Damdupat
Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"
Meaning
Damdupat was an old custom in western India. It said that the interest on a loan could never be more than the amount first borrowed, called the principal. So a debt could at most double. It protected borrowers from moneylenders. Under colonial rule in the 19th century, this custom broke down, and ryots in the Bombay Deccan sank into endless debt.
Example
In the 19th-century Bombay Deccan, in one reported case, a moneylender charged more than Rs 2,000 as interest on a loan of just Rs 100. This went far beyond the damdupat limit. Debts like this helped cause the Deccan Riots of 1875.
Don't confuse with
- Limitation Law (1859): a colonial law that made loan bonds valid for only three years. Damdupat was an older custom that limited the interest itself.
Related concepts
- David Ricardo
- Ricardian theory of rent
- Rentier
- Bombay Deccan
- Thomas Munro
- Ryotwari system
- Temporary settlement
- Mahalwari system
- Malguzar
- Deccan famine of 1832-34