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Course : TNPSC Group I Mains Material

Subject : Modern History of India and Indian Culture
Topic : Effects of British rule on socio-economic factors

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 EFFECT OF BRITISH RULE ON
SOCIO‐ECONOMIC FACTORS

Reforms in Civil and Judicial Administration

▪ Cornwallis organized company administration securing the services of William

Jones, a judge and an Orientalist. He set up a machinery for the detection and
punishment of crime, thereby ending the dual system of government established by
Clive. The collection of revenue was separated from administration and justice.
▪ He deprived the collectors of their judicial function and confined them to revenue
collection. Civil and criminal courts were thoroughly reorganized. At the top of the
judicial system was the Sadar Diwani Adalat and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat. These
two highest civil and criminal courts of appeal at Calcutta were presided over by the
Governor General and his Council.
▪ Under them were four provincial courts of appeal at Calcutta, Deccan,
Murshidabad and Patna. Each was to function under three European judges, aided
by Indian advisers. Next came the District and City courts, each presided over by a
European judge assisted by Indians. Every district and important city were
provided with a court. At the bottom of the judicial system were courts under
Indian judges, called munsifs.
▪ In civil cases, Muslim law was imposed and followed. In criminal cases, Hindu and
Muslim laws were applied according to the religion of the litigants. The biggest
contribution of Cornwallis was the reform of the civil services. Cornwallis provided
scope for employing capable and honest public servants. He put an end to the old
tradition of the civil service wherein the Company’s servants were given a small
salary but were permitted to trade. Cornwallis appointed people solely on merit but
considered that efficiency required the exclusion of Indians from the Company’s
service.
▪ Every district was divided into thanas (police circles). Each thana was under a
daroga, an Indian officer. Cornwallis’ police system was further improved under
Warren Hastings. The rigid separation of judicial and revenue powers was given

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 up. The Collector began to function as Magistrate as well. Cornwallis, who toned up
the civil and criminal administration, however, did not pay adequate attention to
the education of Company servants.
▪ It was Wellesley who emphasized the need for educating and training them.
Wellesley thought the civilians should have a knowledge of the languages, laws,
customs and manners and history of India, in addition to their liberal education in
England. With this object, the College of Fort William was founded at Calcutta in
1800.
▪ A three-year course of study was provided for the Company’s civil servants. The
college was staffed by European professors and eighty Indian pundits. This became
the Oriental School for Bengal civilians. In 1806 the East India College was
established in England. In Madras, the College of Fort St George was set up by F.W.
Ellis in 1812 on the lines of College of Fort William. It was here that the theory that
the South Indian languages belonged to a separate family of languages independent
of Sanskrit was formulated.

Education
Under Company Rule
▪ The establishment of a Madrasa by a learned maulvi with the support of Warren
Hastings was the beginning of initiatives of British government to promote
education. This Madrasa started with forty stipendiary students. What Warren
Hastings had done for the Muslims; his successor was prepared to do for the
Hindus. Cornwallis established a Sanskrit college (1791) in Benares. The successive
governors in the next twenty years, however, did nothing to follow it up.
▪ The Company held the view that it was not desirable in its own interests to
encourage education in India. In 1813, when the Company Charter was renewed, it
contained a clause intended to force on the Company the initiative for a regular
educational policy. Hastings encouraged the foundation of vernacular schools by
missionaries. He was the patron of the Hindu College, established at Calcutta in
1817, supported by the Indian public for the teaching of English and of Western
science.
▪ The cause of education was further promoted by missionaries like Alexander Duff.
Thanks to Hastings’ liberal outlook, press censorship instituted in 1799 was

