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Updated: June 9, 2025
That the said Warren Hastings has declared, "that, by intrusting the collections to the hereditary zemindars, the people would be treated with more tenderness, the rents more improved, and cultivation more likely to be encouraged; that they have a perpetual interest in the country; that their inheritance cannot be removed; that they are the proprietors; that the lands are their estates, and their inheritance; that, from a long continuance of the lands in their families, it is to be concluded they have riveted an authority in the district, acquired an ascendency over the minds of the ryots, and ingratiated their affections; that, from continuing the lands under the management of those who have a natural and perpetual interest in their prosperity, solid advantages might be expected to accrue; that the zemindar would be less liable to failure or deficiencies than the farmer, from the perpetual interest which the former hath in the country, and because his inheritance cannot be removed, and it would be improbable that he should risk the loss of it by eloping from his district, which is too frequently practised by a farmer when he is hard-pressed for the payment of his balances, and as frequently predetermined when he receives his farm."
Our landholders or Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are only too glad to encourage this immigration, and give the exiles, whom they find hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on easy terms. The new-comers are very independent, and strenuously resist any encroachment on what they consider their rights.
He discovers the secret resources of the zemindars and renters, their enemies and competitors; and by the engines of hope and fear, raised upon these foundations, he can work them to his purpose. The Committee, with the best intentions, best abilities, and steadiest application, must after all be a tool in the hands of their dewan."
Some of the feudal Rajahs had been "birsing yont," like the Breadalbanes, and the smaller zemindars were gravely disquieted. The result of the commission was that Ram Singh had his boundaries rectified, and lost a mile or two of country which his hard-fisted fathers had won. I know nothing of the rights of the matter, but there can be no doubt about Ram Singh's dissatisfaction.
There was much angry recrimination and quarreling, and many expressed their regret they had not marched straight to Cawnpore after burning the bungalows. "All this was satisfactory; but I learned that Por Sing and several other Zemindars had already sent in assurances that they were wholly with them, and would be here, with guns to batter down the walls, some time tomorrow."
But against me, and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, has his Lordship's vengeance chiefly been exerted: even the Company's own subordinate zemindars have found better treatment, probably because they were more rich; those of Nizanagoram have been permitted, contrary to your pointed orders, to hold their rich zemindaries at the old disproportionate rate of little more than a sixth part of the real revenue; and my zemindar of Tanjore, though he should have regarded himself equally concerned with us in the event of the war, and from whose fertile country many valuable harvests have been gathered in, which have sold at a vast price, has, I understand, only contributed, last year, towards the public exigencies, the very inconsiderable sum of one lac of pagodas, and a few thousand pagodas' worth of grain.
"There is no fear of the rajah's horsemen keeping up the pursuit, beyond halfway between Sekerah and the city; for they must know that all the zemindars and people round it are in our favour, and that they might be attacked, when beyond the limits of the rajah's jagheer." When morning broke they could see, in the distance, the minarets of Delhi.
Formerly these zemindars were merely the superintendents of the land, but latterly they have been declared its hereditary proprietors, and the before fluctuating dues of government have under a permanent settlement been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.
That, while the Mogul government was in its vigor, the property of zemindars was held sacred, and that, either by voluntary grant from the said Mogul or by composition with him, the native Hindoos were left in the free, quiet, and undisturbed possession of their lands, on the single condition of paying a fixed, certain, and unalterable revenue, or quit-rent, to the Mogul government.
Reports of this kind were well calculated to alarm both the Zemindars, who had waxed fat on the Permanent Settlement, and the credulous rayats, whose labour is indispensable to the zemindar squirarchy.
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