Colonialism, Property and the State 9780195641721, 0195641728

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H U , PROPERTY THE STATE t

Dharma Kumar

Colonialism, Property and the State

Colonialism, Property and the State

DHARMA KUMAR

DELHI

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CA LCU TTA

CHENNAI

M UM BAI

H P

. V:lS ll* !$

Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street. Oxford 0X 2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associates in Berlin Ibadan

© Oxford University Press 1998

ISBN 0 19 564172 8

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a roA 3 & Z (5*^ h f'S

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Acknowledgements

M any o f the papers appeared in journals or books or were com m is­ sioned, and I am indebted to the editors for perm ission to reprint them . The published papers are: (W ith J. K rishnam urthy), ‘Regional and International Inequality: The Indian C ase,’ in P. B airoch and L. Leboyer (eds), Disparities in Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution, 1981. (W ith Alan H eston), ‘The Persistance o f Land Fragm entation in Peasant A griculture: An A nalysis o f the South Asian C ase’, Explora­ tions in Economic History , 1983. ‘A Note on the Term “Land C ontrol” in Peter Robb (ed.), Rural India: Land, Power and Society under British Rule, C urzon Press, London, 1983, and O xford U niversity Press, D elhi, 1992. ‘Private Property in A sia? The C ase o f M edieval South In d ia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1985. ‘The Forgotten Sector Services in Madras Presidency in the First Half o f the 19th Century’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1987. ‘Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India’, in M artin Klein (ed.), Breaking the Chains, U niversity o f W isconsin Press, 1993. ‘States and Civil Societies in M odern A sia’, Economic and Politi­ cal Weekly, 1993. ‘The Chinese and Indian Econom ies, ca 1914-1949’, London School o f Econom ics, Project on India and China, 1991. ‘G overnance and the Colonial Legacy: Some Prelim inary C onsiderations’, London School o f Econom ics, 1995. ‘The Taxation o f A griculture in British India and D utch Indonesia’, in C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. K olff (eds), Two Colonial Em­ pires, The Hague: M artinus N ijhoff, 1986. ‘The C olonial Tradition in India and Indonesia’, Itinerario, 1989. In a few cases, changes have been m ade in the published texts.

Contents

1.

C olonialism , Property and the State M a d r a s P r e s id e n c y

2. 3.

Landow nership and Inequality in M adras Presidency, 1853-1947 The Forgotten Sector: Services in M adras Presidency in the First H alf o f the N ineteenth Century L and

4. 5. 6. 7.

The Persistence o f Land Fragm entation in Peasant A griculture: An A nalysis o f South A sian Cases A Note on the Term ‘Land C ontrol’ Private Property in A sia? The C ase of M edieval South India The State and Private Property: Some General C onsiderations C o m p a r a t iv e S t u d ie s

8.

Regional and International Econom ic D isparities Since the Industrial Revolution: The Indian Evidence 9. The Taxation o f A griculture in British India and Dutch Indonesia 10. The C olonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 11. States and Civil Societies in M odem A sia 12. The C hinese and Indian Econom ies, 1914-1949

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Contents T h e C o l o n ia l S t a t e

13. Colonialism , Bondage, and Caste in British India 14. G overnance and the Colonial Legacy: Some Prelim inary C onsiderations 15. W as the C olonial State in India a Predatory State?

289 311 328

M is c e l l a n e o u s

16. The A nti-com m unalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ H istorians Index

351 378

Colonialism, Property and the State

This volum e brings together several essays, m ainly historical, written over the last three decades or so. Som e o f these essays have not been published before. Som e o f the papers were stim ulated by conferences. O thers, such as the tw o papers on invisibles in the South Indian econom y in the first h alf o f the nineteenth century, and on the lack of polarization in land ow nership in M adras Presidency, are offshoots of m y earlier w ork on South India. These reasons for w riting are not o f geheral interest, though all scholars will recognize that chance dictated w hat they wrote on certain occasions, rather than an intel­ lectual m aster plan. Later in this introduction, I have taken account o f recent work and o f changes in my thinking. I have altered the original text o f unpublished papers but it has not been possible to avoid overlap betw een essays. I was fortunate in two ways. T he first was that I taught in the D elhi School o f Econom ics, which w as civ­ ilized and liberal, with friendly and co-operative colleagues and in­ telligent students. I share the second piece o f good fortune w ith other Indian historians o f my generation, and that is the leap in the last few decades in the quality and quantity o f historical scholarship in India. In the early years o f the Indian Economic and Social History Review, the editors had to beg for articles, and those that they could extract w ere only too often boring glosses on the land revenue records. N ow excellent articles com e in on all sorts o f subjects, and from all over India, not to m ention the world. T he p ap ers co llected here have been grouped under the follow ing heads: M adras Presidency; land; com parative studies; colonialism , and in p artic u lar the evolution o f the colonial state; and m iscel­ laneous. T h e bou n d aries betw een the groups are porous. A lthough the papers are no t printed chronologically, the order o f the groups does partially represent changes in my interests.

2

Colonialism, Property and the State

ESSAYS ON MADRAS PRESIDENCY Both the papers on the M adras Presidency have w ider im plications, though they have suffered very different fates. T he paper on landholding has generally been attacked w hile the paper on services has been com pletely overlooked, in keeping with its title. M y guess is that the im portance o f the service sector in other parts o f India before the m iddle o f the nineteenth century will becom e evident when m ore detailed w ork is done in those areas. Services have been ignored by historians because it was convenient to assum e that the undoubted grow th in agricultural exports and output in the first half o f the eighteenth century was at the expense o f industrial production and em ploym ent, and hence this was yet another way in w hich the East India Com pany brought about deindustrialization. In contrast, there were m any criticism s o f the paper on land ow nership and inequality in M adras Presidency, w hich show ed that inequality in land ow nership did not grow over the last century of B ritish rule, for w hich district-w ise figures are available. This was contrary to w idespread assertions. This im perviousness to facts is not surprising: polarization is an essential part o f the ‘nationalist’ con­ dem nation o f colonialism , as also o f much M arxian analysis. In this, Indianists are not unique. In Japan, Sm ethurst has argued, ‘The belief in the trend tow ards polarization is based on the acceptance o f a m ode o f analysis which precedes the accum ulation o f evidence, and this seem s to m ake it very difficult to abandon.’1 C onsequently, we should not be surprised that a certain school of Indian historians has ignored the strong probability that the distribution o f land was actually less unequal at the end o f colonial rule in 1947, than in 1800. D etailed studies o f landow nership in M adras seem to m e to support m y conclusions broadly. One obvious reason is the grow th o f population which occurred in m ost o f India. B ut there were also factors specific to Madras, such as deliberate governm ent policies. The governm ent o f M adras introduced special rules under w hich a person who cultivated a piece o f land for five years could m ake a claim to legal ow nership; it also m ade specific allocations o f land to ‘depressed castes’ and agricultural labourers, either directly or

'j. Smethurst, Agricultural Development and Tenancy Disputes in Japan,

1870-1940 (Princeton, 1986), p. 29.

Colonialism, Property and the State 3 through C hristian m issionaries. By 1931, about 1 per cent o f th e total cultivated land had been allocated in this m anner, though it w as land o f relatively poor quality; better land may have been already occupied. M ore im portant, perhaps, was the opening up o f opportunities out­ side the village, as on public w orks and tea and coffee plantations in the South Indian hills. Perhaps m ost im portant o f all was em igra­ tion abroad, especially since m any o f the em igrants w ere agricultural labourers and o f low caste. This m obility had tw o effects. First, the reduction in the am ount o f local labour available perm itted w ages in India to rise, or at least prevented them from falling. Secondly, those m igrants who returned could buy land. M offat shows that T am il un­ touchables continued to acquire land from the 1860s onw ard; by 1961, over 30 per cent o f the untouchable caste population ow ned land, as against over 50 per cent for the general population— a strik­ ing statistic w hen one considers the very low level they started from. The social composition of landowners continued to change after 1947, and the data generally show s that the scheduled castes in the Tam il districts held a greater proportion o f the land in 1961 than in 1900. The low est castes also ow ned the least land, but their social and econom ic m obility increased in the colonial period. H ow ever, m any labourers had to return to the Presidency in the 1930s. A gain, the volum e o f land sales went up sharply during the depression and it is not clear how these factors affected the low er castes or the poorest, and hence equalization o f ow nership. In other parts o f M adras Presidency too, inequalities in land ow nership were reduced, but som e historians w ould not agree w ith me. For exam ple, W ashbrook has argued for polarization in the dry Telugu D istricts (in my view, on insufficient evidence) and Bruce Robert against it.2 The view that the colonial period saw the concentration o f land ow nership in the hands o f the rich, w hile the m iddle peasantry was

2David Washbrook, ‘Economic Development and Social Stratification in Rural Madras: The Dry Region, 1878-1929’, in C. Dewey and A.G. Hopkins (eds). The Imperial Impact (London, 1978); Bmce Robert, ‘Economic Change and Agrarian Organization in “Dry South India”, 1890-1940: A Reinterprctation’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1983, and ‘Structural Change in Indian Agriculture: Land and Labour in Bellary District, 1890-1980’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1985. Also see Michael Moffat, An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus (Princeton, 1979).

4

Colonialism, Property and the State

squeezed out does not hold for other parts of India either. The locus classicus was Bengal, on which Sum it G uha has com m ented: The middle peasant society recedes endlessly back into the past: each historian seems to locate it just before the period of his study. Almost the sole exception to this dictum is to be found in the highly original work of the late Ratnalekha Ray, in which the immense inertia, the resistance to change of an old agrarian society is ably highlighted by the snapshots at widely separated points presented in her book. ... So it would appear that despite its apparent solidity, the mainstream view of the agrarian history of Bengal in the last century of British rule is still unable to account for much of the available evidence. Notably, there has been an overemphasis on change and a neglect of the forces making for social stasis, with the path-breaking initiative of Ratnalekha Ray never being adequately followed up by subsequent research. Equally, the interaction between markets and the structure of rural power, which resulted in the effective transformation of legal tenancies into petty properties, has not been adequately considered or analysed. On the other hand, the pessimistic view of the effects of commercialization on the peasant economy has been espoused without perhaps an adequate scrutiny of the evidence on this issue, at least some of which, as we have seen, points to quite opposite conclusions. The same may be said for the impact of jute cultivation and the structure of the jute market on peasant agriculture. Finally, there has been an overly strong emphasis on the medium-term factors (such as the Depression) behind the 1943 famine, to the exclusion of short-term ones (such as the War), on the one hand, and long-term ones (such as population growth), on the other.3

PRE-BRITISH REGIMES: THE MUGHALS The work o f the A ligarh School is still central to any study o f the M ughals, but the leading Aligarh historians appear not to have revised the substance o f their views; Professor A thar Ali sums them up thus: If one blows away the smoke of the ‘revisionist’ verbiage, there remains pre­ cious little fact that can take us anywhere beyond the three-tier relationship

3Sumit Guha, ‘Agrarian Bengal, 1850-1947: Issues and Problems’, Studies in History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1995, pp 124, 142. Also see the chapter on land in D. Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983).

Colonialism, Property and the State 5 of Empire-zamindar-peasantry, which since the early 1960s has been the cornerstone of conventional Mughal historiography.4 I need only add that I have frequently expressed my dissatisfaction w ith the A ligarh estim ates on taxation. These estim ates are w idely accepted, but the A ligarh historians have not noticed that if their estim ates are accepted then the M ughals were far m ore extortionate than the British. This question is discussed in this volum e in ‘W as the C olonial State a Predatory State?’ H istorians o f m odern Europe also stress that m ilitary organization and expenditure are crucial to the em ergence o f m odern states. Thus, John B rew er has described: The emergence of a peculiarly British version of the fiscal-military state, com­ plete with large armies and navies, industrious administrators, high taxes and huge debts. Though not inevitable, these changes in government were endur­ ing. The overweening power of the Treasury, a highly centralized financial system, a standing parliament, heavy taxation, an administrative class o f gifted amateurs lacking training in the science of government but with a strong sense of public duty, government deficits and a thriving market in public securities: all these features of modem British politics began under the later Smarts and Hanoverians.5 B rew er drew on the calculations o f Peter M athias and Patrick O ’Brien which show ed that the share of the central governm ent in taxes in Britain rose from approxim ately 3.5 per cent in the 1670s to 23 per cent at the end o f the A m erican W ar, around 1780, and jum ped to around 35 per cent o f per capita incom e during the N apoleon W ar, alm ost tw ice the com parable ratios in France in the eighteenth century. The relevance o f the term ‘fiscal-m ilitary’ to the colonial govern­ m ents and their predecessors in India has still to be analysed. A lso relevant is the w ork on the role o f the m erchants, particularly in the Com pany period, w hether as lenders to governm ent, revenue farm ers, or as part o f com m ercialization and econom ic growth.

M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Polity—A Critique of “Revisionist Approaches” ’,

Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 1991-2. Also see M. Athar Ali, ‘Recent Theories of Eighteenth Century India’, The Indian Historical Review, Vol. 13, Nos 1-2, July 1986 and January 1987, pp 102-10. 5John Brewer, The Sinews of Power (London, 1989).

6

Colonialism, Property and the State

THE COLONIAL STATE The set o f papers on the colonial state reflects work in progress, and I am sure some o f m y view s on the subject will change. One o f my m ajor assertions which is unlikely to change is that the colonial period brought the m odem state to India but under peculiar cir­ cum stances. This m eans that a fast-grow ing theoretical literature in various social sciences on the theory o f the state needs to be m astered (a task beyond my pow ers), as w ell as em pirical work on state for­ m ation in other countries, as well as on im perialism . T he work on the state by econom ists is closely connected w ith the new institutional econom ics. The state can be viewed as a m ajor institution in itself, but it is also the guarantor and protector o f other institutions. M arkets can only develop freely if contracts are guaranteed, and law s protect contracts and property rights (evading the issue o f w hich property rights and w hich potential ow ners o f rights should b e protected). These general considerations are also germ ane to the papers dealing w ith the law , and with property rights, especially in India. The im portant recent w ork on B ritish im perialism by P.J. Cain and A .J. H opkins6 argues, first, that im pulses from the centre explain the course o f B ritish im perialism , and secondly, that in analysing developm ents in Britain the role o f the industrial bourgeoisie has been overstressed, overlooking the im portance o f the ‘gentlem anly capitalists’, especially in finance and services. M oreover, these chan­ ges in B ritain w ere reflected in India. It seem s to me that Cain and H opkins exaggerate the pow er and reach o f the colonial governm ent, and underestim ate the strength o f Indian business com m unities. British Imperialism consistently in­ flates the pow ers and functions o f the G overnm ent o f India, perhaps reflecting the authors’ expertise in A frica, and is peppered w ith ref­ erences to dirigisme, social engineering, and ‘vast’ developm ent plans. The follow ing general statem ent is typical: Utilitarians treated the empire as a vast laboratory for experimenting with scientific principles of human betterment; missionaries came to see it as a crusading vehicle for collective salvation. Together, they created a new inter^PJ. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914 (London, 1993); Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914-1990 (London, 1993).

Colonialism, Property and the State 7 national order in the nineteenth century by devising and implementing the world’s first comprehensive development programme. O f course the governm ents o f colonial India w ere interventionist on certain occasions, but their attem pts were different in degree from those o f recent dirigiste governm ents in independent India, and from colonial governm ents in A frica. Colonial governm ents in India operated under two severe constraints— their own laissez-faire ideo­ logy, and the shortage o f tools o f control, particularly financial resources. Reading ideology is som etim es difficult because B ritish officials differed am ongst them selves ideologically. In particular, there w as a continual struggle betw een tw o broad groups— the pater­ nalists, w ho believed that the governm ent should preserve certain indigenous institutions, such as the village com m unity, and social groups threatened by the forces o f m odernization, especially w iden­ ing m arkets. Ranged against them were those who in today’s term s w ere econom ic liberals. They believed that the governm ent should enable m arkets to function freely, by, for instance, introducing the necessary law s and legal institutions. The paternalists w anted to protect ‘peasants’ against m oneylenders and city slickers, and loyal chieftains against W esternized O riental G entlem en, and to preserve chosen ‘traditional’ institutions such as the village com m unity (as they im agined it). T heir opponents w ished to break dow n custom ary barriers to the functioning o f the m arket, such as custom ary restric­ tions on the alienation o f land. There were o f course all kinds o f variations, but the point is that not even the m ost authoritarian bureaucrat was ‘dirigiste’ by the standards o f m odern planners. A nd indeed a com m on anti-im perialist indictm ent is that the governm ent placed too m uch reliance on the equilibrating pow ers o f the m arket, for instance during fam ines. C ain and H opkins appear right in stressing the im portance o f India to the im perial state, and the centrality o f governm ent revenues, an issue discussed at length in the essay titled ‘W as the C olonial State in India a Predatory State?’ But they have exaggerated the pow ers of the colonial state, and correspondingly, greatly under-rated the im portance o f Indian business, and o f political parties and other or­ ganizations in India. A dm ittedly, I m yself m ay have failed to take sufficient account o f these factors. W hat is clear is that my work on the colonial state suffers from two types o f error, o f analysis and attitude. The errors

8

Colonialism, Property and the State

o f analysis may reflect the fact that work on the state and on econom ic institutions is growing fast, and I have only im perfectly digested it. One exam ple o f this type o f error is that insufficient attention is paid to the econom ics o f inform ation. It is easy for econom ic his­ torians to overlook the im portance o f inform ation, perhaps because great im provem ents can be brought about at little cost. Transaction costs were alm ost certainly reduced by the cadastral surveys, defini­ tion o f titles and m apping that accom panied British Indian system s o f land taxation, and it is plausible that the volum e o f transactions in land rose. There appear to have been no serious studies o f the specific effects o f these changes on the operation o f private business, w hether British or Indian. Did business contracts becom e easier to enforce under the British as against the traditional m ethods o f regula­ tion o f Indian business com m unities? W hat were the effects on busi­ ness o f the enorm ous volum e o f data collected by the colonial governm ent? The regular official data on rainfall, prices, the volume o f inland traffic, seaborne trade and so on, should have been o f great value to Indian entrepreneurs, if published in time. But the data was collected at first m ainly to meet adm inistrative needs or parliam entary queries, and businessm en frequently com plained that official statistics appeared too late to be o f practical use. It was only in the tw entieth century that the quality o f com m ercial statistics im proved. The telegraph was extensively used by Indian m erchants by the end of the nineteenth century. In m any ways conditions for Indian business im proved under the British, though bureaucratic delays may have held up som e im provem ents indefinitely, or at least till the tw entieth century. M y attitudinal errors may well arise from the fact the I felt that I had to com bat w idespread errors about the nature o f the colonial state. This may have led me to exaggerate som e features and overlook* others. In the last twenty years or so, many friends have pointed out that I overlook certain harm ful colonial policies as the changes in the legal system and hence underestim ate the degree to which the colonial state affected the econom ies and societies o f the subcon­ tinent. Sum it G uha m akes the m ost telling criticism , that I tend to underestim ate the continuity in actual practice (as distinct from ju rid i­ cal codes), betw een the colonial and pre-colonial regim es; this is evident in my discussion o f police and penal regim es. Indeed, this

Colonialism, Property and the State 9 continuity can be seen in operation beyond 1947: torture and m utila­ tion occur in police thanas even today. Even colonial legislation needs to be seen in a different light. G uha points out that the colonial governm ent had in effect a double audience, one in India and one in Britain. As parliam ent and the evangelical press becam e increasingly vigilant in England, the governm ent o f India and the governm ent o f the Presidencies kept o ff the record the elem ents o f continuity with their ‘tyrannical’ predeces­ sors. O ne such elem ent was the use o f forced labour; here again, forest labour is used in forest tracts even today. The point has not been m ade in this form in these essays though the suppression o f data for various reasons has been noted. One reason was financial— when the governm ent stipulated that certain m easures, such as the setting up o f public works, had to be undertaken in droughts o r other circum stances, officials were strongly tem pted to deny that the neces­ sitating circum stances had occurred. Finally, since I am now w orking on the colonial and post-colonial legal system s, my view s on this im portant subject will certainly develop and change. But it is worth noting that the current dissatis­ faction with the actions o f governm ents today has led law yers to stress the utility o f colonial laws. Thus in a letter criticizing the M aharashtra governm ent’s actions on the Srikrishna C om m ittee of Inquiry into the Bom bay riots, A.G. N oorani asserts that the Indian G uidance Act (1872), is a ‘veritable m asterpiece’, containing w ithin it a b rief freedom o f inform ation act.

COMPARATIVE STUDIES One paper in the com parative studies group surveys the evolution of states in A sia as a whole, while the m ajority o f the papers discuss various aspects o f European colonialism in Asia. To take the first paper, a distinction is often draw n betw een the Sinic and Indie civilizations. The Sinic m odel im plied genuine centralization, w hile in Indie states, the ‘cen tral’ governm ents, it is asserted, only played a sym bolic role— m any governm ental functions, such as the adm inistration o f the law, or even the collection o f the revenue, being perform ed by other institutions, including the tem ple. M any o f these institutions were sm all-scale and at the local level, such as village panchayats.

10

Colonialism, Property and the State

The classic description o f an Indie state is C lifford G eertz’s char­ acterization o f the B alinese state as a ‘theatre state’.7 In the Balinese state, throughout its known history, ‘court cerem onial w as the driving force o f court politics; and m ass ritual was not a device to shore up the state, but rather the state, even in its final gasp, was a device for the enactm ent o f m ass ritual. Pow er served pom p, not pom p, pow er.’ G eertz’s description has been criticized as overdraw n and unrealistic. There is truth in these criticism s and certainly we need detailed descriptions o f the actual ways laws w ere legitim ated and enforced, or wages and prices fixed, or assets transferred, to take only a few exam ples. G eneralizations based on such descriptions will obviously be m ore valid than those unconstrained by experience, but G eertz’s bold sketch m ay nevertheless serve a very useful purpose. A t the least it suggests new questions. A general issue o f particular interest to historians o f India is to w hat extent the various M uslim rulers, and in particular the M ughals, altered various characteristics o f their Indie predecessors. A t a m uch low er level o f generalization, a com ­ parison o f the form s o f revenue farm ing, the conditions under which it grew , and its effects on the pow ers o f the state, w ould be fruitful. The paper com paring India and C hina in the inter-w ar period stays within Asia. Tirthankar Roy made a forceful point about the paper in 1993: ‘The paper restricts itself to output and incom es; a com ­ parison o f financial developm ent can be very instructive too. C hina in the 1930s seem s to have had a m ore developed and autonom ous financial sector. The port-cities were also m ajor banking centres. Ram on M yers argues that the banks’ ability to expand credit on a narrow base explains an apparently m arginal im pact o f the depression on the real sector. I found this very significant, given In d ia’s ex ­ perience o f a forced deflation. Perhaps here the contrast betw een a colony and an independent econom y was m ost apparent. Barring natural disasters, the Chinese econom y m ight have been m ore resilient to shocks.’ C om parisons betw een India and C hina should yield many inter­ esting hypotheses, but they have unfortunately been confined to com ­ parisons o f com m unist C hina and p o st-1947 India, resem bling advertisem ents com paring people before and after the use o f some

7Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton, 1980).

Colonialism, Property and the State

11

product. This product, in nearly all recent literature on India and C hina, is the com m unist revolution. O ther striking sim ilarities and differences are ignored. Significant differences include the C onfucian against the Hindu or M uslim value system s. Also, states in India and C hina were, and are, very dissim ilar. O ccasionally the differences in bureaucratic recruitm ent are noted but the actual econom ic and social consequences o f these differences are alm ost never analysed (there is a b rief reference to pre-m odern system s o f fam ine relief in the papers here dealing with colonialism ). The sim ilarities betw een India and C hina are also worth exploring, including resem blances betw een pre-B ritish Indian and eighteenth-century C hina’s tax system s.

LEFT SECULARISM AND HISTORY ‘T he A nti-com m unalist Project o f Left Secularist [or LS] H istorians’, being very different from the other papers’, needs a m ore extended com m ent. T he literature on religion and nationalism , on definitions o f fun­ dam entalism and so on, is grow ing very fast, and I have tried to correct glaring m istakes in the original. It is fortunately unnecessary to sum m arize the recent literature; indeed that would divert attention from the m ain purpose o f the paper, which was to express dissatis­ faction w ith the strategy o f w hat I christened the Left Secular School o f historians. It is w orth reiterating that I passionately share their aim to m aintain a secular polity in India. But I find their strategy politically counterproductive and intellectually destructive. M any people attack ‘H indu fascism ’, but ‘fascism ’, like ‘feudalism ’, is frequently m isapplied. M eanw hile, a truly dangerous current political developm ent is ignored, and that is that m iddle class H indus, who would once have supported the tolerant vision of Gandhi, N ehru and Tagore, now feel victim ized and resentful. In m y view the left secular strategy is at least partly to blam e for this. B ut politics is not m y forte so I will not dw ell on this point. The m ain object o f the paper w as to show how harm ful this strategy w as to the writing (and teaching) o f Indian history. The his­ torians I nam e in the paper share certain com m on assum ptions, prin­ cipally that the seeds o f the com m unal problem s o f today were sown in the colonial period when colonial w riters put forw ard the view that H indus and M uslim s were irreconcilable enem ies. This view has.

12 Colonialism, Property and the State the LS historians assert, resurfaced in the w ritings o f H indutva sup­ porters today. In fact, according to Left Secular historians, H indus and M uslim s lived in harm ony before the British conquest o f India. In independent India, w hile both Hindus and M uslim s may adm it­ tedly be com m unal, it is the com m unalism o f the m ajority com ­ m unity, or the Hindus, which is the m ost dangerous. ‘The historian’ has the duty to com bat this danger by pointing out the historical fallacies o f H indutva. M y paper argues that these L eft Secular his­ torians have in turn propounded several historical fallacies o f their own. The Left Secular School o f historians is well entrenched in our universities and am ong progressives, and the original paper aroused m uch overt criticism , as well as w hispered com plim ents. I quoted from reputed scholars to support my criticism s, but I was not inter­ ested in tracing the intellectual history o f any single person. H ow ever if som eone later repudiated the views I quoted, that clearly vitiates my paper. A nother valid criticism would be that the model I have draw n from various authors is not held by any reputable historian. O ne way to show this would be to construct an alternative model w hich they do support. C iting other scholars who belong to this school but disagree w ith those I have cited may m odify my criticism but will not controvert it. Sim ilarly, disputes betw een the historians cited, e.g. betw een Bipan C handra and G yan Pandey, w ould not con­ trovert my thesis, but may m odify it. A m ajor prem ise o f this school of historians is that the writing o f history is a way o f dealing with current problem s. This prem ise leads in my view to gross fallacies. As a consequence o f this view, the governm ent asked the Suprem e Court to décidé w hether there was an old Hindu tem ple on the site o f the Babri M asjid. The Suprem e C ourt rightly refused the task as beyond its com petence. The issue is in any case irrelevant, as m any have pointed out; in our long history, the structures o f one religion may well have displaced those o f other religions, but this is no reason for breaking later struc­ tures. A gain, those w ho believe in secularism should be concerned about the plight o f a M uslim alive in India today because he is a fellow citizen, and not because-he is the spiritual heir o f Akbar. Sim ilarly, the problem s o f M uslim s need to be considered on their own aside from the general rules applicable to all m inorities, but not for the reasons given by the Left Secular School o f historians. The

Colonialism, Property and the State

13

letter are reluctant to consider aw kw ard possibilities, such as M uslim resentm ent o f the loss o f M uslim rule over India. U ndoubtedly the colonial period saw changes in H indu-M uslim relations unlike any that had gone before. Som e were due to specific colonial policies, such as the draw ing o f a boundary betw een public and private activities, governm ent neutrality betw een religions, chan­ ges in tax and revenue policies, and w ithdraw al o f state patronage, w herever feasible, from religious institutions. B ut not all the changes in H indu-M uslim relations can be attributed to deliberate colonial policy. The unification o f Islam ic beliefs and the spread o f Islam ic orthodoxy in the nineteenth century can be seen across A sia. Yet again, the increasing sophistication o f political organization affected com m unalism . Tw o changes in the colonial period are frequently overlooked. For the first tim e in Indian history, as far as we know, the state w as deliberately neutral in religious m atters by and large. This point ca n ­ not be sufficiently stressed. Even today, defenders o f the M ughals ask indignantly, 4d id they not m arry R ajput w ives and em ploy R ajput o fficials?’ The extent to w hich they em ployed Rajputs and other H in­ dus was in fact lim ited, and in any case the British did so too, and probably to a m uch greater extent. Secondly, under the E ast India Com pany, there was a resurgence o f Hindu religious activities in pilgrim ages, the celebration (and invention) o f festivals, and the building o f tem ples and shrines. Prior has christened this upsurge B ig H induism . This was not simply a case of upwardly-mobile Hindus tapping onto a Brahmanic ‘Sanskritic’ or ‘Great Tradition’ of Hinduism, because not all of the elements can be traced to Sanskritic Hinduism. Much of the inspiration behind the new public festivity derived from vernacular Vaishnavite devotionalism, tolerant of low-casteism and in some cases determinedly antiesoteric. In this way it is possible to talk of the creation of a Big Tradition of Hinduism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, welded together from old Sanskritic traditions of pilgrimage, the re-invigóration of existing symbols such as the cow, and the appearance of a new, enthusiastic veneration of Ram. Taken as 9 whole, therefore, this was not a ‘renaissance’ of Hindu celebration after centuries of Muslim oppression, but a fundamentally new expression of Hin­ duism in a public setting.8

8Prior’s Cambridge thesis is quoted in C.A. Bayly, Information and Empire.

14 Colonialism, Property and the State V an der V eer also points out that while pre-colonial states, w hether M uslim o r Hindu, did favour certain religious com m unities, they had m uch less pow er to do so than the colonial o r post-colonial states.9 M oreover, even the latter have lim ited powers. The vital ques­ tion o f the pow er available to the state, w hatever its intentions, is briefly discussed in the papers on the colonial state; religion is o f course uniquely im portant; especially perhaps in India. M y paper has glaring lapses and om issions, m ost o f w hich result from the shortage o f space or my own incom petence, but it may at least be useful in raising difficult questions. First, political issues depend on current laws, not ancient history. Thus, A nand M argis or tribals o r other individuals refuse to call them selves H indus to avail o f special concessions to ‘m inorities’ or special tax laws, or for sim ilar reasons w hich have nothing to do with the protection o f religious freedom . M ost o f these issues have arisen since 1947, since the state has becom e m uch m ore interventionist, but som e have a longer history. I becam e aw are o f a second problem after my paper was publish­ ed, and that is the pervasive nature o f social (rather than official) censorship. M any people who read the EPW version told me how m uch they liked it though they would have hesitated to say this publicly for fear o f being thought com m unal. This m odern phenom enon is o f course not unique to India. ‘Political correctness’ is a term o f opprobrium in the W est and one friend has even m en­ tioned sim ilarities betw een LS historians and H olocaust-deniers. But w hat is peculiar, even if not unique, about the Indian discourse is that this type o f censorship has a long history in India; thus the paucity o f references to M uslim s in H indu w ritings o f the last thousand years or so seem s rem arkable. But perhaps Hindus share even this trait w ith other defeated com m unities. F inally, the popularity o f the LS model may have led to a lack o f interest in certain areas o f research. One reason may be that it w as felt that the conclusions ‘logically’ follow ed from the ‘scientific’ version o f history. ‘It m ust b e ’ is far too com m on a locution am ongst Indian historians. A nother, generally unconscious, cause m ay have been fear o f unw elcom e findings. Som e exam ples are touched on in

V eter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Delhi, 1996).

Colonialism, Property and the State

15

this paper— the history o f Buddhism , the m isreading o f B hakti m ove­ m ents, the religious policies (as reflected in patterns o f patronage and the enforcem ent o f law s and custom s) of all pre-colonial regim es. To conclude this unavoidably ram bling introduction, I have done m y best to take account o f recent work, but I m ay well have m issed im portant points or very recent work. If so, I would be grateful if readers w ould w rite to me, care o f the publisher.

Madras Presidency •

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency, 1853-1947*

In one standard version o f Indian econom ic history, from som e point (not alw ays clearly specified) in the nineteenth century, peasants have been increasingly dispossessed o f their land: all over India, the grow th o f com m ercial agriculture and the m onetization o f the econom y led to the rise o f m oneylenders and the im poverishm ent o f the peasant; the village econom y was further w eakened by the destruction o f village handicrafts, and the new legal system facilitated the transfer o f lands. An additional burden, high taxation, was im ­ posed on the peasantry in the raiyatwari areas o f the south. M illions of once self-sufficient peasant fam ilies w ere turned into agricultural labourers, and were jo in ed in this fate by village artisans. W ithin the group o f landholders, the ow nership o f land becam e concentrated in the hands o f m oneylenders and large farm ers.1 Indeed, the governm ent o f India itself som etim es took a gloom y view o f agrarian developm ents. Tow ards the end o f the nineteenth century, the authors o f the Memorandum on the Resolution o f the Power to Alienate Interests in Land predicted that *1 am grateful to the Indian Council of Social Science Research for a grant enabling me to carry out the research required for this paper, to Stephen Lord of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and P.M. Mathew, P.N. Kar, and M. Achi Reddy for statistical calculations; and to the following for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper: Chris Baker, Meghnad Desai, S. Guhan, Alan Heston, Tom Kessinger, P.K. Pattanaik, T.N. Srinivasan, Burton Stein, and K. Sundaram. I have been very fortunate in having been able to draw on the experience of South Indian officials, in particular T.L. Shankar. 'This view has been discussed in Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India, Ch. 11. There is a strikingly similar version of Russian history described in T. Shanin’s The Awkward Class (Oxford, 1972), p.l, except that there is no reference to handicrafts.

20

Colonialism, Property and the State

as time goes on and the development of the country progresses, the tendency must surely be for the transfers which are pernicious to increase more rapidly Jh an those which are beneficial. As population increases, cultivation extends, the area available for its further extension diminishes, communications im­ prove, and new markets are opened, the competition for land will be keener, prices and rents will rise, the profits of the landowner wUl increase, and the land itself become more valuable, and there will thus be a stronger inducement to the moneylender to acquire it, while its occupants will, owing to the sub­ division of holdings and the pressure of population on the land, be in a worse position to resist. The process of transfer has already worked such terrible evil in some parts of India, that the burden of proof lies on those who contend that in other parts it has done no ill, and still more on those who say it will do none in the future.2 They w ere speaking o f the transfer o f lands to non-agriculturists, particularly m oneylenders, and not o f the increasing concentration o f landow nership per se, but the tw o are connected. Scattered references from official reports are frequently cited in support o f this view, but there has been no system atic analysis o f landholdings, partly because we do not have inform ation on the dis­ tribution o f actual area held under raiyatw ari at different points o f tim e. W hat we do have, for M adras at least, are land revenue data. T his paper attem pts to extract from the land revenue statistics for M adras Presidency inform ation on changes in the pattern o f landhold­ ings, and in particular on the question o f increasing concentration in landholdings, and shows that there is little evidence in the land revenue statistics for the view that ‘the rich grew rich er’, at least in term s o f land, in M adras Presidency.

USE OF LAND REVENUE DATA U nder the raiyatw ari system , all landholdings are registered for revenue purposes. Every plot o f land on w hich land revenue is pay­ able is registered in the nam e o f an individual who is responsible for the paym ent o f the land revenue; he is issued with a docum ent, a r*

Government of India, Note on Land Transfer and Agricultural Indebtedness in India, no date, para. 56.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 21 patta, describing the lands registered in his nam e.3 The m an who paid the revenue on the land w as in effect its ow ner. The governm ent argued: Under the Ryotwary system, every registered holder of land is recognised as its proprietor and pays direct to Government. He is at liberty to sub-let his property, or to transfer it by gift, sale or mortgage. He cannot be ejected by Government so long as he pays the fixed assessment.. . The ryot, under this system, is virtually a proprietor on a simple and perfect tide, and has all the benefits of a perpetual lease without its responsibilities, inasmuch as he can, at any time, throw up his lands, but cannot be ejected so long as he pays his dues: he receives assistance in difficult seasons, and is not responsible for the payment of his neighbours.4 If the pattadar defaulted on his land revenue, the Government sold as much of his land as was enough to recover the dues. The pattadar was allowed to relinquish part or all of his land so that he would not be liable to pay the land revenue due on it, provided, first, that he applied for permission to do so early in the season so that the land was available to others. Any one could apply to take up unoccupied lands, though mirasdars and residents of the village were given first refusal.3 H ow ever, the patta is not in itself a title deed; governm ent offi­ cials were expected to see that the register o f pattas recorded the actual ow nership o f land accurately, but inaccuracies w ere un­ avoidable. There are two m ain reasons for inaccuracy: deliberate evasion o f tax liability, and failure to record land transfers. O ne could evade land revenue either by concealing the holding altogether o r by understating the liability. It is im possible to conceal o n e’s land holdings in a village, so holdings could only be kept out o f the village records w ith the collusion o f the village revenue offi­ cials. Such collusion was com m on enough before the 1870s and 1880s w hen extensive surveys on m odem principles were first carried out, and it w as probably the richer and m ore influential peasants who

^The patta specified the area held, type of land, land revenue payable, and the instalments in which it was to be paid; the road cess, village cess, and other particulars, such as restrictions of mining rights. Quoted in Manual of the Settlement Department (Madras, 1877), p. 3. 5The dates varied for each district, so as to follow the first rains; C.D. Macleane, Manual of Administration for Madras Presidency, Vol. 1 (Madras, 1885), pp 121-4.

22

Colonialism, Property and the State

succeeded in concealing their holdings. Thus, the figures for 1853-4 may underestim ate the actual degree o f inequality on this account.6 But in the m odern period o f raiyatw ari, it is unlikely that any significant extent o f land was unrecorded. The village surveys were m uch m ore carefully carried out, and extensive areas o f hitherto un­ recorded land were registered and m ade liable to tax, as the govern­ m ent attached great im portance to the accuracy of the registers. Some holdings may still have been undervalued as a result o f collusion betw een village officials and pattadars, but this was very m uch less than in the m iddle o f the nineteenth century. The other reason for inaccuracy is that even if the holding and its tax liability are correctly registered, the nam e o f the actual ow ner m ay not be. W hen land is transferred by sale or otherw ise, the change o f ow nership ought to be recorded in the land revenue registers and a new patta issued, but the parties to the sale as well as the village accountant may neglect to do this. A patta is not a legal title deed, and to get a new patta takes tim e, trouble, and the expenditure o f a small sum o f m oney, so neither party may bother to change the patta (the new ow ner will o f course pay the land revenue— he cannot dis­ avow liability w ithout disavow ing ow nership). In recent years, these discrepancies have been very large: I have been told that it has been estim ated in A ndhra Pradesh that in anyw here betw een 2 0 -4 5 per cent of the pattas, the nam e o f the ow ner is w rongly recorded. It is not known w hether certain classes o f holdings are m ore prone to these errors than others, so nothing can be said about the bias, if any, which these inaccuracies m ay im part to estim ates o f concentration o f ow nership. Som e officials believe that these inaccuracies have grow n enorm ously over the last ten or tw enty years, but this is o f course no proof o f the accuracy o f the earlier figures. One should note, how ever, that at least at every resettlem ent, a vigorous attem pt should have been m ade to correct all inaccuracies in the pattas. One m ay well ask why it is w orth analysing the patta records when they are so liable to error. The records o f land transfers, such 6In the early period (and perhaps later) both the mirasidars and their ‘tenants,’ the actual cultivators who paid the revenue, fought to obtain pat|as. Before the 1850s the collectors tended to favour the mirasidars but later their attitude changed somewhat. I am indebted to David Ludden, who is working on Tirunelveli, for this information.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 23 as the sale deeds kept in the sub-registrar’s office in each taluk, w ould be a m uch better guide to ow nership: the sale deed is the onjy legal title deed, and sales o f property above a certain am ount m ust be registered. But these records om it the vast num ber o f sales o f frag­ m ents o f land, and there are no sum m ary tables o f these sales; these w ould have to be com piled from the original registers, a daunting undertaking for the whole Presidency, or indeed even for a district. A nd in any case these records are not likely to be available for as far back as 1853-4. Thus it is only the patta data that enable us to m ake any statem ents at all about overall trends in land distribution, and it is the argum ent o f this paper that if one bears in m ind their shortcom ings it is possible to extract significant conclusions from the figures. One should also add that w riters on South India continue to use patta data to describe rural inequality in South India for w ant o f better figures,7 so it is in any case necessary to analyse the strength o f the conclusions the data can support. The land revenue data have the additional advantage o f being presented in a form w hich can readily be used for the construction o f Lorenz curves, a useful graphic device for show ing changes in the pattern o f distribution.8

n

Kumar, Land and Caste in South India, p. 171; David Washbrook, ‘Country Politics: Madras 1880 to 1930’, Modem Asian Studies, July 1973, p. 487; Burton Stein, ‘Privileged Landholding: The Concept Stretched to Cover the Case,’ mimeo, 1974. ^To construct a Lorenz curve, one must tabulate the cumulative percentages of land held, starting with the percentage of the total land held by the poorest class of landholders. These figures are then plotted on a graph, with the percentages of landowners being shown on the horizontal axis, and the percentage of the land held being on a vertical axis; the curve joining the various points is the Lorenz curve. If the land were perfectly equally divided, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the diagonal: the bottom 10 per cent of the landholders (though one can hardly talk of ‘bottom’ here) would hold 10 per cent of the land, 30 per cent of the landholders would hold 30 per cent of the land, and so on. If the curve were perfectly unequal, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the axes of the diagram to the right of the diagonal: the richest landholder would hold 100 per cent of the land, and everyone else would have 0 per cent. The Lorenz curve usually falls between these two extremes and the extent to which it falls below the diagonal is an indication of the ‘inequality’ of the distribution. Since Lorenz curves for different years can

24

Colonialism, Property and the State

V arious objections have been made to the use o f the Lorenz curve, som e o f which are m isconceived, som e o f which apply to all statis­ tical m easures, and som e o f which apply to the inferences draw n from Lorenz curves rather than the technique itself. B ut there rem ain valid problem s w hich one m ust bear in mind. Like all curves that are fitted to a limited num ber o f points, the L orenz curve is a very approxim ate representation of reality, and this is the m ore true the few er the num ber o f points. Ideally, in other w ords, one should plot a point for each individual, but even if separate figures were available for each pattaholder,9 this would be an im possibly cum bersom e task. If the raw data were not already aggregated into classes, one would be forced to do so, though o f course one m ight well choose to divide the data into a larger num ber o f classes than the published tables present; nine classes are available for m ost o f our years. It is worth noting that if one is considering the L orenz curve for any one year, the averaging out im plied in considering classes rather than individuals, and in connecting points with a straight line, alw ays underestim ates the actual extent o f inequality.10 The extent to which the inequality is underestim ated is unknown, so if one is com paring Lorenz curves for tw o different points o f time, the L orenz curves m ay conceal a real change in either direction, o f greater equality or greater inequality. The danger that this will happen will depend on the size o f the classes— the greater the range within each class the greater the risk o f real changes being hidden. For the data we are considering, the two low est class intervals are very sm all— Re 1 and less, and Rs 10 and less but m ore than one rupee— so the possibilities

be plotted on the same diagram, this technique is a convenient way of showing changes over time. Thus, if the Lorenz curve for 1936 clearly lies below that for 1836, the distribution of land has clearly become more unequal, whereas if it lies above it, is has become more equal. 9For recent years, individual figures are theoretically available in each village register, but the further back one moves in time, the less likely it is that individual records exist. >0The points plotted must fall on the actual Lorenz curve. These points are then connected by straight lines, and the straight lines are sometimes smoothed out into a curve, the curve being as near the straight line as possible. Since the Lorenz curves must be convex, the arcs joining points on it must be above it, i.e. must lie nearer the 43 per cent line showing equality.

Landowners hip and Inequality in Madras Presidency 25 of significant redistribution within these classes, particularly the low est class, are not very large. But the range w idens with the size o f the class, and for the largest class, ‘over Rs 1000,’ no lim it is specified, so redistribution within each of the largest groups, w hich is obscured, m ay be im portant. This is an argum ent for increasing the num ber o f classes, but it is not an argum ent against the use o f Lorenz curves unless the num ber of available classes is extrem ely small, say three or four. And if only such a few classes are available, all statem ents about inequality, w hether statistical or verbal, are suspect. A nother ‘objection’ is that Lorenz curves show an unam biguous m ove tow ards or away from equality only if the curves do not inter­ sect. But this is a defect not o f Lorenz curves but o f reality. The curves may intersect because the m iddle groups have lost to those at either extrem e. How one values this change depends on the relative extent to which the poorest and the richest have benefited, and w hether the egalitarian gets m ore pleasure out o f the poorest becom ­ ing better off, than pain from the rise in the landholdings o f the richest. Supporters o f a ‘sturdy independent peasantry’ m ight be depressed by the intersection o f the Lorenz curves, i.e. by the relative im poverishm ent o f the m iddle groups. Econom ists have evolved various sum m ary statistics o f inequality, o f w hich the m ost com m on is the Gini coefficient. These m easures enable one to rank distributions, unlike the Lorenz curve, but each measure involves making some assumption about the weights to be given to the various classes (the Gini coefficient gives equal weights), and different m easures will give different ranking.11 The Lorenz cu r­ ves yield sufficient inform ation for m ost o f our purposes, but G ini coefficients have also been calculated for the Presidency as a whole.

BIAS But there may still be some system atic bias in the figures. To repeat, the land revenue statistics divide pattas into classes, according to the 11 There is a large and rapidly growing literature on these and other measures of inequality. J. Pen, Income Distribution (London, 1971) provides a veiy clear introduction. Also see A.B. Atkinson (ed.), Wealth, Income and Inequality (London, 1973).

26

Colonialism, Property and the State

land revenue payable on each patta. For each district, the sum m ary statistics give inform ation on (a) the num bers in each class o f patta as a percentage o f the total num ber o f pattas, and (b) the land revenue paid by each class as a share o f the total revenue. Statistics o f the acreage held by each class o f pattas are also given for som e years, but since the classification o f pattas is on the basis o f land revenue paid, not acreag e,12 it is preferable to plot on the X -axis the percentage o f land revenue paid by each class rather than the percentage o f area held. In any case, it is arguable that in many w ays the am ount o f land revenue paid is a better guide to the dis­ tribution o f incom e or w ealth than land area. If one acre o f w et land yields the same incom e as five acres o f dry land, the holder o f the dry land is equivalent in incom e and w ealth to the holder o f the wet land, not five tim es as rich .13 Tw o assum ptions are being made: first, that land revenue is a constant proportion o f income, and secondly, that each patta cor­ responds to one and only one landholder. To take the first point, the land revenue in M adras was at least in theory fixed at one-half the net produce. Elaborate calculations of gross output from each kind o f soil, o f the expenses o f cultivation, etc., were m ade at the initial settlem ent and net produce was valued by taking into account not only current prices but those o f the preced­ ing thirty years; these revenue rates (in m oney term s) rem ained fixed for about thirty years though rem issions were m ade for poor harvests. There is thus an abundance o f reasons why the land revenue should not in fact equal h alf the net produce— from arithm etical errors in calculation to the divergence o f actual prices from those taken into account in the revenue calculations. B ut the kinds o f error we are interested in are those which intro­ duce a system atic bias in favour o f som e particular group of landholders, thus rendering invalid inferences about changes in ine­ quality from Lorenz curves. C ow le lands, newly cultivated lands on 10 A proposal was made towards the end of the century to classify holdings by area, but the Board of Revenue decided in 1899 that this would not be feasible. G.O. No. 413 (Rev), 28 June 1899. 13As an illustration of the range of assessments in the 1880s, the rates in the heaviest assessed district were around Rs 2-13 annas to Rs 3-12 annas per acre; in the lightest, from 11 annas to 14 annas per acre. B.H. Baden-Powell, Land Systems o f British India, Vol. 3, p. 72.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 27 w hich the assessm ent was light for a period, were not extensive enough to affect the argum ent. But there is one im portant possibility o f such bias: the incidence o f land revenue on certain crops may have been low er than on others, either because o f errors at the tim e o f settlem ent, or because crop prices diverged betw een settlem ents. Thus there is som e evidence that in the 1930s the incidence on food crops w as higher than on others. If large landow ners grow propor­ tionately less food than sm all, then the land revenue statistics w ould have underestim ated the degree o f inequality in the 1930s. To isolate this effect, one would have to analyse group-w ise cropping patterns and the m ovem ents o f relative prices— no a priori statem ents can be m ade, but there is no reason to believe that official calculations were thus system atically biased. The ratio o f land revenue to incom e varied not only across space but also across time. There appears to have been an increase in the incidence o f the land revenue from the beginning o f the tw entieth century: the collections o f land revenue were on an average 4.15 per cent o f the gross output in 1900-1 to 1904-5; 4.87 per cent in 1935— 36 to 1939-40, and 5.44 per cent in 1942-3 to 194 6 -7 .14 H ow ever, to the extent that these changes were caused by fluctuations in the general level o f prices (relative crop prices have already been dealt w ith), these variations over tim e do not affect Lorenz curves at any point o f tim e, and hence do not affect com parisons o f Lorenz curves over tim e. But they w ould affect m easures of absolute changes in, e.g., num bers below the poverty, line. The second set o f problem s arises from the possible divergences betw een the num ber o f pattaholders and the num ber o f actual landholders. Series A o f the graphs has been drawn on the assum ption that each patta corresponded to one and only one pattaholder. This was not the case, for three m ain reasons. First, there were jo in t pattas: in one jo in t patta the nam es o f several holders were recorded as jo in t holders. This presents no great difficulties in principle since the total num ber o f shareholders in each class is also given so that one can

“ Land revenue figures from the Administrative Reports of the Madras Presidency; output figures from George Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947, Appendix Table 4C. The percentages are only a rough indication of the incidence of raiyatwari, since both sets of figures include zamindari and

inamdari.

28

Colonialism, Property and the State

TABLE 2.1 Average Number of Shareholders Per Joint Patta, 1890-1, 1930-1, 1945-6. Class (Rs) 0-1 1-10 0-10 10-30 30-50 50-100 100-250 250-500 500-1000 1000 and above Total

1890-1 -

-

3.01 3.55 5.66 4.46 4.13 4.65 6.12 10.09 3.43

1930-1

1945-6

3.22 3.19 3.20 3.25 3.75 4.08 4.78 5.71 6.79 15.52 3.26

2.70 2.91 2.84 3.34 3.45 4.13 4.09 4.92 5.63 5.04 2.98

calculate the average size of pattas:15 this has been done in Series B o f the graphs.16 If one com pares the graphs of pattas with those o f shareholders, no clear pattern em erges. In many districts, such as G anjam and K rishna, the patterns are sim ilar. In others, such as the T am il districts o f Tiruchi, M adurai, and Coim batore, the graphs for shareholders are nearer the diagonal at the lower end o f the scale, suggesting that there was m ore subdivision in the richer groups (this can also be directly discovered from the tables). In Tanjore, on the other hand, the curves are very sim ilar, with the shareholder graphs being frac­ tionally less unequal. It would be tedious to com pare the figures dis­ trict by district and year by year: the point to make is that w hether one takes figures o f pattas or of shareholders, there is no clear evidence of a trend o f increasing concentration o f landow nership. Secondly, a much more serious problem is that jo in t ow nership (or even the split-up o f a holding) may fail to be recorded. A father lsThis involves making the assumption that in each size class there are an equal number of joint holders per patta, which is clearly inaccurate. This assumption, therefore, leads to some underestimation of concentration at any point of time. 6Unfortunately, data on numbers of joint holders were not available for 1853-4 which is one reason why Series A was also drawn. Series A is entitled ‘Pattas’ and Series B ‘Shareholders’

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 29 and three adult sons may work a holding together with a single patta in the father’s name: when the father dies, if the patta now records the jo in t ow nership o f three brothers, or is split up into three pattas, the figures will show a decrease in average size o f holdings for this group, w hereas in fact there has been an increase17 if one assum es that the sons had as much right over the land when their father was alive. If the fath er had superior rights, then the patta figures are cor­ rect. O r again, the patta may be initially registered in the nam e o f the eldest brother, but at some stage the other two may insist on separate pattas or on their nam es being added to a joint patta: the patta figures will then record a change in ow nership when only a change in frequency o f registration has taken place. Thus in the 1880s Benson stated that the grow th in jo int pattas over the previous 30 years was ‘probably due to the operation o f the Hindu Law o f sub­ division and to the necessity which has been im posed on the ryots o f securing a record o f their coparcenary rights in holdings.’18 To settle this question one requires inform ation on fam ily struc­ ture in relationship to ow nership rights, and on w hether certain clas­ ses in particular fail to record changes in ow nership because o f unfamiliarity with legal procedures or for other reasons. V aidyanathan analysed the NSS all-India data for 1958-9 to show that the size o f the fam ily varied directly w ith the size o f the landholding,19 and this is also true for M adras. It seem s likely that jo in t fam ilies are m ore prevalent am ongst the higher castes, which also are larger land­ ow ners: the resurvey o f 12 villages in M adras in 1936-7 showed that jo in t fam ilies were breaking up faster am ongst the depressed classes, particularly in the Tam il districts.20 The patta data also show m ore

17

There is the further complication that at some point before his death the father may become too old to work—he should ideally be counted amongst the dependents at this stage. I8C. Benson, A Statistical Account of Kumool, p. 102. This report also points out that differences in frequency of joint pattas between taluks may have resulted merely from differences in administrative practices: this may also have been true of variations over time. 19 A. Vaidyanathan, ‘Some Aspects of Inequalities in Living Standards in Rural India’ in T.N. Srinivasan and P.K. Bardhan (eds). Poverty and Income Distribution in India (Calcutta, 1974), p. 226. 20P J. Thomas and K.C. Ramakrishnan, Some South Indian Villages (Madras, 1940), p. 337.

30

Colonialism, Property and the State

nam es per jo in t patta in the highest size groups (Table I). But the question is, do the figures for the higher class sizes underestim ate the actual num ber o f jo in t holdings? If they do, the patta figures overestim ate inequality at any point o f tim e and if the tendency is grow ing over tim e (there is no reason to suppose that it is) the grow th o f inequality is exaggerated. U nfortunately there is no way o f answ er­ ing this question.21 Thirdly, the assum ption that there is a one-to-one correspondence betw een pattas and landholders also errs in the other direction: one m an m ay hold several pattas. In theory each patta records all the land held by one m an (or group of joint holders) w ithin a revenue village, but if a man ow ns land in x villages he will be given x pattas.22 A gain, those w ith jo in t pattas very often also held single 21

One cannot compare the patta data on joint holdings with the NSS data on family size, since the latter include women, children, and other dependents. Household size depends not only on patterns of landholding, the number of children per couple, etc., but also on patterns of migration—do adults who migrate take their wives and children with them or leave them behind in the family house in the village? 22 Thus the patta figures do not reveal the full extent of subdivision and fragmentation. One reason in the early years was the desire to equalize the value of holdings in the family: ‘The average extent of land in the puttah gives no idea of its minute subdivisions, as each puttah includes, as a rule, many scattered patches of a diminutive size. This seems to be the remains of the old Pasengerei system, under which the whole lands of the village were constantly sub-divided among the cultivators, the object being to equalize the burden of assessment by the almost annual change of each ryot’s land, so that all might share in turns in the good and bad. This minute division has thus unfortunately been permanently stamped in the more definite arrangements which have followed’. Proceedings of the Madras Government, 19 October 1860, No. 1, 906, quoted in Selections from the Records o f the Madras Government, No. 74, p. 588. But seventy years later the collector of Tiruchirappalli remarked that ‘The tendency of each shareholder here to get possessed of a share from all the different pieces of varying extent lying in the different places owned by the family is not as pronounced as it was several years ago.’ G.O. No. 735, 12 April 1929. These proceedings contain a number of interesting reports from collectors who were asked to comment on the need for a law enforcing consolidation. The consensus of opinion was that such a law was either unnecessary or unenforceable: farmers liked to hold fragments of different types of land to spread risk, spread labour over the year, and for ease in selling and mortgaging small amounts of land.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 31 pattas separately. Since it is m ore likely that large landholders own land in several villages than poorer peasants, the figures understate the true extent o f concentration at any point o f tim e. For instance, the survey o f V adam alaipuram village in the 1950s found that the large landow ners (those with over tw enty-five acres) held a quarter o f their lands outside the village: nothing is explicitly said about the extra-village holdings o f the small farm ers, presum ably because they w ere not im portant. 3 The question is w hether the degree o f underestim ation has been grow ing over tim e, i.e. w hether there was a grow ing tendency for large landholders to own land in several villages or even to hold several pattas w ithin a village. It is plausible that w ith grow ing econom ic integration large landow ners did tend to spread their land acquisition across villages. But this is one o f those plausible assum p­ tions which needs to be checked against the historical evidence. U n­ fortunately such evidence is not readily available, but it is interesting that as early as 1797, it was said o f the B aram ahal and Salem dis­ tricts, ‘It being a practice w ith the ryots to cultivate in their ow n, and in neighbouring villages, at the same tim e, many o f them are no doubt tw ice registered [in the revenue statistics]... .’24

LANDLESSNESS Since the figures only relate to landholders, a serious om ission is that o f the landless. Thus, if all the landholders in the sm allest group lost their lands to those in the m iddle groups and becam e labourers, the Lorenz curves would show an increase in equality w ithin the landholding group, and w ould be correct in doing so, but if one took the agrarian system as a whole, there would have been an increase in inequality. A gain, if landless labourers began to buy land, the dis­ tribution o f land within the landholding group m ight becom e m ore unequal w hile the distribution o f w ealth within the com m unity as a w hole had becom e m ore equal. 21 University of Madras, Agro-Economics Centre, ‘Survey of Vadamalaipuram Village,’ mimeo, p. 51. 24‘Explanation of the Statistical Statement of the Baramahal and Salem Districts for Fusly, 1206’, para 17. Government of Madras, Baramahal Records, Sec. 21, Vols 1 and 2.

32

Colonialism, Property and the State

In principle, one could include the landless if one knew how m any w ere there. But this is an uncertain figure even for C ensus years, for w ell-know n reasons, and doubly uncertain in inter-Censal years. The C ensus figures for M adras Presidency do not show a significant in­ crease in the proportion o f agricultural labour to the total workforce. M ale agricultural labourers formed 16 per cent o f the m ale workforce in the Presidency in 1871, 18 per cent in 1901, 18 per cent in 1951, and 17 per cent in 1961.25 But many o f these labourers would own som e tiny plot o f land. The m inim um piece of land for w hich pattas are issued is 1 cent (one-hundredth o f an acre), so there is bound to be som e overlapping between pattadars and the C ensus figures of agricultural/landless labour. It is, therefore, im possible to include them in the Lorenz curves; one can only note that the om ission of the totally landless m eans that the full extent o f inequality in the agricultural com m unity as a w hole is not reflected in the L orenz curves.

INAMDARI AND ZAMINDARI LANDS Since our figures only relate to raiyatwari lands, inam dari and zam indari lands have been om itted, and the areas covered by these tw o tenures were large: in the 1870s, of the m ore than 138,000 square m iles o f the Presidency, over 80,000 were raiyatw ari (48,000 square m iles being unassessed w aste), over 12,000 inam, and nearly 40,000 zam indari; and the rem aining 6,000 square m iles officially unclas­ sified, may well have been zam indari too. The om ission o f zam indari lands from our figures m eans that an additional source o f inequality has been om itted; this is particularly im portant for such districts as V ishakhapatnam , by far the m ajor part o f which was zam indari. But the area under zam indari started to decline after the m iddle o f the nineteenth century. A nd besides, there was very little overlapping betw een the zamindars and the raiyatw ari pattadars. The case with inam dari is quite different. There were inam lands in practically every village, and by far the greater part o f them w ere held by individuals, 25Kumar, Land and Caste in South India, pp 172-3; 1961 figures have been calculated from Census of India, 1961, Paper No. 10, Final Population Totals. The Agricultural Labour Enquiry figures show a much higher proportion; see Kumar, Land and Caste in South India, p. 3.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 33 not institutions.26 M any o f these inamdars were also raiyatw ari pat­ tadars, so the om ission o f inam lands vitiates the raiyatw ari figures also. This is particularly so since in the first h alf o f the nineteenth century one easy way to evade land revenue was to get as m uch o f o n e’s lands classified as inam lands as possible. But this becam e progressively m ore difficult. U nfortunately, as figures o f the distribu­ tion o f inam s by size or value are not available one can only attem pt to guess at how the inclusion o f inam lands would affect the calcula­ tions o f inequality. If there were village karnams and headm en whose holdings o f both inam and raiyatw ari lands were substantial, in local term s, there w ere also school teachers and priests with tiny inam holdings. But on the whole the details of inam holdings, if w e had them , are m ore likely to add to inequality at a point o f tim e. B ut not over time. There was no expansion o f the area under inam dari, nor could individuals buy up others’ inams, so the de facto sub-division o f inam rights m ust have proceeded considerably faster than under raiyatw ari. T here is an o th er p oint th at should be noted here. The larger inam dars were generally institutions, particularly tem ples. O nce the B ritish had confirm ed inam titles, there were no additions to their inam lands: private individuals could not and the governm ent would not convert raiyatw ari lands into inam and then gift them to tem ples. B ut private individuals could and did gift raiyatw ari lands, or the incom e from them: we com e across instances in the records o f Chettiars buying land to gift them to the tem ples. And the large tem ples them selves bought lands out o f their am ple incom es, as a useful in­ vestm ent. Tem ples, it is estim ated, owned a third o f all the land in Tanjore district. The richest tem ple in the South (if not in all India?), Tirupathi, ow ned three whole taluks (w hich may have totalled some one m illion acres) in the early tw entieth century; its incom e has grown from Rs 5 lakhs per annum in the late nineteenth century to over Rs 1 lakh per day now. It is true that control over tem ple funds w as a very im portant source o f political and econom ic pow er, and that the enorm ous growth o f tem ple funds may well have led to a 26

Of the 346,207 inam titles confirmed by the Inam Commission, 254,473 were held by individuals; these accounted for 65 per cent of the total assessment and 69 per cent of the total area settled (about 8,330 square miles). Selections from the Records o f the Madras Government, New Revenue Series No. 1.

34

Colonialism, Property and the State TABLE 2.2 Sources of Error or Bias

Factor Concealment of land Change of ownership not registered Averaging out of class data Incidence of land revenue varies at any point of time Incidence of land revenue changes over* time Unrecorded joint holdings Land held in several villages Omission of landless Omission of inams and zamindaris Inclusion of raiyatwari lands of temples

Point of time

Trend

?

♦* ? ? ?

0 ?

? ?

-

-

-

? -

-

-

+

-(? ) + +

* Because this source of bias was probably greater in the earlier years. ' concentration o f such pow er.27 B ut the control tem ple m anagers have over the incom e and assets o f the tem ple are in law and even in practice different from those a landow ner enjoys over his private lands. Ideally one should separate the raiyatw ari lands held by tem ples, and if one did so, the calculations of inequality m ay well be m odified, at least in those districts with rich tem ples, such as Tanjore, Coim batore, Tiruchirapalli, M adurai, Ram nad, and Tum elveli in Tam il Nadu. W e can now attem pt to sum up the factors m aking for erroneous or biased estim ates o f inequality. In Table 2.2 factors w hich under­ estim ate inequality are m arked with a m inus, and those w hich exag­ gerate it, w ith a plus; a distinction is draw n betw een estim ates of inequality at a point o f tim e and o f trends over time. Thus, the bias o f m ost factors is unknow n and certainly Table 2.2 is purely personal. Som e other writers will value the factors dif­ ferently. M y own conclusion is that the extent o f inequality is very probably underestim ated at any point o f tim e, but it is m ore doubtful that there is a sim ilar bias in the trend figures. 27D.A. Washbrook, ‘Temples and Political Development’ in C.J. Baker and D.A. Washbrook, South India: Political Institutions and Political Change, 1880-1940 (Delhi, 1975). The figures for Tirupathi and Tanjore cited above are on p. 71 of the above book.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 35

WHAT DO THE LORENZ CURVES SHOW? Oil

For the Presidency as a w hole Lorenz ratios have been calculated: these show very little change in the degree of inequality betw een 1853-4 and 1945-6, if one considers pattas, and some increase in inequality betw een 1890-1 and 1945-6, if one considers shareholders.

TABLE 2.3 Lorenz Ratios for Selected Years

Pattas Shareholders

1853-4

1890-1

1900-1

1930-1

1945-6

0.63

0.59 0.54

0.62 0.59

0.63 0.63

0.62 0.60

-

The L orenz curves for selected districts are set out in Figures 2.1 to 2.11 ; they reveal a m arked degree o f inequality in districts such as Tanjore, and a fair degree o f inequality in several others as early as 1853-4. The settlem ent reports for this period do not contradict this view: o f M anargudi it was said in 1860, ‘there are m any o f the vellala caste in particular, who are influential men, holding large tracts o f land, and paying up to as m uch as Rs 7,000 a year to G overn­ m ent [in fact the rent roll shows 2 paying over Rs 1001]. W hole villages in several cases, and considerable portions in others are the property o f a single individual or fam ily...’; 9 on the other hand over h alf the pattas paid less than Rs 10. The figures show no clear trends for all the districts, there are som e in w hich there is some increase in concentration betw een 1853— 4 and 1950-1, such as G anjam , K rishna (from 1890-1 to 1950-1), S. A rcot, and S. C anara (where there was a substantial increase), and som e in which concentration w as actually reduced, such as Tiruchirapalli, Tirunelveli (a big reduction), C oim batore, and M alabar. A nd in som e districts there was practically no change: Kur-

28Lorenz ratio = 1 - (y, + y, + 1) (t, + x, + 1) where yt is the cumulative share of assessment and x, is the cumulative share of patlas/shareholders in their respective totals. With complete equality LR = 0; with complete inequality LR = 1. 29G.O. N o. 1906, 19 October 1860. The average assessment per acre in Manargui was Rs 35 per acre, so the largest landowners had around 200 acres.

FIGURE 2.1 Coimbatore

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.2 Ganjam

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.3 Krishna

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.4 Kumool

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.5 Malabar

FIGURE 2.6 Ncllorc

1853-4 1900-1 1930-1 1950-1

0

10

20

30

40

50 60 PATTAS

70

80

90

100

FIGURE 2.7 South Arcot

30

40 50 60 70 SHAREHOLDERS

80

90

100

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.8 South Cañara

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.9 Tanjore

PATTAS

SHAREHOLDERS FIGURE 2.10 Tiruchirapalli

SHAREHOLDERS

PATTAS FIGURE 2.11 Tirunelveli

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 47 nool, N ellore, and Salem .30 N or can one detect any clearer trend by considering interm ediate years: concentration increases and then falls, or vice versa. But it is perhaps significant that it is in general in the irrigated districts that concentration increases and in the very dry areas, such as Bellary and K um ool, that concentration falls or hardly changes (the diagram for Bellary has been om itted). The dom inant im pression left by nearly all the figures is first, that the distribution o f holdings was already very unequal in 1853-4, and secondly, that there was no m arked overall trend in concentration o v er the ninty-tw o years o f our figures. Those who, wish to argue the case for concentration will have to find som e other evidence. B ecause o f the indirect nature of the data used here, the questionable assum ptions, and the possibilities o f statistical errors, further analysis o f land ow nership data m ay reveal a rather different picture from that suggested by our graphs. But till this is produced, it seem s reasonable to hold that by and large there w as no great increase in the concentration o f landholdings in M adras Presidency betw een 1853-4 and 1946-7. O ne check on the patta data is to com pare them w ith the NSS d ata on landholdings for 1953—4. In Figures 12 and 13 the 1950-1 patta figures have been com pared w ith the 1953-4 NSS data for the districts com prising M adras state and A ndhra Pradesh: the Lorenz curves are fairly close to each other for M adras state: in fact, the NSS figures show m ore equality in the higher ranges (the effects o f land reform ?). H ow ever, the NSS data show a very m uch greater degree o f inequality than the patta figures in A ndhra Pradesh. Is this a sign that the m odem revenue data are m uch worse in A ndhra Pradesh than in M adras state? A nother point som ew hat in support o f the Lorenz curves is that the differences betw een districts that they reveal conform s to what one would have expected on other grounds— Tanjore is fam ous for its large landow ners, K rishna for the grow th o f large com m ercial farm ers. Thus, it does not seem satisfactory to reject the patta figures out o f hand as totally worthless.

30

One must also bear in mind changes in district boundaries; the data have not been adjusted for these changes.

48

Colonialism, Property and the State

100

20

30

40

50

60

70

FIGURE 2.12 Madras State, 1950-1

EXPLANATIONS OF THE TRENDS IN LANDHOLDINGS Even if the patta data are correct in suggesting that there was no overw helm ing trend tow ards the increasing concentration o f landholdings over the century considered, it is still possible that various factors m aking for inequality o f w ealth and incom e did operate— com m ercialization, the grow ing hold o f m oneylenders and

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 49

FIGURE 2.13 Andhra Pradesh, 1950-1 so forth— but that they were not reflected in changes in landholdings. As the G overnm ent o f India pointed out in 1895: it must always be borne in mind that the area of land which has been actually transferred by no means fully represents the area in which the proprietor’s interest is virtually lost beyond recall! The successive stages in the process are debt, simple hypothecation, usufructuary mortgage, and sale. Of these stages the figures [of land transfers] represent, though but imperfectly, the results of the fourth and still less completely those of the third. But the land under simple hypothecation, which has in some cases been estimated to fall little short of that under usufructuary mortgage, does not appear at all, while

50

Colonialism, Property and the State

the amount of debt for which, under our law as it stands, the land is liable is enormous, and much of it is of such a nature that it must inevitably pass through the further stages to the final conclusion of sale.31 Sixty years later the patta figures did not in fact show that ‘th e final conclusion o f sale’ had been reached on an enorm ous scale. The fears o f the G overnm ent o f India, particularly that land w ould pass into the hands o f non-agriculturists, were exaggerated, as various detailed reports from the Provinces show ed.32 It may w ell have been true that the m ajority o f the raiyats were in debt and that the volum e o f debt increased over the period, w ith violent fluctuations. W hat seem s to be in doubt is that indebtedness led to increasing concentra­ tion o f landholdings. It is possible o f course that the creditors preferred to prolong debt bondage rather than to foreclose, because o f the other advantages— purchases at low prices, unpaid labour, social power, etc.— that the hold over their debtors gave them . As the D irector-G eneral o f R egistration rem arked in 1906, ‘a pure m oney-lender or trader seldom cares to invest in lands, unless he wishes to becom e an agriculturist him self, since as an absentee landlord his investm ent in land will not bring him as m uch profit as he can secure by other investm ents.’33 A gain, the grow th o f inequality may have m anifested itself not in large landow ners buying up sm aller ones, but in the larger landlords diversifying their assets, and going into trade, banking and industry, particularly agricultural processing industries, such as sugar and rice m illing.34 D avid W ashbrook has described how the wealthy peasants o f the K rishna and G odavari deltas w ent into the m ica busi­ ness, cotton m ills, and banking in the 1920s and points out that 31

Government of India, Memorandum on the Resolution of the Power to Alienate Interests in Land (1895), para 48. 32 In 1900, when the Inspector-General of Registration examined the figures on sales of land, he found that lawyers, officials, etc., had called themselves agriculturists and there were also benami transactions. ‘But making every allowance for these defects, the information already tabulated shows generally that in no district of the Presidency is there any reason to fear that lands are passing from the hands of the agriculturists to the trading or other classes.’ G.O. No. 1952-3; 23 July, 1900. 33G.O. No. 468, Judicial, 14 March, 1906, p. 5. 34Washbrook, ‘Country Policies: Madras 1880 to 1930’, Modem Asian Studies, July 1973, pp 508-11.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 51 despite the grow th o f their w ealth the am ount o f land transferred was not great;35 in T anjore they w ent into rice and sugar m ills. But there are also various possibilities w hich may have m ade for the reduction o f inequalities over tim e. The first set o f factors are dem ographic: if fertility rates varied less between different groups than death rates, so that a larger num ber o f the childrens o f the better-o ff survived, the land w ould be partitioned faster am ong them. U nfortunately we know practically nothing about differential rates o f natural grow th am ongst the different castes or classes. C om m enting on the statem ent that the poor have m ore children than the rich is a w ell-established fact and that hence ‘there is an inverse relationship betw een fam ily size and socio-econom ic status,’ Shanin rem arks, ‘the R ussian peasantry failed to appreciate such fruits o f m odem dem ographic thought. F or them , the reverse held true, m ainly because the rich had low er rates o f m ortality and adopted m ore ch ild ren ’.36 A s we have seen, it is also true o f India that the rural rich have larger fam ilies than the rural poor, but it is not clear to w hat extent this is because m ore o f their children survive or are adopted, o r be­ cause they have a larger num ber o f other dependants. Both the joint patta figures and the village surveys suggest that throughout our period, large landholdings were broken up, not enlarged. In the 1936-7 village resurvey, there is no mention o f any holding having increased in size— and this is a point investigators looked at— whereas in one village, in Tanjore, the holdings o f the largest landowners had decreased.37 Again, in a study o f Pathikanda village in Chittor dis­ trict in 1962, the two authors note that while landownership in the village was extremely concentrated, with one family owning nearly one-fourth the area, its holdings had fallen from 800 acres in the previous generation to 265, as a result o f partition.38 These are, o f course, ridiculously

35Washbrook, ‘Political Change in a Stable Society: Tanjore District 1880-1920’, in Baker and Washbrook (eds), South India. ^ T . Shanin, The Awkward Class, p. 63; the previous quotation is from U.N., The Determinants and Consequences of Population Trends, 1953. 37Thomas and Ramakrishnan, Some South Indian Villages, p. 37. 38G. Parthasarathy and L. Krishnamurthy, Changes in Rural Society, Agro-Economic Research Centre, University of Madras (Madras, 1962), p. 67. The authors go on to state that the large landowners of today are moneylenders and traders who acquired land from cultivators in the past, but provide no further information on this point (p.68).

52

Colonialism, Property and the State

small samples, but it is all we have found so far. No doubt, a really extensive search will throw up some more instances but it is very doubt­ ful that there are sufficient village studies to alter our conclusions. The patta data, which reveal a m arked decline in the average size in each class after 1900-1, show that it is the rich groups that are being broken up faster, but this point should not be stressed too far, since it m ay sim ply reveal greater fragm entation o f holdings am ongst the rich (Table 2.1 show s a very sharp fall in the num ber o f shareholders p er jo in t patta in the highest class after 1930-1; the reason for this is not clear). A t the other end o f the scale, the picture in the nineteenth century was one o f ceaseless m obility: o f men o f no m eans, taking up lands for cultivation (and being given pattas) w hich they threw up as soon as there were bad harvests. P.B. Sm ollet, in 1858, said, ‘the num ber o f pauper cultivators has largely increased o f late years for the system o f sub-division o f tenure is fostered by the inferior revenue servants, because at the tim e o f settlem ent it affords a wide field for chicanery and fraud in the granting o f new rem issions.’39 Sm ollet adm ittedly was a fervent and rare supporter o f the zam indari against the raiyatwari system , but references to ‘pauper cultivators’ abound in the literature. It would be useful to analyse the m obility within this group, and the way cultivable waste was taken up for cultivation. There are also factors m aking for the equalization o f landholdings over time. For instance, the G overnm ent of M adras follow ed a policy o f allotting lands to depressed castes and agricultural labourers, either directly or through Christian m issionaries. The total w astelands as­ signed to the depressed classes by the end o f 1931 am ounted to 342,611 acres:41 over 1 per cent o f the cultivated area and over 5 per cent o f the cultivable waste.

39P.B. Smollet, Madras: Its Civil Administration (Madras, 1858), p.7. ^G .O . No. 2910 of 18 December 1916 mentions that in the preceding three years five grants of land were made in Trichy, Guntur, South and North Arcot, to missionary societies for distribution to Panchamas; these amounted to under 1,200 acres in all. These grants were made by the Government of Madras, but district officers could also assign lands to ‘Panchamas and other landless classes.’ As a result of assignments to the labouring classes, Sathyanathan remarked, ‘many labourers have now become small holders of land.’ See S. Sathyanathan, Report on Agricultural Indebtedness, p. 40. 41G.T. Boag, Madras Presidency, 1881-1931, pp 131-2.

Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency 53 But it is also true that the governm ent itself follow ed the rule ‘w hen dealing w ith extension o f cultivation to offer the tenancy o f land hitherto uncultivated in the first place to the holder o f adjoining cultivated land, if he declines it, to other landholders, so that no landless agricultural w orker can get it unless all the landholders refuse it.... But in such districts as N orth A rcot where land is held by rich pattadars and cultivated by Pariah padiyals (day labourers) it is obviously unjust. The pattadars will even take it in turns to pay rent for the new land and hold it without even cultivating it, merely to prevent the padiyal from having a chance o f emancipating him self by its means. ...,42 These provisions were most frequently invoked in the mirasdari villages: in the whole o f Chinglepet, where mirasdari was very common, the Pariahs, who formed 25 per cent o f the population held only 2 per cent o f the land in 1891 and this proportion would have been m uch low er had it not been for the non-m irasi villages.43 It is true too that the poorest groups suffered from very grave social and econom ic disabilities that m ade it extrem ely difficult for them to m ove up the ladder. D ebt bondage was com m on and was supported by the courts, if the labourer defaulted, the penal provisions o f the Breach o f C ontract A ct could be brought into force. B ut the m obility o f the poorest increased over tim e, as did that o f the highest social groups. The changing fortunes o f agriculture, as well as the chances o f escape from village bondage into the freedom o f the cities or abroad, and the possibilities o f earning m oney there, enabled some labourers to buy land, and induced som e o f the upper castes to sell it. The D irector G eneral o f Registration concluded from the enquiries m ade during several tours at the beginning o f this century, that ‘field labourers’ w ho m igrated abroad returned and bought land w ith their earnings.44 There is, for exam ple, the B rahm in

42Gilbert Slater, Some South Indian Villages, p. 240. 43Though only one-eighth of the total number of villages, these contained nearly one-third of the total pariah holdings. This suggests that in the Presidency as a whole considerably more than 2 per cent of the land was held by pariahs, though doubtless much less than their share in the total population. He added, this weapon of emigration in their hands is gradually securing to them better treatment from their employers here. In fact, owing to the fear that the labourers might run away with advances of seedgrain and money given to them, employers of agricultural labour are also finding it necessary to take labour contracts.’ Proc. Judicial Dept. No. 468; 14 March 1906.

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village o f Dusi, where Slater found the padiyal landless in 1916. B y 1936 they had increased in num ber, changed their caste nam e from G ounder to N aicker, and had bought some land. In 1959, m any o f the Brahm ins had em igrated though some still rem ained in the village as non-cultivating landow ners, and by then 40 per cent o f the 293 N aicker fam ilies ow ned land.45 It is also possible that large holdings broke up m ore easily than small ones precisely because the larger landholders found it easier to obtain credit; they frequently borrowed to buy land, and often had to sell in hard tim es.46 These considerations support the hypothesis that the land revenue figures are not totally m isleading in suggesting that there w ere no clear trends for the ow nership o f land to becom e increasingly con­ centrated from 1853-4 to 1950-1. But nothing stronger has been es­ tablished. It m ay be im possible to do so for the Presidency as a w hole, though it would doubtless be useful to attem pt to reconstruct landholdings for m uch sm aller areas (though larger than a village) or to trace the grow th o f some fam ilies o f large landlords, from the records o f landow nership and possibly from private records. The for­ tunes o f the great landow ners o f Tanjore, pre-em inently the district o f large landow ners, would richly repay study. Did C hidam baranatha M udaliyar o f Shiyali, ‘by far the richest landow ner in T aniore,’ really own m ore than 40,000 acres in 1913, as he was said to, 7 and w hat has becom e o f his holdings since then?

45University of Madras, ‘Village Survey of Dusi,’ 1962, p. 27. The proportion of the total land of the village held by Naickers is not given. S. Sathyanathan, Report on Agricultural Indebtedness, p. 42. Again, ‘The effects of the famine [of 1866-7] are not at all clear, but it appears that the larger pattadars suffered more than the smaller; for, in the matter of remissions, they were treated far less leniently in faslis 1276-7 [1866-7] than the smaller holders, as it was considered that they were in a better position to meet their obligations’. See Benson, A Statistical Account of Kumool, p. 103. 47Report of the deputy collector of Tanjore, Madras G.O. No. 3594-5, Rev., 9 December 1914, p. 67. This statement seems implausible from what is known of the landholders of that area today.

3 The Forgotten Sector: Services in Madras Presidency in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century*

INTRODUCTION S ervices include a wide variety o f occupations whose changing for­ tunes are crucial to an understanding o f social as well as econom ic history, but the services sector has been neglected in Indian econom ic history, especially before 1871. This is hardly surprising, given the paucity o f data, but the neglect has serious consequences. For one, discussions o f structural change in India tend to consider only in­ dustry and agriculture on the im plicit but illicit assum ption that an increase in the proportion o f the population in one o f the two m ust necessarily be accom panied by a fall in the other. This paper discusses services in M adras Presidency in the first h alf o f the nineteenth century, argues that the sector was large there as well as very mobile, and speculates about the course of structural change. M any o f these fin d in g s w ould apply to o th er parts o f In d ia.

The Analysis of Structural Change It is useful first to consider some w ell-know n generalizations about the pattern o f structural change. Sustained grow th entails structural *An earlier version of a part of this paper, entided ‘From Cow Poisoners to Computers: Changes in Occupational Structure in India since 1800’, was presented at the Symposium on Historical Traditions and Patterns of Modernisation and Development, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 27-30 May 1985. I am grateful for their comments to Alan Heston, J.Krishnamurty, Morris David Morris and Sanjay Subrahmanyam.

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change: one way o f an alysing this is in term s o f ch an g es in the relative strength o f three sectors: agriculture, industry and services.1 In the course o f econom ic grow th, the relative shares o f these three sectors in both total output and em ploym ent alter, but we will concentrate on the changing structure o f em ploym ent. ‘A wide, sim ple and far-reaching generalisation in this field ’, one o f its pioneers, C olin Clark, stated, ‘is to the effect that as tim e goes on and com m unities becom e m ore econom ically advanced, the num bers engaged in agriculture tend to decline relatively to the num bers in m anufacture, w hich in their turn decline relative to the num bers in services.’2 There w ere tw o sets o f factors behind this trend, C lark pointed out. First, as incom e per capita rises, the relative dem and for agricultural goods falls; the relative dem and for m anufactured goods rises and then falls, and the dem and for services then rises. Secondly, the productivity per w orker in m anufacturing rises the fastest and that in agriculture rises m ore slow ly, while productivity increases in services varying w ith the type o f service.3 The generalisations regarding agriculture and industry are widely accepted.4 Thus, K uznets’ cross-sectiónal analysis o f 57 countries (in­

1The se are also known as the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, and the coverage is not uniform. For instance, mining is occasionally included in the primary sector but is more often part of the secondary sector. Services are particularly difficult to define; see, e.g. T.P. Hill, ‘On Goods and Services’, Review of Income and Wealth, series 23, No. 4(1977); also cf. ‘it is probably easiest, and most useful historically, to think of the services as a residual, what is left of total employment after subtracting employment in agriculture and industry’; R.M. Hartwell, T he Service Revolution: The Growth of Services in the Modem Economy’, in C.M. Cipolla (ed.). The Fontana Economic History of Europe, 3 (Glasgow, 1973), p. 361. 2Colin Clark, The Conditions of Economic Progress (London, 1957), p. 492. Clark points out that this generalization was fust made in 1691 by Sir William Petty. For instance, productivity in commerce and transport could rise even faster than manufacturing in certain stages, but the demand for these services generally rises even faster; ibid., pp 494-5. jBut not by all. Pointing out that work formerly classified as agricultural is reclassified when it is done by specialists, e.g. artificial insemination by veterinarians, Wiles asserts: T o a very large extent, then, the shrinkage of the agricultural sector in the ACEs [Advanced Capitalist Economies}is an optical illusion, due to reclassification’, P.G.D. Wiles, Economic Institutions Compared (Oxford, 1977), p. 100.

The Forgotten Sector 57 e l u d i n g India) in 1958 for incom e, and 59 countries in 1960 for l a b o u r force, found a clear association betw een per capita incom e a n d the relative size o f the agriculture and industry sectors in both in c o m e and em ploym ent. The trends in the services sector are neither s o stead y nor so m arked.3 The difference in the contribution to na­ tio n a l product w as not so large: in the poorest group, o f countries, s e rv ic e s accounted for 27.9 per cent w hile in the richest group, for 4 0 .6 p er cent. T here is a m uch sharper difference in the proportion o f th e labour force em ployed in services: 10.4 p er cent in the poorest g ro u p and 40.3 p er cent in the richest.6 O f m ore direct relevance is K uznets’ analysis o f a sm aller num ber o f countries over tim e, including som e o f the advanced countries o f to d ay , as well as a few o f the less advanced in Latin A m erica and A sia, and Egypt. This adds to o r m odifies the conclusions o f the cross-sectional analysis in some im portant ways. F irst, in som e o f the less developed countries for which product figures w ere available, the share o f agriculture in national product declined sharply, even though per capita product barely changed, in striking contrast to the experience o f the advanced countries. K uznets’ hunch that this would be true o f India too has been borne out by recent research by Sivasubram aniam and H eston.7 The m ost

5In the poorest group of countries, agriculture accounted for S3.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product at factor cost and fell steadily to 9.2 per cent in the richest group; in contrast the industry sector rose from 18.S per cent to 50.2 per cent. Again, the proportion of the labour force engaged in agriculture fell from 79.7 per cent for the poorest group to 11.6 per cent in the richest, while the proportion in industry rose from 9.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent. Services accounted for 27.9 per cent of GDP in the poorest group, and 40.6 per cent in the richest, but the peak (43.1 per cent) is reached in the sixth richest group and falls sharply in the next richest group; S. Kuznets, The Economic Growth of Nations (Cambridge, 1971), pp 104, 200. T he marked differences between the sectoral distribution of GDP and labour force show that there were wide differences in product per worker in the three sectors: however, these differences narrowed with rising per capita income. Kuznets points out that in the poor countries the product per worker is particularly high in trade. In an earlier work Kuznets suggested that this may be due partly to the scarcity of education and professional skills, and partly to the monopoly position of traders and moneylenders; S. Kuznets, Modem Economic Growth (New Haven, 1966), p. 415. 7A. Heston, ‘National Income’, in Dharma Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic

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plausible explanation, K uznets feels, is that product p e r w orker in agriculture fell due to the grow th o f population com bined w ith stag­ nant technology, w hile there was som e rise in the product per w orker in the other tw o sectors, due to m odernization. Secondly, the rise in the labour force in services w as w idespread, although the share o f the sector in product did not consistently rise. ‘A pparently, som e m ajor factors— possibly the difficulty o f substitut­ ing capital for labour in the S sector as a refuge for the inadequately em ployed labour force in the less developed countries— produced these significant shifts tow ard the S sector in m any countries in both g roups.’8 It is generally accepted that during the process o f m odem econom ic grow th, the proportion o f the labour force in the services sector will rise as real per capita income rises. But there is disagree­ m ent over the reasons for this tendency. The view s o f a long line o f econom ists from Petty to K uznets have recently been challenged by K ravis, H eston and Summers: The analysis suggests that the driving force behind the expansion of service employment associated with higher per capita incomes in both cross-national and inter-temporal data is the evolution of technology rather than the change in wants associated with rising income.9 Since M adras w as clearly not undergoing m odern econom ic grow th, R eynolds’ account o f the pre-industrialization stages, based on the scattered historical data on less developed countries, especially for C hina, is o f special interest. He defines a period o f extensive grow th, one in w hich total population and output are grow ing but incom e per head grow s little, if at all. This phenom enon has occurred throughout history; w hat interests Reynolds is that it precedes inten­ sive or m odem econom ic grow th in which incom e per head rises fast.

History of India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983). 8Kuznets, Economic Growth of Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 256. Kuznets uses the abbreviations A for agriculture, I for industry, and S for services. 9Irving B. Kravis, Alan W. Heston and Robert Summers, T h e Share of Services in Economic Growth’, in F. Gerard Adams and Buit G. Hickman (eds). Global Economics: Essays in Honour of Lawrence Klein (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp 210-11.

The Forgotten Sector 59 P e rio d s o f extensive grow th can be quite long, hundred years or m o re .10 C o n seq u en tly , during the period o f extensive grow th there w as n o t m u c h structural change in the com position o f output. Total a g ric u ltu ra l output was grow ing and possibly even per capita agricul­ tu ra l o u tp u t. Again, there may have been a slow grow th o f produc­ tiv ity in non-agricultural activities. Reynolds estim ates that in C hina a g r ic u ltu r e contributed 65 to 66 per cent o f national output, industry 7 to 8 p e r cen t, and services 25 per cent, o f which trade and transport c o n tr ib u te d half. R e y n o ld s is less clear about em ploym ent. At one point he says th e s e rv ic e s sector is ‘large and expansible though at this stage it in v o lv e s m ainly personal services’. But he also stresses the fact that the e x te n s iv e period was dom inated by household production. Each fa m ily p ro d u ced not only m ost o f its food but m ost o f its housing an d c lo th in g , plus a w ide range o f services— education, healing, re c re a tio n a l activity, religious observance. T his w ould naturally o b s c u re th e actual allocation o f labour time. Thus typically 80 to 90 per c e n t o f the population w as rural, but agriculture only accounted fo r 5 0 to 60 p er cent o f the w orking tim e o f the fam ily.1 T herefore, as R e y n o ld s points out, the apparent increase in the non-agricultural se c to rs w ith econom ic grow th is a sign o f increasing com m ercializa­ tio n , a s well as o f a change in the structure o f final dem and. T h u s both Kuznets and Reynolds suggest, very broadly speaking, th at in pre-m odem econom ies, the proportion o f the labour force e n g a g e d full-tim e in services was relatively sm all, though the share o f serv ices in national product was m uch higher. Reynolds stresses that m any services were produced and consum ed w ithin the household. T h ese points are not universally accepted. Thus C ipolla rem arks, w ithout giving references, that econom ists with first-hand know ledge o f certain prim itive societies have pointed out that the num bers in the services sector are fairly large, ‘with the difference that, instead o f including bankers and insurance agents, it includes a picturesque

10It was several centuries long for the advanced countries; Kuznets, The

Economic Growth o f Nations^ p. 256. 11Lloyd Reynolds, “The Spread of Economic Growth to the Third World: 1850-1980’, Journal o f Economic Literature, Vol. 21, No. 3, September 1983, pp. 956 et seq.

