Permanent Settlement in 1793

• Background

• Basic Features

• Exploitation of Peasants by the Zamindars

• Impact on Zamindars

• Religious Impact

• Administrative and Judicial Impact

• Slave Trade by the British Colonial Regime

• The most momentous decision of the early colonial period was the
creation of a new system of land taxation which came to be known as
the ‘permanent settlement’.

• It was introduced by Lord Cornwallis in 1790 and codified in 1793. It

was more than merely a tax system.

• It formed as the nucleus of the colonial system of control and other

parts of the administration such as the executive, judiciary and the
police were geared to ensure the permanent settlement.

• The company officials found it easier and more practical to collect land
revenue from a few thousands of loyal landlords than from hundreds
of thousands of small peasant proprietors.

• It survived with modifications till the 1950s and shaped the socio-
economic context in such a way that contemporary Bangladesh society
cannot be understood without reference to it.
Permanent Settlement-Background
• Lord Cornwallis was appointed as the first Governor-General outside
the Company and was sent to India in 1786 with clear instructions to
reform the administration of Bengal and to ensure revenue.

• Cornwallis’ appointment came with the passing of the East India

Company Act of 1784 (known as the Pitt’s India Act), by the British
Parliament to address the shortcomings of the Regulating Act and to
bring the Company’s affairs under greater control of the Parliament.

• The pressure on the Company to improve the management of

resources through an efficient administration mounted.

• The need for greater revenue and resources to take care of its cost of
trade and administration pushed it towards territorial expansion.

• Conquest in turn increased the expenditure on the army and a

bureaucracy that expanded in line with the extension of the company’s
territories.

• This required greater financial resources, which the company sought to

meet by increasing its demand for land revenue, revenue from Indian
rulers and increased internal revenue from customs and duties in
trade.

• Cornwallis, firmly believed that the key to ensure continued revenue

from Bengal’s agriculture is to create a hereditary landed aristocracy
and ‘the security of property rights’ (Marshall 1987: 122).

• Cornwallis realized that vast tracts of ‘jungle’ in the Company’s

territory existed which the zamindars can clear, and turn into
agricultural lands to increase the value of landed property.

• The permanent fixation of land revenue could be the best device

toward revitalization of agriculture and revenue collection.
• The Settlement was based on simple principles.

• The Company’s revenue demand was fixed permanently and the

zamindar was recognized as the absolute owner of the revenue-paying
land.

• As long as he paid the stipulated amount of revenue punctually, he had

the right to sell, mortgage or transfer the land and pass it on to his
heirs.

• However, failure to pay revenue was to result in its confiscation and

sale by auction.

• Being freed from the need to constantly monitor and assess the
revenue demand, the company now devote time to the reform of the
constitution of internal government, laws and their due enforcement.

Objectives of Permanent Settlement

• Ensuring revenue payment on a definite footing and making
revenue collection sure and certain

• Ensuring a minimum revenue

• Relieving officials of revenue matter and engaging them to

other spheres of administration

• Forging an alliance between the zamindar class and the

colonial rulers.
Basic Features of Permanent Settlement
• The Zamindars were made hereditary owners of the land under their
possession. They and their successors exercised total control over
lands.

• The Zamindars could sell and purchase lands. The state had no direct
contact with the peasants.

• The company’s share in the revenue was fixed permanently with the
Zamindars. State demand was fixed at 89% of the rent and 11% was to
be retained by the zamindar.

• The state would not enhance the rate in future.

• If the Zamindars were unable to pay the tax; there land was subjected
to be auctioned.

• As absolute proprietors of land, zamindars were required to pay

revenue to government at a rate fixed permanently. But the cultivating
raiyats (farmers) were denied to such a privilege.

• The landholders were free to change the rent rate of their tenants.
They even could evict their tenants if they wanted to.

• If they fail to pay revenue before the sun sets, the property will be
publicly auctioned. This strong law was called the Sun-set Law.

• Under this law greater part of the zamindari lands of Bengal were sold
through auction sales and their lands were transferred to new hands.
• Zamindars had despotic powers over their defaulting rayats.

• The zamindars could now seize their crops, cattle and other properties
and sell them, in the name of recovering rents.

• Zamindars, as absolute proprietors, could summon the defaulting

rayats to their katcharis and keep them confined in chains until the
arrears were paid.

• They could impose community fines on the whole village if any of the
defaulting rayats ran away from the village

• In short, the rayats/peasants did not have any privileges that they were
enjoying traditionally and reduced them to merely tenants.

• The drive toward the ‘recovery’ of the wasteland’ enabled colonial

officials to increase the landed territory and amount of revenue

Impact of Permanent Settlement

• Very soon it was realized that this settlement was not at all beneficial to any
party – the government, Zamindar and the rayats.

• Charles Metcalfe is of the view that “Cornwallis instead of being the creator
of the prosperity in India was the great destroyer of it because the cultivators
who were reduced to the position of tenants suffered miserably at the hands
of their landlords”.

