Table Of ContentThe Formation of the Colonial
State in India
In the period between the 1770s and 1840s, through the process of colonial state
formation, the early colonial state in India was able to harness and extract vast
amounts of agrarian wealth in north India. However, little is known of the histo-
ries of the Indian scribes and the role they played in shaping the early patterns of
British colonial rule.
This book offers a new way of interpreting the colonial state’s origins in north
India. It examines how the formation of early agrarian revenue settlements exac-
erbated an extant late Mughal taxation tradition, and how the success of British
power was shaped by this extant paper-oriented revenue culture. It goes on to
examine how the service and cultural histories of various Hindu scribal commu-
nities fit within broader changes in political administration, taxation, patterns of
governance and a shared Indo-Islamic administrative culture. The author argues
that British power after the late eighteenth century came as much through bureau-
cratic mastery, paper and taxes as it did through military force and commercial
ruthlessness. The book draws upon private family papers, interviews and Persian
sources to demonstrate how the fortunes of scribes changed between empires, and
the important role they played at the height of the British Raj by 1900.
Offering a detailed account of how agrarian wealth provided the bedrock of the
colonial state’s later patterns of administration, this book is a unique and refresh-
ing contribution to studies in South Asian History, Governance and Imperialism.
Hayden J. Bellenoit is Associate Professor of History at the US Naval Academy,
USA. He is the author of Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial
India, 1860–1920 (2007) and has published in journals such as Modern Asian
Studies and South Asian History and Culture. He holds a DPhil in modern history
from Oxford University, UK.
Routledge Studies in South Asian History
The State and Governance in India
The Congress Ideal
William F. Kuracina
Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel and the Making of India
Rebecca Brown
Gender and Radical Politics in India
Magic Moments of Naxalbari (1967–1975)
Mallarika Sinha Roy
Bureaucracy, Community and Influence in India
Society and the State, 1930s–1960s
William Gould
A History of State and Religion in India
Ian Copland, Ian Mabbett, Asim Roy, Kate Brittlebank and Adam Bowles
Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915–1930
Constructing Nation and History
Prabhu Bapu
Cinema, Transnationalism, and Colonial India
Entertaining the Raj
Babli Sinha
Environment and Pollution in Colonial India
Sewerage Technologies along the Sacred Ganges
Janine Wilhelm
The Kashmir Conflict
From Empire to the Cold War, 1945–66
Rakesh Ankit
Hindu Nationalism, History and Identity in India
Narrating a Hindu Past under the BJP
Lars Tore Flåten
The Formation of the Colonial State in India
Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760–1860
Hayden J. Bellenoit
The Formation of the
Colonial State in India
Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760–1860
Hayden J. Bellenoit
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Hayden J. Bellenoit
The right of Hayden J. Bellenoit to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or regis-
tered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation with-
out intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bellenoit, H. J. A. (Hayden John-Andrew), 1978- author.
Title: The formation of the colonial state in India : scribes, paper and taxes,
1760-1860 / Hayden J. Bellenoit.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2017. | Series: Routledge studies in South Asian history ; 18 | Includes bib-
liographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038675| ISBN 9780415704472 (hardback) | ISBN
9780203762011 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: India–History–British occupation, 1765-1947. | India–
Colonization–History–18th century. | India–Colonization–History–19th
century. | Scribes–India, North–History. | Government paperwork–India,
North–History. | Taxation–India, North–History. | Revenue–India, North–
History. | India, North–Politics and government–18th century. | India,
North–Politics and government–19th century.