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variety o f people with trades ranging from dealers in stolen g o o d s to gatherers o f used item s’. 12 On the other hand, H artw ell agrees with K uznets and R eynolds: Services existed before the industrial revolution but were catered for either by a very small group of specialized producers, or, more generally, as a parttime activity by most adult members of society. The specialized producers included a small urban business sector, a tiny bureaucracy, a narrow range of professions and a largish domestic servant class.13

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN INDIA, 1800-1947 Reynolds places the turning point, when the econom y m oves out o f extensive grow th into rapid grow th, at 1947 in India and 1949 in China. The question is, can the preceding 100 or 150 years be char­ acterized as a period o f extensive growth, i.e. o f grow th of popula­ tion, a slow grow th o f per capita product, and no structural change? In my view , this is tenable for the period from 1860 o r so. Popula­ tion increased over the period and so, on H eston’s estim ate, did per capita incom e, but both increased relatively slow ly.14 A gain, the com ­ position o f output did not change greatly: agriculture fell from 67 per cent o f national incom e at the beginning o f this century to around 58 per cent by 1947; the distribution o f the w ork-force hardly changed. Betw een 1881 and 1951, the sectoral distribution w as unchanged: agriculture 70 per cent, industry 10 per cent and services 15-20 per cent. There w ere some changes within the services sector: transport, storage and com m unications rose as well as ‘many services associated w ith m odernization under colonial rule... in particular public, educa­ tional, m edical and legal services’.15 l2Carlo Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1978), p. 73. I3R.M. Hartwell, The Service Revolution, pp 364-5. Heston, ‘National Income’, especially pp. 402-3, and Visaria and Visaria, ‘Population’, in Cambridge Economic History of India (CEHI), 2. There is no need to go into the controversy regarding national income, which mostly relates to the period 1920-47, since a small fall in per capita income for a short period is compatible with extensive growth so long as population and total national income grows. 15J. Krishnamurty, ‘The Occupational Structure’, CEHI, 2, p. 548. I A

' *

The Forgotten Sector 61 It is d iffic u lt to characterize the first six decades o f the nineteenth centu ry in India. All the available estim ates show an increase in p o p u la tio n ,16 but they are unreliable, and there are no estim ates o f natio n al in co m e at all. T h e re is how ever an established view 17 that per capita incom e fell an d p erh ap s fell substantially, over this period. The m ain argu­ m ent is th a t the proportion o f the population engaged in agriculture rose, a n d th a t output per w orker in agriculture was m uch low er than in in d u stry . O n th e first point, let us consider the starting point o f the m odem d eb ate o n de-industrialization in India, Daniel T hom er’s 1960 paper ‘D e-in d u strializatio n in India, 1881-1931’. A fter pointing out that sectoral classification is problem atic in rural India because such a variety o f occupations is carried on within a household, and the pro b lem s o f classifying fem ale labour, which m ake it less am biguous to lo o k a t the m ale labour force alone, T horner states, . . . i f indeed a major shift from industry to agriculture ever occurred during British rule in India, it might have happened some time between 18IS and 1880. But we do not have the kind of data which would allow us to say with any assurance whether or not this actually took place.18 In effect, T horner assum es that the significant sectoral change was the m ovem ent o f labour from industry to agriculture, and this has not been challenged in the recent debate on de-industrialization. It is often argued that a rise in the proportion o f the labour force in agricultural em ploym ent m ust m ean that em ploym ent in industry fell, or, if direct evidence o f a decline in industrial em ploym ent is found, that the displaced artisans w ent into agriculture. The im plicit assum ption appears to be either that the services sector was stable, or that it was too sm all to affect the argum ent. On the second assum ption, that a rise in the share o f agriculture m ust m ean a fall in per capita incom e, it is worth recalling K uznets’ discussion o f C eylon in the nineteenth century:

16Visaria and Visaria, ‘Population’, CEHI, 2, p. 466. 17The best example is perhaps D.R. Gadgil, The Industrial Evolution o f India (Bombay, 1971). 1Reprinted in Daniel and Alice Thorner, Land and Labour in India (Bombay, 1962), pp 76-7.

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Another significant exception—the combination of constant or rising p e r capita product with an increasing share of the A sector in total product— c a n be suggested although I have no data to support i t This could be the c a s e for a small less developed country in the early period of its entry into t h e network of international trade, provided that its exportable surpluses originated in the A sector. If in these early decades the emerging agricultural exports were attained without reducing the output of peasant agriculture, and w ithout raising unduly the output of the I and S sectors (through greater trade activity or, less likely, more domestic manufacturing) the sharp increase in total agricultural output resulting from the newly opened export markets should result in a combination of rising per capita income with a rising share of the A sector.19

MADRAS PRESIDENCY, c. 1800- c. 1860 In our detailed exam ination of M adras Presidency, we will follow a different order than in the preceding general discussion. W e will first look at various service groups in detail, including their fortunes ov er the first h alf o f the nineteenth century. W e look at the occupational breakdow n in 1872, and then speculate about broad structural chan­ ges. Several censuses on population were taken in this period, but detailed census data on occupation only becam e available in 1872.20 There are detailed surveys for particular districts w hich contain a w ealth o f detail on castes, from w hich one m ight try to estim ate occupational distribution. In fact, some so-called occupational es­ tim ates m ay in fact refer to caste, on the assum ption that m ost m em ­ bers o f each caste follow ed the traditional caste occupation. But this is a dangerous procedure. Firstly, one can place only lim ited reliance on the caste data them ­ selves. O ne cannot be sure o f the accuracy o f the figures for each caste nor o f the classific atio n o f castes. S econdly, it is not alw ays c le a r w hat th e tra d itio n al caste o ccupations ( if any) w ere— the ‘a u th o ritie s’ freq u en tly d iffe r on this point. A nd m o st im portantly, 19Kuznets, Economic Growth o f Nations, p. 157. 20The population figures of various censuses in Madras Presidency are discussed in Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge, 1965), Ch. 7. It is possible that some of these contained some very rough data on occupation, but figures on services are unlikely to be good.

The Forgotten Sector 63 o n e c a n n o t assum e th at m em bers o f the caste follow ed the trad itio n al o c c u p a t i o n . T his is esp ecially true o f ag ricu ltu re, w hich c o u ld be p u r s u e d by any caste (ex cep t th at som e kinds o f B rahm ins co u ld not t o u c h t h e plough). A nd there is ab u n d an t evidence in the reco rd s that a r t i s a n s an d m em bers o f the serv ice castes took to ag ricu ltu re w hen t h e i r tra d itio n a l occu p atio n s failed them . T here is the ad d itio n al prob­ le m o f seasonal and p art-tim e o ccu p ations— a w eaver m ight su p p le­ m e n t h is incom e by agricu ltu ral labour during the h arv est, for i n s t a n c e . T he trad itio n al w eav er caste, K aikolars, w ere rep o rted to f o l l o w a variety o f occu p atio n s— w eaver, w riter o r acco u n tan t, s c h o o lm a s te r and phy sician , in the early n ineteenth ce n tu ry .21 O f c o u r s e the so -called ‘agricu ltu ral c a ste s’ could take to o th er fu ll­ t i m e o ccu p atio n s too— the ed u cated could becom e o fficials, the p o o r sep o y s, porters, and so on. A nd ag ricu ltu rists also had partt i m e o r seasonal o r occasio n al o ccu pations— as soldiers o r artisan s f o r ex a m p le. M o b ility in and out o f ag ricu ltu re w as high, so d if­ f e r e n c e s betw een tra d itio n al caste o ccupations and actual o c cu p a­ t i o n s m ust have changed w ith the fortunes o f agriculture. T here is also the problem o f fem ale occupations— fem ales o f all c a s te s w ere spinners, for exam ple; wom en w ere also agricultural lab o u rers and rice huskers. Again in non-trading castes, the w om en m ig h t sell w hat the m en produced. N evertheless, it is essential to analyse the earlier censuses as well as w hatever district and village censuses are available in the Survey o f India m em oirs and other sources. This is a tim e-consum ing task and in the m eanw hile it is useful to assem ble scattered d ata from other sources to build up a picture o f the m ain services groups in 1800. O ne o f the m ain sources used is o f course Francis B uchanan’s w ell-know n report on his tour o f certain parts o f South India at the beginning o f the nineteenth century,22 so it is well to be aw are o f the lim itations o f his work. A ccording to one contem porary observer, his visits w ere organized by local officials who collected the natives Buchanan w ished to meet: Buchanan could only speak to them

21

Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries o f Mysore, Canara and Malabar, (1801, reprinted Madras, 1870), 2 vols (hereafter Buchanan, Journey), p. 266. References are to the second edition. ^Buchanan, Journey.

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through an interpreter and they could not speak freely under the cir­ cum stances.23

Administration, Police and Military This category covers a very w ide range, from m inisters an d top of­ ficials in the capitals, to the village accountant and village w atchm an. T he B ritish w ere apt to com m ent that native rulers had over-large establishm ents. Thus B uchanan rem arks that under Tipu ‘the num ber o f petty officers in this D epartm ent [Revenue] was im m ense, and everyone w as allow ed to share in the spoil o f the co u n try ’.24 W ith the fall o f the native states, large num bers o f court functionaries m ust have lost their positions. In the sm all tow ns or large villages which were taluk headquarters there was a substantial establishm ent. B uchanan tells us that in B havanikudal, in 1801, the tahsildar was assisted by one serishtadar, three gomasthas or mutasiddis (clerks or agents), o n e saraf or m oneychanger, one gola or treasurer, six raiasa or letter-w riters, 30 to forty m essengers, and part o f the five hundred or six hundred can dasha ra or arm ed men ‘that are kept in the w hole co u n try ’25 Sim ilarly, zamindars m aintained adm inistrative establishm ents, in­ cluding accountants, clerks, and arm ed retainers, the total num bers em ployed thus depending partly on the size o f the zam indari, and partly, no doubt, on the recalcitrance o f the peasantry and the hostility o f neighbouring zam indars. A gain, large tem ples m ust have m ain­ tained full-tim e clerks and accountants (though not arm ed retainers, as far as we know). The village officials, obviously, are num erically the m ost sig­ nificant. There are m any references in literature to the traditional tw elve village servants (som etim e called aayagaara in the South),

23Vans Kennedy, ‘Remarks on the Sixth and Seventh Chapters of Mill’s History of British India, respecting the Religion and Manners of the Hindus’, Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, Vol. 3 (1823), pp 125-6. Kennedy pointed out that Mill cited Buchanan on the depravity of the Hindus. Also see Marika Vicziancy, ‘Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in early Nineteenth Century India: The Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762-1829)’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 20 (1986) pp 625-60. B u ch a n a n , Journey, 1, p. 32. 25Ibid., 440.

The Forgotten Sector 65 b u t the com position o f the group varied. H ere again, the size o f the v illa g e w as one im portant determ inant o f the com position as w ell as t h e size o f the group; others w ere the degree and kind o f irrigation a n d the local culture. The m ode o f paym ent also varied: one very c o m m o n system was to allot rent-free lands; another was to set aside p a r t o f the harvest, and additional paym ents w ould also be m ade for s p e c ia l occasions, such as festivals, and for special services. Practically every village would have a village headm an, though in mirasdari villages, w here the dom inant landholders were strong, it w as possible that the headm an’s pow ers were lim ited, and he m ay n o t even have serv ed full-tim e. T he village acco u n tan t w as also ubiquitous. Sarada Raju, referring to m any official reports, asserts th a t in M adras Presidency nearly every village had a headm an and an accountant. If tw o or three very sm all villages shared one betw een th em , there w ere other villages w ith m ore than one headm an o r ac­ co u n tan t each.26 A nother very com m on functionary was the village w atchm an or guard, variously called toti, talliari, or vettiyan.21 Buchanan also m entions the tarugaru or aduca w hose duty was ‘to bustle am ong the farm ers, and call them out to work. He m ay therefore be called the beadle o f the village.’ In the sam e village near B angalore there was an alitigara , or ‘public m easurer’, but there was generally one to every eight to ten villages. Raju m entions a separate ‘boundary man, who preserved the village boundaries’, as one o f the regular village servants.29 Irrigated villages m aintained nirguntis , who looked after the reservoirs and canals and distributed the water from them .30 A. Sarada Raju, Economic Conditions in the Madras Presidency 1800-1850 (Madras, 1941), pp 17-8. (Hereafter Raju, Economic Conditions.) According to Buchanan the toti and talliari had the same functions as watchmen, messengers, and guides for travellers, but the totis were of the ‘wholliaru’ (Holeya?) caste, and the taliiaris were Madiga or Bayda (in a village near Bangalore); Journey, 1, p. 188. Raju, Economic Conditions, p. 18, refers to the vettiyan as a guard. Doubtless, the names varied regionally. JO However, Buchanan’s explanation of the raison d ’etre of this ‘beadle’ is not very convincing: he had to prevent the farmers from pursuing any other occupation than cultivation, since ‘the lower classes of people in India are like children’, and need either Europeans or the government to rouse them from their apathy (Journey, l,p . 188). 29Raju, Economic Conditions, p. 18. Buchanan, Journey, 1, p. 439.

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It was presum ably in the m ore com m ercialized areas that one found the notagar (saraf or m oneychanger) listed by R aju.31 A m edium sized village, it w ould appear, would have at least four or five m ore or less full-tim e village officials: the headm an, accountant and tw o or three guards, peons, etc. If it had irrigated lands or w as in a com ­ m ercialized Tegion, it m ight have more. Raju argues there was a great decline in the vitality of village institutions and a fall in the em ploym ent o f village servants in the first h alf o f the nineteenth century .as a result o f the B ritish policy o f centralization, and the w ithdraw al o f financial support.32 On the other hand, Baker asserts that centralization did not start till the m id­ dle o f the nineteenth century: ‘in the early part o f the century w hen the air had echoed to the sound o f utilitarian argum ent and reform ist fervour, the adm inistration had in fact accom m odated itse lf to local circum stances’.33 O ne reason for these differences m ay be the ele­ m ent o f a priori reasoning in both sets o f argum ents. T o indulge in som e a priori speculations o f our own, what about the effects o f other, non-adm inistratiye, factors? W here irrigation in­ creased, as in Thanjavur and the G odavari delta, presum ably the num ­ ber o f nirguntis w ent up; on the other hand, the B ritish badly neglected the m aintenance o f existing tanks and canals in this period,34 and here the num ber m ay have fallen. O r again, w ith the spread o f Pax B rittanica, did the need for the village m ilitia, arm ed m essengers and so forth to w hom B uchanan frequently alludes,35 fall, or was this offset by the increased volum e o f traffic and o f revenue collection? 31Raju, Economic Conditions, p. 18. 32Ibid., pp 25-6. 33Christopher John Baker, An Indian Rural Economy (Delhi, 1983), p. 67. 34Dharma Kumar, ‘The Regional Economy: South India, ’ in CEHl, Vol. 2, p. 365. 35For example, there were the Candashara near Bangalore: armed men who collected revenue (Journey, 1, p. 258); the Toreau of Karnataka, who ‘formerly were armed messengers employed to collect the revenue (2, p. 270); the Gollawaniu who ‘act as village militia’ and transport money (1, p. 241); and the Handy Cumbaru settled near Coimbatore, who were ‘armed messengers for the police’ (2, p. 40). There is evidence from other parts of India too that the number of armed guards was large in the early days of the British and before them. Spodek quotes Jacobs’ estimate for Saurashtra that for every 100 farming families.

The Forgotten Sector 67 O ne group that alm ost certainly declined sharply in num bers over the period were soldiers.36 The num ber fluctuated sharply w ith the state o f peace. The eighteenth century saw arm ies being built up in the South Indian kingdom s, and by the European com panies. Susan B ayly cites an estim ate o f 150,000 soldiers in Travancore in 1780.37 M any o f the native arm ies were disbanded by the beginning o f the nineteenth century. The British brought better organization and a sub­ stitution o f firepow er for m anpow er. A ccording to B uchanan the ex-soldiers becam e village w atchm en or robbers.3 Som etim es the two occupations were com bined. The caste o f Kallars and M aravars39 is particularly interesting. D isagree­ ing w ith Tam il scholars who see them as form er soldiers in native states, D um ont asserts that there is little proof that ‘they w ere not alw ays brigands, som etim es used as shock troops’. Later they becam e both cattle thieves and village watchm en: Actually, both watching and thieving seem to have been used by the Kallar in order to levy a tithe on the revenues of the productive castes. They seem

there were 8 or 10 pasaitas or armed watchmen; Howard Spodek, ‘Urban-rural integration in regional development; a case study of Saurashtra, India, 1800-1960’, University of Chicago, Dept, of Geography, Research Paper No. 171 (1976), pp 28-9. 36 On Diwan Pumaiya’s attempts to reduce military expenditure, see M.H. Gopal, The Finances o f the Mysore State, 1799-1831 (Bombay, 1960), pp. 30-45. At the end of 1802 the peace establishment was 7000, but to this should be added the Company’s troops, peons, hirkarus (messengers who acted as spies), etc., whose numbers are not given. 37Susan Bayly, ‘Hindu kingship and the Origin of Community: Religion, State and Society in Kerala, 1750-1850’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 18 (1984), p. 187. The estimate was apparently made by the Italian missionary, Fra Paolino da san Bartolomeo. 38 Buchanan, Journey, 1, p. 258; 2, p. 270. By 1801 Seringapatam had already lost nearly 120,000 people who formerly ‘were entirely supported by the court and army’ (Journey, 1, p. 77). 39These are perhaps the chief of the so-called ‘criminal tribes’ of South India. Other tribes too are referred to in official records or even by Thurston simply as ‘criminal tribes’ but Elliot occasionally gives further details. Thus the Korawar figure in the Bombay police records simply as professional dacoits, but they were also village musicians; Elliot Mss., Eur. D 317, India Office Library and Records, London, 1, p. 83.

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to have linked the two very efficiently, using theft to impose themselves as watchmen and then, once established in a place, spreading into neighbouring areas, without giving up highway robbery in more distant areas.40 As w e shall see later, they changed occupations during the B ritish period-

Education A reasonable estim ate can be m ade o f the num ber o f teachers, thanks to a survey o f education conducted in 1822 and 1823 in M adras Presidency. The C ollector o f each district was asked to send infor­ m ation on ‘the num ber o f schools in which reading and w riting are taught, the num ber o f scholars in each and the caste to w hich they belong’, as also the tim e spent at schools, fees, endow m ents, and ‘colleges and other institutions for teaching T heology, Law, A stronom y e tc ’.41 U nfortunately, the C ollectors were not asked to report on the num ber o f teachers. The total num ber o f schools and ‘colleges’ in the Presidency was 12,498; and the population 12,850,941, so there was roughly one school (or college) to every 1000 o f the population.42 It is a fair assum ption that there was on an average one teacher per school, in­ deed the C ollector o f South A rcot explicitly stated that this was the case in his district.43 This was probably true even o f large schools

^Louis Dumont, A South Indian Subcaste (Delhi, 1986), pp. 14-5. Dumont has not cited any historical evidence. 41Secretary, Government of Madras to the Board of Revenue, 2 July 1822, in the Proceedings of the Revenue Department, hereafter Proc. Rev. Dept. The entire official correspondence has been reprinted in Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree (New Delhi, 1983). 42Munro’s Minute, 10 March 1826, Rev. Consultations. It is interesting that Travancore had only one school per 3,434 of population and Cochin had one per 3,186 in 1820, according to an official survey; P.K. Michael Tharakan, ‘Socio-Economic Factors in Development: Case of Nineteenth Century Travancore’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 19, No. 45, Nov. 1984, p. 1917. A rapid growth of education, Tharakan points out, took place in Travancore in the second half of the nineteenth century as a result of various factors, from missionary activity to the growth of public employment and the commercialization of agriculture. 43Collector, South Arcot, to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 29 June 1823.

The Forgotten Sector 69 w ith several classes, since according to the so-called ‘M adras’ system o f education, elder boys used to teach the younger. M oreover, there w ere private tutors— a surprisingly large num ber, according to the few references m ade to them. In the C ollectorate o f M adras, w hich consisted m ainly o f M adras City, 5,699 H indu and M uslim children w ent to school, but 26,963 received private tuition.44 A ccording to M unro: There is probably some error in this number and though the number privately taught in the provinces does certainly not approach this rate, it is no doubt considerable, because the practice of boys being taught at home by their rela­ tions or private teachers is not infrequent in any part of the country.45 M ost C ollectors did not com m ent on private tutors. The report on V izagapatnam m entions ‘tutors in fam ilies o f respectability’ but gives no num bers. In M alabar the num ber educated privately were m uch larger than those in schools.46 The line betw een private tuition and school was not always clear, in that a group o f children could be taught in the house o f one o f them , and such a ‘school’ w ould only last a few years.47 Thus the actual num ber o f teachers was consid­ erably larger than suggested by the num ber o f schools m entioned in the survey, since it is unlikely that the bulk o f these private arrange­ m ents would enter the statistics. M oreover teacher-pupil ratios w ould alm ost certainly be m uch higher for hom e tuition. Thus, if one in­ cludes private tutors, teachers o f the three Rs would am ount to well over one per thousand. W hat about other kinds o f teachers? Training in the crafts, and even in m edicine, was probably conducted within the fam ily, or the workshop, rather than by a separate set o f teachers. D ancers and m usicians were a clear exception.48 In these arts there were separate 44Proc. Bd. Rev., 21 Feb. 1823. 45Munro’s Minute, Rev. Consultations, 10 March 1826. ^Collector, Vizagapatnam to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 14 Apr. 1823; Principal Collector, Malabar to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 8 Aug. 1823. , Collector, Nellore to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 6 June 1823. 48 Many of the female scholars in the schools mentioned in the survey came of the dancing girls caste; in Tirunelveli and Masulipatnam nearly all did. Collector, Tirunelveli to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 28 Oct. 1822; Collector, Masulipatnam to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 13 Jan. 1823.

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full-tim e teachers though practitioners also taught, but the teachers cannot be separated out from the rest o f the group. T here w ere also specialized teachers in other subjects such as astrology. So on the w hole one can roughly estim ate tw o teachers per thousand in 1822-3. The Telugu districts including Bellary, w ere m uch poorer in schools than the Tam il districts. T he 493 villages o f T anjore had 884 schools betw een them , w hereas out o f 1200 villages in R ajahm undhry, only 207 had schools (som e villages had m ore than one).49 A nother group one can include in ‘educational and learn ed ’ w ere the astrologers. Som etim es priests were also astrologers, but there w ere also specialized astrologers, with hereditary inam lands, one of their functions being to tell farm ers the auspicious day and hour for starting ploughing, and to forecast eclipses, scarcities, etc. There was a special training centre for them at M okshagundam , and it w ould be interesting to know how m uch and what type o f scientific know ledge they possessed. Finally, the proportion o f teachers to total population would have been at least as high in 1800 as in 1822 o r 1823, w hen the survey w as conducted. The teachers were supported by endow m ents from native rulers, zam indars, tem ples, and others, by revenue-free lands, and by fees, and at least som e o f these sources dw indled in the first quarter century o f British rule, w ithout adequate replacem ent by governm ent funds (or possibly m issionaries). The C ollector o f Bellary explicitly stated that in 1834 the m iserable state o f education in his district was ascribable to the gradual but general impoverishment of the country.... In many villages, where formerly there were schools, there are now none; and in many others, where there were large schools, now only a few o f the children of the most opulent are taught, others being unable, from poverty, to attend or to pay what is demanded.30

49Principal Collector, Tanjore to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 3 July 1823; Collector, Rajahmundry to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd. Rev., 2 Oct. 1823. Tanjore admittedly was rich and populous, but it is generally true that schools were more widespread in the Tamil districts. Even in 1881, there was a marked difference between the districts, with Madras City, Tirunelveli, Tanjore, Chingleput and Malabar, having over 10 per cent of the population ‘under instruction or instructed’, and many Telugu districts under 5 per cent ^Collector, Bellary to Board of Revenue, Proc. Bd..Rev., 25 Aug. 1823.

The Forgotten Sector 71 If the proportions in agriculture increased at the expense o f the o th e r tw o sectors, it is p o ssib le th at the dem and for teach ers fell, a ssu m in g th at farm ers w ere less keen to educate th eir sons than a rtis a n s — b u t this ch ain o f sp ecu lation requires testing at every p o in t.

Law and Medicine T h e law and m edicine were im portant professions in pre-m odem E urope, but in India it is probable that only m edicine was quantita­ tively significant. M edical practitioners o f various kinds were w idespread. One ham ­ let in C ochin supported several m edical specialists in 1916 (including an eye doctor and a specialist in children’s diseases) w hose fam ilies had lived in the village for several generations.51 This w as clearly exceptional but it is equally certain that there were m any ‘d o cto rs’ as indeed there are in prim itive societies52 as well as m odern ones. Som e castes specialized in collecting and selling drugs,53 and also in adm inistering them , but there is no reason to believe that the prac­ tice o f m edicine was confined to such castes. In fact, barbers also had som e know ledge o f m edicine, not to m ention diviners, ‘w itch docto rs’, etc.54 There has been no research at all, as far as I am aw are, on this group, though it is o f considerable im portance as a guide to scientific know ledge and health at the tim e; as m edical researchers are dis-

5lGilbert Slater (ed.), Some South Indian Villages (Madras, 1916), pp 138-9. 52F. Pryor, Origins of the Economy (New York, 1977). 53Elliot lists the Rasayagolu or ‘medicine people’ and the Aravi Gollar, who combined labour, begging, catching snakes, and selling and administering drugs (a list of which is given); Elliot Mss., Eur. D 317, IOL, 1, p. 262. Buchanan mentions the Jangalu who collected and sold medicinal plants, and who read the Vaidya Shastram in Telugu (Journey, 1, 233) as also the Gandhaki, ‘a kind of drug merchants’, who got the medicinal plants from Raconat Jogalu, who were forest dwellers (Journey, 1, p. 203). 54The Parayar first consulted diviners in cases of sickness; S. Mateer, ‘The Pariah Caste in Travancore’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, Vol. 16 (1884), p. 188.

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covering, traditional know ledge o f m edicinal herbs and drugs w as o f considerable value.55 It is possible that the num ber o f legal professionals w as m uch sm aller than in pre-m odern Europe. T raditionally, disputes w ere set­ tled as far as possible by the headm en, respected elders, or form ally by the caste or village panchayat. The king, o f course, adm inistered ju stice through jud icial officers, but the scope o f these courts w as very lim ited. The legal system adm inistered by the B ritish led to a new profession o f law yers o f all types, but in 1800 the num ber o f vakils, pleaders, etc., w as still minute.

Trade, Finance and Transport T rading and financial activities clearly occupied a considerable sec­ tion o f the population, from large m erchants engaged in overseas trade and bankers who financed princes, to the pedlar. M erchant organizations were pow erful in the Tam il and T elugu regions from the m edieval period;56 and there were several castes w ho were traditionally m erchants, especially the C hettis and the K om atis. These castes were probably a significant proportion o f the total population; for instance, R oy’s analyses o f the C eded D istricts puts the m erchant castes at 14 per cent o f the total population at the beginning o f the nineteenth century.57 Som e o f these castes w ere alm ost certainly entirely engaged in their traditional occupation, but 55Assertions of their incompetence are not very helpful, e.g., T he kabiraj (indigenous doctor) is a great favourite in native society and has been the cause of an enormous number of deaths’, J. Long, ‘Five Hundred Questions on the Social Conditions of the Natives of Bengal’, Journal o f the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series 2, 1866, p. 59. To keep one’s judgement in perspective it is useful to read the description of nineteenth-century doctors in France in Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945 (Oxford, 1973). 56See, for instance, Kenneth Hall, Trade and Statecraft in the Age o f the Cholas; Vijaya Ramaswamy, Textiles and Weavers in Medieval South India um ciais or the Survey of India compiled extensive memoirs of particular areas at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The late Souren Roy collected and tabulated the material for the Ceded Districts (roughly the present Anantapur, Bellary and Cudappah districts), and wrote copious notes on principal topics. It is a great loss to scholarship that he died before he could complete the work, but it is possible that it will be completed and published.

The Forgotten Sector 73 o th ers w ere not. F or instance, the Telugu B alijas engaged in agricul­ tu re as w ell as trade.38 O n the other hand, there w ere castes not classified as m erchant castes, and non-H indu com m unities, such as the M uslim Labbai w hich engaged in trade. M oreover, subsets o f non-trading castes w ere often traders; for instance, a subdivision o f the G ollas, or m ilkm en, engag ed in retail trade in m ilk, curds, etc. C aste, as we have already seen, is a very uncertain guide to actual occupation; it is preferable to look directly at the econom ic structure. There was such great variety in m arketing organization, that generalization is risky. On the one hand, one finds m erchants who specialize in certain co m m o d ities, such as grain or clo th , or in c e r­ tain fu n ctio n s. T hus B uchanan d escrib ed the G andhakis, w ho sp e ­ c ia liz e d in drugs, and the N agarit o r special clo th m erch an ts.39 As to sp e cia liz e d fu n ctio n s th ere w ere the Tarragamar o f M alab ar, ‘a so rt o f brokers, o r rath er w areh o u se k e e p e rs’. M erch an ts from o th e r p arts o f the country w ould d ep o sit goods w ith T arrag am ar to be sold, but they som etim es em ployed the T a rrag am ar as ag en ts.60 A gain, there is a great deal o f evidence, from m any sources, that there w ere large com m unities o f m erchants and traders not only in the tow ns, but also in large villages, particularly specialised villages such as w eavers’ settlem ents. F or som e o f these, a broad occupational-cum -caste breakdow n o f the population is available, from w hich one can estim ate the share o f m erchants. To give a few ex­ am ples, in A doni in 1809, out o f the total population o f 13,016, there w ere 2,557 m erchants o r 19.6 p er cent; in B ariganapalli (C um buru) in 1813 there w ere 4,225 traders out o f 16,000, or 26.4 per 61 cent. M erchant com m unities w ere long established: a D utch d ocu­ m ent o f the late seventeenth century gives occupational figures for five textile centres in north C orom andel. In the largest, M akkapetta, an astonishing 44.5 p er cent o f the total w ere m erchants; there w ere 150 tex tile m erchants and 40 0 others. In tw o large villages, w ith less than 1000 population each, around 20 per cent w ere traders. In a sm all settlem ent, G olepallam , w ith only 243 people, there w ere 58Raju , Economic Conditions in Madras Presidency, p. 187. 59Buchanan, Journey, l,p p 141,152. ^Buchanan, Journey, 2, p. 59. 6,S. Roy, Notes, pp 56-7,161

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16 m erchants (6.5 per cent).62 T hus, in the tow ns, and the larg e villages in the commercialized region, merchants alone may well have accounted for 20 per cent or more of the workforce. On the other hand, villages in rem ote areas w ould have no specialist traders o r m oney-lenders; goods produced w ithin the village m ight be bartered; goods from outside m ight be bought at w eekly fairs, tem ple festivals, or brought by pedlars. The geographical fre­ quency o f weekly m arkets varied too; thus B uchanan m entions th at in the prosperous areas near Shrirangapatnam there w ere w eekly m arkets every two or three miles, and transactions w ere in m oney, only ‘a few poor p eople’ engaged in barter.63 Raju states that w eekly or bi-w eekly m arkets were held ‘in alm ost every v illag e’ but goods were traded by the producers them selves.64 Ludden concludes o f Tirunelveli, a relatively prosperous district, All but a few villages had several permanent trading establishments of one kind or another. Every community on record supported annual festivals and fairs, and all had some resident non-cultivators who depended for their livelihood upon some form of commerce.65 On the other hand, Raju records com plaints by som e C ollectors in the early nineteenth century o f the dearth o f m arkets; shops w hich w ere once flourishing were now in ruins.66 The Banjaris or Lam badis, who travelled in groups carrying salt and other goods over long distances, were m ore im portant at the beginning o f the nineteenth century than in 1850. They were both traders and carriers. In addition, there was a large variety o f m es­ sengers, guides, palanauin bearers,67 porters, boatm en, and others engaged in transport.6 European dem and for porters was high, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Trade and the Regional Economy of South India, c. 1550 to 1650’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Delhi University, 1986, p. 491. 63Buchanan, Journey, 1, p. 86. ^Raju, Economic Conditions in Madras Presidency, p. 195. 65David Ludden, Peasant History in South India (Princeton, 1985), p. 132. Ludden bases this statement on the 1823 Census. ^R aju, Economic Conditions in Madras Presidency, p. 196. 67Such as the Bestas mentioned by Buchanan, Journey, 1, p. 190, who were ferrymen, porters and armed messengers as well as cultivators and fishermen. 68Perhaps one could include here innkeepers; cf. Buchanan’s references to choultries.

The Forgotten Sector 75 travelling as they did with an elaborate assortm ent o f household goods, dow n to cutlery.69 Reynolds cited an estimate that full-time traders were 15 per cent of the population o f China in its extensive phase; taking all kinds o f m er­ chants, moneychangers, pedlars, and transporters together, the figure for M adras in 1800 might well be similar, apart from the part-time traders. O v er the h a lf century, tw o con trary trends w ere at w ork. F irst the spread o f roads, the im provem ent o f carts, and the great in­ c re a se in the num ber o f c arts,70 w ould have m eant that goods could be tra n sp o rted by carts instead o f porters, leading to a fall in the la b o u r input p er unit o f volum e tran sported. O n the o th er hand, th ese sam e facto rs, as w ell as the grow th o f the econom y, e sp e ­ cia lly o f ex p o rts, m eant that the volum e o f goods transported w ent up su b stan tially . T here w as clearly a large increase in the volum e o f ag ricu ltu ral co m m odities m arketed ov er the first h a lf o f the n in eteen th century (ig n o rin g the w ide flu ctu atio n s w ithin the p erio d ), w hich is likely to have increased the num bers em p lo y ed in tra d e and tran sp o rt.7 It is also w orth stressing that even in 1850 th e m ajo rity o f the roads w ere probably poor enough to req u ire a la rg e nu m b er o f p o rters.72 W hat was the net effect o f the extensive spread o f com m ercial agriculture and the standardization o f the m onetary system from 1835— did the num ber o f sarafs first rise and then fall?

Domestic and Personal Services M ost people, when asked to nam e the m ain elem ents o f services in pre-m odern societies, will think o f dom estic servants, but this m ay be a kind o f num erical illusion, or an inference from over-populated poor co u n tries to d ay .73 R ajas, ch ieftain s (including po lig ars), and

69I am indebted to Basudev Chatteiji for pointing this out to me. 70Raju, Economic Conditions in Madras Presidency, pp 216-21. 71 ‘For countries starting out with a relatively low ratio of food passing through wholesale and retail channels, the rate of increase in resources devoted to marketing can be explosive...’, Y. Hayami and V. Ruttan, Agricultural Development, An International Perspective (Baltimore, 1985). Raju, Economic Conditions in Madras Presidency, pp 216-21. 73Cf. W. Arthur Lewis, ‘Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour’, The Manchester School, Vol. 22 (May 1954), p. 142.

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zam in d ars had large and v isible retin u es74 o f course, and o th er rich p eople, such as m erchants, may have had a fair num ber o f dom estic servants too, but all these together need not add up to a large num ber o f em ployers. It m ay be the presence o f a large m iddle class, each household w ith a few servants, that accounts for a large servant class, and this was probably sm all in 1800, though it m ay have grow n later. A lso caste taboo m eant the low er castes were not a l­ low ed to w ork in the house, even if the household could afford them — so m iddle-class wom en m ay have done m ore dom estic w ork then than now. On the other hand, it is possible that even the re la ­ tively poor had serv an ts.75 H indu m ores led to the proliferation o f other types o f personal services, particularly those provided by washerm en and barbers. O ur typical village may well have had at least one full-tim e w asherm an.76

74 Colebrooke lamented (c. 1818) the difficulty of finding goods to tax, ‘In the present state of society in India, where the opulent indulge less in personal enjoyment of luxuries than in maintaining numerous attendants, no productive service of revenue can be looked for, except an impost on an article of prime necessity’, Selection o f Papers from the Records at the

Post India House relating to the Revenue, Police & Criminal Justice under the Company’s Government in India, 4 vols. (London, 1820-6), Vol. 1, p. 51. Their establishments included, besides domestic servants, administrative staff, guards and military personnel, and also musicians, dancers and poets. These establishments probably fluctuated widely, typically expanding under weak employers, see, e.g. M.H. Gopal, The Finances o f the Mysore State, 1799-1831, p. 75, which shows a tripling of the Maharaja of Mysore’s expenditure on domestic servants between 1809-10 and 1814-5. 75Baker comments that even in the late nineteenth century, ‘rural wealth was typically expended on services rather than goods’, without providing any supporting evidences. This was so, he argues, partly for cultural reasons: possessions were vulgar while servants were not. The demand for services was partly stimulated, Baker adds, by the relative cheapness of labour. See C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy, 1880-1955 (Delhi, 1983), pp 334-5. But the point is that the proportion of servants to total population may have been higher in the late than in the early nineteenth century because of the change in the distribution of income rather than for cultural reasons. However, both Baker’s argument and mine are pure speculation. 76Buchanan (Journey, 1, p. 234) states that washermen follow no other profession; their women also engage in the occupation.

X

The Forgotten Sector 77 B arbers w ere not so com m on, perhaps, but they too were found in large num bers. On this point one needs contem porary evidence, since one cannot extrapolate backw ards from present day custom s.

Entertainment and the Arts D ancers and m usicians attached to tem ples are considered under ‘religious services’. T heir num bers, as we shall see, were large, but there were also many other kinds o f entertainers. Just after breakfast ‘a tribe o f conjurers appeared’, an English visitor to M adras w rote in 1811, ‘consisting o f half-a-dozen men and a girl, arm ed w ith the w hole enterprise o f legerdem ain’. They included snake-charm ers, sw ord sw allow ers, a m an w ho threaded beads with his tongue and another who raised a vessel filled w ith wood by a piece o f w ood w ith tw o strings under his eyelids.77 The tow ns obviously supported a fair am ount o f perm anently resident entertainers, but a m uch larger num ber were itinerant, m aking their living, or part o f it, by travelling from village to village, and by perform ing at fairs. A ctors, story­ tellers, clow ns, rope and snake dancers, jugglers and conjurors, singers and m any others lived thus. It is difficult to guess at the num ber o f entertainers, o r painters and sculptors and w ood-carvers. The sculptors, one w ould guess, w ould have been m ainly em ployed by tem ples or occasionally on village m onum ents to warriors, and their num ber may have fluctuated w ith the construction o f tem ples.

Religious Services An obviously large group is the providers o f religious services. It is an am orphous group, since religion and ritual pervaded nearly all

77Anon, ‘A Visit to Madras, being a sketch of the Local and Characteristic Peculiarities of that Presidency in the year 1811 ’, in New Voyages and Travels Consisting of Originals and Translations, 5 (London, n.d.), pp 17-8. 78The Elliot Mss. list of castes includes the Tottal Jeek Aduttar, who were nomads who frequented fairs and lived by singing; Elliot Mss., 1, pp. 127-9. The Elliot Mss. also contains a cutting from the Madras Christian Herald of 6 Sept. 1843, which lists Vinikudiyan who blow chanks, Tather or ‘stage players’, Kalayer or rope-dancers, Ondipili or snake-dancers, Yalpaner or lyrists.

78

Colonialism, Property and the State

aspects o f life: thus washermen and barbers performed im portant ritual services, but are included under ‘domestic and personal services’. L et us start w ith the priests. N early every v illag e had at le a st one tem ple, and m any v illages w ould have sev eral, H in d u ism being as sectarian as it is. The priests o f the m ain tem ples w ere g en erally B rah m in s,79 and m ore or less full-tim e. T he p riests o f the o th er shrines could belong to any caste ;80 they som etim es c o m ­ b in ed th eir p riestly fu nctions w ith other w ork to a g reater e x te n t than the B rahm ins. 81 In large villages and tow ns there w ould be m ore tem ples an d the tem p le estab lish m en ts w ould be larger. In the g re a t tem p les, such as T iru p ati, the estab lish m en t could run in to several h u n dreds. B esides priests, th eir estab lish m en t w ould in clu d e an ad m in istrativ e sta ff o f acco u n tan ts,82 dancers and m u sician s,83 garlan d -m ak ers, sto rek eep ers (since grain from the tem p le lands w as sto red in the tem ple g ran aries), cooks (tem ple k itch en s provided

79This has been disputed by some non-Brahmin writers and others; see Richard Kennedy, ‘Status and Control of Temples in Tamil Nadu’, 1ESHR (1974-5), pp. 260-90. Buchanan states that the village priests in Bhavanikudal in the Tamil country were never Brahmins (Journey, 1, p. 439). The caste of the priests is not of particular importance here. B u c h a n a n stated that Brahmins would not officiate in ‘temples of the inferior gods, whose altars are stained with blood’ (Journey, 1, p. 15). 'Thus, according to Buchanan, Bhatkal contained five hundred houses and seventy-six temples. Journey, 2, p. 292. 82 The financial activities of temples were extensive. Large temples collected revenues over a wide area, and temple funds were lent out for a variety of purposes. 3The attachment of dancers to temples varied regionally. For instance, at Coimbatore, Buchanan remarked that ‘At the temples here dancing girls are kept, which is not done anywhere on the coast towards the south and in Tulava and Malayala, many of the finest women, are at all times devoted to the service of the Brahmans’ (Journey, 2, p. 322). Again, Raju states that there was a dancing girl in every village in the Southern districts. Economic Conditions in Madras Presidency, p. 18. Sections of the Xaikkolars, a weaving caste, and the agriculturist Vellalas, dedicated their daughters to temples; E. Thurston, Caste and Tribes o f South India, 7 vols (Madras, 1909), Vol. 2, pp 127-8.

The Forgotten Sector 79 o b la tio n s and food fo r p ilg rim s), lig h t b earers, p alan q u in b earers, c le a n e rs, and m any o thers. T h u s, th e tw o larg e S iva tem ples in K anjivaram , B uch an an rem a rk e d , h ad a h u n d red fam ilies o f B rahm ins and a hundred d a n c ­ ing g irls.83 In th e g reat tem p le in the fortress o f M elk o tta ‘fo u r h u n d re d Brahmans form the h ig h er class o f the servants; and from th en c e th ey receiv e a d aily allo w ance. T here is also a c lass o f serv a n ts o f Sudra ex tractio n , and c o n sistin g o f m u sician s, dancin g -g irls, an d Vaishnavam o r Satanas’.96 B e sid e ;, itin eran t p rie sts a n d p a lan au in b earers to o k id o ls o u t in p ro cessio n and c o lle c te d d o n atio n s. A nd apart from tem ple priests, there w ere caste and fam ily priests. R ich fam ilies w ould support a full-tim e priest (and perhaps a fam ily shrine o r tem ple). M any non-B rahm in castes had their ow n priests: w itness the frequent references to them in B uchanan.88 B ut not all did— som e used the village astrologer.89 A nd then there w ere m any m onasteries (mathams), and settle­ m ents o f Brahm ins, w hich supported large num bers o f B rahm ins who studied religious texts and philosophy and gave religious counsel; som e o f these w ere religious m endicants (for instance, the M aun B how discussed in the section on beggars). And finally there w ere sorcerers, w itch-doctors, mantravadis or chanters o f spells, and the like. B uchanan describ es the C an i o r S h ay cara, ‘alw ay s o f som e low caste, and w ho su b sist by actin g as so rcerers and d iv in e rs’. They w ere co n su lted on the cau se s o f d isea se, and so could also be classified as m edical services. E ven to d ay p eople use m an trav ad is ‘w ho are b eliev ed to know sp ells th a t co n tro l good an d ev il forces, are som etim es used to rid p eo p le o f such evil p o ssessio n s, to cau se harm to others, and to search

84 See, e.g., M. Atchi Reddy, ‘Rich Lands and Poor Lords’, IESHR, 1987, pp. 1-33. 85Buchanan, Journey, 1, p. 9. 86Journey, 1, p. 343. Buchanan describes one such, where the net collections were given to Tirupati, and adds, ‘Many such collectors are constantly travelling about the Peninsula’, Journey, 2, p. 322. 88For example the Jangams and gurus of the Lingayats, Journey, 1, p. 166. 89Journey, 1, p. 480. Buchanan gives the instance of the Pallis, a low caste. 90Journey, 1, p. 397.

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Colonialism, Property and the State

fo r lo st o b je c ts’.91 This group m erited a separate sub-heading even in the 1901 C ensus o f India: ‘w itches, w izards, cow -poisoners, e tc .’, a cow -poisoner being em ployed to kill cow s by persons who w anted the dead cow but not the sin o f killing it. The group w as clearly not inconsiderable a hundred years back. N ow for the perilous task o f estim ation. O ne can probably safely estim ate that in 1800 a village o f five hundred w ould have at least one priest, and perhaps one other religious functionary or w itch doc­ tor, such as the priest o f a non-Brahm in caste or village tem ple, or a sorcerer. For the population as a whole, the proportion o f religious services w ould alm ost certainly be higher, considering the num erous large tem ples there were in South India. T his proportion probably declined over the first h alf o f the nineteenth century. The support o f native rulers fell and the B ritish certainly were no substitute. M ost B ritish adm inistrators, and perhaps especially M unro, obeyed the G overnor-G eneral’s injunction to the R esident at M ysore. Hindu governm ents, W ellesley said, are too apt to practice to an extent that does not infrequently involve their affairs in great embarassment, namely, the alienation of land in favour of individuals (most commonly Brahmins) and of pagodas.... You must therefore be extremely careful how you allow any augmentation of those establishments, or any other alienation of sircar lands on whatever account.92 B ut w hat about the m erchants whose incom e increased during this period? They w ere large tem ple builders, but one can say nothing yet about the net effect o f these different trends.

Beggars Beggars m erit separate consideration on m any counts. First, they were num erous, far m ore so than m ost people w ould guess. O ne es­ tim ate was that they am ounted to 12.5 per cent o f the H indu popula­ tion. M ackintosh, an arm y officer o f the M adras N ative Infantry stationed in A hm ednagar, wrote in 1836:

9,Mattison Mines, The Warrior Merchants: Textiles, Trade and Territory in South India (Cambridge, 1984), p. 65. 92Letter of 17 September 1799, cited in M.H. Gopal, The Finances of the Mysore State, 1799-1831 (Bombay, 1960), p. 187.

The Forgotten Sector 81 It is well-known to every person who has either read the History of Hindoostan, or sojourned in India that numbers of beggars and devotees (fakeers as they were frequently and indiscriminately termed) are to be seen in every town and village in this country: indeed, it has been estimated that an eighth of the Hindu population subsist by mendicity; for not only the lame, the blind and the sickly go about begging but various sects have at different periods, formed themselves into associations or societies, passing their lives in Mhutts or monasteries worshipping particular deities, and visiting sanctified places of pilgrimage being entirely supported by the eleemosynary donations of the rest of the inhabitants.93 O ne need not take the estim ate o f 12.5 per cent literally, but there are independent reasons for believing that the num ber o f beggars was large. C harity, H indus believe, is one o f the ch ief ways o f acquiring m erit. Every pious H indu household (and very m any Hindu households would have been pious in the early nineteenth century) set aside part o f its incom e for charity, as did the village com ­ m unity;94 even today part o f the com m on village funds is frequently earm arked for charity.95 D em and in this case would certainly have called forth supply, especially since there was no stigm a attached to begging.96 Indeed, one could well argue that beggars should not be classed as unproductive, since they provided a service to donors, by helping them ‘to m ake m erit’.97 A nother sign o f the num bers o f beggars is that begging was the specialized occupation o f several castes, and indeed some castes spe­ cialized in particular form s o f begging. For instance, the K erkerm oondi w ould m utilate them selves if not given alm s, the Dasri or Dasari w ould beg only in the m orning, and w ould act scenes from 9-1

A. Mackintosh, ‘An Account of the Maun Bhows, or, the Black Clothed Mendicant Devotees’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, Vol. 3 (1836), p. 9. 94Thus Buchanan, when describing the division of the village crop, always states that a portion was set apart for charity, Journey, 1, pp 185, 208. 95For instance the Kallar village, Tengalapati, studied by Dumont, gave alms out of its common fund, and made payments to acrobats, etc., Louis Dumont, The Parimalai Kallars, pp 58-9. Indeed Brahmins were enjoined to beg. 97This useful phrase occurs in I. Mabbett, ‘Slavery in Angkor’, in Anthony Reid (ed.), Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in South East Asia (St. Lucia, 1983), p. 56.

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Colonialism, Property and the State

the Mahabharata in the afternoon,98 and so on. B egging w as one o f the ch ief occupations, according to Eliot, o f the Soodgarsid, the D asri, and the K erkerm oondi.99 B egging was frequently com bined with other occupations. Thus B uchanan states that the N ayadis o f M alabar were crop w atchers as w ell as beggars, and V airagis both traders and beggars.100 But beg­ ging was probably m ost com m only com bined w ith entertainm ent. T hus the Soodgarsid were part-tim e jugglers and fortune-tellers, the D asris w ere actors. C urrent experience suggests that it m ight also have been com bined w ith crim e, in particular burglary and theft. I have not seen explicit references to this connection, but then I have not consulted the police or judicial records. O bviously beggars w ere m obile geographically.101 T he fact that traditional begging castes had other occupations suggests that they w ere also m obile occupationally, shifting from one occupation to another w ith shift in dem and. W as there a secular shift in dem and? W ere B ritish rule and W estern education accom panied by a decline in liberality? The M aun Bhow s certainly thought so— they com ­ plained in 1836 that the inhabitants o f the B ritish territories w ere not as liberal as in the past; ‘they add that the people excuse their present conduct, by inform ing them that they are prohibited granting alm s • • Tm now as in tim es p art’ — not a very convincing excuse.

9SEUiot Mss. The Keikermoondi (who ‘call themselves Yedogoile’ and say they are of the Telig Bunjewar caste) are not listed in S. Thurston, Castes and

Tribes of South India. " T h e best account of specialization in begging which I have come across, in the course of random reading, is an article on the Punjab, which lists Doriwalas, Tasmiwalas, Uri-mars, Gurz-mars and Churi-mars, all of whom bullied shopkeepers into giving alms in different ways; Indian Antiquary, Vol.l (1872), p. 162. 100Buchanan, Journey, 1, pp 346, 347; 2, p. 97. 101They are certainly mobile today; one comes across Tamil beggars in Delhi, Dehra Dun and the Punjab. Before the railways, their spread.must have been narrower, but they would still have been more mobile than most others. 102A. Mackintosh, ‘An Account of the Maun Bhows’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, Vol. 3 (1836), pp 17-8.

The Forgotten Sector 83

SECTORAL CHANGES, 1800-72: SOME SPECULATIONS F r o m 1872 onw ards, the C ensuses give figures for the labour force a n d its occupational distribution. In the nature o f the econom y, these f ig u r e s are bound to be problem atic. W ith a large subsistence sector a n d extensive production within the fam ily, m any transactions do not e n t e r the m arket, and m uch fam ily labour is not directly paid. These p ro b le m s are particularly acute in the case o f wom en and children s o it is safest to take only the figure for the m ale w orkforce. There a r e again problem s o f classification where the distinctions betw een d iffe re n t occupations is not alw ays clear, and where labour in certain o c cu p a tio n s is seasonal or part-tim e, and com bined with others. The m a jo r problem here is the very large body o f unskilled labourers, c la ssifie d as ‘general labour’, w hich includes porters, earth-diggers, e tc ., and some agricultural labourers, even w here a separate heading is provided for them . N otw ithstanding these difficulties, it is useful to look at the 1872 fig u res. Table 3.1 gives the occupational breakdow n o f the adult m ale la b o u r force o f M adras Presidency in 1872. N early 50 per cent of th e m ale w orkforce were ‘cultivators’, to w hich one should add a larg e part o f the 20 per cent w ho w ere unskilled labourers; so some 6 0 -6 5 p er cent o f the m ale w orkforce was in agriculture.103 Industry accounted for a little over 12 per cent. Excluding cultivation, un­ skilled labour, and industry, the rem aining, largely services, w as 17.5 per cent (part o f unskilled labour may also have been in services). It seem s likely that the share o f agriculture in the w orkforce in­ creased betw een 1800 and 1872, in view o f the vastly increased ex104 ports o f agricultural produce from M adras. W e should rem ind ourselves that an increase in the share of agriculture in national incom e and even in the w orkforce is not neces­ sarily a sign o f retrogression, or im poverishm ent, especially w hen the increase is brought about by a rise in agricultural exports. These exports m ay represent high value crops, w ith a higher labour produc­ tivity than other crops, and perhaps even than in the services or in­ dustries from w hich labour is displaced.

,03Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India, pp 172-3. 104Dharma Kumar, ‘The Regional Economy of South India’, CEHI, 2.

Colonialism, Property and the State

84

TABLE 3.1 Occupational Distribution of Male Workforce, 1871

(in per cent) Occupation 1) 2) 3)

Cultivation Unskilled Labour Industry

Revised and Correct 49.3 20.8 12.2 82.3

4)

Rest: Government Service Personal Services Trade & Commerce Conveyors of goods, etc. Rentiers Beggars, etc. Unclassified

3.2 5.2 5.4 0.5 1.7 1.1 0.6 17.7 100.00

Total

Source: Report on the Centre of the Madras Presidency, 1871, by W.R. Cornish, Vol. 1 (Madras 1874), pp 176-87. O ne needs to take into account two further considerations. The first is the ‘d rain ’— there w as a substantial export o f bullion in the first half o f the nineteenth century, which can be taken to represent net invisibles, from paym ents for shipping, and com m ercial profits, to pure loot, such as the transm ission o f the earnings o f corrupt of­ fic ia ls.105 But in Sri Lanka too in the period when per capita incom e rose as w ell as the share o f agriculture, heavy rem ittances o f profits, etc., m ust have been m ade. The second point has also been raised by K uznets— the relative productivity o f labour in the three sectors. It is often im plicitly as­ sum ed th at the productivity o f labour in agriculture in the early part o f the nineteenth century was low er than in the other tw o sectors, but this assum ption is questionable. The tools used in the various

105Kumar, ‘The Regional Economy of South India’.

The Forgotten Sector 85 4

in d u s tr ie s w ere very sim ple, and the w ages o f m any artisans were p r o b a b ly little higher than the daily w ages in agriculture. W a s this increase in the share o f agriculture at the expense o f s e r v ic e s or industry or both? N o certain answ er is possible, but it m a y be illum inating to take the 1872 breakdow n for services, and s p e c u la te on the fortunes o f each services group. T h e num bers in ‘governm ent services’ alm ost certainly fell sharp­ l y betw een 1800 and 1872. There are three reasons for m aking this a s se rtio n . First, large num bers o f native m ilitia in 1800 w ere dis­ b a n d e d . Second, with the grow th o f population, there may have been s o m e econom ies o f scale— a village o f 1,500 would not require three tim e s as m any village officials as a village o f 500. And finally, the g o v ern m en t probably centralized adm inistration by 1872, and reduced v illag e officers. The ‘professions’ are a problem atic category. As we have seen, the percentage o f teachers probably fell soon after 1800 (though it started to increase again at som e point in the first h a lf o f the nineteenth century). On the other hand, there were certainly m ore professional ‘law yers’ o f all levels w ith the grow th o f the formal legal system , possibly at the expense o f unofficial panchayats. It is im possible to say anything about m edical practitioners, except to note that they w ere not inconsiderable in num ber in 1800. ‘Personal services’ too are very problem atic, including, as they do, a variety o f services, each o f w hich is still unstudied. For in­ stance, w ith the decline o f courts and the native nobility their per­ sonal retinues w ould have fallen and European em ployers w ere a poor substitute. On the other hand, with the grow th o f ‘m iddle class’ households o f m erchants, governm ent servants, etc., the total num ber o f dom estic services m ay have grow n. B ut this group also includes barbers, w asherm en, and so forth, and w ith the grow ing density o f population few er o f them per 1000 o f population would have been required. A nother difficult group is trade and com m erce, together w ith con­ veyors o f goods. As regards the latter, one cannot be sure as to w hat extent the increasing efficiency o f transport— especially after the rail­ w ays w ere built— offset the increasing dem and due to the huge in­ crease in exports and to a lesser extent in internal trade. A gain, w ith the unification o f currency, the grow th o f banks and so forth, the num bers o f m oneychangers m ust have fallen, but increased com m er-

86

Colonialism, Property and the State %

cialization m ust have led to the grow th o f other financial and trading services. A gain, when one considers religious functionaries one has to w eigh the loss o f the support o f native rulers against the increased support o f the m erchants who grew w ealthy under the C om pany. And w hat effect did conversions to C hristianity have? W ithin H induism too there m ay have been significant changes in the pattern o f expen­ diture. It is true that H indus see m erit in charity, but there were com peting objects o f charity, and alm s to beggars m ay well have reflected fear as m uch as charity. There were alm ost certainly far m ore beggars as a percentage o f the population in 1800 than in 1872, and at least one reason appears to have been the increasing ease of resisting their dem ands. In 1871, the category ‘unproductive’ consisting m ainly of religious and other m endicants, was only 0.7 per cent o f the adult m ale population. The Census C om m issioner for M adras asserted: There can be no doubt but that this class of the community is falling off in numbers. Old travellers in India report that religious mendicants formerly traversed the country in large groups, levying contributions from villagers by force, and abusing the women to a shameful extent. An improved police has succeeded in abolishing this public nuisance; the mendicants now usually travel in small bodies or congregate about large towns and places where pilgrims are moving."16 A striking feature o f the period is the extent o f occupational m obility.107 It is obvious that groups such as beggars, entertainers and porters were geographically m obile. But there also appears to have been a fair am ount o f m ovem ent betw een occupations in response to dem and and changing em ploym ent opportunities. M ost occupations did not require a great deal of skill though caste may have erected barriers to entry to some occupations. O ne sign o f 106 Census o f Madras, 1871, Vol. I, p. 189. l07Geographical and occupational mobility were closely related, as numerous references in the Elliot Mss. show. But China seems to have had a much richer variety, judging from a newspaper cutting of 22 April 1890; the ‘travelling trades’ there included, besides a variety of entertainers, dentists, ‘quacks’, ‘walking restaurateurs’, chessplayers who played chess or taught it for money, and a circulating librarian; Elliot Mss., Eur. D 317, Vol. 1—name of newspaper not given.

The Forgotten Sector 87 m obility w as the wide extent o f m ixed occupations— w eavers who cultivated land, farm ers w ho were occasionally soldiers, and so on. T here w ere seasonal and cyclical patterns o f shift, as well as struc­ tural changes. A system atic search for and analysis of the types of m obility and changes over tim e would throw a great deal o f light on the processes o f change, and the consequences o f fam ines, depres­ sions, and o f de-urbanization (to the extent it occurred). Som e w idely held beliefs m ay have to alter— it is useful to recall P erlin’s argu­ m ent that far from being a sign o f de-industrialization or o f back­ w ardness, m ixed occupations may be a sign o f structural change, of production for a grow ing m arket.108

CONCLUSION The m ain points I have m ade are: i. The services sector in South India at the beginning o f the nineteenth century was large, alm ost certainly considerably larger in term s o f em ploym ent than the industries sector. ii. It is possible that at least part o f the increase in the proportions em ployed in agriculture were draw n from the services sector— this is a possibility overlooked in m any discussions o f de-industrialization. iii. The services sector was very varied, and the degree o f specializa­ tion and organization was probably significantly greater than sug­ gested in the general literature. In other words, m any services were provided outside the household by specialized priests, enter­ tainers, teachers, doctors, village and higher level officials, and so on. iv. Som e o f these groups were surprisingly (to me at least) large in 1800— beggars and entertainers, for exam ple. v. The sector as a whole probably declined considerably betw een 1800 and 1872. The num bers in each group changed for a variety o f reasons. Secular factors included changes in the size and distribution o f in­ come; these m ay have influenced the dem and for dom estic servants, for exam ple. C hanges in m ores may have been one cause o f the 108Frank Perlin, ‘Proto-Industrialisation and Pre-Colonial South Asia’, Past

and Present (1983), p. 58.

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Colonialism, Property and the State

decline in the num bers o f beggars. C hanges in technology and or­ ganization, including the organization o f governm ent and finance, had w ide-ranging consequences. D em ographic factors affect both the dem and for and the supply o f various services. F or instance, an increase in the proportion o f children will stim ulate the dem and for teachers. The population o f M adras Presidency rose substantially betw een 1800 and 1872, but w e know nothing about changes in its age distribution. O n the supply side, d eath rates and fertility both vary w ith occupation109— again an im portant topic on w hich nothing is known for our place and period. It is essentia] to stress that all these statem ents are necessarily tentative because m isunderstanding often arises when scholars w rite o f differen t regions o r different periods and then think they contradict each other. The dangers o f this kind o f m isunderstanding are par­ ticularly great because this period saw so m uch change: industries m oved from one area to another; new lands were sown under cotton or indigo; fam ines were frequent; m oreover, there w as a severe depression from 1825-6 to 1852-3, so that cyclical phenom ena may be taken for secular trends if one is not careful. The aim o f this paper was not to m ake precise statem ents about the size o f the services sector but to point to its m agnitude, and to the im portance o f certain groups. This is particularly necessary since hardly any attention has been paid to services in the literature, apart from b rie f discussions o f overall sectoral changes. W hat w e need are detailed historical studies o f various groups— teachers, doctors, religious services, m erchants, entertainers, etc. W e need to look at the organization o f these groups, and to try to estim ate changes in their productivity. If data could be found, m ovem ents in the relative prices o f com m odities and services would be very revealing.110 A very im portant group on which further research needs to be done is the public servants. B ritish officials com plained about the ‘arm y o f half-em ployed half-paid native servants’. But everyone com ­ plains about bureaucrats; even bureaucrats com plain about each other. This is not ju st because no one loves a tax-collector but also because the benefits o f bureaucratic organization are not im m ediately visible 109Michael Haines, Fertility and Occupation (New York, 1979). 110Alan Heston has pointed out the importance of this issue to me, and the possibility that the ratio in South India moved in the reverse direction to that in the West.

The Forgotten Sector 89 o r m easurable. B ut com parative studies reveal the im portance o f dif­ ferences in bureaucracy— Reynolds concluded his survey w ith the hypothesis ‘that the single m ost im portant explanatory variable [of grow th] is political organisation and the adm inistrative com petence o f g o v e rn m e n t\n There are m any other interesting com parative issues: betw een dif­ feren t regions o f South India and betw een rural and urban areas. W e have already seen that the Tam il areas had far m ore teachers and tem ple dancers than the Telugu districts (c. 1800). A nother set of issues is the regional differences within India. And finally, there are m any significant international com parisons to be m ade. Perhaps, for instance, in its large num ber o f religious functionaries, from heads o f m onasteries to religious m endicants. South India resem bles m edieval E urope rather than China. A gain, is it indeed the case that in India services were perform ed outside the fam ily, by specialists, to a m uch larger extent than in other com parable societies and if so, does the caste system provide an explanation?

m Uoyd Reynolds, T he Spread of Economic Growth to the Third Wodd: 1850-1980’, Journal of Economic Literature (1983), p. 976.

\

I

I

Land

4 The Persistence of Land Fragmentation in Peasant Agriculture: An Analysis of South Asian Cases*

For the past century or so, observers o f South Asian agriculture have deplored fragm ented land holdings1 (scattered plots). Fragm entation was and is thought to be unproductive and therefore a phenom enon to be ended, if not by rhetoric, then by laws preventing further frag­ m entation through inheritance, and by encouraging consolidation of land holdings o r m aking it com pulsory. This raises a question which has concerned many European econom ic historians, nam ely, if frag­ m entation results in inefficient production, why have peasants not individually found it w orthw hile to exchange land and thereby con­ solidate their holdings voluntarily?

♦Many of the early ideas for this study were developed in seminars with T. G. Kessinger. An earlier version was presented to the Cliometrics Conference at the University of Iowa, 30 April to 2 May 1981. We are indebted to discussants at the Conference, and particularly to T. N. Srinivasan, Raaj Sah, and Pranab Roy for many useful subsequent comments. 'Fragmentation is measured simply by the number of non-contiguous pieces of land in a holding in a village (obviously, the case of families holding land in several villages must be excluded). The South Asian literature distinguishes between ownership holdings, the land owned by one owner (which may be a family), and ‘operational holdings’, the land cultivated or managed by a single farmer. When we use the term ‘farm’ it generally refers to an operational holding. By plots or fragments we mean non-contiguous holdings. Actual surveys may overstate the number of fragments if they treat as a separate plot each piece of land with a separate cadastral survey number, since it is possible to have a contiguous holding crossing two cadastral survey areas.

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This paper exam ines several explanations o f the persistence o f fragm entation in the light o f evidence from the subcontinent. The first section begins w ith explanations involving risk aversion and w ork spreading that have evolved from the literature on m edieval European field system s. Som e contrasts betw een Europe and the sub­ continent are also explored in the first section in term s o f settlem ent patterns and inheritance provisions, with the role o f population grow th also being exam ined. The second section deals explicitly with the costs o f fragm entation in South Asia, and the extent to which evidence on local variation in productivity supports the risk aversion proposition o f M cCloskey. Evidence on work spreading as a rationale for scattered plots, and instances o f fragmentation of ownership, but not operational holdings, will also be discussed. In the third section, several other explanations for resistance to consolidation are exam ined, based on narrow ness o f land m arkets, differences in perception o f private and social benefits from consolidation, and differences in the value o f land as a productive factor and as an asset serving as a store o f value.

THE EUROPEAN DEBATE AND THE SOUTH ASIAN SCENE It m ay b e useful to rem ind ourselves briefly o f the m ain issues in the debate on scattered holdings in m edieval Europe. (T he evidence is m ostly from English experience, and if the w hole range of E uropean experience was considered, it w ould probably show as m uch variation as South A sia.) At one tim e, European fragm entation was attributed to distributive factors, to a com bination o f partible inheritance and egalitarianism ; now the stress is on population. M c­ C loskey argues that ‘strips were scattered to reduce ris k ’; that each cu ltiv ato r w anted plots o f land o f different soil, location, etc., even though this involved costs o f travel and enforced coordination w ith neighbours, costs w hich m ay have am ounted to 7 per cent o f output.2

2Donald N. McCloskey, T h e Economics of Enclosures: A Market Analysis, in W.N. Parker and E.L. Jones (eds), European Peasants and Their Markets (Princeton, N J., 1975a), pp 123-61; Donald N. McCloskey, T h e Persistence of English Common Fields’, in W.N. Parker and E. L. Jones (eds), European Peasants and Their Markets (Princeton, N.J., 1975b), pp 73-123.

T he Persistence o f Land Fragmentation in Peasant Agriculture 95 B u t why w ould one need to scatter plots, if the various m edieval fie ld s and their sections offered contiguous areas w ith w ell-know n m e a n yields and variance o f yield? Could a peasant not achieve a g iv e n trade-off betw een risk and return by choosing contiguous hold­ in g s, and carry over the plentiful harvests in one year to m ake up f o r the poor harvests in a subsequent year, achieving yields as high a s by scattering plots, w ithout the cost in lost output attendant on h e d g e s and scattered plots? The M cCloskey argum ent3 is that either g ra in s cannot be stored at a reasonable cost, and/or other storable assets cannot be counted upon to m aintain their purchasing pow er in fo o d from year to year because o f poor transport facilities and thin m arkets. In such a world, each peasant tries to m aintain a m inim um o u tp u t in each year, by scattering plots and output outcom es across the m icro clim ates o f the village fields, the m inim um being less on average; but m ore in some years than could be obtained by holding one contiguous plot in any particular field. W hen m arkets and transportation im proved, it was no longer necessary for the in­ dividual to m aintain a m inim um production level in each year, the inefficiency o f scattered plots no longer need to be tolerated. Fenoaltea argued that borrow ing and storage facilities w ere not as difficult as M cC loskey m ade out and that there is a sim pler ex­ planation for scattering. Fenoaltea argues that there was little loss in productivity and, in fact, ‘private scattering was designed to m ax i­ m ize productivity by optim izing self-em ploym ent’ (p. 130).4 Purchas­ ing or exchanging labour involved transaction costs, so by holding ' his land in separated plots which w ould require labour inputs at dif­ ferent periods, the peasant w ould m inim ize the need to engage out­ side labour. If there was an asymmetric attitude on the part o f peasants so that they would require m uch m ore to hire them selves out than they w ould pay to hire labour in, then this type o f explanation has theoretical plausibility. Both o f these argum ents are based on a high degree o f variability in the output w ithin villages, either from different outcom es from 3Donald N. McCloskey, ‘English Open Fields as Behavior Toward Risk,’ in Paul J. Uselding (ed.), Research in Economic History (Greenwich Conn; 1976), pp 124-71. 4Stefano, Fenoaltea, ‘Risk, Transaction Costs and the Organization of Medieval Agriculture’, Explorations in Economic History, 13, 1976, pp 129-75.

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d ifferent crops during different seasons, or different outcom es and crop cycles for the sam e crop on different soils or drainage areas. F en o altea’s explanation discounts the im portance o f risk; in his m odel risk is taken care o f by storage, charity, borrow ing, and greater thrift and hard work. To explain scattering he only requires that different plots require labour inputs at different times o f the year. If this is so, there will be scattering even if output never fluctuates. C onver­ sely, if scattering is a response to risk aversion, one w ould expect to find it w henever output varies over time and space, even if all plots dem and labour at the same time. Dahlman has a third explanation, based on the fact that all open field systems had a rotation o f crops and livestock in the arable fields. There were large economies o f scale in grazing, hence the advantage o f the open field for livestock farming, which was managed com m unally; it was necessary to prevent any individual farmer from withdrawing his land and so imposing negative externalities on the others. This was done by dividing the arable land into strips ‘so strangely scattered about’ so that no one farmer could easily withdraw from the system.5 O ne notable difference between m odern and m edieval India and m edieval Europe is that in India holdings do not run together, but are enclosed by strips o f land or hedges. This im plies that (a) co m ­ m unal decisions about crop rotation are unnecessary, though various form s o f com m unal organization do exist for other purposes, and (b) the costs o f fragm entation are increased by the am ount o f land under hedges, etc. It has been estim ated in som e Indian villages that 7 -1 0 per cent o f land is lost in this w ay.6 T here is, unfortunately, no direct evidence on the extent o f frag­ m entation in the m edieval period in India to allow com parisons with Europe. The m ost com m only cited cause o f the phenom enon— in­ heritance custom s— certainly applied. Both classical H indu and Is­ lam ic law provide for equal inheritance by all m ale heirs; under both system s w om en also have property rights, though few er than men. B ut a countervailing institution was the jo in t fam ily.7 5Carl J. Dahlman, The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis o f an Economic Institution (Cambridge, 1980). Planning Commission, Report on Consolidation of Holdings (New Delhi, 1957), p. 78. 7On Hindu law regarding joint family property, see P.V. Kane, History of the Dharmashastra (Pune, 2nd ed., 1975). But landowning communities in

The Persistence o f Land Fragmentation in Peasant Agriculture 97 C om m unal landholding w as found in m any parts o f India, but the m ost extensive descriptions available are for South India. Som etim es the villages w ere com m unally held from the beginning, by the original settlers and their descendants, or by the Brahmins who were given uncultivated land which they could rent or lease out, or cultivate with hired labour. If the land was already settled, they could collect rent, the rights o f the existing cultivators being protected to varying degrees. The early history o f these settlements is still obscure, but the genera] tendency was probably towards the breakdown of the com m unal elem ent, and rights increasingly being held severally.8 In these villages, landholdings were expressed as shares o f the total village area. Each share included not ju st the arable, but rights in the com m ons; these rights w ould include rights to graze in the pastures, fish in the village tank, hunt in the forests, and so on, and also to the profits from leasing out the village orchards, tank, or other jo in t property, in proportion to the shares held. The shares w ere sal­ able and transm issable so that over time, as fam ilies prospered and grew at different rates, they becam e very unequally divided, w hatever the initial distribution. There is evidence that the shares w ere not alw ays equally divided even to start with; inscriptions show th at some categories o f Brahm ins were given m ore land than others even at the first settlem ent. A lso, shareholders had preem ption rights. At first the preem ption rules may have been designed to restrict ow nership to certain castes, in particular to B rahm ins or V ellalas (the m ain cultivating castes),

different parts of India were sometimes governed not by classical Hindu or Islamic Law, but by customary law. 8N. Karashima, ‘The Prevalence of Private Land Owning in the Lower Kaveri Valley and Its Historical Implications,’ in South Indian History and Society: Studies From Inscriptions, A.D. 850-1800 (New Delhi, n.d). On the other other hand, as late as the eighteenth century landowners pooled their individual rights and formed some sort of collective to resist the revenue demands of the state (Claudia Strauss, unpublished). Fundamentally, it was probably their aim that the state should assess the village as a whole, and leave it to the landholders to divide up the land revenue assessment among themselves; it is unlikely that great changes in the organization of cultivation were involved.

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but over tim e outsiders bought their way in, and the com position o f the landow ning groups becam e increasingly m ixed.9 O ur know ledge o f m odes o f cultivation under these m edieval South Indian com m unal tenures is obscure. The follow ing points em erge in the literature: (a) periodic redistribution o f the arable w as very rare, though a few cases were reported as late as 1921, in the richest rice-grow ing district o f a ll, T anjore;10 (b) occasionally, the landow ners w ould hold even the arable in com m on, and organize its cultivation through hired labour, the supervision o f the labour being done by representatives or agents o f the landow ners,11 but this too w as probably rare; (c) m ore com m only, the jointly held arable w ould be leased out, and the rents shared am ong the landow ners in propor­ tion to their shares; but (d) the com m onest form was that o f the arable being held separately by individuals (or fam ilies);12 (e) never­ theless, there w ere strong com m unal elem ents in the m anagem ent o f m any aspects o f the village econom y and social life .13

9David E. Ludden, ‘Agrarian Organization in Tinnevelly District, 800 to 1900 A.D., Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Pennsylvania (Pennsylania 1978). 10Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labour in the Madras Presidency in the 19th Century (Cambridge, 1965). 11 David E. Ludden,‘Patronage and Irrigation in Tamil Nadu: A long-Term View’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 16, 1979, pp 347-66. 12 Unlike the situation analyzed by Dahlman, there was no rotation between crops and livestock. Also, the major part of the livestock was owned and managed by specialized pastoral communities, not farmers. 13 Communal institutions were found in all types of villages and some have persisted till today, but we have at least one fairly full description of a modem rice growing village in Andhra Pradesh. Here a village committee of eight to ten members is nominated at an annual open general meeting of the whole village. This committee appoints men to distribute the water among the fields, and appoints guards to police the system; it collects and manages a not inconsiderable village fund from toddy licenses, commissions on the sale of paddy, etc., and it decides the date on which sorghum planting will begin (collective decisions on planting, whether as to time or area, are particularly relevant to the issue of fragmentation). In this village, the supply o f irrigation water is uncertain: in upstream villages with greater certainty of water supply, corporate organizations for managing irrigation arc not found. R. Wade, ‘The Social Response to Irrigation: An Indian Case Study’, Journal of Development Economics, 16(1), 1979, pp 3-26.

The Persistence o f Land Fragmentation in Peasant Agriculture 99 O n general grounds, one w ould expect com m unal landholding and fragm entation (o be inversely related— if institutions for com m unal decisio n -m ak in g exist, it m ight be easier, for exam ple, to arrange for lab o u r exchange so that the labour-scheduling argum ent for fragm en­ tation w ould be less applicable. H ow ever, once the com m unal system breaks up, for w hatever reason, the im m ediate effect m ay be fragm entation, as com pared w ith a village w here land was separately held from the beginning. The reason for this is that the desire to ensure fair shares will be stronger than the disadvantages o f fragm entation. These m ay take som e tim e to be felt, and m oreover, the exchange values o f different pieces o f land m ay take tim e to establish. Thus the C ollector o f Trichinopoly in South India reported in 1929 that the fragm entation in his district follow ed the breakup o f the com m unal system: ‘a very m inute clas­ sification and grouping o f lands according to soil, natural advantages and facility o f irrigation was m ade and alm ost each shareholder was given a piece o f land in each o f these several groups.’ But he reported that fragm entation had decreased in recent years, and farm ers ex­ changed their lands as they felt the benefits o f consolidation.14 If land can be easily alienated, fragm entation m ay have certain advantages. T his point is discussed in the third section; here we need only note, first, that land would be bought, sold, and donated from the eleventh century at least, and second, that gifts o f lands to tem ples w ere num erous in the m edieval period. G ifts to tem ples were a potent source o f spiritual m erit and, o f all gifts, land was the best. M edieval inscriptions record gifts o f all sizes, from m en and w om en o f all con d itions.13 T em ples generally leased these lands out, so th is was one im p o rtan t reason w hy op erational holdings m ight be frag­ m ented. W e have little data on trends in fragm entation even for m odem ' tim es, although it was seen as a m ajor problem from the beginning

14 One example of official concern with this problem is the survey of district officials conducted by the Madras Government in 1929 contained in the records of the Madras Revenue Department (Tamil Nadu Archives), G .0 .735, dated 12th April 1929. This is hereafter referred to as Madras G.O. 735, 1929. How much of the collector’s statement was mere hearsay, and how much based on evidence, is impossible to tell. 15 Karashima, “The Prevalence of Private Land Owning’.

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o f this cen tu ry .16 A nd in the literature—official as w ell as u noffi­ cial— partible inheritance is cited as by far the m ost im portant cause o f fragm entation; to ensure equality each heir has to get a piece o f each variety o f land.17 A very interesting form o f tenure generating fragm entation caused by division o f fam ily shares through inheritance was called the vesh system and was practised by a num ber o f the Pathan tribes in present day Pakistan. The vesh system , as introduced into the Sw at valley in the sixteenth century, also shares one aspect o f the rotation system used in rice cultivation in Sri Lanka, w hich will be described below . The lineage groups am ong the Sw at Pathans exchanged land (often w hole valleys o f tributaries to the Sw at river) usually every ten years. This involved the physical m ovem ent o f hom esteads o f all the daftari or shareholders, w ho were descendents o f the original Y usufzai set­ tlers. Support groups such as artisans, labourers, and m anagers o f certain lands set aside for religious endow m ents did not m ove. These large exchanges were relatively sim ple com pared to those that then took place w ithin subdivisions o f the m ajor lineage groups. Each shareholder received a portion o f the several types o f land (up to eighteen types were distinguished), usually three, irrigated rice, rainfed rice and other lands, the distribution being by lot, or consen­ sus. T he rice land m ight in turn be redistributed every y ear or every other year am ong the subdivisions o f the m ajor clans. Since m ost descriptions o f the vesh system w ere m ade by British officials assigned to change the system , such descriptions were usual­ ly critical, as, for exam ple, M cM ahon and R am say,18 w ho said

I6Madras Revenue Department, Survey of District Officers, Tamil Nadu Archives, 12 April 1929. 17Gujarat, Report o f the Gujarat State Land Commission (Gandhinagar, 1979); M. Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, 1st ed., 1925, reprinted (New Delhi, 1977), p. 28; S.M.Z. Rizvi, M.A. Sabzwari, and C.M. Sharif, ‘Consolidation of Holdings: A Study of the Process of Consolidation of Holdings in Peshawar District’ (Peshawar, 1965). 18A.H. McMahon, and A.D.G. Ramsay, Report on the Tribes o f Dir. Swat and Bajour Together with the Utman-Khel and San Ranizai, first published in 1901 by Government of India. The 1981 volume contains an introduction (pp. 1-29) by R.O. Christensen that discusses subsequent developments of the vesh system and contributions of recent writers such as F. Barth and A. Ahmed. (Peshawar, 1901,1981).

The Persistence o f Land Fragmentation in Peasant Agriculture

101

However remarkable this system may be as an instance of tribal and communal discipline, and however pleasing it may be to the Pathan tribe, as affording a never-failing source of dispute and consequent blood-letting, it is as far as progress in civilisation is concerned, one of the most pernicious systems of land tenure that could possibly be conceived [p. 46]. W hatever the merits o f the system (and it disappeared in m ost areas early in this century),'m ost descriptions, and the frequent redistributions, su g g est that egalitarianism w as the principal m otivation, though in practice the distribution o f the shares am ong several classes o f land served both the purpose o f diversification for each fam ily, as well as equality. In fact, the original shares were not usually held on a p er capita basis (except B annu), so after several generations fam ilies cam e to have quite unequal holdings, even though the egalitarian ideology o f the system w as (and still is) praised by Sw at Pathans. The m ore rapid the grow th o f population, the m ore rapid the frag­ m entation due to this factor, ceteris paribus. B ut other things change in a variety o f w ays— the prevalence o f jo in t fam ilies, the size o f the fam ily, inheritance laws and custom s, fem ale rights to land and m ar­ riage patterns, and so on. Evidence from B angladesh suggests that physical fragm entation does not keep up w ith the potential suggested by inheritance.19

,9A. Qadir, Village Dhanishwar: Three Generations o f Man-Land Adjustment in an East Pakistan Village (Comilla, 1960), p. 84. This study of Dhanishwar shows that fragmentation usually does not proceed as rapidly as one might be led to suspect from views on inheritance. Over the sixty years since 1900, fragments per holding appear to have declined from 6 to about 4. If the model one has of inheritance is that each male receives a share of each plot, then one would expect the number of fragments to roughly increase proportionally to the number of families. In 1960, within the village, residents held 310 plots, the remaining 143 plots being held by outsiders. If plots held by residents grew in the same proportion as all plots, then there would have been about 170 plots for 26 families in 1900 as compared to the actual 242 plots. Since there were 40 per cent more fragments in 1900 than .would be expected if subdivision proceeded without checks, we can conclude that fragmentation is not due to inheritance practice in this, a Muslim village.

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COST OF FRAGMENTATION AND RESISTANCE TO CONSOLIDATION In this section we first take up the case o f paddy cultivation w here the evidence suggests that there m ay be few costs to fragm entation given the existing m ethods o f transplantation and cultivation. In the next section, evidence for m ore m ixed agriculture is exam ined, and in the third section, som e questions are discussed about the degree to w hich fragm entation o f ow nership m ay be reduced in actual opera­ tion. A s em pirical background, Table 4.1 gives the overall fragm enta­ tion picture for operational holdings in India in 1961-2 for a sm all and a large size class and for all holdings. In all the states the num ber o f fragm ents and acres per fragm ent rises w ith the size o f holding, as can be seen by contrasting colum ns (1 -4 ). M ore recent surveys for all o f India have been undertaken as part o f the 1976 and 1981 A gricultural C ensuses, but these have not yet been published. These data represent the situation when land consolidation schem es had been instituted in m ost states except K erala and Tam il N adu, but little progress had been m ade in any states but Punjab and U.P. The fact that fragm entation is still substantial in both these states partly reflects the view developed later in the paper that by 1947 scattered holdings w ere a m ore severe problem in the northern plains than other parts o f India.

Rice Cultivation In the report o f the N ational C om m ission on A griculture, the chapter on C onsolidation o f H oldings notes the alm ost total failure o f the Southern states to undertake consolidation program s, and the volun­ tary nature o f the program m e in W est Bengal. For G ujarat, which grow s som e rice, the K apoor Com m ittee noted that existing evidence on fragm entation o f rice holdings does not suggest that in rainfed rice production there is m uch gain to consolidation.21

20India, Report o f the National Commission on Agriculture, Part XV, Agrarian Reforms (New Delhi, 1976), Ch. 8. 2‘Government of Gujarat, Report on the Consolidation o f Holdings, H.K.L. Kapoor Committee (Ahmedabad, 1965), pp 10-11.

TABLE 4.1 Land Fragmentation in India, 1961-2: 17th Round National Sample Survey Number of parcels per operational holding and average size of parcel (acres) size class of holding

State

Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar Gujarat Jammu and Kashmir Kerala Madhya Pradesh Tamil Nadu Maharashtra Karnataka Orissa Punjab Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh West Bengal Union Territories All India

All size classes

15 to 20 acres

1 to 2 acres

(1)

Average size of fragments (2)

No. of fragments (3)

Average size of fragments (4)

No. of fragments (5)

4.3 2.2 5.9 2.4 4.0 2.1 3.1 3.8 2.8 2.3 4.4 3.8 3.0 6.2 5.3 5.0 4.4

.82 .78 .28 .71 .43 .72 .56 .44 .61 .74 .35 .43 .59 .26 .33 .37 .37

6.6 3.7 17.3 5.4 9.8 6.8 7.1 11.6 4.7 4.5 12.6 5.4 5.2 14.0 16.1 8.3 7.9

2.42 4.67 .95 3.07 1.57 2.28 2.39 1.46 3.67 3.80 1.31 2.95 3.06 1.16 1.08 1.84 2.10

4.3 2.8 7.2 4.3 5.1 2.0 5.3 5.0 3.8 3.8 6.4 4.8 4.3 7.8 7.1 5.0 5.7

No. of fragments

Average size of Holding fragments (6) (7) 1.64 1.31 .52 2.58 .69 .92 1.86 .74 3.04 2.68 .76 2.00 3.22 .57 .54 .88 1.15

7.05 3.67 3.74 11.09 3.52 1.84 9.86 3.70 11.55 10.18 4.86 9.60 13.85 4.45 3.83 4.40 6.56

104 Colonialism, Property and the State Rice fields com e in m any sizes, with terraced cultivation often lending itself to sm all plots by the nature o f the terrain. W hether a single rice field is quite large, say, ten acres, or small, say, one acre, it will have an irrigation bund for retaining water. Ten acres in one field will have m ore grow ing space than will ten one-acre plots, but there are costs to larger fields in that they are m ore difficult to keep level. In any event, it is often observed that small paddy fields have the sam e or higher yields per acre as m uch larger fields because they are farm ed w ith m ore fam ily labour, whose opportunity cost in al­ ternative em ploym ent is low or zero. W hen Sri Lanka w as consider­ ing legislation requiring com pulsory consolidation, B.H . Farm er argued against it on the grounds that until the C eylonese econom y provided enough em ploym ent to require econom izing on labour input to paddy production, there was no gain to consolidation. W e will return to this point later.22 B ased on an extensive study o f 334 villages,23 it w as found that despite sm aller holdings and assured rainfall, the m ost fragm ented division in Bom bay was the K onkan, a predom inantly rice grow ing area: conversely, K arnataka, which has large areas in the fam ine tracts, had the sm allest num ber o f fragm ents per holding (2.5), and average holdings three tim es that o f the Konkan. This survey does not seem consistent w ith a diversification m otive, nor w ith labour sm oothing, in that the K onkan has the least potential for spreading labour tim e over the year, yet has the m ost fragm entation. A lthough rice m ay be grow n on very sm all holdings, there may also be sizable variation in output per plot due to quality o f soil as w ell as drainage. A series o f crop cutting experim ents in O rissa il­ lustrate this point.24 These crop cutting sam ples were located within thanas, w hich m ay contain 100 villages. The coefficient o f variation o f yields across the plots was higher on poorer soils, and substantial for all types o f soils. W here tw o years’ observations w ere available by type o f soil, there was only lim ited correlation of tem poral ex­ perience; thus third class soil show ed an insignificant fall in yield 22B.H. Farm«-, ‘On Not Controlling Subdivision in Paddy Lands’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1960. 2*Bombay, ‘The Size of Agricultural Holdings and Extent of Fragmentation in Bombay Province’, Monthly Bulletin o f Statistics (Bombay 1948). 24J.A. Hubback., ‘Sampling for Rice Yield in Bihar and Orissa’, reproduced in Sankya, 1946, pp 292-4.

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betw een 1924 and 1925, w hile first and second class soils show ed substantial increases o f 20 to 40 per cent in yields. In a year when the average yields in a thana was low, the coefficient o f variation was often m uch higher. To the extent that third class soils are those subject to flooding, in a y e ar o f poor rainfall th eir yield is apt to be h ig h er than norm al, w h ereas y ields o f b etter class lands m ay fall, again su g g estin g th at scattered holdings am ong d ifferen t soil types will tend to m ain tain som e m inim um level o f output in a p artic u la r year. To the extent that yields o f the same crop respond differently to clim atic variations on different class lands, there is case for fragm en­ tation to reduce risk. This point is m ade by G. M urdoch as follow s: I would like to comment on the advantages of fragmentation of cultivated holdings. The risk that is spread relates less to atmospheric moisture distribu­ tion than to soil moisture contents and seasonal water-table levels. In years of high rainfall a farmer’s upland fields do well though crops on his patches of hydromorphic soil are waterbogged. When rains fall and his well-drained soil yields poorly, adjacent low-lying sites can be relied on reasonably often to produce rations sufficient to avert total famine. In the Swaziland Lowveld a distinctive name—tihubodla—is given to arable patches in valleys where relatively high water-tables facilitate ‘insurance’cropping of this kind.25 Before leaving paddy land, we introduce two cases where frag­ m entation o f ow nership appears to take place w ithout fragm entation o f operations, suggesting institutional arrangem ents that can over­ com e potential inefficiencies o f fragm ented ownership.

Tattumaru and Kattimaru Systems A bout 6 per cent o f the paddy land in Sri Lanka is farm ed in Tat­ tum aru and/or K attim aru system s o f rotation, like vesh tenure in Pakistan.26 In these system s each landholder has a right to a plot in

25Dharma Kumar, ‘The Edge of the Desert: The Problems of Poor and Semi-arid Lands’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, B 278, 1977, p. 489. 26This section relies heavily on the account of B.H. Farmer, Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon (London, 1957), pp xxii, 387; G. Obeyesekere, Land Tenure in Village Ceylon (Cambridge, 1967), pp xi, 320; Martin E. Gold, Law and the Social Change: A Study of Land Reform in Sri Ltmka (New York, 1977), pp xx, 252.

106 Colonialism, Property and the State rotation. In principle, if say, tw o or more original fam ilies held d is­ tinguished qualities o f paddy land, their descendants w ould allow (1) all o f the land to be farm ed by one fam ily in a year (Tattum aru), or (2) all land to be rotated over a m ulti-year cycle so that each descent group farm ed each piece o f land once (K attim aru). C om bined T at­ tum aru- K attim aru tenure is possible. Since some farmers would have no paddy land to cultivate in some years under Tattum aru, they would need alternative em ploym ent, or interests in several different settlem ents, suggesting a recent origin of the system . Gold observes that Tattum aru occurs more frequently in rubber grow ing districts, which provide an alternative (and recent) em ploym ent.27 Both system s recognize a wide variety in the produc­ tivity o f paddy lands within a village. It seems clear that Tattum aru and K attim aru are m ore im portant in districts o f Sri Lanka noted for variation in quality o f paddy fields. It is not clear if they are associated with land whose yield varies greatly from year to year, or simply if different lands have different yields whose time to tim e fluctuations are synchronous.

