Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T09:10:09.520Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agrarian Localities: Political economy as local power in early nineteenth-century British India*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2015

UPAL CHAKRABARTI
UPAL CHAKRABARTI*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Presidency University, Kolkata, India Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article writes the agrarian history of an obscure locality, Cuttack, in early-nineteenth-century British India. In doing so, instead of exalting the explanatory power of the local, or the particular, it interrogates the category of the ‘local’ itself by demonstrating how it was assembled as the object of agrarian governance in British India through a densely interwoven network of discursive practices. I present this network as various inter-regional practices and debates over agrarian governance in British India and some methodological debates of political economy in contemporary Britain. This article argues that the governmental engagement with locally specific, indigenous forms of interrelationship between landed property and political power in British India can be more productively understood as internal to the transformed vocabulary of contemporary political economy, rather than lying outside it, amid the pragmatism and contingency of governance. Accordingly, it shows how the particularity of agrarian relations in a locality was produced out of a host of reconfigurations, over different moments and sites, of a universal classificatory grid. In the process, I question those histories of British India which, being rooted in a series of hierarchized binary oppositions, like inside–outside, abstract–concrete, or universal–particular, reproduce the rationality of colonial governance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 898 - 933
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their comments and criticism. I am thankful to Professor Joya Chatterjee and the editorial team of Modern Asian Studies for their support. I will always remain indebted to Peter Robb for his careful scrutiny of my thoughts. I keep learning from Sukanya Sarbadhikary the art of critique. I can only hope that some of it has informed this article.

References

1 Deleuze, Gilles, ‘What Is a Dispositif?’ in Armstrong, Timothy J. (ed.), Michel Foucault, Philosopher (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 159Google Scholar.

2 Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. As examples of works which have argued, from a variety of perspectives that metropolitan theory influenced colonial governance, see Guha, Ranajit, A Rule of Property for Bengal: A Paper on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996 [1963])Google Scholar; Travers, Robert, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India: The British Bengal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Drayton, Richard, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2005)Google Scholar; Mantena, Karuna, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (India: Permanent Black, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zastoupil, Lynn, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 Stokes, Eric, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 33, emphasis mine.

5 Ray, Ratnalekha, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society: 1760–1850 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1979)Google Scholar. For a further development of this line of argument in the context of Bengal, see Islam, Sirajul, Bengal Land Tenure: The Origin and Growth of Intermediate Interests in the 19th Century (Rotterdam: Comparative Asian Studies Programme, 1985), p. 15Google Scholar.

6 For similar arguments made in the context of the agrarian relations of southern and western India, respectively, see Frykenberg, R. E., ‘Village Strength in South India’ in Frykenberg, R. E. (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 217–26Google Scholar; and Charlesworth, Neil, Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Bombay Presidency, 1850–1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Metcalf, Thomas R., Land, Landlords, and the British Raj: Northern India in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 54Google Scholar. Two other classic examples of this perspective are: Rosselli, J., ‘Theory and Practice in North India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 8:2, 1971, pp. 134–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rabitoy, Neil, ‘System v. Expediency: The Reality of Land Revenue Administration in the Bombay Presidency 1812–1820’, Modern Asian Studies, 9:4, 1975, pp. 529–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Andrew Sartori makes a similar argument about the deployment of category of custom in debates over the Bengal Rent Act of 1859. He traces the political economic articulation of custom to a Lockean discourse of property rights. See Sartori, Andrew, ‘A Liberal Discourse of Custom in Colonial Bengal’, Past and Present, 212, August 2011, pp. 163–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Washbrook, D. A., ‘Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, 15:3, 1981, p. 664CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bhattacharya, Neeladri, ‘Colonial State and Agrarian Society’ in Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi and Thapar, Romila (eds), Situating Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 134–35Google Scholar.

11 See Patnaik, N. R. (ed.), Economic History of Orissa (New Delhi: Indus, 1997)Google Scholar; Patra, K. M., Orissa under the East India Company (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971)Google Scholar; and Mukhopadhyay, T. K., The Agrarian Society of Orissa: Nineteenth Century (Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 2008)Google Scholar.

12 Mill, John Stuart, ‘Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India During the Last Thirty Years’ (1858), in Robson, J. M., Moir, M., and Moir, Z. (eds), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXX—Writings on India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), pp. 127–28Google Scholar.

