The ransacking of a paradise
Alamgir Khan studies colonial exploitation of land
Lord Clive described Bengal as 'paradise on earth'. He said that it abounded with the superfluity sufficient not only for its own use but for the use of the whole globe. He compared Murshidabad with London and said, 'There are individuals in the first, possessing infinitely greater property than any in the last city.' Immediately after the victory in the battle of Plassey, he stated, 'I walked through the vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels.'
The Zamindary Abolition Movement in Bengal by Kazi A B M Iqbal, originally his M.Phil dissertation submitted to Dhaka University in 1988 and published by Arial Media and Publication in Dhaka in 2012, reveals the horrendous truth of barbarity the British committed in Bengal. It gives some idea about how British colonial policies turned Aurengzeb's 'Paradise of Nations' into Kissinger's 'bottomless basket'.
The British administrator William Bolts noted about Bengal in 1772: 'Inconceivable number of merchants, from all parts of Asia in general, as well as from the rest of Hindustan in particular, sometimes in bodies of many thousands at a time, were used annually to resort to Bengal with little else than ready money, or bills, to purchase the produce of those provinces.'
T. B. Macaulay wrote, 'A sum of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river from Murshedabad to Fort William. The fleet which conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats.' Clive moderately accepted between two and three hundred thousand pounds. William Digby estimated that from five hundred to one thousand million pounds were looted from The Indian treasury between Plassey and Waterloo. Hastings on November 23, 1780, suggested that 'about forty lacs of rupees worth of bullion was probably sent 'home' every year.'
As a result, a famine broke out in Bengal in 1770. W. W. Hunter mentioned that about 35 percent of the total population of Bengal and almost 50 percent of her farmers had died during this famine. Kazi A B M Iqbal writes, 'But the Company's government did not show any sympathy or give any material help to the distressed. They did not even reduce the land tax.'
The Company obtained a Dewani from Emperor Shah Alam in 1765 and thus got the legal right to collect revenue from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. But the land revenue system of Bengal was totally unknown to them. Mughal Emperors appointed zamindars as authorized persons for collecting land revenue from specified paraganas. Emperor Akbar created the post of Kanungo to obtain information about the activities of zamindars and to protect cultivators. Zamindars in the Mughal period were not proprietors of land the way an Englishman owned his estate. The servants of the Company failed to collect the land revenue properly due to their ignorance in this regard.
They abolished the system of kanungos and began to lease out lands to the highest bidders. The new zamindars began to impose various abawbs, irregular taxes, on the raiyats. The situation went beyond control. The British took various measures to stop this. They reintroduced kanungos. Various investigations went on about how to solve the problems of revenue collection faced by the British. Grant-Shore and Shore-Cornwallis debates arose in Bengal on the questions of permanent settlement and ownership of lands.
Then the Court of Directors in England declared the Decennial Settlement to be permanent and Lord Cornwallis introduced it on March 22, 1793. Iqbal writes, 'From that time all the Zamindars, independent Talukdars and actual proprietors of land were paying revenues directly to the East India Company's Government. In lieu of this revenue paying, the Company had given assurance to them and their heirs or lawful successors to hold their estates at the assessment which had been fixed for ever and would not be liable to any alteration by the future administrations.'
The Permanent Settlement gave zamindars ownership of land in exchange of a fixed amount of rent to the Company. But many zamindars opposed it because the rent rate was high and if they failed to pay before sunset of a certain day their lands would be put on sale. Many zamindars were ruined because their zamindaris were sold in auction for the failure of revenue payment. The author has quoted from a book by Ranjit Guha, 'Land had turned into a commodity, it was to be allowed all possible freedom of exchange' as a result of the Permanent Settlement.
The writer quotes from a letter by Cornwallis to the Court of Directors, 'There is every ground to expect that the large capitals possessed by the natives … will be applied to the purchase of landed property as soon as the tenure is declared to be secure, and they are capable of estimating what profit they will be certain of deriving from it, by the public tax upon it being unalterably fixed.' Thus the landed property of Bengal began to be transferred from traditional zamindars to those who are moneyed interests of Calcutta, shrofs, banyas and other natives involved in the collection of revenue and placed in the position of personal favour. Thus the British created a class of absentee zamindars.
Most of these new zamindars became oppressive. And they helped their British masters in all political affairs, including the national freedom movement during the period. Antagonism between zamindars and peasants grew and gave rise to many revolts in East Bengal. The Great Pabna Peasant Movement is one of these. At that time most of the zamindars in East Bengal were Hindus and most of the ryots were Muslims. But the movement was not communal. Many leaders of ryots were Hindus who fought against the zamindars.
The absentee landlords began to sublet their lands to under-farmers who in turn sublet these to others and thus the system continued. In some cases 50 or more intermediate interests were created between zamindars at the top and the ryots at the bottom. These sub-tenure holders in land were the main source of the new Bengali middle class. Thus a middle class from among absentee landlords and tenure-holders emerged but modern capitalism failed to take root in Bengal.
The author writes, 'The company gained control of internal trade and commerce through the native banyas who, through various malpractices and collaboration with their English masters, emerged as a new commercial class of comprador character. Thus the traditional commercial class began to perish. … with the passing of Haftam or Sun-Set Law of 1799 the native merchants began to invest their capital for the purchase of zamindaries. And thus, they became rural capitalists as well as zamindars and emerged as a new class.' This class became an important pillar of the colonial social structure of Bengal.
The situation began to change in the beginning of the twentieth century with the emergence of various political parties and mass organisations. The rural peasants for the first time began to be linked with national politics through the non-cooperation movement and 'no-tax' campaign organized by the Indian National Congress in 1920. But as the 'no-tax' campaign widened to a dangerous level, it was called off because the Congress was a party dominated by zamindars. Following this setback, the Swaraj Party came into being in 1923 with C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru as its leaders. It sought the support of the rural masses with the slogan of 'Swaraj for 98 per cent'. But it also was a pro-zamindar party. Left-wing leaders in the party began to voice slogans like 'abolition of Zamindary system' and 'land to the tillers'.
The Communist Party of India came into being and its leaders formed the Workers and Peasants Party in 1926-28. Iqbal writes, 'This was for the first time in Indian politics that the exploitation of zamindars, Indian capitalists and the British imperialism was clearly pointed out.'
A different scene was enacted in East Bengal through the partition of the province in 1905. A Muslim middle class began to emerge in this part. 'The establishment of Dacca University in 1921 paved the way for the extension of educated middle class, particularly among the Muslims,' writes Iqbal. The situation here was one of mainly Hindu landlords versus Muslim peasants. The Bengal Census figures show that from 1921 to 1931, landlords and rent receivers increased in number from 390,562 to 633,834; cultivating owners decreased from 9,274,924 to 6,079,7171 and labourers increased from 1,805,502 to 2,718,93. The zamindary system was abolished through the State Acquisition and Tenancy Act, 1950. But the system has left behind legacies of communal politics and landless labourers, the origin of many socio-political ills in today's Bangladesh.
Alamgir Khan is Research and Publication Officer, Centre for Development Innovation and Practices (CDIP)
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