ABSTRACT
T H E consequences of the policies pursued by administrators who subscribed to the principles of utilitarianism were on the whole destructive rather than creative. These administrators had attempted to stimulate a climate of competition and individualism in the villages on the assumption that the dissemination of such values would create the conditions for progress and prosperity in rural society. But in their zeal for reform the utilitarians merely succeeded in undermining the cohesion of rural society, and in heightening tension between different social groups in the villages of Maharashtra. The agrarian disturbances of 1875 were, as we have already seen, a direct consequence of the policies advocated by the utilitarians. But while the attempt of British administrators to remould rural society on the principles of competition and individualism proved abortive, they were far more successful in the intellectual development which they tried to foster in the Community, and more particularly, in the values which they sought to propagate among the sophisticated classes. It is, indeed, in the dissemination of rational and liberal ideas in a section of the Community that we must look for the enduring impact of British rule on Maharashtra.
