A History of India, Third Edition

THE PERIOD OF COLONIAL RULE

to the Bengali Hindu upper castes. The Muslim peasantry of east Bengal
and the tribal and feudal society of Bihar had not much in common with
this Bengali top stratum. In areas outside Bengal the educated Bengali was
often resented as ‘sub-imperialist’—an instrument to provide the
infrastructure of British rule. In this capacity the ‘Babu’ was indeed
welcomed by the British, whose own cadre of civil servants was after all
extremely small. Scores of clerks and bookkeepers were needed to do the
rulers’ bureaucratic business; it was not so much by the sword as by the
pen that the British held India.
Rural Bengal and Bihar experienced quite a different impact under
British rule. They became the main areas of production for export cash
crops such as indigo, opium and jute. Assam, Bengal’s northern neighbour,
emerged as a major tea-producer. Big British managing agencies organised
this export trade. They operated in the same manner as Carr, Tagore &
Co. had done, but on a much larger scale. They controlled tea estates,
shipping lines, jute mills and coal mines. Through their own offices or
partners in London they were in touch with the world market and geared
production in India to the needs of that market. India had never attracted
European settlers and therefore there was hardly any important private
European pressure group in India except for these managing agents and
their Calcutta staff, mostly Scotsmen, who had a great deal of influence on
the Government of India.
Eastern India, with its metropolis, Calcutta, thus provided a classic
example of a colonial economy with all its social and cultural
concomitants: a poor, exploited peasantry, a small landed and educated
elite and an even smaller but very powerful European business community
organising the export trade. The export surplus which India always had to
have in order to be able to pay its tribute, or home charges, was mostly
provided by eastern India.

The evolution of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh

The adjacent region beyond Benares (Varanasi) which also belonged to the
Bengal Presidency had come under British rule much later than eastern
India. Some districts along the rivers Yamuna and Ganga were ceded to the
British by the nawab of Oudh in 1803. The administrative penetration of
these districts remained fairly slight for some time, but the commercial
impact of the East India Company was noticeable as indigo and opium
were grown to an increasing extent as export cash crops. Indian merchants
participated in this trade, which suffered a severe setback in the 1830s
when the agency houses collapsed in Calcutta.
It so happened that at exactly the same time as this trade depression
affected the region, energetic British revenue officers descended upon it and
imposed a rather tough settlement. This was no longer a permanent