PEOPLES OF INDIA The discoveries at Mohenjo-Daro include the skeletal remains of a dolichocephalic (long-headed) people, who, in Sir John Marshall's opinion, "may reasonably be assumed to have belonged to the great long-headed race of Southern Asia and Europe to which the name `Mediterranean' is commonly applied" (Times, Jan. 4, 1928). One skull approximating to the brachycephalic (round-headed) type, which seems to possess the same charac teristics as the pronouncedly brachycephalic statues, was found from a fractional burial. These remains are of the Chalcolithic period and subsequent to the abandonment of the latest city (c. 250o B.c.). Two skulls found buried deep in alluvial deposits near Bombay are perhaps 2,000 years old and are regarded by Sir Arthur Keith as of the small size and narrow shape now pre valent in India. Two of the skulls discovered at Aditanallur in a prehistoric burial site are conspicuously prognathous (with promi nent jaws), and others are markedly long-headed, this latter a feature still noticeable in southern India. In early Indian litera ture mention is made of people having the complexion of a stake, flattened features and very short stature, a type quite com mon in the present population of the continent.
Melanoderms.—The Andamanese (q.v.), are typical Negritos and these people can be considered to be a pure race. They have black skins, woolly hair, very broad noses, round heads and everted lips. It is possible that this element may at one time have existed on the continent but it has left no traces in the present population. More widely spread is a stock marked by short stature, longish heads, broad noses, very dark skins and curly, even frizzly, hair and lips inclined to be everted. This class includes in its numbers the jungle tribes of southern India and of Chota Nagpur, the lower castes in western Bengal and to a slight extent the lowest castes in upper India. This element appears to be related to the Veddas of Ceylon, the Sakai of the Malay peninsula and the Australoids. Here and there woolly haired individuals may be found but they may be merely aber rant forms or due to recent African admixture.
Leucoderms.—An important element, conspicuous in southern, but found in western, India as well, is long headed, with medium to fine noses, shortish, with darkish skin and fine wavy hair. The lips are thin. This element resembles in many respects the Mediterranean stock. The dominant element in the northern, especially the north-western, area is tall, long headed, with fine noses, fair skins (allowing for the effects of exposure to the sun) and in many instances with light-coloured eyes. The lips are thin. It is a type represented among the higher castes of Bengal, and the Nambutiri Brahmans of Malabar, the Nayars, the Coorgs and the Todas also must be regarded as of this stock. In the mountain regions on the west and in Baluchistan is found a round-headed stock, fairly tall, with fine features, wavy hair, ranging from dark brown to fair, and occasional lightish eyes, which seems to be affine to the Alpine stock. A somewhat similar round-headed ele ment can be traced along the west coast but is darker in skin, hair and eyes.
The dissociation of language and race is complete in many parts of India so that terms such as Aryan or Dravidian, which have or may have some value when applied separately either to linguistic or to racial groups, have no significance when attached indiscriminately. Such terms have been avoided here.
This area was of very varying fertility. Probably the central Punjab was then, as later, a bar ren steppe ; but the riverain tracts, the Kurukshetra and the sub-Himalayan belt were doubt less fertile, well-wooded and pos sibly densely forested. We may thus expect to find pastoral types in the steppes and agricultural in the cultivable areas. We have no good reason to assume that the Aryas found these lands un peopled ; on the contrary the pre Aryans of the north were prob ably quite as advanced as the Dravidians who seem to have been settled in villages from an early period. Even in the Rig-veda we find mention of measured fields, and of ploughlands. The village (grama) sometimes con tained a fort (pur), doubtless a tower, and might be of considera ble size. Grain was certainly stored, so the villagers cannot always have been nomadic ; but hints are given that the "village"-f olk was in places a body of herdsmen, wandering in search of pasture under the guidance of the god Pushan. Of the social economy of the settled villages, we learn little. At its head was the village leader, but he seems to have been the chief of its militia, of ten connected with the sendni, or "leader of the host," which would be quite compatible with the exercise of civil or fiscal functions.
Of village councils we hear nothing, although assemblies (sabha samiti) of the people met to advise the king; but in the Epics they disappear.
The village body included such artisans as the rathakara, "char iotmaker," carpenter, smith, and others, but they are not de scribed as members of it. Only once do we read of a gramyavd din, seemingly a village judge. Indeed we find no term to define a "village-owner" in any way equivalent to the modern usage. On the other hand the king's relation to the soil is equally indefi nite. That he was not formally its superior owner is clear, yet he could grant villages or assign his fiscal rights over them to favourites, though such gifts to Brahmans were reproved. And later the idea developed that he was legal owner of the soil, and that his grantees were landlords. Doubtless the feuds alluded to, between nobles and people, arose out of these nebulous rela tions.
Village Community.—The process whereby the Aryan village developed into the modern village community is nowhere described, but it is not difficult to form some idea of it. First of its factors must have been a change in inheritance laws which now gave each son an equal share in the paternal land. This stereotyped the sept or gotra. Meaning at first merely a "herd" or "cowstall," this word assumed later a new significance. A change of gotra once quite possible became unthinkable and marriage within it was disallowed. The older system had only prohibited it within three or f our degrees on either side, and even so permitted a union with the daughter of a paternal uncle, but some instinctive dread of in-breeding seems to have extended the exogamous principle not only to the whole gotra necessitating its immutability, but to the descendants of three more kinships, the mother's and the grandparents'. The result was a solidifying, as it were, of the proprietary body which held a village or a number of villages, whether grouped or dispersed. This principle was applied with equal stringency to non-landholding castes of all degrees, though it was often relaxed so as to exclude only one or two kinships beside the paternal gotra, and in extreme cases it might be further relaxed by splitting even that gotra into two, after a long period of time had reduced the perils of in-breeding to zero. The original gotra indeed seems to have been an artificial unit, at least among the Brahmans, whose gotras, named of ter the semi-mythical sages (rishis) may well have included their disciples as well as their own issue. Not until the Epic period do we find one of the Upanishads enunciating the rule that spiritual succession must descend from father to son, thus closing the gotra to new blood. It is, however, important to note here that in the south of India the exogamous instinct still permits cross-cousin marriage.
The village community no doubt has been, and still is, a real commonwealth. But if we ask how it has enforced its collective will, we shall find it rarely evolving a constitution written or unwritten. Sporadically, in the south of India some interesting inscriptions of the loth century tell us of village committees, under royal control, on which the members sat in rotation deter mined by lot. It is not clear that they were elected. But a low caste man was eligible if he had undergone expiation.
But elsewhere investigation fails to trace any ordered forms of village rule. The convention of the village owners, of ten called its panchayat or "council of five," includes in fact all its members, but it is singularly like the old Polish diet. It has no lawful means, but merely public opinion or collective force, of enforcing its decisions, its customs or its reforms. Its headmen rarely possess definite authority. The wonder is that it has achieved so much. It has enabled provinces devastated by war to reconstruct their rural economy. It has helped vaster areas, ruined by repeat ed famines, to recover their prosperity. It has re-peopled regions left desolate by massacres like those of Timur. But it has failed to set up any working system of self-government on which could be grafted a legal structure. No doubt the Indian village varies in the types of its tenures. In the north its lands may be held on the precise shares heritable by descent, the tenure favoured by the Rajputs. Or it may be that in the fragmentation of the hold ings ancestral right is no longer the measure of actual occupation which has been allowed to individual co-parceners according to their energy and enterprise; so that the industrious having brought much of the common waste under the plough have bequeathed to their descendants, on its final partition, an indefeasible right to the lion's share of what is left of it. Recently much has been done to consolidate holdings, by enforced mutual exchange of scattered ones, but only under State action. In the south of India a more individualistic system was observed to exist by the earliest British administrators. There they found the village not strictly regarded by its former rulers as collectively responsible for the payment of its land-tax, and consisting of individual holdings. The village community therefore was held to be less often existent and the ryot-wari, or system whereby each holder paid his own land tax to the government was favoured.
So far what has been said applies peculiarly to the Hindu castes, including the Sikhs and Mohammedanized tribes which hold the plains of northern India. In the south, caste is tenser, but there is less apparent tendency to subdivide socially. On the other hand two great factions—the right-hand, which is headed by the Brahmans, and includes curiously the Pariahs; and the left-hand, headed by the Panchalars, the "five-castes," workers in stone, metal, etc., and including the Pullars or Pullans—have been formed.
