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Mamool Raj

Mamool Raj

In South India, under the Ryotwari Settlement introduced by the British the ryot or the cultivator was deemed the owner of the land against payment of land rent. The land revenue was collected by revenue officials directly from the ryots and there were no middlemen such as zamindars. The land revenue was not fixed. It increased or decreased according to the yield and the maximum limit varied from time to time. Towards the end of the 19th century the maximum limit of the land revenue was fixed at one-third of the field produce. According to Romesh Dutt, after paying for the cost of cultivation, what was left was taken away as land revenue leaving practically nothing for the ryots.
Mr. Boudillon, in his book, "Description of the Madras Ryot in 1853" wrote : "A Ryot of this class of course lives from hand to mouth; he rarely sees money except that obtained from the Chetty (money-lender) to pay his kist (instalment of Government Revenue) the exchanges in the villages are very few, and they are usually conducted by barter. His ploughing cattle are wretched animals not worth more than 3 1/2 to 6 rupees each (17 to 12 shillings), and those perhaps not his own because not paid for, his rude and feeble plough costs, when new, not more than 2 to 3 shillings; and all the rest of his few agricultural implements are equally primitive and inefficient. His dwelling is a hut of mud walls and thatched roofs and destitute of anything that can be called furniture. His food and that of his family is partly their porridge made of the meal of grain boiled in water, and partly boiled rice with a little condiment; and generally the only vessels for cooking and eating from are of the coarsest earthenware, much inferior in grain to a good tile or brick in England, and unglazed. Brass vessels, though not wholly unknown among this class, are rare…
"…The scale of the Ryots descends to those who possess a small patch of land, cultivated sometimes by the aid of borrowed cattle, but whose chief subsistence is derived from cooly-labour, either cutting firewood and carrying it for sale to a neighbouring town, or in field labour."


The Ryotwari system did not allow remission of land revenue, for a bad harvest or other accidents. The revenue officials resorted to torture to collect the land revenue.
The kinds of torture which were most common were: keeping a man in the sun, preventing his going to meals or other calls of nature, confinement, preventing his cattle from going to pasture, quartering a peon on him, tying a man down in a bent position, squeezing the crossed fingers, pinches, slaps, blows with fist or whip, running up and down, twisting the ears, making a man sit with brickbats behind his knees, putting a low caste man on his back, striking two defaulters heads, or tying them to each other by their hair, placing in the stocks, tying by the hair to a donkey's or a buffalo's tail, placing a necklace of bones or other degrading or disgusting materials round the neck, and occasionally, though rarely, more severe punishment.
Lands were severely assessed and often assessment was arbitrary which gave rise to rampant corruption. The revenue officials used to look forward to go on Jamabandy or revenue assessment tour of villages. A Tahsildar, a minor revenue official, talking to the Hindu described a Jamabandy in these words : "In Jamabandy, to begin with, there is the sweetness of feasting one's self at others expense. Then there is the mamool fee that is to be collected. What is mamool? It is a fee usually given to the Jamabandy officer's staff without murmur by people of every village. The Tahsildar, the revenue inspector and the village officials have all to contribute to it. They of course exact it together with their own mamool from the farmers. You can have no idea as to the amount exacted by this means. It may sometimes be counted more appropriately, by thousands rather than by hundreds for every taluq."
In 1881 when the ryots in Chengalpattu district refused to pay mamool to the Tahsildar, the revenue officials ganged together to hit back causing untold suffering to the ryots. The Hindu which was in its 3rd year of publication, espoused the cause of the ryots and stirred public opinion against the atrocities committed by the revenue officials.

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