During their rule, the British persuaded or forced many cultivators in the Madras Presidency to grow which commercial crop instead of traditional food grains?

Introduction / Context:
This question concerns colonial agrarian policies and how the British changed cropping patterns in different regions of India. In many areas, peasants were encouraged or compelled to grow cash crops for export instead of traditional food crops. In the Madras Presidency, a key example of such a cash crop was cotton. Understanding this helps you see how colonial economic interests reshaped rural life and sometimes made peasant livelihoods more vulnerable to price fluctuations and famines.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• The region mentioned is the Madras Presidency in southern India under British rule.
• The British persuaded or forced cultivators to grow a particular commercial crop.
• The question asks which crop this was.
• Options include cotton, indigo, jute, sugarcane and tobacco.
• We assume familiarity with which regions became associated with which colonial cash crops.

Concept / Approach:
Under colonial rule, different regions were tied into global markets through specific crops. Bengal became linked with jute, Assam with tea, Punjab with wheat, and parts of the Madras Presidency with cotton cultivation. Indigo was prominent in Bengal and Bihar rather than Madras, jute in Bengal, and tea in Assam and parts of North East India. While sugarcane and tobacco did exist in various regions, the classic example taught in basic history texts is that British policies pushed many Madras peasants into cotton cultivation for export to British textile mills. Therefore, the correct answer is cotton.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Recall the typical association made in textbooks: Madras with cotton, Bengal with jute, Assam with tea, and Punjab with wheat. Step 2: Observe that the question specifically refers to the Madras Presidency, not Bengal or Assam. Step 3: Eliminate jute as it is strongly associated with Bengal, and indigo as it is mainly linked to parts of Bihar and Bengal. Step 4: Recognise that cotton was a major cash crop grown in southern India, often for export. Step 5: Select cotton as the crop that British policies promoted among Madras cultivators.

Verification / Alternative check:
You can verify by mentally mapping crops to regions: tea in Assam, jute in Bengal, wheat in Punjab, cotton in parts of Madras and Bombay Presidencies. Many exam guides explicitly mention that British rule led to an expansion of cotton cultivation in the Deccan and southern regions to feed the textile industries of Britain. Indigo and jute, while significant, are not usually linked to Madras in the same way. Sugarcane and tobacco were grown but are not the standard textbook examples of British forced cultivation in this presidency. This confirms that cotton is the most appropriate answer.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Indigo: Mainly associated with indigo planters in Bihar and Bengal, where peasants were forced into indigo cultivation, not primarily with Madras.

Jute: A cash crop strongly linked with eastern Bengal and the jute mills of Calcutta, not with the Madras Presidency.
Sugarcane: Grown in various regions but not the classic example of a British imposed commercial crop in Madras used in most history narratives.
Tobacco: Also cultivated, yet not the principal colonial export crop highlighted for Madras in standard school level histories.

Common Pitfalls:
A common mistake is to confuse the various colonial cash crops and their regional centres, especially jute, indigo and cotton. Another pitfall is to guess sugarcane because it is a familiar commercial crop, without recalling its weaker association with Madras in colonial exam style questions. To avoid such errors, commit to memory the typical set of associations used in textbooks: Madras equals cotton, Bengal equals jute and indigo, Assam equals tea, and Punjab equals wheat. This simple map makes questions like this much easier to answer correctly.

Final Answer:
In the Madras Presidency, the British pushed cultivators to grow cotton as a commercial crop.