Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj by Jharna Gourlay

Author:Jharna Gourlay [Gourlay, Jharna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351936316
Google: HgwkDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-05-15T04:55:09+00:00

The dumb shall speak and the deaf shall hear

Although more than a hundred years have passed since Florence wrote the article at the height of the Tenancy Bill controversy, with land tenancy in Bengal undergoing radical transformation with the abolition of the zemindari system after independence in 1947, it is still worthwhile looking at her suggestions and criticisms of the bill to appreciate how well ahead of her time this extraordinary woman was.

The aim of Florence’s article was twofold. She wanted to make the British public aware of the need for a pro-ryot tenancy act in Bengal and to also draw their attention to Ripon’s good work in India, particularly to the changes he was trying to introduce in the bill (to which we will return in the next chapter). Florence’s argument was that the Government reports had conclusively shown that the zemindars had not fulfilled their part of the bargain made in the Permanent Settlement. They had failed to honour their obligations and duties as laid down in the regulations of 1793, and had imposed illegal taxes on the ryots. The time had arrived for restoring the rights of the ryots. She also argued that the Government should have intervened wherever and whenever the rights of the ryots were infringed, but they had not done so.28 On the one hand, she tried to establish the illegality of the zemindars’ action and, on the other, she tried to shame the Government for its incompetence. She maintained that the Tenancy Bill did not confiscate the zemindars’ rights as was alleged and was only wanted to restore the rights of the ryots. What had really been ‘confiscated’ so far, she added sarcastically, was the zemindars’ duties towards the ryots.

We seem to have ‘confiscated’ the Zemindar’s duties, while confirming and enlarging his [so-called] rights; we seem to have allowed these fictions of rights – at first only winked at by Governments’ sleepy eyes – to become settled rights and ownership; to have allowed the duties which we forgot, or neglected to require from him to become nil, though he held the land on these sole conditions; to have conferred new rights without conditions or corresponding duties.29

Referring to Regulation VII of the 1793 act, which asked the proprietors of the land ‘to conduct themselves in good faith and moderation towards their dependent Talookdars and ryots’ and not to demand rent increase or levy arbitrary taxes, Florence asked: ‘Have they done this? … What is the fact?’30 The facts showed, she gibed, quoting the Bengal Government records, ‘The ryot seems always to pay and not often be paid.’

He pays on his own marriage, he pays on his son’s marriage, he pays on his daughter’s marriage … he pays on Zemindar’s marriage, he pays on Zemindar’s son’s marriage, he pays on the Gomastah’s [agent’s] son’s or Gomastah’s daughter’s marriage, he pays on the Zemindar’s son’s birth, he pays on the Zemindar’s son’s first taking rice, he pays on the Zemindar’s funeral, he pays on his own

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