In a district record room, a historian finds an old Company file from the 1790s. It reports a large public sale of several estates that belonged to a powerful landholder of western Bengal. He had fallen behind in his payments to the Company. The officer who arranged the sale later wrote a puzzled note about the buyers. The same bundle holds a list showing that many other estates in the province passed to new owners in these years. A loose sheet carries a newspaper sketch of village produce being taken to a market.
The file comes from the province where colonial rule was first established. What did the earliest Company attempts in that province aim to do?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Reorder rural society with new land rights and a new revenue system
Option (1) Reorder rural society with new land rights and a new revenue system — Correct. Colonial rule began in Bengal. There the earliest attempts were made to reorder rural society and to set up new land rights and a new revenue system.
Option (2) End the zamindars' rights and settle revenue directly with each ryot — Incorrect. Settling revenue directly with ryots is the ryotwari system, later used in the Bombay Deccan. Bengal's settlement was made with the zamindars instead.
Option (3) Bring the hill communities of the east under settled plough farming — Incorrect. Settling hill people as plough farmers concerns the Santhals of the Rajmahal hills, a later story from outside Bengal's first reforms.
Option (4) Set up famine relief works and cheap credit for the poor peasants — Incorrect. Famine relief and cheap credit were outside the aim. Bengal's rural economy was in crisis, and the Company's answer was a new revenue system.
NCERT (2026-27): “1. Bengal and the Zamindars |