Malaysia Paddy Sharing A very dram atic case w here fragm entation o f o w nership appears to re su lt from the desire for a finely divisible and ap p re c ia tin g , or at least fu tu re-secu rin g , asset com es from a paddy area o f the 90 n o rth w est coast o f M alaysia . H ere reg istratio n o f land in 1870 p ro d u ced 15,462 original paddy holdings, w hich by 1954 had seen som e p h y sical division and new reg istratio n recorded so that there w ere 16,947 holdings in 1954, a very m odest increase o f 10%. H ow ev er, superim posed on these original holdings w as a system o f co -o w n ersh ip (also found in South India) by which several per­ sons hold shares as sm all as 1/8 o f an acre or less, in an original holding, and superim posed on registered co-ow nership is a system o f verbal sharing that often was recorded only after a num ber o f years. In 1870, there were 1.05 ow ners per holding, the average being 2 .7 4 acres each; by 1954 all co-ow ners averaged 1.81 p er h old in g w ith an av erag e o f 2.61 acres. 27 Gold, ibid. 28T.B. Wilson, The Economics of Padi Production in North Malaya, Part I, Land Tenure, Rents, Land Use, and Fragmentation (Ministry of Agriculture, Federation of Malaya, 1958), Ch. 6.

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M any o f these ow nership shares (26 per cent were under one acre and often very difficult in practice to farm. C o-ow ners found it a convenient asset form, and often would not farm it; rather, actual farm ing was carried out on m uch m ore com pact holdings than frag­ m entation o f ow nership w ould suggest. In both M alaysia and Sri Lanka it w ould appear as though the tenure arrangem ents are of recent origin (though Sri Lankan system s are som etim es claim ed to be old), and reflect the changing m an-land ratios.

Fragmentation in Mixed Agriculture: Macro As the preceding section has indicated, it is probably N orth India and the D eccan Plateau that provide agricultural conditions m ore relevant for exam ining the M cCloskey and Fenoaltea hypotheses. H ow ever, we w ill not dism iss paddy lands, since they do exhibit wide local output variations, and rice is grown all over India. O ften, as in Kerala, rice, coconuts, areca nuts, and tapioca provide as m uch diversification potential as one m ight find in m uch o f N orth India. It m ay be instructive to turn to the two states w here land consolida­ tion is considered a success, nam ely Haryana and Punjab. C o n so lid atio n in the fo rm er P unjab w as carried out at the sam e tim e as o th er m ajor land reform s, w hich was probably an ad­ m in istrativ e b lessing. H ow ever, there was a positive response from villag es so co n so lid atio n operatio n s w ere extended to over 9 0 per cen t o f the v illag es by the late 1960s. O ne o f the reasons su g g ested by M ann as to why co n so lid atio n efforts in the 1930s and 1940s in P u n jab w ere relatively successful w as the hom ogeneous c h a r­ acte r o f the so ils, w ith few er reaso n s for fan n ers to feel th at they w ould be at a d isad v an tag e exch an ging lands. H ow ever, even in P unjab ex ch an g es w ere usually m ade betw een the sam e q u alities o f land, so th at if three q u alities w ere d istin g u ish ed , a farm er w ould retain co n so lid ated p lots o f each q u ality , w hose o rig in al fragm ents w ere in each class. O ne other feature o f Punjab and U.P. that m ade consolidation efforts relatively successful is th a t the orig in al frag m en tatio n w as quite high, often w ith 15 to 20 frag ­ m ents per hold in g , w hereas in areas like K arnataka, D eccan, G ujarat, and even K onkan the extent o f fragm entation was on ly 3 to 5 fragm ents. O ne m ight conjecture that the settlem ent p attern s in the N orth led to rap id divisio n o f plots w hich finally fo u n d a

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rem edy in co n so lid atio n , w hereas o th er areas had fo u n d ad ap tiv e m ech an ism s to p rev en t frag m en tatio n from becom ing e x c e ssiv e .29 A nother way to m ake the above point is to look at the exceptions m any states are w illing to m ake, or reasons given by farm ers for not w ishing to consolidate. The K apoor C om m ittee reports objections by cultivators in G ujarat to actually going through with land transfers proposed in the consolidation schem e for their villages as follow s: thought own land superior in quality (20.8 per cent), thought ow n land m ore even (17.0 per cent), sentim ental value o f ow n land (13.2 per cent), proxim ity to roads (4.7 per cent), proxim ity o f village site (3.8 per cent), and all other reasons (40.5 per cent).30 G ujarat village lands are often heterogeneous in quality and terrain, and both factors w ould lead to large variations in yields from different plots w ithin villages. These gross regional differences do not support the labour spreading hypothesis as an explanation o f scattered plots. The greater fragm entation that initially occurred in Punjab and U.P., fo r exam ple, w ould not, because o f the relatively hom ogeneous cropping cycle, m ake fo r a seasonal spread o f fam ily labour, but would instead m ake the consequences o f scattered plots more costly. Rather, these broad regional differences are probably m ore consistent with the M cCloskey position. One might even argue that because Punjab and W estern U.P. were assured surplus areas earlier than other regions, there was ample cany-over from year to year, so that the need to m ain­ tain a m inim um output each year was not critical in rainfed areas (nor an issue in canal areas). Therefore, scattered plots in these areas served no insurance service, and were willingly given up by fanners. H ow ever, there is now in all of India an assurance o f adequate supplies o f grains if one has the rupees to buy them. Since the groups w ithout exchange entitlem ents, to use S en’s term ,31 in po o r years are

29Kessinger argues that British settlement procedure led to, fragmentation. Previously, when the land was held by clans (lineage organizations) or proprietary bodies jointly, producedures for exchanging holdings were informal, but after 1848 ‘the minute recording of the ownership of every field, with an elaborate procedure for transferring the title, for which a fee was charged encouraged fragmentation and made any consolidation of field a difficult task where before the consent of both parties was all that had been required’. T.G. Kessinger, Vilyatpur, 1948-1968 (California, 1974), p. 81. 30Report on Consolidation of Holdings, p. 31. 3lAmartya Sen, Poverty and Famine: An Essay on Entitlement and

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landless labourers who do not m ake decisions on land scattering, the obstacles voluntary consolidation put forw ard by M cC loskey do not seem to ex ist in those areas o f India that continue to resist consolidation. T hat is, if there are output losses associated w ith scat­ tering and farm ers can now feel insured against the risk o f operating all their land in a consolidated holding, then they should consolidate and avoid these losses. In Part III we will develop the hypothesis th at a m ore plausible explanation o f persistent fragm entation o f holdings is the difficulty o f equating values o f land w ith d iffering qualities, terrain, and location.

Fragmentation in Mixed Agriculture: Micro E arlier we alluded to the view that if the main cost of scattered plots is lost labour tim e, then in an econom y w ith abundant labour there are few fragm entation costs. One piece o f evidence to the contrary is that less labour is supplied to land at a greater distance from the village or m arket centre. This shows up in low er yields per acre in m ore distant lands.33 A survey o f 177 farm ers in Jasdan village in G ujarat in 1958-1959 showed a strong negative relationship betw een distance from m arket and output per acre. Another survey from Kodinar taluka in G ujarat also revealed a w eaker negative relationship. H ow ever, both soil quality and size o f holding are also related to distance from the m arket and each other, the form er falling o ff and the latter rising.34 Thus we cannot necessarily infer that it is lack o f

Deprivation (Oxford, 1981). 32 We are assuming, as seems plausible, that variations in prices from year to year have been greatly reduced by the increased ability of the modem economy to transport food supplies to temporarily deficit areas. 33 Even in areas where holdings are rather large, the distances are not ail that great. In the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, for example, surveys examined the average distance and maximum distance from the largest parcel, the average distance being 0.89 miles and the maximum distance from the largest parcel 1.39 miles. The average number of parcels was 4.1 per holding. It would not be a significant input of labour time to visit one or two plots a day, even in an area where village sizes are relatively large. Rizvi et al., 'Consolidation of Holdings’. 34 ‘The Kodinar data refer to a survey done in 1953-4 and described in Shah, C. H., Problems o f Low-Income Farms in Kodinar Tuluka (Bombay, 1958). The individual observations were kindly made available by Dr C.H. Shah of

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labour time that leads peasants to use less labour on more distant plots. Further, nearly all farm m anagem ent studies in India show that less labour is used per acre the m om ent acreage is large enough to require hired labour. T he problem s these relationships pose are that w ith data from South A sia o f the past century it is hard to observe instances where fragm entation involves losses in output.35 Some m easurem ent dif­ ficulties are that farm m anagem ent studies do not usually collect data on fragm ents, only on total holdings. Further, when data on fragm ents are collected, outputs and inputs are usually recorded only for the total holding, not for each fragm ent. If fragm ents had a negative

the University of Bombay. For 361 cultivators the relation between acres per fragment and distance from market was R2 = 146, with a slope of .824 acres per fragment per mile from market. The average distance was 3.61 miles and the average acres per fragment was 3.3. The survey from Jasdan was kindly made available by Dr Z.Y. Jasdanwala, and is described in Zaibun Y. Jasdanwala, Marketing Efficiency in Indian Agriculture (Bombay, 1966). 35This is not to say that observes do not cite the same type of obstacles to productivity that are cited elsewhere; for example, as early as 1917 the following is givin for a princely state of Baroda, ‘The disadvantages resulting from the fields being small and scattered are obvious and hardly require any elaborate narration.’ They may, however, be briefly described under (Report, pp. 10-15) 1. Waste of labour and cattle power, 2. Waste of land in hedges and boundary marks, 3. Waste of manure, etc., 4. Watching of crops impracticable, 5. Wells cannot be sunk economically, 6. Labour-saving implements cannot be used, 7. Difficulty of roads, water channels, etc., 8. Change in cultivation inconvenient, 9. Increase in cost of production, etc., and 10. General backwardness of agricultural conditions. There arc studies which suggest that Output gains do result from consolidation; for example, Aggarwal and Elder argue that in villages where consolidation has occurred, more land could be irrigated, better methods used, and more land planted, so output grew. S.K. Aggarwal, Economics of Land Consolidation in India (New Delhi, 1972), pp vii, 159; Joseph Elder, ‘Land Consolidation in an Indian Village: A Case Study of the Consolidation of Holdings Act in Uttar Pradesh’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, October 1962.

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im pact on productivity per unit land, one would expect, given other inputs, a positive coefficient on the variable acres per fragm ent.36 For the K odinar survey, the regression equations were estim ated nineteen years ago and, unfortunately, cannot now be cast in ap­ propriately structured forms. For what they are worth, these results lend support to the view that, given the labour intensity, fragm ents d etract from output.37

CONCLUSIONS AND SOME SUGGESTED HYPOTHESES Let us bring together our scattered findings from the tw o preceding sections. First, fragm entation has been reported for many parts o f 36T w o q ualifications are that larger parcels m ay be associated w ith poor quality land and with unirrigated land, in w hich case they w o u ld not be expected to h av e higher yields.

37The relevant equations where the dependent variable value is output per sown acre included in one case, productive inputs, land, irrigation, some location variables, and the like. There was also an independently estimated efficiency index, half on use of new seeds, pesticides, and the like, and half on weeding and other labour intensive, yield enhancing activities. These equations (which for reasons that are now inscrutable, were run in arithmetic form) included the variable acres/fragment. When total acreage was not included in the equation but the efficiency index was, the coefficient on acres/fragment was negative and twice its standard error. This implies that, not holding total land constant, large fragments were less productive because of less intensive application of inputs. However, when total sown acreage is included in the equation (which itself has a negative coefficient) the coefficient on acres/fragment is positive, though only 1.15 times its standard error) suggesting some inefficiencies. When calculated as elasticities at the mean values of the variables, the results are as follows: elasticity of output/sown acre w.r. to acres/fragment when a. Net sown acreage not included - .087 b. Net sown acreage included + .054. Although McCloskey expresses his scattered plot effect in terms of total output rather than output per acre, it is probably fair to say that measure 2 above is an approximation to an estimate of his inconvenience parameter, which he takes as 0.02. Needless to say, the estimate reported above is not significantly different from 0.02 as well as a lot of larger values, and as well as some negative values. McCloskey, the Economics of Enclosures, p. 116.

112 Colonialism, Property and the State South A sia for at least a century. It occurred in a variety o f regions: the paddy lands o f the South, the northern plains, and the dry D eccan plateau. T he degree o f fragm entation, i.e. the num ber o f noncon­ tiguous plots per operational or ow nership holding w ithin a village, has alm ost certainly increased in these regions over the last 70 to 80 years at least, w ith the exception o f parts o f the Punjab and U.P. where voluntary consolidation schem es have been successful. A l­ though inheritance custom s are probably the chief cause o f fragm en­ tation, the rate o f fragm entation appears to have been slow er than the rate o f grow th o f population. We have exam ined several explanations for the persistence o f fragm entation. N early all w riters acknow ledge variability in soil types as a reason for fragm entation, and this has been recognized even in schem es for consolidation which allow for retention o f holdings o f different soil types. The dispersion o f fragm ents is consistent with the need to spread labour, and this reason for fragm entation has in fact been given ex ­ plicitly in the past, though very m uch less frequently than the risk aversion hypothesis. W ith the grow th o f population and o f surplus agricultural labour, we would expect this consideration to have declined in im portance. D iversification o f holdings in many small plots is likely to reduce the ex p ected output, but also to reduce the variance o f o u tp u t from y ear to y e a r and raise the m inim um output o f the w o rst years. T his trade-off o f higher return for low er variance w ill be more desirable the more dire the perceived consequences of a bad year— debt, the sale o f assets, starvation. Failure has probably becom e less catastro p h ic in recent years, as integrated m arkets have reduced year to year price fluctuations. So risk aversion has probably becom e a less im portant reason for the persistence o f fragm entation. There seem to us to be tw o other explanations (w hich have only been alluded to above) that play an im portant role in the persistence o f fragm entation in South A sia to the present. The first o f these we will term an inform ation problem , and the second a ‘land as a store o f w ealth’ problem.

Imperfect Information, Markets, and Fragmentation Inform ation problem s m ay be illustrated w ith reference to w atershed m anagem ent planning, where fragm entation is clearly a m ajor con­

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straint. W atershed planning involves areas from about 15 to more than 100 hectares. As reported by Jodha, even m iniw atershed areas o f 8 to 16 hectares are never observed in consolidated holdings in the eight villages where this problem was studied.38 W atershed plan­ ning in m any such villages w ould allow a second crop w hich w ould clearly enhance output, but w ithout collective action, if not actual consolidation o f fragm ents, these benefits will not be achieved. The inform ation problem is com m unicating to small holders and/or those with scattered holdings that collective action could benefit all. M inhas has suggested a general fram ew ork from w hich to view problem s like w atershed m anagem ent. He says, An inquiring mind is apt to ask the question: Why does not individual interest bring about consolidation and comprehensive land development? The answer is that individual behaviour is frequently inoptimal in the presence of infor­ mational deficiencies or in the presence of externalities, which, for institu­ tional or other reasons, cannot be internalized.... Because of the presence of externalities in land development process, the individual owners are unable to assess the development potential of different classes of land. The market for land is riddled with all sorts of imperfections and institutional restrictions. Very few inter-class transfers of land take place. The set-up here is suggestive of an n-person, non-cooperative, game-theoretic situation, in which each per­ son comes in with a given amount of land of different types but lacks infor­ mation about its development potential. Individual interest will produce a solution in this case which will be collectively inoptimal. In an integrated programme of land development and consolidation, one can devise methods to bring about rational realignments of property rights in land which will be conducive to sustained growth of agricultural production.39 For M inhas there are large gains to consolidation that will em erge w ith total reorganization o f fields, w ater channels, com m on lands, and the like. It is unlikely that anything short o f com pulsory con­ solidation w ould w ork, and this could be m ade attra ctiv e because w ith som e g o v ern m en t inv estm en t total output co u ld rise eno u g h for each form er landow ner to be assured o f getting m ore output than before.

38N.S. Jodha, ‘Some Dimensions of Traditional Farming in Semi-Arid Tropical India,’ Progress Report 4, ICRISAT, 1979, pp 22-3. 39B.S. Minhas, Rural Poverty, Land Redistribution and Development Strategy (Delhi, 1970), pp 116-18.

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A som ew hat different form o f argum ent is that village land m arkets are extrem ely thin so there is not m uch land com ing on the m arket. Peasants are convinced o f the virtues o f consolidation but cannot agree on the exchange value of fragm ents. There are so few transactions that it is a bargaining situation and agreem ent is rare.40 Jodha provides some support for this view in his intensive study o f six villages over three years, where 14 to 46 per cen t o f the land w as sold or exchanged through tenancy over the period in the various villages.41 H ow ever, sales ranged from only 3 to 23 p er cent o f all transfers, so were not frequent. Certainly some form o f crop sharing arrangem ent is m uch sim pler than an outright sale. If thin land m arkets are an im portant obstacle to voluntary consolidation it is again an argum ent for why it may be necessary to undertake com ­ pulsory program m es, if the elim ination o f scattered holdings is desired. There are, in fact, at least two separate issues analytically. O ne reason why exchange was infrequent m ay have been that vil­ lagers did not have the necessary inform ation about the potential productivity o f each other’s land. Second, even if they did have the inform ation, they could not agree on the exchange value o f land o f different qualities. The second reason appears to be the only point stressed in the literature but we have found in conversation that re ­ searchers with direct experience in India hold contradictory opinions. Thus, A . V aidyanathan stated that villagers would not be aw are o f the potential o f each o th er’s land, especially w here irrigation channels and field boundaries were changing, w hile Pranab R oy, who has w orked in the Punjab and Assam , was sure o f the opposite.

Land as a Liquid Asset O ur ow n argum ent is certainly not inconsistent with either the M inhas view or the thin land m arket view; in fact, in many w ays it supports the position that voluntary exchanges are difficult because both par­

40Thus, small farmers in Tanjore said in 1929 that they were unwilling to exchange their scattered fields because of ‘the difference in the market value of the various fields due to their use as seed beds, double crop and single crop lands...’, Madras Revenue Department, Survey of District Officers. T.N. Srinivasan found recently that in Bihar-sharif district agreement was difficult. 41N.S. Jodha, ‘Agricultural Tenancy: Fresh Evidence From Dryland Areas of India, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 Dec. 1981, p. A -l 18.

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ties are unlikely to agree on equivalent value o f plots. In this regard it is w orth m entioning that in consolidation program m es, use has been m ade o f revenue rates as a m ethod o f determ ining com pensation (generally rejected after U.P. experience), productivity ratings o f land (Punjab, U .P.), and m arket value. In arguing in favour o f productivity ratings versus m arket value as the best m ethod, the N ational C om ­ m ission o f A griculture says m arket value “ does not find favour with farm ers as those having interest in cultivation only would not take highly valued areas with potential for habitation or industrial develop­ m ent, at present used for cultivation... .’ (p. 201). This seems a curious position since it w ould seem unlikely that a farm er w ith land highly valued because o f its nonagricultural potential w ould w ant to exchange it for land o f equal productivity but w ithout nonagricultural potential. T he Com m ission also says that farmers will not understand the m arket value principle, w hile the K apoor Com m ittee in G ujarat says that G ujarat, like M aharashtra, should keep the m arket value system w hich is now well understood by the peasants (p. 42).42 One point we feel to be neglected in all o f this discussion is the role that land plays (aside from a productive factor) as an asset in the portfolio o f fairly lim ited possible assets available to peasants. In fact, w hen the district officials o f M adras Presidency w ere asked in 1929 to com m ent on the need for a law enforcing consolidation, the m ajority felt that such a law was either unnecessary or unenfor­ ceable since the farm ers preferred to hold fragm ents of different types o f land to spread risk, to spread labour over the year, and for ease in selling and m ortgaging small am ounts o f land.

A

We recognize but are not stressing here some of the important political reasons why consolidation may be opposed by large and small holders. Often small holders feel that they will lose land because the standard size of holdings is larger than all their fragments, or that officials will be bribed by large farmers. Often larger holders may have an undue share of village common land in joint holdings, or some may have adverse possession of the land of others that would be altered by consolidation. See National Land Commission (1976, 194-6). In a study of Peshawar District in Pakistan, the only opposition to consolidation was on the part of small farmers who feared they would be cheated. Rizvi et al, 41 Since this inquiry was apparently undertaken in all of India it should be possible to tabulate the responses by district as to whether the district officials favoured McCloskey, Fenoaltea, or some other explanation, and to associate

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As described earlier for Sri Lanka and M alaysia, the desire to hold a sm all financial interest in land can be achieved w ithout actual physical fragm entation o f land. H owever, in m ost o f South A sia, ow nership and physical fragm entation go hand in hand. O ur argum ent is that land com es into the m arket in small fragm ents, and that buyers w ill not find it w orthw hile to undergo the various transaction costs o f consolidation since they m ay need to sell or m ortgage a sm all fragm ent them selves. To test this, one would have to exam ine the frequency o f transactions in land, and the m agnitude o f transactions costs as against the gains from consolidation. One can, how ever, dispose o f one possible objection to this ar­ gum ent. T hat is, the w idely held thesis that if the sm all m en sold and large landow ners bought land, one m ight then expect the large landow ners to consolidate. But there is no evidence that the ow ner­ ship o f land has becom e increasingly concentrated since at least the m iddle o f the nineteenth century ( Cambridge Economic History o f India, V ol. 2, Ch. 3). For instance, in South India there was, on average, practically no increase in inequality of ow nership, as m easured by Gini coefficient, betw een 1853-4 and 1950-1. As 44 population grew , the average holding in every size class declined. The role o f land as an asset that may have to be m onetized has posed a dilem m a for consolidation program m es w hich w ant to m ain­ tain “econom ic” size blocks o f land and not allow them to be sub­ sequently divided by sale. In G ujarat, where cultivators disliked the restrictions proposed on sales o f land after consolidation, the Report o f the G ujarat State Land Com m ission notes, ‘Sim ilarly, there are occasions in the lives o f the farm ers when they need to sell a part o f the land to m eet certain com m itm ents or unexpected difficulty... A relationship could be m aintained between the size o f the blocks o f m inim um sizes o f fields and farm s that today can be sold or pur­ chased by farm ers’ (p. 93). Clearly, consolidation program m es that seek to restrict resale also restrict the liquidity o f land as an asset in the lim ited portfolio available to cultivators, and for this reason alone m ight m eet opposition from cultivators.

this with structural characteristics of the districts. Dharma Kumar, ‘Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency, 1853-54 to 1946-47’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 12,1975, p. 238. ^Kumar, ibid.

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M ore importantly, land prices have risen, so that the return to capital from cultivating land is often less than from alternative uses. This phenomenon is well known in the residential housing markets o f many countries today, but it also appears true in peasant agriculture in South Asia and Southeast Asia.43 As discussed in Section B, because there are few alternative ways of translating present to future income available to peasants, land becomes an obvious choice. Land is thus an asset in the investment portfolio as well as a direct input to production. Its price is bid up so that its return as a productive asset is substantially reduced. K.N. Raj, in quite a different context, has made the above point as follows: In the transitional stage in particular, when other alternative forms of asset holding have not opened out or become popular enough with the majority of wealth-holders, the demand for land as an asset with general prestige value could be high (particularly if in the earlier phase the privilege of land-holding was limited to a few). This could result in the price of land being pushed up so much that the money rate of return is considerably reduced. A serious problem that can emerge in this kind of situation is that while those who are responsible for pushing up the price of land may derive non-economic satis­ faction from it large enough to compensate for the low or even negative rates of return, those who are motivated solely by commercial considerations will also have to pay the ruling prices if they wish to buy land and may therefore be deterred from investing in land.4*

45Wilson reports in a survey on Malaysia that land was and is a valuable asset (an average of over £700 Malaysia per acre in 1954) that brought an income of usually 50 per cent of the crop as well as the prospects for capital appreciation. Rental contracts were under 8 per cent of the price of land on the average in 1954 (Wilson, The Economics fo Padi Production, p. 70); in 1928 the rent was about 12 per cent of the sales price, suggesting that there is a long-term rise in land values. Kessinger’s study of Vilayatpur clearly demonstrates this phenomenon for a Punjab village over the period 1885 to 1966, where land prices per acre rose from about Rs 200 to over Rs 9000 per acre (p. 133). In contrast to this 45-fold increase in land prices for Vilayatpur, prices of commodities rose 6 to 8-fold over this period. While the extent of the increase apd the level of land prices will differ within India, we believe this large relative increase in land prices is an all-India phenomenon. 46K.N. Raj, ‘Keynesian Economics and Agrarian Economies’ in Reflections

on Economic Development and Social Change: Essays in Honour of Professor V.K.R.V. Rao (South Asia Books, 1981), p. 110.

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In the context o f fragm entation o f holdings, the fact that some landow ners m ay put a high subjective return on land holding, some may have expectations o f land prices rising further and consequent capital appreciation, some anticipate non-agricultural uses, and some value land for its strictly productive return will lead to very different valuations o f land. Add to this the inherent difficulty o f judging the value o f land in production where qualities o f soil, flatness o f terrain, and location o f plots differ, and one has a situation where voluntary consolidation is unlikely to com e about. Even if fragm entation costs am ount to 5 per cent or more in production losses, these costs may be overw helm ed by differing perceptions o f land values to different holders. Put another way, the thin m arket in rural land sales may be the result o f the dual role land plays as productive factor and financial asset. C ertainly this dual role contributes to the difficulty o f voluntary consolidation, and o f acceptability of com pulsory program m es. On all these points further research is o f interest, and not only to academ ics. The South Asian literature yields some data on the costs o f fragm entation due to land wasted on hedging, tim e in m ovem ent betw een fragm ents, etc., w ith estim ates suggesting that cultivation costs may rise 3 to 10 per cent. However, there is evidence that these costs are m uch reduced in actual practice given existing agricultural techniques. Such reductions in the cost o f fragm entation m ean that the benefits o f fragm entation have to be that m uch less for the system to be voluntarily m aintained, and for resistance to consolidation to be w idespread. It should be added that costs o f fragm entation may be m uch larger if consolidation w ould allow and induce better water­ shed m anagem ent and other im proved practices. But the integration o f m arkets, urbanization, and the spread of new technologies will reduce some o f the positive benefits o f frag­ m entation, and m ay m ake it easier to consolidate holdings. The largest obstacle appears to us to be the difficulties of establishing a m arket fo r land fragm ents that will lead to voluntary consolidation. This m akes it politically unpopular to introduce com pulsory con­ solidation since large num bers o f small ow ners individually see little to gain, though collectively the potential is significant.

A Note on the Term ‘Land Control’1

Peter Robb rem inds us that ‘our term inology m ust be general to the extent that we wish to com m unicate with others and relate our findings to theirs’. But finding a general term inology is easier said than done. Since w e are w riting in English, we cannot use only Indian term s (and their m eaning is often am biguous even in the original contexts). But there are no agreed terms to describe the holders o f the various interests in land. O ther specialists will object to the use of com m on E nglish w ords like ‘landow ner’ or ‘tenant’. The general reader has the aw kw ard habit o f dem anding an explanation o f un­ fam iliar E nglish words, like ‘landholder’, or o f Indian w ords like ‘raiy at’ o r ‘m irasdar’, and trying to define them leads one back into the thorny thicket o f Indian land law and adm inistration. There are various escape routes. One is to start w ith a definition o f the Indian or E nglish term and note the exceptions to the definition (there are bound to be exceptions) as one goes along. This sounds sim ple, but is not— one often finds one has to go back and redefine the term. A nother is to pu t a com m on English word into quotation m arks— as

'i am indebted for their comments to participants in the seminar on the External Dimension, and in a symposium of the Society for South Indian Studies held in Philadelphia in March 1980, where an earlier version of this chapter was read. In particular, I have benefited from the written comments of Dr Nicholas Dirks, Dr Pamela Price and Dr Peter Robb; for instruction over the years in Chola history from Professor Champakalakshmi, Professor Burton Stein and Dr David Ludden; and to Professor Ludo Rocher for discussion on classical Hindu Law, and for permission to refer to his unpublished paper (see fn. 41). •2Peter Robb, ‘External Dimension’. On the need to use English words, also see Max Gluckman, The Judicial Process amongst the Barotse, 2nd rev ved. (Manchester, 1973), pp 378-81; Martin Gold, Law and Social Change (New York, 1977), pp 213-14.

120 Colonialism, Property and the State ‘landow ner’— to indicate that it is not entirely appropriate. A th ird is to use a variety o f terms, hoping that one or other w ill fit. T h is is the least illum inating o f all m ethods, but w hether it reflects a desire for eleg an t variation or the hope that one’s own uncertainties about definitions will be hidden by a profusion o f words, it is com m only used (by the author, for one). Finally, one can adopt a new E nglish word, hoping to avoid the am biguities and confusions o f the old term s; the word ‘ow nership’ has been found particularly m isleading by m any. N ew candidates spring up faster than in an assem bly elec­ tion— ‘custom ary right o f physical dom inion’, ‘prim ary dom inion’, and ‘im m ediate physical dom inion’3; ‘agrarian decision-m aker’,4 to nam e only a few. The m ost popular candidate in recent years has been ‘land control’ but before it is finally elected to the position o f ch ief ‘organizing concept’, we should scrutinize its claim carefully. ‘C o n tro ller’ is preferred to ‘ow ner’ because the latter is held to suggest the Rom an concept o f ‘dom inium ’ or the m odern liberal con­ cept o f private ow nership, both o f w hich assum e a clear dividing line betw een the public and private dom ains, w hereas this line was blurred in pre-B ritish India. The word ‘land-controller’, it is argued, thus has the virtue o f conveying tw o ideas: the land-controller has some o f the attributes o f sovereignty (since one m eaning o f ‘co n tro l’ is ‘ru le’), such as the pow er to tax or to punish, but he is not necessarily the sovereign. The closest analogies, on this view , are A frican.5 Stein uses S outhall’s description o f A lur society as a m odel o f the medieval South Indian state; Neale takes the Tiv as a paradigm for all o f India.6 This too is an ‘external dim ension’, and like other external dim en­ sions it can m islead as well as enlighten.

3Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj (New Delhi, 1978), pp 2, 3,7. 4D.A. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics (New Delhi, 1977), d. 84. Cf. Bernard S. Cohn, ‘African Models and Indian Histories’, in Richard A. Fox (ed.), Realm and Region in Traditional India (New Delhi, 1977). ‘Land controllers’ are even creeping into European history—for example, Lester K. Little, Religion, Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, 1978), p. 20—but they are fortunately still rare there. 6Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (Delhi, 1980); W.C. Neale, ‘Land is to Rule’, in R.E. Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison, 1969), pp 3-17.

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AFRICAN LAND TENURES C o n sid er the follow ing general characteristics o f traditional A frican system s: 1. Land w as plentiful, so cultivation was extensive. 2. Land had little exchange value. 3. But ‘control o f land was essential to the survival o f different groups’. T he control was vested in groups (chiefdom s, villages, lineages, etc.) represented by chiefs, elders and/or councils. 4. All m em bers o f the group had access to land by virtue o f m em ­ bership o f the group. 5. ‘M any rights in land could also be obtained through m arriage, m igration, friendship and form al transfer’ (but apparently not by sale). 6. The exercise o f any right was alw ays lim ited by obligations and counterbalanced by the rights and privileges o f others. 7. R ights w ere not always perm anent. 8. Individual and fam ily rights in a particular piece o f land could generally only be m aintained by ‘effective use and appropriation’, and the am ount o f land used by a fam ily was lim ited by ‘technical, econom ic, and even m agical factors’. 9. On the other hand, villages and lineages could m aintain claim s to the w hole o f their territory w ithout m aking full use o f all Their lands. 10. The representatives o f the landholding groups defended the ‘in­ tegrity o f the territory’, m aintained peace, etc., and m ight have specific rights to taxes, labour, and so on. They did not neces­ sarily have the right to allocate land between m em bers and nonm em bers. 11. Q uite often ‘different social personalities exercised rights and claim s in the same piece o f land; this m ust not necessarily be interpreted as a hierarchy o f tenures or a form al system o f suc­ cessive allocation o f land’. 12. In addition, the m ovem ents o f groups have led to ‘the co-exist­ ence o f different groups exercising different claim s, on the sam e tract o f la n d ’. (Conflicts betw een the groups did occur, but w ere ‘generally easily settled’). This co-existence m ight lead to a variety o f new arrangem ents. ‘The autochthonous group m ight m aintain a set o f ritual privileges derived from its m ythical as­ sociation w ith the soil, it m ight retain the effective control o f

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ow nership only on som e o f its form er lands or it m ight retain alm ost all its original land rights, the conquerors o r new com ers claim ing only political control (ruling over m en, not over land); or a com plex system o f overlapping but different land units and rights m ight be elaborated together with a m ultiple land-tenure sy stem ’.7 T here are tw o im portant points to note in this sum m ary o f land control in A frica. N ote that rights in land were obtained prim arily by m em bership o f a group, such as a lineage, and these rights were given by the land-controller to all m em bers o f the group. A m ongst the T iv, for exam ple, a man has perm anent rights to ‘su fficien t’ land as a m em ber o f his agnatic lineage, but not to any specific piece o f land. H e is given a farm and has ‘precise rights’8 to the farm w hile he cultivates it, but once the farm reverts to fallow , his right to that specific piece o f land lapses. But he continues to have a right to enough land to support his family. The ‘land controller’ is the com ­ pound head who, according to the Tiv them selves, ‘has final and com plete control o f the size and location o f the farm s o f each m an in the com pound’.9 Secondly, in the A frican system s o f the ‘land-control’ type, land could not be bought and sold; the Tiv could not even rent la n d .10 This is very different from , for instance, m edieval South India. •

7D. Biebuyck, African Agrarian Systems (Oxford, 1963). 8The man makes the farm for his wife, he owns the millet or bean seed, which he eats or pays as tax. The woman, who works on the farm, owns the other crops, such as yams and com, and must feed her husband and children. The rights of others are also specified. See Paul and Laura Bohannan, Tiv Economy (Evanston, 1968), p. 81. 9Though in actual practice this may not always be so; ibid., p. 42. ,0There is an enormous variety in African land tenures, and the sale of land is found in several societies, including some described in Biebuyck, African Agrarian Systems. African systems of shifting cultivation are particularly inappropriate models for India but the analogy has been carried to strange lengths, for example Neale’s conclusion that the word ‘bigha’ could stand for different areas in Bengal: ‘A bigha was not an area of land in our sense but a piece of land which satisfied the requirement that the tenure holder be able to farm some piece of land whose productivity accorded with his status rights’ (Walter C. Neale, ‘Land is to Rule’). But ‘bigha’ can mean both a fixed area, or a measure normalized for variations in yield; it has in any case no more to do with status than does a ‘share’ in an American joint stock company.

A Note on the Term ‘Land Control’ 123 A fricanists who use the term ‘land controller’ generally specify w hat the pow ers o f and constraints on the land are, w hereas Indianists w ho have borrow ed the term have frequently forgotten the obligation to describe the actual system o f control.

SOCIAL CONTROL AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP It is also im portant to note that ‘land controller’ is not necessarily a substitute for ‘landow ner’. W here the legal system perm its private individuals to buy and sell land, there can be both land controllers (that is, those exercising governm ental control) and landow ners. Take, for exam ple, foreign exchange: Indians who are allow ed to keep bank accounts abroad or foreign currency at hom e are legal ow ners o f foreign exchange, but their rights o f transfer, etc. are lim ited by the pow ers o f the Exchange Controller, as defined by law. If the Exchange C ontroller’s pow ers are very great one m ight wish to say that individual rights have little value, or have been attenuated. Indeed, there is alw ays som e governm ent or social control over in­ dividual rights. But, o f course, the degree o f control varies enorm ous­ ly and some assets, such as foreign exchange or land, m ay be subject to control by a specific agent o f governm ent, in specific w ays; it is in such cases th at one m ay wish to use the term ‘controller’. M oreover, even if the law forbids the transfer o f certain com ­ m odities or rights, m arkets in them m ay exist; as m odern controlled econom ies show one can have official controllers and de facto ‘ow ners/controllers.’ (A nd m arkets can also operate when govern­ ment breaks dow n). C onversely, the law may give the individual full rights o f aliena­ tion o f an asset, but there may be no m arket in it, because o f insuf­ ficient supply o r lack o f dem and or o f transport or o f inform ation. Thus there w ere sporadic sales o f land but no land m arket in classical Rome. The term ‘land controller’ is then particularly useful in tw o situa­ tions. The first arises when certain private property rights, in par­ ticular the rights o f alienation, are not perm itted by the legal or social system — the T iv paradigm . The second is when these private property rights in land ex ist in law, but in fact som eone other than the nom inal ow ner controls the possession, use, sale, etc. o f land.

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W ith these general co n sid eratio n s in m ind let us ex am in e the use o f th e term ‘land c o n tro lle r’ in tw o cases: T am il N adu u nder the C h o las, and M adras P residency in the late n in eteen th cen tu ry .

TAMIL NADU UNDER THE CHOLAS Burton S tein 11 has argued that the C hola State was not a centralized b ureaucratic state, receiving a regular and large land revenue from its ‘te rrito ry ’; rather the C hola and Pandyan kings perform ed m ainly a ritual function as the ‘m ost im portant symbol o f the sacred m oral o rd er’, outside a lim ited core area from w hich they drew m ost o f their m aterial resources. From the rem aining ‘C h o la’ territory they received only sm all and irreg ular paym ents o f tribute. T heir m ajor source o f revenue was raids on the regions o f other overlords. South 12 Indian society was m arked by territorial segm entation. The Tam il country was divided into m icro-regions or nadus : these were the basic units o f political o rg an izatio n ,13 and econom ic as well as eth­ nic territories since ‘requirem ents of the agrarian organization, given the technology o f the age, m ade for territorially segm ented units o f p ro d u ctio n ’.1 The way nadus were governed differed. In the central area (K averi basin and Tondaim andalam ) the nadus were governed by as­ •

11Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India. Dirks questions this characterization of the South Indian state; but his criticisms are probably not crucial to the type of issues we discuss; Nicholas Dirks, ‘The Structure and Meaning of Political Relations in a South Indian Little Kingdom’, Contributions to Indian Sociology. July-December 1979, pp 169-206. 13Stein quotes Subbarayulu’s study identifying some 556 nadus in the Chola macro-region by 1300 a d containing 2,620 villages. Subbarayulu also argues that the ‘government’ at the level of the Chola king consisted mainly of revenue collection and temple management. The settlements for land revenue were made with the ‘chief landholders’ of the nadu, and payments were made by each village; Y. Subbarayulu, ‘The State in Medieval South India, 600-1350 a d ’, PhD dissertation, Madurai University, 1976. But, unlike Subbarayulu, Stein argues that these nadus came into existence before the Cholas (Stein, Peasant State, pp 98-9). l4Ibid.,p. 104. 12

A Note on the Term 'Land Control’ 125 sem b lies;15 in southern K arnataka and Kongu by chieftains. Stein concentrates on the assem blies: these collected revenue, and also su­ pervised the accounts o f tem ples in endow ed villages. The assem blies decided on gifts o f land or o f the incom e from land to tem ples and to brahm ans, the control o f trade settlem ents, and so forth. At a low er level, both peasant and brahm an villages had corporate institutions to m anage cultivation and other village affairs: the brahm an sabha and the peasant ur. The assem blies consisted not o f all cultivators but only o f dom inant cultivators; Stein does not call them landow ners but describes them as follows: They alone possessed the valuable land whose income could constitute a gift to the pious and the learned; they alone possessed the means for maintaining the full productivity of these lands dependent as most were upon irrigation works which served the entire locality; and they alone through their control over dependent labourers—both skilled artisans and unskilled field hands who actually carried out field operations—could have assured that once granted, the specified incom e irom villages and lands granted would sustain a flow of incom e in p erpetuity'.

The first point to note about Stein’s account o f Chola society is that ‘land co n tro l’ is exerted at various levels— by the king, nadu assem blies, and village assem blies. M oreover, the nature o f the con­ trol differed— som e ‘land controllers’ only collected and redistributed taxes or tribute, others took investm ent decisions, or directed agricul­ tural labour. The king, as we have seen, was hardly im portant outside the core area. T he records do not allow us to say a great deal about the precise nature o f the control at the nadu level; som ew hat m ore is known about land control at the village level. The village assem blies— the ur or the sabha— invested in m ajor irrigation, and allocated w ater rights; allocated the com m on village lands to village servants; sold com m on village land to chiefs or tem ples, or gifted it to tem ples.16 These com m unal concerns m ight 15Stein points out that the existence of nadus and of nadu assemblies as ‘administrative institutions of the Cholas’ is an inference, since the contemporary records do not refer to them as such (ibid., p. 96). l6David Ludden, ‘Agrarian Organization in a Tinnevelly District: 800 to 1900 a d ’. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1978.

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be m anaged by com m ittees,17 or by some other mode o f com m unal decision-taking. B ut the actual cultivation o f the arable was alm ost alw ays organized by individuals on land they had inherited, or bought or been gifted— exactly as in a system o f private ow nership. H ow ever the allocation o f land was m ade when it was first settled ;18 there is no evidence that village assem blies, or local chiefs, reallocated lands, as in parts o f A frica, or as the Russian m ir did, to take account o f changes in fam ily size. W hen, for instance, a village assem bly (the ‘land co n tro llers’) wished to donate to a tem ple land w hich som e individual (or fam ily) ow ned, they had to buy it from him — w ho is the ‘land controller’ here? The inscriptions record a great variety o f transactions in land, entered into by all kinds o f parties— Rajas, regional assem blies o f peasants or m erchants, village assem blies, and individuals, w hether B rahm an or m erchant or peasant. A ssem blies and individuals sold land; did Rajas do so? The vast m ajority o f transactions recorded in the inscriptions concern donations to tem ples. But there are excep­ tions: an inscription o f 1238 AD states that tw o people had to sell land to m eet tax d u es.1 A nd there is every reason to believe that people bought and sold land for reasons unconnected w ith tem ples. People m oved, and m ight w ant to sell land to do so; others m ay have bought to expand their farm s, or to give to their children. Som e historians say they were not selling land but only rights in land. B ut this is alw ays so, w hether the object in question is land or a knife, though adm ittedly land gives rise to a m uch greater com ­ plexity o f rights and obligations. You can no m ore have ‘absolute ow nership’ (in the sense o f doing what you like with it) o f a knife

,7One famous Brahman village, Uttaramerur, in the tenth century ran its affairs through five committees: the annual, garden, tank, assessment and gold committees. François Gros and R. Nagaswamy, Uttaramerur (Pondicherry, 1970). I8There seems to be little discussion of the principles on which newly-settled land was allocated in the literature. One inscription describing the establishment of new villages states, at least in the summary, that the land was divided ‘according to Visabadi’; N. Venkataramanayya and M. Somesekhara Sarma, ‘Kakatiyas of Warrangal’, in G. Yazdani (ed.). Early History o f the Deccan, parts VII-XI (London, 1960), pp 681-2. ,9Y. Subbarayulu, T he State in Medieval South India’, p. 214. What the buyer did with the land is not known.

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th a n o f land, as you discover w h en you try to kill som eone w ith it. W h a t particular bundle o f rights w as alienated depended on the terms o f the transaction and on the type o f land— lands on w hich tenants h a d occupancy rights, ‘raiyatw ari’ land in a dry village involving no com m unal rights, or a share in a jointly-held village, where the pur­ ch aser obtained, in addition to the arable, rights in the com m on lands, in the village tank, and so on, and perhaps the right to take p art in the village assem bly and village com m ittees. Even in the so-called jo in t villages, individual shares and fractions o f shares could be bought and sold by the owner, though there m ight well be restric­ tions on the purchaser, and relations and other villagers m ight have pre-em ption rights. W hy cannot the sellers o f these rights be called landow ners? One reason given is that ‘land co ntroller’ is better because it conveys m ore. In particular it conveys that the ow ner has not only the econom ic rights o f m anagem ent, incom e, alienation, etc., but also political pow ers. B ut was this true o f all land holders, w hatever the size o f their holding? There is no evidence that land was particularly equally distributed and there m ust have been som e very sm all plots; 1 w om en also held land. W ere these also part o f the land control group? I f not, there is a difference betw een ow nership, given by the legal system , and control, partly determ ined by the actual distribution of w ealth, as in all unequal societies, but only partly. Legal rights are not sim ply a reflection o f the distribution o f power. The trouble w ith ‘land co n tro l’ is that it covers in one blanket term the different politi­ cal, legal, and econom ic structures, differences m ade beautifully clear in G eertz’s account o f pre-colonial Bali where

20The operation of these joint villages is very well described by Ludden, ‘Agrarian Organization,’ Ch. 5. He stresses that individuals could take certain decisions regarding investment and management on their own. On pre-emption, see J.D.M. Derrett, Essays in Classical and Modem Hindu Law (Leiden, 1976), Vol. 2, p. 388, and P.V. Kane, History of the Dharmashastra (reissued, Poona, 1977), Vol. 5. Clearly, the injunction against selling to people of low caste was not always obeyed since low caste share-holders were found by the eighteenth century, and even earlier, as Ludden shows. 21A. Appadorai, Economic Conditions in South India, 100-1500 AD (Madras, 1936) 2 vols, p. 232.

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... control over land and control over people expressed themselves in distinct and uncoordinate institutions ... . Differential access to agricultural property was certainly not irrelevant to political power in Bali. But it was not the sum and substance of it either... . There was, in short, no systematic congruence (though there was, here and there, some more or less accidental overlap) between the structure of political authority, the structure of land tenure, and the distribution of land tenancy.22 C om parisons o f m edieval South India with Bali should be par­ ticularly fruitful.

LAND CONTROL IN MADRAS PRESIDENCY From the m iddle o f the nineteenth century onw ards, the legal and adm inistrative regulations secured, at least on paper, fairly full property rights to the raiyat. The British also instituted a m odem governm ent, with an efficient bureaucracy. W hy then do historians o f nineteenth and tw entieth century M adras still find it useful to use the term ‘land con tro l’? There seem to be two distinct reasons. First, it is argued that the governm ent took very high rates o f land revenue, and evicted for non-paym ent, so that raiyat’s so-called property rights were in fact o f little value; officials were in control. A lternatively (or for a different period), the governm ent was not in fact in such com plete control of South Indian society as was once believed. Its w rit never penetrated to the village level and in certain areas even above the village level. There w ere then alternative sys­ tem s o f control. ‘Land controllers’ had more pow er than ‘officials’, not to m ention private ‘ow ners’. A s it finally developed, the raiyatw ari system gave the raiyat m ost o f the rights o f m odem liberal land ow nership.23 The M adras M anual o f A dm inistration categorically describes the raiyat in the m odem raiyatw ari system thus: subject to the paym ent of the land revenue, he ‘enjoys an absolute proprietorship over the soil and can deal w ith or use it in any m anner he likes’. 4 He had the right to possess; 22Clifford Geeitz, Negara (Princeton, 1980). 23R.M. Honoré, ‘Ownership’, in A.M. Guest (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (London, 1961), pp 101-47. 24Govemment of Madras, Manual of Administration of Madras Presidency (Madras, 1885), Vol. 1, p. 104.

A Note on the Term ‘Land Control’ 129 ‘physical co n tro l’ in this case m eans the right to occupy, to cultivate or not to cultivate; the right to exclude others w hile no other person had the right to exclude him, apart from his voluntarily giving them a tem porary right o f possession by leasing out or m ortgaging the land. Sim ilarly, he h a d the right to use (except that he could not put the land to non-agricultural uses), to m anage and to the incom e, and the fact that he m ight voluntarily part with any o f these, as, for in­ stance, by appointing a m anager, does not affect the issue. He had the right to capital; he could sell and hold his ow nership right for an unlim ited period. But his right to bequeath the land m ight be restricted by fam ily law. The law took little cognizance o f any rights other than those o f the raiyat (except in M alabar); unlike Bengal no laws recognized the perm anent rights o f tenants under the raiyat though particular tenants m ight establish that they had occupancy rights by ‘proving a custom , contract or a title, and possibly by other m eans’. 5 Also, form s o f com m unal ow nership and m anagem ent becam e increasingly rare under the B ritish.26 W hy then are historians so often reluctant to call the raiyat a landow ner? O ne reason is that the adm inistrative records refer to the raiyat as the ‘tenant’ o f the state. The claim s put forw ard by the British at the outset o f their rule that property in land belonged to governm ent by ‘ancient usage’ to quote M adras R egulation X X X I o f 1802, led to the theory or rather fiction that the raiyat was the ‘tenant of the S tate’ in raiyatw ari areas. This claim was related to their asser­ tion, to quote one case, that ‘sovereigns in India have alw ays claim ed the right to take the share o f the produce in cultivated land, and fix by executive order the share and com m uted money paym ents’.27 W e still do not know on what basis or at w hat levels the land tax was fixed earlier. D oubtless there was a great deal of bargaining betw een tax payers and tax collectors; the question is w hether any principles regarding the legitim ate or ju st or traditional rates were invoked. It is hard to believe that the statem ents in the law books about the 25

S. Sundararaja Iyengar, Land Tenures in Madras Presidency (Madras, 1916), 178. harma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge, 196S), pp 15-18. Secretary of State vs Venkatapati Raju, quoted in S. Sundararaja Iyengar, Land Tenures, p. 170.

130 Colonialism, Property and the State correct rates o f land revenue (one-fourth, one-sixth, etc.) w ere com ­ pletely irrelevant. * It is true that in the first half o f the nineteenth century, land revenue rates were extremely high and in the first quarter giving up the land was sometim es forbidden. These two features combined certainly m ake it difficult to describe the raiyat as a landowner. In any case, land could be thrown up after the middle o f the nineteenth century, and m oreover from then on the real burden o f the land revenue fell. In the twentieth century it was under ten per cent o f the gross produce. A different argum ent is that the small raiyat could exercise few property rights in practice and so his ‘ow nership’ was m erely a legal fiction. In the nineteenth century the charge was frequently m ade that the village headm an or m oneylender or the rich farm er controlled the sm all landow ners w ho were thus, to quote an im portant nineteenthcentury report, ‘in the w orst cases little m ore than tenants o f the lender w ho prescribes w hat crops they shall grow and dem ands w hat term he pleases’.28 There is undoubtedly truth in this charge, and indeed it has been m ade for several parts o f India; in the case o f the D eccan29 even m ore strongly than in M adras. H istorians m ay well be ju stified in using term s such as boss/dependent or patron/client in certain situations. But w as this alw ays or even generally, the case? How frequently was the sm all landow ner prevented from taking decisions, for ex ­ am ple, as to w hat crop to sow on his ow n land? W e m ay never be able to answ er this satisfactorily for the past since in the nature of things the records are not likely to go into the question o f extra-legal control. But undoubtedly this is a vitally im portant issue, as the

•yo

F.A. Nicholson, Report Regarding the Possibilities of Introducing Agricultural Banks in the Madras Presidency (Madras, 1895-7, 22 vols). Vol. 1 (reprinted Bombay, 1960), p. 468. 29J. Banaji, ‘Capitalist Domination and the Small Peasantry*, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, August 1977; Neil Charlesworth, ‘Agrarian Society and British Administration in Western India, 1847-1930’, PhD dissertation, Cambridge University, 1973. 30Washbrook makes an interesting indirect inference from Dharam Narain’s and McAlpin’s figures showing that in Madras’ cotton-growing districts there was a much closer correlation between cotton prices and acreage under cotton than in Bombay or U.P. He argues that this is a sign of the control of the richer landowners who forced smaller landowners to plant cotton despite their

A Note on the Term ‘Land Control’ 131 enorm ous m odern literature on the ‘interpenetration o f m arkets’ and the control o f the creditor over the debtor show s.31 But it is another question w hether ‘land control’ is an appropriate term for the phenom enon, w hich from the late nineteenth century onw ards at least was increasingly connected w ith control over sources o f credit and o f m arket institutions. H ere again the point is that land ow nership and the ow nership or control o f cred it32 were not necessarily connected. The m an who ow ned the m ost land was not alw ays the richest nor the one who supplied credit to sm all landow ners, nor were sm all landow ners al­ ways indebted to the large landow ners. N or indeed was it necessary to ow n any land at all in order to invest and to grow, as A ttw ood’s study o f sugarcane grow ers in M aharashtra in the early tw entieth century shows: Land was simply not the scarcest and most expensive factor of production: as mentioned, rents were quite low relative to other costs. Consequently, control of land alone did not mean effective control over the production of sugarcane. The most enterprising cane growers were primarily tenants. The reason they neglected to purchase land as they expanded operations was very simple: it would have meant tying up their working capital (which was scarcer and much more expensive). Land was rented from ordinary village cultivators (from those who had more land than they had sons to cultivate it, for example) and also from the few scattered Rajas, or princes, in the area. Because control of land alone did not mean control of the production process, these Rajas

preference for subsistence food crops. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics, pp 73-7. There are a number of statistical questions to be settled before accepting this conclusion (for example, how much of the total land belonged to small raiyats), but there is also the problem that in Bombay the moneylender was accused in even stronger terms of controlling the raiyats. Why were peasants not forced to grow cotton in Bombay? 31See the writings of Pranab Bardhan, Krishna Bharadwaj, Amit Bhaduri, Ashok Rudra, T.N. Srinivasan, etc., in the Economic and Political Weekly. 32Before ‘credit controller’ supplants ‘land controller’, may one suggest that ‘creditor’ is a useful word, and that ‘credit controller’, if it be used at all, be reserved for bank and co-operative society officials who lend money they do not own. My fear of the indiscriminate use of the word ‘controller’ is not an idle one, as Stein’s reference to ‘individualized wealth controller’ shows. Is an ‘individualized wealth controller’ merely a rich man or a man who controlled other people’s wealth?

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were only able to collect a fixed, monetary rent at a modest rate, just like anybody else.33 W e still have a great deal to learn about the im portance o r the irrelevance o f legal titles to land, and analyses o f court cases should be very useful. There has been no system atic study o f court disputes in M adras, or indeed anyw here else in India, as far as I am aw are. W hat sizes o f holdings were in dispute? W ere the parties m em bers o f a fam ily, contesting the partitions o f fam ily property, for instance or were they unrelated? W ere there cases o f defective titles, and if so, how w ere they settled? How m uch land was transferred to settle debt, and how useful was legal title in securing credit? The issue o f the control w ielded by the large landow ner or lender is com m on to nearly all o f India. The alleged inadequacy o f governm ental control, particularly at the village level, appears to be specific to M adras Presidency; or is it ju st that historians happen to have studied it here? There were, in the first place, som e m atters w hich the governm ent did not attem pt to control. On others, par­ ticularly issues o f land-ow nership, there was a conflict betw een the executive and the courts. And even when the governm ent did attem pt to control m atters, it w as frustrated by an alternative pow er structure. The rural bosses could deceive, coerce and bribe bureaucrats to achieve ends forbidden by law or governm ent orders.34 The use o f extra-constitutional authority has thus a long pedigree in South India. Perhaps its m ost im portant field was taxation— rural bosses could see that their lands were underassessed and those of others overassessed. The num erous com plaints by collectors in the revenue records are witness to this. H ere again, the question is how im portant the structure o f extra-constitutional authority was and w hether ‘land control’ is the best term for it, especially since the term covers such different types— the old landed gentry, corrupt of­ ficials, new farm ers who have seized the opportunities throw n up by

33Donald W. Attwood, ‘Capital and the Transformation of Agrarian Class Systems: A Comparison of Bengal and Maharashtra, India’, paper read to the Conference on South Asian Political Economy, December 1980. Emphasis in original. 34R.E. Frykenberg, Guntur District 1788-1848 (Oxford, 1965); C.J. Baker and D.A. Washbrook, South India: Political Institutions and Political Change (New Delhi, 1975); D.A. Washbrook, Provincial Politics.

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the extension o f m arkets to grow rich, and to strengthen their position vis-à-vis governm ent.35

CONCLUSION The popularity o f the word ‘land controller’, adm ittedly, is not a m ere m atter o f fashion; it answers the desire for some word that will avoid the am biguities o f words like landow ner or landlord and tenant, draw n, som e have said, from alien legal system s, and one m ight add, not unam biguous even in their ‘native’ contexts, and in any case quite unsuitable when m ight m attered much m ore than legal right. There undoubtedly were, and still are, m any such situations and in these ‘land co ntroller’ may som etim es be a useful term. But som e­ tim es the control o f credit or access to adm inistrators or some other factor m ay be m ore useful than land; as A ttw ood has pointed out land is not alw ays the scarce factor even in agriculture. W hy m ake such a fuss about a word? B ecause words m ay convey m isleading m essages not only to the reader but also to the w riter. The historian convinces him self that he has identified the crucial actor— the controller, the decision-m aker— and pushes out o f m ind the com plexity o f form al legal and custom ary rights, obligations, and norm s36 that bound the ‘land controllers’ too in m odem and m edieval “27 India, the tensions betw een different system s o f rights,' and the changing balances o f social and econom ic power. •

' Washbrook, Provincial Politics, discusses regional variations and changes over time in the nature and powers of rural bosses. There is an excellent description of the way in which rural bosses operate in Andhra today, using loans, domination of the panchayat, ‘coercive buying and selling’, and if necessary, force, including the physical occupation of land, in Marguerite Robinson, The Law o f the Fishes, forthcoming. ^Nicholas Dirks and Pamela Price have both reminded me of the co-existence of different norms that could be used to structure rights or settle disputes before the British; in this connection see Dirks, ‘Structure and Meaning’ and Pamela Price, ‘Resources and Rule in Zamindari South India, 1802-1903’, PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1979. The question is which norm generally prevails; see E. Adamson Hoebel, The Law of Primitive Man (Cambridge, 1967), pp 185-6. 37Bemard S. Cohn, ‘Structural Change in Rural Society’, in Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, brings out some of the features of a transition between two regimes.

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I am w ell aw are o f the enorm ity o f the tasks before us— o f the slipperiness o f term s like ‘law ’, ‘legal system ’,38 ‘p roperty’ and ‘ow n ersh ip ’;39 o f the peculiar difficulties posed by the classical legal literature o f India40 and the perhaps insuperable problem o f deter­ m ining w h ich law s actually applied in a particular region or period in pre-B ritish India; o f the paucity o f direct evidence on such m atters as the principles on which conflicts w ere settled and the efficiency o f ju d icial procedures,41 and the com plexity o f the different structures o f political, econom ic and social rights,4 and o f the state— but per­ haps we w ould discover m ore if we asked m ore precise questions. T he m odest aim o f this note is to uncover som e o f the questions glossed over by the use o f ‘land control’.43

38Max Gluckman, The Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence (New Haven. 1972); H.L. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford, 1981); E.A. Hoebel, The Law of Primitive Man (Cambridge, 1967); M.B. Hooker, Legal Pluralism (Oxford. 1975). 9W.N. Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning and Other Legal Essays (reprinted. New Haven. 1923); Lawrence Becker, Property Rights (London, 1977). ^J.D.M . Derrett, Hindu Law, Past and Present (Calcutta 1957); Derrett. Essays in Classical and Modem Hindu Law; P.V. Kane, Dharmashastra; R. Lingat, The Classical Law o f India, trans. J.D.M. Derrett (Berkeley, 1973); Ludo Rocher, ‘Hindu Conceptions of Law’, Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 29, No. 6, July 1978. 4,B.S. Cohn, ‘From Indian Status to British Contract’, Journal o f Economic History, December 1961, pp 613-28; V.T. Gure, The Judicial System of the Marathas (Poona, 1953); Ludo Rocher, ‘Father Bouchet’s Letter on the Administration of Hindu Law’, to appear in Richard Lariviire (ed.). Studies in

Hindu Law. 42There is a characteristically clear discussion of some of these problems in Max Gluckman, The Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence, pp 86-141. 43Seminars, like pulpits, tempt one to preach what one does not practise, but I am trying to reform. Witness Dharma Kumar, ‘Land Ownership in India’, Delhi School Working Paper,'No. 217, March 1980.

6 Private Property in Asia? The Case of Medieval South India*

M arx ’s w ell-know n assertion that the basic form o f all phenom ena in the East w as the absence o f private property in land is p art o f an old tradition o f W estern thought2 w hich is still alive. But if the conclusions are sim ilar, they follow from different argum ents, vary­ ing from author to author, country to country, and, o f course, over tim e as historical know ledge grows. India, too, has been view ed as an exam ple o f O riental D espotism , especially under M uslim rulers. Thus, Fernand Braudel, referring par­ ticularly to the M ughals: ‘In the vast w orld o f Islam , especially prior

*In the course of writing and rewriting this article. I have accumulated many debts, and I hope my friends and colleagues will forgive me for not naming them individually. But I must acknowledge my great debt to the three historians of the Cholas who have educated me by their writings and their conversation—R. Champakalakshmi, N. Karashima, and Burton Stein—and to Thomas R. Trautmann. For their hospitality and stimulation, I am also very grateful to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the University of Warwick, where I read earlier versions of this article. 'S. Avineri, Karl Marx on Colonialism (New York, 1969), p. 451 (emphasis in original). 2Perry Anderson sums up Marx’s views on the Asiatic mode of production thus, after tracing the changes it underwent: ‘the absence of private property in land, the presence of large-scale irrigation systems in agriculture, the existence of autarchic village communities combining crafts with tillage and communal ownership of the soil, the stagnation of passively rentier or bureaucratic cities, and the domination or despotic state machine cornering the bulk of the • surplus.... Between the self-reproducing villages “below” and the hypertrophied state "above" dwelt no intermediate force.’ Anderson also points out that Marx’s view of the village communities is based on his study of India. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), pp 483,487.

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to the eighteenth century, land ow nership was tem porary, for there, as in C hina, land legally belonged to the prince. Using the term ino­ logy o f the European Ancien Régime, historians m ight call such hold­ ings benefices (that is, possessions given for o n e’s lifetim e), as contrasted with fam ily fie fs .'3 S im ilar view s have been expressed of pre-M uslim India too. T he private landholder, it was held, had few rights against the king, de jure o r de facto. De fa cto , the king generally levied very high rates o f land revenue, and could raise the rates arbitrarily, thus reducing the value o f land.4 M oreover, the notion o f secure private property rights w as m issing. The leading authority on Indian land tenure in the B ritish period, and one w hose influence on m odern w riters is still enorm ous, said in 1986, ‘W e do not, of course, expect to m eet in S anskrit literature w ith any ju ristic analysis o f ow nership, or o f the theory o f “possession”, or a “ju st title” , or the nature o f the “rights o f enjoym ents” w hich cluster round ow nership; these are refinem ents o f W estern Jurisprudence.’5 A nother line o f argum ent was that individual rights were un­ known: the land was held com m unally, by the village com m unity, and alienation was difficult if not im possible. C ustom ary law was as despotic, in its way, as the king. But view s on India have changed in recent years. O riental D espotism has given way to O riental Softness, as in G unnar M yrdal’s Asian Drama. The softness is pervasive, and m ost rules (except, so 3F. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilisation (Baltimore, 1977), p. 73. Braudel is referring to Mughal India, and similar views are expressed by specialists. W. H. Moreland, the leading authority on Muslim India of his time, holds that the landholder did not have ‘rights of ownership in the ordinary sense’, but merely ‘rights to occupancy during the King's pleasure’. W. H. Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India (Allahabad, 1929), p. 58. I have questioned these arguments in ‘Land Ownership in India,’ Delhi School Working Paper, 1977. “^For instance, the authoritative textbook by Vincent Smith, Oxford History of India, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1958), pp 90-1. 5B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian village Community (1896: rpt, Delhi, 1972), p. 206. There is in fact a vast literature on classical Hindu law, including sophisticated analyses of just the points Baden-Powell mentions, e.g., J.D.M. Derrett, Essays in Classical and Modem Hindu Law, 4 vols (Leiden, 1977), 2 89ff. A good genera] introduction is R. Lingat, The Classical Law of India, J.D.M. Derrett, trans. (Berkeley, 1973).

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far, those o f caste), blurred. So the stagnancy and despotism o f cus­ tom ary law , another elem ent in the old view, had been replaced, in the phrase o f O liver M endelsohn, by ‘ceaseless com petition’: The new ruler encountered an imprecise, legally ambiguous agrarian situation in which it was often difficult to find a single ‘owner' of land. Rather, land was shared in a bewildering variety of ways between three categories of com­ petitors: the cultivators of the land; the controllers of the cultivators (often known as zamindars or intermediaries); and different levels of what can be called ‘the state’. Ceaseless competition between these categories and even within them—between large and small intermediaries for example—meant that the agrarian situation was highly fluid . What seems to have been at stake was not ownership of land as a unitar)’ physical entity, but interests in land; it was possible for multiple and legally imprecise interests to co-exist in rela­ tion to a single plot of land. This situation could be tolerated by successive rulers of India because, by and large, their interest was in collecting a share of the profits of agriculture. It was of little importance to them to legislate the question of ownership of land.... What had begun as a concern to secure the financial base of British rule in India had burgeoned into an enterprise that changed the very structure of land relations. Irregularity, imprecision and custom had yielded to a regular, clear and formal scheme of right and duties in relation to land. For the first time a ruler of India had used its authority to define the very concepts of ownership and tenancy to apportion land among the population in conformity with its definitions.6 t

M endelsohn sets out w ith adm irable clarity the dom inant view on pre-B ritish India, in which three elem ents in particular m ay be dis­ tinguished. F irst, rights were m ultiplex. Social anthropologists fre­ quently draw a contrast as associations o f isolated individuals, governed by universal, im personal law s— and sim ple societies, tribal or archaic— in w hich individuals are linked to each other in a variety o f w ays.7 In the form er , m ost relationships are free contractual ones,

601iver Mendelsohn, T he Pathology of the Indian Legal System,’ Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 15,"No. 4, 1981, pp 840-2. 1Cf Max Gluckman on the Barotse: ‘ In a society at this stage of development, where most transactions occur between persons already related by status, the law is interested in property as an incident of a social relationship, in addition to the property’s material value.... Each piece of property, land or title or chattel, may be a link in a complex set of relationships between people who are bound to one another permanently. ’ Max Gluckman, Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence (New Haven, 1965), p. 151.

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and transactions between strangers are frequent; in the latter, they are infrequent, and relationships are m ultiplex. So, in a m odem society, a sale o f land can be considered sim ply in term s o f the econom ic interests o f the buyer and seller; in a sim ple society, the political or social connections between the principals m ay be far m ore im portant. All actual societies are, o f course, m ore o r less m ulti­ plex— in the U nited States, the buyer’s race may affect the price he pays for a house, and in even the m ost rigidly structured tribal societies, there will be some econom ic transactions unaffected by social o r political links betw een buyer and seller; the question con­ cerns the degree o f m ultiplexity. In pre-B ritish India, the argum ent goes, the degree o f m ultiplexity was very high. The second elem ent in this description o f pre-B ritish India is that rights w ere legally im precise. This is not a necessary corollary to m ultiplexity; one can im agine a rigidly structured society in w hich all individuals are related to others in m any codified w ays. In prac­ tice, how ever, the m ore num erous the interconnections, the m ore dif­ ficult it will be to codify them , and hence the high probability o f legal im precision. From this follow s the third point, that transactions w ere not regu­ lated by the law but by ‘competition*, a com petition in which, it is frequently im plied, pow er— w hether social, econom ic, or physical— counted for m ore than any legal ‘right’. This may result from the w eakness o f the state, or, in M endelsohn’s w ords, ‘different levels o f what may be called “the state”.’ The argum ent o f this essay is that the strength of these elements is frequently exaggerated. This exaggeration leads som e historians to ignore native legal categories for land rights, and to assum e that all transactions in land can be discussed in terms o f control and pow er, rather than o f law and rights.8 O ne particular medieval regim e— the C holas o f T anjore— is taken up to illustrate these points. The ch ief reason for choosing this regim e is that it left, in copper plate and stone inscriptions, m ostly on tem ple w alls, a large num ber 8Instead of plunging at the outset into the problems of definition it seems preferable to describe first the Chola land system (since the essence of my argument is that there was a system) of rights, powers, obligations, privileges, and so forth. It should be sufficient to state here that by right I mean a relationship between people, perhaps in respect of a thing, such as land, secured by the social and legal system.

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o f records describing actual transactions in land,9 but there is no reason to believe that it w as untypical. For instance, the C hola period was one o f relative stability, but even so some o f the leading his­ torians o f South India w ould probably argue that in this period also legal rights were too im precise and uncertain to m erit analysis. T here­ fore, this essay should have a fairly general application.

THE CHOLA REGIME—C//?G4 850-1280 The Cholas ruled from c. 850 to 1280 in southeast India. The borders o f their kingdom w ere fluctuating and im precise, but the m ajor part consisted o f the areas covered by the present districts of Tanjavur, Tiruchirapalli, and Pudukkottai. M ost o f this is flat country, sloping to the sea and divided by rivers. By the time the C holas cam e to power, the area had large-scale tank irrigation, and its rice cultivation could support a dense population. There were im portant cities, but the bulk o f the population was rural, and we do not know if there was less u rb an izatio n , how ever m easured, than in 1800 o r 1900. But w e do know th at there were w ell-organized m erchant com ­

9About 9,000 Chola inscriptions have been noted: of the 3,500 published inscriptions, ‘roughly 40 per cent are records of the grant or sale of land or villages’, N. Karashima and B. Sitaram, ‘Revenue Terms in Chola Inscriptions’, Journal o f Asian and African Studies, No. 5, 1972, pp 87-117. When temples had to be reconstructed, the old inscriptions were transcribed and re-engraved, apparently with great care: ‘We have not come across a single instance wherein the text of the original record was altered or tampered with in recopying’, T.N. Subramanian, South Indian Temple Inscriptions. 3 vols (Madras, 1953-7), 3, Part 1, p. xlix. Presumably, the proof of correct copying lies in internal evidence in the transcription, such as absence of obvious errors—deliberate changes of the originals could not be detected if no copies of the original remained. English summaries of the inscriptions are published in the Annual Reports on South Indian Epigraphy, issued by the Archaeological Survey of India, with some variations in title. Each inscription is identified by the sequence number of the year of acquisition by the Office of the Government Epigraphist, e.g., Inscription 12 of 1913. Some full texts have also been published in original and in translation in various series. The Tamil literature of the Chola period is also extensive, but apparently does not yield much direct data on economic matters: K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, 2nd ed. (Madras, 1955), p. 11.

140 Colonialism, Property and the State m unities engaging in internal and external trade in grain, spices, and cloth, as well as elephants, horses, and precious stones. Gold, silver, and copper coins were current, and taxes were collected in cash as well as in kind. M any elem ents o f the political structure are still unclear. T here were num erous institutional sources o f pow er in the C hola kingdom , starting w ith the C hola kings them selves and ranging through the chieftains in outlying areas who paid them tribute, the tem ples, and the regional and village assem blies, and there is serious disagreem ent am ong the specialists over the distribution o f pow ers am ong these institutions. The distribution o f revenues is even m ore befogged. l0Burton Stein argues that the leading South Indian historians before Independence exaggerated the power and degree of organization of the Chola state. While Nilakanta Sastri compares what he describes as a centrali ed and elaborate bureaucratic structure to Byzantium, a better analogy, in Stein’s view, is provided by the segmentary societies of tribal Africa. In the Chola kingdom, too, Stein argues, there were numerous centres of power, or segments; the Chola king had ritual sovereignty (rajadharma) over all of them, but political sovereignty (kshatra) only over a core area around the capital. Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (Delhi, 1980), pp 273-5. Outside this core area, the segments, which were more or less contained as units of government, were administrative areas known as nadus. These nadus were small regions, since by 1300 there were more than 550 of them. Y. Subbarayulu, Political Geography of the Chola Country (Madras, 1973), pp 46-7. Other historians, while agreeing that some correction of Sastri’s account was necessary, argue that Stein seriously underestimates the scope of Chola administration, and correspondingly overestimates the independent power of the nadus. See R. Champakalakshmi, ‘Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, No. 18, 1981, pp 411-26; K.R. Hall, ‘Peasant State and Society in Chola Times: A View from the Tiruvidaimarudar Complex’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, No. 18, 1981, pp. 393-410; N. Karashima, South Indian History and Society: Studies from Inscriptions, A.D. 850 to 1800 (Delhi, 1984). All scholars agree that in outlying areas, and in times o f trouble, there would be struggles for authority and revenues between rival powers, including local assemblies, when villagers would contract for protection. During the disturbed reign of the Chola Kulottunga III, the assembly of Vallanadu declared that they would protect the cultivators of a certain area, and if any of the assembly were to rob a cultivator, a stipulated amount of irrigated land would be given to the temple (Inscription 273 of 1914). Again a Pandya inscription records that a chief promised the headman

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All that is clear is that there was a large num ber o f taxes, and th a t they were levied by various authorities, from the king to the v illag e assem bly. Little is known about the rates o f land revenue or a t w hat levels o f governm ent it was collected and sp e n t." It w ill be argu ed below that this political system did in fact give protection to p riv ate rights, so that private lands did have econom ic value. U nsettled land could be disposed o f by the ruler, or, w here his p o w e r w as w eak, w hoever had the highest authority— it was either presented as a gift to tem ples and brahm ins, free o f land revenue or a t specially low rates, o r allocated to peasants, who m ight pay low rates for an initial p erio d .12 The settled land was ow ned by all kinds o f people, from chieftains and m erchants to w eavers and dancing girls, w ith the probable exception o f the untouchable castes, and per­ haps the C hola kings them selves,13 but the three m ain landholding

in a village that if, in the course of fighting, the cultivation of the villages under his protection suffered, he would pay a fine of 500 panam, a considerable amount (Inscription 359 of 1914). The Pandyas were a rival Southern kingdom of the thirteenth century. Other kingdoms occasionally mentioned are the earlier Pallavas (eighth and ninth centuries) and the later Vijayanagar empire, circa 1350-1564. 11 Stein, in keeping with his view of a decentralized system, suggests that the major part of the tax collections remained in the village or the locality or nadu. ‘The State and the Agrarian Order in Medieval South India’, in Burton Stein (ed.), Essays on South India (Honolulu, 1975), p. 79. He gets some support from Nilakanta Sastri’s description of the method of remunerating public officials. The more common method was to assign the tax revenue from a specific piece of land, and regular cash payments from the public treasury were practically unknown; but Nilakanta Sastri also describes the ruler’s carefully maintained land records. The Colas, pp 464,469. 12Land which had once been occupied, but was then abandoned, frequently lapsed to temples. 13As far as we know, the Chola kings had no demesne lands. But in another part of South India, Karnataka, the records do refer to ‘royal estates or domains’. S. Gururajachar, Some Aspects of Economic and Social Life in Karnataka, A.D. 1000-1300 (Mysore, 1974), pp 23-4. The Chola inscriptions do refer to land held by chieftains, however: for instance, the assembly of a village in Tiruchi district formed a committee to supervise the leasing of lands belonging to the ‘king.’ Perumal Ulagudaiya-Nayanar (Inscription 204 of 1938-9).

142 Colonialism, Property and the State groups were the tem ples, the brahm ins, and the V ellalas, the c a s te o f cultivators. B efore describing the forms o f land tenure, it m ight be useful to discuss the first tw o groups, since they often, though not in v ariab ly , held land on special term s.

Temples as Major Landholders It is not inconceivable that a larger part o f the social product w e n t to the tem ple than to the king. The southern landscape is dotted w ith tem ples, from sm all village tem ples to the great w ealthy tem ples o f the centres o f pilgrim age. From the king or queen to the dancing girl or beggar, H indus gave land, livestock, and gold lavishly to the tem ples in order to acquire religious m erit, fam e, or social authority. T em ple lands w ere generally tax free, but not alw ays so. T his partly depended upon the identity o f the donor and the status o f the donated land. In essence, if the donor was an authority entitled to revenues from taxes— a king, a chieftain, o r village o r higher level assem bly— the land w ould generally be given to the tem ple free o f those tax es.14 If a private individual gave the land, it w ould not be free o f taxes unless the ru ler’s perm ission had been o b tain ed ;15 al14The Tamil word iraiyili is generally translated as ‘free of taxes’. It should be noted that even land given by the king could be liable to land tax. Rajarajadeva Chola once gave land to a temple for maintaining a feeding house and offerings to the deity, on condition that half the tax was paid by the temple and half by the village assembly (Inscription 186 of 192S). I5There were even conventions about the division of spiritual merit between the donor and the ruler where the donor gave the land and the ruler made it free of tax. Sircar, writing of North India, states that the donor was required to compensate the ruler for the loss of revenue, whereupon five sixths of the religious merit went to the donor and one sixth to the ruler (perhaps because the customary land tax was one sixth the produce); if no compensation was paid, ‘the entire merit accruing to the donation was believed to go to the king’. D.C. Sircar (ed.), Land System and Feudalism in Ancient India (Calcutta, 1966), p. 7. But if the king was compensated, why should he receive any merit at all? The statement in the inscription that in die absence of compensation the king would get all the merit was probably a threat made to increase the chances of compensation; the unauthorized conversion of revenue-paying into revenue-free land was an ever present danger up to British times—and indeed even today. Religion is the safest cloak for tax avoidance and tax evasion in India.

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tentatively, the donor m ight also donate a capital sum to pay for the tax es.16 17 The affairs o f a tem ple were run by tem ple m anagers, som etim es supervised by village assem blies. The m anagers could hire labour IR and organize the cultivation them selves, but apparently the lands w ere m ore com m only leased out, to individuals or assem blies.19 Tem ple m anagers needed incom e in cash and kind for a variety o f purposes. C urrent expenses included paym ents o f taxes, m ain-

16Note that various levels in the hierarchy were entitled to different taxes, and if someone at a higher level wanted to give land tax free to a temple, he still had to compensate lower-level authorities for their loss of taxes. Thus a queen gave land tax free to a temple, while giving the brahmin assembly, the former ‘owners’, a sum (puracharam. literally ‘former usage’) to compensate for the loss of four specified taxes. South Indian Inscriptions, 4 pts. (Archaeological Survey of India, Madras, 1899-1929), 3, No. 194. >7In theory, the land was owned by the temple deity and managed on behalf of the deity by temple trustees, whereas in a math, or monastery, the land belonged to the chief administrators and gurus. Burton Stein, ‘Economic Functions of a Medieval South Indian Temple’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1960), pp 163-76. Temple trustees were often supervised by village assemblies or the ruler. K.R. Hall, Trade and Statecraft in the Age o f the Cholas (New Delhi, 1980), pp 24-56. 18 For instance. Inscription 172 of 1915 describes an arrangement under which the temple functionaries (vaikanasa) arranged for the cultivation of the garden lands themselves, employing men to carry water, dig, fence the field, spread a stipulated amount of manure, etc. The village assembly arranged for the cultivation of the paddy lands, giving a fixed amount to the temple. 19The leasing out of land could itself take many forms. Thus David Ludden describes a Pandyan transaction: the king gave lands to the temple, the temple then ‘loaned’ the land to the village assembly, which in turn contracted to give specified goods for ever after. David Ludden. ‘Agrarian Organization in Tinnevelly District, 800-1900 A.D.,’ Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, (Pennsylvania, 1978). 20Burton Stein describes the finances of the largest temple in South India, Tirupati, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries in ‘Economic Functions of a Medieval South Indian Temple’, also see idem, ‘Temples and Agricultural Development in Medieval South India’, Economic Weekly Annual, 13, February 1961, pp 79-89. An interesting discussion of the economic functions of temples, including the storage of grain, is contained in Carol A. Breckenridge, ‘Land as Gift in the Vijayanagara Period’, paper delivered at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Toronto, March

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tenance o f buildings (the sale o f land to pay for tem ple repairs is often m entioned in the inscriptions), rituals and festivals, m ain ­ tenance o f charities, and so on. Som e o f these costs w ere obligatory, as w hen a donor had specified that certain special rituals should be perform ed. But there w as no lim it in theory to the expenditure o f a tem ple— rituals could be grander, idols decked in m ore jew els, n ew shrines could be built, all to the greater glory o f the temple deity (and perhaps, to its superiority over rival deities).21 Doubtless some m anagers were maxim izers o f temple funds, always trying to expand, and others satisficers, content with maintaining the tempo of temple activities. M anagers could raise m oney by soliciting gifts, but they m ust also have devoted m uch attention to the prudent m anagem ent o f tem ple assets, especially in the large tem ples. M anagers had to choose am ong alternative form s o f investm ent: hoarding bullion or jew els, storing grain and other com m odities, loaning out m oney, or buying land or the right to collect taxes.22 The inscriptions reflect the great variety o f transactions that tem ple m anagers undertook. Tem ples sold lands given to them to other tem ples, village assem blies, or individuals, and they exchanged lands w ith other tem ples.23 In addition, the tem ple could increase the value o f its lands by irrigation.24 Tem ples

1981. For the Choias, see K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, ‘The Economy of a South Indian Temple in the Chola Period’, Malaviya Commemoration Volume, A.B. Dhruva (ed.), (Benaras, 1932), pp 305-19. 21 On sectarian rivalries, as reflecting political struggles between different groups, in the post-Chola period, see Burton Stein, ‘Temples in Tamil Country, 1300-1750 A.D.’, and Aijun Appadorai, ‘Kings, Sects and Temples in South India, 1350-1750 A.D.’, both in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1977, pp 11-46, pp 47-74. 22For instance, Inscription 231 of 1910 records that the temple at Tirumayanam bought the right to collect market fees from a village assembly for a lump sum. 23 An obvious reason for exchange was convenience. Temples might be given lands that were far away, and hence difficult to manage; a migrant of today will sometimes donate land in his new village to the temple in his ancestral village and the temple frequently sells such land. M. Atchi Reddy, ‘Tenancy in Nellore, 1870-1980’, manuscript in preparation. 24Temples also contributed to the maintenance and repair of village tanks. A. Appadorai, Economic Conditions in Southern India, 1000-1500 A.D., 2 vols (Madras, 1936). 1, p. 216.

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also m ade gifts o f land to individuals, presum ably in paym ent for past or future services.25

Lands Held by Brahmins Piety also took the form o f granting land to Brahm ins, and, as in the case o f the tem ples, there was a variety o f tax arrangem ents. The lands could be free o f certain taxes but not o f others. B rahm in vil­ lages were relatively recent in South India, the m ajority having been created in the Pallava and especially the C hola periods. Probably every great tem ple w ould have one on m ore settlem ents o f B rahm ins nearby to m anage its affairs and conduct its rituals. B ut the m ain­ tenance o f B rahm ins was also an end in itself, particularly o f B rham ins know n for their learning or holiness, so it is possible that settlem ents o f B rahm ins existed prior to the building o f the tem ple— though every Brahm in village probably w ould have at least one tem ple.26 H ow ever, the m ajority o f Brahm ins lived in non-Brahm in villages, as priests, village accountants, teachers, astrologers, and so on.27 They, too, w ere given land at especially low rates o f land revenue. These beneficial grants o f land w ere frequently subject to special conditions, connected either w ith the m aintenance o f the land (e.g., that it should be irrigated properly) or w ith B rahm inical functions and behaviour. In addition, frequently there w ere restrictions on alienation, such as that the land could be transferred only to other

25The inscriptions often refer to the god and the temple as the donor, e.g., Inscription 386 of 1916 (1578) registers a gift of land by the god, his servants, and the big assembly of the village to an individual for his services as kudavan (cowherd, shepherd). Chola inscriptions record the appointment of individuals as managers, scribes, etc. by ‘the god and his servants assembled together’ (e.g.. Inscription 383 of 1916). On the general legal literature, see G.D. Sontheimer, ‘Religious Endowments in India; The Juristic Personality of Hindu Deities’, Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, 67, 1964, pp 45-100. 26Apparently, non-Brahmin villages did not invariably have temples, though there must have been some place of worship. Karashima, South Indian History, analyses several Tanjore inscriptions. Of forty non-Brahmadeya villages, eighteen had temples. 27Stein, Peasant State and Society, p. 171.

146 Colonialism, Property and the State B rahm ins, or even only to Brahm ins belonging to a particular philosophical school.28 The reason for these stipulations is clear: cer­ tain functions could be carried out only by Brahm ins. A nother reason, applicable to lands in Brahm in villages rather than to holdings by B rahm ins in peasant villages, was caste exclusiveness, especially since landow nership m ight carry w ith it m em bership in the village assem bly. A part from these specially given lands, B rahm ins held other lands on the sam e term s and conditions as other castes, though even there they m ay occasionally have paid taxes at low er rates. In other w ords, w hile it w as generally the land that was m ade tax free or not (w ith stipulations as regards the kind o f person who could occupy it), in the case o f the Brahm ins, they were occasionally, but not as a rule, allow ed to pay at low er rates o f revenue, regardless o f the original tax status o f the land. B rahm ins generally did not plough the lands them selves; they either leased the lands out, or, less frequently, hired labour. W hen B rahm in villages were founded in virgin lands, the rulers may also have assigned groups o f agricultural labourers to them to clear and develop the lands.2 If the labourers were o f low caste, they m ay have becom e serfs, but if o f the higher cultivating castes, m ay have acquired occupancy rights in time.

PROPERTY RIGHTS ON NON-BENEFICIAL TENURES A large part o f the land during the C hola period was subject to the paym ent o f full land revenue; it is our contention that those persons liable to the paym ent o f land revenue had extensive property rights and that the term landowner could be applied to them , at the risk o f m isrepresentation involved in any translation, but not m uch more. In 28Thus, a Pandyan inscription describes the acquisition of land for a Brahmin settlement, and stipulates that land could be sold only to others within the settlement; if a sale outside was necessary, then it could be sold only to a particular kind of Brahmin—bhagavatars (in this context, probably a follower of Vishnu) and those of the same school of philosophy (darsana) (Inscriptions 47 and 49 of 1936-7). ^H all, Trade and Statecraft, p. 35

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fact it is not m istranslation that is the problem so m uch as the am ­ biguity o f the term ownership in E nglish itself (as the enorm ous literature on the term in philosophy, law, econom ics, and history show s) and o u r insufficient know ledge o f property rights in m edieval South India. It is surely significant, how ever, that there w ere native legal categories conveying rights generally regarded as the core rights o f private ow nership: the rights to possess, to use (cultivate), to receive incom e, and to the benefit o f capital (including the right to sell). T hese are the rights generally stressed by econom ists,30 though jurists naturally have m ore exhaustive definitions. R.M. Honoré defines ow nership in term s o f eleven incidents: the rights to possess, to use, to m anage, to the incom e, to capital, and to security, and the incidents o f transm issibility, absence o f term, liability to execution for debt, prohibition o f harm ful use, and residuary rules. In full liberal ow ner­ ship, all these w ould be vested in one private individual, though even here ‘abso lu te’ ow nership m ust be lim ited by the rights (pow ers) o f the state— in particular, the pow ers to tax and to expropriate (em inent dom ain). Indeed, H onoré states that ‘a good case can certainly be m ade for listing liability to tax and expropriability by the S tate’ as standard incidents o f liberal ow nership, though he him self does not do so.31

30E. Furubotn and S. Pejovich state that ownership in an asset has three elements: usus, the right to use; usus fructus, the right to appropriate returns from the asset; and abusus, or the right to change the asset, including the right to transfer all rights in it, as by sale, introduction’, Eirik Furubotn and S. Pejovich (eds), The Economics of Property Rights, (Cambridge, 1974), p. 4. 3,R.M. Honori, ‘Ownership’, in A.M. Guest (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (London, 1961), pp 101-47. Lawrence Becker argues that H o n o r’s analysis is an adequate tool for all varieties of ownership, from tribal life to feudal societies. ‘The Moral Base of Property Rights’, in Roland Pennock and John W. Champman (eds), Property (Nomos XXII), (New York, 1980), pp 190-1. However, there are other ways of splitting up rights. Becker himself splits up the right to capital into the right (or liberty) to abuse or destroy the right to modify, and the right (power) to alienate, i.e. to carry out inter vivos transfers by exchange or gift and to abandon ownership. Lawrence C. Becker, Property Rights (London, 1977), pp 8-11. There is in fact no unique way to specifying ownership since there are infinitely many ways in which things can give rise to transactions and relationships.

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The sales m entioned in the inscriptions occasionally use the T am i 1 w ord for land, nilam, but m ore frequently the word kani. In co n ju n c­ tion, kani m eant a right, generally a hereditary right,32 and w ith o u t qualification it generally m eant hereditary property rights in land.33 It is significant that the inscriptions often specify the rights included in kani. Som e inscriptions state that the eight rights (ashtabhoga ) o f classical Hindu law are included, others specify the rights. R ights conveyed vary, but the rights o f sale, gift, and enjoym ent are general­ ly included. These rights were bought and sold by private parties, who can consequently be considered as being landow ners.3 T hese private landow ners, to repeat, could cultivate the land them selves o r lease it out, m ortgage it, o r sell it (w ith restrictions described later), and w hen they sold their land they transferred all th eir rights in it. There is am ple evidence that they did in fact lease out, m ortgage, and sell their lands; the evidence on sales is exam ined in a later section. Private landow ners as well as tem ples held title deeds, as m any references in the inscriptions show. To give one exam ple, when it was found after a m an ’s death that his title deed had been lost, six of his relatives paid cash to get another.35 Again, when recording the sale o f land to tem ples, the inscriptions often state that the original docum ents w ere deposited in the tem ple.36 A nother inscription records that an assem bly had to give a tem ple new lands because docum ents show ed that those it first gave belonged to another tem ple.37 H ow secure were the landow ner’s rights against the state? In par­ ticular, on w hat grounds could he be evicted? He could be evicted for tax arrears, as in many m odem states, but the m edieval taxpayer

32Thus, tiruppani-kani was the right to supervise repairs, obviously a profitable right since it was sold by temples (e.g., Inscription 209 of 1916). 3Nilakanta Sastri translates kani as 'landed estate.’ The Cola, p. 540. 34We therefore translate the Tamil words kani-atchi-karan or kanival (one having kani) as ‘owner’. Another Tamil word for owner is udaiyavan, literally ‘one who has’. 35Inscription 190 of 1925. Title deeds were issued by village assemblies, especially in cases of renewal of loss, as two Chola inscriptions (213 of 1925, and 291 of 1940-1) show. It is possible that other authorities also issued them. 36E.g. the thirteenth-century Pandyan inscription, 86 of 1916. 37Inscription 539 of 1917.

