HISTORY. Subject : History (For under graduate student) Paper No. : Paper - IV History of Modern India

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1 History of India 1 HISTORY Subject : History (For under graduate student) Paper No. : Paper - IV History of Modern India Topic No. & Title : Topic - 4 Understanding Modern India Unit No. & Title : Unit- c Commercialization of Agriculture Lecture No. & Title : Lecture - 2 Commercialization of Agriculture under Colonial Rule: Part 2 Script Commercialization of Agriculture in India under Colonial Rule (Part 2) British colonialists introduced three different land revenue settlements in different parts of India within the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Their main aim was to establish colonial rule on a stable foundation. Commercialization of agriculture was another important

2 History of India 2 outcome of foreign rule. Commercialization of agriculture normally means agricultural production beyond subsistence requirements and selling the surplus for cash. It also means production of cash crops for sale in the market. This feature was indeed present in the Indian economy during the pre- British days. But commercialization of agriculture assumed a different meaning altogether after the establishment of colonial rule. It came to mean, besides participation of the peasant in the market process, the development of a land market, output market and the consequent differentiation among the peasantry. All these were an integral part of a capitalist process overtaking the Indian economy and converted the Indian economy into a raw material supplying appendage of metropolitan Britain. The focus of this lecture is the spread of commercialization of agriculture in southern India and its impact on the economy. Commercialization of agriculture-south India We know that in south India in the Madras Presidency, the Ryotwari settlement was introduced. In the dry delta of Krishna and Godavari, improvements in irrigation led to specialization in the production of rice. Almost everything

3 History of India 3 else other than rice was imported in exchange for rice. Rice was virtually the only crop cultivated in this region. The region along the Kaveri delta was also well irrigated and produced surplus rice. Farming there was dominated by large landholders or mirasdars. The ryotwari system had recognized the right of the mirasdars. Tenants who cultivated their land received no pattas. Such tenants as well as bonded labourers were given grains as wages. These substantial middle peasants, who had already established direct access to the market taking advantage of the new situation, led the changes in the agrarian economy. Marwari moneylenders were another important force. They migrated also to various parts of south India, providing credit to the people. Washbrook, a scholar of south Indian history, however, observes that dependence on the moneylenders or traditional credit channels was not the main feature of the agrarian economy in south India. He refers instead to the emergence of other credit providers like cooperative credit societies and joint stock banks by the second decade of the twentieth century. According to Washbrook, these institutions made greater impact on the

4 History of India 4 commercialization of agriculture in the deltas than anywhere else in the Presidency. Different regions of the Madras Presidency specialized in cultivating particular cash crops. Cotton was grown in Guntur, Kudappa, Bellary, Curnool, Madurai, Tirunelveli and Coimbatore. Sugarcane was grown in North and south Arcot, Ganjam and Rajahmundry districts. Other commercial crops like tobacco, betel nut, pepper and other spices were concentrated in Mysore and the west coast. Coffee plantation was introduced in the 1830s in Mysore, and then spread to Coorg, Wayanad, Salem, the Nilgiris and Travancore-Cochin areas. On occasions landlords refused to encourage unbridled cultivation of commercial crops. For instance, the zamindars of Madurai, Ramnad and Tirunelveli discouraged production of commercial crops by levying high rates of rent on areas where these crops were cultivated. A senior scholar of modern south Indian economic history, Dharma Kumar, wrote that cash debts were extensive in Tamil areas, but rare in dry Telugu districts where there was little

5 History of India 5 commercialization. Where there was less commercialization, rent was less and where there was greater commercialization, indebtedness was greater. However, according to Srinivasa Iyengar s (Inspector General of Registration in Madras Presidency) report of 1893, moneylenders were more powerful in areas where commercialization was less. A study of tobacco cultivation in Guntur district shows that a foreign company called the Indian Leaf Tobacco Development Corporation Limited, established in 1908, entered into contractual relations with the peasants there. The peasants were supplied with the necessary inputs on condition that they would sell the entire produce to the ILTDC at a price fixed by the company. One is here reminded of similar policies adopted earlier by the East India Company which supplied inputs to the Bengal artisans, obliging them to sell the produce to the Company agents at a price dictated by its functionaries. Those prices were always less than the market price.

