From Mughal Lagaan to British Zamindari: How Land Systems Impoverished Villages

Did you know that in ancient and medieval India, land was never ‘bought and sold’ or ‘auctioned’?

The entire village community held collective rights over village land. Whichever family tilled a portion of land enjoyed its use. The king merely took a fixed share of the harvest (a sixth or a fourth) as tax. In the event of a famine or drought, the king would remit the tax. There was simply no tradition in Indian history of evicting any peasant from his land.

What, then, happened that today, at a single stroke of the pen by the tehsil (sub-district revenue office) patwari (village land record keeper), a peasant is stripped of his ancestral land?

The beginning of this historic devastation lay in the latter part of the Mughal era, and most notably in the ‘Permanent Settlement’ (Istamarari system) introduced by the British Governor-General Lord Cornwallis in 1793.

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The British Revenue-Machine: Zamindari, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari

In the fourth chapter of his book ‘Ujadti Kheti, Ujadte Gaon’ (Desolate Agriculture, Ruined Villages), author N. Singh peels back the layers of India’s land revenue history:

1. Permanent Settlement (Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Eastern Uttar Pradesh): The British declared local tax-collecting middlemen to be the ‘owners’ of the land overnight, turning peasants who had cultivated it for centuries into their ‘tenants’! If the stipulated revenue was not paid, the land was auctioned off.
2. Ryotwari (Madras, Bombay): Here, exorbitant land revenue was collected directly from the cultivator (ryot), driving the peasant into the clutches of moneylenders (mahajans).
3. Mahalwari (Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh): Here, collective land revenue was imposed upon the entire village (mahal).

These three systems had only one purpose—to fill the coffers of the East India Company and the British Crown with gold and silver, even if crores of Indian peasants were forced to eat rotis made of grass. Whether it was the Bengal Famine of 1770 or the Great Famine of 1943, behind the deaths of lakhs of people was not drought, but this cruel land settlement of the British.

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After Independence: Did Zamindari Really End?

After 1947, the ‘Zamindari Abolition Act’ and ‘Land Ceiling Act’ were passed.

Yet what was the reality? Shrewd big landlords transferred land into the names of their servants, distant relatives, and even their pet dogs and horses, evading the ceiling laws! Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan (land-gift) movement too ended up confined merely to barren and stony lands.

The result was that even after independence, the bulk of fertile land remained in the hands of a few influential families, while the actual tiller of the soil remained landless or a nominal tenant-cultivator to this very day.

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Bitter Truth from the Book

“The greatest tragedy of land reforms was that the lawmakers themselves were large landholders. They drafted the legal language in such a way that a hundred escape routes were already left wide open. The bureaucracy of independent India preserved lock, stock, and barrel the very same oppressive British machinery of the patwari, kanungo (revenue inspector), and tehsildar (revenue officer), whose job was not to serve the peasant, but to ensnare him in a labyrinth of lawsuits and khasra-khatauni (field registers and tenancy records).”
— ‘Ujadti Kheti, Ujadte Gaon’ (Chapter 4)

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What is the Real Solution?

1. Impartial Audit of Digital Land Records: Mere computerisation is not enough; there must be physical ground truthing at the grassroots level to verify who actually possesses and cultivates that land.
2. Residential and Agricultural Patta (Land Allotment Deeds) for Landless Families: Unused land of the gram sabha (village general assembly) and gram samaj (village community) should be distributed in a transparent manner among the village’s poorest Dalit, backward-class, and impoverished upper-caste landless.
3. Curbing Corruption in Chakbandi (Land Consolidation): Strict punitive measures must halt the game played during the chakbandi (land consolidation) process, where fertile land is carved away from small peasants and handed over to the rich.

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A Question for Reflection (The Book’s Message)

The earth is no one’s ancestral fiefdom; it is nature’s gift. Until the genuine right to the land is given to the one who drives the plough, can any talk of social justice ever ring true?

To understand this deep historical inquiry, do read the fourth chapter of the book ‘Ujadti Kheti, Ujadte Gaon’.