Land Tenures, Occupancy. CHAPTER VIII. LAND TENURES. SECTION I.-By Cultivation Occupancy. The land tenures of Berár have sprung, here as elsewhere, from its ByCultivation system of government, and especially of finance. The Mahomedan conquerors never distributed the land of the Dakhan into feuds, although they assigned certain portions on service tenure; they dealt directly with the cultivators, and drew from them a heavy land-tax. The supreme administration was despotic and greedy, but on the whole the king was a better landlord than any of his subjects would have been, and the ryots of Berár were far better off than the serfs or the villeins of mediaval Europe under their feudal masters. Successive governments seem to have been always, in Berár, strong enough to prevent the interception of this land-tax by middlemen. The patels and deshmukhs, who were employed to manage the collections in villages and parganas, never got beyond hereditary office, nor transmuted themselves into proprietors of the land. So when the English received charge of Berár in 1853 we found the village communities, with their staff of servants and their hereditary patel, cultivating the lands which from time immemorial have belonged to each township, upon no other tenure than that which usually permitted a man to keep possession of his fields so long as he paid to Government the customary rent. Some such general principle of reciprocal convenience must have always prevailed, land being still more plentiful than cultivators; but of course it has varied in many particulars according to social changes and the state of the country at different periods. If we can rely upon the information collected in 1820 by Mountstuart Elphinstone from the first revenue officers sent into Khandesh after its cession to the British Government, the credit of settling the landtax upon a recognition of private property in the land belongs first to Malik Ambar. Akbar's minister fixed a standard assessment, but Akbar, it is said, held all land to belong to the State. Whereas Malik Ambar is stated to have confirmed his ryots in formal possession of specific fields; and it is even alleged that the joint ownership of its lands by a village community or township was first declared and acted upon by him. Malik Ambar's settlement was made over the greater part of Berár, and in the adjoining parganas of Khandesh. The Collector of Khandesh reports (in June 1819) that mirási land is saleable at the pleasure of its owner only in that portion of the district which belonged to Malik Ambar's dominions. But the proprietor's titles granted by Malik Ambar cannot long have outlasted the wear and tear of the disorders which followed his death. We may suppose that where the tenants managed to keep land for any long time in one family they acquired a sort of property adverse to all except the Government; that where the land changed often by the diverse accidents of an unsettled age, in such cases occupancy never hardened into proprietary * Report by Mountstuart Elphinstone (1820). right. Good land would have been carefully preserved, bad land would be often thrown up; failure of crops or the exactions of farmers would sever many holdings; and all rights ceased with continuity of possession. When misgovernment became chronic, and the country was incessantly exposed to be wasted by famine, war, or fiscal extortion, the tenant's hold on any one piece of land would be more precarious and ephemeral. But perhaps it may be said that in theory the general basis and limit of property in the land was cultivating occupancy undisturbed, except by violence or injustice, so long as the traditional standing rates of assessment were paid upon the fields taken up. It is easy to see that various rights and prescriptions might, under favouring circumstances, arise out of this sort of holding. Several terms, as mirási, mundkari, &c., are known to distinguish the class of occupants in Berár whose possession of their land is or was long established and by descent, but their precise privileges have never been closely defined. The essence of these holdings seems to have been the privilege of paying a fixed sum without regard to cultivated area, and the right to trees. The property was also admitted usually to be heritable and transferable. Then certain advantageous tenures were created by expedients used to revive cultivation in deserted tracts; long leases were given at a rent mounting upwards very gradually year by year, or a whole ruined village was made over by what is called pálampat, which fixes the rental of the entire estate without taking account of the spread of cultivation. These, however, are now special instances. Under the Maráthas and the Nizam the mass of cultivators held their fields on a yearly lease, which was made out for them by the patel at the beginning of each season; the land was acknowledged to belong to the State, and as a general rule no absolute right to hold any particular field, except by yearly permission of the officials, was urged or allowed. A man could not always give up or transfer his holding without official authorization. From the time when Berár fell under two masters-the Nizám and the Maráthas,-all durable rights, say the Berár people, were gradually broken down. Where the Maráthas had