THE PERIOD OF COLONIAL RULEThe Panjab and the martial racesThe greatest attention was paid by the British to the province which they
conquered last: the Panjab. Initially, the Panjab was a ‘Non-Regulation
Province’ to which the various regulations made by the governor general
were not extended. The district officers were accordingly very free in
dealing with problems as they saw fit. Riding through the countryside and
dispensing justice from horseback was considered to be the best style of
administration here. Many of the early district officers were not civil
servants but ex-army officers. They liked this rough and ready way of
governance and claimed that this was what the people of the Panjab were
used to. The Sikh government which had preceded British rule here was
indeed a tough one.
The British continued most of the prevalent practices of revenue
settlement with peasant proprietors organised in village communities. But
whereas the Sikhs had collected their revenue mostly in kind and took a
share of about two-fifths of the produce, the British wanted their revenue
in cash and introduced the usual assessment based on long-term averages
rather than sharing the risks of each harvest with the peasantry.
Accordingly the moneylender became of crucial significance here, too.
Peasant indebtedness and land alienation increased until the British took
the drastic step of passing a Land Alienation Act in 1900, which prohibited
the transfer of land to non-agriculturists. Experience with legislation in
other provinces had shown that it was difficult to define who was an
agriculturist and who was not; this Act therefore specified by caste and
community those whom the British recognised as agriculturist and those
whom they wished to exclude.
The great concern for the agricultural communities of the Panjab was
also due to the fact that the British recruited most of the soldiers for the
British Indian army from these communities of martial races. In the days
before the First World War about one-third of the British Indian army
consisted of Sikhs and Panjabi Muslims. The pay received by these soldiers
was a major contribution to agricultural investment in the Panjab.
Whereas most other provinces received not much in return for the revenue
which they paid, the Panjab was certainly in a more advantageous position
in this respect. In addition, while they did not do much about irrigation in
other provinces, the British did build irrigation canals in the Panjab and
settled ex-soldiers in these newly established canal colonies.
British education made an impact on the Panjab only in the late nineteenth
century. Government College, Lahore, had been established in 1864 but had a
very small staff and few students in its first decade; by the end of the century
the college was attended by about 250 students. In the meantime, however,
some private colleges had also been established in Lahore, among them the
Dayanand Anglo Vedic College sponsored by the Arya Samaj.