village structure and punjab govt

8/9/2019 Village Structure and Punjab Govt

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BRIEFCOMMUNICATIONS

VILLAGE TRUCTURE

ND THE PUNJAB

OVERNMENT

A RESTATEMENT

Marian W. Sm ith 1952) has recently raised for anthropological ana lysis a problem

which has been debated f o r one hundred an d eighty years by governm ental adm inistra-

tors, jurists and politicians. T his is the problem as to how f ar the government of India

had recognized or should recognize in its agrarian system the traditional stru ctu re of

peasant society. Dr. Smiths analysis, based on anthropological field study, differs in

im po rtan t ways from previous analyses, both in general an d in particulars.

Adm inistrative practice in th e revenue systems of British Ind ia varied according to

time an d province.

It

reflected the ch ara cter of th e adm inistra tive personnel an d th eir

experience. It also followed the dic tates of imperial policy. I n several south ern prov-

inces

of

In dia which were take n over a t a n earlier time, pa rts of the traditional agrarian

structure were ignored or overruled. New landlords were created, while old owners

were expropriated. By the time the British reached Punjab, however, the debate on

local recognition was turnin g in favor of those who, with M un ro and Elphinstone,

believed th a t the greatest adm inistrative efficiency would be obtained throug h a m axi-

mal recognition of t he indigenous rural stru ctu re of power Drive r, 1949, pp. 15-26).

T he settlem ent officers of Pu nj ab began a program of systematic ethnography. They

collected volumes of in form ation on n ati ve law and usage. Th eir collections describe

village administration, inter-caste exchanges

j u jmd f i i ) ,

village sections ( p u ~ p ,kok,

tura.,

etc.), and village-groups (&~pd, i ldqd , etc.), as well as th e family law of pro pe rty

and inhe ritance in each ethnic element. Baden-Powells 1892, 1896) detailed com para-

tive analysis of pre-British agrarian structure is based on the same official ethnog-

raphies. Th e government combined much

of

the indigenous structure

of

power with

its own inequities and produced a revenue administration which Indian Nationalists

used to denounce a s a fortress of mediaevalism. T od ay Ind ian reactionaries ar e appre-

hensive over the governments m eddling in the revenue adm inistration, while radicals

are uneasy over wh at seems to them to be th e very slow pace of th e promised ag rarian

reform.

Th e present Pu nja b administration was built from th e bottom u p b y th e British,

beginning in 1845. Dr. Sm ith emphasizes the crucial adm inistra tive significance of th e

village records: these comprise th e title deed of each landed est ate pa{{i, tc.), together

with some vita l ma tte rs of village law an d oral trad ition , here recorded in writing for

the first time. U nfo rtun ately , however, the B ritish village Records-of-Rights do no t

contain names of non-cultivators, nor any inclusive census, nor do they contain in-

formation on

so

difficult a religious question as supi exogamy, nor do they ever

conta in a m ap of th e village house-site, since houses a re outside th e scope of th e

revenue laws Baden-P owell, 1892, Vol. 2 pp. 557-568). T he oldest village records in

Pun jab d ate back barely a cen tury , while th e pre-British records, which ar e extremely

scarce, contain no genealogies, no maps and no statements of village custom whatso-

ever Kohli, 1918; Mo reland, 1929). Full descriptive m aterials are to be found only in

the village records and in the D istrict Settleme nt Rep orts, which were written a t th e

time of the first regular settlements. Abstracts from the full descriptive materials are

found in Tuppers 1881) compendia of tribal law an d in t he Distric t an d St at e Gazet-

.a


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138

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

155, 1953

teers. The later village settlement books and revenue reports naturally have no need

to repeat the original descriptive material; they confine themselves to current opera-

tional statistics a t interva ls of twe nty t o thi rty years.

T o understand th e social constitution of villages, of village sections and of classes

of tenants the anthropologist must acquaint himself intimately with the legal tech-

nicalities of the agrarian str uctu re as formulated in the land laws of the st ate an d in th e

rules of the revenue administration. Sir Henry Maine, an anthropological pioneer in

India, seems to hav e done just tha t. T he agrarian structure is mostly based on peasan t

law, and follows th e custom of each locality. Bu t t he st and ard legal terms often differ

from t he local patois, jus t as th e dialect of each rural region differs from t h a t of the

next. Th e anthropologist is thus confronted with th e task of understanding sta te term s

as well a s local terms. H e has to understand the pr im ary group behavior of peasants

an d to understand tha t, he must also understand the formal legal relationships w hich

ar e implicit in it. Jessie B ernards 1949) warnings in this journal ar e as thoroughly ap-

plicable to anthropologists in I ndi c peasan t society as in our own industrial society.

