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Rural Life and Society
On 12 August 1765, the Mughal Emperor Shah
Alam II granted the diwani rights of Bengal to
East India Company. This was granted after
battle of Buxar (1764). This was signed by Shah
Alam II and Robert Clive. Now, the company
became the Chief Financial Administrator of
Bengal. When the company achieved the right of
diwani, the responsibility of administering the
land and organising its revenue also came on the
shoulders of the company. Not only this, it had to
ensure that it could buy the products it needed at
cheaper rates and sell them at higher rates.
Over the years, the company had also learned
how to play safe in an unknown land, i.e., India.
Company had to pacify those who were the early
rulers of the countryside. It was not possible to
eliminate them completely. So, the company did
the following :
g Organise its revenue resources
g To yield crops it needed
g Colonising the countryside
COLONIAL AGRARIAN POLICIES AND
THEIR EFFECTS ON PEASANTS AND
LANDLORDS
Indian economy has always been mainly agrar-
ian and land settlements have direct and immedi-
ate impact on the agrarian and the general
economy of the country. The land revenue policy
was mainly intended to extract the maximum
revenue from the peasantry. Its result being that,
in the British land settlement in India the welfare
of the peasantry, development of agriculture and
growth of healthy agrarian relations had practically
Social Science-8
no place in it. The earliest
land settlement of Warren
Hastings in Bengal was
made on the assumption
that all land belonged to
the sovereign. He started
the system of auctioning
the land to the highest
bidders of revenue. This
system was also known as
Ijaredari or Bidding Warren Hastings
system. Under this sys-
tem, at the time of bidding the Ijaredars would
raise the bid so high that they would find it quite
impossible to pay the requisite amount of reve-
nue later on. It would result in confiscation of
their lands.
Further, under this system, to collect the requisite
amount of revenue the bidder would squeeze the
peasants to the last drop of their blood. Thus,
many of the old Zamindar families were ousted
and the centuries old links between the heredi-
tary Zamindars and the government on the one
hand and cultivators on the other, were severed.
The said system was known as the Zamindari
which was modified by Cornwallis and came to
known as the ‘Permanent Settlement’.
Permanent Settlement
The permanent settlement that was firstly created
and developed by Lord Cornwallis in the year of
1973 and this is also called as the permanent
settlement of the Bengal.
This permanent settlement was the agreement of
the settle of the land revenue that should be
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