THE STATE AND THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY, 1880 - 1930 By IAN JAMES CATANACH School of Oriental and African Studies A thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of London I960 ProQuest Number: 11010448 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010448 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 ABSTRACT The Deccan Riots of 1875 were believed to have been brought about by the large scale transfer of land, through foreclosure, from the cultivating to the money-lending classes. As a remedy, Sir William Wedderburn suggested the establishment of State-backed capitalistic agricultural banks, But the India Office felt that his scheme would require too much State intervention. The Indian Co-operative Societies Act reflects a more positive attitude to the role of the State, although in 1904 it was hoped that the societies which were to be set up by official Registrars* would eventually become entirely independent. Local manage­ ment and thrift were emphasized. The alternative scheme of agricultural banks remained under consideration, however. The Government of India appear to have dismissed it only when the Egyptian Agricultural Bank did not succeed; what became the non-official Bombay Provincial Co-operative Bank was originally intended to be an agricultural bank. The fostering of democracy through village co-opera­ tives was especially stressed in Bombay, Also, Indian hono­ rary Organizers1, and a *Co-operative Institute1, were given an important role in the movement, although much of the in­ initiative remained with the Registrar and his staff. By the later twenties, however, the attempt to foster democracy at village level through co-operatives appeared to have largely faileds villages in Bombay were not *little Republics*. The 3 honorary workers, many of them now nationalists, were becom­ ing dilettante in their attitudes to co-operation, too. Control therefore increasingly passed into the hands of the State. But at the purely economic level there had been some success in Bombay, The well-managed Provincial Bank was in some areas satisfactorily fulfilling the ryots* credit and marketing needs, although its system of branches, each having dependent societies, was perhaps not completely co-operative * The thesis has been largely based on documents found in the office of the Bombay Registrar, and elsewhere in India. 4 CONTENTS PREFACE 5 I. CHANGING ATTITUDES, Is AGRICULTURAL BANKS 12 II. CHANGING ATTITUDES, II s CO-OPERATION 31 III. TWO PIONEERS (1904-1911) 54 IV. AGRICULTURAL BANKS AGAIN (1904-1911) 94 V. THE REGISTRAR AND THE SOCIETIES (1911-1916) 115 VI. REORGANIZATION (1916-1919) 168 VII. 'THE PEAK’? (1920-1923) 220 VIII. REALITY (1924-1930) 273 CONCLUSION 325 BIBLIOGRAPHY 336 SOME PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 353 ABBREVIATIONS 354 GLOSSARY 355 MAP OP WESTERN INDIA 359 5 P R E P A C E This thesis originated in an interest in the co­ operative movement in the India of today. Because I am by training an historian I was soon led to enquire into the problems which the Indian co-operative movement has faced in the past. Gradually, an almost completely new field of investigation revealed itself. For, in the story of the relationships between the British dominated Governments and the co-operative movement which they fostered amongst the people of India,there is reflected, in miniature, many of the changing attitudes towards state intervention in economic matters during half a century of India1s more recent past. So this thesis is to some extent an essay in economic and administrative history. But it is also very much a study of personal relationships. The interaction of fstatef and 'co­ operative movement1 before Independence meant fundamentally the interaction of personalities, some well known and some virtually unknown. It meant the interaction of British and Indian officials, and Indian and occasionally British non-officials, on a level of intimacy rarely reached in other fields at this time, even in 'local self-government'♦ Because of the need to set limits to my investiga­ tions, and because I have a belief in the value of local and regional studies in history, I decided to concentrate on agricultural co-operatives in the Bombay Presidency, and on the period from 1904 to 1930. I do not discuss developments 6 in Sind. Conditions there were much closer to those of the Punjab than to those of what was called 'the Presidency- proper1. 1930 was chosen as a terminal point partly for reasons of availability of documents, and partly because that date represents, approximately, the onset of the full force of the economic depression, and the end of an era in Indian economic history. Some attention has been given to developments before the passing of the first Co-operative Societies Act in 1904, particularly in Bombay, because of the bearing these had on later policy. It would be wrong to dismiss as unimportant the work which has been done on this subject before. The brief historical chapters in Dr. K.N. Naik's The Co-operative Move­ ment in the Bombay State have been described by a retired Indian Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Shri V.S. Bhide, as Overcharged with emotion' in their 'patriotic eagerness to castigate a foreign regime1. But the historical chapters in the book which Dr. Naik edited on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the movement in Bombay, are more moderate in tone, and contain some useful p information. The Bombay Government also published a volume to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the movement. N.V. Nayak's Fifty Years of Co-operation in the Bombay State is a painstaking study, which, however, concentrates on the 1. K.N. Naik, The Co-operative Movement in the Bombay State, Bombay, 1953* reviewed by V.S. Bhide in Bombay 6o-opera- tive Quarterly. July 1953, pp.33-38. 2. K.N. Naii, ed., Fifty Years of Co-operations Golden Jubilee Souvenir, Bombay, 1954. period after the depression of the thirties."*" In fact, none of these "books deals with the period "before 1930 at any length, and none contains a discussion of the vital period prior to 1904. The authors of these "books have made little use of much of the material which was put at my dis­ posal "by the Bombay Government during my visit to India. Inevitably, perhaps, they do not feel the need to explain the social background of the co-operative movement? it is already largely known to these authors and their readers simply because they are Indian. On the whole they are not interested in personalities. To some extent the nature of the thesis has been conditioned by the availability of documents. The Bombay Government, (I am speaking of the Government of the undivid­ ed Bombay of 1958-59), generously undertook to give me ‘all reasonable facilities1 to study the records kept at the Office of the Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Poona, for the period 1904-1930. They very reasonably added the proviso that fit may not be possible to make available to i you the confidential documents in the Department. Actually, very few restrictions were placed on my studies. Those papers which I was not allowed to see generally related in some way to the national movement, or to the influence on the co-operative movement of. caste animosities and of government policy on caste. In one case I was not given 1. /N.V. RayakJ?’, Pifty Years of Co-operation in the Bombay State, Bombay, 1957. 8 access to certain papers, because they had a direct hearing on legislation then under preparation. Of the records kept in the Bombay Secretariat Records Office I have been per­ mitted to study, though not always to make full notes on, those relating to the co-operative movement up to the year 1914# The Rational Archives of: India made available rele­ vant non-aonfidential records of 1914 and the preceding years. After I had returned to England the Punjab Records Office kindly sent me a typescript of some Government of India records of 1914 now in their possession. The access to records which I was granted could obviously be only to those which have survived. Por reasons which are explained in detail in the Bibliography, the period prior to about 1920 is better represented in the Poona records than the following decade. Por the years after 1920 I have been able to rely to some extent on the records of the Bombay State Co-operative Bank. But, because of. lack of material, I have been able to develop a few points in the final chapters perhaps slightly less fully than I might otherwise have wished. I have been treated with the greatest fairness, and friendliness in all my dealings: with officials in India, in records offices and in the field; I could not have wished for greater co-operation. In England I have worked on records kept in the old India Office Library of the Commonwealth Relations Office, 9 the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Archives, and the Horace Plunkett Foundation, London.