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m a y w ell have been given a m uch longer rope, especially since tax c o lle c to rs w ere less efficient then. Land was confiscated for treason a n d for heinous crim es. Some such cases are reported in the inscrip­ tio n s , but there is no evidence that the incidence o f these types of c o n fisc a tio n w as extensive, except perhaps in newly conquered lands. M oreover, w hen the ruler or other authority wanted to donate set­ tle d lands to tem ples or others, he first had to buy the lands from th e ir ow ners. T he inscriptions often state w hether or not the grantee m a y evict the occupants— kudinikki— or not— kudikudi-ninga. A g ra n te e who could not evict the occupants presum ably w ould not be a b le to raise the rent. One can infer from the inscriptions that the rig h t o f eviction had a m onetary value: in one case o f a dispute about p ay m en ts to the tem ple, the official exam ining the docum ents o f two v illag es that had been given to the tem ple found that they did include th is right, so that the tem ple, was entitled to larger grain paym ents th an the village assem bly had been m aking in the past. H e thereupon converted the shortfall into a capital sum .38 The term kudi is translated as ‘cultivator’ or ‘occupant’; o v er tim e it cam e to be applied to a tenant, as distinct from a landlord, but w hen the ow ner cultivated the land him self, the term kudi could be applied to him .39 The inscriptions contain other term s whose m ean­ ings we still do not know, but it is clear that there were various

™South Indian Inscriptions, 3, No. 203. 39Kudi can be translated as ‘occupant’ and by extension as ‘subject’, one liable to taxation: the grain crop was divided into the kudivaram, the kudi’s share, and the melvaram or the upper share. Originally, the word melvaram referred to the ruler’s share. (Cf kudi with raiyyat, ‘the settled population subject to taxation’ ( Cambridge History of Iran, V, 492). Later on, kudi came to be applied to tenant, as distinct from a landlord, and melvaram was used to refer to the rent, though when the owner cultivated the land himself, the term kudi could be applied to him. Subbaruyulu, Political Geography, p. 103. There is also a specific Tamil word for cultivator: vellan. 40The term karanmai is particularly puzzling. Nilakanta Sastri translates it as ‘cultivators’ right’ in opposition to mikakchi (or miyatchi), ‘landlords’ rights’. As the landlord himself might be the actual cultivator, the term tyl-karanmai-udaiyal-kudigal was sometimes used for occupants having subordinate cultivation rights. The Colas, p. 577. There are some instances of the sale of karanmai rights— several Pandya inscriptions record the sale of karanmai rights by temples (e.g. Inscriptions 103 and 104 of 1916, and 5 of 1924)— but karanmai was probably not invariably saleable, as kani was. It is

150 Colonialism, Property and the State categories and conditions o f tenancy, determ ined partly by the in ­ stitutional statuses o f the two parties, as well as by purely econom ic factors, such as the type o f land.41

HOW CONSTRICTED WAS THE INDIVIDUAL? / W e have so far discussed the issue o f the rights of private landow ners against the state. W e m ust now com e to the second main aspect o f the ideal type o f full liberal ow nership, and that is that all private rights are vested in one individual. In contrast, it has been argued, in societies like those o f m edieval South India it is im possible to identify a single ow ner o f the land since the rights are divided am ongst a large num ber o f people. H onoré calls this condition 'sp lit ow nership',42 and it corresponds in some w ays to the ‘m ultiplexity’ o f the social anthropologists. In fact, a further subdivision is useful because there are tw o w ays in w hich rights can be split, with different social and econom ic conse­ quences. First, different rights can be held by different people: A has

possible that temples, rather than private individuals, sold karanmai rights. Ludden suggests that kani and karanmai are more or less interchangeable, both being translated as ‘primary land control’. It may be that kani was the wider term, occasionally including karanmai, but this issue can be settled only by analysing the terms in context. For example, one needs to know who were the buyers and sellers of kani and karanmai rights. One test of the differences in these rights, suggested by N.H. Stem, is the differences in their prices, and if sufficient data on prices for similar types of land are available it would be useful to make this comparison. 4lAppadorai describes variations in tenancy conditions and various stipulations regarding proper use of the land, the upkeep of ponds, etc. Tenants of temples also had to pay fees to the temple servants who supervised their work during the harvest. Appadorai also states that tenants could not alienate their rights, citing inscriptions, but this prohibition is not as definite as he affirms. The epigraphists often refer to ‘hereditary tenancy’ or ‘tenancy rights’ being sold or given to temples (e.g. Inscriptions 337 of 1923, and 106 of 1924), but it is not clear to what category these refer because the epigraphists sometimes held the theory that all land belonged to the ruler, so that everyone else was a ‘tenant’. Appadorai, Economic Conditions in Southern India, I, pp 170-7. Honoré, ‘Ownership’.

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the right to m anage, B the right to incom e, C the right to alienate, and so on; this can be called the separation o f rights. Second, a par­ ticular right o r bundle o f rights m ay be held jointly by a group o f individuals, such as the m em bers o f a club. A com bination o f these tw o form s can frequently be found, as in the m odem joint-stock com ­ pany, w here the rights to m anage and those to incom e are held by different groups. Split ow nership is often an elem ent in explanations o f the failure o f non-W estem societies to achieve m odern econom ic grow th, but the sim ple contrast betw een the efficiency o f individual private rights and the inefficiency o f collective rights is increasingly suspect. On the one hand, the m odem joint-stock com pany is itself an exam ple o f split ow nership; on the other, earlier forms o f split ow nership m ay also have been econom ically efficient in the circum stances o f the time. W ithout going into the question o f econom ic efficiency, we m ust discuss tw o m ajor form s o f split ow nership in m edieval South India: com m unal ow nership o f village land, and the jo in t fam ily.

The Village Community and Communal Landholding Carl D ahlm an has com pared the English open field village to a firm: We may, if we wish, look at the open field village as a firm. It is a collection of decision rights created by a voluntary relinquishing of those rights by their owners. Implied in the relinquishing of those rights is a way of organizing the relative influence of each member of the collective thus created: a voting rule, and a way to share the proceeds, i.e. a profit sharing rule.... [I]n a very similar way to the firm, the members of the open field village were able to assume corporate responsibility and act as a juridical person. The village could enter into contractual agreements as one body, as for example in the renting of certain lands. It accepted joint responsibility in matters of taxation, militia, criminal liability, road and bridge servicing, and the like. As a body it could bind itself to fulfil obligations and to incur financial liabilities.43 This description is strikingly apt for certain C hola villages in which, significantly enough, the arable land was divided into shares, and the landholders w ere literally ‘shareholders’ (pangukkarar). In these villages only the shareholders w ould be m em bers o f the village 43Carl J. Dahlman, The Open Field System and Beyond (Cambridge, 1980), pp 209-10.

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assem bly. H ow ever, every shareholder was not necessarily a m e m b e r o f the assem bly— m em bers m ight be elected or chosen by lot. (E v en in other villages, where m em bership o f the assem bly was not c o n ­ fined to shareholders, it was likely to be restricted to landow ners, im portant village functionaries, and so on.) It was extrem ely useful to be a m em ber o f the assem bly because that body had im portant adm inistrative and judicial functions and pow ers.44 The land revenue was frequently assessed as a lum p sum on the village as a w hole, and the distribution o f the burden within the village w as left to the villagers them selves, i.e., to the assem bly o r the headm an. M oreover, the assem bly could levy taxes on its own and spend the proceeds on village property and village affairs— irrigation, the tem ple, rituals, and festivals. H ow ever, unlike the English open fields, the arable land in C hola villages w as divided into physically distinct strips, and the fields w ere generally hedged, as they are today. It seems unlikely that different fam ilies ever cultivated jointly their undivided lands w ith com m on livestock and agricultural im plem ents. Even with separate cultivation, it is possible that jo in t decisions were taken about, for instance, the crops to be grow n, although this point has not been explicitly dis­ cussed in the literature. But the inscriptions do record other form s o f collective decision m aking. W hen the landowners w ere B rahm ins who did not cultivate them selves, it is possible that they dealt jointly w ith tenants o f labourers. Som etim es the assem bly adopted certain rules; in one village, the ‘great assem bly [mahasabha] fram ed certain revised rules in regard to tenancy cultivation.’45 O r the assembly could appoint a representative or a com m ittee for the actual m anage­ m ent, th e profits being divided according to the arable land held by each. M oreover, shareholders had rights in the nonarable lands o f the village. T here w as a village site w here each villager w ould have a house. T he threshing floor was invariably com m on to the w hole vil44

Separate committees, with statutory constitutions, were set up to manage the irrigation channels, the garden lands, tax payments, and so on. F. Gros and R. Nagaswamy, Uttaramerur: Legendes, Histoire, Monuments (Pondicherry: Institut Français d’Endology, 1970), describes one brahmin village, Uttaramerur, in which over ninety inscriptions relating to the assembly were found. 45Inscription 536 of 1921.

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lage, the bam , also com m on, as were the barren or brackish lands, the pastures, the forest lands, the tanks, reservoirs, ponds and w ells, and m iscellaneous lands— tem ple sites, burial and crem ation grounds, etc. Som e o f these w ould be wholly com m unal— access w ould be freely available to all villagers, and perhaps even to outsiders. In other cases, the shareholders alone would have rights, som etim es in proportion to th eir shares. This seem s to have been particularly the case w hen the rights had a m onetary value— for instance, if fishing righ ts in the village tanks were leased out, the profits w ould be divid ed in accordance w ith the distribution o f shares. It should be noted that the shares were not necessarily equal, even to start with. Several inscriptions describe the founding o f B rahm in villages, listing the Brahm ins and the shares given to each— som e­ times all got equal shares, but occasionally some Brahm ins, especial­ ly the ch ief guru, got m ore than the others. Shares were inherited, being generally divided equally am ongst sons o f the shareholder. So, as the econom ic and dem ographic grow th o f fam ilies diverged, landholding becam e very unequal, with holdings being expressed as fractions o f original shares. U nder certain system s, the lands were periodically redistributed so as to give good and bad lands to each shareholder in turn,46 but the original, perhaps unequal, size distribu­ tion was preserved, the object o f the redistribution being fairness rather than equality. But redistribution aim ing at equality was not unknow n: a T am il stone inscription o f a late date (1641) in a village in C hinglepet district ‘registers the equal distribution [pagarru] o f land am ongst them selves by the landholders o f Tiruppukuli a t the instance o f the agent o f K um ara Tirum ulai T atacharya o f E ttu r.’47 Lands in such villages were sold both by the village assem bly and by individual shareholders. The assem bly sold the lands that were held in com m on, o f which the m ost com m ercially valuable were those which could be converted into arable. This included once-cultivated land, given up because the fam ily which ow ned it had died out or

R o ta tin g cultivation was found occasionally even in the British period. Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge, 1965), p. 16. Nowadays the practice appears to be confined to tribal areas, especially in the hills. But rotation of fields within the family is still found. Brenda Beck, Peasant Society in Konku (Vancouver, 1972), pp 189-90. 47Inscription of 1916. The Tatacharya may have been a temple trustee; the motive for his action is not stated in the summary.

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lift em igrated. One reason for land sales was the need for m oney to m eet tax arrears, but the m oney could have been used for other c o m ­ m on purposes too, such as the endow m ent o f charities. Individual shareholders could sell their shares, and the buyers a c ­ quired not only the arable but m em bership in the assem bly, as well as a share in all the perquisites and responsibilities th at w ent with it. M oreover, seventeenth century sale deeds show that an individual could sell either the whole or only a part of his share, including a corresponding fraction o f the perquisites, etc.,49 and this was probably the case earlier too. There may have been rules that restricted sales, for instance, by giving pre-em ption rights to certain groups, such as other landholders o r kinsm en. 0 In Brahm in villages attem pts w ere m ade to prevent non-Brahm ins from acquiring shares, but the m ixed caste com position of originally Brahm in villages shows that these restrictions were not entirely successful.51 And in any case, w hatever the restriction, it is surely significant that m em bership in the group w as acquired not solely by birth or kinship but also by purchase.

Family and Individual Rights To som e, the traditional fam ily is an enem y o f individualism (and hence o f industrialisation). A recent representative o f this view is Alan M acfarlane. Synthesizing the work of social anthropologists and historians, he has constructed a model o f a ‘classical p easantry’ which jo

Abandoned lands could revert to either the village assembly or the ruler, presumably depending at least in part on whether there were tax arrears owing on it, and to which authority. Such lands were sometimes given to the temple— again presumably with the consent of whichever authority was entitled to the land. 49 See, for instance, W.H. Bayley and W. Hudleston (eds), Papers on Mirasi Right (Madras, 1892), pp 294-302. 50There are references both in the law books and in compilations of customary law to preemption rights. For instance, one text states that the land had to be offered first to full brothers, and then to a further six categories, ending with creditors and finally co-villagers. P.V. Kane, History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law), 5 vols (Pune, 1930-62), 3, p. 496. But how this procedure actually operated, and in particular how land prices were settled, is not clear. *Ludden, ‘Agrarian Organization,’ p. 173; also, on North India, see Indu Banga, Agrarian System of the Sikhs (New Delhi, 1978), p. 175.

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‘is very roughly that found before the tw entieth century in parts o f A sia [including India] and Eastern E urope’. In this m odel, the family was the unit o f production and consum p­ tion; the head o f the household acted as m anager or adm inistrator rath er than ow ner, and he could be replaced if the other m em bers o f the household found him unsatisfactory. In fact it was the fam ily w hich held the land through tim e; m em bers o f the fam ily obtained their rights by birth, and not at the death o f a parent, so land could not be w illed aw ay. Land could be sold on behalf o f the fam ily, but this w as difficult, both for legal reasons (since the consent o f all m em bers may have been necessary) and because of the strong at­ tachm ent to the land, which had to be handed down intact to des­ cendants. Peasants were loath even to m ortgage the land. Land could be partitioned am ongst the m em bers o f the fam ily, but in general the notion o f individual ow nership was very difficult to introduce in such a society. This type o f family ow nership, in M acfarlane’s m odel, w as ac­ com panied by the absence (or a low level) o f cash and m arkets, low geographical m obility o f peasants, a patriarchal fam ily structure, the low status o f w om en and few fem ale rights, and so on. C lassical peasant societies also tend to be relatively egalitarian. ‘The predicted grow th o f differentiation, with the creation o f a landless proletariat, does not appear to happen’.52 The classical H indu law deals copiously with the distribution o f property rights w ithin the fam ily. 3 Inheritance o f property is governed by tw o different system s— the D ayabhaga in B engal,54 whereby sons inherit only at the death o f their father, and the M itakshara in the rest o f India, w hereby sons receive a right to the ancestral property at birth. In the M itakshara system , ow nership belongs to the coparcenary, i.e. to all m ales descended lineally from a com m on m ale

52Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1978), p. 29. 53J.D.M. Derrett, ‘The History of the Juridical Framework of the Joint Hindu Family’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, No. 2, December 1962, pp 17-47; G.D. Sontheimer, The Joint Hindu Family: Its Evolution as a Legal Institution (New Delhi, 1977). ^ h e r e is apparently no satisfactory explanation of why Bengal differed from the rest of India: Kane, History of Dharmashastra, 3, p. SS9.

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ancestor, up to four generations.55 Thus, while the fam ily is u n ­ divided, the size of the share o f each coparcenor fluctuates, since it can be enlarged by deaths and dim inished by births. Possession and enjoym ent o f family property are joint. The affairs o f the fam ily m ay be m anaged by the father or other senior m em ber. N o coparcenor (except the m anager or the father) can alienate his undivided interest w ithout the consent o f the other coparcenors. The m anager or father, how ever, can do so under special circum stances— in tim es o f distress, for fam ily m aintenance, or for religious purposes. The father can also m ake gifts even o f im m ovable property, within reasonable lim its.56 Each coparcenor has the right to enforce a partition, but this rig h t took a long tim e to establish. This legal structure certainly bears m any resem blances to M acfarlane’s model, but the question is, did it apply to C hola society? The problem arises because the classical Hindu texts are not codes o f law in the European sense, but rath er a com bination o f discussions o f judicial norms and descriptions o f custom ary law .58 There are some reasons for supposing that this legal structure m ight indeed have applied to the Cholas. First, V ijnaneshw ara, author o f the M itakshara, lived in South India at the end o f the eleventh century, and his work is a digest o f several earlier w orks. Second,

55T o lawyers, a Hindu joint family includes all males, up to four generations,

lineally descended from a common ancestor, as well as their wives and unmarried daughters. Sociologists define it differently, focusing on joint residence or joint household economy; A.M. Shah, The Household Dimension of the Family in India (Berkeley, 1973); S. J. Tambiah,'Dowry and Bridewealth and the Property Rights of Women in South India’, in J. Goody and S.J. Tambiah (eds), Bridewealth and Dowry, (Cambridge, 1973). 56Kane, History of Dharmashastra, 3, pp 591-93. 57‘More than fifteen centuries passed (from Gautama to the Mitakshara) before the son’s right to separate from his father during the latter’s lifetime and against his desire was clearly, ungrudgingly and emphatically recognised’. Kane, History of Dharmashastra, 3, p. 571. 58‘The written law of the sastras and the customary laws of the different groups of humanity thus existed side by-side, equally respected though often in notable disagreement with each other. The former acted upon the latter and restricted its mobility; but the latter also acted upon the former through the medium of interpretation. The result was an extremely variable and diverse law’. Lingat, Classical Law of India, pp 41-2. This question is further discussed in the next section.

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s o m e agricultural com m unities in the south even today do follow s o m e o f the M itakshara rules, for instance, that a m an cannot alienate land w ithout his son’s consent.39 But these are not strong enough grounds to confirm that the C holas were a classical peasantry in M acfarlan e’s sense and, in particular, that land was difficult to alienate. The actual sales recorded in the inscriptions are described sub­ sequently. H ere we advance certain general considerations. The first is that, while the law books naturally describe the structure o f rights in the largest possible fam ily, the norm al fam ily in m edieval India w as very probably m uch smaller. In a survey o f current anthropological work on the fam ily and household in India, V eena Das and Ralph N icholas argue that until 1947 ‘as m any as a third o f the m en m ight die w ithout surviving so n s’. Since the H indus believed that a m an who was not survived by a son to carry out his funeral rites would go to a special hell, the ju rists m ade extensive provisions for adoption, and provided for con­ siderable flexibility in rules o f inheritance— ‘the rules for the division o f proj>erty w ere subject to constant interpretation and reinterpretaM ortality rates in the C hola period are unlikely to have been m uch low er than the recent figures cited above. The inscriptions refer fre­ quently to fam ine. It is im possible to estim ate the effects o f disease on m ortality. Som e diseases, such as sm allpox, were unknow n; som e o f the m odem effects o f overcrow ding were not present; but

39P.C. Hiebert, Konduru (Minneapolis, 1977), p. 33. Konduru is a village in another part of South India; unfortunately, this very important issue of the distribution of property rights within the family in rural South India has by and large been neglected by social anthropologists. 60Veena Das and Ralph Nicholas, ‘Family and Households: Difference and Division in South Asian Domestic Life’, in Veena Das, Michele McAlpin, and Ralph Nicholas (eds.), Welfare and Well Being in South Asian Society (Delhi, forthcoming). There is similar evidence for the region covered here. A survey of a village in Tiruchi district revealed old genealogies showing that many families had died out in the (unspecified) past, and many had only one heir, in contrast to the present. Tadahika Hara and Yoshima Komoguchi, Studies in

Socio-cultural Change in Rural Villages in Tiruchirapalli District, Tamilnadu, India, No. 2 (Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1981), pp 74-5.

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m edicine, and especially public-health organization, was p r o b a b ly prim itive com pared even to the nineteenth century.61 O ne interesting consequence noted by Das and N ic h o la s i s th a t the cases o f m ultiple heirs were probably nearly m a t c h e d b y recipients o f two (or m ore) inheritances. If a man inherited I a n d in different villages, he may have wished to alienate some land, w h e t h e r by exchange or sale (though in South India, the geographical r a n g e w ithin which m arriage partners were selected was m uch n a r r o w e r than in the north). There were other reasons besides in h e rita n c e f o r geographical m obility, notably the availability o f new land f o r c u l ­ tivation. D isputing the applicability o f M acfarlane’s m o d e l to m edieval W estern Europe, Rosam und Faith points out that p e a s a n ts m ove from use o f one form of inheritance to another a cco rd in g to econom ic circum stances, and in particular the availability o f la n d . This m ay well have happened in India also— its social im m obility is too often exaggerated. M ore im portant, the small average size o f th e fam ily and the frequent variations in the size o f each fam ily a r e strong reasons to expect changes in fam ily holdings— and w hen la n d is not freely available, these m ust take the form o f sales and p u r­ chases. T here are other C hola departures from the m odel o f the classical peasant fam ily. W om en, for instance, ow ned property, m ovable and im m ovable, as is clear from num erous inscriptions th at record gifts to tem ples and other charities m ade by women o f all conditions, from queens to dancing girls and servants. Som e property m ay have been given to daughters when they m arried. B ut som e property could be acquired by inheritance— a C hola stone inscription records that a w idow gave land that had belonged to her husband and her brother, and w hich had becom e her property after their deaths.63

6,Writing of the period 500 B.C. to a .d . 1200, William McNeill remarks on ‘the heavy parasitism characteristic of a climate as warm and wet as that of the Ganges Valley and of the rest of India’s best agricultural land’ (which would certainly include the rich delta land of the south). William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Oxford, 1976), p. 91. 62Rosamund Jane Faith, ‘Peasant Families and Inheritance Customs in Medieval England’, Agricultural History Review, 14, 1966, pp 77-95; see also her review of Macfarlane in Journal o f peasant Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1979-80, pp 384-5. 63Inscription 258 of 1926.

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W hen a m an died w ithout a male child, his w idow and the ruler w e re rival claim ants to his estate. If he died owing revenue, his lands w ere sold by the ruler o r by the village assem bly, which had to pay th e revenue. Thus a thirteenth-century C hola inscription records that an inhabitant o f a brahm in village left it and died elsew here, w ith ten years o f ‘re n t’ (i.e., land revenue) rem aining in arrears. H e had n o heir, so the assem bly sold his land to pay the taxes. B ut in one case, the wife and son (the son presum ably being too young to cul­ tiv ate the land and pay the arrears) pleaded that they needed support, so part o f the land was given to the tem ple for their m aintenance.64 W hat if the deceased was not in arrears? Jurists advocated recog­ nition o f the w idow as the heir as early as the third century, but rulers in various parts o f India frequently refused to follow this in­ junction, although they may have granted a sum o f m aintenance for the w idow .65 H ow ever, according to the epigraphist, the C hola king R ajadhiraja II decreed in his fourteenth year (circa 1160) that a m ar­ ried wom an, even though childless, should inherit from her husband his lands, slaves, cattle, jew els, and other valuables. There could also be a clash betw een the interests o f the fam ily and those o f the tem ple. As we have seen, the father could give a reasonable am ount o f land to tem ples, but there m ust occasionally have been disputes over what w as reasonable. (Sim ilarly, m inisters in ancient India had occasionally to restrain over-pious kings from giving too m uch to tem ples and m onasteries.) There is even a hint o f som ething like a w ill, though for a later period. A V ijayanagar inscription records that a certain V ikram asola M uthurayan m ade an

^Inscription 432 of 1924. 65A.S. Altekar, State and Government in Ancient India (Delhi, 1958), p. 287. Altekar argues that the tax on persons dying without an heir mentioned in some Chalukya and Yadava records was compensation for the ‘new right’ (to maintenance or to the whole property) of the widow. ‘Death duties’ are also mentioned in Chola inscriptions; Inscription 156 of 1942-3, from Chittoor district, mentions a ‘death duty’ in cash leviable on Brahmins, to be utilised for the benefit of the local tank. in scrip tio n s 429 and 539 of 1919. This decree raises important questions. What force did it have, at least in the central core area? What light does it throw on the assertion that ‘now there never was in India, prior to the British period, a power able to pass legislation, in our sense of the word, at least in matters of private law’. Lingat, Classical Law o f India, pp 141-2.

160 Colonialism, Property and the State assignm ent o f one-fifth o f his estate to the tem ple, stipulating th a t in the absence o f any male issue, the rem aining four-fifths should also belong to the tem ple .67 The inscription is silent about the claim s o f his w ife and o f the ruler: presum ably the latter w ould not be in­ clined to dispute a gift to the tem ple and the tem ple w ould provide for the w idow . One w onders if sim ilar attem pts w ere m ade to leave property w ithin the fam ily; these may not be recorded in the inscrip­ tions bu t one can conceive o f situations where a father m ight w ant to rew ard some particular m em ber o f his fam ily— a favourite son, o r a d aughter who had looked after him .68

UNCERTAINTY OF LEGAL RIGHTS: THE DANGERS OF A PRIORI REASONING The w idespread b elief that the ‘rights’ o f private landow ners in m edieval India w ere so ill-defined and ill-enforced that the poor and w eak at least could hardly be said to have property rights has several strands. M ost m atters relating to rights in land were covered by cus­ tom ary law , which, being unw ritten, could easily be perverted by the pow erful. M oreover, the m achinery for settling disputes was weak. H ence, the argum ent goes, the rich and pow erful controlled the land in fact, w hatever the legal position. But m ost o f these argum ents are based on extrem ely thin evidence. It is true that m any issues o f law, such as the division o f rights w ithin the fam ily, w ere covered by custom ary law, specific to castes and localities. W hen law is unw ritten, rules can be changed unpredictably, as people forget the old rules or as the pow erful are able to insist on some m ythical precedent in their favour. Som e o f these rules, as we have seen, were in fact described in legal texts; that it is now not clear to us when and w here these texts applied is no reason fo r assum ing that it was not clear to the people concerned. Som e scholars hold that these texts were m erely academ ic com ­ pilations by Brahm ins, rarely if ever referred to in the actual settle­ 67Inscription 369 of 1914-5. . 68Kane cites a modem case where ‘a gift of a small portion o f joint family immovable property by the father to his daughter on the ground that she looked after him in his old age was set aside at the suit of his grandsons’. Kane, History of Dharmashastra, 3,593, n. 1122.

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m ent o f disputes, but J.D .M . D errett has described and analyzed a tw elfth-century inscription in Tam il and Sanskrit in w hich a dispute regarding caste status w as settled by reference to the te x t .69 N or should one exaggerate the dangers o f relying on m em ory, particularly in a culture w hich so greatly stressed accuracy in m em orization. W rit­ ing in the early eighteenth century, the French Jesuit F ather Jean B ouchet stated that w hile the H indus o f South India had no w ritten codes o r digests (in which he was wrong), ‘they have a num ber o f genera] m axim s in lieu o f laws, w hich are known to everybody’, citing as exam ples m axim s on the inheritance o f property, and the rights o f adoptive children .70 How efficient was the enforcem ent o f rights? There w as in fact an institutional structure for the settlem ent o f disputes: village as­ sem blies, caste tribunals, intravillage councils, higher-level as­ sem blies, and so on. M . G alanter, w riting o f pre-B ritish India in general, argues that these tribunals covered such sm all groups that they w ere unable ‘to invoke fixed legal principles, apply them to the case, and m ake their decisions stick .’ 1 Given the paucity o f evidence, such statem ents m ust be largely a priori; and one could give a priori argum ents on the other side too, such as the evidence for the eighteenth century and for today that local tribunals can actually be fairly efficient in settling disputes. In fact, this kind o f transaction cost m ay w ell have been low er (even as a proportion o f the value o f land) then than it is today, when endless appeals to higher courts are available.

69

Derrett remarks that ‘the pre-British situation has been misjudged by some, who believed that written sources of law were never consulted by judges....’ He also cites a literary account of a fifteenth-century dispute in which large numbers of texts were consulted. J.D.M. Derrett, ‘Two Inscriptions concerning the Status of Kammalas and the Application of Dharmashastra’, in Prof K.A. Nilakanta Sastri 80th Birthday Felicitation Volume (Madras, 1971), pp 32-56. 70L. Rocher, ‘Father Bouchet’s Letter on the Administration of Hindu Law’, in Richard Lariviire (ed.), Studies in Dharmashastra (Calcutta, 1984); also see idem, ‘Hindu Conceptions of Law’, The Hastings Law Journal, 29 (1978), pp 1283-1305. 7 ,M. Galanter, ‘Remarks on Family and Social Change in India’, in David C. Busham (ed.), Chinese Family Law and Social Change in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Seattle, 1978), pp 492-3. A similar contrast between India and China is drawn by Stein, Essays on South India, pp 77-8.

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F or instance, Father Bouchet found that the eighteenth-century process o f dispute settlem ent was cheap and efficient: disputes w ere settled by the village headm an, with the aid o f three o r four ar­ bitrators. 2 Presum ably, the vast m ajority o f disputes over land sales in the C hola period, too, were settled within the village, and w ere not recorded. It was generally only when higher authorities w ere called in th at the dispute m ight reach an inscription, or w hen the norm al processes o f dispute settlem ent— generally arbitration or an attem pt to reach a consensus— failed.' But it is m ore than likely that when these processes broke dow n, settlem ent becam e difficult .73 This kind o f a priori reasoning is adm ittedly unsatisfactory, but there is little help in the inscriptions. As m ight be expected, the dis­ putes w hich figure in them usually concern the tem ple on one side and local assem blies or individuals on the other. Often a k in g ’s officer arbitrated, fining the guilty party. There are certainly refer­ ences to illegal occupation and to the inability to obtain legal redress. C laim ants w ere occasionally driven to suicide to attest ow nership. In one instance in Tanjore, four individuals had occupied and claim ed •JA

72

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Modes of settlement of disputes in South Indian villages today are described, e.g., by K. Ishwaran, ‘Customary Law in Village India’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1964), pp 228-43; and Dagfin Sivertson, When Caste Barriers Fall (London, 1963); as well as Hiebert, Konduru. Hiebert and Ishwaran both show how the poor and weak could secure rights against the strong—though of course there were many instances when the powerless lost. 73One of the few descriptions we have of the actual operation of the law in pre-British India, the working of the Maratha judicial system from 1400 to 1800, suggests that once appeals were made, final settlements were difficult. V.T. Gune, The Judicial System o f the Marathas (Pune, 1953). Only a few of the cases Gune cites relate to land. 74There is some difference amongst the authorities on whether or not the king had any judicial officers. Arguing against Nilakanta Sastri, Subbarayulu asserts that there were no royal judicial officers, and that all judicial proceedings were local or communal. Subbarayulu, Political Geography, p. 422. But there are references in the inscriptions to arbitration by officials of the king, whether or not their positions were specifically judicial. Settlement officers used to look into the validity of title deeds. Thus in one Tanjore village, the village assembly had occupied temple lands for thirty-five years, and on a complaint the king sent an officer to look into the matter. He found the assembly guilty and fined it (Inscription 139 of 1935-6).

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ow nership o f som e tem ple lands; a num ber o f tem ple officials entered fire ‘to attest to the ow nership o f the tem ple ’ 75 and died; the four w ere com pelled not only to give up the disputed lands but in addition to m ake gifts o f m oney and land for the m aking and w orshipping o f im ages o f the self-sacrificers .76 A C halukyan inscription o f 1059-60 records that tw o Brahm ins forcibly occupied the land o f three Gaundar (m em bers o f a peasant caste), who decided that one o f them should kill h im self to prove their title, and the two survivors w ould com pensate his fam ily. He stabbed him self to death in the presence o f the Brahm ins, who thereupon gave up the land .77 H ow ever, one cannot conclude that these dram atic but scattered instances w ere either norm al o r so frequent as to m ake titles to land w orthless. T he truth is that we know next to nothing about the ef­ ficiency o f judicial procedures in m edieval South India, and hence even less about their effect on property rights.

SALES OF LAND: TYPES, PURPOSES AND NUMBERS O ne can now m ove to m uch firm er ground— the evidence o f actual sales o f lan d 78in the inscriptions. Noboru K arashim a points out that in the early C hola period (849-985), land sales to and by individuals w ere m ostly by B rahm ins in Brahm in settlem ents ( brahmadeyas). H ow ever, by the late C hola period (1179-1279), m any inscriptions

75This is somewhat different from ordeal by fire, where the accused proved his innocence by emerging unscathed from the trial; ordeal by fire was a recognized judicial procedure in India too. One might add that the difficulty of obtaining justice might well drive one to suicide in India today; indeed it was reported in the newspapers on 5 February 1982 that a man had immolated himself in order to shame someone who had occupied his land into giving it back, but shame was probably more efficacious in medieval times, in sc rip tio n 188 of 1925. 77 K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, T he Chalukyas of Kalyani’, in G. Yazdani (ed.), The Early History o f the Deccan, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1960), 1, p. 427. 78Generally referred to a kani, sometimes as pangu, or share. The inscriptions record a variety of other transactions too: gifts, mortgages, and exchanges of land (e.g., Inscription 117 of 1916), but these have not been analysed quantitatively as yet.

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record individual sales in peasant villages also .79 Im perialistic expan­ sion was accom panied by the distribution o f booty in the core areas; there was greatly expanded irrigation, and the grow ing prosperity was accom panied by increasing econom ic differentiation in core areas. M oreover, in the m iddle C hola period (985-1179), the practice o f giving lands on beneficial tenures to B rham ins was extended to bureaucrats, who disposed o f their lands as the B rahm ins did, which facilitated sales by peasants in the late C hola period. By this time, the strong com m unal feeling o f the early period had broken down. B ut th is im plied that communal feeling was less strong in the Brahmin villages than elsew here during the early period— for w hich there seem s to b e no evidence. (K arashim a does not explicitly discuss this point.) In any case, the strength o f com m unal feeling m ay itself reflect differences in the property rights o f the two groups. The Brahm ins, as we have seen, did not cultivate the lands them selves— th eir rights extended to a share in the tax revenues, and, if they had the right to evict the cultivators, to an additional sum representing a rental in­ com e, or, if they hired labourers, to the profits o f m anagem ent. In the early period, there are references to the m anagem ent and super­ vision o f cultivation by com m ittees, and in such cases the sale by a Brahm in o f his share did not affect the cultivation o f the land and hence the taxpaying capacity o f the village. Since the village was often collectively responsible for the paym ent o f the revenue, the danger th at output m ight be affected m ay have m ade landholders in peasant villages reluctant to allow one o f their num ber to sell his

79

Karashima uses as evidence his own analysis of 1SS land sales and Subbarayulu’s analysis of 260 sales in the Chola inscriptions. Subbarayulu found that over 80 per cent of the sales in the early Chola period were by Brahmin assemblies (54 per cent) or individuals (28 per cent); whereas in the last period, the Brahmin assemblies sold 26 per cent, Brahmin individuals only 4 per cent, and non-Brahmin individuals as much as 37 per cent. (The other categories of sellers were temples, mercantile assemblies, and ‘others’.) Karashima states that ‘individual landholding did exist on a rather larger scale in the non-brahmadeya villages in the lower Kaveri valley towards the end of Chola rule’, and elsewhere refers to ‘many land transfers’ by individuals, but we do not yet have sufficient evidence to enable us to estimate the significance of individual holdings or transfers as proportions of the total land occupied. Karashima, South Indian History, pp 1-35.

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land, ju st as m em bers o f the mir were reluctant to let one o f their num ber leave in nineteenth-century Russia. On the other hand, the Brahmins had been given brahmadeya lands for a purpose, such as the performance o f rituals or maintenance o f learning. Presum ably the Brahm in com m unity had to ensure that these duties continued to be perform ed. M any could be perform ed only by B rahm ins, and explicitly or im plicitly sales were restricted to B rah­ m ins, at least initially. But over the years, people o f other, even low, castes, bought their way into these villages. It is possible th at B rah­ m in v illag es becam e m ore m ixed in caste com position o v er tim e than did p easan t villages, reflectin g B rah m in s’ g reater m o b ility . In the later C hola period, to continue with K arashim a’s account, landlordism grew in the peasant villages. M any landow ners had grown rich (w hether by official service or plunder or farm ing) and bought land either to cultivate them selves or to lease out. W hatever the earlier restrictions on sales had been— pre-em ption rights o f other villagers, a general ban on sales (though there is no evidence for this), or m erely lack o f buyers— they had broken dow n. W ith the grow th o f prosperity, the buyers cam e from various occupations— w eavers ,81 toddy palm tappers, m erchants, and others. H ow strong is the evidence provided by the analyses o f sales by K arashim a and Y. Subbarayulu? Certainly, 415 sales o f all types in roughly as m any years (o f which several involved individuals) is not a large num ber. But one should note, first, that this is not the total num ber o f sales described in inscriptions. Not all the inscriptions have been recorded and translated as yet nor have all the recorded C hola inscriptions been analyzed. N evertheless, it appears unlikely, given the frequency with which the sales appear in the annual epigraphical series, that a very m uch larger num ber o f private sales will be O') found in the inscriptions. But why should one expect them there? 80

Ludden describes the purchases by Shanar (toddy palm tappers) and others from the fourteenth century on, when immigration grew substantially, but adds that there was also immigration into the district earlier. Ludden, ‘Agrarian Organization’. Ch. 2. Several instances of purchases of land by weavers are cited in Vijaya Ramaswamy, Textiles and Weavers in Medieval South India (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 82It is also possible that some sales were concealed. Before the twelfth century, Marc Bloch comments, when the legality of land sales in Europe was doubtful,

166 Colonialism, Property and the State It was expensive to incise inscriptions, and the vast m ajority o f private transactions would hot need to be recorded thus. One tends to assum e that there w ere relatively few land sales in the C hola period, as com pared not only, say, to W estern Europe or England at that tim e bu t also to South India in the British period; and this follow s from the view that the British period saw increasing m onetization, the grow th o f m arkets, and m ore secure land rights. B ut it is not clear that rights were less secure during the C hola period. T here was undoubtedly m uch less m onetization, but is it so certain that the m arket in land (as m easured, say, by the percentage o f cultivated land sold each year) was much lower in the Chola period? On the one hand, there was m uch m ore uncultivated land available then, so that the cultivators m ay have been m ore m obile and hence readier to sell land; but on the other, buyers may have been less eager to buy. In order to estim ate the econom ic significance o f land sales, one needs to consider not only their num ber, but also the purposes for w hich land was bought and sold. Fortunately, the inscriptions som e­ tim es state the purpose. Perhaps the m ain recorded reason for the sale o f the land was the need to m eet tax arrears— a considerable num ber o f inscriptions list such sales. As we have seen, even village assem blies were occasionally forced to sell com m unal land to pay o ff taxes. D oubtless land was also sold to redeem debts to tem ples 3 or to private individuals. Land w as also sold to enable the ow ner to m igrate— cultivators and others w ere not im m obile. Both push and pull factors operated. W hen new lands were settled, some o f the colonists m ay have had shares in settled lands, w hich they sold to obtain the new . This is pure conjecture; though several inscriptions describe the process of settlem ent, none o f them m entions this point. Push factors are recorded: one inscription describes how in a fam ine som e residents o f the village m igrated, selling their house sites, and the village as­

the sale of land to the church was disguised as a pious donation, the price returns being reduced, Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (London 1961), pp 132-3. Similar transactions may well have taken place in the early Chola period. 83A Vijayanagar inscription from Chittoor, Inscription 179 of 1924, states that an individual sold land to the temple to liquidate the debt he had incurred in worship and during a period of drought. It is not stated in the summary whether or not he borrowed from the temple: temples were large lenders of money.

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sem bly ‘redistributed’ tw enty-five shares in the village to new com ers, who w ere not allow ed to sell or barter their output to outsiders .84 A s regards land purchases, the m ain purpose recorded in the in­ scriptions was, obviously, for presentation to a tem ple. But som e of these recorded transactions are com plex and throw light on purely private transactions. Take, for exam ple, Inscription 129 o f 1914, an inscription o f the C hola period. A village assem bly had m ortgaged a piece o f land to Y> an individual; X, who wanted to give that land to a tem ple, redeem ed the land from Y, then bought it from the as­ sem bly and gave it to the tem ple, m aking a lum p-sum paym ent tow ards tax exem ption. The incom e from the land w as to be used to m aintain four people to sing hym ns. A lternatively X could have given cash directly and stipulated that the income from investing it should be used for a specific purpose— several inscriptions record donors w ho did ju st that. D onations were m ade in land as well as cash, and doubtless in each case the particular donor was m oved by different considera­ tions; the availability o f land m ust have been an im portant factor. Even if the donor had land him self, he may have been reluctant to part with it (or been restrained from doing so by his relations). P eter G randa, w riting o f a later period, supplies another m otive for buying land fo r gift purposes— purchased land had a clear title .85 A series o f choices had to be m ade. On the donor’s part, there were decisions as to w hat to give (cash, land, other gifts in kind) and w hether to stipulate how it should be invested (in som e inscriptions the donor lays down that his m oney is to be invested in a particular way). W here ‘untied’ cash was given, the tem ple authorities had to determ ine how to invest it. A farm er w ho had a small holding or a large fam ily m ight have needed to buy additional lands for subsistence purposes. L ife was uncertain in m edieval South India: the size o f the fam ily, and hence the availability o f fam ily labour, m ust have fluctuated considerably, and to som e extent sales and purchases o f land could have offset these fluctuations. Presum ably each transaction o f this type w as not

^Inscription 151 of 1934-5, cited by Hall, Trade and Statecraft, p. 121. Hall does not state who bought the house sites or what happened to the shares of the migrants. 85Peter Granda, T he “Gift after Purchase" in Vijayanagara Inscriptions’, Journal o f the Epigraphical Society of India, 6 , 1976, pp 25-31.

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very large, and one would not expect this m otive to be directly m en­ tioned in the inscriptions. T here is m ention, how ever, of land bought to be developed and then resold. Tw o early-thirteenth-century inscriptions describe the enterprise o f a certain Pandyadeva who bought waste land from a village assem bly, reclaim ed it, and sold it four years later for ten tim es its original value .86 Rents could yield a handsom e incom e; K.R. H all cites the purchase by two m erchants of ‘the landlord’s share’ in a large plot o f land for a considerable am ount in gold .87 In another C hola inscription, an assem bly sold half a village to a m erchant’s son, and the other half to seven V ellalas (m em bers o f an agricultural caste), again for cash .88 Finally, land was also sold to finance consum ption, as in the trans­ action recorded in a stone inscription from G udur from the thirteenth year o f V irarajendra C holadeva (1073-4), where three Brahm ins (probably related) sell their land in order to pay for the m arriage of the sons o f one o f them .89

CONCLUSIONS The C hola regim e o f m edieval South India, we have argued, is a notable exception to that supposedly universal phenom enon, the ab­ sence o f private property in land in the East. It m ay be useful to recapitulate the m ain features o f the system o f landholding. The king him self apparently had little or no dem esne lands, but was entitled to a share o f the produce from all the land in his kingdom , though nothing can be said definitely about the rates o f land tax, or what actual collections were, o r how they were distributed. U nsettled land w as generally his to give, but on settled land he coul^l evict the holders only for tax arrears (just as the U nited States governm ent does today) or for m ajor crim es such as treason— and there is no evidence at all that these pow ers were exercised frequently.

86Inscriptions 15 and 16 of 1924. 87Hall, Trade and Statecraft, p. 61. 88Inscription 230 of 1922. 89A. Buttcrworth and V. Venugopaul (eds.), A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper-Plates in the Nellore District, 3 pts (Madras, 1905), Gudur 4.

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The king w as certainly no O riental Despot; indeed it is now ar­ gued that, outside a central core area, he was ruler in nam e only, m erely exercising ritual authority while the m ajor part o f state pow er w as exercised by other ‘levels o f the state’. In South India, these ranged from the tem ple through regional assem blies to village as­ sem blies. These institutions also collected taxes and exercised execu­ tive and jud icial powers. Below these institutions lay what one may call, w ithout any claim to precision, the private dom ain, and the inscriptions m ake references to various categories o f private rights, including those generally regarded as th e core rights o f private ownership: the rights to possess, cultivate, m ortgage, sell, and bequeath. Certain categories o f rights holders, such as the kaniatchikaran, had all these rights and could be evicted only for prolonged tax arrears or for serious crim e; other­ wise, if the king, the tem ple, or the assem bly w anted his land, they had to buy it (if he w anted to sell it), and there is am ple evidence in the inscriptions that they did so. There are certainly enorm ous problem s in interpreting native legal term s, and one tem pting solution, follow ed by m any m odern his­ torians, is to ignore these categories altogether, using instead term s like land controller. A dm ittedly we do not know the m eaning o f the native term s precisely— one has only to look at the variety o f ways in w hich they have been translated. This am biguity has led to three im plicit or explicit assum ptions, all o f which are doubtful. T he first is th at the term s were equally am biguous to contem porary users, and so can be ignored. B ut why should one assum e this? W hy d id the C holas use different words to express the rights being conveyed in actual gifts, sales, and purchases o f land? A stronger and m ore frequent assertion is that, w hatever the words, there existed in fact no legitim ate private property rights w orth the nam e. The frequent references to title deeds and registers and to form al ju d icial procedures for conveying rights are again, on this view , irrelevant, because these so-called rights could not be enforced. In this ‘highly flu id ’ state, goes the third assum ption, the distribu­ tion o f rights in the land had little to do with the law — the pow er o f the land controllers w as constrained only by ‘ceaseless com petition’ betw een them . If this w ere so, one should find, for exam ple, instances o f rich m en taking oVer the lands o f the weak, regardless o f the legal title, or taking m ore rent than the contract specified. T he inscriptions certainly do m ention such cases and I have described those I have

170 Colonialism, Property and the State com e across. N evertheless, it seem s to me that the evidence that private rights were respected is rather stronger than that they were not, but it is as much to the point that the evidence on both sides is thin. A separate issue is that o f individual rights. There w ere two im ­ portant landow ning groups: the jo in t landlord body found in some villages and that universal institution, the fam ily. M em bership o f the group strengthened the individual’s pow ers against those outside the group at the sam e tim e that his freedom to act against others within the group was constrained. But it was possible to leave o r to join the jo in t landlord body, and shares in it were bought and sold. M em ­ bership o f the fam ily as a landow ning unit was also not entirely involuntary; sons could probably enforce partition o f the fam ily property. W ithin the group, alienation of fam ily land m ay have been constrained by the need to obtain the consent o f adult m ale m em bers o f the fam ily, but it is im portant not to exaggerate the strength o f this constraint. In those days o f high m ortality, fam ilies w ere probab­ ly not so large that it was difficult to obtain agreem ent on decisions to sell property, and sharp changes in fam ily size may have m ade it necessary to buy and sell land. Land was given to daughters and was som etim es held by widows; it could be divided am ongst sons; and land was exchanged and sold as people m oved. The inscriptions record a variety o f transactions o f this kind. This study has concentrated on one m edieval South Indian kingdom , but there is no reason to believe that it was unique. The inscriptional data are perhaps not so rich for other areas, but other scholars have show n that private property in land was found, for instance, in N orth India and Bengal too. In the light o f their work, and the argum ents put forward here, we m ay need to reconsider some popular beliefs on the differences between m edieval India and m edieval Europe, and on the revolution in p ropertj^rights effected by the B ritish. AA

A /\

On North India, see, e.g. Sircar, Land System and Feudalism; L. Gopal, ‘Ownership of Agricultural Land in Ancient India’,• Journal of the Bihar Research Society, Vol. 46, Nos 1/4, 1960, pp 27-44; on Bengal, B. M. Morrison, Political Centers and Cultural Regions in Early Bengal (Tucson, 1978). Many of the leading historians of South India also hold that it is meaningful to talk of private landownership in the Chola period—the references I have made, for instance, to Nilakanta Sastri and N. Karashima, show this— but they have not analysed the content of the term extensively.

7 The State and Private Property: Some General Considerations

M any historians o f India are uneasy over using the word ‘landow ner’ (except perhaps to describe the ruler) for any period o f Indian history, but especially before the B ritish. The grounds for unease are one or m ore o f the follow ing assertions: 1. the pre-B ritish legal system s did not have a developed concept o f ow nership; 2 . there was such a concept, but it did not apply to land, all land being ow ned by the ruler either de jure or de fa cto ; 3. land was not ow ned by the ruler but private rights over any piece o f land w ere held by so m any different people that no one held enough rights to w arrant being called a landow ner; 4. groups such as the jo in t fam ily or a landlord body rather than the individual held rights; and 5. the actual protection o f rights was so m eagre that the legal posi­ tions had little practical significance. O f course, not all these argum ents are put forw ard by the sam e author; d ifferent authors apply one or m ore o f them to different regim es. And, obviously, there are distinguished historians w ho do not accept any o f them . But our purpose here is not to exam ine any particular author, or particular regim e , 1 but to exam ine the underlying logic o f these argum ents. M oreover, I shall concentrate on the state or ruler and private property in land, nam ely, first the argum ent that the ruler was th e de jure or de facto landow ner, and secondly, that w hatever the legal position, the apparatus o f protection was so w eak that private rights were severely attenuated. ’i have examined these arguments in the context of the Cholas in ‘Private Property in Asia? The Case of Medieval South India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1985.

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B ut it may be useful to stress one general point at the outset. It is very com m on to begin discussions o f land ow nership in India with the statem ent that there was no absolute private ow nership o f land in India as if such a thing, in the sense of com plete exem ption from social control, could exist anyw here. As H onoré stresses, private ow nership has never been absolute. ‘Even in the m ost individualistic ages o f Rom e and the U nited States, it has a social aspect. This has usually been expressed in such incidents o f ow nership as the prohibi­ tion o f harm ful use, liability to execution for debt, to taxation and to expropriation by the public authority . ’ 2 If there is no absolute ow nership, ‘ow nership’ m ust necessarily be a m atter o f degree. As social control grows, private rights becom e attenuated, perhaps to a point where one may want to say that private ow nership in X does not exist. Thus the grow th o f zoning restrictions, building codes and so on leads B ecker to assert that ‘full liberal ow nership o f land, at least in densely populated areas o f industrial­ ized societies, is a thing o f the past . ’ 3 W here social control is very strong, one m ay refer to the agents o f th at control as controllers; in recent w ritings on India the term ‘land controller’ is frequently used .4 Possibilities o f confusion arise because ow nership im plies fairly com plete control over the thing ow ned. So it is possible to have both official ‘controllers’ and private ow ners o f a thing at the sam e tim e. In India today there are exchange controllers, who are bureaucrats, but there are also private ow ners o f foreign exchange. Thus, when w riting o f land tenure in the past, the term ‘land controllers’ is not necessarily a substitute for ‘landow ner’, though it is true that the co-existance o f ow ners and controllers is an uneasy one— if the controller’s pow ers extend beyond a particular point one m ay wish to drop the term ‘ow ner’ and adopt a w eaker term. T here are in fact various possible m ethods o f control: the govern­ m ent; custom and other social, non-governm ental but legal form s o f constraint; and finally illegal form s o f constraint. A ll these have relevance to India.

Honoré, ‘Ownership’, in A.M. Guest (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (London, 1961), pp 144-5. 3Lawrence C. Becker, Property Rights (London, 1977), p. 116. 4The use of this term is criticized in ‘A Note on the Term ‘‘Land Control’”. 2R.M.

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LEGAL ARGUMENTS T w o sorts o f argum ents have been put forw ard to support the view that the Indian ruler w as the de jure or de facto ow ner o f land, to the exclusion o f private rights. The first is a legal argum ent. In Sanskrit literature, the king was occasionally described as the ‘ultim ate lo rd ’, adhipati, and this has occasionally led to the er­ roneous belief th at no private property in land was possible .5 Sim ilar rhetorical claim s can be found in Islam ic texts. In fact, distinctions w ere generally draw n betw een crow n lands and other lands though the king could own land personally; moreover there was also a category o f lands w hich could be ow ned neither by the ruler nor by private individuals. ‘Forests, sacred m ountains, holy places, tem ples— these have no (definite) ow ner and they cannot be the private property (of any o n e ) . ’ 6 In any case, statem ents in the legal texts that the king is the ul­ tim ate proprietor no m ore prove that there was no private property in land than the claim o f the governm ent to em inent dom ain does in the U nited States.

REVENUE PRACTICE The other argum ents are based not so m uch on legal texts as on revenue practice. Before discussing these, one m ust first note that the liability to pay land revenue is not disproof o f the landholder’s ow nership. It is, if anything, proof o f ow nership .7

5Megasthenes, writing of the Mauryan empire ‘... all India is the property of

the crown and no private person is permitted to own land’, quoted in S.K. Maity, Economic Life in the Gupta Period (Calcutta, 1957), pp 15-6. On the literature regarding the king as ultimate proprietor see J.D.M. Derret, Essays in Classical and Mbdem Hindu Law, Vol. 2 (Leiden, 1977), p. 87. *P.V. Kane, History of the Dharmashastra, Vol. 4 (Pune, 1977), p. 377. These lands were distinguished from lands which were temporarily unowned, but which could give rise to property rights, especially for the mler, also J.D.M. Derrett, Essays in Classical and Modem Hindu Law, Vol. 2, pp 33-5. 7Honoré states ‘A good case can certainly be made for listing liability to tax and expropriability by the state as such’ (i.e. standard incidents of liberal ownership), although he himself does not do so; Honoré ‘Ownership’, pp 123-4.

174 Colonialism, Property and the State It is quite a separate point that if the land revenue was in general so high that it left no surplus w ith the cultivator (i.e. a profit above subsistence or the wage level) or if it was frequently and arbitrarily raised to very high levels, private ow nership w ould in fact have very little econom ic value, w hatever the legal position. W e have alm ost no know ledge o f w hat was actually collected in taxes on the land and its product before the M ughals. ‘It is unfortunate,’ H abib states, ‘that w e cannot satisfactorily establish how the agricultural surplus was appropriated in the period before the G horian conquests... W hile the inscriptions give us the nam es o f a large num ber o f taxes, their nature is a m atter o f speculation; alm ost nothing can be said about the share o r produce that they represented .’ 8 For the Sultanate period, H abib infers that taxes were often very heavy from reports o f p easan ts’ suffering and peasant uprisings. Even for the M ughal period, the evidence on actual collections is extrem ely problem atic; from H ab ib ’s careful discussion one gets the im pression that the average share o f produce taken by the state was very high— ‘the land revenue covered practically the entire surplus produce raised by the p easan t’ but profits on cash crops such as sugarcane and cotton could also be high: ‘Such peasants as were able to com m and the necessary resources to raise these crops m ust then have norm ally gained subtantially from their investm ent ’ . 9 D oubtless there were periods when tax collections w ere arbitrary and oppressive, but there is no evidence at all that this was the rule. And since there are several periods, including the M ughal period, for w hich w e have records o f private transactions in land, it is clear that land taxes did not alw ays destroy the sale value o f lands. In theory, M uslim rulers levied higher rates o f land revenue than in the H indu period. At the end o f the thirteenth century, the theoreti­ cal rate w as fixed at h alf the gross produce, and thereafter it rem ained very high, from one-third to one-half the gross produce, and even

8Irfan Habib, ‘Northern India Under The Sultanate: Section 2’ in Irfan Habib and Tapan Raychaudhuri (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 60 9Ibid., pp 223-5. The two statements are not irreconcilable, though reconciling them does raise questions about the meaning of the ‘surplus’. I have questioned the conclusion that the average tax absorbed the surplus in ‘Agricultural Taxation in India and Indonesia’, forthcoming.

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three-fourths in fertile areas, such as coastal G ujarat . 10 B ut actual collections w ere frequently considerably lower. 1 As alw ays, the am ount that the ruler could actually collect depended on the stability o f his regim e; he had to offer concessions to obtain peace, or in return for help in m aking w ar . 12 The m ost im portant sort of conces­ sions was to leave untouched the revenue-free lands o f tem ples and Brahm ins, and perhaps not to revise the assessm ents to take account o f all increases in productivity. In any case, the rates could not be com pletely arbitrary. M em ories o f the custom ary rates o f land revenue w ere strong, and there is at least one recorded case w here the people o f G ujarat appealed to a high judicial authority against proposed new taxes; he held they were invalid and they w ere not im posed . 13 U nfortunately, we are not told the grounds on w hich he m ade his judgem ent, and such cases were probably rare, but they do show that the state’s pow ers o f taxation were constrained in theory as well as in practice. It m ay be that the grow th o f state power, and the increasing centralization o f governm ent led to higher collection o f revenue in the M uslim period, and especially under the M ughals, but it is not the case that these rates were so high as to make private property in agricultural land valueless everyw here. C om m erical agriculture spread, urbanization increased, cultivation and agricultural produc­ tivity w ent up in m any areas, and sales o f agricultural land were recorded.

IOIrfan Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India (Bombay, 1973), pp 190-6. 11 See for example, J.F. Richards,

Mughal Administration in Golconda

(Oxford, 1957), pp 21-30; also Shirin Moosvi, ‘Magnitude of Land Revenue Demand and Income of the Mughal Ruling Class’, Medieval India: A Miscellany, Vol. 4, pp 91-121. l 2Thus, in A.D. 1297, the regional council of a number of Jat villages protested against the increases in the land revenue from one-sixth to one-half; refused to pay this and other taxes; and threatened to go to war if their demands (unspecified in the minutes) were not met. In A.D. 1547, the council was apparently successful in getting taxes lowered; in A.D. 1517, it agreed to send an army of 40,000 soldiers to help the Delhi Sultan crush a revolt led by his brother, in return for certain concessions. M.A. Pradhan, The Political System o f the Jats of Northern India (Bombay, 1966), pp 254-7. 1 Zameeruddin Siddiqui, ‘The Institution of the Qazi under the Mughals’, Medieval India: A Miscellany, Vol. 1 (Aligarh, 1969), p. 244.

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M oreland asserts that w hat were sold were not ‘rights o f ow ner­ ship in the ordinary sense,’ but m erely ‘rights to occupancy during the K ing’s pleasure .’ 14 If taken literally, this would im ply that the ruler could evict the landholder even when he paid his land revenue but there is absolutely no evidence for this and a great deal of evidence to the contrary. Irfan H abib denies that the taxpayer (w hom he calls, rather im ­ precisely, ‘the p easant’) had the right o f ‘really free alienation— the right to abandon or dispose o f the land as the holder m ight choose— w hich is an essential feature o f m odem proprietary right,’ and bases his argum ents on the fact that if the peasant did not pay the tax he m ight be forced to cultivate. “The farm an to M uham m ed Hashim (Art. 2) lays dow n flatly that ‘if after investigation it appears that despite th eir capacity to undertake cultivation and (the availability of) irrigation, they (the peasants) have w ithdraw n their hands from cultivation,” the revenue officials should “coerce and threaten them and visit them w ith im prisonm ent and corporal punishm ent,” If even despite these com pulsive m ethods, a peasant was found incapable o f cultivating the soil, his right to the land lapsed at least tem porarily and could be transferred Jo another... It was a natural consequence o f this outlook that a right was assum ed to lie with the authorities to bring back fugitive peasants by force, especially if they happened to flee to the territories o f a ch ief or zam indar.’ 5 In a later work, H abib states that actual instances o f forced cultivation appear to be rare: ‘It w ould rather seem that the restraint on the peasant w as an ultim ate rig h t resting w ith the em peror and his assignees, exercised in practice only in exceptional circum stances . ’ 16 R are though it m ay be, it is worth exam ining the legal im plica­ tions o f the em peror’s ‘right’ a little further. There seem to be three d istinct issues. The first is the nature o f punishm ent for non-paym ent o f revenue. A battery o f punishm ents— from torture and sale o f the

14W.H. Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India (Allahabad, 1929), p. 58. !5Irfan Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India, pp 115-6. This question is not discussed in this chapter in the Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 1. ,6Irfan Habib, ‘The Social Distribution of Landed Property in Pre-British India: A Historical Survey’ in R.S. Sharma (ed.), Indian Society: Historical Probings (New Delhi, 1974), p. 313.

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177

d efau lter’s fam ily, and other m ovable and im m ovable property to forced cultivation— w ere available to the M uslim ruler . 17 M odern states can also sell property to m eet tax dues, though the d efau lter’s fam ily is not now regarded as his property; in certain cases they can send him to prison. But they generally cannot and do not force him to w ork to pay o ff the liability. The perm issible degree o f punishm ent is defined in nearly all form s o f law ; these lim its are exceeded by m any m odern governm ents but for political rather than econom ic of­ fenses. The second question is w hether the ow ner should give up h is title to avoid future taxation. This m ust be im plicit in full liberal ow ner­ ship, i.e. the ow ner m ust be able to give up his title, by sale or letting it lapse to the state. I f taxpayers in pre-B ritish India could not aban­ don their land and claim s to ow nership to avoid future paym ent o f land revenue, they w ere clearly not full owners. C onnected w ith this is the question w hether the state could direct w hat crops w ere to be cultivated, regardless o f w hether o r not the ow ner w as prepared to pay the land tax. L et us suppose the taxpayer w anted to concentrate effort on h alf o f his land, grow ing a particular­ ly labour-intensive crop there, but w as prepared to pay the assessed revenue on the w hole o f his land. D id the state have the legal right to insist on his grow ing a particular crop on all the land? The answ er depends on w hether it could only collect h alf the actual production, in w hich case it would insist on production, or could tax the poten­ tial— if the latter, it did not need the legal pow er to order a particular pattern o f production. (In India today, the state can in fact pow erfully influence the choice o f crops that are grown by its price and purchase policies, but it does not have the legal right to enforce a particular pattern o f cultivation, though some have advocated that the govern­ m ent should assum e legal pow ers to direct cultivation in the com ­ m and areas o f large irrigation schem es.) It is highly probable that the question o f enforced cultivation arose only w hen the cultivator could not o r would not pay tax; hence, there is at present no unam biguous answ er to the question o f w hat the cultivator’s legal rights were, assum ing he m et his tax liabilities. But

>7 Moreland, Agrarian System, pp 142-3. These punishments were available to Hindu rulers too though I have not seen references to the sale of wives and children of tax defaulters.

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this m ay well be because the question o f liability to tax has not been looked at this way. The Arthasastra expressly states, ‘Those who do not till should m ake good the loss (to the treasury ) . ’ 18 This suggests that the state was prim arily interested in the revenue, not actual cultivation, though it m ight enforce cultivation to ensure that its dues w ere met.

THE PROTECTION OF PRIVATE RIGHTS W eber defined the existence o f a right ‘as being no m ore than an increase o f the probability that a certain expectation o f the one to w hom th e law grants the right will not be disappointed .’ 19 A nd it has been argued that at least for considerable periods, state pow er in India w as too unstable or too fragm entary, or the judicial m achinery too w eak or inefficient to protect legal rights, so that in fact private property rights in land had little significance, w hatever the legal theory. I f no state is stable for long, the probability that contracts, e.g., to buy and sell land, will be protected by the state will be low, and the view that Hindu society, fragm ented by caste and with no uniform legal system , w as unable to m aintain a stable political order, underlies m uch o f the literature. D errett’s stress on the Indian ‘fear o f prim eval chaos’ is typical. A gain, ‘M any o f the legal rules o f the Dharmasastra seem vague, or frankly provide the ju d g e w ith alter­ natives; th e bold description o f harsh punishm ent for offenders marks a system in w hich m uch w rongdoing was accounted for by groups interacting in an extra-legal m anner .’ 20 N early all m edieval Indian states, according to S tein, were ‘cus­ todial, tributary, locally based, and oriented to rural netw orks.’ The

18This sentence occurs in a chapter dealing primarily with the settiement of new lands, but some rules, including this one may have applied to both types of settlement; Sibesh Bhattacharya, ‘Land System as reflected in Kautilyas* Arthasastra,’ IESHR, Vol. XVI, No. 1, January-March 1979, pp 85-96; M.P. Kangle, The Kautilya Arthasastra, Vol. 2 (Bombay, University of Bombay, 1963), p. 62. 19 Max Rheinstein (ed.), Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), p. 98. J.D.M. Derrett, ‘Social and ai Political Thought and Institutions’ in A.L. Basham (ed.), A Cultural History of India (Oxford, 1975), p. 133.

The State and Private Property: Some General Considerations

179

king did not collect regular taxes, but tributes. In m edieval south India, the basic unit o f political organization was not the kingdom but a sm all region controlled either by an assem bly o r a chieftain; the assem blies (o f dom inant cultivators or B rahm ins) or chieftains paid a tribute to the king in recognition o f his overlordship but m anaged affairs within their localities. In particular, the ru ler did not arrogate to h im self coercive functions; he did not legislate o r enforce the law. ‘U nlike China, India recognised no hom ogeneous unit ac­ cording to which state supervision and control could be exercised. It was a recognized responsibility of the Indian ruler to support those units in society which were charged with supervision and at m ost to adjudicate conflicts am ong them when other means o f coping with conflict, for example, through corporate groups or territorial associations, failed. Even such adjudicating functions appear to have been rare .’ 21 A ssum ing that this view is correct (w hich is still a m atter o f con­ troversy), does it necessarily im ply that private rights could not be protected? O r to put it another way, could a buyer be sure that the seller had th e right to sell, and could both parties have the confidence that if one party defaulted the other could get the contract enforced? Thé fact that a political unit is small need not matter if both buyers and sellers live in it. N or does the ruler’s weakness matter greatly if thére are other means o f enforcing contracts. The m odem state apparatus o f uniform laws, law courts and so on, is not the only social m eans o f protecting property rights. There may be many social and psychological incentives and pressures to obey social norms, and many m odes o f set­ tlement o f disputes, from village and caste assemblies to arbitration. Intra-caste or intra-village disputes over land m ight be settled w ithin the caste or village tribunal and disputes betw een villages m ay have been settled by jo in t councils. A dm ittedly, these tribunals too m ight have been inefficient. G alanter argues that the tribunals covered such small groups that they were unable ‘to evoke fixed legal principles, apply them to the case, and m ake their decision stick .’ 2 G alanter gives no historical references but one o f the few 2>Burton Stein, T he State and the Agrarian Order’ in B. Stein (ed.). Essays on South India (Honolulu, 1975), pp 76-8; also see Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (Delhi, 1980), Ch. 9. 22Mark Galanter, ‘Remarks on Family and Social Change in India’, David C. Buxbaum (ed.), Chinese Family Law and Social Change in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Seattle, 1978), pp 492-3.

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descriptions we have o f the actual w orking o f the law in pre-B ritish India, G u n e’s work on the M aratha judicial system from A.D. 1400 to 1800, does suggest some problem s in getting final settlem ents through the courts: ‘There w as no definite gradation o f courts with their w ell defined jurisdiction in those bygone tim es, and therefore no properly con­ stituted co u rt o f appeal as such. The decision o f a local court was generally taken up to a higher authority for revision ...’ 23 H ow often the parties actually w ent on appeal and how this affected the sale value o f land is another m atter, and one which G une does not discuss. O f the disputes he lists, only a small m inority related to land, and m ost o f these w ere about inheritance. P eople did not alw ays have to go to co u rt to settle property rig h ts; they could bargain, use physical force o r m oral p ressu re. Dharna, o r fastin g outside the d oor o f o n e ’s opponent to sham e him into se ttlin g the d isp u te or paying his debt, w as a com m on p ractice. It is ch aracteristic that one could hire a serv an t o r B rah­ m in to do o n e ’s fasting. O r one could resort to arb itratio n by m en o f h ig h er caste or v illage or fam ily elders. T he q u estio n is how effectiv e the d ifferen t m ethods were. W hat d egree o f un certain ty , for ex am p le, attach ed to buying land from relativ es, fello w vil­ lag ers, m en o f d iffe re n t castes and so on? T here are d escrip tio n s o f various ty p es o f settlem en t o f dispute in the B ritish p e rio d ,24 an d p erh ap s m ore w ould be know n for e a rlie r periods if h isto rian s r.pecifically looked for it. T he inscriptions w ould yield inform ation on tra n sac tio n s betw een v illag es and betw een castes, and in fo rm a­ tion on d isp u te s fo r the m edieval period at least m ay be av ailab le in c h ro n icles, co u rt docum ents, etc. D ifferent regim es will, needless to say, vary in their procedures, and in the degree o f efficiency in protecting rights and settling dis­ putes. Perhaps it is over-optim istic to hope that one day w e will be able to correlate these variations with land transactions. 23V.T. Gune, The Judicial System of the Marathas (Pune, 1953), p. 81. Also see T.V. Mahalingam, Administrative and Social Life Under Vijayanagar, Part 1, (Madras, 1969), pp 123-7. 24For example, Bernard S. Cohn, ‘Some Notes on Law and Change in North India’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 8 , 1960; K. Ishwaran, ‘Customary Law in Village India’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 5, 1964, pp 228-43.

The State and Private Property: Some General Considerations

181

CONCLUSION It w as once believed that the degree o f social control was so great in pre-B ritish India that private rights could hardly exist. T he state extracted large am ounts by way o f land revenue and either forced cultivators to slay on the land o r evicted for non-paym ent. N ow it is often held th at in m any, perhaps m ost, periods o f Indian history the state was so w eak that there was no public protection for private rights, that in fact the distinction betw een private and public is m ean­ ingless. In both cases historians focused their attention on the State, w hether despotic or segm entary. But the little evidence we have does not suggest that tax collections have been exaggerated. M oreover there is hardly any evidence or arbitrary evictions in the Hindu period, and they were very rare under the M uslim rulers. Future research should concentrate on the various categories o f private rig h t in land. Few but the legal historians consider classical literature on the law, w hich is understandable in view o f the enor­ m ous problem s o f discovering w hat law s were actually accepted and enforced in any particular tim e o r place. N evertheless, we m ust ana­ lyse indigenous legal categories. One category o f peculiar im portance is that know n as the kshetrika or bhumilca in pre-M uslim N orth India, or the mirasdar o f D eccan or the South (to use a later term for an old category), the village zam indar o f M ughal times. These m en paid the land revenue and had many o f the rights o f ow nership th at H onoré lists. H ow ever m uch these rights w ere encroached upon in tim es o f political trouble, w hat is significant is their strength o f survival. And finally, on the extrem ely im portant question of the enforcem ent o f laws and th e protection o f private rights, we need to m ove beyond our present stage o f obiter dicta.

Comparative Studies •

8 Regional and International Econom ic Disparities Since the Industrial Revolution: The Indian Evidence

T w o general hypotheses dom inate the literature on historical trends in regional disparities in incom e. The first holds that regional dis­ p a r itie s increase within a country in the early stages o f developm ent, s in c e the process o f grow th starts in a few areas; in tim e, grow th w ill spread and regional incom es converge. The second holds that th e p ro ce ss o f increasing disparity is cum ulative, and that differentials w id e n over tim e . 1 This again can be applied both to differences w ith in and betw een nations, but will apply m ore strongly to interna­ tio n a l differences, since the equalizing factors, such as the m ovem ent o f fa cto rs o f production or governm ent policies, will be w eaker in / th e international case; on one view, indeed, disparity has been in­ c re a s e d by im perialist exploitation, leading not only to slow er grow th o f th e colony but to actual im m iserization. T hus both hypotheses p re d ic t an increase in regional and international disparities in the in itia l stages o f developm ent; they diverge only about the later stages. T o test either o f them , one m ust define the phases o f developm ent. T h e re is, o f course, no single unam biguous definition but various m easures o f the degree o f developm ent w ithin a country have been used: level o f per capita incom e, structure o f the labour force, co m ­ position o f national incom e and so forth. In this paper w e exam ine the Indian data on national and regional incom e, and other indicators o f levels o f living, and ask w hether they

*G. Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (London, 1957), specially Chapters 3-5.

186

Colonialism, Property and the State

sup p o rt eith er o f the hypotheses on trends in international a n d in ter-reg io n al inequality. O ur aim is m odest: we have no g ra n d th eo ry to propose and do not evaluate the various ‘e x p la n a tio n s ’ o f g ro w in g d isp arities in India, since we are sceptical about the facts th em selv es. T here are enorm ous inadequacies o f data, but it is still p o ssible to show that certain hypotheses can be fairly firm ly ruled out, such as that the developm ent o f the international econom y over the last 1 0 0 years has led to the im poverishm ent o f In d ia, and that others have at present little support from the facts, such as that there has been a grow th in regional d isp arities w ith in India during the sam e period. W e take up first the e v id en ce on the d isp arity betw een India and the W est, and then the e v id en ce on reg io n al incom es w ithin India.

INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCES, 1860-1970 As one o f India’s national incom e statisticians M. M ukherjee has rem arked with respect to India’s per capita income, ‘o u r know ledge about the period 1850 to 1900 is nearly non-existent ’ 2 and this is equally true o f earlier periods. Fortunately for this paper, M ukherjee has gone on none the less to estim ate national and per capita incom e for this period 1860-1900, largely on the basis o f scattered point estim ates m ade by earlier writers. F o r the fo rty -y ear period 1 860-1900 M ukherjee found that n a­ tional incom e grew by 0.9 p er cent per annum , p o p u latio n by 0.5 per cen t and hence p er cap ita incom e by 0.4 per cent. T here w ere flu c tu a tio n s w ithin the period: 1865-85 saw a rapid increase in p er ca p ita incom e o f 1.2 p er cent (the population grew at 0.5 per cent); w hile betw een 1885 and 1900 per cap ita incom e d eclin ed , a co n clu sio n w hich som e o ther w riters dispute (L idm an and Dom ress, 1970, pp 3 3 3 -4 ). T h e re are m uch b etter data after 1900, though it is only after 1951 th at a sy stem atic official series has been com piled. O f the v ario u s non-o fficial national incom e series ,3 far and aw ay the best av ailab le series is by S ivasubram oniam , w ho has m ade d ire ct esM. Mukherjee, National Income of India, Trends and Structure (Calcutta, 1969). 3Ibid.

Regional and International Economic Disparities

187

tim ates fo r eac h y ear from 1900-1 to 1946-7.4 H is estim ates show th a t b etw een the tw o fiv e-y ear periods ending 1904-5 and 1 9 2 9 30, p er c a p ita incom e increased by around 20 p er cent or 0.8 p er cen t p er annum ; during the dep ression p er cap ita incom e d eclin ed but started to rise again after 1940-1. B etw een 1900-1 to 1904-5 an d 194 2 -3 to 194 6 -7 real p er cap ita incom e rose by only 19 p er cent. How does this rate o f growth (19 per cent) com pare with that o f o th er countries for about the same period? India’s per capita incom e grow th was roughly sim ilar to that o f Asia; it was m uch low er than that o f Latin A m erica (70 per cent, but this may be an overestim ate), or the LD Cs as a w hole (36 per cent, but also overestim ated, if the Latin A m erican rates turn out to be too high), or the DCs (113 per cent ) . 5 Thus the gap betw een India and m ost o f the w orld outside A sia has been grow ing in the tw entieth century. G oing back to 1860-1900, it is alm ost certainly the case that the gap betw een India and the W est and Japan increased, if one considers that the latter grew at rates well above those estim ated for India during this period .6 India’s per capita incom e m ay well have grown m ore slow ly than m any other tropical countries, including some A sian countries like Thailand. A t least, this appears to be true for the period 1800-1913.7 It is w ell-k n o w n that o fficial ex ch an g e rates u n d erestim ate ,the re lativ e real value o f the incom e o f LD C s, so th at in tern atio n al co m p ariso n s can ex ag g erate international disp arities o f incom e. T his bias m ay also affect co m p arisons over tim e. H eston h as m ade som e ad ju stm en ts fo r purchasing pow er, and estim ated th at the ratio o f In d ian to UK p er cap ita incom e, co rrected for p u rch asin g p o w er d isp aritie s, declin ed from 30 p er cen t in 1870 to 12 p er c e n t in 1970, and com pared to the US from 24 per cen t in 1870 to 7 p er cen t in 1970. A t the official exchange rate the d eclin e is a little fa ste r: from aro u n d 10 p er cen t o f the US and UK levels

4S. Sivasubramoniam, ‘National Income of India, 1900-01 to 1946-47’, Ph.D.

thesis, University of Delhi (mimeo), 196S. 5P. Bairoch, The Economic Development of the Third World since 1900 (London, 1975), p. 191. Simon Kuznets, Modem Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, Spread (New Haven, 1966) pp 64-5. 7Arthur Lewis (ed.), Tropical Development, 1880-1913 (London, 1970),p. 28.

188

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in 1870 to 3.7 per cent o f the U K and 2.5 per cent o f the US level in 1970 (H eston, forthcom ing ) . 8 It m ight be argued that im m iserization in In d ia took the form o f a d eterioration in the q u ality o f life m easu red by dem ographic and social indices. It is d iffic u lt to find su p p o rt fo r this hypothesis. If we co n sid er the period from 1 8 8 1 1901 to 1951, there w as a d ecline in the death rate o v er the period from 41 p er cen t in the 1880s to 27 per cen t around 1951, though this im p ro v em en t really dates from 1921. S im ilarly in fan t m o r­ tality rates in India declin ed from 295 p er thousand live births in 1901 to 199 in 1951; we have no reason to believe th at they w ere low er in the late n ineteenth century. The literacy rate too show s a m ark ed im pro v em en t in the tw entieth cen tu ry , from 5.4 p e r cent in 1901 to 16.7 p er cen t o f the population in 1951. O ne m ight argue th at incom e d istrib u tio n becam e m ore skew ed in In d ia o v er the p erio d , but d ata does not ex ist to test this h ypothesis. O ne can, h o w ev er, assess the per cap ita availability o f food to th e p o p u la­ tio n . C ertain ly B ly n ’s estim ates 9 indicate that p e r capita a v aila b ility o f food declin ed after the 1920s, but B ly n ’s figures are b ased on the official data on agricultural yields w hich Heston s u s p e c ts u n d e r e s tim a te th e g ro w th o f a g r ic u ltu r a l o u t p u t . ' 0 A lte rn a tiv e ly , we could consider direct estim ates o f nutritional availability based on field surveys, but these are sporadic and un­ 8In A. Heston, ‘Official Yields Per Acre in India, 1886-1947: Some Questions of Interpretation’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, December 1973, pp 303-32, it has been pointed out that Sivasubramoniam (and others) may have underestimated the rate of growth of agricultural output. Heston has therefore reworked the estimates of national income in A. Heston, ‘National Income of India, 1857-1947’ in Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2. His figures agree broadly with Sivasubramoniam’s estimates as to trends. On Sivasubramoniam’s estimates the gap between India and the West would have widened further, but there would still be no immiserization. 9G. Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947, Output. Availability, Productivity (Philadelphia, 1966). Ashok V. Desai, ‘Revenue Administration and Agricultural Statistics in Bombay Presidency’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April-June 1978), pp 173-85. 10A. Heston, ‘Official Yields Per Acre in India, 1886-1947: Some Questions of Interpretation’, Indian Economic and Social History Review. Vol. 10, No. 4 (December, 1973).

Regional and International Economic Disparities

189

representative. For what they are worth, the evidence of the surveys conducted in the 1930s and early 1940s su g g e st th a t 30 p e r c e n t o f th e p o p u la tio n g o t less th an 2 3 0 0 c a lo rie s p e r c o n su m p tio n u n it . 11 T h e e v id e n c e fo r 1 9 7 2 -3 b ased on the re su lts o f th e N a ­ tio n a l S am p le S urvey su g g e sts th a t 46 p e r c e n t o f the In d ian p o p u la tio n g o t less th an th e p o v e rty norm (2 4 0 0 c a lo rie s in ru ra l an d 2 1 0 0 c a lo rie s in urban In d ia p e r co n su m p tio n u n it). T h is d o es s u p p o rt th e v iew th a t th e re has been im m ise riz a tio n , b u t th e e m p iric a l b a sis is n o t so u n d e n o u g h to e n a b le us to re je c t th e h y p o th e sis o f im p ro v e m e n t in liv in g s ta n d a rd s su g g e ste d by th e n a tio n a l in co m e a n d o th e r d em o g ra p h ic d ata. It is im portant to note that the Indian data for the period after 1860 do not support the hypothesis that the grow th o f international trade and the w orld econom y led to im m iserizing grow th in the LD Cs. T he gap betw een India and the advanced countries w idened, and also probably betw een India and the m any other LD Cs. B ut this was because Indian per capita incom e grew at a relatively slow posi­ tive rate, not because it declined.

REGIONAL DISPARITIES IN INDIA, PAST AND PRESENT The data problem s are even m ore serious w hen one turns to regional disparities w ithin India. W ith one unsatisfactory exception w hich will be discussed later, there are no com plete regional breakdow ns for the pre-Independence period; and even since 1951, although the col­ lection and processing o f national incom e statistics has greatly im­ proved, the regional figures are unsatisfactory. The Indian U nion is

11 See W.R. Ackroyd, ‘Problems of Nutrition in India’,

Indian Journal of

Social Work (December, 1941). According to Ackroyd, ‘in about 30 per cent of the groups, average daily calorie intake per consumption unit was below 2300, that is below any reasonable standard of requirements...’ These observations cannot legitimately be generalized into a statement of the extent of undemutrition in India, because the sample of the population—about 1,500 families—investigated was small, and cannot in any strict statistical sense be taken as typical of the country as a whole.

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at p re sen t d iv id ed into 23 states o f greatly varying s iz e . 12 P racti­ cally the only regional breakdow ns available are for statew ise d is ­ trib u tio n o f incom e. F or testin g m any hypotheses a b o u t the cau ses o f reg io n al d isp arities the state is often not the n atu ral unit to study as it m ay contain a num ber o f agro-clim atic zones, or regions d isp lay in g w idely varying cu ltural patterns and socio-econom ic ch a ra cte ristics. But d ata are often the by-product o f ad m in istrativ e p ro c ed u re and usually can n o t be recast to fit into ‘econom ic re g io n s’, how so ev er defined. But it is still worth considering the distribution o f incom e betw een states in the post-w ar period, since the figures show that regional incom e disparities are not very large in India by international stand­ ards. Further, the regional incom e distribution can fruitfully be com ­ pared w ith other indicators o f the level o f living. Let us consider 1961, a census year and one for which a fairly good non-official estim ate o f statew ise incom e distribution is available . 13 T he state w ith the highest per capita incom e in 1961 was M aharashtra w hich con­ tains B om bay City, the second richest was W est Bengal, w hose capi­ tal is C alcutta. These are also large states w ith populations in 1961 o f 40 m illion and 35 m illion respectively. The poorest states, O rissa and B ihar, both in the east, are also large. There w ould be broad agreem ent on this ranking. As one would expect, the richer states derived relatively higher shares o f their incom e from m anufacturing and relatively low er shares from agriculture. Punjab is an exception, with a relatively high share (57 per cent) o f its incom e com ing from agriculture. Sim ilarly m ost o f the poorer states depended heavily on agriculture; Bihar, the poorest state, was an exception, with a large m ining and m anufac­ turing sector.

I2Most of the estimates used in this paper relate to fourteen larger states using the boundaries in force in 1961. |i National Council of Applied Economic Research, Estimates of Slate Income (New Delhi, 1967). These were based on direct estimates of agricultural output and factory manufacture. For most other sectors, 1961 workforce estimates and appropriate output-worker ratios were used.

Regional and International Economic Disparities

191

TABLE 8.1 Ranking of States According to Per Capita Income, 1960-1 (current prices) 1960-1 State

Per capita income (Rs)

Rank

289.1 328.4

11 6

222.0

14 4 7 9 5

Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar Gujarat Kerala Madhya Pradesh Madras (Tamil Nadu) Maharashtra Mysore (Karnataka) Orissa Punjab Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh West Bengal

402.8 326.2 293.4 343.8 479.4 313.2 267.9 441.3 272.0 291.7 461.9

All India

336.3

1 8

13 3 12 10 2

Source: National Council of Applied Economic Research, 1967.14 TABLE 8.2 The Percentage Distribution of NDP by Broad Sector in the Indian States, 1960-1 State

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Maharashtra West Bengal Punjab Gujarat Madras (Tamil Nadu) 6 . Kerala 7. Mysore (Karnataka)

Agriculture (including allied activities)

Manufacturing Services Total (including mining)

36.5 36.6 57.0 46.0 46.4

22.4 23.7 14.1 20.9 16.9

41.1 39.7 28.9 33.1 36.7

100.0 100.0

56.0 57.3

15.8 15.2

28.2 27.5

100.0

100.0 100.0 100.0

100.0

Table 8.2 (Contd) l4Ibid.

192 Colonialism, Property and the State (Contd) 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Andhra Pradesh Rajasthan Orissa Bihar

India

60.6 67.4 56.9 63.8 67.0 57.0 52.3

17..2

2 6 .9 2 3 .4 3 3 .6 2 8 .7 2 5.0 25.8

1 0 0 .0 1 0 0 .0

15.7

32.0

1 0 0 .0

12.5 9.2 9.5 7.5 8.0

1 0 0 .0 1 0 0 .0 1 0 0 .0 1 0 0 .0

Source: National Council of Applied Economic Research, 1967.15 T a b le 10, p. 62. TABLE 8.3 Shares of Broad Sectors in the Male Working Force o f th e Indian States, 1961 States (ranked by per capita income 1960-1)

1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10 . 11. 12 .

13.

Maharashtra West Bengal Punjab Gujarat Madras (Tamil Nadu) Kerala Mysore (Karnataka) Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Andhra Pradesh Rajasthan Orissa Bihar

Share of agriculture (including allied activities) in the male working force, % 1961 64.5 59.5 66.6

67.3 64.5 55.0 73.4 78.8 77.4 72.2 78.4 84.2 79.5

Share of manufacturing in the male working force, % 1961

14.4 15.1 11.3 12.7 13.7

Share o f services in the male working force, % 1961

10.7

19.5 21.9 18.3 17.8 18.5 26.5 13.7 10.5 12.5 14.6

6.0

12.8

5.7 6.7

8.9 10.9

14.6

9.7 8.0 8.2

Source: Krishnamurty, 1971, Table 6.1, pp 182-3.16 15Ibid., Table 10, p. 62. 16J. Krishnamurty, T h e Industrial Distribution of the Working Force in India,

1901-1961: A Study of Selected Aspects’, Ph.D. thesis. University of Delhi (rnimeo), 1971.

TABLE 8.4 Some Indicators of Levels o f Development in the Indian States Around 1960-1 States

Per capita income (Rs) 1960-1

1

2

Maharashtra West Bengal Punjab Gujarat Madras Assam Kerala Mysore Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Andhra Pradesh Rajasthan Orissa Bihar India

479.4 461.9 441.3 402.8 343.8 328.4 326.2 313.2 293.4 291.7 289.1 272.0 267.9 222.0

336.3

Percentage of male workforce in agriculture and allied activities, 1961 3 63.5 59.5 66.6

67.3 64.5 85.5 55.0 73.4 76.8 77.4 72.2 78.4 84.2 79.5 71.7

Percent­ age of male work­ force in manufac­ turing, 1961 4 14.7 15.1 11.3 12.7 13.7 3.5 14.6 9.7

Percent­ age of male work force in services, 1961

Birth rate percen­ tages, 1950s

Death rate percen­ tages, 1950s

Percent­ age of population literate, 1961

Expecta­ tion of life at birth. (male, 1950s)

Infant mortality per thousand live births, 1950s

5

6

8

42.8 42.9 44.7 45.7 34.9 49.3 38.9 41.6 43.2 41.5 39.7 42.7 40.4 43.4 41.7

9 45 45 49 41 40 37 49 49 40 39 38 48 41 38 41

10

21.8

7 19.3 20.9 18.9 23.5 22.5 26.9 16.1

8.0 8.2

10.7 6.0

5.7 6.7 10.1

25.4 22.1 20.0 21.8

9.2 30.4 16.9 13.2 14.4 17.1 15.6 10.1

13.8 15.5

22.2

23.2 24.9 25.2 19.4 22.9 26.1 22.8

Sources: Col. 2: NCAER, Estimates of State Income, 1967. Cols 3, 4, 5: Krishnamuity, 1971, Table 6.1. Cols 6-10: Bhattachaijee and Shastri, 17 1976, Tables 9, 11, 12, 16, 22, 37, 38. I7PJ. Bhattachaijee, and G.N. Shastri, Population in India (Delhi, 1976).

29.8 29.3 24.2 30.5 31.4 27.4 46.8 25.4 17.1 17.6 2 1.2

15.2 21.7 18.4 24.0

109 120 110

N.A. 109 184 120 120

175 186 111

177 159 145 140

194

Colonialism, Property and the State

A gain, if we com pare the structure o f the m ale working force in 1961 with the per capita income o f different states (excluding A ssam ), we find a fairly m arked positive association between per capita incom e and the respective shares o f m anufacturing and ser­ vices in the w orkforce; conversely, there is a m arked negative as­ sociation between per capita incom e and the share o f agriculture in the w orkforce o f thirteen states which were considered. As we know , per capita figures in them selves are an inadequate guide to the quality o f life. The expectation o f life, the rate o f literacy, standards o f health and nutrition, depend on the distribution o f incom e, the standard o f public services and other social factors, (for instance, literacy is higher in states where m issionaries w ere ac­ tive.) Thus, m ost dem ographic variables like birth and death rates, or the expectation o f life at birth or the dependency rate, do not appear to be closely correlated with per capita state income. H ow ­ ever, infant m ortality rates are negatively associated to some degree w ith per capita state incom e with the exception o f A ndhra Pradesh. Literacy rates w ere above 24 per cent in states with per capita incom e above Rs. 300 per annum , and below 22 per cent in states w ith per capita incom e below this level. W hile high infant m ortality or low literacy are associated with low average per capita state incom e, they (and perhaps other dem ographic variables) ought to be related to the extent o f absolute poverty within a state. In rich states like Punjab and G ujarat, the percentage o f the ‘poor’ to total population was relatively sm all, as one w ould expect. But in M aharashtra, the richest state, the percent­ age o f the ‘p oor’ was above the national average and the estim ates for W est Bengal for the period 1956-7 to 1973-4 suggest rather a large percentage below the poverty line— the results for 1960-1 for W est Bengal appear exceptional. O f course this could be because we consider the percentage below the poverty line in rural areas only and M aharashtra and W est Bengal have the large cities of Bom bay and C alcutta respectively w ithin their boundaries. O ne should note that the extent o f regional disparity is not in fact large by international standards. M aharashtra’s per capita income was only about tw ice that o f B ihar’s. The relative variation of state per capita incom es w as 24 per cent com pared to 36 per cent in the US

Regional and International Economic Disparities

195

TABLE 8.5 Percentage of the Population Below the Poverty Line in the Indian States, 1960-1 and 1973-4 (rural areas) States

1960-1

1973-7

Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar Gujarat Kerala Madhya Pradesh Madras (Tamil Nadu) Maharashtra Mysore (Karnataka) Orissa Punjab (including Haryana) Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh West Bengal

501 25.6 41.5 31.6 57.8 43.8 53.9 48.4 39.1 62.4 18.8 32.3 37.9 40.4

39.8 39.3 58.4 35.6 49.3 52.3 48.3 49.8 46.9 58.0 23.0 29.8 47.3

India

42.0

47.6

66.0

Source: The World Bank (1978): Paper by Montek S. Ahluwalia, Table 3(a), p. 17. The basic data are from the 16th and 28th Rounds of the National Sample Survey. The poverty line was set at Rs 15 per head per month at 1960-1 prices for all India, but account was taken of differences in prices in different states in that year. For each state in each year, the poverty line in current prices was estimated using the consumer price indices for agricultural labourers. in 1929 and 23 per cent in the US in 1955.18 Again if, follow ing W illiam son, we us the share o f agriculture in the w orkforce as an indicator o f relative backw ardness, India in 1951 turns out to have a rather low degree o f regional inequality; the coefficient o f variation in shares o f agricultural w orkforce was 9 p er cent. This is low er than that o f Brazil which is 13 per cent; the sam e as the US (9 per cent); and significantly low er than that o f Italy, Finland, A ustria, Spain, Japan and Sweden (W illiam son, 1965, Table 7a).

