CENTRAL PROVINCES of British India

The former Nagpur Province and Saugor (Sagar) and Nerbudda (Narmada) Territories were joined together to form Central Provinces in 1861 as a Chief Commissioner province and Agent to Governor-General. Like Bombay and Madras provinces, Central Provinces was also rich in its diverse ethnography - from Hindi speaking regions edging Bundelkhand and Bagelkhand in the north, to the Marathi speaking Vidarbha in the south; from Chattisgarhi and Odiya in the east to the Narmada river valley of the Malwa, Central Provinces had once a population of over 6 million (something hardly of any figure as compared to today's Indian population).

CP was sandwiched between the Sindhia (Shinde) dominions of the former Maratha Empire in the north and Nizam's Dominions in the south (the region that would later be known as Hyderabad) and the territories annexed belonged to the former Maratha Bhonsles of Nagpur. After the defeat of the Bhonsles in the 1803 and 1817 Anglo-Maratha wars, they had to surrender Berar, Orissa and later the Narmada (or Nerbudda) valley territories to the British.

Divided into 4 major divisions - Narbudda (or Nerbudda; consisting of Hoshangabad, Betul, Chhindwara and Narsinghpur), Jubbulpore (or Jabalpur; consisting of Sagar, Damoh, Jabalpur, Mandla and Seoni), Nagpur (or Nagpore; consisting of Chanda, Bhandara Nagpur, Wardha and Balaghat) and Chhattisgarh (consisting of Bilaspur, Raipur and Sambalpur). It was earlier decided that the former Saugor and Nerbudda Territories should be merged with the short-lived Agra Presidency in 1834. The Princely States of Jagdalpur (or Bastar), Kawardha, Nandgaon, Makrai, Raigarh and Jaipur State of Orissa was also added in this territory. Its interesting to know that before a confirmed formation of Central Provinces as a separate province, it kept shuffling between merging and seceding from North-Western Provinces (that would later become United Provinces or as we now know it as, Uttar Pradesh).

After the formation of the Central Provinces, the headquarters was shifted to Nagpur. The nucleus of central India surrounded by the 4 Presidencies - Agra, Bengal, Madras and Bombay. But like any other territory, there were territorial changes in Central Provinces as well. Soon after its formation, in 1861, Sambalpur was transferred to Bengal. Bilaspur was carved out in 1862, Nimar was added in 1864 and a new district of Balaghat was created in 1870. And hence, the necessity of creating 4 divisions. Later, on creation of Orissa province, Sambalpur was transferred to Orissa in 1906.

But what was different about Central Provinces? While the British were in India, they introduced various ways of administrating land revenue system. Izaredari (1772), Permanent Settlement or the Zamindari (1793), Ryotwari (रैयतवाड़ी, 1820), Mahalwari (1822), Talukdari and Malguzari. As compared to other systems where the revenue was collected from landowners or village headmen or the highest bidders of the farmlands, the Malguzari system introduced in Central Provinces made mere farmers as the revenue collectors. Earlier known as Mukaddam, the Malguzars were replaced by another farmer if the former was unable to correctly quantify the revenue of that particular land. The head of the Malguzars was known as Lambardar or Sadar Lambardar.

But be it any land revenue system, the British had literally broken back of agriculture in India by extracting as much as they could from these landowners. The intermediate collectors gave almost everything to the British government and in return the peasants had nothing left to improve the quality of agriculture in India. Worse, the British made Indian farmers to cultivate huge amount of cash crops such as cotton, jute, sugarcane, tea, coffee, opium etc. bringing huge revenues to the Empire but leaving the farmers in dire state of hunger and poverty, leading to frequent famines between 1770 to 1943. Things got even worse when these landowners became literal puppets of the Empire drenched in richness, noble titles and royal positions while not giving much attention to the peasants and cultivators, resulting in a huge class divide. The Zamindari system was abolished in 1956 with compensations given to the landowners depending on the area they belonged to.

Central Provinces was later added with Berar in 1936 to form Central Provinces and Berar, that lasted till 1950. The territory was rearranged to form today's Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and part of it was added to Maharashtra, with intermediary post-independence states of Vindhya Pradesh and Madhya Bharat. Below here is the map of Central Provinces in 1861 when it was first formed. The red regions are British territories, while the chrome are Princely States.