India Under British Rule

Extinction of the Peishwa, 1818.

Such a humiliation must have taken away all hope from the Peishwa. For six months longer he kept out of the reach of his pursuers, but was at last environed by British troops under Sir John Malcolm. He threw himself on the mercy of the British government, and eventually talked over Sir John Malcolm, as he had done a year or two previously in the matter of the three fortresses. From feelings of pity for an Asiatic prince who had ruined himself by his own treachery, Malcolm gave his personal guarantee that the British government would pay a pension to the conquered Peishwa of 80,000l. a year. Lord Hastings was extremely angry at such a charge upon the yearly revenue, but would not withhold his sanction to Malcolm's guarantee.19 Since then there has been no Peishwa of the Mahrattas. The ex-ruler lived in idle luxury near Cawnpore, whilst his dominions were incorporated with the Bombay Presidency. A futile attempt was made by Lord Hastings to revive the extinct Raja of Satara, but in the course of years the Raja was intriguing like the Peishwa, and the principality was eventually annexed by Lord Dalhousie.

Pacification and protection of Rajputana, 1818.

The crowning event in the administration of Lord Hastings was the renewal of protective treaties with the princes of Rajputana. The raids of the Mahrattas, which had been the curse and agony of Rajputana for nearly a century, were stopped for ever. The territory of Ajmere, in the heart of Rajputana, which had been successively the head-quarters of Mogul and Mahratta suzerainty, was taken over by the British government, and is to this day the head-quarters of the Agent to the Viceroy for the states of Rajputana, and a centre of British supremacy and paramount power.

Lord Amherst, 1823-28: demands of Burma.

§12. Lord Amherst succeeded Lord Hastings as Governor-General in 1823. The wars of 1817-18 had established the peace of India, by breaking up the predatory system which had been a terror to Hindus and Mohammedans for more than a century. But the king of Burma, to the eastward of Bengal, was causing some anxiety by demanding the surrender of political fugitives from his dominions who had taken refuge in British territory. The British government refused compliance. Had the refugees been given up, they would have been crucified, or otherwise tortured to death by the Burmese officials. Common humanity forbade the concession, so the refugees were required to keep the peace within British territory, and to abstain from all plots or hostile movements against the Burmese government.

Burmese aggressions.

For years the Burmese officials tried to bully the British government into surrendering these refugees. They knew nothing of the outer world, and treated the British with contempt as a nation of traders, who had paid the Indian sepoys to fight their battles. Conciliation only provoked them to insolence and aggression. They seized an island belonging to the British. They overran the intervening countries of Munipore and Assam, and demanded the cession of Chittagong. Finally, they invaded British territory and cut off a detachment of sepoys, and threatened, with all the bombast of barbarians, to conquer Bengal, and bring away the Governor-General in golden fetters.

Expedition to Rangoon, 1824.

At last Lord Amherst sent an expedition under Sir Archibald Campbell to the port of Rangoon, the capital of the Burmese province of Pegu. The Burmese officials were taken by surprise. They sent a mob of raw levies to prevent the British from landing, but the impromptu army fled at the first discharge of British guns. The British landed, and found that all the men, women, and children of Rangoon had fled to the jungle, with all their provisions and grain. The British occupied Rangoon, but the country round about was forest and swamp. The rains began, and the troops were struck down with fever, dysentery, and bad food. No supplies could be obtained except by sea from Madras or Calcutta. Nearly every European in Rangoon who survived the rains of 1824 had reason to remember the Burmese seaport to the end of his days.

British advance to Ava.

Peace.

When the rains were over a Burmese general of great renown approached Rangoon with an army of 60,000 braves, and environed the place with stockades. There was some severe fighting at these stockades, but at last they were taken by storm, and the braves fled in a panic. The British expedition advanced up the river Irrawaddy, through the valley of Pegu. The people of Pegu, who had been conquered by the king of Burma some sixty years before, rejoiced at being delivered from their Burmese oppressors, and eagerly brought in supplies. The British expedition was approaching Ava, the capital of the kingdom, when the king of Burma came to terms, and agreed to pay a million sterling towards the expenses of a war which cost more than ten millions. The British were content with annexing two strips of sea-board, known as Arakan and Tenasserim, which never paid the cost of administration; and left the valley of Pegu, and even the port of Rangoon, in possession of the king of Burma. But Assam and Cachar, between Bengal and Burma, were brought under British rule, and eventually made up for the expenditure on the war by the cultivation of tea.

