Opinion

The violent history of the Justice Party and the Dravidianists

A detailed historical investigation into how British-backed zamindars formed the Justice Party, oppressed ordinary Tamils, manipulated social-justice narratives, and laid the ideological foundation for today’s Dravidian politics

Arvind Kumar

November 27, 2025

A detailed historical investigation into how British-backed zamindars formed the Justice Party, oppressed ordinary Tamils, manipulated social-justice narratives, and laid the ideological foundation for today’s Dravidian politics

The zamindari foundations of the Justice Party

In recent times, Tamil Nadu Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the party’s supporters have claimed that the so-called Justice Party, and its ideological successor-in-interest, the DMK, brought social justice to the state and even invented the concept of the midday meal program in schools, leading to the rise of the state’s literacy rate.

In reality, the so-called Justice Party, which was officially called the South Indian Liberal Federation, was formed as a party of wealthy zamindars and moneyed merchants whose wealth depended on their subservience to the British, which led to widespread misery. Contrary to claims that they rose to power in 1920, they had been part of the power structure since around 1800 and were responsible for the systematic destruction of the economy along with the British. Under the Hindu rulers, South India had been the most prosperous place in the world, and unlike other parts of India, which had been under Islamic rule, the parts of South India ruled by Hindu kings did not have the zamindari and jagirdari systems until they were introduced by the British through a law known as Regulation XXV of 1802[1]. The zamindars were created as a class of rent-seeking landlords who were put in charge of periodically pillaging the monies of other people as a reward for their support of the British during the Polygar wars. The 1802 law stated that “the proprietary right of the soil shall become vested in the zamindars or other proprietors of land, and in their heirs and lawful successors for ever,” and that the “zamíndárs or landholders shall enter into engagements with their raiyats for a rent, either in money or in kind.” In other words, the zamindars, along with the British, grabbed the lands of everyone else and became the de facto property owners, while the original property owners became the “tenants” on their own lands and had to pay rent to the zamindars, who split the spoils with the British.

The process to collect the money from the “tenants” involved mercilessly beating them up and using other forms of torture if they did not surrender whatever money was demanded of them. It did not matter even if the crops had failed due to a poor season, and the “tenants” had no money. In this case, their personal belongings were taken away in the name of rent recovery, and the “tenants” also had to perform forced labor as compensation, turning the “tenants” into slaves. Landless laborers and farm workers who had lost their income as a result of the zamindari system, too, were not spared from the tyranny of the landlord class. Many times, sensing an opportunity to trap their victims into their system of slavery, the zamindars provided predatory loans to the “tenants” and farm workers at exorbitant interest rates and harassed them to repay the loans with interest, and even took away their personal belongings as collateral, making it impossible for them to repay their loans except through forced labor.

The oppressive system of forced labor was the primary method used by zamindars to exploit the “tenants” and farm workers who could not pay their high rents or debts; this was often enforced through illegitimate confinement, which, though a severe abuse of power, was legalized by the British. Regulation XXV, apart from creating the zamindars, granted despotic powers to them for “apprehending and securing offenders of all descriptions,” which they used to arrest defaulting “tenants” and kept them confined in fetters until the arrears were paid. Even children were not spared from forced labor. The system of debt bondage and extreme poverty meant that entire families, including children, were forced into unpaid labor to pay off debts incurred by their parents or even grandparents and their ancestors belonging to earlier generations. The end result was that their assets progressively declined, and many of these “tenants” abandoned the lands they had once owned and ran away as a last resort to escape the insurmountable debt, exorbitant rents, and the cruel exploitation by the zamindars. Many of them were even reduced to begging.

The methods used by the British and the zamindars induced Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty, the founder of the Madras Native Association, to demand an investigation, and his demands led to the Torture Commission being set up. In his speech to the House of Lords on 14 April 1856 on the Torture in Madras[2], the Earl of Albemarle highlighted many points from the report of the Commission: “That your Lordships may not think that the torture inflicted is of the mildest description, an impression which you might receive from the extenuatory despatch from the Court of Directors to the Governor of Madras, dated the 12th of September, 1855, I will read a list of the modes of torture practised, which I have extracted from the Report of the Commissioners.

