CHAPTER 8

The Farming Monopoly.

In S. 1840 (A.D. 1784), Zalim possessed only two or three hundred ploughs, which in a few years increased to eight hundred. At the commencement of what they term the new era (naya samvat) in the history of landed property of Kotah, the introduction of the pateli system, the number was doubled; and at the present time[[1]] no less than four thousand ploughs, of double yoke, employing sixteen thousand oxen, are used in the farming system of this extraordinary man; to which may be added one thousand more ploughs and four thousand oxen employed on the estates of the prince and the different members of his family.

This is the secret of the Raj Rana’s power and reputation; and to the wealth extracted from her soil, Kotah owes her preservation from the ruin which befell the States around her during the convulsions of the last half-century, when one after another sank into decay. But although sagacity marks the plan, and unexampled energy superintends its details, we must, on examining the foundations of the system either morally or politically, pronounce its effects a mere paroxysm of prosperity, arising from stimulating causes which present no guarantee of permanence. Despotism has wrought this magic effect: there is not one, from the noble to the peasant, who has not felt, and who does not still feel, its presence. When the arm of the octogenarian Protector shall be withdrawn, and the authority transferred to his son, who possesses none of the father’s energies, then will the impolicy of the system become apparent. It [540] was from the sequestrated estates of the valiant Hara chieftain, and that grinding oppression which thinned Haraoti of its agricultural population, and left the lands waste, that the regent found scope for his genius. The fields, which had descended from father to son through the lapse of ages, the unalienable right of the peasant, were seized, in spite of law, custom, or tradition, on every defalcation; and it is even affirmed that he sought pretexts to obtain such lands as from their contiguity or fertility he coveted, and that hundreds were thus deprived of their inheritance. In vain we look for the peaceful hamlets which once studded Haraoti: we discern instead the ori, or farmhouse of the regent, which would be beautiful were it not erected on the property of the subject; but when we inquire the ratio which the cultivators bear to the cultivation, and the means of enjoyment this artificial system has left them, and find that the once independent proprietor, who claimed a sacred right of inheritance,[[2]] now ploughs like a serf the fields formerly his own, all our perceptions of moral justice are shocked.

The love of country and the passion for possessing land are strong throughout Rajputana: while there is a hope of existence the cultivator clings to the bapota, and in Haraoti this amor patriae is so invincible, that, to use their homely phrase, “he would rather fill his pet in slavery there, than live in luxury abroad.” But where could they fly to escape oppression? All around was desolation; armies perambulated the country, with rapid strides, in each other’s train, “one to another still succeeding.” To this evil Kotah was comparatively a stranger; the Protector was the only plunderer within his domains. Indeed, the inhabitants of the surrounding States, from the year 1865, when rapine was at its height, flocked into Kotah, and filled up the chasm which oppression had produced in the population. But with the banishment of predatory war, and the return of industry to its own field of exertion, this panacea for the wounds which the ruler has inflicted will disappear; and although the vast resources of the regent’s mind may check the appearance of decay, while his faculties survive to superintend this vast and complicated system, it must ultimately, from the want of a principle of permanence, fall into rapid disorganization. We proceed to the details [541] of the system, which will afford fresh proofs of the talent, industry, and vigilance of this singular character.

Agriculture in Kotah.

Each plough or team is equal to the culture of one hundred bighas; consequently 4000 ploughs will cultivate 400,000 during each harvest, and for both 800,000, nearly 300,000 English acres. The soil is deemed poor which does not yield seven to ten maunds[[4]] of wheat per bigha, and five to seven of millet and Indian corn. But to take a very low estimate, and allowing for bad seasons, we may assume four maunds per bigha as the average produce (though double would not be deemed an exaggerated average): this will give 3,200,000 maunds of both products, wheat and millet, and the proportion of the former to the latter is as three to two. Let us estimate the value of this. In seasons of abundance, twelve rupees per mauni,[[5]] in equal quantities of both grains, is the average; at this time (July 1820), notwithstanding the preceding season has been a failure throughout Rajwara (though there was a prospect of an excellent one), and grain a dead weight, eighteen rupees per mauni is the current price, and may be quoted as the average standard of Haraoti: above is approximating to dearness, and below to the reverse. But if we take the average of the year of actual plenty, or twelve rupees[[6]] per mauni of equal quantities of wheat and juar, or one rupee per maund, the result is thirty-two lakhs of rupees annual income.

Let us endeavour to calculate how much of this becomes net produce towards the expenses of the government, and it will be seen that the charges are about one-third gross amount [542].

Expenses.