How the feud between these factions originated is unknown. The causes of collision were trivial and apparently for the most part of a purely sumptuary character. The Pullans are agri cultural serfs, little, if at all, above the Pariahs. Offspring of a Brahman woman by a Shudra, Devendra, they say created the work for the Tamil peasantry, which hints at a pre-Tamil origin. A stocky, sturdy black man eating meat (but not beef, and so superior to the Pariahs) the Pullan specializes in the cultivation of wet rice-land, but is excelled by his woman-folk. Some old sumptuary law forbade a Pullan woman to be clothed above the waist, and when Christian converts broke this rule disturbances ensued. Divided into numerous endogamous and innumerable exogamous groups, they trace descent through females and bury their dead. Yet they adopted some Hindu gods and even claim descent from Indra. In a faction fight they form the vanguard as do the Pariahs on the other side. Yet, low in the caste as they are, the Pullan evince a considerable power of self-organization. They have caste-councils which punish theft and adultery and discipline is enforced by flogging (of both sexes) or expulsion from the caste.
In northern India it may be said that caste self-government is confined to the artisan castes, with occasional guild committees among the traders. But no general assemblies ever seem to have existed. The traders settle commercial disputes in townships and their associations may also decide matrimonial conundrums, but the latter form the main if not the sole matter which interests the artisan panchayats or juries. These are presided over by elders, usually hereditary, and sometimes have an appellate sys tem. Owing to the dispersion of such castes in the village, the jurisdictional area may be large and it is often coterminous with an old fiscal area.
Of the earliest pre-Aryan faiths of India, all that can be said is that the Vedic sacrifice was sympathetic magic that was directed to secure the benefits of sunshine and rain in due season. It is not safe to attribute all magical practice to aboriginal Dravidian or non-Aryan sources. The faith of the Vedas was untouched by Zoroaster's monotheism, yet in them we may discern at first a struggle towards it and then in the Atharva-Veda a re-action towards magic, but we have no evidence that the Atharva-Veda owes anything to the indigenous magicians of India. It was indeed rather a revival of Iranian practice. But the admission to canoni cal rank of the Atharva-Veda was none the less of cardinal im portance in Indian religious history. It raised the good magician at least to priestly status, and if it denied that status to the evil working sorcerer it tacitly confessed his power. The Vedas en bloc were thus made to appeal to the most primitive instincts and the task of the Brahman simplified. He had not to convert, but merely to assimilate.
In the beliefs of the most backward tribes of India, observers have detected Animism, definable concisely as a worship of spirits including impersonal forces. But it is doubtful if Indian Animism ever had any real conception of an impersonal force. It lacked quite completely a vivid idea of personality. The Santal who still believes that if he takes a false oath on a piece of tiger skin he will be devoured by a tiger, does not seem to attribute any impersonal power to the relic, but to regard it as a convenient substitute for the live tiger which will eat him if he calls upon him to do so in his oath, and then commits perjury. So inchoate is the concept of personality that his primitive mind fails to draw much distinction between inani mate things and living beings. It is equally incapable of realizing death. Accustomed to obey his living village chiefs, he continues to placate them when dead, but worships neither their ashes nor their memorial stones, nor their spirits. The latter are not deified or even ranked as specially endowed bongos, the so-called spirits who in human shape marry Santal men and maidens, cause disease and mischance when so bidden by witches and display gratitude in tangible form by material acts. The Santals seem to have no words of their own for ghosts or spirits and their native god is Marang Buru, the "great mountain" whose personality can only be described by using a borrowed term, deo, the Sanskrit deva, and whose main function appears to be the instruction of maidens in witchcraft. But the Santals cannot be safely regarded as typical pre-Aryans. They dwell in the eastern outskirts of the Chota Nagpur plateau and are hunters in the forest, not assiduous cultivators. In more favoured localities the Dravidians may have attained a much higher civilization. Still less can we be certain that the concep tions of impersonal forces, of the soul and of a future life were unknown to them and kindred tribes before the Aryan conquests.
In the Rig-Veda we find belief in a future life, delectable for those who have done penance, for heroes and generous donors of sacrificial gifts. In the earliest hymns burial of the dead is alluded to but cremation was more in favour, doubtless because the soul ascended to Heaven with the smoke. The Vedas contain no hint of a belief in metempsychosis but it appears in a Brahrnana. Yama (q.v.) is essentially the king of the dead, but he is hardly their judge, as they pass between two fires, which burn the wicked and let the good go by. Nor does Yama reign alone.
Yet, stranger still, the old Vedic ritual was not abandoned and the Sutras which were now written were intended to aid the stu dent, being classified indices of its increasing perplexities, more or less unintelligible by themselves and requiring a commentary to explain them. They reflect ritualism and polytheism which are retained without misgivings as to their contradictions by the karma theory.
The Ramayana, whose author was a man of low caste, is easier to dissect. It contains innumerable superstitions and the doctrines of transmigration and karma are not yet full-grown. But the Mahabharata is even more primitive. In it everyone eats beef. Brahmans often become warriors. The heroine, Draupadi, is polyandrous. On such documents we can as yet found no final theory as to the origin of the cult of Krishna, who may be identi cal with Vasudeva, while others hold that he was distinct. Rama was almost certainly a man.
Hence by the middle of the 6th century, we find a network of Hindu schools, already in full working order, and represented by the prose Upanishads the Karma Mimamsa, etc.
Probably in the 4th or 3rd century B.C. appear the Samkhva and Yoga (q.v.) systems. The former admitted Sudras, the latter outcasts as well. The one derived from the Upanishads in the main, the latter ultimately from popular magic and hyp notism. The Lokayata or materialistic school was probably also in existence.
The Samkhya, Yoga and Upanishads are all dragged in with out any attempt to reconcile their differences. It recognizes no animal sacrifice but it tightens up the bonds of caste and estab lishes the regular worship of ancestors. If the Dharmashastras as we have them are those to which it refers the ideal is laid down that every man ought to pass through the four asramas, and that not even a virgin widow may re-marry. Scholars who hold that the Song was contaminated by the pantheism of the Upanishads in the end century A.D. have much on their side. But how did it in the end century B.C. appear as a purely theistic tract glorifying Krishna? It began as a sectarian thesis, it has become the very cream of orthodoxy.
This by no means exhausts the Vaishnava material in the didac tic Epic. It was followed by a flood of writings, notably by the Narayaniya section of the Mokshadliarrna which seems to pre sent a later period in the history of Vaishnavism. In it to the Bhagavata are added the Sattvata and the Pancharatra, the latter a term whose name is not yet explicable and the doctrine of Vyuha or expansion according to which Vishnu exists in four forms, de noting the steps of his ascent to Brahma. It is very difficult to see what the idea behind this scheme is. The second is Sam karshana, "withdrawn," because Vishnu, identified with primaeval matter, was drawn from his mother's womb and placed in Rohini. But Vasudeva is Krish na, Balarama or Samkarshana, Krishna's brother, Pradyumna his son, and Aniruddha one of his grandsons. The Narayaniya has r o incarnations of Vishnu, whereas the Anugita only men tions six, adding four to the orig inal two but otherwise making no advance whatsoever. The Narayaniya also has a tale of Narada the saint taking a long journey to the north where he came to the White Island in the Sea of Milk wherein white men worshipped Narayana, i.e., Vishnu. Here we have seemingly allusions to Christianity. But as yet there is nothing to suggest any worship of the child Krishna or any association of Krishna with the Gopis, "cowherdesses." The story of his rescue from the wrath of Kamsa is still untold and Radha is not mentioned.
In the didactic Epic, Shiva follows Vishnu, but at a long in terval. His new theology is clearly in its inception an imitation. Pasupata, as it is called, is scarcely to be distinguished from Pancharatra. The term is formed from Pasu pati, "lord of flocks," once an epithet of Rudra. Shiv-worshippers to-day revere the phallus (e.g., the Lingayats, q.v.), but though it appears on pre Christian monuments no mention of it occurs in literature before this period.
The Vaishnavas of the Bhagavata school also accepted the Advaita Vedanta and the five gods, but still more serious was their identification of Shiva with Vishnu in the Skanda Upanishad. To-day in the Tamil country the ritual is that of the Pancharatra Samhitas said to be unorthodox as inconsistent with Vedic usage, but we cannot be certain when they were written.