, 8H.S. Perloff et al., Regions, Resources and Economic Growth (Baltimore, 1960); NCAER, Estimates o f State Income (Delhi, 1967), p. 48.

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Colonialism, Property and the State

O ur main interest is in the changes in regional disparities in the nineteenth and tw entieth centuries, but unfortunately there are no reli­ able estim ates o f regional incom es before 1951. For the nineteenth century, there are only a few im precise estim ates for a few regions. Even for the first half o f the tw entieth century only one set o f es­ tim ates, by B. N atarajan, seem s usable and even this is doubtful. His ranking o f Provinces in 1938-9 and 1949-50 is startlingly different from the 1961 estim ates we have used, even when account is taken o f changes in territorial coverage, etc. N atarajan found that W est B engal was the second poorest Province and that this was the case not only in 1938-9 but in 1949-50 as w ell . 19 No other estim ate for the period around 1950 agrees with this result (except the W est B en­ gal State Statistical B ureau’s estim ate for 1958-9), and one cannot but suspect that N atarajan’s figures for Bengal are underestim ates. N atarajan does not directly estim ate incom e in each state sector by sector; instead he allocates national sectorial totals am ong the states on the basis o f a variety o f indicators. The N CA ER 1960-1 figures, on the other hand, are based on direct estim ation, and are reinforced by evidence that in Bengal the share o f the workforce engaged in m anufacturing and services w as rising fairly rapidly, while that in agriculture was declining betw een 1901 and 1951 (Krishnam urty, 1977, pp. 2 1 -3 ). If W est Bengal was poor, East Bengal m ust have been poorer and hence undivided Bengal m ust have been poorer than W est Bengal. Y et even for undivided B engal, the share of agriculture fell and the shares o f m anufacturing and services in the workforce rose between 1911 and 1951. T his does not suggest econom ic decline during the tw entieth century. F or the period 1911-51 w e can obtain a summ ary m easure of regional inequality by taking the coefficient o f variation in the shares in different states o f agriculture in the workforce. Using this m easure w e find that regional inequality rose m arginally from 6 per cent to 9 per cent over this period. So there is evidence that regional dis­ parities did not rise rapidly betw een 1911 and 1951 at least. Even this type o f calculation cannot be m ade for the nineteenth century and only som e general speculations are possible. There are practically no historical studies o f regional developm ent, but there

19B. Natarajan, An Essay on National Income and Expenditure in India (Madras, 1949), p. IS.

Regional and International Economic Disparities

197 20

have been several studies o f individual sectors, such as agriculture or processes, such as ‘deindustrialisation’,21m any o f w hich suggest very unequal regional growth. H ow can these be reconciled with the findings that the regional distribution o f incom e was not in fact par­ ticularly unequal in 1961? T he qualitative assessm ents o f historians suggest that there were vast disparities in regional incom e in 1800 or even earlier .22 It is, therefore, difficult to argue that regional inequality per se has in­ creased over time in India; though o f course it is perfectly possible that the fortune o f individual regions may have altered substantially. In 1800 Bengal was regarded as one o f the richest parts o f India; it was free from fam ine, had flourishing handicrafts, an active m er­ chant com m unity and large prosperous tow ns. B etw een 1893 and 1947 agricultural output per head m ay have declined som ew hat .23 G ujarat and M adras w ere areas which, in the early nineteenth century, had been at least partly com m ercialized and w hich in 1961 were in the top six states. Kerala, w hich was a highly developed area in the nineteenth century, w as at the m argin o f inclusion am ong the developed states o f 1961. But the area around A gra, w hich used to be highly developed, is now subm erged in the large backw ard state o f U ttar Pradesh .24 A gain, neither M aharashtra nor Punjab were

20G. Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, 1886-1947: Some Questions of Interpretation. 21Daniel and Alice Thomer, Land and Labour in India, (Bombay, 1962); J.G.

Williamson (1965), ‘Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 13, pp 3-45; A.K. Bagchi, ‘Deindustrialization in Inida’, Journal o f Development Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, January 1976, pp. 132-50; J. Krishnamurty, ‘Deindustrialization Revisited’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 11, No. 26, 26 June, 1976, pp 964-7. 22M.D. Morris et al., The Indian Economy in the Nineteenth Century: A Symposium (Delhi, 1969). 2 A recent careful study by M.M. Islam, ‘The Quality of Official Crop Statistics of Bengal (1920-1947)’, Bulletin o f Quantitative and Computer Methods in South Asian Studies, No. 1, July 1973, pp 23-4, suggests that there may not have been the sharp decline in food output reported by George Blyn. 24The share of agriculture (including allied activities) in the workforce of Agra Division remained rather high, around 69 per cent during the period 1911-61

198

Colonialism, Property and the State

regarded as developed areas early in the nineteenth century a n d th ese tw o sates were am ong the top three states in 1961. It is lik e ly that there have been som e striking changes in fortunes in the sta te /p ro v in ­ cial league tables since 1800. O ne possibility is that the grow th o f form erly backw ard re g io n s was offset by the decline o f once prosperous regions w ith little change in overall regional disparity. A nother possibility is th at regional disparities w ere actually reduced, for exam ple, by the le v e l­ ling down o f the richest regions, or by the spread of im p u lses o f grow th, as transport im proved and m arkets widened. Political c h a n g e s are o f great im portance too, but their significance is not yet c le a r— how do the differences in the governm ents o f B ritish India and the native states before Independence com pare w ith the differences b e ­ tw een the successor states? It at least seems probable that p o litical unification w ithin the Indian U nion has reduced regional disp arities, particularly since the reduction o f such disparities is now an e x p licit policy goal. W e cannot take the discussion m uch further w ithout m ore w ork on the first h a lf o f the nineteenth century, and in particular, on th e regions. H ow ever, it m ay be w orthw hile to sum m arize som e recent w ork on South India, shaky though its em pirical basis is, to illustrate the dangers o f generalizing from one factor, such as a fall in the exports o f m anufactures. In the first half o f the nineteenth century M adras Presidency, w hich w as once a m ajor exporter o f textiles, be­ cam e m ainly an exporter o f prim ary com m odities. The total volume o f exports expanded greatly, but at least from 1821-2 bullion was exported abroad in large quantities to finance net invisible paym ents. These are pointers to a ‘d rain ’ and to ‘deindustrialization’, but it is not at all clear that they did in fact lead to im poverishm ent. It is not even clear that total em ploym ent in w eaving fell, since the fall in exports m ay have been m atched by the expansion o f dom estic dem and. O n the other hand, skilled w eavers lost em ploym ent and it seem s probable that there was actually a decline in literacy, perhaps a consequence o f the increasing dependence on agriculture. H ow ever, population expanded— often taken as a sign o f prosperity; agricultural output also grew , and at least some groups o f the population (unpublished estimates of Krishnamurty). This is not low in an absolute sense, but is the second lowest among the 9 Divisions of Uttar Pradesh for which we have comparable data.

Regional and International Economic Disparities

199

prospered, such as the larger farm ers producing cash crops, and if there are no signs o f a w idespread rise in living standards, there are equally none o f a w idespread fall .25 This casts doubt on many generalizations m ade about the first h alf o f the nineteenth century, such as that it was a period o f actual im m iserization. To conclude, India’s per capita incom e alm ost certainly grew be­ tw een 1860 and 1947, and those o f the Indian Union and Pakistan certainly grew betw een 1947 and 1970. The gap between India and the W est widened, since the rate o f grow th o f incom e was com para­ tively low. In com parison w ith m any other countries, such as the US, Brazil or Italy, regional disparity was relatively low in Independent India. There is evidence o f significant regional disparities in , say, 1800, but not o f m arked grow th in overall regional disparities. There have been various social, political and econom ic forces at work af­ fecting regional grow th, but the net result o f these forces is unknown.

25Dharma Kumar, T he South Indian Economy, 1757 to 1857’, in Dharma Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History of India (Cambridge, 1983).

9 The Taxation of Agriculture in British India and Dutch Indonesia1 INTRODUCTION A striking and w ell-know n feature o f British Indian fiscal history is the enorm ous decline in the im portance o f the land tax, once the m ainstay o f governm ent finances. The land tax will naturally decline in im portance as the contribution o f agriculture to national incom e falls, but this could only explain a m inor part o f the fall in India, since the fall in agriculture’s share o f national incom e was very small. In m uch Indian writing it is assum ed or asserted that the British squeezed the m axim um they could out o f the cultivator: to quote one standard textbook, ‘The land tax is ... the appropriation of the bare m inim um o f subsistence left to the cultivator .’ 2 If this was the case, a great im poverishm ent of the cultivators m ust have occurred, for w hich there is no firm evidence. M oreover this line of reasoning often assum es that colonial pow ers have unlim ited powers o f collect­ ing taxes, ignoring the fact that colonial pow ers, while undoubtedly m ore powerful than dem ocratic governm ents in som e respects, may face specific political problem s o f their own. N or do colonial pow ers start with a tabula rasa-, despite the w idespread belief in the huge taxes levied by O riental despotism s such as the M ughals, the am ounts taken by these regim es seem to be greatly exaggerated .3

'An earlier version of this paper was presented at a subgroup of Section A of the Eighth Economic History Congress, August 16-22, 1982, and I am grateful to the participants for their comments, as also to Ehtisham Ahmad, B.R. Tomlinson, J. Krishnamurty and N. Stem. 2P.A. Wadia and N.C. Joshi, The W ealth of India (London, 1925), p. 281. 3Dharma Kumar, ‘The Fiscal System’, Cambridge Economic History of India, II, Cambridge, 1983 hereafter CEHl, unless otherwise stated, all figures for

The Taxation o f Agriculture 201 In this paper I extend the argum ent by com paring agricultural taxation in British India w ith that o f another colonial econom y: Dutch Indonesia. Com parisons betw een the two have long been made, and it m ight be am using to trace the fluctuations in the relative ranking o f the two regimes, with the D utch being som etim es preferred for their enterprise ,4 or criticised for being m ore exploitative .5 N owadays they are som etim es dam ned equally: in a w ide-ranging paper, J.C. H eesterm an argues that despite enorm ous differences in the initial positions o f India and Indonesia, and apparent differences in m odes o f colonial rule, both societies converged under basically sim ilar colonial regim es to the same dism al end: What could Indonesia offer to compare with India’s status as a world manufac­ turing power, to its land-based bureaucratic imperial systems, to its internal marketing networks and cash revenue base; to its traditions of cultural in­ tegration; to its deep and complex patterns of stratification? In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, all these were to count for very little... . They [the two societies] were crushed together through a mill which, at the end, produced them looking very much alike.6 The tw o m ill-stones, to continue his analogy, were the state and the law. The two Asian societies were sim ilar in many significant respects: tropical agriculture, peasant cultivation, roughly sim ilar standards o f living in the tw entieth century at least. There were also im portant differences. The D utch were m uch m ore interventionist, and collected much higher levels o f tax, including agricultural taxes, than the British. Again, the Indian nationalist m ovem ent was more organised than the Indonesian, and it is possible that political factors explain part o f the differences in tax levels. The fiscal history o f each country is discussed separately below, beginning with an outline o f pre-colonial regimes. Some com parisons are m ade between the tw o countries, concluding with rem arks and suggestions for further research. India are from this source. M.G. Ranade, Essays on Indian Economics, Bombay, 1989. 5See the discussion of the literature in English in R. van Niei, ‘The Function of Land Rent Under the Cultivation System in Java’, Journal of Asian Studies, 23, 1964, pp 357-75. 6J.C. Heesterman, T he State and Society in a Colonial Context: India and Indonesia’, unpublished, 1980, p. 19.

4

202

Colonialism, Property and the State

INDIA7 Pre-colonial Taxes The mode o f ‘exploitation’ or o f extracting a surplus will depend partly on the density of population. At the dawn of the colonial period, both India and Java were densely populated, in contrast with Africa or Latin America. India’s population was perhaps 200 million from 1750 to 1800, and perhaps a little higher in 1850.® Java also may have been more densely populated in 1800 than was formerly believed though there is still disagreement about the nineteenth cen­ tury rate of growth of population.9 The colonial pow er’s task is made much easier if the conquered are used to paying taxes regularly to government treasuries, and the higher the taxes and the more centralised the treasuries, the better. The British are generally held to have been fortunate in these respects. In his first financial statement, in I860, Wilson rejoiced that

7To remind the reader of some important dates in Indian history, the Mughal Empire was founded in 1526 A.D., and began to disintegrate after the death of the emperor Aurgangzeb in 1707. The English East India Company received its charter in 1600, and established a ‘factory’ on the west coast in 1611. In 1765 the Company took over the administration and direct collection of revenue in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Company expanded its territorial rule till the Revolt of 1857-58 and the takeover of its Indian possessions by the Crown in 1858. A landmark in the growth of Indian nationalism and the first meeting of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935 brought increasing devolution of power to the provinces and Congress ministries were installed in most provinces in 1937 but resigned in 1939. 1947 saw independence and the partition of India. 8P. Vissaria, ‘Population, 1757-1947’, CEHl, 2, Ch. 5, p. 465. 9B. Peper, ‘Population Growth on Java in the 19th Century. A New Interpretation’, in C. Fasseur (ed.), Geld en Geweten, The Hague, 1980, Vol. 1, pp 131-155. R. van Niel, ‘The Effect-of Export Cultivations in Nineteenth Century Java’, Modem Asian Studies, 15 , 1981, pp 25-58. Peper estimates the population of Java at nearly 10 million; Van niel (p. 45) at a about 5.5 million in 1815. He argues, in contradiction to Peper, that the rate of growth of population was very high in the first half of the nineteenth century, partly in response to the labour requirements of the Cultivation System.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 203 there is latitude enough here in the laws of Manu for the most needy Exche­ quer and for the most voracious Minister ... I should imagine the revenue laws of the ancient Hindus must have been contributed to the sacred compiler by some very needy finance minister of the day. It is certainly true that the classical Hindu texts m ention rates of land revenue ranging from a sixth to a third o f the gross produce, and that the theoretical rates ranged from a third to half o f the gross produce in the M ughal period, paym ents generally being made in c a s h .10 On the assum ption, first, that rates o f this m agnitude were actually collected, and second and more plausibly, that the land revenue contributed the m ajor part o f the public revenue, historians have tried to estim ate the percentage of the national incom e taken by way o f tax. For exam ple, Raychaudhuri cites estim ates that the realised revenue, largely land revenue, was betw een one-third and a h alf o f the gross national product, and then adds that all this went to the em peror and some 8000 or so nobles in the m iddle of the seventeenth century. Thus an infinitely small proportion of the population disposed of the bulk of the agricultural surplus and in so doing influenced crucially the course of the economy." N o details are given of the estim ate, such as the share agricultural taxes or the size and com position of GNP, and absurdly high, given what we know o f the inefficiency o f lections in this period. Angus M addison has a m ore m oderate that the

o f nonit seem s tax col­ estim ate

total revenue of the Moghul state and autonomous princelings and chiefs was probably about 15-18 per cent of national income.

I0Irfan Habib, ‘Agrarian Relations and Land Revenue in North India’, CEHl, I, 1982, p. 239. Land revenue was increasingly collected in cash in the eighteenth century in other parts of India too; on the Maratha kingdom see H. Fukuzawa, ‘Agrarian Relations and Land Revenue: Maharashtra and the Dfeccan’, CEHl, I, 1982, p. 257, and G.T. Kulkami, ‘Banking in the Eighteenth Century: A Case Study of a.Poona Banker’, Artha Vijnana, 10, 1973, on the role of bankers in facilitating payments in cash. n T. Raychaudhuri, ‘The State and the Economy: Mughal India’, CEHl, 1, p. 178. The basis for this estimate is not given.

204

Colonialism, Property and the State

N o European governm ent, he adds, succeeded in claiming such a large part of the national product until the twen­ tieth century.12 The trouble w ith these estim ates is that they appear to be, by and large, based on statem ents in revenue m anuals on what the revenue rates were in theory, or on estim ates made by chroniclers and foreign travellers. There is no reason to give great credence to the latter, and m any reasons for believing that estim ates based on the theoretical rates are likely to greatly exaggerate the actual amounts paid into the central treasuries. First, one should not assum e that these rates were uniform ly applied over so large an area as the M ughal Em ­ pire— as H abib points out, ‘one can only regard them as essentially paper rates .’ 13 And even in theory, lands granted to religious institu­ tions and functionaries, charities and so forth, were subject to light or no land revenue. Second, even on the other lands, the ‘legal’ rate m ay have been reduced as a result o f bargaining— there is evidence that subjects protested against high taxes and were occasionally suc­ cessful in having the rates reduced. W here they were not successful they could m igrate to less highly taxed areas. Third, w hatever the theoretical rate o f assessm ent, they were not always w hat the landholders actually paid— faulty assessm ents, evasion and fraud (especially by falsely claim ing tax-free status) were characteristics o f pre-m odern societies, and indeed o f m any modem ones . 14 M oreover, there was a gap betw een paym ents by those liable to tax and receipts by the central treasuries. Som e revenues were spent in the village itself and a considerable part was siphoned off, officially 11

A. Maddison, Class Structure and Economic Growth (London, 1971), p. 22. This is based on the assumption, following Habib, that the land tax took a third or more of gross crop output, and that other taxes were ‘of smaller importance but not negligible’. Maddison probably assumes that agriculture contributed well over 50 per cent of total output (pp 33, 69). , 3I. Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India (Bombay, 1963), p. 202. Hereafter Agrarian System. l4Bayly quotes Barnett’s estimate that only 60-70 per cent of the Mughal revenue demand of 1700 was collected in the late eighteenth century. C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge, 1983), p. 150; it is possible, but not proven, that collections were higher earlier.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 205 o r otherw ise, by various interm ediaries . 15 Estim ates o f total tax revenues, based on the assum ption that a third or more o f gross crop output w as norm ally collected over the whole area o f the Empire, and likely to be wide o ff the m ark. Figures o f actual collections in rupees are available for a few years , 16 but since no estim ates w hatever have been m ade o f the value o f agricultural output, they cannot yield an estim ate o f the share taken by the land tax. O f course, the am ounts varied w ith the political fortunes o f rulers and states , 17 and it certainly seem s very likely that in m any areas, particularly perhaps in fertile areas near centres o f adm inistration and in good years, the cultivators had often to pay land revenue am ounting to a third or m ore of his gross output. This was, indeed, a very useful precedent for the British. B ut it seem s very unlikely that the M ughal adm inistration was effi­ cient enough, or the econom y sufficiently m onetised, for this rate per acre to represent the share o f total crop output taken by the state over the bulk o f the em pire and for long periods.

The British Period T hroughout its rule from circa 1765 to 1858 the East India Com pany Ift w as in a chronic state o f deficit. It needed revenue to finance its m ilitary expansion, to pay for its investm ent in India, and for rem it­ tances o f interest, salaries and so on, to England. Its m ajor source o f revenue had necessarily to be agriculture, though custom s duties had the advantage o f being easier to collect. To sum m arise brutally its various experim ents in the land revenue, the Com pany generally tried to follow local precedents, choosing at least initially the highest rates o f revenue but applying them w ith considerably less flexibility than its native predecessors, and gradually elim inating interm ediaries as its adm inistration im proved. By the end o f the Com pany period,

15Shireen Moosvi, ‘Magnitude of Land Revenue Demand And Income of the Mughal Ruling Class’, Medieval India—A Miscellany, Vol. 4, 1977, pp 91-131; ‘The Zamindars Share in the Peasant Surplus in the Mughal Empire—Evidence of the Ain-i-Akbari Statistics’, IESHR, 15,1980, pp 359-74. 16Habib, Agrarian System, pp 408-409. l 7 Bayly, op. cit., has an excellent discussion of the finances of northern Indian states in a period of flux; he is especially interesting on the role of merchants and bankers in financing rulers. 18P. Banerjea, Indian Finance in the Days of the Company (London, 1928).

206

Colonialism, Property and the State

half the public revenue cam e from the land revenue, and a fu rth e r 17 per cent from the profits o f the opium m onopoly; o f the 8 p e r cent collected in custom s duties, some part consisted of duties on agricultural exports, so about 70 per cent or more of the revenues were livied on agricultural output. 9 One m ajor constraint on the am ount extracted from agriculture w as the elasticity o f output to tax. In theory at least the land revenue in M adras at the beginning o f the nineteenth century was h alf the gross produce on irrigated lands and one-third on dry lands (ignoring regional variations and sundry deductions) but it is doubtful if even the Com pany, rapacious as it undoubtedly was, could keep this up as a steady rate. M unro com plained in M adras that the high rates o f land revenue had led to a fall in output, a reduction o f the revenue rates w as often follow ed by an increase in output— there w as plenty o f land av ailab le, and in m any areas also la b o u r .20 But one should also note that despite high taxes, extrem ely low expen­ diture on public works, education and health, and net rem ittances to England, there is no evidence o f a sustained or w idespread fall in the average incom es o f the cultivators, nor o f those of the poorer classes in the first half o f the nineteenth century, in Madras Presiden­ cy at least .21 19

The East India Company occasionally operated trade monopolies as their Indian predecessors did, but on the whole the bulk of the government’s direct receipts from agriculture came in the form of taxes, chiefly land revenue. In the Company period in some areas officials were allowed to keep a percentage of the taxes they collected as an incentive to raise collections. Corruption also appears to have been more widespread in this period than later. The land revenue was occasionally collected in kind even in the nineteenth century, but by 1858 the collections were probably entirely in cash. 2 Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India, Cambridge, 1965. Detailed regional studies of this period might throw some light on the relative strength of the various factors influencing the impact of an increase in tax on output: the need to maintain income after tax would lead to an increase in output; the lower relative price of ‘leisure’ would tend to decrease it, as also the increase in the relative costs of earnings in other occupations, if available; the incentive to invest in land might be reduced; emigration to non-British areas would increase, and so on. Changes in the relative rates of taxation of irrigated and unirrigated land would also have to be taken into account. The main difficulty here will be in obtaining reliable figures of output. 21Dharma Kumar, ‘The Regional Economy of South India, CEHl, 2.

The Taxation o f Agriculture

207

The governm ent’s pressing need for revenue continued throughout the B ritish period. Its heavy expenditure on defence and adm inistra­ tion absorbed h a lf o f its current revenues, and there w ere several claim ants for the rest: roads, railw ays (partly for defence needs), fam ine relief (especially in the last quarter o f the nineteenth century), B ritish businessm en w anting assured supplies o f raw cotton, and In­ dians, as their political organization developed, w anting the pitifully low expenditure on health, education and other ‘nation building’ ac­ tivities to increase. And yet revenues hardly increased: tax revenues w ere perhaps 9 p er cent o f national incom e in 1872-3, but the propor­ tion fell to 6 per cent by 1900 and ros£_again to this level only during the Second W orld W ar (Table 9.1); public expenditure fluctuated TABLE 9.1 Public Expenditure and Revenues in British India, 1900-1 to 1946-7 Rs million Year

1900-1 1917-8 1921-2 1930-1 1940-1 1946-7

Public Total expendi - revenues ture 958 2,845 2,132 2,086 2,149 7,973

817 1,397 1,516 1,692 2,061 5,942

As Percentages of national income Public expendi­ ture

Total current revenues

Tax revenues

Non-tax revenues

10

8

6

16

8

8

6

12

10

11

10

16

12

5 5 7 7 9

3 3 1 2

3 3

Sources: K.N. Reddy, The Growth o f Public Expenditure In India (New Delhi, 1972), pp. 170-1, 187-90 for population and expenditure. S. Sivasubramoniam, ‘National Income of India, 1900-l to 1946-7’ (Ph.D. thesis, Delhi University, 196S), p. 337, for per capita national income at cur­ rent prices. Reserve Bank of India, Banking and Monetary Statistics of India, pp 872-4 for revalues (D. Kumar, ‘The Fiscal System’, CEHI, 2, p. 926). The national income of British India has been calculated from the per capital income at current prices for undivided India given by S., Sivasubramoniam and the population of British India given by K.N. Reddy. Public expendicutre is the total of central and provincial government ex­ penditure on current and capital account, as shown in the budgets. The figures include interest payments and retirement of the public debt, but exclude the bulk of expenditure on the railways (for which there was a separate budget after 1925).

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around 8 - 1 2 per cent of the national incom e except in war years. This contrast with the experience o f advanced societies is striking; in Britain itself, to give only one exam ple, public expenditures w ere under 9 per cen t o f G N P in 1890 but 30 per cent in 1938, and taxes rose c o rresp o n d in g ly .22 T otal tax revenues in India grew slow ly or not at all, largely because o f the very sharp decline in the land revenue, the m ain source o f revenue before the B ritish. Even in 1900 nearly h a lf the total tax collections cam e from land revenue; in 1937-8 only a fifth, and by 1946-7 less than onete n th .23 O ne w ould ex p ect this to happen if the share o f agriculture in the national incom e had declined rapidly, but agriculture co n ­ trib u ted as m uch as 48 per cent o f the net dom estic product even in 1946-7 as com pared to 51 per cent in 1 8 6 5 -6 9 .24 Land revenue w as 3 -5 p er cent of the value o f gross agricultural produce in m ost years in the tw en tieth century, and perhaps 11 per cent in 1 8 6 0 -6 1 — clearly a con sid erable fall from the collections at the beginning o f the n ineteenth century. O ne reason for this decline is clear. O ver large parts o f eastern and southern India, under the zam indari or perm anent settlem ent, the land revenue was fixed in money rates in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The benefits o f rising prices and increasing cul­ tivation thereafter were divided between the zamindars or landlords, and the cultivators. ' Zam indars could have been taxed in other ways, and in fact when the income tax was first introduced in 1868 agricul­ tural incom es were taxed. But largely for political reasons, from 1986 agricultural incom es have been exem pt from tax, except for relatively low provincial incom e taxes in certain provinces. In the rest o f India, the money rates o f land revenue p er acre w ere subject to reassessm ent every 15, 20, 30 or 40 years. In between reassessm ents, the real incidence per acre varied inversely with prices. Some adjustm ents were also m ade for variations in produc­ tion. Since revenue rates in the perm anent settlem ent areas were

22Richard A. Musgrave, Fiscal Systems, New Haven, 1969, pp 138-9. 23In 1793-4, they may have accounted for 69 per cent of total government revenues, Government of India, Report of the Taxation Enquiry Commission, Delhi, 1955, 31 p. 216. 24A. Heston, ‘National Incotne’, CEHI, 2!, Tables 4, 3A and 3B. ^Estimates of incidence of land revenue per acre or, which is preferably, as a share of output, are available for only a few regions and a few years.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 209 frozen, it is clear that collections o f land revenue in the tem porarily settled areas did not fall as fast as the total. But it is significant th a t even here the proportion o f ou tput taken as tax probably fell in the long run. T hus in M adras P residency, w here the B ritish had been extrem ely severe at the beginning o f the century, aim ing at c o lle ctin g from o n e-third to o n e-h alf o f the gross produce, by the end o f the century they did not take m ore than 1 0 per cent o f the gross produce, and co nsiderably less than that in the tw entieth ce n tu ry .27 From the end o f the nineteenth century onwards it becam e in­ creasingly difficult to raise the land revenue rates. Thus in south India, the governm ent was forced to revise its plans to increase the assessm ent in T anjore in 1923-4, and the proposals to raise it in K rishna and Godavari led to w idespread agitation in the 1930s. These problem s were heightened during the depression; when prices fell the real incidence went up even with rates unchanged, and the Indian National Congress was able to m ake opposition to the land revenue system one o f the m ain issues o f opposition to the British. But despite the declining role o f land revenue in the overall tax structure, it w as still by far the larg est single source o f revenue to the provin­ cial governm ents (it am ounted to 51 per cent o f total provincial tax revenues in 1 9 2 1 -2 and 44 p er cent in 1937—8 ,28 and they reacted to the anti-tax ag itations w ith varying degrees o f severity. T he fiercest punitive m easures w ere probably taken in G ujarat w here the lands o f those w ho p articip ated in the resistance w ere co n fiscated ; police action, in cluding firing to break up m eetings and d em o n stratio n s, and p u n itiv e fines w ere am ongst the other m easures taken all over the country. The protests w ere not alw ays successfu l. The depression w as a period o f acute financial strin ­ gency for governm ents too, and even if the rates could not be raised , o fficials co u ld m aintain or even increase actual collections by bringing m ore land under survey and assessm ent, refusing to gran t rem issions for bad w eather, and so on. 26

Estimates of incidence of land revenue per acre or, which is preferable, as a share of output, are available for only a few regions and a few years. 2 ,Kumar, ‘Fiscal System’, CEHl, 2, p. 230 28From 1919 certain heads of revenue were entirely allocated to the provinces; a brief account of the evolution of the federal financial system is given in Kumar, ‘Fiscal System’, CEHl, 2.

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INDONESIA29 Pre-colonial Taxes There appear to be less data on tax rates and actual collections for the pre-colonial regim es in Indonesia than in India. There is how ever a striking sim ilarity betw een the reports o f the early officials in both areas— in fact the reported rates are even higher in Java than in India. In the ‘free villages’ o f the less settled areas in the W est and East, Day rem arks, ‘there was som e lim it to the taxes w hich the people bore, even though it was as high as that reported by an E nglish official— three-fifths o f the c ro p ’. In the densely populated central part, the old state o f M ataram , there was no lim it to the taxes, except the cultivator’s ability to pay, squeezed as he was by a chain o f officials. But an Indian historian is struck by the resem blance o f these accounts to the statem ent o f B ritish officials in the early days o f the Com pany— and those frequently exaggerated the m iseries o f preceding regim es, for obvious reasons. A recent and more authorita­ tive estim ate is that the rulers usually took a third o f the crop, som e­ tim es a fifth .31 But even this m ay be too high. Again, Brem an also describes a chain o f interm ediaries, but in his m ore plausible account, they form part o f a fluid rural system , with opportunities for tax avoidance at all points o f the chain, starting with the cultivators w ho could, on the periphery and for a tim e at least, escape by settling in uncultivated areas .32 As M oertono com m ents,

29The Dutch East India Company was formed in 1602 and by 1755 it controlled all of Java. The Netherlands’ government took over the ‘East Indian Possessions’ in 1799; but the British ruled Java briefly, from 1811 to 1816. Indonesia became independent in 1949. 30One-fifth of the produce of the land was set aside for the desa notables; two-fifths was in theory given to the king as land tax, S. Moertono, State and statecraft in old Java, Ithaca, 1968, p. 142; C. Day, The Dutch in Java (Oxford, 1972), pp 31-2. ’w.M.F. Mansvelt and P. Creutzberg, (eds), Changing Economy in Indonesia, The Hague, 1975, Vol. 1, ‘Indonesia’s Export Crops 1816-1940’, p. 19. 2J. Breman, The Village on Java and the Early-Colonial State O^otterdam, 1980), p. 31.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 211 ... the usual assumption that the feudal population was heavily burdened by taxation is inaccurate, for the burden was sporadically, not consistently, heavy.33 O ther parts of Indonesia w ere m ore lightly taxed— for exam ple Van d er Kraan estim ates th at the Raja o f Lom bok, ‘alm ost certainly the w ealthiest indigenous ruler in the eastern part o f the Indonesian ar­ chipelago,’ collected less than 8 p er cent o f the rice output in land tax .34 M oreover, before the D utch appeared on the scene, trade and com m erce were the ch ief source o f revenue in later M ataram , so the burden o f the land tax was lighter .35 A nother big difference from India is that in Java very little o f the land revenue was collected in cash, the bulk being collected in labour services and in k in d .36 In India, the land revenue was partly collected in kind, but a large part w as collected in cash. Forced labour was not unknow n in India, for public works and tem ples ,37 but probably on a m uch sm aller scale than in Java.

The Dutch A s in India, H olland’s takeover o f its territories from the U nited East India Com pany (V erenigde O ost-Indische C om pagnie )38 in 1799 was m arked by financial disorder and confusion. For som e years accounts w ere still kept in com m ercial form , and m any adm inistrative practices w ere unchanged. Som e changes w ere m ade in 1811-16 when Java w as brought under direct governm ent control under the English in­ terim adm inistration, except for the Principalities; the O uter Islands continued to be indirectly ruled till the beginning o f the tw entieth century. A s in India the early decades o f colonial rule saw chronic

33Moertono, Slate and Statecraft, p. 144. 34A. van der Kraan, ‘Dutch rule on Lombok 1900-40; The Development of

Underdevelopment’, South East Asian Monograph Series, 6,1980, pp 11-15. 35Moertono, State and Statecraft, pp 150-1. 36Moertono, State and Statecraft, pp 144-51. 37On Travancore, see R. Jeffrey, The Decline o f Nayar Dominance (London, 1976), pp56-7. 38The V.O.C. charter was terminated by the Estates General of the Dutch Republic in 1795, but was extended by the National Assembly of the Batavian Republic to the end of 1799; van Niel, ‘Export Cultivations’, p. 26.

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deficits, but it is possible that the Dutch spent m ore (as a proportion o f public expenditure, or even o f dom estic product), than the British did, but this is ju st a guess .39 There is also a sim ilarity in the very high rates o f land tax introduced in the English interregnum in lieu o f the form er levies on land. It was then fixed at tw o-fifths of the m arket value o f the m ajor crop o f the village, usually rice. H owever, the actual collections were considerably lower than this .40 There w ere all kinds o f problem s in collecting the revenue and many villages thought they w ould sim plify m atters, by contracting with a European or Chinese, or a Javanese notable who would pay the land revenue on their behalf, and receive paym ents in kind and labour in return. The Chinese and Europeans produced export crops, but often found that the necessary labour contracts were not fulfilled .41 Until 1829, the governm ent played a sm all role in the production and m arketing o f agricultural com m odities (unlike the English East India Com pany which was considerably more active in these fields than the G overn­ m ent o f India after 1858). But the Dutch were m uch more active in the follow ing period, 1830-1877, when the notorious Culture System was instituted in order to obtain crops for export. U nder this system , the peasant was required to grow a designated crop, generally on one-fifth of his lands .42 These crops were sold to the governm ent at prices fixed by it; the sales proceeds in theory should have covered the peasant’s entire land tax dues, but in practice often did not .43 The peasant had also to provide 6 6 days o f unpaid labour in the year on governm ent estates and projects. The Culture System was in fact 39

Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 2, ‘Public finance’, The Hague, 1976, state ‘During this period (1816-29) a great deal was spent on the maintenance and construction of roads and other public works’ (p. 17), excluding the large amount built by unpaid corvée labour. The English East India Company spent a very small proportion of its revenue on public works during this period. ^V an Niel, ‘Function of Land Rent’, pp 357-75. 41Van Niel, ‘Export Cultivations’, pp 40-2. 420 n the types of compulsion used by the government, and the growth in the power of the village headman, see Van Niel, ‘Export Cultivations’, pp 43-4. 3Van Niel, ‘Measurement of Change Under the Cultivation System in Java 1837-51’, in Fasseur, Geld en Geweten, 2, p. 109. If the peasant produced more than the value of the land tax, he was paid the additional amounts in cash. On the remaining four-fifths of the land the villagers could grow and sell what they liked.

The Taxation o f Agriculture

213

very unsystem atic, and apparently only 5 per cent of the total land under cultivation was put under export crops under this scheme. On the other hand, 70 per cent o f the fam ilies were involved in one way or another. Van Niel points out that the techniques used were very labour-intensive, that labour was used very w astefully, and that the system was abused by the bureaucrats, who made use o f the labour for their personal w ork .44 The Culture System also encouraged in­ creasing investm ent by the governm ent: the expenditure on ‘public utilities’ tripled betw een 1830-34 and 1845-49, while the expendi­ tures on ‘general adm inistration’ only went up by 30 per cent .45 The main export crops were coffee, sugar, and indigo. Indigo was particularly detested; it exhausted the soil, and the work was un­ pleasant and ill-paid .46 Sugar m eant that the fields had to be taken away from rice cultivation, and necessitated com plicated arrange­ m ents for swapping fields and organising labour. D espite its ill-fame, in the short run the Culture System, according to som e historians, did not im poverish the peasants. The land under cultivation expanded faster than the population (except in Surabaya) and output per acre went up. The consum ption o f various articles increased. However, the gains were probably unevenly distributed with special benefits flow ing to the village headm en and other m agnates .47 The governm ents’ collections from the land tax, the main source of revenue, also went up as more land was brought under cultivation, iO evasion becam e m ore difficult, and the assessm ent was raised. In the long run, m ost authors agree, the system was harmful be­ cause it discouraged enterprise.49The land requirem ent encouraged the growth of com m unal tenures, which, it is arguable, discouraged individual investm ent and risk-taking. The labour requirem ents were

^V an Niel, ‘Measurement of Change’, p. 112. 45Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 2, p. 18. The heading ‘public utilities’ covers a wide 'range, including government monopolies, agricultural estates and commercial concerns, as well as the conventional public utilities (ibid., p. 45). No further breakdown is available. Van Niel, ‘Measurement of change’, p. 103. *47Van Niel, ‘Measurement of change’, p. 109. ^V an Niel, ‘Function of Land Rent’. One exception is R.E. Elson, ‘Peasant Poverty and Prosperity Under the Cultivation System in Java’, Paper for the conference on Indonesian Economic History in the Dutch Colonial Period, Australian National University, 1983.

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particularly harm ful in rem oving incentives to increase the m arginal product of labour, and in their effects on the upper classes, who ‘w ere relegated to w hat seem ed to w ork best, nam ely traditional authority controlling unthinking labour ’ .50 The crops ow ned by the governm ent w ere SQld to Europeans and Chinese who processed them in plants financed by interest-free governm ent loans. The processed crops were shipped by the N ether­ lands Trading Com pany, a governm ent concern, to the N etherlands w here they were auctioned, but the share o f the private sector in exports gradually increased .51 From these proceeds were deducted the am ount needed to m eet deficits in Indonesia (the ‘Territorial F inances’) and to cover the extrem ely high expenditure in the N ether­ lands debited to the N etherlands Indies. The balance— called ‘Surplus B alance’ or ‘Contributions from the N etherlands Indian T reasury’— w as paid into the N etherlands Exchequer. O ver the period 1832— 1877, the Surplus Balance averaged Dfl. 19 m. per year, a sizeable contribution to the N etherlands .5 A bout 90 per cent o f this am ount (w hich Fasseur refers to as the ‘E ast Indian profits’), cam e from the C ulture System, the rem ainder being provided by the exports o f tin: In the fifties the East Indian profits amounted to almost one-third of the total of the Dutch public revenue (31 per cent) as against less than one-fifth (19 per cent) in the period before 1850. The East Indian surplus had become the cork that kept the Netherlands afloat ... .53

50Van Niel, ‘Measurement of Change’, p. 111. 5,Van Niel, ‘Export Cultivations’, p. 50. 52Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 2, p. 18. The guildersterling rate fluctuated between 12 and 16.5 guilders to the pound between 1838 and 1977; J.T.M. van Laanen, ‘Money and Banking 1816-1940’, Vol. 6 of Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy (The Hague, 1980), Table 8 . 53C. Fasseur, ‘Some Remarks on the Culture System in Java’, Acta Historiae Neerlandicae, 10, 1978, p. 155. To put it another way, of the estimated budget revenues, 13.9 per cent from the land tax in 1871 and 16.3 per cent in 1895; while the sale of government produce contributed 55.6 per cent in 1871 and 22.9 per cent in 1895; A. Booth, ‘The Evolution of Fiscal Policy and the Role of Government in the Colonial Economy’, paper for the conference on Indonesian Economic History in the Dutch colonial period, Australian National University, 1983, Table 3.

The Taxation o f Agriculture

215

There was no such direct contribution by India to the British exche­ quer, as the British sometimes pointed out with complacency: I have opposed, as stoutly as any one, any attempt to ease English finance unduly at the expense of India; but I cannot deny that England, having founded the Indian Empire, and being ready to sustain it, and having given up all pretensions to exact a tribute, as Holland does from Java, or Spain from Cuba, and all claim on a monopoly of the Indian market and carrying trade, may with some reasons, ask India so to levy the necessary revenue as not to interfere injuriously with trade between the two countries ... In fact, so completely has England given up those claims which other countries have enforced on their dependencies, that speculative reasons have been argued that the parent State would be better without its Foreign and Colonial Em54 pi re. The British exchequer did of course gain in various ways: every item that could reasonably or even unreasonably be debited to India as ‘home charges’, was (but corresponding items of expenditure in the Netherlands were debited before calculating the surplus balance). It is true too that the ‘home charges’, or payments for expenditure in Britain on the account o f the government o f India or the provinces, were a sizeable charge on Indian revenues: 16 per cent or so in 1875— 6 to 1898-9, and 27 per cent in 1933,55 but they were a small propor­ tion of British revenues. It is ironical then, that the well-known Indian nationalist, M.G. Ranade, writing towards the end of the nineteenth century, praised the Culture System as a model for British India: In short, the Java Culture System may be described as a system of encouraging the planting of remunerative crops, and manufacturing them for the European market, by private agency and at private risk, with Government advances, and under Government supervision, and with the Government as the sole customer.

54Financial statement, Samuel Laing, 16 April 1862. 55The main items in the ‘home charges’ were interest payments, military expenditure, pensions and furlough to British officials, and stores. The ‘drain’ is a wider and more ambiguous concept, also covering commercial profits, and anything else the person making the estimate regards as a foreign exchange cost of British rule; for a brief survey of the literature and of some of the problems in defining the drain, see A.K. Baneiji, Aspects of lndo-British Economic Relations, 1858-98, New Delhi, 1982.

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Colonialism, Property and the State

All the three parties who worked the system, the Government, the Contractor, and Peasants, benefited by it. The essential point to Ranade was that the G overnm ent borrow ed cheaply and then lent to private enterprise: the British did this too in their railw ay policy, but did too little and for the wrong ends— investm ent in m anufactures would be far better. Consequently, the land revenue in India was Re. I per head, in Indonesia three-quarters that amount. In Indonesia a m uch larger part o f current expenditure was m et from taxes, while India had to pay much m ore interest on public debt.57 Indonesian exports were relatively more im portant than in India, and the proportion o f m anufactured exports higher.58 Incidentally, R anade’s thesis is partly supported by a recent analysis o f opium production in India though Ranade m ight not have approved of the purpose o f the m onopoly: The end result of the state opium monopoly was thus extraordinarily long-term (115 years), stable support for precisely that type of intensive high-yielding garden cultivation not generally considered a strong point in India’s agricul­ tural practices. v The Culture System was given up in 1870, after which date cash crops were produced by the peasants them selves under a variety of contracts w ith the sugar m ills and others, or on ‘estates’ i.e. large plantations run by Europeans (and a few Chinese), the land being leased from the peasants or from governm ent. The area under cul­ tivation, production and exports all expanded between 1870 and 1900, but the bulk o f the export crops were produced by the estates. The governm ent went back to collecting the land tax, fixed in 1872 at one-fifth o f the gross p ro duct— but in Indonesia as in India, 56Ranade, Essays, p. 76. 57The role of public debt in the fiscal systems of the two colonies is an important point, but one which we have not been able to deal with in the paper. Ranade, Essays, p. 76 et seq. 59J.F. Richards, ‘The Indian Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century’, Modem Asian Studies, 15, 1981, P. 82. ^Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 1, p. 21. There was a further and more rapid expansion of output and exports, particularly of new commodities like rubber and palm oil, between 1905 and 1930 (ibid.).

The Taxation o f Agriculture 217 th ese theoretical rates had little m eaning, and ‘a system o f h ig g lin g ’61 o r w hat th e B ritish called ‘p rag m atism ’ determ ined w hat was ac­ tu ally paid. No estim ate o f the ratio o f tax paym ents to actual a g ric u ltu ra l output is read ily available for Indonesia fo r the n in eteen th century; hardly any estim ates o f national incom e are a v ailab le before 1900.62 Even for the tw entieth century, a series is available only for the years 1921-1939; com piled by J.J. Polak,63 these figures include a breakdow n o f national incom e accruing to various nationalities, revealing the high share to resident foreigners, especially resident Europeans (these estim ates are very rough, and so too all com parisons based on them ). Sim ilar figures are not available for India but it is unlikely that the share o f resident foreigners w ould be as high: ‘E uropeans’ were 0.4 p er cent o f the total population o f Indonesia in 1939, and ‘Foreign A siatics’ (m ainly C hinese and A rabs) 2.2 per cent.65 In India in 1941 there w ere only 135,000 ‘Europeans and allied races, a m ere 0.04 per cent o f the total population o f 338.1 m illion.66 U sing P olak’s figures, A nne Booth has calculated that total tax revenues w ere some 7 per cent o f national incom e in the 1920s, and about 10 per cent in the 1930s. This rise reflects the inelasticity o f the tax system : national incom e fell in the 1930s but tax collections declined at a slow er rate. As in India the share o f the land revenue declined steadily.

61Day, The Dutch in Java, p. 405. Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 5, ‘National Income’, p. 16. 63Reprinted in full in Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 5, 1979; this volume also gives details of the few point estimates made for other years. However, ‘Europeans’ is a legal, not a racial concept. Japanese, Americans and Filipinos are equally classed as ‘Europeans’; J. J. Polak, The National Income o f the Netherlands Indies, 1921-39 (New York, 1943), p. 29, reprinted in Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 5. Maddison estimates the income of the British (the bulk of the Europeans) at 5 per cent of India’s income in the 1930s; A. Maddison, 1983, p. 3. 65Polak, National Income, p. 29. 66Kingsley Davis, The Population o f India and Pakistan (Princeton, 1951), p. 186. 67.

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The land tax w hich was about 1 per cent of indigenous incom e in Indonesia in the 1920s, rose to 1.6 per cent in 1931-35, and fell to 1.2 per cent in the next three years. But indigenous incom e arose from non-agricultural sources as well, and agriculture was also taxed by duties on export crops, and by statute labour ( Heerendiensten ), levied either in labour-days or, in lieu o f labour, money. Booth has valued the labour at the im puted wage rate for ransomed labour, fo r one year, 1939. In this year the average burden o f all three taxes was 5.6 per cent o f indigenous agricultural income in Java, and nearly 10.1 per cent in the O uter Islands.67 There were great differences in the structure o f taxes: levies in labour were very much higher in the O uter Islands and the land tax was small. However, as Booth points out, the labour tax m ay have been substantially underestim ated in Java, so the differences between the two regions may have been over­ estim ated and the total tax burden would to that extent be underes68 tim ated. M oreover, the per capita incom e in the Outer Islands w as about 20 per cent higher than in Java in 1930.69

SOME COMPARISONS There were o f course great differences betw een the two system s.70 The British were throughout less interventionist: there was nothing like the Culture System in India; the use o f corvée labour was always low er in India to start with, and had m ore or less disappeared by the m iddle o f the nineteenth century. But there were also striking sim ilarities. W hat needs explanation is why in both system s the tax burden was, apparently at least, so m uch lower in the twentieth cen­ tury than at the beginning of the nineteenth. It was once believed that the pre-colonial regim es o f both countries extracted a great deal from agriculture, perhaps one-third to one-half the gross produce, or som etim es even more. It now ap­ pears likely that the central treasuries received much less. In both

67A. Booth, ‘The Burden of Taxation m Colonial Indonesia in the Twentieth Century’, Journal of South Asian Studies, 11, 1980, I, p. 105. 68A. Booth, ‘Burden of Taxation’, p. 106. 69Polak, National Income, p. 77. 70There were, to begin with, differences in accounting systems; so all statistical comparisons are rough.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 219 countries m uch o f the taxes paid by the peasants leaked to a series o f interm ediaries. It could be argued that this still left the cultivator paying out half o r m ore o f his crop (w ith enorm ous regional varia­ tions), but this too seem s unlikely as a general rule. N evertheless, the b elief that these high rates were normal, provided a convenient precedent for the new European rulers, and the rates they im posed at the start o f their rule were very high. The D utch w ere apparently m uch m ore ruthless in cutting out interm ediaries than the B ritish, especially after 1857. Breman describes this as a process o f social ‘de-differentiation’.71 The British policy tow ards interm ediaries varied from region to region and from tim e to tim e, and w ith varying m otives. In M adras recalcitrant petty chieftains w ere rem oved at the beginning o f the nineteenth century. H ere the m otive was political but elsew here, as in the D eccan, the objective w as also to increase the revenue collections.72 In the D ec­ can the loss o f the pow er and privileges o f form er officials— the deshmukhs, pradhans and patwardans—m ay have reduced social and econom ic differences, though we cannot be definite about thifc, but in m ost parts o f India, notoriously in Bengal, the B ritish preserved the econom ic privileges o f the interm ediaries, even w hile divesting them o f their form er judicial and adm inistrative functions. In India, the land revenue was betw een 3 and 5 per cent o f gross agricultural output in the first h alf o f the tw entieth century, and less than that during the Second W orld W ar, when prices rose sharply.73 In Indonesia taxes on land were considerably higher— from 6 to 10 p er cen t o f agricultural incom e in 1939. B ut in both countries these rates were very m uch low er than the recorded rates at the beginning o f colonial rule. There are several w ays o f attem pting to explain this phenom enon. The first is to deny that there is anything to explain, to assert that there was in fact no fall. Since the estim ates for the tw entieth century

7'Breman, The Village on Java, p. 32. There was a fair degree of economic differentiation in Java by the 1930s, judging from the data quoted by W.F Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition (The Hague, 1959), pp 111-4. 72Ravinder Kumar, Western India in the Nineteen Century (London, 1968). 73One should add the irrigation and betterment levies, the export duties on agricultural products, and the provincial income taxes on agriculture, but this will not alter the conclusions significantly, since these taxes were relatively low.

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are reasonably firm, and certainly m uch better than the figures for the nineteenth century, this im plies that collections in the earlier period were surprisingly light. This ju st pushes the problem one stage further back. O r rather tw o stages back, since the im perialists adopted the highest rates their predecessors were believed to have levied. In fact, all three o f the follow ing seem likely. First, the pre-colonial regim es did not collect as m uch as half or a third o f the harvest; second, the early colonial regim es kept up the burden on the c u l­ tivators, and tightened the system o f adm inistration, and in som e areas, elim inated revenue interm ediaries, so that accruals to govern­ m ent coffers w ent up, but were still on an average som ew hat less than the stipulated rates; and finally, there was some fall in the tax burden on agriculture in the tw entieth century; and in India at least, from the late nineteenth century. It then appears that the native rulers of India and Java took less out o f agriculture than their contemporaries in Japan; information on other parts o f Asia is not readily available. Direct taxes on agriculture in Japan were 17 per cent of net agriculture income in 1879-83 and 22 per cent in 1884-88, after which they declined to 13 per cent by 19091911, on the official estimates o f output; on N akam ura’s estimates the proportions would fall to 12 per cent in 1884-88 and 9 per cent in 190911. 4As a share o f central government taxes, the land tax fell from 80 per cent in 1868-72 to 43 per cent in 1909-11. Japan was once held up as a model to developing countries in this as in other respects, but views on the relevance o f Japan for other countries have changed, since it is not clear that there was in fact a net resource flow out of agriculture; heavy taxation may have hindered agricultural growth, and Japan had exceptional initial conditions.75 O ne reason for the high rates of direct taxes on agriculture in the Tokugaw a and M eiji regim es, Richard B ird argues, was the fact that the ruling classes did not ow n m uch land, and adds ‘the uniqueness o f this situation deserves m ore attention than it has generally received.’76 But in B ritish India, too, the rulers ow ned no land, and 74There is still no consensus on the output figures; see R. Sinha, ‘Agriculture and economic Development in Meiji Japan’, Development and Change, 10, 1979. 75R. Bird, Taxing Agricultural Land in Developing Countries (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 119-120; Raj Krishna, ‘Inter-sectoral equality in agricultural taxation’, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, 1972. 76Bird, Taxing Agricultural Land, p. 165.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 221 yet they could not m aintain the rates o f tax on agriculture. Again, one m ight argue that the D utch had de facto property rights under the C ulture System but this was certainly not the case in the tw entieth century. W hy then did the burden on agriculture fall in both countries even though the governm ents w ere continually in need o f revenue? O ne answ er frequently advanced, or im plied, in India at least, is that the peasantry was so im poverished after a century o f colonial rule that it was hardly possible to squeeze m ore out o f them . It is im pos­ sible to say anything definite about output in the first half of the nineteenth century, but the rapid increase o f exports o f agricultural products under the Com pany rule suggests that output did go up then, and probably faster than population. It is certainly true that after 1920, agricultural output p er head declined, but it had probably risen betw een 1860 and 1847.7 H ow ever, patterns o f grow th of population and o f agriculture varied so m uch regionally that statem ents about the overall change in tax burden and the capacity to pay are unsatis­ factory; unfortunately the necessary detailed regional studies, which should also take into account changes in the pattern o f landholding, are not available. But at least one can say that the w illingness to pay also changed in India: the grow ing strength o f the national m ovem ent and the organisation o f the peasantry constrained the governm ent’s ability to increase agricultural taxation in the tw entieth century in India, a point we return to in the next section. A s T able 9.2 and 9.3 show , the Dutch consistently extracted m ore public revenue than the British. Public revenues were 15-17 p e rc e n t TABLE 9.2 Distribution of Total National Income in Indonesia, 1925-39 Year 1925 1929 1933 1939

Indonesians Europeans 72 73 79 69

10 12 16 13

Foreign Asiatics

Total Govt. Export NonIncome Residents

7 8 12 10

1 1 1 1

10 6 -8 7

100 100 100 100

Source: W.M.F. Mansvelt and P. Creutzberg, Changing Economy in Indonesia: A Selection o f Statistical Source Material from the Early 19th Cen­ tury up to 1940, Vol. 5, National Income (The Hague, 1979), p. 71. 77A. Heston, ‘Nadonal Income’, CEHI, 2, p. 387.

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TABLE 9.3 Tax Revenues, Total Revenues, and Total Expenditure as a Percentage of National Income in the Dutch East Indies Year

1921-25 1926-30 1931-35 1936-39

Land tax Personal Excises Foreign Total tax trade as percen­ income taxes revenue tax tage of indigenous income 0.9 1.0 1.6 1.2

NA 1.1 2.0 1.5

0.5 0.8 1.7 2.2

1.6 2.0 2.5 3.2

7.2 6.8 9.6 10.5

Total reve­ nue

Total expen­ diture

14.8 14.6 16.2 16.7

16.0 15.0 21.8 18.9

Sources: Tax data as for Table 1; National income data: J.J. Polak, The Na­ tional Income o f the Netherlands Indies, 1921-29 (New York, 1943); data on total income and expenditure: Creutzberg, op. ciL, A. Booth, ‘The burden of taxation in colonial Indonesia in the twentieth centruy’, Journal of South Asain Studies, 11, 1980, 1, p. 96. Personal and company income taxes were only included in disaggregated form after 1925. •

of national income in Indonesia between 1921 and 1939, and only 8-10 per cent in India from 1900 to 1940—even in the last year of the Second World War, the proportion went up to only 12 per cent. Correspondingly, public expenditure was also a much larger percent­ age of national income in Indonesia, and there was considerable government investment in the export industries,78 unlike India. 78Investment in the export industries had begun to rise in the 1890s but estimates of the investment are available only for the period 1905-1939; investments were particularly high in the 1920s, when exports were also very high: Period

1905-41 1915-19 1920-24 1925-29 1930-39 1935-39

Yearly average in fl. 1 million Ordinary public expenditure

Exports from Indonesia

221 450 831 709 603 495

485 1,056 1,504 1,630 680 717

Estimated Investments 71 151 265 263 95 75

Source: Mansveh and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, Vol. 2, pp 19-20.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 223 So w hich colony fared w orse? The Dutch alm ost certainly took m ore out o f Indonesia by way o f profits on ‘produce’, expenditure in the N etherlands, and so on, but they also alm ost certainly invested m ore in infrastructure, and spent m ore on education and health— they could hardly have spent less— though a large share of this was spent on Europeans. A com plete com parison would take into account the form o f different taxes as well as the overall level o f taxes, since, for exam ple, an export duty on agricultural crops would have different effects from a tax on output.7 Per capita incom es in the two countries were probably not very different in the tw entieth century. Polak80 takes V.K.V.R. R ao’s es­ tim ate o f Rs. 84 per capita for British India in 1925 to be equivalent to Dfl. 76; the per capita incom e o f the total population o f Indonesia w as Dfl. 80, but as we have seen a larger share probably went to foreigners in Indonesia. The structures of the two econom ies were not too different: agriculture accounted for 46 per cent o f the national incom e in Indonesia in 1939 and m anufacturing for 15 per cent;81 in India agriculture was 40 per cent o f net dom estic product in 1939-40, and industry 16 per cent.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH This sketchy and partial survey o f land taxes in India and Indonesia suggests two areas for future research. First, one needs to know m ore about the pre-colonial tax system s. Levels o f taxation were much low er in Indonesia and India than in Japan: how did they com pare w ith other contem porary governm ents? This issue is o f interest in

79See Bent Hansen, review of Thomas A.B. Bimberg and Setphen A. Resnick, ‘Colonial Development: An Econometric Study’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 14, 1976, p. 1299. One should add that independent Indonesia started with a heavy debt to the Netherlands (Wertheim, Indonesian society, p. 126) but the British left India in debt to their former colony. This was entirely a result of the heavy expenditures in India during World War II. 80Polak, National Income, p. 100. 81 Polak, National Income, p. 71. 82Heston, ‘National Income’, p. 398. If animal husbandry, forestry and fishing were included, agriculture and allied activities would account for 57 per cent of national income.

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itself, throw ing light on the structure and efficiency of pre-co lo n ial governm ents. M oreover, the pre-colonial levels o f taxes, or w hat w e re believed to be these levels, influenced colonial tax policies. A n d colonialism has left its legacy to the politics o f taxation after in d e­ pendence. The four independent successor states have all found it difficult to raise the direct taxes on agricultural incomes, though n o t total tax revenues. By 1970, direct taxes on agriculture in India h ad fallen to less than one per cent o f the net dom estic product in agricul01 ture, and despite the recom m endations o f experts it has proved politically difficult to raise it, although total tax revenues in In d ia have risen rapidly since independence, to about 20 per cent o f G N P today. The second question is the ability and willingness o f colonial governm ents to raise taxes. Theorists have analysed various m odels o f governm ent and voters’ behaviour in dem ocracies; there is m uch less theoretical interest in these problem s in colonies, perhaps on the im plicit assum ption that they can be subsum ed in the model o f an all-pow erful dictator. But Britain and H olland were not dictatorships, and the colonial experience throws up special problems. One has to consider two sets o f governm ents and tw o societies— the m etropolitan and the colonial, the links betw een them and the differences in struc­ ture. Thus the G overnm ent o f India was subject to different instru­ m ents of pressure in India than the G overnm ent o f Great Britain in 83

Against the widely held view that the agricultural sector in undertaxed in India, and for a country in the early stages of development, Raj Krishna asserts that ‘the light fiscal treatment of agriculture apears as an understandable and defensible response of the free government of India to a unique inheritance. The relevant historical truth in this connection is that Indian agriculture was as systematically ‘exploited’ as agriculture in other early-stage economies, but, because of the existence of a colonial regime, this exploitation did not finance the industrialisation of India but contributed in part to the industrialisation of Britain’ (Krishna, ‘Inter-sectoral Equality’, p. 1593). The point he makes is that independent India inherited an exhausted agriculture (and a stagnant economy) which needed an inflow of resources, not an extraction of surplus. Raj Krishna is certainly correct on the inadvisability of raising direct taxation of Indian agriculture to Meiji levels. Nevertheless, most Indian economists would argue that the state should raise more from agriculture, especially from the rural rich, and that it should also invest more in agriculture, ^ o r example, A.B. Atkinson and J. Stiglitz, Lectures on Public Economics, London, 1980.

The Taxation o f Agriculture 225 the U.K., subject as it was to Parliam ent. In the early stages o f the colonial experience, both in the U.K. and the N etherlands, both the m etropolitan and the colonial governm ents were subject mainly to the-pressures o f the ruling com m unity, especially as regards expen­ diture. British businessm en dem anded investm ent in canals and rail­ w ays to secure supplies o f raw cotton, for instance. M ore weight was given to opposition in the m etropolitan country, even on issues m ain­ ly concerning the people o f the colonies. Thus the C ulture System w as abandoned because o f opposition to it in H olland, not In­ donesia.85 As the fast grow ing literature on nationalist and peasant m ovem ents show, the opposition to taxes, and particularly to m ass taxes like the land revenue, w as nearly everyw here a m ajor rallying point for independence m ovem ents. But there were significant dif­ ferences requiring further analysis in the sources of grievances and the degree o f resistance to the colonial pow ers. For instance, the land revenue was a particularly sensitive issue in m any parts of Asia in the inter-w ar period,87 though apparently not in Indonesia. Booth sug­ gests that one reason for the ‘docility o f the Indonesian peasantry’ was that Java was less intensively taxed than the O uter Islands, and 88 that direct taxes appeared to be lightened; she also quotes O ’M alley ’s conclusions that both the repressive nature of the Dutch regim e, and the fact that few in Indonesia faced starvation, were responsible for the deference betw een the Indonesian and other South QO East Asian (and South Asian) peasantries. 85

C. Fasseur, ‘Some Remarks on the Culture System in Java’. A brief but useful survey of the literature on India is contained in David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District, 1917-1934 ¡(Delhi, 198 i), Ch. 1; on India also see Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj, 86

Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1978)|and Ranjit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983), and on Indonesia, K. Sartono, Protest Movements in Rural Java (Singapore, 1973). An interesting comparison of various forms of resistance can be found in M. Adas, ‘From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 23, 1981. 87D.A. Low (ed.). Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle, 1917-47 (London, 1977), J.C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (Yale, 1979). 88 B ooth,4 Burden of Taxation’, p. 109. 89W.J. O ’Melley, The Bengalis Hunger Riots of 1935 (Canberra, 1979).

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A t a certain stage o f political organisation in the colony the dem ands o f the colonised have to be heard. Taxes are difficult to raise in all poor countries, including independent ones. Thus W ang has estim ated that tax revenues am ounted to a m ere 2.4 per cent o f C h in a’s N.N.P. in 1908; he also stresses the declining burden o f land revenue, w hich he attributes to a num ber o f factors, including the 90 fear o f peasant riots, and the lack o f a land survey. The governm ents o f British India and D utch Indonesia were certainly better able to collect taxes, having som e o f the apparatus o f m odern governm ents. A gain, the opposition to them was less organised and weaker than in dem ocracies. But there w ere other and perhaps m ore pow erful constraints on their actions, in particular the actual and perceived risks o f losing in a confrontation with their opponents. The first con­ straint is that the perceived risks to governm ent o f unpopular taxes m ay be greater in colonies than in dem ocracies. A dem ocratic govern­ m ent may fear that it will lose the next election, but it can alw ays hope to win the one after that. O nce the colonial governm ent is over­ throw n it can hardly hope to return. This fear recurs frequently in the statem ents o f the British rulers in India, from the first V iceroy’s ‘D anger for danger, I would rather risk governing India with an army o f only 40,000 Europeans than I would risk having to raise unpopular taxes.’91 A nother V iceroy said in 1928: Land Revenue administration has always been the danger point of administra­ tion, and I fancy that this will be more and more true as time goes on. There is here an obvious field for the political agitator who will certainly not be slow to avail himself of any opportunity that offers for the organization of a mass movement, on an issue of immediate interest to large number of persons, which may embarass government.92 The first quotation neatly sets out two alternative ways of reducing risk: lower taxes, or higher police and army costs (the British were notoriously reluctant to charge the British taxpayer for the latter). O ne cannot, o f course, leap to conclusions from such isolated quota­

90Y.C. Wang, Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750-1911 (Cambridge, 1973), pp 83-3, 133. 9,J.P. Niyogi, ‘The Evolution of the Indian Income Tax’ (London, 1929), p. 36. 92 D. Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists, p. 3.

The Taxation of Agriculture 227 tions. But they illustrate a neglected dim ension of the official m ind and point to the need to analyze closely the processes of decision­ m aking behind successive budgets. Again, there has not been m uch analysis o f the politics of public expenditure in colonies. Indian econom ists from G okhale onwards had written on the need for m uch greater expenditure on education and other ‘nation building’ activities, and there was considerable debate in the legislatures on the level and pattern o f public expen­ diture; for instance, on the choice betw een railw ays and irrigation. B ut there has been no system atic analysis o f these views, relating them to political parties and pressure groups such as landow ners and business associations in India. W ere colonial governm ents less able to derive political benefits from public expenditure than dem ocratic governm ents supported by m ass-based parties? W hich items o f ex­ penditure— prim ary education or irrigation or cheap credit— m ight have gained the governm ent political support? In this connection a close analysis o f the policies o f the Congress m inistries which took pow er in India in 1937 is badly needed, even though they lasted for only tw o years or so.

10 The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia INTRODUCTION ‘G iven the circum stances facing Indonesian governm ents in the years 1 9 5 0 -7 ’, a standard history o f Indonesia com m ents, ‘it is not surpris­ ing that the dem ocratic experim ent foundered, for there were few foundations upon w hich representative dem ocracy could be built. In­ d o n esia inherited from the D utch and Japanese the traditions, as­ su m ptions and legal structure o f a police state. The Indonesian m asses— mostly illiterate, poor, accustom ed to authoritarian and paternalistic rule, and spread over an enorm ous archipelago— were hardly in a position to force politicians in Jakarta to account for their perform ance. The politically inform ed were only a tiny layer o f urban society and the Jakarta politicians, while proclaim ing their dem ocratic ideals, were m ostly elitist and selfconscious participants in a new urban superculture. They were paternalistic towards those less for­ tunate than them selves and som etim es sim ply snobbish tow ards those who, for instance, could not speak fluent Dutch. They had little com ­ m itm ent to the grassroots structure o f representative governm ent and m anaged to postpone elections for five m ore years. A plant as rare as representative dem ocracy can hardly grow in such soil.1 H ow then does representative dem ocracy fare in the Indian soil? Parts o f the above description apply to India as well. The people w ere at least as poor as Indonesians, and barely m ore literate. India too spent long years under foreign rule, and there were perhaps not m any observers in 1947 who predicted that India would be able to

'm.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modem Indonesia (London and Basingstoke, 1981), p. 225.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 229 m aintain a dem ocratic p o litical system . It has m anaged to do so, ho w ev er im perfectly, with the brief interruption o f the Emergency. A nd with the exception o f the Em ergency Indians have generally enjoyed a greater degree o f political liberty than Indonesians after independence.2 Political liberty has m any dim ensions: institutions such as repre­ sentative governm ent, some form o f elections based on a wide franchise, a free press, an independent judiciary, and such individual rights as freedom o f speech and association, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and so on. It is not easy to m easure any one o f them, let alone to sum them up. M oreover, in both India and Indonesia, the constitu­ tion and laws can be a m isleading guide to the degree o f freedom citizens actually enjoy. Not content with the illiberal laws inherited from the British, such as those em pow ering preventive detention, the central and state governm ents in India have added several of their own; m oreover, they frequently ignore even the limited safeguards granted by the laws. Political prisoners ‘die w hile escaping’, i.e. are shot in custody, and tens o f thousands lie in jail before trial, many o f them spending m ore years there than they would if found guilty o f the crim es they are accused of. H owever, large scale arrests and detention w ithout trial are also features o f Indonesian life.3 Conver­ sely, Indonesians, it has been pointed out to me, have many ways o f influencing their governm ent, including extensive discussions in parliam ent though the influence doubtless varies greatly with the status o f the individual. H ow ever it can be said that India has an appreciably greater m easure of political liberty even today than In­ donesia.4 The citizens o f India have a greater ability to choose, and dism iss, their governm ents; universities and the press are freer and

^This was less true of the period 1950-7 when there was a form of democracy in Indonesia, but the comparison is probably valid even then. One should note that Ricklefs adds that ‘because of the élite commitment to the idea of democracy, the years 1950-7 stand as the freest period of Indonesian history for the politically articulate’. Ibid. But this was also a period of chaos. 3Hans Tholen (ed.), Indonesia and the Rule of Law (London, 1987). ,4When I read the original version of this paper, one or two foreigners were outraged by this statement. No Indonesians protested to me, and I do not think their exquisite politeness was the only reason. 5During the Emergency in India, of course, there were various curbs on the universities. Sanjay Gandhi’s birthday was celebrated, and seminars held on

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the judiciary can be m ore critical o f the governm ent. In this respect, it is India that is the freak and Indonesia that is normal. D em ocracies are rare in the Third W orld, even am ongst the middle incom e countries to which Indonesia belongs.6 That a country as poor as India has m anaged to m aintain dem ocratic institutions, im perfect though they are, belies the crude connections so com m only draw n betw een the econom y and the polity. Present differences are clearly related to the differences in the colonial histories o f the tw o countries, and this chapter discusses som e features o f the colonial period relevant to the issue o f liberty. The issue is large and com plex and I have been ham pered by my own lim itations, particularly my ignorance o f Dutch. But the litera­ ture is also unsatisfactory, even for India. R epresentative institutions are discussed in constitutional histories, as well as the political philosophy o f individual leaders. But there are very few books on civil liberties as such.7 Perhaps one reason is pre-occupation with nationalism and nationalist m ovem ents. A nother may be that the dom inant group of Indian historians in recent tim es has been M arxist, and to them civil liberties are not or at least have not been o f basic im portance; even

the Twenty Point Programme, but even this was better than the compulsory burning of Western books and compulsory courses on Pancasila described in C.W. Watson, State and Society in Indonesia: Three Papers, Occasional paper No. 9, Centre of South-East Asian Studies, University of Kent, Sept. 1987, p. 32. fo llo w in g the criteria for democracy laid down by Freedom House: freedom of expression, association, elections, etc., Sklar identified 31 Third World democracies in 1986 of which only two were in Asia: India and Turkey; Richard N. Sklar, ‘Developmental Democracy’, Comparative Studies in History and Society 29, 4, Oct. 1987, p. 691. 7Of the very few books on the history of civil liberties in India which I have found, one is Bharat Mishra, Civil Liberty and the Indian National Congress (Calcutta, 1969). The author argues that, after 1947, Congress did not live up to the ideals of civil liberty it had championed earlier. This was for three reasons: first, Nehru and his contemporaries moved away from the earlier ideals of individualism and liberty to democratic socialism; secondly, the Congress inherited ‘the vicious tradition of the colonial government which was callous to all ideas of freedom’, and, finally, satyagraha had legitimized disobedience to legally constituted authority. The theme is an important one, but the treatment is slight and simplistic.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 231 in the best and most developed bourgeois state they are epiphenomena, m asking the exploitation o f the working class, and colonial states were far from the best. Som e W estern historians have taken it for granted that w hatever few liberties the colonial governm ents granted w ere im ports from the W est, and im ports unlikely to take root. But the legacies o f colonial regim es are com plex and contradic­ tory: neither the pure repression o f sim ple-m inded anti-im perialist narratives nor the pioneering if lim ited gifts o f liberty described by com placent im perialist apologists. M oreover, policies aim ed at serv­ ing purely imperial econom ic interests— such as integrating the colonial econom y and adm inistration— may have had unintended political consequences. And w hatever their aims, the pow er of the colonial governm ents was constrained by native society, and to some extent by the nature o f pre-colonial regim es.

THE PRE-COLONIAL STATES The pre-colonial states of India— not ju st the M ughals, but also the M arathas and the various kingdom s o f South India— were alm ost cer­ tainly m uch stronger than those o f Indonesia. These regim es collected a larger share o f incom e in taxes, had m ore num erous and better organized bodies o f officials at various levels, and exercised authority over larger areas. A dm ittedly, our know ledge on all these points is uncertain for both countries; historians differ sharply on the share of incom e collected as tax, or the reach o f the central authority.8 But there still appears to be a considerable difference betw een the precolonial regimes o f India and the pre-colonial Indonesian states described by Ricklefs:

8There are sharp differences of opinion even about Mughal India, for which there are relatively good data. Irfan Habib puts the realized land revenue at one-third to one-half the gross produce but I have argued that these were only theoretical rates and the actual collections were almost certainly much lower; Irfan Habib and T. Raychaudhuri (eds), The Cambridge Ecomonic History of India I (Cambridge, 1982), p. 298; Dharma Kumar, ‘The Taxation of Agriculture in British India and Dutch Indonesia’, C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. Kolff (eds), Two Colonial Empires (Dordrecht, 1986), pp 203-28 (reprinted here as Chi 9).

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it is clear that certain general features of Indonesian states were constant for several centuries.... In all areas there was limited population, and therefore a limited base of taxation and manpower for rice cultivation and armies. It was sometimes one of the aims of warfare, therefore, to deport the population of conquered territories to the area of the victor. The physical isolation of popu­ lated territories and poor communications meant that it was difficult to main­ tain centralized authority over several populated areas. In Java, the solution to this was a system of limited kingship, with considerable autonomy granted to regional overlords. Similarly, outer island empires often were obliged to give considerable autonomy to vassal lords. There was, therefore, constant tension within large states between regional and central interests, and all such states were fragile entities.9 O f course, in India too the pow er o f the centre was constantly threatened, but com m unications w ere better than in Indonesia, and the rulers had a w ider base for taxation and m anpower. There was, after all, a huge difference in density o f population: the population o f Java was probably a m ere 3 m illion o r so at the end o f the eighteenth century; the population o f India in 1800 is estim ated at betw een 139 and 214 m illion.10 B ut w eak states can have certain advantages for their subjects. R icklefs points out that in the pre-colonial Indonesian states there w as ‘a lim it upon the degree o f oppression that was possible, for the existence o f large uninhabited tracts m ade it possible for the popula­ tion to m ove to a new area beyond their lo rd ’s control if oppression reached intolerable lim its’.11 Flight was a com m on way o f avoiding excessive taxes in India as w ell, but to the extent that the Indian state was stronger, the subject was less protected against oppression.

^Ricklefs, A History of Modem Indonesia, pp 14, 15-16. Also Anthony Reid and Lance Castles (eds), Pre-Colonial Systems in South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur, 1975), especially the papers by Christine Dobbin on The Exercise of Authority in Minangkabau in the Late 18th Century’, and by Anthony Reid on Trade and the Problem of Royal Power in Aceh, c. 1550-1700’, describing the brief period of royal absolutism under Iskandar Muda (1607-36) and its subsequent decline. Also see B. Schrieke, Indonesian Sociological Studies, Vol. 2, p. 221. 10Ricklefs, A History o f Modem Indonesia, p. 14; Visaria and Visaria, ‘Population’, in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 466. 1'Ricklefs, A History o f Modem Indonesia, p. 16.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 233 B u t this is an unduly narrow way o f looking at the problem . One needs less extrem e shields against oppression than exit and in both groups o f societies these were provided by custom , precedent, feel­ ings about the legitim acy, the proper sphere, functions and pow ers o f rulers, and so on. In India, for exam ple, passive resistance was a traditional and som etim es successful weapon against unpopular m easures. But not enough is known about the quality o f life as it w as lived in different tim es and places. H istorians generally discuss such issues as legitim acy or the con­ cept o f pow er in the light o f texts, but what force did these injunc1? tions actually have? On what issues and to what extent was dissent tolerated in practice? In what ways did universities, m onasteries, vil­ lage com m unities and even fam ilies allow discussion and individual d issen t? O r was it only in the forest that a man was intellectually free? These are questions, unfortunately, which have rarely been asked , perhaps because it is so difficult to see where one would find an answ er.

THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE The colonial experience was very mixed. The Dutch and the British both set up m odern state form s, with new, and on the w hole, more efficient instrum ents o f rule: m odem bureaucracies, with im proved abilities to collect taxes and inform ation; arm ies with m ore m odem firepow er and a better organized police, new er form s o f punishm ent and new legal concepts. But the very fact that they were alien con­ strained the pow er o f colonial regim es. They could not alw ays understand their subjects nor predict their reactions and their ignorance could be dangerous when hostility was so easy to arouse. M cV ey points to ‘the increasing opacity of society ’s low er depths, in spite o f the new m eans for investigation and control which the colonial apparatus possessed. M odem ad­ m inistrators, foreign or otherw ise, were even less able to understand local society in its own term s than were m em bers o f the coopted

12

P.J. Worsley, ‘Preliminary Remarks on the Concept of Kingship in the Babad Buleteng’, in Reid and Castles (eds), Pre-Colonial State Systems in

South-East Asia.

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traditional élite s.13 These words have been echoed by many h isto rian s o f India.14 The British and the Dutch were caught in a further contradiction, unlike other colonial pow ers such as the G erm ans and the Japanese. England and H olland were in the forefront o f the m ove tow ards in ­ dividual liberty and the rule o f law, and authoritarian rule in the colonies could not easily be isolated form parliam entary pressures at hom e. Frequently, it was criticism at hom e that forced changes in colonial policy, o f which the abandoning o f the culture policy in Indonesia is perhaps the ch ief exam ple. A dm ittedly, Britain could follow another tradition: freedom at hom e was accom panied by im perialist pow er all over the world, and it was often the latter that provided convenient precedents for India. It was the Irish C onstabulary, with their extensive powers, which provided a m odel for India, as for other colonies, rather than the m ore liberal London po lice.15 There were great sim ilarities between the two regim es but there w ere also sharp differences, that may well have affected the post­ colonial history o f India and Indonesia. In w hat follows, I touch upon a few of these differences, in the bureaucracy, educational policy, the setting up o f representative institutions, and the law.

The Bureaucracy B oth India and Indonesia introduced W eberian bureaucracies, with im personal rules and m odem m ethods o f gathering inform ation, keep­ ing records and central control. The extent o f change was much greater in Indonesia since, as we have seen, the pre-colonial regim es there were less organized. M ore to the point, Indonesians received m uch less training in adm inistration than the Indians. There were no Indonesians at all in the superior civil service, the Binnenlands Bestuur o r BB. In contrast, Indians jo in ed the Indian Civil Service from the late nineteenth century onw ards. By 1939, Indians com prised 13Ruth T. McVey, ‘Local Voices, Central Power’, in Ruth T. McVey (ed.), South-East Asian Transitions (Yale, 1978), p. 21. ,4The classic study for the early years of British rule is R.E. Frykenberg, Guntur District, 1788-1848 (Oxford, 1965). 15David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule, Madras ¡859-1947 (Delhi, 1986), p. 27.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 235 nearly half the ICS, and m ore than h alf by 1947. One m ight argue that the Indians w ere thereby trained in authoritarian habits. ‘It would scarcely be an exaggeration’, H ayek warns us, ‘to say that the greatest danger to liberty today com es from the men who are m ost needed and m ost powerful in m odem governm ent, nam ely, the efficient ex­ pert adm inistrators exclusively concerned w ith w hat they regard as the public good.16 But it is also possible that continuity and adm inistrative stability will support liberal practice, if there are independent forces in favour o f liberty. And in any case, at present, adm inistrators have much less pow er than politicians in India. The absence o f high-level adm inistrative experience in the colonial period was certainly not favourable to civil liberties in In­ donesia. On the contrary, the collapse of the dem ocratic experim ent in 1950-7 has been attributed partly to the fact that the new ly inde­ pendent state had a very w eak bureaucracy at higher levels. B ut it the British em ployed Indians in adm inistration to a greater degree, they adm inistered less than the Dutch. The British avowed b elief in laissez-faire, even if forced to depart from it in crises, while the D utch had greater faith in the necessity for intervention and in their Christian m ission.18 Several authors, from Fum ivall to H eather Sutherland, Onghokham and Fasseur and Kolff, stress the interven­ tionism o f the Dutch, their zeal to control every detail o f village life. Ricklefs states that ‘the heavy hand o f D utch paternalism ’ was suf­ ficient ‘to destroy the autonom ous and sem i-dem ocratic life of the villages o f Java’, w hile O nghokham quotes Fum ivall: no villager in Java could scratch his head unless a district officer gives him per­ m ission and an expert show s him how to do it’.19 The historians o f India constantly stress the laissez-faire policies o f the British, and their lack o f control at the village level. Yet village autonom y and

l6F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London, 1960; repr. 1976), p. 262. l7This despite the fact that the Japanese had perforce to involve Indonesians to a greater extent in administration than the Dutch did. I8C. Fasseur and D.H.A. Kolff, ‘Some Remarks on the Development of Colonial Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia’, Itinerario, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1986, p. 52. 19 Fumivall, Colonial Policy and Practice, quoted in Onghokham, T he Residency of Medium, unpublished PhD dissertation (Yale, 1975); also see Heather Sutherland, The Making of Bureaucratic Elite (Singapore, 1979).

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village enterprise can hardly be said to have flourished under th e British, as the difficult history o f rural cooperatives, or the lack o f private initiative to start village schools, shows. A dm inistration was more centralized under the Dutch and th is may be one reason why Indonesia is so centralized today, despite its great ethnic and geographical diversity. This is in striking co n trast to India’s genuine, if chaotic, federalism , a federalism which o b ­ servers as diverse as A m erican political scientists and Z ulfikar A li Bhutto saw as guaranteeing dem ocracy.

Education For colonial governm ents the field o f education was strewn w ith mines. M odern bureaucracies and m odern industries required m an­ pow er endow ed with some elem ents o f m odern education, but o th er elem ents o f m odern thought, such as the necessity for representative governm ent, were politically dangerous, and it was not possible to have the one without the other. N or is traditional learning any safer: religion can be the m ost powerful form o f political m obilization in traditional societies, and schools are a useful form o f organization in societies in which other forms o f organization are limited. Here again the differences between the two colonial regim es are striking. As we have seen, the Indians were far m ore involved in the bureaucracy from the m iddle levels upw ards, and since at these levels all govern­ m ent work was conducted in English, this alone was sufficient in­ ducement for large numbers o f Indians to learn English in government and private schools. As late as 1895, there were only 1,135 Indonesians in Dutch Ian20 guage schools in the whole o f the N etherlands Indies. There were over 4 m illion students in all types o f educational establishm ents in India in 1987-8, o f whom a fair proportion learnt English, and large num bers attended universities: there were five in India21 and none in Indonesia in 1898. Even in 1930-1 there were only 178 Indonesian students at university level. 20Benedict O’Gorman Anderson, ‘A Time of Darkness and a Time of Light’, in Anthony Reid and David Mar (eds). Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia (Singapore, 1979), pp 219-48. 2lApama Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898-1920 (Delhi, 1974), p. 100.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 237 If the Dutch educated less, they tried to control more. A striking exam ple is the guru ordonnantie or teachers’ ordinance o f 1905 in Java whereby Islamic educational establishm ents had to obtain w rit­ ten perm ission from the authorities before they could im part religious instruction. This did not work, and twenty years later a new ordinance was passed for all o f Indonesia, requiring, instead of perm ission, only w ritten notification of an intention to give religious instruction; even this had to be suspended in M inangkabau. In India, even the feebler controls tried by the British w ere less successful, partly because o f opposition from the press and the Congress party. N o attem pt to con­ trol religious instruction was m ade in British India, though it could be and was politically dangerous. Sim ilarly, the D utch m ade an abor­ tive attem pt to control all private schools in Indonesia, including those which received no governm ent subsidy.22 The governm ent of India considered doing so in 1904, but received no support from London and considerable hostility from the press and political or­ ganizations in India.23

Representative Institutions Both the British and the D utch set up sem i-representative institutions above the village level. T heir autonom y was no less lim ited than their electorates: nevertheless, it is unlikely that the experience of w orking them was totally irrelevant to developm ents after inde­ pendence. Here too, these institutions started earlier had wider pow ers’ and far larger electorates in India than in Indonesia. As late as 1931, only half o f the m em bers o f the Volksraad were Indonesians, the other half being Chinese and Europeans, and in 1939 only 2,228 out o f 70 m illion Indonesians could elect m em bers of the 24 Volksraad. In India, a legislative council was set up in 1861; ad­ m ittedly it had severely restricted pow ers and legislation but it was a beginning nonetheless and three Indians, all non-officials, were ap­ pointed as early as 1862. T hereafter the pow ers o f the legislative councils— central and provincial— increased steadily, as did the num ­ bers o f Indians and the w idth o f their constituencies. Under the 22

Ricklefs, A History of Modem Indonesia, pp 169, 180. 23Apama Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development, pp 52-3. 24Ricklefs, A History of Modem Indonesia, p. 153.

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G overnm ent o f India A ct o f 1935, which is in fact the basis o f the present constitution, there was a considerable delegation o f pow ers to the provincial assem blies, which were entirely elected; the elec­ torate consisted o f about one-tenth of the total population.25

The Legal Order The Dutch and the British introduced W estern legal notions into their colonies— concepts o f ‘rational’ legal order, individual rights, and equality before the law. These concepts o f course, were not fully applied, and the colonies were authoritarian regim es. N evertheless, new judicial concepts and procedures that still influence the law and courts o f India and Indonesia were introduced then. A t the sam e tim e, there were very significant differences betw een the tw o colonies. In the first place, the English and the D utch fol­ low ed two very different W estern legal traditions. The Anglo-Saxon system of com m on law im plied a sharp distinction betw een the ex­ ecutive and the judiciary, not the case in the continental tradition. It is possible that the form er is m ore protective o f individual civil rights. In both colonies, the executive naturally was m ore closely associated w ith the judiciary than in the respective home countries, but the as­ sociation w as closer in Indonesia. Again, over m ost o f the colonial period the law m ade narrow er distinctions betw een the ruling race and the natives in B ritish India than in the D utch E ast Indies. Invidious distinctions did obtain in India too, but to a lesser degree. Lev rem arks that the criminal pro­ cedure code for Indonesians, apart from the priyayi, ‘w as sim pler [than the European code], less dem anding o f authorities, and there­ fore less protective o f individual rights } The Dutch and the Indonesians were governed by different laws in both civil and crim inal m atters, with ‘foreign orientals’ (i.e. m ainly the C hinese) being brought under Dutch law in m ost m atters, and it w as only in 1915 that a com m on crim inal code was introduced for the entire population. B ut the Indian Penal Code, applicable to all in India, was passed over h alf a century earlier, in 1860. C ertain ex ­ 25R.C. Majamdar, H.C. Raychaudhuri and Kalinkar Datta, An Advanced History of India (London, 1958), p. 924. 26Daniel S. Lev, Judicial Institutions and Legal Culture in Indonesia’, in Clarie Hok (ed.). Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Cornell, 1972), p. 264.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 239 ceptions w ere m ade in favour o f the British, notably that they could only be tried by ju d g es of their own race, but this too was m odified.27 Both colonial regim es had to take account o f existing m ores and institutions, but again they did so in very different ways. F or Instance, both refrained from W esternizing personal laws (w ith certain excep­ tions), but the very act o f codification in India brought about change. A gain, the colonized societies were deeply inegalitarian, like all traditional societies, India m uch m ore so than Indonesia. Som etim es, old distinctions were m aintained, as in the privileges granted to the priyayi in Indonesia, and the revenue concessions given to brahm ans and others at the beginning o f the nineteenth century in India. O ther infringem ents o f the rule o f equality before the law reflected im­ perialist im peratives, such as the legal provisions against the so-called ‘crim inal tribes’ in India. But, on the whole, British Indian law tended m ore to equality than the law the Dutch applied in Indonesia. The m ost striking evidence o f this is the various m easures o f reverse dis­ crim ination in favour o f the so-called scheduled castes (or form er untouchables) w hich the B ritish put into effect from the nineteenth century onwards. A dm ittedly, one (but only one) o f the m otives o f the British was to divide the opposition to British rule (the D utch too were opposed to Indonesian unity). But w hatever the qualifica­ tions, the difference betw een the two legal orders is significant. The tw o pre-colonial societies were alike in another respect but the changes brought about in this sphere by the colonial powers were very different. This is in regard to local judicial institutions. M any legal m atters in both societies w ere settled at the village level, and in the villages o f India as o f Indonesia the ideal was a consensus not only o f both parties but o f village society, in direct opposition to the W estern ideal o f the unam biguous victory o f one litigant over the other. TTie Dutch preserved the indigenous system in their m ain­ tenance o f adat law for the Indonesians. In contrast, the adversary system flourished in British India, from the local level upw ards. O ne striking sign o f the difference between the D utch Indonesian and British Indian system s is the size o f the 27In 1883, Ubeit, the Law Member of the Viceroy’s Council introduced a bill deleting this clause but following intense opposition from the British the government instead introduced a compromise that only judges and magistrates above a certain rank could try the British; these judicial officers could also be Indian.

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respective legal professions. In 1970, there were only 5,000 law yers in Indonesia, out o f a population o f 130 m illion, a vastly sm aller proportion than in India. Paradoxically, after independence both countries have m oved aw ay from the colonial pattern, but apparently in opposite directions. A nglo-Indian legal culture, the result o f grafting British legal proce­ dures on to Indian roots, has som e very strange aspects. The delays in settling cases w ould have surprised Dickens. D issatisfaction w ith the courts is w idespread, and one unofficial remedy that is being tried is precisely to go back to the old system of consensus, the best exam ple being the Lok A dalat, or people’s court, that is being run by a Gandhian social worker, Shri H arivallabh Panth, in a tribal area in Gujarat, which has already settled over 50,000 cases. But w hether this can now be operated by ordinary people in a routine way is a different question. In contrast, adat law has proved too local and too differentiated for m odem Indonesia with its strong centralising tendency. ‘The determ ining authority’, Lev rem arks, ‘is now the national govern­ m ent, and the fundam ental source of law is som ething very close to the imperium. It is not enough to com pare legal codes and judicial structures; we need to exam ine the actual experience o f law in the two colonies. Indians may have had m ore formal rights, and in m any areas (such as freedom o f the press) the rights w ere substantive too, but there m ay have been greater delays in adm inistering justice in British India. H istorians need to study the changes in the citizens’ consciousness o f their existing civil and political rights, and their dem ands for new ones, as well as the actual (as opposed to form al) protection o f these rights, in both countries. There are hardly any such studies for India, no doubt at least partly because o f'th e ir difficulty, and I have not seen references to such studies for Indonesia, but m ay well have m issed them. But until we have such studies, m eaningful com parisons will be limited.

N.G. Schulte Nordholt, State-Citizjen Relations in Suharto's Indonesia: Kawula-Gusti (Rotterdam, 1987), p. 61. 29Lev, ‘Judicial Institutions and Legal Culture’, p. 313.