These are, deprivation of food and water; hindering a man from sleeping; hanging a necklace of bones or other disgusting materials round the neck (a punishment peculiarly offensive to a Hindoo); compelling a man to sit on his heels, with brickbats or sharp stones under his hams; striking the heads of two defaulters against each other; tying two persons together in a stooping posture by the hair of their heads; tying a man in a stooping posture to the wheel of a cart; tying a man by the hair of his head to the tail of an ass, and parading him through the public market; forcing a man into a stooping posture with another man on his back; binding a man to one tree and hoisting his leg by a rope attached to another; suspending a man by his heels to the bough of a tree; suspending him by the wrist, and scourging him while in the air. If my recollection serves me right, there is in that Report an instance of a woman who died under the infliction of this torture. Tying to a tree with a fire underneath, in order to produce partial suffocation; forcing a man to whirl his head in a peculiar manner with his hair dishevelled, sitting in the sun, the process being assisted by scourging (called in the native collector’s office, “extracting the devil”); suspending a man by his arms tied behind his back, which, I believe, is the Indian punishment of the strappado; plunging into wells and rivers, until the victim is half, or sometimes wholly, drowned; placing the carpenter beetle, or other gnawing insect, or some stinging reptile, confined within a cocoa-nut shell, on the navel or still more sensitive part of the body, causing great torment; cudgelling with bludgeons with such severity as to produce dislocation; placing the muzzle of a musket on the great toe, and forcing the party to continue with it for hours in the burning sun; placing a stick across the chest with a man seated at each end of it, so as to produce partial suffocation (I have heard that this has been in some cases continued until the tongue protruded from the mouth); binding a limb by twisting a rough rope round it, so as to impede the circulation, the intensity of the torture being increased by the application of a composition of red pepper, salt, and mustard. This torture the Court of Directors have themselves described in their Judicial Dispatch of the 11th of April, 1826, page 7 of the Report. Another punishment is the stocks – a very different punishment from the stocks formerly used in this country; the victim is placed on his back, with his heels in the air, his face exposed to the sun by day, and the damp and cold by night.

Then there is lifting up by and tearing out the mustachios-not only a very painful torture, but a great indignity into the bargain; placing the victim on a nest of red ants, also a very painful torture; squeezing the crossed fingers; pinching the fingers between a cleft bamboo; torture by the kittee, an instrument by which the fingers are gradually bent back until the pain is unbearable; pinching the inside of the thighs; nipping the flesh with wooden or iron pincers; pounding the joints with mallets of soft wood; flagellation with every kind of scourge in every part of the human body, and with such severity as occasionally to cause death (at page 80 will be found a case mentioned by Mr. Lushington of a man flogged to death for non-payment of taxes); tying rags round the fingers and setting fire to them; burning various parts of the body with a lighted cheroot, heated packing needles, and searing irons; wrapping the body in cotton steeped in oil, and setting fire to it; compression of the sensitive organs of the body; driving thorns under the nails; filling the nostrils, eyes, and other parts of the body with cayenne pepper; applying the bamboo pincers to women’s breasts.”

The earl then highlighted other parts of the report and pointed out, “Mr. Saalfelt, agent to Messrs. Arbuthnot and Company, a very important witness, from his necessarily constant intercourse with the natives, states, ‘Not a single individual can be found bold or resentful enough to make torture a subject of complaint, simply because the idea is prevalent among the people that such acts are tacitly tolerated by the Government.’” Calling attention to yet another part, he stated: “Mr. Bourdillon, collector of Arcot, quoting the evidence of a native revenue officer of North Arcot, says, ‘The ryots do not think that the Government and collector do authorise such acts; but they think the collector does connive at it, and that if any charge of this kind were given, the collector would inquire into it formally, but at the end he would dismiss it on the ground that the charge was not proved. On this account, the ryots are backward to make a complaint.’”

