The frequent passages of hostile armies and other causes had left much culturable land a desert. In order to restore the population and induce colonists to settle and cultivate in such spots, leases on favourable terms were granted to desáis, who administered the land as they pleased, and were directly responsible to the head revenue authority of the sub-division for the annual rent. The patels and other village officials also made use of their position with reference to the foreign supervisors in appropriating large tracts of waste land to their own uses. The kamávísdár or farmer for the time being was interested only in recouping himself for the amount he had agreed to pay the Marátha government, together with a margin for bribes paid to underlings at head-quarters for good offices with regard to the farm. He was ready, therefore, to make use of any agency in collecting his revenue that he found effective, and which saved the cost of a personal establishment. In many parts of the country there were hereditary village headmen accustomed to the duty of extorting money from unwilling ryots. In other places, such for instance as Dholka, it had been customary for certain Muhammadans called Kasbátis, to become responsible for the revenue of certain villages in return for a discount on the jama or amount collected (manoti). These manotidárs were found so useful by the Marátha officials that they gradually acquired an hereditary position and claimed proprietary rights in the villages for which they had been formerly mere agents for collection. They also acted as desáis or colonists, and succeeded in getting their leases of certain tracts renewed long after they had ceased to actively improve the land, which had in fact been all brought under regular cultivation.
Such was the agency employed in administering the revenue. The kamávísdár was also the dispenser of justice both civil and criminal. As his object was to make money and not to improve the condition of his charge, his punishments consisted chiefly in fines, and most offences could be paid for. No record of trials was
The Maráthás, a.d. 1760–1819.
General Review. kept except a memorandum of the amount passed at each decision to the credit of the farmer. In civil suits sometimes one-fourth of the amount in dispute was assigned as costs and appropriated by the court. The Girásiás in their own territory exercised somewhat similar jurisdiction, but grave crimes with violence were apparently left to the party injured or his relations to decide after the manner of the offence. Arbitration, too, was a frequent mode of deciding differences of both civil and criminal nature, but the kamávísdár or girásiá usually managed that the State should not be a loser by such a method of settlement.
The whole system indicates clearly enough the slight hold the Maráthás had on the province and their desire to make the most out of it for the furtherance of court intrigues or political ends above the Gháts. There is nothing to show that they contemplated a permanent colonization of the country until the British Government undertook the task of dividing the Marátha nation by the establishment of a powerful and independent court at Baroda.
The home of the Maráthás was always the Dakhan, and for many years after they had effected a lodgment in Gujarát, their army regularly returned for the rainy season to the country from whence they originally came. Their leaders were encouraged to be as much as possible near the court by the Dábháde, or the regent on the one side and by the Peshwa on the other: the former on account of their weight with the army and the Marátha chiefs, the latter in order that their influence in a distant dependency might not grow beyond what prudence recommended or might be counteracted if its tendency to increase became manifest. For similar reasons no force was allowed to be maintained in Gujarát sufficient to consolidate the Marátha acquisitions there into a manageable whole. Dámáji Gáikwár, had he lived, would undoubtedly have done much towards this end by means of his personal influence; but, as it happened, the thin crust of Marátha domination rapidly disappeared before it either was assimilated into the system of the province or hardened over it. A military occupation of a large and civilised district at a distance from the mother-country, and prevented by the jealousy of the central authority and the short-sightedness of those in charge of its exploitation, from either conforming itself to the elements it found already established, or absorbing the vital forces of the government it dispossessed, a system without the breath of life, without elasticity, without the capacity of self-direction, imposed bodily upon a foreign people, without even the care of preparing a foundation, such seems to have been the Marátha government, containing within itself all that was necessary to ensure a precarious, but while it lasted, an oppressive existence.
[1] Surat was known as Báb-ul-makkah or the Gate of Makka on account of its being the starting place of the ships annually conveying the Muhammadan pilgrims of India to the shrine of their Prophet. [↑]
[2] Sardeshmukhi or ten per cent on the revenue. The chauth was nominally one-fourth, but both these claims were fluctuating in their proportions to the total revenue. [↑]
[3] Now the capital of the Rája of Rájpipla. [↑]