Land transfer, social change and political stability in the Punjab, 1849-1901

Abstract

Before the advent of the British, over-all political control vested in the Lahore Government. Rural society was dominated by those whose position ultimately derived from this Government, i.e., by assignees of revenue, revenue-farmers, local officials, rural notables and village headmen. The British greatly augmented the power of the State; they brought more peace and order to the country-side; and they relinquished control over the development of rural society by destroying or diminishing the position and influence of those who had exercised that control. A class of peasant-proprietors, entrusted with a limited agricultural surplus and an almost unfettered power to transfer their holdings, was created as the basis for stability and prosperity. Rapid economic development from the eighteen-sixties enormously increased the amount and value of the agricultural surplus. The value of land rose; the credit of the land-owners expanded; they began to borrow freely for agricultural and social purposes; the trading castes and indeed men of capital and enterprise of all classes, became interested in the acquisition of land; and the transfer of land in satisfaction of debts or under the pressure of necessity assumed serious proportions. The expropriation of the land-owners was accelerated by the introduction of a law and civil procedure adapted to the needs of a commercial, competitive, literate and homogeneous society and unsuited to those of an agrarian, customary, illiterate society divided along caste and tribal lines. The law of contract, interest and limitation disturbed the traditional relations between lenders and borrowers and stimulated the demand for the payment of high rates of compound interest. The courts, burdened with work, without administrative experience or rural sympathy, with little power for local enquiry, bound to adjudicate in accordance with written rather than oral evidence, favoured the money-lender rather than the peasant. They did not work efficiently as machines for the recovery of money lent, and they could not sell the debtor’s land, but they enabled the money-lender to exert sufficient pressure to induce a recalcitrant debtor to part with his land. The land passed rapidly from those who had inherited a pastoral or turbulent way of life, who found great difficulty in developing agricultural skills and adjusting to settled and peaceful conditions, let alone to the temptations of inflated credit. It passed rapidly from those who, claiming high status, whether on political or religious grounds, were inhibited from making the most of their land, while determined to make the most of their social position. It passed rapidly from those whose physical environment, history or religion contained the seeds of demoralisation. It passed even from those who were well-adjusted to agricultural life, and thrifty to greater or lesser degree, hut who could not hear up against agricultural calamities or succumbed to a new-found affluence. Acquisitiveness developed more rapidly among the trading castes than among the land-owners, and more rapidly among certain classes of land-owners than among others. The character of the alienees varied from place to place and this, together with regional variations in social organization and religion, gave a distinctive significance to the transfer of land in each region. The political significance of land transfers was not confined to the loss of status of expropriated proprietors and the growth of agrarian discontent. The matter was complicated by the acquisition of land by village menials, artisans and others of low birth who wanted to raise their social status; and above all by the conflicting interests of an educated Hindu elite, drawn largely from the trading castes, dominating the professions and Government service, and an educated Muslim elite, most of whose members had an agrarian and high status background, hut some of whom had commercial or low-born origins. It was the growing discontent of the land-owners, and the consequent political danger, which excited the apprehension of many British officials. They argued that land was transferred under the pressure of debt or necessity, and that the unsuitable administrative system introduced by the British was responsible. They believed that some action was essential to remedy an increasingly dangerous situation, and that such action was economically feasible. More conservative British officials were not prepared to believe that land was transferred on a large scale or at a rapid rate, or that the process constituted a serious political danger. They saw the transfer of land as a natural, even desirable, phenomenon, or at least one inherent in the constitution of society. Interference, they considered, would do more harm than good, because such interference ran counter to natural economic laws. The question was debated seriously for the first time in the early ’seventies. The radicals of that generation failed to convince their conservative fellows, who occupied the senior positions in the Punjab Government, that action was necessary. But from the ’eighties the radicals of a later generation grew in numbers, influence and outspokenness and gradually gained the upper hand. Until the early ’nineties most attention was focussed on legislation similar to the Dekhan Relief Act, to protect the land-owner when Drought into court. Attention then shifted to reforms in the revenue system which might inhibit the transfer of land, and proposals for a differential assessment on alienated land found a fair amount of support. Finally, in the second half of the ’nineties, the question of direct restrictions on the power of alienation came to the fore. The policy embodied in the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900 was the outcome of a long and involved struggle between the Punjab Government and its officials, the Government of India, and the Secretary of State for India with his India Council. Even after the principle of the imposition of restrictions on the power of transfer was accepted, the nature and extent of those restrictions were keenly debated. Proposals for mere enabling legislation were defeated; but the measure as it finally emerged from the Legislative Council, or rather as it was finally interpreted and applied, was more of a restriction on the power of acquisition of certain communities, than on the power of alienation of the land-owners. Economic considerations were uppermost in this debate. The political effect of legislation was considered only from the standpoint of the land-owners, the reactions of the trading classes and the educated elites "being considered unimportant. The fierce agitation of the Hindu elite against the Land Alienation Bill took the British "by surprise. Even so they were hardly ready to "believe that the views and actions of the elite were of serious political significance.