A correlative review study on land revenue systems: - Zamindari, Mahalwari and Ryotwari

system

Abstract

Agriculture has been the most important source of income in India. Tax from land was a major
source of revenue for the kings and emperors from ancient time. So administration needs a
proper care to handle land revenue system. During the eighteenth century, the process of decline
the Mughal Empire continued and the British colonial power have risen in India. After securing
the Diwani rights of Bengal in 1765, the British East India Company worked to enlarge the
company’s revenue which was reflected in their land policies and settlements. The British
company invented and experimented different land revenue settlements in colonized India.

Land revenue was one of the major sources of income for Britishers in India.

Keywords: Land Revenue System, Zamindari, Mahalwari, Ryotwari.

Introduction
The British East India Company introduced new revenue policy which has completely destroyed Indian
agriculture system. All rural classes’ especially poor peasants had been disturbed by the British land
revenue policy and administration. The new revenue policy also worked against the interest of small
land owners, raiyats and share- croppers who constituted the poor peasantry. Growing indebtedness
among the poor cultivating classes and consequent transfer of lands to money-lenders had considerably
worsened agrarian relations and the resultant unrest threatened the political stability of British rule.

Objective of the study

Objective of the study is to study land revenue systems and its kinds like Zamindari, Mahalwari and
Ryotwari system.

History of Land revenue system in India

During the Muslim period Indian polity had only three constituents: the ruling sovereign, the army that
supported the throne and a peasantry that paid for both .Agriculture being the most important
occupation before the British rule and during it. It was the most important source of income for the
state also. So the crucial importance of well managed land revenue administration. The essential feature
of the land revenue system was a three tier framework of rights. The lowest tier consisted of rights to
collect taxes, and the upper most tiers consisted of rights to grant taxation rights vested ultimately in
the imperial center. Each one of these levels was differentiated with in itself.
After gaining full control over Bengal in 1765 and securing the Diwani rights the administrators of the
British East India Company primarily worked to enlarge the company’s revenue which was reflected in
their land policy and settlement. In beginning, company followed the traditional land assessment system
but after that they modified the existing land settlement from time to time to collect maximum revenue
from land to fulfill their needs of colonial administration

First of all Lord Cornwallis introduced Zamindari system in 1793 through Permanent settlement Act.
Zamindars were recognized as owner of the lands and were given the rights to collect the rent from the
peasants. They were declared full owner with absolute proprietary rights in land, without realizing that
they were only tax collecting intermediaries during the preceding regime. Infact the Britishers wanted to
introduce property rights in land and thus redefine the relationship between the cultivators and the
state. The Zamindars were the key link between the central authority and the vast numbers of peasants
who occupied and cultivated land. But it was a great injustice to the peasants (raiyats) as the Zamindari
settlement totally ignored their occupancy rights and reduced them to the position of mere tenants at-
will on their own fields.4 the Britishers thought that the Zamindar were like the landlords of Britain that
is a superior type of cultivator and they believed in that the Indian Zamindars also brought a commercial
revolution in Indian agriculture as enterprising English landlords had done in England. Some historians
attribute that the permanent settlement was devised to create a class of loyal collaborators for building
the empire.

After sometime the government of the East India Company fixed the rent charged by the Zamindars to
their tenants. Bitter complaints about Zamindari exploitation of cultivators continued, however a series
of tenancy act recognized and strengthened the occupancy rights of tenants on a land for many
generations. Tenancy regulation encouraged a rental market. Superior right-holders could hope to make
money by leasing out land to inferior right-holders. A large numbers of these leases were unregulated .it
is clear that the land market is to push in to lease market. Ratnalekha Ray argued that taking advantage
of the Zamindars own distance from land and unstable economic conditions, wealthy peasants with
superior tenancy rights extended their landholdings, so much so that they put limits on the Zamindars
ability to take closer hold of actual cultivation. After 1857 revolt the British Crown took the colonial
administration authority from East India Company and established a new law and order in India. A
commercial revolution increased the production of cash crops. Now food crops were shifted in to
commercial crops which required credit facilities. Credit system was not properly organized in
nineteenth century India. So poor peasant naturally turned to the money lender, who exploited him by
charging exorbitant interest rates on loans. Peasant unable to repay loans with interest had to surrender
their land to their creditors. This strengthened the position of the money lenders and rich landlords in
rural India.

