This view was not confined to British proconsuls. Karl Marx shared it too.

In truth, the British were  in a permanent dither about how best to raise the revenue on which their Raj depended. They began with, and never really lost, a sentimental attachment to the idea of Indian village life. As Sir Charles Metcalfe famously put it: '... Hindoo, Patan, Mughal, Mahratta, Sikh, English, all are masters in turn, but the village communities remain the same.' This view was not confined to British proconsuls. Karl Marx shared it too.

F. Mount,  The tears of the Rajas (2015), 189