On the Degradation of Mobility in Early Colonial India

Introduction The ability to move, to uproot ourselves and relocate, both as individuals and as communities is an important aspect of labour studies and labour history. The nature of settlements, migration patterns, and the composition of settled and migratory populations have been looked at in a variety of ways by academics, and fall within a variety of disciplines. In this paper, the role migration played in the formulation of agrarian policy in Early Colonial India is examined. In particular, the implications that community movement had on British thought in the formulation of their policy. The article also highlights the considerations that would have factored into British agrarian, landholding and revenue policy with regards to the question of movement. Prasannan Parthasarathi’s “The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India 1720-1800”1 and the arguments on societal condition and the role of mobility plays an important role in the essay. The argument presented here can in fact be seen as an elaboration of Parthasarathi’s arguments in conjunction to a wider set of factors, regions and communities. The essence of Parthasarathi’s argument is that the ability to migrate at a whim, walking out of agreements in times of distress or in the face of pressure from the other party played a crucial role in production systems among weavers and agrarian labourers in South India. Parthasarathi’s argument focusses primarily on weaver communities to advance this thesis, though he also devotes a chapter2 to agrarian labourers as well. He enters the long standing debate on the question of the wealth of pre-colonial producer and agrarian labourer communities. He challenges the existing academic mainstream view of seeing these communities, particularly those which were lower in the caste hierarchies, as being impoverished and lacking power. This view had emerged as a counterpoise to an earlier narrative which saw such communities as having been wealthy and competitive in the precolonial era, and blamed their degradation on Colonial practices. Weavers have in particular received significant attention in these debates. Parthasarathi points out that while in quantitative terms the material prosperity of these communities in question may not have been high, their communal prosperity and strength was quite high. One factor behind this strength lay in their freedom to move. 1 (Parthasarathi, The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India 17201800, 2004) 2 (Laborers, kings and colonialism, pp. 121-149) The expression of this freedom and strength lies in the fact that the demand for the activities of these communities (agrarian labourers and weavers) far outstripped the total supply. Thus, there were always people looking to employ them and this in turn meant that a current employer or contractor3 needed to constantly ensure that those contracted with him stayed. An inability to do so, either due to his actions or outside pressures, could result in the weavers or labourers simply relocating with their meagre possessions to a different employer. In this regard, the simplicity of their material existence is a part of the community’s strength. Parthasarathi brings out that the political setup prior to the imposition of Colonial practices was such that these communities were not restrained from acting in this way. Thus, their ability to bargain in the contract was enormous4. Equally important to Parthasarathi’s argument is the degradation of the position of these communities. Through an examination of Colonial practice and policy, it is shown that the imposition of curbs on the movement of weaving and labour communities5 was crucial to the economic and attendant social degradation of said communities. In dealing with the Indian modes of trade, and imposing their vision of contract and trade on Indian communities, the English East India Company6 ended up changing the balances of power. Producing communities such as that of the weavers and agrarian labourers found their position diminished while merchants, traders, and various landholding communities found their hands strengthened. The contention of this paper is that this issue of migration was not merely limited to communities in South India. We can locate7 a similar set of practices by agrarian communities involved in the cultivation process, even in Bengal. Reading the primary sources and the conjunction of arguments of historians such as Wilson and Parthasarathi allows us to project that an assertion as to the widespread prevalence of this phenomenon. A more 3 The term is used in a generic sense to describe any individual or community who had entered into an agreement for the services. Merchants and cloth traders would be contractors with regards to the weavers, and landholders and other various communities involved in the control of agricultural lands for labourers) 4 In history, contracts or agreements should not be seen as something fixed in time, but instead seen as a continuous dialogue. Therefore a contract or agreement is a constant process of bargaining, especially when we are looking at such things in a broad context of historical trends and between communities. It is my belief that Dr. Parthasarathi would agree with this interpretation on contracts and the influence it has had on the interpretation of his work with regards to this article. 