So, too, the chauntries of the Shaiva gave their cults a great uplift and made possible the creation of the Tamil Shaiva Sid dhanta. The two great books are the Sri-Bhashya of Ramanuja and the Bhagavata Paurana, whence sprang two streams of Bhakti, the one meditative, the other explosively emotional. While the Shankhya and Yoga schools stood still all the others continued their literary activity in which Bhaskaracharya, author of the Bhaskara-Chasliya, attacks Shankara and in turn is assailed by Udayana in the Kusummanjali, between 85o and 98o A.D., while Madhya, founder of the Madhya sect, left Dvaita commentaries on ten principal Upanishads. The Bhagavata Purana seems to have sprung from the Bhagavata community and from its influ ences were born a number of new sects. It has several distinctive features. It devotes itself to Krishna's boyhood and youth and to the gopis or cow-maidens; but even yet Radha does not appear, her place being foreshadowed by a favourite gopi. Further, Bhakti now attains its highest point of mystical expression and it must have arisen among Vaishnava ascetics. It is a surging emotion which leads to tears and laughter, to sudden fainting fits and long trances of unconsciousness. But it has one fatal feature in its sensuous description of Krishna's dalliance with the gopis. Hindus are by no means in accord as to its age or authorship, but, as Alberuni mentions it, it can hardly have been written after 900 A.D. and must be due to a community of singers in the Tamil coun try. The sects due to the Bhagavata Purina's influence are nu merous. They included the now possibly extinct Raseshvaras or Mercurials, who acquired a divine body by the use of mercury and then by Yoga an intuition of the Supreme ; the aspirant is then liberated in this life. Another inchoate sect is that of the Gorakhnathis—closely related to the Kapalikas—with an unor ganized laity. They have temples all over India from the Gorkatri in Peshawar, in Nepal, right down to the south. Its adherents mainly called Kanphatas, Yogis or split-eared, are its strongest part. Both Tantrik Hinduism and Tantrik Buddhism glorify Goraksha Nath and his companion saints, yet Goraksha himself probably flourished about i 200 A.D. and with his name is associated a new type of Yoga, the Hatha-yoga, destined to attain the samadhi, "supreme concentration of mind," by strange bodily postures, breathing exercises and attention. In the later books on this cult is added Raja-yoga, a more intellectual discipline. The book by Goraksha on the Hatha-yoga seems to be lost.
On the other hand, some of the older sects have disappeared, e.g., the Rama sect which re-wrote the Ramayana, adding Shakta elements to it so that Sita's illusory self is carried off by Ravana and when Rama speaks as a man he is explained to be under the influence of mays, "illusion." This elevates the pair to the position of the Supreme.
Of the ten sects founded by his followers during the next three centuries, the Sikhs (q.v.) are incomparably the most important. All are to be found in the country about Delhi, in Rajputana and its states and the Punjab, only one, the Shiva Narayanas, having originated in Ghazipur in the United Provinces. (H. A. R.) Political Divisions.—India (with Burma and Aden excluded, has a total area of 1,575,107 sq.m., with a population of 338, 119,154 by the 1931 census. These figures comprise:— British India.—British India; area 862,599; pop. 256,808,309; British India proper is divided into 16 provinces. Ten of them would, in size and population, rank with important countries in Europe. They are Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, Central Prov inces and Berar, Madras, Orissa, Punjab, Sind, and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; each of these, and the North-West Frontier has its own local government under a governor. (Burma was separated from India, Apr. 1937.) Then comes a smaller province, of special strategical and military importance, more directly under the control of the central government, to wit British Baluchistan. The remaining four are lesser areas, for administrative convenience technically classed as provinces, viz.: Ajmer-Merwara, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Coorg, and the Delhi enclave.
The Indian States.—The Indian states are governed by Indian princes or chiefs, the more important of whom are helped by political officers appointed by the British government, and resident at their courts. The degree of sovereignty exercised by the dif ferent rulers varies greatly, as do the areas under their dominion. The greater princes administer the internal affairs of their states with almost complete independence, having revenues and armies of their own, and the power of life and death over their subjects. At the other end of the scale are petty chiefs with a jurisdiction hardly higher than that of an ordinary magistrate; and between these extremes lies much gradation. The authority of each ruler is determined by treaties or engagements with the British govern ment, or by practice that has grown up in the course of their relations with British India. The paramount power requires the states not to enter into alliances or armed disputes with each other, or with foreign states; and it asserts the right to interfere in cases of gross misgovernment.
The most important states are Hyderabad, Mysore, Kashmir, Gwalior and Baroda. After them come a number of great princes, for whom the official criterion of importance is the number of guns to which they are entitled by way of salute. Some of them are in direct relation with the central government ; others belong to the large territorial circles known as the Rajputana and the Central India Agencies; others again, including all the more petty chiefs, deal with the local governments whose boundaries their states adjoin. Burma contains a number of Shan states, which technically form part of British India, but are administered through their hereditary chiefs.
Frontier States.—In addition to the internal states, there are several frontier tracts of India, whose status is fluctuating or not strictly defined. In Baluchistan there are the native states of Kalat and Las Bela, and also tribal areas belonging to the Marri and Bugti tribes. On the north-west frontier, in addition to the chiefships of Chitral and Dir, there are a number of independent tribes which reside within the political frontier of British India, but over which effective control has never been exercised. The territory belonging to these tribes, of whom the chief are the Waziris, Afridis, Orakzais, Mohmands, Swatis and Bajouris, is attached to, but is not strictly within, the North-West Frontier Province. Kashmir possesses as feudatories Gilgit and a number of petty states, of which the most important are Hunza-Nagar and Chilas. Nepal and Bhutan, though independent, are under various commercial and other agreements with the government of India. On the north-east frontier, as on the north-west, semi independent tribes extend across the frontier into independent country. Similarly Karenni, on the Burmese border, is not in cluded in British territory, but the superintendent of the Shan states exercises some judicial and other powers over it.
Government of India.—The government of India vests in the Crown, and is exercised in England by a secretary of state who, as a member of the cabinet, is responsible to parliament. His salary is now on the British estimates, which gives parliament a clearer invitation than it formerly enjoyed to discuss Indian affairs. In administrative details the secretary of state has the machinery of the India Office, and particularly the assistance of the Council of India, an advisory body with special control over finance. The members of the Council must not be fewer than eight, nor more than 12; at least one-half of them must have recently served or resided in India for ten years ; and they are appointed for five years. A Hindu and a Mohammedan were put on the Council for the first time in 1907; and there are now three Indian members. Since 1920 a High Commissioner for India has been in existence. Acting as agent for the central and provincial governments in India, and also as official trade representative of the country, he occupies a position not unlike that of the ac credited representatives of the Dominion governments.
In India the head of the government is the governor-general or viceroy, who is appointed by the Crown for a period of usually five years. He functions, for practically all administrative business, in his executive council ; and it is in the "governor general-in-council" that the supreme authority, civil and military, as well as the control over the local governments, vests. The "Government of India," to use its best known name, works at Delhi in the cooler months, November to April, and migrates to Simla in the Punjab hills for the rest of the year. The members of the executive council are appointed by the Crown for a period of five years; and two of them must have had ten years' service in India. There are at present seven members, including the commander-in-chief, three of them being Indians. The departments of administration are divided among them as in a European cabinet ; but by use and wont the viceroy retains the portfolio of foreign affairs. All orders, however, must issue in the name of the governor-general-in-council.
In the eleven major provinces the governor is appointed by the Crown ; in case of Madras, Bombay and Bengal he is usually a nominee of the political party in power in England at the time of his selection, and in the other provinces he has generally been promoted from the ranks of the civil service. Since 1921 his administration has been carried on through two agencies, the system being explained in more detail below: in certain "reserved" departments he acts with his executive council, and in the re maining ("transferred") departments with ministers. The two intermediate and the four minor provinces are each under a chief commissioner, who is directly responsible to the Government of India, and has no council.
Within the separate provinces the administrative unit is the district, of which there are 273 in India. In every province except Madras there are divisions, consisting of three or more districts under a commissioner. The title of the district officer varies according to whether the province is "regulation" or "non regulation"—an old distinction, which now tends to become obsolete; in a regulation province the district officer is styled a collector, while in a non-regulation province he is called a deputy commissioner. The chief non-regulation provinces are the Punjab, Central Provinces and Burma. The districts are partitioned out into lesser tracts, which are strictly units of administration, though subordinate ones. The system of partitioning, and also the nomenclature, vary in the different provinces; but generally it may be said that the subdivision or tahsil is the ultimate unit of administration. Broadly speaking, the subdivision is character istic of Bengal, where revenue duties are in the background, and the tahsil of Madras, where the land settlement requires attention year by year. There is no administrative unit below the sub division or tahsil. The thana, or police division, only exists for police purposes. The old pargana, or fiscal division, has now but an historical interest. The village still remains as the agricultural unit, and preserves its independence for revenue purposes in most parts of the country. The township is peculiar to Burma.
