Mirasidar Subversion of State Coercive Strategies

One way to look at the relations within the mirasi system is to look at the conflict that developed between the British administration and the Mirasidars over the collection of taxes. This perspective allows us to understand the institutional mechanisms introduced by the state that aided in the process of defining the mirasi system even further and made the sedentary ideal increasingly critical for the definition of citizenship, not only in Chingleput but on the subcontinent generally. As we have seen, during the first half of the century, the state made tax settlements with the Mirasidars through mediation and consultation. By the 1870s, however, this particular style of inducing the Mirasidars to come to terms with the economic requirements of the state was considered outmoded. In its place, a system of courts, institutionalized coercion, and juridical power was introduced to retrieve what the state conceived to be its appropriate share of the village produce.

Within this context, it is important to note that one of the main characteristics of Chingleput administration, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, had been the considerable amount of annual tax arrears existing at the end of each tax year. For instance, in 1853, Collector J. H. Cochrane showed that between 1841 and 1851–52 the amount of unpaid balance on the tax assessment in the district every year had never fallen below 11 percent of the yearly tax demand. Sometimes it rose to 22 percent and even 35 percent.^[54] This general characteristic of the tax-gathering process was common to the entire presidency but was much more exaggerated in Chingleput than elsewhere.^[55] Between 1855 and 1873, the number of coercive processes served every year to recover those arrears in Chingleput alone rose from 2,692 to 394,693. During that period, the number of coercive processes in the entire presidency also increased from 273,191 to 2,508,606. That is, although the number of coercive processes increased a little over ninefold in the entire presidency during that period, the number of coercive processes served in Chingleput alone during that period increased by more than 146–fold.^[56] The Board of Revenue also discovered that during that period the amount of money realized by the state each year in Chingleput from these coercive processes rose from a mere rupees 485 to rupees 115,772, a 238-fold increase. By comparison, the increase realized by coercive processes in the entire presidency in that period rose from rupees 14,776 to rupees 452,789, only a 30-fold increase (see table 1).

The Board convinced itself that the increase in the number of coercive processes had nothing to do with the enhancement of the tax demand. Yet in 1855–56 the demand in Chingleput had been rupees 1,046,793, whereas by 1872 it had risen to 2,376,276. In the whole presidency during that period, it rose from rupees 37,039,916 to 45,238,597 (see table 2). Moreover, examining the individual situation of Chingleputmakes even more apparent its peculiarity. In 1871–72, for example, though the amount of land revenue and arrears amounted to rupees 1,489,734 in Chingleput, the value of property distrained was rupees 431,490 or 28.9 percent of the entire tax demand for the year. Considered from the point of the entire presidency, the total tax demand for 1871–72 was rupees 44,878,526, whereas the value of property distrained in the entire presidency came only to rupees 1,679,230. This was only 3.74 percent of the total land revenue demand for the entire presidency (see table 3).

When the Board looked at the way in which the coercive process operated in the presidency as contrasted with Chingleput, they found that in all districts except Chingleput, landowners would pay their taxes before the actual sale. In Chingleput, not a single defaulter paid his taxesbefore the actual sale of his property. Therefore, the amount distrained in Chingleput (one of twenty-four districts in the presidency) alone amounted to slightly more than a quarter (25.6 percent) of the entire amount distrained in the entire presidency. This was true even though the number of defaulters in Chingleput was only 14.5 percent of the total in the presidency.

This new “legal” approach had the effect of increasing the number of coercive processes in the district far in excess of any other area of the presidency, although this increase occurred to some extent in the other districts as well.^[57] Significantly, unlike other districts where most or at least many of the defaulting cultivators paid their taxes before their lands were auctioned by the government, there is no record in this period that any Mirasidar in Chingleput paid his taxes before the auction took place.^[58] The Madras administration argued that in the period 1855–73, “law has been substituted for arbitrary usage, and…the people have become more enlightened and more able to hold their own against officials.”^[59] Previously, the ability of the state to derive taxes from the cultivators of Madras presidency had been greatly limited by several factors. An account by the Board of Revenue said:

The recovery of arrears by coercive processes was [previously] discouraged partly because the sale of land required reference to the Board of Revenue and gave endless trouble to the higher authorities while section 6, Regulation XXVII of 1802 and subsequently Sect. 2 Act XXXIX of 1858 made it unsafe to attach personal property and partly because it was seen as a sign of inefficient administration.

During the period prior to the submission of the Torture Commission’s report in 1855, the Tahsildars, the main government tax-gathering officers, typically brought pressure on the cultivators

which [according to the Board] sometimes no doubt amounted to cruelty and extortion, but more often consisted in the mere presence and importunity of the tahsildar and his peons. The revelations of the Torture Commission…and the consequent activity of district officers in watching for repressing anything which had the appearance of being an illegal pressure, put an end to the old order of things. Land became more saleable in consequence of the high prices and attachment and sale were made easier by Act XXXIX of 1858.

