposes them' (Krader, 1972, P.329).
Thus the development of the state and the various forms it has taken cannot be
understood as a sequence of juridical forms but must be related to the relations of
production. In the development of the AMP, as seen in the Indian `laboratory', it is not
the direct producer of the village community who is freed from the communal bonds,
rather:
The individuality that is torn free is that of the consumers of the surplus
product, these are members of the ruling class, the sovereign, clients, his
retainers, the countries, the wealthy in the rural life, and money-lenders,
usurers, zamindars (Krader, 1975,p.224)
Despite Marx's opposition to Maine's general theory of the development of the state out
of the patriarchal family, Marx found in Maine confirmation for his own view of the self-
sustaining characteristics of village communities.
Marx criticized both Phear and Kovalevsky for the suggestion that feudal relations of
production were to be found in India. Kovalevsky had based his argument on the
existence of the ikta in India, land grants for military service rendered. Marx pointed out
that such benefices were not uniquely feudal, but had existed in ancient Rome as well.
Furthermore, the form of social labour in India could not be characterized as serfdom; in

India land could only be alienated through the consent of the village community; and
finally, in contrast to Europe, the ruler or superior lord had no claim over the
administration of justice on the domain of his vassal, whereas in India the sovereign had
direct control over his tax-collecting/policing agents(Levitt, 1978).
In the midst of his ethonological research, Marx was called upon to relate his work on
the village commune to the prospects of achieving socialism on the basis of pre-capitalist
relations of production. In November 1877, he had written a letter to the editorial board
of Òtechestvenniye Zapiski', contesting the idea that his theory of the development of
the capitalist mode of production in Western Europe was àn historico-philosophic
theory of the general path that every people is fated to tread' (Marx and Engels, 1965,
p.313). From his own researches Marx felt that Russia since the mid-nineteenth century
was tending towards becoming a capitalist nation.
In 1881, Marx was called upon to predict the fate of Russia. Was the complete
development of capitalism in Russia a necessary stage to the ultimate creation of
socialism or did the remaining institutions of the Russian commune provide a basis for
socialism? In his reply to U. Zazulich, Marx affirms that such a possibility of the
development of socialism existed, not just because of the survival of these pre-capitalist
relations, but because their survival was contemporaneous with developed capitalism
in Western Europe, by which Russia had not been enslaved as is the case in the East
Indies. This path would entail eliminating the private property which had developed
within the mir and incorporating the positive developments (technology) of capitalism.
The Russian commune, in which arable land was privately owned and pastures, forests,
etc. were held in common, is seen by Marx as the most recent form of the agricultural
commune. Whereas in the more archaic forms the individual was bound through
kinship to the commune, the more evolved mir was an association of individuals.
Marx's ethnological researches and his correspondence on the Russian commune

today constitute evidence of Marx's interest in the development of non-Western
societies per se, his critical appreciation of leading ethnologists of his day. These
writings reaffirm his method expounded in the `Grundrisse', particularly his wariness of
periodization focusing on a specific element abstracted from the totality.
Engel's Ànti-Duhring' (1878) and articles on Russia (1875, 1894)
Engle's `Herrn Eugen Duhrings Ummalzung der Wissenschaft' is a polemical work

aimed at refuting Duhring's force theory of history, wherein major changes in the
history of human society were attributed to warfare and conquest, Oriental societies,
with a history of numerous conquests but relatively stable base, constituted a good
counter-example to Duhring's theory. Engels noted that the age-old village
communities of India had evolved from tribal communal property to the parcellation of
land and (36) differences of wealth among the population; these changes had come
about through intercourse with the outside: exchange had resulted in unequal
distribution within the communities which in turn had led to the parcellation of land
and the creation of small and large property holders. Such changes had not been effected

by the conquerors; and members of these village communities had had little contact.
Economic processes rather than political events were at the basis of the change that had
occurred within these communities.
In arguing specifically against the force theory of the development of the state, Engels
postulated a two-stage development of the state; it first arose out of functions necessary
to, and serving, the common interest (generally protection, and in the Orient the
necessity or irrigation-works). Once in existence, the state developed into a repressive
force serving the interests of the ruling class. For Engels, oriental despotism was the
most primitive form of the state since it rested on the most elementary form of rent, rent
in labour.
In Engels's `The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State' (1884), composed
on the basis of Marx's notes on Morgan and Engels's own reading on communal
institutions in Europe, oriental despotism is not considered.
Whereas in Ànti-Duhring' Engels had focused on the historical civilized period, he

now projected his analysis back to the pre-historic condition of man. His method is
more chronological or historical, setting out a linear typology of forms, from simple to
complex. The basis of the topology is a common end point, which is defined by a
particular element, a strong centralized government. The state and its origins in Asia do
not enter into Engels's evolutionary scheme which is centred on the development of the
Mediterranean and Europe using Morgan's ideas on American Indians in his recreation
of early developments.
Engels also entered the debate on the Russian commune. The Russian commune was a
more evolved form of communal property than that found in India; within the
commune there were already significant differences of wealth. From all indications it
was leading towards complete dissolution into private property. Furthermore, the
isolation of these communities and the narrowness of the members' outlook hardly
provided the foundation for a transition to socialism:
Such a complete isolation of the individual communities from one

another, which creates throughout the country similar, but the very
opposite of common, interests, is the natural basis for oriental despotism,
and from India to Russia this form of society, wherever it prevailed, has
always produced it and always found its complement in it(Marx and
Engels, 1969, p.394)
Whatever vestiges of communal labour that remained in Russia could provide a partial
basis for the construction of socialism in Russia, but:
A victory of the West-European proletariat over the bourgeois: and the consequent
substitution of a socially managed economy for capitalist production - there is the
necessary precondition for the raising of the Russian Community to the same stage of
development (ibid.,p.402)

-------------------------
47. `The Ethnological Notebooks', ed. L.Krader (1972), contain Marx's notes and
comments on L.H.Morgan, Àncient Society' (1877), Sir John Phear, `The Aryan Village
in India and Ceylon' (1880), Sir Henry Maine, `Lectures on the Early History of
Institutions'(1875) and Sir John Lubbock, `The Origin of Civilization' (1879). Marx's
notes and comments on M.M.Kovalevsky, Òbscinnoe Zemlevladenie' (1879)
(Communal possession of land) are found in L.Krader, 1975, pp.343-412. Marx's letter to
the Editorial Board of Òtechesvenniye Zapiski (November 1877) was first published by
the populists in 1886 (Marx and Engels, 1965, pp.311-13). Marx's letter to Vera Zasulich
(8 March 1881) was first published by B.Nikolaevesky in 1924. The three drafts of the
letter are reprinted in CERM (1970).
48. John Austin, `The province of Jurisprudence Determined' (1832).