Thus a sociological village in India or Pakistan is often the same as an ad-

ministrative village, but neither necessarily corresponds to the architectural unit

which the anthropologist sees. D r. Smith has noted a dr am atic example of this near

Laho re in th e low-caste hamlet of Khan pu r. Kh an pu r is a named cluster of houses

which does no t seem to hav e been included in th e list of revenue villages of La ho re

tahsil. D r. Sm ith furth er notes th a t the people of Kh anp ur are felt to belong to the

estates (puttis) of Shahpur. That means that they live on land owned by Shahpur

people, and th at they m ay once hav e been the serv ants of Sha hpu r landowners. Abou t

1868,

the revenue settlement officer inquired about local feeling and economic fact;

he recognized both b y refusing to consider the Kh an pu r hamlet as a viable indepe nden t

village. B u t he did not abolish Kha npu r. Khan pur exists for the revenue adm inistra tion,

jus t as it does for the peasants, as a pa rt of Sha hpu r: its population is counted in the

Shahpur census, its house-site is set off on t he Sha hpu r map and its service relations ar e

recorded in the Sh ahpu r book. Similar situations are common all over Ind ia Ba den-

Powell,

1892,

Vol. 1 pp.

96-97;

Vol.

2,

pp.

556, 560-566).

T he government classifica-

tion of house-sites into revenue villages, which appe ars arbi tra ry a nd inaccu rate a t first,

contains in many areas vital clues for reconstructing social histo ry and for und erstan d-

ing present imperative relations among persons.

Thus also the village section

(patti,

etc.), to whose social importance Dr. Smith

calls attention, has a defined legal existence determining and parallelling primary-

group behavior. I n law an d administration, the term

pu i

in Hindi a leaf or

divisionl) is applied to a division of a n agna tic landed e sta te Baden-Powell,

1892,

Vol. 3, p.

619).

Sha hpu r village has two e states an d Nia s Beg h as four. T he fields of

a

patti

ar e typically scattered in all area s of a villages lands, a nd ar e sometimes even

scattered across several different villages Baden-Powell, 1896, pp. 266-281). Estates

own shares in th e village house-site, and the s ite may on their demand be divided up

int o wards or blocks, which are named afte r the es tates and also called

(pa&is.

The

division of a village house-site into wards is an intric ate qu estion which mu st be de-

cided among t he partitioners by

a

Civil Co urt Baden-Powell,

1892,

Vol.

2,

pp.

557-

558). Decision weighs social criteria-caste, kinship, wealth, tenancy a nd service ties

among owners and residents; it gives littl e weight to area.2 Th e numb er of wards in a


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BRIEF

C OMMUNIC A T IONS

139

village house-site is determined by the number of partitions of management which occur

among the owners; it cannot be determined by cultural formula. The number of wards

might be expected to vary roughly in proportion to the size

of

the village and to the

number of the owners.

Government revenue administration is explicitly based on

patiis

as landed estates;

it

makes no use of

paliis

as residential wards. The headman

(lambarddr,

one who has a

number [in the revenue register], a title derived from the English word number) is

the tax agent for an estate; he is not the leader for a block of households. The families

(tuhld

in Patiala, cf. other Punjabi

thuld

or

[huld,

cf. Hindi

[old,

a iigroup, ward

or hamlet, from Sanskrit) which are said to be in the headmans charge are sub-

shares of an estate, designated by an old Punjabi legal name; they are not real kinship

groups Baden-Powell, 1896, pp. 31-32, 238-239, 278, 280). The headman in the

revenue administration is only a kind of an attorney, and cannot be held iresponsible

in case others fail to pay their taxes to him Baden-Powell, 1892, Vol. 2, pp. 340-341).

By contrast, the present-day watchman of

low

caste continues an ancient office of the

whole village-which means that watchmen are now independent of estates, and were

once independent of the police espionage system. Each watchmans beat includes an

average of three wards

(Pu nj ab States Gazetteers, Vol .

