Brown’s analysis of the causes of the 1837 koot revolt

When Brown attempted to discover “the causes of the disturbances there; to the complaints and grievances which drove a simple, quiet, peaceable, inoffensive race of men to assemble from their wilds and jungles, and commit riots,” every Indian he met told him it was due the new tax rates, which were fixed and based on the maximum money assessment of the new districts. Farmers and land owners paid until they could pay no longer. They told the collector's sheristedar in Puttur in March, that instead of money which they did not have, they would pay with produce, as they had done during the raja’s time. The sheristedar replied that if they did not pay in cash, their cattle, movables, and lands would be attached and sold. He then proceeded to execute his threat. The farmers retaliated by seizing the sheristedar and forced the Collector and a party of 150 sepoys to retreat in the middle of the night.

Brown blamed the Court of Directors who had ordered, in order to avoid the difficulty of making accurate assessments, that “the surplus produce is, IN ALL CASES, made the UTMOST extent of our demand.”[1] The assessment was to be taken in money. The amount was to be determined by the Collectors, without the least regard to the past practice which always fixed the tax demand in produce, or the smallest reference to the progressive increase in the value of money in comparison with produce, which such a tax system would inevitably perpetuate.

Brown quoted General Briggs, who, he writes, had compiled the ablest work ever written on the Indian Land-tax: “By this latter sentence, it seems clear that, in the latter end of the year 1821, the Indian Administration in England was of opinion that it was just and expedient to take from the landholders of India the whole surplus produce; i.e. the whole of the landlord's rent, leaving the cultivator only a sufficiency for his own subsistence and the maintenance of his stock!”

Farmers, Brown argued, produced grain and fruit, not coin. The introduction of a fixed maximum money assessment on the land was unheard of until now. If farmers were taxed six-tenths of their produce, justice and policy demanded that it should taken only from what they produced. In a country without roads and towns, there could be no trade, no exchanges, and no money; men were reduced to barter. To insist on having his revenue in money, therefore, was insisting on having that which they could not get nor give.

Brown told the Court of Directors that of the taxes collected, only the minutest fraction was spent locally, and the rest locked up in the treasury until it was sent to Madras or Bombay. A part of this money eventually returned to the few inland marts via a restricted and circuitous trade route to enable the farmer pay his taxes. This system led to traders buying produce in advance to sell later at substantial profits. Farmers were, therefore, compelled to raise the money to pay taxes when prices were low, and buy at high prices the necessities they needed. An Assistant Collector from Kanara attested that this trade of buying grain at harvest time when farmers needed money, and sell it towards the end of the season offered a profit of 20-30%.

In addition to this tax, monopolies on salt and tobacco prohibited Indians from touching the sun-evaporated sea-salt at their own doors, and from growing tobacco, making it profitable for smugglers to sell American tobacco. Further, duties were levied for transport of produce from one province to another.

This system of revenue and internal taxation, resulted, in a few years, in making the maximum money assessment wholly unrealizable. Farmers did not have the money to buy seed or plough-cattle. The Government was obliged to lend money for such purchases under the tuccavi scheme. Corruption ensured the farmer received a fraction of the loan, perhaps 30%, while he was held accountable in the public accounts for the full amount.

A Collector could issue peremptory orders to his subordinates to collect all outstanding balances, under pain of dismissal. These subordinates were forced to do so as otherwise their salary was adjusted in the public account as revenue collected. Brown attested he had seen this done, adding “I have known arrears of 19 years' standing exacted by the Collector himself from whomsoever was found in actual occupation or possession of the land. I have seen these men confined for days and days together, until, wearied out with the persecution, they paid the demand, and—then starved with their families for the rest of the year through, while the Collector received the highest praises for his zeal and ability.”

Brown explained how Munro's Instructions to Revenue-Surveyors, Rule 15 (“When a field contains a few tamarind, kikar, or other productive trees, you will make NO DEDUCTION for the land under their shade, because the ryot (occupant) derives a profit from them.”) had contributed to the farmer’s plight. Asserting that trees were vital for preserving the fertility of the soil and averting famine, this regulation was a great disincentive for farmers to do so. A tree required 15 or 20 years to yield fruit, yet this regulation taxed him on the premise that a fruit-tree in the open fields was proof' that the land yielded a profit. Meanwhile, the government never planted trees for fruit or shade, thus exhausting the soil of its fertility, and water absorbing capacity. Eventually, famine resulted. This is what had happened to the climate of Madras. In the last 14 successive seasons, the monsoons had been poor, resulting in lower water levels in the tanks and reservoirs. He blamed “short-sighted rapacity, like the earth devouring her children, is sure gradually to convert the fairest regions on the globe into little better than howling wildernesses.” More devastating was his following sentence: “The European instrument of this spoliation, sent over the waste to hunt out land-revenue, but panting in vain for repose or rest, or stricken to the heart by the fatal climate, beholds the scene with unutterable loathing and abhorrence…he turns to the wasted forms of animated existence he now sees around, cowering at his presence; he denies that beings, who accept of life on such terms and conditions…can be possessed of the feelings and sentiments which entitle them to rank in the creation in the same scale as that to which he himself belongs, and hence, incapable as they are of resistance or remonstrance, he learns, by degrees imperceptible to himself, to debase them by treatment, which his better nature would revolt from bestowing upon the dog which crouches at his feet.” His conclusion was damning: “in this system of impolicy, rapacity, injustice, and oppression, pursued towards a mute and defenceless people, are being sowed…the seeds of revolutions, of convulsions, and of events which…must sap the prosperity of this Queen of Nations, and lay all her greatness low.”

[1] Court's Letter to Fort St. George, December, 12, 1821, paragraph 99