LECTURE

V.

Amount of revenue.

The zemindar and cultivator in Bengal sometimes divided the produce in equal shares on the buttai system: but in later times the zemindar frequently exacted even more than this proportion, generally however upon a money assessment, which was probably not felt to be so oppressive as an equal increase of the rent taken in kind. The rates seem to have been raised to two-thirds of the crop in some places: from one-third to two-thirds of the crop being the usual assessment, the lower rate being however more general.1 The tenants were classified under different names according to the mode in which they were assessed. Those paying a fixed rate for the beegah were called hari ryots, and those paying according to the crops produced were called fasli ryots. Again, lands assessed in money were called ryotty. Lands assessed in cash according to the estimated produce were called raikunkuti; and those assessed at a rate depending upon the actual crop halhasili.3

Having now described the mode in which the revenue was assessed both upon the zemindar and upon the ryots, it will be useful to give some particulars of the details of the assessment, and of the amount paid by the zemindar. The revenue was classed under two heads,-mal, the revenue derived from the land; and sayer, the variable personal taxes, including duties, customs, &c. These were both included in the jumma; and the zemindar collected

1 Land Tenure by a Civilian, 65.

Whinfield's Landlord and Tenant, 70. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 65.

' Whinfield's Landlord and Tenant, 70. Fifth Report, Vol. I, 164. Fifth Report, Vol. I, 239; Vol. II, 163. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 60.

both accounting separately for each.1 The sayer was about one-tenth of the whole revenue. Besides the regular revenue there were also occasional sources of revenue, consisting mainly of later exactions, and included under the head of bazee jumma; such as fines, forfeitures, marriage fees, grazing fees, &c.2

LECTURE
V.

The assessment by Todar Mull was, as already mentioned, The assul, the assumed basis of all subsequent assessments, wherever it had been applied. That assessment with its details was called the assul-toomar-jumma3 (or original rent or revenue roll); and under this name, or in its revised form, called jumma-kaumil-toomar (original revised revenue details), was referred to throughout the country as the ultimate standard of revenue." This original assessment, called shortly the assul, was fixed, as we have seen, at a certain rate for the beegah, varying with the quality of the soil and the facilities for securing an artificial supply of water.5 The amount of the assul jumma for Bengal was originally Rs. 106,93,152.6 This was increased by about twenty-four lacs of rupees in the reign of Aurungzebe or Alumgir, Bengal being then under the administration of Shah Sujah (A.D., 1658): but the new standard still continued to be called by the name of Todar Mull. Again, in 1722 Jaffier Khan

Fifth Report, Vol. I, 103, 265, 266. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 70, 112. Orissa, Vol. I, 53; Vol. II, 231 to 236.

Fifth Report, Vol. II, 162. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 60, 69, 70, 76, 77, 226 to 232.

' Fifth Report, Vol. I, 360, 361; Vol. II, 164. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 59.

Fifth Report, Vol. II, 157.

3 Ib., Vol. I, 216. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 69.

7

Fifth Report, Vol. I, 103, 189.

Ib., 103, 173, 245, 246 to 250, 360. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 59; Vol. III, 235. Baillie's Land Tax, xl.

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LECTURE increased the jumma; and a new assul-toomar-jumma was framed, and teshkees drawn up on the footing of the divisions into zemindaries. This was probably the first official recognition of the modern zemindary divisions. This assessment was adopted by Jaffier Khan's successor Sujah Khan in 1728. The increase of revenue thus effected was about 211 lacs, being an actual increase of 11 lacs, and a reduction of the allowances out of the revenue to the extent of 10 lacs.o The jumma, which was still called Todar Mull's assessment, was after this period not directly increased: the further exactions being made in the shape of abwabs, and kept separate in the revenue records.R

Abwabs.

These abwabs were imposed by successive rulers; and were the means by which the State appropriated what share it could of the improved condition of the land, or of the increased revenue which the zemindar had contrived to wring out of the ryots. These abwabs were imposed, as we shall see, upon various pretexts. Mr. Grant says that the revenue was thus only kept up to the original standard ; the amount of revenue having practically diminished in consequence of the depreciation of the precious metals which followed the discovery of America.5 Others consider these additions as mere arbitrary exactions, enforced by the strong hand: while others again treat the imposition of abwabs as the assertion by the State of its original

Fifth Report, Vol. I, 259 to 272, 273. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 59.

2 Fifth Report, Vol. I, 252 to 255.

' Ib., 109. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 69. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 66.

See for a specimen of the jumma as calculated with abwabs the case of Dinajepore; Fifth Report, Vol I, 110, 190.

Fifth Report, Vol. I, 272.

V.

right to the soil, and its consequent right to a proportion LECTURE of the improved value of it. But the mode in which an increased assessment was obtained leads Mr. John Stuart Mill to infer, and with reason, that the ryots had customary rights, which could not safely be infringed in any more direct way. The former additions to the toomar jumma had been indeed made by a direct increase; but the details of those additions show that they professed to be based upon a more correct valuation of the sources of revenue, such as increased land brought into cultivation, increased value of the produce, and the resumption of allowances of various kinds, which had before been deducted from the revenue. The passage from Mr. Mill may be usefully quoted here:

"In India and other Asiatic communities similarly constituted the ryots or peasant farmers are not regarded as tenants-at-will, nor even as tenants by virtue of a lease. In most villages there are indeed some ryots on this precarious footing consisting of those or the descendants of those who have settled in the place at a known and comparatively recent period: but all who are looked upon as descendants or representatives of the original inhabitants, and even many more tenants of ancient date, are thought entitled to retain their land as long as they pay the customary rents. What these customary rents are or ought to be has indeed in most cases become a matter of obscurity; usurpation, tyranny, and foreign conquest having to a great

'Rickards' History of India, Vol. II, 224, 236. Patton's Asiatic Monarchies, 73, 175. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 9. Evidence of Lieut.-Col. Barnewall before the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1832), 1753 to 1756, 1758. Directions for Revenue Officers, 3, 21.

' Fifth Report, Vol. I, 246 to 250, 253 to 255. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 47 to 51.

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LECTURE degree obliterated the evidences of them. But when an old and purely Hindoo principality falls under the dominion of the British Government, or the management of its officers, and when the details of the revenue system come to be enquired into, it is usually found that though the demands of the great landholder, the State, have been swelled by fiscal rapacity until all limit is practically lost sight of, it has yet been thought necessary to have a distinct name and a separate pretext for each increase of exaction; so that the demand has sometimes come to consist of thirty or forty different items in addition to the nominal rent. This circuitous mode of increasing the payments assuredly would not have been resorted to if there had been an acknowledged right in the landlord to increase the rent. Its adoption is a proof that there was once an effective limitation, a real customary rent: and that the understood right of the ryot to the land, so long as he paid rent according to custom, was at some time or other more than nominal.”1

The following remarks of Mr. Justice (now Sir George) Campbell on the mode of imposing cesses upon the ryots may also be quoted:

"A common process seems to have been a mere repetition of the old process by which Toran Mull's assessment was enhanced. In spite of the prohibition against adding abwabs or cesses to the consolidated rates of the time of settlement, illegal cesses (almost always in the regulated form of percentages, so many annas or pie in the rupee, or so many seers in the maund) were from time to time added on and gradually annexed to the customary rate: then as

Political Economy, Bk. ii, Ch. iv, § 2; People's Edn., p. 148.