¹ Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus (London: Paladin, 1972), p. 54.Google Scholar In recent years the ‘rich peasant’ has been most often studied, though Catanach, I. J., Rural Credit in Western India 1875–1930 (Berkeley, 1970)Google Scholar, prefers ‘a solid middle peasantry’, and Washbrook, David, ‘Economic Development and Social Stratification in Rural Madras: The Dry Region, 1878–1929’, in Dewey, Clive and Hopkins, A. G. (eds), The Imperial Impact (London, 1977), finds magnates so dominant as to preclude a true peasantry, of cultivators making their own economic decisions.Google Scholar

² Musgrave, Peter, ‘An Indian Rural Society. Aspects of the Structure of Rural Society in the United Provinces, 1860–1920’, Cambridge Ph.D. thesis (History) 1976, Ch. 2.Google Scholar See also his ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land: Estate Management and Social Control in Uttar Pradesh, 1860–1920’, Modern Asian Studies 6:3 (1972): he finds estates dispersed and intermixed, and management partly dependent on tenants for its power.Google Scholar The confusion which may arise is illustrated when C.A. Bayly writes of ‘village-controlling peasants’ contrasted apparently with non-occupancy tenants and ‘area-zamindars’, but identified either as ‘often Kurmis, Kachchis and Ahirs’ or as ‘subdivided but literate Brahmin and Rajput small-holding communities’, and moreover preceding in political awareness a ‘thrifty but unprotected middle peasantry’ (The Local Roots of Indian Politics (Oxford, 1975), pp. 9,51 and 220). See also note 22 below.Google Scholar

³ See, for example, Bishop, Cletus James, ‘Sachchidananda Sinha and the Making of Modern Bihar’, Virginia Ph.D. thesis (History), 1972Google Scholar, but also the criticism of Carroll, Lucy, ‘Caste, Social Change and the Social Scientist: a Note on the Ahistorical Approach to Indian Social History’, Journal of Asian Studies, XXXV, 1 (1975).Google ScholarHauser, Walter, ‘The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha, 1929–1942’, Chicago Ph.D. thesis (History), 1961, stresses economic issues and political rivalry in the kisan movement but still supports the general political importace of caste (pp. 13, 37–8, 75–8 and 82–4).Google Scholar

⁴ R&A Rev B17–18, January 1897; Stevenson-Moore, C. J., Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the Muzaffarpur District 1892–1899, Calcutta 1901, pp. 285–363.Google Scholar I use the terms landlord, zamindar, proprietor and malik (as also ryot, tenant and cultivator) more or less interchangeably to describe social and economic roles rather than, in most contexts, legal status: the important issues and distinctions have been much discussed (see Neale, Walter C., Economic Change in Rural India (New Haven, 1962), chapter 3) but provided there is full awareness of specific features in any explanation it seems immaterial which of the admittedly approximate terms is used here.Google Scholar

⁵ On bhaoli see R&A Rev A16–46, July 1883, and A11–16, February 1890; Patna Coll to PC, 10 December 1880, PCR 350; PC to BR, 25 August 1882, PCR 336, 5/44. Hauser, ‘Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha’, p. 26, notes that proportions taken by the zamindar varied each year and in practice were ‘never’ (often not?) more than a quarter.Google Scholar

⁶ Coll, Gaya to PC, 20 January 1881, PCR 350.Google Scholar

⁷ Reynolds, , 11 December 1880, R&A Rev A11–16, 02 1890.Google Scholar

⁸ See PC to BR, 18 June 1890, PCR 345–6 (1887–1888). It is important to note how much of the evidence is polemical, arguing for or against tenancy laws, in a situation in which the inadequacies of the statistics increase our reliance on subjective accounts. Hauser bases his views on anti-zamindari sources and favours their interpretation of landlord–tenant conflicts (see note 13 below); P. C. Roy employed some of the evidence used for this paper, to argue for zamindari omnipotence (The Rent Question in Bengal (Calcutta, 1883), pp. 122–34 and 137–52).Google Scholar

