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.