6. LETTER AND EDITORIAL FROM THE "TIMES" 1878
1) From the Times, Friday, January 4, 1878: Letter dated December 31 from J.F.Stephen, 4, Paper-
buildings, Temple. - 3 3/4 columns. (extracts, about half omitted)
2) From the Editorial of "The Times, Friday, January 4, 1878" (last para omitted).
1. From the Times, Friday, January 4, 1878: Letter dated December 31 from J.F.Stephen,
4, Paper-buildings, Temple.
...Mr. Bright's view is that our power is founded on "ambition, crime, and conquest,"
which I take it means that ambition and conquest are crimes. We are to regulate our
policy with a view to our departure from the country, and to try to win the preises of
our sons by "trying to make amends for the original crime" of our fathers. The temper
which dictated these expressions is seen in a string of sneers at all that has been and is
being done in India, and at the men who have done and are doing it. England "passed
through a great humiliation" at the Mutiny. Mr. Bright had tried for years to show that
the praises awarded to the East India Company were undeserved, and he was right, or
"when the Mutiny came there was nobody to say anything for the Company and that
famous old institution tumbled over at once, having not a friend or a single element of
power left in it." The present rulers of the country, at home and abroad, are, to judge
from his speech, deserving of little or no respect. The Council of the Secretary of State is
"cumbrous and burdensome". When a Governor-General is sent out he knows nothing
whatever about the country and begins to read Mill, in order to get some elementary
notions about it. He is not much better off when he gets to India. "Half-a-dozen
gentlemen in Calcutta, and who spend, I believe, half the year at Simla" (a remark which
if it has any meaning at all, means, so idle and self-indulgent are they) are utterly
incompetent to perform their task, which is to govern "one-sixth of the population of the
globe." There never was anything in the world so monstrous." As for economy, every
European in India is opposed to it, except the Governor-General; "they have all an
interest in patronage, promotion, salaries, and ultimately pensions." The country is on
the brink of bankruptcy. Those who direct the Government care nothing about any
expenditure which has any other object than their own and their friends' advantage, or
the military security. "Not one of these great personages" - ie., the principal official
persons in England and India- "steps forward resolutely with intelligence and force, and
courage" to put a stop to famines. I do not know that I should do Mr. Bright much
injustice by putting the result of all this, and more the same sort, into a few words;
"Indian civilians, - Our fathers were robbers and we are receivers. At one for their
original crime as well as you can by bringing up the sons of the men whom our fathers
plundered to replace you as soon as possible in the management of the property which
our fathers stole."
It seems to me that Mr. Bright allows his philantropy at times to make him cruelly
unjust. Moreover, his hatred of military power, his fanaticism in favour of popular
institutions, incapacitate him from doing justice to the Indian Empire or to the men who
administer it. If our presence in the country at all is a continuation of a crime; if the

systematic maintenance of that power by military force is essentially wicked, it seems to
me that nothing remains except the utterance of a mournful protest against the whole
system and a declaration that all reform of it is hopeless. The process of reform implies
some common ground with the institution which is to be reformed. This seemed to be
Mr.Bright's own view when he refused to take the responsibility of being Secretary of
State for India. He had a right to take that view, but then he ought in consistency to
keep silence on the subject. It is difficult to feel respect for the conduct of a public man
who utters strong opinions on great subjects, and will not act on them when he can. This
consideration would destroy the value of the views of the fairest-minded man who held
Mr. Bright's opinions; but I cannot truly say that Mr. Bright's speech is that of a fair-
minded opponent to a great institution. It appears to me to be the speech of one who
heaps on what he hates reproaches which he assumes to be true without any sufficient
evidence, and which are, in fact, utterly false.
Knowledge of Indian matters is not too common in England. Mr.Bright's speech

implies that the class from which the Governor-General is usually appointed is specially
ignorant, and his audience cheered and laughed at his account of the newly-appointed
Viceroy reading Mill. How many of them had read Mill? How many of them could
answer such questions as these - Into how many Provinces is India divided, and in
which of them is Delhi included? What is the difference between a division and a
district? What is the relation to each other of Hindustani, Hindi, and Urdu? What was
the date and what the effect of the Treaty of Bassein? How many legislative bodies are
there in India, how are they constituted, and what are their powers? What is the
difference between the Indian Councils Act and the Act for the better Government of
India? I should like to cross-examine a few of the noisiest of Mr.Bright's audience, or,
indeed, Mr.Bright himself, upon some topics of the sort. I believe that if no one had been
admitted to the meeting who could not point out on a map the positions of Jubbulpore,
Agra and Allahabad, the result would have given some sort of test of the real value as
distinguished from the accidental force of English public opinion on Indian subjects. An
ignorant laugh, or cheer, however, is a venial offence. I cannot say as much of grave
mis-statements recklessly made by men of the highest public standing; and I must say
that Mr. Bright's speech gives me the impression that if he had accepted the office of
Secretary of State, he might have done well to read Mill, or some other common book on
the subject. As it is, I fear that he (the use his own expression about the Governor-
General) "knows no more than the majority of his own class of society on the
question." I have marked no less than 17 passages in his speech which show either great
ignorance or great inaccuracy of expression, and I will quote six by way of specimens. I
referred to some in my last letter.
And now I wish to say a few words, if you will allow me, on the way in which I took at
the immense problem to which Mr.Bright has turned our attention. The differences
between us are far too deep to be discussed in your columns, but I should like to
indicate their nature. If I thought that our power in India had originated in crime and
was mainteined by brute force, it would have no interest for me. In that case I should
turn my attention to other matters and leave a hopeless system to reach its natural end
by its own road. I feel, however, that such a view is utterly false, and that We, the
English nation, can hardly degrade ourselves more deeply than by repudiating the

