Lord Cornwallis

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, served as Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief of British India from 1786 to 1793 (and again briefly in 1805, dying at Ghazipur that year), appointed under the framework of Pitt's India Act of 1784. Having earlier surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown in 1781, he was sent to India with enhanced powers — the Amending Act of 1786 allowed a Governor-General to override his council in exceptional cases and combined the offices of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief. His tenure is treated as the foundational moment of the Company's administrative, revenue and judicial machinery in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

Cornwallis's most consequential measure was the Permanent Settlement of 1793 (the Permanent Settlement Regulation), framed with the assistance of John Shore and James Grant. It fixed the land revenue demand on the zamindars in perpetuity, recognising them as proprietors of the soil with the obligation to pay a fixed sum to the Company; the 'Sunset Law' provided that a zamindar failing to pay by sunset on the appointed day would have his estate auctioned. This created a class of loyal landlords but impoverished the actual cultivators (raiyats) and deprived the state of any share in rising agricultural prosperity. In administration he introduced the Cornwallis Code of 1793, separating revenue and judicial functions, and instituted reforms of the Indian Civil Service — raising salaries, prohibiting private trade and the acceptance of presents, and basing promotion on seniority — earning him the title 'father of civil services in India'. He reorganised the judiciary by establishing district and circuit courts, a Sadar Diwani Adalat and Sadar Nizamat Adalat at Calcutta, and propounded the principle of the sovereignty of law and equality before law (though Indians were excluded from higher posts — the root of his racial 'Cornwallisation').

Militarily, Cornwallis personally led the British in the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790-92) against Tipu Sultan, concluding the Treaty of Seringapatam (1792) which forced Tipu to cede half his territory and pay an indemnity, taking two of his sons as hostages. His settlement system and the exclusion of Indians from senior office shaped Indian governance for over a century; the Permanent Settlement remained the dominant revenue arrangement across eastern India until its abolition through post-Independence zamindari abolition legislation in the 1950s.

For the UPSC examination, Cornwallis is a high-yield figure in Modern Indian History (GS Paper I, Prelims and Mains). Prelims questions commonly test the date and features of the Permanent Settlement, the Sunset Clause, the separation of powers under the Cornwallis Code, and his civil-service reforms. Mains answers frequently demand a critical evaluation — weighing the creation of a loyal landlord class and administrative stability against the ruin of cultivators, fixed state revenue and the institutionalised exclusion of Indians. Comparison with the Ryotwari (Munro) and Mahalwari systems is a recurring analytical angle.