17A, 1904, p. 129;

Vol.

17B, 1913,

pp. cxx-cxxiii).

Paiiis are not easily forgotten by jurists or administrators in any relevant contexts.

Paiiisestates or wards-often form the bases of factional conflict, a tru th well known

to police sub-inspectors, party workers, and the like. Knowledge of paitis is often used

by such outsiders to manipulate factional situations in particular villages which are

strange to them. Partitions of

patiis

and disputes between

pa[tis

are inevitably the

daily courtroom fare of the higher magistrates and judges3

State land law and village custom have interacted from their beginnings. Agrarian

rules and classes found in villages today are derived from the long interaction

of

state

and village and are therefore difficult to dissect. Dr. Smith reports that Patiala villagers

recognize a division into Ianded

(scinziddr,

one who has the arable land, of Dogra or

Persian origin) as opposed to landless

(lagi,

attached person, retainer, of Sanskritic

origin) classes, and that persons of the landless class, which may include bankers, are

forbidden ever to become landed. This rule, which seems to be a village taboo, is ac-

tually a non-literate phrasing of a recent sta te device for the regulation of mortgages-

the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900. Until the 1900 Act was passed, many cultiva-

tors had rapidly lost their places within the village, regardless of birth and the social

fiber

(Report

of

the Royal Commission

on

Agriculture in India,

1928, pp. 416-22). One

wonders if Patiala villagers do not also distinguish, as villagers in many places do, some

others of the dozen or

so

categories of land rights which in fact determine the con-

tinuity of their places in the village

(Pu nj ab States Gazetteers, Vol .

17A, 1904, pp. 129,

144-166). The very heterogeneous foreign etymologies-Arabic, Persian, English,

Urdu, Hindi and Sanskrit-which a dictionary reveals for what seem to be old Pun-

jabi village words suggests the peasants essential lack of isolation, and indicates the

degree to which the land laws of the state must be considered in analyzing the deter-

minants

of

the village social structure of any epoch since Hindu times.

Certain relations between the menial castes and their cultivating clients are felt to

be binding; Dr. Smith notes that some of these binding relations have been recorded in


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140

AM ERI CAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 1.55, 1953

the village Records-of-Rights. The Records-of-Rights along with many unwritten

jajmani usages are accepted a s binding also by t he Pu nja b courts. Both sta te and vil-

lage law hold that a menial who supplies the specified services must be paid by the

client at the specified rate. As long as the hereditary menial family fulfills the terms

of i ts contract, the client may not evade pay me nt by taking th e same services from an y

oth er competing menial family. Litigious villagers can cite q uan titie s of legal folklore

based on such jajmani rules which have been confirmed by the decisions of courts as

high as the British Priv y Council Wiser, 1936, pp. Sn, 14, 129-135).

Dr. Sm ith has noted a num ber

of

oth er customary fea tur es of service relations which

are no t recognized in sta te law. The se are features which ar e not generally regarded as

binding in village law, either. There

is

nothing in village customary law which forbids

a client from dismissing an d replacing a washerman who gives poor service. M an y dis-

missals do occur. The re is also nothing in village customary law which forbids t he client

of a w asherman from w ashing his own shir t, or which forbids a grain-farm er from grow-

ing his own vegetables. Villagers in northern India and Pakistan in fact do most

of

their own washing, and most grain-farmers grow vegetables such as peas, chickpeas,

lentils and two or thre e kinds of spinach, mixed right into th e grain fields e.g., Punjab

District

Gazetteers,

Vol.

30A, 1916, pp. 99-100, 1 8; Wiser, 1936, p. 49; Hocart, 1950,

There is real value in calling attention, as Dr. Smith does, to the intimate or

emotional attitudes which give permanency to the relations between menials and

clients in th e service system-attitudes which m ay exist between persons despite and

apart from crude questions of economic status. Some pairs may share symmetrical

attitud es toward one another: an appropriate example is the on e cited of a mutual

dependency between potter and carpenter, two artisans who stand about midway in

the rank hierarchy, and who practice technically elaborate crafts. But there seems

need of adding t h at asymm etrical attitu de s can rath er be expected to pervade m ost

service relationships, since the majo rity of m enial-client pairs involve persons of

markedly different economic and ritual status . Th e people who are conceived to be the

permanent clients of the potter a nd the carpenter ar e not all the people

of

the village,

but only those who are cultivators: payment is legally graded and specified according

to th e num ber of th e clients plows or oxen. The people whose life-style requires the

courtly obsequies of th e barber a nd removal of bloody pollution by midwife an d washer-

man a re not all of the castes, but only th e higher ones. Th e need t h a t gives permanency

here is neither technical nor symmetrical, but ritual and essentially asymmetrical.