established themselves solidly and incontestably, they consulted the interests of their revenue in their treatment of the rent-payers, but upon the debatable lands they had no reason to be considerate. Two necessitous governments, rendered hungry and unsparing by long wars, competed with each other for the land-tax; and when, in 1803, one ruler was driven out, there ensued the usual evils which follow the cessation of protracted hostilities. The country was exhausted and the population scanty. That very year came a severe famine, remembered fifty years afterwards when we took charge of the province; and the revenue collections were made over to farmersgeneral, who advanced the supplies of cash that could not at once be extracted from the soil. Yearly leases and unscrupulous rack-renting came more into fashion than ever; a man who had carefully farmed and prepared his fields saw them sold to the highest bidder ;* whole taluks and parganas were let and sublet to speculators for sums far above the ancient standard assessment. Under these fiscal conditions the exaction of revenue must have wrung nearly all value out of property in land. The mirásdar suffered heavily; he was rated at higher rents than the tenants Report of 1854, North Berár. Land Tenures. By Cultivation Land Tenures. at-will, apparently because more could be got out of him; he would cling During the ministry of Rája Chandu Lál (1820-1840) the land revenue of certain tracts was regularly put to auction at Haidarábád for the highest bid. It is related of that famous minister that he did not even respect these auction sales, as it was usual to do, but disposed of the same contracts simultaneously to several different buyers. Then came the opportunity of the pargana officers: he who secured them on his side kept the farm; or sometimes these officers solved the complication equitably by putting all purchasers on a kind of roster, whereby each got his turn at the collections. While this roster was known to be full, even Rája Chandu Lál could not persuade a fresh set of contractors to deal with him.† The least recent holdings which now exist are said to be of lands attached to towns, which were better protected and more able to keep their own than the open villages. Yet the cultivating communities in a large township have still preserved distinctions of family or tribe corresponding with internal divisions of the land, which indicate its previous history. These distinctions may date from the original settlement of the village, or from its latest revival, or from some period of usurpation or revolution which brought in foreigners. The leading families still represent dimats and khels-bodies which may be separate as branches of the same family stock, or as of different caste and race. They claim certain ancestral privileges and rights; they furnish the hereditary patel to their subdivision; and the land is occasionally still marked off in shares cultivated exclusively by the members of each khel. Some of these headmen have been known formerly to contract with, the tax-collectors for the revenue due from the land of their khel, and here they must have touched nearly the status of small zamindars or pattidars in Upper India. The following extracts from the reports of the officers who held charge of Berár when it was first made over in 1853 will show the state of things that we found existing. Mr. Bullock, describing North Berár, writest that: * Gardi, trouble, calamity, infliction. † Statements of pargana officers in Berár. "There are no large classes of proprietors, and the tenure by which land is held is very vague; but he has no doubt that a proprietary right might be established in numerous instances, though it does not seem to be asserted or recognised (except in the case of digging wells), nor does any class claim exclusive privileges; all appear to hold their fields as tenants-atwill. Neither are there any village communities in the sense in which the term is understood in the North-Western Provinces; and where no such communities exist he is of opinion that the attempt to establish a system of joint and several responsibility, or to create a mutual interest in property amongst parties not naturally allied to each other, would neither be successful nor desirable." Major Johnston, reporting on South Berár in 1854, says, however— "In these districts there are three descriptions of cultivators-First, the mundkari or resident cultivator, who has acquired prescriptive rights to certain fields and orchards, which have been held for ages by the family, and descend from father to son in hereditary succession-rights of which he cannot be deprived so long as he pays the usual rent, unless by the laws of the country from some act of his own amounting to forfeiture. Secondly, khush-bash, or persons residing in villages at will, Bráhmans, Musalmáns, and other castes not cultivators who rent land, entering into agreement to renew the lease annually, and bring it under cultivation, by employing other persons for that purpose, obtaining their lands, which are chiefly waste, or such as have been deserted by the ryots, at easy terms. Thirdly, walandwár or pyakari: persons living in one village who cultivate lands of another from year to year, having only a contingent interest expiring with the harvest. The