5 Something the Colonial State was able to do as its political power expanded 6 From here on simply East India Company or Company 7 Substantiated below in Intervention of the Colonial State, see passages of Francis and Hastings from (Francis, 1782) and in conjunction with Jon Wilson s ('A Thousand Countries To Go To': Peasants and Rulers in Late Eighteenth-Century Bengal, 2005) generalized contention is that this freedom to migrate was central to the communal strength of communities involved in production. For much of its history, India has traditionally been a land where the total area under cultivation was vastly lower than the total area that could be brought under cultivation8. Towards this end, we can note that the demand for agrarian labour9 would have consistently been greater than the total availability. The “threat” of the ability to leave with impunity gave to the cultivator and agrarian community strength in negotiations with landholder communities and groups such as the Zamindars and Talukdars. Intervention of the Colonial State With the grant of the Diwani by the Mughal Emperor10 following the battle of Buxar in 1764, The East India Company became the territorial power in Bengal and Eastern Bihar, and was acknowledged as such by its neighbouring territories. In 1772, with the passage of Lord North’s Regulating Act, the Presidency of Bengal became the seat of English power in India. The first Governor General of Bengal – Warren Hastings, was not however a power unto himself. He was a member of a governing council, and it was largely through the council that he could act. The conflicts between him and Philip Francis, the physiocrat whose 1776 plan became the basis of Cornwallis’ Permanent Settlement have been remarked upon by many historians11. Francis’ Plan of 1776 and the discourse by administrators such as Hastings lie at the heart of the argument here. We can see that British Administrators of the Company were fundamentally opposed to the system of migration as it existed. For a variety of reasons explained below, they sought to establish a more fixed notion of settlement and landholding, and eradicate the free movement of primary producers. The assertion here is that a system existed wherein cultivators and agrarian producers were free to move about. Both Hastings and Francis have alluded to it, though as we can see, they would have sharply divergent opinions about it. Francis for instance would say the following 8 (Cambridge Economic History of India, 1983, pp. 17, 157, 230, 364, 525, 917) Particularly skilled cultivators, rather than simple manual labourers 10 Shah Alam II in 1765 11 Several historians have commented upon this and the different dimensions they disagreed on, and even Firminger devoted an entire chapter to the feud (Firminger, 1917-18). For instance, see (Marshall, 1965). With regards to their differences on agrarian policy however, the best guide would likely be Ranajit Guha (Guha, A Rule of Property in Bengal: An Essay on the Ideas of Permanent Settlement, 1981, pp. 61-143). 9 “I know not whether, in ancient times, the Ryots constantly took out Pottahs or not. They derived a better security against ill-treatment from the natural interest and relation, by which they and the Zemindars were mutually bound to-each, other. This security, so much superior to any formal engagement the present system promises to restore. By establishing a quit- rent for each Zemindary, we make it the interest of the Zemindar to extend his cultivation to the utmost; which can only be done by encouraging the resort of Ryots, and by letting his lands on such favourable terms as may excite their industry. I have heard it asserted, that formerly, when a Ryot quitted any Zemindar's lands, he followed him and used every motive of persuasion to prevail on him to return; and that the Zemindars were accustomed to bribe away each others tenants.”12 Hastings on the other hand, retained a more jaundiced view about this phenomenon, as he noted13: “It is to be observed also, that there are two kinds of Rieats. The more valuable are those who reside -in one fixed spot, where they have built themselves substantial houses, or derived them by inheritance from their fathers. These men will suffer much before they abandon their habitations, and therefore they are made to suffer much; but when once forced to quit them, they become vagrant Reiats. The vagrant Reiats14, as Mr. Francis observes, have it in their power in some measure to make their own terms with the Zemindars. They take land at an under rent, hold it for one season ; the Zemindar then increases their rent, or exacts more from them than their agreement, and the Reiats, either desert, or, if they continue, they hold their land at a rent lower than the established rent of the country.”15 12 Taken from (Francis, 1782, pp. 61-62). The passages quoted from this text have all been slightly modified by me for the purposes of readability. Minor alterations to the text (such as replacing the letter f with s, where appropriate) have been made towards this end. The structure or construction of the passages has not been tampered with nor have any changes been made which would alter the meaning of the passage. Similarly, all personal spellings have been retained as written by the authors. 13 (Francis, 1782, p. 154) 14 It is worth noting, that in my perusal of the text, I was unable to find Philip Francis using the term vagrant. 