The landlords' response to political change in the United Provinces of Agra & Oudh, India, 1921-1937

Abstract

The landlords of the United Provinces emerged as a group in the mid-nineteenth century as a result of changes wrought in the traditional agrarian structure by the policies and actions of British land-revenue administrators during the preceding half-century. The group was endowed with political importance by the policies of the administrators who re-settled the province of Oudh after the mutiny of 1857. These "Oudh men" looked to a strong central government and to the landlords* control of their tenants for the preservation of political stability in the province. The group also generated a distinctive landlord style of life in which status and the aristocratic virtues played an important part. Together the "Oudh men** and the landlords retained a controlling position in the province through to 1920. Two developments, however, challenged their position. Firstly, the deterioration in the condition of the peasantry due to the oppressive burden of rent and allied exactions demanded by the landlords; and secondly, the movement to expand and popularise the institutions of government in the Indian Empire. The peasant problem was avoided up until 1920 but the movement for constitutional reform pressed forward, culminating in the Government of India Act of 1919 which gave the province a legislative council with a large majority of elected Indian members and an executive government partially responsible to this council. If the landlords were to retain their political position they had now to act within a system premissed not upon their own position as the natural leaders of the people but upon a form of popular politics. The landlords entered the Council and from the beginning they made an effort to organize within the new system. A loosely-structured Zamindar (landlord) party grew in the Council as the manifestation of the landlord viewpoint, particularly on agrarian legislation. In the first year of the reforms, moreover, the landlords found that they were still accorded their old position by the government, which deferred to their wishes and looked to them for support. Neither their own adjustment nor the support of the government proved enduring. The government showed itself willing to pass over the landlords in the larger interests of the province; and although in 1923 the landlords gained an additional hold on the Council by the selection of two of most of their prominent members as ministers in the executive government, the individualism of the landlord members in the Council made it difficult for the group to hold together. These developments culminated in 1926 and both the Oudh Policy and the Zamindar Party seemed to have passed from the scene. Disgruntled by the government’s failure to uphold their interests, the landlords moved into the broader political field and, in the circumstances of the time, came closer to the nationalist movement seeking Indian independence. This adventure, however, was ended in 1928-9 by the landlords* fears; f ir s tly , that if they were represented before the committees then appointed to discuss further constitutional reforms, they would lose any security whatever in the legislative system; and secondly, that the militant wing of the nationalist movement warn bent on destroying them. The path of retreat, however, led to disaster for they were relegated to a minor position in the new constitution which emerged from the discussions. Seemingly bereft, they turned to suggestions for a new approach to their political future - the idea of a strongly-organized landlord-conservative party possessing, in its electoral machinery, the means to carry them to a majority in the larger, more representative and responsible, reformed Council, In the years 1934-36 they were engaged in building such a party, the National Agriculturist Party. From the beginning there was a lack of unity in, and a lack of total commitment to, the party (or parties, for the landlords of the two sub-provinces were unable even to join together in the enterprise), The parties ultimately crumbled and fell because of the individualism of the landlords and because of their refusal to subjugate their personal interests to those of the group as a whole. In the elections to the new legislature in February 1937 they were completely routed. I t had proved impossible for the landlords to convert the position of political pre-eminence assured them by the Oudh men into a position of leadership in a system based on the popular vote. Show more