War against Bhurtpore, 1825-26.

Meanwhile, Lord Amherst had some difficulty with the Jhat state of Bhurtpore in Rajputana, which had defied Lord Lake in 1805, but had eventually been brought under British protection. In 1825 the Raja died, and the succession of an infant son was recognised by the British government. An uncle, however, seized the throne, and shut himself up in the mud fortress which had resisted the assaults of Lord Lake. At first Lord Amherst was disinclined to interfere, but all the restless spirits, who had been reduced to obedience by the wars of 1817-18, were beginning to rally round the usurper, who had openly defied the British government. A British force was sent to Bhurtpore, under Lord Combermere. The mud walls were undermined, and blown up with gunpowder. The British soldiers rushed in, the usurper was deposed, and the young Raja was restored to the throne, under the protection of the paramount power.

Lord William Bentinck, 1828-35: peace and progress.

§13. Lord William Bentinck succeeded Lord Amherst in 1828. His administration was emphatically one of progress. He promoted English education amongst Hindus and Mohammedans, and founded a medical college at Calcutta. He laboured hard to establish steam navigation between India and Europe viâ the Red Sea, in the place of the old sailing route round the Cape. He encouraged the cultivation of tea in Assam and Cachar. He sought to open a trade with Central Asia up the river Indus, but was foiled by Runjeet Singh, who was still as friendly as ever, but resolutely bent on keeping the British out of his territories.

Abolition of Suttee 1829.

In 1829, the year after the arrival of Lord William Bentinck, he electrified India by the abolition of suttee. In these advanced days it is difficult to understand why British rulers did not suppress this hateful rite the moment they had the power. But for many years toleration and non-intervention were a kind of fanaticism with British administrators; and the Bengalis appeared to exult in the performance of a rite which they knew to be obnoxious to Europeans. As a matter of fact, the number of suttees in Bengal appeared to increase under British rule, and this was most marked in the villages round Calcutta.

Relief of Hindus.

The abolition of suttee by treating it as a capital crime was followed by none of the evils which had been anticipated. There was no rising of the sepoys; no discontent on the part of the masses. British rulers were delivered from the odium of sanctioning a barbarous crime under the plea of religious toleration; whilst the living widow was no longer compelled to immolate herself with her dead husband, nor was her son forced by a sense of duty to apply the torch to the funeral pile. The pride of Brahmans and Rajputs may have been wounded when all concerned in the performance of the ancient rite were punished by imprisonment or death, but humanity has triumphed, and suttees have vanished from British India, and from every state owing allegiance to British sovereignty.

Thug atrocities.

§14. The suppression of the Thugs was another work of the time. These detestable miscreants appeared to the outer world as honest traders or agriculturists, who occasionally went on pilgrimage or travelled for business or pleasure. In reality they were organised gangs of murderers, having a dialect and signs of their own. They made friends with other travellers going the same way; halted beneath the shade of trees, and suddenly threw their nooses round the necks of their victims, strangled them to death, rifled them of their money and goods, and buried them with a speed which defied detection. Sometimes the unwary traveller was beguiled by a female to a lonely spot, and was never heard of more.

Hereditary Thug gangs.

Every boy born of Thugs was brought up in what may be called the religion of the noose. From his cradle he was taught that he was bound to follow the trade of his forefathers; that, like them, he was the blind instrument of the deity of life and death. At first he acted as a scout; then he was allowed to handle and bury the victim; and finally tried his prentice hand at strangling. Before committing his first murder, one of the elders acted as his Guru or spiritual guide, and initiated him in the use of the noose as a solemn rite associated with the worship of the goddess Durga, Bowani, or Kali, the mythical bride of Siva, the incarnation of the mysteries of life and dissolution, who is often represented with a noose in her hand.20 Throughout his after career he adored the goddess as a tutelar deity; worshipped her in temples where Thugs officiated as priests; and propitiated her with offerings of flesh meat and strong drinks, which were supposed to be most acceptable to female divinity.

