CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 99 of 120

Correct — C, Trade permit. A dastak was a pass issued by the English East India Company that let goods travel through Bengal without paying the transit and customs duties every other merchant had to pay. The right came from the farman that the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar granted the Company in 1717: duty-free trade in the province of Bengal against a flat annual payment of 3,000 rupees to the imperial treasury, together with authority to issue these passes. In practice the Company's servants used dastaks to cover their own private trade rather than the Company's business, so private consignments moved duty-free while Indian merchants paid. That leakage cut straight into the Nawab's revenue and became one of the standing quarrels between the Nawabs of Bengal and the Company through the middle decades of the century.

• (a)Signature — This trades on the similar-sounding dastkhat, which is the word for a signature. A dastak is not a mark on a document — it is the document, a pass that travels with the goods.
• (b)Land document — Nothing about a dastak concerns land. It is a customs instrument in the world of river and road trade, not the revenue paperwork that recorded holdings and rents.
• (d)Tax on textiles — The exact inverse of what a dastak did. It exempted goods from duty; it did not levy one. The item is testing whether you know which side of the customs line the word sits on.

Farrukhsiyar's farman of 1717 is the hinge document of the Company's Bengal trade. It gave duty-free trade in Bengal for a fixed annual sum and the power to issue dastaks — passes exempting a consignment from transit duties. The privilege was granted to the Company as a body, but it was the Company's individual servants who worked it hardest, extending the passes to their own private ventures and to Indian merchants who paid them for the cover.

This one is decided by knowing what kind of object a dastak is. Two of the wrong options are the right kind of object in the wrong department — a land document and a tax are both eighteenth-century paperwork — and one, 'signature', is a pure sound-alike planted for the candidate who half-remembers the Persian. Anchor the word to the 1717 farman and the answer follows: what the farman conferred, alongside duty-free trade, was the authority to issue passes. It is worth knowing why this is asked so often: the abuse of the dastak, and the Nawabs' attempts to close the gap by equalising duties, run directly into the confrontations of the 1750s and 1760s that ended with the Company holding the revenues of Bengal.

• Dastak is a Persian-derived term for a pass; in Bengal it meant a permit that let goods move free of transit and customs duty.
• Farrukhsiyar's farman of 1717 gave the East India Company duty-free trade in Bengal for an annual payment of 3,000 rupees and the right to issue dastaks.
• The farman is traditionally linked to the Company surgeon William Hamilton, who treated the emperor.
• Company servants used dastaks to shelter their private trade, so the exemption reached far beyond the Company's own consignments.
• The resulting loss of customs revenue was a running source of conflict between the Company and the Nawabs of Bengal.

• Reading dastak as dastkhat and answering 'signature'.
• Treating the exemption as a tax; a dastak released goods from duty rather than imposing one.
• Assuming the 1717 privilege was confined to the Company's own goods — the abuse lay precisely in extending it.

As a one-word definition, or inside a statements item on the 1717 farman and the Company's commercial privileges in Bengal.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The right of the English East India Company to issue duty-free passes for its goods in Bengal was granted by which one of the following?

  • (a)The farman of Farrukhsiyar, 1717
  • (b)The Treaty of Alinagar, 1757
  • (c)The Charter Act of 1813
  • (d)The Regulating Act, 1773

  Answer(a) The farman of Farrukhsiyar, 1717 — it allowed duty-free trade in Bengal against a fixed annual payment and gave the Company authority to issue dastaks.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the 1717 farman, the East India Company's duty-free trade in Bengal was allowed against an annual payment of

  • (a)300 rupees
  • (b)3,000 rupees
  • (c)30,000 rupees
  • (d)3,00,000 rupees

  Answer(b) 3,000 rupees — a flat yearly sum to the imperial treasury in place of the ordinary customs duties.