⁹ Coll, Gaya to PC, 19 May 1890, PCR 352, 12/4.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Coll, Patna to PC, 10 December 1880, PCR 350; Gaya Rev administration report, PCR 347, 12/4 (1885–1886); Muzaffarpur ditto, PCR 340, 12/4 (1884–1885); Patna Coll to PC, 9 May 1892, PCR 357, 12/9, Saran Coll to PC, 30 April 1885, PCR 342.Google Scholar

¹¹ Gaya Rev administration report 1889–90, PCR 352; Coll, Shahabad to PC, 8 November, and Saran Coll to PC, 15 December 1880, PCR 350; R&A Rev A16–46, July 1883; J. Tweedie, Patna judge, PCR 356, 10/40 (1892–1893).Google Scholar

¹² Coll, Patna to PC, 10 December, Shahabad Coll to PC, 15 December, and Saran Coll to PC, 15 December 1880, and Gaya Coll to PC, 20 January 1881, PCR 350;Google ScholarRoy, , Rent Question in Bengal, pp. 67–70.Google Scholar

¹³ In the well-known descriptions by Cohn, Bernard, for example in ‘Political Systems in Eighteenth Century India’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 82 (07–09 1962), p. 316CrossRefGoogle Scholar, all groups within a territory provided members of the dominant lineage with a share of the produce, cash dues, or goods and services as appropriate. Hauser, ‘Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha’, accepts this and the implication that zamindars had ‘overwhelming and uninhibited power’ (p. 15), a description which Musgrave, ‘An Indian Rural Society’, and ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land’, seems to suggest would better fit rich peasants, village-controllers. The truth, for Bihar, is probably between these two extremes. (Musgrave writes of U.P.—permanently-settled areas favoured the zamindar by being less directly governed and paying much less revenue, only one third as much in Benares according to Neale, Economic Change in Rural India, p. 55.)Google Scholar

¹⁴ Coll, Gaya to PC, 2 03 1896, PCR 363, 15/24.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Coll, Gaya to PC, 9 05 1881, PCR 336, 12/4.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Finucane, , 7 July 1888, R&A Rev A11–16, February 1890.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Coll, Muzaffarpur to PC, 13 October 1892Google Scholar, with note by Bell, , Manager, Darbhanga Raj, PCR 357, 17/9.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Coll, Darbhanga to PC, 14 October 1880, PCR 350.Google Scholar

¹⁹ PC to Bengal Government, 20 April 1881, PCR 333, 17/3.

²⁰ Coll, Patna to PC, 10 May 1884, PCR 342, 12/4; Shahabad Coll to PC, 1 May 1894, PCR 361, 12/3.Google Scholar

²¹ PC to BR, 6 June 1895, PCR 363, 12/6; PC to Darbhanga Coll, 24 September and 22 November, and reply, 11 October, and Subdivisional Officer, Madhubani, to Darbhanga Coll, 6 October 1890, PCR 353, 17/4.Google Scholar

²² Whitcombe, Elizabeth, Agrarian Conditions in North India, Vol. 1, The United Provinces under British Rule 1860–1900 (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 43–5, stresses ‘blood or service relationship with the maliks’;Google ScholarBayly, , Local Roots of Indian Politics, p. 51, refers to ‘village-based cultivators’ who ‘already controlled rural credit and sometimes dominated access to the market’.Google Scholar On marketing see Fisher, Colin M., ‘Planters and Peasants: the Ecological Context of Agrarian Unrest on the Indigo Plantations of North Bihar, 1820–1920’, pp. 122–4Google Scholar, and also Neil Charlesworth, ‘Rich Peasants and Poor Peasants in late Nineteenth Century Maharashtra’Google Scholar, in Dewey, and Hopkins, , The Imperial Impact. Charlesworth defines rich peasants by land holdings sufficiently large for growth and marketing of cash crops;Google ScholarCatanach, , Rural Credit in Western India, pp. 16–17, claims for 1836–73 a 43% increase in population, 10% in bullocks, 25% in cultivated area, 31% in ploughs, 71% in wells and 220% in carts—which suggests to me greater independence in marketing but also retention of agricultural resources (except wells) in proportionately fewer hands.Google Scholar

²³ PCR 362,8/10 (1895–1896); Rasik Lal Sen, Report on Land Acquisition Proceedings, Gaya, 1897–1900, R&A Rev B26, April 1901.