achievements of our ancestors, apologizing for acts of which we ought to feel as proud
as the inheritors of great names and splendid titles must feel of the deeds by which they
were won, and evading like cowards and sluggards the arduous responsibilities which
have devolved upon us. I say, let us acknowledge them with pride. Let us grapple with
them like men. That will enable our sons to praise us for something more manly than
reviling our fathers. Let them praise us, not for atoning for the misdeeds, but for
following the examples of Clive and Hastings, and the two Wellesleys, and Dalhousie,
and Canning, and Henry Lawrence and Havelock, and others whom I do not mention
because they still live and because I have the honour to call some of them my friends. I
deny that ambition and conquest are crimes; I say that ambition is the great incentive to
every manly virtue, and that conquest is the process by which every great State in the
world (the United States not excepted) has been built up. North America would be a
hunting-ground for savages if the Puritans had not carried guns as well as Bibles, and
the United States would be a memory of the past if the North, 13 years ago, had not
conquered the South. I, for one, feel no shame when I think of that great competitive
examination which lasted for just 100 years, and of which the first paper was set upon
the field of Plassy, and the last (for the present) under the walls of Delhi and Lucknow.
Like Mr.Bright, I can speak of the East India Company as a "famous institution; " but,
whether I thin of its history or of its end, I am conscious of no humiliation and I feel no
disposition to sneer. It is true that 20 years ago that famous institution struck its colours.
They had been displayed on many seas and on many fields of battle, and never more
triumphantly than at the close of the Company's career. It is false that they were lowered
under circumstances of humiliation, for the flag of England was hoisted in their place.
It is false that "the Company tumbled over because it had no friend left," no life, no
strength. It ceased to exist in the full pride of its strength, at the moment of its crowning
triumph, by the hands, not of the mutineers who tried to throw it down, but of men who
raised the Imperial Joint Stock Company to its proper place when they made it a
permanent member of the Government of England. what difference is there between the
institution over the fall of which Mr. Bright makes merry and the institution which has
replaced it? Much the same sort of difference as there is between the Courts at
Westminster as they were upto 1875 and the Supreme Court of Justice as it is now. Mr.
Bright, no doubt, thought that he was pulling down a rotten institution. In fact, he was
unconsciously building up an institution which had burst the mould in which it was
cast. The corporation has gone, but the corporators remain. The same men continue to
do the same things as of old in precisely the same spirit and under slightly different
names. Any one who will study the series of Charter Acts passed in 1773, 1793, 1813,
1833, and 1861 was in substance only an administrative change in the direction of unity
and simplicity, towards which every successive step manifestly tended. The Statue Book
has not a syllable which indicates shame or repentance. It breathes throughout of
Empire and Conquest. It was once possible to groan over the sins of the East India
Company and to represent their history as something other than a part of the history of
England. This is no longer possible. The Government of India is now, at all events, in
form as well as in substance, a distinct, avowed part of the doings of the English nation.
The institution is just as ambitious, just as much based upon conquest as it ever was; but
if there is any crime in the matter, it is the crime of the nation at large and not that of a
private company of merchants.

But was not the Mutiny a humiliation? Is it not humiliating for a Government to have
to fight its own army? That depends on the further question, What did they fight
about? To me the wonder is not that there was one mutiny, but that there was only
one. What can be expected when an enormous conquest has to be made, protected, and
guarded by an army of mercenaries? If we are too delicate-minded to be conquerors,
let us give up our conquest and throw India back into interminable anarchy and
bloodshed. If that seems at once cowardly and cruel, let us hold on to our conquest and
accept and discharge its responsibilities; but we can no more be conquerors without the
incidents of conquest (one of which is the possibility of insurrection and mutiny) then
we can eat omelettes without breaking eggs.
But what, it will be said, is the prospect before us? Do your regard India simply as a
Campus Martius in which Englishmen are to exercise the military virtues which are not
called into activity at home? Are we to look forward to nothing but a series of aimless
wars and a constant repression of popular disturbances, fighting still and still destroying
? If that is all, it may be a melancholy duty to stay where we are in order to keep off
something worse; but is not such a state of things very nearly as bad as bad can be ? Can
any humane person look with greater pride or exultation on the machinery by which
such a system is maintained than would be afforded by the view of an ingenious
gallows or a well-contrived apparatus for flogging garroters ? I should reply to such
questions that I regard India and the task of the English in India in a very different light
from this. The British Power in India is likely Vast bridge over which an enormous
multitude of human beings are passing, and will (I trust) for ages to come continue to
pass, from a dreary land in which brute violence in its roughest from had worked its will
for centuries -a land of cruel wars, ghastly superstitions, wasting plague and famine -
on their way to a country of which, not being a prophet, I will not try to dress a picture,
but which is at least orderly, peaceful, and industrious, and which, for aught we can
know to the contrary, may be the cradle of changes comparable to those which have
formed the imperishable legacy to mankind of the Roman Empire. The bridge was not
built without desperate struggles and costly sacrifices. A mere handful of our
countrymen guard the entrance to it and keep order among the crowd. If it should fell,
woe to those who guard it, woe to those who are on it, woe to those who would lose
with it all hopes of access to a better land. Strike away either of its piers and it will fall,
and what are they? One of its piers is military power; the other is justice, by which I
mean a firm and constant determination on the part of the English to promote,
impartially and by all lawful means, what they (the English) regard as the lasting good
of the natives of India. Neither force nor justice will suffice by itself. Force without
justice is the old scourge of India, Wielded by a stronger hand than of old. Justice
without force is a week aspiration after an unattainable end. But so long as the
masterful will, the stout heart, the active brain, the calm nerves, and the strong body
which make up military force are directed to the object which make up military force are
directed to the object which I have defined as constituting justice, I should have no fear,
for even if we fail after doing our best we fail with honour, and if we succeed we shall
have performed the greatest feat of strength, skill and courage in the whole history of
the world. For my own part, I see no reason why we should fail. What remains to be
done can hardly be more dangerous than what has been done already, though the