If the permanent settlement in Bengal was an experiment in transplanting the enterprise and dynamism
of the English landlords on to Indian soil, then the experiment unquestionably failed as it did not end
parasitic landlordism.

Perhaps learning from the failure and also under the impact of nineteenth century- utilitarianism the
British tried to introduce a new form of revenue settlement in Madras, Bombay and Berar regions. The
Ryotwari system is associated with the name of Sir Thomas Munro who was appointed governor of
Madras in May 1820. Subsequently this system was extended to Bombay area under the supervision of
Thomas Reid. Under Ryotwari settlement, a direct contact between the Ryot (the cultivator) and the
state. It meant a tax contract that remained valid for a period of time, usually thirty years and was
renegotiated thereafter.

At every subsequent resettlement or revision, assessment invariably went up by between 25- 60 percent
on average, depending upon factors such as soil quality, yield ,improvements made in land plots,
surplus/profit earned by cultivators and so on. Raiyats were turned in to rent tenants and share-
croppers came in to existence. In the raiyatwari areas various categories of tenants- such as ‘protected’,
‘occupancy’, ‘ordinary’ and ‘sharecropper’ tenants, besides different types of attached labour emerged.

The third variety of land is known as the Mahalwari or Malguzari system. It was adopted in the united
provinces (excluding Oudh) Punjab and the central provinces and also excluding the Berar region.
Cultivation of land was done on a co- sharing basis and co-sharer of good social standing was generally
selected to undertake the responsibility of paying the assessment fixed for the entire village.12
Conquered ethnic groups- lineages, tribes or castes were made to work on the lands of the Co- sharing
landholders. Unfortunately the system did not work successfully because the settlement officers, who
were the carrier of the settlement, turned corrupt and the revenue was at their own discretion. As a
result the system proved miserable to the agricultural classes. This created widespread discontent and
finally the Mahalwari system failed to create any extensive effect.

Agrarian Discontent and peasant Revolts

All the agrarian classes were distressed by the British government’s high revenue demands. Either the
peasants (actual cultivator) revolted against their oppressors- the landlords under whom they held land,
or sometimes all the agrarian classes joined together and rebelled against the severe demands of the
state. The body of the rebel Armyu was the cultivating peasant who resisted the intruders whether they
were the new Zamindars, money lenders or the British troops often commissioned to enforce the new
system.14 the new landlords were given unlimited powers to increase the rents of their tribal tenants
then tribal uprising occurred in the whole of Bihar and Orissa. Kol, Bhumij and Santal uprising was the
part of agrarian unrest. The tribal sentiment was deeply hurt when the land was transferred to urban
money- lenders the tribal people rose in arms and they murdered several landlords, Mahajans and
darogas. Similarly in Pabna and Bogra (Bengal) the peasants destroyed a large numbers of agreement
forms-Kabuliyats. In 1875 the peasant’s riot against British government were spread in several villages of
Poona, Ahmednagar, Satara and Sholapur district. Physical violence was rare and resorted to only when
the money lenders refused to surrender the legal documents which they used for exploiting their
debtors. The direct result of the Deccan riots was the Deccan Agricultural Relief Act which was passed in
1879. But this act did not cure the poor peasant of Maharashtra and they were left completely
unprotected at the mercy of the money lender- the new - despot. Like western Maharashtra Punjab also
experienced serious agrarian unrest. The tenants, share-croppers and poor landholders faced enormous
economic burdens, evidenced by the fact that by 1874 a million acres of land were mortgaged in the
Punjab and the figures had gone up to four million acres in 1891.15 The partition of Bengal had
radicalized the national movement in Punjab. The agrarian distress of the peasantry broke out in the
form of Punjab peasant riots. However the Punjab riots were neither a neither purely agrarian nor
purely political agitation, but a combination of both, hence failed to bring about any change in agrarian
relations.

