The Muslim, as the Hindu had done before, treated wasteland

indifferently; that is, whoever was instrumental in bringing the land into cultivation received the primary proprietary interest.

Thus, for over 3,000 years the village retained its position of primacy as the source of proprietary rights. The decline of the Muslim and the ascendency of the Mahratta during the late 17th and early 18th century had very little effect on the tenure structure except that in this period of political upheaval the weakening of the central government permitted some encroachments on the rights of the ryot. In this respect, there was some virtue to the orderly treatment of property accorded to the British.

British rule. Near the end of the year 1600, Queen Elizabeth chartered the British East India Company. From that time until the company became directly responsible to the Crown in 1784, India experienced a dramatic upheaval in its institutions. Nor did imperialism end with the

passage of Pitt's India Act; legislation aimed at the welfare of the
people did not appear until the 1930's. Dutt states that:

[Lord Clive's] endeavours to introduce reforms both in the civil
and military administration deserve all the praise that has been
bestowed upon them by historians; but when we examine the
essential features of his scheme, we find that it was framed--
as so many schemes have since been framed in India--mainly in the
interest of the British rulers, and not in the interests of the
people. 1/

Romesh Dutt, Early British rule, p. 39. [Brackets own]

Until late in the 18th century England was concerned primarily with
its struggle with France for supremacy in the East as well as the New
World. The passage of Pitt's India Act of 1784 and the impeachment of
Hastings brought an era of administrative development, highlighted by
During Cornwallis' administration the system of Permanent

Lord Cornwallis.

Settlement was established.

It was a time of severe exploitation. In

spite of the urgings of many of the British leaders in India such as Bentinck, Munro in Madras, and Elphinstone in Bombay, no genuine cognizance, or at least admission, was made the rural land problem until the 1930's; even in the report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, 1/ there is a conspicuous absence of any reference to land policy.

A most important feature of the tenure development in India is its relationship to the revenue system. Whether under the rule of the East

India Company or the Crown, the fundamental objective of revenue maximization remained the same; in the former case, it was for the benefit of the subscribers of the Company, in the latter, the British public. The concepts are necessary to an explanation of the British India revenue system, (1) the permanently settled estate and (2) the temporarily settled estate. Under the first type of estate revenue (tax) settlements were made in perpetuity. Purported attributes of this scheme were security of the government with respect to revenues and the ability of the cultivator to secure the advantages of improved productivity of the land. The temporary or periodical settlement had the advantage of enhanced revenues where and when production rose. The system of

1/ Royal Commission on Agriculture in India. Report. Bombay, Govt. Central Press. 1928.

permanent settlements developed under the administration of Lord Cornwallis (1784) in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa after the attempts at an effective method of temporary settlements by Warren Hastings had failed. 1/ The East India Company in its attempts to follow the line of least resistance adopted its own variations on the Hindu-Moghul theme of tax-exaction. Revenue collections were farmed out to local headmen or "zamindars" who received a portion of the revenue, usually about 1/11. Under the Muslim regime these zamindars were held strictly to the position of revenuecollectors; however, in keeping with landed estate system in England, the British advanced the zamindar to the rank of landlord over the land for

which he was responsible in revenue-collection.

The end result was a

substantial diminution of the rights of the cultivators or ryots.

The permanently settled system is not synonymous with the zamindari tenure system, but the two are generally associated with the same geographical area, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces. The Malguzars of Central Provinces, as an exception, were revenue farmers whom the British recognized as owners (under the Peshwas the Malguzars had no proprietary rights). They were analogous to the zamindars of Bengal but settlements

were temporary.

Later on, as the British territories in India expanded, the permanent settlement scheme fell into disfavor. Particular opposition arose when

a settlement for Punjab was anticipated; it was felt by the Government of Punjab that a permanent settlement at the time would result in a great loss of potential revenue inasmuch as the country had not developed.

1/ Discussions concerning the equitability of land revenue settlements had begun as early as 1776 in Calcutta. At that time, Phillip Francis, a member of the Governor General's Council, proposed that the land revenue should be permanently fixed.

ment.

The other principal revenue system was the temporary settle

Warren Hastings had made an unsuccessful attempt at temporary settlements previous to the Cornwallis administration. But even the

Cornwallis reforms had fallen into disrepute and ideas of a permanent settlement for the north India provinces had been abandoned in 1821. The classification of lands, "proprietary estates temporarily settled" sprang into prominence in Regulation VII of 1822, which provided for complete reassessment as well as periodic resettlement.

From the period 1792 to 1802, the East India Company acquired most of what is now Tamil Nadu (Madras) and Andhra States. Under the leader

ship of Thomas Munro the ryotwari (peasant cultivator) system was

developed.

Munro favored the establishment of a permanent ryotwari system

but he was overruled and the temporary ryotwari system was introduced in the unsettled tracts of Madras in 1820. The settlements in Madras were also oppressive to the cultivator because very little account was taken of the tax-bearing capacity of various grades of land. Later (1855) a survey and resettlement

were made in an effort to produce a more equitable system but in practice, this too, proved unsatisfactory.

There was

Thirty-year settlements were introduced in Bombay in 1835 after the unsuccessful attempts at temporary settlements by Pringle between 1824-28. a general survey of lands which were classified into nine grades according to their productive ability. Settlements were made directly with Difficulties were also encountered in Bombay; taxes became very oppressive on the peasantry and the government was forced to make revisions. The revenue system was again revised under the Bombay Revenue Code of 1879

the ryots.

which provided for assessments based on the contract rents rather than a

calculated value.

This form of revenue system is generally connected with the ryotwari tenure because the settlement is not only temporary but made directly with who assumes an owner position. In the ryotwari

the ryot arrangement, no intermediary exists between the government and the landholder. It is a so-called "occupancy tenure" thereby permitting the ryot to inherit, transfer, and otherwise alienate. Unless the revenues are paid the land will revert to the custody of the government. Although this tenure is generally regarded as a "peasant proprietorship," there is nothing inherent in the ryotwari to prevent tenancy.

In a third type of revenue system, the government dealt with a village community, leaving collection to the village leader. This system was rejected in Madras but the same principle--village collection--was employed in the Mahalwari system of northern and northwestern India.

The mahalwari (village) system was first developed in what is now Uttar Pradesh in Regulation VII of 1822 and Regulation IX of 1833. In this system revenue was collected from the village. The individual cultivators were generally responsible for a certain share of the revenue but, in the last resort, all the villagers were responsible, jointly and severally. Payment was usually made through a village headman. A notable variation from that of the Uttar Pradesh region came about in the revenue system of Punjab where the share of the revenue from each landholder was separable so that the system was virtually ryotwari in nature. Thus the mahalwari settlements were an important innovation in the revenue system. The recognition of a more subtle form of property right

than the absolute ownership concept in the British Isles was in itself

notable.