At
the apex stand covenanted civilians; whose service is now practically
a close preserve for white men. It is split into the Secretariat,
who enjoy a superb climate plus Indian pay and furlough, and the
"rank and file" doomed to swelter in the plains. Esprit de corps,
which is the life-blood of caste, has vanished. Officers of the
Educational Service, recruited from the same social strata, rank as
"uncovenanted"; and a sense of humiliation reacts on their teaching.
The Land.--In 1765 Clive secured for the East India Company the
right of levying land-tax in Bengal. It was then collected by
zemindars, a few of whom were semi-independent nobles, and the
rest mere farmers of revenue, who bid against one another at the
periodical settlements. Tenant right apart, the conception of private
property in the soil was inconceivable to the Indian mind. Every one
knows that it was borrowed by English lawyers from the Roman codes,
when commercialism destroyed the old feudal nexus. Lord Cornwallis's
permanent Settlement of 1793 was a revolution as drastic in its degree
as that which Prance was undergoing. Zemindars were presented with
the land for which they had been mere rakers-in of revenue. It was
parcelled out into "estates," which might be bought and sold like
moveable property.
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