²⁴ R&A Rev B3 and 4, May 1898; Stevenson-Moore, , Final Report on…Muzaffarpur, p. 314.Google Scholar Interpretation is complicated because the figures are averages—in Nasriganj, Shahabad, 10 or 12 in cach village held sub-tenancies at about 1½ times the occupancy rate, but some large jotidars sublet ‘at hardly any advance on the rental they themselves pay’—McPherson, D. J., 1883, PCR 356, 10/15 (1892–1893). For Kurtaoli see note 60 below.Google Scholar

²⁵ R&A Rev0 B3 and 4, May 1898, and A40–2, May 1899; Roy, , Rent Question in Bihar, pp. 192–200.Google Scholar

²⁶ PCR 351, 21/44 (1889–1890).

²⁷ Sen, Rasik Lal; see note 23 above.Google Scholar

²⁸ Coll, Darbhanga to PC, 14 October 1880, PCR 350; BR to Bengal Government, 22 December 1883, PCR 342, 10/63; Muzaffarpur Coll to PC, 13 October 1892, PCR 357, 17/9.Google Scholar

²⁹ Gibbon, T.M., Bettiah Manager, to Champaran Coll, 11 April 1892, R&A Rev A56–8, January 1895.Google Scholar

³⁰ PC to BR, 31 January 1894, PCR 358, 12/9.Google Scholar

³¹ R&A Rev B3 and 4, May 1898, and B26, April 1899; L. Hare, ‘Keeping up the Record of Rights’, PCR 357, 17/9 (1892–1893); Patna Coll to PC, 10 December 1880, PCR 350.Google Scholar

³² R&A Rev B26, April 1899; Mylne, L. H., R&A Rev B52–3, June 1895; Darbhanga Coll to PC, 14 October 1880, PCR 350; PC to BR, 31 January 1894, PCR 358, 12/9.Google ScholarJanuzzi, F. Tomasson, Agrarian Crisis in India. The Case of Bihar (Austin and London, 1974), examining post-independence conditions, found one village in which high-caste cultivators engaged in money-lending, with net incomes of less than Rs 50.Google Scholar

³³ Report on Cooperative Societies in Bengal 1904–5, R&A Rev B14, June 1906.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Musgrave, P. J., ‘Rural Credit and Rural Society in the United Provinces 1860–1920’Google Scholar, in Dewey, and Hopkins, , The Imperial Impact;Google Scholar and Charlesworth, Neil, ‘The Myth of the Deccan Riots of 1875’, Modern Asian Studies 6, 4 (1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Exceptions would include times when the profits of agriculture were suddenly high without involving greater debts or, just possibly, where a bania wanted to avoid tax (his lending was liable for tax where a zamindar's was not); annual licence tax report 1882–3, PCR 339, 37/7. On indebtedness see note 67 below.

³⁵ Ibbetson, , 11 August 1884, R&A Rev A5 and 6, September 1894.Google Scholar

³⁶ R&A Rev B12, March 1901.Google Scholar

³⁷ PC to BR, 27 July 1894, PCR 361, 23/37. Clive Dewey, ‘Patwari and Chaukidar: Subordinate Officials and the Reliability of India's Agricultural Statistics’Google Scholar, in Dewey, and Hopkins, , The Imperial Impact, describes the independent patwari, a picture which applies best to North Bihar and large poorly-supervised estates. But Musgrave (‘Landlords and Lords of the Land’), stressing control of records rather than men, describes a variety of patwari types.Google ScholarCf. Catanach, , Rural Credit in Western India, pp. 21–2: old mirasdar groups who were usually not poor but also ‘not necessarily’ the wealthiest, or village servants, many but ‘probably not all’ poor.Google Scholar

³⁸ See Report, by PC, PCR 333, 14/4 (1880–1881);Google ScholarColl, Muzaffarpur to PC, 5 April 1881Google Scholar, ibid. 14/8; Coll, Darbhanga to PC, 18 May 1881, PCR 336, 12/4; Champaran Coll to PC, 16 June 1881, PCR 334, 14/8.Google Scholar