Classification: LCC DS475.1 .B44 2017 | DDC 954.03/1–dc23LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038675
ISBN: 978-0-415-70447-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-76201-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK
Contents
List of figures vi
List of tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
List of abbreviations x
Introduction 1
1 Revenue administration and scribal skills in late Mughal India,
c. 1650–1750 12
2 The pensmen and scribal communities of Hindustan 33
3 Revenue and state formation in the Doab, c. 1780–1840 67
4 ‘Accounting for every grain’: the origins of the colonial archive
in north India 118
5 Kayasthas, ‘caste’ and administration under the Raj, c. 1860–1900 155
Conclusion 190
Glossary 203
Bibliography 205
Index 214
Figures
1.1 A revenue-agreement (bandobast) form used to enter contracts
between zamindars and sarkars 22
2.1 King Chitragupta (Sri Chitragupta ki Maharaj) and his 12 sons,
from whom the north Indian Kayastha sub-braches trace
their lineage 35
2.2 Demographic distribution of Kayasthas in South Asia 37
2.3 A Kayastha scribe 44
3.1 The Doab and the ‘Ceded and Conquered Provinces’ after 1805 78
3.2 Codex used to correlate the Fasli calendar (taghvim padishahi)
with the Gregorian calendar (taghvim-i-ingilisi) 93
Tables
2.1 Selection of various Perso-Islamicate names adopted by Kayasthas 48
2.2 Selection of Perso-Islamicate names and titles adopted by
Kayasthas reflecting profession 49
3.1 Revenue collected in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, 1766–9 71
3.2 Changes in assessment in north India, 1805–18 97
3.3 Changes in assessment in north India, 1805–18 98
4.1 Rent-roll (hastobud) – required statistics, c. 1850s 126
4.2 ‘Weekly and monthly returns’ for Settlement Officers, c. 1840s 127
4.3 ‘Weekly and monthly returns’ for Settlement Officers, c. 1840s 127
4.4 ‘Weekly and monthly returns’ for Settlement Officers, c. 1840s 129
4.5 ‘Rules for Tehsildar’s accounts’ 130
4.6 ‘Circular order for the Sadr Board of Revenue’ 131
4.7 Overview of the khusrah survey 133
4.8 Weekly and monthly returns required to be filed by treasuries 137
4.9 Requirement for ‘Register of Landed Property’ in CCP, c. 1810s 145
Acknowledgements
One incurs many debts in writing a manuscript of such length. As academic pub-
lishers breathe a sigh of relief upon receiving their slab of meat, one hopes for a
product of reasonable academic merit. This project started as a spin-off of my pre-
vious work on educational sociology in north India, where Kayasthas made their
mark as a prominent ‘service caste’. Their noticeable prevalence in the adminis-
tration of Awadh and, as I increasingly learned over the years, in the rest of the
Doab and Bihari country got me thinking about the history of scribes and how
they fit into the transition to colonial rule under the East India Company after the
1780s. I was also fortunate to have gotten to know a good number of Kayastha
families in my travels to India. For all the literature on the transition to colonial-
ism, surprisingly little was made of mundane paperwork, fiscalism and taxes. I
decided therefore to follow this broader group of pensmen between the Mughal
and British empires. So while this book is somewhat of a distraction from my
overarching interest in religious encounters and interactions, I can only hope it
proves a persuasive one that stimulates further discussions on paper and scribes
in India’s history.
I would like to thank Richard Barnett, Ian Barrow, Ananya Chakravarti, Joya
Chattrjee, Nandini Chatterjee, Frank Conlon, Faisal Devji, Michael Dodson,
Sanchari Dutta, Carl Ernst, Ravindram Gopinath, Angma Jhala, Justin Jones,
Dilip Menon, Afzar Moin, Ilhan Niaz, Mubbashr Rizvi, Aparna Vaidik and David
Washbrook, all of whom provided gentle guidance and constructive feedback and
reviewed chapters. I would specifically like to thank Karen Leonard for reading a
few chapters and offering valuable feedback and insights on the cultural fashion-
ings of Kayasthas. In Lucknow, Naheed Verma generously opened her home to my
curiosity, and her late husband Raj Verma openly shared details about Kayasthas
over the years. Vibhuti Rai and his father, Sampal Rai, taught me more about
Kayasthas than I could imagine and were gracious enough to share a very valu-
able family history. I particularly am indebted to the late Ram Advani in Lucknow,
a true gentleman who linked me up with Kayasthas in the city, its environs and
Unao. I only wish he could have seen this final work. Feedback at seminars in
Cambridge, Delhi, Oxford and Lucknow helped in navigating the early contours
of the project. A visiting fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge enabled me to ham-
mer out final details and discuss my findings with faculty at the Center for South
Acknowledgements ix
Asian Studies. Special thanks should be given to David Washbrook. He not only
encouraged me to follow up on the histories of scribes but also (in an unsurprising
Marxist analysis) to examine the impact of revenue administration upon the agri-
cultural economy. I also would also like to thank Dorothea Schaefter and Jillian
Morrison at Routledge for their help in preparing the book’s final details, both
vexing and less so. The staff at the Library of Congress, the British Library, the
National Archives in Delhi and the Uttar Pradesh State Archives in Lucknow all
provided immeasurable assistance in tracking down material and errant files. A
special mention should be made of the late Chris Bayly. Over the years, he gave
so much warm support and encouragement in pursuing the histories of a scribal
group he always wanted to investigate more. Hopefully this work will do justice
to the scribes he often referenced in his work on Benares and north India.
This book, though, is ultimately dedicated to my wife Sara, our daughter Noor
and our son Kian. Sara corrected my fumbling Persian (mis)translations, and our
dokhtar-Noor-ilahi endured travels to India and the UK while daddy was off at
the archives in work that must seem remarkably pointless to a three-year-old. She
is the ‘light’ that guided this book. They have all opened my eyes and heart to the
wider Indo-Persian cultural world and its luminance.
Hayden Bellenoit
Annapolis, October 2016