share of a pyakari is higher than that of a resident ryot, the extra advantage being conceded to him to compensate for bringing his cattle and labour from the village of which he is resident, and of which perhaps he is a mundkari. The mundkari and resident ryots have the choice of land in their own villages, selecting those nearest to the village, unless other fields exist whose fertility will repay them for going to a greater distance. Under the Hindú government and up to the year 1818 walandwár and mundkari it would appear had the right to dispose of their lands by gift, by sale, or by transfer. In 1818 an order from the Máhárája Chandu Lál, the late minister, did away with the prescribed right, making it necessary under certain pains and penalties, that the previous sanction of the government should be obtained for the so-doing.* There are no mirásdárs; the term cannot be well applied to mundkaris or resident ryots, or to walandwárs, whose right to possession exists only so long as they continue to pay the usual rates of assessment on their lands. The distinctive mark of property, viz., the power of alienation, does not exist.". Major Johnston probably represents very correctly the theory or mundkari tenure. But he goes on to observe on the "little faith" which has been kept by the former government in its revenue system. And all my own inquiries, not only into former practice within Berár, but into actual practice now going on beyond our borders, confirms my belief that the talukdars and revenue farmers cared nothing for prescriptive claims to hold at fixed rates. "The village communities," writes Captain Campbell in his report for 1855-56, "are indeed changed from what they originally were, but they still * Rája Chandu Lál's object was of course to exact heavy fines on each transfer. Land Tenures. By Cultivation Land Tenures. By Cultivation exist, and proprietary rights are everywhere recognised; and claims are now asserted to what few cared to claim during the later years of the Native government, when proprietary rights were often disregarded, were far from secure, and the possession of wealth often brought loss with it. That proprietary right exists and is recognised is shown by the right of digging, or granting permission to dig, wells, and planting trees. The ancestors of the proprietors it was who built the garhi or small mud-walled fort round which the huts of the villagers cluster, and by which they were protected. None but proprietors are now allowed to reside within the walls, and the proof of ownership of a house within them is in disputed cases an admission of proprietary rights. In many villages the lands and ásúmis have been divided among the proprietors." Mr. Bushby's* conclusions as to the tenure of land which originally prevailed in this province are given in the quotations here subjoined :— "A system similar to what obtained in the North-West Provinces appears to have been maintained in all its integrity until the decline of the Delhi power, and indeed in many places until the district now included in North Berár was taken from the Nágpúr Rája and made over to the Nizám. "In the smaller villages, owing to the extinction of other branches of the family, there is often only one proprietor; in others, and particularly in kasba towns or large villages, the land has been much subdivided. There the divisions of dimats are found, which would appear to correspond with the thoks of the North-West, and these again are subdivided into khels or pattis. In some villages the whole land is common to the different khels, and no doubt in former days all the proprietors shared equally the profits and losses. In others the land has been regularly parcelled out, and the ásámis shared with it, the members of each khel sharing the profits of it which of late years amounted to little more than the haks (customary dues)." The report next gives in detail the history of a village in which the Marátha rulers had for many years fixed the assessments of each internal division of the lands with the several branches of the original family that had settled in this township. These headmen of each khel or dimat agreed with the Marátha officer for the rents to be paid upon the lands claimed by each khel. But when the country was transferred to the Nizám, his talukdar farmed the whole estate to a stranger, who rackrented it for seventeen years, breaking down all the twenty-two original headmen into mere cultivators, and collecting direct from each holding. At last the talukdár took to squeezing his farmer, probably treating him as a full sponge, and wrung him dry in one season by raising the demand from Rs. 17,000 to Rs. 25,000. The farmer collapsed, and the village was afterwards given year by year to the highest bidder. Of course when the estate came into our hands no actual proprietary rights existed at all; and Mr. Bushby laments in this as in other instances the ruin of the "old proprietors." At that time the intention of the Government was to settle the land on the North-Western system, with the village headmen as proprietors, or at any rate with the pattidars for parcels of land upon which they managed revenue collections; enforcing joint responsibility of the whole body thus settled with. The settlements *Resident at Haidarábád 1853-56. |