Suppression.

The Hindus were too fearful and superstitious to suppress the Thugs. The Moguls had no such scruples, and often condemned Thugs to a cruel death; but wealthy Hindus would offer large ransoms to save their lives, or would follow the miscreants to the place of execution and regale them with sweetmeats and tobacco. When, however, the British discovered the secret organisation, they resolved to break up the gangs and put an end to the hereditary association. A department was organised for the suppression of Thugs, and chiefs and princes were called upon to co-operate in the work of extermination. Between 1830 and 1835 two thousand Thugs were arrested, and fifteen hundred were imprisoned for life, or transported beyond the seas, or publicly executed. Many saved their lives by giving evidence against their fellows, but were shut up for the rest of their days to protect them from vengeance, and to prevent their return to a horrible profession which had become an hereditary instinct in Thug families. To this day the children or grandchildren of the old Thug gangs, who were the terror of India within the memory of living men, are manufacturing carpets, or working at some other useful trade, within prison walls.

Civil and judicial reforms.

§15. Lord William Bentinck put a finishing touch to the civil and judicial administration which Warren Hastings initiated and Lord Cornwallis reformed. The district was still retained as the unit of Indian administration, with its civil judge, and its collector and magistrate, and necessary establishments of native officials. But the civil judge was invested with the criminal powers of a sessions judge for the trial of prisoners, and henceforth known as the district judge. The four provincial courts of circuit and appeal were swept away, and the supervision of districts was entrusted to commissioners of divisions, each having five or six districts under his control. Henceforth the collector and magistrate was under the control of the commissioner, and was sometimes known as the deputy commissioner.21

Asiatic officials.

Lord William Bentinck also introduced an Asiatic element into British administration, which was the first real movement in that direction. He appointed natives of India to be "deputy collectors," and created a higher class of native judges to those appointed by Lord Cornwallis. They are known in the present day as "subordinate judges." The further development of these political experiments belong to the later history.

North-West Provinces.

§16. Hitherto the "North-West Provinces" had been a mere appendage of Bengal. They were known as the Upper Provinces, whilst Bengal, Behar, and Orissa were known as the Lower Provinces. But a territory which extended from Assam to the Punjab was too vast for the supervision of the Governor-General of Bengal in Council. Accordingly the North-West Provinces were separated from Bengal and placed under a Lieutenant-Governor, without a Council, but with a separate Sudder Court and Board of Revenue.22

Hindu village communities.

The Hindu people in the North-West Provinces are more masculine and independent than those of Bengal. In Bengal the Hindu village communities had nearly faded away under the domination of zemindars. In the North-West Provinces the village communities had survived every revolution, and have been compared to little commonwealths, each having an individual and domestic life of its own, unchanged by the storms and troubles of the outer world. The village community paid a yearly revenue,—a share of the crops or a commutation in money,—to whatever power might be uppermost, Mogul or Mahratta, Mohammedan or Hindu. The members took a keen interest, individually and collectively, in settling the yearly rate to be paid by the whole village to the government of the day. But otherwise they cared not who was the reigning authority, Sindia or Lord Wellesley; nor who was the French general of the sepoy battalions of Sindia, nor who was the British commander-in-chief of the armies of the Governor-General.

Constitution of Hindu villages.

The village community was originally a brotherhood, consisting of a tribe, family, or clan, who settled in a particular locality, and distributed the land, or the produce of the land, amongst themselves. The area was called a village, but was more like an English parish. The village community managed its own affairs, and claimed a joint proprietorship in all the land within the village area. They rented out waste lands to yearly tenants, strangers and outsiders, who were treated as tenants, and shut out from the management. Some of these tenants acquired rights of occupancy by prescription or length of possession, whilst others were only tenants at will.

