Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
In north India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries several great landed estates played a crucial part in the consolidation of imperial rule and in the support of the social and economic order. These estates have attracted considerable scholarly attention, but previous research has concentrated primarily on their relations with the colonial administraton and on their general intermediary role in north Indian society. The only study directly concerned with their internal affairs is Dr. P. J. Musgrave's ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land: Estate Management and Social Control in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1920’ (Modern Asian Studies, 6, 3 (1972), pp. 257–75), in which official sources are used as the basis for an account of the internal operations of the great estates in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Hitherto the major obstacle to the examination of the administration of the great estates has been the absence of comprehensive estate records. Fortunately the extensive and well-organized archives of the Raj Darbhanga of Bihar recently have been opened to scholars. In this paper the Raj archives have been drawn upon to provide evidence for an account of the structure and operation of the administration of the Raj Darbhanga during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper argues that despite substantial difficulties the Raj Darbhanga effectively pursued its interests by means of a bureaucratic system of management and that therefore Dr Musgrave's conclusions concerning the limited power of the great landed estates need substantial qualification and correction.
I am grateful to Dr Lance Brennan, and to the participants in a South Asia conference held at the Australian National University in Fcburary 1981, for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
The following abbreviations are used: AAR Annual Administrative Report; C Collection; f File; F Fasli; G General Department, Raj Darbhanga Archives; L Law Department, Raj Darbhanga; RDA Raj Darbhanga Archives.
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14 Chief Manager's Note on Retrenchment Committee Report, p. 4, f 10G, C Management, G 1937–38.Google Scholar
15 Interview, Jageshwar Mishra, Darbhanga town, 23 September 1976.Google Scholar
16 Interview, Umarpathi Tewari, Dumari village, Darbhanga, 17 October 1976.Google Scholar
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18 Letter 9, Parihar AAR, C XXXIV, G 1919–20 RDA.
19 Priyanath Banurje, Report on the Administration of the Durbhanga Raj for 1322F—1914/15, C XXXIV, G 1915–16.
20 16A21, C Management, G 1939–40.
21 Hayaghat AAR 1346 F, 16D2, G 1939–40.
22 Naredigar AAR 1348 F, G 1941–42.
23 Naredigar AAR 1322 F, C XXXIV, G 1915–16.
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25 Ibid.
26 Diary 23 March 1923, f 43A, C XXV, G 1922–23.Google Scholar
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31 Hayaghat Manager's Report, 8 April 1922, f3M, Darkhasht, G 1921–22.Google Scholar
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33 Memorandum, 25 August 1939, f 16D27, C Management, G 1941–42.Google Scholar
34 Bhawanipore AAR 1322 F, f2, C XXXIV, G 1915–16.
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38 Chief Manager's Note on Retrenchment Committee Report, f 10G, C Head Office, G 1937–38.
39 Dain, quoted in the Report on the Land Revenue Administration of the Province of Bihar and Orissa for 1932–33 (Government of Bihar and Orissa: Patna, 1934), p. 20.Google Scholar
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42 Parihar Manager to Chief Manager, 26 February 1939, 14 Cl, C Head Office, G 1939–40.Google Scholar
43 Naredigar Manager to Law Superintendent, 8 August 1921, f 10–0, C V, L 1920–21.Google Scholar
44 Alapur Manager's Diary 7 and 17 November 1922, Letter 24, C XXV, G 1922–23.Google Scholar
45 Alapur Manager to Law Mukhtear, Madhubani, f 56C, C Alapur, L 1940–41.
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48 Parihar AAR 1349 F, f 16D2, 1942–43.