The Judicial Service.—Bengal, Madras, Bombay, the old North-Western Provinces (now the Agra portion of the United Provinces), the Punjab, Burma and Bihar and Orissa, each has a high court, established by charter under an act of parliament, with judges appointed by the Crown. Of the other provinces Oudh has a chief court, and the Central Provinces, Sind and the North West Frontier Province have judicial commissioners, all estab lished by local legislation. From the high courts, chief courts and judicial commissioners an appeal lies to the judicial com mittee of the privy council in England. Below these courts come district and sessions judges, who perform the ordinary judicial work of the country, civil and criminal. Their jurisdictions coin cide for the most part with the magisterial and fiscal boundaries. But, except in Madras, where the districts are large, a single civil and sessions judge sometimes exercises jurisdiction over more than one district. In the non-regulation territory judicial and executive functions are still to some extent combined in the same hands.
The chief of the Indian services is technically known as the Indian civil service. It is limited to about a thousand members, who used to be chosen exclusively by open competition in England between the ages of 21 and 24. Nearly all the higher appoint ments, administrative and judicial, are appropriated by statutes to this service. Other services which used to be mainly or wholly recruited in England were the education, police, engineer ing, public works, telegraph, forest and superior railway services. A quarter of a century ago it was estimated that, out of 1,37o appointments drawing a salary of f Boo a year and upwards, 1,263 were held by Europeans; while the vast majority of the lower posts were occupied by Indians. All this is now changing fast. The pronouncement of Aug. 1917 adumbrated "the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration," and standard ratios for the recruitment of Indians for the dif ferent services were laid down as the result of a Royal Com mission appointed in 1923. For the Indian Civil Service and the superior engineering service it will be 6o per cent; for the Police 5o and for the Forests 75 per cent ; while the recruitment for the "transferred" departments will be left to the provincial governments and by them will no doubt be largely Indianized. Besides the great mass of subordinate and clerical posts, the magisterial work and the administration of the land and the revenue is very largely in the hands of Indians ; the subordinate courts of justice are almost entirely manned by Indians, who also sit on the benches of all the high courts.
The Police.—The present police system, which is modelled somewhat on that of the Irish constabulary, was established by an act of 1861. It provides a regular force in each district, under a superintendent who is almost always a European, subordinate for general purposes to the district magistrate. The unit of work is the thana or police station; some of these have jurisdictions as big as some English counties, and staffs of not more than a dozen men. The regular force depends necessarily on the village watch men, overworked and underpaid Dogberries, for information and help in their investigations; and they suffer from the steady fail ure of the general public to give them adequate support in the discharge of their duties. Though the old canker of corruption and abuse of power has not been by any means eradicated, the morale of the force has been vastly improved in recent years; and a commission appointed in 1902 led to a much needed amelioration of their pay and general conditions. The strength of the force for the whole of India is about 200,000, and its cost just under f8,000,000. A small force (about 27,00o) of military police, under officers seconded from the army, is maintained along the frontiers, especially in Burma.
Jails in India are relatively cheerful abodes, and are being con stantly improved. Their average population in 1924 was just over r 2 7,000, a figure which, in its relation to the total population, is striking testimony to the general law-abiding disposition of the Indian people. Discipline is well maintained, though separate confinement has been abolished ; and various industries, especially carpet-weaving, are profitably pursued wherever practicable. Diet and sanitation account for the remarkably low death rate (1924) of 14 per i,000 inmates. A recent committee of enquiry laid stress on the reformative side of the system; and considerable progress has been made in Borstal and similar treatment. It used to be the rule to transport to the Andamans convicts with more than six years to serve; but the islands are now being abandoned as a penal settlement, and in 1925 the number of their convict inhabitants had been reduced to close on 8,000.
Local self-government, municipal and rural, in the form in which it now prevails in India, is essentially a product of British rule. Village communities and trade gilds existed previously, but only in a rudimentary form. The present system is based upon legislation by Lord Ripon in 1882, providing for the establishment of municipal committees and local boards, whose members should be chosen by election with a preponderance of non-official mem bers. These powers lay far too long in abeyance, but their appli cation has been greatly stimulated as part of the recent political advance. The municipalities and district boards have largely been freed from official control; but its place has too often been taken by political faction, and it seems necessary to suspend judgment on the work of the new bodies. The chief difficulty has Leen to induce them to raise the taxation needed for the efficient main tenance of their services. Great and small, there are 763 munici pal bodies in India, with nearly 19 millions of people under their care, and their average rate of taxation is under 9 shillings per head of inhabitant. The great cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Rangoon have energetic improvement trusts, which have worked wonders in development, removal of slums and housing projects for relieving congestion; and their example is being followed in other industrial centres. In another field of work, the Port Trusts of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Karachi and Rangoon have proved enlightened custodians of their harbours and the com mercial interests for which they cater.
India's Constitution of 1919.—Transcending in general inter est the annals of administrative routine, however progressive and benevolent, is the narrative of the development of the political machinery of a country where autocratic monarchy and interne cine war had for many centuries prevailed. The restoration of peace and order under the East India Company was a task which left little leisure or inclination for theories of political emancipa tion; and the only duty immediately in sight was to rule the land, first, for the promotion of peaceful commerce, and then, by slow degrees, in the interest also of the people, who neither sought nor were considered fit for any share in the management of public affairs. The Mutiny set back for quarter of a century any move ment that might otherwise have come from England for some measure of self-government; and it was not till Lord Ripon's viceroyalty that conceptions of political rights began to stir. Broadly speaking, they were pushed aside as being, in the eyes of the responsible officials, premature; but two consequences ensued. On the one hand, an organized school of political reformers came out into the open; the National Congress was founded in 1885. On the other hand, representatives of the people were called in to the councils of the government. The former movement pro gressed with vastly greater rapidity than the latter. Each succeed ing year brought louder insistence on India's right to share in her own administration; while the appointment of an extra Indian here and there to the small legislative bodies was but a halting response, especially as the elective principle was steadily refused. It is sometimes said that the first big forward move towards political responsibility was forced by the outbreak of revolution ary crime in Lord Minto's regime ; but it is well known that he and some of his advisers had been convinced of the need for an advance before the outrages began, and as a consequence of the remarkable outburst of political claims that followed Lord Curzon's departure.
The Morley-Minto reforms, as they are commonly called, of 1909 seemed at the time a liberal and striking advance, and were received with a chorus of approval and gratitude by Indian pub licists. But they entrusted the legislatures, and through them the people with no control over the executive governments; Lord Morley himself, good radical though he was, had definitely re jected the idea that they gave parliamentary institutions in embryo. What they did do was to introduce the electoral principle into the Indian legislatures, and give them a wider sphere of in fluence over the executive government. But in effect the legis latures remained advisory bodies, and the absence of any adminis trative responsibility whetted their critical faculty without giving them any corresponding practice in the actual work of govern ment: The executive authorities, imperial and provincial, re mained governments of officials, responsible to the Secretary of State, and through him to the British Parliament, and not ame nable in any direct sense to popular control in India.
From this arrangement to the announcement of 1917 was a wide step, involving organic change and not taken before time. The enthusiasm which had welcomed the Morley-Minto reform had long evaporated, and the demand by the Indian leaders for administrative power was clamorous. The Montagu-Chelmsford report conceded the justice of the demand, and proposed that responsible government, in the sense of government by ministers primarily responsible to an elected assembly, should be conferred on India by progressive stages. It recognized that India was not yet ready for full responsible government, that an electorate had to be created and that its representatives must at first be inex perienced. Its authors proposed therefore to confine the first stage of advance to the major provinces, and in these provinces to set up a dual form of government, generally known as "dyarchy." This device, accepted only after all possible alterna tives had been found impracticable, was a division of the provin cial field of government into two sections, one of which would be transferred to the control of ministers chosen by the Governor from the elected members of his legislative council.
In July 1919 a bill embodying this scheme, with certain modi fications, was introduced into the House of Commons, read a second time and referred to a joint select committee of both Houses presided over by Lord Selborne. The committee, after an elaborate investigation, accepted the main principles of the scheme, and dealt at length with the political and administrative problems involved in the bill. The bill passed both Houses sub stantially as amended by the committee, and left a great deal of the new constitution to be worked out by rules drafted and ap plied by the government to meet the needs of each particular case. The general purport of the constitution will now be de scribed.
At the outset it demarcates the duties of the "central" or Im perial government from those of the provincial governments. The former retains certain powers of supervision and control over the provincial administrations; but its direct functions are specifi cally listed, and the departments which are under the provincial governments are similarly enumerated. These governments de rive their revenue from the departments under their own control, i.e., land revenue, stamps, excise, forest, etc. The Imperial gov ernment takes the yield of its own central departments—railways, post and telegraphs, customs, income tax, salt, opium, etc. At first, however, these did not balance its budget, which carries the whole cost of the defence of India ; and consequently it had to levy subsidies from the provinces, though it is pledged to forgo them when the development of its own resources shall permit. As with the administrative and financial powers, so also are the law-making powers of the central and the provincial authorities carefully delimited.
