It remains only to make a few remarks as to the social and political advantages (or disadvantages) arising from the village organisation of agrarian society, whether that organisation is in the form of the severalty village under a headman, or a body which, organised under joint family custom, or under some other form of tribal or family allotment, is in some sense “joint” and dealt with as a “proprietary unit” by the Administration.
In early days, whenever a district came under the N.W. Provinces authorities, the system required the village to be dealt with as a whole, as an unit, whether it was so naturally or not; and the method of the (so-called) raiyatwari provinces, where each holding was dealt with separately, was regarded by officials trained in the north-western school with something like horror120. But all that has long passed away.
With the later well-organised establishments, it is just as easy to deal with thousands of separate holdings, grouped in villages, as it is to deal with a number of whole villages. And we have two Land-Revenue systems – one treating the village as a whole (but carefully recording all shares and separate rights), the other frankly adapted to the severalty village of the peninsula, and assessing each holding in complete independence.
The village organisation of society – whether the village itself is of one type or the other – offers many facilities for rural administration, for repression of crime, and gradually for bringing about attention to simple systems of sanitation. The village system also enables the agrarian districts to dispense with a poor law. Each village will secure its infirm and pauper inhabitants at least from starvation, without the intervention of any poor-rate machinery.
Moreover, the district officers are much more readily brought into friendly contact with the people, from village to village; each brings forward a new group of headmen and local elders, from whom the state of the country, the prevalence of sickness or cattle disease, or suffering from drought, or local famine, can be at once known. A vast number of
separate points of communication exist, and the whole area of a district is divided up into small sections, which can be examined one by one, just as an engraver divides a picture he has to copy into little squares, so as to concentrate attention, and direct it successively to every section in detail. In parts of Bengal, for example, the district officer is almost dependent on the police officers scattered about at local stations for information regarding the country affairs. There are no other points of communication: the village organisation has almost completely decayed under the influence of the greater landlords. This, however, does not apply so much to those parts where the landowners are really peasant proprietors, and no large estates exist.
The village system produces all the advantages, but also the disadvantages, of “peasant proprietorship” in their full extent. For whether it is a separate (individual) holding, or a whole village regarded as the estate of a joint group, the land may be subdivided again and again, till the ultimate holding is so small that it barely affords the means of subsistence. In much-divided joint villages, especially where the plan of division is at all complicated, the whole of the co-sharers are really in the hands of the village accountant (patwari), who alone knows all the details of the little scattered plots, and the charge upon each. The joint village is also peculiarly liable to develop cliques and parties, and even to split into
fierce factions; and the co-sharer in one patti, or section, hates the members of another section cordially121. The success of the northern village largely depends on the energy and character of the tribe or family group holding it. There is a vast difference – I must say superiority – for example, when one compares the villagers of the West Panjab with those of Ambala, or – farther east – of Aligarh (for example), or of Bihar: not that each race may not have some conspicuous good qualities of its own.
When the village or the holding becomes much subdivided, the holders are sure to get into debt. If the clan, caste, or tribe is of a good fibre, it does not allow such excessive subdivision: the energetic members, who see that all cannot thrive on the paternal inheritance, take service in the army, the police, or the numerous branches of minor public service; but even so, the supply of occupation is limited, because all crafts and industries are so tied to particular castes and hereditary groups and guilds that any general turning of surplus hands to industrial occupations is hardly possible122.
But when a landholder gets into debt he generally ends by mortgaging his land, and finally selling it.
This does not always, or even frequently, involve his removal. The purchaser, unless he is a richer co-sharer (under the operation of the custom of pre-emption which prevails in many villages) will frequently be the village money-lender, or some non-resident banker desirous of accumulating land as an investment. The old owner or co-sharer resides still on the land, only he is now the tenant of the purchaser. This plan is not likely to answer very long if the holding is such that it does not afford more profit than suffices to support the tenant’s family. The tendency must be either for a whole village to fall piecemeal into the hands of some (non-agricultural) owner, or else it will become held by absentee money-lenders and traders of various origin, and having no connection one with the other.
