The White Slaves of England

by John C. Cobden

From the earliest times the "village system," with its almost patriarchal regulations, seems to have prevailed in Hindostan. Each village had its distinct organization, and over a certain number of villages, or a district, was an hereditary chief and an accountant, both possessing great local influence and authority, and certain estates. [106] The Hindoos were strongly attached to their native villages, and could only be forced to abandon them by the most constant oppressions. Dynasties might change and revolutions occur, but so long as each little community remained undisturbed, the Hindoos were contented. Mohammedan conquerors left this beautiful system, which had much more of genuine freedom than the British institutions at the present day, untouched. The English conquerors were not so merciful, although they were acquainted with Christianity. The destruction of local organizations and the centralization of authority, which is always attended with the increase of slavery, [107] have been the aims of English efforts. The principle that the government is the sole proprietor of the land, and therefore entitled to a large share of the produce, has been established, and slavery, to escape famine and misery, has become necessary to the Hindoos.

Exhaustion was the result of the excessive taxation laid upon the Hindoos by the East India Company. As the government became stinted for revenue, Lord Cornwallis was instructed to make a permanent settlement, by means of which all the rights of village proprietors over a large portion of Bengal were sacrificed in favour of the Zemindars, or head men, who were thus at once constituted great landed proprietors—masters of a large number of poor tenants, with power to punish at discretion those who were not able to pay whatever rent was demanded. [108] From free communities, the villages were reduced to the condition of British tenants-at-will. The Zemindaree system was first applied to Bengal. In Madras another system, called the Ryotwar, was introduced. This struck a fatal blow at the local organizations, which were the sources of freedom and happiness among the Hindoos. Government assumed all the functions of an immediate landholder, and dealt with the individual cultivators as its own tenants, getting as much out of them as possible.

The Zemindars are an unthrifty, rack-renting class, and take the uttermost farthing from the under-tenants. Oppressions and evictions are their constant employments; and since they have been constituted a landed aristocracy, they have fully acted out the character in the genuine British fashion.

Another tenure, called the Patnee, has been established of late years, by some of the great Zemindars, with the aid of government enactments, and it is very common in Bengal. The great Zemindar, for a consideration, makes over a portion of his estate in fee to another, subject to a perpetual rent, payable through the collector, who receives it on behalf of the zemindar; and if it is not paid, the interests of the patneedar are sold by the collector. These, again, have sub-patneedars, and the system has become very much in vogue in certain districts. The parties are like the Irish middlemen, and the last screws the tenant to the uttermost. [109]

During the British government of Bengal, wealth has been accumulated by a certain superior class, and population, cultivation, and the receipts from rent of land, have largely increased; but, as in England, the mass of the people are poor and degraded. In the rich provinces of Upper India, where the miserable landed system of the conquerors has been introduced, the results have been even more deplorable. Communities, once free, happy, and possessed of plenty, are now broken up, or subjected to such excessive taxation that their members are kept in poverty and slavery.

Colonel Sleeman, in his "Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official," records a conversation which he held with the head landholder of a village, organized under the Zemindar system. During the dialogue, some statements were made which are important for our purpose.

The colonel congratulated himself that he had given satisfactory replies to the arguments of the Zemindar, and accounted naturally for the evils suffered by the villagers. The reader will, doubtless, form a different opinion:—

"In the early part of November, after a heavy fall of rain, I was driving alone in my buggy from Garmuktesin on the Ganges, to Meerut. The roads were very bad, the stage a double one, and my horse became tired and unable to go on. I got out at a small village to give him a little rest and food; and sat down under the shade of one old tree upon the trunk of another that the storm had blown down, while my groom, the only servant I had with me, rubbed down and baited my horse. I called for some parched grain from the same shop which supplied my horse, and got a draught of good water, drawn from the well by an old woman, in a brass jug lent to me for the purpose by the shopkeeper.

"While I sat contentedly and happily stripping my parched grain from its shell, and eating it grain by grain, the farmer, or head landholder of the village, a sturdy old Rajpoot, came up and sat himself, without any ceremony, down by my side, to have a little conversation. [To one of the dignitaries of the land, in whose presence the aristocracy are alone considered entitled to chairs, this easy familiarity seems at first strange and unaccountable; he is afraid that the man intends to offer him some indignity, or what is still worse, mistakes him for something less than a dignitary! The following dialogue took place:—]