India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    452/552 page 422
    of Bengal now belongs to a small and wealthy class of proprietors. Although some of the estates of the zemindars are great tracts of country, yielding immense incomes to their owners, a constant process of subdivision has been going on. In 1901 the number of estates in the whole province had increased to 186,583, of which 152,824 or nearly 82 per cent were petty estates paying less than 100 rupees as revenue, with an average area of only 51 acres and an average assessment of 24 rupees per annum. We cannot now restore to the State the large revenue which has been sacrificed; we cannot replace the ryots in the enjoyment of the property of which they have been deprived, and give to them again the rates of rent which have been so enormously increased, but we can at least secure to them protection for the rights they still retain, and prevent the further illegal enhancement of their payments. I am far from suggesting that pledges given at the time of the Permanent Settlement should be set aside, or that the zemindars should be deprived of privileges which, however they may have been acquired, have been enjoyed through a long course of years. So far, how- ever, as it is now possible, without breach of engage- ments which we are bound to maintain, to remedy evils such as these which I have been describing, it is our obvious duty to do so. The zemindars have repeatedly put forward the claim that in consequence of the stipulations of the Permanent Settlement they are entitled to exemption for ever from all taxation upon profits derived from the land. In 1859, when an income tax was first imposed on every kind of property throughout India, they pro- tested that the conditions of the Settlement were
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