Hereditary officials and artisans.

The village commonwealth had its own hereditary officials, such as a village accountant, who kept a record of all transactions between the joint proprietors, and all accounts between the joint proprietors and their tenants. There was also a village constable or guide, who watched the crops and looked after strangers. Sometimes, when a brotherhood had decayed, a head man ruled the village in their room; and the headman, with the help of the accountant and constable, managed all the domestic affairs of the village, and conducted its relations with the outer world. To these were added hereditary artisans, such as a carpenter, potter, blacksmith, barber, tailor, washerman, and jeweller. In like manner there was an hereditary schoolmaster, astrologer, and priest, who were generally Brahmans. The higher officials were remunerated with hereditary lands, held rent free; but the others were paid by fees of grain or money. Traces of these institutions are still to be found in Behar and Orissa, but in Bengal proper the village life has died out. Hereditary artisans still remain, but hereditary officials have become the servants of the zemindar.

Land revenue.

These village communities contributed a yearly revenue to the government of the day, either as joint proprietors or through a head man. In theory they claimed possession of the land because they had cleared the jungle, and cultivated and occupied a virgin soil. But they paid a revenue to the Raja in return for protection, or to satisfy the superior right of the sovereign, or as black-mail to prevent the Raja from carrying off their crops and cattle.

Talukdars or zemindars.

After the Mohammedan conquest the mode of collection differed according to circumstances. Sometimes officials were appointed by the sovereign. Sometimes a local magnate, or a revenue farmer, was employed, who collected the revenue from a group of villages, and paid a yearly block sum to the sovereign. They were middle-men, getting what they could out of the village communities, and paying as little as they could to the government of the day. These local chiefs, or revenue contractors, were known in the North-West Provinces as talukdars. They corresponded to the zemindars of Bengal, and often, like them, assumed the rights of ownership over the villages.

Settlement with joint village proprietors.

Lord Wellesley ordered that the land revenue in the North-West Provinces should be settled with the talukdars at fixed rates, like the perpetual settlement with the zemindars in Bengal. Fortunately, there was a preliminary inquiry into the conflicting rights of talukdars and village proprietors, which terminated in favour of the villagers. Lord William Bentinck travelled through the North-West Provinces, and eventually the land revenue was settled direct with the joint village proprietors.

Madras villages: Hindu colonisation.

§17. The Madras Presidency seems to have been originally distributed into village communities of joint proprietors. A Hindu legend has been preserved to this day, which tells the story of old Hindu colonisation. A Raja of the southern country had a son by a woman of low birth. The people refused to accept the prince as their Raja. Accordingly the young man crossed the river Palar with a band of emigrants, and cleared the forest to the northward, near the site of the modern city of Madras. For six years the emigrants paid no share of the crops to the Raja. In the seventh year they were brought under the revenue administration.23

Joint village proprietors.

The modern history of this locality is equally interesting. It was ceded by the Nawab of the Carnatic to the East India Company during the wars of the eighteenth century, and was known as the Company's Jaghir. It was found to be in the possession of joint village proprietors of the same constitution as those described in the North-West Provinces, and a settlement of the land revenue was made with these joint proprietors.

Disappearance.

During the latter half of the eighteenth century the rights of the joint village proprietors in Southern India faded away under the tyranny of Asiatic rulers, but the hereditary officials, artisans, and professionals still survived. Few, if any, joint village proprietors in their full entirety could be found in any villages under the Nawab's officials; whilst those within the Company's Jaghir had been duly respected and preserved by the British officials. Under such circumstances it was proposed to settle the revenue of the Carnatic territory, acquired in 1801, with individual ryots or landholders under what was afterwards known as the ryotwari system.

Perpetual settlement ordered.

Lord Wellesley, however, interfered, and ordered that perpetual settlements should be concluded with zemindars. Somehow this zemindari settlement had a fascination for British statesmen of the period. It was believed that the creation of an aristocracy of landlords would guarantee the permanence of British rule in India. Accordingly, Lord Wellesley was deaf to all arguments in favour of a ryotwari settlement, and threatened to remove any public servant in the Madras Presidency who should hesitate to carry out his orders.