13 ‘The Fifth Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company’, Parliamentary Papers, 1812, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, p. 47.

14 Ibid., p. 155.

15 4 April 1817, Bengal Judicial Consultations (henceforth BJC), India Office Records, British Library, London.

16 That is why, within a month of the reporting of the insurrection, it was pointed out that, ‘although I have discovered nothing calculated to remove the suspicion, that the Rajah of Khoordah is the immediate instigator of the disturbances . . .I lament to state that there are some grounds to believe that a much more general spirit of disaffection at present exists in that District . . .’ 11 April 1817, BJC.

17 17 July 1818, Proceedings Connected with the Recent Disturbances in Cuttack, Examiner's Office, 1819 (Volume 1), India Office Records, British Library, London.

18 It was being argued that the permanent settlement of Bengal had mistakenly established the zemindars, or big landlords, as the exclusive proprietors of the soil. In doing this it had swept away a great variety of proprietary rights possessed by different kinds of landholders. See ‘Minute by the Right hon. the Governor-General, on the Revenue Administration of the Presidency of Fort William, 21 September 1815’ in Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company 1831–32, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, n.d., Appendix 9, Revenue, p. 84.

19 ‘24 October 1817’ in De, S. C. (ed.), Guide to Orissan Records, Volume II (Bhubaneshwar: Orissa State Archives, 1961), p. 116Google Scholar.

20 ‘18 April 1818’ in Revenue Proceedings Relative to the Late Disturbances in Cuttack, Vol. 2, Examiner's Office, 1819, emphasis mine.

21 Ibid.

22 ‘3 April, 1818’ in Revenue Proceedings Relative to the Late Disturbances in Cuttack, Vol. 2, Examiner's Office, 1819.

23 A. Stirling, An Account, Geographical, Statistical and Historical of Orissa Proper, Or Cuttack (No publisher, 1822), p. 5.

24 Ibid., p. 6.

25 Ibid., p. 56.

26 Ibid., pp. 56–57.

27 Ibid., p. 57.

28 Norbert Peabody argues that James Tod made similar use of the category ‘feudal’ in describing the social and political organization of the Rajputs of Rajasthan. See Norbert Peabody, ‘Tod's Rajasthan and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century India’, Modern Asian Studies, 30:1, 1996, p. 198.

29 Stirling, An Account, p. 65. He further pointed out that these chiefs never had a right of property in the soil itself. That right belonged only to the actual cultivators of the soil under the ancient Hindu government, but he did not find any traces of it in Cuttack. Further, almost echoing the discussion in the ‘Fifth Report’, he noted that such a right was existent in other parts of India, like Canara and Malabar.

30 Husain, Imtiaz, Land Revenue Policy in North India: The Ceded and Conquered Provinces, 1801–33 (Calcutta and New Delhi: New Age Publishers, 1967), p. 3Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., p. 60.

32 ‘Memorandum by the Secretary regarding the past settlements of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, with heads of a plan for the permanent settlement of those Provinces, 1 July 1819’, Selections from Revenue Records, North-West Provinces, 1822–1833 (Allahabad: North-Western Provinces Government Press, 1872), p. 75.

33 Ibid., p. 88, emphasis mine.

34 Ibid., p. 89.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., p. 91.

37 Ibid., p. 96.

38 Ibid., p. 97.

39 Ibid., p. 150. See also, Holt Mackenzie, ‘Memorandum’, 1 July 1819, para. 414, as cited in Husain, Land Revenue Policy, p. 130.

40 Bentinck, William, ‘Minute on Land Tenures’ in Circular Orders of the Sadar Board of Revenue at the Presidency of Fort William; Including the Rules of Practice for the Guidance of the Board and of the Commissioners of Revenue, from the Year 1788 to the End of August 1837, India Office Records, British Library, London, 1838, pp. 317–51Google Scholar.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 In the ‘Fifth Report’ the ‘ryot-proprietor’ was discussed in terms of the same example.

45 Bentinck, Minute on Land Tenures.

46 ‘Extract of a Despatch from the Honorable the Court of Directors dated the 10th December 1823’, Acc. No. 12B, 13 August 1821 to 25 November 1825, Revenue, Balasore District Records (henceforth BDR), Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar.

47 ‘Extract of a Despatch’.