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 abolished. It was in such an atmosphere that the Bengali Weekly, the Samachar
Darpan was started in 1818.
▪ The Charter of 1833 emphasized the development of the country primarily in the
interest of its inhabitants. William Bentinck, appointed the first Governor General
of united India reformed the society by suppressing thuggee (robbery and murder
committed by the thugs in accordance with their ritual), abolishing sati and
introducing English as the medium of instruction in schools and colleges.
▪ This he thought would facilitate Indianisation of the services. Bentinck founded the
Calcutta Medical College in March 1835. The students of this college were sent to
London in 1844 to complete their studies. Then years after the establishment of the
Calcutta Medical College, the Grant Medical College in Bombay was founded in
1845.
▪ In 1847 the Thomason Engineering College at Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee) came
into existence. In 1849 a school for girls was founded in Calcutta. Macaulay came to
India as a law member in 1835. He was appointed President of the Board of
Education. He had a poor opinion of indigenous learning. Macaulay recommended
and government accepted to make English the literary and official language of
India.
▪ Dalhousie showed keen interest in education. He approved of the system of
vernacular education designed by James Thomason, Lieutenant Governor of the
North-Western Provinces (1843- 53). The Educational Dispatch of Charles Wood
(1854) outlined a comprehensive scheme of education-primary, secondary,
collegiate. Departments of Public Instruction and a university for each of the three
Presidencies were organized for the purpose.
▪ University of Madras was established under this plan (1857), along with
universities in Bombay and Calcutta. Dalhousie modified the policy of Macaulay by
encouraging educational institutions in vernaculars too. He also agreed to the
principle of grants-in-aid to private effort, irrespective of caste or creed.

Under British Rule:

▪ Lord Ripon was a champion of education of the Indians. Ripon wanted to review
the working of the educational system on the basis of the recommendations of the

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 Wood’s Despatch. For further improvement of the system Ripon appointed a
Commission in 1882 under the chairmanship of Sir William Hunter. The
Commission came to be known as the Hunter Commission. The Commission
recommended for the expansion and improvement of the elementary education of
the masses.
▪ The Commission suggested two channels for the secondary education-one was
literary education leading up to the Entrance Examination of the university and the
other preparing the students for a vocational career. The Commission noted the
poor status of women education. It encouraged the local bodies in the villages and
towns to manage the elementary education. This had resulted in the extraordinary
rise in the number of educational institutions in India.
▪ Curzon took a serious view of the fall in the standard of education and discipline in
the educational institutions. In his view the universities had degenerated into
factories for producing political revolutionaries. To set the educational system in
order, he instituted in 1902, a Universities Commission to go into the entire
question of university education in the country. On the basis of the findings and
recommendations of the Commission, Curzon brought in the Indian Universities
Act of 1904, which brought all the universities in India under the control of the
government.

British Agrarian Policy

▪ It is a well-known fact that India is primarily an agricultural country. The

overwhelming majority of its people depend on agriculture for sustenance. If the
crop is good, prosperity prevails otherwise it leads to famine and starvation.
Till the 18th century, there was a strong relation between agriculture and cottage
industries in India. India was not only ahead in the field of agriculture than most
other countries but it also held a prominent place in the world in the field of
handicraft production.
▪ The British destroyed handicraft industry in the country while unleashing far-
reaching changes in the country’s agrarian structure by introducing new systems of
land tenures and policies of revenue administration.

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▪ India’s national income, foreign trade, industrial expansion and almost every other
dominion of economic activity, depended on the country’s agriculture. The British
policies revolved around getting maximum income from land without caring much
about Indian interests of the cultivators. They abandoned the age -old system of
revenue administration and adopted in their place a ruthless policy of revenue
collection.
▪ After their advent, the British principally adopted three types of land tenures.
Roughly 19 per cent of the total area under the British rule, i.e., Bengal, Bihar,
Banaras, division of the Northern Western Provinces and northern Karnataka, were
brought under the Zamindari System or the Permanent Settlement. The
second revenue system, called the Mahalwari Settlement, was introduced in
about 30 per cent of the total area under British rule i.e., in major parts of the
North Western Provinces, Central Provinces and the Punjab with some variations.
The Ryotwari System covered about 51 per cent of the area under British rule
comprising part of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, Assam and certain other
parts of British India.

The Permanent Settlement

▪ Lord Cornwallis’ most conspicuous administrative measure was the Permanent

Land Revenue Settlement of Bengal, which was extended to the provinces of Bihar
and Orissa. It is appropriate to recall that Warren Hastings introduced the annual
lease system of auctioning the land to the highest bidder. It created chaos in the
revenue administration.
▪ Cornwallis at the time of his appointment was instructed by the Directors to find a
satisfactory and permanent solution to the problems of the land revenue system in
order to protect the interests of both the Company and the cultivators. It obliged
the Governor- General to make a thorough enquiry into the usages, tenures and
rents prevalent in Bengal.
▪ The whole problem occupied Lord Cornwallis for over three years and after a
prolonged discussion with his colleagues like Sir John Shore and James Grant he
decided to abolish the annual lease system and introduce a decennial (Ten years)
settlement which was subsequently declared to be continuous.