Each of the major provinces is placed under a Governor. The whole of the provincial departments are divided in each province into two groups, the "reserved" and the "transferred." The former (at present law and order, justice, police, the land, etc.) are administered by the Governor and his Executive Council, the latter (education, public health, excise, etc.) are administered by the Governor and two or more Ministers, who are chosen by him from the leaders of the provincial legislature. These two bodies work independently, each in its own field; and their re sponsibilities are clearly distinguished. The Governor is the link of union, and has full discretion to bring them together for joint consultation on matters of common interest. The Executive Council in its control of reserved subjects is responsible through the Government of India and the Secretary of State to the British Parliament; the Ministers in their control of transferred subjects are responsible to the legislative council on the spot. This, in the briefest terms, is the system which has been named or nicknamed "dyarchy." Its purpose is to provide a field of actual duty in which Indian leaders can be trained by actual practice in the art of Government.
The legislative council in each province has a large elected majority, with an element (under 3o%) of officials and nominated members. The elections are direct and the constituencies mainly territorial. A property qualification, differing in different prov inces, determines the franchise. The vote was originally given to about s,000,000 of the adult male population in the whole of India, and has subsequently been extended by the grant of a restricted female suffrage in certain provinces. For whatever legislation and supply they require, both halves of the Govern ment are dependent on the legislature thus constituted. In the "transferred" sphere, Ministers must secure the support of the legislature. If they fail, their policy fails; and the ordinary course is for them to resign or be dismissed by the Governor, so that they may be replaced by Ministers who can carry the legislative council with them.
In the "reserved" sphere, it is the task of the Governor and his official colleagues to reconcile the legislature to their policy. But if they fail, their responsibility for right policy to the British Parliament is in no wise diminished; certain safeguards are ac cordingly provided against the event of the council refusing a law or supply for which it has been asked by them. The Gov ernor has an exceptional power to pass such a law by his own decree, if he certifies that it is essential for the discharge of his responsibility; but a measure enacted in this way has to be reserved for His Majesty's pleasure. Similarly the Government may restore a grant for expenditure which has been refused or reduced by the Council if the Governor certifies in the same sense; and in case of emergency he may authorise any expendi ture which "may be in his opinion necessary for the safety or tranquillity of the province or for the carrying on of any depart ment." Finally, should the legislature take action in any depart ment which the Governor regards as dangerous, he has wide powers to stop a bill, or to refuse assent to it, or to return it for reconsideration, or to reserve it for the consideration of the Governor-General. Extensive safeguards thus exist against the possible misuse of its power by the provincial legislature.
It was foreseen that the Central Government may not always be able to carry the legislature with it, and machinery was pro vided for avoiding a deadlock in such an event.
In legislative business a difference between the two Chambers may be referred to a joint sitting. If in either Chamber a bill is proposed or amended so as to affect "the safety or tranquillity of British India or any part thereof," the Governor-General may stop it. He may also, as under the previous constitution, veto a bill, or refer it for His Majesty's pleasure. Should he recommend a bill which either Chamber accepts and the other rejects. he may treat it as enacted; or if both Chambers reject it, he may make it into an Act on his own responsibility. In both cases, however, the Governor-General must first have certified that the "passage of the bill is essential for the safety, tranquillity or interests of British India or any part thereof," and the measure must subse quently be laid before both Houses of Parliament; effect may not be given to it, unless in a state of emergency, until His Majesty's assent has been received. In financial business the supply grants have to be voted by the Legislative Assembly; but if a grant which the Governor-General declares to be essential to the dis charge of his responsibilites is refused or reduced, he may re store it.
Expenditure on defence and in the political and ecclesiastical departments, charges prescribed by law, loan charges and certain salaries and pensions need not be voted; and the Governor General has power to sanction vital expenditure in cases of emergency.
At no period of its history has India been an altogether unen lightened country. Inscriptions on stone and copper, the palmleaf records of the temples, and in later days the widespread manu facture of paper, all alike indicate, not only the general knowl edge, but also the common use, of the art of writing. From the earliest times the caste of Brahmans has preserved, by oral tradition as well as in mss., a literature unrivalled alike in its antiquity and in the intellectual subtlety of its contents.
The Mohammedan invaders introduced the profession of the historian which reached a high degree of excellence, even as corn pared with contemporary Europe. Through all changes of govern ment vernacular instruction in its simplest form has always been given, at least to the children of respectable classes, in every large village. Even at the present day knowledge of reading and writing is, owing to the teaching of Buddhist monks, as widely diffused throughout Burma as it is in some countries of Europe.
During the early days of the East India Company's rule the promotion of education was not recognized as a duty of govern ment.
The enlightened mind of Warren Hastings did indeed anticipate his age by founding the Calcutta madrasa for Mohammedan teaching, and the establishment of the Sanskrit College at Benares in 1791 was associated with the name of another servant of the Company, Jonathan Duncan. But Wellesley's schemes of im perial dominion did not extend beyond the establishment of a college for English officials.
On the ioo,000 rupee grant which was prescribed, the first of its kind, for the encouragement of education by the Charter Act of 1913, no general scheme of public instruction could be built. But the Sanskrit College in Calcutta was founded in 1824, the medical college by Lord William Bentinck in 1835, the Hooghly madrasa by a wealthy Indian gentleman in 1835, and the Agra college had been established in 1823. Meanwhile the missionaries made the field of vernacular education their own. Discouraged by the Official authorities, and ever liable to banishment or deporta tion, they not only devoted themselves with courage to their special work of evangelization, but were also the first to study the vernacular dialects spoken by the common people. Just as two centuries earlier the Jesuits at Madura, in the extreme south, composed works in Tamil, which are still acknowledged as classi cal, so did the Baptist mission at Serampur, near Calcutta, first raise Bengali to the rank of a literary language. The interest of the missionaries in education, which has never ceased to the present day, though now comparatively overshadowed by govern ment activity, had two distinct aspects. They studied the vernacu lar, in order to reach the people by their preaching and to translate the Bible ; and they taught English, as the channel of non sectarian learning.
A fresh wind began to blow from England, with the Charter Act of 1833. The work of the missionaries received official licence; and in 1835 Lord William Bentinck decided that "the great object of the British government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India." This was the last word on a long-drawn controversy between a school which arrived at the extension of oriental learning in India in its own languages, and the school which urged the teaching of elementary knowledge in the vernacular tongues and of the higher branches in English. The scale had been turned by Macaulay's famous minute in support of the latter view; and the low state into which Hindu morality and culture had sunk at the time was felt to be adequate justification for the decision. It settled the aim of the British governmental system of education in India, and Sir Charles Wood's famous despatch of 1854 determined the methods and machinery. From that date onwards education has meant a network of schools, colleges and examinations ultimately controlled by the government. Many of the institutions are main tained directly from public funds, and staffed by teachers who are public officials. Another class is maintained by local authorities, subject to close control by the government. A third class under private (e.g., missionary) management depends on the govern ment for grants-in-aid or for "recognition"; and both grants and recognition imply strict compliance with governmental regulation. At the same time the government in its anxiety to hold an even balance between the different sects and creeds in India has kept carefully aloof from the teaching of religion on morality.
The British government thus, while honestly giving its best in teachers and what it believed to be its best in curricula, ex posed itself to the odium of what were for long three grave defects in the system. First, by making its own type of education the qualification for government service, it tended to concentrate the energies of the youth of India on the search for public offices, rather than of learning for its own sake or of that general develop ment of the intelligence which would serve the industrial growth of the country. Second, the mass of students who clamoured for a purely literary education as the doorway to official employment was so great that the vast majority of them absorbed only a shallow and mechanical smattering of knowledge. To those who failed in securing government service their education proved of no commercial value: and in this way a class of unemployable and half-educated lads grew up, who became ready vehicles for political unrest and in some cases for revolutionary crime.
Third, purely secular instruction which virtually ignored the vernacular languages involved neglect of the indigenous ethos and culture of India, and became in time largely responsible for the reaction against Western civilization which characterizes re cent political movements in the country.
To these defects the government was far from blind, and the history of the educational policy of the last twenty years is a constant endeavour to mitigate them. Lord Curzon had the whole system overhauled and improved. The universities were liberal ized, the colleges set on the way to becoming residential institu tions, and the assistance to elementary schools largely extended; while technical and agricultural schools were reformed and vital ized. Lord Minto got a special ministry of education established; and the financial prosperity of Lord Hardinge's viceroyalty en abled him to make generous grants to the provinces for education, and to wage a definite war on illiteracy. But the root of the matter was attacked when a special commission was appointed, under the chairmanship of Sir Michael Sadler to inquire into the weaknesses of the Calcutta university, and incidentally of uni versity education generally. It reported in 1919, and condemned in emphatic and impressive language the whole conduct of second ary and university education.