15 The sections in bold and underlined are my emphasis The British administrators thus found that many communities favoured a mobile existence. Another example this for encounter of the community moving in the face of disruption can be located in the famous (or infamous depending on one’s perspective) Rangpur dhing of 1783, a widespread peasant insurgency. Absconding in the face of intolerable policies was considered a right by the Ryots16, one which they pleaded to administrators17. The suppression of these rights by British Administrators and their agents18 was articulated as a grievance and has been considered a crucial factor in the spread of discontentment in the region. The expression of this practice as a right indicates the degree of the importance attached to it, and historians across the board have recognized this. The statement reported by Firminger19 “‘You are head of one country, we have a thousand countries to go to, You are Chief, we are Ryotts [raiyats], you will therefore order us Justice’”, one emphasized by Wilson is an example of this and its recognition by historians. This existence gave to them a degree of power over their negotiations with the landholders who were Zamindars and Talukdars. As Francis seems to have observed, this system led to the landholders needing to constantly placate their cultivators. The divergent opinions also led to diverging methods with regards to the plan being discussed. Francis had noted that excessive taxation by the state had been at the heart of the agrarian decline of Bengal.20 His survey of the situation led him to develop the plan which called for a permanent fixing of revenues and agreements, as well as insisting that the Zamindars reach fixed agreements with their cultivators which they were not free to change. Francis wanted21 to avoid the system as it existed at the time, describing it as confused, and replace it with a more formal set of agreements and contracts. From his statements we can thus see a common attempt to suppress the migratory system in place. The idea was to keep the cultivators fixed, since it ensured a stable flow of revenue. While Francis envisaged the cultivator-zamindar agreement fixed only as long the rent was fixed, and that the agreement should be with the consent of the cultivator, he was nonetheless quite happy to place the onus of “keeping the peace” on the same zamindar. Making the principle landholders responsible 16 See for instance the statements by Ryots to the Rangpur Commission from (Kaviraj, 1972, pp. 51-52) There is debate as to the nature of the uprising and the quality of the engagement. A contrarian position has been taken by Jon. E. Wilson in (Wilson, 2005) 18 In the case of the 1783 dhing Richard Goodlad, the collector of Rangpur and his native agent Debi Singh. 19 I Petitio of ‘yots of Cargeehat, Futtypore &ca. , i Fir i ger ed. , Be gal District Records, Rangpur, iv, 139. From (Wilson, 2005, p. 5) 20 (Francis, 1782, pp. 29, 40, 49) 21 Ibid p.62 17 for the internal stability meant that the tools of coercion would be placed with the same group which was responsible for maintaining their agreements with the contracts. Francis for himself did not envisage the government “descending to the level of the Ryot” 22. The language of Francis, despite an otherwise positive recognition of the migratory system nonetheless conveys a belief in the need to settle cultivators rather than letting them move about. The use of terms such as desertion,23 for instance show us to see that even for Francis, a sense that the agreement and contract were supreme was crucial. The emphasis on sustaining agreements and the enforcement of a British sense of contract is what led to the degradation of the peasant class in South India, as Parthasarathi24 had shown, pointing to an English system which was determined to break the power of the cultivator. Hastings is much more explicit than Francis, and despite the common agreement between the rivals on the need to fix cultivators, saw this mobility in much harsher terms, using language such as “flown off from their engagements”25 and “absconded”26 Both Hastings and Francis however would agree that the ownership of the land would be vested with the Zamindar.27 The protection to the cultivator was merely against dispossession so long as “rent” was paid. The reduction of the cultivator to a mere tenant, and the strict enforcement of contracts and agreements (thus binding the cultivators), and vesting the powers of keeping the peace with the Zamindar had the cumulative effect of severely curtailing the power of the agrarian labour community. By destroying the mobility of the community, the state significantly weakened the bargaining power of these communities, leading to the agrarian and peasant degradation that historians have commented upon. We can also see that Parthasarathi’s argument for South India can be extended to Bengal, where the state embarked on a campaign to degrade mobility, arguably even before it did so in South India. Ultimately Francis’ vision was to simply leave the Zamindars and Ryots to themselves28, and when Hastings would eventually concur, the idea would take root in the 22 Ibid p.29 Ibid p.68 24 (Parthasarathi, Laborers, kings and colonialism, 2004, p. 141) (Parthasarathi, The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India 1720-1800, 2004) 25 (Firminger, 1917-18, p. 219) 26 Interestingly, even in reporting comments from natives, administrators utilize these terms, lending strong credibility to the arguments of