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Dewan (also known as diwan, sometimes spelled devan or divan) designated a powerful government official, minister, or ruler. A dewan was the head of a state institution of the same name (see Divan). Diwans belonged to the elite families in the history of Mughal and post-Mughal India and held high posts within the government.
The word is Persian in origin and was loaned into Arabic. The original meaning was "bundle (of written sheets)", hence "book", especially "book of accounts," and hence "office of accounts," "custom house," "council chamber". The meaning of the word, divan "long, cushioned seat" is due to such seats having been found along the walls in Middle Eastern council chambers. It is a common surname among Sikhs in Punjab. [1]
The word first appears under the Caliphate of Omar I (A.D. 634–644). As the Caliphate state became more complicated, the term was extended over all the government bureaus.[ citation needed ]
The divan of the Sublime Porte was the council or Cabinet of the state. In the Ottoman Empire, it consisted of the usually (except in the Sultan's presence) presiding Grand Vizier and other viziers, and occasionally the Janissary Ağa.[ citation needed ]
In 19th-century Romania, the Ad hoc Divan was a body which played a role in the country's development towards independence from Ottoman rule.[ citation needed ]
In Javanese and related languages (such as Malay and Indonesian), the cognate "dewan" is the standard word for council, as in the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (or Indonesia's Council of People's Representatives) and Dewan Undangan Negeri (State Legislative Assembly of Malaysia), Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives of Malaysia), and Dewan Negara (Senate of Malaysia).[ citation needed ]
During the effective rule of Mughal India, the Dewan served as the chief revenue officer of a province. [2]
Later, when most vassal states gained various degrees of self-determination, the finance — and/or chief minister and leader of many princely states (especially Muslim, but also many Hindu, including Baroda, Hyderabad, Mysore, Kochi, Travancore — referred to as Dalawa until 1811) became known as a dewan.[ citation needed ]
Exceptionally, a ruler was himself titled Dewan or a loftier variation, notably:
As a title used in various Early Modern Indian states, Diwan denoted the highest officials in the court after the king; the suffix -ji is added as a mark of respect in India. [3] In the major Maratha states of Baroda (ruled by the Gaekwad), Gwalior (ruled by Scindias or Shinde), Indore (ruled by Holkar), and Nagpur (ruled by Bhonsle, but not from the Chhatrapati Shivaji family), the highest officer after the king was called the Diwan.
One of the examples – Shrimant Diwan/Rao Bahadur Atmaram Kulkarni, was the Diwan (Prime Minister) of Maratha Jamkhandi State. In the 19th century, the British Parliament established in British India a supreme court for revenue matters (non-criminal matters) named the "Sudder Dewanny Adawlut", which applied Hindu law. [4] [5]
Dewan, Diwan, Divan, or Deo was the hereditary title borne by the Chief Minister of the Hindu Cooch State in the Bengal region.
Diwan also became a surname of high-caste Hindus or Sikhs in the Punjab region.
There is also a community with the surname Diwan found in Chhattisgarh, near the Bilaspur and Janjgir-Champa regions. This is a Brahmin-Rajput community descendant from Deo Brahmin-Rajputs who migrated from Purvanchal in Uttar Pradesh. The males in this community take the title Dhar (e.g., Mohan Dhar Diwan, a high-ranked member of Vishwa Hindu Parishad). They had a fight with the royal family of Ratanpur, defeated the king, and started ruling the Ratanpur estate.
After the Battle of Buxar, when Bengal was annexed by the East India Company in 1764, the Mughal Emperor granted the Company the Diwani (the right to collect revenue) in Bengal and Bihar in 1765. [6] [5] The term Diwani thus referred to British (fiscal) suzerainty over parts of India during the early British Raj.
In French India, one of its constituent colonies, Yanaon, had Zamindar and Diwan. They were active in its local and municipal administration during French rule. The Zamindar of Yanam was given a 4-gun salute by French counterparts.[ citation needed ]
The document dated Bikram Samvat 1833 Bhadra Vadi 3 Roj 6 (i.e. Friday 2 August 1776), shows that Vamsharaj Pande and Swaroop Singh Karki had carried the title of Dewan (equivalent to Prime Minister) of the Kingdom of Nepal. [7]
Mahārāja is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king", or "high king".
Company rule in India was the rule of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with Mir Jafar, who had the support of the East India Company; or in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar; or in 1773, when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance. The Company ruled until 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Government of India Act 1858, the India Office of the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj.
Nawab, also spelled Nawaab, Navaab, Navab, Nowab, Nabob, Nawaabshah, Nawabshah or Nobab, is a royal title indicating a sovereign ruler, often of a South Asian state, in many ways comparable to the western title of Prince. The relationship of a Nawab to the Emperor of India has been compared to that of the Kings of Saxony to the German Emperor. In earlier times the title was ratified and bestowed by the reigning Mughal emperor to semi-autonomous Muslim rulers of subdivisions or princely states in the Indian subcontinent loyal to the Mughal Empire, for example the Nawabs of Bengal.
A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semi-autonomous ruler of a province. The term itself came into use during the reign of Mughals and later the British had begun using it as a native synonym for "estate". The term means landowner in Persian. They were typically hereditary, and held the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes.