The commission advised radical reforms. The universities should be centralised, unitary, residential, teaching bodies with a government of their own. Tuition of a preparatory and not a university type should be removed to a new grade of intermediate colleges, where the curriculum would be a varied kind and would lead up to appropriate examinations not under university control though qualifying for entrance to a university, and having an in dependent value as a certificate of general education. Students would thus enter the universities at a later age and at a stage represented by the old "intermediate" examination, thus relieving the universities of a part of their unwieldy host of undergraduates. These recommendations were generally welcomed, and most of the former universities (including the Hindu University at Benares, which owed much to the energy of Mrs. Besant) have been reconstituting themselves accordingly, while new universities of the teaching and residential type are being built up at Dacca, Aligarh (Muslim), Lucknow, Rangoon, Patna, Nagpur and Delni. In 1926 legislative provision was made for incorporating a uni versity at Agra to relieve the external work at Allahabad, and in the same year a new Andhra university was inaugurated in Mad ras. The multiplying of universities, however, may go too far; there is already some danger of the lowering of standards, in competition for undergraduates; and it is hoped that an Inter University Board for all India will be strong enough to maintain standards and insist on modern methods of instruction. In 1926 the number of students at university and professional colleges was 8 7,600 of whom barely 1 4 per cent were women.
Acts asserting the compulsion principle have been passed in sev eral provinces, but the translation of principle into practice is still incomplete. Meanwhile the decentralisation of the control of primary education offers a prospect of greater elasticity, espe cially in adapting the school curriculum to rural needs.
The following statistics show the progress of education between 1896-97, when Lord Curzon had not begun his measures of re form; 1921-22, when education (except in universities) was being handed over to the control of ministers under the new constitu tion; and 1926, the latest year for which complete figures are available.
Despite this substantial progress, illiteracy remains in complete ascendancy. At the 1921 Census, roughly 7 per cent of the popula tion-19.8 million males and 2.8 million females—were returned as literate, in the sense of being able to read and write a letter in their own vernacular language. Literates in English were only .8 per cent of the population.
Like education, the sanitary welfare of the country is extremely backward, and for much the same reasons,—climate, general poverty and the pressure of the population. Over an average of five recent years, the ratio of births was 33.44 Per I,000 of popu lation, and the ratio of deaths 26.56; fully one fifth of the mor tality being among infants of under a year old.
In years of bad epidemics, the death roll runs much higher; the ratio, for example, was 62.46 in 1918, the disastrous influenza year; and plague, which started in 1896, has carried off 12 mil lions in the last decade. Cholera is endemic in some areas, malaria in almost all; hook-worm and kola czar are widespread. Medical relief hardly exists outside the towns, except at the dis pensaries established by the government and now controlled by local authorities. Yet improvement is being slowly effected. In the past, every important fair or seat of pilgrimage was a focus of disease and death to many thousands. This has now been brought under control ; and great strides have been made in pro viding the cities and larger urban areas with a supply of pure drinking water and with proper sewage or conservancy. Element ary hygiene is also being introduced into the teaching in schools; and some interest is being taken in child welfare. In British India there are about 4,000 hospitals and dispensaries of very varying quality, at which 41 millions of patients were treated in 1925; but the total number of beds available was only 45,000.
That the state should appropriate to itself a direct share in the produce of the soil is a fundamental maxim of Indian finance that has been recognized from time immemorial. In the old Hindu village community, the land was not held by private owners but by occupiers under the petty corporation; the revenue was not due from individuals, but from the community represented by its head-man. The aggregate harvest of the village fields was thrown into a common fund, and before the general distribution the head man was bound to set aside the share of the state. No other sys tem of taxation could be theoretically more just, or in practice less obnoxious to the people. Under the Mogul empire, as organ ized by Akbar, the share of the state was fixed at one-third of the gross produce of the soil; and a regular army of tax-collectors was permitted to intervene between the cultivator and the supreme government.
Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb extracted a larger land revenue than the British do. When the government was first undertaken by the East India Company, no attempt was made to understand the social system upon which the land revenue was based. The joint responsibility of the village community for the revenue was over looked, and the convenience of collecting it from some individual or group was magnified. The conception of private property in the soil, with which the early British authorities were familiar at home, was grafted from a rural policy to which it was wholly alien. As a result, the office of zamindar—originally a mere farmer or lessee of the revenue under the Mohammedan regime—was transmuted into that of landowner and zamindars were created, where they did not exist, from men or families who, for almost any reason, were prominent in the areas of their residence.
The annual government demand was made the first liability on the land; subject thereto, the registered land-holder was given powers of sale or mortgage scarcely more restricted than those of a tenant in fee-simple. At the same time the possible hard ships, as regards the cultivator, of this absolute right of property vested in the owner were anticipated by the recognition of occu pancy rights of fixity of tenure, under certain conditions. Legal rights were substituted for unwritten customs; and the new class of landowner was endowed with a credit which he never before possessed, by allowing him a certain share of the unearned incre ment. Against the misuse of this credit the British government has had consistently to struggle.
The means by which the land revenue is assessed is known as settlement, and the assessor is styled a settlement officer. In Bengal the assessment has been accomplished once and for all, but throughout the greater part of the rest of India the process is continually going on. The details vary in the different prov inces; but, broadly speaking, a settlement may be described as the ascertainment of the agricultural capacity of the land. The settlement officer estimates the character of the soil, the kind of crop, the opportunities for irrigation, the means of communica tion and their probable development in the future, and all other circumstances which tend to affect the value of the produce. With these facts before him, he proceeds to assess the government de mand upon the land according to certain general principles, which vary in the several provinces. The result is the settlement re port, which records, as in a Domesday Book, the entire mass of agricultural statistics concerning the district.
Lower Bengal and a few adjoining districts of the United Provinces and of Madras have a permanent settlement, the land revenue having been fixed in perpetuity by Lord Cornwallis in The zamindars of that time became practically landlords, with rights of transfer and inheritance, subject to the payment of a rent charge in perpetuity. But no detailed record of tenant ,right was inserted in the settlement papers, and the cultivators lost rather than gained in security of tenure. The peasantry found no protection in the law courts until 1859, when an act was passed which restricted the landlord's powers of enhancement. Later the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885, since amended by an act of 1908, created various classes of privileged tenants, including one class known as "settled ryots" in which the qualifying condition is holding land, not necessarily the same land, for twelve years continuously in one village. Outside the privileged classes of ten ants the act gives valuable protection to tenants-at-will; and the original vices of the Bengal system are being partly overcome, though the growing division of rights in the land is an abiding economic calamity.
The representatives of several ancient lines of powerful chiefs exist in the extreme south and in the north of the presidency. Their estates have been guaranteed to them on payment of a peshkash or permanent tribute, and are saved by the custom of primogeniture from the usual fate of subdivision. Throughout the rest of Madras there are no zamindars either in name or fact. The influence of Sir Thomas Munro led to the adoption of the ryot wari system, which will always be associated with his name. According to his system, assessment is made with the cultivating proprietor upon the land taken up for cultivation year by year. Neither zamindar nor village officer intervenes between the culti vator and the state, which takes directly upon its shoulders all the landlord's responsibility.
Nothing can be more complete in theory and more difficult of exposition than a Madras ryotwari settlement. First, the entire area of the district, whether cultivated or uncultivated, and of each field within the district is accurately measured. The next step is to calculate the estimated produce of each field, having regard to every kind of both natural and artificial advantage. Lastly, a rate is fixed upon every field, which may be regarded as roughly equal to one-third of the gross and one-half of the net produce. The rates thus ascertained are fixed for a term of thirty years; but during that period the aggregate rent-roll of a district is liable to be affected by several considerations, which are discussed and decided by the collector at the jamabandi or court held every year for definitely ascertaining the amount of revenue to be paid by each ryot for the current season.
In the early days of British rule no system whatever prevailed throughout the Bombay presidency; and even at the present time there are tracts where something of the old confusion survives. The modern "survey tenure" as it is called, dates from 1838. Each field is measured, and assessment placed upon it according to the quality of the soil without any attempt to fix the actual average produce. This assessment holds good for a term of thirty years.
The principles of the land revenue settlement and administra tion were reviewed by the government of India in a famous resolution prepared under Lord Curzon's direction and presented to parliament in 1902. It gives a full description and justification of the system and its consequences. In the previous year, the Famine Commission had come to the general conclusion that "except in Bombay, where it is full, the incidence of land revenue is low to moderate in ordinary years, and it should in no way per se be the cause of indebtedness." There is now an active movement to have the principles of valuation and assessment fixed by law instead of being left to usage. In areas where en hancements in the land revenue are decided to be, in whole or part, attributable to the benefits of State irrigation, an appropri ate part of the field is transferred to the irrigation department. Otherwise that department charges by a rate on the land for the water it supplies, attempts to meter the flow and charge accord ingly having so far met with imperfect success.