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 241

COLONIAL NORMS Som e colonial legacies are very easy to identify. The line o f descent from the Indian Civil Service (ICS) to the Indian A dm inistrative Ser­ vice (IA S) or from the G overnm ent o f India A ct to the Constitution o f 1950 is short and clear. The British them selves were very proud o f the bureaucracy and the subject has not been neglected by historians either.' M any colonial laws have undergone no change at all in independent India. It is possible that there has been greater con­ tinuity in these m atters in India than in Indonesia, if only because the Japanese interregnum provided a sharp break. But there is a m uch m ore nebulous area which, as far as I am aw are, has been hardly touched, in which differences betw een the two countries may be very revealing. The is the role o f the colonial regim es in providing norms for their successors. A gain, some aspects o f this role are better known than others. W hatever colonial practices were, education in the rulers’ tongues and travel to their countries gave Indians, and to a lesser extent In­ donesians, knowledge o f the English and Dutch versions o f W estern political philosophy and practice, and as we have noted earlier, these tw o countries were leading dem ocracies. Indeed British officials in India often saw this as a great draw back o f education in English. But it is striking that appeals are still m ade to British standards 40 years after independence, and by the m ost unexpected people. A current Indian institution is often judged by com parison with its British counterpart, by direct reference to Britain itself. Thus to the charge that Lohia and his Sam yukta Socialist Party dem eaned the Lok Sabha by their shouting, M adhu Lim aye w rote recently: ‘N either Lohia nor I— his lieutenant— wished to denigrate the Lok Sabha. W e w anted it to be a lively dynam ic institution. How envious we were

30It even figures in the recent upheavals in the communist world! A recent report in the New York Times by Flora Lewis stated that ‘China has asked many countries, including India, for advice on setting up a real Civil Service, because it has come to see that diluting central party control makes it essential. The Indians replied that their effective civil service, imposed by the British in the mid-19th century was modelled on the old Chinese Mandarinate. Key principles were enttance by examination, promotion by merit, and posting people away from their home areas to avoid corrosive demands of family and friends.’ Unfortunately, I have since been informed that this is apoctyphyal.

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o f the House o f Com m ons. It was alw ays our longing to m ake o u r Lok Sabha the equal o f the House of C om m ons.3 It is significant that a radical politician could thus address his fellow Indians w ithout self-consciousness. It is easy to understand the attraction o f English political tradi­ tions. W hat is m uch m ore surprising is the appeals to colonial prece­ dents, again from unexpected quarters. The newspapers frequently provide exam ples. For instance, in the Sunday Observer in A ugust 1987, D hiren B hagat com pared the official and the various citizen s’ reports on the anti-Sikh riots o f 1984 very unfavourably with the official and the C ongress reports respectively on Jalianw ala Bagh. O f greater interest, both because o f its depth and its author, is a study o f the press coverage o f fam ines and droughts, by N. Ram o f the Hindu and one o f the founders o f the leftw ing journal, Social Scientist. ‘The Indian press,’ he states, ‘is w idely regarded as the m ost pluralistic, the least inhibited and the m ost assertive or inde­ pendent in all the third w orld.’ D espite serious w eaknesses, such as the ‘fading out o f the “new spaper of record” tradition in Indian jo u rn alism ’, he finds the reporting o f the food shortages since 1947 has been independent and probably has influenced policy. W hat is particularly relevant here is R am ’s analysis o f the ‘considerable his­ torical strength’ o f the Indian press which is draw n, he show s by analysis of the reporting o f earlier fam ines, especially by the Hindu , as m uch from the professionalism o f the loyalist press, e.g. the States­ man, as from the nationalist struggle, and from the relative liberalism o f governm ent.32 The relative nature o f the liberalism needs to be stressed: the governm ent retained fairly stringent pow ers o f control, including the right to ban publications, and m ake new spapers pay deposits which could be forfeited.33 Also, as Barrier and Ram point out, it was m uch less liberal at certain tim es, such as in the Punjab in the 1920s, than at others, and in som e areas, such as M adras, than others, such as the Punjab. Ram rightly contrasts the relative inde­

31The Times of India, 1 September, 1987. 32N. Ram, ‘An Independent Press and Anti-Hunger Strategies', paper presented at WIDER, Helsinki, 21 to 25 July. The paper was written in the context of Sen’s contrasting India with China, where the press was not free. 33The evolution of control over the press and books is traced in N. Gerald Barrier, Banned: Controversial Literature and Political Control in British India, 1907-1947 (Columbia, 1974).

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 243 pendence o f the press with the servility o f the governm ent-ow ned radio and T.V.— the history o f the latter is outside this brief (and has hardly been studied by historians)34— but that too dem onstrates the im portance of tradition. Is a sim ilar continuity in the censorship o f the m edia discernible in Indonesia? A nd, m ost surprising o f all, even the East India Com pany is held up as an exam ple! Professor D.C. W adhw a, who brought to light the B ihar governm ent’s habit o f ruling by ordinance (i.e. executive fiat), asked: ‘W hich court w ill tell the C h ief M inister o f K erala today, in 1986, w hat the C ourt o f D irectors had told their G overnor-G eneral o f India 153 years back in 1833 that no law except one o f an oc­ casional kind, or arising out o f som e pressing necessity, should be passed without having been subm itted to m ature deliberation and dis­ cussion?... Anyway, three cheers for the Court o f D irectors o f the East India C om pany.35 H as any Indonesian professor called fo r three cheers for the VOC? A nd if so, for w hat reasons? These are all conscious appeals to colonial traditions. But there is also an often unconscious process by which the colonial experience has been absorbed, and that is by altering expectations o f governm ent. T o return to fam ines, alw ays a m ajor problem for governm ents in India,36 pre-B ritish regim es stored and distributed food in fam ines and perhaps undertook lim ited public works to provide em ploym ent, but the scale and system atic nature o f the fam ine relief m easures and fam ine codes elaborated in the later nineteenth century, and followed even today, are quite new. Com paring the terrible fam ine o f 1958-61 in C hina which took at least 16 m illion lives (and perhaps m uch m ore) w ith the lack o f large-scale fam ines (but the presence of w idespread continuous m alnutrition) in independent Ipdia, A m artya Sen stresses the im portance o f a free press and opposition parties in India and their absence in C hina.37 But the cum ulative adm inistrative

34Fortunately, Professor P.S. Gupta is working on the history of radio. 35D.C. Wadhwa, ‘Executive Law Making: Lesson from East India Company’, Journal o f the Indian Law Institute, Vol. 28, No. 2, April-June 1986, p. 197. The Prime Minister of India needs these reminders too. f a m i n e was a very much less serious problem in Indonesia thbugh there were a few in the nineteenth century. See W.R. Hugenholtz, ‘Famine and Food Supply in Java 1830-1914’ in Bayly and Kolff (eds), Two Colonial Empires. 37Amartya Sen, Food Battles, Coromandel Lecture, 1982 New Delhi.

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tradition of the colonial regim e was at least as im portant as freedom o f the press and the legislatures in India. Besides, the use o f political freedom is itself determ ined by the popular perception o f w hat governm ents can do. In very poor countries, people may accept natural disasters as inevitable, as Acts o f God rather than om issions o f governm ent. But Indians no longer feel that o f famine, thanks partly to their nineteenth and tw entieth-century experience. I have the im pression that Indonesians are less prone to m easure them selves by D utch o r N etherlands East Indies standards, and if this is indeed so, there are some fairly obvious reasons for it. A m uch sm aller proportion o f Indonesians studied in universities at hom e or abroad than did Indians, and far few er spoke a W estern language (the use of D utch has declined in Indonesia since Independence but English, the w orld language, has spread in India). There is also the Japanese break, and the fact that the Dutch ended their rule so acrim oniously. And, o f course, the fact that the dem ocratic experi­ m ent was so short-lived in Indonesia. W hile it lasted, Indonesians in fact tried the m ulti-party unicam eral system of the Dutch.

CONCLUSIONS This chapter began with the observation that Indians today enjoy rather greater political liberties than Indonesians, despite all the m anifold and m anifest deficiencies o f the Indian polity. It glanced at certain features o f the colonial period that m ight explain these differenceds in part. One com m entator at a conference at which it was presented as a paper thought the paper was odd because it seemed to be saying ‘our rulers w ere better than yours’. This is patronising and silly. It is perfectly legitim ate to com pare the extent o f political liberties, obviously being careful to define one’s term s and being aw are o f the difficulties o f m easurem ent. It is not only legitim ate but essential to re-exam ine the colonial pasts o f the two countries, ob­ viously again being aw are o f the com plexity o f the subject. And there is no reason why Indonesians and Indians should be unable to un­ dertake this exercise, any m ore than A m ericans should be unable to discuss England’s rule over its A m erican colonies. H owever, it m ust be said that many im portant issues have been om itted altogether, such as the role of the m ilitary, or the history of political parties (including the eclipse of the liberals in India). In

The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia 245 particular, the om ission o f Pakistan and B angladesh begs all m anner o f questions. Why are Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the same ex­ perience o f British rule, less liberal (in the political sense) than India? Is Islam relevant here and in the com parison w ith Indonesia, or does the explanation lie in such specific factors as the special role o f the arm y in the Punjab or the m ilitary problem s o f the N orth-W est Fron­ tier Province? This chapter is unsatisfactory partly because o f my own deficien­ cies, particularly my ignorance o f Dutch. But its faults partly lie in the inherent difficulties and com plexities o f the subject itself. Politi­ cal scientists do not know w hat the necessary and sufficient condi­ tions are for dem ocratic institutions to be established and m aintained. A nd, finally, the historical literature on India and Indonesia has neglected the question o f civil rights. N ationalism , defined simply as opposition to British rule, has in recent years at least aroused m uch m ore interest than the issue raised here. An influential line o f argum ent is that the colonial past and, a fortiori, pre-colonial history are both irrelevant to the question o f political liberties. If India does in fact have m ore liberty than In­ donesia, Pakistan or Bangladesh, the explanation lies in a series of special factors or lucky contingencies. O r if the past does hold a clue, it m ust be sought elsew here. The Indian political tradition is at least as authoritarian as the Indonesian, and it is fruitless to enquire when or how Indians acquired liberal values since in fact they do not hold them. D em ocratic forms have survived, to the extent that they have, for quite other reasons, such as the fragm entation o f society into innum erable groups w hich have learnt to com prom ise 'lO t and co-exist over the centuries. These views seem to m e to ignore an im portant com ponent o f Indian history. N o one who has experienced the Em ergency, or who goes about N ew Delhi with its road barricades and arm ed policem en, or who reads the Indian new spaper with their frighteningly frequent reports o f repressive m easures presented to Parliam ent and passed the very sam e day, can be confident that even the im perfect degree of liberty she enjoys today will survive. But it is for that very reason all the m ore im portant to recongnise that Indians did enjoy certain liberties 38These views, adumbrated by Ainslee Embree, James Manor and others, are briefly discussed in Rakhari Chatterji, ‘Democracy and the Opposition in India’, Economic and Political Weekly 23 April, 1988, pp 843-7.

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for nearly 40 years, and to a greater extent than most people predicted, and it is essential to try to understand why that was so. It seem s to me very unlikely that purely contingent factors constitute the whole explanation. India is frequently com pared with C hina, for obvious reasons, but com parisons with Indonesia are at least as fruit­ ful.

11 States and Civil Societies in Modern Asia1

This chapter discusses Indian colonialism — in itself and in contrast to other countries in Asia, particularly China. It was influenced by my grow ing dissatisfaction w ith the treatm ent in the literature on the colonial state in India, at once too lofty and too narrow . The State is thought o f in capital letters, as the dom inant actor in the colonial period. It is assum ed that it is om nipotent, so that its actions can be explained solely by its will and its motives. A nalysis of its capabilities is hence deem ed unnecessary. But, in fact, the colonial state was constrained by history, and by its ow n ideology, and these constraints have been inherited by its successors. Colonialism was In d ia’s vehicle to the m odem w orld, and the vehicle partly deter­ m ined the nature o f the journey and o f the final destination. W e have been g eo g rap h ically narrow , as if In d ia and B ritain w ere the w hole w orld. O ur narrow ness is u n derstandable— if we are paro ch ial, our parish is a very crow ded one, and is, in my view , one o f the m ore in terestin g parts o f the w orld. B ut the nar­ row ness and p arochialism m ay also reflect the d efects o f our ed u catio n , and the om ission o f w orld history from school and univ ersity cu rricu la. W e have found in the D elhi School o f E co n o m ics that students see B ritish India in m uch b etter persp ec­ tiv e w hen they study about im perialism elsew here. A nd I m yself have le arn t to ask b etter q u estio n s about India after learning some-

’This is the text, with slight modifications, of the eleventh Ansari Memorial Lecture delivered at Jamia Milia, New Delhi, on 8 March 1993. I am grateful to the Jamia Milia, first, for inviting me to deliver the lecture and, second, for permitting me to publish the lecture.

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thing about M alaysia, In d o n esia and B urm a, to nam e form er co lo n ies, and from C hina and Ja p an .2 N ot only have we overlooked the experience of other countries, we have also ignored, to our cost, new trends in the social sciences. These are exem plified in the title o f the book, Bringing the State Back In, w hich includes essays by historians, econom ists, political scientists and sociologists.3 N on-econom ists often have a crude stereo-type o f the neoclassical econom ist as a m an whose rem edy for every ill is the setting up o f markets. In fact, neoclassical work on organization, w hether o f the firm, the m arket, or governm ents, should be o f interest to historians, and som e o f it is even readable.4 Confining ourselves to Asia, the m ajor experience for all Asian countries has been their contact with the W est, and in m ost cases the encounters have been violent and painful. But they have also been varied. For instance, nearly all Asian countries have suffered from great political discontinuities, but at different tim es, in different ways, and with very different long-term results. For India, the m ajor in­ stitutional discontinuity in m odem times was the colonial conquest. The transition to independence, w hile horribly costly in term s of hum an death and dislocation, was in institutional aspects relatively sm ooth as com pared, say, to Indonesia. W hile the Japanese occupa­ tion o f Indonesia during the second W orld W ar was brief, the Japanese m ade far-reaching changes in Indonesia’s adm inistrative system . Japan itself reversed its historical role. It successfully negotiated the transition to m odernization through the Meiji R evolu­ tion, despite the constraints o f W estern forces of dom ination. Japan also becam e an im perialist pow er itself with, according to some

Nor should we restrict ourselves to Asia: the role of government and of the form of the state has been emphasised in the economic, social and political history of western Europe. E. L. Jones has analysed the crucial role of the European invention of the nation-state in the ‘European miracle’, that is modern economic growth and the rise of modem market structures in north-west Europe, and contrasts Europe’s ‘dynamism’ with the stagnation of the Ottoman, Chinese and Mughal governments, E. L. Jones, The European Miracle Cambridge, 1981). Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985). 4The extensive literature includes work by R. H. Coase, J.F Stiglitz and Oliver Williamson, to name only three of the leading authors.

States and Civil Societies in Modern Asia 249 scholars, far-reaching effects on the pattern o f developm ent o f a colony like Korea. It then m anaged to extract success from defeat in w ar and A m erican occupation in peace. To take a third exam ple, C hina appears to have had m ore political stability than India over the very long run, and certainly a far greater degree o f political centralization and cultural hom ogeneity, but its 19th and 20th century history has been far m ore turbulent than India’s. The question o f the effects o f discontinuity per se on the form o f governm ent is a fas­ cinating one— do sharp and sudden shocks m ake it easier to introduce needful reform s that disturb deeply entrenched inertia and vested in­ terests? And if so, is there a political Richter scale on w hich one can m easure such shocks?

MODERNIZATION OF GOVERNMENT A t the very broadest level, the pre-m odem states o f A sia differed enorm ously in ideology and levels o f organization; striking exam ples o f these great differences are provided by Bali and China. G eertz char­ acterizes 19th century Bali as an Indie state and certainly the features he stresses— the im portance o f hierarchy, the com plex concept o f divine kingship, ‘organizational pluralism , particulate loyalty, disper­ sive authority and confederate rule in India5— were found in Hiiidu India, and som e o f them in the M uslim kingdom s’ too. A t the other extrem e, C hina is obviously the m ost centralized o f the great Asian states. Chinese im perial history goes back at least to 221 BC when the Q ing em pire was founded; indeed some state institutions have been traced back to the W estern Zhou period, w hich began in 1122 BC. In C h in a’s long history em pires have collapsed, but they have risen again, underpinned by special institutions, and sustained by an im perial ideology.6 B oth o f these w ere m issing in India till recent tim es. W e should m ake it clear that w e are stressing the lack in India o f the type o f institution that sustained a centralized state. O bviously 5Clifford Geertz, Negara (Princeton, 1980), p. 136. Geertz also mentions the alteration the relationship between king and priest underwent by the time it reached Bali. On mediaeval south India see in particular, David Dean Shulman, The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (Princeton, 1985). v'iviena Shue, The Reach o f the State (Mass., Stanford 1988).

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th ere has been a strong and, com paratively speaking, c o n tin u o u s institutional structure but many historians have argued that these in­ stitutions, particularly caste, worked for the dispersion and pluralism o f power, rather than centralization. Shue stressed ‘three aspects o f imperial C h in a’s prodigious statem aking ... its historical precociousness and institutional continuity; its ‘conquer, civilize, and con trol’ m entality; and its deep dependence on the gentry sym biosis o f landed interests and officialdom 7. T he role o f the gentry was a unique aspect of C hinese history. This class, an essential pillar o f em pire, provided the bureaucracy, and was sus­ tained by ideals o f loyalty to the em peror, and of imperial glory. Entrance to the bureaucracy was determ ined by academ ic degrees and by exam inations. There is m uch debate in the literature over the com position o f this crucial class; some use ‘gentry’ only for official potential officials, others extend the definition to cover three groups: the official-gentry, the scholar-gen try (or those with academ ic degrees), and the local notables or lower-gentry. These groups over­ lapped in actuality, and there was considerable upward as well as dow nw ard m obility. C hina was thus a forerunner of at least one feature regarded as quintessentially typical of m odern states— a bureaucracy selected for m erit, by exam ination. The Chinese state’s achievem ent in organizing a state-w ide bureaucracy, and opening it to m erit, is extraordinary. Entrance into bureaucracy by exam ination was organized in England only in the late nineteenth century; indeed, the British civil service exam inations were instituted after the Indian civil service exam ina­ tions. But as early as in the seventh century in C hina high officials w ere being selected by exam ination. In successive regim es the system lapsed and was revived, and the exam inations were abolished in 1905. B ut there is an am using and m ysterious sequel. Around 1988, Flora Lew is wrote in the International Herald Tribune that ‘C hina has asked many countries, including India, for advice on setting up a real civil service, because it has com e to see that diluting central party control m akes it essential. The Indians replied that their effective civil service, im posed by the British in the m id-nineteenth century, w as m odelled on the old Chinese M andarinate. Key principles w ere entrance by exam ination, prom otion by m erit, and posting people

7Ibid., p 86.

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away from their hom e areas to avoid corrosive dem ands o f fam ily and friends.’8 U nfortunately, this story seems to be apocryphal. I en­ quired o f a friend in the D epartm ent of External A ffairs, and was told that no such inquiry had been received. Flora Lewis could throw no light on the m atter either. But in m any other respects the great C hinese im perial states, even at the height o f th eir success, w ere very d issim ilar to m odern states. In com parison w ith o th er contem porary states, the C hinese im perial state m ay have had strong arm s, but they w ere not long eno u g h to reach right dow n into the localities. ‘F or all its g ra n d e u r’, says Shue, ‘C h in a ’s im perial bureaucracy did not d ire ctly penetrate into the local rural co m m u n ity .’9 F or this, the state depended on the low er gentry. In fact, the state depended on the lo w er gentry to co llect taxes, to m aintain the social order, and for ‘celebration o f the official m oral c o d e ’. The latter is connected w ith an o th er rem arkable C hinese in stitu tio n — the C hing rural lec­ ture system , appointing scholars o v er 59 years o f age to expound the im perial m axim s in every locality. To a m odern liberal, this is u npleasantly to talitarian , and a C hinese historian has pointed out th at it was transform ed into a police apparatus in the n in eteen th c e n tu ry .10 But to a m odern ex p ert in advertising, the system p athetically lacks the reach o f television. A nd to an Indian it is sim ply astonishing th at such a system was conceived, and in stitu ted at all. D ependence on the low er gentry m eant that they could enrich them selves illegally or extra-legally, in ways we Indians can readily recognize. But they also perform ed another vital function. Being part o f rural society, unlike the im perial m andarins, they understood local discontents, and could even convey them back to the centre. Fei X iatong asserts that ‘in actual practice, by the use o f interm ediaries such as the governm ent servants ... unreasonable orders m ight be turned back. This influence from the bottom up is not usually recog­ nized in discussions o f the formal governm ental institutions o f China, g

I apologise for my carelessness in not noting the newspaper date on the clipping I carefully preserved. 9Shue, op cit., p. 97. 10 Hsiao, Kung-ch’uan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, p. 203.

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but it was effective nevertheless’.11 It is a m oot question how often and how successfully this avenue was in fact used, but the institu­ tional potential for reform is noteworthy. T he pre-B ritish Indian state, even in its m ost centralized form , w as strikingly d ifferen t. And if one considers the pre-m odern states of the Indonesian archipelago, one w ould find a yet low er d eg ree of b u reau cratic organ ization. As we have seen, G e e rtz ’s ch aracterizatio n o f nin eteen th century Bali pointed to the very com plex relatio n sh ip s betw een form s o f state organization and form s of social hierarchy. All m ajor A sian societies, and indeed m ost pre-m odern so cieties, w ere h ierarchical; the interesting q u es­ tions are the form s hierarchy took, the sym biosis betw een the state and social hierarch y , and the changes brought about by the m odern repugnance for h ierarchy, increasingly seen as a kind of inequality. W e have glanced at the role o f the gentry as pillars of the state in C hina. In the H indu view , caste was part o f the natural order, and it was the duty o f the ruler to uphold it. N on-H indu rulers, including the B ritish in their first phase, generally did not disturb the caste system ; they even enforced it, for political rather than ideological reasons. B ut the colonial period saw a com plete rever­ sal— the state was and is sought to be used to destroy caste, or at 12 the least, to nullify its effects. I propose to discuss three aspects of the m odernisation o f govern­ m ents, trying to look at India in the Asian context. The first is the J3 im provem ent in efficiency in the m aintenance o f law and order. The second is the huge increase in the inform ation at the disposal of governm ent. And the third is the change in public expectations of governm ent. This list, o f course, is not exhaustive. Indeed, these three aspects are not necessarily the m ost im portant.

1'Quoted by Shue, op cit., p. 95. l2This point is discussed more fully in Dharma Kumar, ‘Affirmative Action: Indian Style’. Asian Survey. 1992. l3See, M N Srinivas, Social Change in Modem India, first published by University of California Press, Indian edition: (New Delhi, 1972, 1992 reprint), p. 46.

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SYSTEMS OF PUBLIC ORDER AND JUSTICE O ur obsession w ith the evils o f im perialism has m eant, first, that we regard the use o f state coercion as an unm ixed evil. I suspect that this is not unconnected with the fact that m ost historians led, at least till recently, safe lives and so took the advantages of security for granted. W e are learning some hard lessons now, but there is a new source o f com placency about the need for security and this is the rom antic anarchism o f some radicals. W e should ponder the wise words o f a distinguished A m erican social anthropologist who worked in Africa, Elizabeth Colson. (Incidentally historians should reflect on why social anthropologists w rite so sensibly on this subject. Is it because they are less sheltered than historians?) ...men may see governments as providing services for them, services which they cannot see themselves capable of providing, and if necessary, they are prepared to pay the cost of that service. We cannot understand the history of the colonial period, or indeed the his­ tory of our own time, if we do not understand that people may be prepared to accept authority, even though they find it both threatening and frustrating, because they see it as the guarantor of an overarching security which they value or as promising a security that is lacking. Those who challenged the colonial governments in a search for more local control and then for inde­ pendence were not seeking a return to the pre-colonial systems of diffuse controls.14 Colson was thinking specifically of Africa, but her observations apply to Asia too. Unfortunately, we have few accounts o f the historical experience of living in traditional Indian regimes, as far as law and order are concerned, and certainly nothing to match Jonathan Spence’s fascinating account o f village life in seventeenth century China.15 An Indian reader of this book is immediately struck by similarities with Indian experiences of famines, floods and tax-collectors, and also with the absence in the Indian literature of accounts of how villagers actually lived through feuds, trials imprisonment and other punishment. Admit­ tedly Spence has far richer archival resources, but part o f the difference is surely lack of interest on the part o f Indian historians. Fortunately, ,4Elizabeth Colson, Tradition and Contract: The Problem of Order (Chicago, 1974), p. 67 l5Jonathan D Spence, The Death of Woman Wang (London, 1978).

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Sum it Guha has begun work on the state of law and order under the Peshw as using their ex ten siv e records. His citatio n o f E lp h in sto n e’s rep o rt o f 1819 is significant: Great abuses, it must be mentioned, are stated to have at all times existed even under the regular system. Criminals found refuge in one district, when chased out of another, some Jageerdars and Zamindars made a trade of harbouring robbers; and any offender, it is said, could purchase his release, if he had money enough to pay for it. False accusations were likewise made a cloak to exaction from the innocent; and villagers were likewise made to pay the amount of plundered property, in the loss of which they had no share, and for which the losers received no compen­ sation. But Elphinstone also pointed out that the system was not without its com pensations: ...the ancient system of police was maintained; all the powers of the state were united in the same hands, and their vigour was not checked by any suspicions on the part of the government, or any scruples of their own. In cases that threatened the peace of society, apprehension was sudden and ar­ bitrary, trial summary and punishment prompt and severe. The innocent might sometimes suffer but the guilty could scarcely ever escape ... The Mamlutdars were themselves considerable persons and there were men of property and consideration in every neighbourhood; Enamdars, Jageerdars, or old Zamin­ dars. These men associated with the ranks above and below them, and kept up the chain of society to the Prince; by this means the higher orders were kept informed of the situation of the lower, and as there was scarcely any man without a patron, men might be exposed to oppression but could scarcely suffer from neglect. G uha finds that the Peshw a docum ents support Elphinstone in m any respects; they also provide striking evidence on the kinds of punishm ent m eted out (and suggest sim ilarities w ith the intelligence role o f Chinese rural gentry). Fines were com m on, even for m urder, and provided, as G uha points out, pow erful incentives to apprehend crim inals. M utilation was com m on too for serious crim es; and culprits were occasionally blow n from the m outh o f a cannon— our film -m akers w ould enjoy show ing this. M oreover, the punishm ent depended as m uch on the social status o f the crim inal and victim as

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upon the crim e. 6 Extrem e chauvinists or those obsessed by fear of orientalism may yearn for pre-B ritish penology, but I suspect that m ost o f us do not w ant to go back to these particular old times.

FAMINE PREVENTION AND FAMINE RELIEF Let us descend now to a much more specific level of comparison of governmental functioning. A comparison of famines and famine policies in India and China is instructive from several points of view. It illustrates the new techniques of information collection and risk control brought by the British to India, the collapse of premodern institutions in China and the persistence o f old problems, together with the introduction of new ones, in the com m unist regime. A standard charge in the old ‘nationalist’ indictment o f British rule in India was that the horrendous famines o f the late nineteenth century were much worse than any India had ever suffered before, and that they were the consequence of British policies, ranging from excessive land revenue collections to laissez fa ir policies once famine set in. Devastating famines certainly occurred before British rule, with huge, though not reliably measured, famine mortality. Again, famine occurred in many other parts o f the world in the late nineteenth century, in Russia, for example. Clearly one needs to look at changes in weather worldwide. The 1876-9 famine in north 17 China was said at the time to be the greatest famine in history ; the estim ated famine mortality was 9.5 million. The estimates o f famine mortality in nineteenth century Indian famines are of similar orders of magnitude, but for a valid comparison we also require data on the populations o f the affected areas. In any case the point is not statistical. It is that both countries have had very long experience of famines but have evolved very different tools for dealing with them. C olonial governm ents may well have been negligent in dealing w ith fam ines by m odern standards, but they w ere certainly not so in com parison with their predecessors. Pre-B ritish governm ents in India did try to counteract the effects o f famine by takkavi loans, the distribu­ l6Sumit Guha, ‘An Indian Penal Regime: Maharashtra in the Eighteenth Century’, Occasional Paper, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi. 17Paul Richard Bohr, ‘Famine in China and the Missionary: Timothy Richard as Relief Administrator and Advocate of National Reform, 1876-1884’, mimeo, Harvard, 1972.

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tion o f grain from public granaries, and so on; in addition, temples and rich individuals provided charity in cash and food. But public and private resources were limited. Sanjay Sharma has pointed out that active intervention by the Mughal state was constrained by 18 transport bottlenecks and the decentralized nature of Indian society. This would certainly have applied to other pre-British regimes too. Moreover, if one considers the laissez faire analysis o f some utilitarian officials, how much more mistaken were the causal theories of preBritish rulers attributing famines to divine displeasure, to be averted by ritual and magic. In M ing China too, natural disasters were regarded as signs o f cosmic disorder. But apparently this did not prevent the Chinese government from taking energetic measures to arrange for the distribu­ tion of grain, to defer taxes, and encourage merchants to import grain into famine areas, among many other measures. If some were apparently not used in India at all, including pest control, others appear to have been much more systematically applied in China. On the other hand, the position was reversed in the colonial period. Sanjay Sharma describes Indian society in the Mughal period as decentralized, and Chinese traditional society may be described as more centralized, though we may argue over the criteria for centralization. In other words, the differences in state structure m irrored differences in civil society, and this was far from accidental. H ow ever, this com paratively efficient apparatus for fam ine control too shared in the general breakdow n of governm ent in C hina from the late nineteenth century onwards. A dm ittedly the m ost m odern and avow edly rational of govern­ m ents can also m ake terrible m istakes. In fact, the worst fam ine of history is now held to be the fam ine w hich occurred in com m unist C hina betw een 1959 and 1962. The estim ates o f famine mortality range from 15 m illion to tw ice that figure and even higher. The causes of the fam ine are as controversial as its effects, but it is generally agreed that official policy was at least partially responsible for the disaster.19 O ne error was the extension o f irrigation without regard to the salinization and alkalinization of the soil which recalls to Indian historians Elizabeth W hitcom be’s criticism o f irrigation in ,8Sanjay Sharma, ‘Death, Famine and the Colonial State. The 1837-38 Famine in UP’, M. Phil, dissertation, Delhi University, 1989. 19Carl Riskin, ‘Feeding China: The Experience since 1949’ in Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (eds), The Political Economy o f Hunger, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 1991).

States and Civil Societies in Modem Asia 257 U ttar Pradesh in the nineteenth century.20 There w ere numerous other official errors, including the continued export o f grain to Russia to service debt. A nd all analysts em phasise the varied excesses o f the cadres during the G reat Leap Forw ard. One should note, in particular, the role o f inform ation, or rather m isinform ation— absurdly high tar­ gets were set, for political reasons, and output was falsely reported, so that procurem ent o f foodgrains from rural areas was excessive, leaving no stocks in the countryside when bad w eather occurred in 1959. In contrast, one o f the great achievem ents o f the colonial governm ents o f India and o f Indian statisticians especially was the elaborate organization o f forecasts o f grain yields and estim ates of output. A m artya Sen has used the contrast betw een fam ine policy in in­ dependent India and com m unist C hina to point to the im portance of a free press and public pressure on governm ent. The governm ent of India, he argues, had to give high priority to the prevention o f famine deaths, whereas this dem ocratic pressure was not exerted in China.21 But his analysis overlooks two im portant points. The first is that the long adm inistrative experience built up over nearly a century was a vital factor in India’s excellent post-independence record o f averting fam ines. All over the country official m echanism s were in place for collecting and transm itting inform ation about grain output, each province had its fam ine m anual, and m easures to provide food and em ploym ent could sm oothly be effected. The im portance o f organiza­ tion can clearly be seen if we consider the enorm ous difficulties in providing aid to the victim s o f the Bhopal gas disaster— logistically a m uch sm aller problem , but one which the m odern governm ents of M adhya Pradesh and India have not been able to handle well. Second, it is undoubtedly true that there m ust be avenues for the expression o f popular dissatisfaction with governm ent, and the press is certainly a pow erful one, m uch m ore pow erful, in my opinion, than the traditional channels ‘from the bottom u p ’. But there is a prior condition: people m ust feel dissatisfied w ith governm ent, and believe that there is som ething the governm ent could have done in a particular situation. This may sound obvious, but in fact popular Indian reactions to fam ine reflect recent history, rather than the ex­ 20Elizabeth Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, Vol. I (California, 1971). 'Amartya Sen, Food Battles, Coromandel Lecture, (New Delhi, 1982).

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perience o f centuries, during which terrible fam ines regularly o c ­ curred. If people believe that fam ines are an act o f god, or inevitable natural occurrences, they will only look to governm ent for palliatives or for pujas. But if they believe that fam ines can be averted by m un­ dane governm ent action, they will dem and that this be done. I would guess that because, over tim e, the official m eans for averting fam ines clearly im proved (the Bengal fam ine o f 1943 being a special w ar-tim e case), we now expect Indian governm ents to take a series o f practical m easures when there is danger of fam ine. This is adm ittedly only a guess, and I hope som e young historian will make a study o f popular attitudes to public policies on famine. A good beginning is the paper by jo urnalist N. Ram describing the role of the press during fam ines in the colonial period,22 but our young historian needs to look at other avenues o f expression too.

CONCLUSION I h av e looked at the c h an g e in state form s and g o v ern m en tal fu n ctio n s b ro u g h t ab o u t by the im p act o f the W est on A sia. A sian states re sp o n d e d to th ese c h allen g es in very d iffe re n t w ay s, p artly d ep e n d in g on th eir p ast h isto ries. Japan was in m any re sp e c ts th e m o st su ccessfu l o f all, m an ag in g to rev o lu tio n ise g o v ern m en t and the eco n o m y , d e sp ite u n d en iab le social strain , m ilita ry d efeat by the W est, and W estern c o n stra in ts on its trade p o licy . C h in a, the m ost c e n tra liz e d and o rg an ized o f the p rem o d ern sta tes, u n d e rw en t a co m p lete breakdow n in the m o d ern p e rio d , up to 1957, but then reb o u n d ed to g reater c e n tra liz a tio n . China presents a paradox. Econom ic historians have stressed the im portance o f governm ent, and neoclassical econom ists have stressed that there are certain functions that only governm ent can provide. G ershenkron showed that the role o f the state in Europe becam e larger the later a country began on the path o f modern econom ic 2^ t grow th. ' Lloyd Reynolds, analysing the m odern econom ic history 22

In Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (eds), The Political Economy of Hunger, 3 vols (New Delhi, 1991). ‘ Alexander Gershenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, (Cambridge, 1966).

States and Civil Societies in Modern Asia 259 o f a large num ber o f developing countries, found that differences in governm ent were the main variable explaining differences in rates of grow th.24 India obviously enjoyed greater stability in governm ent and adm inistration than C hina in the first half o f the 20th century. And yet, according to recent revisionist historians, C hina m anaged to grow at least as fast as India in the inter-w ar period, despite warlords, earthquakes, floods, civil w ar and Japanese occupation. This may suggest that governm ent was not so im portant after all, that civil society, especially in the form o f m erchants and m arkets, can over­ com e the loss o f governm ental stability, but it may also be that the revisionist picture, freed from data constraints, exaggerates C hina’s inter-w ar grow th.25 Several Asian countries, including India and Indochina, becam e European or Japanese colonies in the m odem period. I have argued that one aspect o f colonisation was the m odernization o f governm ent, and took up tw o issues in particular. These are: first, the transform a­ tion o f system s o f public order and justice; and, second, the organiza­ tion o f fam ine prevention and fam ine relief. Fam ines provide an instructive contrast betw een colonial and independent India on the one hand and pre-republican and com m unist C hina on the other. H istorians of my generation tend to overlook the transform ation in public expectations o f governm ent brought about by the colonial experience. One largely unintended consequence o f colonial rule was that it w idened the Indian capacity to im agine governm ents. We In­ dians now dem and in a m yriad ways that governm ent should trans­ form the econom y and society, dem ands very different from those m ade o f pre-B ritish rulers. O f course, I am not saying that this change is solely the result o f the colonial experience— even India cannot isolate itself com pletely from the spirit o f the tim es. But I am saying that our actual experience o f colonial rule has changed our expecta­ tions from governm ent now by enlarging our sense o f what is possible for governm ents to do. Fam ines, to take one instance, are no longer m erely acts of god requiring divine intervention nor is the current social structure seen as part o f the natural order. Finally, I am reacting against w hat appears to be a bias in the way historians o f my genera­ 24Lloyd Reynolds, ‘The Spread of Economic Growth in the Third World 1850-1980’, Journal of Economic Literature, 1983, p. 976. 25Dharma Kumar, T he Chinese and Indian Economics from ca 1914-1949’, London School of Economics, STICERD Paper No. 22, May 1992.

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tion have dealt w ith the colonial period. The danger is that I m ay be seen as arguing that im perialism was an unm ixed blessing, w hich is very far from my intention. Its harm ful effects were most evident in its im pact on civil society, and civil societies were highly developed in Asia. In India this is seen in the w eakening or death of traditional form s of com m unal organization— o f village com m unities, village and caste panchayats, and so on. The sym pathies and ties betw een ruler and ruled were snapped, and a more form al, distant relationship took its place. But this again was not necessarily an unm itigated loss; traditional social institutions were often arbitrary and inefficient, as in the case o f traditional system s o f justice or fam ine control. The w ork o f Sum it G uha and Sanjay Sharm a was directly relevant to the topics o f this paper, but there is a grow ing body o f work by a splendid new generation o f historians in India on the actual functioning o f governm ent, for exam ple on public health. C om parative research has also begun, but the field is wide open and the archives barely tapped.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-19491

INTRODUCTION T his paper com pares broad trends in the C hinese and Indian econom ies from around 1914 to 1949. The choice o f countries needs no explanation though the period m ay. T hese tw o large, densely populated, agricultural and poor A sian countries are frequently com ­ pared, but m ost com parisons began at around 1950. Till recently, C om m unist C hina appeared to provide the better m odel for other p oo r countries, but C hina is not exem pt from the recent disenchant­ m ent w ith, to use a currently fashionable phrase, ‘actually prevailing socialism ’. There has also been a spate o f w ork on C h in a’s p re­ revolutionary past, in the m ain part revisionist. A com parison o f the tw o econom ies from the beginning o r middle o f the nineteenth century to 1950 is desirable, but the data for China is still sparse and patchy, and in large part will rem ain so, reflecting C h in a’s political turbulence, in contrast to the bureaucratic stability o f the colonial regim e in India. For India, reasonable national income fig u res are available from the end o f the nineteenth century, but for C h in a, the m ost d etailed d ata relates to the republic period, 19121949, w hich is w hy this p erio d has been chosen for com parison. Till the recent w ork on China, especially R aw ski,2 accounts of the two econom ies sounded alike in many respects; both, to use F euerw erker’s phrase,3 ‘told their tales in a m inor key’. In both 'i am grateful to Nicholas Stem, Alan Heston and Robert Neild for comments, and to Alan Heston also for information. 2Thomas G. Rawski, Economic Growth in Pre-war China (Berkeley, 1989). 3Albert Feuerwerker, ‘Handicraft and Manufactured Cotton Textiles in China, 1871-1910,’ Journal of Economic History, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1970, pp 338-78.

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countries, the m ain line o f dissent was that the per capita incom e actually fell in the tw entieth century, (on C hina see M yers, 19914), but the ground o f debate in both countries has perceptibly shifted tow ards agreem ent on stagnation, rather than decline. In both econom ies, total output barely kept pace w ith the slow grow th in population, and per capita incom e fluctuated around a low level. T his sim ilarity persisted despite the civil war, revolutions and foreign in­ vaders in China, India having undergone these over a century earlier. A lso fam ines, earthquakes and floods had a grater im pact on China. There were, o f course, significant econom ic differences. M odem transport and m odern industry were m ore highly developed in India, urbanization, sm all though it was in both countries, probably proceeded faster in India. D em ographic trends are o f central im por­ tance. In India, population began to increase steadily from 1921, as death rates fell; this m ay not have happened in C hina (Lavel et al., 19905) but we cannot know. The first full census was taken in China only in 1982; in 1950 the population was estim ated at 600 m illion. Paradoxically, claim s that the processes o f econom ic grow th set in early in the tw entieth century have been put forward for China, not India. But perhaps this is not so paradoxical, given that the Sinologist’s im agination is m uch less constrained by data than the Indologist’s, the greater ideological stakes in China, and it m ay even be the general b elief that they order things better in China than India. The leading proponent o f the new revisionism is Thom as Rawski, and the follow ing long quotation may be in order, as portending a new trend: Recent discussion of East Asia’s remarkable economic gains has focused primarily on the postwar experience of Japan and the smaller ‘new industrial countries’. The discovery, that, with the exception of the war period 1937-49, China’s economy has now experienced seven decades of rising aggregate and per eapita output stretching back to 1914, if not earlier, points to the necessity of integrating China into the discussion of East Asian economic achievements and extending the analysis backward in time. In view of the geographical

4Ramon H. Myers, ‘How did the Modem Chinese Economy Develop?—A Review Article’, Journal of Asian Studies, 50, No. 3, 1991, pp 604-27. 5William. Lavel, James Lee and Wang Feng, ‘Chinese Demography: The State of the Field’, Journal of Asian Studies, 1990, p. 5.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 263 diversity of the East Asian region, one may speculate that Chinese cultural traditions, which permeate the historical background of each of the East Asian economies, may hold essential clues to the sources of their extraordinary economic progress. Many aspects of imperial Chinese society, ranging from the prevalence of marketing and market-related institutions to widespread par­ ticipation in complex organizations and harsh social competition in which family strategies often resemble the behaviour of competitive business firms, cast China’s inherited economic culture as a promising training ground for participation in the contemporary world market economy.... Despite the heavy burden of domestic political strife, periodic warfare and chronic instability, China’s prewar economy mustered enough entrepreneurship and flexibility to attain a significant increase in average living standards, placing China within the ranks of the economically progressive low-income nations long before the advent of land reform, socialisation of industry, or state-led development plan­ ning. Dramatic improvements in Chinese economic performance may be ex­ pected if China’s current regime succeeds in harnessing the energies responsible for these achievements.6 V ariants of this view have also been put forward by other authors (three o f their m onographs, and R aw ski’s book are review ed in M yers7), but Rawski deals with the whole o f China, w hile the others arc regional studies, and he provides m ore statistics than any other author. I have therefore discussed his 1989 book, but have picked out only some o f those features o f his w ork which appear interesting from a com parative perspective. I am not com petent to evaluate his statistical techniques. But one should note that this m ethod is often an indirect one— to build up a plausible estim ate o f a particular vari­ able, from various other connected variables.8

R aw ski, pp 347-51. 7Myers,‘How Did the Modem Chinese Economy Develop: A Review Article’. 8I do not know how far this devastating criticism of another revisionist, Brandt, is applicable to Rawski, or indeed to Brandt: ‘How does Brandt accomplish such a fundamental revision of the conventional wisdom? His method is fairly unifoim: disregarding the direct evidence, he chooses a handy data set, makes some convenient assumptions and calculates an alternative conclusion. Each conclusion (on marketed surplus, or on non-agricultural population, for example) then becomes the basis for the next stage of his argument—significantly increasing the chances of compounding errors’. (Joseph W. Esherick, ‘Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China 1870-1937’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 51, No. 2, 1991, pp 501-2.

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We first take up estim ates o f rates o f grow th o f national incom e and sectoral trends in China, then those for India, for the period 1914-8 to 1931-6 in China, and 1914-39 in India. W e then discuss the W orld Bank com parison o f the two countries around 1950. Final­ ly, we analyse a few salient differences between the two countries. Tw o in particular have been highlighted— argicultural yields, and handicrafts. M any others, o f course, are im portant, especially those connected with m arkets and com m ercialization— the organization o f m arkets, the extent and grow th o f m arketed surplus in both countries, the effects o f com m ercialization on technology, output, and distribu­ tion o f incom e; the grow th o f financial institutions, changes in money supply and so on.

ESTIMATES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CHINA 1914/18 TO 1931/36 Estimates by Yeh and Perkins Even m oderately detailed and reliable estim ates o f GDP in C hina are available for only a few years in the tw entieth century. The m o s t' frequently cited estim ates are those m ade by K.C. Yeh and D w ight S. Perkins.9 They both use 1914/18 as the base period; Y eh’s second estim ate is for 1931/36 and P erkins’ for 1933 (Table 12.1). Both authors found that G D P rose by little over one per cent per annum , barely keeping pace with the grow th in population (population data was also very uncertain for this period). Perkins estim ated that GDP per capita rose from 112.6 yen in 1914-8 to 123.4 yen in 1933 (at 1957 prices), an increase o f under 10 per cent over 15-17 years, well w ithin the m argin o f error. ‘Given the potential error in both the G D P and population estim ates, how ever, all one can really say with confidence is that there was no pronounced dow nw ard trend in per capita GDP in the first half o f the tw entieth century, and there may

9There are estimates by other authors and for a few other years such as Ou’s estimate for 1933 cited in Albert Feuerwerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Republic of China, 1912-49’, The Cambridge History of India, Vol. 12, 1983, p. 37 . We do not go into the comparability of these estimates, the effects of price changes and of different base years and so on.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 265 have been a slight increase in the decades prior to the Japanese attack ’.10 B oth authors found th a t m odern industry and tran sp o rt w ere by far the fastest grow ing secto rs, w hile the larg est sector, agriculture, w as relativ ely slu g g ish , grow ing at 0.8 per cent (Y eh) to one p er cen t (P erk in s) p er annum . Y eh has estim ates for m ore sectors than P erk in s, b u t these need not detain us. P e rk in s’ estim ate o f G D P grow th rate o f 1.4 p er ce n t p er annum w as the highest estim ate m ade b efo re 1989; in fact one w idespread view w as that the C h in ese ex p erien ced a neg ativ e rate o f grow th before 1949, but this w as based on a priori reasoning m ore than on statistical evid en ce. W hile ag ricu ltu re w as relativ ely sluggish, grow ing at one per ce n t per annum at m ost, m odern industry and transport show the rapid rates o f grow th in both estim ates. B ut the size o f th ese secto rs was very sm all, around 7 per cen t even at the end o f the period.

Rawski’s Estimates R aw ski, on the other hand, revises Yeh and Perkins substantially up­ ward. As Table 12.2 show s, his ‘preferred’ rate o f grow th of G D P is 1.8 to tw o per cent per annum , yielding grow th rates o f GDP per capita o f 1.1 to 1.2 per cent per capita, depending on the assum ed / rate o f grow th o f population. Raw ski substantially revises all Y eh’s sectoral estim ates, with the exceptions o f personal services and residential rent. His estim ate o f the grow th o f m odern industry falls betw een Yeh and Perkins. It is w orth considering som e o f his sectoral estim ates further. (a) Agriculture: B ecause o f its w eight (around 60 p er cent o f G D P) the m ost im portant area o f controversy is agriculture. Yeh had estim ated the rate o f grow th o f agriculture at 0.8 per cent per annum , and Perkins at 1.0 per cent; thus, according to these es­ tim ates, agricultural output barely kept ahead o f population. But R aw ski argues that these estim ates are too low, and that agricul­ tural output per head rose. He draw s this inference from indirect evidence, especially trends in farm w ages and in internal trade. 10Dwight H. Perkins, ‘Growth and Changing Structure of China’s Twentieth Century Economy’, Dwight H. Perkins (ed.), China’s Modem Economy in Historical Perspective (Starfoid 1975), pp 122-3.

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TABLE 12.1 Estimates by Yeh and Perkins of Aggregate Real Output Growth in China, 1914-36 Sector

Terminal Year Weight

Output Index Terminal Year (Base period-100)

A. Yeh estimates, 1914-8 to 1931-6, 1933 prices Agriculture 0.629 114.5 Modem Industry 0.042 366.7 Handicrafts 0.075 113.0 Construction 0.016 184.6 Transport and Comm. Modem 0.017 200.0 Traditional 0.039 104.5 Trade 0.093 121.5 Finance 0.010 164.7 Government services 119.7 0.031 Personal services 0.012 116.7 Residential rent 0.036 114.3 Gross domestic product 1.000 120.1 B. Perkins estimates, 1914-8 Agriculture Industry and Transport Modem Other Services Depreciation Gross domestic product

to 1933, 1957 prices 0.571 117.0 0.074 0.117 0.203 0.035 1.000

419.2 100.4 125.2 ... 126.4

Average Annual Growth rates (%) 0.8 7.7 0.7 3.5 4.0 0.3 1.1 2.9 1.0 0.9 0.8 1.1

1.0 8.8 0.0 1.3 ...

1.4

Source: Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China, p. 272. No figure given in source. Taken from K.C. Yeh, ‘China’s National Income, 1931-36’ in Chi­ ming Hou and Tzong-shian Yu (eds), Modem Chinese Economic History (Tapei, 1979), p. 126; and Dwight H. Perkins, ‘Growth and Changing Struc­ ture of China’s Twentieth Century Economy’, in Dwight H. Perkins (ed.), China’s Modem Economy in Historical Perspective (Stanford, 1975), p. 117. The annual growth rates for Yeh’s estimates are computed over a period of 17.5 years (mid-1916 to the end of 1933). The annual growth rates for Perkins’ estimates are computed over a period of 17 years (1916 to 1933).

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 267 TABLE 12.2 Rawski’s Estimates for Growth of Chinese GDP, 1914-8 to 1931-6 Preferred Low Estimate Estimate (%) (%) A. Average annual growth rates, 1914-8 to 1931-6 Agriculture 1.4-1.7* 1.0-1.3* Industry 4.9 8JL Handicrafts 1.0 ÌA Constmction 4.0 ÛA Trans, and Comm. Modem 2.8 10 Traditional 1.5 L2 Trade 2.0 11 Finance 3.0 Government services 2A 2A Personal services 0.8 1.5 Residential rent 0.9 1.5 1.8-2.0 Gross domestic product 1.3-1.5 Population 1. Perkins var. 0.9 0.9 2. Schran var. 0.6 0.6 GDP per capita Population 1 0.6* 1.1* Population 2 1.2* 0.7* B

Gross domestic product (GDP) Population 1. Perkins var. 2. Schran var. GDP per capita Population 1 Population 2

High Es­ timate (%) 1.8-2. la 9.5 2.0 5.5 2.5 3.0 3.0 6.0 fL4 2.0 2.0 2.3-2.5 0.9 0.6 1.6* 1.7*

126.3-130.7

High Preferred Estimate (%) Estimate (%) 137.5-142.4 149.2-154.5

117.0 111.0

117.0 111.0

117.0 111.0

111.7* 113.8*

121.7* 123.9*

132.0* 134.0*

Low Estimate (%)

Note: Sectoral growth rates with relatively firm empirical foundations are un­ derlined in this table. *The rate of agricultural growth is assumed to equal the rate of population growth plus 0.4 flow estimate), 0.8 per cent (preferred estimate), or 1.2 per cent (high estimate) per annum. Output performance derived from the lower figure for agricultural growth in each column is related to the Schran popula­ tion variant; output total derived from the higher alternative for agricultural growth are combined with the Perkins population variant. Source: Rawski, pp 330-1.

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Thus he computes firom Buck’s farm wage data.11 That farm w ages over the 100 counties for which Buck collected data rose by 1.2 per cent per annum from 1914-1933, ‘which he argues supports the hypothesis o f rising productivity and living standards’. T h is inference seem s ju stifiable if the wage calculations are correct, and if Raw ski is correct in believing these wage rates to be typi­ cal o f the whole co u n try.12 A gain, Raw ski lays great stress on the beneficial effects o f m arket integration, which he infers from the grow th o f freight transport. M aking strong assum ptions, (fo r exam ple, that agricultural technology could be described by the C obb-D ouglas function), Raw ski arrives at a ‘preferred estim ate’ o f the grow th o f agricultural output o f 1.4 to 1.7 per cent p er annum , depending on the rate o f grow th o f population, the range o f the rate o f grow th o f output was betw een 1.0-1.3 per cent and 1.8-2.1 per cent (Raw ski, 1989, p. 330).13 This im plies that total farm output rose by 2 8 -3 4 p er cent between 1914-8 and 1931-6, as opposed to Y eh’s 15 per cent (p. 329).14 (b) Services: In both econom ies, services had a larger weight in both output and em ploym ent than industries. M easuring output in these sectors is notoriously difficult, and it is here that Raw ski m akes daring estim ates. Thus to estim ate incom e from the ‘finance sector’, that is, banks and other financial interm ediaries, he builds up series o f m oney supply, including bank deposits; betw een 1914 and 1936 m oney supply grew at 5 -6 p er cent p er annum and prices at tw o per cent per annum .15 This was m uch faster than growth in nom inal GDP, and this ‘m onetary expansion and financial deepening’ Raw ski argues, stim ulated the com m ercialization of agriculture and econom ic growth. He assum es that ‘output’ in this sector grew at the sam e rate as m oney supply, a rate considerably above Y eh’s estim ate o f 2.9 per cent. A gain, he adopts the average annual rate o f grow th o f freight carriage o f 2.5 per cent as an estim ate o f the growth o f wholesale and retail trade. 6 And, finally, 11 John L. Buck, Land Utilization in China, Statistics (Chicago, 1937). 12 Rawski, p. 307. 13 Ibid., p. 330. 14 Ibid., p. 329. l5Ibid., p. 162. 16 Ibid., p. 277.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 269 he estim ates that governm ent revenue grew by 2 .4 -4 .4 per cent during 1908-31, and hence assum es that output in the govern­ m ent sector grew by 3.4 per cent per annum betw een 1914-18 and 1931-6. (c) Handicrafts: H andicrafts, again were im portant in both econom ies though their w eightage was larger in the Chinese econom y. H ere again R aw sk i’s estim ates rest on shaky foundations. First, R aw ski assum es th at the grow th rate for all h an d icrafts was the sam e as for tex tile h an d icrafts, by far the largest craft sector, and one w hich faced p artic u larly strong co m p etitio n from fo reig n and do m estic m ills.17 R aw ski estim ates th at handloom output grew at 1.4 p er cen t per annum ; m oreover, th at this occurred despite the very large grow th in m ill pro d u ctio n o f cotton cloth; net im ports 1A d eclin ed , from being nearly 30 tim es as large as d o m estic m ill pro d u ctio n in 1 9 0 1 -1 0 to u n d er a q u arter in 193 4 -6 . H e estim ates th at hand lo o m s co n tin u ed to acco u n t for the m ajor p art o f the o u t­ p u t o f clo th and yarn (in p hysical term s h an d icrafts w ere as m uch as tw o -th ird s o f total o utput, even in 1 9 3 4 -6 ), and th at both p er c ap ita o u tp u t and consum ption o f cloth, (factory plus handicrafts) increased up to 1923-7. ‘An increase in per capita cloth consum ption from 5.8 to 9.0 square yards [betw een 1901—10 and 1923-7, followed by a decline to 8.9 square yards] in 1934-6, suggests a general in­ crease in living standards during the pre-w ar decades, especially since cloth consum ption seem s to have risen w ith no m ajor decline in the relative price of cloth’. 19 M any previous authors asserted that hand­ loom output declined during this period, but Raw ski points out that m any o f them ‘tend to assum e a constant per capita consum ption o f textile goods’.20 One authority, C hao, declines to com m it him self to a d e fin ite statem en t ab o u t overall trends, alth o u g h he cites in d ica­ tions th at h an d icrafts m ay hav e grow n. ‘F or now , all we can say is th a t h an d icraft pro d u ctio n o f co tto n cloth still played a dom inant

17 Ibid., p. 278. Net imports amounted to 65 million square yards in 1901-10 to 630 m square yards in 1928-30 and only 360 m square yards in 1931-3 (Rawski, p. 93). Figures for 1914-8 are not provided. 19 Ibid., p. 97. 20 Ibid., p. 96. 18

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TABLE 12.3 Rawski’s Estimates of Per Capita Output of Textiles and Consumption of Cotton Cloth, 1871-1936 Period

Population (millions)

Indicators of Per Capita Output and Consumption Value Added, Cotton Yam and Cloth (1933 yuan)

1871/80 1901/10 1923/27 1934/36

350 435* 476 500

Total

Factory

0.30 0.25 0.57 0.63

0 0.03 0.20 0.35

Consumption of Cloth

Handicraft (square yards) 0.30 0.22 0.37 0.28

5.7 5.8 9.0 8.9

Source: Rawski, 1989, p. 97. ro le as late as 1936’ . 1 H e attrib u tes its su rv iv a H a rg e ly to the huge am ount o f surp lu s lab o u r available. Feuerw erker, alw ays m ore cautious than R aw ski, describes the variety o f handicrafts, including handloom s, and their differing fates, and suggests th at earlier view s o f their decline in the 1920s and 1930s w ere not substantiated, being based partly on a priori reasoning, and partly because these concentrated on the dow nw ard phase o f industrial cycles. 22

INDIA— 1911-1947 The Indian data is far better than the C hinese, for reasons that rem ained relevant after 1950. U nlike China, the central provincial governm ents w ere stable. M oreover, the B ritish set up a huge bureaucratic apparatus for collecting inform ation, partly for fiscal reasons, but partly too because they needed know ledge o f the exotic society they ruled. O n som e subjects, such as population and rainfall, Indian historical statistics are superior to those o f many developed countries. In others, such as some categories o f national incom e 21

Kang Chao, The Development of cotton Textile Production in China (Cambridge, Mass., 1977). 2 Albert Feuerwerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Republic of China, 1912-1949’, The Cambridge History o f China, Vol. 12, pp 55-7.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 271 statistics, the data is unreliable or altogether lacking, partly because so m uch o f the econom y was rural, sm all-scale or unm onetized. M any figures are still controversial, but the range o f disagreem ent betw een scholars is m uch narrow er than for China. To take the population data first, for several decades the rate o f grow th o f population fluctuated enorm ously, as m ortality rates shot up in som e years due to fam ines and disease, especially the latter. The last great m ortality crisis was the influenza epidem ic of 1918; after 1921 the censuses recorded an accelerating rate o f grow th in population, as the death rate was steadily reduced. U pto 1921 the death rate fluctuated around 40 per thousand, but by 1941 it cam e dow n in 30 per thousand (see Tables 12.6 and 12.7). From 1860 to 1920, population grew very slow ly; over the 60-year period popula­ tion grew by only 30 per cent. N o official estim ates o f national incom e were m ade in the colonial period, and we have to rely on the estim ates o f individual scholars. T he m ost com plete and now generally accepted study is by S. Sivasubram oniam , consisting o f direct estim ates o f value added every year for thirteen sectors from 1900 to 1947.23 For the grow th o f na­ tional incom e too 1920 was a turning point, as H eston points out. N ational incom e data is not available for the nineteenth century, but rough estim ates put the grow th o f per capita incom e at 0.5 to 0.9 per cent per annum in the last decades. This was low com pared to rates o f grow th o f other tropical countries w hich benefited m uch m ore from the huge expansion in international trade, but significantly higher than in 1920-47. Sivasubram onian and H eston find that national incom e barely kept p ace w ith the gro w th o f p o p u latio n betw een 1920 and 1947, so th at p er capita incom e rem ained stable (Table 12.6). O ther scholars have argued that per capita incom e declined slightly, by 5 -1 5 per cent over the period. H eston com m ents: ‘These results are different in the sm all but sim ilar in the large, nam ely that there w as a sig­ nificant grow th in per capita incom e through the last h alf o f the nineteenth century, w hich grow th appears to have ceased after 23 S. Sivasubramoniam, ‘National Income of India, 1900-01 to 1946-47% Ph.D. dissertation, Delhi School of Economics, 1965. This is the basis for Heston’s analysis; Alan Heston, ‘National Income’, in D. Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983), also has an extensive discussion of other estimates.

TABLE 12.4 Death and Infant Mortality Rates in the Indian Sub-continent, 1901-11 to 1946-1956 Year Registration Date 1901-11 1911-15 1916-20 1921-25 1926-30 1931-35 1936-40 1941-45 1946-50

Infant Mortality Rate

Death Rate

—

30.2 38.2 26.3 24.6 23.6 22.3 22.5 18.7

Life Table Estimates

Davis

43.7 49.8

42.6 48.6

41.7 48.6

37.3

36.3

37.9

31.5

31.2

—

—

Das Gupta

Visaria

—

25.2

—

Registration Data -

204.2 218.8 174.3 177.6 174.0 161.4 161.0 134.0

Life Table Estimates

Das Gupta

287 290

295 282

241

247

211

227

—

199

Note: Beginning with 1871-81, life tables have been constructed by the census actuaries on the basis of the census age distributions for every decade except for 1911-21 and 1931-41. Life tables for the latter two decades were constructed by Davis. The table estimates of death rates are reciprocal to expectation of life at birth. Source: Leela Visaria, and Pravin Visaria, ‘Population (1757-1947)’, in D. Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983), pp 501-2, based on Kingsley Davis, The Population o f India and Pakistan (Princeton, 1951), pp 33-6, 62-3. Census of India, 1931, I, India, Pt 1—Report, 165-6; Census of India, 1956, Paper no. 2 of 1954, Life Tables, 35. Leela Visaria, ‘Religious and Regional Differences in Mortality and Fertility in the Indian Subcontinent’, unpublised Ph.D. thesis Princeton University, March 1972.

TABLE 12.5 Population of the Indian Sub-continent, 1901-1941 Census counts Census year

1901 1911 1921 1931 1941

Davis’s estimates

Population (million)

Decennial change (per cent)

Average annual growth rate (per cent)

Population (million)

283.9 303.0 305.7 338.2 389.0

1.5 6.7 0.9 10.6 . 15.0

0.15 0.65 0.09 1.01 1.40

285.3 303.0 305.7 338.2 389.0

Decennial change (per cent) 1.1 6.1 0.9 10.6 15.0

Average Annual Growth rate (per cent) 0.11 0.60 0.09 0.01 1.40

Notes: Burma is excluded from these figures. Source: Visaria and Visaria, ‘Population’, p. 488, based on various census volumes of India for the period 1871-1941, Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton, 1951), p. 27.

I

TABLE 12.6 Net Domestic Product of India by Sectors 1900-47 in 1946-47 Prices 1900-1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Agriculture (S) Agriculture (H) Animal Husbandry Forestry Fishing Mining Manufacturing Small-scale industry Government (S) Government (H) Professions Other Services Other Commerce House rent Foreign Trade Net Product (S) Net Product (H)

21,872 19,660 6,767 172 244 199 664 3,852 1,032 2,381 1,348 530 3,938 809 -635 40,792 39,929

H: Estimated by Heston. S: Estimated by Sivasubramonian. Source: Heston,‘National Income’, pp 398-9.

1910-11

1913-14

1914-15

1930-31

1935-36

1946-47

25,389 24,542 7,678 223 347 305 1,270 4,818 1,465 1,897 1,798 632 5,437 1,198 -891 49,669 49,254

21,455 20,641 8,625 243 341 347 1,415 4,901 1,717 1,999 1,835 653 5,465 1,273 -757 47,513 46,981

23,317 22,881 8,254 235 332 340 1,450 4,757 1,720 1,967 1,903 681 5,463 1,321 -755 49,018 48,829

24,124 24,453 9,204 266 327 387 2,181 6,875 2,959 2,727 2,743 1,362 6,308 2,565 -1,010 58,291 58,338

23,597 24,370 9,295 312 341 408 2,869 6,176 3,101 2,742 2,817 1,343 6,624 3,104 -1,391 58,596 59,010

23,907 24,899 10,110 432 364 430 4,841 5,979 5,253 5,253 2,432 1,026 8,681 2,501 -49 65,907 66,899

TABLE 12.7 Some Social and Economic Indicators for India, 1901-1946 (selected years) 1901 1. Population (million) 2. Per capita income (1946-7 prices)

1911

1921

1931

1941

303.3 175.8

305.7 173.4

338.2 184.8

389.0 174.8

0.23 0.20 0.17 23.6 34.7

0.23 0.20 0.18 22.6 33.4 205

0.22 0.20 0.18 19.4 26.7 198

0.20 o js 0.17 26.9 36.4 179

0.16 0.15 0.15 32.1 41.2 160

Education 9. Number of students— all levels (in ’000s) 10. Ratio of female to all students 11. Students as percent of population— India

441.7 0.097 0.020

678.0 0.140 0.029

838.1 0.169 0.036

945.4 0.220 0.037

1577.0 0.226 0.054

Transportation and communication 12. Rail passengers (.million) 13. Net tons

183.1 41.9

366.6 68.3

534.6 86.4

505.0 95.3

Nutrition and Health? Net availability o f foodgrains 3. Blyn: British India (tons per person/year) 4. Sivasubramonian: India (tons per person/year) 5. Present study: India (tons per person/year) 6. Expectation of life of male (at age 0) 7. Expectation of life of male (at age 10) 8. Infant mortality rate (per thousand)

Source: Heston,‘National Income’, pp 410-12.

285.3 155.6

651.6 135.6

1946 412.3 177.4

0.16 0.14 0.16

1192.6 128.4

276

Colonialism, Property and the State _

1920’. The interesting question is how m uch o f this change can b e attributed solely to dem ography: if the Indian population had grow n at the same rate during both periods, there would have been m uch less difference in the rate o f grow th o f per capita incom e, but there still would have been some difference, since national incom e probab­ ly grew som ew hat faster in the earlier period, especially betw een 1880 and 1914. This assum es aw ay the question o f the causal tw oway connection betw een population and incom e. A rising or falling standard of living can lead to a faster/slow er rate o f growth o f popula­ tion, though the com m on in feren ce that the p o p u latio n d eclin es in the nin eteen th cen tu ry pro v es th at p er cap ita fell, is not necessarily valid. The cau sal relatio n sh ip can w ork the o th er w ay— a h ig h er rate o f population gro w th m ay stim ulate tech n o lo g ical change and lead to a h igh rate o f grow th o f total incom e (B oserup, 1965).25 F ar m ore com plex relatio n sh ip s have been describ ed by econom ic h isto rian s, b rin g in g in real w age trends and com plicated feed b ack m echanism s. These figures m ake another point: the low correlation betw een international trade and the national incom e o f India. If the Indian econom y drew m uch less stim ulus from the expansion or world trade before 1914 than m any other tropical developing countries it also w as hit relatively lightly by the G reat D epression. T here w ere m arked chan g es in the sectoral com position o f out­ pu t betw een 1 9 0 0 -1 9 4 7 . A g ric u ltu re ’s share o f net dom estic p ro d u ct fell, as did th at o f sm all-scale industry, w hile there w ere larg e increases in m an u factu rin g and govern m en t (T able 12.6). T h ese raise in terestin g qu estio ns o f statistical m ethod, as w ell as m ore general issues. (a) Agricultural output: T he estim ate o f agricultural output depends crucially on official estim ates o f yield p er acre, used by both B lyn (1966)26 and Sivasubram oniam (1965).27 These official figures show a decline betw een 1887 and 1947. There were great

24 Alan Heston, ‘National Income’, pp 379-80. 25 Ester Boserup, The Conditions o f Agricultural Growth (Chicago, 1965). 26 George Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India 1891-1947: Output, Availability and Productivity (Philadelphia, 1966). 27 S. Sivasubramoniam, ‘National Income of India, 1900-01 to 1946-47’, Ph.D. dissertation, Delhi School of Economics, 1965.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 277 differences betw een crops and betw een regions. F or instance, yields per acre declined for rice but w ent up for wheat. This was partly reflected in regional trends. Punjab, which benefited from governm ent irrigation as well as the distribution o f im proved seed, was the fastest grow ing area. The declining yields per acre in the Bengal region can be attributed partly to the shifting in river courses, and perhaps also to epidem ics. H eston has argued that this decline reflects the m ethod o f data collection and, in particular, the grow ing political difficulties o f collecting the land revenue, and that there are no obvious prior reasons for expecting the yields to have declined; for one, there was no deterioration in rainfall. H e has therefore assum ed that there was no change in average yields; w hile Sivasubram onian finds that output per capita of the principal crops w ent up by only 7 per cent between 1901-1946, H eston puts the increases at 23 per cent reflecting increased acreage. But even this m uch disputed figure is well below the estim ated increase in agricultural output in China. (b) Small-scale industry: Since no direct data on output are available, the net dom estic product o f this sector is estim ated by Sivasubram onian from the census figures on occupations, and scattered figures o f wages. N either the m ethod nor the sources o f data are satisfactory and it is disappointing that here has been so little w ork on sm all-scale industry, w hich even in 1946-47 contributed m ore to G D P than m anufacturing. A ccording to the estim ates w e have cited, this was a relatively slow growing sec­ tor, and the fact that m anufacturing grew extrem ely rapidly lends som e plausibility to these estim ates. F or instance, the railw ays brought products o f Indian m ills to areas such as Rajasthan, thereby destroying m any local handicrafts.30 N evertheless, it is possible that S ivasubram onian’s estim ates o f sm all-scale in­ dustrial output, w hich have not so far been disputed, are too low, not only as regards particular points o f tim e, but also as regards grow th over the period. F or exam ple, Roy (1988)31 has pointed 28 Blyn, Agricultural Trends, p. 236. 29 Heston, ‘National Income’, pp 381-91. 30 J. Krishnamurty, T h e Occupational Structure’, in D. Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 2, (Cambridge 1983). 31 Tirthankar Roy, ‘Size and Structure of Handloom-Weaving in the Mid-Thirties’, IESHR, XXV, No. 1,1988, pp. 1-24.

278

Colonialism, Property and the State

out that the volum e o f handloom cloth produced in the 1930s w as som ew hat higher and the value significantly higher, than the usual estim ates w hich were based on the consum ption o f cotton yarn, w ithout taking into account the use o f other fibres, fancy weaves, and so on. (c) Government sector: A nother fast grow th sector was governm ent. H ere again the estim ates w ere com piled from data on num bers o f bureaucrats and official em olum ents, begging the obvious question o f the real w orth o f bureaucrats' services. Jibes about official parasitism are too easy; one should rem em ber that Reynolds (1983)32 found that governm ent services were the m ost im portant reason for w hat he term ed extensive growth up to 1949, and it is m isleading to treat all governm ent services together, especially when m aking com parisons w ith China. One needs detailed analyses o f particular bureaucratic functions and departm ents. For instance, there are econom ic returns to the im­ provem ent o f law and order (though the C hinese pre-w ar ex­ perience suggests that they may be exaggerated). Again, the inform ation collecting agencies o f governm ent m ust have yielded large positive externalities. There were clear returns to official extension work, w hether in agriculture in the Punjab or handloom s in M adras, but such official activity was limited.

CHINA AND INDIA c. 1950 Com parisons o f com m unist C hina and independent India usually begin w ith circa 1950 as a benchm ark. It is useful hence to end our statistical survey w ith this com parison. T able 12.8 reproduces a recent W orld B ank table, giving various figures for India in 1950 and for C hina in 1952. The follow ing points em erge: (a) C h in a’s per capita incom e was significantly low er than In d ia’s, around 1950. But the figure for C hina is very uncertain, and som e authors com e to the opposite conclusion that C hina’s per capita incom e was higher. In any case, W orld Bank figures for C hina are notoriously influenced by political considerations— the 32 Lloyd G. Reynolds, T he Spread of Economic Growth to the Third Worid: 1850-1980’, Journal of Economic Literature, 1983.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 279 TABLE 12.8 The Benchmark: India 1950 and China 1952 India 1950 GNP in (1952 $) GNP per capita (1952 $) Population (million) Birth rate (per 1000) Death rate (per 1000) Life expectancy Nos. dependent on agriculture per acre of cultivated land Paddy rice fields (tons per acre) W^eat yield (tons per acre) Industrial output per capita: Coal (kg) Pig iron (kg) Crude steel (kg) Electric power (kw) Cotton spindles (units) Cement (kg)

22,000 60 358 38 24 0.60 1.3 0.7 97 5 4 0.04 0.03 9

China 1952 30,000 50 573 37 17 36 (1950) 1.90 2.5 1.1 96 2.8 2 0.005 0.01 4

Source: IBRD, China-Socialist Economic Development, 1983, Vol. 1, p. U3, Washington. Taken from A. Eckstein, China’s Economic Development, 1975, with the substitution of later demographic data for China, and the inclusion of life expectancy data for India. per capita incom e drops when the need is for great loans— and there is little historical consistency. (b) M odern industry m ade far greater progress in India. In addition, the infrastructure, judged by electric pow er and railw ays was far m ore advanced in India. By 1947 India had 65,217 kilom etres o f rail track (H urd, 1983, p. 739),33 C hina had 21,800 km in 1949.34 (c) B oth countries w ere overw helm ingly rural— 89.4 per cent of the population o f C hina was rural in 1949; 87.2 per cent in undivided John Huid, ‘Railways’, in D. Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 739. 34Rawski, Economic Growth, p. 209.

280

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

Colonialism, Property and the State India in 1941 and 83.9 p er cent in India in 1951 (V isaría and Visaría, 1983, p. 519).35 On the other hand, yields per acre w ere m uch higher in C hina than in India— paddy yield was nearly tw ice as high. O ne reason may w ell have been the greater intensity o f cultivation. T able 12.8 show s that the num bers dependent on agriculture p er acre o f cultivated land was over three tim es higher in China; the num ­ ber o f w orkers p er acre was probably also much higher. T his suggests that yields per w orker w ere low er in China, at least for rice and w heat (we return to these points later). The death rate for C hina as shown in Table 12.8 seem s im probab­ ly low. As w e have seen, the Indian population probably grew faster than the C hinese in the period 1912-1949, due to a decline in m ortality, and Chinese m ortality probably started to decline rapidly only after the com m unists took over. As a result o f the differences in death rates, the life expectancy was 36 years in C hina in 1950 and only around 32 in India, 6 but this is subject to the sam e reservations as death rates. There is general agreem ent that the C hinese w ere m ore literate than the Indians. C ertainly the Indian rates w ere very low— only 15 p er cent o f the population w as literate in 1941. N o data for C hina is available for this period. The 1982 census for C hina show ed that 28.2 per cent o f the w orkforce were illiterate or sem i-illiterate and Spence com m ents that this gave ‘those in the W est w ho had believed that the C om m unists had elim inated il­ literacy a shock’,37 but this does not tell us what the situation was around 1950. T he general im pression am ongst historians is that prim ary school education at least was m ore w idespread in C hina than in India, over very long periods, perhaps reflecting the different attitudes o f C onfucianism and H induism (or Islam ) to popular education. On the other hand, India alm ost certainly had a far higher proportion o f graduates, scientists, engineers and doctors in 1950.

35Leela Visaría and Pravin Visaría, ‘Population, (1757-1947)’, in D. Kumar (ed.), Cambridge Economic History o f India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983). 36 Ibid., p. 502. 37Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modem China (New York, 1990), pp 689-90.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 281

CHINA/INDIA COMPARISONS, 1912-49 T he preceding discussion o f the two countries leads to the follow ing com parisons: (a) O verall rates o f grow th on the basis o f the estim ates for China o f Yeh and Perkins and those for India m ade by Heston or Sivasubram oniam , the overall trends in per capita incom e w ere very sim ilar; G D P per capita in both countries may have in­ creased a little faster than population betw een circa 1915 and circa 1935. But India’s population grew rather m ore rapidly, so total G D P grew som ew hat faster. On the other hand, C hina suf­ fered from w ars and natural disasters to a m uch greater extent, so that if it did m anage to m aintain the sam e rate o f per capita grow th as India, that in itself suggests the greater potential for grow th o f the C hinese econom y, even before 1950. Raw ski, as we have seen, has estim ated a m uch higher rate o f grow th, o f over one per cent per annum o f G D P per capital, m uch higher than any estim ates m ade for India. But the Chinese data is m uch w eaker, and the hypotheses Raw ski resorts to in the absence o f data lose plausibility when com pared with data fo r India. M any o f the factors Raw ski cites for China, such as native business com m unities, existed in India too. He lays great stress on the functioning o f m arkets, but there is no reason to believe that they w ere less w idespread or less efficient in India. O n the contrary, since railw ays grew very m uch faster in India, it is likely that m arkets were integrated faster too, enabling regional specialisation.38 M oreover Indian farm ers too were responsive to price changes.39 But if the average per capita incom e changed relatively little, over the period in either country, there w ere fluctuations in in­ com e in both; the variability o f incom e is an im portant question in econom ics w ith no insurance against risk for the poor or even for rich farm ers. It is true that both India and C hina appear to have suffered relatively little from the w orld depression (on 38 Hurd, ‘Railways’. 39Omkar Goswami and Aseem Shrivastava, ‘Commercialization of Indian Agriculture, 1900-1940: What Do Supply Response Functions Say?’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, 1991, pp 229-20, which contains references to earlier work.

282

Colonialism, Property and the State

China, see M yers, 1989).40 But both were subject to natural d is­ asters, and C hina to banditry, civil war and invasion. One w ould guess that there were m ore such disasters in C hina than India, and w ith greater effect, since official policies o f disaster relief, especially fam ine relief, worked m uch better in India. (b) Agriculture: The one sector in C hina seem s to have had a clear superiority is agriculture. In 1950 yields per acre w ere m uch higher in C hina than in India for rice (Table 12.8; Ishikaw a, 1965).41 Even in the 1930s, rice yields in C hina w ere tw o to three tim es the Indian or Thai yields (Feuerw erker, 1983, p. 73). If Raw ski is correct, average yields p er acre grew m uch faster in C hina than in India, even on H eston’s estim ates. T his apart the C hinese seem ed to have attained higher levels centuries ago— one estim ate is that an average rice yield o f about 2.3 t/ha, a level still not achieved in India, was attained in China as early as the tenth century.43 There are m any possible reasons for this.44 The first is physi­ cal conditions— for instance, the im pact o f organic m anure is m ore lim ited in tropical regions than in tem perate areas, and a far greater proportion o f C h in a’s cultivable area enjoys tem perate conditions. There are also differences in seasonality o f rainfall. Second, there is the question o f quantity and quality o f inputs. A great portion o f C h in a’s arable land was irrigated in 1950 and this has a great influence on yields (Bray, 198645; Ishikawa, 196546). In 1950, as we have seen, there were more agricultural w orkers p er acre in China, w hich would have increased yields per acre (though yields per m an m ay have been low er than in India). It is im possible to state how the relative use o f various

^ a m o n Myers, ‘The World Depression and the Chinese Economy 1930-36’, in Ian Brown (ed.), The Economics of Asia and Africa in the Inter-War Depression (London, 1989). 4!S. Ishikawa, National Income and Capital Formation in Mainland China: An Examination of Official Statistics (Tokyo, 1965). 42Feuerwerker, ‘Economic Trends’, p. 73. 43Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies (Oxford, 1986), p. 62. R h o a d s Murphey, 1977, The Outsiders: The Western Experience in India and China (Ann Arbor, 1977), p. 48. 45 Bray, The Rice Economies. ish ik a w a , National Income.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914—1949 283 inputs changed on average over time, though com parisons be­ tw een specific regions m ay be possible. O ne m uch stressed factor in the ‘optim istic’ literature on China, the effects o f m arkets, can very probably be ruled out, for reasons discussed earlier. But tw o other sets o f factors m ay be im portant. The first is that the Chinese farm er was better inform ed and m ore skilled than his Indian counterpart, though both w ere constrained by lim ited education and access to inform ation. The apparent basis for this hypothesis is the alleged greater extent o f popular education in China, and the traditional em phasis on agricultural extension. But this hypothesis is difficult to test in the present state o f know ledge. The second set o f factors is even m ore tenuous, but m ore facts are available for testing. There are tw o related hypotheses. The first is that the m ore egalitarian the agrarian structure, in terms o f land ow nership or access to inputs, the greater is total factor productivity. The second hypothesis is that C hinese rural society w as m ore egalitarian than the Indian. These are crude statem ents, and refinem ent is needed if the hypotheses are to be tested. This is becom ing possible. There is now a grow ing body o f regional studies for C hina (for exam ple, Brandt, 1989,47 Faure, 198648 and 1989,49 and H uang, 198550) and there are far m ore studies o f India. (c) Handicrafts: H andicrafts w ere im portant in both countries, but far m ore im portant in C hina w here even in 1933, according to Perkins, m odem industry contributed only a little over one-third o f the GDP in m anufacturing (Table 12.1). In India too, ‘smallscale industry’ contributed m ore than ‘m anufacturing’, that is, m odem industry, b u t the disparity was not s o l large. (There are problem s o f definition: ‘sm all-scale industry’ in India included som e m odem but sm all firm s, and the C hinese and Indian figures w ere not strictly com parable, but these differences are unlikely

Loren Brandt, Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870-1937 (Cambridge, 1989). ^D avid Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern Sew Territories (Hong Kong, 1986). 49David Faure, The Rural Economy of Pre-Liberation China (Oxford, 1989). 50Philip C.C. Huang, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (Stanford, 1985).

284

Colonialism, Property and the State to affect our broad conclusions). On Perkins’ estim ates, m odem industry, starting from a m uch sm aller base, grew m uch faster in C hina than in India. In both countries output from handicrafts continued to grow, though m uch m ore slow ly than m odem industry— so m uch for the fam ous ‘de-industrialization’ thesis, that exposure to the W estern econom y destroyed Indian handicrafts. [Sim ilar assertioins used to be m ade o f Chinese handicrafts]; these are now disputed but the literature on C hina still contains assertions that C hina w ithstood foreign com petition better than India. M any scholars have stressed the resilience o f Chinese hand­ icrafts. H ous> argued that handicrafts w ithstood com petition from m odern industry for four m ain reasons. The first was low labour costs, especially if the labour was supplied by w om en and children or if handicrafts were supplem entary to farm work. T he second reason Hou cites was m ass poverty, w hich reduced the dem and for better quality higher priced m odem goods. The third reason, som ew hat contradictory to the second, is that internal and external dem and went up, and handicrafts could take ad­ vantage; he gives the exam ple o f the increase in trade leading to an increase in the dem and for native junks. Finally, technological im provem ents enabled som e handicrafts to grow in absolute term s and some even increased their share o f the total m arket. This was true o f hand-w eaving in m any areas, w here the iron handloom , first im ported from Japan, was intro­ duced. He also cites im provem ents in other industries, such as silk-reeling, oil pressing, soap m anufacture, flour m illing and cotton ginning.52 Com paring India and China, C hao stated that: ‘The hand-w eav­ ing industry in India could have survived longer if people there did not attach so m uch disutility to the use o f their surplus labour’.53 As we have seen, the Indian hand-w eaving industry did not die, and if it did grow m ore slow ly (which is yet to be established) that w as because it faced greater com petition from dom estic m ills.

5lChi-ming Hou, Foreign Investment and Economic Development in China, 1840-1937 (Cambridge, 1965). 52Ibid., p. 184. 53 Chao, The Development of Cotton Textile Production, p. 201.

The Chinese and Indian Economies, 1914-1949 285 There seem s no obvious reason to believe that C hinese hand­ icrafts were inherently m ore resilient or dynam ic than their In­ dian counterparts and the natural protection the form er derived from the absence o f m odern industry or transport can hardly be taken to be a sign o f the overall strength o f the econom y. O utput figures are know n to be very suspect in India and a revision o f these will affect overall trends. This is true o f post1947 statistics too. H andicrafts m ay be one sector w here Indian data is not better than the Chinese.

CONCLUSION T o sum up, this discussion focused on the period 1912-1949, the R epublican period in China, because a great deal o f new work has appeared on this period, m ainly by Thom as Raw ski. Raw ski (1989)54 has argued that the earlier estim ates by Yeh and Perkins needed to be pushed upwards, and that the per capita incom e grew by around 1 per cen t per annum , and overall incom e by 2 per cent. These rates are still well below the rates required for m odem econom ic growth (K uznets 1966), but are substantially above the rates estim ated for India. B ut R aw ski’s estim ates are highly speculative, partly because the data is so poor for C hina. The Indian experience, so m uch better m easured and recorded, suggests that he frequently exaggerates the beneficial effects o f the grow th o f m arkets, the grow th o f the finan­ cial sector, the activities o f governm ents and so on. The safest view is still that the overall grow th story was not very different in the tw o countries— a slow grow th o f population, and slow or no growth m per capita incom e, in m arked contrast to the p o st-1950 experience in both countries. The per capita incom e o f both India and C hina was very low — around $ 1 5 0 -1 6 0 (in 1952 dollars) 1950, and given the m argin o f error, it is not w orth arguing about w hich country was the poorer. T he dem ographic data in T able 12.8 suggests that the physical quality o f life was better in C hina, but this is based on unreliable data. B ut this sim ilarity is itself surprising, given other huge differences betw een Chinese w arlords and the Raj. One w ould have expected

54Rawski, Economic Growth.

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civil war, foreign invasion, earthquakes, floods and fam ines to h av e depressed C h in a’s rate o f grow th well below India’s. Do these d is­ asters affect the econom y less, or at least for shorter periods, than historians are prone to believe? Or did China have a greater potential for grow th? The latter question is often answ ered in the affirm ative, often with references to Confucianism or the peculiar com m on sense and practicality o f the Chinese. This author has not found the H indu rate o f growth a useful concept, and doubts if a C onfucian rate o f grow th will be m uch better. Useful com parisons are better m ade at low er levels o f generalization— agriculture and the agrarian structure and handicrafts are the tw o obvious places to begin.

The Colonial State

13 Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India

W riting on A frica, M iers and K opytoff1 propose the phrase ‘delegalization o f slavery’ for the situation in which the legal status o f slav ery was ab o lish ed but the social in stitu tio n s o f slavery co n ­ tinued. T he term is ap p licab le to In d ia in that a long period o f tim e in terv en ed b etw een leg islation and social changes. On the o th er hand, the term ‘sla v e ry ’ does not accurately describe m any form s o f traditional bondage in India. A bove all, there w as In d ia ’s ow n pecu liar in stitution, the caste system . The B ritish did in fact b ring profound chan g es in the social structure. T h eir intended in­ stru m en ts o f ch an g e, such as law s abolishing slavery, how ever, w ere less effective than p o licies w ith o th er objectives or indeed than w ider forces w hich ow ed little to d elib erate governm ental p o licies. In large part, this reflected the com plexity o f traditional so cial structures in India. In pre-B ritish India, as in m any other com plex pre-m odern socie­ ties, there was a great range o f un-free status, from chattel slavery to debt peonage. The classical H indu and M uslim system s o f law both recognised form s o f servitude, and local custom s legitim ized others. Kings, tem ples, landlords— all had un-free labourers, and in addition ,corvée labour was levied for public works. But personal freedom w as also restricted by the caste system , w hich in its con­ tinuity, extensiveness, and degree o f organization was unique to India. It is necessary first to consider the caste system , w ithout w hich the in stitu tio n s o f bo n d ag e, the lim its to legal em ancipation, and the w orking of other factors o f change in the B ritish period cannot

Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (eds), Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1977).

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be understood.2 One need only add that bonded labourers alm ost a l­ w ays cam e from the low er castes.

CASTE AND SERVITUDE IN PRE-BRITISH INDIA The caste system in fact consists o f two classificatory schem es. T he first, the vam a system , very loosely divides caste society into four orders, o r vam as, often called castes. A t the top o f the hierarchy cam e the Brahm ins, the priests and religious teachers; next cam e the K shatriyas or w arriors; and third cam e the V aishyas, farm ers or traders. These three upper castes w ere ‘tw ice-born or ‘clean.’ Below them cam e the fourth vam a , the Sudras, artisans and labourers, whose function was to serve the three higher vamas. These people w ere considered im pure and polluting but still w ithin caste society. Still low er cam e a category that was considered extrem ely polluting. The last group is o f particular relevance here, and I shall use the term untouchables in general for the group, or, occasionally, for the m odern period, ‘Scheduled C astes’.

2Patterson has a very interesting discussion of the distinction between caste and slavery (Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, 1982), pp 49-51), but his treatment begs a number of questions, and the Indian experience is not sufficiently, taken into account, for instance on the matter of sexual relations between ‘outcastes’ (an ambiguous term) and others. Caplan (Lionel Caplan, ‘Power and Status in South Asian Slavery’, in J.L. Watson (ed.), Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Oxford, 1980) discusses the relations between caste and slavery (or ‘power’ and ‘status’ in his terms) in Nepal and India from a comparative perspective. His focus is different from mine. In particular, colonial policy is not his main interest, as it is mine, though he does touch upon it. 3The terms used for this group have changed over the years, to avoid giving offense, like the transition from ‘Negroes’ to ‘Blacks’ in the United States. The term ‘Scheduled Castes’ arose form the fact that these casts were listed in a special schedule of the Government of India Act of 1935, which gave them special electoral representation. They are also listed in the Constitution of India of 1951, along with the Scheduled Tribes. Galanter (Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities, Delhi, 1984) discusses the history of the various terms used for this group and the difficulties of defining the castes included in the schedules.

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 291 M oreover, the operative units o f social life w ere m uch sm aller groups called jatis. Since these too, like the vam as, were m utually exclusive, determ ined by birth, endogam ous, and hierarchically ranked (though not as unam biguously as the varnas), the ja tis form ed a caste system . Som e social anthropologists translate varna as ‘c aste’ and ja ti as ‘sub-caste’, but m ost prefer to use ‘caste’ for the jatis. T heoretical attem pts to fit all the existing ja tis into the varna schem e have proven unsuccessful. The caste system restricted social and econom ic m obility, but one m ust not exaggerate the degree o f rigidity. The system evolved and changed over tim e; new castes were constantly created by fission, by fusion, and in other ways. M oreover, a particular caste could raise itself in the hierarchy. M obility w as in theory and alm ost certainly in practice severely lim ited for the untouchables. They were forbid­ den to do work o f higher status or to ow n land. They lived in separate ham lets, drank from separate w ells, had to dress m eanly and behave hum bly, and were denied education. These prohibitions w ere zealous­ ly enforced by the upper castes, the com m unity, and the ruler. Indeed, although they are illegal today, occasional attem pts by the upper cas­ tes to enforce them still provoke violent altercation. C aste was correlated w ith occupation, but not uniquely. C ertain occupations were too high for the low castes. Scavengers, leather w orkers, and those who handled the dead w ere considered extrem ely polluting, and people who follow ed these occupations were untouch­ ables. O ccupation w as not the sole criterion o f status, how ever, and certain occupations, notably agricultural ones, were in fact open to all castes, o r nearly all. In some areas, Brahm ins w ere forbidden to touch the plow. Sim ilarly, caste and servile status w ere closely connected, but not uniquely. A part from the categories o f the caste system , separate legal categories differentiated those o f un-free status. The classical legal texts enum erate several categories o f dasas, often loosely translated as ‘slaves’. The classical H indu legal texts are neither codes of form al law s nor m ere descriptions o f custom ary law s but are both norm ative and descriptive, in unknow n proportions.4 T he dasas w ere differen­ tiated by origin: conquest, sale by parents or oneself (as in fam ines),

R obert Lingat, The Classical Law o f India, Trans. J.D.M. Derrett (Berkeley, 1973).