³⁹ PC to BR, 5 December 1891, PCR 354, 8/1.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See, for example, PCR 355, 14/6 (1891–1892).Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Agent, Opium to PC, 18 03 1883, PCR 338, 84/10.Google Scholar

⁴² PC to Royal Commission on Opium, 11 April 1894, PCR 361, 29/9.Google Scholar

⁴³ R&A Rev A54–5, September 1896.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ PC Rev administration report 1882–3, PCR 338, 12.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Lt. Col. R. C. Money, PCR 341, 17/1 (1884–1885).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ R&A Rev A15, February 1892. The lower levels of survery teams were not immune from partiality, and initially were recruited locally.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ R&A Rev A40–2, May 1899; Coll, Shahabad to PC, 12 May 1890, PCR 352, 12/4;Google ScholarColl, Gaya to PC, 12 May 1890, PCR 357, 12/9 (1892–1893); PC to BR, 18 June 1890, PCR 345–6 (1887–1888); Shahabad Coll to PC, 8 November 1880, PCR 350; PC Rev administration report 1894–5, PCR 363, 12/6.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Gaya government pleader (a Babhan landowner) quoted in ‘Memorandum on the Rent Question in Behar’, R&A Rev A16–46, 07 1883.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ PC to BR, 30 November 1882, PCR 337, 14/47.

⁵⁰ Coll, Patna to PC, 10 May 1890, PCR 352, 12/4.Google Scholar

⁵¹ On Partition, see R&A Rev A16–46, July 1883, and A11–16, February 1890, and B49–71, January 1894Google Scholar (The Pioneer, 7 January 1893);Google ScholarRev administration reports—Muzaffarpur 1883–4, PCR 340, 12/4, and Patna 1889–90, PCR 352, 12/4; Coll, Saran to PC, 6 November 1893, Patna Coll to PC, 30 November 1893, Muzaffarpur Coll to PC, 3 February 1894, Champaran Coll to PC, 10 February 1894, and Gaya Coll to PC, 22–3 March 1894, PCR 359, 17/7; PC to BR, 6 June 1894, PCR 361, 17/2; Darbhanga report on cess valuation, 18 january 1896, PCR 362, 8/10.Google Scholar

⁵² PCR 353, 17/4 (1890–1).Google Scholar

⁵³ Coll, Gaya to PC, 20 January 1881, PCR 350; Muzaffarpur Coll to PC, 30 April 1884, PCR 340, 12/4.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ See, for example, R&A Famine A6, January 1882.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ McPherson, D. J. to Coll, Shahabad, 9 May 1884, PCR 341, 10/63–9.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ R&A Rev A11–16, February 1890; PC Rev administration report 1882–3, PCR 338; Patna ditto (fragment) 1893–4, PCR 361, 12/3; PC to BR, 18 June 1890, PCR 345–6 (1887–1888); Coll, Darbhanga to PC, May 1892, PCR 357, 12/9; Muzaffarpur Coll to PC, 13 October 1892Google Scholar, ibid. 17/9; Coll, Patna to PC, 10 December 1880, PCR 350.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ McPherson, D. J. to Coll, Shahabad, 15 04 1885, PCR 342, 10/13.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Das, Prankumar, Sudder Excise Deputy Coll, Gaya, 30 January 1884, PCR 340, 7/69.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Patna to PC, 9 May 1892, PCR 337, 12/9; R&A Rev A16–46, July 1883; Muzaffarpur Rev administration report 1883–4, PCR 340, 12/4; BR to Bengal Government, 22 December 1883, PCR 342, 10/63; Gaya Coll to PC, 8 May 1894, PCR 361, 12/3. In the Nasriganj estate demand for zerat was associated with numerous partitions as proprietors sank ‘through improvidence into the position of cultivators’; but it would be dangerous to assume that this was necessarily indicative of more than a continual flux which left constant the numbers of the wealthy—PCR 358, 10/12 (1893–1894).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Muzaffarpur Rev administration report 1884–5, PCR 344, 12/4. See also Fisher, , ‘Planters and Peasants’.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Muzaffarpur Rev administration report 1883–4, PCR 340, 12/4.Google Scholar