Customs has already been discussed. Excise duties vary greatly in different provinces, and flow from a special form of government monopoly. The articles taxed are intoxicants and drugs; and the avowed object of government is to check consumption as well as to raise revenue. The right to manufacture, and the right to retail, spirits and beer are monopolies of government permitted to individuals only upon terms and under strict supervision. Of excisable drugs the most important are opium, bhang, ganja and charas. Opium is sold through private retailers at a monopoly price. Bhang, ganja and charas are three different narcotic drugs prepared from the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa, var. indica).
The plant grows wild in many parts of India; but the culti vation of it for ganja is practically confined to a limited area in the Rajshahi district of Bengal, and charas is mainly imported from Central Asia.
In regard to ganja and charas, cultivation of the plants is severely restricted and a direct quantitative duty is levied on the drugs on issue from the warehouse in the province of consump tion; while as regards bhang, cultivation of the hemp for its pro duction is prohibited or taxed, and collection of the drug from wild plants permitted only under licence, a moderate quantitative duty being levied in addition to vend fees. No duty whatever is now levied upon tobacco in any part of India. The plant is uni versally grown by the cultivators for their own smoking, and the impossibility of accurate excise supervision has caused the gov ernment to abandon the impost. Other sources of revenue are stamps, levied on judicial proceedings and commercial docu ments; registration of mortgages and other instruments; and provincial rates, chiefly in Bengal and the United Provinces for public works or rural police.
Local Finance.—The 767 municipalities of British India have the disposal of an annual revenue of f 12,000,000 excluding ab normal items and borrowings; and the district and local boards have a normal revenue of about f 10, 500,000. Both classes of bodies have been endowed by the 1919 constitution with a finan cial independence commensurate in its degree with that of the provinces. The six port trusts have statutory powers for their own business, and control an income of approximately £6 mil lions: Bombay and Calcutta in particular having raised consider able loans, which rank in the Indian market only second to government securities.
Recent Financial History.—Before the war India was making rapid economic progress. After the famine year of 1908 the monsoons were satisfactory and the harvests good; trade went well, and there were large windfalls in the opium revenue. During the five years immediately preceding the outbreak of war the country absorbed gold and silver to the amount of f 12 7 millions.
Large grants became possible to the provinces for education and public health; some notable new undertakings were launched, and a spirit of enterprise was displayed in commerce and in in dustry. When the world went to war in 1914, Indian finance enlarged its experiences. Direct expenditure on the war was at first small, but the country's external trade was dislocated, and her railway and customs receipts suffered accordingly; so that the first two years were marked by deficits. In 1916-7 additional taxation was imposed, while the export of war material had now begun to assume large proportions, and agriculture was also flourishing. In 1917 the financial position was sufficiently strong to justify the Indian government, with approval of the Legis lative Council, in a contribution of f Ioo,000,000 to the home government towards the cost of the war; and in 1918 a further contribution was volunteered, which had, however, to be subse quently revised after the Afghan War, and was adjusted finally at about £ 14,000,000. In 1917-8 taxation was again increased, but such was the activity of trade and the general prosperity of the country that a surplus of f 8,000,000 was realised.
Then the tide turned, and for a series of years the national accounts failed to balance. The old standard of military expendi ture was doubled; the Afghan War of 1919 and the succeeding troubles in Waziristan threw a heavy burden on the revenues; the trade boom which had been stimulated by the heavy manufac ture of war material slowly exhausted itself, and exchange was crumbling; while a rapid rise in the cost of living left the govern ment with no option but to make some corresponding increase in the wages of its army of employees. The deficits were met by temporary expedients which had recently been strangers to the Indian financial system--dipping into balances, accommodation from the banks and borrowing for revenue purposes. There fol lowed two weak monsoons, and the year 1921-22 closed with over i22,000,000 to the bad; and, what was even worse, the govern ment had to budget for a further deficit in 1922-23, the legislature having rejected several of its proposals, among which a rise in the salt duty was prominent for improving the revenue.
Sharp retrenchment had now become imperative, and in the winter of 1922 a special committee under Lord Inchcape attacked the whole problem of expenditure. Their recommendations, drastic and comprehensive, extending to military as well as to civil charges, were put into effect, as far as time admitted, in the estimates for 1923-24, and the salt tax was doubled in the face of fierce opposition. The result, combined with a marked revival in trade, was a small surplus at the end of the year. The budget for the succeeding year was wrecked by an extremist demonstration in the Assembly; and the Viceroy had to exercise his emergency powers of restoring it, though he was careful to revert the salt tax to its old rate of Rs. I 4 per maund. Despite this untoward start, 1924-25 went well; trade steadily improved, and with it exchange revived, the year ending with a substantial sur plus. The same was true of 1925-26, a year of good harvests, though external trade was hampered by the low level of agricul tural values as compared with the high prices of imports. In the two following years, the world's exchanges became more stable, the country's external trade markedly advanced, and good har vests continued. Thus it was impossible, for the fifth year in succession, to frame a prosperity budget in the spring of 1928 for the financial year 1928-29. Instead of aiming at a surplus, it used its estimated excess of revenue in cancelling, for good and all, the former levies from the provinces. Its main features are :— It will of course be understood that none of the "nation building" services are provided for here, as they are all charged on pro vincial revenues. It will also be noted that effect has been given to an arrangement arrived at in 1924-25, by which the railway finances are separated from the general account. The railways are now a self-regulating entity, instead of a handmaid to the general revenues, and the sport of their vicissitudes. In exchange for this liberty, they contribute to the exchequer 1 % on the out standing capital of the commercial lines, plus one-fifth of what ever surplus remains after this payment, minus the loss incurred on the working of the strategic lines.
The exchange value of the rupee follows the ordinary economic law and depends on India's trade balance with the outer world. When there is a surplus of exports, import bills are at a premium and the rupee rises in terms of sterling; when in bad years exports decline and there is a relative glut of import bills, the rupee falls in terms of sterling. The operation of this law, how ever, assumes a fairly constant adjustment of the volumes of currency to the requirement of trade. If there were no restriction on the output of rupees, the gold value of the coin would tend to fluctuate with the gold value of silver. Up to 1873, although the Indian mints were open, the rupee continued steady at an exchange value of 2S. ; then the price of silver began to tumble until the rupee dropped almost to is., and so disastrous were the consequences to the finances of the country that in 1893 it was de cided to close the mint to free coinage and establish a "managed" currency, with the rupee as a token coin. By this policy an equilib rium was sought.
The political effects of inconvertibility were regarded with grave anxiety; but in 1918 the U.S.A. came to India's aid, by passing the Pittman Act and selling 200 million ounces of its silver dollar reserve to the government of India. From July 1918 onwards American silver began to arrive in large quantities and was coined into rupees. For some months the new money went out of the reserves as fast as it was coined, but by Dec. 1918 the converti bility of the note issue was secured. Within a few months the out put of the mints was represented by the enormous quantity of 1,390 million new rupees (f93,000,000) as currency.
Throughout this struggle another anxiety grew apace, in the risk of being unable to maintain the rupee as a token coin at its statutory panty with sterling. Sterling was depreciating and silver was rapidly appreciating. As the conversion of the rupee into bullion became profitable when silver touched 43d., the rapid rise beyond that figure led to a wholesale melting down of rupees for clandestine export ; and the Government was forced to protect itself by hurriedly pushing up the parity of the rupee until it stood at 2s.4d. in Dec. 1919, while for a short time private remittances fetched over 2s.1od.