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birth to a fem ale slave, enslavem ent to w ork off a fine or jud icial decree, and so on.s D ifferent disabilities and rules for m anum ission affected different types o f dasas. A ccording to some writers, no sec­ tion o f the population was exem pt from bondage: Brahm ins and w ar­ riors could sell them selves or be sold into slavery, and enslavem ent w as a punishm ent from w hich none were exem pt. A ccording to one classical text, the Arthashastra , sinful Brahm ins could be sent as slave labour to the m ines.6 I shall refer to these as types o f ‘servile status’ to differentiate them from low castes, though this has problem s, as indeed any system o f differentiation using only English term s has. W e m ust bear in m ind, first, that there are tw o distinct principles o f status differen­ tiation: a dasa could belong to any caste, although few were B rah­ m ins, and a m em ber o f even the low est castes was not necessarily a dasa. Second, the tw o system s w ere closely linked: m em bers o f the high castes w ere m uch less likely to becom e dasas than were m em ­ bers o f the low castes, and an individual could not be held as a slave by a m em ber o f a low er caste. Third, low caste in itself entailed the lack o f many kinds o f personal freedom . Caste and other principles o f differentiation overlapped and interacted in com plex ways. Finally, although the ideology o f caste had been attacked even within the H indu fold, m ost notably by the mediaeval religious reformers known as the Bhakti school, one could not escape from one’s caste except by renouncing the world or by managing to deceive it: for instance, one m ight migrate and pass oneself o ff as a m ember o f a higher caste. Hindu rulers believed that one o f their m ain duties was to punish infringements o f caste rules. The Bhakti reformers also preached that caste was ir­ relevant in the eyes o f God, but not on earth.7 Private individuals, tem ples, and rulers m ight all own dasas or em ploy bondsmen o f various sorts. The ruler could legitimately restrict the freedom o f his subjects, for instance, by extracting forced labour for public works. Similarly, temples, landowners, and village magnates could exact unpaid labour, such as a day’s plowing or porterage, from nominally free tenants and others. There were various local term s for 5P.V. Kane, History o f Dharmashastra, Vol. 2, pt. 1, (Pune, 1974), p. 184. 6Dev Raj Chanana, Slavery in Ancient India (New Delhi, 1960), p. 60. ?Dharma Kumar, ‘Attacking Untouchability: The Changing Role of the State in India’, in Krzysztof Michalski (ed.), Europa und die *Civil Society' (Stuttgart, 1991).

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 293 this type o f forced labour. All over northern India the term ‘b eg ar’ was used for unpaid labour as well as for paym ents in kind. These generalizations apply to a very large area and to a very long period o f tim e. O bviously, conditions varied enorm ously. M ore­ over, our know ledge o f w hat actually prevailed is indistinct, derived as it is mostly from texts o f uncertain provenance and age. The his­ torians o f ancient India consequently differ in their accounts o f the extent and form s o f servitude.8 N evertheless, it is clear that ‘un­ freedom ’ o f various degrees, from chattel slavery to debt peonage, w as w ell established in ancient India. The general consensus, how ­ ever, appears to be that the m ajor part o f the labour force did not consist o f chattel slaves or o f serfs o f the European variety. The M auryan em pire o f northern India is a possible exception. Sharm a argues that ‘although w e have no statistics for the M auryan em pire, the state sector o f agricultural production was certainly run by slaves and agricultural labour, and in this sense dependent labour form ed the backbone o f the M auryan state’.9 Since the extent o f state lands and the ratio o f slave to other labour are not know n, how ever, this rem ains a m ere assertion. On the other hand, the so-called free labourers, and even tenants and sm all farm ers, were constrained in various ways, because o f the generally unequal distribution o f land and w ealth and the existence o f the caste system. From the seventh century onw ard, Islam ic rulers brought M iddle Eastern fiscal and adm inistrative practices and Islam ic jurisprudence to India. The num bers o f chattel slaves increased sharply. These slaves were artisans, soldiers, and dom estic servants.10 We have descriptions o f a large slave m arket in D elhi, and we know that Indian slaves were exported to other parts o f the Islam ic world. This type o f slavery declined after the fourteenth century,11 but K idw ai12 argues that debt peonage increased, partly as a result o f Q

Vivekanand Jha, ‘Stages in the History of Untouchables’, Indian Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 1,1975, pp 14-31. 9R.S. Sharma, Sudras in Ancient India (Delhi, 1958), p. 158. l0Salim Kidwai, ‘Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics: New Forms of Bondage in • Medieval India’, in Patnaik and Dingwaney (eds). Chains o f Servitude (1985). 11Irfan Habib, ‘Northern India Under the Sultanate: Non-agricultural Production and Urban Economy’, in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1982). 12Kidwai, ‘Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics’.

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fam ines, which them selves partly resulted from the greatly increased revenue dem anded in the M ughal period. D espite the Islamic p ro h ib i­ tion o f usury, apparently no law prohibited debt slavery. Hindu rulers tried periodically and in vain to lim it the am ount o f repaym ent: one w ell-know n rule was that the total o f repaym ent and interest should not be m ore than tw ice the original loan. O lder forms of bondage such as agrestic slavery or serfdom also continued. Again, Islam ic rulers did not attem pt to change the caste practices o f the H indus, and they may even have upheld them when they were appealed to. O ur know ledge o f the social policies o f these regim es is lam entably lim ited.

THE COLONIAL REGIME The British w ere understandably bew ildered by the variety o f statuses, the m edley o f schools o f law and texts, unwritten custom s and local practices, and untranslatable words in the dozens o f lan­ guages and dialects that they found in India. A t first they were m ore concerned w ith collecting revenue than with addressing issues o f per­ sonal freedom , but these were forced upon their attention in the early nineteenth century. Slaves were exported and bought and sold in local m arkets, some o f the rich had dom estic slaves, in som e handicrafts and industries artisans w orked in bondage, and agrestic serfdom or slavery was w idespread. C ap lan 13 is alm ost certainly wrong in as­ serting that w ith the possible exception o f the south, ‘slaves were em ployed largely or predom inantly in the dom estic sp h e re / He states that agrestic slavery was found m ainly in the south, and he only m entions Bengal Presidency and Kum aon as other areas where it was found. Severe servitude, how ever, prevailed in m any other parts o f India, including B ihar,14 G ujarat, A ssam , and Rajasthan. Perhaps evidence o f servitude will com e to light for other areas as their his­ tories are written.

13

Lionel Caplan, ‘Power and Status in South Asian Slavery’, in J.L. Watson fed.), Asian and African Systems o f Slavery (Oxford, 1980), p. 182. 4Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1990). 15Jan Breman, Patronage and Exploitation (Berkeley, 1974).

X

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 295 The British diligently codified laws and recorded custom s. O ur know ledge o f Indian servitude takes a quantum leap for the colonial period, but even so it is deficient in three respects. First, our know ledge o f servitude relates m ostly to British India. The native states o f Kerala have been studied (for exam ple, Jeffrey, 1976),16 but the rest, a large num ber, have been relatively neglected by historians. The native states accounted for nearly one-fourth the population of undivided India. Social and econom ic conditions and state policies differed m arkedly in many o f these states from those in British India. K now ledge o f them would not only fill out our picture of the colonial period but would also throw light on the pre-B ritish period, since historical continuity was stronger in the native states. Second, the tribal population has been little studied, but it is of specific relevance. Som e tribes them selves practised slavery, and m ore im portant, the steady conversion o f forests into arable land was accom panied by the conversion o f tribals into low -caste agricultural labourers.17 Third, the official records which are our m ain source o f inform ation can som etim es be m isleading. The initial im pulse to inquire into slavery in India was transm itted by abolitionists in England. The answ ers o f the local officials to parliam entary inquiries reflect the confusions of the officials, faced w ith a staggering variety of form s o f servitude and w ith dozens o f Indian words, w hose m eanings could alter from locality to locality. They w ere naturally not alw ays successful in their attem pts to describe these unfam iliar institutions. N ative terms were often translated into term s draw n from European feudalism , such as adscriptus glebae, and the resulting confusion has lasted till today. A significant form o f error was that officials treated certain lowcaste nam es as synonym ous w ith ‘s e r f or ‘slave’. T heir reports m ake it clear that separate native term s existed for such statuses, but the confusion arose because these forms of hereditary bondage were confined to a few low castes. W e will take southern India as an exam ple since the connection between caste and bondage was par­ 1O

i 6R.

Jeffrey, The Decline of Nayar Dominance (New Delhi, 1976). 17There is no tribe from India among the sixjy slave-holding societies listed in .Murdoch’s Ethnographic Atlas, on which Patterson bases some of h is' generalizations, though there is one from Tibet (Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, pp 350-2). One Indian tribe practising slavery is the AppaTani (C. von Furer-Haimendorf, TheApa Tanis and Their Neighbours, New York, 1962). 18Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge, 1965).

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ticularly strong there, but elsew here too, such as in G ujarat, hereditarily bonded agricultural labourers w ere draw n from the low est castes.19 The adima o f K erala approached the condition o f slavery. They w ere bought and sold, m ortgaged and hired out, and the sam e term s w ere used to describe transfers in land and in hum an beings. They were given as gifts to tem ples o r w ere part o f a daughter’s dow ry. Local governm ents regarded them as their m aster’s property and con­ fiscated them as paym ent for arrears. Som etim es the m aster had prac­ tically unlim ited pow ers over them : one deed o f transfer for 1833 said: ‘You m ay sell or kill him or h er’. In som e parts o f Kerala, how ever, there w ere constraints on the m aster. F or instance, he could not send the slave out o f the district. These are the w orst conditions o f bondage know n, though in Tam il areas to the southeast it was occasionally reported that labourers w ere bought, sold, and gifted, and there w ere even rules regarding the ow nership o f children. I f a fem ale adimai (the same w ord as in K erala) m arried a free m ale or one belonging to a different m aster, on h er husband’s death she and her children were reclaim ed by the form er m aster. But on these m at­ ters our inform ation is still dubious, F or instance, there are conflicting reports on w hether the agrcstic labourer could be sold separately for the land he w orked on, perhaps because in fact the rules varied from place to place. These w ere m atters o f custom , not formal law, so conditions were not uniform and our know ledge o f them is indistinct. T he rights and obligations o f servants and m asters and the sanc­ tions by w hich they were enforced were not easy to grasp. The colonial governm ent was pulled in different directions. A bolitionists in England, m issionaries in India, and to som e extent the colonial rulers’ own consciences urged direct action. O n the other hand, there was the danger that if long-standing agrarian arrangem ents w ere dis­ turbed, governm ent revenue, as well as agricultural exports, would fall. A southern Indian official expressed the dilem m a well in the early nineteenth century: There is something so revolting and abhorrent to an Englishman in the Idea of Slavery that the advocates of its continuance in any shape must ever labour l9Breman, Patronage and Exploitation. P h a r m a Kumar, T he Agrarian History of South India’, in Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1983).

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 297 under the disadvantage of prejudgment. Notwithstanding this, I shall en­ deavour to show that so far as it relates to the Revenue of the district (and I mist my opinion will not be supposed to extend further) any abolition of the Puller System would be attended with the most serious and ruinous con­ sequences.21 Puller, or, m ore correctly, Pallar, the nam e o f an untouchable caste, was used by this official as a synonym for bonded labour. The governm ent o f M adras and other provincial governm ents felt that reform should be slow and cautious, but at least they could im ­ m ediately reform their own practices. The colonial governm ents them selves m ade use o f un-free labour in two ways, both inherited from their predecessors. First, in the early nineteenth century in southern India slaves were sold to realize arrears o f taxes from their m asters. Such cases were alw ays rare, and they were prohibited in 1819.22 Far more im portant was the governm ent’s own em ploym ent o f forced labour, m ainly for public works. Labourers, generally from the low er castes, w ere im pressed to repair roads and tanks, to dig channels, and to repair temple structures. The East India Com pany used this kind o f labour on canals and other public works, as well as for porterage for touring officials, especially in the hills. All econom ies in public expenditure were w el­ com e, but the practice cam e to be seen as unethical. Proposals to give it up were m ooted in the m iddle of the nineteenth century, t h i s led to extensive official debate and strong protests from engineers and others who felt that the construction and m aintenance o f public works, especially roads and canals, would be seriously im peded if they did not have the pow er to im press labour at fixed rates of pay, often well below the m arket rates for free labour. T here w ere various system s o f em ploym ent. G overnm ent officials could force local land­ ow ners to send their labourers to work on public works, the workers being paid directly or through the landow ners, or they could im press m en directly. Even if labourers continued to get the sam e wages that they did for their norm al agricultural work (and this was not neces­ sarily the case), they were not indifferent to the arrangem ent. Digging roads or cleaning canals was hard, unpopular work and m ight entail staying aw ay from home. One canal official in Sind reported that 21

Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste, p. 69. 22Ibid., p. 70.

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labourers were w illing to pay substitutes m uch m ore than they received them selves to escape the work. 23 Civil engineers w ith tight budgets were reluctant to pay m ore, though, and in a few cases they argued that w hatever the w ages offered, force was absolutely neces­ sary to carry on the public works. ‘It is doubtless d esirable,’ H orsley, a civil engineer in Tinnevelly D istrict in M adras, adm itted in 1854, ‘that labour should, if possible, be voluntary, but such a thing as voluntary labour in G overnm ent works in the Talooks is quite new to the district and considering how little disposition for work is m anifested by natives generally, and how small a sum suffices to give them their usual daily food, it is not to be w ondered at that they do not com e to the cotton Roads, except it may be at particular seasons when it suits their convenience’ (G overnm ent o f M adras, 1855, pp 1 0 -1 1).24 Regulations banning forced labour or establishing rules for paying m arket w ages were passed in several provinces. The m ost forthright, perhaps, was the notice issued in Sind in 1856, w hich stated that statutory or forced labour was abolished in Sind: ‘Every m an is at perfect liberty to work when, and at w hat rates, he pleases.’ G overnm ent servants who com pelled labour could be dism issed or legally prosecuted.25 W hether any were actually proseciited is not know n. Elsew here, governm ent servants w ere given lim ited pow ers to enforce w ork, as when a canal was breached. A nother parliam entary question in 1887 led to further inquiries by the governm ent o f India. From the answ ers o f the local govern­ m ents, the governm ent o f India concluded that the practice o f forced labour was generally dying out. It was used in em ergencies, for cus­ tom ary m aintenance o f public w orks, or in rem ote areas where labour w as scarce. It was m ost prevalent in the Punjab. In two districts, M ultan and M uzaffargarh, tradition decreed that labourers were obliged to clean the canals (the cher system). The local government adm itted

Government of Bombay, Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, 7, n.s., Correspondence on the Subject of the Effect Produced by the Abolition of Statute Labour in Sind on the Prosecution o f Canal Clearance in that Province (Bombay, 1860). 24Govemment of Madras, Selections from the Records of the Madras Government, No. 6, Correspondence Relative to Proposals for Organizing Permanent Corps o f Coolies for Employment on Road Works (Madras, 1855). 25Govemment of Bombay, Selections, p. 9.

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 299 that the system could be abused but was issuing orders to prevent this.26 The use o f forced lab o u r by g o vernm ent w as a survival from earlier regim es. D oubtless, o fficials found it useful, but the prac­ tices ran c o u n ter to the basic p rin cip les o f governm ent, and it was steadily reduced. T here is a m arked co n trast betw een D utch and British co lo n ial use o f corvée labour. M oreover, forced lab o u r for governm ent w as no t o fficially ab o lish ed ev ery w h ere in the nineteenth century, and in at least one case it actually increased in the tw en tieth . In the hills, o fficials found lab o u r in short supply for p orterag e, road building, and lev elin g sites, and finding it con­ venient to follow the p ractices o f the hill ch ieftain s w ho w ere their predecessors, they im pressed labour. T he villagers w ere supposed to be reim b u rsed , but this w as not alw ays done. In the nineteenth century th e burden o f com pulsory lab o u r in the hills w as relatively light. It in creased in the tw entieth century as a resu lt o f the opera­ tions o f the F orest D epartm ent. M oreover, the F o rest D epartm ent reserved larg e areas o f fo rest for g o vernm ental use. T hese two factors co m b in ed led to w idespread p ro tests and refusal to supply the labour. W hen the v illag ers w ere fined, they refused to pay the fines. T h e g overnm ent u ltim ately gave in on the issue o f forced labour, and the system w as ab o lish ed in 1921. T h ereafter, officials 27 had to pay fo r transport. But nothing in India dies out com pletely, w ith the exception, on hopes, o f sm allpox. Petty officials, such 3 $ forest guards, still force tribals to w ork for free.

PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS OF SERVITUDE T h e governm ent could w ithdraw from its own use o f bonded labour re la tiv e ly easily. It was m uch m ore difficult for the governm ent to tra n sfo rm the relationships betw een private m asters and servants, in­ c lu d in g the extraction o f forced labour by m asters and landlords, w h ic h was extensive in some areas in India in the tw entieth century.29 26India Office Records and Library, London, L/PJ/6/205. 27Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods (Delhi, 1989). MS.D. Kulkami, ‘Bonded Labour and Illicit Money Lending in Maharashtra’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 14,1979, pp 561-4. 29T h e novels and shoit stories of the great Hindi novelist Prcmchand describe

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The E ast India Com pany indeed often supported the master. For instance, labourers som etim es tried to escape from an intolerable m aster by fleeing to another region, even though this often meant only an exchange o f one m aster for another. If they went to a neigh­ bouring district in British India, how ever, their form er m aster could appeal for official help in getting them back. Since the land revenue depended on agricultural output, the district officials often obliged the m asters, and one zealous C ollector o f Tanjore suggested in 1800 that the police be em pow ered to force the ‘slaves’ to w ork for the governm ent and their m asters. But such officials were reprimanded by higher authorities, and the practice o f assisting m asters in regain­ ing their labourers ceased in the first half o f the nineteenth century. In the early nineteenth century the courts and officials generally upheld w hat they took to be the custom ary rights o f the masters. Indeed, the form s officially sanctioned by an early adm inistrator in southern India, Read, include Form 38, a ‘Prom issory N ote to a Ser­ vant w ho engages to serve him for life ‘I f you serve me w hile you are able to work, I will m aintain you w hile you live.’ Form 36 is also intriguing: ‘If you serve m e five years from this date to the best o f your ability, I will supply you with food and apparel, and at expiration o f that period will give you my daughter in m arriage’. C an this form have been w idely used? It would, in any case, have been restricted to debtors o f the sam e caste as the creditor. U nfortunately, w e do not know if such notes were actually executed or if the co u rts adjudicated on them . But governm ental support to the m aster d id decline during the nineteenth century. T he official pronouncem ents against it w ere effective to som e extent, im perfectly obeyed th o u g h they may have been. A lso, the pow er o f the low er officials, o fte n *

the various types of begar and the relations between the begar-takers and begar-givers in East United Provinces in northern India. In Premchand’s writings the exactions of landlords are less resented than those of officials, possibly because the former are part of the community and begar is p art o f patron-client relations (Kartikeya Kohli, ‘Premchand’s Writings and th e Institution of Begar,' unpublished M.A. Thesis, Delhi School of Econom ics (Delhi, 1990). °Richards, F.J., Gazetteerfor Salem District, Government of Madras, M ad ras, 1918.

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related to or o f the same caste as the landlords, weakened as the bureaucracy becam e centralized.31 Even if officials did not actively support the m asters, m ere ac­ quiescence was som etim es sufficient. The m ost notorious exam ple was provided by the issues surrounding the cultivation o f indigo in eastern India. Here m ost indigo was grown by small tenants o f British planters or o f Indian landlords (zamindars). The peasants, though, preferred to grow other crops, especially rice. One solution would have been to offer them higher prices for indigo, but the planters found a cheaper answ er in Indian practices them selves. They ad­ vanced loans to the peasants and were not unhappy when they were not repaid, since, with the debt, their pow er to enforce the cultivation of indigo mounted. Their final instrum ent was force. All indigo fac­ tories had armies o f m usclem en who would beat up recalcitrant peasants. N either the use o f credit not the use o f private force was new — the zamindars to had their own arm ies— but the planters may have em ployed them on a greater scale and m ore vigorously. The planters tried to enforce contracts under which the peasants agreed to cultivate indigo w ithout full aw areness o f the consequences. For a considerable time, the governm ent did not suppress their m anifestly illegal activities. Indeed, ‘governm ent acquiescence had been the m ainstay o f the indigo system in Low er B engal’. This system was brought to an end in 1860 by peasant uprisings and governm ental action to prevent illegal force. M oreover, the governm ent rejected the dem and by British cotton m anufacturers for a perm anent law w hich w ould have m ade the violation o f a contract by a cultivator a crim inal offense.32

ANTI-SLAVERY LAWS T he governm ent o f India could not w ithstand the pressure by the abolitionists to im pose a legal ban on ‘slavery’, and finally, A ct 5 o f 1843 was passed. This A ct attacked slavery in four ways: there w ere to be no more sales o f slaves for arrears in revenue; no court should in the future enforce rights arising out o f the alleged posses­ sion o f slaves; no person was to be deprived o f his property on the 31Breman, Patronage and Exploitation, p. 77. 32Blair filing, The Blue Mutiny (Philadelphia, 1966).

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ground that he was alleged to be a slave; and any act w hich w as a penal offence against a free person was to be equally an offence if com m itted against a person on the ground that he was a slave. T h e Indian Penal Code o f 1860, w hich is still in force today, con tain ed stronger provisions. Sections 370 to 372 o f the Code m ade trading in slaves, keeping slaves, and kidnapping and abduction for the p u r­ pose o f slaver-trading crim inal offenses, punishable by term s o f im ­ prisonm ent o f up to seven to ten years. B uying or im porting a girl w ith a view to m arriage was not punishable under these sections, but buying her for dom estic service was. In 1871 a man who had bought a H indu girl, converted her to Islam , and kept her as a m enial, giving her food and clothes but no w ages, was found guilty.33 R anchhoddas and Thakore m ention that a later judge found the decision ‘extraordinary’ but give no further details. L egislation had little direct effect. The law s did m ake it m o re difficult for officials and courts to support m asters, but it w as n o t official actions that kept alive the institutions o f servitude. N everthe­ less, as m asters becam e aw are o f the official attitude, they som etim es changed old institutional form s w ithout giving up the substance o f dom inance. Substantial change depended on the servants’ becom ing aw are o f their rights and being able to fight for them. That w as m ore problem atic. G yan Prakash34 has described these com plex responses to legis­ lation against debt peonage in Bihar. Sim ilar legislation was enacted elsew here, and there too law s w ere rarely enforced and in fact could do little so long as the labourer had no alternative sources o f em ploy­ m ent or o f credit. In some cases, so-called debt bondage may have been a cloak for a hereditary relationship not based on a loan, but d ebt bondage in its true sense was found all over India and not ju st in agriculture. M en, and m ore rarely wom en, contracted a loan w ithout security, frequently on the occasion o f their m arriage, and their labour w as m ortgaged until they repaid the loan. Since their wages w ere extrem ely low, they w ere frequently unable to do so. Parents could also m ortgage the labour o f their children against a loan, as parents doubtless do today, not only in India. The district gazetteers o f the B om bay Presidency in the late nineteenth century 33R. Ranchhoddas, and D.K. Thakore, The Indian Penal Cade (26th ed.), (New Delhi, 1987). P ra k a sh , Bonded Histories.

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 303 generally state that debt bondage was not hereditary, but one case was reported in w hich a villager died leaving a debt o f tw enty rupees and his son had to work for tw elve years to repay it.35 The Royal Com m ission on L abour found in 1930 that children, som e only five years old, were bonded to pay o ff their parents’ loans in artisanal industries, particularly carpet weaving and the m aking o f cheap cigarettes, notorious em ployers o f child labour to this day. The children w orked very long hours, in w retched conditions, and under very harsh discipline.36 T he difficulties o f fram ing and enforcing legislation concerning debt peonage are w ell dem onstrated "by the yet unfinished chain o f law s attem pting to deal w ith it. As we have seen, the m ortgage o f labour at a subsistence w age against a loan could not alw ays be repaid. U sually no w ritten docum ents confirm ed the transaction. The lender m ay well have found custom ary sanctions sufficient. M oreover, in rem ote or econom ically stagnant regions, default was difficult. If a labourer did m anage to escape to some other part o f India o r abroad, legal action to bring him back would be futile. In som e cases, how ever, the transaction was w ritten down. Even in the early tw entieth century prom issory notes were occasionally presented for registration, o f w hich the follow ing is a sam ple: ‘I have received Rs 37, and in lieu o f interest I have em ployed my three sons under you for 15 years, on pay o f Rs 1 -8 -0 per annum , and 12 vallam s o f ragi [a coarse grain] per m ensem . If my sons fail to work, I render m y self liable to dam ages and punishm ents under the Acts o f G overnm ent’.37 The governm ent faced a dilem m a: W ere these arrangem ents nor­ m al com m ercial contracts, in w hich case the courts and the adm inis­ tration would have to punish or prevent breaches? This was w hat the landlords and m asters urged. O r were the ‘contracts’ so unequal and unfair that the governm ent w as under no obligation to enforce them ? There was no clear way out o f the dilem m a, and in fact, the governm ent som etim es took tw o contradictory types o f m easures. First, like other Indian rulers before them , they tried to restrict 35H. Fukuzawa, ‘Agrarian Relations: Western India’, in D. Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History o f India (Cambridge, 1983). ^Government of India, Report o f the Royal Commission on Labour in India, HMSO (London, 1930), p. 92. 37Richards, Gazetteer for Salem District, p. 246.

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‘usuriours ’ lending, and acts restricting rates o f interest were passed from tim e to tim e in different provinces. The usual effect was that credit dried up for a tim e after the law was passed and then the old conditions reasserted them selves. O n the other hand, other law s w ere passed in the nineteenth cen ­ tury reinforcing the m aster’s powers. One act w hich is often cited as evidence o f the colonial governm ent’s anti-labour bias is the W orkm an’s B reach o f C ontract A ct of 1859. U nder this A ct, if a w orkm an obtained an advance o f m oney from his em ployer and then refused to work, the em ployer could com plain to the m agistrate. I f the m agistrate was convinced that the com plaint was justified, he could order the w orkm an to w ork. If the w orkm an still refused to work, he could be ordered to repay the m oney or could be sentenced to not m ore than three m onths at hard labour. The A ct was originally m eant to apply to Presidency tow ns, but it was extended to other areas. There is disappointingly little discussion o f the A ct in the his­ torical literature. To m y know ledge, no detailed studies exam ine the w orking o f this Act. How m any com plaints were actually lodged under the A ct? H ow m any w orkm en w ere punished? W as the know ledge that these sanctions were available to em ployers a suffi­ cient deterrent to w orkm en w ishing to break the term s o f their loans? Perhaps the Act, and other sim ilar regulation, did in fact reinforce the pow ers o f the m asters in the unequal struggle between m asters and labourers. T his has been asserted, for exam ple, to have been the case in part o f Bihar. The prom issory notes from M adras cited earlier also suggest that labourers felt they could be punished under law for breach o f their ‘contracts’. F ar m ore evidence is required, how ever, before one can agree that ‘bondage was cem ented follow ing the W orkm an’s B reach o f C ontract A ct o f 1859, which m ade it im possible fo r bonded labourers to escape servitude unless the entire loan was repaid’.39 The law was repealed in 1926, and the general trend o f legislation in the tw entieth century m oved aw ay from support o f the m asters. T his can also be show n by an analysis o f the A ssam tea industry, 38Detlef Schwerin, T he Control of Land and Labour in Chota Nagpur, 1858-1908’, in Diebnar Rothmund and D.C. Wadhwa (eds), Zamindars, Mines and Peasants (New Delhi, 1978). 39Tanika Saikar, ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’ in Patnaik and Dingwaney (eds). Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slarvey in India (Madras, 1985), p. 110.

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 305 w here the governm ent once supported an indenture system officially described as ‘som ething in the nature o f slavery’.40

PRESSURE GROUPS AND OTHER REFORMERS Even in the colonial period, m any outside the governm ent, and some w ithin it, saw that the law was an inadequate instrum ent o f reform and that other direct m easures w ere needed. In the latter part o f the nineteenth century, nationalist critics o f governm ent drew attention to the m iserable lot o f bonded labour, and in the tw entieth century the labourers them selves w ere able to exert som e pressure, although econom ic stagnation and, perhaps, their ow n acceptance o f their low status constrained them , though the strength o f the latter factor is a m atter o f controversy.41 M issionaries also constituted an im portant pressure group. In m any parts o f India, m issionaries had at first concentrated on con­ verting the upper castes, but they realized that the m ost prom ising converts w ere individuals o f the low er castes, those w orst affected by H indu social inequality. M issionaries set up schools for the low er castes, for which they often received special governm ent grants, and the literacy rate rose significantly in areas o f m issionary activity. The m issionaries pressed the governm ent to take other m easures to im­ prove the condition o f the low est castes, including the granting o f land. In M adras Presidency, uncultivated lands w ere allotted through m issionary societies and directly to ‘depressed classes', that is, the low est castes, and agricultural labourers. By 1931, the lands thus allotted am ounted to over 1 per cent o f the cultivated area.42 M ost o f it was alm ost certainly o f poor quality, but the total am ount is not insignificant. M adras w as exceptional, how ever. O ther provincial governm ents apparently did not do as m uch. But changes in govem -

40Rama Pratap Behl, ‘Some Aspects of the Growth of the Tea Plantation Labour Force and Labour Movements in Assam Valley Districts’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, 1983). 41Michael Moffat, ‘An Untouchable Community in South India (Princeton, 1979). 4ZDharma Kumar, ‘Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency, 1953-54 to 1946-47’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 13, 1975, p. 259.

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m ental policies were less significant than the other effects o f c o n ­ version to C hristianity, notably the increased unw illingness o f low caste converts to put up w ith traditional restrictions and the increased m obility w hich literacy brought them (Frykenberg, 1976,43 is only one exam ple, but a particularly ‘th ick ’ one, o f various studies on conversion). Indeed, m em bers o f low castes som etim es found that it was sufficient m erely to threaten to convert to Christianity to w in som e o f their dem ands. If the aim o f official policy was social reform on some issues, on others it was the preservation o f the status quo, and governm ental efforts to preserve the rural social structure som etim es had the unin­ tended effect o f reducing the m obility o f the low er castes. The best exam ple is the Punjab Alienation o f Land A ct o f 1900, w hich restricted the right to own land to a group o f so-called agricultural castes, that is , those w ho had traditionally ow ned lands (B arrier, 1966).44 The object was to prevent urban m oneylenders from buying agricultural land, but the low er castes were also debarred. It is true that not many o f them had the m oney to buy land and that they had som etim es been used as a front by m oneylenders, but nonetheless, one escape route was closed to them .45 In the political arena, the governm ent used M uslim s and the low er castes to split the nationalist m ovem ent— for instance, by offering them separate electorates for the central and provincial assem blies. This was one o f m any factors leading to the grow ing organization and political consciousness, even m ilitancy, of the low er castes. U n­ w illingness to accept social and econom ic disabilities showed itself in m any ways, from a lim ited am ount o f unionization to the refusal to bear visible m arks o f low er status. The low er castes w ere once forbidden to w ear shoes, for exam ple, and their insistence on doing so often led to violent reprisals. The grow ing refusal o f tribals and

43R.E. Frykenberg, T he Impact of Conversion and Social Reform Upon Society in South India During the Late Company Period: Questions Concerning Hindu-Christian Encounters with Special Reference to Tinnevelly’, in C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainright (eds), Indian Society and the Beginnings o f Modernisation, 1835-1850 (London, 1976). 44 N.G. Barrier, The Punjab Alienation of Land Bill of 1900, Duke University Program in Comparative Studies on South Asia Durham, N.C., 1966). 45Neeladri Bhattacharya, ‘Agrarian Change in Punjab, 1850-1950’, Ph.D. dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, 1985).

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untouchables to acquiesce in the old restrictions was also dem onstrated in the prevalence o f religious and m essianic m ove­ m ents.46,47 The southern Indian state o f K erala offers striking evidence o f the im portance o f political aw areness. In the nineteenth century agrestic servitude was at its worst here: slaves were bought, sold, and m ortgaged and the low est castes were not m erely untouchable but also unseeable, at least in theory. The rule was that they had to ring a bell as they walked along public roads so that Brahm ins could avoid them. Today agricultural labourers in K erala can dress as they please and go where they will. K erala is not the richest and m ost industrial state in India, but m issionaries and low er-caste social reform ers have been active for a long tim e, and left-wing political parties are now very strong. K erala has had a high rate of literacy for m any years and may indeed eradicate illiteracy by the end o f the century. One o f the great failures o f the colonial regim e was the abysm al growth o f prim ary education, which undoubtedly held back labourers.

ECONOMIC FORCES Law s freeing bonded labourers had little significance when the w orkers had no other m eans o f subsistence, but econom ic change could bring a real im provem ent in status even w ithout legal change. Thus, K. Suresh Singh asserts that w hile the system of bonded labour in Bihar survived laws m eant to reform it, it show ed signs o f disin­ tegration when the construction o f a dam in the neighbouring state o f U ttar Pradesh in the 1950s provided alternative em ploym ent.48 In the colonial period, the construction o f railw ays and public works, urbanization, and the grow th o f m odern industries all provided avenues of escape for individuals. Frequently, the only way o f es­ caping the burden o f debt and a m aster, was to run away. U nfor­ tunately, econom ic grow th and urbanization were slow. India lagged behind other developing countries even in the half century o r so before 1914, when the w orld econom y expanded. M oreover, it is ^ M . Juergensmfeyer, Religion as Social Vision (Berkeley, 1982). 47Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology (Cambridge, 1985). ^ K . Suresh Singh, The Indian Famine, 1967 (New Delhi, 1975), p. 14

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possible that bonded labourers in som e places w ere less aware o f and less able to take advantage o f new opportunities than others. A nother escape route was em igration abroad. Soon after the aboli­ tion o f slavery in the British colonies, sugarcane planters tried to obtain Indian labourers. Thereafter, they were in dem and in other parts o f the em pire and elsew here for tea, coffee, and rubber plan­ tations and on the railw ays. Labourers w ent to free them selves from debt bondage and to escape m iserable conditions at hom e. The num ­ bers o f m igrants frequently rose after fam ines or during droughts. B etw een 1846 and 1932 some 28 m illion Indians em igrated, m ainly to w ork in the tropics.49 C onditions en route and on plantations abroad w ere terrible, especially in the early years, and the indenture system for em igrants, sim ilar in m any ways to indentures for the tea plantations, has been described as a ‘new system o f slavery’.30 But one m ust consider the conditions the em igrants were leaving behind and the probability that they w ent w illingly, though undoubtedly w ith insufficient know ledge.51 M oreover, conditions did im prove, and the indenture system itself was abolished in 1922. The dem and for labour outside agriculture rose slow ly and fitfully, but the supply began to rise after 1921, and this had a definite effect on institutions o f servitude. A s the supply of labour increased, the em p lo y er’s need to secure labour w ith loans, or by other m eans, decreased. One study o f a southern district found a m arked correla­ tion betw een a decline in the length o f labour contracts and the grow th o f population. The labourer also lost an appreciable degree o f security, perquisites, and probably wages. On the other hand, the length o f the w ork day also declined, and w hether it was voluntary or not, the increase in leisure was valued by the labourer. This fact is easily overlooked by historians who have never had to do tw elve

49Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton, N J., 1951). 50 Hugh Tinker, A New System o f Slavery: The Export o f Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920 (London, 1974). 51 Pieter C. Emmer, ‘The Meek Hindu: The Recruitment of Indian Indentured Labourers for Service Overseas, 1870-1916’, in Pieter C. Emmer (ed.).

Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery (Dordrecht, 1986). 2M. Atchi Reddy, ‘The Agrarian History of Nellore’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Delhi University (Delhi, 1978).

Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India 309 hours or m ore o f hard labour, m ostly in the sun. W hen com puting the loss o f w elfare due to falling wages, the value o f increased leisure, which m ay be less significant that the fall in incom e but is positive nonetheless, should be included. Jodha’s finding from his field studies is also pertinent. Even when national incom e statistics show ed no im provem ent in their incom es, the villagers he studied felt that they were in fact better o ff because o f their freedom from debt bondage.33 The im provem ent in the labourer’s lot in India has been painfully slow in the last tw o centuries. Debt bondage and abject poverty are w idespread, and servile status is reinforced by caste. The lack of change is striking in com parison with changes in many other countries in A sia, but com pared with the preceding centuries of In d ia’s own past, the occurrence o f change is equally striking. It has been greatest o f all in precisely that part o f the country w here the w orst conditions o f ‘agrestic slavery’ prevailed 150 years ago, K erala.54 In other parts of the country, too, the reduction of bondage is not a legal o r political sham but a fact o f experience for the labourers and the low er castes, im perfect but real. D ifferent, intetw ined, som etim es m utually reinforcing, at other tim es opposed forces have contributed to this change. C olonial policies were often ineffective or had unintended effects. Legislation against debt peonage had little im pact in the absence o f sources of credit other than the em ployer. On the other hand, the grow th of em ploym ent opportunities at hom e and abroad enabled the debtors to escape their bonds w ithout the benefit o f special legislation. These opportunities w ere lim ited, though, by the slow pace o f grow th in

33N.S. Jodha, ‘Poverty Debate in India: A Minority View’, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Bulletin, 23 (November), 1988, pp 2421-8. ^K erala is not among the ten states found to have particularly large concentrations of bonded labour today, though other southern Indian states are. There is, however, some bonded labour in the Wynaad District in Kerala. The ten are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh. A National Institute of Labour survey repots that 86.6 per cent of the bonded labourers still belong to the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Sarla Mala, Bonded labour in India, New Delhi, 1981). It must be stressed, however, that the definition of bonded labour adopted in the survey is questionable and the estimates are consequently exaggerated.

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the colonial period.55, 56 M oreover, the rapid grow th o f population after 1921 and the closing o f avenues for em igration m eant that the m aster found it less necessary to extend loans or to guarantee em ploy­ m ent for long periods. T he social reform m ovem ents, the grow th o f political conscious­ ness and political organization, and governm ental policies to am elio­ rate the lot of the low er castes, w hether in response to pressure from m issionaries or in an effort to woo the labourers as allies against the Indian N ational Congress, all acted to strengthen labourers’ bargain­ ing pow ers. The legislation against ‘slavery’ and bondage may have been less im portant in the long run than the various forces set in train in the colonial period w eakening the constrictions o f caste.

55A. Heston, ‘National Income’, in D. Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History o f India (Cambridge, 1983). 56J. Krishnamurty, T he Occupational Structure’, in D. Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India (Cambridge, 1983).

14 Governance and the Colonial Legacy: Some Preliminary Considerations1

INTRODUCTION M any o f the problems o f governance in developing countries have roots in the nineteenth century. This is particularly true o f the large num ber o f countries w hich were form erly colonies, especially o f E uropean powers; but countries w hich are not ex-colonies have fol­ low ed their exam ple, if only unconsciously. There is, o f course, a v ast literature on the colonial experience, but its analytical value is often circum scribed by tw o defects. M uch o f the early literature is too often judgem ental, trying to ju stify colonial rule as the only way o f reform ing backw ard or corrupt societies, or to condem n it as w holly exploitative. Indeed, this desire to pass sentence on im perialism still pervades the historical literature, notw ithstanding a few exceptions. M ore recently, various authors’ political convictions result in op­ posed historiographical stances: those o f a conservative bent o f mind tend to exaggerate the w eaknesses o f pre-colonial States (w hich may be a failing this author should guard against; but ‘conservatives’ are exceptions, certainly in India and probably in m ost ex-colonies, though they do exist. In India the ‘progressives’ are far m ore influen­ tial, and there have recently been interesting twists in their historical

’This has been written for non-Indologists as well as those familiar with the literature, so I have cited only works of specific relevance to the points made in the text. See, for example, Neil Charlesworth, British Rule and the Indian Economy, 1800-1914 (London, 1982), for a good survey of the literature on India.

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analysis, w hich frequently reflect current political strategies. T h u s present-day political activists often condem n ‘the State’, w hich is held to have taken an authoritarian, over-centralized form u n d e r colonial rule, and hark back to a pre-colonial ‘decentralized’, ‘pluralist’, past. There can be little doubt that under the colonial regim es form s o f governm ent changed enorm ously, but it is easy to m isinterpret the nature o f these changes. One reason— perhaps the main reason— is that so little is know n o f pre-colonial institutions, laws and custom s, or o f the contem porary political, econom ic and social conditions.3 W e take up a few general issues of current interest, alw ays bearing in mind that only a cursory discussion is possible. I have not been able to explore the history o f various social policies in a com parative perspective in sufficient depth. W e need to com pare not m erely different countries but also different regions w ithin the country. A recent book on Italy argues that differences in the histories o f Italian regions have led to the huge differences e v i­ d en t in the w orking o f their civic institutions today. The authors also suggest that the differences between the United States and the republics o f Latin America, despite similar endowments and international oportunities, are attributable to the fact that North America had ‘decentral­ ized, parliamentary English patrim ony’ while Latin America received ‘centralized authoritarianism, fam ilism and clerification’ from late mediaeval Spain.4 The histories o f former colonies should reveal many m ore instructive contrasts and similarities. The focus here is m ainly on India but other ex-colonies are also discussed.3 The issues have been chosen with two considerations in

3Thus, if one wanted a general picture of actual conditions of law and order just before the British, one would have to build the picture up from accounts of various regions, which are only now becoming available: for example, Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and the State in Eighteenth Century India (Delhi, 1993). Kobert Putnam with R. Leonaidi and R. Nanetti, Making Democracy WorkCivic Traditions in Modem Italy (Princeton, 1993), p. 179. 5J.S. Fumivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study o f Burma and Netherlands India (Cambridge, 1948). Recent comparative work includes the collection of essays in C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. Kolff (eds). Two Colonial Empires (Boston, 1986), and the proceedings of the joint Cambridge Delhi Jogyakarta Leiden conferences published in Itinerario.

Governance and the Colonial Legacy 313 m in d . The first is their relevance to current problem s o f governance. T h e second criterion is m ore problem atic: issues have been selected w h ic h , at least partially, neglected or distorted in recent writings. T h e s e topics are considered under three broad heads: law and order; p u b lic expectations; and the contradictory legacies o f colonialism .

LAW AND ORDER T o begin with, in a broad observation on the central issues o f law a n d order, the colonial regim es transform ed ruling ideologies as well a s governm ental institutions, such as the organization o f the police a n d o f the courts. There w ere, o f course, differences betw een the c o lo n ia l pow er,6 and their colonies, for instance, betw een N igeria and C ey lo n . A gain, France, G reat Britain, H olland, Spain and Portugal all h ad different attitudes to civil liberties. Spain and Portugal w ere m u c h less influenced by ‘Enlightenm ent’ ideals than Protestant co lo n ial powers. N evertheless, the ‘Enlightenm ent’ touched even S p a in and Portugal, even if they w ere considerably less liberal than B ritain or France. M any W estern colonial pow ers brought with them ‘E n lig h ten m en t’ ideals o f law, notably the stress on individual rather than group rights, and the equality o f all individuals before the law, ideas that w ere revolutionary. In particular, the idea that individuals w ere equal in some sense was profoundly subversive, perhaps m ost so in Asia. M any pre-colonial societies treated an individual as a m em b er o f a group, and som e groups had greater rights than others. T h u s in India, in H indu kingdom s, one o f the functions enjoined on the ruler w as to uphold caste hierarchies. C astes m ight be taxed at differen t rates, and punishm ents varied according to the caste o f the victim as w ell as the crim inal. The ruler had to punish infringem ents o f caste boundaries and occasionally to rule on the caste ranking o f a particular group. Islam ic theory does not prescribe the ru le r’s obligation to enforce caste, but it too m ade legal distinctions betw een different groups. M uslim s were superior to non-M uslim s; in fact one authority uses the term ‘caste’ w hen discussing State policy in the D om ain o f Islam: ‘T he identification dhimmi refers to the m em ber o f a caste inferior 6See for example, Dharma Kumar, ‘The Colonial Tradition in India and Indonesia’, Itinerario, 1989.

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to his M uslim fellow subjects. H e m ust suffer legal disadvantages... In such a political order, dhimmis are not dealt w ith by the govern­ m ent as individual citizens or subjects o f the State, but as m em bers o f a distinct and separate com m unity.7 Moreover, in India, M uslim rulers firequently enforced caste rules in the interests of political stability, and where they did not, it was not so m uch because the rulers had ideological notions o f equality amongst non-Muslims, but rather for political reasons, such as the emasculation o f potentially subversive groups, for instance, landowners. A gain, large areas o f pre-B ritish India were settled by tribes. Som e tribes, though not all, m ay have granted equal rig h ts to all m em bers o f the trib e (or at least all adult m ales), but even they drew a sharp line betw een m em bers o f the tribe and o th ers.8 In A frica too, tribes m ade very sharp d istin ctio n s betw een m em bers o f the tribe and ou tsid ers, often to the p oint o f denying ou tsid ers even hum anity.9 The m etropolitan pow er them selves were lim ited and am biguous in their adherence to equality before the law, in particular equality betw een the ruling race and ‘natives’, but a push to equality was constantly exerted, especially by parliam entarians at hom e. There w ere m arked differences betw een the various colonies, partly because o f differences in m etropolitan legal traditions, for instance betw een the British and continental legal traditions, and partly owing to local variations.10 A com m on crim inal code was introduced for the entire population o f Indonesia only in 1915, w hereas the Indian Penal Code, applicable to all residents in India, was passed over 50 years earlier.11 7P.J. Vatikiotis, Islam and the State (London, 1991), p. 87. 8On tribal slavery, see Christoph von Furcr-Haimendorf, The Apa Tanis and

Their Neighbours—A Primitive Civilization of the Eastern Himalayas (London, 1962), pp 90-91. On Africa, see Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (eds), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977). A good general survey, though weak on India, is Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982). l0Dharma Kumar, ‘The Colonial Experience in India and Indonesia’, Itinerario, 1989. MCeitain exceptions were initially made in favour of the British, notably that they could only be tried by one court in Calcutta and later by judges of their own race, but these were progressively removed. Edwin Hirschmann, White Mutiny (New Delhi, 1980). Q

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In Indonesia, ‘the basic principle was adat law for Indonesians and those classified as natives and D utch law for Europeans and those classified as Europeans. Both substantive and procedural laws dif­ fered for the various com m unities, and in post-colonial Indonesia critics have failed to achieve their persistent dem ands for legal reform s along the lines o f the old procedural codes for Europeans, and political reform s that are best understood by reference to the liberal ideas that underlay their codes’.12 The French were different ag ain — certain groups o f ‘natives’ were granted full equality with F rench citizens, but not others. A fter the colonial pow ers left, in som e countries, authoritarian regim es were set up, but the ‘E nlightenm ent’ ideal o f equality before the law for all citizens was n o t com pletely subm erged, as in Indonesia. The colonial tendency to standardize, codify, and centralize, took m a n y form s, partly depending on the previous legal structures. In In d ia , at first the British follow ed their Indian predecessors .and reco g n ized caste hierarchies, but they gradually m oved towards for­ m a l equality. To give one exam ple, Brahm ins continued to be charged lo w e r rates o f land revenue than others in the early nineteenth cen­ tu ry , but as the land revenue system was standardized, these conces­ sions were dropped by the British. O ver the nineteenth century, the British tried to m ake the law uniform over the w hole o f British India. T heir m ajor achievem ent w as the enactm ent o f the Indian Penal Code, m ost o f which is still in force in independent India. Standardizing personal law was m uch m ore difficult, and the British com prom ised by standardizing Hindu and M uslim personal law separately. But even these were gigantic tasks. H indus had ¿lw ays recognized the validity o f custom ary law, necessarily localized and diverse, although the sharia is, in theory, uniform for all M uslim s. In practice, local M uslim com m unities were allow ed to follow local custom s in certain m atters, but there was a pan-Islam ic thrust towards uniform ity, from the nineteenth century onw ards, M alaysia being a good exam ple. W hen local tribunals— the custom ary tribunals o f the village, the caste, the guild or w hatever— perform ed legal functions, the diversity o f custom ary law did not pose great problem s, since their rulings applied only to their locality, but the British w ere attem pting to stand12

Daniel Dev, 'Colonial Law and the Genesis of the Indonesian State’, Indonesia, No. 40, 1985.

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ardize legal adm inistration and the law, so it was necessary to co d ify personal laws too. In consultation with Hindu and M uslim scholars, codes of Hindu and M uslim personal law were com piled and ad ­ m inistered. The Hindu scholars were generally Brahm ins o r o f o ther high castes, and frequently upper caste custom s were codified and applied as the law for all H indus.13 There were, inevitably, excep­ tions; for instance, many tribes w ere governed by their own custom s, and com pendia o f custom ary law in each region were com piled by officials. But the underlying thrust was to codify and hom ogenize, and to introduce W estern notions, such as the equality o f individuals before the law. This gigantic effort has again evoked m uch criticism recently: m uch o f w hich justifiably points to the problem s o f im posing uppercaste notions on the low er castes. But the extensive literature criticiz­ ing this procedure often takes a rom antic view o f the virtues of pluralism , and does not consider the feasible alternatives to codifica­ tion, and hence uniform ity. M oreover, m any current problem s have historical roots which are often not recognized, especially w hen problem s o f personal law invade other realm s o f policy. To give one recent exam ple, tax exem ptions for ‘Hindu undivided fam ilies’ are a w ell-know n m eans o f tax evasion open to Hindus, but other com ­ m unities in India are also finding loopholes that let them escape tax. F or instance, couples can divorce each other to lessen their tax burden w hile continuing to live together, but their action may have un­ foreseen consequences. Very recently in India a judge questioned the validity o f a divorce by a M uslim couple, w hich he felt was only an attem pt to evade land redistribution. This was not a judgem ent on Islam , but given the current tensions am ong both Hindus and M uslim s in India, the M uslim s took it as an attack on their faith. The m atter is now being considered by the Suprem e C ourt (Times o f India, 5 A ugust 1994). The adoption o f a traditional code is not a solution to m odern problem s, as the troubles o f overtly Islam ic states show. In any case, this ‘solution’ is not available to m ulti-ethnic societies. M any current ‘com m unal rio ts’ in India in fact reflect unsolved legal problem s, and problem s o f personal law invade civil matters. 13J.D.M. Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India (London, 1968); Essays in Classical and Modem Hindu Law (Leiden, 1977); ‘Administration of Hindu Law by the British’, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 4; Ali Hamid, Custom and Law in Anglo-Muslim Jurisprudence (Calcutta, 1938).

Governance and the Colonial Legacy 317 C olonial regim es also standardized the adm inistration of the law. T h e same types o f m unicipal and district courts were set up all over B ritish India, and law yers becam e ubiquitous and politically powerful (G andhi, Nehru and Jinnah were all lawyers). Nearly everyw here the traditional tribunals gave way to their colonial successors, and many su rv iv e only in the historical literature or in recent radical rhetoric. P aradoxically but typically, supporters o f a return to ‘indigenous’ w ay s do not alw ays like the few rural survivals of traditional trib u n als. In a recent Indian case new spapers (at least the English o n e s) were shocked to discover that in a north Indian village, the villag e tribunal had executed two young lovers o f different castes. T h is was widely denounced but no one pointed out that this m easure w as in fact in keeping w ith tradition. Again, local tribunals are often p raised for being cheap and fam iliar, but their supporters generally d o not consider w hether their ‘fam iliar’ values should be enforceable by la w .14 R ecent work on pre-B ritish judicial and police system s shows how d efectiv e these system s were by m odern standards, even though they m ay have had some virtues lacking in the present system s, such as sim plicity and speed. Thus Sumit G uha’s work on the Peshwas, im­ m ed iate predecessors o f the British in Bombay Presidency, describes su ch punishm ents as m utilation, and being blown from the mouth o f a cannon. M oreover, the social statuses o f th e crim inal and of the IK victim determ ined the punishm ent as m uch a^ the crime itself. ' W e also have tw o accounts o f the attem pts by t^e British to adapt and m odify Islam ic Law in Bengal, which bear out many of G uha’s con­ clusions. Thus Radhika Singha points out that Islam ic Law ‘seemed to concentrate too narrow ly on “giving satisfaction” to the heirs o f the deceased, instead o f the injury to the “public interest” equated here with the punitive claim o f the State ... The Law o f levsas (retaliation) also offended British conceptions o f justice for its posi­ tion that punishm ent could also vary with the relationship between 14 However lawyers have critically examined the functioning of the Lok Adalats, or ‘Peoples’ Courts’, set up to speed up the administration of justice. Articles on this subject can be found in the Journal of the Indian Law Institute, and other publications of the Institute. 15Sumit Guha, ‘An Indian Penal Regime: Maharashtra in the Eighteenth Century’, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, February 1994. This work is being revised.

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the offender and the deceased. A m aster could not be put to d eath for the m urder o f his slave and parents could not be put to death fo r (the m urder of) their children.’ 16 Fisch argues that ‘there can be little doubt that actual practice becam e harsher under the B ritish’ as a result o f the British transfor­ m ation o f the Bengal Crim inal Law betw een 1769 and 1817, but he also points out that the British felt that this ‘m ildness’ was because ‘the law was full o f loopholes and that far too m any crim inals escaped or w ere inadequately punished’. W ere the m ajority o f these fortunate crim inals the rich and pow erful? W e have little evidence on this. Fisch only concludes cautiously: ‘There are indications that on average the B ritish system was m ore severe, w hile the system o f M ogul India w as harsher in selected cases, as a result o f the dualism betw een a m ild ordinary and a harsh extraordinary justice. B ut this is rather a conclusion from the respective system s o f law than the result o f a survey o f actual practice.’17 N evertheless, it is true that the very rapidity and extensiveness o f legal change in colonial India has bequeathed terrible legacies to its successor (in p o st-1947 India at least) in the shape o f legal delays, corruption and blatant injustices.18 It is arguable that the current legal and judicial system is the ch ief obstacle to social and econom ic progress in India.19 But not all o f its defects are attributable to colonialism . Legal delays and the expenses o f going to court are notorious in the U nited States, and those who want m ore ‘decentralization’ and w ho blam e colonialism for centralization should consider this fact. The Indian system is obviously in urgent

16Radhika Singha, ‘Civil Authority and Due Process: Colonial Criminal Justice in the Banaras Zamindari, 1781-1795’, in M. Anderson and S. Guha (eds), Concepts o f Rights and Justice in South Asia, forthcoming. 17Jorg Fisch, Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs: The British Transformation of the Bengal Criminal Law, 1769-1817 (Wikesbaden, 1983), pp 120-21 ,8On the legacies of the colonial legal system, see Oliver Mendelsohn, T he Pathology of the Indian Legal System’, Modem Asian Studies, 1985; Marc Galanter and Rajeev Dhavan, Law and Society in Modem India (New Delhi, 1989). 19There is a large legal literature on this subject, e.g. Upendra Baxi, The Crisis of the Indian Legal System (New Delhi, 1982); Rajeev Dhavan, Litigation Explosion in India, Delhi. There are also several reports by the Indian Law Commission, of which the Indian Government has taken scant notice.

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need o f reform , and it is possible that some features o f the old sys­ tem s should be revived; som e form s o f local arbitration which are less costly than the present system are required. But form er colonies cannot return to the old legal institutions either, com pletely ignoring the colonial interregnum . Elizabeth C olson’s wise words about A frica apply to Asian ex-colonies too: We cannot understand the history of the colonial period, or indeed the history of our own time, if we do not understand that people may be prepared to accept authority, even though they find it both threatening and frustrating, because they see it as the guarantor of an overarching security which they value or as promising a security that is lacking. Those who challenged the colonial governments in a search for more local control and then for inde­ pendence were not seeking a return to the pre-colonial systems of diffuse controls.20

PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS FROM GOVERNMENT The colonial period saw a transform ation in the relations between rulers and ruled, and in public expectations from governm ent. In fact m any citizens of the form er colonies, especially those who have been to college, do not realize w hat revolutionary changes took place in the colonial period, and often exaggerate the novelty of post-colonial changes. The m ost obvious o f these changes is the introduction of m odern m ethods o f governm ent. A great deal has been w ritten about the institution o f a m odem bureaucracy in India; indeed, recruitm ent by m erit was introduced in B ritish India before it was introduced in England. Again, historians have stressed the colonial zeal to collect inform ation better to control native populations; the Indian C ensuses in particular have received m uch attention from historians.21 But the colonial zeal to gather inform ation was not confined to counting heads.22 In India data was collected from the nineteenth century on­ 20Elizabeth Colson, Tradition and Contract: The Problem of Order (Chicago, 1974), p. 67. 21 Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in Bernard S. Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi, 1987). 22For an excellent general discussion of these issues, see Ian Hacking, The Taming o f Chance (Cambridge, 1990).

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w ards on rainfall, yields, prices, the conditions of em igrants, p u b lic health and so on, well before they were collected in many E u ro p ean countries. And in some respects the data for Dutch Indonesia are even better. To see this data collection only in terms o f social control is too narrow; this inform ation was useful to colonial public policy in many other fields, such as public health, and continues to be useful today. The evolution o f fam ine policies illustrates the new techniques o f data-gathering and risk control brought to India by the British. Colonial governm ents may well have been negligent in dealing with fam ines by m odern standards, but they were certainly not so in com ­ parison with their predecessors.23 Pre-B ritish governm ents in India did try to counteract the effects o f famine by loans to cultivators, the distribution o f grain from public granaries, and so on. In addition, tem ples and rich individuals provided charity in cash and food, but public and private resources were limited. Sanjay Sharm a has pointed out that active intervention by the M ughal State was constrained by transport bottlenecks, and the decentralized nature of Indian society,24 but he does not ask w hether m ore active intervention was considered desirable o r possible. In fact, the European colonies brought new attitudes to public policy in A sia and Africa. M any critics have pointed out that the laissez faire policies of colonial utilitarian officials were m istaken, but no one has considered how much m ore m istaken were the causal theories of previous regim es attributing fam ines to divine displeasure, which could only be averted by ritual and m agic. M oreover, pre-B ritish policies of relief were generally put in place after the fam ine; these policies included the distribution o f grain and cash, relief from land revenue, public prayers. But from the late nineteenth century onwards, as the colonial governm ents evolved policies o f fam ine prevention as well as fam ine relief, public expectations o f governm ent changed. And w hen fam ines occurred, governm ents were blam ed for not preventing 23

A critical view of official policy is provided by Martin Ravallion, ‘Trade and Stabilisation in India’, Explorations in Economic History, October, 1987. See also Jean Dreze, ‘Famine Prevention in India’, LSE, February 1988; Michelle Burge McAlpin, Subject to Famine: Food Crises and Economic Change in Western India, 1860-1920 (Princeton NJ, 1983). 24Sanjay Sharma, ‘Dearth, Famine and the Colonial State: The 1837—8 Famine in U.P.’, M.Phil. dissertation, Delhi University, 1989.

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them . Such expectation are occasionally unrealistic, but the change in expectations is generally beneficial, since governm ents need to be spurred into taking action to avert disasters. A dm ittedly the m ost m odem and avowedly rational o f govern­ m ents can also m ake terrible m istakes, as the Chinese fam ine of 1959-1962 shows; in fact it is now held to be the w orst famine in history. A m artya Sen has used the contrast betw een fam ine policy in independent India and com m unist C hina to point to the im portance o f both a free press and public pressure. The governm ent of inde­ pendent India, he argues, had to give high priority to the prevention o f fam ine deaths, whereas this dem ocratic pressure was not exerted in com m unist C hina.25 But his analysis overlooks two im portant points. The first is that the long adm inistrative experience built up over nearly a century was a vital factor in India’s post-independence record o f averting fam ines. All over the country official m echanism s were in place, well before 1947, for collecting and transm itting in­ form ation about grain output. Each province had its fam ine manual, and m easures to provide food and em ploym ent could be smoothly effected. The im portance o f organization can clearly be seen if we consider the enorm ous difficulties in providing aid to the victims o f the Union C arbide gas disaster in Bhopal in 1984. This is logistically a m uch sm aller problem than the nineteenth century fam ines, but neither the state governm ent o f M adhya Pradesh nor the governm ent o f India has been able to handle it well. Second, it is undoubtedly true that there m ust be avenues for the expression o f popular dissatisfaction w ith governm ent, and the press is a m ost powerful one.26 But there is a prior condition: people m ust feel dissatisfied w ith governm ent, and believe that there is som ething the governm ent could have done in a particular situation. This may sound obvious, but in fact popular Indian reactions to fam ine reflect recent history, rather than the experience o f centuries, during which terrible fam ines regularly occurred. If people believe that famines are 2^ ' An early reference is Amartya Sen, Food Battles, Coromandel Lecture, New Delhi, 1982. 26For a comparison of freedom of the press and the quality of famine reporting in colonial and post-colonial India, see N. Ram, ‘An Independent Press and Anti-hunger Strategies: The Indian Experience’, in Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (eds), The Political Economy of Hunger (Oxford, 1990).

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an act o f god, or inevitable natural occurrences, they will only look to governm ent for palliatives. But if they believe that fam ines can be averted by governm ent action, they will dem and that governm ent acts. Fam ine relief is only one exam ple of governm ent intervention in colonial India, despite its frequent espousal o f laissez faire. Com ­ pletely new social problem s in m any fields were seen as suitable cases for treatm ent by governm ent. A good exam ple of colonial policy is affirm ative action for particular social groups. Pre-B ritish rulers had certainly taken caste into account in form ulating their policies, but they generally supported the caste system .27 The British gradually and partially introduced a com pletely new principle, nam e­ ly that governm ent should actively take steps to counteract caste dis­ abilities. At first these policies o f reverse discrim ination were fairly lim ited: the reservation o f a small proportion o f governm ent jobs, special scholarships and schools, and so on. B ut they grew even during the British period, and have exploded in recent years, as politicians have seized on their vote-getting potential, so that now 28 India has the largest program m e o f affirm ative action in the world. Tw o separate principles were involved in affirm ative action program m es. The first is that groups, rather than individuals, are the objects o f governm ent policies; this was not a colonial innovation. But the second principle w as an innovation: this was that the objec­ tive o f public policy was reverse discrim ination. This objective, a radically new one, was not the only objective o f colonial policy— political stability, m ilitary needs, efficiency were am ongst the others. The nineteenth century saw, mutatis mutandis, group policies, som e o f w hich could be classified as affirm ative action, in other 29 B ritish colonies in Asia, such as Burm a, Sri Lanka and M alaysia. 27

For instance, the social policy of the Peshwas tried to preserve the ‘purity’ of Brahmin women, i.e. to punish those who sexually violated caste boundaries. V. S. Kadam, ‘The Institution of Marriage and Position of Women in Eighteenth Century Maharashtra’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 25, 1988. 28 D. Kumar, ‘Affirmative Action, Indian Style’, Asian Survey, 1992, contains references to the earlier literature on reservations in India. 29 On Malaysia, see Robert E. Klitgaard and Ruth Katz, Ethnic Inequalities and Public Policy: The Case of Malaysia’, mimeographed, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, July 1981. On the most powerful ethnic

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There too British policies have had long-lasting and unintended con­ sequences. The concessions given to Tam ils are said to have con­ tributed to the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, and in other countries the very existence o f affirm ative action policies may be used to strengthen authoritarianism . Thus, in M alaysia it is treason to question the preferences given to M alays over the Chinese and the Tam ils. In other European colonies too, public policies took ac­ count o f social differences, for instance, in French Indo-C hina and the Dutch East Indies. The A frican colonies were conquered later than the Asian, but there too group differences were an im portant consideration in form ulating public policy. These policies have not m erely been retained but have been great­ ly expanded in post-colonial regim es, part o f a w orldw ide trend.30 The contradiction betw een group policies and another colonial intro­ duction— the equality o f all individuals— has not yet been resolved.

THE CONTRADICTORY LEGACIES OF COLONIALISM The colonial experience has left many contradictory legacies. On the one hand, the very experience o f m odem governm ental methods has perm anently altered people’s expectations o f governm ent. Various form s o f social engineering are now seep as possible, and therefore desirable. A ffirm ative action for disadvantaged groups is one ex­ am ple. Disasters w hich w ere once regarded as acts o f god are now seen as preventible, and governm ents are held accountable if they do not prevent them. A striking exam ple is fam ines, a regular occurrence over the centuries in nearly all form er colonies. But the colonial governm ents were not sim ply purveyors o f m odern or beneficient m ethods o f governm ent. They w ere at the same tim e alien and arrogant and the nationalist struggle against foreign rule had deep effects. The com plex legacy o f these processes is il­ lustrated by what m ay seem the m undane history o f taxation in British India. There was hardly any change in the proportion o f na­ minority in South East Asia, see Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 2nd edition (London, 1965). 30Thomas Sowell, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (New York, 1990).

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tional incom e taken by the B ritish as governm ent revenue betw een 1872 and 1939. Tax revenues fluctuated betw een 5 and 7 per cen t o f the national incom e, rising to 12 per cent only during the second w orld war. This was very different from trends elsewhere. In many developed countries, including the U K and Japan, public revenues and public expenditures were sim ilar to Indian levels in the late nineteenth century, but rose rapidly thereafter. Between 1860-64 and 1910-12, both taxes and expenditure declined in British India, but rose in all the other groups o f countries considered by D avis and H uttenback: the UK, British colonies with responsible governm ent, dependent colonies, ‘foreign developed’, and ‘foreign undeveloped’.31 M oreover, land tax, for long the staple source o f revenue in India, contributed less than one-tenth the total tax revenues in 1946-47, by w hich tim e incom e tax alone contributed 37 per cent and custom s and excise had also risen. This is striking because the structure o f the econom y did not change so sharply— agriculture contributed around 40 per cent o f the national incom e even in 1946-47.32 The cause o f this stagnation in tax revenues was largely political. O p­ position to the land revenue was an obvious plank for the nationalist m ovem ent and difficulties in collecting the revenue, and in raising tax rates to reflect changes in prices, w ere translated into a fall in the incidence o f land revenue. C ollections did not exceed 5 per cent o f gross agricultural output in the tw entieth century. A m ajor problem confronting the finance m inisters o f India even today is the difficulty o f taxing agriculture, once the m ainstay o f the public revenue. This is at least partly due to political opposition in the colonial period. There w ere in fact at least tw o m ajor strands in the com plex problem o f collecting colonial taxes. One was the lack of inform ation about public attitudes and even individual incom es, as w ell as covert hostility am ongst sm all tax p ay ers, but this was probably an endem ic feature o f these societies. The other was the open hostility to taxation, frequently m obilized by nationalist m ove­ m ents. In colonial India, public officials frequently noted the political dangers of raising taxes, but there seem s to have been little discussion o f the advantages to be gained by public expenditure in dem ocracies; 31

Lance E. Davis and Robert Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit o f Empire: The political Economy of British Imperialism (Cambridge, 1986), p. 227. 32A. Heston, T he National Income’, in Dharma Kumar (eds), The Cambridge Economic History o f India (Cambridge, 1983).

Governance and the Colonial Legacy 325 governm ents may try to win favour by public expenditure. Even in post-colonial dem ocratic regim es the past has left a legacy. Such peculiarities of the pattern o f public expenditure in some ex-colonies today— such as the com paratively high proportion o f public expen­ diture spent on higher education and the com paratively low propor­ tion spent on prim ary education (especially in form er British colonies)— may well go back to their colonial past. Financial stringency determ ined the degree o f centralization in India, as indeed in Britain. Surveying the nineteenth century, Stokes concludes that: ‘D espite obvious disparities, Indian bureaucratic developm ent observed certain rem arkable parallels with the British, finding its law o f m otion in financial stringency and its organizing principle in devices o f centralized control’. 3 On a broader plane, while the colonial pow ers introduced more efficient tools o f law and order, and o f collecting inform ation, they were necessarily distanced from their subjects. This distance often led to loss o f control. M cV ey has noted in Indonesia, the increasing opacity of society’s lower depths, in spite of the new means for investigation and control which the colonial apparatus possessed. Modern administrators, foreign or otherwise, were even less able to un­ derstand local society in its own terms than were members of the co-opted traditional elites.34 O b v iously, the p o litician s and bureaucrats o f today are not reg ard ed as foreign in this w ay, though other ethnic divides have w idened. A nd the h ab it o f questio ning the legitim acy o f govern­ m ent. healthy in so m any w ays, also gives rise to various d ifficu l­ ties o f governance, as the g o vernm ent o f Sough A frica is d isco v erin g today.

33T. Stokes, ‘Bureaucracy and Ideology: Britain and India in the Nineteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, Vol. 30, 1980, p. 155. 34Ruth McVey, *Local Voices, Central Power’, in Ruth T.McVey (ed. with A. Suddard), South-East Asian Transitions: Approaches Through Social History (New Haven, 1978), p. 21.

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CONCLUSION The governance o f very m any developing countries is m anifestly im ­ perfect and these im perfections are frequently attributed to the colonial past. To quote a recent text on South Asia: The common strand of authoritarianism informing the dialectic between the State structure and political processes as well as the broader relations between the State and civil society flows from the colonial legacy of administrative centralization and the accompanying ideological idioms of monolithic and indivisible sovereignty.35 B ut the legacy o f colonial rule is more com plex than suggested by this summ ing up by a distinguished historian. U ndoubtedly, many form er colonies suffer from authoritarianism today, but its historical roots may go back to pre-colonial regim es. M oreover, the govern­ m ents of m any post-colonial states are in some ways w eaker than they may seem, partly because o f their lack o f public support. This lack o f public support m ay stem partly from the habits inculcated by anti-colonial struggles36 and partly from w orldwide expectations that governm ents m ust deliver ‘human rights’ to all their citizens. The m ost recent instance, not a classic post-colonial experience, is the problem s faced by the governm ent o f South A frica today. The colonial experience itself has contributed to the change in public at­ titudes, as we have seen, especially in the context o f famine relief and prevention in colonial India. It is now believed that governm ents can avert m any calam ities form erly thought of as inevitable acts of god and that they should therefore do so. In some ways, post-colonial governm ents are stronger than their pre-colonial predecessors, in the sense that they can achieve more, because colonial rule brought with it m any instrum ents o f m odem governm ents, including bureaucracies, institutions for collecting in­ form ation, and W estern scientific techniques and knowledge. W e

35Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (New York, 1995), p. 249. 36But it often seems that the government of India is reverting to pre-colonial models of collecting taxes, with bargaining and high rates of evasion. See Anil Kumar Jain, ‘Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion: The Indian Case’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 21, 1987.

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have not m ade the absurd argum ent that colonial rule was a necessary condition for these governm ental changes: no counter-factual argu­ m ents have been advanced here, but obviously enough, one can easily conceive o f paths like that of Japan. The problems o f governance today were influenced too by changes in non-governmental institutions. British colonies in particular also ex­ perienced the beginnings o f democracy and mass politics in their modem forms. The electorate in the colonial period was tiny, but Indians have had a long experience of elections, and of forming political parties. This brief paper necessarily fails to cover all the relevant issues o f this vast them e. One om ission that is becom ing increasingly relevant is secularist policies. Though the British were avowedly neutral betw een different religions, they were aware o f the political dangers o f attem pting to control certain religious institutions and practices. Thus, in Ceylon and Burm a, the British were afraid to con­ trol the Sangha and m onks becam e politicized in m odern Sri Lanka and Burm a, in contrast to Thailand and C am bodia where the govern37 m ents continued to control the Sangha.' Colonialism does not autom atically explain why problem s of governance have arisen in post-colonial societies. A lso, colonial his­ tory cannot provide quick answ ers to the problem s. Nevertheless, detailed analysis o f governm ental institutions, law s and public at­ titudes for each country m ay well yield insights useful for policy­ m aking today.

37Donald E. Smith (ed.), Religion and Political Modernization (New Haven Conn. and London, 1974).

15 Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State?*

The state has com e to the forefront in the social sciences: even n eo ­ classical econom ists have turned to analysing different forms o f the state and specific m odes o f bureaucratic organization and behaviour. In developm ent econom ics, the state is seen as a m ajor player, either retarding or propelling econom ic growth, and the Sum mer 1990 issue o f the Journal o f Economic Perspectives included a symposium on the state and econom ic developm ent. In com parative historical studies too, the state is central, influencing or determ ining different grow th patterns, and itself undergoing change in the course of historical developm ents. It is not surprising then that the taxonomy o f states has grown so fast— predatory states, m inim alist states, developm ental states, entrepreneurial states, m ercantilist states, autonom ous states, organic states, are only some o f the terms used in the recent literature. The terms are draw n from different taxonom ies, organized on dif­ ferent principles, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A fter a brief discussion o f a few of these terms, we first look at their application to colonial India and its im m ediate or proxim ate predeces­ sors, and then discuss certain features of the colonial regime which have been neglected, as a consequence o f rigid adherence to the dom inant m odels o f the colonial state.1 Finally, it should be noted

♦This paper is based on one presented at the University of Philadelphia in 1990; this version was completed in 1992. 'The term colonial government refers to all governments directly controlled by the British, including those run by the Company, and the colonial period roughly from 1757 to 1947; in other words, the governments of the native states are not included. They were indeed informally controlled by the British, and often followed British Indian examples, nevertheless they were also significantly different.

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 329 that this paper is not a survey o f the literature; and refers only to work o f relevance to the argum ent.

THE PREDATORY AND OTHER STATES A model often applied to both the colonial regime and its Mughal (and even other) predecessors is the predatory state, which has some elem ents in common with an older category, the O riental Despotism. The essence of the predatory state is that the ruler’s m ain aim is to squeeze as much revenue as possible out o f his realm . Such regimes can be short- or long-lived, but are more likely to be short-lived, since predatory states are not conducive to building institutions, in­ cluding institutions that support the state, such as a bureaucracy. But even when there are frequent changes o f regime, each succeeding regim e may be as greedy. One can also define the predatory state by what it is not, for instance the ‘organic state’. U nlike the predatory state, the organic state, to use John H all’s term, was subject to in­ ternal restraints, such as parliam ents in Europe. But it was more in­ volved than the predatory state in various levels o f the econom y; paradoxically, ‘the restraint on governm ent in the end generated a larger sum o f pow er in society’. E.L. Jones does not use the term organic state, but m akes the point that the particular form of the nation state in Europe was an im portant elem ent in the m iracle of European econom ic grow th.' H all also described the custodial or guardian state, directly con­ cerned with law and order; as far as econom ic grow th was concerned it could be benign, indifferent or m align, whereas the organic state is benign by definition. These term s too have been applied to colonial India, with the adjectival qualification depending on the writer. Though the term predatory state is hardly used in the literature on India, it could well be em ployed by many critics o f colonial India. Fiscal issues are central to the concept o f the predatory state, and they are the main focus o f this paper.

2 John Hall, ‘States and Societies’, in Jean Baechler, John Hall and Michael Mann (eds), Europe and the Rise of Capitalism. 3E.L. Jones, The European Miracle (Cambridge, 1981).

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PRE-BRITISH REGIMES The literature on the regim es which m ore or less im m ed iately preceded the British, and in particular on the M ughals, is o fte n paradoxical. M any M ughal historians are fierce critics of the B ritish Raj, but do not recognize that their ow n work on M ughal India im ­ plicitly suggests that some of their criticisms fitted the predecessor regimes better. Again, Marxists and neo-classical economists such as Deepak Lai occasionally im plicitly agree in their analysis o f predeces­ sor regimes, which is on reflection not surprising since the neo-clas­ sicists use the work o f the Marxists, particularly the Aligarh school. The Aligarh view , first expounded by Habib in 1963, is encapsu­ lated in the first volum e o f the Cambridge Economic History o f India.* In this view o f the M ughal em pire, a tiny ruling group w as able to extract a huge ‘surplus’ from the econom y, unconstrained by political opposition or by other w ielders o f econom ic power, such as m erchants. A sserting that the realized revenue was about one-half to one-third the gross national product, R aychaudhuri states that in the m iddle of the seventeenth century this huge am ount went to a tiny group— the em peror and 8,000 or so nobles, out o f a total population o f well over 100 m illion: ‘Thus an infinitely small proportion o f the population disposed o f the bulk o f the agricultural surplus and in so doing influenced cru­ cially the course o f the econom y’.6 R aychaudhuri adds that ‘the sur­ vival o f the em pire and its ruling class depended on their pow er to co erce’, thus com pleting the delineation o f the M ughal em pire as a predatory state. T he m ost recent w ork o f the A ligarh school is by Shirin M oosvi;7 this is essentially an elaborate reconstruction based on the contem ­

4Bemier’s account of the Mughal empire played an important role in the formation of European notions of Asian or Oriental Despotism, culminating in Marx’s account of the Asiatic Mode of Production; Perry Anderson, Lineages o f the Absolutist Stage (London, 1974), pp 462-83. Irfan Habib and Tapan Raychaudhuri (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1982). 6T. Raychaudhuri, T he State and the Ecbnomy’, in Habib and Raychaudhuri, (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 Shirin Moosvi, The Economy o f the Mughal Empire, c. 1590 (New Delhi, 1987).

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 331 porary w ork Ain-i-Akbari, relating to 1595—6. M oosvi estim ates that the land revenue dem and was generally one-half the total agricultural product, but only 60 per cent o f this was realized. A ccording to her estim ates, 30 per cent o f agricultural output was actually collected by the M ughal state at the end o f the sixteenth century. This very high figure is near Raychaudhuri’s lower limit (in fact he referred to the total GDP, not m erely agricultural output, but he m ay have con­ fused the two). M oreover, M oosvi reinforces the view o f the M ughal state as predatory w ith her estim ates o f the distribution o f the revenue: 82 per cent o f the ‘effective jam a' (or collected revenue)8 w ent to the nobility, 13.79 per cent supported the em peror’s personal establishm ent and 4.73 per cent was hoarded.9 In passing, one o f the oddest features o f her work is the confidence with which she produces estim ates to tw o decim al places, even o f rates o f saving o f d ifferent classes! Earlier, M addison follow ed H abib (1963), and assum ed that the land tax was a third or m ore o f gross output. W ith further assum ptions about other taxes and other com ponents o f national income, he es­ tim ated that ‘the 4otal revenue o f the M ughal state and autonom ous princelings and chiefs w as probably about 15-18 per cent o f national incom e’, and pointed out that no European governm ent reached this level till the twentieth cen tu ry 10. Finally, Raym ond G oldsm ith has used the published research to reconstruct the M ughal econom y at the end o f the sixteenth century. He concludes that the revenues o f the im perial governm ent alone am ounted to ‘w ell over one-fifth the national product’; the zamindars' charges raised this burden on the peasants to one-fourth the national product. Taxes levied by local and provincial govern­ m ents w ere relatively sm all, though their nuisance value was often h ig h ." Land taxes constituted the greater part o f the revenues, and the burden on the peasant was very m uch heavier than on the city dw eller. O ver tw o-thirds o f the ‘total regular revenues o f the governm ent’ financed the arm ed forces. The real incom e per capita 8The word jama is variously defined, but these problems need not detain us. 9Shirin Moosvi, The Economy o f the Mughal Empire, p. 272. IOAngus Maddison, Class Structure and Economic Growth (London, 1971), p. 22. 'Raymond W. Goldsmith, Premodem Financial Systems (Cambridge, 1987) p. 122.

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c. 1600 m ay have been about the same as in 1860,

I?

but the d is tr ib u ­ tion was extrem ely unequal. On the basis o f various calculations o f the shares o f total incom e accruing to the richest fam ilies G o ld s m ith concludes, ‘All these estim ates involve a substantial margin o f u n ­ certainty, but even so they leave little doubt that the share o f t h e sm all very top slice o f the incom e pyram id in M ughal India w as t h e highest know n to m an with the possible exception o f a f e w theocracies ‘such as pharonic E g /p t and ancient M esopotam ia’.13 I have earlier expressed scepticism about the Aligarh school’s c a l ­ culations o f rev en u e.14 If the M ughal state had indeed been able to collect one-third to one-half the gross product as a steady average , it would have had a m echanism for revenue collection of a scale a n d efficiency for w hich there is no evidence. A part from this g en eral consideration, the proposition is essentially untestable— there are n o reliable estim ates o f agricultural output, so it is im possible to te ll what proportion was taken by land revenue. There are several reasons for believing that the A ligarh school’s m ethod o f calculating the am ount o f land revenue actually collected is faulty. The basis is the rules set out in the revenue m anuals, and in these the land revenue rates are undoubtedly very high. But how strongly were these rules linked to actual collections? Even in theory, uniform rates cannot be applied to the vast area o f the M ughal E m ­ pire— apart from distinctions o f qualities o f soil, extent and kind of irrigation, and so on, concessions were m ade on newly settled lands. M oreover, lands w ere granted to religious institutions and holy men, for schools and public purposes, and to court officials and favourites, subject to the paym ent o f light or no revenue, though I w ould guess that these concessional grants were not as generous as those made by previous rulers. A gain, the ‘legal’ rates could be reduced in prac­ tice. Subjects protested against high taxes and were sometim es suc­ cessful in getting the official rates reduced. W hen they were not successful, they could m igrate to less highly taxed areas. Y et again, one m ust take into account the possibilities o f evasion, fraud and collusion with local officials. A considerable part o f the revenue was 12Ibid., p. 101. 13Ibid., p. 108. l4Dharma Kumar, ‘The Taxation of Agriculture in British India and Dutch Indonesia’, in C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. Kolff (eds). Two Colonial Empires (The Hague, 1986).

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 333 siphoned o ff by various interm ediaries, either officially (as in the zamindari system ), or otherw ise. Finally, since the land revenue was collected in cash, estim ates o f the real burden o f land revenue will rem ain conjectural in the absence o f detailed local data on output, prices, and cash collections. Thus estim ates o f total tax revenues based on the assum ption that a third or more of gross crop output steadily accrued to the em peror or the nobility are likely to be wide o f the m ark, though even higher levels o f extortion may well have been achieved for short periods. On the other hand, in tim es o f grow ing political disorder the state, as K olff argues,15 found it difficult to collect revenue from the armed peasantry o f North India. There were also great regional variations in revenue rates and actual collections, and the degree o f evasion and collusion. T he A lig arh school ‘m o d e l’ is under attack from different q u arters. In a w id e-ran g in g review o f the literatu re, Subrahm an y a m 16 has pointed out the d angers o f reading the w hole period in term s o f a sim ple rigid governm ental structure, and o f ignoring processes o f change and the strength o f non-governm ental forces, in p artic u la r m erchants. T he old view o f the eighteenth century as a period o f crushing revenue dem ands and o f consequent im ­ poverishm ent is being increasingly challenged. D etailed regional studies o f R a jasth a n 1 and the P u n jab 18 will enable m ore realistic estim ates o f regional revenue co llections to be m ade. B ut for the purposes o f this paper, it is su fficien t to assum e th at rates o f realizatio n w ere not nearly as high as the A ligarh school estim ates, and to note that even w ith realistically low er estim ates it w ould appear that the M ughal state collected a considerably higher proportion o f the land revenue than its co ntem poraries outside

15Dirk H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy (Cambridge, 1990). l6Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Mughal State-Stmcture of Process? Reflections on Recent Western Historiography’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, 1992. l7Madhavi Bajekal, ‘The Stale and the Rural Grain Market in Eighteenth Century Eastern Rajasthan’, in Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.), Merchants. Markets and the State in Early Modem India (Delhi, 1990). l8Chetan Singh, Punjab in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi, 1991).

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In d ia, or than its H indu p redecessors in India, it w as ‘the hig h est know n to m a n ’.

20

w hether o r n o t

THE COLONIAL STATE A lthough the term ‘predatory state’ is not yet popular in India, the colonial state is in fact depicted as a type of predatory state in m ost o f the literature. Revenue m axim ization is generally a m ajor feature o f the characterization o f the predatory state, and the assertion that the British tried to m axim ize the revenue is frequently found in the literature, including textbooks. It is unfortunate that this view con­ tinues to be expressed even though taxes alm ost certainly declined as a share o f the national product over the period of British rule, w ith the exception o f the great wars, and were significantly low er than in m any other contem porary states. O verlooking this fact has led to neglect o f the im portant question o f why this decline occurred. T his neglect reflects tw o other weaknesses o f the application o f the predatory state m odel to colonial India. First, there is confusion on how precisely public revenues were appropriated by the rulers; unlike the Dutch, the British budget did not include colonial receipts. The political psychology o f the m odel is also too sim ple for British India. Let us look at the facts first. 21 N ational income data o f any reliability are available only for the tw entieth century but at a rough estim ate the British took only 7 per cent o f the GNP in taxes in 1872-3; if one includes revenues from opium, forests, and so on, the 19Goldsmith estimates that the yield of land tax, the main source of public revenues, was about one-fifth to one-third the national product in early Tokugawa, Japan, c. 1600 to 1651 (Goldsmith, Premodem Financial Systems, P-142). °The further back one goes, the more uncertain the economic information. Sanskrit texts tell us what ‘taxes’ should be; though scholars differ over their interpretation, the statement that land revenue should at most be one-sixth output recurs frequently. What was actually collected is much more uncertain, see D.N. Jha, Revenue System in Post-Maurya and Gupta Times (Calcutta, 1967)—but it seems highly improbable that normal collections ever approached Mughal levels. 2 This draws heavily on Dharma Kumar, ‘Private Property in Asia: The Case of Medieval South India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1985.

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 335 governm ents o f India and the provincial governm ents took about 9 per cent o f the national incom e (this includes land revenue but ex­ cludes m unicipal and other local taxes). This startling contrast to the shares said to have been extracted by the M ughals has hardly been analysed. We know that the East India Com pany was perennially pressed for funds, and when the British occupied a region, they took the highest estim ate o f their predecessor’s revenues, and used that as a precedent. This suggests tw o possibilities— first, Indian rulers col­ lected less than historians have estim ated, and secondly, the share taken by the British declined over the course of the century. And. in fact, both may be true. For instance, in the early decades o f the nineteenth century, many officials argued that very high taxes led to a fall in output and hence in overall collections, forestalling supply side econom ics by over a century and a half (on South India, see Kumar, 196522). It is equally striking that there was hardly any change in the proportion taken by the British betw een 1872 and 1939. Tax revenues fluctuated between 5 and 7 per cent o f the national incom e, rising to 12 per cent only during the Second W orld W ar. This was very different from trends elsew here. In many developed countries, includ­ ing the UK and Japan, public revenues and public expenditures were sim ilar to Indian levels in the late nineteenth century, but rose rapidly thereafter. (To digress, public revenue and expenditure grew more slowly in the US than in the other developed countries and are still relatively low). M oreover India differed not only from advanced countries but even from other underdeveloped countries between 1860-4 and 1910-12; both taxes and expenditure decline in British India, but rise in all the other groups considered: the UK, British colonies w ith responsible governm ent, dependent colonies, ‘foreign developed’, and ‘foreign undeveloped’.23 Davis and H uttenback also calculate taxes for the princely states, and find that British India ‘dif­ fered m arkedly both from the rest o f the dependent Em pire and from the underdeveloped sector, but less sharply from the Princely S tates’.24 This suggests the im portance o f all-India characteristics in

22

Dharma Kumar. Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge. 1965), p, 82. 23Lance E. Davis and Robert A. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire (Cambridge, 1986), p. 227. 24Ibid„ p. 228.

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the form ation o f fiscal policy, as well as control by the British o v e r the princely states. A further puzzle is that in colonial India the tax structure w a s m odernized to some degree. The land tax, for long the staple source o f revenue, contributed less than one-tenth the total in 1946-7, by w hich time the incom e tax alone contributed 37 per cent, and custom s and excise had also risen. This is striking because the structure o f the econom y did not change so sharply— agriculture contributed around 40 per cent o f the national income even in 1946-7. The cause was largely political. O pposition to the land revenue was an obvious plank for the nationalist m ovem ent, and difficulties in collecting the revenue, and in raising tax rates to reflect changes in prices, w ere translated into a fall in the incidence o f land revenue which did not exceed 5 per cent o f gross agricultural output in the twentieth century. This was probably under half the rate in 1860 at a rough estim ate, which was itself extrem ely low com pared to the estim ated rates for M ughal India. Since land revenue accrued to the provinces it is necessary to look at the issue at the provincial level. The perm anent settlem ent is o f course the obvious reason why collections were so low in Eastern India and parts o f M adras. The large areas given on low rates o f tax or tax-free to tem ples, schools, holy men, and so forth (the inam lands) were another source o f stagnancy in tax revenues. But in nonzam indari and non-inam areas, the rates o f land revenue per acre in m oney terms w ere reassessed periodically. In theory the governm ent aim ed at revising them to take account of price changes, so as to keep the real incidence constant (we can ignore the other com ­ plexities o f the baroque system s British bureaucrats evolved). Thus, if it was calculated that prices had risen since the last settlem ent, from fifteen to fourty years previously, the land revenue rates were m eant to rise proportionately. But incorporating such increases into the revenue system becam e increasingly difficult from the end o f the nineteenth century onw ards. These difficulties were reflected in the declining share o f agricultural output taken as land revenue. For in­ stance, the British aim ed at collecting from one-third to one-half the gross produce in M adras Presidency in the early nineteenth century, but did not in fact collect m ore than one-tenth by the end o f the century, and even less in the tw entieth century. One m ajor reason w as the increase in political difficulties as political opposition be­ cam e organized— land revenue was an excellent focus for anti-tax

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 337 agitations. O f course the opposition was not alw ays successful; during the Depression, in particular, financially hard-pressed provincial governm ents took severe action.25 N evertheless, political opposition and the fear o f it does seem an im portant reason for the low and declining level o f agricultural taxation, though detailed analysis of discussions within governm ent on fiscal policy is needed to confirm this hypothesis. And one m ay have to go below the level o f finance departm ents and boards o f revenue in provincial capitals. For instance Heston has argued that in Bombay Presidency after 1907 local officials deliberately reported low yields; this reduced the taxes they had to collect, and so avoided local agitations. On the basis o f this argum ent and other general considerations Heston rejected the official figures o f a decline in yields per acre; Blyn26 had also found a decline in yields o f food crops in the twentieth century. H eston’s argum ents have been widely criticized and his general findings rejected27, but even if one posits a decline in yields and hence in agricultural output, this would not alter the fact that the share o f output taken by land taxes fell in the tw entieth century, though the extent o f the decline would be a little sm aller than on H eston’s figures. And Heston drew attention to the significant pos­ sibility o f deliberate underestim ation o f yields by officials. Thus G uha him self, while disputing H eston’s findings for the early part of the century, argued that district officials underestim ated yields from 1940 onw ards because o f wartim e adm inistrative difficulties. O f course, taxes are now here popular with those w ho have to pay them , and revolts against taxes have occurred everyw here in a myriad form s, from the Boston Tea Party to the civil disobedience against the house tax in Banaras and other N orth Indian cities in 1 8 1 0 -1 1.29 Protest was in fact not so extrem e in British India as in m edieval South India whose inscriptions occasionally record the m urder o f taxcollectors,30 but it was m uch better organized.

