NOTE 57
Trade and 'colonization. The word 'colonization5 needs to be explained. For about a decade before the renewal of the charter in 1833, there was a growing demand among the European indigo planters for some kind of law that would allow them unrestricted residence in India.4 This movement came soon to be known as the colonization movement. Simultaneously an influential section of the Bengalees also started a serious movement for colonization of Europeans in India in which Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarakanath Tagore figured most prominently. A brief survey of this movement during the five years preceding the renewal of the charier in 1833 would lay bare the conditions under which Free Trade and colonization were conceded.
In February 1828, the Sambad Kaumudi, one of the earliest Bengali journals, brought out a news item that in violation of the existing laws the planters were seizing paddy fields for planting indigo. Consequently, there was a sharp fall in the production of rice, the staple food of the people.8 Dwarakanath Tagore raised this point with great vehemence in a letter to the editor of the Sambad Kaumudi on 26 February 1828. He claimed that everyone who had an estate of his own—and Dwarakanath, to be sure, had quite a few—knew '^to what degree wastelands have been cultivated in consequence of indigo plantation and how comfortably the lower classes are spending their days from the dispersion of money throughout the country by the indigo planters." It therefore, he went on, could be justly inferred that the unrestricted residence of European gentlemen should be permitted. Towards the end of his letter he even went so far as to say that whoever was opposed to this was an enemy of the natives.6 Dwarakanath followed this up with yei another piece in the columns of the Bengal Hurkaru. Here., of course, he offered no new arguments but merely reiterated those he had already put forward in the Sambad Kaumudi.
In Aid of European Settlers
The Europeans, mainly the planters, met in June 1828 and again in May 1829 demanding Free Trade and unrestricted settlement in India. This was reported in the third issue of the Bengali weekly Bangadut which came out on 30 May 1829.7 Mention must now be made about the agency houses of Bengal. These agency houses controlled the country trade in large measure and financed indigo manufacture. Among other things ^trade with Europe in indigo became their preserve/98 These agency houses depended a great deal on the savings of the company's servants. They lent the planters enough money at an interest of about 10 per cent. These agency houses sometimes secured money from the government as well. In fact the debt policy of the government in 1823 helped them to borrow and invest in indigo cultivation.9 With the commencement of the Anglo-Burmese war in 1824 things took a critical turn. Even the government faced a serious financial crisis. Owing to a sharp fall in the prices of the Bengal raw materials in England there was a vicious depression in