Such oppressive rule by the zamindars and the British would lead to opposition from Indian freedom fighters, and that, in turn, would lead to the zamindars and the British rallying together to counterattack by setting up the Justice Party.

Justice Party, or the zamindari system, by another name

Among those who highlighted the harsh rule of the zamindars and the British who had reduced India to a state of despair was G Subramania Iyer, a brahmin who had founded the Madras Mahajana Sabha which was one of the forerunners of the Indian National Congress, and who had also founded the Tamil newspaper Swadesamitran and The Hindu which used to be a patriotic newspaper before he left it. In his article entitled ‘Land Revenue System in Madras’ which was published in 1897, he highlighted the plight of farmers and called for land reforms and wrote, “The State is the landlord in India, but unlike other countries where the rents are fixed not by the landlord but for the landlord, in some instances by custom, in others by competition, in India the landlord fixes the rent at any sum he chooses, and in practice in the Madras Presidency he fixes it at the maximum which he thinks can be extracted in good years, after leaving the tenant the barest subsistence allowance, and granting grudgingly – if at all – remissions in bad years, when threats, distress and evictions are alike found useless for the extraction of the full amount. A more effectual plan for keeping the agricultural population in hopeless misery and indebtedness could scarcely be devised.”[3]

In his book, Some Economic Aspects of British Rule in India, published in 1903, he pointed out, “The truth is, the Local government and the Supreme government share the land revenue between them, and both are interested in pushing it up… Between the two, the ryot’s last pie is squeezed out of him[4].” There is no other way to describe this relationship between the British and the zamindars on one side, and the Indian people on the other, than as parasitical. If the British were the leeches that fattened themselves, the zamindars were the jaws of these leeches, which attached themselves to their victims and sucked their blood. It is a cruel joke that the descendants of some of these landlords who perpetrated crimes against humanity describe themselves as belonging to an “aristocratic” family.

The harsh zamindari system and the accompanying land revenue policies were major contributing factors to the frequent and devastating famines that occurred during British rule in India. Describing the nature of these famines, G. Subramania Iyer wrote in his 1903 book, “If a few thousands of people in a limited tract suffered severely and died in the occasional famines of the pre-British period, millions now live a life of chronic famine and die the slow harrowing death of unrelieved starvation. In these days of British civilisation, what is called the normal year has become the famine year; and the famine year officially recognised is one when hundreds of thousands of people can no longer stay at home, nor escape death from starvation, without flying to the government relief camps.”

Another brahmin patriot, S Subrahmaniya Ayyar, as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, ruled in 1905 against zamindars extracting money by categorizing homes as part of cultivated lands merely because their backyards had a couple of trees[5]. After he left this post, Ayyar set up the Dharma Rakshana Sabha together with V Krishnaswami Aiyar to oppose the mismanagement of temple funds. At this time, many temples were controlled by zamindars, and the interests of M T Somasundara Mudaliar, a Mirasdar who controlled temples, were hurt as a result of the Dharma Rakshana Sabha. Christopher John Baker, in his book, The Politics of South India, states that Somasundara Mudaliar’s “temple interests had suffered under the attacks of the Mylaporeans’ Dharmarakshana Sabha” (emphasis added)[6]. Ayyar also started the Home Rule League together with Annie Besant to demand self-government in India. The extremist wing of the Indian National Congress was also active during this period, and brahmins like V V S Aiyar and Vanchinathan Iyer were involved in armed fight against the British. G Subramania Iyer was arrested for his fiery writings, and there was an arrest warrant for Subramania Bharati for his writings.

