Company Rule, the Permanent Settlement and the Bengal Renaissance — WBCS
Weightage: Bengal is the heartland of the Indian National Movement section of the WBCS Prelims (about 25 marks) and of Mains General Studies Paper I. Questions on reformers and institutions are among the most reliable. The national frame comes from the aliased UPSC CSE modern history chapters.
1. Two stories in one period
After 1765, Bengal tells two stories at once. The first is extraction and resistance: revenue, famine and peasant revolt. The second is reform and learning: new schools, societies and ideas. A strong answer holds both and shows how they connect.
2. From diwani to the Permanent Settlement
- 1765: the Company received the diwani, the right to collect revenue.
- 1765 to 1772: the dual system gave the Company the revenue and left administration to the Nawab, so power had no responsibility.
- 1770: a terrible famine followed, remembered in Bengali as the famine of the year 1176. It is estimated to have killed a very large share of the population, though numbers vary.
- 1772: Warren Hastings ended the dual system. Calcutta became the capital of the Company's territories.
The Permanent Settlement (1793) under Lord Cornwallis fixed the revenue to be paid by zamindars, who were treated as owners of land, permanently. Its effects were the rise of a landlord class, a harder position for tenants and a market in land through the sunset law of 1799, under which an estate was sold if the revenue was not paid by sunset on the due date.
3. Calcutta and its institutions
Calcutta grew from three villages, Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata, which the Company held from 1698, and was the capital of British India until 1911. Know the institutions as dated pairs:
| Year | Institution |
|---|---|
| 1784 | Asiatic Society, founded by William Jones |
| 1800 | Fort William College; Serampore Mission and press under William Carey |
| 1817 | Hindu College |
| 1857 | Calcutta University |
Calcutta University was among the first three Indian universities, with Bombay and Madras, set up in 1857.
4. The reformers
Raja Rammohan Roy (1772 to 1833) founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, which became the Brahmo Samaj. He campaigned against sati, and Lord William Bentinck outlawed it in 1829. He also supported modern education and a free press.
Henry Derozio taught at Hindu College and inspired the radical Young Bengal group, who questioned custom in the 1820s and 1830s.
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820 to 1891) led the cause of widow remarriage, and the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856 followed. He also worked on girls' education and simplified Bengali prose.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa taught harmony of faiths. His disciple Swami Vivekananda spoke at Chicago in 1893 and founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897.
5. Writers and the press
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote Anandamath (1882), which contains the song Vande Mataram. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Dinabandhu Mitra's play Nil Darpan (1860) exposed indigo planters. The press included the Samachar Darpan (1818) and the Amrita Bazar Patrika (1868).
6. Revolts of peasants and tribes
- Titu Mir led a rising of Muslim peasants against landlords in 1831 at Narkelberia.
- The Faraizi movement of Haji Shariatullah and his son Dudu Miyan called for religious reform and for peasants to resist illegal cesses.
- The Santhal Hul of 1855 to 1856 under the brothers Sidhu and Kanhu rose against moneylenders and landlords.
- The Indigo Revolt (1859 to 1860): cultivators refused to grow indigo under harsh planter contracts. The government set up an Indigo Commission.
- The Pabna agrarian leagues (1873) resisted rent rises by zamindars.
7. 1857 in Bengal
The first spark of the Revolt of 1857 was at Barrackpore, where Mangal Pandey attacked officers in March 1857 and was hanged. Bengal's educated class mostly stayed away from the rebellion, a point examiners like to ask about.
8. How to link the two stories
The Permanent Settlement fixed landlords' income and encouraged absentee landlords, whose rents paid for education in Calcutta, while peasants carried the burden that produced the revolts. A Mains answer can say that the renaissance was largely urban and upper-caste, and that the peasant revolts were the other face of Bengal.
Common traps WBCS sets here
- Giving the Permanent Settlement to Warren Hastings. It was Cornwallis, in 1793.
- Placing sati's abolition in 1856. It was 1829; 1856 is the widow remarriage law.
- Crediting Hindu College to Rammohan alone. It was founded in 1817 with others, including David Hare.
- Mixing Titu Mir and Dudu Miyan. Titu Mir's rising was in 1831; Dudu Miyan belonged to the Faraizi movement.
- Calling the Santhal Hul an indigo revolt. They are separate.
Memory aids
- "1765, 1772, 1793": diwani, end of dual system, Permanent Settlement.
- "1828, 1829, 1856": Brahmo Sabha, sati ban, widow remarriage act.
- "1831, 1855, 1859": Titu Mir, Santhal Hul, Indigo revolt.
Summary
After the diwani of 1765 and the famine of 1770, the Permanent Settlement of 1793 created a landlord class and a burdened peasantry, which produced revolts from Titu Mir to the Indigo movement.
Calcutta became a centre of learning, and Rammohan, Derozio, Vidyasagar, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda drove reform. The renaissance was real but largely urban and upper-caste.
Exam protocol
- Keep the three date chains straight.
- Add one limit to every renaissance answer.
- Match each revolt to its leader and year.
