Colonialism and the Countryside: Exploring Official Archives (Part III)

Colonialism and the Countryside: Exploring Official Archives

Introduction

When the British East India Company and later the British Crown established control over India, one of their most consequential interventions was reshaping the agrarian structure of the countryside. Unlike Mughal revenue arrangements, British colonial rule introduced permanent changes in land ownership, revenue, and peasant-zamindar relations through a series of land settlements. This chapter focuses primarily on Bengal (the site of the first large-scale experiment in colonial land settlement) and Paharia and Santhali communities in the Rajmahal hills, examining how colonialism transformed rural society and how we can study it through official archives.

The Permanent Settlement of 1793

The most consequential colonial agrarian policy in Bengal was the Permanent Settlement of 1793, introduced by Governor-General Lord Cornwallis. Its key features:

• Zamindars were recognised as the permanent, hereditary owners of the land — a fundamental change from the Mughal conception of zamindari as a right to collect revenue.
• The revenue the zamindars owed the colonial state was fixed permanently — it would not increase even if agricultural productivity rose.
• Zamindars who failed to pay the fixed revenue on time would have their lands auctioned off (the Sunset Law — payment due by sunset on a fixed day, or the estate could be sold).
• The East India Company expected this to create a class of improving landlords similar to English country gentlemen, who would invest in agriculture and increase production.

• What actually happened?
• Many zamindars failed to pay and their estates were auctioned — leading to the rise of new zamindars (often urban merchants and lawyers who purchased estates at auction).
• Ryots (peasants) who had customary rights were reduced to tenants-at-will, losing long-term security.
• Zamindars, to meet fixed revenue demands, often increased rent on ryots, sub-leased land, and engaged in rack-renting.
• The expected improvement in agriculture largely did not materialise.

The Ryotwari System and the Deccan Riots

In the Bombay Deccan (Maharashtra), the British introduced the Ryotwari system, which dealt directly with the ryot (peasant), setting revenue on each individual plot of land assessed by revenue surveyors. There was no zamindari intermediary.

The revenue demands under the Ryotwari system were often very high — set during good years and enforced even during drought. When the American Civil War (1861–1865) boosted cotton exports from India (American cotton supply was cut off), Deccan cultivators borrowed heavily from moneylenders to expand cotton cultivation. When cotton prices collapsed after the war ended (1865), peasants were crushed under debt.

The Deccan Riots of 1875 — a widespread peasant uprising against moneylenders in Pune and Ahmadnagar districts — were a direct consequence. Peasants did not attack the British directly but targeted moneylenders (sahukars), burning their account books and bonds of debt. The government's response was the Deccan Agriculturalists Relief Act (1879), which attempted to regulate moneylending.

The Paharias and the Santhals

The Rajmahal hills of what is now Jharkhand were home to the Paharia people before British colonisation. Paharias practised shifting cultivation (jhum) and lived by a combination of forest produce gathering, hunting, and occasional raids on plains settlements. They resisted colonial intrusions.

The British, seeking to 'civilise' and settle the hills, brought in the Santhal community to clear forests and cultivate the land. The Santhals were excellent cultivators and settled in the Damin-i-Koh area (a demarcated zone at the foot of the Rajmahal hills), creating permanent villages and agricultural settlements from the 1820s onwards.

However, the Santhals were soon oppressed by a combination of colonial revenue demands, rapacious traders (diku — outsiders), and moneylenders who charged usurious interest rates. The result was the Santhal Uprising (Hul) of 1855-56, led by brothers Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu. The Santhals declared independence, attacked police stations, and killed several British officials and their allies. The uprising was suppressed with great force by the British Army. In its aftermath, the British created the Santhal Parganas in 1855 — a special administrative region — acknowledging that existing law had failed the Santhals.

Official Archives as Historical Sources

A distinctive feature of British colonial rule was the creation of a vast bureaucratic archive — surveys, settlement reports, revenue records, census data, court records, and administrative correspondence. Historians studying colonial agrarian history rely heavily on these sources:

• Bengal Proceedings: Administrative files recording decisions, reports, and correspondence.
• Settlement Reports: Detailed records of land surveys and revenue assessments.
• Survey and Settlement Records: Cadastral maps of individual plots (khatiyan).
• Census Reports: Data on population, caste, occupation, and landholding.

• Critical use of archives: Colonial archives must be read with awareness that they were produced by colonial officials with specific goals (maximising revenue, controlling populations, projecting order). They often:
• Misrepresented or simply ignored peasant perspectives.
• Classified people into rigid categories (tribal, peasant, nomad) that distorted more fluid social realities.
• Recorded what was administratively relevant, not what was socially or culturally significant to the communities themselves.

Historians like Ranajit Guha (in · Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India · ) and the Subaltern Studies school have argued for reading colonial archives 'against the grain' — looking for traces of subaltern (subordinated) voices even within documents that tried to suppress or ignore them.