Then Act II of 1864 made the attachment and sale of property for arrears comparatively easy and produced a

vast effect not so much because the law was changed as because it was expressed more clearly and became more widely known than the Act which it replaced. It soon became manifest not only to the Tahsildars [government tax employees] but also to the people that the old way in which ‘persuasive methods’ of collecting the revenue were used and land resumed and written off without selling the land for arrears was irregular and even illegal. As soon as arrears attracted notice in any taluq, the tahsildar was asked not why he allowed them to increase but why he did not make sufficient use of the coercive processes sanctioned by the law; and when the coercive process was served, the ryot who received it knew that it entailed no necessary danger to his property nor pecuniary loss.^[60]

The government came to consider the “coercive method” the “correct method” because it did not involve the arbitrary resumption of land and the cultivators knew, said the Board, that the new coercive system essentially did not harm their own economic interests. The Board said that writing off arrears irrecoverable through death, poverty, or desertion was also reduced. Now it was known, wrote the Board, that trouble was avoided

and regularity is substituted for irregularity—if the land is sold for arrears, and that the title of Government to the land can only be legally recovered in this way—not by summary resumption. The effect of increased enlightenment and knowledge of the law is shown by the large number of cases, in which ryots allow a coercive process to be issued, whilst they have the means of paying punctually, and intend to do so before the day of sale arrives.

However, the mirasi system of Chingleput is

of great importance, and tends to increase the sales for arrears in the district where they are largest. It has constantly attracted attention.…Nevertheless the [mirasi] system is strongly rooted in law and immemorial custom. It is there, and must be regarded as in many respects neither more nor less than a [“gigantic” marked out] great but necessary evil.^[61]

Therefore, the benefits accrued by sedentarized inhabitants in their villages outweighed the “costs” of the mirasi system, rural conflict and state impoverishment. The phrase characterizing the mirasi system as “rooted in law and immemorial custom” and the assertion that it was “neither more nor less than a great but necessary evil” were repeated in government documents on other occasions. For instance, a report on the paraiyars in September 1892 repeated these phrases to indicate the government’s knowledge of the problem in Chingleput but its unwillingness to do anything about it. These phrases illustrate the heteroglot, dialogic system in which truth and knowledge were created. In this case, the changing mirasi system came to be simply a representation of the increasing interdependence in society. That is, the definitions of the mirasi system became knowledge produced to epitomize the increasing division of labor in society at that moment.

Similarly, the rise in the number of coercive cases became simply another way used by the Board to demonstrate the essential rightness of their approach. What Board members did not see was that the legal system merely reflected and strengthened constructed discursive categories. It was not “produced” simply by the state from the top down. Nevertheless, the Board’s analysis concluded that the extent to which coercive processes were used was “no sign that the people are oppressed or that they are less able to pay their dues than formerly.” They noted that in Chingleput “the land is poor, and the Board do not anticipate that the settlement now in progress will raise the [tax] demand.” In 1875, C. S. Crole, author of the Chingleput Manual, wrote that in the Chingleput district “the destruction of the cattle produces inability to cultivate, waste, loss of revenue, poverty and backwardness compared with other districts. Moreover, the soil of the district is itself generally of inferior quality and easily exhausted.”^[62] Thus, the 1790s excitement and interest in the potential of the Jagir as a fertile area had been converted into the characterization of a district with inferior soils. In this altered vision of the district, the large amount of tax defaulting in the area came to be represented as a product of a wasteland, moral decay, and an exhausted soil that was hopelessly unfruitful. Crole noted also that during the tax year 1871–72 in Chingleput, 38 percent of all tax defaulters (whom he referred to as ryots) were Mirasidars. Both here and in many other government documents thereafter, this “backwardness” of the Chingleput district simply became attributed to the unproductivity of the soil. This idea was even inscribed in the answers given in Parliament to questions put by Samuel Smith, a liberal member of Parliament (MP) who participated with Dadabhai Naoroji in a debate on the “condition of India.” On 25 June 1891, the under secretary of state for India said that in the inquiry of 1887–88, including the “Condition of the People—Papers laid on the table on 21st June 1889,” it was stated that “owing to its infertile soil and to certain accidents of tenure, [the Chingleput district] was among the most backward parts of Madras Presidency.”^[63]

In this manner, “infertile soil” became part of the knowledge produced interactively by Crole, the Board of Revenue, the Mirasidars, the Payirkkaris, the Pannaiyals, and many other authors to explain why agriculture in the area was so unproductive. Although articulated by Crole in 1875, this characterization was a multiauthored construction advanced to illustrate that the backward state of the district was a given, that since the infertility was innate it was something that could not be altered. The production of the “decayed” description of Chingleput as “truth” resulted from a need to satisfy both British and local Indian requirements. These in turn interacted with local and other appeals to ideals of a former time and another place. For the British employees of the Company and the local inhabitants in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Jagir and Chingleput existed in a state of decay. Whether from the Sanskritic or Tamil point of view, contemporary society was in the Dark Age and the “harmonious” past was essential to project new requirements for a more interdependent and embedded future.