difficulties and dangers to be dealt with are more refined and less tangible. It was,
perhaps, an easier matter to win the victories of 1846 and 1857 then to deal with the
questions of our own day. Still we must recollect who we are and whose work we
inherit. The men are still living, and in the full force of their life, who did that which
neither our sons nor our grandsons will care to forget; and bearing in mind their
exploits, I shall not despair of dealing successfully with the great questions as to the
employment of Natives, the uncertainly and unsatisfactory character of the opium
revenue, the extension of trade with due regard to the principles of political economy,
and the prevention or mitigation of famine and pestilence without pauperising the
population.
As I see nothing chimerical in the end, so I see nothing monstrous in the means by
which it is to be attained. It is easy to talk of "half-a-dozen officials" governing a sixth of
the human race, under the direction of an ignorant Viceroy, subject to a not less ignorant
Secretary of State, with his cumbrous and burdensome Council. It would be equally
easy and about as just to talk of England itself as being governed by a Sovereign who is
a mere puppet, the strings of which are pulled first by a clumsy committee of politicians
called the Cabinet, which has not even got any legal character or powers, and next by a
popular assembly of 658 miscellaneous persons, who waste the greater part of whatever
powers they may possess in squabbling among themselves. We all know that such a
description of the Government of England would show nothing but ignorance and
impudence on the part of the describer.
Mr.Bright's description of the Government of India and of the India Office in England
is almost as unfair. The number of European officers is certainly small, but they are in as
close contact with every class of the population in every part of the country as the agent
of an Irish landlord is with his employer's tenants. Their knowledge is collected,
digested, and accumulate in a way of which it is impossible to give an adequate notion
to anyone who has not seen it. Their zeal and interest in the discharge of their duties are
such that it gives me real pain to find Mr. Bright insinuating that their minds are set on
personal objects. What pay they have, says Mr. Bright and above all what pensions.
Was any service ever paid so well? Was any money ever earned to well? And, after all,
what is it? How many men are at this day walking about the streets in honourable
poverty and forced idleness, and who are elbowed on one side as being his inferiors by
every schoolfellow moderately successful who stayed at home, and minded his own
business, while they were risking life and health, and foregoing home and happiness, to
earn the sneers of Mr. Bright! Bishop Milman once said to me, "I think upon the whole
that the district officers are the very best men I ever knew in my life;" and Bishop
Milman was not a bad judge of what constitutes a good man, and was less disposed to
praise at random than almost any man I have ever known.
From various sources, of which this is the most important, an amount of knowledge
upon every conceivable subject relating to india is collected and methodized at head-
quarters, which enables any man fit to be a Viceroy at all to inform himself upon the
subjects with which he has to deal with surprising rapidity; and, arduous and
multifarious as the duties are which devolve upon him and his Council, it must be
remembered that they do not do the actual hard work of Government. Their function is

to decide upon the questions which are proposed to them by their official subordinates
who transact upon the spot, and in the vast majority of cases without appeal or
complaint, the common routine of business. As for the manner in which the Viceroy and
his Council do their share of work I will only say that there are things which it is much
easier for seven men to do than for 700, and that the direction of the government of an
Empire is one of them.
I have I fear, occupied your space at almost intolerable length, but the subject is one
on which I speak from the fulness of my heart. I have had the privilege of being a close
spectator of one of the greatest sights in the world, and I cannot bear to see the work
misrepresented or those who do it undervalued.
I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

J.F.STEPHEN
4, Paper-buildings, Temple, Dec. 31.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2. From the Editorial of "The Times, Friday, January 4, 1878" (last para omitted).
Sir James Stephen is determined that Mr.Bright shall not escape unpunished for his
attack, some three weeks ago, on the English administration of India. In a second letter,
which we publish this morning, he pursues his old enemy once more from point to
point, trips him up half-e-dozen times, tramples him, and finally leaves him prostrate on
the ground, an awful example to any would-be offenders like him. It is harsh treatment
that Mr. Bright receives, but in strict justice not more than he has deserved. He probably
sees by this time that, when he next feels impelled to give reins to his fancy and indulge
his taste for hard hitting, he had better not choose India and Indian officials to disport
himself with. But to have forced this conviction well into Mr. Bright is, after all, a very
small success for Sir James Stephen scarcely worth taking up his pen to secure. Mr.
Bright's remarks, ill-advised as they were, and mischievous as they might have been in a
wholly different state of the public temper, fell very harmlessly indeed at Manchester.
No one is thinking just now how wise it would be for us to withdrew from India in
favour of some as yet unformed natives Government, or how much better we could
manage India if it were divided into five or six independent Presidencies. The day may
come when questions like these will be discussed as pressing, but it has certainly not
come at present. We hold India without constantly vexing ourselves with scheming in
what way we shall take our departure most gracefully and most advantageously. The
method of administration we are satisfied meanwhile to leave in the hands of those who
are practically conversant with the country; nor are we always searching into our title
deeds to see what flaws we can make out from the mistakes of past administrators. But
even if Mr. Bright must be judged to have sinned beyond all forgiveness and to have
deserved the scourge as often as Sir James Stephen is pleased to lay it on, yet surely the
guileless audience that listened to his remarks at Manchester need not receive the same
severity of handling. These sheep, we would ask pityingly, what have they done? They
have listened, replies Sir James Stephen, and they have been ready with their applause
for a speech of which they were no fit judges. They must share the condemnation of the
false prophet they have been silly enough to follow. They do not know where