48 9 July 1833, Acc. No. 28B, June 1829 to December 1830, Revenue, BDR.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 12 November, 1833, Acc. No. 28B, June 1829 to December 1830, Revenue, BDR.

52 12 January, 1838, No. 37, Sadar Board of Revenue—Settlement Proceedings, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata.

53 ‘Papers on The Settlement of Cuttack and On The State Of The Tributary Mehals’, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. III, 19 (Calcutta: no publisher, 1851).

54 For a detailed study of these conflicts, see Upal Chakrabarti, ‘Interconnections of the Political: British political economy, agrarian governance, and early nineteenth-century Cuttack’, PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2013, pp. 198–244.

55 Whewell, William, ‘Review of Richard Jones's An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation’, British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review, 10:19, July 1831, p. 52Google Scholar.

56 See Snyder, Laura, The Philosophical Breakfast Club (New York: Broadway Books, 2011)Google Scholar.

57 Jones, Richard, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation (London: J. Murray, 1831), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

58 McCulloch, J. R., ‘Review of Richard Jones's An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation’, Edinburgh Review, 54:107, September 1831, p. 85Google Scholar.

59 McCulloch, ‘Review’, p. 86.

60 Ibid., pp. 87, 90.

61 Whewell, William (ed.), Literary Remains, Consisting of Lectures and Tracts on Political Economy of the Late Rev. Richard Jones (London: John Murray, 1859), pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar.

62 ‘1 July 1832’ in Todhunter, I. (ed.), William Whewell, D.D. Master of Trinity College, Cambridge: An Account of His Writings with Selections from his Literary and Scientific Correspondence, Vol. 2 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876), p. 142Google Scholar.

63 Mill, James, Elements of Political Economy (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1821), p. 198Google Scholar.

64 Mill, James, History of British India, Volume I, Book II, Fifth Edition with notes and continuation by Wilson, H. H. (London: Routledge, 1997 [1858]), p. 226Google Scholar.

65 Mill, James, ‘Theory and Practice’, London and Westminster Review, 3:1, April 1836, pp. 223–34Google Scholar. It is worth noting here Robert Fenn's comment on this essay. Fenn argues that, ‘If there was any aspect of Mill's intellectual efforts for the amelioration of society that he would have prided himself on, it would have been his emphasis on the necessary relation between correct theory and sound practice.’ Fenn, Robert, James Mill's Political Thought (New York and London: Garland, 1987), p. 128Google Scholar.

66 Whewell (ed.), Literary Remains, p. xxii.

67 In his political economy lectures at Haileybury, Jones taught concepts in this field through a discussion of the agrarian structure of various localities in British India. Whewell (ed.), Literary Remains, pp. 185–290.

68 Ibid., p. 552, emphasis mine.

69 Ibid., p. 554.

70 Ibid., p. 553.

71 Ibid., pp. 557–58.

72 Ibid., p. 557.

73 Ibid., p. 570.

74 Mary Poovey, despite examining the inductivist intervention in the debates over formulation of objective knowledge in nineteenth-century Britain, fails to identify its universalizing aspirations and its underlying similarities with the a priori perspective of which it claimed to be a critique. See Poovey, Mary, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Richard Jones's location in contemporary political economy has not been adequately conceptualized. In the light of disciplinary traditions of economics, he has been classified as a historical/institutionalist economist. See Rashid, Salim, ‘Richard Jones and Baconian Historicism at Cambridge’, Journal of Economic Issues, 13:1, 1979, pp. 159–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Miller, William L., ‘Richard Jones's Contribution to the Theory of Rent’, History of Political Economy, 9, 1977, pp. 346–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. References to him in the histories of British India are scanty and under-theorized. See Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj, pp. 94–97; Bayly, C. A., The New Cambridge History of India, II.1: Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robb, Peter, Ancient Rights and Future Comfort Bihar: The Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 and British Rule in India (London: Curzon Press, 1997), p. 197Google Scholar. The only person to devote substantial conceptual attention to Jones is William Barber. But even he analyses Jones's work in terms of its self-styled inductivism, arguing that Jones, intuitively, had a more realistic understanding of Indian society. See Barber, William J., British Economic Thought and India 1600–1858: A Study in the History of Development Economics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 194–210Google Scholar.