Guha in (Guha, The Prose of Counter-Insurgency, 1988) on the need to deconstruct the language of the author of an archive 27 (Francis, 1782, p. 153) 28 (Guha, A Rule of Property in Bengal: An Essay on the Ideas of Permanent Settlement, 1981, pp. 90-96) (Firminger, 1917-18, p. 304) 23 state towards degrading the movement of people through a rigid system of contracts even as power began to be vested with the Zamindar class. The essence of these ideas was at the core of the Permanent Settlement enacted by Cornwallis. Cornwallis, as Ranajit Guha noted, was sympathetic towards the landholding classes29 and sought to strengthen their hands. Drawing much inspiration from Francis’ plan, the Permanent Settlement created a system which fixed rents, but also vested30 the Zamindar class with enormous powers to coerce the cultivators. The state aided this system as authors have noted, as enforcement of rigid notions of contract took place, negating the ability of cultivators to renegotiate or move. With the heavy revenue burden on the Zamindars that came about, the Zamindars in turn sought to completely exploit the cultivators so as to satisfy these demands. The long term effect was the disastrous degradation of the cultivator community in the long run. While the Colonial state would eventually seek to implement other plans, it nonetheless absorbed the strong ideals of suppressing movement and migration. This has been noted by authors writing on disparate fields. Radhika Singha has for instance noted31, notions of enumeration and policing were intrinsically tied up with this philosophy of negating free movement. Similarly Prathama Banerjee32 has noted that the state sought to curb movement and the customs of nomadic and semi-nomadic communities in the encounter with forest communities and “tribal” societies. The suppression of movement and migration, and the settlement of communities, even with the use of force and coercion would therefore become a central tenet of the Colonial State, and also demonstrably played a critical role in the degradation of producing communities. As Wilson has been able to point out, it had proved critical to the process of impoverishment due the strengthening of the coercive powers of the landholding communities, as well as forcing them to exercise said coercion in the face of heightened revenue demand. This in turn has been considered by Wilson to have been an important contributor to peasant alienation and consequently peasant rebellion. Unable to tap the enormous demand for their services by moving to favourable locales, these communities lost an important tool of negotiation, and in the process found themselves at the mercy of those who sought to exploit, and eventually degrade their social and economic standing. While rebellion33 was an option that was utilized 29 (Guha, A Rule of Property in Bengal: An Essay on the Ideas of Permanent Settlement, 1981, p. 171) (Bandyopahyay, 2004, pp. 83-86) 31 (Singha, 2000) 32 (Banerjee, 2000) 33 The Rangpur dhing of 1783 for instance 30 in the face of intolerable conditions, with the enormous disparity in strength, the peasant classes were, for the most part, impotent in preventing this. The Military Angle Where did this motivation to suppress mobility come from? As authors such as Guha and Bandyopadhyay have noted, part of it was located in purely economic and administrative terms. The setup allowed the state to increase revenue, made it easier to enumerate and control communities, and at the end of the make the communities conform to a more Anglicized vision of landowner-cultivator relations. I am of the opinion that this vision can in part be located in purely English ideology and motivations. The English state had traditionally not seen the same question of supply and demand for cultivator communities and land supply that India had, save for a brief period in the aftermath of the Black Death.34 In response to the spike in demand, the state had enacted severe laws to prevent the free movement of serfs35, at times even free peasants36. Thus, the entrenched notion of favouring landed classes over cultivators seeking to use their ability to move as a bargaining chip was a part of English history and ideology. One overlooked aspect however is the military. Historians such as Seema Alavi37 have noted38 that the existence of a military labour market39. The crux of the argument is that the 18th century was an era in transition with regards to military cultures. With the slow decline of the Mughal military culture, communities were shifting to peasant based infantry centric armies. The British were reliant on the Military for their power, and the Bengal Army, the premier arm of Company power, was constituted to consist of upper caste peasant communities from Western Bengal and Eastern Bihar, drawing primarily from the landed communities. This was in response to the military traditions as they were shaping up, with other powers, such as Awadh, also seeking to draw on upper-caste landed communities for their military strength. 