Establishments—namely, feeding cattle and servants, tear and wear of gear, and clearing the fields—one-eighth of the gross amount,[[7]] or400,000
Seed600,000
Replacing 4000 oxen annually, at 20s.[[8]]80,000
Extras20,000
1,100,000

We do not presume to give this, or even the gross amount, as more than an approximation to the truth; but the regent himself has mentioned that in one year the casualties in oxen amounted to five thousand! We have allowed one-fourth, for an ox will work well seven years, if taken care of. Thus, on the lowest scale, supposing the necessities of the government required the grain to be sold in the year it was raised, twenty lakhs will be the net profit of the regent’s farms. But he has abundant resources without being forced into the market before the favourable moment; until when, the produce is hoarded up in subterranean granaries. Everything in these regions is simple, yet efficient: we will describe the grain-pits.

Storage of Grain.

Reputable merchants of the Mahajan tribe refrain from speculating in grain, from the most liberal feelings, esteeming it dharm nahin hai, ‘a want of charity.’ The humane Jain merchant says, “to hoard up grain, for the purpose of taking advantage of human misery, may bring riches, but never profit.”

According to the only accessible documents, the whole crown-revenue of Kotah from the tax in kind, amounted, under bad management, to twenty-five lakhs of rupees. This is all the regent admits he collects from (to use his own phrase) his handful (pachiwara) of soil: of course he does not include his own farming system, but only the amount raised from the cultivator. He confesses that two-thirds of the superficial area of Kotah were waste; but that this is now reversed, there being two-thirds cultivated, and only one-third waste, and this comprises mountain, forest, common, etc.

Extortionate Taxes.

When the English Government came in contact with Rajwara, it was a primary principle of the universal protective alliance to proclaim that it was for the benefit of the governed as well as the governors, since it availed little to destroy the wolves without if they were consigned to the lion within. But there are and must be absurd inconsistencies, even in the policy of western legislators, where one set of principles is applied to all. Zalim soon discovered that the fashion of the day was to parwarish, ‘foster the ryot.’ The odious character of the tax was diminished, and an edict limited its operation to the farmer, the seller, and the purchaser; and so anxious was he to conceal this weapon of oppression, that the very name of lattha was abolished, and sawai hasil, or ‘extraordinaries,’ substituted. This item is said still to amount to five lakhs of rupees.

Thus did the skill and rigid system of the regent exact from his pachiwara of soil, full fifty lakhs of rupees. We must also recollect that nearly five more are to be added on account of the household lands of the members of his own and the prince’s family, which is almost sufficient to cover their expenses.

What will the European practical farmer, of enlarged means and experience, think of the man who arranged this complicated system, and who, during forty years, has superintended its details? What opinion will he form of his vigour of mind, who, at the age of fourscore years, although blind and palsied, still superintends and maintains this system? What will he think of the tenacity of memory, which bears graven thereon, as on a tablet, an account of all these vast depositories of grain, with their varied contents, many of them the store of years past; and the power to check the slightest errors of the intendant of this vast accumulation; while, at the same time, he regulates the succession of crops throughout this extensive range? Such is the minute topographical knowledge which the regent possesses of his country, that every field in every farm is familiar [545] to him; and woe to the superintendent Havaldar[[10]] if he discovers a fallow nook that ought to bear a crop.

Yet vast as this system is, overwhelming as it would seem to most minds, it formed but a part of the political engine conducted and kept in action by his single powers. The details of his administration, internal as well as external, demanded unremitted vigilance. The formation, the maintenance, and discipline of an army of twenty thousand men, his fortresses, arsenals, and their complicated minutiae, were amply sufficient for one mind. The daily account from his police, consisting of several hundred emissaries, besides the equally numerous reports from the head of each district, would have distracted an ordinary head, “for the winds could not enter and leave Haraoti without being reported.” But when, in addition to all this, it is known that the regent was a practical merchant, a speculator in exchanges, that he encouraged the mechanical arts, fostered foreign industry, pursued even horticulture, and, to use his own words, “considered no trouble thrown away which made the rupee return sixteen and a half annas, with whom can he be compared?”[[11]] Literature, philosophy, and excerptae from the grand historical epics, were the amusements of his hours of relaxation; but here we anticipate, for we have not yet finished the review of his economical character. His monopolies, especially that of grain, not only influenced his own market, but affected all the adjacent countries; and when speculation in opium ran to such a demoralizing excess in consequence of the British Government monopolizing the entire produce of the poppy cultivated throughout Malwa, he took advantage of the mania, and by his sales or purchases raised or depressed the market at pleasure. His gardens, scattered throughout the country, still supply the markets of the towns and capital with vegetables, and his forests furnish them with fuel.

