Introduction
Indian society is very old, complex, plural and it has a long history. It is composed of different religious groups, racial groups and groups having cultural differences. In the long span of Indian history various groups from” different parts of the world entered into India with their own socio-cultural and racial features. The best example is Indus valley civilization.
In the later stage the Indo-Aryans came and they had interaction with earlier inhabitants of the land. They had their own socio-cultural pattern of living. They considered themselves superior. They developed norms and customs for different social groups with their own category and for the outsiders. That was the phase when Varna’s originated.
The Indo-Aryans were divided into different groups: Brahmins (Priests), Kshatriyas (Kings and warriors) Vaishyas (trade and commerce) Sudras (Servicing group/those who serve these three categories). It is believed that sudras were outside of the Indo-Aryan group. Perhaps this category emerged due to the union of Indo—Aryans and the inhabitants of the land.
There was also another category, which is the fifth category of the society. Their status was different in the society and they were allotted polluting occupations.
Land Ownership Pattern:
The problem of land ownership at present cannot be resolved without understanding the land ownership structure of the past. The past plays an important role in shaping our perceptions and ordering our priorities. Naturally, the solutions we find for the contemporary crisis are affected by our past. Hence, it is important to see how our ancestors understood land ownership.
There is a general consensus among experts that the question of land ownership came into existence in the post-vedic era. Let us discuss and highlight some of the importance of land ownership patterns in British India.
The land ownership pattern in British India:
It was in Bengal that British rule first tried to solve this problem. In the beginning, all the land was considered to be that of the ruler and revenue collection was based on contract. The highest bidder of a tract of land was given the right to collect the revenue. After experimenting with several models of revenue collection, the then Governor General Lord Cornwallis accepted that the Zamindars had the right of ownership of land and this ownership passed from father to son. This was done so that if a zamindar failed to give the promised revenue on time, his land could be auctioned. When lands of the zamindars were auctioned, it was the traders who usually purchased them. During the British period, industries had declined and for the traders there was no safer investment than land. However, the zamindars lived in the cities and the problem associated with absentee landlordism started cropping up.
The main aim of the absentee zamindars was to extract the maximum amount of revenue from the farmers and little from the tillers. Gradually, the new generation of the zamindars also started living in the cities and their motive too was to extract the maximum amount of revenue from the farmers.
Apart from Bengal, the ownership of land was given directly to the farmers in the rest of the country upon the payment of fixed revenue called malguzari. If they failed, their land had to be mortgaged or sold to pay the dues. In south India, the farmers used to deposit the land revenue directly to the government, while in Punjab and other parts of north India, the Mahal, who represented the farmers, used to collect revenue. Over a period of time, the British increased their demand for land revenue and to ensure that it could be collected, they made land a saleable property. So whenever a zamindar, farmer or Mahal failed to deposit the revenue on the given date, his ownership of the land was auctioned and the land revenue was collected. Prior to British rule, such auctions of confiscated land were rare. In most of the cases the land on which people could build houses or land that was to be donated for religious purposes were bought and sold. Even during the British period, 40 percent of the area came under the princely states and the pattern of ownership on this land was based on concepts that varied from the medieval to modern.
There were several hurdles to the abolition of the zamindari system. In Uttar Pradesh, the zamindars were allowed to keep land for their personal cultivation, but there was no limit to this holding, as a result of which the absentee landlord could save their land from acquisition. However, some of the bigger landlords did cultivate land on their own and invested in the land, which were included in goals of land development. The land owners also tried to block the implementation of the Act by misusing the path of judicial remedy.
Before British rule there was no formal individual ownership of land in India. However, during the two centuries of British rule (1757–1947), India’s traditional land ownership and land use patterns were changed with the introduction of the concept of “private property”.
Land ownership systems:
Various land ownership and transfer systems were introduced by the British:
The ‘zamindari’ system prevailed in most of northern India whereby feudal lords (zamindars) became owners of large tracts of land. They had to pay fixed revenue payments to the government and so peasants became tenant farmers and had to pay rent on the land they farmed.
The ‘ryotwari’ system was followed in south and west parts of India. Individual cultivators (ryots or raiyats) were proprietors of land against revenue payments. They had rights to sub-let, mortgage and transfer land.
The ‘mahalwari system’ was a third system whereby entire villages had to pay revenue, with farmers contributing their share in proportion to their holdings.
The Indian Forest Act was passed in 1920, making all forest land government-owned. This delegitimize the traditional community ownership systems in adivasis (tribal) societies.
It has been noted that in the middle ages the king or sultan and zamindar or farmer had concurrent rights over the same plot of land. In the British era, due to excessive land revenue extracted from farmers, land became a saleable product.
Thus, rural society was polarized due to an extremely unequal system in the land distribution: landlords and rich peasants versus tenants and agricultural labourers. By the time of Independence in 1947, about 40% of India’s rural population was working as landless agricultural labour. The number of landless agricultural labourers in the country rose to 14.43 crore in 2011 from 10.67 crore in 2001as per Indian Census.
British India: Self-Sufficient Village Economy:
The British conquest of India led to a revolution in the existing land system. The new revenue system introduced by the British in India superseded the traditional right of the village community over the village land and created two forms of property in land: landlordism in some parts of the country and the individual peasant proprietorship in others.