6 History of India 6 Beneficiaries of Commercialization There is no doubt a crucial question as to who the actual beneficiaries of commercialization of agriculture in India were. Were they ordinary Indian people or were they British capitalists and their domestic collaborators? Amales Tripathi argued, in his Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency (1956) that growth of commercial crops proved beneficial to the people of India. It is well known, however, that the East India Company developed India s resources not in the interest of the Indian people but of the British merchants and manufacturers. We shall take up some case studies to illustrate this point. Selection of cash crops The British chose their export crops very carefully. Cotton, silk, opium, indigo, sugar and tea were the cash crops to which the Company largely focused its attention. Cotton and silk could not be produced in Britain. Opium and tea directly hit China, for the former was exported against its consent and the latter was cultivated in India to break Chinese monopoly. Indigo and sugar were plantations in India that were encouraged to reduce British dependence

7 History of India 7 on South American plantations. None of these competed or replaced any British product. In fact, their cultivation and export dovetailed with the interests of British commerce. Secondly, all of these articles were valuable in relation to their bulk. Their price per kilogram or cubic meter was high. We must remember that during this period transport costs were very high. If cheap bulky goods were exported, transport costs alone could have eaten away all profits. Only goods which were profitable in relation to their weight could ensure steady profits for exporters. Cotton Indian cotton was the most important cash crop at that time. The export of Indian cotton to England began in 1783 and the quantity increased by more than 800 times by But the beneficiaries were chiefly the Lancashire mill owners, European business houses and the native elites. Not the basic Indian masses, mind you, but the native elite. Cotton trade in western India was dominated by Adam and Company and Raleigh Brothers, the largest of the European firms based in Bombay at the time.

8 History of India 8 It has been pointed out by a scholar named Marica Vicziani that the involvement of indigenous business interests in ginning and pressing companies did not go beyond motives of a good investment. However, the European managing firms viewed these companies as a tool for their advancement in the export trade. The country s export crops, especially raw cotton, thus became the property of the foreign export firms. As matter of fact, it was the Indian middlemen who kept the peasants in a state of perpetual financial bondage which passed on from one generation to another. They paid advances to the cultivator and purchased their cotton even before it had ripened. Indigo Indigo was another important crop for export. It was grown in Bengal and Bihar through a system of coercion people were forced to cultivate it. Indigo was needed in the west as a dyeing agent for the textile industry. Cultivation of indigo started in Bengal in the last quarter of the eighteenth century on the initiative of European adventurers and some agents of the East India Company.

9 History of India 9 Many of the indigo planters were actually slave drivers from the West Indies. In fact, up to the 1790s much of the supply for Europe came from the Caribbean colonies. From the eighteenth century up to the first half of the nineteenth century indigo remained one of the major export commodities. Force was freely applied to make peasants grow indigo, for whom however indigo cultivation was far from profitable. D H Buchanan, referring to Parliamentary Papers, observed that cultivation of indigo entailed a loss because the production resources could have been devoted more profitably to other crops. That is the reason why advances were thrust upon the peasants who were not at all willing to cultivate indigo. For them it meant forced labour, growing indebtedness, insecurity of life and property. The debts were often fictitious even as they passed from father to son. Once a peasant was forced to accept money advance, he had no escape from debt bondage. They became bonded slaves, as it were, and there were several other ways through which they could be harassed and humiliated. A District Magistrate of Faridpur in Bengal once

10 History of India 10 remarked that not a chest of indigo reached England which is not stained in human blood. Ultimately, it was a revolt of the peasants also called the blue mutiny by historian Blair B Kling which swept several districts of Bengal in 1860 that virtually put an end to indigo cultivation. There was another factor as well synthetic chemical dyes were invented by Adolf Von Baeyer, a German scientist, in the late 1860s significantly reducing the demand for natural indigo in the international market. Both these factors contributed to the decline and end of indigo cultivation. Opium The East India Company was also very interested in the cultivation of poppy plants in Bihar and the neighbouring districts, which formed part of the Bengal Presidency. The production and sale of opium, which was exported mainly to China, were under the complete control of the Company. As Michael Greenberg observed, the Bengal opium monopoly was one of the prizes of Clive s victory. Cultivators of poppy were offered unattractive prices and were coerced into maintaining a certain level of production. The Koeri caste of Bihar to which the poppy growers largely