The British and their zamindar underlings felt threatened by all these actions, and they set up the Justice Party to attack brahmins and vehemently oppose the Home Rule League. Among the landlord class who were part of this effort were the so-called Raja of Panagal, the so-called Raja of Bobbili, M T Subramania Mudaliar, who was M T Somasundara Mudaliar’s brother, Pitti Theagaraya Chetty, T M Nair, and Natesa Mudaliar. They were supported by Shahu, the Maratha zamindar of Kolhapur, and P T Rajan, who was the nephew of Subramania Mudaliar, and Somasundara Mudaliar would soon join them. The Arabic title of Mirasdar used by Somasundara Mudaliar had been reintroduced by the British after it had fallen into disuse. It had been originally introduced by the Nawab of Arcot, who had invaded Madurai and destroyed the last Hindu rulers. This title signified that he, too, was some sort of petty feudal overlord who terrorized farmers and others, but mirasdars were lower down the feudal hierarchy.

While brahmins were made scapegoats and accused by the Justice Party of depriving people of education, that claim was far from the truth. In fact, brahmins held no wealth and no power but lived in poverty, and yet, they provided education to others. The International Review of Missions noted in 1918, not long after the Justice Party was formed, about the brahmins of South India, “It must be admitted that the highest castes deserve every credit for the way they have pursued education in spite of all difficulties. It is a common thing for a Brahmin boy to beg his fees and food throughout his school and college course[7].” Even the founders of the Justice Party had benefited from the education provided by brahmins. Calamur Sundara Sastry was the foster father of the so-called Raja of Panagal, and C P Ramaswamy Iyer mentored N Sivaraj in his legal career. N Sivaraj, who was one of the founders of the party, would go on to become the first Harijan lawyer in India to enroll as a High Court advocate. Even B R Ambedkar had been tutored by a brahmin.

Under the old Hindu system in Madras Presidency, as published in the book, The Beautiful Tree by Dharampal, about the survey of Indian schools carried out between 1822 and 1825 by Thomas Munro, the percentage of students in schools from the brahmin, kshatriya and vaishya communities ranged between thirteen percent in South Arcot and twenty three percent in Madras while those from the Shudra and other Hindu communities constituted between seventy percent in Salem and Tirunalveli and over eighty four percent in South Arcot showing that the Hindu system of education was very inclusive. Even the British were forced to admit this fact, and according to the Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, which was published in 1885, “There is indeed not that hard line of separation between Brahmin and Shoodra in Southern India which obtains in other parts.”[8]

However, this situation had already started deteriorating a few decades earlier due to the combined effects of the introduction of the Macaulayite education system and the autocratic rule by the coalition of the British and their zamindar lackeys, who deprived the common people of education, and instead held them prisoners on their farms and kept them barely alive to perform forced labor. After all, many of the zamindars fancied themselves as rulers of “princely states,” and nothing stopped them from improving the lot of the people and providing education instead of sucking the souls out of the poorest classes of people, whose poverty and illiteracy in the first place was created by these zamindars.

Shahu, the Maratha zamindar of Kolhapur who styled himself as the inheritor of Shivaji’s legacy and supported the Justice Party, was disingenuous for more than one reason when he blamed brahmins for the low literacy rate of the Marathas. Not only did the Maratha rulers not provide education to the people despite being in power, but they also benefited from the brahmins who helped educate them. As the report of the Indian Education Commission appointed in 1882 pointed out about Maratha regions like Berar, “The Maratha government had done nothing for popular education in these territories. Each noble Hindu house had its own Brahman tutor[9].” The Cambridge History of India of 1929 noted that the Marathas “generally considered it beneath their dignity as fighting men to learn the art of reading and writing[10].” That description was not an isolated observation. James Grant Duff had written in the History of the Maratha in 1863, “Maratha seldom can write or read; they consider all such learning the business of a carcoon [clerk], and if not degrading, at least undignified[11].” This was the key reason that members of the Maratha caste lagged behind in literacy rate.