FIRST EXPERIMENTS IN LAND REVENUE MANAGEMENT

After gaining control of Bengal in 1757, the British thought that they would retain the administration
established by the Nawabs of Bengal. but would use it to collect an ever-growing amount for
themselves. However, the rapacity and corruption of the Company's employees, and their continua1
interference in the administration led to complete disorganisation, and was one of the causes of the
terrible famine of 1769-70, in which it was estimated that one-third of the people of Bengal died. i From
1772 therefore, a new system was introduced: this was the farming system. Under this system the
government gave out the collection of land revenue on a contract basis. The contractor who offered to
pay the largest adount from a certain district or sub-division was given full powers for a certain number
of years. Obviously, such contractors (they were called 'farmers' in those days), would try and extort as
much as possible during the period that they held the contract; it would not matter to them if the
people were ruined and the production in the later years declined. After all, they would have made their
profit. Extortion and opprcssion were the obvious results of such a system. Furthermore, many of the
contractors had offered to pay very large amounts, and later found that they could not collect so much,
even with great qpression. Finally, the system also led to corruption. As with many government
contracts even today, profitable contracts on very easy terms were given to the friends and favourites
and 'benamidars' of men in power, leading to loss to the government. In 1786 Lord Cornwallis was sent
out to India with orders to clean up and reorganise the administration.

THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT

Cornwallis realised that the existing system was impoverishing the country -its agriculture was in
decline. Furthermore, it was failing to produce the large and regular surplus that the Company hoped
for. And it was also becoming difficult for the Company to get the large quantities of Indian goods that it
planned to export to Europe, because, as Cornwallis observed, the production of silk, cotton. etc. all
depended on agriculture. When agriculture was decaying, handicrafts could hardly be prosperous. And
both the London authorities and Cornwallis were agreed that much of the corruption and oppression
originated in the fact that the taxation had the character of an 'uncertain, arbitrary imposition’

It was decided therefore, that the land-tax would now be permanently fixed: the government would
promise never to increase it in future. Several effects were expected from this measure. It would reduce
the scope for corruption that existed when officials could alter the assessment at will. Furthermore, now
that the state would not demand anything extra if the production increased it was hoped that
landholders would invest money in improving the land as the whole of the benefit would come to them.
Production and trade would increase, and the government would also get its taxes regularly. Finally,
Cornwallis believed that even if the Ian4 tax was fixed, government could always levy taxes on trade and
commerce in order to raise more money if it was needed. In any case, the land revenue was now fixed at
a very high level - an absolute maximum -of Rs. 2 crore and 65 lakhs

There were broadly three types of land revenue policies in existence during the British rule in India
namely zamindari, ryotwari and mahalwari system.

Zamindari system

The Origin and History of Zamindari

As we have seen it is an unchallengeable fact that there were Zamindars before the British came but
here again we are in a danger of being fooled by a mere word. There has been considerable trouble
about understanding the position of the Zamindars of the pre-British period und most of the trouble has
been due to the confusion caused by the word itself. The word "Zamindar" had no definite and uniform

meaning all over India. According to Shore, the origin of Zamindars was uncertain and according to
Baden-Powell no Moghal ruler ever created an official collector of rents or invented the word
"Zamindar:' Anyone who had some real estate was spoken of as "Zamindar:' Those who held a
dependency, i.e. land which was not an independent estate, were called "taluqdars." Originally many of
the Hindu chiefs were called "landholders" or Zamindars. It was largely during the period of political
weakness after 1707 that all the intermediaries-the Rajas or chiefs. the revenue-assignees and the
revenue-farmers carne to be called Zamindars. Even court favourites. bankers. and other officials carne
to be called Zamindars.

There always was a tendency for Zamindars to usurp power and become tyrants and nothing suited
their purpose better than the end of law and order after 1707 A.D. It is easy to see how a powerful
Zamindar could gradually usurp more and more power. No wonder in course of time the Zamindars even
claimed hereditary rights. Their favorite method of consolidating their position was 10 begin cultivating.

The British Zamindars of Bengal

If Zamindars have shown a tendency to usurp power and take advantage of political weakness of the
country, no Zamindar ever did this on a larger scale than the British. It was in 1698 that the British, in the
name of the East India Ccmpany, first became Zamindars of three villages, Calcutta. Smanti. and
Govindpyr. Later they acquired the 24-Parganas and in 1765 got the control of Bengal, Biha,· and Orissa.
The cultivators of this area thus came in the grip of a commercial joint-stock company of British
merchants who were as puzzled as our own Tata Company Ltd. or Birla Bros. Ltd. would be if asked to
govern Japan or Brazil. The East India Company had come to buy Indian goods and now found itself
buying up the freedom of Bengal from its simple-minded Nawabs and its treacherous army generals. It
had come to sell British goods and now found itself selling the protection of British arms, and
armaments. To a people who no longer could protect themselves in the absence of a strong Central
Government.