So rigid was his system of taxation that nothing escaped it. There was a heavy tax on widows who remarried. Even the gourd of the mendicant paid a tithe, and the ascetic in his cell had a domiciliary visit to ascertain the gains of mendicity, in order that a portion should go to the exigencies of the State. The tumba barar, or ‘gourd-tax,’ was abolished after forming for a twelvemonth part of the fiscal code of Haraoti, and then not through any scruples of the regent, but to satisfy his friends. Akin to this, and even of a lower grade, was the jharu barar, or ‘broom-tax,’ which continued for ten years; but the many lampoons it provoked from the satirical Bhat operated on the more sensitive feelings of his son, Madho Singh, who obtained its repeal [546].

Zālim Singh and the Bards.

Though rigid in his observance of the ceremonies of religion, and sharing in the prevailing superstitions of his country, he never allows the accidental circumstance of birth or caste to affect his policy. Offences against the State admit of no indemnity, be the offender a Brahman or a bard; and if these classes engage in trade, they experience no exemption from imposts.

Such is an outline of the territorial arrangements of the regent Zalim Singh. When power was assigned to him, he found the State limited to Kelwara on the east; he has extended it to the verge of the Plateau, and the fortress which guards its ascent, at first rented from the Mahrattas, is now by treaty his own. He took possession of the reins of power with an empty treasury and thirty-two lakhs of accumulating debt. He found the means of defence a few dilapidated fortresses, and a brave but unmanageable feudal army. He has, at an immense cost, put the fortresses into the most complete state of defence, and covered their ramparts with many hundred pieces of cannon; and he has raised and maintains, in lieu of about four thousand Hara cavaliers, an army—regular we may term it—of twenty thousand men, distributed into battalions, a park of one hundred pieces of cannon, with about one thousand good horse, besides the feudal contingents.

But is this prosperity? Is this the greatness which the Raja Guman intended should be entailed upon his successors, his chiefs, and his subjects? Was it to entertain twenty thousand mercenary soldiers from the sequestrated fields of the illustrious Hara, the indigenous proprietor? Is this government, is it good government according to the ideas of more civilized nations, to extend taxation to its limit, in order to maintain this cumbrous machinery. We may admit that, for a time, such a system may have been requisite, not only for the maintenance of his delegated [547] power, but to preserve the State from predatory spoliation; and now, could we see the noble restored to his forfeited estates, and the ryot to his hereditary rood of land, we should say that Zalim Singh had been an instrument in the hand of Providence for the preservation of the rights of the Haras. But, as it is, whilst the corn which waves upon the fertile surface of Kotah presents not the symbol of prosperity, neither is his well-paid and well-disciplined army a sure means of defence; moral propriety has been violated; rights are in abeyance, and until they be restored, even the apparent consistency of the social fabric is obtained by means which endanger its security.

[1]. This was drawn up in 1820-21.

[2]. Throughout the Bundi territory, where no regent has innovated on the established laws of inheritance, by far the greater part of the land is the absolute property of the cultivating ryot, who can sell or mortgage it. There is a curious tradition that this right was obtained by one of the ancient princes making a general sale of the crown land, reserving only the tax. In Bundi, if a ryot becomes unable, from pecuniary wants or otherwise, to cultivate his lands, he lets them; and custom has established four annas per bīgha of irrigated land, and two annas for gorma, that dependent on the heavens, or a share of the produce in a similar proportion, as his right. If in exile, from whatever cause, he can assign this share to trustees; and, the more strongly to mark his inalienable right in such a case, the trustees reserve on his account two sers on every maund of produce, which is emphatically termed 'hakk bapota ka bhum,' the ‘dues of the patrimonial soil.’

[3]. [Now the commercial capital of Jhālawār State, on the Kotah border.]

[4]. A maund is seventy-five pounds.

[5].

Grain Measure of Rajputana.—75pounds= 1 ser [? 1·7 lbs. The
standard ser is a little over 2 lbs.]
43sers= 1 maund.
12maunds= 1 mauni.
100maunis= 1 manasa.

[6]. It does descend as low as eight rupees per mauni for wheat and barley, and four for the millets, in seasons of excessive abundance.

[7]. It is not uncommon in Rajwara, when the means of individuals prevent them from cultivating their own lands, to hire out the whole with men and implements; for the use of which one-eighth of the produce is the established consideration. We have applied this in the rough estimate of the expenses of the regent’s farming system.

[8]. [To illustrate the rise in prices, the average value of a plough bullock is now Rs. 40, or about £2:13s.]

[9]. [Jagātya, a Marāthi word derived from jakāt, Arabic zakāt, the religious alms which a Musalmān is bound to pay.]

[10]. [Havāldār, havāladār, the officer in charge of the collection of grain.]

[11]. There are sixteen annas to a rupee.