Jubbulpore is, or what was the date and what the effect of the Treaty of Bassein. But, we
would ask in return, does not Sir James Stephen himself a little presume on English
ignorance when he wishes us to accept his glowing version of the early history of
English intercourse with India? That the natives of India have been the better for our
dealings with them is what we may take as granted on all hands. But are we therefore
to assume, as Sir James Stephen seems to do, that the merit of the unforeseen benefit is
to be reckoned backwards in favour of our adventurous ancestors, and that they are to
be credited with accidental consequences of which they could have known nothing, and
for which they would have cared nothing if they had known of them? The real question
for us is, not how we came to be in India, but how we have to act finding ourselves
there, weighted with the load of an empire. Nor can we admit that this is a question
which concerns no one outside the narrow circle of Indian specialists. It is one on which
Englishmen claim to have a voice and will insist on having one - wrongly, Sir James
Stephen thinks, rightly, we think - whether they happen to know where Jubbulpore is or
not. Our wish is that this interest could be developed, and that Englishmen could be
made to care more than they do for Indian questions and to meddle with them more
frequently. A knowledge about Jubbulpore and all the rest will follow in due course,
but it would not be well that it should be insisted on as a condition precedent.
There is scarcely anything which an expert so much dislikes as the criticism of

outsiders, and there is scarcely anything which is more necessary for him and more
capable of being turned to good account. It is not in Indian matters alone that the rule
holds good. Lewyers, politicians, men of science, and a dozen other classes besides, are
always supplying instances of it. the show of viceroy in all these cases rests easily with
the specialist. The reality of victory rests, in the long run, with the attack. There may be
a thousand errors and absurdities committed while the debate is in progress, far worse,
probably, then the very worst evil against which the attack is directed; but these
neutralize one another, and pass off, leaving behind them a clear and valuable
remainder of sound common sense. Mr. Bright's speech at Manchester and the applause
that attended it are thus to be looked upon as simply parts of a process, imperfect in
themselves, but by no means useless. Sir James Stephen's letter is another part. The
result will have to be looked for somewhere between the two, and it will bear traces of
both factors, and of all others that have gone to make it what it is. Sir James Stephen's
contribution would have been larger if he had been less mindful of Mr. Bright's
mistakes, and had not needlessly warned us against doing what, warned or unwarned,
there was not the least chance of our doing. But when he appeals to us to reverse our
judgement about the past, and to pronounce honourable and praiseworthy that which
we have fully determined is neither one nor the other, he will scarcely obtain a hearing.
Ambition, says Sir James Stephen, is a good quality, and we agree with him; but
ambition, he adds, must be tempered and kept within bounds by justice, and here we
agree with him, too. A love of exercising power, together with a firm purpose that
power shall be exercised in a regular way and for the good of its subjects, may go far to
account between them for the existing facts of English rule in India. But do they
therefore explain past facts? Have the two conjoined influences always thus gone hand
it hand? Or should we hold ourselves justified in choosing the same career in another
country which we once followed without any misgiving in India? What is Sir James
Stephen pointing to with his remarks on the folly of disuniting justice and force, and

with his half hints that it does not always do to be too scrupulous? We know, Well
enough, that justice without force to support it can be nothing but a name, powerless
for good. But the employment of force in restraint of wrong-doers or in self-defence is a
wholly different matter from its employment against our neighbour simply because our
neighbour is weak and cannot resist us. Sir James Stephen seems to confuse the two,
and to transfer to the latter a tribute of praise which can belong of right only to the
former.

7. A.SARADA RAJU: ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE MADRAS
PRESIDENCY 1800-1850, U of M, 1941.
(Ed P.S.LOKANATHAN)
Note: This document has not been compared with the original document for corrections.
P.19 The share of the crops which was appropriated for the village servants varied
generlly from 5 to 12 percent of the gross produce, though in chengelput and Madura
the proportion was higher. Mr. Hodgeson wrote that towards the close of the 18th
century, the deduction on this account amounted to 40 % (28), leaving only 60 % to the
ryot. But this must be an exaggeration, for it would leave hardly anything to the ryot
after paying the Government due which was usually half the gross produce.
(28 report on Dindigul, 1808, p.6)
IOR (Rev & 30 NW 1810) by James Cumming.

An Historical account of land Revenues XXXVIII + 921 hacs.
p.895 It is customery throughout that territory (and it is believed in every part of
Hindoostan ) for deductions to be made from the gross produce of the land as
appropriations to the municipal officers of each village; and for the maintenance of the
Pagodas and other public establishments.
The village officers are those who in various ways administer to the necessities and
wants of the little community to which they belong. The shares of the produce which
they recive, are in the nature of fees or a remmuneratory consideration for the services
they render. Those to the pagodas and other establishments are charitable
appropriations. Both these descriptions of allowances in kind are called `marahs' or
`russams'.
The cultivator who paid certain fees or perquisites in ready money called `sadeward'
for defraying the expenses of oil and stationary in the cutcherry of the village and for the
other purposes.
SOME OTHER MENTIONS OF VILLAGE INFRASTRUCTURE DEDUCTIONS

DINDIGUL: (District records, Madura, Vol.5160 (S.N.25681) )
Report by G.Wynch 24.11.1795. p.41,96-8, 99,100-3.
Deduction of over 25% from main crops as SWATANTRAM. Out of the swatantram
Circar is allocated 1/4 th.
MALWA (by Sir John Malcolm, later Governor Bombay, written 1820, published 1822)
p.430-31,Village Expenses and Establishment range from 22% - 33% (Details of expenses
on agriculture and value of total produce)
MASULIPATAM, RAMNAD,etc have similar references ON RATE OF LAND
REVENUE
1.MALABAR : no tax on agriculture till about 1736 (Comnr Graeme report 16.7.1822,
TNSA: BRP:Vol 277 A, Para 78)