49 Nishankpur AAR 1349 F, f 16D1, G 1942–43.
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51 A copy of the map of the Awa estate, dated Allahabad, 9 March 1877, is bound in with the Court of Wards’ Reports, North-Western Provinces, for 1874/75–1881/82 (Government of the North-Western Provinces: Allahabad, 1875–1983), held in the Victoria State Library.Google Scholar See also the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (Government of the United Provinces: Allahabad, 1905–1911)Google Scholar for Agra (author: H. R. Nevill), p. 89;Google ScholarAligarh (author: H. R. Nevill), p. 102;Google ScholarEtah (author: Neave, E. R.), pp. 88–92;Google ScholarMainpuri (author: Neave, E. R.); and Muttra (author: Drake-Brockman, D. L.), p. 128.Google Scholar Note that in the 1870s the district jurisdictions were changed as follows: the Jaleswar pargana was transferred from Muttra to Agra in 1874, and in 1879 all of this pargana except for 46 villages was transferred to Etah. See Nevill, , Agra, pp. 103, 285.Google Scholar On the question of dispersal it is noteworthy that later in his article (pp. 267–8) Musgrave refers to the estate of the Raja of Mahmudabad, which comprised 613 villages, 539 of them in the single district of Sitapur, thus forming a ‘central cluster of villages’.
52 Nevill, H. R., District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh: Ganda, Bahraich, Basti, Fyzabad, Sultanpur and Bara Banki (Government of the United Provinces: Allahabad, Naini Tal, 1903–1907).Google Scholar
53 The difficulties created by dispersal and distance could be increased when the ownership of a village was divided between landlords. However, at least in the Raj Darbhanga it seems that the problems of joint-proprietorship generally could be remedied. The scarcity and brevity of reference in the Raj records to such problems indicate they were an annoyance rather than a major concern.
54 See my ‘Peasant Protest and the Darbhanga Raj’.
55 Musgrave ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land’, pp. 267–8;Google ScholarMetcalf, , Landlords and Raj, p. 251.Google Scholar
56 Yang, Anand A., ‘An Institutional Shelter: The Court of Wards in Late Nineteenth-Century Bihar’, Modern Asian Studies, 13, 2 (1979), pp. 247–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
57 Report of the Court of Wards, North-Western Provinces and Oudh, for the Revenue Year 1891–92 (Government of the United Provinces: Allahabad, 1893), p. 9.Google Scholar
58 See the annual Court of Wards' reports.
59 For details of these estates see Report of the Court of Wards, North-Western Provinces, for the Revenue Years 1874–75 ana 1883–84 (Government of the United Provinces: Allahabad, 1876, 1885)Google Scholar and Report of the Court of Wards, North-Western Provinces and Oudh, for Revenue Years ending 30 September 1901, 1903 and 1915 (Government of the United Provinces: Allahabad, 1902, 1904 and 1916).Google Scholar
60 Nevill, , Gonda, p. 81. Musgrave (p. 267) points out that in the Balrampur Raj the thikadars had established themselves on a hereditary basis.Google Scholar
61 No figures are available either on the total number of bureaucratically managed estates or on the area they covered. However, Siddiqi's analysis indicates that only a small proportion of the acreage of the United Provinces was under either thikadari leases or under proprietary control. It seems probable, therefore, that most of the great landlords ran their estates by more or less bureaucratic systems of managements, though of course the effectiveness of these systems probably varied greatly. See Siddiqi, Agrarian Unrest, Ch. 1, and particularly fig. 1, p. 37, and fig. 4, p. 42.Google Scholar
62 Around 1950 the long history of conflict between the village élites and the great landed estates of north India culminated with the abolition of the zamindari and associated systems of landholding. Neither the Raj Darbhanga nor the other landed estates could survive unchanged in the face of heightened political awareness, mass suffrage, and a populist movement and party—the Indian National Congress—committed to mild measures of land reform. Nonetheless the Raj Darbhanga fought a stout rearguard action which did not lose momentum until the death of Maharaja Kameshwar Singh in 1962. Indeed the ‘Raj interest’ endures today as a force in the politics and society of north Bihar. In doing so it acts as a testament to an estate which effectively managed its affairs and controlled its tenants throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the fortunes of the landlords of the United Provinces in the post-independence era, see Metcalf, Thomas R., ‘Landlords without Land: the U.P. Zamindars Today’, Pacific Affairs, XL, 1 and 2 (Spring and Summer 1967).Google Scholar Metcalf concludes that the landlords ‘… are still very much a power to be reckoned with …’.