ABSTRACT
THE Deccan Riots of 1875 revealed the limitations of the policy of reform which the utilitarians had devised for Maharashtra. The lynch-pin of this policy was the ryotwari System of land revenue, which was designed to undermine the collective institutions of rural society, and which was also designed to create a climate of individualism and competition in the villages. The utilitarians wanted to liberate the kunbis from their obligations to the jatha and the village Community, since they believed that in doing so they would stimulate the rise of a class of affluent peasants whose acquisitiveness would form the basis for economic progress and create the conditions for stability in rural society. But the indifference of the utilitarians towards the values of the kunbis and the vanis, particularly the latter, and their lack of concern for the established institutions of rural society, led to consequences which defeated the very objectives they had in view. The breakdown of the traditional institutions in the villages, and the introduction of a revenue System based on the laws of political economy did, as we shall later see, to a limited extent promote the rise of an affluent class of cultivators. But these cultivators were eclipsed by the growing dominance of the vanis, who enriched themselves at the expense of the landed families whose power and prestige had formerly been the mainstay of rural society.