No zemindars.

Madras had no alternative but to submit. There were zemindars in the Telugu country to the northward, which had been conquered centuries previously by the Mohammedan Sultans of Golconda; and with these zemindars it was easy to conclude a perpetual settlement. But there were no zemindars in the Tamil country to the southward.

Zemindars created.

In this extremity there was no alternative but to manufacture zemindars. Accordingly zemindars were created in the Madras Presidency by the old Bengal process of grouping villages together, selling them by auction, and treating the lucky buyer as a zemindar. But the new zemindars failed to pay the stipulated revenue. The groups of villages were again brought into the market, and as Lord Wellesley had left India, the estates were bought in by the Madras government, and the revenue resettled with individual ryots or cultivators.24

Military bond-holders.

In Malabar and Canara on the western coast the proprietors of land did not live in villages. They were landholders of the old military type, clinging to their lands with hereditary tenacity, employing serfs or slaves to cultivate them, and paying no revenue except feudal service and homage to their suzerain. Eventually Malabar and Canara were conquered by Tippu of Mysore, and the landholders were compelled to pay revenue, or to surrender their lands.

Thomas Munro: ryotwari settlement.

Thomas Munro is the real author of the ryotwari settlement. He was a cadet in the Madras army, who landed at Fort St. George about the time that Hyder Ali was desolating the Carnatic. In 1792 he was employed in settling the revenue in Malabar and Canara, which had been ceded by Tippu to Lord Cornwallis; and there he formed his ideas of a settlement direct with individual landholders. The controversy between Madras and Bengal raged for years, but in the end Thomas Munro was victorious. He converted the Board of Control and Court of Directors to his views. He was knighted, and appointed Governor of Madras. He died in 1827, after having triumphantly introduced the ryotwari. The zemindars in the Telegu country still retain their estates with the proprietary rights of landlords.

Bombay: Mountstuart Elphinstone.

Meanwhile the Bombay Presidency had been vastly enlarged by the acquisition of the dominions of the Peishwa. Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the contemporary of Sir Thomas Munro, was appointed Governor of Bombay. He introduced the ryotwari settlement into the Mahratta country, and framed a code of laws which remained in force throughout the Bombay Presidency until 1860, when it was superseded by the Penal Code.

Madras collectorates.

Lord William Bentinck's system of commissioners of divisions was introduced into the North-West Provinces and Bombay; but the Madras Presidency was without commissioners or divisions, and was distributed into twenty large districts or collectorates, which on an average are as large as Yorkshire. In Bengal and the North-West Provinces the districts on an average are no larger than Devonshire. In each Madras district there was a collector, who might be described as a proconsul, and a civil and sessions judge, corresponding to those in the other Presidencies. The administration of the Madras Presidency, revenue and judicial, has always been distinguished by a larger element of Asiatic officials than either Bengal, Bombay, or the North-West Provinces.

Charter Act of 1833: India Thrown open.

§18. The last and most important changes in the rule of the East India Company were carried out during the administration of Lord William Bentinck, under the charter Act of 1833. Before, however, dealing with this radical reform, it may be as well to review the successive stages in the relations of the East India Company towards parliament and the crown.

Company and Crown, 1600-1688.

During the seventeenth century, the first of the Company's existence, it mainly depended on the favour of the crown. It had obtained a charter of exclusive trade from Queen Elizabeth. It prevailed on James I. to send Sir Thomas Roe as ambassador to India, to propitiate the Great Mogul and secure his good offices for the Company's trade. It sold 600,000 lbs. of pepper to Charles I. on the security of bonds on the customs, and enabled that sovereign to raise £60,000 for the expenses of his war with Parliament. Oliver Cromwell however did not approve of trade monopolies. The Lord Protector was willing to help the English Company to fight the Dutch Company, but he was of opinion that every Englishman had as much right as the Company to trade in the Eastern seas. Charles II. and James II. renewed the Company's original monopoly and privileges, and received presents in return, which however rarely exceeded the modest sum of £1,200 a year.