34 (Hilton & Dyer, 2003, pp. 152-3) (Prestwich, 2005, p. 548) 36 (Ormrod, 1996, p. 156) 37 (Alavi, 2006), in particular see chapters 1 and 2, pp 11-95 38 Citing Dirk Kolff (Kolff, 1990) 39 Essentially, there was a large pool of communities which were available for recruitment into militaries, and this labour market would be heavily contested, as control of the market would grant dominance to the power controlling and monopolizing it 35 The East India Company was eager to push further west since due to the belief that superior troops were to be had from wheat growing territories40. Their ideology of recruiting from the landed elite was however established. We can thus note that there was an inherent need for the British to favour the class which was the source of their military recruits. The ideologies of administrators from Hastings to Cornwallis in favouring the landed elite over the cultivators must thus consider this factor. Ensuring the stability and prosperity for the landed elite was therefore a must. Another factor we should consider when discussing migration and movement is the ebb and flow of the military labour market. Restricting the movement of cultivators not only helped strengthen the recruit base of the Bengal Presidency Armies, but it also meant depriving other political power of the same communities which would empower and strengthen their own landed elite. Destabilizing the flow of revenue for rivals through destabilizing their agrarian systems while strengthening their own thus had military implications as well as economic, making it easier for the Company to expand its political and eventually its territorial grasp. A conjunction can also be made in the theses of Alavi41 and Banerjee42 to show that the British state, in controlling the movement was also looking to experiment militarily by creating new pools of recruits which it sought to exploit. The Military angle thus leads to the contention that imperatives of military strategy and control, and military culture were as critical to the suppression of mobility and migration by the Colonial State as questions of ideology, English customs and laws, and economic imperatives. We can see that a convergence of factors led to the state developing a strong position against the free movement of communities, which would seep into the essence of its ideology and structure and would guide many of the laws and policies it enacted. These practices would also have disastrous consequences on the social and economic well-being of communities, and while some of this impact has been examined by historians such as Parthasarathi, the impact on other communities in other parts of India remains to be studied. Certainly, at the very least, a common pattern of behaviour and outcomes can be outlined, as has been attempted here. Bibliography 1. Alavi, S. (2006). The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770-1830. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 40 (Alavi, 2006, pp. 38-42) In the chapter the Military Experiment with the Hill people (Alavi, 2006, pp. 155-194) 42 (Banerjee, 2000) 41 2. Bandyopahyay, S. (2004). From Plassey to Partition. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. 3. Banerjee, P. (2000, December). Debt, time and extravagance: Money and the making of 'primitives' in colonial Bengal. Indian Economic Social History Review. doi:10.1177/001946460003700402 4. Firminger, W. K. (1917-18). The fifth report From the select committee of the House of Commons on the affairs of the East India Company, date 28th July, 1812 . 5. Francis, S. P. (1782). Original minutes of the Governor-General and Council of Fort William on the settlement and collection of the revenues of Bengal : with a plan of settlement, recommended to the Court of Directors in January, 1776. Boston Public Library. Retrieved October 2016, from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/originalminuteso00fran 6. Guha, R. (1981). A Rule of Property in Bengal: An Essay on the Ideas of Permanent Settlement. New Delhi: Orient Longman. 7. Guha, R. (1988). The Prose of Counter-Insurgency. In G. C. Ranajit Guha, Selected Subaltern Studies (pp. 45-87). Oxford University Press. 8. Hilton, R., & Dyer, C. (2003). Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381. Routledge. 9. Kaviraj, N. (1972). A Peasant Uprising in Bengal 1783: The First Formidable Peasant Uprising against the Rule of East India Company. New Delhi: People's Publishing House. 10. Kolff, D. (1990). Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 11. Marshall, P. J. (1965). The Impeachment of Warren Hastings. Oxford University Press. 12. Ormrod, M. (1996). The politics of pestilence: government in England after the Black Death. In M. Ormrod, & P. Lindley, The Black Death in England (pp. 147-81). Stamford: Paul Watkins. 13. Parthasarathi, P. (2004). Laborers, kings and colonialism. In The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India 1720-1800 (pp. 121-149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 14. Parthasarathi, P. (2004). The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India 1720-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 15. Prestwich, M. (2005). Plantagenet England: 1225–1360. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 16. Raychaudhuri, T., Kumar, D., Habib, I., & Desai, M. (1983). Cambridge Economic History of India (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Archive. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?id=9ew8AAAAIAAJ&dq=cambridge+economic+history+of+ india&source=gbs_navlinks_s 17. Singha, R. (2000). Settle, mobilize, verify: identification practices in colonial India. Retrieved October 2016, from www.oslo2000.uio.no/program/papers/s4/s4-singha.pdf 18. Wilson, J. E. (2005, November). 'A Thousand Countries To Go To': Peasants and Rulers in Late Eighteenth-Century Bengal. Past & Present, pp. 81-109.