Since British education was the benchmark used by the zamindars of the Justice Party when they blamed the brahmins, it should be noted that none of the brahmins who were at the forefront of politics fighting against the British and the oppression of the zamindars had attended a university in Britain. In complete contrast, P T Nair, who was one of the founders of the Justice Party, was educated in Britain. P T Rajan was not only educated in Britain but also grew up there. His admission to the University of Oxford was a process of humiliating himself. When he applied to Trinity College for admission, the President of the College responded in a manner reminiscent of the infamous words ‘Indians and Dogs not allowed’ by saying, “I should add that we have not had an Indian at this college for nearly twenty years and are not anxious to encourage Indian students to come to Oxford.” P T Rajan swallowed this insult and joined the Jesus College at Oxford, where, as the Indian Magazine and Review reported, he got his degree in the third class[12], which was known as the “Gentleman’s Third” during a time when it was prestigious to obtain a degree only in the first or second class. Thus, the claims of the Justice Party standing for the “self-respect” of everyone, especially those from the depressed classes, blow up in the face of such servile behavior by P T Rajan.

The violent track record of the Justice Party and the DMK

In 1921, soon after the Justice Party won the elections because the Indian National Congress had boycotted it as part of the non-cooperation movement, its members used horrific violence against the Harijan workers of the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills for not participating in a strike. They burned down many huts, and more than one hundred and fifty poor people belonging to the Adi Dravidar community in the Pulianthope area of Madras city were rendered homeless[13]. The government’s inquiry committee documented the fact that the rioters had also chopped off the toes and fingers of some of their victims[14]. To add insult to injury, Theagaraya Chetty, who was the President of the Madras Corporation, wrote a letter to the British demanding the ethnic cleansing of the Adidravidar laborers in Madras by deporting them out of the city[15]. This led to M C Rajah, the Secretary of the Madras Adidravida Mahajana Sabha, to describe the British allowing the Justice Party to remain in power as equivalent to handing over the “poor depressed classes” to “ravenous and blood thirsty wolves and vultures.”[16]

Soon after this episode, the Justice Party abused its power and provided reservations in government jobs to members of the zamindari castes while not setting aside any quota for the depressed castes, leading to Harijan leaders like M C Rajah, Rettaimalai Srinivasan, and Namasivayam Sivaraj quitting the party. Harijans leaving the Justice Party would turn out to be the first sign of the disintegration of the party that was to come. A full-blown caste war within the party would soon break out, and when P.T. Rajan, who belonged to the Vellala caste, and Kumaraswami Reddiar of the Reddy caste were made ministers, the Nattukkottai Chettiars and the Velama caste zamindars felt insulted and eventually forced the two of them to resign, leading to the combustion of the party. Soon after, when efforts were made to abolish the zamindari system, the Justice Party opposed it, leading to its loss in the 1937 elections, after which it would never recover. Thus, in a twist of irony, the party that had claimed to fight for caste equality and social justice collapsed by being on the wrong side of these issues.

Even as the remnants of the Justice Party metamorphosed into the allegedly non-political Dravida Kazhagam, which then spawned the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, some things remained constant. Among these were hatred for Tamil and Hindu culture, continued violence against the Harijans every so often, attacks on brahmins, granting themselves freebies including reservations in college admissions and jobs despite being born in privilege and being part of the ruling dispensation, extra-territorial loyalties, looting of the temples, corruption, support for the zamindari system, and deception about its own beliefs and track record.

After the creation of the DMK, its rise to power in the 1960s was accompanied by violence against Harijans and brahmins. They terrorized the brahmins with a shrill call to kill the brahmin first if anyone saw a brahmin and a snake at the same time, and started attacking them in the streets. Upon taking power, they dismissed brahmins from government jobs and schools, harassed businesses that employed them, and made it hard for brahmin students to get college admissions. Murderous raids on communities of Harijans became so common that Harijans would flee into the mountains to escape from the Dravidianists. They also awarded themselves freebies by categorizing the descendants of the zamindars as ‘Backward Castes’ and ‘Most Backward Castes’ who deserved government jobs and college admissions despite being part of the comprador class that had colluded with the British to carry out atrocities to enrich themselves. It was under such a system that the Mudaliar caste of P.T. Rajan would be declared a backward caste despite being one of the wealthiest and privileged communities that was part of the power structure for over two hundred years, and as a result, his grandson, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, would gain admission to one of the prestigious engineering colleges in the country. Tamil Nadu was truly reeling under a hybrid between a Kafkaesque reality and an Orwellian government.