11 History of India 11 belonged would find themselves forced to cultivate poppy by the influence of the mahtoos or village headmen, who had them completely under subjection. It was around opium that, as Tan Chung said, something like a triangular trade developed embracing Britain, India and China. Tea The British introduced the cultivation of tea in India in the 1830s to break the near monopoly of Chinese tea in the international market. Under government encouragement and with government help, tea plantations, owned exclusively by the Europeans, increased rapidly. Like indigo and opium, tea was also intended for export. This trade too was controlled by the Europeans. The profits and larger part of the salaries were remitted abroad or appropriated by planters here. Oppression on the workers was so cruel that it beggars description. Usually innocent tribal men and women from distant places were recruited as tea garden workers, some of which were situated in highly inhospitable locations. These workers were duped by the planters recruiting

12 History of India 12 agents with false hopes about their future prospects. The mortality among the recruits during the long journey to the gardens was fearful, and once they reached the gardens, they virtually became serfs. The European planters were described as a lot of inhuman monsters by Cotton, the highest government official at one time. Flogging was common; the workers were surrounded by guards and savage trackers so that they might not escape. An Act of 1865 armed the planters with powers to arrest them if they attempted to do so. They could be imprisoned for refusing to do work. Buchanan has pointed out that among a group of about 50,000 coolies in the tea districts, 13,905 died and 4,425 deserted and disappeared in the forest within a year and a half. Viceroy Curzon had to admit that on many plantations harsh and cruel and abominable things go on, that the coolies get nothing like the wage which is stipulated for by the law. Impact of commercialization of agriculture in India It is necessary to attempt a brief survey of the general effects of commercialization of agriculture in India, notwithstanding its regional particularities. The British

13 History of India 13 focused on commercialization of agriculture primarily to stop its import of gold and silver bullion and finance its exports out of Indian revenues. Commercialization therefore served as a means to remove India s resources out of the country as a forced tribute to Britain. India received no imports against these exports. Commercialization therefore caused a great deal of impoverishment. Commercialization of agriculture also exposed the Indian agriculturist to the fluctuations in the global marketplace. If West Indian sugar production was good, prices might fall in Calcutta and the sugar factories in the United Provinces might pay less to the peasants. Similarly the Budelkhand region had a booming cotton export trade with China between 1815 and the 1830s after which prices fell and the trade declined, without a corresponding reduction in taxes. Subsequently the place went out of cultivation and in 1842 an agrarian uprising broke out. Just as commercialization helped in the emergence of various markets, the way the British pursued it in India stunted their growth in important ways. Very rarely were

14 History of India 14 free labour sought or tolerated. Indigo, for instance, was forced upon the peasant. It was not a natural choice for the profit, if any, was abysmally low, particularly because the peasant was forced to sell at a very cheap price to the planters agents. Extra-economic factors such as coercion were therefore a crucial aspect of commercialization of agriculture in India. This is the reason why such a system produced an imperfect market, stripping the labour or the primary producer of his freedom to bargain for his labour or produce. Similarly, the input market was retarded from the very beginning. Since the peasant received no incentive for improving agriculture or using better inputs, he had no resources to invest in them. The exacting regime of the tax collector, the zamindar, and the planter prevented the growth of a land market as well. Prospective buyers, perpetually apprehensive that demands from the land could be suddenly increased by any of these authorities, saw no reason to sink their capital in land. Those who did buy land had to be either any of these three or in close alliance with them or their interests.

15 History of India 15 Finally, commercialization led also to a certain extent to differentiation within the peasantry. However, since market was seriously restricted in its scope and freedom, usually commercialization imposed itself upon the existing pattern of the small peasant economy. There did of course develop among them a group of enterprising middle peasants who eventually also took to money lending and trade on a small scale. However, the structure of production underwent no change. The European businessmen found it more profitable to exploit the small peasant household than to engage in large scale production with hired labour. Conclusion The commercialization of agriculture in India under colonial rule was intended to serve the colonial ruling class. Its main object was to produce those crops which had a demand in the European market. Some of these such as raw-cotton and indigo were needed in the British textile mills, while opium was produced for export to China in order to grab a huge amount of silver out of its sale and this helped in the empire-building efforts of Britain. Tea was meant for meeting the demands in Europe, as also to break the

16 History of India 16 Chinese monopoly over it in the international market. This commercialization process also helped in the emergence of landed classes, which became beneficiaries of colonial rule.