25D.A. Low (ed.), Congress and the Raj (London, 1977). 26George Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947 (Philadelphia, 1966). 27Sumit Guha, ‘Introduction’ to Sumit Guha (ed.), Agriculhtral Productivity in British India: Growth, Stagnation or Decline? (Delhi, 1992 ). ^Sum it Guha, The Agrarian Economy of the Bombay Deccan, 1818-1941 (Delhi, 1985), p. 97. 29Dharampal, Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition (Varanasi, 1971). ^Dharma Kumar, ‘Private Property in Asia’.

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The question is, did the specifically colonial nature of the govern­ m ents of British India lead them to react to public protest or resent­ m ent differently from other governm ents, w hether autocratic native regim es or the dem ocratic governm ents o f today? Two points spring to mind. The first is that colonial governm ents tend to be m ore distant from their subjects even than authoritarian native regimes. Thus on Indonesia M cV ey pointed to ‘the increasing opacity o f society’s low er depths, in spite o f the new m eans for investigation and control w hich the colonial apparatus possessed. M odem adm inistrators, foreign or otherw ise, were even less able to understand local society in its own term s than were m em bers o f the coopted traditional elites.’ In India too the point has been m ade; indeed M unro noted the phenom enon at the outset o f British rule. But British adm inistrators did learn about Indian society. M oreover, the colonial governm ent learned to use divisions am ongst Indians, and to make allies within ‘society’s low er depths’, and religious m inorities, against the Indian N ational Congress. (In fact, to cite another well-known fact, alien rulers may find it easier to effect radical reform s than native rulers, M acA rthur in Japan being a recent exam ple). H owever, in India this feature seems to have been m ore im portant in the political and social sphere than in the econom ic, w hatever the reasons. But this is only an im pression— research on the factors behind the m aking o f fiscal and other policies may well lead to other conclusions. The second feature o f colonialism , and one which has not, so far as I know, been com m ented on, is the great risk o f failure. In m odem dem ocracies, if a political party loses an election, it hopes to regain pow er, and can work to do so. But a colonial pow er is very unlikely to return after a successful revolt (the Dutch return in Indonesia was short lived). In this, colonial powers som ew hat resem ble dynastic rulers. Does this tend to m ake colonial fiscal policy more conserva­ tive, as various V iceregal pronouncem ents suggest? The fear o f revolt recurs frequently in the statem ents o f the British rulers in India. As early as 1811 the G overnm ent o f Bengal wrote to London, pressing ‘the extrem e circum spection necessary to be observed in establishing new taxes am ong the people, whose civil and dom estic usages are so closely interw oven with their religious rites, and who are so peculiarly sensible to any innovation or departure from established custom ’. London agreed; ‘W e deem it extrem ely unwise to do any­ thing which by creating irritation and disgust in the minds o f a large

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 339 part o f the natives m ay w eaken their confidence in our ju stice.’31 A gain, the first V iceroy said ‘D anger for danger, I would rather risk governing India w ith an arm y o f only 40,000 Europeans than I would risk having to raise unpopular tax es’. A nother V iceroy said in 1928: Land Revenue administration has always been the danger point of administra­ tion, and I fancy that this will be more and more true as time goes on. There is here an obvious field for the political agitator who will certainly not be slow to avail himself of any opportunity that offers for the organization of a mass movement, on an issue of immediate interest to large numbers of per­ sons, which may embarrass Government.32 The political factor was recognized early by British officials: ‘As Ibbetson had rem arked in 1885, political considerations outw eighed alm ost everything else in India. In England, popular discontent m eant only a change o f M inisters and an alteration o f the law, in India it m eant disloyalty.’33 There has been alm ost no analysis of the politics o f public ex­ penditure in colonies. Econom ists have m odelled the behaviour of pressure groups in dem ocracies and the effect this has on public ex­ penditure, but this analysis has not been applied to colonial budgets. A nd even in the historical literature, only two pressure groups have been considered in anv depth— British businessm en at home and in India (and their interests did not alw ays coincide), and Indian businessm en to a lesser extent. This reflects the concentration in the literature on im perialism and the nationalist struggle; thus the dem ands o f B ritish businessm en that the G overnm ent o f India should in v est in railw ays and irrigation to ensure supplies o f raw cotton have been am ply docum ented. That only British businessm en could in­ fluence governm ent is frequently im plicitly or explicitly assumed. It is true that London was m ore accountable to B ritish businessm en than N ew Delhi o r C alcutta o r Bom bay were to Indians or even to B ritons in India, but Indian businessm en steadily becam e more in­

31Dharampal, Civil Disobedience, p p 9 6 ,104. 32Dharma Kumar, ‘The Taxation of Agriculture’. 33P.H.M. Van den Dugen, The Punjab Tradition (London, 1972), p. 169. 34A.W. Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton (Manchester, 1966); Basudev Chatteiji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire (Delhi, 1992).

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fluential.35 And business apart, the G overnm ent o f India could not ignore other Indian pressure groups, political parties or even relative­ ly unorganized public opinion as expressed in the press. Obviously m odels applicable to dem ocracies are not applicable to colonial regim es (and even for dem ocracies many are too mechanical in their assum ption o f the dom inance o f individual econom ic self-interest). In the latter the connection betw een public opinion (and even pres­ sure groups) and governm ent policy is indirect, and may be con­ cealed, but the connection is there nonetheless. However, the political dangers o f taxation m ay well have been m ore apparent than the political benefits o f expenditure. W ere colonial governm ents less able to derive political benefits from public expenditure than dem ocratic governm ents supported by m ass-based parties? Did it follow that in India colonial governm ents were rela­ tively conservative in fiscal affairs, both taxing and spending less than popular governm ents? W as this im perialist tim idity altered over tim e, and in w hat direction and by what forces? A very good subject for research is w hat new taxes were considered and rejected, and why they were rejected. It is, o f course, an essential part o f the predatory state model that the rulers will extract as much as they can by way o f taxes, and return as little as they can by way of expenditure on public services. This is the view that underlies m uch of the literature on the ‘d rain ’, and the criticism o f the overpaid colonial bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the literature is very poor analytically, and is often a vent for the author’s spleen against or adulation o f the Indian Civil Service. Bear­ ing in mind R eynolds’ contention that ‘the single m ost im portant explanatory variable (o f grow th) is political organization and the ad­ m inistrative com petence o f governm ent’36, analytical studies o f the costs and benefits o f different branches o f the adm inistration are ur­ gently required. Here I will only make general points. First, and to repeat m yself, there has been hardly any analysis of the political econom y o f expenditure. D ifferent heads o f expenditure need to be treated separately. For exam ple, did political considera­ tions influence decisions on social services? This is obviously 35C. Markovitz, Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931-39 (Bombay, 1985). 36Lloyd Reynolds, ‘The Spread of Economic Growth to the Third Wodd, 1850-1980’, Journal of Economic Literature, 1983.

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 341 relevant to the budgets o f the elected governm ents o f the 1930s. But it is also relevant to bureaucratic rule, since, as we have seen, the bureaucrats also needed political support. And why did the far more autocratic Dutch spend m ore on social services in Indonesia than the British did in India? Secondly, British India needs to be com pared not only to other colonial regim es but also to the native states. I would guess that some princes, perhaps the m ajority, spent far m ore on religious institutions, holy m en, sacrifices and so forth, than the governm ents o f British India. (The governm ent o f M adhya Pradesh reverted to type a few years ago by spending a large sum on Hindu rites after the Union C arbide disaster). M oreover, even in British India, the large areas given tax free or on low rates to religious institutions and holy m en were a source o f revenue stagnancy, and there were inter-provincial variations in the public control o f the enorm ous funds o f im portant tem ples and m osques. In the South, governm ent controlled the use o f tem ple funds; Tirupati could use its vast revenues for hospitals and universities, but not for straight political purposes, unlike the G olden Tem ple in A m ritsar. Since Independence, politicians have m anaged to control tem ple lands even in the South, and this has led to a fall in the donations.37 Thirdly, we require analysis o f the effects of governm ent expen­ diture, including its political feedback. It is typical that defence ex­ penditure, which alone accounted for 25 to 30 per cent of total provincial and central outlays, has been the subject o f com m ination rather than analysis. In a pioneering study o f the social and econom ic effects o f m ilitary expenditure in three districts o f north-w est Punjab, D ew ey has argued that ‘defence spending galvanized the econom ies and flattened the societies o f the areas on w hich it was concentrated’.38 H owever, the m ultiplier and other effects may have differed in other areas and Dewey rightly points out the im portance o f further studies in this subject.

'"W M. Atchi Reddy, ‘Rich Lands and Poor Lords: Temple Lands and Tenancy in Nellore District, 1860-1986’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 24, No. 1,1987. 38 Clive Dewey, ‘Some Consequences of Military Expenditure in British India. The Case of the Upper Sind Sagar Doab, 1849-1947’ , in Clive Dewey (ed.). Arrested Development in India (New Delhi, 1988).

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G iven the relatively small share o f public expenditure in the GDP, perhaps analysis o f its redistributive effects is relatively low in the list o f research priorities, which is fortunate, given the difficulties o f analysis o f feedback, and the indirect and unintended consequences o f governm ent expenditure. It may be that the expansion o f public em ploym ent was the ch ief instrum ent o f redistribution. This redistribution m ay have been partly unintended, at least as regards personal incom es. In contrast, the distribution o f public em ploym ent betw een groups (w hether religious com m unities, or categories such as agriculturists and non-agriculturists), was a policy consideration and a subject o f public debate from at least the beginning o f the tw entieth century in many parts of India.

THE MODERNIZATION OF THE STATE The obsession with the exploitative nature o f colonialism has led historians to neglect the com plex and fascinating story o f the inter­ action between Indian society and a m odern state. Deep-rooted and understandable anti-im perialism and the currently fashionable rom an­ tic anarchism have m et to delineate the colonial state solely as an agent o f repression. This view suffers from several weaknesses. In the first place its concentration on the evils o f ‘social control’ is one-sided, and m isleading. In many situations, people may prefer order, even if im posed by foreigners coercively, to violence and dis­ order. ... men may see governments as providing services for them, services which they cannot see themselves capable of providing, and, if necessary, they are prepared to pay the cost of that service. We cannot understand the history of the colonial period, or indeed the his­ tory of our own time, if we do not understand that people may be prepared to accept authority, even though they find it both threatening and frustrating, because they see it as the guarantor of an overarching security which they value or as promising a security that is lacking. Those who challenged the colonial governments in a search for more local control and then for inde­ pendence were not seeking a return to the pre-colonial systems of diffuse controls.39 39Elizabeth Colson, Tradition and Contract: The Problem of Order (Chicago, 1974), p. 67.

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 343 But w hile Colson has m ade an im portant point which is frequent­ ly overlooked, and o f relevance to India too, there is also the danger o f over-generalizing from A frican or even Indian tribal experience. There was obviously a far greater degree o f governm ental organiza­ tion in the settled regions o f pre-colonial India than in tribal areas in India or Africa, and here the B ritish may have destroyed tradi­ tional chains of com m unication betw een ruler and ruled, culm inating in various forms o f civil disobedience.40 The whole issue o f law and order has to be considered from the point o f view o f both rulers and subjects, o f social norms, as well as the costs and benefits to each party o f using force or o f civil disobedience. Secondly, the public services provided by the colonial state, meagre though they undoubtedly were by modern or even contemporary stand­ ards, were still in certain respects superior to anything the state had provided before. For example, earlier governments had attempted to mitigate the effects o f famines by such measures as the distribution of food to the starving, the provision of loans to farmers and the provision o f employment through public works. They had also indirectly tried to avert the occurrence o f famines, for instance by encouraging agriculture. But the scale of their actions was far smaller, and, which may be more important, less systematic than British famine policies. A m ongst the tools and objectives o f m odern governm ent which the British brought with them were a bureaucracy organized on m odern lines, from entrance by exam ination to the m ountains of paperw ork that have fed so m any Ph.D. theses, to statistical organiza­ tions, new laws and so forth. To see the new tools m erely as instru­ m ents o f repression is to ignore the various beneficent uses to which they could be and som etim es were put. It is true that in the modern era, colonial powers have been active in collecting statistical purposes for im perialistic purposes: In the modem era, however, a census was an affair more of colonies than of homelands.... Ireland was completely surveyed for land, buildings, people

^ O f particular relevance here are various traditional forms of protest against taxes which were seen as unjust; Dharampal, 1971, contains excerpts from official records describing the organization of opposition to the house tax in Benares and other North Indian towns in 1810-12, which finally succeeded in the abrogation of the tax; also see C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge, 1983), pp 319-21.

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and cattle under the directorship of William Petty, in order to facilitate the rape of that nation by the English in 1679 .... Going east, the British took the same pains to count their subject peoples. India evolved one of the great statistical bureaucracies, and later became a major centre for theoretical as well as practical statistics.41 But colonial governm ents did not use statistics only for exploita­ tive purposes. The R egistrar-G eneral collected data on diseases w hich was used for public health policies which, inadequate though they undoubtedly were, were still better than anything governm ents had done before in India (the fact that the British also brought a host o f new diseases with them is a separate issue). British Indian officials, such as Cornish, were in the forefront of research on tropical diseases. The health o f jail populations was carefully studied and jail diets em bodied views on sound nutrition rather than purely utilitarian con42 siderations o f the cheapest ways of m aintaining prisoners. A lthough disease accounted for vastly m ore deaths than fam ines, the latter have preoccupied the historians o f colonial India. Fortunately, this appears to be changing, as several recent studies o f colonial policy tow ards health and sanitation show .43 A gain, statistics could serve other purposes than those they were originally intended for. System s o f estim ating agricultural yields, w hatever their original purpose, were worked upon by som e o f the best Indian statisticians, including M ahalanobis, and were an essential com ponent for the estim ation of national ijicome. The data had m ore im m ediate practical effects in the evolution o f fam ine relief policies. M ughal and pre-M ughal governm ents did take m easures to relieve distress once fam ine started, such as the distribution of grain from public granaries, and the control of m erchants; tem ples and private individuals also fed the poor. But there is no evidence that rulers thought they could anticipate famine and take precautionary steps 41Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge, 1990), p. 17. 42This point was made to me by Sumit Guha, who also pointed out the contrast of colonial jails with pre-modem forms of punishment and that the jails might seem more humane than mutilation or punishment. 43V.R. Muraleedharan, ‘Rural Health Care in Madras Presidency: 1919-39’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 24, No. I, 1987; David Arnold (ed.), Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (Manchester, 1989); Poonam Bala, Imperialism in Bengal (New Delhi, 1991); Mariam Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities (Delhi, 1991).

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 345 (a p a rt from policies to increase agricultural output such as low rev e n u e s or concessionary loans). The M ughals seem to have been m u c h less efficient in counteracting fam ines than their contem ­ p o ra rie s in China.44 In the tw entieth century, this ranking was reversed. This is espe­ c ia lly true when one com pares the fam ine records o f Independent In d ia and Com m unist China, but in the Indian case particularly, the p rev io u s fifty years m ade possible later success, and in unrecognized w a y s. It is also possible that the Chinese failure to avert m illions o f fam in e deaths in 1958-61 w as affected by the governm ental break­ d o w n o f the inter-w ar years, and earlier, but this is my speculation. S e n has argued that one factor in the events leading to the terrible C h in e se fam ine o f 1958-61 was the absence o f a free press which m ig h t have goaded the governm ent into action earlier, while d em o c rac y and a free press prevented such an occurrence in India.45 In su p p o rt, Ram 46 has show n how active and critical the new spapers w e re during colonial fam ines. B ut neither Sen nor Ram discusses w h a t people consider it reasonable to dem and from governm ent; one e le m e n t o f m odern life is that w hat w ere form erly regarded as acts o f G o d , for which no one can be held responsible, are now regarded as a c ts o f com m ission, on w hich governm ents m ay fall. I f fam ine is no lo n g e r regarded as tragic inevitability in India, som e credit must be given to British Indian bureaucracy, to the fam ine codes and to the statistical apparatus for agricultural data and m anuals w hich are still in operation 47 M isinform ation about local food production was on e o f the m ajor causes o f the recent Chinese fam ine.48

^Sanjay Sharma, ‘Dearth, Famine and the Colonial State; The 1837-38 Famine in U.P.’; M. Phil, dissertation, University of Delhi, 1989. 45Amartya Sen, Food Battles, Coramandel Lecture (New Delhi, 1982). 46N. Ram, ‘An Independent Press and Antihunger Strategies: The Indian Experience’, in Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (eds), The Political Economy of Hunger, 3 vols (Oxford, 1990). Michelle McAlpin, Subject to Famine: Food Crises and Economic Change in Western India, I860- 1920 (Princeton, 1983); Jean Dreze, ‘Famine, Prevention in India,’ in J. Dreze and A. Sen (eds). Hunger, Economics and Policy (Oxford, 1991). ^B asil Ashton et al., ‘Famine in China, 1958-61’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4,1984.

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On the other hand, some other legacies o f British bureaucracy have been m uch shorter lived, notably efficiency in tax collection. Since 1947 the Indian governm ent has been culpably weak tow ards tax offenders. Every year betw een 1961-2 and 1983—4, hundreds o f cases against evaders o f incom e tax were launched but hardly any w ere convicted till 1977-8; the num ber o f convictions rose thereafter to 38 out o f 1,541 prosecutions in 1983-4.49 Is this a reversion to pre-B ritish w ays? How m uch o f the enorm ous recent growth in tax evasion and corruption is atavism , how m uch a response to the sud­ den jum p in the scope o f governm ent activity and in tax rates, and to the special problem s o f Indian dem ocracy, is still anybody’s guess. But no analysis can ignore the m arked contrast with the colonial period.

CONCLUSION This paper has argued against the w idespread view that the colonial state in India was merely predatory, extracting the maximum o f revenue, and spending only on im perial needs, such as the m ilitary, and high bureaucratic salaries. In fact, in com parison with M ughal fiscal policy at the tim e o f Akbar, the British were m oderate. M oreover, the share o f the national income taken in taxes fell over the colonial period, and was relatively low, com pared not only to developed countries but even other developing countries. It is this m oderation that requires explanation, and we have argued that the answ er may lie in the peculiar nature o f colonial regim es— in the fear o f political instability and the lack o f inform ation about popular attitudes. It is possible too that colonial governm ents could not reap the benefits o f public expenditure that dem ocratic governm ents can, or that British bureaucrats could not perceive such political benefits, but to go beyond speculation, research into the form ulation o f ex­ penditure policy is required. On the other hand, in free countries too the form ation o f nation states and the evolution o f m odem tools of 50 governm ent were attended with political troubles and discontent. 49Anil Kumar Jain, ‘Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion: The Indian Case’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 21, part 2, 1987, p. 26. 50Gianfranco Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Cambridge, 1990), p. 79.

Was the Colonial State in India a Predatory State? 347 The obsession w ith the exploitative nature o f the colonial state has diverted attention from the im portant changes brought about in the tools and objectives o f governm ent in the colonial period. These include the vast expansion in the inform ation available to govern­ m ent, the system atization o f bureaucratic procedures, the evolution o f fam ine policy which has changed not only the riskiness o f peasant life but also popular expectations o f governm ent, and the beginnings, how ever slow, tim id and m eagre, o f public policies towards health (education is a m ore com plex issue). W e are not arguing that the best way to develop is to becom e a colony.51 A rthur Lew is has pointed out the negative effects of the colonial system including the im planting o f an inferiority com plex in the conquered and the diversion o f talent to anti-colonial struggles; several fascinating counterfactuals could be set up trying to guess w hat India would have been like free o f the British. But deliberate exploitation and the unconscious stifling o f enterprise and self-confidence are only part o f the story o f British India. A balanced analysis requires the recognition o f the benefits that the British did bring, and the relative costs o f these benefits. For a correct perspective the Raj should be com pared w ith other colonial pow ers and with Indian predecessors.

5IW. Arthur Lewis, Growth and Fluctuations, 1870-1913 (London, 1978), p. 214.

Miscellaneous

16 The Anti-communalism Project of ‘Left Secularist’ Historians*

A group o f Indian historians, whom I call the Left Secularists (O R LS), has em barked on a collective project to com bat com m unalism in India by their professional writing. W hile I share their aim o f a secular India today,1 I feel that this venture is m isguided, as regards both current political strategy as well as historical scholarship. O nly the latter is considered in this paper. A t the outset, I should make it clear that I have chosen to criticise only reputable historians, and that I respect m any o f them not only professionally but for the courage and integrity they have shown in their personal actions. A m ongst Indian social scientists, historians alone have an ‘anticom m unalism p ro ject'2 The historians are unique in their organiza­ tion and intellectual energy in this sphere; they alone constitute w hat m ay be called schools o f thought on this subject. A t least tw o o f these groups have entered current politics, for instance as advisers to politicians. The tw o groups are H indutva supporters and Left Secularists, but I will consider only the latter. ‘C om m unalism ’ does not occupy a sim ilar position in any other discipline, though in­ dividual w riters have discussed it in varying degrees o f depth. O f the social anthropologists and sociologists, T.N. M adan has w ritten m ost

*1 have learnt much not only from the authors I have quoted, but a very large number of friends who will forgive me if I do not thank them individually. Some indeed may be grateful that I do not thank them. 1The word ‘secular’ has many meanings. When I use the term here I simply mean that I desire an India where people of different faiths can live together in peace, so a secular policy is one that furthers this ideal. The difficulties of achieving this ideal are often underestimated; perhaps one reason is that we do not reflect upon our experience and are not ready to admit our mistakes. ^ i s is a point made to me by Andre Beteille.

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extensively on the subject.3 other sociologists who here done so in­ clude M.N. Srinivas, Satish Saberwal,4 and Veena Das (who has writ­ ten specifically on the theme of violence5. The political scientists have generally subsumed communalism under ethnicity; outstanding work here has been done by Paul Brass and Urmila Phadnis.6 Sudhir Kakar is working on the psychology of communalism.7 Ashis Nandy, who has also written on communalism, along with cricket and colonialism, is unclassifiable.8 Again, at least two philosophers, Ramachandra Gandhi and Akeel Bilgrami,9 bring their philosophical tools to bear on these issues, sometimes to the bewilderment of this lay woman. But the issue does not seem to have engaged the profes­ sional attention of economists.10 3See especially his ‘Secularism in its Place’, in T.N. Madan (ed.), Religion in India (Delhi, 1992), and ‘Whither Indian Secularism?’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 27, Part 3, July 1993). v 4Satish Saberwal, ‘Elements of Communalism’, in Madan (ed.), Religion in

India. 5Veena Das (ed.). Mirrors o f Violence; Communities, Riots and Survivors. (Delhi, 1991). See especially Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in India (Cambridge, 1974). Sudhir Kakar, The Colours of Violence (New Delhi, 1995). 8Nandy’s writings include ‘An Anti-secularist Manifesto’, Seminar, October 1985, pp 1-11, and ‘The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance’, Alternatives, Vol. 13, 1988, pp 177-94. Akeel Bilgrami has commented on this in a pamphlet published by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, RGICS Occasional Paper, 60 29, 1995. 9Akeel Bilgrami, ‘What is a Muslim? Fundamental Commitment and Cultural Identity’, in Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), Hindus and Others (New Delhi, 1993); Ramachandra Gandhi, Sita’s Kitchen: A Testament of Faith and Enquiry (Albany, 1992). ,0Amartya Sen’s The Threats to Secular India’, New York Review o f Books, 8 April, 1993, does not use economics. A few economists are working on the costs of discrimination in India; this could include discrimination against members of some religious groups, for instance by private employers. Economists may well be reluctant to work on this problem because empirical work would require data that is not available. Also see AK. Bagchi, ‘Predatory Commercialization and Communalism in India,’ in Sarvepalli Gopal (ed). Anatomy o f a Confrontation: The Babri-Masjid-Ramjanambhumi Issue (New Delhi, 1991). However economists often form groups with an express agenda, the most recent example being groups for and against economic liberalization.

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 353 W hy then have the historians em barked on their anti-com ­ m unalism project? History has served as the handm aiden of nationalism everyw here, but the group I am referring to in India is specifically united by its adherence to historical m aterialism . The central im portance o f history to this group is obvious enough. There is also the influence o f one standard line am ongst w estern radicals. E leanor zelliot has expressed it thus: ...every movement for equality (black, native Americans and women’s liberation groups included) needs to discover a past identity of which they can be proud, and to rewrite conventional history to reveal the importance of their past." W hile this observation is correct, one should also rem em ber that w hat begins as an attem pt to understand particular historical narra­ tives m ay be taken as a license to ignore, and in the w orst cases, tam per with, historical evidence. South Asian historiography provides m any exam ples o f the dangers o f official history, particularly evident in P akistan,12 but com m on in India too. The activities of left secular historians have become more hectic in the last few years, but many of the core group have been writing in this I1 vein for much longer. The core group is mainly Delhi-hased, and draw n very largely from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, with the ad­ dition o f Gyanendra Pandey, Tanika and Sumit Sarkar and R.S. Sharma from Delhi University, and Mushirul Hasan from Jamia Mlllia. This group is not confined to Delhi; there are important members in Aligarh, Calcutta, and elsewhere. These historians have been very powerful in-

1'Eleanor Zelliot, ‘the Psychological Demension of the Buddhist Movement in India’ in G.A. Oddie (ed.), Religion in South Asia (Delhi, 1991), pp 201-2. 12 K.K. Aziz, the Murder o f History: A Critique of History Textbooks used in Pakistan (Lahore, Vanguard Books Pvt. Ltd., 1993); also, Mubarak Ali, ‘Akbar in Pakistani Textbooks’, Social Scientist, Vol. 20, September-October. 1992. That Indian and Pakistani historians treat Akbar and Aurangzeb differently is well known. For an analytical view of Pakistani historiography see Ayesha Jalal, ‘Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining’, unpublished, 1993. ' i h e pamphlet Communalism and the Writing of Indian History (New Delhi, 1969), seventh reprint 1993, contains three essays by Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Bipan Chandra. I saw this pamphlet only after I wrote the original paper, but a quick reading of it has not convinced me that i need to rewrite the paper.

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tellectual figure in India. M any people assume that they are the sole voice o f secularism in India as is obvious in the statements even o f opponents o f their views. Needing a name for this group, I chose ‘secular leftists’, or left secular historians, terms they would probably accept.

THE LEFT SECULAR MODEL B ased on my reading o f their w ork I have constructed a basic m odel, setting out w hat seem to m e to be the essential propositions o f the group. W herever possible, I have quoted from these writers them sel­ ves but readers should rem em ber that this model is m y construction, intended to show the logic o f their credo, and individuals may object to one or other o f the propositions; o f course, if an individual objects to all the propositions o f the m odel, he or she has been wrongly included in the LS group. M em bers o f this group, being intellectuals, often differ from one another, but there is a w ide area o f agreem ent. D ifferences betw een them (as betw een Pandey and Bipan (Chandra), do not seem to me to destroy the LS m odel. Before going on to the propositions o f the m odel, one should note that nearly all LS historians use ‘com m unalism ’ in its com m on N orth Indian sense o f tension betw een religious com m unities; som e may qualify the term to signify political action based on such discord. Pandey recognises that in South India, ‘com m unal’ refers to caste divisions; thus the fam ous com m unal G overnm ent O rder o f 1921 prescribes caste-w ise reservations in governm ent em ploym ent. But then he too lapses into saying, ... in its common Indian usage the word ‘communalism’ refers to a condition of suspicion, fear and hostility between members of different religious com­ munities. In academic investigations, more often than not, the term is applied to organized political movements based on the proclaimed interests of a religious community, usually in response to a real or imagined threat from another religious community (or communities). It denotes movements that make sectional demands on state policy for a given share in jobs, education and legislative positions, leading on in some instances to demands for the creation of new provinces and states.14

14Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 355 The essential propositions o f the LS model, in chronological order, are as follows: The first proposition is that Hindus and Muslims, by and large, lived in harmony before British rule. To quote Hasan, While there were stray, localized and sporadic incidents o f conflicts over religious symbols, the integrative and syncretic forces were at work amongst the elites as well as the common people. The dominant picture o f the seven­ teenth and eighteenth centuries is not o f the Hindus and the Muslims forming exclusive and antagonistic categories but of their cooperating in cultural life and social affairs.15 The reason for this, according to Hasan, was that ‘religious solidarity was not the basis o f collective socio­ economic experience. The ideology o f the State did not rest on the notion o f a “unified” community, with identifiable interests, which forms the main pillar of modern day “communalism” . ,16 Second, the seeds o f com m unalism in its m odem form lie in the colonial period. Indeed, they were deliberately planted by the colonial rulers; in P andey’s phrase com m unalism was a colonial ‘construction’. The w riting o f history was a m ajor elem ent in the colonial strategy. ‘Both as an ideology and as a m ovem ent, com ­ m unalism derives ideological sustenance from the view, which was popularized by H enry Elliot and other colonial writers, that Islam and Hinduism , as indeed their followers, co-existed uneasily in India and that religious conflicts rather than harm onious living was the hallm ark o f the m edieval Indian ethos.’17 The third proposition is that the colonial period, m arks a seachange in H indu-M uslim relations. ‘For the first time, signs of Hindu-Muslim friction surfaced in some areas and amongst certain groups. Now, the terms of dispute were articulated differently. The language and vocabulary of discourse changed. Muted expressions were replaced with angry exchanges. Mild protests took the form of violent out­ bursts. The reasons for this were quite numerous, ranging from the introduc­ tion of westem-style institutions to the emergence of religio-revivalist trends, stimulated by powerful socio-religious reform movements in Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra.18 India (Delhi, 1992). ISHasan, ‘Competing Symbols’, in S. Gopal (ed.), Anatomy of a Confrontation, p. 103. Ibid. l7Ibid. ,8Ibid.

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Fourth, the greatest danger facing India today is Hindu co m ­ m unalism . In S. G opal’s words ‘the m ain attack on secular objec­ tives in free India has com e from the ranks o f Hindu bigotry.20 T his is because H indus are the m ajority com m unity. ‘It is for the H indus to be secular and thereby help the m inorities to becom e secular. F o r it is the m ajority com m unity alone that can provide the sense o f security.21 Bipan C handra argues that ‘m ajority com m unalism in­ evitably leads to fascism , w hile m inority com m unalism leads to separatism o r separatist sentim ents.22 Fifth, Hindu com m unalists now play on the false notions o f his­ tory put forw ard by colonialists and later em bellished by H indu chauvinist writers. Sixth, this leads to the conclusion that this ‘political abuse o f histo ry ’ necessitates intervention by ‘the historian’. A m anifesto prepared by 25 m em bers o f the C entre for H istorical Studies, Jaw aharlal N ehru U niversity, declares: ‘Each individual has a right to his or her belief and faith. But when beliefs claim the legitimacy of history, then the historian has to attempt a demarcation between the limits of belief and historical evidence. When communal forces make claims to ‘historical evidence’ for the purposes of communal politics, then the historian has to intervene.23 The different steps in the argum ent presented here and the links betw een them are not equally strong. O ne essential point is the change brought about in the colonial period in the way in which religious com m unities were organized and interacted w ith other com ^ m unities and w ith governm ent. This change is attributed in the m ost general terms to capitalism and colonialism . A lthough this step is not logically necessary, m any authors also stress the general harm ony that prevailed betw een M uslim s and H indus in the m edieval period, thus reinforcing the argum ent that colonialism created com m unalism . 1incidentally, I am not asserting that this or any other of these ideas originated with LS historians, but the derivation of their ideas, for example from Nehru, is not my concern. 20 S. Gopal, ‘Introduction’ to S. Gopal (ed.). Anatomy ofa Confrontation, p. 14. 21Ibid., p. 18. 22Bipan chandra, Essays on Contemporary India (Delhi, 1993), p. 189. ‘Hindu fascism’ is another much used and abused term. 23‘The Political Abuse of History,’ Seminar, No. 364, December 1989.

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 357 The next crucial stage is the transition to adult suffrage, m ass politics and m ajority voting after 1947. The view that com m unalism took its m odem form during the colonial period is certainly tenable, but requires com plex analysis bringing in the new political form s o f the colonial period. M ost o f us would consider many colonial innovations desirable. The innova­ tions o f the colonial period include new ideas o f equality, new ideas o f the scope and possibilities o f state action, and the effects o f econom ic growth, lim ited though it undoubtedly was, and the effects o f political unification and peace.24 And one change is that the British w ere neither Hindu nor M uslim the fact that this is obvious does not m ake it irrelevant. The LS model has been very influential and in my view has dam aged historical research and writing in India. M any subjects are considered dangerous or irrelevant, especially those relating to religion, even though at least two m ajor w orld religions originated in India, and others that originated elsew here have spread throughout India over the centuries. A range o f exam ples of this distortion can be cited from the decline o f Buddhism to the consequences o f colonialism . None o f these is dealt w ith here in depth; my object has been to show the effects o f the LS model on the w riting of history, by considering the work o f leading LS historians n significant areas.

THE POLITICIZATION OF BUDDHISM The historiography o f Buddhism provides a good exam ple of the dangers o f allow ing political predilections to determ ine o n e’s writing o f history. Buddhism is now regarded as egalitarian, republican and anti-brahm in, and hence good. This may have been why Buddhism appealed to A m bedkar,25 and why it figures frequently in anti-brah­ min discourse. Consequently the decline o f Buddhism is bad, hence H indutva writers blam e the M uslim s for the dow nfall o f Buddhism. C onversely, some LS historians argue that brahm ins destroyed BudSee M.N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modem India (California, 1966); Lioyd and Susanne Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago, 1967). 25As an irrelevant aside Hitler was also interested in Buddhism, no reflection on Ambedkar or on modem Buddhists.

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dhism . A m usingly enough, this view was, according to Rhys D avids, first found in ‘B rahm in accounts’, and culm inated in the statem ent o f one Rev. W .T. W ilkins that, ‘The disciples o f B uddha were so ruthlessly persecuted that all were either slain, exiled, or m ade to change their faith. There is scarcely a case on record w here a religious persecution was so successfully carried out as that by w hich Buddhism was driven out o f India.’26 Rhys Davids stoutly says, I do not believe a word of it. In the Journal of the Pali Text Society for 1986. I come to the conclusion, that the misconception has arisen from an erroneous inference drawn from expressions of vague boasting, of ambiguous import, and doubtful authority. We must seek elsewhere for the causes of the decline of the Buddhist faith; and they will be found, I think, partly in the changes that took place in the faith itself, partly in the change that took place in the intellectual standard of the people. And in both respects the influence of the foreign tribes that invaded India from the north-west can scarcely be exag­ gerated.’ The Scythians and Kushan Tartars, he adds, adopted and corrupted Buddhism in m uch the way, described by Gibbon, that the Goths and V andals adopted and corrupted Christianity. He ends with the hope that as m ore m aterial becom es available, ‘som e historian o f the future w ill be able to piece together a story, equally interesting and equally instructive, o f the decline and fall o f Buddhism in India.’27 N inety years later, we are still w aiting for this historian o f Buddhism . Very little appears to have been w ritten on this extraordinary dram a, played out over m any centuries in various regions, apart from a sketchy, overly econom istic account by D.D. Kosam bi. In a short essay, K osam bi w rites, ‘In a word, Buddhism had becom e uneconom ic. The innum erable m onasteries and their pam pered inm ates were a counter­ part o f the costly m ilitary establishm ent. Buddhism had, from the very beginning, favoured the grow th o f a universal m onarchy w hich w ould stop petty warfare. H arsha’s w as about the last o f the sort in India. Thereafter, kingdom s were m uch sm aller till feudalism from below gave the state

^Quoted in T.W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, 1st ed. (London, 1903), Indian reprint (Delhi, 1987), p. 319. ^ b id ., pp 319-20.

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 359 a new basis o f feudal landow ners.28 This reductionist account com ­ pletely ignores the specific process by w hich H induism absorbed Buddhism , a process clearly not usable for the absorption o f C hris­ tianity or Islam. M oreover H induism itself m ust have been altered both by its assim ilative successes and failures. B efore we can m ake sensible generalizations, w e need histories o f m any localities and periods. Buddhism took a very long tim e to decline in India, and a good account o f the decline and fall o f Indian Buddhism will have to be a com plex one, covering regional histories, and accounting for differences betw een them . Thus in eastern India, Buddhism began to decline from the seventh century or earlier, ac­ cording to Eaton, w ho cites Chinese pilgrim s and Tibetan monks. Significantly, ‘w hat is conspicuously absent in the history of East Indian Buddhism as recorded by Taranatha, a Tibetan monk who wrote in 1608, is any evidence o f popular enthusiasm for the religion.’ The fate o f the B uddhists was sealed when royal patronage was transferred from B uddhist m onasteries to brahm in tem ples.29 In contrast, the art historian, V idya D ehejia, arguing from the stone and bronze Buddhist im ages found all over Tam il N adu, concludes that ‘the B uddhist faith persisted in the Tam il country w ith greater strength and for a longer period than has hitherto been realized.30 Indeed the persistence o f Buddhism is an unexplored elem ent in the exuberant history o f religions in South India.

THE TREATMENT OF HINDUISM The LS treatm ent o f H induism bears several m arks o f politically m otivated scholarship. In fact, the problem begins with the very term

28D.D. Kosambi, T he Decline of Buddhism in India’, in Exasperating Essays (Calcutta, 1957), reprinted 1977, p. 64; also see Kosambi, Introduction to the Study o f Indian History (Bombay, 19S6). ^Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley, 1993), p. 13. (Hereafter Eaton, Rise o f Islam). °Vidya Dehejia, ‘the Presistence of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu’, P. Pal (ed.), A Potpourri o f Indian Art (Bombay, 1988). George Michell says that Buddhism lingered in the Tamil Nadu zone upto the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, George Michell, Architecture and Art of Southern India (Cambridge, 1995), p. 204.

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‘H induism .’ There has been a sad expenditure o f intellectual energy on the definition o f Hinduism , and indeed on w hether the term can be used for any religious com m unity that ever existed. (This may be connected with the b elief instilled in Indian students that no discus­ sion can begin w ithout definitions.) Those w anting to use the term ‘H induism ’ m ust ju m p over tw o hurdles. The first is the absence o f boundaries o f the kinds found in the so-called Sem itic religions, and the second is that the term ‘H indu’ itself occurs relatively late. But neither of these hurdles m akes the use of the term ‘H induism ’ inad­ m issible today. To deal w ith the second hurdle first, the question of when the term ‘H indu’ was first used is an interesting philological question, but the argum ent that it was first used only in Arab texts does not m ake the application o f the term Hinduism to earlier periods in­ valid,31 any m ore than scientists cannot use the term ‘elephants’ be­ cause the anim als in question do not use it.32 There is no reason w hatsoever why the m odem scholar should not apply the term to a set o f beliefs held by people in the distant past, regardless o f their own usage. He can then consider the set o f beliefs held by people in a different period, and decide w hether there is enough in com m on w ith the earlier set to w arrant the use o f the term ‘H induism ’ for the later set also. He may decide that w hile there are sim ilarities there are also significant differences, so he may add a qualifier. Thus, H albfass describes the w ritings o f Radhakrishnan and others as neoH induism ,33 and his distinction between ‘H induism ’, a term he does 3'Those who think I am attacking a straw man should refer to Irfan Habib, ‘Medieval Popular Monotheism and its Humanism: the Historical Setting’, Social Scientist, Vol. 21, 1993, p. 79. 32 Dr C.J. fuller has pointed out to me that my analogy may be confusing because ‘elephants, as far as we know, don’t reflect upon themselves.’ But the point I wished to make was that what we call ourselves should not determine what others can call us. William Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York, 1988); also see ‘The Idea of the Veda and the Identity of Hinduism’, in Wilhelm Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection (New York, 1991), especially pp 7-9, where Halbfass quotes (and later disputes) several versions of the view that ‘Hinduism is a European invention’. Similarly Gonda distinguishes between ‘ancient’ and ‘more recent Hinduism,’ cited in H. Von Stietencom,’ Hinduism: On the Proper Use of a Deceptive Term’, in G.D. Sonthfcimer and H. Kulke (eds), Hinduism Recbnsidered (New Delhi, 1989), p. 23.

The Anti-communalism Project o f 'Left Secularist’ Historians 361 not hesitate to use of works written well before the Christian era, and ‘neo-Hinduism’, is not only clear but very informative. This failure to describe themselves by a modern term is not unique to Hindus; Crone and Cok state that the term ‘Muslim’ is used relatively late; (It may still be useful to describe Hinduism as less self-con­ scious about identity than Islam or Christianity.) Having queried the very existence of Hinduism, LS historians dis­ tinguish between ‘brahminical Hinduism’ and popular Hinduism. Brahminical Hinduism is basically Bad Hinduism as distinct from the Good Hinduism of the people, or ‘true Hinduism.35 The term ‘brahminical Hinduism’ abounds in current LS literature, and evokes knee-jerk hatred from modem radicals.36 But the term is inaccurate to describe modern urban religiosity, or even the political Hinduism of the BJP or RSS. Dislike of the RSS should not obscure the fact that the RSS itself realizes that caste is divisive and weakens the Hindu community.37 In fact, ‘brahminical Hinduism’ tells us what it

P a tric ia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism, The Making o f the Islamic World (Cambridge) pp 8-9. 35I suspect that a careful reading of current writings would reveal that any Hinduism is mistrusted (a good subject for psychologists), but the inconvenient fact that large numbers of the ‘oppressed’ are clearly Hindus, makes the distinction between ‘popular’ and ‘brahminical’ Hinduism necessary. 36After the destruction of the Babri Masjid there was a spate of articles by LS journalists about ‘true’ Hinduism, which is tolerant and belongs to the people, and some of them quoted the Upanishads or even Tulsidas. Bhaktism and Sufism are particularly good, prompting Ramachandra Guha to coin the phrase ‘Bhakti Marxism.’ Note also Bardwell Smith’s warning that ‘it is only partially valid to term bhakti movements as popular, for their leadership often came from those bom to higher castes, even if their appeal is largely to lower caste groups because of the emphasis upon egalitarian ideals and the promise that birth presents no barrier in access to the Divine’; ‘Introduction’ to Bardwell Smith (ed.), Hinduism (Leiden, 1976), p. 3. 37Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffrom (New York, 1987). Indian edition, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi; p. 95. Their is also supported by hearsay evidence about the attitude to Mandai by RSS activists today, but a serious study of this issue is required. I do not deny that sadhus and some Hindu politicians do assert that the laws of Manu should form the basis of the Indian constitution, but the beliefs of the lunatic fringe are not our concern.

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is that the users o f the term hate m ost— ‘brahm inical H induism ’ has been described as racist, inegalitarian, and now it is said to have a gender bias. It is in short politically incorrect, in American term s; in the postm odern idiom, it is the other to ‘progressive’.38 This em phasis on the caste-ridden nature o f Brahm inical H in­ duism is not m erely inaccurate; it obscures a fascinating developm ent taking place before our very eyes. H induism , whose elastic and flexible nature so m any com m entators stress, is assuming a yet new shape (or shapes) o f a com pletely unprecedented kind. G enuinely devout Hindus, including V ivekananda and M ahatm a Gandhi, have long attacked untouchability on moral grounds. Political Hindus have decided that all caste distinctions are an encum brance; in a m irror im age the Left has apparently decided that caste divisions are useful politically. Priests in South Indian A di-Saivite tem ples have declared that they are not brahm ins, while once they would have insisted that they were brahm ins. In Pune, Hindu women are now being trained to be priests. W hat does all this leave o f brahm inical Hinduism ? In short, there have been two different, som etim es inter-related, developm ents in m odem India. The first is a cultural one: a large num ber o f Indians feel Hindu in a religious sense, as shown by the proliferation o f gurus, bhajana samajs, and so on. W hether this is a grow ing tendency is a m oot point. Secondly, politicians have found 19 it useful to get votes on the plank o f ‘H induism ’. In my view faith in the necessity or the inevitability of caste boun­ daries has declined considerably in both groups. M any other changes have taken place, giving rise to sneers about syndicated Hinduism or appeals to ‘true H induism ’, as defined by M arxists. Is not denying the possibility o f change am ongst Hindus an act o f ‘reification’, the intellectual sin ‘orientalists’ are accused of?

' It is difficult to keep pace with this Hydra-deaded monster. One night I joked to a friend that I was waiting to learn of the connection between brahminical Hinduism and multinational corporations. The next morning the journalist Praful Bidwai linked BJP leaders to the ‘hedonistic world of Indian big business’, and RSS workers to employers of child labour and excise tax evaders, The Times of India, 10 September. 1993. 39For a good if brief discussion of the dynamics of mass politics and Hindutva see Thomas Hansen, ‘RSS and the Popularisation of Hindutva’, Economic and Political Weekly, 16 October, 1993, pp 2270-3.

The Anti-communalism Project o f 'Left Secularist’ Historians 363

HINDUS AS THE MAJORITY COMMUNITY A com m on ploy is to refer to H indus m erely as ‘the m ajority co m m u n ity ’, thus reducing com m unalism to the co n flict betw een the m ajority and m ino rity com m unities, a sim ple question o f num ­ bers. LS historians also seem to have the need to reduce the size o f the H indu ‘m a jo rity ’ as far as possible; thus B uddhism and Jain ism are included am o n g st the ‘m in o rity ’ religions. T hapar w rites, ‘R eligions such as B uddhism , Jainism , Islam and C hris­ tian ity see them selves as part o f the historical process o f the un­ fold in g and interpreting o f the single religion and sects are based on v arian t interp retatio n s o f the original teach in g .’40 It is undoub­ tedly co rrect that H induism is, and w as, organized very differently from Islam or C h ristian ity , but the p oint at issue is the classifica­ tion o f B uddhism and Jainism . T here is o f course no reason why one should not classify religions as one likes, having first ex­ pounded and ju stifie d the prin cip les o f classification. B ut this p ar­ ticu la r division is at variance w ith general scholarly practice and req u ires g reater ju stific a tio n than T h apar provides. M oreover m any H indu sects, such as the L ingayats, could fit T h a p ar’s definition o f B uddhism and Jainism on the one hand, and designated H indu sects on the other, but the line w ill vary in w idth and sharpness acco rd in g to region and p eriod, especially since H induism was deeply influenced by o th er faiths. M oreover, a line can also be draw n betw een B uddhism and Jain ism .41 To repeat, historians are free to choose any d istin ctio n , p ro viding only that the grounds be exp lain ed . B ut surely B uddhism and Jainism are m uch m ore like H induism than like Islam and C h ristianity? Sim ilarly, Hindu num ber are kept dow n by excluding tribals and low er castes. To quote Thapar again, ‘In this sense Hindu in the A rabic texts included both the brahmanas and the low er castes, an ^Rom ila Thapar, imagined Religious Communities?’ in Romila Thapar,

Interpreting Early India (Delhi, 1993), p. 69. 4lThus Max Muller distinguished Buddhism as a missionary religion from the non-missionary Jainism; Hermanm Kulke, Kings and Cults, State Formation and Legitimation in India and South East Asia (New Delhi, 1993), p. 241.On South India, see David Shulman, T he Enemy within: Idealism and dissent in south Indian Hinduism’, in S.N. Eisenstadt, Reuben Kahane and David Shulman (eds), Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Dissent in India (Berlin, 1984).

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inclusion w hich was contrary to the precepts o f B rahm anism .’ Presum ably ‘low er caste; is w ider than ‘untouchables’, a term T h a p a r also uses in this essay. Perhaps Thapar refers to the fact that S udras w ere not one o f the thrice-bom ivam as , but they were obviously p art o f the vam a schem e conceptually. You cannot criticize ‘brahm inical H induism ’ for being hierarchical, and at the same tim e refuse to see that castes cannot be ‘higher’ w ithout ‘low er’ castes. (Tribals are specifically discussed later.) The trouble with this bland division into m ajority and m inority com m unities is that it overlooks the huge differences between Islam and the Indie group, w hich m ust include ‘brahm anism ’ as well as folk Hinduism , and in which m ost scholars would include Buddhism as it was practiced in India, and Jainism . W riting in 1962, A ziz A hm ad endorsed the statem ent m ade by an Englishm an in 1892 that ‘Islam is in m ost respects the very antithesis o f H induism ’, adding that ‘The H indu has been a spiritual anarchist, his faith being inten­ sely personal and individualistic.43 D ifferences in psychology, theol­ ogy and social philosophy betw een Islam and the Indie religions raise fascinating historical questions which have been overlooked by m odern Indian historians. For instance, did the consciousness o f shar­ ing a religion with their rulers play a part in the identity form ation o f M uslim s in the past and today? How do other com m unities rem em ­ ber their pasts? Again, the history o f the application of the term ‘m inority com m unity’ to M uslim s in India is itself an interesting his­ torical question.44 O f course this is politically dangerous ground, but it would be sad if historical scholarship were deterred by current political fears. W hen historians take part in politics they should not assum e that history is their private property, to use old fashioned language, or that they can ‘appropriate history’, to be m odem . The trouble is that LS historians need the notion o f putting right ‘historical injustice’ (for instance, to support affirm ative action) but they have decided that the only historical victim s are the low er castes and hence the only oppressors upper caste H indus, especially brahmins. In view

42Thapar, Interpreting Early India, p. 77. 43Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford, 1984). 44T.N. Madan has pointed out to me that both Jinnah and Aazad rejected this use.

The Anti-communalism Project o f Left Secularist' Historians 365 of In d ia’s long, com plex and still little known history, this is dangerous self-deception.

COMPOSITE CULTURE A very im portant com ponent o f the LS tradition is the belief that a ‘com posite culture’ had evolved when M uslim s and H indus lived together in harm ony before the B ritish.45 This evolution, it is believed, shows that Hindus and M uslim s can live together in har­ m ony today too, especially if, some m ight add, Hindus went back to ‘tru e’, i.e. non-V edic and non-brahm inical Hinduism . In some respects this ‘com posite cu ltu re’ is an aspect o f the Golden Age myth, the myth that all was well before the British, (or the M uslim s) into which even careful scholars in other disciplines lapse. Thus to Susanne and Lioyd Rudolph ‘The question is not why old conflicts are flaring up anew, but rather why traditionally harm onious mosaics have been shattered’. There are sadly few accounts o f life as it was lived under the various M uslim rulers; the references in LS w riting are often only to court life, and to a single account at that, and m oreover, only N orth Indian court life. U ndoubtedly, a courtly culture in art, ar­ chitecture, m usic and literature evolved under certain rulers, welding various strains— Hindu, Persian, Saracenic, and so on. But this never spread all over India, nor one m ust forget that under som e M uslim rulers one pan-India, nor one m ust forget that under some M uslim rulers one pan-Indian elem ent in N orth Indian urban high life was supplanted by another— m any educated men who would once have learnt Sanskrit learnt Persian instead. U ndoubtedly this N orth Indian courtly culture can accurately be term ed a com posite culture, and in m y view its achievem ents in architecture and m usic are glorious. But this was a very small part o f N orth Indian life. The beauty of the

45Significantly, the term ‘composite culture’ is only applied to Hindu-Muslim interaction, although, as T.N. Madan reminds me. Indian history provides many other (and genuinely mutual) examples of composite culture, such as Hindu-Buddhist cultures. ^Susanne Hoeber and Lloyd Rudolph, ‘Modem Hate’, The New Republic, 22 March, 1993. The notion of traditional harmony is pervasive and both T.N. Madan and Ashis Nandy refer to it in their essays.

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Taj tells us nothing about the absence o f conflict between M uslim s and Hindus at the time it was built, nor about M uslim arrogance n o r the suppressed feelings o f resentm ent o f the Hindus or distrust b e ­ tw een various com m unities. D istrust and fear o f authority may have to be read betw een the lines, for instance from H indu behaviour after the end o f M uslim rule. Thus a historian o f the early colonial period rem arks in passing, ‘It is rarely acknow ledged how much Hindu fes­ tivity cam e out into the open during the nineteenth century.’ 47 R ead­ ing betw een the lines is undoubtedly difficult and risky, but the historian should at least be aware of the possibility of suppressed feelings. M any Indians even today seem afraid o f Open expression o f their feelings. Exactly o r even approxim ately when and where did com m unal harm ony reign, and w hat were the conditions under which it w orked? (The im plicit answ er— ‘when the British were absent’— is hardly satisfactory). W hen detailed accounts of medieval life in town and country, court and cam p, are available, one will have a better sense o f the variations in inter-com m unal relations, and the extent and causes of conflicts o f different types. Till then the historian should refrain from appeals to the m yth o f com m unal harm ony, especially since other scholars have com e to other conclusions. Aziz Ahm ad is one exam ple: ‘The history o f m edieval and m odern India is to a very considerable extent a history o f H indu-M uslim religio-cultural ten­ sions, interspersed w ith m ovem ents or individual efforts at understanding cultural harm ony and even com posite developm ent.’ Again, LS historians often argue that religious syncretism was the pre-B ritish norm, and frequently refer to A kbar’s Din llahi and the sim ilarities and interaction betw een Sufism and Bhakti m ovem ents. H ow ever this is apparently not the view o f all scholars. For instance, the radical partiality for Din llahi is ironic in view o f A ziz A hm ad’s i O

An

Katherine Prior, ‘Making History: The state’s Intervention in Urban Religious Disputes in the North Western Provinces in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 27, February 1993, p. 180. 48Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment. On a practical note, the concept of ‘composite culture’ does not solve current political problems, as the political history of the U.P. shows. Paul Brass. Languages, Religion and Politics in North India, pp 220-3. T.N. Madan has denounced the ‘dogmatic language of a So-called Composite Culture,’ T.N. Madan, ‘Urdu in India’, times of India, 16 October 1989.

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 367 opposition o f A kbar’s ‘im perial and aristocratic* Din Ilahi to the ‘popular and dem otic’ K abirpanthis.49

RELIGIOUS ‘CONVERSION’ India has a rich and com plex religious history, but little outstanding w ork in the field has been done by Indians. Perhaps the m ain reason is that it is very difficult for Indians to be dispassionate about religion. Also, m any M arxists hold sim plistic beliefs about the sim ilar irrationality of all religions. W hatever the causes, the fact rem ains that the literature is dom inated by propagandists or the defensive. A ggressive Hindus assert that Islam spread in the subcontinent by force, to which secularists and M uslim s o f various persuasions retort that H indus them selves were violent towards B uddhists,50 am ongst others, and some secularists say that it was the deficiencies o f H in­ duism itself, in particular the treatm ent o f the lowest castes, that led large num bers o f the poor to em brace Islam . Thus M . M ujeeb, ‘Those w ho object on any ground to expressions o f fanaticism generally m ust view this phenom enon as one o f the m any expressions o f fanaticism in Indian history bearing in m ind that aggressiveness can make fanaticism more obvious, but may not be morally much worse or socially more fatal o f those regarded as impure or defiled as lower types o f human beings.51 The defensiveness o f this statement is typical. Eaton provides an excellent survey o f the spread o f Islam .52 He distinguishes between four conventional theories o f Islam ization in

49

Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment. pp 179-80. Akbar is indeed a fascinating figure, but not as the author of a successful Composite Culture and Religion. ^ o r example in the controversy over school textbooks in the U.P. in 1‘961 between Dr Sampumanand, the then Chief Minister, and A.J. Faridi, ‘Faridi claimed to have no objection to the narration of stories of Muslim conquerors , destroying Hindu temples if it was also taught how Hindu rulers destroyed Buddhist temples’. Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, p. 222. 51M. Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (London, 1967), p. 557. 52Eaton, The Rise o f Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (California, 1993). An earlier brief survey is by John Richards, ‘The Islamic Frontier in the East: Expansion into South Asia’, South Asia, 1974, Ch. 5.

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India. The first, and least convincing, holds Islam ization to be the result not o f conversion, but o f im m igration by M uslim s from abroad. The second he calls the ‘religion o f the sw ord thesis’, refuted by the religious geography o f the subcontinent. ‘If Islam ization had ev er been a function o f m ilitary or political force, one w ould expect that the areas exposed m ost intensively and over the longest period to rule by M uslim dynasties w ould today contain the greatest num ber o f M uslim s.’ On the contrary, Islam spread fastes in the frontier regions o f Bengal and w estern Punjab. The third, or ‘religion o f patronage theory,’ attributes conversion to the desire to receive non­ religious favours from M uslim rulers, but this again cannot explain m ass Islam ization in Bengal and Punjab. The fourth or ‘religion o f social liberation theory’ juxtaposes, as we have seen, ‘the inherent ju stice o f Islam and the inherent w ickedness o f Hindu society.’ Popular though this theory is it is not supported by facts, at least in B engal, i n Bengal, M uslim converts w ere draw n mainly from in­ digenous groups that had only been lightly exposed to brahm anic culture, and in Punjab the sam e was true o f the various Jat clans that eventually form ed the bulk o f the M uslim com m unity’.54 T he best descriptions o f the process o f conversion in any part o f India are for Bengal but even they are incom plete.55 Thus Eaton ar­ gues that the m ass Islam ization o f the Bengal peasantry occurred only from the sixteenth century onw ards, that is under the M ughals, who show ed no interest in proselytization. He describes a slow process, beginning with the extension o f agriculture on the eastern frontier; religious institutions w ere often the agents o f colonisation, leaving m osques and shrines all over rural Bengal. At first, Allah, M uham m ad, and M uslim holy m en were accepted as additions to the existing body o f gods and saints; Eaton calls this first stage ‘in clusion’. In the next stage, ‘identification’, the tw o m erged; thus ‘A llah ’ was used interchangeable w ith ‘N iranjan’. In the final stage

53Eaton, Rise o f Islam, p. 115. 54Ibid, p. 117. Cf. Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Conflict and Contradiction in Bengali Islam: Problems of Change and Adjustment’, in Katherine P. Ewing (ed.), Shariat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam (Delhi, 1988), p. 119. 55Eaton, Rise of Islam. Also see Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Conflict and Contradictions in Bengali Islam: Problems of Change and Adjustment’, in Katherine P. Ewing (ed.). Shariat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam; and Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal (Princeton, 1983).

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 369 ‘displacem ent’, M uslim categories displace the others. Dating the stages is difficult, but ‘the idea o f Islam as a closed system with definite and rigid boundaries is itself largely a product o f nineteenth and tw entieth century reform m ovem ents, w hereas for rural Bengalis o f the prem odern period,56 the line separating ‘Islam ’ from ‘nonIslam ’ appears rather to have been porous, tenuous and shifting’.57 Sim ilarly Roy describes the m aking o f the Bengali ‘syncretic tradition’ by ‘Bengali M uslim cultural m ediators’, follow ed by the ‘em ergence of rigorous even m ilitant Islam ic revivalist and purificatory m ovem ents in Bengal, as elsew here within and without India, since the beginning o f the nineteenth century...’.58 Studies sim ilar to E aton’s are badly required for other regions; elsew here, the balance o f im portance o f different forces m ay well be different.59 N evertheless, Eaton has shown up convincingly the in­ adequacies o f the conventional theories o f Islam ization. In particular, M uslim conquest was neither a necessary n o r a sufficient condition for w idespread Islam ization. N evertheless, all pre-colonial rulers publicly adhered to a particular faith (including B uddhism ), and this affected public policies to greater or lesser degree. O n state oc­ casions, the rituals o f the ru ler’s religion were perform ed, and public revenues and lands w ere liberally granted to the functionaries of that faith. M any rulers patronised several faiths in this m anner, but in no case, as far as I know, was the patronage even-handed. The M ughals may have given grants to tem ples and sadhus, but they gave m uch m ore to m osques and pirs. A nd sim ilarly each Hindu ruler gave spe­ cial support to his sect. The notion o f the separation between state and religion was brought to India by the British. This enorm ously im portant change is com pletely overlooked in the literature on the colonial origins o f com m unalism . Individual officials m ay have

R e se a rc h is needed on some other social groups in Bengal. Thus Hein mentions in passing that in Bengal, T he upper class Hindu survived under Muslim rule by the Muslim’s unsteady tolerance’, Norvin J. Hein, ‘Caitanya’s Ecstasies and the Theology of the Name’, in Bardwell Smith (ed.), Hinduism, p. 16. 7Eaton, Rise o f Islam, p. 273. 58Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretist Tradition in Bengal (Princeton, 1983), p. 251. 59Richard Eaton's The Sufis of Bijapur (Princeton), throws lights on the way Islam was spread by women in this medieval Deccan kingdom.

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helped m issionary activity but this was not the rule. Indeed the rule was the opposite one o f not supporting any religion, and my guess is that this would be shown in the large reduction in official subven­ tions to religious institutions and functionaries in the colonial period. Indeed, historians them selves unconsciously accept this. They offer argum ents purporting to prove M ughal tolerance that they them selves w ould not accept for a m om ent if applied, m utatis m utandis, to the British. One exam ple is the argum ent that not all M ughal em perors levied jiziya, and that special taxes on Hindus or the¿A looting o f tem ples were m otivated only by the desire for revenue. There were o f course great differences between the actual policies o f various rulers. Again, w hile both Hindu and M uslim rulers ac­ cepted it as their duty to uphold their religion, how ever lax personally som e o f them m ay have been, there were very im portant differences in Islam ic and H indu political theory. Islam ic texts were categorical that the function o f the state was ‘to safeguard Islam and extend its m essage.61 It is perhaps to be expected that these texts, being far m ore recent than classical Hindu texts such as the Arthashastra, and Islam being part o f the W estern tradition o f political philosophy, the concept of the state should be clear in Islamic theory. A nother im­ portant difference is the treatm ent o f non-believers. Although the H indu king may well have regarded other religions or sects as inferior to his own, it is still possible to assert o f Hindus, as one cannot o f Islam ic rulers, ‘The king was charged with the duty to protect all religions in his kingdom .’ The sam e G erm an scholar, indeed, regards this religious tolerance as the m ark o f the Hindu group o f religions.62 A gain, Rizvi rem arks that ‘the Chishti interest in the betterm ent o f H indus and o f the untouchables am ong them as is claim ed by m odem M uslim s, is a figm ent o f their im agination.’63 Doubtless the rulers w ere not alw ays successful in their intentions. But in the long run, ¿A

One example of this type of reasoning is Satish Chandra Mughal Religious Policies, the Rajputs and the Deccan (Delhi, 1993). 61P.J. Vatikiotis, Islam and the State (London, 1987), paperback edition, (London, 1991), p. 10. 2Heinrich von Stietencron, ‘Hinduism, on the Proper Use of a Deceptive Noun’, in gunther D. Sontheimer and Herman Kulke (eds.), Hinduism Reconsidered (Delhi, 1989), pp 19-20. 63S.A.A. Rizvi, ‘Islamic Proselytisation: Seventh to Sixteenth Centuries’, in G.A. Oddie (ed.), Religion in South Asia, p. 29.

The Anti-communalism Project o f 'Left Secularist’ Historians 371 Hindu inclusiveness was w eaker than M uslim exclusiveness, to use - E aton’s terms. The dynam ics o f religious conversion is a badly neglected field. M any scholars agree that ‘conversion in South Asia... involved more an im m ediate “change o f fellow ship” than a spiritual e x p e rie n c e ’ but th at form ulation begs fu rth er questions, for ex ­ am ple, w hy did groups perceive the need for a ‘change in fellow ­ ship?’ How and why did the pace of Islam ization fluctuate? In the colonial period, the low er castes had several options open to them in their battle against the higher castes. In nineteenth-century Kerala, for exam ple, low caste Iravas had only to threaten to convert to C h ristian ity to win som e o f th eir dem ands from h ig h er caste H in­ dus, w hile other ch an g es in this period im proved their standing w ithin the H indu co m m u n ity .64 On the o th er hand Islam continued to attract converts in the n in eteen th century in Kerala. Conversely in the tw entieth century A m bedkar chose B uddhism as the option fo r h im se lf and his M ahar fo llow ers, and even considered Sikhism for a brief period.65 The drive to escape social stigm a is clearly very pow erful, but som e o f the purely econom ic reasons advanced for conversion are not so convincing. Som e historians have speculated that more o f the low er castes did not convert to Islam because their landlords did not allow them to, but w here is the historical evidence o f landlord pow er on the necessary scale? A gain, D ale’s attribution o f the spread o f Islam in K erala to m er­ cantile expansion begs several questions. W hy was Kerala, for ex ­ am ple, so different to Java, although both were part o f the ‘transm ission o f Islam to the coastal areas o f India and South-East

64

‘Although conversion was to remain a useful threat for Iravas to use against caste Hindus, a junior partnership amongst Christians ceased to be an attractive alternative when respectability among Hindus became a possibility’, Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nayar Dominance (London, 1976), p. 213. The point is that the Irvas wanted to remain Hindus, provided the old conditions were changed. 65There is a huge literature on Buddhism, Ambedkar, and the Dalits; for example Valerian Rodrigues, ‘Buddhism, Marxism and the Conception of Emancipation in Ambedkar’, in P.G. Robb (ed.), Dalit Movements and the Meaning o f Labour (New Delhi, 1993); Eleanor Zelliott, From Untouchable to Dalit (Delhi: 1992).

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A sia along established sea-trade routes?’66 C onversion to Islam has to be seen as part o f several international patterns, including the Iranian drive to convert B uddhists to Islam ; 7 only in this context w ill we understand m ovem ents w ithin the sub-continent. The conversion o f tribals to Buddhism , H induism , Islam or C hris­ tianity is particularly im portant. It is here that m issionaries o f dif­ ferent faiths would have com e into conflict. W e see this in the clash betw een Christian m issionaries and Hindus today, and it seems likely that such clashes took place earlier, though o f course in different form s. Before the British brought enlightenm ent notions o f secularism to India, it was taken for granted that the ruler was the protector o f the faith, w hichever faith that was, so incorporation w ith a non-tribal religion often also m eant incorporation into a non-tribal state. Clashes betw een different m ajor religions apart, tribals, or at least the tribal ruling class, m ay often have needed little persuasion to adopt the new faith, since conversion was the route to higher status and greater pow er. W hen tribals becam e Hindus they also jo in ed or form ed a caste. Iraw ati K arve has argued that m any present day G ujars are derived from the Central A sian tribes who invaded India in the Seventh o r eig h t century, and founded the G urjara P ratihara em pire. They spread from th e P u n jab to M a h a ra sh tra , ad o p ted new o c cu p atio n s, su ch as tra d e , an d e n te re d c aste so cie ty ‘in d iffe re n t w ays an d at d iffe re n t lev els’.68 T his q u estio n of the as­ sim ilatio n o f trib als is ia r g e ly ignored in the h isto rical accounts o f the ancient or m edieval periods, with the notable exception o f V ivekananda Jha.69The relationship betw een tribes and Hindu society

^Stephen F. Dale, ‘Conversion to Islam in Kerala’, in Oddie (ed.), Religion in

South Asia, p. 39. 67

S.A.A. Rizvi, refers to the ‘campaign for the Islamic proselytisation of Buddhists under the Ilkhan Mongols of Iran’, in ‘Islamic Proselytisation’, Oddi (ed.), Religion in South Asia, p. 30. ^Irawati Karve, Hindu Society—An Interpretation (Pune, 3rd edition, 1977), p. 60. Vivekananda Jha, ‘From Tribe to Untouchable: The Case of Nisadas’, in R.S. Sharma and V. Jha (eds), Indian Society: Historical Probings (Delhi 1974), and ‘Candala and the Origin of Untouchability’, The Indian Historical Review, Vol. 13, 1886-7. References to the literature on South India are given in the Introduction to the reprint of Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India (New Delhi, 1992), pp xxxv-xxxvii.

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 373 70

has concerned sociologists, from N irm al Bose to Andre Beteille, and they have also studied the conversion o f tribes to Christianity in recent tim es. But tribal conversion to Islam seem s to surface only indirectly in the literature, for instance, in studies o f Sufism . The pace o f conversion also depended on state polices. Hindu and M uslim rulers differed in their polices tow ards those outside the ‘state ’ religion, and to proselytization and reconversion. Thus A ziz A hm ed rem arks, ‘The use o f force was exceptional, as also state enthusiasm for proselytization, with a few exceptions like Firuz tughlaq. B ut all M uslim rulers w ere very strict in punishing apostasy. Sultan Zayn al-i-A bdin o f K ashm ir and A kbar were perhaps the only tw o m onarchs w ho accepted the equal religious right o f the Hindus to proselytize or reconvert’. The term conversion usually evokes im ages o f the conversions o f H indus into M uslim s or, to a lesser extent, C hristians. But the con­ version o f tribals to H indus certainly went on m uch longer, and m ay have been larger in extent, though even rough estim ates are not readi­ ly available. This neglect o f the conversion o f tribals into Hindus, Kulke suggests, m ay be because ‘no clearline of distinction can be draw n between the sphere o f literary brahm inical H induism and the w ide fold o f India’s folk cults and tribal religions, w hich form only parts o f an interw oven continuum based on m utual interrelations and dependency.] Also tribal religions, as he points out, are not docu­ m ented.72

PANDEY ON THE COLONIAL PERIOD A lthough the colonial period is crucial in the LS m odel, only G yan Pandey has attem pted to deal w ith the colonial ‘construction of com m unalism ’ directly. The Construction o f Communalism in

70See in particular, G.S. Ghurye, The Scheduled Tribes (Bombay, 3rd edition, 1963). Ghurye was very concerned that the strength of the Hindu population was being reduced by classifying tribes separately); N.K. Bose, The Structure of Hindu Society, translated from the Bengali by Andre Beteille; Surajit Sinha, ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India’, Man in India, 1962. 71 Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, pp 85-6 72Herman Kulke, Kings and Cults (New Delhi, 1993), p. 115.

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Colonial North India is itself a rather odd construction. One part consists o f detailed studies o f a few H indu-M uslim riotsin the nineteenth century, m ainly in the U.P. The other part contains generalizations about all India, not ju st N orth India, despite the title. In his own words: The all-India ‘Hindu community’ (and, to a large extent, the all-India ‘Muslim community’ too) was a colonial creation for, as I have argued, the social and economic changes brought by colonialism, Indian efforts to defend the in­ digenous religions and culture against western missionary attacks, the ‘unifying’ drive of the colonial state—which was marked at the level of ad­ ministrative structure and attempted political control ( ‘Muslims' must not be antagonized, ‘Hindu’ sensibilities must not be touched), and the very history of movements like that of Cow-Protection, widely publicized as they were by the end of the nineteenth century, tended to promote the idea of an all-India ‘Hindu community’ and an all-India ‘Muslim community* which were sup­ posedly ranged against one another for much of the time. In spite of a widely felt sense of ‘Hinduness’ and ‘Muslimness’. I would suggest that until the nineteenth century at any rate, people always had to work through caste, sect and so on to arrive at the unities implied in the conception of the ‘Hindu community’ and the ‘Muslim community’. Pandey criticises the unifying drive’ o f the colonial state, w ithout considering w hether unification had any advantages for Indians them ­ selves, either in the colonial period or now. His am bivalent discussion o f nationalism is no clearer, especially, since the refers at various places with rom antic nostalgia to the ‘little com m unity’; for instance, ‘the real alternative to colonialist historiography in the nineteenth century is to be found in the historical m em ory and accounts o f the “little com m unity” ...73 Little com m unities too can experience com ­ m unal conflicts, and in any case they have not m ade up the sum of the history o f the sub-continent for m illenia. P andey’s attachm ent to the m yth of the harm onious little com m unity leads to his absurd dis­ m issal o f C.A. B ayly’s im portant paper on com m unal conflicts be­ tw een 1700 and I860.74 Bayly challenges assum ptions widely held by m any historians— first, that syncretic practice excludes the pos­ sibility of com m unal riots, and secondly, that the riots of the late 73

Pandey, Colonial Construction, p. 115. 74C.A. Bayly ‘The Pre-history of “Communalism”? Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860’, Modem Asian Studies, 1985, pp 177-203.

The Anti-communalism Project o f ‘Left Secularist’ Historians 375 com m unal period were m arkedly different from earlier riots. Bayly him self stresses the im portance o f shifts in the balance o f pow er betw een different social groups in the analysis o f com m unalism . Pandey is correct in identifying some o f the elem ents in the ap­ parent grow th o f overt com m unalism , but grossly overrates the pow er o f colonialism . Pandey m ay rightly object to ‘the reduction o f Indian history to the history o f the state’, but om itting the need for the state is no better. Even if India had not been a colony, it would have undergone contending nationalism s, m ore or less successful attem pts to construct m odern governm ents and states, and m ass movem ents, and these would have contributed to the grow th o f com m unalism . M oreover, many things that did occur in the colonial period in India were not directly attributable to the policy o f the Raj— one obvious exam ple is the rise o f Islam ic ‘reform ’ m ovem ents which hom ogenised M uslim beliefs and practices all over Asia. Finally, there is also the separate question, which LS historians often avoid, of the policies o f independent India which have fostered com ­ m unalism . A ‘free’ India could no more escape the m odem world than China could, and we will not understand the history of com ­ m unalism unless we accept this fact. On one point I partly agree w ith LS history; the nature of com ­ m unalism may well have undergone an alteration in the colonial period. But the reasons for this are more com plex than in LS ac­ counts. A central fact is that the British were by and large neutral betw een Hinduism and Islam. O ther factors include urbanization, in­ dustrialization, and the w orldw ide rise in Islam ic fundam entalism . Factors specific to India include the nationalist m ovem ent, and the rise o f political parties, and a relatively free press. Som e o f the chan­ ges which originated in the colonial period are working them selves out today, for instance in the appeal o f com petitive dem ocratic politicians to group vote banks, first discussed by M .N. Srinivas, and in governm ent policies o f affirm ative action. O ther recent develop­ m ents cannot be attributed to the colonial period, or at least not directly. The most im portant may be the decay o f political parties. T o force these profound com plex changes into the sim ple LS model greatly dam ages historical research and writing, and probably harm s their short-term objectives as well.

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RECAPITULATION A group o f historians, here called the Left Secular or LS group, has been w riting on the com m unal problem in India. A distinct and very popular version o f Indian history em erges from their writings, w hich can be set out baldly thus. First, in the m edieval period, H indus and M uslim s lived in harm ony, by and large, and the seeds o f m odern com m unalism w ere sown only in the colonial period. This was partly deliberate; for instance, to acquire legitim acy for their rule, B ritish historians stressed that Hindus and M uslim s had previously been in conflict. A fter Independence, H indus, being the m ajority com m unity, pose the greatest threat to secularism . H indutva historians have revived the colonial thesis about pre-colonial religious conflict. H ence, as a m anifesto issued by several historians o f the Jaw aharlal U niversity asserts, secular historians (in their language, ‘the historian’) m ust intervene as historians. I have argued that this ver­ sion is seriously flaw ed as history. (I also happen to believe that it is bad politics since these w ritings have alienated m any H indus who w ould normally support a secular policy, but this is not my subject.) O ne would expect LS historians to be insensitive to the vast difIS ferences betw een Islam and H induism , differences obliterated by the stress on syncretism and ‘com posite culture’. M odern unbelievers (such as m yself) have to m ake a special effort to com prehend these differences, but overlooking these issues drains Indian history o f m uch of its m eaning. It is significant that LS historians take such a partial view o f political power. M uslim em perors and kings ruled far longer than the British, and they did not subscribe to m odem notions o f religious neutrality in state policy, how ever m uch they recognised political exigencies. This sim ple fact has surely left a deep im pact on the consciousness o f both M uslim s and Hindus. H istorians will have to overcom e the lack o f accounts o f how Hindus felt and the paucity o f descriptions o f life as it was actually lived in the m edieval period. These lacunae may reflect the Hindu tendencies to ignore

75Gopal betrays not only his ‘rationalism’ but also his unconscious Hinduism when he writes, ‘To the person moved by the religious impulse, the ultimate truth is one, every religion shows some traces of it and it is a matter of indifference to which religion one adheres.’ ‘Introduction’ to S. Gopal (ed.), Anatomy of a Confrontation, pv 14.

The Anti-communalism Project o f 'Left Secularist’ Historians 377 experience and to shut out unpleasant facts, tendencies well in evidence today. Finally, I m yself believe passionately in secularism but to achieve it we m ust reform our institutions and laws as they are now, not construct an unconvincing version o f history.

Index

Ackroyd, W. R. 189 Adas, M. 225 affirmative action 322-3 Ahmad, A. 364, 366-7, 373 Ahmed, A. 100 Ahmed, R. 368 Aggarwal, S. K. 110 Ali, M. 353 Aligarh School (see also Habib, I.) 4-5, 330-1 Altekar, A. S. 159 Anderson, P. 135, 330 Appadorai, A. 127, 144, 150 Arnold, D. 234, 344 Ashton, B. 345 Atchi Reddy, M. 144, 308, 341 Athar Ali, M. 5 Atkinson, A. B. 25, 224 Attwood, D. W. 132 Avineri, S. 135 Aziz, K. K. 353 Babri Masjid (see also cotrimunalism) 12 Baden-Powell, B. H. 26, 136 Bagchi, A. K. 197, 352 Bairoch, P. 187 Bajekal, M. 333 Baker, C. J. 66, 76, 132 Bala, P. 344 Banaji, J. 130 Baneijea, P. 205 Baneiji, A. K. 215 Banga, I. 154 Banjari 74

Bardhan, P. 131 Barrier, N. G. 242, 306 Barth, F. 100 Basu, A. 236-7 Baxi, U. 318 Bay ley, W. H. 154 Bay ly, C. A. 204-5, 312, 343, 374 Bayly, S. 67 Beck, B. 153 Becker, L. 134, 147, 172 Behl, R. P. 305 Benson, C. 29, 54 Bemier, F. 330 Beteille, A. 351 Bhaduri, A. 131 Bhagat, D. 242 Bharadwaj, K. 131 Bhattacharjee, P. J. 193 Bhattacharya, N. 306 Bhattacharya, S. 178 Bidwai, P. 362 Biebuyck, D. 122 Bilgrami, A. 352 Bird, R. 220 Bloch, M. 166 Blyn, G. 27, 188, 197, 276-7, 337 Boag, G. T. 52 Bohannan, L. 122 Bohannan, P. 122 Booth, A, 214, 218, 222, 225 Bose, N. K. 373 Boserup, E. 276 brahmin (see caste) Brandt, L. 283 Brass, P. R. 352, 366-7

Index Braudel, F. 136 Bray, F. 282 Breach of Contract Act 53 Breckenridge, C. A. 143 Breman, J. 210, 219, 294, 296, 301 Brewer, J. 5 Buchanan (Hamilton), F. 63-5, 67, 71, 73-4, 76, 78-9, 81 Buck, J. L. 268 Buddhism (see communalism) Butterworth, A. 168 Cain, P. J. 6-7 Caplan, L. 290, 294 caste (see also occupational structure; slavery ; major caste names) and servitude 290-4 (see also slavery) and the colonial state 294-9 Ceyion/Sri Lanka 61, 84, 100, 105-7 Champakalakshmi, R. 140 Chanana, D. R. 292 Chandra, B. 12, 353, 356 Chandra, S. 370 Chao, K. 270, 284 Charlesworth, N. 130, 311 Chatterji, B. 75, 339 Chatterji, R. 245 Chetti 72 China (see also state) economic condition and growth in 261-70 colonial India and imperial China, economic conditions and growth in 9-11, 278-86 Christensen, R. O. 100 Cipolla, C. 59-60 Clark, C. 56 Coase, R. H. 248 Cohn, B. S. 120, 133-4, 180, 319 Colebrook, H. T. 76 colonial experience 241-4, 247-8

379

colonial legacy 323-7 colonialism (see imperialism; state, the colonial; colonial exprience; colonial legacy) Colson, E. 253, 319, 342 communalism sociological and social anthropological studies 351-2 ‘left secular’ historiography, on precolonial period 11-13, 354-67, 376-7 ‘left secular’ historiography, on colonial period 373-7 religious conversion 367-73 Cook, M. 361 Creutzberg, P. 210, 212-14, 216-17, 221-2

Crone, P. 361 Dahlman, C. J. 96, 98, 151 Dale, S. F. 372 Damie, S. D. 361 Darling 100 Das, V. 157, 352 Datta, K. 238 Davis, L. 324, 335 Davis, K. 217, 272-3, 308 Dehejia, V. 359 deindustrialization 2, 61, 87 Denett, J. D. M. 127, 134, 136, 155, 161, 173, 178, 316 Desai, A. V. 188 Dewey, C. 341 Dharampal 337, 339, 343 Dhavan, R. 318 Dirks, N. 124, 133 Dobbin, C. 232 Drtze, J. 320, 345 Dumont, L. 68, 81 Eaton, R. 359, 367-9 economic conditions and growth, colonial India 270-8 economic growth (see also China, economic condition and growth in) 58-60

380

Index

economic inequality (see also land, distribution; land control) international 186—9 in India, regional 189-98 economic policy (see state) Elder, J. 110 Elson, R. E. 213 Embree, A. 245 Emmer, P. C. 308 Esherick, J. W. 263 Evans, P. B. 248 Faith, R. J. 158 famine 88, 255-8, 320-2, 345 Farmer, B. H. 104-5 Fasseur, C. 214, 225, 235 Faure, D. 283 Feng, W. 262 Fenoaltea, S. 95 Feurwerker, A. 261, 264, 270, 282 Fisch, J. 318 Frykenberg, R. E. 132, 234, 306 Fukuzawa, H. 203, 303 Fuller, C. J. 360 Fumivall, J. S. 235, 312 Furubotn, E. 147 Gadgil, D. R. 61 Galanter, M. 161, 179, 290, 318 Gandhi, R. 352 Geertz, C. 10, 128, 249 Gerard Adams, F. 58 Gerschenkron, A. 258 Ghurye, G. S. 373 Gluckman, M. 119, 134, 137 Gold, M. E. 105-6, 119 Goldsmith, R. W. 331, 334 Gopal, L. 170 Gopal, M. H. 67, 76, 80 Gopal, S. 356, 376 Gordon, S. 312 Goswami, O. 281 government/governance (see state) Granda, P. 167 growth, economic (see economic growth)

growth, population (see population growth) Gros, F. 126, 152 Guha, Ramachandra 299, 361 Guha, Ranajit 225 Guha, S. 4, 8-9, 254, 260, 317, 337, 344 Gune, V.T. 134, 162, 180 Gupta, P. S. 243 Gururajachar, S. 141 Habib, I. (see also Aligarh School) 175-6, 203-5, 231, 293, 330, 360 Hacking, I. 319, 344 Haines, M. 88 Halbfass, W. 360 Hall, J. 329 Hall, K. R. 72, 140, 143, 146, 167-8 Hansen, B. 223 Hansen, T. 362 Hardiman, D. 225-6 Hart, H.L. 134 Hartwell, R. M. 56, 59 Hasan, M. 355 Hayami, Y. 75 Hayek, F. A. 235 Heesterman, J. C. 201 Hein, N. J. 369 Heston, A. 57-8, 88, 188, 208, 221, 223, 274-7, 310, 324 Hiebert, P. C. 157, 162 Hill, T. P. 56 Hinduism (see communalism) Hirschmann, E. 314 Hoebel, E. A. 134 Hohfeld, W. N. 134 Holeya 65 Honoré, R. M. 128, 147, 150, 172-3 Hooker, M. B. 134 Hopkins, A. G. 6-7 Hou, C-m 284 Hsiao, K. 251 Huang, P. C. C. 283 Hubback, J. A. 104

Index Hudleston, W. 154 Hugenholtz, W. R. 243 Hurd, J. 279, 281 Huttenback, R. 324, 335 imperialism (see also state, the colonial) 6 Inam Commission 32 inamdari 32-3 Indian Economic and Social History Review 1

Indonesia taxation of agriculture (see state; taxation) 210-18 colonial and precolonial states (see state) 231-40 colonial experience compared with Indian 233-40 (see colonial experience; colonial legacy) inequality (see economic inequality) information, official 8, 319-20, 343-4 Ishikawa, S. 282 Ishwaran, K. 162, 180 Islam (see communalism) Islam, M. M. 197 Jain, A. K. 326, 346 Jala), A. 326, 353 Jangam 79 ja ti (see caste) Jeffrey, R. 295, 371 Jha, D. N. 334 Jha, V. 293, 372 Jodha, N. S. 113-14, 309 Jones, E. L, 248, 329 Joshi, N. C. 200 Jurgensmeyer, M. 307

381

Kangle, M. P. 178 Karashima, N. 97, 99, 139-40, 145, 164-5, 170 Karve, I. 372 Katz, R. 322 Kennedy, R. 78 Kennedy, V. 64 Kessinger, T. 108 Kidwai, S. 293 Kling, B. 301 Klitgaard, R. E. 322 Kohl, K. 300 KolfT, D. H. A. 235, 312, 333 Komati 72 Komogucfei, Y. 157 Kopytoff, I. 289, 314 Kosambi, D. D. 359 Kravis, I. 58 Krishna, R. 220, 224 Krishnamurthy, L. 51 Krishnamurty, J. 60, 192-3, 197, 277, 310 kshatriya (see caste) Kulkami, G. T. 203 Kulkami, S. D. 299 Kulke, H. 363, 373 Kumar, D. 19, 23, 32, 62, 66, 83-4, 98, 105, 116, 129, 134, 136, 153, 171-2, 174, 199-200, 206-7, 209, 252, 259, 273, 292, 295-7, 305, 313-14, 322, 332, 334-5, 337, 339, 372 Kumar, R. 219 Kuznets, S. 56-9, 61-2, 84, 187 Labbai 73 Lai, D. 330 Lambadi 74 land (see also land control; raiyatwari; inamdari; zamindari)

Kadam, V. S. 322 Kaikolar 63, 78 Kakar, S. 352 Kallar 67 Kana, P. V. 96, 127, 134, 154-6, 160, 173, 292

acquisition 3 distribution 3, 19-20, 31-2 distribution, estimates of 35-48 fragmentation defined 93 in Europe 94-6

382

Index

in India, reasons, costs of 99-101, 107-18 communal tenure (see land, custom) transfer, sale 22-3 (see also land, fragmentation) revenue incidence, Madras Presidency 27 statistics, Madras Presidency 25-31 Hindu, Islamic law (see also land control; land, property rights in) ownership, inheritance, tenure 29, 96 custom, customary law (see also land control; land, property rights in) ownership, inheritance, tenure 97-9, 100-1, 105-7 property rights in views on precolonial India 135-9, 171-2 Chola State and 139-70 revenue practice 173-8 protection 178-80 land control {see also land, property rights in) concept of 120, 172 African example 121-73 Chola State 124-8 Madras Presidency 128-33 landlessness (see land, distribution) Lavel, W. 262 Lee, J. 262 Lev, D. S. 238, 240, 315 Lewis, F. 240, 251 Lewis, W. A. 75, 187, 347 Lingat, R. 134, 136, 156, 159, 291 Little, L. K. 120 Long, J. 72 Low, D. A. 225, 336 Ludden, D. 22, 74, 98, 125, 127, 143, 154, 165 Mabbett, I. 81 Macfarlane, A. 155 Mackintosh, A. 81-2

Macleane, C. D. 21 Madan, T. N. 352, 364-6 Maddison, A. 204, 217, 331 Madiga 65 Madras Presidency landownership (see raiyatwari; land) service sector (see occupational structure) economic condition (see economic growth; famine) Mahalingam, T. V. 180 Maity, S. K. 173 Majumdar, R. C. 238 Mala, S. 309 Manor, J. 245 Mansvelt, W. M. F. 210, 212-14, 216-17, 221-2 Maravar 67 Markovitz, C. 340 Marx, on India 135, 330 Mateer, S. 71 Mathias, P. 5 McAlpin, M. 130, 320, 345 McCloskey, D. N. 94-5, 111 McMahon, A. H. 100 McNeil, W. 158 McVey, R. T. 234, 325 Mendelsohn, O. 137, 318 Michael Tharakan, P. K. 68 Miers, S. 289, 314 migration 3 Mines, M. 80 Minhas, B. S. 113 Mishra, B. 230 Mitchell, G. 359 Moertono, S. 210-11 Moffat, M. 3, 305 Moosvi, S. 175, 205, 330-1 Moreland, W. H. 136, 176-7 Morris, M. D. 197 Morrison, B. M. 170 Mujeeb, M. 367 Mukheijee, M. 186 Mukhia, H. 353 Muraleedharan, V. R. 344

Index 383 Murphy, R. 282 Musgrave, R. A. 208 Myers, R. 10, 262-3, 281 Myrdal, G. 136, 182 Nagaswamy, R. 126, 152 Nandy, A. 352, 365 Narain, D. 130 Natarajan, B. 196 National Council of Applied Economic Research 190-1, 193, 195 National Land Commission 115 nationalism (see also communalism) II Neale, W C. 120 Nicholas, R. 157 Nicholson, F. A. 130 Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. 139-41, 144, 148-9, 162-3, 170 Niyogi, J. P. 226 O’Brien, P. 5 O’Gorman Anderson, B. 236 O’Hanlon, R. 307 O’Malley, W. J. 225 occupational structure general 56-60 in Madras Presidency caste and (see also caste and major caste names) 62-3 gender 63 public administration and 64-8 education in 68-71 law and medicine in 71-2 trade, finance, transport in 72-5 domestic and personal services in 75-7 entertainment and the arts in 77 religious services in 77-80 beggars 80-2 changes in colonial period and 83-7 Pakistan 100 Pandey, G. 12, 354, 373-5

Parthasarathy, G. 51 patta/pattadar (see raiyatwari)

Patterson, O. 290, 295, 314 Pejovich, S. 147 Pen, J. 25 Peper, B. 202 Perkins, D. S. 264-7 Perlin, F. 87 Perloff, H. S. 195 Petty, Sir William 56, 58 Poggi, G. 346 Polak, J. J. 217-18, 222-3 policy, economic (see state) population growth 60-1, 88 Pradhan, M. A. 175 Prakash, G. 294, 302 Premchand 299-300 Price, P. 133 Prior, K. 366 property/property rights (see land) Pryor, F. 71 Purcell, V. 323 Putnam, R. 312 Qadir, A. 100 raiyatwari/ryotwari (see also land)

defined 20-2 Raj, K.N. 117 Ram, N. 241, 258, 321, 345 Ramakrishnan, K. C. 29 Ramaswamy, V. 72, 165 Ramsay, A. D. G. 100 Ranade, M. G. 201, 216 Ravallion, M. 320 Rawski, T. C. 261, 263, 265-70, 279, 285 Ray, R. 4 Raychaudhuri, H. C. 238 Raychaudhuri, T. 203, 330 Reddy, K. N. 207 Reid, A. 232 Reserve Bank of India 207 Reynolds, L. G. 58-9, 75, 89, 259, 278, 340 Rheinstein, M. 178

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