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The main features of the Permanent Settlement were as follows:

1. The zamindars of Bengal were recognised as the owners of land as long as they
paid the revenue to the East India Company regularly.
2. The amount of revenue that the zamindars had to pay to the Company was
firmly fixed and would not be raised under any circumstances. In other words
the Government of the East India Company got 89% leaving the rest to the
zamindars.
3. The ryots became tenants since they were considered the tillers of the soil.
4. This settlement took away the administrative and judicial functions of the
zamindars.
▪ The Permanent Settlement of Cornwallis was bitterly criticised on the point that it
was adopted with ‘undue haste’. The flagrant defect of this arrangement was that no
attempt was made ever either to survey the lands or to assess their value. The
assessment was made roughly on the basis of accounts of previous collections and
it was done in an irregular manner. The effects of this system both on the
zamindars and ryots were disastrous.
▪ As the revenue fixed by the system was too high, many zamindars defaulted on
payments. Their property was seized and distress sales were conducted leading to
their ruin. The rich zamindars who led luxurious lives left their villages and
migrated into towns. They entrusted their rent collection to agents who exacted all
kinds of illegal taxes besides the legal ones from the ryots.
▪ This had resulted in a great deal of misery amongst the peasants and
farmers. Therefore, Lord Cornwallis’ idea of building a system of benevolent
landlordism failed. Baden Powell remarks, “The zamindars as a class did nothing
for the tenants”. Though initially the Company gained financially, in the long run
the Company suffered financial loss because land productivity was high, income
from it was meagre since it was a fixed sum. It should be noted that in pre- British
period a share on the crop was fixed as land tax. Nevertheless, this system proved
to be a great boon to the zamindars and to the government of Bengal. It formed a
regular income and stabilised the government of the Company. The zamindars
prospered at the cost of the welfare of the tenants.

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Ryotwari Settlement

▪ The Ryotwari settlement was introduced mainly in Madras, Berar, Bombay and
Assam. Sir Thomas Munro introduced this system in the Madras Presidency. Under
this settlement, the peasant was recognised as the proprietor of land. There was no
intermediary like a Zamindar between the peasant and the government.
▪ So long as he paid the revenue in time, the peasant was not evicted from the land.
Besides, the land revenue was fixed for a period from 20 to 40 years at a time.
Every peasant was held personally responsible for direct payment of land revenue
to the government. However, in the end, this system also failed. Under this
settlement it was certainly not possible to collect revenue in a systematic manner.
The revenue officials indulged in harsh measures for non payment or delayed
payment.

Mahalwari Settlement

▪ In 1833, the Mahalwari settlement was introduced in the Punjab, the Central
Provinces and parts of North Western Provinces. Under this system the basic unit
of revenue settlement was the village or the Mahal. As the village lands belonged
jointly to the village community, the responsibility of paying the revenue rested
with the entire Mahal or the village community. So, the entire land of the village
was measured at the time of fixing the revenue.
▪ Though the Mahalwari system eliminated middlemen between the government and
the village community and brought about improvement in irrigation facility, yet its
benefit was largely enjoyed by the government.

Local Self-Government (1882)

Ripon believed that self-government is the highest and noblest principles of politics.
Therefore, Ripon helped the growth of local bodies like the Municipal Committees in
towns and the local boards in taluks and villages. The powers of municipalities were
increased. Their chairmen were to be non-officials. They were entrusted the care of
local amenities, sanitation, drainage and water-supply and also primary education.
District and taluk boards were created. It was insisted that the majority of the members
of these boards should be elected non-officials. The local bodies were given executive

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powers with financial resources of their own. It was perhaps the desire of Ripon that
power in India should be gradually transferred to the educated Indians. He also
insisted on the election of local bodies as against selection by the government. In all
these measures, Ripon’s concern was not so much for efficiency in administration.
Instead, Ripon diffused the administration and brought the government closer to the
people. This was his most important achievement. It was Ripon who laid the
foundations of the system which functions today.

Calcutta Corporation Act (1899)

The Viceroy brought in a new legislative measure namely the Calcutta Corporation Act
in 1899 by which the strength of the elected members was reduced and that of the
official members increased. Curzon gave more representations to the English people as
against the Indians in the Calcutta Corporation. There was strong resentment by the
Indian members against Curzon’s anti-people measures.

Police and Military Reforms

Curzon believed in efficiency and discipline. He instituted a Police Commission in 1902

under the chairmanship of Sir Andrew Frazer. Curzon accepted all the
recommendations and implemented them. He set up training schools for both the
officers and the constables and introduced provincial police service. As for the
remodeling of the army, it was by and large done by Lord Kitchener, the Commander-
in-Chief in India in Curzon’s time.

British Policy towards Indian Handicrafts

▪ The European companies began arriving on the Indian soil from 16 th century.
During this period, they were constantly engaged in fierce competition to establish
their supremacy and monopoly over Indian trade. Not surprisingly, therefore,
initial objective of the English East India Company was to have flourishing trade
with India. Later, this objective was enlarged to acquire a monopoly over this trade
and obtain its entire profit. Although the trade monopoly thus acquired by the
Company in India was ended by the Charter Act of 1833, yet the British Policy of
exploiting the resources of India continued unabated. In this respect, the nature of
the British rule was different from the earlier rulers. As far as the traditional
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 handicraft industry and the production of objects of art were concerned, India was
already far ahead of other countries in the world. The textiles were the most
important among the Indian industries. Its cotton, silk and woollen products were
sought after all over the world. Particularly, the muslin of Dacca, carpets of Lahore,
shawls of Kashmir, and the embroidery works of Banaras were very famous. Ivory
goods, wood works and jewellery were other widely sought-after Indian
commodities.
▪ Apart from Dacca, which was highly famous for its muslins, the other important
centres of textile production were Krishnanagar, Chanderi, Arni and Banaras.
Dhotis and dupattas of Ahmedabad, Chikan of Lucknow, and silk borders of
Nagpur had earned a worldwide fame. For their silk products some small towns of
Bengal besides, Malda and Murshidabad were very famous.
▪ Similarly, Kashmir, Punjab and western Rajasthan were famous for their woollen
garments. Besides textiles, India was also known widely for its shipping, leather
and metal industries. Indian fame as an industrial economy rested on cutting and
polishing of marble and other precious stones and carving of ivory and sandalwood.
▪ Moradabad and Banaras were famous for brass, copper, bronze utensils. Nasik,
Poona, Hyderabad and Tanjore were famous for other metal works. Kutch, Sind
and Punjab were known for manufacturing arms. Kolhapur, Satara, Gorakhpur,
Agra, Chittor and Palaghat had likewise earned a reputation for their glass
industries.
▪ Making of gold, silver and diamond jewellery was another important industrial
activity in which many places in India specialized. These entire handicrafts
industry indicated a vibrant economy in India.
▪ Despite enjoying such fame in the world, the Indian handicraft industry had begun
to decline by the beginning of the 18th century. There were many reasons for it.
First, the policies followed by the English East India Company proved to be highly
detrimental to the Indian handicrafts industry. The Indian market was flooded with
the cheap finished goods from Britain. It resulted in a steep decline in the sale of
Indian products both within and outside of the country.
▪ In 1769, the Company encouraged the cultivation of raw silk in Bengal while
imposing service restrictions on the sale of its finished products. In 1813 strategies

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 were devised by the Company to enhance the consumption of finished goods from
Britain. In this respect the tariff and octroi policies were suitably modified to suit
the British commercial interests. To cite an example, in 1835 only a minimal import
of British duty of 2.5 per cent was imposed on the import of British manufactured
cotton cloth whereas a very high 15 per cent export duty was charged on Indian
cotton textiles as per the new maritime regulations.
▪ Moreover, goods from England could only be brought by the English cargo ships.
As a result of all these policies, the Indian textiles could not enter the British
market, whereas the Indian market was flooded with British goods.
▪ Thus, with the rise of British paramountcy in India, the process of decline in the
power and status of Indian rulers had set in. Thus, the demands for the domestic
luxury goods like royal attires, armoury and objects of art by the Indian royalty also
reduced drastically.
▪ So, with the disappearance of the traditional dynasties, their nobility also passed
into oblivion. This led to a sharp decline in the demand for traditional luxury
goods. Besides, the Industrial revolution led to the invention of new machinery in
Europe. Power looms replaced handlooms. In India also the advent of machines led
to the decline of handicraft as now the machine-made products were available at
cheaper rate and more goods could be produced in much lesser time.
▪ Finally, the new communication and transport facilities brought about a revolution
in public life. Earlier, goods used to be transported either by bullock carts or by
ships. Thus, during the rainy season, it was not always convenient to carry on with
the normal transportation. But now conditions were changed with the introduction
of railways and steamer services. Concrete roads were laid to connect the country’s
agricultural hinterland. The import of goods from England also increased with the
simultaneous increase in exports of raw materials from India, leading to massive
loss of jobs among Indian artisans and craftsman who lost their only means to
livelihood.

Social Laws Concerning Women

▪ The condition of women, by the time the British established their rule, was not
encouraging. Several evil practices such as the practice of Sati, the Purdah system,

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 child marriage, female infanticide, bride price and polygamy had made their life
quite miserable. The place of women had come to be confined to the four walls of
her home. The doors of education had been shut for them. From economic point of
view also her status was miserable. There was no social and economic equality
between a man and woman.
▪ A Hindu woman was not entitled to inherit any property. Thus, by and large, she
was completely dependent on men. During the 19th and 20th centuries some laws
were enacted with the sincere efforts of social reformers, humanists and some
British administrators to improve the condition of women in Indian society. The
first effort in this direction was the enactment of law against the practice of Sati
during the administration of Lord William Bentinck.

Female Infanticide

• Female infanticide was another inhuman practice afflicting the 19 th century Indian
society. It was particularly in vogue in Rajputana, Punjab and the North Western
Provinces. Colonel Todd, Johnson Duncan, Malcolm and other British
administrators have discussed about this evil custom in detail.
• Factors such as family pride, the fear of not finding a suitable match for the girl
child and the hesitation to bend before the prospective in-laws were some of the
major reasons responsible for this practice. Therefore, immediately after birth, the
female infants were being killed either by feeding them with opium or by
strangulating or by purposely neglecting them. Some laws were enacted against this
practice in 1795, 1802 and 1804 and then in 1870. However, the practice could not
be completely eradicated only through legal measures. Gradually, this evil practice
came to be done away through education and public opinion.

Widow Remarriage

▪ There are many historical evidences to suggest that widow remarriage enjoyed
social sanction during ancient period in India. In course of time the practice ceased
to prevail increasing the number of widows to lakhs during the 19th century.
▪ Therefore, it became incumbent on the part of the social reformers to make sincere
efforts to popularize widow remarriage by writing in newspapers and contemporary

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 journals. Prominent among these reformers were Raja Rammohan Roy and Iswar
Chandra Vidyasagar. They carried out large scale campaigns in this regard mainly
through books, pamphlets and petitions with scores of signatures. In July 1856,
J.P. Grant, a member of the Governor-General’s Council finally tabled a bill in
support of the widow remarriage, which was passed on 13 July 1856 and came to be
called the Widow Remarriage Act, 1856.

Child Marriage

▪ The practice of child marriage was another social stigma for the women.
In November 1870, the Indian Reforms Association was started with the efforts of
Keshav Chandra Sen. A journal called Mahapap Bal Vivah (Child marriage: The
Cardinal Sin) was also launched with the efforts of B.M. Malabari to fight against
child marriage. In 1846, the minimum marriageable age for a girl was only 10
years.
▪ In 1891, through the enactment of the Age of Consent Act, this was raised to 12
years. In 1930, through the Sharda Act, the minimum age was raised to 14 years.
After independence, the limit was raised to 18 years in 1978.

Purdah System

Similarly, voices were raised against the practice of Purdah during the 19 th and 20th
century. The condition of women among the peasantry was relatively better in this
respect. Purdah was not so much prevalent in Southern India. Through the large scale
participation of women in the national freedom movement, the system disappeared
without any specific legislative measure taken against it.

Questions:

1. Discuss the reforms in civil and Judicial administration in British Rule.

2. Describe the main features of the permanent settlement.
3. Examine the British Policy towards Indian Handicrafts.

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