Many menials would resent the implication that they are retainers or even mutual

pa rtn ers of th e lower castes. Studies of th e whole system show th a t t he lower castes

an d landless laborers receive few special services from ou tside the ir own gro up. I n

Wisers study, as in

so

ma ny others, the lower groups pass largely o ut

of

the pattern

of sta ble exchang ing pairs Wiser, 1936, p. 12; Hocart, 1950,

p.

12 et

passim).

While th e basic units of village struc tur e an d the basic laws of the ir relations a re

recognized in the Punjab revenue system with extraordinary precision, other admin-

istrative devices which were introduced by the British seem to have had unsettling

effects. The police ar e one such device Moon,

1946,

pp.

44-62).

They comprise much

more than just the village watchmen and their inspectors. In Lahore tahsil, for in-

stance, there are about a dozen police stations and outposts. More than 150 rifle-

P. 2 .


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B R I E F C O M M U N I C A T I O N S 141

carrying policemen daily roam around the

400

villages, looking for trouble. Every year

they extract three or four cases from each average village. Direct, violent crimes like

murder, rape and dacoity are scarcely one in a hundred

Punjab District Gazetteers,

Vol. 30B, 1916, pp. cxlii, cvi-cix). There was little difference even in the native states.

In Patiala, police and revenue systems have been separated since

1888,

and most other

features of British administration speedily borrowed PunjabState Gazetteers, Vol. 17A,

1904,

p.

174).

Above the village level, British administrators of Punjab were sensitive to any

larger supra-local structures and areal characteristics which might raise tax receipts

and make collecting easier. They mapped tribal caste) distributions-tribal traits

were supposed to affect agricultural ability-and then made their pargana, tahsil or

district boundaries so as to approximate the distributions e.g., Baden-Powell, 1892,

Vol. 2, p. 671). This practice seems to have been new to Indian administration, for the

British administrative boundaries have no known congruence with any Sikh or Moghul

boundaries. The Sikhs and Moghuls never maintained such elaborate small regional

units as the tahsil collection, a purely Arabic word). Their techniques for collecting

the revenue worked by informal, mass coercion and did not require one tenth the

amount of present tahsil stationery Kohli, 1918; Moreland, 1929).

The important village-group organization of India and Pakistan which is now being

rediscovered was well known to nineteenth-century British administrators of Punjab.

It was of much interest to nineteenth-century social scientists such a s Sir Herbert

Risley

1903,

p.

246)

who were attempting to reconstruct the social history of thc

Aryan peoples in India. The Settlement Reports of U.P. and Punjab and many other

descriptive and analytic works contain discussions of indigenous village-groups com-

prising from two to a theoretical eighty-four villages which had a purely agnatic, or

conforming with Punjabi usage, a common tribal origin. Such village-groups of ten

employed a special clan of Brahman priests and a full complement of menial castes.

They maintained a common headman, and sometimes a central market. Many exist

and operate today. There are plenty of genuine vernacular terms for these village-

groups--iappd,

kherd,

i hqa mauzd, etc.-so tha t invention of a new Punjabi name is

not necessary Baden-Powell,

1892,

Vol.

2,

pp.

134-137, 629-676, 684-685).

The example of a village-group which Dr. Smith cites as centering a t Nias Beg in

Lahore District may have had just this kind of common agnatic origin. A reading o

the revenue records should tell. Agnatic village-groups do exist in Lahore. But Nias

Begs affiliations may have grown up simply by its economic pull as a trade center and

a religious center in a pre-existing neighborhood area. Government administrators

in Lahore do not seem to have neglected Nias Begs natural status as a rurban capi-

tal, for they have given it a Post Office and a Canal Rest House, and have made i t the

headquarters of a Zaildari and of a Field Qanungo Circle in the revenue department

Punjab District Gazetteers, Vol. 30A, 1916, maps). There is even a possibility that

government recognition has contributed to the formation of the Nias Beg village-group.

