Sunday, September 4, 2011

Land ownership introduced by British

Lord Cornwallis
The British had regularized land ownership relations by introducing the Zamindary, Ryotwari and and Mahalwari in different parts of the country.Although all these systems differ from one another, but they have one factor in common , if there is a land -there is a owner. As marx said that this was a revolutionary change.
While thus recognizing land owners with full ownership rights, the functions that were formerly attached to land ownership were taken away from it. Formerly, each had some obligation to the village community or to the administrative machinery above it. The rights over the land and the share in its produce were determined in relation to such obligation.
The British severed all these links and divided the entire system into two; the administrative machinery and other social organisational forms on one side and the land ownership rights on the other. The revolutionary changes brought by the British thus controlled the whole land affairs in collecting taxes and paying salaries to different persons attached to the adminstration.
As a result a considerable section of people who had possessed previously various rights and privileges were deprived of all such privileges and rights. Similarly local and provincial chiefs and many other individuals and families aassociated with administration lost the rights and privileges they once enjoyed. All these form the basis of dissatisfaction leading to some sort of unity against the ruling machinery.
At the same time a class of land owners having given the chance of collecting money as they wish gradually formed landed aristocracy. These capitalist landlords gradually wanted capitalist mode of reconstruction initiated by the British to develop a  bourgeois society in India.