DMK also built up a reputation for corruption. It went to such an extent that it was termed “scientific corruption” by the Sarkaria Commission, which investigated it. No sooner did DMK come to power for the first time in 1967 than they started to diligently and methodically start stripping the state’s coffers of its wealth. Among their corrupt schemes were the muster rolls case in the Madras Corporation, which paid money to thousands of phantom personnel for phantom projects, the Veeranam pipeline scandal, bribery for awarding contracts for cloud seeding, making themselves beneficiaries for distributing textbooks, and many more. They were also the masterminds of the 2G spectrum case when they were part of the UPA regime between 2004 and 2014.

In recent times, the supporters of the Justice Party and the DMK have tried to take credit for supporting the temple entry movement to allow Harijans to enter temples, and for pioneering the idea of the midday meal scheme in schools, thus improving the quality of life in Tamil Nadu.

The Justice Party did not contribute to the temple entry movement. That movement was started and sustained by the Ezhavas of Travancore, and one of the Ezhava leaders, T K Madhavan, roped in M K Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. As a result, Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari played a key role in the Vaikom Satyagraha, bringing it national attention, while E V Ramasamy happened to join them as he was then in the Indian National Congress, which had passed a resolution to support the movement, and he merely followed the party line. After E V Ramasamy left the Congress for the Justice Party, neither he nor the Justice Party supported Muthuramalinga Thevar and Madurai Vaidyanatha Iyer when they led Harijans into the Madurai Meenakshi temple in 1939. They also did not support C Rajagopalachari’s Madras Temple Entry Authorization and Indemnity Act of 1939, which would open up temples to the depressed classes and also protect the priests of the Meenakshi temple from any potential action by the trustees for letting in the Harijans. Besides, the zamindars had controlled the temples both before and after the Justice Party government passed the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act, and they were responsible for keeping out the Harijans. The trustee of the Madurai Meenakshi temple, V. Ramalinga Mudaliar, too, was related to P T Rajan.

The claim about the midday meal program, too, is a dishonest one, as it had already been part of the educational system before the Justice Party came to power and destroyed it. The annual report of the Office of the Director of Public Instruction in Madras published in 1914 stated that a “recurring grant of Rs.30,000 was specifically available for poor schools and orphanages in the city of Madras, and also a nonrecurring grant of Rs.25,000” and that these grants “were utilized towards payment of enhanced rate of boarding grants and for grants for free meals and clothing to poor pupils[17].” This was apart from Rs.1,09,000 for “increasing the number of poor children under instruction” and for “helping poor pupils who have shown intelligence to continue their studies[18].” The report also noted that the total number of pupils had increased and stated that the “increase in strength is considerable and may be attributed to some extent to the policy of aiding managers to give clothing and free meals to poor children and to allow them compensation for remitting fees of indigent pupils.”[19]

Such programs were not new. For example, Hindu temples have had feeding centers for the poor for a long time, and the Theosophical Society, which operated schools for the children of depressed classes, provided free meals to its students. Annie Besant, who was the President of the Theosophical Society, apart from leading the Home Rule League, also contacted Sankaran Nair, who was the Education Minister of Madras in 1917, and asked that the government provide free education and free food for students[20].