2.CANARA: According to Thomas Munro the tax on agriculture till 1400 was equal to
the quantity of paddy seed but was taken in rice.
3. TRAVANCORE: Tax on agriculture was no more than 5 % to 10 % (Col.John Munro,
Resident in Travancore, House of Commons Papers, year___, Vol. XI, Q.1420,1427, 1478.
4. RAMNAD : "The assement of land was very trifling and the principal revenue to
Government had arisen from duties levied upon the trade of the country. " Madras.
Board of Revenue Proceeding: 6.8.1795, G.Powney to Board.
5. ADAM SMITH : Land Revenue in India was 1/5 th of produce. Also similar
statements were made by other British observers around 1770.
6. MANU SMRITI : 1/6 th to 1/12 th of Agriculatural production as tax.
7. AKBAR : Edict of 1/3 rd as land tax.
8. CAMBRIDGE ECNOMIC HISTORY : After taking note of Akbar, etc, seems to infer
that 1/2 of Agricultural produce was taken as tax.(I,p.358)
My Tentative Inference
It seems that traditional agricultural production treated the village infrastructure
(Religious, Cultural, Technical, Economic and Administrative) as a first charge on the
total produce. Along with it, it provided for its share of the intra-village expenses
(expenses of larger religious establishments, education and cultural centres,militia
services, administration-(Canoongo, Deshmukh, Madoomdar, etc). As indicated by
Dindigal, (above) around 1/16 th of the total production was similarly alloted by
agriculture to what may be called the `Circar'. Though in certain relatively small areas
of India the people may have at times paid 1/4 th, 1/3 rd, or even 1/2 to the `Circar' (as
a tribute paid by the conqured to the Conqueror) the norm practiced till about 1750,
appears to have been of the primary community budgeting for all the local
neighbourhood expenses, and in addition paying a proportion of about 1/16 th (which
may at times have risen to 1/12 th or 1/8 th) towards the expenses of a distant political
authority.

8. CHARLES WILLIAM BOUGHTON ROUSE: Dissertation Concerning
the Landed Property of Bengal, 179 .
pp.200 (apendix 201-322) (secretary Board of Control, dedicated to H. Dundas: 956.k.33)

Note: This document has not been compared with the original for corrections.
(p.171.) For be it from me to ascribe the schemes, which have been formed, at
different times, for the increase of the revenue, to intentioned oppression. They arose
much more from the expectation excited in Great Britain, by the erroneous notions
which had been propagated here, of the inexhaustible wealth of Bengal, and of
immense resources concealed by the zemindars, and the officers of collection, I am sorry
to say, attempts were still made to mislead (p.172) this country by such extravagant
delusions. Nations, like individuals, are, seldom placed in that state of perfect ease and
sufficiency, that they can resist the invitation to wealth, and say, "We are content". They
are too ready to find plausible grounds of right, when the means of acquisition are held
out to them. But, if there is no virtue and firmness enough in those intrusted with the
administration of India, to disregard all such fallacies and improvident speculation, for
raising the land revenue; we shall inevitably be punished by a defalcation of that we
actually enjoy.
These ? and inquisitions have been practised under the, government of our
immediate predecessors but still more under our own:-- and I fear Bengal has suffered
from such experiments.
J. Grant: An Inquiry into the nature of Zemindary Tenures, 1790 (BM: T.671(2)
(p.24) On the early conquests of the Mahomedans in Hinostan, towards the beginning
of the llth century, the Persian word (zemindar) was probably applied indiscriminately
to all those Hindoos were found in the possession of lands whether in their own right as
independent, or tributary Rajahs or princes, or merely as delegates in financial
management, under the proper vernacular appellation of Chowdry.
Q. Craufurd: Sketches...2nd edition 1792, 2 viols. IV: pp 102-22. In those countries
the lands were highly cultivated; the towns and their manufactures flourished; the
villages were composed of neat and (p.103) commodious habitations, filled with cheerful
inhabitants; and wherever the eye turned it beheld marks of the protection of the
government and of the ease and industry of the people. Such was Tanjore and some
other provinces, not many years ago
How We Tax India: A Lecture, 1858, pp. 40 (BM: 8023. aa. 8.)
(p.25) ..Lord Harris, the present Governor of Madras, in his minute dated October 26,
1854, advises its reduction, because, "In the Presidency, I hear " he writes, "that it is
often 50 per cent, or even more" !! ... Aurangzebe, in the necessities consequent upon
his long wars, had tried to get 50 per cent- - a proportion almost unheard of since the
days (p.26) of Alla-ood- Deen, one of the Mussulman rulers of the twelfth century,
whose name is execrated in oriental history as one of the most rapacious of monarchs....

Actually, however, our tax was soon discovered to be a great increase ... because we
levied it upon all the land in cultivation, which the native tax-gatherers did not .... You
will see how in this way each ryot might find his own individual tax twice as much as
his old share of the village tax, and yet the nominal percentage of gross produce might
be the same, or even less than before. This over-assessment, or rather rack-rent, was
not and could not be paid.
On Bengal Revenue Arrangements (IOR:HM 351)

(p.14) The (Nazir, Naib, and 46 others) were to be paid wages instead of fees and the
fees were to be abolished.
(p.19) The Chief Rs. 3OOO per month, Second Rs. 600 pm Persian Translator Rs 100
p.m.
(p.270) Warren Hastings to new Council: Oct 1774: Pallemow and Ramgur, --- and
Jugleterry & c... These may be properly termed military collectorships. They are
composed of the wild and mountain parts of the country which have been lately
reduced to a state of submission to government and require the continual presence of a
military force to keep them in subjection. The revenue which they yield is inconsiderable
but the possession of them is a security to peace of the cultivated and more civilized
lands in their neighbourhood (p.28) which till their reduction were continually exposed
to the ravages of the wild and lawless people inhabiting them.
Plan of 1781: (p.138) 13. That a commission of 2% on all net sums paid immediately
into the Treasury ... and a commission of 1% on all sums paid to the Treasuries which
remain under charge of the collectors ... shall on the passing of each month's accounts
be (p.139) allowed to the Members of the Committee (of revenue) ... the whole being
divided into 25 shares. The President shall take six shares, each of the other members
of the council shall have five shares, and the remaining four shares shall be divided
equally between the Secretary and the present Assistant of the Khalsa records.
Certain Religious Ceremonies at Surat 1836

Minute of Governor R Grant :22.11.1836
(IOR :BC: vol. 1618: No.64968 (115), pp 37-51, 20 paras; Governor General Auckland
Minute :
l.4.1837, pp.81-92; Coconut ceremony at Surat thrown in Tapti, salutes fired; Minutes
Feb 1833-31.10.1836; Madras GO: 26.7.1836; also No. 64969(79) Minutes of Munro
Thackeray Lushington 1822-29.)
4. I have never proposed to touch any of those great establishments which the
superstition of past dynasties has created in honor of the religions of the country; I
have not sought to intercept any of the funds which law or immemorial usage may
leave appropriated to the service of those religions. There is not a single zillah under
this presidency, not a single pergannah, not even a single village, a portion of whose
tenures is not employed in feeding priests, maintaining temples, and purchasing
superstitious services and in some places, very large endowments are thus supported.
Yet the British government (p.40) meddles not with these appropriations where it finds
them sanctified by time, however wanting in other sanctity; and on the present
occasion, I have not tried to move one of them, as I have already intimated, even with
a finger...