The whole problem was then referred to a committee of cur rency and banking experts sitting in London. Reporting early in 1920, this body (with one notable dissentient) recommended that the rupee should be correlated to gold, and not to sterling, and that it should be given a new statutory ratio equivalent to one-tenth of the gold contained in a sovereign. Accordingly, in Sept. 192o the Indian Coinage Act established the new ratio of the rupee as one-tenth of a gold pound. But currency was already laughing at the law. There was a rush of remittances to England, and at the same time the export trade of India fell off. The former surplus of exports gave place during the second half of 1920 to a large adverse trade balance which had to be liqui dated by bills on London. Exchange persistently dropped from 2s.6d. the rupee, which in the first months of 192o roughly repre sented the parity of one-tenth of a gold sovereign, to below is.4d. in the early part of 1921, and the price of silver receded to 32d. the ounce. All attempts by the government to maintain the rupee at its statutory parity were defeated, and exchange had to be left to find its own level. At last, another enquiry—on this occasion by a Royal Commission—was instituted towards the end of 1925. On its report, published in 1926, is based the present currency and exchange policy of the country. What was estab lished was a gold bullion standard, under which the rupee is fixed by law at the equivalent of is.6d. gold, its fluctuations being con fined between the upper and lower gold points corresponding to that ratio. The maintenance of the ratio was, the Commission advised, to be the duty of a Reserve Bank, and was to be se cured by laying on the Bank the obligation to buy and sell gold without limit at rates fixed to accord with the gold parity of the rupee. The Bank was to be the government banker, and to under take the Government's remittances. It was also to be entrusted with the issue of notes, to replace the present currency notes, the notes ceasing to be convertible by law. The sovereign and half-sovereign were to be no longer legal tender; and thus the old attempts to introduce a gold circulation were finally con demned. Action on those recommendations was taken by the government of India as far as lay in its power, but on the crea tion of a new Reserve Bank the legislature raised questions of mechanism and control which, after prolonged discussion, forced the government to abandon that part of the scheme for the pres ent. Meanwhile, the improvement in general economic condi tions has strengthened the hands of the government in securing the new legal value of the rupee. In 1925-26 the daily telegraphic transfer rates between Calcutta and London averaged 1 s.6•o8d. ; and in 1926-7 the average was Is.5.9o2d. In this article accord ingly the new ratio has usually been adopted for the conversion of rupee figures into sterling; a lakh (Rs. Ioo,000) being treated as equal to 17,500, and a crore (ioo lakhs) to £75o,000.
The strenuous efforts made during the War to preserve the convertibility of the currency notes were rewarded by a rapid expansion of their popularity. The circulation (66 crores) of March 1914 has trebled, for it touched 200 crores in Aug. 1926, notwithstanding the practical disappearance of the 21-rupee and the 20-rupee notes. In 192o the whole system was improved by the Paper Currency Amendment Act of that year, which allowed an unlimited note issue provided a metallic basis of 5o% was observed, required the gold backing to be held in India and introduced the principle of a certain definite expansion of the note issue during the busy season against trade bills of a durance not exceeding 90 days. Before the note circulation became so firmly established as it now is, several attempts were made to lighten the task of supplying India with silver currency by the employment of gold. Among them was the opening of a branch of the British Mint at Bombay, intended to coin sovereigns and i5-rupee gold pieces. Like all other similar experiments, it was defeated by the immediate disappearance of gold into the hoards of the people. Nearly 3,500,000 gold coins were minted at Bombay in 1918-19, and work was then abandoned.
The close of the World War was marked by a great outburst of speculation. The aggregate authorised capital of new joint stock companies floated in the year 1919-20 alone was Rs. 281 crores, whereas the paid-up capital of all registered companies in existence in 1914 was only 75 crores. Subsequent liquidations were heavy. The most important of the new projects which failed to realise expectations was the Tata Industrial Bank, founded to finance new industries on much the same lines as those followed by the "D Banks." Tariffs and Protection.—From 1894 there was a general standard customs duty of 5% ad valorem, with certain exemptions and certain exceptions; it was levied entirely for revenue pur poses. Cotton goods were taxed at 31%, whether imported or woven in Indian mills. During the war financial exigencies drove up the standard rate to 71%; and in the post-war slump it rose further to I 1 %, with 20% on certain luxury articles. Then came the new political constitution, with its pronouncement in favour of allowing India to choose its own fiscal policy. It was speedily followed by the appointment in 1921 of the Indian Fiscal Com mission, which reported for "rapid industrialization by means of discriminating protection." Coinciding as this did with a promi nent tenet in the nationalist creed, the recommendation was quickly put into practice, and an Indian Tariff Board was ap pointed in 1923 to deal with applications for protection. The first and most important of these was from the steel industry; and in the event the Tata enterprise was protected by a heavy tariff supplemented for some years by subsidies. The tariff schedule is now a complicated document, divided into non-protective duties and other duties ranging from 21% to 30% ad valorem. The distinction is subtle, seeing that some of the "non-protective" duties are as high as 25% (rough sugar) and 75% (cigars). The Board have recently decided against a general protective duty on coal. Besides the import duties, there are some low export dues on jute, hides and rice. The objectionable excise formerly levied on cotton goods manufactured in the country was removed in 1925, and the duty on imported cloth became undis guisedly protective.
India was represented at the International Labour Conference at Washington, which was followed by an "All India Industrial Welfare Congress" held in Bombay in April 1922. Important labour legislation was enacted in the same year. The Factories Act of 1922 raised the age of admission for children from 9 to 12, for full time work from 14 to 15, prohibited night work for women, and enacted for all workers a maximum day's work of II hours and a maximum week of 6o hours. The Mines Act of 1923 forbade the employment of children and young persons below ground, while still permitting that of women, and limited the week's work to 6o hours above ground and 54 hours below. The Workmen's Compensation Act of the same year allowed compensation for death or accident for 3,000,00o industrial workers. The contention that long hours of labour are more toler able and justifiable under Indian than under European conditions springs from interested motives, and is not based upon actual fact.
A review of Indian trade is annually presented to parliament, and therefore it is only necessary here to mention the main channels that it has taken of recent years. The chief exports, in order of their importance today, are raw cotton, cotton goods and yarn, raw jute and jute-manufacture, food grains including rice, oilseeds, tea, hides and skins, lac, wool and rubber. Japan and China are India's best customers for raw cotton, Great Bri tain for raw jute, Ceylon and Germany for rice. The total value of Indian produce and manufactures exported by sea in the year 1925-6 was Rs.375 crores, of which the United Kingdom took roughly 78 crores, Japan 57 crores, the U.S.A. 4o crores and Germany 27 crores. The chief articles of import, again in order of their importance today, are cotton manufactures, which lead by a long way, metals and manufactured metal, machinery and mill work, sugar, mineral oils, railway plant and rolling stock, hardware and motor vehicles. In 1925-26 the sea-borne imports of private merchandise were valued at 226 crores, of which the United Kingdom provided 115 crores, and no other single country more than 18 crores, which was Japan's share.
Besides ordinary merchandise, there is a rarely interrupted influx of gold and silver into India. Their net import in 1925-26 was in the neighbourhood of 52 crores: but the figure varies enormously from year to year, being in effect the balancing factor in India's foreign trade, after provision has been made for what are loosely called her "home charges," i.e., the interest on capital borrowed abroad, the payments abroad for her civil and military services and pensions, and the upkeep of the India Office.
Of recent years there have been significant changes in the trend of the overseas trade. There has been a marked reduction in the volume of imports, most marked in cotton goods and other textiles; but from this decline, in spite of protective duties, iron and steel have been exempt, the increase in Indian production being no greater than the increase in Indian demand ; and there has been a very great increase in the imports of machinery and mill work. Other imports which have greatly increased are mineral oil and motor-cars. The volume of exports is now at least at as high a level as before the War ; but the character has considerably altered. Less grain is being exported and more tea; much less raw jute and a great deal more manufactured; the export of raw cotton has increased, and so has that of cloth, particularly coloured piece-goods, but the export of yarn has greatly declined. India has in fact become much more self sufficing with regard to manufactures, and less disposed to export food and raw materials except where, as in the case of cotton, high prices and increased production make export specially profit able. The causes of this change are partly to be found in higher freights and higher import duties; partly also in the changed condition of world trade as a whole, regarded as an interchange of manufactures for foodstuffs and raw materials, in consequence of which the Indian peasantry get only a small increase of price for most of the things they sell, but have to pay a great deal more for what they buy. But it is also partly due to Indian progress in manufacturing equipment and industrial organisation.
Local trade is conducted either at the permanent bazaars of great towns, at weekly markets held in certain villages, at annual gatherings primarily held for religious purposes, or by means of travelling brokers and agents. The cultivator himself, who is the chief producer and also the chief customer, knows little of the great towns, and expects the dealer to come to his own door. Each village has at least one resident trader, who usually combines in his own person the functions of money-lender, grain dealer and cloth seller. The money-lender deals chiefly in grain and in specie. In those districts where the staples of export are largely grown, the cultivators commonly sell their crops to travelling brokers, who re-sell to larger dealers, and so on until the com modities reach the hands of the agents of the great shipping houses. The wholesale trade thus rests ultimately with a com paratively small number of persons, who have agencies, or rather corresponding firms, at the great central marts. Buying and selling in their aspects most characteristic of India are to be seen, not at these great towns, nor even at the weekly markets, but at the fairs which are held periodically at certain spots in most districts. Crowds of petty traders attend, bringing all those miscellaneous articles that can be packed into a pedlar's wallet ; and the neighbouring villagers look forward to the occasion to satisfy alike their curiosity and their household wants.