The only contribution of the Justice Party after it took over the Madras Corporation in 1920 was the destruction of the midday meal scheme in schools, which had to be canceled after a few years due to its failure. Thus, they took a once successful system and turned it into a colossal failure just as they had done with the economy of South India. The midday meal scheme in schools had been tried multiple times by different governments over a long period of time, and suddenly gained the world’s attention in the 1980s when it worked under the AIADMK government of M G Ramachandran. Success has many fathers, and there are now a number of claimants for this success, but under no circumstances can the Justice Party or DMK lay claim to any share of the credit.

Apart from damaging the economy and covering up their crimes against humanity with tall tales, the Dravidianists have also inflicted great damage to the culture of Tamil people by trying to create a British version of Tamil language, falsely detaching South Indian history from that of Indian history, and by attacking brahmins, Hinduism, and Sanskrit, which are among the core features of Tamil Nadu’s culture. Sanskrit is deeply connected to Tamil Nadu, more so than to any other place in the world, and it is from the Tamil kingdoms that it spread to Southeast Asia. That is also true of Hinduism, which is described in the Sangam literature.

The time has come for all those who love Tamil culture (and by extension Indian culture) to unite and put an end to the hateful strand of Dravidianist politics. The first step would require well-off communities, which have historically belonged to the ruling classes or been wealthy, to voluntarily give up their categorization as backward castes so that they do not view the government as a mechanism to get freebies but actually contribute to the country. Next, they should focus on restoring Tamil Nadu as the cultural capital of the world.

Gounders, Nadars, Thevars, Pillais. Vanniars and Brahmins all have deep roots in Hindu civilization and have all contributed to India’s freedom struggle in significant ways, and none of them are among the voter base of DMK. However, all these groups vote for different political parties, and their lack of unity has only helped DMK’s hateful ideology. If these communities recognize this reality and work together, nothing can stop Tamil Nadu from restoring its golden past, which gave rise to the Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas, and Cheras, and once again become the beacon for the whole world.

Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

Reference: –

[1] Madras Regulation XXV of 1802 [The Madras Permanent Settlement Regulation, 1802] [13th July 1802], The Madras Code, Volume 1, p.5, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1915 – Google Books

[2] Speech of the Earl of Albemarle on the Torture in Madras in the House of Lords on 14 April 1856, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Volume CXLI comprising the period from the twelfth day of March, 1856 to the fifth day of May, 1856, Second Volume of the Session, pp. 964-975, Published by Cornelius Buck, 1856. – Google Books

[3] Land Revenue Settlement in Madras, G. Subramania Iyer, India: A Record and Review of Indian Affairs, p. 205, Published by the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, July 1897. – Google Books

[4] Some Economic Aspects of British Rule in India, G. Subramania Iyer, p. 46, The Swadesamitran Press, 1903. – Google Books

[5] Elumalai Chettiar (Defendant), Appellant v. Natesa Mudaliar and Another (Plaintiffs), Respondents, before Sir S. Subrahmania Ayyar, Officiating Chief Justice, and Mr. Justice Boddam, 25 July 1905, p. 81, The Indian Law Reports, Madras Series, Vol. XXIX, 1906. – Google Books

[6] The Politics of South India 1920-1937, Christopher John Baker, p. 59, Cambridge South Asian Studies, Issue 17, Cambridge University Press, 1976. – EPDF

[7] The International Review of Missions, Edited by J.H. Oldham, p. 293, Printed by Morrison and Gibb Limited for the International Review of Missions, 1918. – Google Books

[8] Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency in Three Volumes, Volume II, p, 226, Printed by E. Keys at the Government Press, 1885. – Google Books

[9] Chapter II, Historical Review of Education in India, Report of the Indian Education Commission appointed in 1882, p. 21, Printed by the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1883. – Google Books

[10] The Cambridge History of India, Volume V, p. 385, Edited by H.H. Dodwell, The Cambridge University Press, 1929 – Google Books

[11] History Of The Mahrattas, Volume 1, James Grant Duff, p. 94, Indian Reprint, Printed at the “Exchange Press,” Fort, 1863. – Google Books