It may seem strange that in the progress of ideas regarding the State’s dealing with the land in India, it never occurred to anyone to utilise, rather than abandon, the State ownership of the land. It is well known that when land administration first came under the direct control of British officers in Bengal in the eighteenth century, it was a firmly-established doctrine that the State was the owner of all land. Mr. James Grant, in Bengal, even argued that this was legal and constitutional; and it is not certain whether Lord Cornwallis took this view or not. It is not necessary here to discuss the question as it may be argued from the texts of the Hindu or
Muhammadan law. It is quite enough to remember that long before the eighteenth century, de facto the right had been fully established, and is asserted to this day by all the native states123. Lord Cornwallis simply desired to abandon it, substituting the Zamindar landlords, whom he found in managing possession of large estates in Central Bengal. These he hoped to see acting the part of benevolent owners, at once securing the State revenues and blessing their tenants by their liberality and kind dealing. When, in the N.W. Provinces (in the absence of such landlords), attention was turned to establishing the independent rights of the villages, it was still the policy to give up the State right. The “joint body,” dealt with as the ideal landlord of the village, is not declared by the Regulation (of 1822), in so many words, to be “actual proprietor”; but this right is implied, and the whole body, as well as the several co-sharers, are treated in all respects as owners. Not only so, but when in Bombay and Madras the individual holding was separately dealt with (without the intervention of any middleman proprietor or joint responsibility), and when the supreme ownership of the State was maintained, or at least not formally abrogated124, still
no restriction was placed on the power of alienating the permanent hereditary occupancy, which for all practical purposes was as good as ownership. It might have occurred to someone in authority to think that the State ownership should be formally retained for beneficial purposes, to prevent the ignorant agricultural classes from losing their lands. The State would, in fact, have retained the nuda proprietas – the bare ownership of the soil – while giving all the practical benefits to the village co-sharer or the ryot cultivator; and the effect would have been that the holder could not sell the land which was not his; and moreover, by express enactment it might have been provided that he should not sell (or charge beyond his own lifetime) the occupancy or cultivating right in the holding.
As it is, the “ryot,” no less than the co-sharing proprietor of the north, is free to lose his right by mortgaging and ultimately selling it. Thus many agriculturists have got into debt, and their lands became hopelessly encumbered, under either system. I am not saying that this complete laissez faire to
the ordinary action of economic forces was or was not right; but no one seriously considered any other view. The “Ryots Relief Acts125” and similar provisions have rarely had any great success. To some extent this is due to the fact that they require very exceptional qualities in the officers who work them – sympathy, resource, great knowledge of local conditions and the like. But the provisions at best can only touch a part of the evil. When the debt burdening the share, or holding, is examined, it is usually found to consist of a vast mass of interest piled up; and the whole matter is complicated by the fact that the debtor’s payments on account have been mostly in kind, that even if these have been fully credited in respect of quantity – which is by no means always the case – the money-lender has put his own market value on the credit items. The unfortunate debtor disputes both the smallness of the quantity and the meagreness of the value allowed him; but, alas I he has no evidence; – no receipts, no regular accounts of his own; and when the arbitrating judges come to settle the account, though they can reduce the interest easily enough, they can only deal with the items of the principal account, almost by guess. And even if the debt is reduced to a reasonable, and per se tolerably accurate, figure, it may well be that the
holding is not capable of yielding enough to support the family, and also to give a surplus for the instalment of the debt besides the revenue and rates. In that case the fixing of the debt, and even the advance of the whole from the public treasury – to be repaid by fixed instalments constituting a first charge on the land, and extending over a number of years, at moderate (simple) interest – does not really relieve the holding, unless the mouths to be fed from it can be largely reduced; and this is rarely practicable. We have recently heard of proposals to restrict the alienation of land in India. The difficulty is
after the free property system has gone on so long – to introduce any change. I am only here speaking of villages, and therefore do not allude to the cases of landlords in Madras, Oudh, etc., where primogeniture prevails, and the owner may have no power to alienate or charge the estate beyond his own lifetime. But in the peasant class, any attempt to deal with the subject by a general law would, I fear, result in a great difficulty. If any change is made, it must be very cautiously in separate provinces; and even separate districts, and experimentally – first where the conditions are such that it could be tried with the least appearance of a violent bouleversement. Especially where many holdings have already passed into the hands of money-lenders and others, an inquiry, unless very cautiously conducted, might have the effect of stirring up alarm and spreading excitement over the
towns, in which the monied and trading interest naturally congregates.