The Permanent Settlement, also known as the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, was an agreement between the East India Company and landlords of Bengal to fix revenues to be raised from land that had far-reaching consequences for both agricultural methods and productivity in the entire British Empire and the political realities of the Indian countryside. It was concluded in 1793 by the Company administration headed by Charles, Earl Cornwallis. It formed one part of a larger body of legislation, known as the Cornwallis Code. The Cornwallis Code of 1793 divided the East India Company's service personnel into three branches: revenue, judicial, and commercial. Revenues were collected by zamindars, native Indians who were treated as landowners. This division created an Indian landed class that supported British authority.
Diwan and divan are variant terms originally used in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish with derivates in other Asian and European languages such as diwaan, dewan, etc.. These terms may refer to:
The Nawab of Bengal was the hereditary ruler of Bengal Subah in Mughal India. In the early 18th-century, the Nawab of Bengal was the de facto independent ruler of the three regions of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa which constitute the modern-day sovereign country of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. They are often referred to as the Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Nawabs were based in Murshidabad which was centrally located within Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha. Their chief, a former prime minister, became the first Nawab. The Nawabs continued to issue coins in the name of the Mughal Emperor, but for all practical purposes, the Nawabs governed as independent monarchs. Bengal continued to contribute the largest share of funds to the imperial treasury in Delhi. The Nawabs, backed by bankers such as the Jagat Seth, became the financial backbone of the Mughal court. During the 18th century, the Nawabs of Bengal were among the wealthiest rulers in the world.
The Bardhaman Raj, also known as Burdwan Raj, was a zamindari Raja estate that flourished from about 1657 to 1955 in the Indian state of West Bengal. Maharaja Sangam Rai Kapoor, a Khatri from Kotli, Punjab, who was the first member of the family to settle in Bardhaman, was the original founder of the house of Bardhaman, whereas his grandson Abu Rai, during whose time the zamindari started flourishing, is considered to be the patriarch of the Bardhaman Raj family.
The dewaniya or diwaniya was the reception area where a Middle Eastern man received his business colleagues and male guests. Today the term refers both to a reception hall and the gathering held in it, and visiting or hosting a dewaniya is an important feature in the culture of Eastern Arabia.
The Singranatore family is the consanguineous name given to a noble family in Rajshahi of landed aristocracy in erstwhile East Bengal and West Bengal that were prominent in the nineteenth century till the fall of the monarchy in India by Royal Assent in 1947 and subsequently abolished by the newly formed democratic Government of East Pakistan in 1950 by the State Acquisition Act.
The Darbhanga Raj, also known as Raj Darbhanga and the Khandwala dynasty, was a Maithil Brahmin dynasty and the rulers of territories, not all contiguous, that were part of the Mithila region, now divided between India and Nepal.
Murshid Quli Khan, also known as Zamin Ali Quli and born as Surya Narayan Mishra who later converted to Islam, was the first Nawab of Bengal, serving from 1717 to 1727.
The Bettiah Raj, also known as the Bettiah Empire, was the second-largest zamindari in the Bettiah region of Bihar, India. It generated annual land revenue rentals of more than 2 million rupees.
Baroda State was a princely state in present-day Gujarat, ruled by the Gaekwad dynasty of the Maratha Confederacy from its formation in 1721 until its accession to the newly formed Dominion of India in 1949. With the city of Baroda (Vadodara) as its capital, during the British Raj its relations with the British were managed by the Baroda Residency. The revenue of the state in 1901 was Rs. 13,661,000. Baroda formally acceded to the Dominion of India, on 1 May 1949, prior to which an interim government was formed in the state.
The East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950 was a law passed by the newly formed democratic Government of East Bengal in the Dominion of Pakistan. The bill was drafted on 31 March 1948 during the early years of Pakistan and passed on 16 May 1951. Before passage of the legislature, landed revenue laws of Bengal consisted of the Permanent Settlement Regulations of 1793 and the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885.
The Zamindars of Bengal were zamindars of the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. They governed an ancient system of land ownership.
The Jhargram Raj Palace is the current residence of the Malla Deb Royal family. Situated in Jhargram district, West Bengal. About 14 rooms on the ground floor have been converted into a Heritage Hotel run by the family.
Zamindars of Natore were influential aristocratic Bengali Zamindars, who owned large estates in what is today Natore District in Bangladesh .
Dewan Bahadur or Diwan Bahadur was a title of honour awarded during British rule in India. It was awarded to individuals who had performed faithful service or acts of public welfare to the nation. From 1911 the title was accompanied by a special Title Badge. Dewan literally means Prime Minister in Indian context and Bahadur means brave.
Jhargram Raj was a zamindari which occupied a position in Bengal region of British India. The zamindari came into being during the later part of the 16th century when Man Singh of Amer was the Dewan/Subahdar of Bengal (1594–1606). Their territory was centered around present-day Jhargram district. Jhargram was never an independent territory since the chiefs of the family held it basically as the zamindars of the British Raj in India after Lord Cornwallis's Permanent Settlement of 1793. Although its owners were both rich and powerful, with the chiefs of the family holding the title of Raja, the Jhargram estate was not defined as a Princely State with freedom to decide its future course of action at the time of Indian independence in 1947. Later, the Vice-Roy of India agreed to recognize Jhargram as "Princely State" after the Second World War, but the proposal taken back as the British had decided to give independence to India.