Advantage may accrue to comparative Indic sociology if rural groupings like these are

discussed in the terms and in relation to the explicit frame of reference already built

up by such rural sociologists as Charles

P.

Loomis and Douglas Ensminger

1942;

also

Loomis,

1947).

Similar clusterings

o

economic relations around markets and official centers have


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7/7

B R I E F C O M M U N I CA T I O N S

143

province having an analogous land system October,

1950

to April,

1952

I have to thank the

Social Science Research Council.

Personal ohservations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RADEN-POWELL,. H.,

1892,

The Land System s

of

British India,

3

Vols.

BERNARD,

ESSIE

1949,

Sociological Mirror for Cultural Anthropologists.

American Anthropolo-

BOARDF ECONOWICNQUIRY

UNJAB,

1922-,

Pun jab Village Surveys.

CRAVEN,HOMAS

932,

The New Royal Dictionary.

CUNNINGHAM,.

D. 1849,

A History of the Sikhs.

DRIVER,

.

N.,

1949,

Problems of Zamindari and Lan d Tenure Reconstruction i n In di a.

HOCART,. M.,

1950,

Caste.

KOHLI,L. SITARAM,

1918,

Land Revenue Administration under Maharajah Ranjit Singh.

LOOMIS, HARLES

.

1947,

Demonstration in Rural Sociology and Anthropology. Applied

- and DOUGLASNSYINGER,

942,

Governmental Administration and Informal Local

MOON,

ENDEREL946,

trangers

in

India.

MORELAND,. H.

1929,

Th e Agrarian System of Moslem India .

PATHAK,

.

C.,

1946,

Bhargavas Standard Illtatrated Dictionary

of

the Hindi Language.

Pu nja b D istrict Gazetteers, Vol.

30A, 1916;

Vol.

30B, 1916.

Pu nja b Sta tes Gazetteers, Vol. 17A,

1904;

Vol. 17B,

1913.

Report of the Royal Commission

on

Agriculture

in

Ind ia ,

1928.

RISLEY , . H.,

1903,

Census

of

India,

1901,

Vol .

1 ,

Ethnographic Appendices.

SMITH,MARIANW.,

1952,

The Misal:

A

Structural Village-Group

of

India and Pakistan. Ameri-

THORNTONHOMAS846,

History

of

the Pulzjab.

TUPPER

. L., f al.,

1881,

Punja b Customary Law,

31

Vols.

WISER,W. H.,

936,

The Hind u Jajmani Sys tem.

1896,

The Ind ian Village Community.

gist, Vol.

51,

pp.

671-677.

Journal

of

the Pu njab Historical Society,

Vol.

7

pp.

74-90.

Anthropology,

Vol. 6,

p.

10-25.

Groups. Applied Anthropology, Vol.

1

pp.

41-60.

can Anthropologist, Vol.

54,

p.

41-66.

THE

MPACT

F SMALLNDUSTRY AN

INDIAN

OMMUNITY

T h e L a c

D u

Flambeau Ind ian Reserva tion i s a community of 1,200 Chippew a In -

dians in northern Wisconsin. U ntil

1946

i t was the usual poverty-stricken Wisconsin

Indian se t t leme nt wi th par lous economic t imes in th e winte r gradu a t ing to

a

marginal

existence w ith th e influx of warm weather, tourists and fishermen, and the seasonal

harvest ing of crops for the local farmers. Th e rath er picturesque lake an d pine fo rest

set t ing was marred by bo th th e concentrated and sporadic occurrence of Ind ian shacks

-log or fra m e assemblages, usually in need of pa in t an d repair, an d bordered b y un-

kem pt yard s often li t tered with the resul ts of th e contact with the container cul t . T h e

house within was jus t as grim. Bat tere d furn i ture rested on l inoleum-covered or ba re

wood floors.

A

wood s to ve furnished he a t for the two

or

three rooms and cooking

facil it ies . Ind oo r plumb ing an d electric i ty were conspicuously absent . T h e people inside

were dressed to m atch this mil ieu.

I n 1946 a change occurred in the economic life of t he comm uni ty . T he S impson

Electric Company,

a

meter manufacturing company of Chicago, had sent out a staff

to to ur Wisconsin in search

of a

labor supply a nd locat ion for

a

branch assem bly plant .

village structure and punjab govt

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