⁶² Coll, Shahabad to PC, 8 November 1880, PCR 350; munsiff on Darbhanga rents, May 1892, PCR 357, 12/9.Google Scholar

⁶³ Coll, Darbhanga to PC, 20 February 1889, R&A Rev A11–16, February 1890.Google ScholarOn ryots reluctant to execute kabuliyats see Roy, , Rent Question in Bihar, p. 67.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ The landlord was Raja of Maksudpur; Coll, Gaya to PC, 8 May 1894, PCR 261, 12/3Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Coll, Shahabad to PC, 8 May 1894Google Scholar, ibid.

⁶⁶ See Muzaffarpur report in PCR 339, 37/7 (1883–4).

⁶⁷ See Coll, Darbhanga to PC, 3 May 1892, R&A Famine A12, June 1892. In debtedness does play a large part in contemporary and present-day explanations of nineteenth-century stratification. I have not examined it in detail; partly it was less fashionable a problem in Bihar, partly it seems not to have been a primary worry (other disabilities being fundamental, and to some extent alternative credit being available through indigo planters and opium agents), and partly its effect is difficult to judge. For example, Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in North India, pp. 162–70, echoing her sources, considers freedom from debt essential for high economic status; but only Catanach's middle peasants (see note 1 above) were thus free, compared with the poor who borrowed to survive and the rich who borrowed to invest, and Charlesworth (‘The Myth of the Deccan Riots’) finds the wealthiest often the most heavily in debt. Even Whitcombe remarks (p. 191) that ‘cultivators considered it prestigious to keep a running account with the Bania for a sizeable sum.’ The key question clearly was not debt itself but the relationship between payments owed and resources available, and it is in part with the origins and conditions of that ratio that this paper deals.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Coll, Shahabad to PC, 8 November, Patna Coll to PC, 10 December, Saran Coll to PC, 15 December 1880, and Gaya Coll to PC, 20 January 1881, PCR 350; Shahabad Coll to PC, 1 May 1894, PCR 361, 12/3;Google ScholarStevenson-Moore, , Final Report on…Muzzaffarpur, pp. 412–17.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Darbhanga report on cess revaluation, 8 January 1896, PCR 362, 8/10.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Coll, Darbhanga to PC, 20 February 1889, R&A Rev A11–16, February 1890.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Finucane, , 24 November 1891, PCR 355, 15/4.Google Scholar

⁷² Note, for example, Charlesworth's distinction between quantitative resources such as land which might fluctuate to produce ‘floating’ élites, and qualitative differences such as freedom to manoeuvre which tended to perpetuate advantage (‘Rich Peasants and Poor Peasants’, pp. 98–9). This distinction is difficult in Bihar because of the variability of circumstances.Google ScholarSee Januzzi, , Agrarian Crisis in India, for one lowcaste village with 61 landed and 12 landless households and an absentee zamindar controlling 5/6ths of the land; another village with 28 Bhumihar (Babhan) and 2 Koiri ex-zamindars or tenure-holders, and 42 landless; a third with low castes dominated by a patwari; and a fourth with 209 landed Rajputs and 158 landless Yaddavas, and 30 absentee zamindars. Endless variations of this kind could be presented as a smaller number of types: there are some consistent factors—landed households, for examples, were significantly larger on average than landless ones—but the problems of such analysis are that not only characteristics but also the effects of each characteristic varied, and that generalizations would need to be made at one point in time, a snapshot in the same way as survey proceedings were.Google Scholar

⁷³ The charts are calculated from and the discussion based on enclosures to Stevenson-Moore, Settlement Officer, Muzaffarpur, to Director, Bengal Government Rev and Agriculture Department, 12 June 1896, PCR 366, 15/11. The village had 61 holdings, for 44 of which figures are available in full. (Three more are included because each was amalgamated with one of the 44; the remaining 14 have been omitted, except in that the village totals in Table 4 are for all of the 61 holdings for which a return was made in each year.) The figures do not take account of income from external or non-agricultural sources, but concentrate on the primary question, surplus to sell.Google Scholar