• As such many landlords became defaulters of tax to the government and had
to sell their lands to pay the tax.

• The expectation behind the permanent settlement was that zamindars would
invest in agricultural development and boost the revenue of the company.

• This did not happen partly because zamindars lacked government support for
agricultural development, better communications, technological innovation
and control of marketing, and there were other easier ways to grow rich.
Impact of exploitation of peasants by the zamindars

• Popular strategies included squeezing the peasantry by increasing

rents and forcing tenants to pay contributions to events in the
zamindar’s family such as marriages, festivals, pilgrimages, funerals,
shraddha etc.

• As their incomes grew, zamindars began to distance themselves from

agriculture and tax-collecting.

• They turned themselves into rentiers and shifted their responsibilities

to intermediaries.

• Pattandari meaning giving tax collection to intermediaries

• In this way, a multitiered system of leisured tenure-holders developed,

all living off the wealth of the land.
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• The colonial rural Bengal came to be dominated by zamindari

landowners whose land was tilled by tenants with only occupancy
rights.

• The zamindari gentry benefited enormously from the colonial state’s

patronage.

• Many of them grew very rich and built lavish mansions on their estates

• Peasants (ryots) were the most serious victims of this new settlement.
They did not have any rights on their land.

• Unfortunately, the long-term vision behind the permanent settlement

did not materialize.

• Instead of improving land and agriculture, their strategy was to

increase income by other more profitable means such as mahajani
investment, grain trade, purchase of new estates, bonds, urban
properties, and enhancing tax on rayats other than regular tax.
• The zamindars got habituated to living on unjust income. They
transferred the zamindari management and control to a permanent
intermediate class in exchange for an income.

• As the absolute proprietors of land, they established a second

permanent settlement with the lease-holders under more or less the
same terms and conditions as their own settlement with the company.

• The use of land was not part of the agreement. There was a tendency
of Company officials and Indian landlords to force their tenants into
plantation-style farming of cash crops like opium, indigo, jute, silk and
cotton rather than rice and wheat.

• That was a cause of many of the worst famines of the nineteenth

century.

• Many zamindars in Bengal, such as in Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Nadia,

Bishnupur and Birbhum, suffered the most because they failed to keep
up with the new rigidity and rhythm of revenue collection.

Permanent Settlement: Religious Impact

• Whereas Muslims had dominated during the Mughal period, the
colonial period saw an advance of Hindu landlords.

• In many parts of Bengal religious and class identities began to merge,

with Hindu zamindars at the apex of a local society whereas Muslims
became cultivators.

• As the East India Company took control over the Subcontinent, it

approached Hindus for co-operation, as they are considered loyal
supporters and reliable partners of the new rulers.

• The Permanent Settlement Act “elevated the Hindu collectors to the

position of landholders, gave them a propriety right in the soil and
allowed them to accumulate wealth.”

• Muslims were reduced to poverty and destitution.

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Permanent Settlement: Administrative and Judicial Impact
• The Bengal Code of Regulations of 1793 sought to give concrete form
to the English Rule of Law in Bengal.

• Collection of revenue was put in charge of the Revenue Board in

Calcutta and collectors in the districts.

• A European trained civil servants acted as judge and magistrate in each

district.

• The local institution of nizamat (civil admin) was reconstituted and set
up in Calcutta under the direct jurisdiction of the governor-general and
Council.

• Qazis and muftis now only had the job of offering legal religious
opinion. Criminal courts made systematic amendments to the existing
pattern of Muslim criminal law.
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• Litigations increased due to European judges’ lack of knowledge of the

local language that made them dependent on ill-paid native officers
who had no responsibility in the administration of justice.

• Cases piled up and perjury(false oath) became rampant.

• With the ending of the nizamat, police became the responsibility of

the Company, and the district magistrate became the superintendent
of police.

• The districts were sub-divided into thanas, each with an Indian

darogah and a troop of constables.

• Former institutions of local militia and village watchmen came under

the direct control of the Company’s police.
Slave Trade by the British Colonial Regime
• The famines that resulted from unprecedented taxation following Lord
Cornwallis' Permanent Settlement killed millions in Bengal and left
those who survived on the edge of desperation. From this pool came
the new slaves (2.5 million).
• The first batch of Biharis reached British Guiana in 1836. Starvation,
beating, imprisonment and death were common among the slaves.
• Slave trade from India soon began to fill the British Empire’s cash-crop
havens (tea, sugarcane) of Mauritius, Fiji, Jamaica, Trinidad, Malaya,
Ceylon and Burma.
• By the 1880s, destitution in Bihar had forced even high caste Brahmins
into slave labour, making them a powerful community in places like Fiji.
• Why do you think one third of the West Indies cricket team is named
Chanderpaul, Ganga, Mohammad or Ramadhin? They are the children
of Hindus and Muslims of India, enslaved to enrich the Empire.