Editing Content :: Admin Scraper

Chapter

Content type

Position

Value

C OLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE 233 zamindar never paid the full revenue demand; the Company rarely recovered the unpaid balances that had piled up. Such transactions happened on a grand scale. Between 1793 and 1801 four big zamindaris of Bengal, including Burdwan, made benami purchases that collectively yielded as much as Rs 30 lakh. Of the total sales at the auctions, over 15 per cent were fictitious. There were other ways in which zamindars circumvented displacement. When people from outside the zamindari bought an estate at an auction, they could not always take possession. At times their agents would be attacked by lathyals of the former zamindar. Sometimes even the ryots resisted the entry of outsiders. They felt bound to their own zamindar through a sense of loyalty and Fig. 9.6 perceived him as a figure of authority and themselves Maharaja Mehtab Chand (1820-79) as his proja (subjects). The sale of the zamindari When the Permanent Settlement was imposed, Tejchand was the disturbed their sense of identity, their pride. The Raja of Burdwan. Subsequently zamindars therefore were not easily displaced. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the under Mehtab Chand the estate depression in prices was over. Thus those who had prospered. Mehtab Chand helped the British during the Santhal survived the troubles of the 1790s consolidated their rebellion and the 1857 revolt. power. Rules of revenue payment were also made somewhat flexible. As a result, the zamindar’s power over the villages was strengthened. It was only during the Great Depression of the 1930s that they finally collapsed and the jotedars consolidated their power in the countryside. 1.6 The Fifth Report Many of the changes we are discussing were documented in detail in a report that was submitted Benami, literally anonymous, to the British Parliament in 1813. It was the fifth of a is a term used in Hindi and several other Indian languages series of reports on the administration and activities for transactions made in the of the East India Company in India. Often referred to as the Fifth Report, it ran into 1002 pages, of which name of a fictitious or relatively over 800 pages were appendices that reproduced insignificant person, whereas petitions of zamindars and ryots, reports of collectors the real beneficiary remains unnamed. from different districts, statistical tables on revenue returns, and notes on the revenue and judicial administration of Bengal and Madras (present-day Tamil Nadu) written by officials. Lathyal,literally one who wields From the time the Company established its rule the lathi or stick, functioned as in Bengal in the mid-1760s, its activities were closely a strongman of the zamindar. watched and debated in England. There were many Reprint 2026-27