One very hopeful experiment has been made in the Panjab. Here there are in the great “Doabs” or tracts between two rivers – in the central parts equally removed from the moistening influence of either river – great stretches of alluvial land fertile enough if artificially irrigated, but which can only be irrigated by expensive State-made canal works. In some cases Government has been able to provide the water, laying out (with reference to the straight canal cuts and cross channels) a number of rectangular blocks suitable to form holdings, a number of which will aggregate into an (artificial) “village.” Here the (originally waste) land belongs, without any question, to the State; and so (by law) does the water; hence it is possible that all settlers, who can be tempted away from the “congested” districts, can be located as Government tenants, at a very moderate tent and revenue rate, and without any power of alienation. This plan, though recent, has now been in working for some time. But we have not heard much of its results; but, as far as I know, they have been very satisfactory. It is a great pity that this and similar matters concerning the economic welfare of the peasantry are not thought more worthy of occasional notice by local “correspondents.” The Panjab scheme has been worked on a considerable scale. For example, the Doab near the Chinn River contains many
hundred thousand cultivable acres laid out in this way; and there are other centres. The Panjab Government has to deal with (on the whole) varied and superior agricultural races, a large proportion of whom cultivate their own lands.
In existing villages, the Panjab law does not encourage the dissolution of the bond of joint responsibility; and a village cannot become separated completely into independent parts, except when a “Settlement” (p. 28) is in progress, and then under special conditions. In the N.W. Provinces, a much larger proportion of the village owners employ tenants, and look to rental rather than to cultivating profits. Here there is hardly any restriction on complete severance (including the revenue responsibility) so long as all concerned agree in asking for it. And the plan is commonly adopted of allowing separate landholders in the villages to pay their own share of the revenue and rates direct into the local treasury126. The tendency of the N.W.P. villages is certainly towards their becoming completely raiyatwari, though the title to the holding is that of complete proprietary right. And in all cases where the owner is of a
non-agricultural caste, originally or by purchase, we shall have a series of small properties, often held by non-resident owners, and worked by tenants, some having “occupancy” rights, and other privileges under the Tenant Law127, some being tenants at will paying what is already, virtually, a competition rent. Such properties will probably tend gradually to reaccumulate in the hands of a few owners, who will buy up first one plot and then another, and have estates scattered in plots through half-a-dozen villages or more; but the “village” will be only a geographical or survey unit; it will hardly have any meaning, except as a monument of some forgotten unity, which may be once more gilded by the halo of theories.
120. Even Sir H. Maine, who was too philosophically minded to suppose that it was really wrong, says – contrary to all historical fact – that it was not the ancient system of the country (“ V.C.,” p. 106). What was, we may ask, the ancient system, if it was not the taking of a share of the grain from every separate holding in each village, under the superintendence of the headman and the king’s agent or accountant – the village itself being usually in the raiyatwari form? See the note to p. 70.
121. I have noticed this more particularly in the Panjab, north of the Gujranwala district.
122. Something can, of course, be done in this direction, especially in helping the village women to take up embroidery and other such work as they are naturally skilled in, to help out the family maintenance.
123. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 207. It is quite possible, no doubt, to find in Sanskrit books passages which contain vague assertions of the king’s power, and of his being owner of everything; but it would be beyond the scope of this little book to enter on the discussion of such a matter.
124. It is expressly maintained under the terms of the Bombay Revenue Code. In Madras, where no such code has been enacted, it is more or less tacitly or inferentially maintained, because it is so essentially a part of the system (formerly of great practical importance) that any “occupant” may relinquish his land by notice at a suitable season, and thus become free of the responsibility to pay the land-revenue. While this is maintained, it would be inconsistent to call the “occupant” or “ryot” the full owner of his holding.
125. They have been applied both in parts of the N.W. Provinces and in the Dakhan for the relief of encumbered village owners, and for ryots whose holdings have become burdened with debt.
126. Ordinarily they pay to the lambardar or representative head of the village, or of the section (patti) to which they belong, the representative being personally responsible for the total being paid in. Complaints became frequent that the payments made to this person were misapplied, on one pretext or another; hence the rule that permission to pay direct might be given. But this tends powerfully to break up the idea of a “community.”
127. It would be beyond my scope to explain the nature of the Tenant Law, which, as may be supposed, is chiefly needed in the Northern Provinces where there are landlords, or joint-villages employing tenants, and where these tenants are often the remains of older settlers whose rights have been overborne, but too long ago to make it possible to do more than recognise certain privileges attaching to long possession. There is a general account of the Tenancy Law in my little book called “A Short Account of the Land Administration of British India” (Clarendon Press, 1894), pp. 133–144.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage