Tensions in Rural Bengal : Landlords Planters and Colonial Rule
Contents: Preface Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Landlords after the Permanent Settlement. 2. Land Resumption and landlord Resistance. 3. Justice and police in the Interior and the Conflict over Local Authority. 4. Landlords and Planters. The uneasy Collaboration (1830 1850). 5. Landlords and Planters. The growing Confrontation (1850 1860). 6. Resistance to Rent Control. The Genesis of Act X of 1859 and its Aftermath. 7. Conclusion. Glossary. Bibliography. Appendix A. Appendix B. Index.
This book is a definitive work on agrarian change in colonial Bengal. It deals with a period which witnessed the first conflict between two alien systems of political economy. The British rule wanted to monetise and commercialise the more or less subsistence economy by various agencies of improvement and by linking it to the international market. But its revenue system, justice and police, the introduction of indigo planters and tenancy laws failed to transform the agrarian economy through the agency of landlords, planters and rich peasants. This was because of the colonial policy of maximising profits with minimum administration, leaving feudal forces to prevail upon the meager experiments in commercial agriculture. It only agitated the economy, creating tension and spurring revolt which finally led to the decline of zamindari, famine and depeasantisation, without any visible landmark of improvement.
The book is concerned with the confrontation of two alien political economies since the advent of colonial rule and its aftermath of tension, resistance and revolt. It illustrates how the contrived policy of converting a petite culture into the capitalist mode of production ultimately died down to a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist equilibrium. Since then it has been caught in the throes of an unfinished transformation. In the process several experiments were made by the British rule – permanent settlement of revenue with a landlord class, resumption of rent free tenures, introduction of indigo planters into the hinterland, regulation of rent and tenancy right, but all these only led up to agricultural contortions. The book would be of interest to students and scholars of Modern History of India and Bangladesh.