It was Lord Cornwallis who, during his term of office, created the first group of landlords in India by introducing the Permanent Land Settlement for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1793. These landlords were created out of the tax farmers in the provinces who had been appointed by the political predecessors of the British rulers to collect revenue from these provinces on a commission basis. Under the terms of the settlement, they had hence- forth to make a fixed payment to the government of the East India Company.
Three principal reasons prompted a group of British administrators to introduce the landlord system in India. First, the East India Company in India adopted British juridico-economic conceptions for land settlements. The economic past of England was fundamentally different from that of India. The English landlord system was conceived and carried out in the spirit of the tradition of private property in land, in the past feudal period. In India, however, the creation of the landlord system had no precedent in her economic history.
Secondly, from the standpoint of administration, in earlier stages of British rule, it was found easier and more economical to gather land revenue from a few thousand landlords than from a legion of small peasant proprietors.
Thirdly, for political-strategic reasons, the young British Raj in India needed social support in the country to maintain itself. It was expected that the new class of landlords, which owed its existence to British rule, would naturally support it.
The East India Company also created a group of landlords out of the petty chiefs by transforming their tribute into revenue and by taking over their political, military and administrative power. There was also a third method adopted for the purpose. Persons who rendered valuable military or other aid to the British government were granted land and were transformed into landlords.
The Ryotwari was subsequently extended to a number of other provinces. The Ryotwari settlements prevailed in Bombay, Sind, Berar, Madras, Assam, and some other areas constituting 51 per cent of British Indian territory.
Considering that the Ryotwari like the Zemindari was based on private property in land which was unknown to pre-British India, it was as much exotic to the Indian tradition as the Zemindari. Both were points of departure from the traditional Indian economy which excluded the economic category of individual private ownership of land.
Thus private property in land came into being in India. Land became private property, a commodity in the market, which could be mortgaged, purchased or sold.
New Land Revenue System:
The village was the unit of assessment until the village ownership of land existed. It was the village community which, through the headman or panchayat, paid the state or the intermediary a specific proportion of the annual agricultural produce as revenue. The new land system eliminated the village as the unit of land assessment and revenue payment. By creating individual holders of land, it introduced the system of individual land assessment and revenue payment.
Secondly, a new method of fixing the land revenue and its payment was introduced, previously the revenue due to the state or its intermediary to whom the monarch had ‘farmed’ out the village, was a specified portion of the year’s actual produce which varied from year to year. This was now replaced by the system of fixed money payments, assessed on land, regularly due in cash irrespective of the year’s production, in good or bad harvests, and whether more or less of the land was cultivated or not, and in the overwhelming majority of settlements fixed on individual landholders, whether directly cultivators or landlords appointed by the state.’ This new method and form of the land revenue assessment and payment had a far reaching result.
The practice of the new land and revenue system logically and inevitably brought in its wake the phenomena of the mortgage, the sale and the purchase of land. When a land-holder could not pay the land revenue due to the state out of the returns of his harvest or his resources, he was constrained to mortgage or sell his land. Thus, insecurity of possession and ownership of land, a phenomenon unknown to the pre-British agrarian society came into existence. The new land system disastrously affected the communal character of the village, its self-sufficient economy and communal social life.
Under the new land system, the individual landholder was directly connected with the centralized state to which he owed his proprietary right over land and had to pay the land revenue. And all land disputes were now settled, not by village panchayats, but by the courts established by the centralized state. This undermined the prestige of the panchayats, shorn of power.
Thus the new land system not only deprived the village of its agricultural-economic functions but also led to the loss of its judicial functions. It also broke the bonds which organically tied the village peasant to the village collectivity.
Commercialization of Agriculture:
One of the consequences of the introduction of the system of new land relations and revenue payment in the form of fixed money payment was that the old objective of village agriculture, namely production for village use, was replaced by that for market- The production and produce were now determined by the new objective, that of sale, and, hence, changed their character.
Under the new system, the peasant produced mainly for the market, which, with the steady improvement of means of transport and expanding operations of trading capital under British rule, became available to him. He did so with a view to realizing maximum cash, primarily to pay the land revenue to the state which was fixed fairly high and, in course of time, to meet the claim of the moneylender in whose hands he progressively fell due to numerous causes.
This led to the emergence of the phenomenon of what is known as the commercialization of agriculture. This also led to the practice of growing specialized crops by the peasants. The land in groups of villages was solely used, because of its special suitability, for the cultivation of a single agricultural crop such as cotton, jute, wheat, sugarcane and oil-seeds.
Breakdown of Traditional Indian Village:
Due to British India the unity of village agriculture and industry, the basic pillar of the self-sufficient village economy, was disrupted. The economic base of the autarchic village existence was undermined. The communal and self-governing character of the village was undermined by other measures and encroachments also. In addition to the village being deprived of its traditional possession of the village land, it also lost the right to the free use of pasture and forest land in its proximity. The peasants and other village folk used this land for collecting fuel and grazing cattle, under the control of the village as a whole. Further, this land had a decisive value for the maintenance of the general village economy and agriculture. The new state expropriated the village of its possession and free use of this peripheral land.
Thus, we could understand how the transformation of village land owned by the village community introduced the New Land Revenue System in India by the British. The village solidarity bound up with the self-sufficient nature of the village thrived only in the absence of any higher form of solidarity such as the national or the international. The village solidarity of self-sufficient in the latter stage was destroyed due to the transformation of land by British India.
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