6. To Mahomedans, I believe that this forced participation in rites
which they detest and despise is often distasteful. The feeling does not break out into
act, for the fact is, that men will seldom sacrifice their interest to a scruple of
conscience. It is however well known that, a few years ago, a Muslim officer on the
Madras side refused to attend in honor of (p.42) a Hindu festival. A court of enquiry sat
on his conduct, which by the law subjected him even to capital punishment, and it
was found expedient to let the affair drop into obscurity.
The Hedaya (translated by C. Hamilton), 4vols, 1791.

(I: Larceny lxxi: Book VIII; vol II 82-138. Institutes: vol I, lxxi-lxxii Book IX; vol II 139-
256. Bail: Book XVIII; vol II 567-605, Offences against person lxxxii- lxxxiv: Book XLIX;
vol IV 270-327; Misc Cases: vol IV 568-74. Amputation: for stealing above 10 dirms.
Robbery: imprisonment till repentance; right hand, left foot (robbing). (??without
robbing) murder without robbery: death. both murder and robbery: option of
magistrate.)
Tithe and Tribute: vol II: 2O4-ll: (p.208) "The learned in the law allege that the utmost
extent of tribute is one half of the actual product, nor is it allowable to exact more; but the
taking of a half is no more than strict justice, and is not tyrannical, because it is lawful
to take the whole of the pers and property of infidels, and to distribute them among the
Mussulmans, it follows that taking half their incomes is ?? a fortiori".
Bombay Petition for law to enable Charitable Institutions to

Hold Land and Property in their own name; Turned down (IOR:BC: Vol.2529 :
No.146002(75), in Leg Despatch 31.3.1853, II, para 25; also. No.146167(22) Jud from
Madras 21.3.1853(10), Para 13. Hindu-Muslim affray at Trichi; No.146006(71) Calcutta
Memorial against police interference (2000 inhabitants) 25.9.1852. police notification
25.6.1849 prohibiting processions in several streets, stopped in 1850 Durga Poojah,
interference in Dec 1851, conviction for playing music in streets, Home Leg letter
31.3.1853(2) para 35, section 61 Act XII of 1852:23.10. 1852; No.146166(197) Fatal
accident at Trichi from furious riding, Mad Jud Letter 21.3.1853(10) paras 9-12;
No.146003 (353) draft Act for further repression of Dacoity in Lower Provinces)
25.Fully as much evil as good, we thought would be likely to arise from an
indiscriminate permission to create perpetual endowments for all purposes which might
take the fancy of individuals. The circumstances of a country change, and
independently of that consideration many institutions, from which great good is at first
expected, are found, by experience to develop evils not contemplated by their
founders. We therefore doubted the expediency of complying with the wish of the
memorialists unless some distinct and well defined power of control were vested either
in the executive government or in the court of justice which should under the institution
established under the Act, not only subject to periodical examination in respect of their
manner of working and their usefulness to the community generally, but would
empower the controlling authority to make such changes in the system and
management as from time to time might be deemed necessary. Practice of Bharwittye:
Judge and Magistrate Kaira to Government (IOR: BC: vol 458: N0.11064(32) General
state of society in Ceded territories)

Rev Despatch to Bombay: 10. 1. 1810 : l04.II. The second general head to which the
information you have collected may be reduced is the state of society in the ceded
territories. In the pergunnah of Broach much
greater order and tranquility prevail than in the northern districts of Guzerat, nor does
there seem to be any serious obstruction in the manners and habits of the people to the
introduction of a permanent system analogous to that which we have established in
other parts of India.
Rev Letter from Bombay: 2l.l2.l8l3: 94: The state of society in Gujarat and the prevalence
of crimes in that province have not we are happy to say proved of that disorderly and
serious nature which from the observations contained in these paragraphs your Hon'ble
court would appear to apprehend.
Bombay Jud Cons:7.4.1813:14(p.12.) Yet it is no less certaian that the Bharwittiya hardly
ever failed to gain his object ultimately. The almost solitary instance of Naar Singh is
both too recent and the scene too remote to have any detering influence in the #
? to which I allude.
Madras Presidency Religious Places;1841-

N.W.Kindersley, Principal Collector, Tanjore to B of R : 26.11.1841 ( IOR:M Bof R
Proceedings: P/303/32:16-23.12.1841, pp.18870- 94, 95-7; Despatch 21.4.1841:
Government Letter 12.6.1841: Bd's proceedings 24.6.1841 in P/303/12;Dispatch
16.12.1840 No.18) ----------- (pp.8134-37)
2. The places of native worship under the superintendence of government officers in

Tanjore are all Hindoo and their number 2, 874
Receiving money allowances 875
Depending on the land &c 1, 999
-------------
2, 874
They were brought under the superintendence of the collector in 1812. But all those
whose annual receipts from land and money endowments did not 30 chucrums (Rs 46-
10-8) per annum 2,247 in number, were made over, upon my own responsibility, to
the entire management of their respective stanicks in 1833. The aggregate amount
(p.18871) of their endowed revenues, averaging about 11 1/2Rs per annum to each
institution, and the extent of land attached to them, which is confined entirely to
topesare exhibited in the margin.
v m g Rs a p
Lands(area)707 - 19 -45 (value)17, 610- 1-10
Money allowance 8, 342- 5- 4 Rs 25, 952- 7-2
3. These may be considered disposed of agreeably to the wishes of Government, and
will require no further reference in this report.
4. There remain 627 places of native worship the annual revenues of which at the time
of their assumption, amounted according to the Dowle Beriz, to Rs 3, 31, 709-12-2.
Land 13, 117 v Rs 2, 04, 902- 8- 8
Money allowance Rs 1,26,807-3-6 Rs 3,31,709-12-2

5.No money allowances have been assigned for the support nor any sum been
expended in the repair of the buildings or for any other object... since the assumption
of the province by the Company's government.
Madras Board of Revenue:24.6.1841 (IOR:P/303/12, p.8138; also

28.6.1841: Bd to Govt on Trees, Govt letter 31.5.1841, Bombay Enquiry:
(pp.8210-14)
1. Ordered that transcript of the foregoing letter be forwarded by circular to the

several collectors in the provinces and to the collector of Madras, with reference to the
communication from this department of date the 10th June.
2.It will be the duty of the collector to report in detail the arrangement he would
propose for each institution in his district, explaining the present extent of interference
and control and shewing how far that is withdrawn by the operation of the method of
administration that is to supercede the present management. It will be proper also to
suggest in what manner vacancies to be supplied in the trustees whether arising from
death or resignation so that the withdrawal of active interference by government in the
affairs of pagodas and mosques shall be final and complete. The attention of the
several authorities is specially drawn to the observation in para 5 of the chief Secretary's
letter and it is requested that the arrangements best calculated to give effect to the best
wishes of Govt be supplied from each district at the earliest practicable period.
Steps regarding route to India through Egypt, etc.
Board of Control to Marquis of Carmarthen on Instructions to Mr. Baldwin, Consul-
General in Egypt (IOR:F/2/1:Board's Letters: 7.9.1784- 14.10.1795, pp.162; pp. 74-94,
dated 19.5.1786,instructions: pp.95-107:28 paras, route by Suez to East Indies:108-119)
(p.75) The grand end of Mr Baldwin's residence at Cairo is the opening of a

communication to India through Egypt ...keeping up a constant and uniform succession
of correspondence with these important, but distant parts of the British empire. This
might be accomplished alternatively by the three ways of the Cape, Bussorah, and
Suez. The two former are already open to us, but being excluded from the latter, a
material interval occurs from the month of April till July, when no other route can be
performed so soon by nearly two thirds of the time.
Capitulations between HM and the Port of 1675
If the English Nation had, in fact, shewn any such design as the Firmaun imputes to
them, of "seizing on the cities and territories or enslaving the subjects belonging to the
Porte", (p.82) how is it that no ill consequences have resulted from their having
factories at Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo and other places, without ever having yet
shewn any such design.
(p. 88) Sir Robert (Ainslee, envoy to Porte) may have full liberty to employ (if he finds
it absolutely necessary for the accomplishment of both these objects) a sum of money not
exceeding 2,000 (p.89) pounds sterling, and a further sum not exceeding L. 600 per
annum to be employed in making suitable presents as occasion may require.
(p.110) travelling times:
London to Venice (or Leghorn) 15 days
Venice to Alexandria 20 days

Alexandria to Suez (via Cairo) 6 days
Suez to Anjengo 20 days
Anjengo to Calcutta 40-45 days #?
------------
Liberal estimate 100 days
-------------
Stratton, AW: (1866-1902: Oriental College, Lahore) Letters from India l908,
introduction by Maurice Bloomfield.
Intro : Many days and nights have gone since Dr. Strutton's untimely death. In the
language of the little Brahmna legend about Yami the Hindu Eve, who will not foreget
her dead Adam, Yama, until the gods create night to alternate with day:` 't is days and
nights that cause men to forget sorrows.'
Sardar Patel Correspondence: Vol 8: JN to Rajendrababu 8.12.49 pp.219-23; R to JN

12.12.1949, pp. 224-5; JN to Sardar, 19.6.49,#244 (on Lohia arrest) We are rapidly getting
out of touch with public opinion and becoming just a government and more. An
extreme development of this is Calcutta. But even in Delhi the Congress has hardly any
position left. They are afraid of holding public meetings, unless (p.221: Calcutta meeting
; #??)

Vol 19

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Vol 19

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Vol 19

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

VOL.

Ashram Pratishtan, Sevagram - 442102

1. HISTORIANS OF INDIA, PAKISTAN AND CEYLON ....................................................... 3

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 2 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 3 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 4 of 37

2`James Mill and India' October 1951

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 5 of 37

By this assessment, contemporary as well as ancient India, whether in science,

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 6 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 7 of 37

5 I am indebted for this apt quotation to Dr.K.A.Ballhatchet.

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 8 of 37

At this point he happended to read in The Edinburgh Review Macaulay's essay on

...Our writers confound the distinctions of time and place;

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 9 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 10 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 11 of 37

It had, in fact, taken a century of British paramountcy to produce an adequate text-

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 12 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 13 of 37

My object is to propose a system of rural self government for India in opposition to

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 14 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 15 of 37

.........."Again democratic provincial governments were compelled by experience to

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 16 of 37

N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar - (former Registrar-General) in Introduction "It (blame)

Chapter I -Village Assemblies in Ancient South India

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 17 of 37

Edited by Anne M. Bailey and Josep R.Llobera

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 18 of 37

Marx's ethnological researches and his correspondence on the Russian commune

Engel's `Anti-Duhring' (1878) and articles on Russia (1875, 1894)

Engle's `Herrn Eugen Duhrings Ummalzung der Wissenschaft' is a polemical work

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 19 of 37

Whereas in `Anti-Duhring' Engels had focused on the historical civilized period, he

Such a complete isolation of the individual communities from one

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 20 of 37

48. John Austin, `The province of Jurisprudence Determined' (1832).

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 21 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 22 of 37

Knowledge of Indian matters is not too common in England. Mr.Bright's speech

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 23 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 24 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 25 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 26 of 37

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 27 of 37

There is scarcely anything which an expert so much dislikes as the criticism of

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 28 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 29 of 37

IOR (Rev & 30 NW 1810) by James Cumming.

SOME OTHER MENTIONS OF VILLAGE INFRASTRUCTURE DEDUCTIONS

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 30 of 37

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 31 of 37

pp.200 (apendix 201-322) (secretary Board of Control, dedicated to H. Dundas: 956.k.33)

Archival Compilations – Vol. 21 Page 32 of 37

On Bengal Revenue Arrangements (IOR:HM 351)

Certain Religious Ceremonies at Surat 1836